The Secrets of Blood and Bone

by Rebecca Alexander

  “Sir Henry Dannick,” Maggie said, her voice rich with derision. “I have a message from Thomazine Ratcliffe, my ancestress. You have caused enough damage to this community, and to my family. This is for Ellen, who never harmed anyone.”

  She reached out her hand, barely three feet from the man’s chest. He just watched her, his lips drawn back from his teeth, his chest heaving. Jack just had time to wonder if those teeth were abnormally long and sharp when his expression changed. He made a whimpering noise that the others recoiled from. Even as he stumbled back, Maggie stepped forward, muttering familiar words. The fox fire—

  The man shrieked, fell to his knees and clutched his chest. His face changed color to a deep, purple-red, his hands clawed at his trunk, drawing blood, as if he would open his own rib cage. Finally he fell back, his face almost black, motionless on the frosted grass.

  Maggie shook herself like a dog. “Oh, God,” she said, putting her hands to her face. “Did I really do that?”

  Felix stepped beside Maggie, leveling the gun. “Go home, now,” he ordered, with quiet authority. “All of you.”

  Jack turned to look at the woman who stepped impassively over her father’s body to assume the role of leader. “Give my son back.”

  Felix answered, his voice strong. “Callum isn’t one of you. He doesn’t need the wild hunt. None of you need to kill. You’ve just grown to like it.”

  The woman’s face seemed to change in the early light, a strange twist of grief on her face as she looked at the body at her feet. “He’s my son,” she said, her voice rasping.

  “We’ll keep him safe,” Jack said, wondering that herself. “We’ll get him help. You need to control your pack and deal with your dead. Not to mention your wolves are roaming the countryside.”

  The pack looked to their new leader, and one by one they turned and limped or hobbled toward the house. Jack counted them. Of the original seven, Sir Henry was dead, a pile of bloodied rags was all that remained of another, and one must still be at the wolf enclosure.

  Callum’s mother remained, staring at Jack. “We need this. This is who we are.” The woman looked over at the boy in the car. “Callum, look at you.” Her voice softened. “You are healed; you will be well now, and strong. You will be a Dannick Lion.”

  The door opened and Callum, dressed in Felix’s jacket, stepped out. “I don’t want that.” His face was still twisted with horror at what he had seen. “I don’t want to take a human life just to become like you. You exploit people every day, you only think about making money and winning the big deals at the bank. I’m not like that.”

  “You will weaken. You will need the hunt.”

  Felix stepped forward, waving the herbal. “Thomazine Ratcliffe knew that wasn’t necessary in the fifteen hundreds, and she told your ancestors they needn’t be monsters. Amyas—”

  “Amyas was a weakling, a bastard. Callum is a purebred Dannick, from a long line of leaders and rulers.”

  “They ruled through aggression and violence,” Felix said. “Amyas was strong, he went from a shepherd’s son to the administrator of all the Dannick wealth. He was bright; he was given an education—that’s the real power. That’s the advantage Callum needs.”

  Jack stepped over to the shaking boy, his face washed with tears. “If you love the boy, you will let him go. Change the way the Dannicks operate so he’ll have a family to come home to.”

  The woman looked more human with each passing moment. She stared at Callum. “No. If you go, you can’t come back.”

  Callum looked at Sadie, who was still folded in a heap in the circle. “I can’t stay with people who could kill—I can’t be like you.”

  The woman turned and walked away, as dignified as if she weren’t naked but for a layer of grass and dirt and blood. Callum started crying, great hacking sobs. Jack patted him on the arm.

  “We’ll help you, of course we will.” She looked at Felix. “Won’t we?”

  He half smiled back. “Of course.”

  Chapter 45

  Venice seethes with secrets. Plots, lies, deceptions, abductions. It does not pretend to be else, with its masks and whores.

  —EDWARD KELLEY, 1586, Venice

  We approached the port at Mestre at nightfall, and were welcomed into a travelers’ inn. The place was overcrowded, and as we approached I realized that the countess’s retinue was waiting for her. I saw many uniforms, many costumes. There was a Turkish party and there were soldiers from all over the continent. There was even a party of wealthy Jews in their caps and robes.

  I was billeted in a loft above the stables, along with Marinello, the commander gaining a mattress stuffed with straw. I suspected he would not need it. The countess was ushered into a proper chamber, and much fussed over by her dark-faced women, three of them hissing and spitting in their native tongue. By dark, Marinello had gone to join her, and two of his officers had claimed the mattress, little attention being paid to me.

  I was surprised, then, when a boy carried a note to me, written upon a piece of good paper in a fair hand in Latin. I held up a lantern that I could read it.

  “Pray meet me outside, that you may learn something to your advantage.”

  Curiosity above all others is my sin and frequently my downfall, and yet I went. Ah, fool! That note led to a scuffle outside the barn, and I was dragged away from the inn by two soldiers.

  “Gently,” I heard a deep voice intone, and my terror was complete. It was the voice of the inquisitor, the representative of the Holy Inquisition, which had declared a war upon the Protestants everywhere. “Take him alive.”

  “My lord,” I stammered. “Let me know your business with me.”

  “You have fallen into the service of the succubus,” he said. “My business was in the nature of a rescue, if not for your body, for your immortal soul.”

  “She lies within—”

  Konrad stepped into the dim lights of the stable. “She is guarded by her soldiers. Now, come with us, or face a quick death.”

  This silenced my words, and I was roughly lifted onto a horse behind one of the soldiers and we rode in sedate style from the inn yard. Beyond, my captor put a spur to the horse, and I found myself riding knee to knee with the Inquisition, Konrad himself leading our journey. When we rode many hours later into the ports, all I knew was exhaustion, and was happy to see a pile of hay, and to gulp down a tankard of wine and a handful of bread.

  —

  I awoke, my senses reeling and my stomach heaving. I managed to turn my head before spewing the sour wine and bread of my last meal away from myself. I was rolled in a blanket and sickened but was otherwise unharmed. I was laid on the wet planks of a small boat, maybe fifteen paces long, and mostly open to the dawn sky. It was very blue, I recall, and the motion of the boat very great. The sound of the sea slapping the bows and the shuddering of each wave along its keel told me we were underway upon the lagoon.

  Standing in the prow, holding a figurehead lightly for balance, stood an apparition. A man in black clothes embroidered with gold thread, his boots in dark leather extending above his knees and bearing cruel-looking spurs. On his chest, a sash of scarlet; upon his head, a hat of velvet. His coat was ornamented in brocade, and bore heavy sleeves and cuffs. His hand, resting upon the hilt of a sword, was adorned with gold rings. The sword itself was a schiavona, the hilt defended by a basket of gilded guards, enclosing the quillons. The blade, judging by the black-and-gold scabbard, was broad—a soldier’s sword. It was also long, stretching from the man’s waist almost to the ground, and he was a tall man, broad in the shoulder.

  He leaned into the movement of the boat, not staggering or falling as it breached the odd wave. The wind scudded into two large sails, one so great it dipped into the water from time to time, I judged, as it sprinkled salt spray over me. I struggled to sit up in the bottom of the boat.

  As I did so, the soldier turned, and I saw it was the inquisitor Konrad, though dressed as a knight. He wore no emblem of the Pope,
but looked as he was truly, a Reichsritter of the Holy Roman Empire. He looked at me, no animosity on his face, but perhaps he saw some fear in mine for he stepped down onto the deck. There were four pairs of oarsmen I had not noticed, so entranced I had been by Konrad, and he stepped between them.

  “Up, young Kelley,” he said, reaching his hand down to grasp me by my clothes, and pulled me up to sit upon a crude seat. I could see, then, the prow of the boat cutting through the waves toward the gleaming towers and domes of Venice. “Are you well?”

  I opened my mouth, but resisted a litany of all that was unwell with me. A sore head, for a start, and a cramp behind my injured shoulder from lying cup-shot on the boards. “I would deem it a great kindness, my lord, to learn where we are going,” I said with whatever dignity remained from my straw, mud- and vomit-stained person.

  He reached within his doublet and brought out a paper, waving it about upon the rise and fall of the vessel. I closed my eyes as the movement made my stomach turn, then I felt the paper pressed into my hands. He laughed aloud at my shuddering.

  “How—how did you find me?” I said, touching my healing shoulder. The bandage remained, and my little finger just touched the sketch within my shirt.

  “I paid a man I think you know, one rogue called Bezio. He told me Marinello was looking for you, and I simply followed him.”

  I opened the paper, scribbled upon it some rude scratching that might be Venetian. The name Contarini was legible. That varlet Bezio, I thought, my rage lending me some courage. “So you had me beaten, threatened and abducted from my friend.”

  “My poor Kelley, you have been vilely used,” he laughed, and sat upon a seat opposite, leaning his sword before him. I rubbed my poor hands, which burned as the blood flew back into them. His expression cooled. “Though, as a heretic, I suppose you deserve a little discomfort. You have led me a merry dance, and, worse, have rendered aid to my enemy. That she-demon.”

  “She aided me,” I had to admit. “Lady Báthory saved me from a group of monsters.”

  “Indeed?” He stretched out his great boot, jingling the spurs. “What monsters can compare with a woman who suckles the life out of children, a complete reversal of the natural order?”

  I choked upon my next words, as I recalled the child at the farmhouse. “She is as monstrous as that and more,” I answered. “If I could help you stop her, I would. But the Contarinis—they are a race tainted by the devil and his hellhounds. They would have slain me, but for her.”

  He leaned forward. “What does she want of you, Master Kelley? You have transformed her, shackled her soul to that corpse she wears, and given back her life.”

  I thought back to her story. “It is that—she suffers a spirit that speaks to her. A voice within, she says, that gives her a great appetite for blood.”

  He looked at the growing city rearing out of the lagoon as we approached. “Interesting. And what were these monsters that she rescued you from?”

  I explained my working at the Contarinis’ house—save the sketch of the tablet, of course. I explained the transformation from man to raving man-beast, and he nodded slowly, without interrupting.

  “I have heard of such,” he said when I had finished. “They call them volkodlak in Slovenia. My mother told me tales of them as a boy. It means wolf-skin. Such monsters are as men in the sunlight, but the moonlight transforms them into beasts.” He sat forward, and signaled to someone behind me. “I have lodgings with Cardinal Malipiero. He provided the ship and the escort. I have but a few soldiers with me.” He smiled at me, his lips tight with something that was not humor. “He, my little heretic, would have you chained and delivered to Rome.”

  A flame of hope flared within my breast. “But you, my lord?”

  “I have a bigger prey in my sight.” His face turned stony, as I had seen it before, and he clasped both hands around the hilt of his sword. “If I have to sacrifice you or me or the emperor himself to destroy her, I will.”

  Chapter 46

  PRESENT DAY: LAKE DISTRICT

  Something has changed in the garden within a single night. The triumph of another in the line of witches brings more confidence. Plants thrust out more buds, open more flowers. The bees raise more queens for future swarms; the slow, cold snakes birth new serpents to hunt the creeping pestilence of voles and mice. Badgers turn striped snouts into the wind to scent the change.

  No one spoke in the car. Felix hugged Sadie to try and infuse some warmth into her, and Callum leaned against the window with his eyes shut. Maggie seemed shocked by her own actions, staring at her hands. It seemed to Jack that none of them would get over the events of the night in a hurry. She pulled up outside the cottage, to hear Ches throwing himself at the door.

  Felix lifted Sadie from the car, her head dangling over his arm, and Jack unlocked the door, pushing the frantic animal back. Callum followed, self-consciously pulling Felix’s jacket down.

  “Maggie, why don’t you run Callum a bath and find him some clothes?”

  Maggie shook off the inertia that was holding her in the car and nodded. “Come on, Callum.”

  Jack followed Felix and Sadie into the living room. While he laid the girl on the sofa, she concentrated on building up the fire from the embers left in the woodburner.

  “Jack?” The girl’s voice was weak but coherent. “We did it, didn’t we? We survived and we saved Callum as well.”

  “We did.” She smiled and patted Sadie on the shoulder. “You made it. I don’t know how but you did.”

  Sadie shifted uncomfortably under the blanket. “I don’t know either. I ache all over, though.”

  Jack laughed out loud, grinning up at Felix. “I think we all do.” The smile faded as she saw Felix’s expression. “What is it?”

  “You can’t live like this.” He sat down heavily on the other sofa, head down, hands dangling between his knees. “You’re so vulnerable, all of you.”

  “Before this, we’d had a couple of decades with hardly any dramas,” Jack said, staring at the top of his head. “Just a few minor run-ins with people like Pierce.”

  “Anyone else could have called the police when they were threatened. Ellen didn’t, you couldn’t.”

  She shrugged. “Well, obviously.” She watched him lift his head and stare at her. “This is the price of life for us, Felix, you know that.”

  He sighed, and looked at the teenager. “This isn’t good enough, not for you and not for Sadie.”

  Jack tried to speak calmly, knowing a logical appeal might work better. “So help us. You were finding out about blood—”

  He chopped the air with his hand. “Blood isn’t the answer. What I saw in Paris…whoever, whatever that woman was, she wasn’t healthy. She looked like a walking colony of competing thoughts and feelings. She reminded me of someone with dissociative identity disorder.” When Jack looked blank, he added, “Multiple personalities.”

  Jack’s doubts flew to the surface and something stirred rebelliously in the very back of her mind. It was like a memory, but a memory that hadn’t happened yet, a feeling that didn’t belong.

  “I—I’ve been wondering.” She paused, trying to reach the feeling. It was somewhere between euphoria, power and rage. “I’ve had some very strange impulses lately.”

  He rubbed his hands over his hair. “I know.” He sounded angry.

  Jack tried to unravel the expression on his face. “If this is too hard for you—”

  “Damn it!” His shout made both Sadie and Jack jump. “Do you think I would be here for a second if…you aren’t part of my research, you are part of my life!”

  “I know, I just—” Jack stood up to meet him as he pulled her into his arms.

  For a moment he just held her, shaking with some emotion, maybe relief, maybe anger. Then he looked into her eyes and she knew what the emotion was. She smiled back before he kissed her.

  “Gross.” The word from Sadie was faint but just enough to break them apart.

  Felix exha
led. “I’ll check on Callum.”

  “Is it really over?” Sadie pulled the blanket around her shoulders, Ches leaning against her. “Do you think they will come and try to get Callum?”

  “I don’t know. I expect they will try one day but for now they have at least two dead family members and a lot of injuries to explain.” Jack sat on the sofa beside her, and touched her hand to the teenager’s cheek. “You’re not too bad, are you? I didn’t think you could survive outside of the circles that long.”

  Sadie shrugged, and stroked the dog. She looked as if she were going to say something, then stopped herself.

  “Go on.” Jack patted the dog’s flank, making him lean his head back, tongue lolling.

  “Did you know Maggie could do that? She killed him with magic.”

  Jack’s smile faded as she remembered the look on Maggie’s face. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have been so cheeky as a kid,” she admitted.

  “Me neither.” Sadie managed a nervous chuckle. “I know we talk about the magic all the time, but actually feeling it, seeing it…”

  “Like you and that tree.” Jack shook her head. “I still don’t know what you did, but it caught you.”

  Sadie looked at her hands for a moment. “I just touched the bark and it was like I was touching everything, you know? Like the garden. It just looked after me.”

  Felix came back in and sat on the other sofa, leaning his head against the cushions. “He’ll survive, but he’s been through hell. He’s just a seventeen-year-old, for God’s sake, and he’s lived a very sheltered life.”

  “But he’s out of the wheelchair,” Sadie said, her eyes shining. “So we managed to help him get the cure without the curse. Like Jack.”

  “No, it’s not the same.” Felix bit his lip, then looked up at Jack. “That trip to London, I think we need to make it.”

  Jack met his eyes, willing him to stop talking in front of Sadie.

  In the silence that followed, Sadie started to fidget. “Well, what happened to Callum isn’t the same,” she burst out. “Amyas, Thomazine’s son, he was good, wasn’t he?”