George Abrams, the Eighth, was the highest ranking official in the Bureau of Immortal Affairs. He directed its missions, outlined its agendas and drafted men to its army. A former soldier himself, Abrams had fought for England during the Highland Wars and during several more recent uprisings. As an esteemed member of Parliament, he had spoken ill of werewolves publicly and in the courts almost every chance he’d gotten, and he became known for his infamous mantra, “Dogs are subjects of man,” with which he argued that werewolves were an inferior species because they were a lower variety of human. For this he was hated by the clans of the highlands.
True to his beliefs, Abrams had gone off to fight the Grey-Reivers, a British clan that was particularly odious to him, but he was captured by them. Abrams was missing for months, and there were rumors that he’d been killed or burned alive or, as some fanatics loved to believe, he was eaten in true, barbaric werewolf fashion. None of these scenarios was true. After Abrams’s disappearance, the English and Scottish clans alike had celebrated, but to their disappointment, he was found and taken back to London only a week or so after his death was officially proclaimed. Never failing to seize an opportunity, Abrams later had pointed to the clans’ celebrations as proof of their dislike of humans and their dangerous and evil nature.
Those proclamations had to wait until Abrams was, literally, rebuilt. There had been little left of him when he was found, beaten half to death and missing most of both arms and one of his feet. The Bureau soldiers who’d spotted him saw part of his white uniform, but most of it was red. If they had come by only seconds later, Abrams surely would not have survived. Because he was far from London and had no chance of living on the return trip, the Bureau surgeons rebuilt him on the spot. Using all the techniques they had collected from seized magical documents, they replaced his lost flesh and bone with steel. Even the surgeons were amazed at their success. Abrams returned to London fully revitalized as a human golem—a metal man.
George Abrams wasn’t exactly the same man he’d been when he left to fight the Grey-Reivers. Corvessa had seen him before and after his transformation. The surgeons had put something else in him that made him not quite human. He no longer aged, and every day less of his skin was visible, as if his body were gradually hardening into steel. As he spoke to her, Corvessa noticed that if she looked at his eyes when he raised his voice, she could see a fiery little point of light shining behind his pupils. She expected flames and smoke to spout from his head as from the mouth of a cannon. Whatever had become of him, it was something that had made him mad. Underneath the versed veteran’s shell there was something irrational and radical, and in Corvessa’s mind that made George Abrams a perfect ally.
“I propose a toast,” said Abrams, pouring everyone a glass of brandy, “To the new world.”
“No,” said Corvessa, “To the old world. I’ll miss it bitterly.”
*
As Tom turned his head away from Molly, the smile on his face never left him. He blinked, and for a second he felt the blade of Death pass through him. It wasn’t painful. It felt like the tickling of a winter wind, creeping across his stomach and then leaving through his shirt. When the scythe finished its pass, a ripple ran through everything Tom could see—the sky, the trees around him and the Octopus. Color began to bleed out of the world, leaving only blacks, grays and whites. A sensation of being turned upside down overcame Tom, making him stumble dizzily in place. When the sensation of movement ceased, Tom opened his eyes and found himself standing in a new landscape.
All around him, as far as he could see, a soft, colorless world was developing. The ground beneath his feet, the sky, the trees and a great lake some distance ahead of him appeared. The impression of mountains beyond the lake was taking form, and hazy white light trickled down onto the lake’s surface through uncertain clouds like milk through cheesecloth. Tom could not see a sun; it seemed as if light were falling into the world from somewhere beyond. Trying to see past the cloudy gray sky was like looking through the fabric of an old blanket. Curiously, the tall grass he stood in rustled as if tossed by the wind; though he could hear it, Tom felt no breeze, and instead of brushing his legs, the grass passed right through him like the fingers of ghosts.
Only after the world had finished painting itself into existence did Tom notice that from his chest there had sprouted a thread. It was barely thicker than a hair, shining like spider silk and stretching as far as he could see into the distance across the lake, as if it were tied to something miles and miles away. For all his conjecturing, Tom hadn’t a clue what it was. Having no other reasonable thing to do, he decided to see where it led.
As he descended the gently sloping grassy hill toward the lake, it struck Tom that his steps made little sound. He stopped to inspect a strange willow tree growing by the shore. It had no definition and sometimes appeared flat as a shadow. When Tom ran his hand through its drooping branches, a faint sound like broken, falling glass reverberated as the branches swayed slowly, and then stopped to hang, still, as they were before. When the branches stopped the sound was gone, and only the whispering of the breeze filled the world with sound.
At the banks of the lake Tom stared off into the distance, unsure whether what he perceived to be water would behave like water. So far everything was strange and unusual to him. Squatting down he scooped up the colorless lake water in his hand and stood back up. The liquid jostled and danced just as a little pool of water should, but when he turned his hand to dump it out, it slid from his palm and hung in the air for a moment, slowly fading from sight and vanishing altogether. It was then that Tom saw an old rowboat just a short walk away, wedged in the shallows by the lakeshore.
To his surprise the small boat was solid, and it floated when he gave it a push into deeper water. Wading out to it, he climbed inside and found a single oar lying against the inside. Standing with his feet apart in the middle of the old boat, he pushed the oar through the water, alternating from right to left. The oar sent the boat gliding forward with almost no resistance at all. Every now and then Tom would give it an extra push, but most of the time he looked around at the scenery, wondering where he was. Certainly not in Paradise, he thought to himself, since he’d tasted the lake water and it wasn’t anything like rum.
The farther he rowed, the larger the great lake seemed to be. Tom smiled awkwardly every time this concerned him. He could see the opposite shore, and it wasn’t as though being stranded in the middle of the lake was a problem. His arms did not tire from rowing, and if the boat should fail him and sink, he certainly wasn’t going to drown. He was already dead. Still, these human worries came and went as he pushed himself along, and when they did, he thought of Molly. Where was she? What would happen to her now that he was gone? How long had he been gone? He couldn’t seem to remember where or when he’d died. As he scoured his memories, they came to life in the world around him. Sometimes he heard Molly’s laughter coming from somewhere across the water. Other times he heard his father and mother, but to his knowledge, he was completely alone in that place.
Crossing the lake seemed to take hours, almost an entire day, but there was no way of telling what time it was, or even if time were keeping count. The light trickling down from the grey sky changed every so often, but the world never became darker. Only the shadows changed shape, stretching, shortening, and pointing off in one direction or another.
When the boat reached the opposite shore Tom stepped out into the shallows, instinctively tugging the boat to dry land. He did not notice that neither the boat nor his legs were wet. Stopping a moment to gaze beyond the rolling mountains ahead of him, he looked at the thread in his chest once more and continued to follow it with his eyes until it vanished on the horizon. Wasting no time, he began to walk, wrapped up in thought and wondering where the thread would take him.
*
The worst part of watching Jack Darcy’s men clean out The Roatán Butterfly, Molly felt, was that she couldn’t do anything to stop them.
It would risk the lives of her friends. Molly stood silently on the beach, Ine by her side, as Tom’s ship was emptied and all its contents were moved onto The Howl. Jack was thorough. He’d taken all the weapons Tom’s crew had been carrying, including Brother and Fantome, as well as Molly and Chera’s pistols. In addition, Molly had to surrender all her powerful jewelry. These things were locked up together in a single chest and stowed away somewhere on the Blood Moons’ floating fortress.
Molly, Ine, Chera, Leon and Geoffrey talked only amongst themselves. None of them acknowledged anything Jack Darcy or his men said to them. Leon, most miserable of all, stared daringly into the eyes of every Blood Moon that came close. Surrounded by thieves who had stolen from his family’s great house, once the center of the French Black Coat Society, he wanted nothing more than to get his sword back and mince them all.
No one was certain where Morgan had gone. Jack Darcy certainly was not fond of him. Refusing to tell Jack where the crew had gone, Morgan had been beaten for hours on the beach before Molly and crew came back down the mountain that evening. The last time anyone had seen Morgan he was being taken to The Howl.
Several hours passed, and the Blood Moons prepared to sail. A portion of The Howl’s crew had been ordered to take control of The Roatán Butterfly and sail ahead of The Howl. Jack was not going to leave it behind, figuring it was either particularly fast or extremely dangerous and, therefore, valuable. As for Molly and the crew, they were taken by small boatloads to The Howl, their hands locked in irons.
The crowd of Blood Moons on the main deck of the ship was enormous. A city’s worth of werewolves prowled The Howl. Many climbed around in the vast workings of sails and rigging that blocked any view of the sky like a forest. Others continually poured in and out of the stairways and ladders leading to decks below. Across the breadth of the main deck, by the quarterdeck stairs, close to fifty men strained to crank the capstan and raise the ship’s massive anchor.
Molly found it difficult to hear over the shouting of crew, banging of rigging and the awful slapping and waving of gigantic sails all around her. She and the others were soon taken below deck, past the first and second gun decks and into the dim underworld of the ship. Jack Darcy followed the men who ushered them along, ordering them to place Molly, Chera, Ine, Geoffrey and Leon in separate cells in the brig, one cell between each of them so they couldn’t reach one another’s cells and couldn’t talk amongst themselves without having to raise their voices. After each of them had been forced into a cell and locked inside, they were left alone, kept company by a single lamp that swung with the rocking of the ship.
“What’s your name?” Smoke from Jack’s grackle-skull pipe burned Morgan’s eyes. “Haven’t you got a name?” Jack asked again. “Did your mother not give you a name?”
Morgan wasn’t sure whether Jack knew something about him or was just trying to spark a reaction. Either way, he wouldn’t speak to the old devil. Tom had taught him not to cooperate with enemies or captors. During the early years, when Tom had just begun to sail on his own ship, Morgan had signed up with his crew. As young men the two were terrible pirates. They were always hungry, always being conspired against by their own men, and they had been captured by the authorities more than once. Morgan treated Jack the same as he would the judges in the English courts. The only difference to Morgan, between Jack and the powdered wigs back in London, was that Jack was an enemy to be taken seriously. Jack Darcy didn’t have to show restraint.
“Look at him!” howled Jack, laughing and glancing around at the men who watched. “He’s a mean little cur!” Jack rolled back and shook his head, his robin-egg eyes pinching shut as he cackled himself to tears. “Acts like he’s got something to protect!” Taking the pipe from his ugly teeth and knocking out the ashes, Jack smiled and leaned down into Morgan’s face again. “You ought not to test my patience, and I’ll tell you why,” he said. “If Thomas thinks he can hide, he can’t. He’s got more bounties lined up than every privateer of yesteryear put together. If he wants his woman back, he’ll have to come after me, and we’ll throw him in the brig with the rest of your lot. If he’s dead,” said Jack, taking time to crack a wide smile, “I’m still going to turn all of you in and get my money’s worth.” When the meanness left Morgan’s eyes, Jack knew he’d made his point.
“Here is my proposal,” Jack said, leaning forward. “I’m always looking to pick up a new deckhand. You don’t want to talk? That suits me. I don’t care to hear you talk.” Jack stood up tall again and rested a hand on his mako-skin belt. “You’re in an especially troubling bind, boy. I don’t know your name, but I know there’s no bounty listed for you. You’re not a werewolf, a vampire or a magesmith. Whatever they’ll pay me for you isn’t enough. When we get to Bombay, if you aren’t part of this crew, you’ll be entertainment. We’ll dangle you from a low yardarm and feed you grapeshot ’til there’s nothing left of you.”
Morgan wasn’t listening. He stared at his feet, unable to do anything to Jack, tied tightly to a mast as he was. Jack’s threats hadn’t upset him at all. It was when Jack told him that he wasn’t even worth turning in for a bounty that his hopes had died. Morgan wasn’t Tom. He couldn’t break free, kill Jack, save the crew and escape The Howl. He was human and mortal. He wouldn’t stand a chance. Bravery and loyalty weren’t going to save his life.
“I’ll leave you to your thoughts,” said Jack, slowly walking away. “You have a choice to make. Tomorrow night I’ll expect an answer. If you don’t want to talk to me then, you can talk to the cat o’ nine tails.”
Below deck in the dark of the brig, Molly sat quietly in the back of her cell, away from the scant light of the swinging lamp so the Blood Moons keeping watch would not see her lips. When she most needed to think clearly, Molly mouthed the thoughts that ran through her head. She no longer had her books and was trying to silently recite every spell she knew. One or more of them would certainly be necessary to escape from Jack. Instead of thinking of Tom, which would only discourage the others, Molly decided to think like him. In the dark she split herself in two. Tears fell from her eyes every now and then when Tom’s face came to mind, but she never stopped planning, listening, and watching what was happening around her in the guts of The Howl.
Long after dark, hours since Tom’s crew had been captured and The Roatán Butterfly had been cleaned out and refitted with a crew of Blood Moons, a great noise silenced the activity on the ship. Molly and the others sat up in their cells, their heads turning all around as the sound of footsteps ceased and only the clanking of rigging and flapping of sails could be heard. Then, a terrific moan rose in the depths of the ship, woodwork and beams straining as the gigantic ship began to turn and head out to sea. As the ship howled, the thousands of werewolves onboard howled with it, calling out in a chorus that made the hair on Molly’s arms stand tall and rattled the iron chain links around her hands and feet. The Great Pack was on the move.
*
The great lake now lay behind Tom. Ahead, a range of mountains rose up around a forested valley. The thread coming from Tom’s chest pointed into the forest and surely much farther beyond. Still fascinated by it and wanting to know where it led, he continued moving, heading into the vast forested valley.
Inside the forest less light found its way to the ground. Unusual shadows crossed the forest floor and flickered at Tom’s feet. Unlike the serene lake he’d first come across, the forest was strange and made him uncomfortable. A streak of light came swimming through the air toward him and he stopped, poised and tense. The thing looked like a long goldfish tail, or a stream of water, and when it stopped, the tail caught up and it became a perfectly round little ball. Tom, having ducked into a thicket, did not dare move or make a sound, for he did not know what the ball of light was. It bobbed gently in the air and made a faint noise like a hollow log being struck over and over. The sound changed in frequency and regularity, like the call of a bird or some sort of animal. Tom wondered if the thing was speaking.
After a while it stopped making noise and flew off down the path Tom had traversed. He watched as the light disappeared, and then he saw more of the lights approaching from where the first had come. Through the trees they darted, flying in curving, jagged lines like bats, all speaking the same unintelligible language he had heard before.
Deciding the lights were not any danger to him, Tom gradually emerged from the thicket of trees and continued to follow the thread, keeping a hand rested on Yatagarasu at his hip. He’d only just then remembered he still had the sword given to him by Ine. At the memory he began to think of Molly again, and sometimes his ears played tricks on him, making him think he heard her voice coming from somewhere in the forest or from down the mountains all around him.
As hard as he tried to ignore her voice, he couldn’t. It became clearer and more audible. Soon Tom had wandered away from the direction the thread was taking him and headed toward where he thought the source of the voice might be. As he did he saw more and more of the little flying lights. They came from the direction of the voice as if they wanted to get away from it. The world was darker now, in the way it loses its happiness upon the approach of a thunderstorm and becomes beautifully sullen. When Tom could see the sky above, it looked higher than any sky he’d ever seen; the clouds hung so that not much light pierced through.
Just ahead Tom saw two dark masses rising up and setting themselves back down again on the ground. Suddenly he realized they were not trees, as he first assumed. They were legs! Tilting his head to look up, he saw the body of a giant wading through the forest, swinging its long arms through the trees and scooping up the flying white lights into its hands. The figure was completely dark and shaped somewhat like a man, though its outline shivered and rustled with electric intensity. On top of its short neck its large bulky head swung around, two full-moon white eyes sweeping the ground as it looked for more of the flying white lights. As it did, it crammed the handful it had into its mouth, which opened wide and made a terrible sound like a tornado, sucking up the white lights that struggled to escape. None of them did, and the giant closed its mouth, letting out a noise of satisfaction, which sounded like the shrill screech of a giant bird of prey. Featureless except for its tiny, globular, white eyes, the giant’s face turned left and right, looking for more of what Tom believed were souls, streaking through the trees.
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