Dear God, did they mean to kill me?
“Enough,” Zeiler said.
The stream of water thankfully disappeared, but my shaking didn’t stop, the air sucking warmth from my bare skin. I blinked water out of my eyes and tried to focus on the doctor. He approached me with a syringe, its needle glittering in the single light of the room. Both the attendants watched avidly, and humiliation and fear scalded me in turn, to be thus exposed to their rude gazes.
Zeiler seized my arm. I tried to protest, but my teeth chattered too hard. The needle stung as it punctured my skin; I caught a glimpse of swirling blood as he pulled back the plunger to make sure it was correctly seated.
The he pushed it in, and molten lead poured into my vein. I screamed and tried to pull away, but he gripped my arm and the chains held me fast. The potion moved inside me, like some sentient thing, squirming through my vein, up my arm, into my shoulder.
What would happen when it reached my heart?
“That should do it,” Zeiler said. He turned and made for the door. “Come. We have things to do, and time grows short.”
The last attendant out turned off the electric switch, so the only light remaining came through the door. Then it swung shut, and the lock grated home, leaving me alone in the dark.
The oculares potion crept through my shoulder and coursed downward, following the great vein and describing an arc across my chest. I tried to will it back, but of course it was impossible; I could only stand there in my chains, naked and freezing cold, and wait for the inevitable.
I’d fought off the dweller before, but with the damnable potion in me, the chances of doing so again seemed slim. Still, I tried to imagine the warm blanket of my home around me, the doors locked against the monsters outside, but the cold had sapped away too much of my strength.
Then the potion reached my heart, and was sent rushing out through the rest of my body.
I wasn’t alone any more.
Chapter 21
I toppled forward, hands and knees striking the floor of the undersea temple. I had the impression of something immense, something nearly beyond comprehension, trying to fold itself to fit inside my skull. Pain spiked through my head, and I tasted blood.
Currents stirred my hair as something approached. A pair of familiar shoes came into view, then stopped, as if waiting for me to acknowledge them. Feeling as if a tremendous weight pushed down against me, I struggled to my feet. I was fully clothed, my ordinary suit heavy against my skin.
Griffin stood before me, but his eyes were gold, with the misshapen pupils of a cuttlefish. He—it—didn’t look triumphant, as I’d expected. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The thing with Griffin’s face spoke, and the oculares must have truly broken down the final barriers, because at last I understood what it had been trying to say to me all along. It was what Amelie had tried to tell me on my first visit to Stormhaven.
“Help me,” it said. “Help me!”
Even though I knew it wasn’t him, the plea in my lover’s voice sent an ache through my heart. Where was the real Griffin? What had become of him?
What had become of me? The undersea temple seemed so very real.
No. I had to focus. “What are you?” I asked. “You aren’t Griffin, so stop pretending.”
It cocked its head to the side and blinked its strange eyes. “We take the forms we find in your mind.” Its voice was still Griffin’s…and yet I felt as if some vast, subsonic song preceded it just slightly, too low to hear save as a vibration in my very blood and bones.
That didn’t sound promising. “We? There are more of you?”
“Yes.” Griffin paced past me, and I lost sight of him.
And I hung naked from my chains, back in Stormhaven. But the rank scent of the sea filled the windowless room, and ocean water swirled around my feet. Blood slicked my upper lip, running from my nose and eyes. I licked it away. “Why are you doing this?”
A flicker, and I was neither in the temple nor the asylum, but swimming, my body vast, cutting through the ocean. Moving up and up, from heavy darkness into lighter regions, drawn helplessly by the tether of chanting voices, the weight of the water lessening, and it hurt…
“We do nothing,” the dweller snarled, and I stood in the temple again, clothed but still tasting blood. “For millennia, we have watched the land, touching the minds of sensitive humans. They are our eyes and ears, the tools we use to explore places we cannot easily go.”
“But you’re coming to the surface now!” I argued. “You intend to dominate the land, or at least Zeiler seems to think so.”
“You know nothing.” It was suddenly far too close to me, misshapen eyes glaring into mine. The pressure in my head spiked—
—and I hung from my chains. “Help me!” Griffin screamed in my face.
The stone floor of the temple met my knee yet again, and I sucked in lungfuls of water. My thoughts scattered like a school of fish before a shark. “You need my help,” I managed to gasp. “Why?”
The thing walked past me, hands clasped behind its back. “Humankind worshipped us as gods,” it said with a sneer. “Tiamat. Nodens. Poseidon. But in this new age, men have cast aside their deities. They seek now to control.”
Blood floated from my nose to swirl in the water in front of my face, staining whatever currents moved here in the depths. “Control?” What was it Zeiler had said? That he would have a god at his command? “Do you mean to say Zeiler is summoning you against your will?”
“We can survive on the surface, on your land, but it is painful to us. Long ago we retreated to the depths in which we spawned, content to watch.” The thing masquerading as Griffin came to a halt in front of me, horrid eyes unblinking. “This Zeiler wishes to force me to the surface, to do his bidding. I have touched his dreams many times. His father belonged to us. From his ship, which hunted whales, the father showed us many things, showed us the growing strength of humankind. But we did not understand the threat they posed.
“Then this insect began to experiment, to link minds together. In desperation, I found your dreaming mind and called to you for help, but you would not hear me until now.” The dweller looked away. “When it is too late.”
“No.” The creature before me was utterly alien, no matter what forms it plucked from my mind. Its thoughts crowded my own, heavy and strange. Its kind had made use of humans throughout history, turning us into servants of their curiosity, but right now, it needed help. “It isn’t too late. Perhaps I can still do something to stop Zeiler.”
It looked back at me, and I tried to focus on Griffin’s familiar features instead of its eyes. Where was the real Griffin right now? Was he hurt? Captured? Dead?
“You would help me?” it asked in his voice, and yet not.
I swallowed, tasting blood and seawater. “You don’t want to come to the surface, and I certainly don’t want you here. So yes, I will do whatever I can to help you.”
“Good.” It smiled a ghastly smile. “With the oculares opening your mind, you can draw on my power. Do so.”
“Er, all right?” I said, not at all sure what I had just agreed to.
The pressure in my head spiked. I screamed, spine arching, and blood trickled down the back of my throat.
I was in the asylum, alone, naked, and freezing. My arms hurt, and warm blood slicked the manacles, where I had struggled against them unknowing.
Power flooded into me: wild and unbridled as the waves pounding the rocks. I felt as though I might cast every spell in the Arcanorum at once without effort: call up a storm, or raise the dead, or burn Widdershins to the ground. I’d go to Whyborne House and make my father listen to me for once in his damned life; I’d track down Stanford and make him weep and beg. I’d make Griffin’s parents sorry they had ever hurt him. Then I’d take Griffin home and fuck him hard, for hours.
A key grated in the lock, catching my attention. The door swung open, and the night watchman shuffled in, shining his light into my eyes. The sm
ell of sweat and musk rose from his skin, and I knew his intent even before he shut the door again and began to unbutton his trousers.
“Well now,” he said, pulling out his hardening member, “let’s see what sort of fun we can have.”
“Yes,” I said with a smile like a shark’s. “Let’s.”
~ * ~
The power of the dweller poured through me. It was easy, so very easy, with the dweller’s thoughts weaving through my own. I reached out with my will as if with a physical hand, grasped the flame in the watchman’s lantern, and urged it into an inferno.
Glass shattered from the heat, the kerosene igniting all at once. The watchman let out a cry of surprise and terror. It turned into a scream as the flames caught on his sagging trousers. He shrieked and flailed, beating at the fire, but it wouldn’t go out until I willed it.
I didn’t will it until his movements stopped altogether.
I hung from the chains, smelling roasted flesh and hair and clothes, the tide crashing on the rocks beneath Stormhaven beating in my blood. I was there, but I also swam through the water, up and up, drawn inexorably by the call like a harpooned whale.
A hum filled the room, the painted sigils on its walls and floor glowing. I felt the minds of the other captives around me, bent and broken, mesmerized by Zeiler into summoning the dweller.
I had to break the circuit. I twisted, tugging on the chains, power and magic slithering through my veins. None of it would help me here. If I tried to melt the chains, I’d roast myself within the small enclosure of the room.
The door swung open, and a young woman entered. I had to struggle through the alien thoughts coating the inside of my skull to remember her name. “Amelie,” I said.
She stepped lightly past the smoking heap which was all that remained of the night watchman, pausing only to spit on his corpse. No doubt I wasn’t the first helpless inmate he’d meant to victimize, just the first who could fight back. Turning from him, Amelie pulled a pin from her strawberry hair and set to working the locks on my chains. As she did so, she rested her hand lightly on my shoulder.
Something about the humanness of the touch shocked me back into myself. The dweller was still with me, but pushed to the back of my mind. I realized with a flush of horror I was completely naked in front of her. “Oh dear heavens! I-I’m so sorry. Please…well you can’t really close your eyes, I suppose, but, er, oh.”
My face felt unnaturally hot, and the situation only became worse when she paused what she was doing and cast a thoughtful gaze over me.
“You’re pretty,” she said.
Why didn’t I know any spells which might actually be useful? Like conjuring a decent suit from nothingness?
The manacle fell away, and I hurriedly did what I could to cover myself with my hand. I swore Griffin would never find out about this. Or, good lord, Christine.
Assuming any of us survived.
I stumbled a bit when I was free, my legs aching from being forced into a single position for…how long had it been, anyway? How long had I been in the dream sent by the dweller, while it crawled through my brain?
How much longer did I have before the dweller reached the surface?
I closed my eyes, felt a strange shock go through me, like a vibration of some huge drum. For an instant, I was in the ocean, trailing streamers of kelp wrapped around my limbs as I swam toward the surface. Lithe shapes cut through the water around me, their mouths filled with serrated teeth, their hair the stinging tentacles of an anemone. But they were helpless to save me from my enslavers.
The sea tasted different here. It tasted of the land.
I/we were close.
I opened my eyes again, staggering and disoriented. I could feel the dweller as a pressure in my mind, feel the sluggish churn of the injection in my veins. “We have to hurry,” I gasped.
Amelie led the way out of the room. I tried not to look down at the body of the dead man. A part of me was horrified at what I’d done, but I remembered his hands unbuttoning his trousers, the way Amelie had spit on him. Remembered, too, Griffin’s nightmares.
Remorse washed away, like sand before the tide.
I paused at the doorway, studying the glowing lines of magic. Leaving the room would remove me from Zeiler’s battery and break the circuit. Which likely meant he’d know of my escape instantly.
There was nothing for it. I stepped out, felt something like a pop in my ears, a tingle rushing across my skin. The ward now lay eerily silent, all the inmates motionless on their beds or their floors, staring into nothing. Had the psychic battery drained them somehow? Would it have done the same to me, had the vast power of the dweller not poured through me?
“I brought clothes,” Amelie said, picking up a neatly-folded bundle from the floor outside. “I stole them from the clothing room on my ward.”
“How did you know…never mind.” I communicated telepathically with a monster from the deep. Asking how Amelie had known I’d be here, or what I’d need, seemed absurd in light of that. I took the bundle and shook it out, only to find she’d brought me a woman’s dressing gown and a pair of embroidered slippers.
I stared at the dressing gown—paisley, with a great deal of lace at the collar and cuffs—in dismay. “Do you like it?” Amelie asked anxiously.
“Well, at least the slippers match the gown,” I said. There was nothing for it; my only other choice was to go naked, which I certainly had no intention of doing. I pulled on the dressing gown; the sleeves ended just below my elbows, and the hem swished around my calves, but at least it had a belt to fasten about my waist. “Thank you. And thank you for your rescue.”
“Do I get a kiss?”
“No,” I said firmly, sliding my feet into the slippers. “I don’t suppose you know where there’s a men’s closet on the way out?”
Now. The urge reverberated through me, pushing me forward, my head ringing like a bell. The surface was above me—I could see the moon—too close, too bright. It was almost too late.
But I’d broken Zeiler’s spell. Why was the dweller still trapped?
I felt the dweller’s thoughts fill me, carried on the hellish drug Zeiler had injected into my veins. It was here with me, and I was there with it, and for a moment I didn’t know what was happening.
Something shifted, as though two things jostling for space within a box suddenly slipped into place and fit snugly together. Except in this case, the box was my skull, and I was one of the items which now had to share space with something else.
But fit we did. It was huge, and vast, and only a small part of it was inside me, but I could taste its cold blackness, heavy as rancid oil on my tongue.
I straightened out of the crouch I’d fallen into. The dark corridor was bright as day to my eyes, and I heard Amelie give a little gasp. “Oh, your eyes! They’re beautiful,” she said, but the words were far away and meant almost nothing.
“Why aren’t you a part of Zeiler’s battery?” I asked Amelie. “You hear the dweller.” I knew she did, knew it had reached for her just as it had sought me out.
“Because I haven’t had the injection.” She smiled guilelessly. “Dr. Zeiler says women’s brains are too feeble to be of any use.”
The fool. I laughed, but it didn’t sound like me. It sounded like someone crueler, and for a moment, I was almost afraid. But the tides beat in my veins. I smelled the shore, and the power of the dweller surged through me. I no longer remembered fear. “Zeiler will notice his conduit missing, if he has not already. We should leave.”
She led the way to the heavy iron door, but before we reached it, it was flung open from the other side. Judging by the group of sailors and attendants in the doorway, Zeiler must have realized the moment I escaped his psychic battery. Anger twisted their faces, and the one in the lead threateningly slapped his cudgel into his palm, promising violence.
They thought to stop me? How absurd. They should go down on bended knee and beg my forgiveness.
“Step away,” I war
ned Amelie, clinging to a shred of myself. She darted behind me, even as the paltry creatures charged.
I needed a sigil to command the air, but the dweller had its own magic. So together we sang down the wind.
The wind screamed down the hall behind me, ruffling my hair and flapping the dressing gown about my knees. Gathering the flow of air, I snapped out my fist.
The men flew back with the crunch of breaking bone. The steel door tore loose, crashing into those who tried to flee, and now the ward once again echoed with screams and moans.
Good.
Amelie came to my side; if she feared me at all, it didn’t show on her face or in her manner. She looked like something feral, her hair knotted about her shoulders, her eyes bright and wild. An odd feeling of familiarity caught at me, and I realized her willowy frame and large eyes reminded me of the shark-men statues at the undersea temple.
“I’ll take their keys, and let the ones in the restraints go,” Amelie said. “Then I won’t get in trouble, because we’ll all be out.”
“Yes,” I agreed. My voice sounded like something that had rotted on the seafloor for a thousand years.
I went down the stairs and into the ward below. I walked into the wide hall; the nurse fled, shrieking for help, so I simply kept walking. Every door I passed ripped open, clanging against the walls. The wind the dweller and I commanded howled and buffeted the furniture about. Loose clothing and papers scattered across the floor, and the inmates scrambled to flee my coming.
“Run,” I told them. “Run from this place.”
I passed from ward to ward, wending my way down, breaking open every door. Not all would flee, perhaps most wouldn’t, but I could do nothing more for them than this. Those who glimpsed me began screaming. I fended off two who tried to attack me. As I passed by one of the nurse’s stations, the glass windows caught my attention, and I paused.
My reflection stared back dimly, save for my eyes. Rather than their usual muddy shade, they’d paled to amber, and glowed as if a fire blazed behind them.
Something moved in the glass behind me. “Die, you devil!”
Whyborne and Griffin, Books 1-3 Page 67