Whyborne and Griffin, Books 1-3

by Jordan L. Hawk

  Kerr ran at me, clutching a splintered chair leg like a cudgel. I slapped it from his hand with a burst of wind.

  “You dare attack me?” I asked. My voice sounded hollow, vast, ancient, reverberating in the hallway.

  Kerr shrank back, his eyes wide with terror. This man had hurt Griffin, broken his heart, and now dared to call me a devil?

  I’d show him what a devil truly was.

  As I took a step toward him, however, chanting swelled up around me, calling me closer, twisting the dweller’s song.

  Damn Zeiler! I had discharged the psychic battery, but too late. The dweller was too close to land, close enough Zeiler and his followers could force it nearer with their chants and magic alone.

  I would simply have to kill them.

  Chapter 22

  I left Kerr cringing on the ground. Zeiler had to be dealt with first; everything else could come later.

  I walked down the stairs in front of the asylum and onto the wide lawn. Wind swirled around me, like a dog frolicking about its master, and the stunted trees shook and shivered. The air washed away the stench of human waste and madness, bringing with it an older, primal reek, of ancient mud and seaweed, of fish slime and barnacle-encrusted blocks of stone. A storm gathered on the horizon, conjured up by magic and the movement of something older than humanity itself, and my bones ached with its need for release.

  We broke the surface. The clouds hid the hateful light of the moon, but still it hurt, the wash of air on our sleek skin. A ship made its way toward shore, trailing smoke, and we lashed out in our fury, smashing it with a titan tentacle, wrapping our self around it and dragging it down, while tiny creatures scuttled and screamed and rained down into the water.

  The first spitting tongues of rain touched my face. Chanting echoed from the lawn behind the asylum, closest to the sea, and I followed the sound. The twisted chant snaked into my ears like a slimy tongue, and I shuddered at its touch. It was corrupt, vile, distorting the song of the dweller. I had to put a stop to it.

  Torches leapt and guttered around a bonfire made from driftwood. Men dressed in the rough clothing of sailors, or in the simple suits of the asylum attendants, stood around the fire, the orange light revealing hideous looks of avarice on their faces.

  As for Zeiler, he stood at their head, arms lifted high toward the sea, his strong, clear voice cutting the night and bending the chant to his will. A smile played around his lips, and his expression bordered on rapturous.

  I thrashed through the sea/strode across the lawn. One of the ruffians on the outskirts of the gathering turned at the sound, swinging his torch so its light fell across me.

  His eyes widened in incredulity—then he laughed.

  “Hey,” he said to one of his fellows. “Looks like one of the crazies got loose. Get a look at what he’s—”

  I dashed him aside with the wind of the storm. His scream cut off when he hit the asylum wall.

  The chant fell silent. Zeiler turned from the sea to face me, his features dark with hate. “You. You think to put me in my place, just like your father. But you’re the one who will suffer now.”

  This was the one who had distorted my/our song, this was the one who brought pain, and shame. Inhuman rage burst through me, like a tide of black filth, and I howled along with the wind that would strike him down.

  Zeiler called out words in a language so old no human memory of it remained, and the cultists echoed him. Their voices crawled into my brain, like dirty fingers, prying, poking, intruding…

  They’d taken the oculares injection as well. But instead of being drowned in dreams like the wretches Zeiler had experimented on, they used the connection with the dweller to enforce their will over it. No wonder they’d only needed the psychic battery to bring it to the surface.

  I clawed at my ears, my skull, seeking to dislodge them, but the pain only distracted me and let them further inside. They had the dweller in their grip, and it and I were one.

  The cultists continued their obscene chant, but Zeiler switched to ordinary English. “On your knees, Dr. Whyborne,” he said with relish.

  I tried to lock my muscles, but my body was beyond my control. My knee hit the damp grass.

  Far below, the dweller surged into the cove. A nauseous odor, of dead fish and rotting bones, of black slime nourished by sulfurous water and a thousand years of decay, burst over the headland in a revolting wave.

  “This is even better than what I’d planned,” Zeiler went on. I wanted to scream defiance, but my jaw remained stubbornly shut. I was a slave to his will, free only in the confines of my mind.

  And even that I shared with the dweller.

  “Having Niles Whyborne’s son leashed at my side will be a pleasure,” he went on. His eyes glittered, not blown bright by the dweller’s power like mine, but wild with hate and ecstasy. “You can take him apart with your sorcery while I watch. Perhaps I’ll let my men have your mother first, while Niles looks on.”

  He turned to one of the sailors and motioned sharply. “Bind him.”

  A loud scream came from the direction of the asylum.

  ~ * ~

  Zeiler looked up in surprise at the unholy storm of shrieks, rising even above the howl of the wind and the thunder of the ocean. What was happening? I couldn’t see, couldn’t move, the chant pinning me in place along with the dweller.

  The man who’d been ordered to bind me froze, eyes going wide, his voice falling out of the chant. “What the hell?”

  “Keep on!” Zeiler cried. “The dweller will crush them—we will crush them—there is nothing to fear!”

  The sailor seemed to take heart and started toward me. His skull disintegrated in a shower of blood and bone, the crack of a rifle echoing across the headland.

  The chant faltered, putrid fingers slipping free of my brain. I regained enough control to turn my head and see what transpired behind me.

  The patients of the asylum streamed out into the night, crying for vengeance. At their head ran Amelie, a garden hoe held high as a makeshift weapon. Griffin ran with them, his green eyes narrow with fury, and my heart surged for just an instant.

  They closed with the cultists, and the chant fell into tatters, nothing remaining to hold me. A wave of anger roared through my body, washing away all other thought, driven by the dweller. Rage and pain, and fury that these crawling worms, these insubstantial creatures with their brief lives, would turn my own tools against me. The dryness of the air burned my skin, and I sang of my pain, the unearthly howl shattering the night.

  I stretched out my arms, elation and power pouring through me. Cultists ran toward me, but I hurled them back with wind, or set them ablaze with a word. The air reeked of blood and I heard myself laughing above the roar of the tide.

  A tentacle mimicked the motion of my human limbs, stretching for the sky. Titanic, it whipped into the air, towering above even the cliff. Bands of luminescent color rippled across its surface, stark white and furious red, interspersed with spots of black. A group of cultists attempting to flee froze at the sight, hypnotized.

  The tentacle crashed down, smashing the wall into dust and crushing the cultists into a bloody pulp.

  “And now the rest,” I whispered.

  A second gargantuan tentacle joined the first, then a whole writhing host of them, color strobing along their lengths and making them difficult to look at directly. They grasped the ground, the rocks, and even the walls of Stormhaven itself. One wrapped around the clock tower; a moment later, it toppled in a rain of masonry. The screams around us became a cacophony, cultists and patients alike fleeing before the coming of the dweller.

  As it should be.

  “Damn you!”

  The wind whipped my dressing gown about my calves, power flooding my veins and hardening my cock. I turned slowly, leisurely, to face my tormenter.

  Zeiler’s face was distorted with a mixture of terror and frustrated rage. “You’re no better than me!” he screamed. “You have no right, you whor
eson bastard! Just because your father—”

  “I am my mother’s son,” I snarled, and reached out with fire and wind.

  He screamed, blazing up in an inferno, a zephyr of flame spiraling off his flailing form. Wheeling and stumbling, he spun toward the edge of the cliff, but we flicked him back with a massive tentacle. He didn’t deserve the quick death of a fall, or to pollute the ocean with his bones.

  The charred shape which had been Zeiler collapsed onto the lawn, twitching feebly. But our vengeance remained unsated.

  We were wrath and magic. These crawling ants would pay for hurting us, starting with the loss of their nest. I summoned the waves, the sea pounding against the base of the cliff. Stormhaven began to crumble, the entire headland collapsing, and I laughed as I strode ahead of the destruction. A great hand clutched the rock behind me, hauling its heavy body free from the sea. We’d strike out across the land, destroy these insects who dared imagine themselves our masters. They would pay. All of them.

  “Whyborne!”

  Another ant, crying out. I ignored it.

  “Ival!”

  The name snagged something deep inside, beneath the rush of power. A good memory. I wouldn’t crush them all, perhaps. I’d take this one, take him again and again, make him scream for me even as I satisfied the lusts of a god. I’d…

  He emerged from the smoke and dust of Stormhaven’s destruction, his hair wild and his face streaked with blood. Our eyes met, and he froze, like a mouse in front of a viper.

  “Zeiler is dead,” he said. “Let the dweller go!”

  His words made no sense. I wasn’t keeping it here. We would bring suffering on those who deserved it, and those who did not would laugh and be free, reveling in the downfall of cruel men like Zeiler, and my father. Like Kerr and the damnable preachers who called my desire for men an abomination.

  I tried to step around him, but he obstinately put himself in my path. A heavy tentacle curled around the jutting foundation of the asylum, not ten feet from us, its grip firming to haul a vast body further onto the land.

  “Out of my way,” I ordered, and my voice was made of wind and fire and wave.

  His face had gone utterly white, but he shook his head. “No.”

  The wind rose around me, my every nerve burning to unleash against something, anything. “Out of my way!”

  “Ival, please. Remember who you are. Come back to me.” He swallowed convulsively. “I love you.”

  I was power and magic and rage, and by rights I should strike him aside. But something deep within me rebelled.

  “You promised,” he said, tears in his eyes. “You promised to stay with me forever. Don’t you remember?”

  Yes. I did. I remembered…something. A name.

  My name. I was someone, wasn’t I? Someone human.

  Ival.

  I was…

  I was Percival Endicott Whyborne, and he was

  “Griffin,” I gasped, reaching for him.

  The tether of rage snapped. Released, the dweller drew back, even as I tumbled forward, into Griffin’s arms.

  ~ * ~

  I blinked awake a few moments later, to the feel of someone frantically caressing me. “Whyborne? Whyborne!”

  “Slap him,” Christine suggested. “That will bring him around.”

  I dragged open dry eyelids as hastily as I could. “Please, don’t,” I croaked.

  Christine and Griffin knelt over me, their faces drawn with worry. Seeing me awake, Griffin slumped back, putting his hand to his eyes. Christine, being more practical, extended her hand. “Can you sit up?”

  “I think so.” I let her haul me into a sitting position, and was vaguely pleased when I didn’t topple over. “What on earth are the two of you doing here?”

  “It took most of the day, but I managed to discover rumors of something important happening tonight,” Griffin said, letting his hand fall to his lap. “The summoning, I assumed. I rushed back to the house and found you gone, and a frantic note from my mother, saying Pa had disappeared.”

  “They threatened to kill him if I didn’t cooperate,” I said. “I-I don’t know what happened to him.” God, if he’d been crushed by falling masonry, it would be my fault, as surely as if I’d killed him with my own hand.

  “He escaped,” Griffin said. “I encountered him on the lawn with the other patients. He tried to talk me into fleeing with him—he said something about you being a devil.”

  I shuddered, remembering what I had almost done to the man. “He had good reason to think so.”

  Griffin put a reassuring hand to my shoulder. “At any rate, I was wild with fear when I found you gone. I didn’t know what had become of you, or Pa, or how to stop the dweller from coming. The only thing I could think to do was hurry to Stormhaven as quickly as possible and try to do something, anything, to disrupt the summoning. Everything else had to wait. Christine agreed, and we lingered only long enough to arm ourselves before rushing here. Even then, we were almost too late.”

  “But you weren’t.” A shiver ran through me. I hated to imagine what might have happened had he not been here to stop me.

  “No.” Griffin hesitated and tightened the hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right, my dear?”

  Exhaustion settled over me like a heavy blanket. “I think so. Just scraped and bruised. And I lost my clothes.”

  He leaned back, concern on his face, and I realized what he really meant to ask. “No, Griffin. Nothing happened.” Although perhaps I should be completely honest. “Well, almost. But I set him on fire.”

  He nodded, then kissed me on the mouth, heedless of the fact Christine sat three feet away. My face grew uncomfortably hot, but I returned his kiss anyway.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked, when I could speak again.

  “Run off,” Christine said. She climbed to her feet, using her rifle like a cane. “The children and some adults like Kerr took off for the road even before the fighting started. I think most of the patients got away in the end. And a few of the cultists; I ran out of bullets, you see.”

  “We should follow their example and remove ourselves from the scene,” Griffin said, rising to his feet and holding out his hand to me. “Someone will surely be along to investigate the disturbance, and I don’t wish to answer any impossible questions. Better no one learn we were here at all.”

  I agreed whole-heartedly. “Did you bring a carriage?” I asked as Griffin hauled me to my feet.

  “Horses. And they’re bound to have run off,” Christine said, taking one of the torches for light. “We’ll have to travel by foot.”

  I wasn’t certain how far I could walk wearing slippers, but leaving the immediate area seemed imperative, so I only fell in beside Griffin. As we walked through what looked more like a battlefield than the peaceful lawn it had been only hours before, I scanned the faces of the dead. I didn’t see Amelie or Allan Tambling, and hoped they’d escaped unharmed.

  The front wall still stood, the iron gates open wide. As we passed through them, a coach rumbled up. My heart sank—we hadn’t escaped without notice after all. Perhaps Griffin could spin some wild tale which would allow us to slip away?

  Then I saw the ornate crest painted on the side, and my heart sank even further.

  The carriage came to a halt, and my father climbed out. He looked at us, at the ruins of Stormhaven, then back at us. “Well, Percival, I suppose this is your doing?”

  “Yours, rather,” I said shortly, too exhausted to tolerate his sniping.

  He scowled at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Zeiler carried rather a grudge against you and the rest of the Brotherhood. This was his means of settling the score. So congratulations, you’ve indirectly almost destroyed the world twice now.”

  “I accept no responsibility for—”

  “Of course you don’t.” I waved a tired hand. “What are you even doing here?”

  His lips pursed in the midst of his silvery beard. “Your mother roused the entire househo
ld, screaming in a nightmare. We had a devil of a time waking her from it. When she spoke of the sea, it seemed likely the Eyes were making their move. If Zeiler was involved, it must be here. And of course you were certain to be in the midst of it. Heliabel would never have forgiven me if I hadn’t come straight away to make certain you were still breathing.”

  I exchanged a glance with Griffin. “Mrs. Whyborne heard the dweller’s song?” he asked.

  “I would put it down to a mother’s intuition of her child’s danger, but I suspect there was more to it.” Father looked around again at the ruins and shook his head. “Well, get in the carriage. I might as well take you back into town with me.”

  He stood aside so Christine and Griffin could climb inside. As I waited my turn, he eyed my attire and let out a loud sigh. “Ah, well,” he said, “a good thing Stanford is bound to come around in the end.”

  Chapter 23

  A week later, Griffin led the way across the rocky strand of a secluded beach to the south of Widdershins. We’d had quite a hike to get there, but the weather was fair, and my various bruises and cuts largely healed. As he had the day we rode to Stormhaven, Griffin carried a picnic basket. Unlike that day, this one held nothing but the expected contents.

  We spread a blanket well above the water’s reach. While I unpacked our meal, Griffin opened a bottle of wine and poured us each a glass. The sun cast the shadows of the cliffs over us, and turned the sea a strange shade of bronze. Only the crying of gulls and sigh of the waves met our ears, and I could almost fancy we were the last two humans on earth.

  I held up my glass to make a toast. “To the anniversary of your arrival in Widdershins,” I said.

  Griffin clinked his glass against mine. “I must say, it proved a rather more eventful year than I’d ever imagined when I stepped off the train.”

  “And probably contained rather more monsters than you’d prefer.”

  He propped his chin on his fist and smiled at me. “Perhaps. But I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.”