Maelstrom (11 page)

Christine and Iskander accompanied us, both
of them wanting a closer look at the site to compare it with the
one on the Robinson farm. Although I doubted we’d need their
archaeological expertise, I welcomed their presence, if only
because of my dark memories of the island. I couldn’t help but feel
as though the place were cursed in some fashion.

We avoided the estate itself, as the
standing stones were on an island, and we needed to approach by
boat. I clung to the sides of the craft and tried not to look at
the black water. The moon rode low, its beams largely blocked by
the dark bulk of the Draakenwood. It was very quiet. No night birds
called from the forest. There came the soft slap of water against
the boat, the whisper of Griffin and Iskander’s oars, and the
occasional plop of a fish breaching the surface after an insect,
but nothing more. The island loomed against the stars, thick trees
concealing the standing stones from casual view.

I hated this lake. Leander, the boy I’d been
hopelessly in love with as a youth, had died in its waters. I’d
come close to dying myself, and had a terror of drowning ever
since. Then Griffin, Christine, and I had nearly perished on the
island while trying to stop Blackbyrne from opening a doorway to
the Outside. I’d never wanted to come back here again.

Not to say Griffin or Christine likely did
either. I twisted around to look at Griffin, who sat directly
behind me. I found he’d been watching me already, and a little
smile touched his handsome face when our eyes met.

It was all right, I told myself. We were all
right. We were alive and together, and this accursed lake would
claim none of us if I had anything to say about it.

The little dock had fallen into disrepair,
but was still serviceable enough. I scrambled out of the boat as
soon as it drew alongside.

“Be careful,” Christine snapped. “You’re
going to send us over!”

Her voice rang across the lake, the
unnatural stillness carrying the sound farther than it would have
otherwise. Christine looked taken aback and clapped a hand to her
mouth. “Sorry,” she whispered.

There came a loud rustling from the bushes
next to the dock, as though something forced its way through the
tangled growth. I jumped at the unexpected sound. “What was
that?”

“Just a muskrat or something like,” Griffin
said soothingly as he tied up the boat. “Perfectly natural.”

“Nothing about this island is natural,” I
muttered.

The path leading from the dock to the
standing stones was so overgrown I could barely discern it, even
when Griffin directed the beam of his police lantern on it. “This
way,” he murmured, and started forward.

I wanted to snatch him back. To bundle him
into the boat and return to shore, away from this place.

“Hurry it up, Whyborne,” Christine said from
behind me. “The sooner this is done, the sooner we can leave.”

She had a point. I forced my reluctant feet
to move, following Griffin toward the heart of the small island.
Tree branches snatched at my clothing and tried to knock off my
hat. The faint scent of death and rot seemed to hang over the
place, although perhaps it was simply my memories coloring my
perceptions. The undergrowth continued to rustle not far from us;
there must have been an entire clan of muskrats living here.

At last the trees gave way, and we stumbled
out into the clearing around the standing stones.

And it was a clearing. The forest had begun
to encroach upon it, but someone had removed the saplings, trimmed
back the branches, and cut away the brambles. The place might not
look as well used as when the Brotherhood conducted their unholy
rituals here, but it had obviously been tended to recently.

“Not the best of signs,” Iskander
remarked.

“No,” Griffin agreed. “Neither is this.”

He directed the beam of his lantern onto the
altar stone. The dark stains on it were too fresh to have been made
when the Brotherhood occupied the estate.

“The site is on an arm of the maelstrom,
just as the other standing stones were,” Griffin said. He stepped
further into the clearing, his body tense and his revolver in his
hand. “And these stones are infused with power as well.”

The undergrowth rustled again, louder this
time. A dark shape emerged and scampered up the altar stone. For a
moment, I thought it a giant rat. Matted brown fur covered its
misshapen body, and the naked tail trailing after it was scabbed
and unhealthy. Did the thing have some disease, to show itself to
us so boldly?

Then it reached its perch atop the altar and
turned to us. In place of a rat’s muzzle, it had the twisted,
leering face of a man.

Griffin

“Good gad!” Christine
exclaimed in revulsion. My own gorge rose at the sight of the
abomination on the altar stone. I’d seen enough to think myself
inured to horrors, but there was something so profoundly
wrong
about the creature
that I could hardly stand to look at it.

But look I had to, because it raised
forepaws that more closely resembled human hands. A strange,
tittering sound issued from its distorted mouth which sounded like
a chant.

A chant to which voices responded from all
around us.

We’d been expected, it seemed.

Four men appeared, one at each of the
cardinal points. Each held a wand of some sort before him, a
twisted skein of magic glowing from the polished wood. Within
moments, they were joined by another man—one with an eye patch, who
wore an odd, loose-sleeved shirt and held a dagger in his visible
hand.

“It’s the thief from the museum,” Iskander
said.

Whyborne didn’t waste time
with words. He
burned
in my shadowsight, the power of the arcane river beneath his
feet flooding into him as he called upon it. Blue fire lit his
eyes, and the scars on his right arm showed even through his
clothing, lines of power inscribed upon his skin. He thrust out his
hand toward the one-eyed man, and the world responded to his
will.

His spell twisted through the air in my
shadowsight, like a needle piercing the warp and weft of the
universe itself, tugging on the very threads of reality. The wind
leapt up, howling over the open water, shaking the trees—

Then the edge of the dagger found it. The
spell shattered, broke, threads snapping and fading into
nothing.

Damn it.

The monstrous rat creature still called from
the altar, the cultists responding to it. Light glinted from
Iskander’s blades, and Christine hoisted her rifle and sighted on
the abomination. I raised my revolver, intending to put a bullet
through the head of the one-eyed man.

The chant reached a crescendo, and the magic
in the wands flared. The web of a spell spread out from each,
racing across the ground like a sudden frost, lines intersecting
and tangling with one another. I tried to shout a warning, but the
magic reached me first.

Dizziness swept over me, and my revolver
grew unspeakably heavy. I tried to aim it, but instead my arm fell
slowly to my side. Lethargy gripped me, and I swayed on my feet. I
thought Christine moaned, but I couldn’t turn my head to be
sure.

I had to move. Had to break free. We were
defenseless otherwise, easy prey for the one-eyed man approaching
with his knife.

Weariness lapped over me like a wave. So
much easier to just close my eyes. My knees grew weak, and I
stumbled. Perhaps I should just lie down. Sleep.

“No,” Whyborne said, like a man trapped in a
nightmare. “G-get back.”

I forced open eyes I hadn’t even realized
I’d closed. The cultist with his dagger was almost on Whyborne now.
There came the clink of metal from somewhere on the thief’s person,
and I saw some sort of shackles hanging from his belt.

They meant to use those on Whyborne. Do
something to him.

Hurt my Ival.

No.

It took every ounce of stubbornness I
possessed, but I forced my legs forward: one, then the other. “Get
away from him,” I snarled, and lifted a revolver that felt heavy as
an anvil.

The one-eyed man spat a curse. Keeping his
knife raised defensively, he grabbed for me with his other
hand.

Only it wasn’t a hand that emerged from his
odd, loose sleeve.

I had but a glimpse, before a thick, slimy
tentacle wrapped itself around my throat.

The spell fell away from me and the world
went dark, save for the lantern light. The anti-magic of the witch
hunter’s blade blinded my shadowsight. I would have cried out if
the tentacle around my neck hadn’t squeezed tight. I clawed at it
madly, trying to breathe. Suckers gripped my flesh, squirming
nauseously against my skin.

“How dare you, worm?” the cultist said.
“Your blood will feed—”

“No,” Whyborne growled, and grabbed at the
tentacle arm.

He missed, the spell of lethargy sending him
staggering. Instead, his hand closed around my shoulder.

The world exploded. Heat burned through me,
and my skin tingled. I felt as if I’d grabbed a live wire,
electricity surging through my veins.

Whyborne gasped, and I felt it in my mouth.
His heartbeat seemed to thunder in my chest alongside my own.
Flashes of emotion and fragments of thought sparkled in my brain,
there and gone too fast for me to comprehend.

The one-eyed man shouted and leapt back,
tentacle whipping free, as if we’d scorched him. The world around
me lit up once again, filled with arcane radiance. Whyborne made a
slashing gesture with his hand, and the sticky web of the spell was
obliterated in surging magic, burned away by the power of the
maelstrom.

All four of the other cultists shrieked and
released their wands. Christine let out a blistering string of
curses, and her rifle fired at almost the same instant Iskander
threw his knives. Two of the men went to the ground, dead or dying,
and the other two beat a hasty retreat.

The taste of blood filled my mouth,
accompanied by the scent of burning and hot iron. The rat creature
fled, and the one-eyed man ran after it, both vanishing into the
darkness.

Silence fell, and we were left amidst the
stones and the dead. The wands lay scattered about the clearing,
their glow soft now, the magic quiescent.

Whyborne released my shoulder. “Griffin?” he
asked, but the sound of his voice was faint and far away. The
ground was close, though, and drawing rapidly nearer. Even so, I
fell into darkness before reaching it.

Griffin

“How are you feeling, darling?” Whyborne
asked.

I lay on our couch at home, Saul curled up
on my legs. Whyborne perched on the edge of the cushion, holding
out the steaming cup of tea he’d made me.

I’d awoken as Whyborne and Iskander hauled
me out of the boat. My mouth tasted of blood, and my throat was
mottled with bruises and sucker marks. A look in the mirror once
we’d returned home showed the whites of my eyes had gone red with
burst capillaries.

“The powder has taken care of the worst of
my headache,” I assured him. I took the tea, inhaling the scent of
bergamot. “I’m certain this will do me wonders.”

He watched me anxiously as I sipped the tea.
Guilt stirred in my gut—I’d frightened him, even though I certainly
hadn’t meant to do so. I reached out and took his left hand in
mine. The light from the lamp burnished the deep gold of our
wedding rings.

“What happened?” I asked. “There on the
island. You touched me, and...”

Saul stood up to investigate, standing on my
stomach and putting his head between us. Whyborne stroked him with
his free hand, eyes distant. “I’ve been thinking about it ever
since it happened. I have a theory. I don’t know if it’s true,
though, or just wild conjecture.”

“What is it?”

“The umbrae that touched your mind in
Chicago and Egypt, the Occultum Lapidem, all created certain
pathways, if you will.” His mouth flexed into a small frown. “Which
the Mother of Shadows used to communicate with you. Not to mention
the little queen.”

Old pain flared in my chest. So much hurt
and grief there beneath the glacier, in the ancient city built by
nothing human. But love, too. “It felt a bit like that,” I said,
turning over the thought in my mind. “When the Lapidem connected
us, there at the end. Not as intense, but I had...glimpses, I
suppose, of your thoughts and emotions.”

“Which lends credence to my theory.”
Whyborne sighed and redirected his gaze to our joined hands. “Those
pathways are still there, still intact, and now stronger than
ever.”

I arched a brow. “More of a highway than a
path, then?”

He snorted. “Only you could joke about such
a thing. But yes. With the power of the maelstrom already flowing
through me, I saw the magic through your eyes. The lines of the
spell. Once I knew what I was up against, I tore it apart at its
weak points.”

“I’m glad.” I took another sip of my
tea.

“As am I, but...” he turned his gaze back to
me and sighed. “It hurt you. We shouldn’t do it again.”

“We would have died otherwise!” I protested.
“What if—”

“No.” He held up a hand to forestall me. “I
know what you’re going to say, Griffin. But I’m not risking your
life.”

“Whyborne—”

“I said no!” Pain twisted
his features, and he looked away. “Don’t you see?
People—
humans—
don’t tap directly into such power for a reason. Even Theo and
Fiona used a wand when they drew on the vortex. The power would
have burnt them to ash otherwise. I won’t let that happen to
you.”

Curse it. I reached out and
put my hand over his. “You
are
human. In every way that matters.”