He’d tried to help Charles. That still touched him.
Charles stopped on the top of the ridge and stared out into the darkness, letting the thought roll around in his head. He should keep going, he knew, but the urgency to move had left him, and whether or not it was true, he felt safe from Smith here on the moor. And the longer Charles thought about the Catalian, the stronger and surer he felt. It had been a month of hell with Smith, of living in pain and fog, of having parts of himself he didn’t know he had torn like strips from his soul, but ever since the Catalian had knocked Smith cold, he’d felt strong. He replayed that image in his mind, even though he’d watched it through a fog; he saw Smith crumble into the dirt, and he smiled blackly.
Oh yes
. How he had been aching for that. Better still would have been if they’d been able to kill him, but there had been too many witnesses, and Charles feared the alchemist had some sort of self-protection against murder.
Charles set off again, but the fog was getting thicker, making it harder to keep his bearings. He started to head down into the next valley because there was one place down there where the mist did not reach, but when Charles saw the great lumps of gray, he retreated again.
That
was the Stone Circle, and he would not go there. Madeline had told him once what it was like inside; she said the shadows inside that place were the witch guides and that they ran up and down your spine like cold fingers. And you had to be naked there. Smith had taught Charles well that “magic” and “naked” together wasn’t any fun at all.
Madeline might be at the circle now, he realized. He took another step backward. Well, if she was, he would be waiting at the cottage for her when she finished.
But by the time Charles came back to the top of the ridge again, the fog had completely engulfed the valleys. The cottage should only be two more hills over, but to get there he had to descend into the thickest soup of all: the fog surrounding the lake. Charles would lay naked and flat on the stone slab in the Circle before he went anywhere near that damned lake.
He edged carefully down the next valley, skirting hard west, but he was thinking about the lake. It featured prominently in dozens of Etsian fairy tales, but not in any popular in Rothborne. The truth served well enough here. The lake wasn’t large, but it was impossibly deep and black as tar. Nothing lived within it—nothing usual, anyway. No fish, no plants, not even insects made that water their home. But every wisp of fog on the moor had its origins there, billowing from the center of the lake, from the dark cloud that never burned away, not even in the brightest sun. Jonathan had all but dragged him by the ear out to the moor one day that summer and made him look at it. That alone would have been enough, but Jonathan was Jonathan, so he’d lectured too.
“Don’t go in there,” he’d told Charles. “No one of the Houses can touch that water. You’ll wake the monster up, and it will suck your brain out through your nose. You can never, never go in that lake.” Charles hadn’t slept for a week after that, and when he did, he dreamed of horrible gray creatures full of mud and seaweed rising up over the end of his bed, dripping slime water over him as they reached down to press their lips to his nostrils.
He ascended the next hill, walking faster now, eager to come to the last ridge, to the great tree that stood at the entrance to the forest. But he kept thinking of the lake and the potential demon that lived inside it. It seemed more real tonight than it had ever been. Smith’s sadistic games had all been based on the idea that goddesses and demons and curses were real. Yes, that one vision he’d had of the Goddess had felt genuine, but when she never appeared again, when it was just the rotted wraiths followed by Smith’s phallus-of-the-day or yet another opportunity to kneel beneath Smith’s desk and suckle his musky cock for an hour—well, Charles had decided even she was just his imagination. His very
creative
imagination, yes. But imagination all the same. Smith and his weird rituals were real. Whatever power or essence Smith was milking out of Charles was real. The pain was real. The Goddess and the daemons and curses were not, or not real enough to matter.
He wanted to believe, though. He wanted very much to believe.
Charles angled harder to the west, sidestepping a white rock that appeared in the middle of his path. It wasn’t the Goddess who would save him just now, but Madeline had a shot. So he’d find her, and he’d tell her about Jonathan and about Smith. And once that was all sorted, he’d try to see the Catalian again. And then…then he didn’t know, but he’d make up the rest as it came to him.
He smiled at the thought of all the things he could make up with the Catalian.
Then he stopped smiling as a splash of ice-cold water filled his shoe and swallowed his leg up to his knee.
What the devil? He wasn’t anywhere near the lake. Charles cried out and stepped backward to withdraw. But when he did so, all that happened was that his other leg went into the water too, up to his thigh. Charles spun around, reaching out with his hands for the shore, the shore that by rights should have been just there behind him. He felt all the way around, his fingers clawing at the surface of the water as he tried to find the earthen edge.
There was none, not anywhere.
Charles turned around several times again, wanting to bolt, but he feared heading accidentally into the center of the lake. It made no sense. He had
gone west
. And he’d only taken one step into the water.
He should have been able to back out! How?
How? How the bloody hell was that logical?
In the distance, Charles heard the clicks and chitters begin. The beasts of the moor were starting to rise. The fog around him parted, and for a moment, he could see all the way to the center of the lake. The mist there was swirling, darker than Charles had remembered it being from that day Jonathan had showed it to him. It seemed to be rising. It was almost…reaching. For him.
“I know you. You are the one.”
The voice appeared in his head, just as the Goddess’s had in his dream. But where her voice had been warm and soothing, this voice was like having ice inside his mind. It was sharp and unearthly, and it hurt to hear.
“You are the one they made for me.”
Wind whipped up from nowhere, scattering all the fog save the mist gathered in the center. The waters were full of whitecaps now, making the lake look more like a sea than a humble moorland tarn. The highest peaks were in the center, waves so high that in the spray and fog, Charles thought he could see the shape of a man. The shape came closer, holding out arms made of mud and mist.
“Come to me. Come to me now.”
The shape lifted its arms higher, opening them wide.
“Come to me, as you were meant to. Come and let me make you what you were meant to be.”
Charles whimpered and backed away, sloshing through the water.
“What—who are you?” Charles’s throat had gone alarmingly dry. “H-how do you know me?”
He thought he heard a dark laugh echoing across the lake.
“I have always known you. I have waited long for you.”
The mist-and-fog creature stood scant feet away from him, advancing no farther, but it held out its arms directly in front of itself. It was like the wraiths but worse. It was death. Charles didn’t know what it was, but this, he knew with cold certainty, would bring him slow, painful death.
“Come to me, sweet one, and we will change the world, Charles.”
The voice laughed.
“Charles…Perry.”
The fog parted around the creature, and Charles could see that it had eyes. They burned red, as red as Jonathan’s had in the inn yard. Charles cried out and tried to step back, but there was no lake bottom behind him; he was trapped where he stood. He looked into those eyes, as captive as he was in one of Smith’s spells, except this was worse. The lake demon didn’t need a charm or a word to bind him. It simply
did.
The misty hands reached out and closed around Charles’s throat.
“
Go back
.”
This was a new voice, and it was not in Charles’s head. “
Go back
,” it said again, and there was a great roar like a wave; Charles stumbled backward in an effort to stay upright as the water rushed away from him, churning in torrents around his legs as it drew back, but this time he felt the edge of the bank behind him. The hands at his throat tightened; Charles’s vision was going black, but he saw a face before him, a terrible face made of mud and dirt and slugs, of dead fish and slime. The stink of it choked him, but the angry glow of its eyes burned him, the red glare searing his own eyeballs until they burned.
“Mine! You are not hers! You are mine!”
The world began to die away. The wraiths from his dream rose up, mouths open, hands raised, ready to drag him with them into their horrible depths. He saw stars, dull, dead stars, and he knew soon he would be one of them.
Wind blasted Charles’s back, and the water demon howled again. But so did the voice behind him.
“
He is not yours to take. You have violated your sentence. Let him go, or we will banish you into the Void. Release him, and go back to your prison
.”
The voice banged against Charles’s bones and rattled his teeth. It was a feminine voice, but it was not sweet or gentle or kind. It was terrible. It spoke with the authority of a goddess, but it was not, Charles knew,
his
Goddess.
It sounded, actually, like the moor witch. It sounded like the Morgan.
The demon had eased its hold on Charles, and now it was withdrawing reluctantly. It pulled him forward with it, like an angry child seeing how long it could defy a parent. Charles wanted his release, but he feared, too, his rescuer. The Morgan. Goddess help him, he thought Smith had said she was dead! He didn’t want to see the Morgan! He had once, when he was young, and the image returned to him now: tall, swathed in black from head to toe, only her pale, sticklike hands visible. He’d seen her swarthy veil come off too, and he’d seen the bald, pale head, the sunken cheeks, the gray eyes that cut like knives—
“
You will release him now
,” the witch demanded.
The demon gave one last howl, but it removed its hand completely as it fell back into the water. It sent a great splash up into the air that should have coated the shore, but the witch murmured another spell, and the water bounced harmlessly against a shield and fell away.
Charles fell backward onto the bank. His throat hurt, and he felt as if he were going to vomit copiously. He opened bleary eyes to the night sky, then cried out as he saw the moor witch bend over him, her white hands reaching out to touch his face. She retreated at his outburst, raising those hands to her veil instead.
Goddess, no, don’t show me that hideous face
! Charles wanted to shout at her, but he could only manage a gurgle.
However, not just the veil but the whole headdress lowered, and it was no bald, wizened visage that bent over him. It was a beautiful one—outside the Goddess, this was the most beautiful woman Charles had ever seen. And he knew her. That had not been her voice he’d heard dispelling the lake demon, but he knew this woman. She was, in fact, the woman he had come to see.
He cried out in relief and reached for her, and in response Madeline Elliott crouched down beside him, her eyes full of concern as she took his face in her hands.
“It
is
you,” she whispered, sounding stunned. Her voice was normal again, not full of magic and power, just love. She shook her head and stroked Charles’s cheek. “Charles Felix Perry, what in the name of heaven are you doing here?”
“Madeline.” His voice was slurred, and his body felt heavy. “Madeline—something has happened.”
She tossed her headdress aside and crouched down beside him, her long, thick hair spilling over her shoulders. “Charles, it’s all right. I have you. No more harm will come to you.” She touched his forehead, his neck, and his temples. Her brows knit in concern. “What has
happened
to you? You feel…” She frowned and placed her hand over the center of his chest. Then she sucked in a breath. “
Alchemist
,” she swore. “You are under the thrall of an alchemist.”
She’s so beautiful
. Charles smiled drunkenly as he reached up and touched her face, running fingers over the edges of her hair.
Beautiful and strong
. He remembered why he had come to find her and what he had run from, and his smile dropped away. “Jonathan,” he rasped, clutching her arms. “He’s here. He’s hurt. He’s at the abbey.”
He saw the flicker of emotions pass over her face: alarm, unease, even sorrow, but then she shuttered it all away. She stroked his face again. “Jonathan is dead, Charles.”
Charles shook his head. “He’s here. And he says he has a demon in him.” She blanched; he opened his mouth to spit out the rest, to tell her about Timothy, about Smith, about the way the lake had sneaked up on him, but a wave of nausea caught him first. He groaned and sank to the ground, shutting his eyes.
“I’m going to take you to the cottage,” Madeline was saying, but she sounded miles away. “I’ll take care of you, Charles.”
Charles tried to open his eyes, but they were too heavy. He cried out as he saw the wraiths rising, cold and gray and moaning. “Help me,” he whispered, clutching at Madeline. He tried again to open his eyes, but when he did, everything was strange.
He saw Madeline, but she looked wrong, as if she were nothing but blue and silver and white, as if she were made of stars. Goddess, he thought. Not mine. But a goddess all the same. He watched sparks of magic dance about her shoulders.
At the very least a sorceress. So much more than just a witch.
“They try to pull me down with them,” Charles whispered to the Goddess, his words starting to slur. “They want me to help them, but I can’t.”
They call me Father.
Madeline blinked at him with eyes that shone like sapphires in a sea of silver dust. “I will help you, Charles. Rest now. I will help you.”
Charles didn’t want to let go. He was afraid. But when heaviness forced his lids to close, he saw, to his relief, that the starry, sorceress Madeline stayed. She stayed right beside him, smiling with teeth like diamonds as blue light danced around her, and the wraiths faded into the night.