The Nightmare Garden

10 Ravens over Innsmouth

DEAN, CAL, BETHINA and I dozed for a few hours in a barn, taking turns sitting watch with Dean’s lighter trembling between our palms both for warmth and to ward off the night-dwelling creatures we could hear hooting and crying in the darkness beyond. Fire would keep them at bay—for a while, anyway.

When the sun was just a stain on the horizon, we resumed walking. I was numb everywhere, especially in my heart and mind, but the horrible weight I’d been carrying since we left Lovecraft had lessened a little. Just to be doing something, instead of sitting and waiting for someone else to figure out the plan, was freeing enough that I actually hopped over an icy puddle.

Dean gave me a crooked grin. “You’re in a good mood.”

“Better than the last few days,” I agreed.

He kicked a pebble ahead of us down the road. “You ever been to Innsmouth?”

“No,” I said. “Conrad and I didn’t exactly get seaside vacations.”

“Nice little town,” said Dean. “Quaint, I guess you’d call it. I ran a few fugitives up there to catch the boat for Canada.”

Sometimes it was easy to forget Dean’s life before we met. He had been a guide to fugitives and those wanted by the Proctors; he’d lived every day of his life with danger. Because of that, I tried to stay in the good mood he was seeing. I didn’t want him worrying.

“Tell me more about the places you’ve been.”

“Favorite place ever was San Francisco, hands down,” Dean said. “They have the walls, not like Lovecraft, and inside it’s like a million cities compressed into one, piled on top of each other, like layers you could dive down through. They have a Chinatown there, and men who can breathe fire if they drink a potion, and women who can swallow knives. It smells like steam and smoke and gunpowder, and since it’s a modern city the Proctors don’t pay any attention to the poor folks and we have the run of the place without much risk of getting burned.”

All I really knew about San Francisco was that it was home to one of the three great Engines in the States—now two, I supposed—and that off the coast was Alcatraz Island, where the worst heretics were confined to a hospital run by the Bureau of Proctors, like Ravenhouse in Lovecraft, only a hundred times worse.

“At night you can see weird blue lights out on Alcatraz,” Dean said, as if reading my thoughts. “Everyone says the Proctors have got secret experiments going on out there.” He looked at me. “Knowing what I know now, I gotta wonder.”

I’d wondered too: if there was no necrovirus, what had the necrodemons everyone had so feared during the war really been?

“Maybe someday we’ll know,” I said to Dean.

“Maybe,” he said, “but I doubt it. I don’t think the whole truth’s ever really going to get out.”

Before I could give that too much thought and just depress myself all over again, we came over a hill and saw the sea, with a cluster of gray and blue buildings huddled at the water’s edge.

“Innsmouth,” Dean said. “Doesn’t look like much, I know.”

“No,” Cal agreed. Bethina wrinkled her nose.

“Smells like fish.”

“We need a plan,” I said. “Dean and I will go ahead and try to find the captain of the submersible, and you two wait here for him. If something happens, you need to get word back to my father. All right?”

Cal instantly shook his head. I knew he wouldn’t like staying behind again, but Cal was the only one I trusted to be wily enough to get back to the Crosley house if we ran into trouble in the village. Plus, he could protect Bethina, which was more than I could do at the moment. I was so jittery and nervous I could feel myself vibrating, even standing still on the hilltop.

“Please,” I said to Cal softly. “I promise we’ll either send word or we’ll be back in a few hours and this will all be a wash.” The last part was a lie. I had to go north.

Bethina took Cal’s hand. “I think Miss Aoife is right,” she said. “If there’s trouble, they’ll need someone to light out and send help.”

“There won’t be,” Dean assured them, but I saw worry lines in his forehead that usually weren’t there. I wondered if he knew something about Innsmouth that I didn’t.

“As long as there’s someone down here who can get me out of this place,” I said aloud.

“I’ll introduce you around,” Dean said. “If the boat I’m thinking of hasn’t been sunk yet, they can get us to the Great Old Ones themselves. Crackerjack crew, every one.” He shoved a hand through his hair, a nervous gesture that I’d come to recognize as Dean getting ready for trouble. “But antsy,” he said. “So move slow and stay quiet in the village, and don’t say anything stupid to anyone.”

I squeezed his hand to reassure him I could handle it. “I trust you, Dean.”

We walked in silence until we came to the village outskirts.

Even as early as it was, I’d expected some movement, but there was nothing. No jitneys, no steam carriages. Not even the horse-drawn variety was in evidence, though far away I heard some sort of livestock bray and then quiet. The place felt as if it were holding its breath—not abandoned, but staying perfectly still, waiting for something.

The curtains on the rows of pitch-roofed cottages were drawn, down to the last one; passing the houses was like passing a line of faces with blind eyes staring into nothing. I shivered, not entirely from the brisk sea air.

I got close enough to Dean so I could whisper. “Is it supposed to be this quiet?”

“No,” Dean said in the same tone, his hand going into his pocket for his knife. “Something’s wrong.”

I reached deep for a little of my Weird, but nothing unusual prickled, just the usual sorts of machines and locks and clockworks that a village at the edge of the ocean would possess.

There was a small town square, like a hub in a wheel, and a fountain in the center of it frozen solid, plumes of ice erupting from the mouths of a trio of metal leviathans.

A scream came, then cut off as abruptly as a needle skipping off a record. I started down the narrow side street it had come from, placing my feet carefully and silently on the bricks.

Dean caught up with me. “I’d say we should get to the docks, but I don’t know that I want to be that exposed right at the moment,” he whispered.

I nodded silently and reached back for his hand. Dean squeezed it and then let it drop, and we crept ahead in matched steps, until we’d gone away from the sea and the center of town and come upon a farmhouse set a little back from the street. A sagging red barn beyond held the source of the scream.

Something else, softer and more terrifying, drifted on the wind. Sobbing. Human sobbing, coming from a human throat.

“Aoife …,” Dean started, but I shushed him and continued toward the barn, keeping myself out of view of the barn door.

Through a slat in the side, I saw three people in nightclothes on their knees on the dirt floor of the barn, two Proctors in black uniforms brandishing shock rifles at them. The girl, the one sobbing, had a split lip, and blood dribbled down her white nightgown. One of the Proctors drew back his hand again.

“We’ve been flying up and down the coast looking in every rathole they could duck into,” he snapped. “We know everyone in this filthy town harbors fugitives. Now tell me where they are—at least two, boy and girl, dark haired. One calling herself Aoife Grayson.”

“We don’t know,” the girl sobbed. “If that terrorist were here, we’d turn her in real quick. Please. We don’t know.”

I almost shrieked when Dean clapped a hand on my shoulder. I’d been transfixed by the scene in the barn, and enraged. “Aoife,” Dean whispered.

“I’m not leaving,” I hissed at him. “We have to do something.”

“Not that,” Dean insisted, his mouth practically pressed against my ear. “Look. Past the barn.”

There was a long field that sloped down to cliffs above the water, probably half a mile away. And there, moored at the edge of the cliff, was a familiar black hulk of an airship with the spiky Proctor insignia painted on the side.

Draven’s. I’d been so preoccupied with the people in the barn I hadn’t even looked beyond. It wasn’t just regular Proctors in there, but Draven’s elite troops. How had he known I’d be coming to Innsmouth?

“What do we do?” Dean muttered. His voice was still as soft as a flick of silk, but his grip on my shoulder betrayed panic as he squeezed hard enough to bruise.

“I don’t know,” I said in the same voice. Inside the barn, the girl screamed again.

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know, sir! Please stop hitting me!”

“Just … something,” I said to Dean, and wrenched free of his grasp.

In Cal’s stories, heroines usually carried bullwhips or daggers, flew their own airships, swung in on ropes. They always had a daring plan. Or even a stupid plan. Never no plan.

Inside the barn door, I grabbed up a disused axe handle and swung it at the nearest Proctor, catching him across the back of the skull. He went down with a grunt, and the other swung his rifle toward me.

Dean grabbed him from behind and threw him into the nearest wall. The Proctor rebounded off it with a clatter but held on to his shock rifle and got off a wild shot. The sizzling electric bolt clipped the older woman in the trio—the girl’s mother, I guessed—and she cried out as she fainted.

“Mother!” the girl screamed.

Dean caught the Proctor across the jaw with a hard punch, and the man went down for good.

I took the girl by her shoulders. “You’re strong,” I told her. “Help your father carry her inside. Trust me, you need to get out of here.”

Her eyes widened as she got a good look at my face. “You’re …,” she started, then slapped my hands off and scrambled away.

She didn’t have to say it. I knew. Aoife Grayson, terrorist. Destroyer of the Engine.

As the girl and her father got her mother up and out the back door of the barn, I saw black shapes approaching from the front. My chest clenched. I’d hoped we could escape unnoticed, but I should have known better when Grey Draven was involved.

I could tell, even from my distance, that the weapons were new. The guns were copper, and midway along the barrel was a green glass bulb in which some kind of substance churned. The end narrowed to a point, like a needle. Some kind of fine ammunition, or perhaps gas, or …

“You like my toys?”

Grey Draven walked through the row of Proctors and into the barn as if it were perfectly usual for him to be walking through a field in the first hours of the morning in full dress uniform. “Hello, Miss Grayson,” he said, tipping his head at me. “And the infamous Dean Harrison. It appears I get two for the price of one today. Already worth getting out of bed for.”

They hadn’t found Cal and Bethina. My stomach plummeted in relief. Cal would be dead if Draven got his hands on him. But my friend knew how to hide, and I knew he’d keep Bethina safe. He fancied her too much to let anything happen to her. They’d get away and tell my father what had happened, so at least he wouldn’t always wonder.

“You sure came a long way from your cushy new job in Washington to chase a couple of kids,” I said to Draven. Keep him talking. Keep him thinking it’s just the two of you.

“Oh, I think we both know you’re no innocent child, Aoife,” Draven purred. “As for my new job—one of the perks is I get to do exactly as I wish. Including kit out my men with the best.” He extended his hand to the two men at the head of the troop. “A little something I’ve been working on. I call it the needle pistol.” He took one from the Proctor standing nearest and aimed. A thin bolt of light arced from the pistol to the barn wall, leaving a smoking hole. “Pretty impressive,” he said. “And I’m not even a genius. Imagine what your father could do for us.”

“Is that what this is about?” I asked. “My father?”

“You’ve got me wrong, Aoife,” Draven said. “I don’t want to hurt your father. I never wanted to. I want to use him, his knowledge of the Thorn Land and his uncanny mind, for my own ends.”

“Against his will,” I countered. Draven shrugged, as if I’d caught him out in a white lie.

“One way or another. We need him, now more than ever.”

I shook my head. Draven could sugarcoat it any way he liked, but at the end of the day he’d still be a brute, a kidnapper and a liar. “I’m not helping you, Mr. Draven,” I said. “Either let me go or try to take me to jail again. We all remember how well that worked last time.”

Draven stepped forward and raised his hand as if to slap me across the face. I didn’t flinch from his dark gaze. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore, I realized in surprise. I’d seen so much worse, Grey Draven didn’t even rate at this moment.

Dean made a move toward Draven, and two Proctors jumped at him and held him back. Draven waved the pistol. “Now, now, Dean. Don’t get hotheaded. Your little girlfriend here needs to learn how to speak to her betters.”

He dropped his hand. “This is hardly the place I wanted to have this conversation. Come. We’ll retire to the ship, where it’s warm.” He smiled at me, and it was worse than anything he could hit me with. “I do enjoy a few creature comforts, don’t you?” He brushed the backs of his knuckles down my cheek and I shivered in disgust.

“I can take them or leave them,” I said. The Proctors shackled Dean while Draven took me firmly by the arm.

The airship grew bigger and bigger as we approached, until it blocked all but the barest edge of the sun. I could see scrolling letters along the prow—Dire Raven.

“Beautiful, isn’t she? I had her specially built,” Draven boasted. “She’s triple armored, with two pressurized hulls. Her balloon is ultralight. Five bladders inside, and backup batteries so we never lose power.” He touched the hull lightly as we climbed the folding steps to the hatch, unctuously opened by yet another uniformed Proctor.

“Much better than that hulk your father flies,” Draven said. “What’s he call it, again? The Bad Memory?”

“You know damn well what it is,” I said. Draven pursed his lips.

“This little rebellious act you’ve got playing now is not amusing,” he told me.

The Dire Raven was enormous in comparison to the Munin, and we passed through two decks before we reached a small room wrapped with windows. We were in the prow of the craft, just under the helium bladders, in a sitting room done in black, red and gold. Even more patriotic than Draven’s old office, when he’d only been Head of the City and not one of the most powerful men in the country. Dean glanced around, and I could tell he was as nervous as I was. I hoped Cal and Bethina knew to run as soon as they spied Proctors, to not wait for us. I knew they’d be safe in Innsmouth, especially when Draven was distracted with us, but I still worried.

Draven sat in an armchair and put one foot up on an ottoman, drawing my focus back to him. He pulled over a rolling metal cart and poured himself a drink from a metal decanter. All metal, I realized, so that nothing would shatter during a rough ride. The Dire Raven was full of iron, and I could already feel it starting to eat away at my edges. If I stayed here for more than a few hours, I was going to be out of my mind. Calm down, Aoife, I told myself. Don’t panic over the disaster that hasn’t happened yet. “It’s early, but you understand how hard my job has become these days,” he told me, placing the decanter back on the cart.

“I still don’t know what you want from me.” I stood straight and tried to appear calm. Inside, I was trembling worse than a bare twig on one of the trees outside. Draven could kill me, torture me, or do worse to Dean while he made me watch, and I couldn’t do a thing except beg. Using my Weird inside this iron ship would be suicidal, and trying to fight off the Proctors and escape would be suicide, period. The Proctors might all have been part of a lie, but they were still men, men with guns, and Draven gave them orders.

“I don’t think you’re that stupid, so do us both a favor and drop the ingénue schoolgirl act.” Draven tossed back his drink. “Your father had a little spat with the Brotherhood, and I don’t blame him. They’re unrecognizable from the stalwart society my grandfather helped found. And I don’t care about them—right now I exist to put the status quo back in place. And you’re going to help me.” He narrowed his eyes over the top of his cup. “You and that clever little trick you do.”

Draven refreshed his cup, this time filling it to the brim with hot tea to cover the amber liquid at the bottom. “At first I thought another Grayson with uncanny powers would just complicate my life. But you had to be too smart, too bright a penny. So I adapted.”

“Like the reptile you are,” I spat.

Draven raised his cup to me. “Too right. To Mr. Darwin, and his proof that a clever creature like me will always survive.” He blew on the tea. “And you too, Aoife. If you’re as clever as you think you are.”

“Is this going anywhere?” I sighed.

Draven sipped and set the cup aside, never taking his eyes from me. “You are going to fix the Gates. Convince your father to help. Or I’ll cut your friend Dean’s throat so that his blood pools all over this lovely carpet. That’s how strongly I feel about this, Aoife.” His tongue flicked out over his lips like a lizard’s while I shot a glance at Dean. His face was pale, his expression mirroring the panic I felt.

Draven sat back and raised one eyebrow. “Don’t mistake my current civility for a lack of conviction.”

For a moment I just listened to my heart raging, my blood boiling through my ears with an enraged thrum. I knew that Draven didn’t want to fix the Gates the way I did. I knew that he didn’t want my father and me for anything except the power over Thorn we could grant him. He could act like we had the same motives, but we didn’t.

And threatening Dean was the last damn straw. I reached out and smacked the hot tea into his lap. Draven yelped, leaping out of his seat. “Don’t think that because I’m standing here quietly you can threaten me or the people I love,” I said in return, moving back to stand next to Dean.

Draven bared his teeth as he grabbed a monogrammed tea towel and swiped the hot liquid off his pants. “You’re just like your mother, you know that? A stubborn bitch.”

Hearing Draven actually swear made me realize I was probably about five seconds from being tossed into a deep, dark hole, no matter how reluctant he’d initially seemed to harm me. Draven was normally immaculate in both speech and appearance, but something more than me had cracked his demeanor. Now that I was looking, I saw that the buttons on his black jacket were crooked, and his dark hair had been yanked back with a comb rather than carefully smoothed into place. Lines of sleeplessness had appeared under his eyes, and he hadn’t shaved.

“Then I guess this is pointless,” I said. “You better just clap the shackles on me and drag me right to Banishment Square to burn the wickedness out of me.”

“Don’t think you’re getting off that easy,” Draven gritted out. He went to his desk and pulled out a small brass box, flipping it open and stroking his thumb over whatever lay inside.

My curiosity allowed the words to sneak out. “What’s that?”

“Nothing much,” Draven said. He came over and held it out to me. I strained to look and was surprised by the simplicity of what I saw: it was a compass, just the usual kind they gave out to the Expedition Club at the Academy, only in the center the compass rose had been removed and instead of needles I saw a tiny globe of aether churning inside the device. It emitted a strange sound, a high-pitched tone I could feel in my teeth, while the arrows of direction constantly shifted.

“From the Dire Raven and her instruments, I can find anyone holding this compass, anywhere in the world,” Draven said. “Take it.”

“I don’t think I want you knowing where I am,” I said, shrinking from his gift. “In fact, I know I don’t.”

“Take the damn thing. Or do I have to remind you of what happens to Dean if you sass me?” Draven snapped.

I took the box, which prickled my Weird fiercely. I set it as far away from me as possible, on the arm of my chair. “Why give this to me if you already have me?” I whispered.

“I have you, but I want what you want,” Draven said. “You’re going to the Bone Sepulchre, to the Brotherhood of Iron. You’re going to continue your journey north, Aoife.” He tapped the box with one slender forefinger. There was some kind of black dirt or engine grease under his nail. “And this little box is going with you.”

As if a map had unfurled behind my eyes, I saw all at once where this was going. “No,” I said. “No, I won’t.”

“You will convince the Brotherhood of your intent to betray your father and become one of them, toe the party line, and you will guard this box as if your life depends on it. If not your life, than certainly the unlucky Mr. Harrison’s.” Draven gave me a wide, sharp grin. “He’ll be staying here.”

“The hell I will!” Dean spat. Draven turned one cold eye on him.

“Don’t even pretend you have any say in the matter, boy. I could gut you like a fish and have somebody clean up the mess, and no one would ever know. So stay. Quiet.”

I shook my head at Dean. He felt things strongly, and that could make him reckless. A rash move was the one thing we didn’t need right now.

Draven turned away from us and went to the portholes in the side of the Dire Raven. He breathed on a spot and polished it with his sleeve. “I’ve tried for a long time to find the exact location of the Brotherhood,” Draven said. “Not to exterminate them, mind. I want them to answer to a single law, as it was in the old times. The law of humanity. Not the law of magic or any other creature. Especially not those Fae they’re so enamored of.”

“And get a private army of magicians in the bargain,” I added.

Draven came back to me and squeezed my upper arms with an intensity that would leave bruises. “You’re so smart, Aoife. And because of that, I know you’ll make the smart call, to save your friend and your own hide. I thought it would be your father who’d redeem this world for me, whether he knew it or not. But no. It’s going to be you. Scared little Aoife.” He exhaled against my ear, and I could feel the scrape of his stubble as he smiled. “Fail and I kill your friend. Then I come for your mother, your brother and everyone you’ve ever spoken to, friend or enemy, in your life. You think even I can’t be that ruthless? I can. Make no mistake, Aoife. I can, and will, if you fail.” He drew back, brow furrowed. “You believe me?”

My throat was so dry and my heart thudding so fast in that moment that I didn’t think I could make a sound. But a squeak emanated from me. “Yes.”

“Yes what?” Draven snapped.

“Yes, Mr. Draven,” I whispered. “I believe you.”

And I did. One hundred percent.

Draven tucked the compass into my bag with a pat and then guided me to a lower level of the Dire Raven, where three cells were set into the hull, bolted directly to the ultralight steel. He instructed the Proctors to put Dean in the farthest one.

Dean turned back and looked at me when he was inside, and I pressed my fingers against his through the bars. “Aoife,” he said, his voice rough with panic. “Aoife, don’t do this.”

I grabbed his hands and held them around the iron, inches away but separated by miles. The Proctors and Draven watched us, unblinking. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, pressing my forehead against the bars. “It’s the only way either of us will get out of this alive.” That was true, I knew—I’d at least partially failed in my mission to reach the Brotherhood on my own. If I refused Draven, he’d lock me up next to Dean and hold me there until my father was forced to comply in my place, to go back to the men who regarded him as a traitor and would certainly simply lock him up as well. Draven had me over a barrel, and for now, I had to take his compass and play his game. “I’ll be back for you,” I told Dean. “Please don’t ever doubt it.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he muttered. “Just get out of here. Get as far away as you can. I’ll be fine.” He moved as close as he could, like he was trying to kiss me, and muttered, “The captain’s name is Rasputina Ivanova. The Nor’easter Inn, on the docks, is where she usually picks up passengers. Tell her I sent you, and ask about the Hallows’ Eve in New Amsterdam to prove you really know me.”

Draven grabbed me by the back of my collar before I could reply. “Time is up, young lovers. Aoife has work to do.”

Dean held on to me for as long as he could, and when our grasp was broken his fingers left faint marks, like the memory of a burn.

The same pair of Proctors escorted me to the hatch of the Dire Raven.

“One last thing,” Draven said. “I know that you might be tempted to ditch my compass the moment you’re out of my sight, but if it stops moving—if I get any hint that you’ve tried to rid yourself of it—then I’ll kill Dean without a second thought.” He patted my cheek, and I couldn’t draw back this time, hemmed in by Proctors as I was. My stomach heaved.

“I know you’ll complete your mission,” Draven continued. “And just think—if you do, if you help me seal the Gates and fix this world, you may even be able to sleep at night.”

I glared at him as the Proctors prodded me back down the gangway and into the farmer’s field. “You’re a vile person,” I told Draven when I was at a safe distance. “You’re no better than a ghoul crawling up from the sewer.”

Draven tapped his chest. “Words will never hurt me, Aoife. Now get moving. Safe travels, don’t get devoured, all that usual sentimental nonsense.”

I could feel his eyes on me until I reached the road and turned the corner.

Walking back to Innsmouth, I was numb. I’d had to leave Cal and Bethina behind for their own safety, but I’d never planned on being separated from Dean. I’d never felt so alone. Dean had been the one constant in my life since I’d met him—he’d saved my life.

I steeled myself. Grey Draven was not going to beat me again. I was going to keep Dean alive, no matter what it took. Alone or not, I was smarter than Draven. And he was going to learn, by the time this was over, just how big a mistake it had been to cross me.