The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [143]
“People do not have the capacity, Aoife,” Draven said, as if I were a very small and stupid child. “Something called the necrovirus, something that has a specific cause and perhaps some day a cure, they can control. They can guard against infection. The Folk, magic—the truth, that ‘virals’ are really creatures crawled up from a world that only exists in their nightmares? That lands exist beside our own and some human’s very blood causes them madness or greatness, depending on a flip of a coin?” He sniffed. “If the world knew the truth, it would burn within the week. It nearly did, until a few of us took action, after the Storm.” Draven sighed. “I’m not one for telling tales, but in brief: in 1880 there was a man named Nikola Tesla. He was like Edison, but Tesla had a weakness of spirit. He saw things beyond this world, beyond reason. He created a machine, a machine that could tear the very fabric of the universe asunder. And he turned it on.”
Draven passed a hand over his forehead. “It was terrible, terrible what happened. My father was only a boy, but he spoke of the magical cataclysms, the strange creatures that flowed unencumbered through the gateway Tesla ripped open. They called it the Storm. And a brotherhood stepped forward, composed of sorcerers and scientists and madmen. They beat back the Storm. They created the gates with magic and the wonder of Tesla’s technology. But they were not good men.”
I stayed silent, not giving Draven the reaction he clearly wanted, even though my brain was racing to assimilate his version of history. His nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply. “They did not see that the only way was to cleanse the world of all supernatural corruption. We did. And so we called them heretics. We erased magic from all the corners of the earth, and only a few times has it reared its head since. But we’ll burn them out. Have no fear. And magic will always be a lie, be no more substantial than a shadow, as long as people believe it’s really only the necrovirus.”
He stepped to his desk and pressed his buzzer as I watched him, insensible.
The necrovirus wasn’t real.
Magic was.
Draven had known all along. He’d let it go on, the burnings and the lockdowns and people like my mother being shoved into madhouses. Why, I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter.
Everything about Lovecraft was a lie. Everything about this modern, scientific world, the ghoul traps and the madhouses and the worship of reason, was wrong.
Before I could scream, Quinn and another officer appeared. Draven jerked his chin. “Take her to interrogation and test her blood for the usual panel of infection. She’s been outside the city limits. She’s a contamination risk.”
“Let me go!” I screamed as they dragged me along. I lost one of my shoes on the thick carpet, skinned my knees as I thrashed and the Proctors wrestled me along. The truth was sinking in, and as Draven had warned, it was terrible. My head spun and I thrashed like I was a spastic in my mother’s asylum. “Let me go! I’m not contaminated! There is no necrovirus! He’s a liar!”
As Quinn and the other officer dragged me away, Draven placed his hand on my carpetbag, on my father’s journal and the goggles and the invigorator, as if they belonged to him, and then he met my eyes and tipped me a wink.
Draven and I. United in the awful, world-burning truth.
The door of Draven’s office slammed shut and then only my own voice echoed down Ravenhouse’s long iron halls.
The interrogation room was bleak and bare, entirely different from Draven’s office. There were no bones of finery here, just concrete and one-way glass.
Cal would have loved it, I thought. It was just like his novels and Saturday matinees. Sweat the villains and make them talk.
“Doctor’s coming in,” Quinn said. “Don’t you make a move, kid.”
My lip had stopped bleeding. Now it just felt swollen and sticky, like I’d let candy melt and linger on my tongue.
I counted stains on the acoustic tiles of the ceiling