The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [146]
“That’s …” Dean shook his head. There was a long time where the only sound was the scrape of the pin against the lock. “Aoife, I don’t know what you want me to say to make that all right,” he said at last.
“Nothing,” I said as I wiggled the pin in his locks. “Don’t say anything. I just had to tell someone before I exploded.”
“So if there’s no virus”—Dean gave a long breath of relief as his shackles came loose, and rubbed his raw wrists—“what’s wrong with your old lady and your brother?”
I turned to the door, laying my cheek against the metal, caressing the lock and the handle with my Weird. “I don’t know,” I told Dean. “But something is making us mad, and I aim to find out what.” I had always known that Nerissa’s behavior and her hallucinations and my dreams weren’t normal, never mind my own brother coming at me with a knife. There was still something in our blood. But now, at least, there might be a real cure.
The lock popped and the door swung open before me. The Weird was quiet in this place encased in iron, easier to control. I flinched as my nose began to leak blood again. My vision slurred left and right as I stumbled along the wall with Dean.
“We need to find Cal,” I gasped. “Draven said … he said for the Proctors to torture him.…”
I became aware that Dean was no longer behind me.
“I don’t think we’re going to get far on that plan, princess,” he said, and I turned to watch him put up his hands. My stomach plummeted. We’d been so close.
“Nice to see you again.” Quinn was flanked by two other Proctors, and they were all armed. He shouldered his weapon and snatched me by the arm. “Be a good little girl this time,” he whispered. He dragged me away from Dean and down flights of stairs, until dripping water and mold told me I was deep beneath the earth. We spilled into a hallway containing a row of iron doors lit only by a series of aether lanterns hung from crossbeams.
“We’re below the riverbed,” Quinn told me as he unlocked the nearest door. “Unless you’ve got gills, you’re ours for good.”
He tossed me into the cell and the door shut behind me. I shouted and screamed and pounded on the door, but it did no good. Once more, I was alone in the dark.
Escape from Ravenhouse
I LAY IN the dark for a long time, on cold stone, listening to water drip and things slither in the dark. Rats scuttled in and out of my view, through a drain in the floor trickling filthy water from the cell into the new sewers. I wondered if this blackness and the foul, eldritch caress of damp river air would be the last things I saw and felt before I was executed or lost to madness.
I thought about what Draven had said, that he meant to use me to lure my father back to Lovecraft. I thought about the fact that nearly the entire world believed the most elaborate of lies.
I wondered how many other heretics had gone to the castigator knowing what I knew.
At last, when I couldn’t be alone with my thoughts for another moment, a second door rolled back from a nether part of the cell, letting in light and sound and two more forms, both of whom hit the floor with a thump and a curse from the Proctor herding them.
“Who’s there?” A man’s voice, from the corner. I curled myself up, putting my back to a wall, trying to get as far away from the invisible rasp as possible. Who’d been dumped in here with me? I had a feeling they might be worse than the Proctors.
“Who are you?” Something ran over my foot and I kicked at it.
“Aoife?”
I squinted into the dimness of the cell. “Dean?”
A hand reached out and felt for mine, and I grabbed it. “Oh, Dean. You’re all right.” I had never been more glad of anything in my life. Alone, I might make it out alive, but knowing that Dean’s life rested with me as well redoubled my resolve.
“Of course I am, kid,” he whispered. “You never doubted me, did you?”
“Did they hurt you?” I demanded. “I can