The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [168]
“What’s happened?” Cal said, coming to stand next to me. “The whole town’s blazing.”
I felt an awful premonition creep along my spine and into my twinging shoggoth bite, and turned to Captain Harry. “Can we go faster?”
“We are at the mercy of the winds now, petite,” Captain Harry said. “And the ill wind, she’s blowing over your valley.”
As we crossed the empty field and drifted up against the mountain, I saw more and more signs of carnage. Blood smearing the cut cornstalks of the fields. Dead crows circled by worrying, cawing live ones. Dark shapes that darted from shadow to shadow, like liquid.
The rising moon overhead was swollen and yellow, nearly full. Ghoul howls echoed from the mountain, and the only respite I saw was that Graystone was not blazing like Arkham.
“Set it down. Set it down!” I shouted at Harry, already scrabbling for the hatch. It was my fault the Folk’s monsters were lose, my fault that bodies were littering Arkham’s streets. Tremaine had played me, and it had worked. The barriers between Thorn and Iron were no more.
Harry lowered the dirigible only long enough for me, Dean and Cal to jump off. He hollered at us from the cockpit, “Good hunting, chère!” and then with a whirr of fans the Belle was gone.
The Enemy of Thorn
IN THE SILENCE, I heard the hiss of a nightjar from the garden.
Cal’s nostrils flared and Dean’s switchblade came out. “We got some uninvited guests,” he said.
“They’re everywhere,” Cal said. “All over the garden. Under the porch …” His eyes went round and milky in the twilight. “Bethina.”
Cal shifted into ghoul on the fly and took off at a four-legged run for the house. I thought that poor Bethina was about to get the shock of her life, if she hadn’t already.
“He had the right idea, doll,” Dean said. “About making tracks for inside, I mean.”
A nightjar crawled away through the apple orchard, and from the roof tiles, a springheel jack snarled at us before leaping from cupola to ground in one fluid motion.
“Definitely the right idea,” Dean said, and we ran.
The creatures were everywhere, crawling over the house itself. “Why are there so many of them?” I shouted to Dean, though I had an idea. Maybe there had always been this many horrors lurking in the shadows of Thorn.
“Figure it out later!” Dean shouted, and that also was a good point. We slammed and locked the kitchen door behind us as something ran into the other side, scrabbling and chittering and making the hinges bow from the impact and the assault of its claws.
I braced the door while Dean grabbed a kitchen chair and stuck it under the knob. When I let go, I nearly fell into the arms of a ghoul.
He didn’t look anything like Cal, Toby or their mother—this was one of the cemetery ghouls, wild matted hair, wilder eyes, and a stench that could fell a war Engine. He snarled at me.
“You murdered Tanner.”
I reeled away from him, until I realized I was backed into a corner. I heard soft whimpering behind me and turned slightly to find Bethina occupying the same space. “Are you all right?” I asked.
She shook her head, eyes wide and pupils vibrating with shock. Cal stood behind her, hand on her shoulder. Thankfully, he’d made himself look human again. We’d have a discussion about his deceiving Bethina, but this was most certainly not the time.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ve got it under control.”
“How,” Bethina gasped, “in hell can you have this under control, miss?”
More ghouls crept into the kitchen, and in the dim light they appeared all eyes and teeth.
I looked at Dean. He was watching each ghoul in turn, an expression I hoped to never see again on his face. Dean looked as hungry for a fight as they did, and his switchblade flicked open. “Who wants the first taste?” He grinned at the ghoul’s leader. “It’s silver-coated. I hear you puppy dogs don’t much care for that.”
Graystone whispered to me frantically, pleaded with me to rid it of its interlopers.