Heaven's Bones (39 page)

Artemis grabbed his temples and moaned with the pain of it.

Find Dirk
.

His mother's voice was as clear and cool as a pitcher of water on a hot day.

Find Dirk, else all perish
.

With difficulty, Artemis rose. He could see only the outlines of the houses—which was it? Was it possible Dirk was still living where he remembered?

You've been in London too long, paying attention to addresses and house numbers, he thought. Find Dirk, and let the Sight take you to him.

They'd run—how long could it have been? Hours, although the light hadn't changed, the sun no more sunken than when they ran for their very sanity out that door. They ran blind, trusting the road or their own sure-footedness and the very pavestones seemed to rise below their feet. The fog dissipated, breaking away in wispy clots the further they got from the house. Sophie risked a glance back, feeling like Lot's wife. There was no house to be seen: only a solid barrier of mist. It was if they waded along the shallow depths before a great impenetrable ocean of fog.

They slowed, still walking hand-in-hand. Sophie looked desperately about her for a cluster of houses, a shepherd's shack, anything—any sign at all of habitation whatsoever. They must find aid, they must alert the authorties.

How they'd get said authorities to believe them was another matter, she thought. She wished Artemis Donovan was there.

The country was not only curiously void of any sign of settlement. The very landscape seemed out-of-place. A cluster of trees appeared, then another—pines, perhaps, but subtly unlike any pine Sophie had ever seen. Was it the height, or the color …

“I don't like it,” Sophie said, turning back and staring into the distance from which they'd come. There was no sign even of the mists that bound Sebastian Robarts' nightmare house.

“There's something wrong with this place. It doesn't look right, it doesn't smell right. It's like we're not even in England at all.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way,” came a voice so close she jumped. “But if you give us a chance perhaps we could change your mind.”

Sophie whipped around to face the speaker, a powerfully-built man wearing a light-colored suit. He held a close-woven straw hat in his hand, and his accent was strange. He must be an American, thought Sophie, who has bought a manor from a family that couldn't pay the death duties.

The man looked past her at Henry, and his eyes narrowed slightly.

“I do know you, sir, don't I? Aren't you that boy that Robarts brought in to help him with his flying scheme? Thorpe, isn't it?”

Henry stammered in confusion. “Indeed, yes—Henry Thorpe, and this lady is my cousin, Doctor Sophie Huxley.”

“I'm pleased to make your acquaintance,” said the man, with a courtly bow to Sophie. “It seems this part of the world does not lack for doctors.”

She nodded warily in return.

“Weldon is my name, Alistair Weldon. And I have been a doctor myself, in some past life.”

“Mr.—Doctor Weldon,” said Henry. “There's something dreadful happening at Bryani House.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” said Weldon, unperturbed. “Is Robarts not well?”

“No,” said Sophie. “That is—he's mad, Doctor Weldon. He must have been going mad for years, and no one knew it.”

“I don't like the fog,” said Weldon shortly, with a malicious glance at the mist that wisped around them. “Let us go inside, like civilized people, and you can tell me everything.”

“I don't think there's time,” said Sophie, but Weldon was already leading the way along the road, the same direction they'd been headed, so she bit back her objections and followed.

She whispered sideways at Henry. “You know the gentleman, then?”

He shook his head. “No. Yes, I mean. I might have … I don't remember, Sophie. I'm sorry.”

She would have replied but the road curved and there
was
a house at last, nestled against more of the odd pines that grew thicker and thicker, obscuring any faint smell of the sea that remained with the scent of balsam. It was a sprawling, strange-looking house, with great white pillers bracketing a wide porch and huge windows like outsized, staring eyes. Had this American doctor built or transported this monstrosity to the Cornish countryside?

And was it her imagination, as their host lead them up the steps, that the door opened wide for them to enter, and no one was there to do it?

I'm tired, she thought. And I've been drugged; of course someone opened the door, then slipped away again.

Weldon showed them to a sitting room.

“Make yourself comfortable, and you can tell me all about it,” he said.

A long, low moaning sound, as if the wind was prowling the hallway, echoed from upstairs. Weldon looked a little annoyed.

“My wife,” he said. “She's an invalid, unable to see company.”

The moan was repeated.

“Pray forgive me,” said Weldon. “I had better check on her. I won't be a moment.”

“But the police,” began Sophie, but Weldon just gave her a pleasant nod and was gone.

“He has horses, I'm sure,” said Henry, and was about to continue when the haunting groan filled the room again.

“Whatever is that, I wonder?”

He wandered to the sitting room door, looking upstairs inquisitively.

“Oh, do sit down, Henry!” cried Sophie, exhaustion making her irritable. “Don't go poking your nose in the poor woman's business.”

“You're a doctor, Sophie,” said Henry, with a trace of his old mischief. “Maybe I can offer your services.”

“Henry …”

He waved at her impatiently and slipped down the hall. Sophie sank into the soft cushions and closed her eyes. A little nap, perhaps. She was so tired. A little nap wouldn't hurt.

She opened her eyes suddenly to see a little girl in a pinafore contemplating her, with long blonde curls, and an expression out of place on her child's face.

Good Lord. She'd fallen asleep. For how long?

She heard Henry's voice.
Time
, he'd said.
The time here is different
.

Stress and shock to sensitive nerves. Henry always had been sensitive.

“You have to get out of here,” said the girl, matter-of-factly. “My father … hurts women like you.”

Sophie stared at her, wondering if she was real or a fragment of a dream.

“Henry,” said Sophie, rising unsteadily. “My cousin—he's upstairs. I have to get him.”

From the upper reaches came a bloodcurdling scream that struck
ice into Sophie's every limb. Her skin prickled all over, and she felt herself blanch.

The little girl tilted her head with a knowing look that was far too old for her childish features.

“Henry—that was Henry,” gasped Sophie, starting for the door. “He's in trouble.”

“I think it's too late,” said the little girl, in an odd voice that made Sophie stop and stare at her. “He's already met my mother.”

Artemis found Dirk where the Sight led him—in a dirty hovel, half a dugout, behind the tanner shop, where the stench of leather found every secluded corner.

Dirk was crouching on a makeshift bed, barely looking up when Artemis entered.

“I've done it this time, haven't I, Artie,” he said, with a harsh laugh. “Cursed us well and proper.”

“No, Dirk,” said Artemis. “This time you'll be our salvation.”

Dirk looked up swiftly then. “Don't mock me, Donovan. We were friends once, but that doesn't give you the right to mock me.”

“It's a gift, Dirk,” said Artemis. “Don't you see? Yours is the gift of Cursing.”

The other man snarled at him. “So they say, and hate me for it. I've been called darkling since I was a child, and as it turned out, they were right to do it. I am filthy black at my very soul.”

Born darkling, and cannot help his nature
.

On impulse, Artemis reached out to the other man, grasping his forearm. Dirk tried to twist away, but Artemis held firm, and pulled him close.

“You weren't born evil, Dirk,” he said. Dirk laughed once, harshly, more a bark than a human sound.

“Get away,” he said. “Get out while you can, Artie.”

“Listen to me.” Artemis shook the smaller man a little. “You were born with one of the Lady's gifts, just like I was. Mine's served me well enough. Yours—it's a hard gift to have, Dirk. And a rare one.”

Dirk finally twisted free, but didn't move away. Artemis was standing so close he could feel him breathing in short, shallow gasps.

“I suppose, where she came from, they knew better how to teach a lad like you,” he continued. “How to control it, how to manage it.” His voice hardened. “How not to bring a tin mine down on the men.”

He felt Dirk flinch.

“God knows, cousin, I've had to learn how to control my gift, and it's been a hard lesson sometimes. But I'm lucky. It hurts no one but myself.” He swallowed, thinking of the things he'd
seen:
the mutilated girl in the brothel, the child in the abandoned house.

“But you—with this terrible gift of saying something, and sometimes having it so—you're like a child with fire for fingers, burning all around you. You can't help it.”

“It's true,” said Dirk. “And it was my fault, Artie, for I never thought it through, never bothered to learn how to control it. I suppose there's some in this world familiar with such a nature as mine, and I never sought them out. The child whose fingers burn learns not to touch his playmates, else …”

He moved to the window, and nudged aside a corner of the filthy curtain. Mist pressed against the windows.

“Else he becomes as I am.”

Something flopped against the window, and they both jumped. A man's face pressed against the pane, his nose and cheek flattened, his eyes vacant, his mouth grotesquely open, his head at an unnatural angle. Limbs askew, he slid to a heap on the ground, leaving a dark streak on the glass.

Dirk swore and backed away, staring at the fishy gaze.

“Your people are dying, Dirk,” said Artemis, when shock let him speak. “And you were born to save them.”

“How?” The word was a bark, a demand, a curse, an order.

“The knife, Dirk,” Artemis said. “The knife we stole, the knife the Lady of the Mists brought.”

“What of it?”

“We need that knife.”

Dirk shrugged and moved to the bed, shifted the straw mattress with a careless motion. From underneath he brought out a small wrap of leather. He unrolled it, and with a thrill of recognition Artemis saw the knife, a true deadly work of art, lying on his cousin's palm.

“Here it is, and much good's it done anyone,” said Dirk. But Artemis saw that he couldn't help fondling the handle, as if his fingers were in love with every curve forged into it.

“Come, Dirk,” said Artemis, drawing him to the door. “Sight and Curse. Let's show the Lady what we're made of.”