Stones Unturned (2 page)

He has to be brought to the brink of madness — to the brink of murder — before the time is right.

Little Tommy hit him again. One of Cully's front teeth broke off, sending a spike of excruciating pain up into his brain. Cully rocketed backward, his momentum stopped only when he collided with the metal surface of one of the dumpsters.

"I'm gonna take thirty dollars out of your ass," the man growled, any semblance of humanity leaking away. His face was a blistering shade of red, glowing in the dim light cast by the distant streetlamps.

Cully was drifting away on a wave of pain, pulled beneath the black, cold waters of unconsciousness, when the voice violently dragged him to the surface.

It's time.

The behemoth that was Little Tommy stood over him, fists pounding down upon the dumpster lid, making sounds like the crashing of thunder. "Why'd you fucking do it?" he screamed, the words blending together to create more of a primal scream than spoken language.

It was time.

Cully stared up at Little Tommy, hot blood running from his nose and mouth. His tongue flicked over the jagged break where one of his front teeth used to be, and he gestured with a curling finger for the big man to come closer.

"Do you want to know why?" Cully slurred through bloody, swollen lips.

Tommy bent down, bringing his face close, the filthy stink of the man filling Cully's nostrils.

"Tell me!" he screamed. "Tell me before I rip your fucking head off and shit down your . . ."

Now.

The voice was like a starter's pistol, compelling Cully's hand to pull the homemade knife from inside his windbreaker pocket. The knife felt warm, like it was somehow filled with life, but that was crazy — wasn't it?

It had come from the wreck of a car in which an entire family had died: mother, father, little girl no older than six, and a newborn baby boy. They had been killed by the miscalculations of a drunk driver coming home from a company picnic. The lush had been trying to change the station on the radio, completely unaware that he had crossed over into oncoming traffic.

The blade had been cut from a piece of the car floor where the family had died — where the greatest amount of blood had pooled — and filed to a nasty point. Its grip was made from strips of material from the dead baby's pajamas.

The knife glided through the air with wicked precision, plunging into the soft tissue of Little Tommy's throat, severing the carotid artery with its first strike. It was like holding on to a deadly snake, the blade seeming to strike out on its own, stabbing the man's throat three more times before the big man had time to react. Cully could see that he wanted to scream, but was too busy trying to keep the blood from squirting from his neck.

He wasn't doing a very good job.

Don't waste it,
the voice commanded, urging Cully to his feet. He had to get Little Tommy over to the designated space. With a nervous tremor Cully recalled what had he had seen there earlier, the swirling black mist that somehow signified that that particular patch of alley was tainted.

His head swam as he stood, lunging toward Tommy, driving the monstrosity of a man across the alley with his attack. He plunged the still-hungry blade into Tommy's girth over and over again, stealing away his strength and driving him to his knees.

The dying man fell forward onto his stomach, flopping around on the floor of the alley like some gigantic fish hauled gasping from the sea. But Cully saw that Tommy was at least two feet away from where the voice needed him to be. Furious, face spattered with the huge man's blood, he got a grip beneath Little Tommy's arms and pulled him to the special spot, muscles shrieking with the effort.

Yes, that's it,
the voice urged.
Almost there.

The man weighed a ton, but the blood leaking from the stab wounds acted like a lubricant, helping Cully slide his massive bulk across the ground. When he reached that black, tainted spot on the alley floor, Cully let go of the man and stepped back to catch his breath. His face ached, and one of his eyes was nearly swollen shut from the beating.

"Serves you right," he spat, staring down at the barely twitching body of the man who had beaten him so badly. For a brief moment Cully thought the music had been returned to him, but realized that it was still the voice he was hearing, only now it was humming.

Little Tommy's blood drained out in multiple crimson. It was strangely mesmerizing, watching the pool of blood around him expand in size, the flickering streetlights at the far end of the alley causing a strobe that made the gore shift in color from fire engine red to nearly black.

Dragging his gaze from the pool, Cully realized that Tommy wasn't moving anymore and that the blood had pretty much stopped flowing from his body. The humming had stopped as well, and he began to grow anxious. He listened intently, waiting for a sign that he wasn't alone.

It wasn't long before the pooling blood began to bubble. Cully stepped back. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but he couldn't bring himself to act. Not yet. The voice had yet to do what it had promised — Cully was still not hearing the music.

"Where are you?" he asked, watching as the blood bubbled and frothed. "I did what you wanted — give me back my music," he said, his voice growing louder, tinged with panic. "Do you hear me?"

The roiling pool of gore exploded upward in a roaring fountain, covering him in a fine, gory mist that filled his nostrils and mouth, stinking and tasting of metal.

Cully stumbled back, temporarily blinded by the blood in his eyes. As he frantically wiped at his eyes, trying to clear his vision, he sensed that he was no longer alone.

"I can hear you just fine," said a voice that made Cully remember every bad thing that had ever happened to him.

As his vision cleared, he saw its body glistening wetly in the flickering fluorescent lights from the mouth of the alley. Its long, spindly arms moved as if conducting the Boston Symphony. It was far more, now, than just a voice.

Far, far more.

CHAPTER ONE

There's still a music to this place,
Arthur Conan Doyle thought as he strolled into the woods behind the small cottage he had acquired in Cottingley. The forest glowed with autumnal colors and the warmth of the fall sunshine. Yes, things had changed much since the last time he'd visited, but the music was still here. Faint, but here nonetheless.

He breathed in the cool November air, his mind traveling back to the year he'd first visited this quaint English village, situated between the larger towns of Shipley and Bingley in West Yorkshire. It had been warmer then, the gardens and forests lush with summer growth. Conan Doyle smiled at the pleasant memory.

With all the recent supernatural threats to the world and the knowledge that somewhere out there in the cosmos, the ancient evil known as the Demogorgon was even now traveling toward Earth, Ceridwen had convinced Conan Doyle that he needed to recuperate, to rest and rejuvenate himself. Neither of them could think of a better place to do that than Cottingley. It had been here, after all, that Conan Doyle had first encountered the world of Faerie.

He had met seventeen-year-old Elsie Wright and her younger cousin Francis Griffith in 1920 and found himself captivated by the photographs they had taken, and which had caused an uproar among the local populace. Of course, he had known they were forgeries, these fanciful photographs, showing the girls interacting with tiny fairy folk and gnomes, but he played the part of the gullible old man. Conan Doyle had been in his sixties then, his studies of spiritualism and magic beginning to garner far too much attention. He had needed more privacy to continue his studies, and what better way than to be branded a credulous old kook.

Yet his strategy had had unexpected consequences. The trip to Cottingley had been all for show. The last thing he had imagined was that he would encounter actual mysteries in the woods outside the village, or that the playful hoax of two young girls would lead him to a real encounter with the Fey. But he stood now not far at all from the very spot where he'd had his first encounter with creatures from Faerie and discovered in an impossibly hollow tree an entrance into a world beyond his imagining.

The voice of his lover stirred him from his ruminations of the past. Ceridwen had gone on ahead, anxious to view the Cottingley Beck again, the narrow brook fed by a cascading waterfall that ran between two steep banks. That was where Elsie and Frances had chosen to compose their fantastical photos, and the beauty of the place made it simple to understand why.

Ceri called his name again, and he quickened his step. There was a tension in her voice, not one that implied danger, but certainly something had upset her. Conan Doyle conjured a quick defensive spell and felt the magic swirl around his fingers as he carefully descended an embankment that led down to the stream.

He found the princess of Faerie standing beside the stream, not far from the falls, her back to him as she scrutinized her surroundings. Conan Doyle was again struck by the way she was dressed. Her usual couture consisted of silken gowns and wraps in the colors of earth and ocean. Ceridwen was an elemental sorceress and felt most comfortable in the hues of nature.

The colors she wore today were no exception, but rather than a silk gown, she wore stylish khaki trousers and a sky blue blouse. As breathtakingly beautiful and elegant as she always was, it lifted his heart to see her this way, to have an aspect of his home world accepted by her, even if it was something as inconsequential as fashion. Ceridwen had not confirmed it, but Conan Doyle felt certain this was Eve's doing — she had such a taste for style — and he made a mental note to thank her when they returned to the States.

"What is it, love?" he asked as he approached.

Ceridwen cast a worried glance over her shoulder at him. Her thick golden hair was pulled back and knotted. Her alabaster skin glowed in the faint sunlight of the autumn afternoon. In that moment, her beauty would have stolen his breath, if it hadn't been for the sadness in her eyes.

"Ceri, what is it?" he asked, hurrying to her side. "What's wrong?"

She'd dropped the basket they had brought with them for a picnic repast. It had fallen on its side, its contents partially spilling out onto the riverbank.

"Look what they've done, Arthur."

He placed his hands gently upon her shoulders, attempting to see through her eyes — through the eyes of a being inherently connected to the elements.

Where there had once been none, there were now homes built on either side of the stream. Beyond them he saw a fence, likely erected because somebody believed that the site was potentially dangerous for public access, even all these years later. Even though the girls' claims were debunked so thoroughly.

Conan Doyle sighed, wrapping his arms lovingly around her from behind. "It's awful," he said softly. "But we can't expect them to leave it as it was. To
them
, this is progress."

Ceridwen stiffened in his arms.

"Progress?" she spat. "They're killing it."

She spoke of Cottingley Beck as if it were a person, and to the Fey, that was precisely how it was perceived.

"Houses practically built atop one another, their pollutants finding their way into the stream . . . and somebody actually put up a fence," she said, stabbing a finger toward the offending structure. "A fence, Arthur."

He held her tighter, trying to calm her angry spirit. "This wasn't the purpose of coming here," he said. "To make you angry and bring you that much closer to declaring war on humanity."

She scoffed at his attempt at humor. "And you were appalled by what my race calls your world."

"The Blight," Conan Doyle said, the word sounding incredibly ugly as it left his lips. But true.

"When I see something like this," Ceridwen said, turning in his arms to face him, "it makes it so difficult not to wish them ill will."

Conan Doyle told himself he knew how difficult it must have been for her to leave Faerie in order to be with him in this often cold, ugly, human world. Yet he knew he could never understand the true extent of her sacrifice. It must have been torturous, but here she was, standing by his side. The time that he had spent living in Faerie was no sacrifice at all, in comparison. In truth, he had gained far more than he had lost while residing there. Often he had questioned his decision to leave Faerie and to leave Ceridwen behind. She had refused to come with him, and he had been unable to stay. Now he wondered how he had ever had the strength to turn his back on their love.

That they had been brought together again, found the love growing between them once more, was a greater gift than he had ever deserved. Silently, he vowed to himself that he would never let her go again. No matter the cost. Yet looking back, he knew all too well that had he not made that decision to leave Faerie, humanity would likely have met it demise by now. The world of his birth would have been swallowed up by some horrific preternatural threat if not for his efforts and those of his special operatives — his
Menagerie
.

He put his mouth close to the delicate shell of her ear and whispered, "Even though it has changed, it is still the place that brought us together. That is what brought us here, Ceri. And even with the way the woods have changed, it is still a beautiful, autumn day. Are we going to allow it to go to waste?"

She wrapped her arms tightly around his waist. "I hope not, Arthur. Somehow I know you'll do your best to ease my mind."

Ceridwen did not wait for his response. She pressed her lips tightly to his in a passionate kiss, her hands leaving his waist to cup his face. He responded in kind, pressing his body tightly against hers.

It wasn't long before they lay beneath the trees, their passions inflamed, and fumbled with their clothing. Conan Doyle could feel the environment around them responding to his woman's pleasure. To the magic in her. The grass grew tall around their entwined bodies, the air filled with the sound of insects and the chirping of birds.