Briar Queen (21 page)

Then a girl's voice—it had something wrong with it—prowled around the bus, “Come out, come out, from the big yellow bus. Come out, come out, and get eaten by us.”

The taunt was followed by one of the most terrifying silences of Finn's life.

Something began to breathe, brokenly, beneath one of the windows. Sylvie, her eyes wide, aimed her bow and drawn arrow at that window. A figure wearing a plastic possum mask peered in, ducked down.

When several figures in masks began clambering through the windows, regardless of the jagged glass, Finn shouted, “
Bail!
”

Finn and Sylvie ran toward the exit. Moth slammed one hand on the doors' mechanism. As the doors fell open, Finn and Sylvie lunged out, past two more figures in plastic masks. Finn heard Moth shout, “Keep running!” as she and Sylvie raced toward an ivy-clotted alley between two boarded-up houses. She glanced back to see Moth heading in another direction, followed by several of the masked creatures.

As Sylvie hauled herself over a fence, Finn heard running steps behind her and a piercing whistle from the pine trees surrounding the houses. She glanced over her shoulder to see a figure in a suit and plastic crow mask loping after them.

She and Sylvie fled across a yard, toward a cottage in a cavern of weeds and creepers. Sylvie grabbed Finn's hand, pulling her into the creepers, and they slid along the paint-peeling exterior of the house, to the cottage's back door. Sylvie indicated a window to the left, which was open.

They heard more whistling.

Finn pulled herself over the windowsill, and Sylvie followed. They dashed through a kitchen where yellow wallpaper peeled from the walls, and an old refrigerator covered with souvenir magnets and faded photos was open to reveal rotting food in a slant of sulfurous light.

When another whistle came from outside, Finn and Sylvie dove to the linoleum and crawled toward a closet door. Finn reached up, grasped the knob, and winced as the door creaked. As they crept into the closet and shut the door, she could clearly see Sylvie's white face in the dark. Finn pressed her brow against her drawn-up knees.

The cottage door crashed open. She reached out to grip Sylvie's hand.

Something heavy hit the floor. There came the sickening sound of a blade being driven into flesh, a pained cry. The second time they heard the noise, Finn drew the silver dagger. Sylvie, who had lost her bow, pulled two arrows from the aluminum quiver and held them like knives.

There was a murmur, a cough, a gargling voice. It was unbearable—

The closet door flew open.

Finn shouted as she was dragged out, the dagger wrenched from her hand. She heard Sylvie scream.

Moth was crouched near the door, his hands pinned to the floor by two blades. He despairingly met her gaze through a tangle of hair. Standing around him were several figures in stained and torn school uniforms, each wearing a plastic mask representing an animal—an alligator, a crow, a fox, a rabbit, a possum.

The rabbit—a girl—sauntered forward as Finn rose unsteadily, keeping her back to the wall. Sylvie, on the floor, scrambled across it until she was against Finn's legs. They'd taken away Sylvie's arrows. There were scratches on her cheek.

“Well,” Rabbit Girl said, eyes shining in the hollows of the mask. “I smell blood.”

As terror spiraled into an insane anger, Finn found her voice. “What do you want?”

Rabbit Girl came closer. There were old bloodstains on her blouse and kilt. Her dirty blond braids were knotted with ribbons and plastic charms. She smelled like poppies and something dead.

“What do we want?” The girl leaned forward, and Finn looked away from eyes that glinted like beetles. “Well, we're hungry.”

Sylvie lunged up, slamming the arrow she'd hidden into Rabbit Girl's chest. As the girl staggered back, Sylvie and Finn launched themselves past her, toward Moth.

The animal-masked figures blocked the door, but Finn and Sylvie managed to yank the kitchen knives from Moth's hands before pulling him up between them. This time, he bled.

“You should have kept running.” His voice scraped out. The muscles in his arm were steely against the back of Finn's neck. “I could have kept them away.”

Rabbit Girl plucked the arrow from her chest. The point of the weapon dripped papery-red petals as more petals slid from the tear in her skin.

“You're a Jill.” Moth straightened, sliding his arms from around Finn's and Sylvie's shoulders and standing on his own. He looked around at the masked creatures. “You're all bloody Jacks and Jills.”

“That's not what we're called.” The boy wearing the alligator mask gestured gracefully to his companions. “We are the dead. And you are in our territory.”

“So”—there was a smile in Rabbit Girl's voice as she twirled the arrow in one grubby hand—“you're our evening's entertainment.”

Finn spotted her backpack nearby, along with the jackal-headed walking stick. As the Jacks and Jills closed in, she began sliding along the wall. Moth tensed. Sylvie was whispering a prayer in Japanese.

Something caught the light on Rabbit Girl's wrist—a pewter spoon twisted into a bracelet, like something made in an arts and crafts class. The crow wore battered Nikes. The alligator had on a Star Wars watch.

All the little details clicked. They were kids, teenagers transformed into these horrors, probably by the Fata whose coral skeleton decorated the interior of the school bus.

Moth began to whisper and she recognized the words from Ovid, one of Christie's favorite classical writers: “‘
She came to Envy's house, a black abode. Ill-kept, stained with dark gore, a hidden home
.'”

The masked figures halted. Rabbit Girl tilted her head as Moth continued, “‘
In a deep valley where no sunshine comes, where no wind blows, gloaming and full of cold
.'”

The creatures, listening, didn't move as Moth said to them, “There was a queen who took each of you, wasn't there?”

Finn reached for the jackal-headed walking stick and her backpack—

—a gloved hand gripped her throat and pushed her against the wall.

The point of Eve Avaline's silver dagger glittered before her eyes as Caliban smiled beyond its length. “Hullo again, darling. I rode the shadow all the way here, just to be with you.”

Sylvie grabbed Moth's arm as he lunged at Caliban.

“Children.” Caliban slowly turned his head, his hair shifting like white satin. “Children, I am disappointed. I thought you'd have taken them apart by
now—although this morsel belongs to the
Madadh aillaid
.” He smiled at Finn, who clawed at his wrist in a frantic attempt to get his hand away so that she could breathe. He said, “Know how I found you? I caught a scent when I left Scarborough—
her
blood.” He nodded at Sylvie.

Moth stepped forward, but Rabbit Girl and Alligator pointed butcher knives at him. He halted.

Caliban looked Moth up and down. “You've been brought low, haven't you?”

The
crom cu
flipped Eve's dagger, slid it into its elder wood scabbard, and tucked it into the pocket of Finn's coat. When he released her from the stranglehold, she collapsed to the floor, rasping in lungfuls of air. He'd put the dagger in her coat as a tease, hoping she'd reach for it so he could hurt her again.

Without taking his gaze from her, Caliban said, “I remember who you are, Moth. Lot told me what was done to you. Move again and I take one of her eyes.”

Sylvie tugged Moth back as Caliban told Finn, “The Wolf didn't expect you to call in allies, darling.”

Finn pointed at the silent Jacks and Jills. “Why don't you tell
them
what I did to make your master angry?”

“Glad to.” Caliban turned to face the Jacks and Jills in their animal masks and ruined uniforms. “She is a queen killer. She killed the
ban nathair
. Reiko.”

“It was
her
?” The possum stared at Finn as the others whispered among themselves—admiringly.

This wasn't the reaction Caliban had expected. He spoke as if he were addressing idiots. “She murdered a
queen. Your
queen. You were her subjects. Now you are nothing.”

Rabbit Girl stepped forward. “We are nothing because of that Fata bitch in the school bus, the one who lured us into a lake, drowned us, and gave us to the Wolf so that he could stitch us up. Was
your
queen like that?” The rabbit mask tilted malevolently.

Caliban evidently hadn't expected
that
reaction. He slid a dagger from his coat and snarled, “Cursed
sluagh . . .”

Ignoring Moth and Sylvie now, the masked teenagers moved forward, their attention fixed on Caliban. The
crom cu
's voice twisted, “I'll take each of you apart and gnaw the bones.”

As the
sluagh
circled him, his coat began to writhe with shadows.

Finn, edging toward the door, grabbed her backpack and the walking stick.

Alligator lunged and slammed a rusty steak knife into Caliban's shoulder. The
crom cu
's yell descended into an animal howl as Finn, Sylvie, and Moth dashed out of the cottage, into the pine forest.

FINN COLLAPSED
beneath a giant fir's downward-sweeping branches. Moth dropped to his knees beside her. Sylvie leaned against the tree, her breath like sobs. Finn reached up and pulled her down and they huddled together. As Finn met Moth's gaze over her friend's head, he raised his hands. The knife wounds were gone.

Finn let her head fall back against the tree. “How will we get to Orsini's?”

“Finn.” Sylvie's voice was soft with wonder. “What is that, through the trees?”

Finn followed her gaze to a platform and a brick building with a quaint air of '60s Britain. By the time she realized what it was, the mournful whistle of a train was echoing through the air.

I shall grow up, but never grow old,

I shall always, always be very cold,

I shall never come back again
.

                
—“T
HE
C
HANGELING
,” C
HARLOTTE
M
EW

T
he dragonfly of brass and crimson glass that was Jack's guide paused in its arrowing flight, as grief for Orsini, who had been like a father to Jack, crashed over him and he slid down against a tree. Then he thought of Finn with Caliban, and adrenaline—that lovely, mortal elixir—shot through him. He pushed to his feet.

The insect led him past a railroad track to a derelict station. After mounting the station's steps and finding no signs of life in the carved, wooden building, he pressed his brow against the door and thought,
Finn. I should never have brought you here
.

The dragonfly led him down the tracks, into a grove of willow trees, their fronds veiling a lichen-scummed pond gleaming green in the fulvous light. A deteriorating mill house shadowed the water, its giant wheel sinking, its exterior slimy with algae and rippling scallops of fungi. A yew to one side curled over the building, its branches clutching. Moving among the willows, Jack noticed bones scattered in the tree roots, in the mud around the pond. Whatever had taken up residence in the mill hadn't been here long—there were only a few bones. There was also a blinged-out Chevy pickup truck in the dirt driveway.
That
made Jack cautious.

He turned to the dragonfly, which clicked as it hovered in place. “I'm guessing your witch wants me to put an end to something here? She knows I'm not Jack Daw anymore, right?”

A terrified cry from the mill house made him curse—it had been a human voice. He prowled toward the sounds of splashing in the darkness between the mill wheel and the pond. Then he saw the mill's resident.

The Fata seemed to be a giant shadow, its true form—monstrous and horse-headed—blurring as it moved shoulder-deep in the water, its teeth bared, its eyes like pearls. Fish slid from its tangled mane. Its body coiled over the victim frantically paddling to keep his head above the water.

Jack drew the jackal-headed
kris
from his coat. “
Uisce!
”

The Fata in the water became a pattern of shadow and light, glided back into the darkness beneath the mill wheel, and reemerged as a smiling, black-haired man waist-deep in the water. Green runes glistened around his muscled arms and torso. He wore a necklace of human teeth and smiled as if he and Jack had just met in the local pub. “
Jack?
Jack
Daw?
When did you get back?”

When he recognized the Fata, Jack didn't let his dismay show, but smiled back, comrade-like, “Not long ago, Ivan Vodyanoi. What are you doing eating veal? I thought you liked a fight?”

“I do. And these boys
fight
. They step right into my pond, thanks to that Way over there.” He gestured in the general direction of the train station Jack had found abandoned. “Straight from the true world. This one”—he pointed at his flailing victim—“is covered in scrawlings. I couldn't quite sink my teeth into him, so, if you don't mind . . .” He began wading through the deep water as if he were walking.

The victim yelled out, splashing in the shallows at Jack's feet. Keeping his gaze on Vodyanoi, Jack reached down. A wet hand gripped his. Jack pulled the victim out, heard him sputter, “
Jack?
”

His astonished gaze dropped to the boy spitting up water and shuddering. “
Christopher Hart?
”

“Gentlemen.” Vodyanoi was in the shallows before them now, his smile broad, his arms stretched to either side. “I'm hungry. If you'll leave, Jack Daw, I'd be grateful, since I never interrupted any of
your
kills.”

“I'm not Jack Daw anymore.”

Ivan Vodyanoi's black eyes narrowed. He said, “You are Jack Daw. The one I taught how to play the violin like a devil. The one I taught how to kill in the water.”

Jack had a creeping memory of sitting near Orsini's pond while this creature showed him how to play an instrument of bone, and he experienced a bizarre affection for Vodyanoi. He said, “I am Jack Hawthorn now.”

“Jack.
Jack
.” Vodyanoi's smile returned. “Do you really think a name change is going to make you any less of a predator than the rest of us?”

“I am not”—Jack spoke in a low voice—“like you.”

“No.” Vodyanoi's smile grew until the entire lower half of his face seemed all curved teeth. “You are not. You'll come apart easily now.”

Darkness slid over Vodyanoi as he began to ride the shadow. He vanished within it.

Christie shouted. Jack grabbed him and yanked him away.

Then Vodyanoi collapsed into a smoky pool drifting on the water. Jack stepped back. “Christopher, I want you to run when I say—follow the dragonfly—”

Darkness swept up from the pond. Jack was slammed against the ground so hard, he felt as if his brain had been struck loose. He clenched his teeth and tried to move as, beside him, Vodyanoi's black mass settled back into the form of the man with the dark hair. Ivan waved a forefinger at Jack as if he'd been naughty, before rising and walking toward Christie, who was trying to crawl away.

Jack hated that the resurrected mortality he'd sought for so long was a weakness here. He hauled himself to his feet as Ivan gazed down at Christie, who, with a sob, had given up, his face in the grass. Vodyanoi said, “Well, maybe I'll take your eyes out first, Jack. You can always hear the boy scream—”

As Ivan turned, Jack launched himself at the water Fata, the misericorde in one hand, the
kris
in the other.

“WHAT IS IT WITH YOU
and water monsters?” Jack sat with Christie on the bank of the mill pond as what was left of Ivan Vodyanoi—a sludge of putrefying water plants, bones, and human teeth—sank into the earth.

“Both eyes.” Christie was blank with shock. Every now and then, he would shudder. There were pond weeds in his hair. “You got him in both eyes, with one move. And you're not even a Jack anymore.”

Jack had checked himself for injuries, found only minor cuts and bruises. He grabbed the cuff of Christie's coat, pulled up one sleeve, frowned at the words scrawled in black ink over the boy' s skin—his arms, throat, hands—everywhere but his face. Jack felt something else at work, then, and hope, a rare thing for him, sparked.

“The marks just appeared when I got here.” Christie spasmed again. “I think Phouka did it to protect me, back home.”

“Didn't work, did it? And how did you
get
here?”

“A dragonfly key from the Black Scissors. We stuck it in StarDust Studio's door, me and Sylvie.”

“Where is Sylvie now?”

“I don't
know
.” Christie put his head in his hands, his voice breaking. “We were together when we stepped through. Something pulled us apart.”

“You lost her.”

When Christie looked up, his eyes were rimmed with red. “Where is Finn?”

“I lost her. Am I going to hear it from you? No? Good.”

“Jack, what are we going to
do
?” Christie abruptly hunched over and was sick in the grass.

Jack glanced at the artificial dragonfly hovering in the branches above. “We're going to find Finn and Sylvie.”

The sudden buzzing of cicadas made him climb to his feet. When a drop of blood fell onto his sleeve, he raised a hand to his ear, felt more blood leaking from it. He wanted to move and couldn't. “Christopher. Something—”

The buzzing faded into the sweetest sound he'd ever heard—his mother's voice singing an Irish lullaby. A languorous peace hazed over the horror of the past hour. He moved in the direction of the song—

Someone shouted his name before tackling him into the grass. The warmth ran from him like blood. The world became a chilly patch of willows and water—green ivy was twisted around his wrists and legs, was creeping toward his throat. He didn't see his mother, but a woman made of ivy, one mad green eye watching him as she bared human teeth in the skull of her head.

Jack had seen some bad things on his visits to the Ghostlands, but never anything like this. One rarely saw her kind, because most were dead by the time they realized what had gotten hold of them.

Christie, who had tackled him, hurdled toward the creature, a wooden dagger in one hand. He slammed it into the green woman's skull. The creature's scream nearly deafened Jack, who pressed his hands over his ears and watched as the green woman disintegrated into a tattered drift of dead vegetation and withered ivy. Her skull fell at Christie's feet.

“Siren.” Jack pulled himself up. “Ivan's lover was a bloody siren.”

“You nearly got taken out by that monster's girlfriend?” Christie was still holding the wooden dagger that had cracked open the siren's skull. He began to sway a little. Jack hoped he wouldn't faint. Or vomit again. They needed to leave. What if there was a brood?

Then Jack looked at the boy, wondering. “You didn't hear it. The siren. Why didn't it affect you?”

“Don't know. I've got implants.” He gathered his hair back from one ear to reveal a small metal disk. “I got them when I was a kid. Hearing impairment.”

Jack said carefully, “Technology shouldn't work here, but you didn't register the siren's voice because of those. Interesting.”

Christie stared down at the siren's skull and began to turn a greenish color. “What would have happened if I'd heard her, too?”

“Well.” Jack sauntered to Ivan Vodyanoi's remains. “She would have wrapped us up nice and tight. She would have drained us of our bodily fluids. Within a few days, we would have been two mummified corpses.”

“I wish I hadn't asked—what are you doing?”

Jack was crouched beside Vodyanoi's bits and was picking out the human teeth. “Human teeth are valuable in the Ghostlands.”

“That's so horribly wrong.” Christie was staring nervously at the siren's skull, as if expecting it to jump at him.

“Why don't you smash the teeth out of that?” Jack gestured to the skull.

Christie's voice was faint. “I'm not touching it.”

Jack tossed the Indonesian
kris
to him and said, “Keep that. Try not to fall on it. Get the teeth from that skull, Christopher. We may need to bribe some people to save Finn and Sylvie.”

Christie glanced down at the skull, muttered, “You really are a psychopath. I think I'm going to be sick again. That guy was going to
eat
me.”

“Well, there's no accounting for other people's tastes.”

CHRISTIE WAS IN HELL
.

They were following a metal bug, which, when he stared at it long enough, seemed to become a tiny winged woman of brass and glass. He kept picturing Sylvie caught by something worse than Ivan Vodyanoi and thought of Finn stalked by that terrifying Fata man with the wolf-blue eyes. He regretted the loss of his backpack, which had had clothes, food, the useless phone, and a switchblade in it. They hadn't been able take Ivan Vodyanoi's truck because Jack said only Fatas could work vehicles here. More damn fairy magic.

“Is Tinkerbell leading us in a
helpful
direction?”

“Yes. What did the Black Scissors tell you?”

“The Black Scissors told Sylvie how that bastard Lot can be killed, since you can't shove him into a sacrificial green fire. He said you need to do three things: poison him, stab him, and cut off his head. Is that dragonfly a
fairy
?”

“You'll need to cease using that word if you appreciate breathing. It's stopped.” Jack indicated the dragonfly, which had darted up into a tree and appeared to be sulking. “There now—you've insulted it with the ‘f' word.”

Christie wished he could stop shivering. “How can you be so calm?”

Jack turned, his eyes shadowy. “I believe this Dragonfly witch is allied with the Black Scissors. The dragonfly seems to be a popular motif with our coconspirators.”

“The dragonfly key . . . the Black Scissors said it would lead us to a witch who would help us . . .” Christie went quiet, imagining Sylvie alone in this place of horrors. She'd always been a beacon of common sense to him, and she'd talked him down from some crazy things—like running away with Victoria Tudor when he was twelve years old. What if Sylvie was dead? When his mind ventured in that direction, he felt breathless and dizzy, as if the ground was moving. He groaned and sank to a crouch.

He heard Jack walking back to him, leaves crackling beneath his boots, then Jack's calm voice. “Breathe deep, head between your knees. Don't pass out. I won't be carrying you.”

“Okay. Okay, I'm good. Sylvie isn't dead. And Finn is safe. How did you lose Finn?”