10. Night Fever
Even before her training under Swami Tonpetti and his disciples, Erina had learned to think quickly and act just as fast using whatever happened to be on hand. Her first three years of medical apprenticeship, before her formal degree and before the ripple, had largely been spent in tents and impromptu clinics without enough scalpels or syringes to go around. Treating diseases she’d barely heard of, and removing parasites she’d shuddered to even look at. Therefore, when she heard Jonathan’s cry of warning, she spent but a fraction of a second panicking before looking around for what was on hand. The open window, already broken by Wamuu, across the room behind her. She didn’t know what dynamite meant, in terms of specifics. How large of an explosion would that make? How long did it take to detonate? How far must one stand to be safe? Her imagination failed her, but her quickness of thought did not.
“Here!” She shouted at Speedwagon and Wamuu, as Jonathan dashed forward toward the opposite window. Her heart froze as she saw him descend into the very source of danger, but she had to have faith in him. He was so powerful. He had to survive. She managed to keep shouting as she ran in the opposite direction, forcing herself to look away. “The window!”
Speedwagon came running after her, the two of them thundering across the larger room full of filing cabinets and into the icy December wind. The ripple still fizzed and crackled through her body, and it took her but a single breath to return it to full strength. Wamuu had vanished, with only a gust of unnaturally strong indoor wind to mark his passing; she had to assume that the ancient being could save himself, somehow or other. There was nothing she could do for him. The idea of Wamuu dying was easier to entertain than Jonathan doing so, but the prospect still gave her a profound sense of loss. A four thousand year old man, nonhuman and yet perfectly human. How unlikely was it that she would ever meet such an entity again, and after having a chance to learn but so little? There was nothing she could do for him, though, and perhaps for Jonathan’s less-than-distinguished Londoner friend there was.
“Ripple to waves!” she snapped at him as they arrived at the window, “Breath in time with me, and grab on!”
She had no time to look behind her and make sure he was doing as instructed. She simply raised her left leg and put her foot down on the sill of the shattered window. Umbrella in hand. Speedwagon’s hands latched onto her waist just in time, but his grip was clumsy, knocking her down instead of letting her jump. As they tumbled across the sill, broken glass biting through her coat to slice flesh, she opened the umbrella and positioned her fingers just so around the handle, stabbing the shaft directly outward from her heart and up at the whirling sky.
Speedwagon’s extra weight
would have overburdened her and dropped them both to break their bones against the frozen earth beneath the not-deep-enough snow two stories down. As luck would have it, the ear-shattering boom of the dynamite rent the air just then, and she felt the leading edge of the shockwave pull monstrously at the umbrella. She tightened her grip, arms burning and eyes tearing up. The brunt of the shockwave hit like a burning hot train car, breaking her ripple-to-waves and making her let out a stifled, choking gurgle.
Then, she felt snow and shingles under her, and collapsed onto them, hearing nothing but an unending ring that came from nowhere and everywhere at once. The one thing that gave her relief was the feeling of Speedwagon’s arms releasing her midsection, actively rather than in the manner of a corpse.
The cold chill of the snow, the burning pain of her wounds where the glass had cut her, and the vibrations from the rain of debris that fell across the rooftop all around helped anchor her to wakefulness and pull herself back. Debris still falling. That meant it had only been seconds, she hadn’t actually lost consciousness. Struggling up onto her hands and knees, she blinked some freezing tears away and looked back up, gritting her teeth against the painful ringing. She was on the roof of the one story cottage across the street from what had been the town hall. The larger building had been cored. Its roof was gone, the brick walls of its upper story blasted outward and shattered from within. Thick black smoke and weak orange flames rose from the splintered wood behind the walls. On the ground floor below, every single window pane had been shattered. On the gently slanted roof beside her, her umbrella lay open, more intact than she herself was. Speedwagon, who must have been shielded from more of the shockwave by virtue of hanging below her, had already stood back up, and was clutching his hat in front of him. His long hair was tattered and burnt, but otherwise he did not look seriously injured.
He looked down at her, and moved his mouth. For a moment, she wondered why he was whispering so quietly, and then for another moment panicked when she realized he wasn’t. Her experience caught up to her though, and she breathed an ash-flavored sigh of relief. She could still move all her fingers and toes. If the blast hadn’t been close enough to break any of them, then the ear damage wasn’t likely permanent either. Not for a ripple conductor, at least. Remembering that she had more serious injuries as well in the deep cuts across her midsection, she resumed her deep, rhythmic breathing and rose shakily to her feet. Speedwagon offered her a hand, which she gratefully took.
“Jonathan?” she asked him, still just barely hearing her own voice as the buzz and warmth of the ripple condensed around her wrists, stomach, and ears.
Speedwagon’s reply wasn’t audible enough to understand, but his expression and body language said something along the lines of “I don’t know.”
Trying not to stagger, Erina kept one hand over the warm, wet tear on the stomach of her coat and grabbed her umbrella with the other. Still keeping the ripple-to-waves flowing, she jumped off the roof and used the umbrella to slow her fall, so the shock of the landing wasn’t
too agonizing for her cuts. Speedwagon’s cuts were all on his arms and the sides of his chest; he dropped to the snowy ground beside her with much less difficulty. Bent forward a little, she trotted as fast as she could manage around the side of the smoking, smouldering town hall, Speedwagon beside her, eyes open as wide as possible as she scanned the snow for a muscular human shape. By the time they made it around the corner to the back side of the building, the side whose lake-facing window Jonathan had jumped through, she could finally hear the crackle of the flames and the crunching of their footsteps over the less-painful-than-before ringing. She spotted him in the fluttering shadows of the smoke and firelight, sprawled out in the snow some yards from the building, little melted pits around bits of brick and wood debris all around him. Wamuu stood over him. The nightman’s cloak was torn and singed, and its hood down. His hair was too short to be too badly disarrayed, but it and his normally gleaming headdress were both full of ash and stone dust. Most disturbingly, a long, jagged wooden beam was stuck through the right side of his abdomen, an end of it protruding from his front and back.
His expression showed pain, but only a little.
“Are you…is he…?” Erina looked frantically up and down from Wamuu to the writhing form of Jonathan. He looked like he was breathing, at least. She ran toward them, forcing her own pain down as she hurried to assess Jonathan’s condition. His head was turned aside, one half of his crystalline chin and gentle lips exposed to the sky and fluttering snow. His hair, black with the faintest undercurrent of blue like a clear midnight sky, was everywhere. There were no injuries that she could see, but the snow around him was stained and half-melted from beneath with warm blood. Thank god he seemed to be breathing normally, at least.
“I began to fear the worst for you,” Wamuu’s voice was quieter than it should have been, but getting clearer with each syllable, “you must not have heard my call.” He gestured down at Jonathan, while giving his own stomach an aggravated grimace. “Tend to him. My own wound is minor; the debris did not pierce my spine.”
Putting her bafflement over Wamuu’s physiology aside, Erina sunk to her knees in the snow beside Jonathan, holding her torso straight upright and her arms pointing rigidly down from her heart and toward him. Five of her fingertips pressed themselves against the bare skin of his face, while the other hand twisted below his collar to press its digits against the top of his muscle-covered spine.
Breathe with me, she thought urgently, unable to speak aloud as she devoted her mouth entirely to building up the ripples in her bloodstream,
please, Jonathan, remember to breathe like I taught you. I can’t heal you alone.
As she silently cursed her tiny lungs and miniscule blood supply, Wamuu’s voice brought her gaze back up, toward the cloud of night-shadowed steam that roiled above the lake. “Enemies. Prepare yourselves.”
Squinting through the darkness at the swirling fog, Erina saw them. Dark shapes, scuttling and crawling up the shore on all fours, bodies held low to the snow. She thought they were animals at first, but a sudden crackle and flare-up from the town hall revealed dripping wet clothing, hair hanging from heads, and boots on their scrabbling hind feet. A human shouldn’t have been able to move that way, but there was no mistaking them now. Perhaps realizing that they’d been spotted, the three villagers that had scuttled furthest from the lake leapt abruptly to their feet, standing so quickly she almost startled, and ran off to the sides to flank them.
As Wamuu conjured a wall of wind between the encircling monsters and themselves, Erina stared frantically back down at Jonathan. The ringing in her ears was gone now, making way for the rising wind and Speedwagon’s babbling screams. Jonathan’s lips had parted, blood dripping out from between them. He wasn’t choking, so it must have been from a cut inside his mouth, but his breathing was unchanged. From both sides, she began to hear a horrible whistling as the vampires drew nearer.
Damnit Jonathan, you need to help me! He didn’t respond to her silent urging. Just flexed his lips a tiny bit, and shivered.
He breathes the ripples to waves on reflex now. I’ve seen
him do it. It’s in his muscle memory.
Another whistle, closer and more piercing, from the left. Wamuu and Speedwagon were shouting to one another.
Erina took her fingers off of Jonathan’s back, and seized his head in both hands, tilting it higher above the snow. As he gasped and gurgled, she blinked away a fresh pair of tears and bent down, pressing her lips against his.
Breathe out.
She sucked a lungful of sour, used air out of him.
Breathe in.
She held his nose, and pulled her head back. He sucked a loud, deep breath in through his mouth.
She released his nostrils, and – after spitting out his blood and taking in a deep mouth breath herself that left just barely enough room in her chest to take on more – returned her lips to his own and continued inhaling.
…
He had seen JoJo and Erina infuse their ripples into handheld items, and Erina had told them about Indian monks who could do that well enough to
keep the item charged for a short time after dropping or throwing it. Unfortunately, Robert Edward Orville Speedwagon had only just recovered from his unorthodox lung surgery, and had little idea of how to do any of that at all. Which meant his hat, brilliant piece of headgear though it might be, was useless here, and he wasn’t keen on jumping through the wall of wind toward the whistling, scuttling horrors OR on staying put and waiting for another to produce a firearm. Wamuu was pulling enough snow up into the vortex to make it hard to see through, but sooner or later there’d be a lucky knife, stone, or bullet.
Crouching lower to the ground, he looked back at where Erina was kneeling over JoJo. JoJo’s bulging chest was moving in time with Erina’s strenuous mouth-to-mouth breathing now, and his arms – so inexplicably graceful despite their bulk – began carving angel wings into the softened snow. It looked like he’d be okay, or at least not worse off than the rest of them in the unlikely event that they survived the next few minutes. He averted his eyes and returned them to the monsters that surrounded them, and the other monster (meant in the good way, of course) who kept them at bay.
“Wamuu!” He shouted over the din of monstrous whistles and howling winds, gritting his teeth against the stray, snow-filled currents as he moved closer to the giant with the whirling chains. How well could vampires hear? Enough to distinguish his words over the din, from where they skulked? He’d have to just hope not. “I’m going to try and slip back in! Let me through!” The nightman’s eyes flickered over to focus on Speedwagon, and he gave a very slight nod of his head. The circle of howling winds moved just a foot or so toward the blasted, smoking town hall, rising in loudness and pitch until it resembled the screams of the vampires themselves as it began grazing the brick wall and throwing snow in through one of the shattered windows. Staying near the ground, praying silently to the god he’d never really believed in since he’d needed both sets of fingers to count off his age that the snow-filled wind would hide his movements, he half ran and half crawled back toward the window. It was a struggle to stay on his knees against the rebounding wind once he reached the wall, but at least there was no glass left in the window frame to work around when he pulled himself up and climbed inside as quickly as he could manage, collapsing onto the rubble strewn floor inside.
The ceiling was gone, of course, and not a single inside wall of the ground floor hadn’t been splintered to head-height or lower, so Speedwagon could barely even tell where each room had begun and ended.
How many bits of vampire are mixed up in this dust and ash right under me, I wonder? He hadn’t seen the elderly woman who had set off the explosion since he and Erina turned their backs and fled, and if her body was fortified to around the same degree as Jack the Ripper’s rather than more…well, there probably wasn’t two fingers left of the dame to rub together. Better for her this way of course, and even moreso for himself, but the thought that he was inhaling bits of human along with this acrid smoke still disconcerted him. He’d breathed much worse before, but it was the spirit of the thing.
Ah, right. Breathing. He really hoped this would become instinct soon, the way it seemed to have for JoJo. The smoke wasn’t as bad here by the window where the gale still blew in fresh winter air from outside, and Speedwagon took the opportunity to get three good ripple breaths in and out before getting up and creeping toward the door. A few fires still crackled away in sheltered corners of the hollowed out building, but he could tell the heat of the flames from the heat of his body, and the second one was rising a lot faster alongside the electric tingle.
As luck would have it, he heard the crunch of snow outside the door frame just as he was sidling up beside it. Just barely audible over the fire and the howling storm across the floor, but this was a sound he’d trained his ears to pick up on for a long time. He couldn’t smell the thing in this fast moving air, but hopefully that meant it couldn’t smell any of the blood left on him either. He waited for the next footfall to bring his opponent right outside the door, drew in another deep breath that sent a stabbing pain into the bottom of his chest (perhaps he’d been just a touch overconfident when he’d told the others he’d healed completely), and forced it out abruptly while leaping through the door with his arms forward and hands and forearms raised upward. He barely had time to register the sight of the red haired young man with a pitchfork clutched in his hands before he brought his forearms down and he jabbed his fingertips into the boy’s head and throat. The boy screamed. The feeling of flames erupting around his own fingers and human flesh disintegrating under them made Speedwagon scream almost as loud himself. The young man, quite a handsome fellow until now, leaped back away from him, dropping his pitchfork to the snow as the skin and muscle peeled away off from around his mouth and neck. The half-burnt mouth opened, but no whistle came forth from behind those jagged fangs. The burning wretch lunged at him, its own clawed hands outstretched, and Speedwagon ducked low and stabbed his fingers out to intercept its own. Red hot pain exploded through his left hand as one of his own fingers broke with the impact, but both the vampire’s hands went up in flames. Speedwagon stumbled back into the building away from the blindly flailing, burning demon as its fire-covered claws came toward him. His foot caught on the rubble, and he fell flat on his back. Luckily, the wounded monster didn’t approach further. Speedwagon raised his head just in time to see it limping back the way it had come, out into the night.
He let his head fall back on the floor as he breathed an ash-flavored sigh of relief.
He must’ve not realized that was all I had in me. I hope I hurt him enough for the others to finish off without trouble.
Speedwagon’s head was still spinning from the impact, and the iron-hard agony in his hand still seizing it up, when he heard more whistling vampire shrieks from just outside, followed by a burst of cold air that doused the nearby flames and covered him in a layer of powdery snow as it gushed in through the doorway. He used his good hand for support as he raised himself halfway up into a sitting position, and through his teary and smoke-filled eyes he managed to distinguish Wamuu standing out in the snow, grabbing someone in both hands and tearing. A moment later, Jonathan stumbled into view beside him, meeting another attacker with an outstretched arm that covered her in yellow flames.
Letting out a sigh of exhaustion and relief, Speedwagon found his hat again and put it back on his head before replacing his good hand on the floor to push himself the rest of the way up. By the time he’d gotten back on his feet and stepped out into the snow, the unnatural winds had ended, and Jonathan and Wamuu were standing back to back, looking around for any more attackers. Erina stood a few feet away, breathing heavily, looking near ready to drop from exhaustion.
“There you are,” Wamuu said, turning his chain-hung head toward Speedwagon as he stepped out onto the snow, “your diversion worked perfectly. The others broke off to investigate when you brought that one down, which gave us an opening to push through.”
“Are you alright?” JoJo asked, pulling away from Wamuu and taking a step toward him. His voice was strained, and his gait slow and painful, but he barely even seemed concerned about his own condition. Part of Speedwagon wanted to think it was just confidence in his own healing powers, but no, that wasn’t it at all. He’d been no different when they’d met Eliza, before he had any powers save his damned near unbelievable strength. This was who Jonathan had always been.
“Right as rain,” Speedwagon reassured him, forcing a pained smile, “aside from this one finger. I’ve still got nine more, though.” He took in another ripple breath, the pain in his lower chest distracting him just a tiny, blessed little from his searing hand. Around them, the snowfall was starting to pick up, as if to make up for Wamuu ending his wind spell. “You alright yourself?”
JoJo nodded yes, his dark hair flapping loose and disheveled. His hair had gotten longer since Speedwagon had first laid eyes on the man. Growing it on purpose, or been too distracted to keep it cut? Probably the latter, though it wasn’t a bad look for him at all. “I’ll be fine now. I’m still healing myself though; why don’t you put that hand to my chest while I do?”
Speedwagon felt even hotter than his ripple-filled blood was already making him. “Well, if it’ll slow your own healing down I can wait, though I’d appreciate it regardless.”
JoJo stepped forward and raised his tattered shirt, exposing his lightly tanned torso with its rippling muscles and gently sloping frame to the snow flecked winter air. Speedwagon gave him an obliged nod and pressed his burning hand to Jonathan’s skin, electricity tingling into his hand and all the way up his arm as JoJo opened his mouth and filled his chest. Speedwagon matched Jonathan’s rhythm with his own, looking carefully away from Erina until his finger was nearly painless and Jonathan was pulling his shirt back down.
“Well then,” Erina said, still panting a little as Jonathan and Speedwagon withdrew from each other, “if that
was all of them, where do we go next?”
Wamuu produced his flask, and tested the ripples. “There are no more in the village.” He shook his head. There were cuts and scratches all over him, as well as a bite mark full of fang-punctures on his neck, but he seemed hardly the worse for them. There was only a wet patch around a tatter in his cloak where the wooden pole had been a minute ago. “The mask wearer will either hide from us now, or attack again.”
“Could they be hiding in the lake?” Jonathan asked, casting his gaze toward the fog-covered water that the vampires had crawled forth from.
“Maybe. I don’t think so.”
“Where is everyone?” Speedwagon asked, after the snow fell silently for a long moment. The others turned to him. “Even if he can turn a whole village at once, why wouldn’t he have sent them all just now instead of only a few?”
“Perhaps they’ve killed all the others for their blood,” Jonathan said, looking downward.
Erina shook her head. “How could no one have heard about it if that many people went missing all at once?”
Wamuu looked up from his flask again. “No more nearby. We should circle the lake. I’d rather find them before more of them find us.”
…
The steam’s refreshing warmth didn’t last long. Once her clothes were damp through and through and her hair all stuck to her skin, Erina found the winter chill reaching into her even through the heated fog, and she needed to fall back into ripple-to-waves to keep herself warm. Even that wasn’t working as well as it should. Too much humidity in the air, she was sure, her lungs putting in more work for less air, and even less ripple in between the water vapor particles. The fact that she could barely see further than five yards in front of her, and that she kept half-thinking she saw menacing shapes form in the mist, didn’t help either. Her one reassurance was in the quarter or so of her field of vision occupied by Jonathan’s back and shoulder as he strode just ahead of her, keeping himself between her body and the steaming water.
The two other sets of footfalls in the slush beside her were less comforting. Erina still wasn’t sure what to think about that Speedwagon character, thief, pimp, and possible murderer that he was. She’d spent much of her childhood being warned about strangers that fit his description far too closely, musical proclivities aside. As for Wamuu…she had been enchanted and curious about the nightman at first, and still was she supposed. But after watching what he’d done to the fallen vampires. How nonchalantly, almost dismissively he’d looked at her from over his blood-covered lips as he’d said “Eating daymen is distasteful, but I need to heal myself and there’s no other meat in sight,” well. At least she’d found it slightly reassuring that Speedwagon, like Jonathan, refused to watch as it happened.
What did that say about her, then, that she hadn’t? Just her jadedness after so many years in the tent hospital and emergency room, or something that went deeper?
The explosion and subsequent battle had brought her nearer to death than she’d ever been in her life. She was shaken, she knew, frightened and stretched thin. She concentrated on the rhythmic harmony of her own and Jonathan’s fog-laden breaths, clinging on to the warm and vibrant electricity of the ripple to anchor herself, when Wamuu stopped in place and turned his still-bloody visage toward the others.
“I hear something ahead,” he whispered, just loudly enough to make Speedwagon, Jonathan, and herself stop as well. “One small creature, hiding in the bushes above the shore.”
Erina looked back in front of them. She could barely make out the shape of the foliage rising from a muddy bank above the springwater, through the nighttime steam. Wamuu stepped up to the front of the group, and blew on his open hip flask once again. His expression grew quizzical. “It’s not a vampire.”
Jonathan advanced beside him, standing just far enough inland to the left to let herself and Speedwagon see between the two larger men. “It’s most likely an animal, then. A dog or a sheep that’s run away with its owner gone, perhaps.”
Wamuu’s chains swayed and jangled as he shook his head. “It didn’t sound like hooves, and its breathing isn’t a dog’s.”
Erina pulled back behind Jonathan and laid her hands on his hot, steam and snowmelt-wetted back, working her lungs harder against the moisture so she could help him heal again. Beside her, she was aware of Speedwagon gliding silently up the shore’s incline and removing his bowler hat, which he held beside him like a boomerang ready to throw. Were those blades she was seeing above its brim? She could have sworn those hadn’t been there a minute ago. It was Jonathan, of course, who raised his voice above the fluttering snowflakes and deafening silence. “Hello?” he called out, putting a hand by his mouth as he peered at the bushes, “Is there anyone there? We’re here to help.”
The whispers of the wind and the flutter of the snowflakes in the steam were the only reply. Then, just as Erina was about to call out as well, a tiny, childish voice answered, barely audible from this distance. “Tell Musgrave there’s nobody here!”
Jonathan looked back at her over his craggy shoulder, wet bangs hanging just above his eyes as he regarded her as if asking for help.
“Musgrave?” She whispered. Jonathan just shook his head, expression blank.
From his perch above the bank, Speedwagon took it upon himself to ask “What’s a Musgrave?”
Erina sighed, and then stepped aside to shout out around Jonathan’s arm. “Who’s Musgrave? Is he the one the…” she almost said ‘bad people,’ but stopped herself in the nick of time. Were this child’s friends and neighbors among the vampires, now? His siblings? His parents? “…ones who have lost their minds are listening to?”
Slowly, a small, sharp-chinned head emerged from among the leaves. Erina couldn’t make out the boy’s features through the darkness and mist, but she thought he had dark hair, and from his size and the depth of his voice she’d place his age at around eleven. His eyes were wide. Too wide. She couldn’t be sure with this visibility, but she thought he was trembling, either from cold or fear.
“Who are you?” The child asked. Then, before anyone could answer, “Where did you come from? Why are you here?”
Before she or Jonathan could answer, Speedwagon came a little ways down the slope and lowered himself onto one knee in the slush, holding his hat much more loosely in front of himself now. “Well, my name is Robert, but everyone calls me Speedwagon. These are me mates JoJo, Wamuu, and Miss Pendleton. I’m from London myself, but the rest are from all around. And, well, we heard this village was having a spot of trouble and we came here to help if we could.” He bowed his head, letting his long hair shift saucily over his shoulder. “What can I call you?”
The child emerged partway from the bushes, crawling on his own scraped hands and ragged knees. His eyes remained wide and unblinking, but when a rise in the wind cleared the steam a little she saw that he was holding his head higher, more hopeful. “My name’s Franklin,” the boy said. He paused before continuing, so quietly that Erina had to strain her ears to hear. “But most people call me Poco.”
“Well,” Speedwagon’s head bobbed up and down and he used his free hand to beckon the child forward, “Poco it is, then. Could you perhaps help us find the others?”
Poco hesitated. Speedwagon remained squatting. Moreso than even when she’d heard him singing, Erina was struck by how very unthreatening he suddenly seemed. Did that just make Speedwagon even more dangerous than she’d thought? What did he usually use this particular skillset for?
As she watched, Poco finally came the rest of the way out of the bushes and rose, shakily, to his feet. She’d been right about his age, he had to be somewhere between ten and twelve years old. His skin was a few shades darker than one would expect from a typical English villager, and something in his face made her think of Spanish ancestry. She supposed that would explain the nickname, along with him being a little thin and scrawny for his height. “Musgrave took everyone to the castle,” he said as he stepped up to within arm’s reach of Speedwagon. He kept his eyes mostly on the crouching Londoner, but glanced up at Erina and the others every few moments. Now that he was closer, she was sure he was shivering with cold as well as fear; he was soaked head to toe, and half covered in twigs and mud. “He does something to people that makes them like him.”
Erina stepped up beside Speedwagon. “If we don’t dry his clothes, he’s going to get hypothermia. Before any more questions, perhaps you could…?” she gave him what she hoped was a meaningful look. Fortunately, he got her meaning quickly, and tipped the hand with his hat in it at her with a smile before returning his attention to Poco. “Say Poco, you wouldn’t mind giving me your hand?”
The child looked more cautious again for a moment, before nervously raising his hand. Speedwagon began breathing in through his mouth. His pacing was as terrible as ever, his breaths irregular and his posture horribly inefficient, but now was not the time to correct him. At least, not in front of Poco. Soon, she felt the heat and saw the slush around the crouching Speedwagon begin to thin out and run. Poco looked up at the smiling man in wonder, and then stepped forward and let him pull him against his chest. A look of relief immediately came across the child’s face as his skin was warmed and his clothes began to dry.
As Jonathan stepped up beside her and put his own arm around her, and she leaned in and did the same, Erina kept her eyes on Speedwagon. Someone from his background – particularly someone so shifty, not to mention loud and intrusive – becoming so soft, so quickly? At this point, she was sure Speedwagon wasn’t just playing a character, any more than he had been when she’d seen him play peekaboo with his infant nephew before they’d left his sister’s respectable establishment.
Erina Pendleton had never before met a person that she would trust with her children but not with her purse.
“Alright then,” Speedwagon said as he released the much warmer and dryer child, “could you spare us some more details on this Musgrave chap and where he’s got everyone?”
Poco nodded, looking much sharper and more energetic now, keeping his eyes on Speedwagon alone. “He and the…the people he made like him…locked everyone up in the dragon tower. Erm, that’s the square tower on the right side of the castle. I got out through the tunnel.”
“Tunnel?” Jonathan asked, stepping up a little closer behind Speedwagon. Erina took a hold of his arm and pulled him back a little; she doubted crowding the child was going to make him more talkative, and Speedwagon seemed to have this as it was.
“Yeah,” Poco said, looking at Jonathan for just a moment before returning his attention to Speedwagon kneeling in front of him, “Erm…its hidden by the balcony door. I was the only one who could fit through when they weren’t looking, and who could also climb down the wall.”
Jonathan spoke again, keeping a comfortable distance this time. “I’m not sure all of us are up for that sort of climb.” Indeed, Erina hadn’t had a good look at the castle since they entered the crater valley, but she’d seen how high the towers were at the time, and the thought of an eleven year old child climbing down one – let alone unsupervised – wasn’t a comforting one. If anything, she was bothered by how Jonathan and Speedwagon
didn’t react to that. “How else can we get up there?”
Poco shook his unkempt head. “Just the stairs from down below, I think. But that’s where they’re guarding.”
Erina turned around and stepped up to Wamuu. “Do you have any idea,” she asked, “why he might be doing this?”
“Possibly,” Wamuu said, barely looking at her. He raised his voice so the child could hear him and locked his eyes on him. “Poco.” Poco looked up at him, and then recoiled a little behind Speedwagon again. “When did Musgrave capture your people?”
“Um…last night, just before dawn. He and Mrs. Potter, Mr. Phillipson, Jenny, Mayor Smith. Just barged into the house with rifles, with these big sharp teeth showing, and they made us walk. They gave us food today, but then this evening he…Musgrave…took Branford, Mrs. Cotton, and Old Jacob and did the…thing...that he does to them and then sent them away.” He paused. His eyes looking dewy again. “He also sent some of the ones he’d already changed, who were guarding us. He only left the Mayor and Mrs. Potter. That’s why I thought I could get through the tunnel without one of them noticing.”
Wamuu folded his arms, expression stony and grim. Poco hid further behind Speedwagon, but the giant’s eyes were no longer on him. “I feared as much. Our quarry must have prepared for our attack after the man and horse I killed in the tunnel didn’t report back. I returned to the tunnel before sunrise. If he only noticed shortly before dawn, I wouldn’t have seen them. He’s keeping the prisoners as reserve forces. Whenever he learns he’s lost another group of slaves, he’ll turn more of them to bring his army back to full size immediately.”
Erina felt her blood go cold, even through the heat of the ripple she’d been keeping active with her slow, constant breathing rhythm. “What’s full size?”
“We killed four,” Jonathan whispered, his face ashen as he turned his back to Poco and Speedwagon, “Speedwagon killed another. There was one more who set off the explosives. At least two still in the castle guarding the prisoners.”
Erina clenched her teeth, nodding slowly. At least eight at a time. Jonathan had told her what that Lamkin creature had said to him, about smaller bodies being easier to reanimate. How many more or less could there be if this new demon chief used small children himself? How many adult human vampires was a horse worth, as far as his powers were concerned? How many rats or pigeons or dogs to a human?
“That’s six down, and most likely six more he’ll kill and enslave by the time we reach the tower.” Jonathan didn’t need to say anything more. Every vampire slain on the way to Musgrave would mean one more victim.
Speedwagon looked back at the three of them, and then at the suspiciously staring Poco again. Erina stepped aside, so that she, Jonathan, and Wamuu could face the child. “Here’s what, Poco,” Speedwagon said, “we’re going to try and help as many of you Windknight lot as we possibly can. Do you perchance know a way we can get to that castle’s doorway without them spotting us?”
Poco looked nervously back over Speedwagon’s shoulder at the others. His eyes happened to catch Erina’s. She did her best to look reassuring, affecting the same businesslike confidence she used to get taken seriously at the hospital. The child stared at her, as if accepting a silent promise that he’d judge her very harshly for breaking, and then looked back at Speedwagon.
“I think so.”
…
Another villager turned for each vampire they would be forced to destroy. Six innocent lives already on his, Wamuu’s, and Speedwagon’s hands, most likely, and god only knew how many more to come before this mask was shattered.
Poco led them through the bushes along the steaming lakeside, where the wind was concentrating the fog against the muddy bank and snow-lined hedges in a manner that would hopefully hide them at least for part of the way. Erina and Speedwagon ducked down. Jonathan, and Wamuu at the trailing end of the procession behind the others, had to bend over almost double to stay concealed. The grass and mud and slushy water was building up on his hands as well as his feet and knees.
How long would it take Musgrave to learn of it, if they slew more during their approach? Not long, Jonathan realized, if animals too were among his minions. Jonathan looked warily up at the dark and snow-streaked sky, barely visible through the steam, and wondered if a vampire owl or heron were searching from it right now, ready to communicate each of its fallen brethren back to a watcher in the tower with some aerial motion. Vampires could see in the dark far better than humans, at least as well as Wamuu himself could. There would be no reason for him
not to do it. Even if the fog succeeded at hiding them for now, it would not protect them the entire way.
He looked over his shoulder at Erina. She looked wet, and on edge, but not as miserable as he’d feared. She caught his eyes, and the look she gave him through the steaming mist was one of concern. Just like his own. He smiled, she smiled back, and they continued after Poco. The mist grew thinner, and the bushes drier and snowier. Then, just as Jonathan began to wonder if the boy was leading them around in circles, the winter shrubbery gave way to a flat stone wall standing high up into the overhead darkness.
“Here,” Poco said, indicating the wall with his head, “the main door’s further along, but the broken side tower here has a door you can climb up to really easy. It’s on the broken deck, maybe twice as high off the ground as Mister Joestar or Mister Wamuu.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know if he’s guarding it?” Speedwagon asked, crouching under the hedges just opposite the boy.
Poco shook his head.
Jonathan shook his own as well. “If he’s been here for this long, he must have noticed any openings that can be seen from the ground outside. He’ll be guarding that door, if he has the manpower for it.”
Speedwagon looked back at him. “What are you proposing, then?” When Jonathan didn’t reply, Speedwagon looked to Wamuu, and then to Erina, crouched in the snowy bushes behind him. Jonathan moved out of the way so they could all face one another, hoping he wasn’t shaking and crushing the bushes too obviously from outside.
“You mentioned rifles before,” Erina said, “but nobody shot at us back in the village.” She looked up at Wamuu and Speedwagon. “Or, did they? My ears were ringing.”
“It’s probably a limited supply of rifles,” Jonathan mused aloud, “or just not wanting to get them wet in that fog. If he thought he could get away with not using them during that ambush, he’ll certainly have changed his mind by now.”
“I can survive a few bullets,” Wamuu said, “but I don’t know if everyone can.”
Jonathan looked back out at the stone wall, a few yards from the edge of the tall bushes. Bare snow. A clean line of sight from the towers and battlements, or from any exposed doorway overhead, at least for a creature to whom darkness meant nothing. The snowfall had evened out, medium sized flakes continuing to waft downward through the near blackness at a persistent rate. If only the weather were a bit worse, they could trust it to shield them from vampire eyes.
“Wamuu,” Jonathan said, “you can stir the snow up to hide.”
“I can’t move very quickly while I do that,” Wamuu replied, “and the wind would make it hard for the others to climb. I’d have suggested it myself otherwise.”
Poco stared past Jonathan at Wamuu, eyes widening at the mention of wind control.
“Well, yes,” Jonathan said, “but do you think our enemies know that?”
He felt all eyes on him. He wasn’t sure, for a moment, if he’d explained himself poorly, or if he’d simply overlooked some glaring flaw.
“Oh, I like this,” Speedwagon finally said.
Wamuu was smiling, and nodding his head admiringly.
“It’ll be like the town hall, then,” Erina said, “you climb up and use the snow for cover. This Musgrave person will probably think we’re all in there, and he only has so many vampires to send. And the rest of us…”
“Dance right in through the front gate,” Speedwagon finished for her.
“What about Poco, though?” Erina asked.
“Three choices,” Wamuu said.
“We’re
not leaving him outside,” Erina growled at him, just as Jonathan and Speedwagon both started opening their mouths as well.
“Two choices, then.” Wamuu caught Jonathan giving him an interrogative little glare, and seemed to catch his meaning. “Leaving him outside while we attack would be safer from the vampires. I forgot that these temperatures could be dangerous for a dayman who cannot channel the ripple.”
“What about ripples?” Poco whispered to Speedwagon.
Speedwagon gave him a placating gesture. “You’ll see in just a bit, sonny.”
“He does know the way to where he’s holding the villagers,” Erina mused, “but letting you take him is probably safer.” She gave Wamuu an icy glare. “As long as you don’t forget we need
oxygen or something like that.”
“Most of the daymen I’ve fought alongside lived in warmer places. The topic rarely came up.”
They spent a few minutes asking Poco how one might get from the main entrance to the dragon tower. Then, Speedwagon smiled at him. “Alright chap. Climb up on the big man’s shoulders. No, the
other big man.”
…
They approached the door at the top of the winding, coffin-narrow staircase. Jonathan in the lead, of course, with Poco struggling to keep pace without holding up Speedwagon and Erina behind him. The last of the tiny windows was many feet below now, and the air was dusty and smelled of mold and must. Jonathan had to force his mouth and lungs to admit the foul air as he built his ripple charge back up.
“You should hide on one of the balconies back downstairs,” Jonathan told Poco, looking down the staircase over his shoulder while he kept his torchlight on the stone portal ahead.
The boy shook his dusty, sweat and snowmelt dampened head. Another gunshot echoed up from somewhere in the castle below where Wamuu had been continuing his distraction after they regrouped and parted again. Poco flinched at the sound, but he didn’t look away from Jonathan.
“Poco,” Jonathan tried again, “I’m not sure you understand just how dangerous this is going to be.”
Poco stared at him. “I was already in there.”
Jonathan sighed. “Well, yes, but there wasn’t any fighting going on before you escaped, was there?”
The boy shifted a little in place, but still didn’t look down. “Not really,” he said, “there wasn’t any more fighting by the time they brought us to the castle.”
Further down the stairs, Speedwagon gasped and tried to hide his grimace behind his hands. Even in the darkness, it just wasn’t possible.
“But,” Poco continued, “that doesn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous! My sister’s still in there, and I’m going back in as well!”
Jonathan held back a grimace of his own as another gunshot echoed up, followed an instant later by the high, piercing whistle of a wounded vampire. Wamuu had said he’d try to avoid killing any, but he’d also warned that keeping himself alive might make this difficult. Had any more vampires been destroyed, since they’d entered the castle? Was Poco’s sister, or his mother or father, now being transformed? Had they
already been, as a consequence of the battle back at the town hall?
It then occurred to Jonathan that Poco had been very specific in mentioning his sister, but not his parents. He felt his blood run cold even through the ripple heat he’d built in his veins as he looked at the child’s leaf and snowmelt covered hair and unblinking eyes.
No wonder he’s so insistent on this. She might be his only surviving family.
“Alright,” Jonathan said, nodding his head at the boy in heartfelt respect, “just try to stay behind us.” Before he turned back to the door, he caught Speedwagon’s expression as he regarded Poco. He looked almost ready to tear up. Kinship of a sort, Jonathan supposed. He made eye contact with Erina, who silently nodded her head, an unspoken, businesslike agreement. He could see the fear in her eyes, but it was bound tightly in chains of determination. And of faith.
Faith in me, Jonathan realized as she reached out over Poco’s shoulder and laid her ripple-tingling fingers on his free left hand. He didn’t know how that made him feel. Honored? Afraid? Ecstatic? Unworthy? All of them at once?
Slowly, he turned back to the door, and reached for the rusty iron handle. It opened far more easily than it should have. It had seen use recently. Perhaps it had even been oiled. Behind it, his and Erina’s lamplights fell across dark flagstones and floating dust. Jonathan felt a cold draft from somewhere, but there wasn’t so much as a hint of moon or starlight. He craned his head around, knees bent and ready to spring, breath filling his body with ripple. After a long moment, the lamplight fell on a set of rust and dirt covered iron bars, and a huddle of shivering bodies on the floor behind them.
“I’m holding another bomb,” a clear, clipped voice echoed around the inky black tower room, “and I’ll be throwing it into the cell should you take another step forward.”
Jonathan’s head jerked around as he tried to locate the speaker. It was no use; with that echo, he could have been anywhere in the murky chamber.
If only Wamuu were here with his potion. Poco’s hand pulled at Jonathan’s shirt, as if the boy was afraid of letting him advance. Erina shined her own lamp higher in the space beneath Jonathan’s raised arm. The light pierced further behind the bars, illuminating half a dozen of the coated and scarfed villagers huddled together for warmth. A few pale, half-lit faces stood out against the shivering wool and trembling limbs. An old white haired woman staring back at them like a deer at a train’s headlamps. A burly man with a dark mustache who seemed to be trying to comfort someone obscured by the darkness. A teenaged girl who looked a lot like Poco, standing with bent knees and raised hands as if to catch any incoming explosives and throw them back.
“He won’t actually do it!” Speedwagon shouted from behind Erina and Poco. “He does that, and he’s got nothing left to throw at us!”
“Killing them would leave me with scarce little,” the voice replied before Jonathan could, “that much is true. But I know you’re trying to rescue them. I haven’t been able to raise any more since you entered the castle. This means you’ve been taking pains to disable rather than kill. What reason could you have for that, if not to disincentivize me from using my remaining supply?”
There was a wry, rattling chuckle. Like a laugh that had had all the moisture drained out of it and replaced with dust and bone ash.
“So then. We each have something the other wants. I know at least one of you is a gentleman of breeding and refinement. Surely, we can parley?”
“Well, will you listen to that,” Speedwagon said, “I’m a man of breeding and refinement! Wish I’d have known.” Erina, whose ear he had been shouting near, put her free hand to it and gave him a half-panicked glare. Speedwagon whispered an apology.
“You’re named Musgrave I presume, sir?” Jonathan spoke.
There was a sharp pause before the voice continued. “How did you…well, if you’ve learned my name then I suppose there’s little I can do about it at this point. Other than killing you, of course, but I’ve already given that my best effort.”
“I’d give you perfect marks,” Jonathan said wryly.
“Hah!” The laugh was sharper, and hoarser. It had an unguarded, wild sound to it that the voice hadn’t shown before. It also, Jonathan was sure, came from a few paces ahead of him and straight upward by the ceiling. Behind himself, he heard Speedwagon sniff sharply. “Marks, ah? Brings back memories from long before I fell under the devil’s sway.”
The voice grew cooler again, and was masked once more by the echo. Now that he knew what to listen for, however, Jonathan was sure he heard a faint scratching coming from above, as of fingernails against crumbling stone. He followed it a few paces to the left, but made sure to keep his head still and his eyes pointing straight ahead. He tried to think of how to signal his discovery to Speedwagon and Erina without the vampire noticing, but nothing came to him. Keeping his ripple breathing going while also listening to the tiny scrabbling sounds was so distracting.
Suddenly, something occurred to Jonathan. Something that nearly made him drop his lantern.
“Wait…Musgrave?
Matthew Musgrave?”
Jonathan’s ripple breathing slowed, fumbled. Behind him, Erina whispered something, but Jonathan could hear nothing but his own heartbeat.
The voice in the darkness did not speak again for a long moment. When it did, its tone was carefully businesslike. “Ah, of course. You
would be familiar with my work, Mister Joestar.”
Jonathan nodded his head, thinking as hard as he ever had while he struggled to keep his eyes away from where he knew Professor Musgrave lurked. The level of unreality that fell over him, the sense of the nightmare reaching out and consuming his old life bite by bite, there weren’t even words to describe it. Jonathan forced himself to stay in the present. To keep Musgrave talking, and judge the distances. “I read your publication on archaeological solutions to the contradictory documentation of the Hundred Years War. Everyone in my class must have.”
Behind him, he heard Speedwagon muffle a grunt as Erina elbowed him in the chest. Jonathan weighed the risks carefully before looking over his shoulder. Speedwagon, who he supposed had started to interject something, was glaring at Erina ruefully. For her own part, Erina gave Jonathan a desperate look, both questioning and terrified. Poco just looked frightened and confused. Jonathan nodded his head in what he hoped was a reassuring way, and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling in front of him. Hopefully she would get his meaning. He had already faced away from the vampire as long as he dared though, and turned back toward the darkened room before he could tell if Erina had gotten the message or not. He doubled down on his ripple breathing, the sound of his own sharp exhalations obscuring anything else from behind him.
“Perhaps you seek to flatter me,” Musgrave replied, “and perhaps I ought to be flattered indeed. Were our meeting under different circumstances, I might bring you into my crew of the damned. I’ve been quite missing academic discussion since I became what I am now. Unfortunately, I know I cannot lay a hand on you directly. Now, you shall all-”
Jonathan bent his knees and leaped. Years of rugby experience took over, guiding each muscle in perfectly coordinated motion as he shot himself up through the air, spinning his torso around as he rose to face the spot where he knew Musgrave must be hanging. The clatter of his lamp falling to the stone floor beneath him barely registered, but the wild flicker of moving light threw the outline of the man, hanging upside down like a bat from the ceiling, into relief. Jonathan couldn’t see Professor Musgrave’s face in any detail, but he didn’t have to, or even really want to. He just needed to confirm the vampire’s position, and to see that he was indeed lighting the fuse of the dynamite in his hand. As the lamp spun over and the ceiling was once again buried in darkness, Jonathan felt the impact as the paper-lined cylinder knocked into his chest, leaving a trail of bright sparks as Musgrave threw it before he could take Jonathan’s exact movement into account. Then, Jonathan was falling on his back toward the flagstones below, holding the cylinder in one hand and pinching the fuse to choke out its flame in the other. The searing agony in his fingertips was buried by the tingle of ripple healing, and then drowned out by the sharp impact as he hit the floor.
“WHAT?!”
“Shine your light up, Miss!” Speedwagon’s shriek followed immediately on the heels of Musgrave’s exclamation, “let me get a shot at the bastard, and I’ll burn ‘im to ashes just like last time!”
Jonathan was too dizzy, and too blinded by the electrical tingling and crushing pain in his skull and ribs, to see if Erina caught on to Speedwagon’s bluff in time to play along. He did, however, hear a desperate scrabbling from overhead, and feel a rain of stone dust bounce off of the skin of his face as Musgrave dashed across the ceiling away from the staircase.
“The cage!” Speedwagon shouted as Jonathan picked himself up off the floor, balancing his body’s need for oxygen against its need for ripple as he managed his breathing. “He’s going for the cage!”
Jonathan lurched to his feet and reached for the bars. If he could just get himself in the way again, put a ripple-charged body between the creature that he still couldn’t quite believe was Professor Matthew Musgrave of Oxford University and his captives, perhaps he could force the vampire out of the tower room and corner him somewhere safer. As his fingers closed around the rusty iron bars, the light of Erina’s lamp pointed back in his direction, showing him the bars and the gasping, blankly staring throng behind them.
Speedwagon saw something else though, and began to scream out a warning, but it was already too late. As Jonathan craned his head upward to look for Musgrave, he felt a sensation like steely sharp teeth closing around his fingers and pinching their skin so taut it felt about to rip. As he gasped in shock and pain, two glowing yellow eyes filled his vision as Musgrave glared down at him from where bars met ceiling. Another wave of
unreality swept over Jonathan as he saw his opponent’s face for the first time.
Professor Musgrave’s first treatises had been published around the middle of the century, before Jonathan was even born. The last Jonathan had heard, he had mostly retired from teaching at Oxford and came back only to deliver the occasional seminar, spending most of his time up north pursuing his Elizabethan research at his own, slowing pace. The face that glared down at him, aside from the burning golden eyes and bared crystalline fangs that marred it, was that of a man scarcely older than Jonathan. His hair was a sleek reddish brown in the lamplight, as were his trim beard and moustache. His pale, freckled face was without a wrinkle.
Jonathan remembered what Lamkin had said, about her having had grown up children despite looking no older than this herself.
He tried to raise his hands to strike the revenant with his ripple-charged fingertips, but he found, with a horrified drop in his stomach, that he could not remove them from the bars that felt like they were cutting into his flesh. It was then that he noticed Musgrave’s hands, unwrinkled, unmarked, and uncalloused despite his decades of excavation and note-writing, wrapped around the upper bars. Where the vampire’s skin touched the iron, a thick coat of frost had appeared, spiderwebbing its fractal patterns down along the bars toward Jonathan’s own hands.
“Clever,” the glowering, impossibly young face growled through its mouthful of batlike fangs, “but one cannot defy the devil with mere cunning. I tried myself, before he relieved me of my will to resist.”
Shutting out the pain in his frozen hands, Jonathan kept his ripple breathing going. He wasn’t sure if Musgrave
knew that he’d be vulnerable if he stopped, but he wasn’t about to take that chance. Over the background noise of Speedwagon’s frantic shouting, Erina’s loud, sharp ripple-to-waves breathing, and the throbbing pain of his stuck and frozen hands, Jonathan forced himself to focus on Musgrave’s words, and to reply.
“You keep talking about the devil. What happened to you, Professor Musgrave? How did you fall to…this?”
The young, blazing-eyed face was nearly still save for the mouth as Musgrave hung in place and replied. “I always did love Windknight’s Lot. I came here every summer, when my spine didn’t prevent it. To speak truthfully, I was afraid my digging days were behind me for good before
he invited himself into my home.”
The yellow light dulled, slightly, and Jonathan thought he saw Musgrave shift in place in the half-darkness.
“I came downstairs to find Roberta, my wife, dead in his arms. He left…almost nothing. I used to love her, before he cured me of love. I threw myself upon him, but he placed his mark upon my head and-”
Suddenly there was a wet hissing sound, and Jonathan felt hot, damp steam run up in a little cloud around his face. He and Musgrave both dropped their jaws, and turned their heads to the bars a couple of feet away from Jonathan. Speedwagon had pulled off his shirt and half-ruined jacket, and was pressing his lithe and more than slightly hairy pectoral muscles against the barricade. He was too busy breathing in deeply and out sharply to speak, but not too busy to wink at Jonathan and flash him an open-mouthed grin as the ice receded across the bars.
Jonathan tried to move his hands. His fingers didn’t obey him perfectly, but he felt them wriggle painfully against the bars, and then pull away from them with a sharp ripping sensation, followed by the soothing tingle of ripple healing.
“WHAT IN THE-”
Jonathan didn’t let Musgrave finish his sentence. He bent his knees, lowered his still half-frozen hands to his sides, and leaped upward, driving his head straight into the ghostly visage out of time. How much ripple would the thin skin of his forehead, separated from his heart and lungs by so much bone and brain tissue, be able to carry? Jonathan had no idea. More likely than not, he realized even as he leaped, Musgrave’s claw would catch his head and tear through it like an overripe fruit without the vampire suffering more than a minor burn for it. However, Jonathan’s head struck neither claw nor skin; Musgrave let out a terrified, whistling shriek completely unlike his measured and cultured speaking voice, and threw himself across the room, leaving a waterfall of dust and broken masonry chips scattering down from the ceiling as he kicked off of it before Jonathan could headbutt him. He landed, both knees bent, on the floor at the edge of Erina’s lamplight, and an instant later broke the balcony doors open with an ear-splitting
crack that put even his screaming whistle to shame. Outside, the snow had stopped falling, and a few distant stars had shown themselves in a gap in the clouds. In their pale blue-white light, Jonathan saw Musgrave’s black silhouette rush out onto the crumbling balcony, and then throw itself over the battlements.
“After him!” Speedwagon roared, turning away from the steaming, moisture-laden bars and waving his hat wildly at the balcony. “He’s go…
ack!” Overtaxed as they were from their ripple breathing, Speedwagon’s lungs gave out then and left him doubled over in a fit of hacking coughs. Inside the cell, two dozen or more faces stared in open mouthed and wide eyed confusion as their owners pressed back away as best they could. The girl who looked like a taller, more feminine, and much angrier Poco turned away from the coughing Speedwagon and glared urgently at Jonathan. “Well, listen to him you big oaf!
Go kill the prick!”
Jonathan opened his mouth to answer, but quickly decided that action would speak better for itself at the moment. He saw Erina advancing toward Speedwagon, extending her free hand toward his bare skin, and Poco running toward the prison and babbling excitedly. He turned back toward the balcony, raised his still thawing hands in front of him, and ran out into the winter air to where Musgrave had leaped off the edge.
He peered his head downward, straining his eyes to see into the darkness below. If only he hadn’t dropped his lamp before, this would have been so much easier. What enabled Jonathan to find what he was looking for wasn’t the sight of the vampire himself, but rather the sound of howling wind and the image of flying clouds of snow and stone dust that not even the late night darkness could hide. There, in a clear patch of snow amid the bushes, he now saw the hulking shape that could only be Wamuu rushing forward, driving the roiling cloud of wind and debris ahead of him as he chased something Jonathan couldn’t see. A moment later, his eyes found the smaller shadow tearing through the leafless shrubs ahead of him, streaking toward the mist-covered lake.
Jonathan looked right and then left for something to throw, but realized that was foolishness even before he’d done it. The fugitive was far too distant to strike with any accuracy, even if he could find a weapon that could retain a ripple charge for so long away from his body. Not to mention that he wasn’t sure he even
could pick up and throw anything yet, with his hands still healing and thawing themselves. Could his ripple healing allow him to jump down after Musgrave and survive? Perhaps, but he wasn’t ready to gamble his life on it. As he thought, Erina and Speedwagon appeared at his sides, looking out in the same direction as himself.
“Think he’s planning to hide underwater?” Speedwagon asked, his voice still hoarse and breathless.
“I hope so,” Jonathan said, eyes still following the figure as he thought back to the nightman’s fishing expedition in Brighton, “I doubt he can outswim Wamuu. Or see better than him underwater.”
“Wait,” Erina said, sounding a bit breathless herself, “no, I don’t think that’s what he’s doing at all!” She reached out her slim arm and pointed at the edge of the lake, where Musgrave was now racing across the last stretch of snow at the shore. It indeed did not appear as if he were crouching down to jump or dive into the steaming water. It was getting harder and harder to tell as the distance increased, but it appeared as if he was running forward like there was nothing but solid ground ahead of him.
Jonathan realized what he was about to do just before Musgrave’s first step on the surface of the lake, which froze solid beneath his foot. The steam withdrew half a dozen yards all around him, and he continued running across the spreading, gleaming ice. Wamuu, who had been gaining on him, slowed to a crawl as his massive feet crunched into the frozen edge and sank into the water below; the ice was thick enough to bear Musgrave’s weight, it seemed, but not Wamuu’s. Another wind vortex tore through the steam around Musgrave, but it only made him stagger, not fall. He was already further away from Wamuu than Jonathan had ever seen him use his winds, and it seemed the nightman’s headdress could only project its full force for so far.
“Think he can swim under him?” Speedwagon asked.
“I don’t know.” Jonathan shook his head. “He can swim fast, but as fast as Musgrave can run? I don’t know that he can control the wind from underwater either.”
“The wind’s blowing toward them,” Erina said, suddenly. Indeed, the mist over the lake was still billowing away from them and toward the village on the far shore, and the swaying of the leafless tree branches pointed likewise.
“Yes it is,” Jonathan said, “what do you have in mind?”
Erina was already rebuilding her ripple charge, and pulling out her umbrella.
…
Wamuu heard Jonathan’s call echoing over the valley. Breaking his way another step out through the ice and bringing the water level up to his waist, he took his eyes off of his quarry and looked back. There, on the tower balcony, Jonathan was shouting, and pointing. Following his finger brought Wamuu’s eyes to a shadow gliding through the air overhead, down from the balcony and out toward himself, high above his head. He mistook it for an immense seed-pod at first, floating on a leafy wing. A fraction of a heartbeat later, however, he realized what he was looking at.
I told the daywoman her spirit dwarfed her body. Perhaps I should have told her it dwarfed Jonathan’s body as well.
He didn’t know precisely what they had in mind, but Wamuu had spent enough time among the Sendo monks of the northern Indus over the ages to have some idea. And, as luck would have it, he had already dealt with the crow that served as Musgrave’s scout and aerial striker.
He sloshed on through the thin, weak ice up to his chest, keeping the winds pulling as strongly at Musgrave’s legs as they could at this distance. Then, when Erina flew overhead, so low now he could hear the sound of her deadly breathing, he withdrew the gale and pushed it up behind and beneath her. He heard her breath stutter for just a beat as the wind caught her weapon, raising her up again and rushing her forward, helping her gain on the mask-slave. Then, with a silent plea for fate to have decided in Erina’s favor, he ducked down and swam forward under the ice, holding his breath and propelling himself as fast as he could.
Above the steaming water, he saw the light-distorted image of Erina descend, her bare feet landing on the surface well ahead of Musgrave’s spreading ice. He saw the ripples shoot outward across the water from the soles of each foot and the underside of each toe, felt his flesh crawl in aversion at the deadly power being radiated down into the lake ahead of him. He forgot the name the monks had invented for it – the strengthening of surface tension as it conducted the Sunfather’s burning hand – but he had known Erina was skilled in it from the moment he saw her use that gliding instrument to break his gale in their first meeting.
She stayed in place, holding the water tight, unbroken, and charged with living death beneath her. Closer to himself, Musgrave stopped. His ice ceased to advance. Was he staring at her in confusion? Gawking in superstitious terror? Considering parlay? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he stopped long enough for Wamuu to close the distance and crush the ice under his feet with his fists. The mask-slave’s frenzied splashing grew wilder still when Wamuu grabbed his sinking legs and tore them out of their sockets. Two heartbeats later, his skull had crunched together between Wamuu’s hands, staining the water around him a foul, inky black that he knew would soon clear away.
TO BE CONTINUED ->