Chapter 26
I found Christine in her office, scribbling out a last few instructions to the rest of the staff before her departure. “There you are!” she said, when I knocked on her door. “I was worried I wouldn’t have the chance to see you again before I left. How is Griffin?”
Griffin. I’d avoided thinking about him while looking at the map, but now it all came rushing back. Was he alive? In pain? Afraid? “The Brotherhood has him.”
All the color leeched from her face. “Oh. Oh dear.”
“I need your help. I have a plan, but it will mean missing your steamer this afternoon.”
Christine hesitated. “My equipment—”
“Wire ahead and have someone waiting to claim it when the steamer docks.”
She stood up, shoving her chair back. Clasping her hands behind her, she paced to the other side of the room, deliberately putting space between us. “It isn’t as simple as you’re making out. If I miss the steamer, the first thing everyone will say is a woman can’t be trusted to run an excavation. My colleagues from other museums are already muttering about the delay caused by the gala. It doesn’t matter to them if the director ordered me to stay; they’re saying the real reason is my feminine side couldn’t resist the lure of a fancy party. Proof I don’t have the dedication of a man. If I’m not in Egypt at the earliest possible moment, my professional reputation could be ruined.”
“I know.” I crossed the room to stand in front of her. “It’s not fair, and I’m sorry. But we’re out of time. Griffin is going to die, and the world might very well follow.” I put one hand to her shoulder. “Please, Christine. I can’t do this without you.”
She hesitated, and I did not blame her. I was asking a great deal of her, and I couldn’t honestly say the chances of success were high, even with her help. Very possibly my hasty plan would end with the two of us dead alongside Griffin.
Her piercing eyes regarded me for a long time. I met her gaze and let her see whatever she might, because I was asking too much to hide anything in return.
A resigned sigh escaped her lips. Looking away, she awkwardly patted me on the arm. “Very well. Tell me this plan of yours.”
~ * ~
For the first time in over a decade, I knocked on the doors of Somerby Estate.
It had not changed much from my memory. The gravel of the stately drive was still immaculately groomed, and the thick hedges perfectly trimmed. The Draakenwood formed a dark line on the horizon, while nearer at hand the Cranch glittered in the sun. The lake itself couldn’t be seen from the front of the house, which seemed a small mercy.
The door swung open, revealing a butler in starched livery. What had happened to the man who’d held the position in my youth? Had he retired due to old age, or was there a more sinister reason behind the change?
The butler’s brow arched almost imperceptibly. “May I help you, sir?”
I firmed my spine and hoped my expression revealed nothing. “I’m here to see Mr. Somerby.”
“Mr. Somerby is not in at the moment.”
“Yes, he is,” I said. “Tell him Percival Whyborne is here. I know what he’s doing, and I want to help.”
~ * ~
Addison received me in his study. The curtains were drawn over all the windows, and the only light came from the gas lamps and the cheerful fire burning on the hearth. A portrait of Leander hung over the fireplace. A photo of the two of us as boys hung framed on another wall; I averted my eyes quickly.
Addison rose to greet me, his expression guarded. “Percival. How can I help you?”
I couldn’t think of Griffin, or of the way my heart pounded in my throat, or my knees wanted to buckle. “Uncle Addy.” Was I projecting the right amount of hurt, or did I sound overly dramatic? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Guardedness gave way to uncertainty. “Tell you…?”
“It was all to bring Leander back.” I swallowed against the thickness in my throat. “Don’t you know saving him was my first thought as well, when I learned it was possible?”
A tremulous smile broke over his wrinkled lips. Had it been Leander’s death which had aged him, or simply the natural passing of years? “It was?”
“Of course it was. Leander was my best friend.” I gestured to Addison’s black clothing. “I might not wear mourning, but I think of him daily. As soon as I read the grimoire, as soon as I realized the power it held, my mind flew to him.” All true, and please let it be enough salt to make the lies go down easily. “If I’d known saving Leander was the goal, I would never have never opposed you. Surely you don’t believe I’d choose the museum’s reputation over him?”
His joyful smile filled my gut with self-loathing. “My dear boy,” he said, rising to his feet and taking my hands. “Forgive me. It wasn’t my decision. I suggested to your father…but he was adamant you not be involved. When I saw you’d been hurt at the gala, I knew we’d made a terrible mistake.”
At least Addison hadn’t wanted me dead, then. It shouldn’t have made a difference, given the horrors he was willing to unleash on us all, but it did.
“I’m glad to have you here now,” he went on. “Very glad. Let us—”
A soft knock on the door cut him off. Addison seemed surprised; he let go of my hands. “Come in?”
I sensed him like a cold wind at my back. “Oh,” Addison said. “Mr. Blackbyrne, this is—”
“Dr. Whyborne and I have already met, although we’ve not been formally introduced.”
This was it. Fooling Addison was one thing; tricking Blackbyrne another altogether. Perhaps the years I’d spent schooling my face not to betray embarrassment, or shame, or desire had not been for nothing after all. Keeping my expression as bland as possible, I turned and met his gaze.
His eyes were black and glittering, his smile crocodile-cold. None of which diminished his beauty, and I couldn’t suppress the stirrings of warmth in my groin when he held out his hand. “Theron Blackbyrne,” he said.
I shook his hand. His fingers curled around mine, the points of his sharpened nails scraping lightly against my skin, sending a delicious shiver up my arm. “Percival Endicott Whyborne,” I replied, and thank God my voice didn’t tremble with either lust or fear.
“I suspected my assessment of you was correct,” Blackbyrne said; he still hadn’t let go of my hand. “When I heard the decision had been made not to recruit such an asset, I wondered at its wisdom.”
Asset. Apparently, I was doomed never to be anything more. “I’m glad to be here,” I said.
He finally let go of my hand; I tucked it into my pocket to keep from wiping it on my trousers. “I have something you might want to see,” he said. I wished he would stop smiling.
I nodded, a bit stiffly. “Excuse us, Addison,” he said, and led the way out of the room.
I followed, wondering what he had in store. I didn’t believe for an instant that he trusted me with such ease. But, like Griffin, he saw me as a tool he couldn’t bring himself to discard, as long as there was a chance to get some use from it.
At least, I hoped he considered me too useful to discard. If not, he could very well be taking me to a nasty death.
My trepidation grew when he let us into a servants’ hall. I’d never been in this part of the house before. “Has the estate changed much, since you lived here?” I asked. It was a stupid question, but I didn’t want my silence to give the impression of fear.
Blackbyrne glanced over his shoulder, one brow raised. “You know about that? Somerby said it had been mostly forgotten, except for an odious little man at the museum who busies himself with the petty doings of a single, young country and thinks himself wise.”
His contempt for Bradley made me even more uneasy, not because I disagreed with the sentiment, but because I didn’t want to have anything in common with him.
“However,” Blackbyrne added, turning back to the fore, “my old home is long gone. Burned upon my death, I’m told, by small-minded fools.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t known. Would my ignorance decrease his opinion of my potential usefulness?
We went into the kitchen; there were no servants to be seen. The door on the other side of the room opened onto a stair leading into the basement. With another reptile grin, Blackbyrne gestured for me to precede him.
Nothing good ever happened in basements.
The smell of rot swept up from below. I wanted to run, but flight wasn’t an option, not without Griffin.
I started down the creaking stair. “It’s unfortunate,” Blackbyrne said from behind me, and those were not words I wanted to hear in these circumstances. “There was no real way to hide these things from the servants.”
My stomach turned over, but I clung to the blank expression which had gotten me through much in my life. “New ones can always be hired.”
An awful thing to say, but any other response would result in my death here and now. Blackbyrne was a step or two above me; the sensation of his nails lightly resting against my shoulder made my skin crawl. Why did he keep touching me?
I half-suspected what I would see when I stepped out into the basement. For once, I wasn’t remotely glad to be right. Griffin was on his knees with his head bowed, bound securely in thick ropes. Remembering his fear of underground places, my heart contracted: couldn’t they have kept him somewhere else?
Maybe they knew, or at least suspected. Perhaps this was just one more careless cruelty.
Three Guardians lurked in various corners: two of them were the animal-human hybrids, while the other was somehow even more horrific. It was only human, but stomach-churningly unfinished.
Griffin lifted his head at our approach, and his eyes widened to see me. Despair flashed across his face, followed by surprise as he realized I was unbound.
“I thought you might want to see your friend,” Blackbyrne said.
My hands itched to strike him. Instead, I shoved them into my pockets and conjured up my best imitation of Father’s most lofty sneer. “Mr. Flaherty is no friend of mine.”
Griffin stared at me in confusion. “Whyborne?”
My heart pounded; it seemed Blackbyrne must surely hear. “You picked the wrong man to betray,” I told Griffin. “What do you think now of your asset?”
“No! I love—” Then he caught himself. His shoulders slumped wearily, and he looked away. “Never mind. It hardly matters now.”
I couldn’t breathe. There was no reason for him to say such a thing, not now, when he had nothing to gain from it.
“Ah.” Blackbyrne’s voice was low and soft in my ear. His breath caressed my cheek; it stank like something long dead. “I suspected there was something more behind your sudden desire to work with us. A lover scorned is a frightful enemy indeed.”
“Are we done here?” I asked, striving to sound bored.
“Indeed.” He turned back to the stair. “Come, Dr. Whyborne. We have many preparations to make yet for tonight.”
“Please,” I said, “call me Percy.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Griffin’s head lift a fraction of an inch. I didn’t dare look at him, though. I could only hope my signal had been received.
Blackbyrne smiled. “And you must call me Theron. I think we are going to work together very closely indeed.”
He started up the stair. I followed, but at the moment, I would almost rather have stayed in the basement with the Guardians.
~ * ~
Father’s shock upon seeing me with Blackbyrne verged on the comical. We found him in the study, sipping brandy with seven or eight other men, most of whom I recognized. The majority formed the elite of Widdershins, although some hailed from Boston and Kingsport. No wonder the police had refused to investigate Philip Rice’s death.
Blackbyrne made a show of introducing me around. “I’m surprised to see you here, Percival,” Father said. Stanford didn’t speak, only glared at me sullenly, as if my appearance had taken something from him.
“Leander was my friend. He died at my side.” Because I was too weak to hold onto his hand. “Don’t you think I would do anything to change that?”
Father looked uncertain, but gave me a grudging nod. “Well. Good. Loyalty is everything.” As if he’d ever shown the slightest hint of loyalty to me. “Glad to have you with us, son.”
I nodded politely. Blackbyrne’s long-nailed hand closed on my elbow. “Percy and I have some things to discuss,” he said silkily, and drew me away. “What do you think?” he asked, when we were alone in the hall.
I’d not forgotten what he said at the Ladysmith. “Small-minded fools. They see money as an end in itself, not as a steppingstone to real power. Even those with higher ambitions only dare imagine themselves senators, or presidents.”
Blackbyrne let out a delighted laugh at my audacity. “And I’ve had none but them to speak with since my resurrection,” he said, his hand slipping from my elbow to settle rather familiarly at my waist. Dear God, please don’t let him be taking me to a bedroom.
Thankfully, he merely led me to the library. “This is the ritual we will perform tonight, when the stars are right,” he said.
The stolen scroll lay on a table. He lifted it, forcing me to stand with my shoulder pressed against his in order to read it.
I’d already seen most of it, of course, but now I could read it in full. All being done, the gate closes; Yog-Sothoth closes; the Beyond-One closes. All not being done, the demons of the night will come through; Those Outside will enter in, and they will not hear you. Give to them a man; send him through the gate; they will accept the sacrifice; they will close the door. All being done, the container will be yours to command, and lo shall it make the rivers into deserts, and the desert into ocean, and lift up the land or cast it down as you say.
The container. Leander. Did Addison really know what Blackbyrne had planned for his son? Or did he believe that Leander would be the one in control?
Blackbyrne carefully laid the papyrus back on the table. “You have the Liber Arcanorum, do you not?”
It wasn’t really a question. “Yes. I’ve studied it as thoroughly as possible, given the brief time it’s been in my possession.”
“It was mine once, you know. Left behind in the care of the Brotherhood, along with instructions on how to bring me back.” For a moment, a flash of hatred and anger distorted his features into something demonic, before smoothing out again. “Instructions they were…tardy…in following.”
Perhaps if I kept him talking, he would say something useful. “How did it come into Philip Rice’s hands?”
“The fools chose to recruit him instead of you, when they finally decided to restore me,” Blackbyrne said with a sneer. “He had some small sorcerous skill—a dabbler only, not like you and me, but enough to follow the instructions I had laid out. After my return, he assisted with the creation of the Guardians—I believe he was the one who obtained the materials from the museum.”
“But his nerve failed,” I guessed.
“He was weak.” Blackbyrne’s dark eyes burned with contempt. “He mailed the book to his father, believing that would somehow act as insurance. But I had plumbed its depths long ago.”
Had Philip known what he was getting into, when he returned Blackbyrne to life? Or had the Guardians—or Blackbyrne’s own monstrous nature—proved more horrible than he’d imagined?
“But enough of these matters,” Blackbyrne said, waving a negligent hand. “There are far more interesting things I wish to discuss with you.”
He began to speak, then, about the arcane arts, the Al Azif and the Arcanorum, about his travels in Europe and the things he had seen and learned there. Conjecture, and theory, and the painstaking pursuit of knowledge.
I found myself drawn into conversation. And, God help me, I enjoyed it.
I’d conversed with my professors at university, of course, and somewhat with my fellow students. And of course there was Christine, but her interests and mine overlapped only in the matter of hieroglyphics.
Blackbyrne, though, was truly brilliant. When I spoke of the advances in philology and the hidden relationships between languages, he listened avidly, drinking in every word. Asking questions, making suggestions…
In any other circumstances, I would have hoped to call him a friend. And when he stepped up and let his fingers trail along the side of my face, my heart beat a bit too hard, and I wasn’t as revolted as I should have been.
“What was Leander to you?” he murmured, studying me with those penetrating eyes.
“You already know.” My voice sounded thick and a little breathy.
“Hmm. And you wished to uncover the secrets of the island, and he came with you.”
I couldn’t look away from him. “Our interests coincided in more ways than one.”
He was too close, his lips only a hairs-breadth away. “He’ll be a boy still. Caught in the moment of his death. Fresh and ripe.”
The sour taste of bile coated the back of my throat. “In some ways, but he’ll also be…more,” I said carefully, and truly I was treading a tightrope over a bottomless pit. Except if I fell, I’d take Griffin with me.
“The Container. The Immortal Vessel. You know what it means, don’t you?”
“I know Yog-Sothoth will open the gate, and something will come through and merge with him.”
“It will. And trapped in a human shell, it will be at our command.” His tongue flicked out, touching my lips. A tiny whimper escaped me. “Bound by the words we will speak, in the husk of your young lover. Shall we share him?”
I wanted to crawl out of my own skin to get away. “That seems only fair. And I suspect you know how to make things far more…interesting.”
He drew back and gave me a look full of erotic promise. “Indeed. I would offer you a preview now, but alas, one must abstain before undertaking such a ritual. After, though…”
“I am filled with anticipation.” Of a dreadful sort.
“As am I. It’s been a very long time since I was able to indulge.”
I shuddered to imagine what his idea of indulging might include. If the Immortal Vessel were truly indestructible, there would be no need to hold back in any fashion. Not to suggest he would anyway; how many bodies might be buried in various locations around the grounds of his old estate, a testimony to his appetites? Or had he simply recycled them into Guardians when he was done?
“Return to the others, then. I’ll see you later.”
I took his hand and lifted it to my lips, brushing them lightly against the knuckles. His flesh had an oddly rubbery texture, and the odor of the grave clung to it. A soft sigh of pleasure escaped him, and for a horrible moment I thought I’d gone too far, and he would pull me to him.
He didn’t. I released his hand and went to the door, shutting it carefully behind me. I managed to make it to the next hall before collapsing against the wall, all the strength gone from my legs. I wanted to scrub my skin until it blistered; I wanted to drag the very thought of Blackbyrne from my head and dissolve it in bleach.
The sound of distant footsteps echoed from some other room. I hurriedly climbed to my feet; if anyone came along and found me in such a state, everything I’d managed so far would be for naught. I had to compose myself, for Griffin’s sake as well as mine.
Taking a deep breath, I forced my spine straight. I had confronted Blackbyrne successfully. Now, I just had to do the same with my father.