Chapter 12
The train that goes to the Idles—the small cluster of islands off the coast of Astera where Shiloh Asylum is housed—leaves from the southwest corner of the Windsor at six in the evening.
We stay vigilant on the railcar and only forty minutes later, Peter, Sophia, and I are wandering up the driveway to Shiloh.
“This is more terrifying than Arkham,” Peter says, staring up at the sagging old building, cobwebs and broken shutters dotted throughout.
“It’s not as bad inside.” I don’t mention that I was almost killed by a vampire orderly here. He’s had a rough enough day as it is.
Peter does have a point, though. The unrelenting winter hasn’t done any favors for dear old Shiloh. The trees are sickly and bare of leaves, the already-peeling paint cracked off the building with the shedding snow, and icicles hang from the faded awning out front like sharpened canines.
“Maybe you’ll find your very own Harley Quinn in there,” Sophia says with a gleam in her eye.
“She fell in love with a patient,” Peter mumbles. “That is not encouraging.”
“We’ll make this quick.” Not just to avoid the haunted-looking facility and the High Thane’s son on my tail.
If Fiona knew we’d ditched the safety of Harker to talk to the eccentric woman I found here last fall, she’d have my head mounted on her classroom desk.
But I’m not ready to tell anyone I’m worse off than we already thought, least of all her.
Not without some answers.
Inside, holiday music rattles out of rundown speakers, a month too late.
We take advantage of the empty front desk and slip down the hall I’d followed the vampire through.
Down sets of stairs and through winding hallways, my detailed hunter’s memory guiding the way.
At the door with the key card, I use my daggers to break inside and inhale the familiar scent of medical-grade cleaning fluid and mildly floral air freshener.
“You might want to brace yourself,” I tell Peter and Soph beside me. “She’s a little unsettling.”
We walk down the narrow hall until we arrive at the room—though it’s more of a plexiglass holding cell. I take a deep breath and peer inside. But it’s empty.
Not just empty as in the woman’s been taken out for a stroll to look at the bird feeders. Empty of linens, of slippers, of furniture. A floor and padded walls. That’s it.
Sophia cups her hands against the glass. “Where is she?”
“Good question.”
Peter kicks at an old paper cup. “You sure this was the room?”
I crouch down on the linoleum flooring and brush my fingers over a single singe mark. “I burned a vampire right here. This was definitely it.”
I try not to assume the worst—that she passed away—but can’t imagine where else the woman could have gone. I kick myself for not visiting her earlier, but I hadn’t thought of it until Peter brought up my impending madness.
“We should go,” Peter says, checking his watch. “Fiona will notice if you aren’t at dinner.”
On our way out, we pass the front desk where that same sweet, graying woman from the last time I was here sits before what might be the first computer ever made.
“Hi there,” I try in my best Penny Pine voice. “You had a patient here who I read a book to on a volunteer trip, and I was hoping to bring her a belated holiday gift. I just cannot for the life of me remember her name.” I flash a big smile for good measure.
The woman’s brows knit together, and at first I wonder if it’s because my chipper attitude is so at odds with my aesthetic. Pitch-black hair; steely, slate-gray eyes; and a gothic, Victorian-era locket do not pair well with a sunny disposition.
“We don’t have any volunteer programs like that,” she says. “Unless my memory is failing me again.”
I almost feel bad, but the fate of the world—and, thus, this kind, floral-scrub-wearing woman’s life—hangs in the balance here. “It was with ACFAC? Last fall?”
“Well”—she shakes her head—“give me a description, and I’ll see if I can help.”
Score. “She was elderly, maybe eighty or so, with dark gray hair and pale eyes. Perhaps she was blind?” I try to remember what I can about the woman and find my heart rate kicking up.
She’d scared me, if I’m honest. More than the vampire I’d fought.
Something about her voice, her gnarled fingers, like she’d tried to scratch her way out…
“She wasn’t well in the head. She spoke in rhymes. Sometimes she sang them?”
The nurse chews her lip in thought but eventually shakes her head. “I’m certain we’ve never had a woman like that here. I’ve worked at Shiloh for nearly three decades. My memory may not be what it once was, but I know my patients.”
“But—”
“Thank you,” Peter says to the woman at the front desk. “We must have the wrong hospital.”
We stalk outside in crushed silence.
Perhaps I’m already starting to lose touch with reality. Maybe the woman was never there in the first place. I’d been drugged by that vampire. Maybe I’d misremembered the entire thing.
In another life this would have been a great night to get some hunting done—take my mind off our failure—but even that’s been taken away from me.
Not only are Harker students forbidden from hunting in Astera unsupervised, but I’m also on the Brood’s most wanted list. Not a good time to go pick a fight with deviants.
Sophia and Peter know me well enough to give me and my glum mood some space, which means that when we round the blustery corner heading toward the subway station and my body lights up like a spark plug, images of matted beige fur and snarling canines filling my vision, they’re at least two feet away and unable to stop the werewolf from grabbing me around the waist.
I kick and thrash at my assailant, regular aeon bloodlust peaking and soaring in the familiar way I’m used to.
I was looking for a fight and I got one.
All hail whatever gods are looking out for murderous hunters having bad days.
My daggers flash out and I swipe, cutting into skin and fur before the werewolf howls in pain and drops me onto the pavement of the quiet, empty street.
By then, Sophia and Peter have reached us. Silver arrows sail through the air, Peter’s long sword slashes, and I almost, almost feel sorry for this fucker who’s going to die at the hands of not one but three murderous hunters having bad days. What a way to go.
Until the wolf scrapes a claw toward Sophia as she’s nocking her next arrow and Peter raises his sword just in time, blocking the werewolf’s blow.
I’m only a second away from driving my silver into the thick fur at the beast’s chest when he whirls on Peter and roars loud enough to set off a car alarm one block down the road.
And in that split second, Peter panics.
He doesn’t feint left and swing his blade into the creature with all he’s got like I might have. He hesitates. Takes a split second to swallow his fear.
And that’s all the time the beast needs to lunge with his maw for Peter’s ribs—
In that moment I see the most horrible fate I can imagine play out before me:
Peter, writhing in agony on the street outside of Shiloh. Waiting for the lycanthrope venom to take hold. Turned, trying to protect Sophia and me. Doomed to a life as a deviant.
My scar burns white-hot with the imagery. Fury spools around my bones and flesh and muscle. Bloodlust I had once before, when I found that pool of Reid’s blood. Only today it’s at the thought of this monster turning my friend.
I will not let it happen. Not to Peter.
My limbs move on pure, undiluted instinct. My vision glows red and blurry. My daggers arrive right in time. I slash into the werewolf’s mouth before his teeth can take out the chunk of Peter they’re aiming for. Fangs and blood scatter the snow-laden pavement. Enamel and flesh and dirt-crusted ice.
The wolf falls to the ground, and my syrabraxa takes over.
I descend on him.
Slashing and roaring and driving my daggers. Each cut of silver through wet, tangled fur more satisfying than the last. I lose track of time. I know only butchery.
“He’s dead, Viv,” Peter husks after who knows how long. “It’s enough.”
My dagger only flies back down into the werewolf’s still heart.
“Viv—” Sophia’s voice is alarmed.
But I can’t stop. This…thing…inside of me demands blood. And the creature whose fur I’m ripping into almost turned Peter. My Peter. My family. On a mission I dragged him into. The werewolf has to suffer for what he tried to do to someone I love—
“Viv!” Sophia is urging me. “More are coming, you need to get up—”
My blades are driving so fiercely into the werewolf’s body I’m bypassing flesh and hitting the cold asphalt underneath. But I can’t get up. I can’t warn my friends. I can’t stop—
And then they’re pulling me off the pulpy mess of what was once a werewolf and dragging me back behind the wrought-iron fence that surrounds Shiloh and into a copse of trees.
I thrash until Sophia grasps my shoulders. Peter’s arms wrap tightly around my waist. “What is wrong with you?” Sophia snaps. “There’s a herd of Brood out there.”
When the syrabraxa’s influence dissipates, it’s not the condemnation in her voice that gets me; it’s what I see in her eyes. In Peter’s eyes.
Not just worry.
Fear.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe. “I don’t know…”
But I do. I do know what’s happening. The syrabraxa is making me into what I’ve always feared. The worst of what aeons are capable of. Maybe the Elders had created the lore that we killed mortals, but the bloodlust was always inside us, straining to be let free.
“I’m sorry.” I repeat, pulling myself out of their grasp.
“It’s fine,” Sophia says. But her dark brown eyes are more than wary.
“Sophia…” But then I sense it.
Or rather, sense him. Greased dark hair, a snarling grin, and cold, unfeeling eyes that never crinkle despite hysterical, giddy laughter.
Click, click, click—
Nervous, needy claws tap together in macabre excitement around the corner.
“Get back,” I whisper, heart slamming into my lungs.
We squish deeper into the snowy trees and peer out through the wrought iron. On the sidewalk outside Shiloh, Finn, two Brood, and his redheaded warlock have happened upon what’s left of their werewolf.
“Our aeon must have been very angry,” Finn tsks, toeing a heap of severed fur and flesh with his boot. I wish I could say I repulsed myself, but the sight only sends a thrill into my veins. Do not lay a hand on Peter Roydon. End of discussion.
“So she was here,” one of his Brood says.
“Clearly,” Finn murmurs, baring teeth at his lackey. “Good thing it was just a turned she filleted.”
My stomach twists. The class discrimination among the deviants is revolting.
“What now, my liege?” the warlock asks.
Finn kneels and brushes a finger through the werewolf’s remains.
“The fight wasn’t too long ago. Search the area.
” The Brood nod and take off, but the redheaded warlock stays behind.
“Ten more men at the station up by the Windsor,” Finn tells him.
“That’s where our wolf saw her get on. The school has to be nearby.
” He scans the neighborhood and looming asylum with a shrewd eye.
“We’ll smoke her out before the new moon. ”
We stay under the tree cover for long minutes until we are sure Finn and his Brood are gone. Only then do we breathe easily. Even still, there’s so much shame coursing through me, I can barely turn to face Sophia and Peter.
When I do, Peter looks stricken.
“That was him,” he stammers, brows knit as if he hardly believes his own words.
“Who?” Worry carves Sophia’s forehead beneath her sweat-coated bangs. “Finn?”
When Peter’s gaze doesn’t leave the empty, chilled sidewalk where Finn just stood, Sophia grasps his face between her hands. “Who, Peter?”
But bone-deep sorrow is slinking through me. An understanding I’d give anything not to know.
I’ll never forget his face, Peter had said that night in the commons when he told me of his mother’s death. The sound of his claws clicking together…
Peter swallows hard. “The Brood demon that killed my mom.”
When we’re back in the lantern-lit embrace of Harker’s Old Campus, Peter rubs his neck, his eyes finding the moonlit spires and iron-tipped spikes of the school’s ancient architecture. “Think I’m going to call it a night.”
“Peter.” Sophia’s voice is nearly pleading. “I don’t think you should be alone right now.”
“Well, being around people isn’t much better. I almost got you guys killed.”
I take a step closer to him, chest tightening at his implication. “That was not your fault back there—”
“Don’t bullshit me, Viv.” His eyes are bloodshot. “I failed to protect my mom, and Kitty—” Peter’s voice cracks on her name. “And I almost just cost both of you your lives.”
Sophia crosses her arms. “That is not true and you know it.”
“I froze! Being a hunter is about saving people. It’s about heroism. And that’s just never going to be me, is it?” He shakes his head, walking off into the night before Sophia and I can argue.
We reach the creaking wooden door of our dorm minutes later. It’s been a terrible, unproductive day, and I’m ready to sleep for a year.
“Miss Abbot?” a kind, older voice says near my hip.
I look down to find one of Harker’s gnomes, pushing a cart of packages and parcels.
As with the kitchen, the gnomes run the school’s postal service.
The gnome has a bulbous nose, bushy brows, small, wide eyes, and she’s wearing a navy Harker uniform.
To a mortal, gnomes appear just shy of human-looking.
Enough to make you wonder about what you’ve seen and then scold yourself for being judgmental of the kindest person you spoke to all day.
“That’s me,” I say.
“Enjoy your parcel.” The gnome offers a toothy grin, then places a small package wrapped hastily in brown paper in my hands. There’s no label on it, but as soon as I feel the shape of it, I know I’m holding a camera.
The gnome isn’t even two doors down before I tear at the paper and reveal a brand-spanking-new 35mm camera.
It’s heavy—entirely made of silver. Just like the one I described to Reid on the subway we took back from Shiloh four months ago when the leaves were changing color and he was barely my friend.
“Who’s that from?” Sophia asks.
Tears let themselves loose down my cheeks.
“Reid,” I murmur. “This is his way of telling me he’s alive.”