Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Nina
Pearson was awake.
“Harboring unreported relics! I should confiscate everything in this dungeon.”
And apparently feeling like himself.
Nina carried a tray with a fresh pitcher of water and a plate of food, the contents rattling with each step. She set down her burden on the table.
On the night of the equinox, she traded shifts with her father. Aunt Prudy couldn’t be trusted not to slaughter their guest and was exempt from guard duty. Her father gleefully informed her that Pearson survived an attempted poisoning because he could smell the wolfsbane. Fascinating, yes?
Watching Pearson’s transformation had been fascinating, she had to admit.
“No one is harboring unreported relics,” she said.
He snarled, flashing a mouth full of pointy teeth.
She stepped closer to the cage to get a better look.
Her fingers twitched, wanting to push back his lips and examine his mouth as one might examine the teeth of animals, but she restrained herself.
As loathsome as she found Pearson, he was a person and not livestock.
Instead, she said, “That looks uncomfortable.”
Pearson laughed, watery and wrong. “You need to be a bit more specific. All of me is uncomfortable.”
“The teeth.” She wiggled her fingers at her mouth to demonstrate.
“Yes.” He ran a not entirely human-looking tongue along the teeth. “New teeth. They’re more odd than uncomfortable.”
“Did they push out the old ones or were those reabsorbed?” Nina asked out of curiosity.
Pearson gave her a look so cutting that it did not matter that his eyes were a murky black, his skin a blue-green hue, or that he now had fins along the side of his head that poked out of his hair. He was utterly himself with that expression of contempt.
“Fuck, you’re a morbid woman,” he said, “and stop distracting me. This cell is an unregistered artifact and exceptionally powerful. A tier two artifact, possibly a tier one. I should have mentioned it sooner, but I was distracted.”
“Your arrival was distracting,” she agreed.
He snarled again. “This relic needs to be surrendered to the government to be studied. You know the regulations.”
It was heartening to know that his physical transformation had not changed his personality.
“I do, and I’m sure you’re equally aware that an artifact being actively used by a hunter is exempt,” she said.
“Actively used how?” he asked with a fishy sneer.
Nina raised her brows but otherwise made no reply.
He huffed, fins flexing up and down on his head.
“Your features are remarkably expressive,” she said.
He grumbled an uncharitable reply that Nina chose to ignore.
“Step back,” she ordered, and opened the panel near the bottom of the door to slide in the tray.
“What is that?” Pearson asked.
“Lunch. I don’t trust Prudy not to try to poison you again, so it’s cold chicken, bread, and an apple.
I’m not much of a cook, I’m afraid.” Her culinary skills were limited to making a sandwich and frying an egg.
It hadn’t really been an issue. Her aunt and mother kept her fed, schedule permitting, and when it did not, the tavernkeepers in town filled the gap.
“You have other skills.”
The casual compliment astounded her. Fortunately, he countered this by picking up the plate with the sandwich and sniffing, as if searching for poison. Thus was harmony achieved in the world.
“I’m not sure if I should be flattered or insulted that you believed I would hoard a tier one artifact,” she said, settling onto a nearby chair.
“It’s a moot point. Without a constant source of power, the cages are tier three, I’m afraid.
They’re remarkably effective when they’re fully charged.
No creature or beast has managed to open them. ”
Satisfied with whatever he smelled, or failed to smell, he took an enormous bite, devouring half the sandwich.
“Are you even chewing?” she asked, astounded. She should have used the entire loaf of bread. One sandwich was clearly not enough.
“How’d you do that?” he asked, gesturing to the open panel with half the sandwich.
“Oh, I have a knack.” Truthfully, she had no idea. She had lived her entire life with these three artifacts under her feet, and she simply didn’t have to think about it. They opened when she desired.
“It doesn’t hurt you?”
“It tickles.”
He made a thoughtful noise and shoved the rest of the sandwich in his too-pointy mouth.
“Why doesn’t it have a battery?” he asked, mouth full of sandwich and teeth. “It’d be a tier one artifact with a constant power supply.”
“There was one originally, but it was unstable. Burned down the barn and the surrounding houses.”
Pearson sniffed the glass of water, then drained it. “Is that why you have all this big plot of land? I thought your family was too snooty for neighbors.”
Nina had heard the story of her long-gone uncle, the great artificer.
She hadn’t appreciated how the incident shaped Sweetwater Point until it came up in school as a cautionary tale against meddling with relics and artifacts.
The early days on Nexus were a wild, unpredictable time and the artifacts were equally wild and unpredictable.
If the occasional empowered object was discovered in grandmama’s attic, it was best to leave it alone.
“Oddly, the neighbors were reluctant to rebuild,” she said.
“Your family must have paid a fortune in restitution.”
“It was a hundred and twenty years ago, Major. That matter was handled.”
He had the decency to wince.
“Still sore about that, I see,” he said.
“My cousin’s death is still a tender subject, yes.”
“I handled the situation. Jollett was put to use.”
“You led me to believe that the beast would be executed.”
“Conscription is better than death.”
“Marginally,” she replied, her tone dry.
“I know you have… strong feelings about what happened, but no one else was killed.”
“He would have murdered Dora.”
“Never. He was sweet on her.”
“Half the town is sweet on her. She’s the most popular singer in the music hall. That does not explain his actions.”
“Doesn’t it?” Pearson’s hand reached toward the bars and flexed, like he wanted to grab them again, but stopped himself.
Nina considered the situation, the beast drawn to a woman. He had been desperate to reach her. “She was his anchor?”
“I think that was his intention.”
“That connection has to be mutual,” she said.
“I wouldn’t know. You’re the expert.”
The grimoires, all the journals her family kept, mentioned this phenomenon. A connection to a person, usually a romantic, acted as an anchor and kept the monster stable. She saw it in her own deputy Hal and his wife, Emma DeLacey. Emma kept Hal grounded and, for lack of a better word, human.
“He was searching for his anchor,” she concluded.
“How long until you release me?”
“Soon. When it does, you can have a hot bath, a filling meal, and then you can leave. We never have to speak to each other again.”
She looked forward to it.
Anthony
The mirror didn’t lie.
As much as he’d prefer the lies, it was better to confront the truth.
Anthony wiped away steam from the mirror. It was polished steel, not silver-backed, and did not sting or burn his hand.
Finfolk.
He had never seen one in person before, but he had heard enough stories growing up to recognize the creature looking back at him.
The eyes were inhuman and completely black.
His face was still recognizably his, but the skin was different.
Moving his face from side to side, the light shimmered.
The hair on his head had grown an absurd amount in two days.
What had once been a neat trim was now untidy and shaggy.
More alarming, the hair on his chest, arms, and other parts of his anatomy had vanished.
He pushed the shaggy hair back, revealing the fins that had grown along the shell of his ears.
He twisted, trying to view his back. The mirror was too small. Slinging his arm around, he felt the newly grown fins that ran along his back. And he couldn’t forget the fins that grew along his forearms and the webbing between his fingers and toes.
A strange texture covered every inch of him. Scales. They had been darker, more vivid, during the surge. He could not recall properly. Pain and the disorientation of being broken, stretched, and knitted back together distracted him.
The scales covered everything. Alarmingly, his member was covered by a layer of scales.
He prodded the area, finding a seam where the scales parted.
He was still intact underneath and worked when he answered the call of nature.
If it still functioned for other activities, he did not feel such stirrings.
It was strange. He felt like himself, yet… not. The creature in the mirror wasn’t him, and yet it was.
The creature blinked. Once. Twice, a translucent layer that made his eyes a little more gray than black.
As a child, he had been fascinated by the wood panel carvings of the finfolk in the great hall.
Creatures with large eyes and long fingers tangled with seaweed, clutching the instruments used to lure people to watery graves.
His family knew.
That strange visage of the finfolk was engraved on the medallion his parents gave him.
The curse was more than a whispered rumor.
It was a very real affliction. They punished the servants for even whispering about the finfolk, but creatures were literally carved into the bones of Saltwick.
He wished he had memorized the stories he heard in the kitchens from the cook and maids.
He wished he had asked better questions when cousin Madeline disappeared.
Roderick implied she went away to be cured.
The servants claimed she died and her body had been removed under the cloak of darkness. Surely one of those had to be true.
The cage had unlocked automatically, as Nina promised. A hot bath soon followed, as she also promised. She also promised that they would never have to see each other again and he simply did not find that agreeable. Not agreeable in the least.
Steam curled off the water in the large cast-iron tub, filling the room.
He eased his way in, distressed as the scales shifted from translucent to a deep blue -green. The heat soaked through, releasing the tension in his muscles.
He cleaned himself thoroughly with soap and a cloth, paying careful attention to the new bits of himself. He was too different now. The changes would be impossible to hide.
He needed a cure. He needed to return to Saltwick.