Fathomless (37 page)

His departure from the seed world was too sudden and too soon. Daniel had started calling Barnabas Marsh grandfather by the end of the Innsmouth trip, but now Sean had lost his chance to call Orne that. There was no use saying it to the inanimate minister and no time to call Orne back. Helen could return from the Archives, or Mr. Glass could wander into the library to snoop on what Daniel was reading. Next time. Or the time after. Mom had wanted him to have a chance at magic. She'd asked Orne to make it happen.

Sean arrowed to the palm shadow within the horns of the crescent moon and popped back into himself, crouched on the ladder, wingless.

But.

The glass crow hovered in its usual place above Nyarlathotep's casting hand, and it would mind his wings for him.

 

YOU'VE FOUND HIM

Theophilus
Marvell left it to Helen to write the initial curator's report on Sean's whistle. That it might date back to Egypt's Old Kingdom had thrilled her—she was too young to have lost her awe for vast stretches of time, even if they were vast only in mortal terms. The script on the whistle was far more ancient than the instrument, and its gold alloy was sure to puzzle consulting metallurgists with its extraterrestrial components.

From the university, he walked to Geldman's. As Cybele filled his usual order, her lash-veiled gaze chastised him for entering the pharmacy under an illusion. But he was tired, unwilling to drop his mask until he meant to leave it off for a while, and that was not until a quarter hour later, when he turned onto Lich Street.

As on most fine summer days, gravestone-rubbers haunted its antique boneyard, too busy with their chalks to notice how Theophilus Marvell changed dark hair for blond and brown eyes for blue, how he shed twenty pounds and twenty years, to become Redemption Orne. The gray tabby sunning on his neighbor's porch saw the illusion break. She didn't flick a whisker, for she'd seen the sudden change many times before, and being a cat, she approved it.

Redemption unlocked Number Five, at the same time probing his wards. They were undisturbed, and in the shaft of sunlight that entered the front hall with him, even the dust motes seemed to have hung unmoving since his hurried exit the day before. It had been a mistake to show Sean the guest-magician avatar and the peephole. Knowing about them had allowed the boy to bring Daniel into the seed world, had allowed Daniel to find out about his grandfather, had precipitated the perilous trip to Innsmouth. Thank the Master it had all worked out well—Sean and his friends had come through the trial whole, and Redemption had even advanced his cause. He and Sean had met face-to-face at last and parted as de facto mentor and apprentice, for one could hardly call them less after the success of the whistle and Sean's decision to keep the seed world secret, a place where they might continue their “illicit” lessons.

Redemption set his pharmacy order on the hall table and smiled at the familiar candy-striped bag. Solomon Geldman, the eternal enigma. He'd helped plant doubt of Marvell (hence of the Order) in Sean's mind, but then he had used the special Order meeting to engineer Daniel's crisis, a mad complication to throw into their interwoven schemes. It had been an agony to sit still, illusioned as Marvell, while Sean and Daniel eavesdropped on the revelations that Geldman coaxed out of the other participants. Still, given the positive outcome, maybe Geldman had taken one of his cryptic longer views after all. Redemption would visit the pharmacy again that evening, try once more to puzzle out the enigma's motives, if only for both their amusements.

First he had to see to Patience and her donor.

Thank the Master again, the reawakening process had gone smoothly so far. Adrift in the dreams of Lethe Powder, supported by Geldman's reverse leech, Garth Lynx had proved a bounteous tap, and Patience's heart had begun to beat, her lungs to draw air, her cheeks and lips to blush the palest pink, like the blowsy petals of the roses in the dooryard, whose forebears she'd raised so long ago. In three more days, maybe four, Redemption could send Garth on his way with a harmless gap in his memory and money fattening his wallet. Then Redemption would slowly, safely, bring Patience back to full animation.

His buoyant mood lasted another three steps into the hall. On the fourth step, he felt the change he'd overlooked on first entering the house, for his palms began to prickle, the bones in his inner ears to vibrate. Say he was standing right next to Patience—in her current state between trance and waking, he'd expect to feel her resurging energy this strongly.

He was not standing right next to her.

He was not in the same room.

Or in the subcellar, or even in the basement.

Redemption grabbed the pharmacy bag and ran. He pelted down the basement stairs, plunged into the subcellar. With every step he took, his sense of Patience should have strengthened. Instead it grew weaker, and before he skidded off the last step, he knew that the time he'd thought he had, that three or four days? Time had fled from the chill space, as had the psychic scent of Patience's exquisite and exquisitely enjoyed nightmares. Replacing it was the copper tang of blood, because Patience had awakened, and Patience had left her alcove, and Patience had not been content to sip when she could quaff.

Garth Lynx wore an oozing choker of wounds where her feeding tentacles had battened onto his neck and gnawed their way down to the veins themselves. Multiple direct taps had meant a swift death for him, a swift glut for Patience. She'd also detached Garth from Geldman's reverse leech and tucked its proboscis back into its tank, where it lolled in its nutriment broth, happily brainless and therefore untroubled by the carnage around it. Patience hadn't been content merely to tentacle-feed. Craving as always the salty-sweet taste of blood, she had cut Garth's left wrist with a scalpel from Redemption's surgical kit. His arm still dangled over the side of the gurney, its hand in a pail she'd set to catch his flow.

The pail contained only clotted residue.

Redemption knocked it aside and lifted Garth's arm onto the gurney. If he could take any comfort, it was in the wondering smile on the boy's gray face. He had remained asleep and dreaming, had never felt her ravening, never seen her rub his blood on her face and throat, reveling in it.

But Redemption didn't want that comfort. He didn't deserve it. He was supposed to have started Garth toward as decent a future as money and the boy's talent could secure. Instead he'd have to put him into the furnace, piece by piece. He couldn't let Patience clean up her own mess. She'd probably hum over the work.

Redemption stamped the bloody pail to bloody plastic shards. Then he went looking for Patience.

*   *   *

Her
energetic aura wasn't hard to track, for after such gorging it flared high. She was on the second floor, in her bedroom, already showered and dressed in clothes a few years outdated, which she would soon replace. When Redemption pushed through the half-open door, she didn't turn from the vanity mirror but smiled at his reflection as she continued combing out auburn hair dampness had darkened to vermilion. Her eyes were feverish with the glee of waking, and gluttony had swollen her belly to an obscene semblance of pregnancy. Most terrible were her teeth—they gleamed so innocently white, he had to fight an urge to pound them out of her mouth. Not that she would have stood for that at any time in her life and long undeath. “I know,” she said. “You're angry about the donor.”

“It was so unnecessary, Patience!”

“I suppose.”

“You know it was! You knew I'd be back, I'd take care of you.”

“Well, if you were so worried about him, you should have stayed with us. You must have realized I was waking up, and you certainly know how hungry I am when I do.”

He bowed his head. “I thought I had more time.”

“Perhaps, but you've awakened me often enough to know how uncertain the timing can be. Truth is, you were more worried about another boy than you were about that one in the cellar.”

He lifted his head.

Patience had swiveled on her stool to face him. She never illusioned herself for him alone; therefore, she flaunted their Master's gift, eyes like his, three-lobed, three-slitted, white lava within the slits. “So I'm right. It's
our
boy, isn't it?”

Redemption took three heavy steps to the bed and sat, exhausted, in need of feeding himself. Sensing his emptiness, Patience came to sit beside him and rubbed the center of her left palm until not tentacles but a teat emerged. The blood that welled from it was gold, again like their Master's, Garth's donation transmuted. When Patience's cupped hand had filled with the shimmering liquid, she raised it to Redemption's lips, and he could not refuse the chalice. He drank every drop; then, soothed and roused by her bitter honey, licked her skin clean and sucked more directly from the teat. Wasn't it always so, wouldn't it always be, for ever and ever, amen.

When finally Redemption released the teat, intoxicated beyond the anger that he should have clung to, that he would have to find again later and turn on himself, Patience withdrew her hand. “It's our boy,” she said again. “Sean Wyndham. Your mind's bursting with it. You've found him.”

“I found him long ago.”

“You know how I mean it. You've
found
him.”

Redemption nodded. He took her bountiful hand and kissed the now-teatless palm, the wrist, the cool flesh above it.

Patience laughed like the young girl in the woods, as she'd been, like the young mother at her cradle. A third time, as if it were a spell, she said it: “You've found him.”

And Redemption nodded again, to seal the charm.

 

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my agent, Craig Tenney, and my editor at Tor, Miriam Weinberg, for being my magical mentors and again helping me string words into story.

Thanks to
Tor.com
for hosting Ruthanna Emrys and me in our Lovecraft reread blog. Ruthanna's takes on the stories and our readers' amazingly erudite and entertaining comments continue to illuminate the dark canon for me, in all shades of eldritch light.

And thanks ever to my alpha and beta and omega reader, Deb.

 

About the Author

ANNE M. PILLSWORTH
currently lives in a Victorian “trolley car” suburb of Providence, Rhode Island.
Summoned
is her first novel in the Redemption's Heir series, expanded from her widely acclaimed short story “Geldman's Pharmacy.” You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

TOR TEEN BOOKS BY
ANNE M. PILLSWORTH

The Redemption's Heir Series

Summoned

Fathomless

 

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