Heaven's Bones (40 page)

The little girl's hand was cool and dry in Sophie's sweaty fingers. She led her out the front door, and this time she was sure no servant opened it. Outside, the fog had risen, thick and hungry, and Sophie recoiled.

The girl tugged her hand. “You're safe with me,” she said. “At least in the fog. Otherwise …” She frowned. “Otherwise, I don't know. But you must come.”

“What's happening?” cried Sophie, desperate to understand something of what was going on.

“Slaughter,” said the girl, calmly. “Massacre. Trueblood's called the Angels down on St. Agnes, and they've no choice but to answer. He's built them that way.”

“Henry.”

“It's too late.”

She was about to object, about to dash back into the house and find her cousin. But a wave of dizziness passed over her, fast and
hot and strong, and only the grip of the girl's fingers on hers kept her from falling.

It was receding, thank God. Her face flushed hot but at least she hadn't fainted.

She smiled at the girl, at her serious little face, and opened her mouth to speak, and stopped, puzzled.

“What is it?” The girl sounded as if she might already know the answer.

“Why, that's odd,” said Sophie, frowning. “I don't know what I was going to say. Something I left inside, perhaps.”

“There's no time now,” said the girl, insistent. “You must come. Please.”

The fog pressed in around them, and Sophie couldn't help but imagine that it wanted to press closer, to be inside her, to possess her. She gripped the girl's hand a bit tighter. The girl walked through the blinding vapor as if it were transparent.

“What's your name?” she asked her.

The girl paused, and seemed to consider.

“I forget sometimes,” she said, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. She frowned.

“Frances—Fanny Weldon,” she said.

Of course—she said she was Weldon's daughter.

“How long have you lived in England?”

“England?” Fanny tugged her forward and she followed, trusting the girl across the odd terrain. “I don't think Riverbend's in England. After the Fire, we were just here, in the Mists. England's far away, sometimes. Sometimes close. Like now.”

It seemed to Sophie that for some time the fog had been lessening, and the familiar—or at least, less alien—landscape of Cornwall was visible periodically through fractures in the mist. She had the dim impression of two tall stones to her right, and the remains of a primitive path beneath her feet.

“Past the stones is the town,” said Fanny. “And Trueblood's Angels are killing them.”

Someone called for help, many someones, and Sophie automatically started toward the sound.

Fanny tugged on her skirt. “But over there,” she pointed in the opposite direction. “The Angels are killing your friend.”

A chilling cry pierced the air and Sophie gasped. She knew that voice, although she had never heard it raised in terror.

Cecelia.

Without a word she dashed into the still-thinning mist, leaving Fanny behind at the stones.

Fanny watched the woman vanish in the fog. She didn't follow; she had done what she could.

Somebody was standing, almost solid, behind her.

“Sadie,” said Fanny, without turning around. “I remember you now.”

Sadie's voice tickled her ear. “It's hard for a ghost to remember,” she said.

A ghost—was that what she was, in the end? Nothing more?

“My father,” said Fanny. “He—I'm sorry. You were my friend.”

Sadie's voice became harder. “Your father's found his place of damnation—or redemption, although I don't think he'll choose that path. Listen, Fanny—I don't have much time. I need to tell you about the foxes.”

“Foxes?”

“Do you remember, how they'd come sometimes, and play at the edge of the woods in the moonlight?”

“Yes. I remember.”

That summer, a year before Sherman came, when it was still warm but after heat and humidity made the nights a misery. Fanny and
Sadie snuck out to the porch and huddled together once the night became cool, and watched the vulpine bodies slip over and around each other, silver in the white light. She could feel the warmth of Sadie's body as she leaned against her. Sadie told her that the den was not far away, at the base of a big oak, and that Holbart had put out a poisoned rabbit that she had removed. Fanny could hear the laughter in her voice as she said it.

A few months later, Sadie disappeared.

“They found mine,” said Sadie, as if divining her thoughts. “So I know what I am. But yours, Fanny. The foxes pulled them out from the ashes, and took them to their den to play with, the naughty things. Tell him the old den at the base of the lightning-struck oak. That's where he'll find you.”

“Poor foxes. They didn't burn, did they, like in the Bible?”

Sampson had tied foxes together, set them alight, and loosed them in the fields of the Philistines. Clever but cruel, like her father.

“No, child. They're gone now, but they didn't burn. Don't forget to tell him, now. He'll take care of the rest.”

The lightest of touches on her shoulder, and Sadie was gone.

Sophie trusted her feet to find the path, fearing that if she thought about it too much she'd stumble and fall.

Her breath was catching in her throat when she saw the remains of the carriage—Lady Cecelia's carriage. Two figures stood beside it, next to a heap of …

Bodies. Two bodies. And the standing figures had widespread wings. One had a rope that extended somehow to one of the bodies …

God in Heaven. It was a tail. The creature had a tail, long and muscular, that protruded from its back, and it must have had a sharp tip or razor, because it was pinning …

… Cecelia. The thing had her pinned against the ground like a butterfly in a collector's box.

It seemed to go through her shoulder, and she was still moving, grasping the tail, trying to pull it off and out of her.

A few feet away the body of the coachman—Alex—lay still.

Sophie grasped the tentacle-like tail and pulled it out of Cecelia as best she could, trying to avoid any more tearing. Cecelia looked up at her, pale as death but still very much alive.

The Angel retracted her tail and she crouched over Cecelia, facing them both.

The one with the tail was at least otherwise normal, as far as she could tell. The other, who stood regarding the horrible scene with equanimity, was simply frightful to behold. Every ounce of Sophie's medical training rebelled against the possibility of the existence of such a creature.

From the woman's—Angel's—
creature's
midriff protruded another creature—a twisted mockery of a baby. The woman's face was mutilated as well—one eye sewn shut, and the mouth stitched closed as well.

“Get away,” Sophie shouted at them. It didn't look like any of Cecelia's vital organs were hit. She might still save her.

When the baby spoke, part of Sophie, the part that wasn't concerned about getting a cloth and staunching the bleeding, realized she was, they all were, in Hell, and England was, indeed, far away.

“We must,” said the baby. “We must kill all within and without St. Agnes. You as well.”

The other Angel whipped its demon tail around, aimed straight for her heart. Sophie didn't move, and felt Cecelia's hand tighten in hers. She closed her eyes for the blow.

When it didn't come she squinted up at the creature. It was—both of them were—staring at her in wonder. The sharp, razor-tipped
point of the tail was poised just over her sternum, touching her …

… no. Touching her medallion, which had fallen from under her shirtfront as she ran. She felt the same burning sensation underneath the disk of metal as she had when Robarts had stared at it, when he had called her …

“Margaret.” The baby breathed the name, and the Angel's remaining eye was open wide. A tear trickled down her ravaged face.

“You are Margaret,” said the other Angel, and her tail withdrew.

To Sophie's amazement, both of the terrible Angels kneeled to her.

A man was standing in the middle of the road. The wisps of fog made it unfamiliar, but Artemis recognized the place: It was where the main road intersected Hallows Lane, which led across the fields to the low stone church that had squatted there since Saxon times. It was as near the center of the village as never mind, as his mother would say, and a chill went through him as he remembered the sight of her, bearing a basketful of linen or apples, stopping to talk with the other women before the bake shop.

The man was tall and dressed in a dark suit, and there was something about his profile that made Artemis' chest catch, falter a beat—something familiar. It was the sweep of the nose and cheekbone, he realized. Half a dozen of his childhood friends had it, and more of their mothers and fathers. It was a trait of the village.

The man was looking at the sky, a dark blue-gray, where a deadly flutter of wings passed over, hesitated, and swooped. He turned his head to follow it, and Artemis saw the sharp curve of a cruel smile.

A bloodied bundle, child-size, lay almost at the man's feet, and he looked at it reflectively. He ignored the screams that echoed through the town, distorted by the omnipresent mist.

The man looked at Artemis, and Dirk behind him. His smile did not reach his eyes.

“More yet of you,” he said, in clear but queerly-accented English. “My sister was prolific in her day and her man potent. Else, perhaps she was a whore, and I wouldn't like to think
that.”

From somewhere across the moor came a long and lonely cry, and the wings above them swerved away to find it.

Dirk held the knife low and ready against his leg, and it could be the man …

What was his name? Artemis groped for it at the edge of his consciousness, but it slipped away and he couldn't
see
it, or
hear
it, or
touch
it …

… it could be the man didn't even see it. If he did, he didn't care.

“This
one,” he said, indicating Artemis with a negligent flick of his thumb. “This one is Sighted, but you, my young Vistana,
you
have the gift of Cursing. And I'm sure they made you suffer for it, didn't they?”

He bent close, his face inches from Dirk's. Dirk's lips thinned and he paled but he stood his ground.

The man gave a short harsh laugh. “I'm weak in the Sight, myself, but even I can see that. You were kept outside the light. You were turned away from hearth and home. You were called …”

The man seemed to consider his words, determining the flavor of them like a strange dish. Suddenly he smiled.

“You were called
Darkling.”

Dirk did flinch then, jerked back as if slapped.

The man didn't move. “Why would you spend a moment trying to help
them?
Why would you spend a second trying to stop
me?”