Iron Codex 2 - The Nightmare Garden (44 page)

I knew on some level that I wasn’t really hearing the voice that came out of the dark; rather, it had planted itself deep in my mind, where my Weird came from, where the memories of my oldest ancestors were stored.

Did you dream
the Old Ones whispered.

“Yes,” I whispered.

We have dreamed. We have dreamed stars and suns. The before time and the after time. Dreamed your world into being
.

“I want you to turn it back,” I said. “Stop all this from ever having happened. Stop me from having met Tremaine, having destroyed the Engine, all of it.”

Is that what you truly wish?
the voices hissed, like the burn of steam against my mind.
The before time of blood and entrapment? We are trapped. We are trapped so long, dreaming
.

Crow stood next to me, staring at the pinpoint as it grew larger and larger, and I saw all at once that it wasn’t a light but an eye, nearly as large as the dome itself, staring down at us from a fathomless distance. The Old Ones, linked inexorably with the nightmare clock. Now that I’d found its heart, they were speaking to me, letting me know what would happen if I turned the thing keeping them prisoner to my own use.

“I want what I did to have never happened,” I repeated.

But the world is bleeding
, the voice replied.
And the flow can never be stanched. You are a destroyer, and even the great gear of the worlds cannot turn back what has already been done
.

My mouth dropped open in shock and anger. “No. I stood up to those horrible things I had to see. Now I get to use the clock.”

Who are you to change the course of history?
the Old Ones whispered.
You have torn the world. For that there is no cure. Not in your lands, and not in this device. Some things cannot be unmade, Aoife Grayson. Some things simply are
.

I snapped my gaze to Crow, furious and unbelieving. “You lied to me,” I snarled.

Crow spread his hands, helpless. “I told you the clock
can’t simply turn time around. I thought maybe it would work for you, but there are some things nothing on earth or in the heavens can move, Aoife. The clock can’t undo time and knit the past back together—not like Tesla thought, like he told others it could. But maybe it can set things differently, allow you to see things in a new light.” He took my hand, even though I fought him. My skin was ice. I could feel the clock as a part of me, and saw that Crow and I were both limbs of a greater organism, while below us the Great Old Ones churned, a sea of things so ancient they didn’t even feel alive, only constant and cold, like the stars they traveled.

“Your life before,” Crow whispered. “Was that really a life you wanted? The world was sick long before the Gates shattered, Aoife.” He ran his free thumb down my cheek. “You can’t go back. You can go forward, though.”

Ever onward through the cold of space
, the voices agreed, tickling my mind.

I realized that ever since I’d learned about the nightmare clock, I hadn’t really been meaning to reset the world. I’d really just wanted to make things with my mother okay. Crow was right—the Proctors, the Brotherhood and their war had broken it long before I’d ever been born. Tremaine and his trick of forcing me to open the Gates were merely symptoms, not problems. And as long as the worlds sat side by side, bleeding into one another, the boundaries slowly fracturing, no mere mortal was going to be able to change a damn thing.

There would always be Fae to entice mortals; there would always be mortals to protect those who couldn’t resist the temptation, mortals like my father.

There was only one mistake I was directly responsible for, and only one I could set right, because of that.

You know your heart’s blood and your heart’s desire
, the Great Old Ones intoned.
You know what you have allowed to slip through your fingers
.

“My mother,” I whispered.

Lost little lamb
, the Old Ones hissed.
Changeling child, fragile as glass
.

“I want my mother back,” I said to Crow. “I left her behind,” I said. “I should have made sure she was all right.”

Then the great gear is yours
, said the voices.
Let us go. Let us free, let us roam and devour the four corners of the universe, and all you desire can be yours, not just your mother
.

When I reached out to touch the nightmare clock, it didn’t hurt at all. I felt the gears turn smoothly, erasing something from one world while they drew something from another.

The pressure in my mind finally eased and the voices disappeared.

I had gotten my wish.

And in the process, I had set the Old Ones free.

When I came back to myself in the spire of the Bone Sepulchre, Casey was shaking me frantically. The Gate had shut off, leaving just a hum to indicate it had ever been alive. From far below, sirens whooped.

I couldn’t process anything beyond blinding pain, so I rolled onto my side and vomited. Casey pointed out the window and shouted something I couldn’t hear over the roaring in my head.

Had I really seen any of what I thought I’d seen in Crow’s realm? Had I done anything at all besides pass out and throw up?

“I said, we gotta run!” Casey shouted. I managed to pull myself together and follow her gaze, and when I saw what had her in such a panic I was truly back in reality, cold and hard as the ice around me.

A black blot appeared against the white of the horizon as I watched from the tower window, wobbling and wavering against the last of the light, dipping dangerously close to the white wasteland below as it struggled against the extra weight of ice.

Reflected light from the glacier caught the blob, and it grew a shape: the slim, sharp hull of a dirigible. I stared, hoping that I was wrong.

The dying sun illuminated the black wings on the balloon, and my heart sank through the floor.

The
Dire Raven
had found me.

I watched them land from the tower. Draven’s shock troops were well outfitted for winter, and they didn’t meet much resistance from the Brotherhood. I heard them yelling, the Brotherhood screaming, the sizzle of Draven’s guns. I waited. He’d find me soon enough. I didn’t want to put up any overt resistance. Not until I knew Dean was all right.

“What are we going to do?” Casey whispered, crouched next to me at the window.

I sat, wrapping my arms around my knees to keep warm. “Wait,” I said. “Trust me, Draven wants me alive.”

While we listened to the Proctors make their inexorable way toward us, I thought about what I’d seen inside the nightmare clock. Could Crow have been right? Could Tesla and I have shared a gift, to bend reality rather than machines? Could he have gone through the same trials I had, when he made the Storm in the first place?

Had anything I’d done actually helped Nerissa?

Casey looked up, alarmed, as footsteps crunched toward us, spiked boots eating chunks out of the ice steps, grappling hooks that they’d no doubt used to mount the tower hanging from their belts. The half-dozen Proctors who appeared in the tower entrance covered us with their guns. They were coated in snow.

“Hands up!” one barked.

I didn’t move. Just waited. I was so numb and exhausted that I wasn’t scared.

“Hands
up
!” the Proctor screamed. “Or we shoot!”

“Knock it off.” Draven’s voice was muffled by the wool mask over his face. It hid everything but his eyes, turning him into the dark figure of nightmares that so many people in Lovecraft thought he was. “She’s no threat to you,” he told the Proctors. “Not while I’ve got her precious Dean.”

He snapped his fingers and the Proctors lowered their guns. “Go help with prisoner counting and transport,” he said. “Anyone puts up a fight, shoot them.”

“We can’t take off until it warms up again, sir,” said the lead Proctor. “The
Raven
will freeze up and we’ll crash from the extra weight.”

“Thank you so, so much for educating me on the laws of physics, Agent McGuire,” said Draven. “Now get the hell out.”

The Proctors filed out, using their hooks one by one to rappel past the gaps in the stairs. Draven glanced around the tower, then lifted his mask up and grinned at me. “You’re such a good spy, Aoife. That guileless little face and those big green eyes of yours. I bet I could send you into the headquarters of the Crimson Guard in Moscow and you’d have them eating out of your hands.”

“Where’s Dean?” I snapped.

“Now, that’s not very civil,” Draven said. “I’m trying to pay you a compliment and all you care about is your little greaser friend.”

I clenched my jaw, fighting not to scream. “I did everything you said. To the letter. You found the Brotherhood. Now tell me where Dean is, and let him go.”

Draven gestured to the ice where the
Dire Raven
sat. “He’s on board. I haven’t harmed one Brylcreemed hair on his precious little head.” He took off his gloves and smacked them together. “But by all means, say the word and I’ll throw him out onto the ice. It’s only about thirty-five below out there. He’ll have a good ten minutes before he starts to lose fingers and toes.”

“You’re a bastard,” I told him.

Draven smiled at me. “I’d be careful how you toss that term around. I both knew my father and know that I come from a wedlock. Can’t really say the same for you.”

He looked at the Gate, kicked at the iron arch. “One of Tesla’s science projects? Pathetic.” He edged closer, his boots treading on the copper and crushing the outer border of the Gate. “You know what you and that rabble-rouser Tesla will be remembered as? When the Brotherhood of Iron works for me? The name Aoife Grayson will be a
new fairy tale, one parents tell their daughters when they stray off the path and think that they can change the world.”

He took another step toward us, then planted his feet. “I’m going to take you from here, Aoife, and I’m going to put you in an iron box, where you can never, ever hurt anyone else. You’ll think I’m a monster, but what I really am is a man. A normal man, without any gifts, a man who protects his world and the people in it by any means necessary. I thought in Innsmouth we could come to an understanding, but that blood of yours will always betray you.” Another step.

“Fine,” I said. “But I’m through letting you threaten the decent people, who don’t know the truth.”

He sneered at me. “You think you’re meant to stop me, be a heroine who casts aside the darkness? You’re the opposite. It’s you who is the bringer of darkness and damnation, Aoife, and I’m the cleansing fire.”

His hands flashed out and one closed around my arm, the other around Casey’s. “Now you come with me. We’re going to put you where I should have in the first place.”

Casey stared at me with panicked eyes, but I shook my head. Draven had found the Brotherhood, but he hadn’t found the truth, and the sooner we got out of this room, the better. Before he realized how close he was to the unimaginable power he craved.

We made our way to the ground, where two Proctors thrust us into our cold-weather gear. Casey was shuffled off with the other line of prisoners. I caught sight of Crosley, the side of his head bleeding red droplets onto the ice, handcuffed in a row of men waiting to board the
Dire Raven
.
He glared at me as I passed by under Draven’s protection. “I hope you’re happy,” he snapped. “I know you brought him here. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you.”

“I’m not remotely happy,” I told him, and meant it. Draven huffed and pulled me along.

“You’re about to get unhappier still,” Draven said. “And believe me, the only reason you aren’t shackled with the rest of them is because you agreed to help me.”

We rounded the corner of the dirigible, and my heartbeat picked up. I had one chance to get away from Draven, one chance to hope that I hadn’t accepted his vile compass and doomed everyone in the Brotherhood for nothing.

I’d visited the nightmare clock. I’d done what I’d come back to the Iron Land to do.
Now where the hell was he
? He’d always had a flair for the dramatic.

Draven pounded on the hull, and a black-clad Proctor slid open a small hatch, extending a set of steps that I guessed ran straight to Draven’s personal quarters. The Proctor shivered in the harsh wind sweeping across the glacier. “W-w-welcome back, sir.”

Draven reached back to pull me inside, and I decided all was lost, just before the vertigo gripped me and I fell to my knees.

Another gust blew snow across my eyes, and when they cleared, Tremaine stood before me. “Aoife …,” he started, and then his eyes fell on Draven and the gaping Proctor. “Oh.”

I stayed still, watching. Waiting to see what would happen. Draven stared, absolutely still, as did Tremaine. The Proctor was the first to move. He raised his rifle and aimed it at Tremaine, but the Fae was too quick. I watched, almost
awed at his fluid movements as his silver knife slipped from its hiding place in his sleeve. He ducked behind the Proctor and drew the knife soundlessly across his throat.

The man dropped to the snow, a fan of crimson spreading from under his body and freezing on the ice. I stared, shrinking away from the corpse. Tremaine’s savagery always came as a shock—his face was so beautiful, you couldn’t see the cruelty in it until you looked into his eyes.

Draven raised his chin. “Am I supposed to be afraid of you, silver-blooded freak?”

“I don’t know,” Tremaine said with a grin. “Are you a smart man or a stupid one, human?” He wiped his knife on his sleeve, twice, and tucked it back into his sheath.

“Oh, come on, Draven,” I said, sensing my opening. “Surely you’re not going to let this Fae get away with that. After all …” I looked to Tremaine, hoping he’d pick up my cue. “The Head of the Proctors would never be worried by one Fae.”

Tremaine grinned at that, thin and cruel. “Oh,” he said. “So clever, Aoife, well done.”

Draven pulled his pistol, but it was already a losing proposition. The Fae was faster, stronger, angrier, and I watched the same way you’d watch a frog strike a fly. Tremaine pulled Draven close, disarmed him with a wet cracking sound in his wrist and spun him around, front to back. “I think we’re going to have a fine time together, Grey Draven,” he hissed. “My queen will be so pleased to meet you.”