The Rook

  Although he never took his eyes off the fungus-clad people on the floor, the man took advantage of the pauses between each whisper to shout something in the general direction of the door, so Myfanwy and Shantay received his message as a series of short exclamations.

  “Thank God, you’ve come!—They started two nights ago without warning!—I mean, I certainly never gave the order—and then the growth manifested!”

  He stayed squatted in front of an extremely fat woman, staring fixedly into her eyes.

  “I came over yesterday morning to check on the congregation and see what progress they’d made—well, they’ve bloody well made some progress! The invocation was building in volume—I mean the neighbors were going to hear it eventually, and the light would show up when the sun set. I had to call in sick to the office, and since then I’ve been trying to quell them here. I would have called you directly, but I put my phone down on a table after I called work, and it got overgrown. And then I couldn’t leave, and the whole situation went critical. Once the Checquy showed up, I decided my only option was to let the congregation run through its self-defense routines. I knew you’d be called in after the second team was consumed. Jesus Christ! Do you realize those were my people I had to liquidate? My people!”

  Myfanwy shot Shantay a horrified look and received an incredulous stare in return.

  Could this man actually be the head of the Checquy outpost in Bath? she wondered. She gingerly reached out with her mind, finding the pattern of the man’s senses. And if so, why is he doing this? It can’t be a Checquy action, or he wouldn’t have liquefied the teams. But if it isn’t, then why is he talking to us like we know exactly what’s going on?

  “At least I could prevent them from killing the third team—Barghests, right?” He didn’t pause for an answer. “I don’t understand it! They weren’t supposed to be starting this yet, and unless we do something, it’ll only spread. They’re barely responding to any of the instruction phrases we were given. I could only get my message into the chanting by shooting one of the congregants and briefly grafting myself into the system. We’ll have to get someone in to clean me out. I’ve still got some of that gunk in me.

  “Anyway, I knew you’d hear the message. Thank God you shouted up—my vision is so poor through this thing’s sensory organs that I was ready to have you cocooned.” Myfanwy shuddered at the implications, then wondered where the Barghest strike team was being kept. The man was still talking.

  “… no idea how to stop them. I’m running though all the emergency codes and nothing is working. Do you know some backdoor hack to shutting it all down?” He turned around, looking for an answer, and froze when he saw them. “You’re not Gestalt!” he exclaimed in a tone of complete shock.

  Ah, thought Myfanwy. Suddenly it all makes a bit more sense.

  They stared at each other for a moment, and then Myfanwy briskly cut him off from the world. After all, she thought, I have no idea what this guy is capable of. For all I know, he can make my spleen eat itself. Better not give him the chance.

  “Don’t worry, Shantay, I’ve got him,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” asked the tall woman cautiously. She moved forward and relaxed a little when she saw the guy in the suit was frozen in a crouch, breathing rapidly, his eyes glazed and his features fixed in a look of total confusion. Now that Myfanwy had the chance to look the guy over, he seemed vaguely familiar. Probably one of those hundreds of personnel files I read.

  Shantay waved a hand in front of his eyes and noted that his gaze didn’t shift. She leaned forward carefully and flicked his ear. Nothing. “That’s very impressive,” she said. “How did you do that?”

  “I figured it out just now,” said Myfanwy, who was looking around dubiously at the chanters. They were still droning along.

  “So, am I insane, or is this guy one of your people?” asked Shantay.

  “I think his name is Goblet,” conceded Myfanwy.

  Suddenly the man pulled himself out of his trance and smashed Shantay with an uppercut. The American Bishop was sent reeling back and fell over one of the cultists. The fungus-enshrouded figure kept chanting, undisturbed. “How the hell did you do that?” Myfanwy asked him.

  Goblet stood and bared his teeth at her, and a coating of spines erupted all over his body. Myfanwy gave a little squeak as his hair lengthened itself and hardened into a mass of spikes. Bony quills pierced his clothes. His once-distinguished suit was now a perforated mass of wool.

  Shantay had rolled to her feet and was rubbing her jaw. Now she stood up and shot a look of absolute loathing toward the porcupine man. “Don’t fucking move,” she said, bringing her massive pistol up and pointing at him. “That really hurt. I thought you said you had him,” she said tightly to Myfanwy.

  “I thought I did.”

  “Well, can you do it again?”

  “Maybe.” Myfanwy reached out with her senses and carefully probed at Goblet, who was slavering in the middle of the room. How on earth did he get out of my grasp? I disrupted his spine here and here, so he couldn’t have just—oh. Well, this is fascinating. Myfanwy reeled herself back in and looked to Shantay. “No good; he’s got, like, seven supplementary spines, all woven together in a lattice. I can’t get control of all of them at once—the impulses are strobing between them.” The guy had been swinging his head back and forth, following the conversation, but now he again focused on her.

  “Rook Thomas, I would never have guessed that you would venture out of your little office and get your hands dirty,” he said with massive contempt. His fingernails stretched into horny barbed talons and he moved toward her.

  “Oh, please,” said Shantay, and she shot Goblet in the back. He reeled for a moment and then got a grip on himself, swung around, and backhanded her against a wall. His spikes cut the Bishop in the face, and she cracked her head against the fungus.

  “I had no idea that we’d sunk so low. Enlisting Americans in the Barghests? But then, this is the same Court that appointed you as a Rook,” he spat out in disgust. “A useless little girl who weeps in corners and fiddles about with the account books.”

  “No doubt they should have selected some treasonous git who grows spikes out of his arse instead,” Myfanwy remarked as she fumbled for the pistol at her side and nearly dropped it in the process.

  “Treasonous?” he exclaimed. “This endeavor is for the good of the Checquy, and by extension, the good of the nation!”

  “Is that why you didn’t feel the need to inform the Court of your activities, Goblet?” she asked.

  “Pah! The Court isn’t ready for this! At least, not yet.” He took a step closer to Myfanwy and she backed up against the door, which had closed silently behind her. Around them, the chanters continued chanting obliviously.

  “So, you felt it was your responsibility to set this up?” she asked even as she sidled around a cultist, keeping obstacles between her and Goblet. She surreptitiously fiddled with the gun and tried to figure out how to take the safety catch off. No doubt this was something Thomas had learned in her first days at the Estate, but unfortunately the knowledge did not appear to have stuck. It didn’t help that she couldn’t take her eyes off Goblet for fear of his gouging them out.

  “Ah, Rook Thomas. Such an amateur in fieldwork! You’re angling for some information about the plan.” Goblet smirked, baring a set of saw-edged teeth. “Shall I give you all the details, like a Bond villain, right before your wristwatch turns out to be some sort of buzz saw?”

  “I’m not wearing a wristwatch,” pointed out Myfanwy.

  “Even better,” said Goblet. “I won’t have to tear your arms off at the beginning of our little session. I always like to leave them till the end.” Myfanwy faltered a little at this prospect, and Goblet noticed. “Oh, yes, Rook Thomas, we’re going to have all sorts of fun. But you’re going to die without ever finding out what the hell is going on here.”

  “Goblet, I will find out everything. In fact, you will tell me.”
br />   “Indeed?” said Goblet, raising an eyebrow and several quills. “And how do you expect—” He broke off, his eyes crossed, and he slumped to the ground, revealing Shantay, who was wearing shiny metal gauntlets. No, not gauntlets. Her fists appeared to be covered in a highly polished, flawless silvery metal. Flawless except for the flecks of blood and fragments of quills that adhered after she’d bashed the back of Goblet’s head in.

  “What a prick,” the American Bishop remarked. She flicked some pieces of quill off her knuckles with a metallic scrape, and the silver melted back into her skin, except for a few patches that resolved themselves into rings and bracelets.

  “That’s very convenient,” said Myfanwy admiringly. “I wish I could grow my own accessories.”

  “Yeah? Well, I wish I could get men to shut the hell up,” said Shantay. “You want to trade for a while?”

  “It’s tempting,” mused Myfanwy, “but I’ve only just figured out how to make people sweat profusely, and I still want to play with it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Anyway, we should probably try to come up with a way to stop this thing.” Myfanwy gestured vaguely at the tableau that surrounded them: the mold, the supine hedgehog man, the frantically chanting cultists. “Goblet here seemed to think the lot of them were veering out of control.”

  “Do we want to call in your boys out in the trailers?”

  “Won’t they get swallowed up by the slime?” asked Myfanwy.

  “Maybe not, with Goblet out of the picture.”

  “I’m not sure—for all we know, it was him keeping it from eating us and digesting the team that went in earlier,” said Myfanwy. She looked around anxiously but was relieved to find that the fungus wasn’t inching its way up her boots. “I think we’re okay for the moment. All the more reason to resolve this issue quickly.”

  “Agreed. I could bash all their heads in, if you’d like,” suggested Shantay, her jewelry glittering with the promise of unspeakable violence.

  “I’m not particularly keen on bludgeoning several dozen British citizens.”

  “Well, then, what do you propose?” For an answer, Myfanwy knelt down by the nearest chanter—a terribly thin woman who looked as if she’d been attempting to live exclusively off photosynthesis. The fungus cupping her face was an angry puce and had draped itself lightly over her frame. Myfanwy reached out and spread her fingers over the woman’s face. Myfanwy’s eyes glazed, and a look of intense concentration came over her.

  There was a reverent pause as Shantay watched expectantly.

  Then she watched less expectantly.

  Then she checked her watch.

  Then she looked at her nails and gave one of them a few quick licks with a file she produced from a pouch.

  Then she went over to Goblet, and gave him a solid kick in the stomach for good measure.

  Then she checked her messages on her mobile phone, listening intently against the chanting.

  Then she glanced at her watch again.

  Then she hummed a few lines from a popular song and got a good close look at each of the people chanting.

  Then her phone rang.

  “Did it ever occur to you that this might require a modicum of concentration?” snapped Myfanwy in irritation, breaking out of her trance. “Did the dramatic pose and the look of profound focus not tip you off?”

  “Sorry,” said Shantay, “but I can’t turn my phone off. I’m Bishop for the Croatoan. What if there’s an emergency?”

  “Is it an emergency?” asked Myfanwy icily. Shantay looked at the caller ID and shamefacedly put her phone back on her belt. “Well?”

  “Okay, so in this particular instance it wasn’t an emergency,” admitted Shantay.

  “Who was it?”

  “My mom.”

  “Christ,” muttered Myfanwy, going back into her trance. Shantay sighed and looked around vaguely. It was a little while before she noticed that Myfanwy had begun to bleed from the nose and that her limbs were trembling.

  “Oh, crap!” she exclaimed, dropping to her knees and holding her sleeve up to the Rook’s nose. She called Myfanwy’s name but got no response. Instead, there was a slight increase in the chanting, and the blood continued to flow out of Myfanwy’s nose. Shantay saw a red blush blossoming along her friend’s jawline. She peered more closely and saw that it was actually a dusting of spores. It thickened before Shantay’s eyes and rapidly grew into a fuzzy coating down Myfanwy’s neck and up toward her hairline.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” Shantay muttered to herself, frantically trying to comb the growths out of the Rook’s hair. Her fingers became silver, metal curled up over her manicured fingernails, and she clawed along Myfanwy’s camouflage sleeves, scraping off the little mushrooms that had suddenly sprung up. Then, remembering, she held part of her own sleeve to Myfanwy’s streaming nostrils. “Myfanwy, honey, you need to wake the hell up!” she called into the fungus-covered ear.

  Shantay heard a stirring behind her and looked over to see Goblet twitching feebly. He must have had some sort of regeneration ability. Either that or his quills had provided more protection than she’d anticipated. She looked at her silver fingernails and briefly entertained the idea of clawing out his jugular. Instead, she twisted around awkwardly—by this time, she was holding Myfanwy up in her arms—and lashed out with her boot. Her heel connected with Goblet’s bequilled jaw, and for that one moment, it was totally worth it.

  But then Myfanwy went into convulsions, and in the process of shaking about, she slammed her head back into Shantay’s face.

  “Ow! God dabbit,” she yelled, clutching at her nose and dropping Myfanwy on the floor.

  The chanting got louder and more frantic, and Shantay failed to notice that there was a light dusting of fungus along her forearms.

  22

  Dear You,

  Well, this was a day and a half. I’m currently in a limousine on the way back from Whitby, along with Chevalier Gubbins. Bishop Alrich and Sir Henry are flying back in a helicopter, since Checquy policy dictates that no more than two Court members can be on the same aircraft, and I felt that, after today’s money- (and staff-) eating fiasco, springing for another helicopter would be extravagant.

  It started out early, which is exactly how I don’t like my Saturdays to begin. I like to sleep in a bit, have my breakfast cooked for me, sit by a blazing fire, maybe do a little shopping, and then go into the office. But this Saturday I had to wake up at four in the morning so as to get ready to be picked up at quarter to five. My bodyguard for today, Anthony, was waiting at my door when I walked out, and I wondered guiltily how long he’d been standing in the freezing winter wind. He carried my briefcase, garment bag, and satchel to the limo, making sure I was comfortably settled before heaving his ponderous bulk into the front passenger seat. Once I was in the car, I fell asleep, and I only woke up when we picked up Gubbins, who was abominably cheerful.

  “Morning, Myfanwy,” Gubbins exclaimed as he bounded into the car, jolting me awake. I had been drooling copiously on the armrest. “Gad, but it’s freezing out. Still, this is fairly jolly, eh?” His bodyguard, an anorexic-looking black man, sat silently next to him.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. Quite jolly when you weren’t the one who had to plan all of this.

  “I have to admit, I’m not entirely certain of the details—I was in Brasília when the notification came out.”

  “It’s an egg hatching.”

  “Of course it is,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Whenever there’s a supernatural event, there’s always an egg.”

  “Eggs are big in our business,” I said through a yawn. “Anyway, there’s this seventeen-year-old student at the Estate. Noel something, I’ve got the details written down somewhere. He’s not much in the special-abilities department—gets along with animals or some such—but he’s enthusiastic about history and research.”

  “Smart kid?” asked Gubbins.

  “They don’t give them the option of not being smart
,” I said. “You think Frau Blümen would let her standards slip?”

  “No chance,” he said with a snort.

  “Anyway, this kid is allowed special access to the archives, and he was digging through some manuscripts when he came across mention of something particularly interesting.” I rummaged in my bag and produced a thermos of coffee; I offered it to Gubbins, who shook his head politely.

  “So, what was the interesting thing?”

  “You won’t believe me,” I warned.

  “I’m in the Checquy,” he said. “I’m paid to believe things no one else believes.”

  “A dragon,” I said wearily.

  “You’re bullshitting me,” he said.

  “I told you. I didn’t believe it either. I mean, there’s been no confirmed sighting of a dragon for centuries, and even back then, they were spotted only in places that were cold beyond reason. The beginning of the Little Ice Age was the last time they were here.” I was trying not to watch as Gubbins did some strange little isometric exercises. The man was like a yogi on acid. I poured myself some coffee and kept my eyes firmly on my hands.

  “Anyway, it seems that some particularly fecund female dragon decided to lay her egg in North Yorkshire. Apparently the area was very popular with dragons.”

  “Oh?” said Gubbins.

  “Yeah, dragons and pterodactyls. For millions of years, something about the place has been very attractive to flying reptiles. People have found entire pterodactyl skeletons, and some bits of dragon skeletons that they thought were a subspecies of pterodactyl. One of our operatives, Yves Tyerman, witnessed and recorded the egg laying. His report was accepted by the Court in London and filed away, not to be seen again for hundreds of years.”