Shoggoths in Bloom (24 page)

“Something like that,” Matthew said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. A dust bunny was stuck to the heel of his hand; he blew it off. When he opened his eyes, he found her staring at him, tongue-tip peeking between her lips.

“Want to make sure we’re safe?” she said, with a grin. The spoon glittered as she turned it beside her face. “I’m off duty. And your chicken won’t mind.” She held up her left hand and showed him a plain gold band. “No hassles.”

He bit his lower lip. Matthew had practice. And years of careful sublimation—which was, of course, the point: sacrifice made power. He also had a trick of flying under the gaydar, of making straight women think he was gay and gay men think he was straight. All just part of the camouflage.

He hated having to say no. “Sorry,” he said. “That’s a lovely offer. But I need a virgin for the cockatrice already, and it beats having to send out.”

She laughed, of course.

They never believed him.

“Come on,” he said. “Help me ensorcel this chicken.”

Doctor S. lived in Midtown West, on 60th near Columbus Ave. It was kind of a hike, but they got there before sunset. It wouldn’t get dark for an hour, but that was only because the afternoons were still long. By the time they paused down the block Katie’s stomach was rumbling. That milkshake was only good for so long.

The spot they picked to loiter had a clear view of the front door of Doctor S.’s brown brick apartment building. “Nice place for a junior professor,” Melissa said, and for ten seconds she sounded like she was from Boston, all right.

Katie looked at Gina and made big eyes and whimpering noises, but it was Melissa who went and got convenience store hot dogs, Diet Pepsi, and a bag of chips. They ate in the shade on the north side of the building, the heat soaking from the stones, their hair lank and grimy with the city air. Katie scratched her cheek and brought her fingernails away sporting black crescents. “Ew.”

“Welcome to New York,” Gina said, which was what she said every time Katie complained.

Katie had nearly stopped complaining already. She scratched her nails against her jeans until most of the black came out and finished her hot dog one-handed, then wiped the grime from her face with the napkin before drying her hands. It worked kind of halfway—good enough, anyway, that when Melissa splashed ice water from a sport bottle into everyone’s cupped hands and Katie in turn splashed it onto her face, she didn’t wind up feeling like she’d faceplanted into a mud puddle.

The second handful, she drank, and only realized she had been carrying a heat headache when the weight of it faded. “All right,” she said, and took the bottle from Melissa to squirt some on her hair. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Unfortunately, apparently Doctor S. isn’t,” Melissa said, reclaiming the bottle to drink. She tilted her head back, her throat working, and as she lowered it a droplet ran from the corner of her mouth. “No, wait, spoke too soon.”

Katie stepped behind the pole of a street lamp—silly, because Doctor S. wasn’t even looking in their direction—and caught sight of his stiff little blond ponytail zigzagging through the crowd. He was wearing another sort-of costume—Katie wondered what he wore when he wore what he liked, rather than what suited his role—a well-cut gray suit with a fabulous drape. A woman in a navy pantsuit, whose light flyaway hair escaped its pins around a long narrow face, walked alongside him. Her stride was familiar. She had a white cardboard pet carrier slung from her left hand; Katie could not see what was in it, but it swung as if something was moving slightly inside.

“Isn’t that the cop who showed up where the woman jumped?”

Katie glanced at Gina and back at the woman, a stuttering doubletake. It was. Not the same outfit, and her hair was clipped back aggressively now— though it wasn’t staying restrained—but the woman was conspicuous. “Well,” Katie said, feeling as if she watched the words emerge from a stranger’s mouth, “we could follow him and find out where they’re going.”

Neither Matthew nor Marion was particularly sanguine about attacking on a cockatrice in the dark. They had to take the subway across the island (at least the cockerel was quiet, huddled in the bottom of its carrier) but still ascended to the surface with light to spare. It roused the bird; Matthew heard it shift, and Marion kept her fingers well clear of the air holes. It was, as promised, aggressive.

Matthew shoved down guilt and substantial apprehension. There was no other choice, and power grew out of sacrifices.

They found the courtyard without a problem, that tunnel-like entrance with its broken gate leaving rust on Matthew’s clothes as they slipped through. He wasn’t wearing his usual patrol clothes, a zipped camouflage jacket and boots enchanted to pass-unnoticed, but a gray silk suit with a linen shirt and a silver, red, and navy tie. A flask in an inside pocket tapped his ribs when he moved. He looked like a dot com paper millionaire on his way to a neck-or-nothing meeting with a crotchety venture capitalist who was going to hate his ponytail.

His clothes today, and the quick preliminary ritual they’d performed in his living room, were not designed to conceal him, to occlude his power, but rather to draw the right attention. If you squinted at him with otherwise eyes, he would shine. And other than his rings and the earrings and the pigment in the ink under his skin, he wasn’t wearing any iron, as he might have been if they went to face something Fae.

Iron was of no use against a cockatrice. Except in one particular, and so two steel gaffs wrapped in tissue paper nested in the bottom of Matthew’s trouser pocket. He touched them through fabric like a child stroking a favorite toy and drew his hand back when they clinked.

“This is it,” he said.

Marion set the carrier down. “Nice place you’ve got here, Matthew. Decorate it yourself?” From the way her nose was wrinkling, she picked out the acid aroma of the monster as well.

Henry and his comrade at arms were nowhere to be seen. Matthew hoped they had taken his advice and moved on. He hated working around civilians.

Without answering Marion, he kicked aside garbage, clearing a space in the center of the court. The windows overlooking it remained unoccupied, and if for some reason they did not continue so, Marion had a badge.

She helped Matthew sketch a star overlaid on a circle in yellow sidewalk chalk. They left one point open, facing south by Marion’s compass. When they were done, Matthew dusted his hands, wiped them on his handkerchief, and reached into his pockets for the spurs, the flask, and something else—a leather hood of the sort used by falconers to quiet their birds.

“Ready?”

She nodded. “Where’s the lair?”

He patted himself on the chest—“the s.o.b. comes to us”—and watched her eyes widen. She had thought he was kidding.

They always did.

Well, maybe someday he could catch a unicorn.

“It’s okay,” he said, when her blush became a stammer. “Let’s get the knives on this chicken.”

It took both of them, crouched on either side, to open the box and hood the bird without harming it. It exploded into Matthew’s grip as Marion pried open the flaps; he caught at it, bungled the grab and got pecked hard for his pains. Somehow he got the bird pressed to his chest, a struggling fury of iridescent black plumage, and caged it in his blunt hands. It felt prickly and slick and hotter than blood under the feathers. He smoothed its wings together and restrained the kicking legs, while Marion dodged the jabbing beak. Once in darkness it quieted, and Marion strapped the three-inch gaffs over its own natural spurs.

When they were done, it looked quite brave and wicked, the gleam of steel on rainbow-black. Marion stroked its back between Matthew’s fingers, her touch provoking a tremor when she brushed the back of his hand. “Fucking abomination.”

She meant cockfighting, not the bird. Matthew set the cockerel down and moved his hands away. It sat quietly. “How do you think I feel?”

She shrugged. Still crouched, she produced a pair of handcuffs and a silken hood from her tan leather handbag. Matthew bent over to pick up the flask. “God, I hate this part.”

He prized it open with his thumb and upended it over his mouth. The fumes of hundred-and-fifty-proof rum made him gasp; he choked down three swallows and stopped, doubled over, rasping.

Matthew didn’t often drink.

But that would be enough for the spell.

Light-headed, now, sinuses stinging from more than the reek of the cockatrice, Matthew handed Marion the flask and then his spectacles, feeling naked without them. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, fine hairs harsh on his lips. Four steps took him through the open end of the pentagram.

He turned back and faced Marion. With the silk of the hood draped over his forearm, he handcuffed himself—snugly: he did not want his body breaking free while he was not in it.

They weren’t replaceable.

He took one more deep breath, closed his eyes on Marion’s blurry outline, and with his joined wrists rattling pulled the hood over his head.

In the dark underneath, sounds were muffled. Concentrated rum fumes made his eyes water, but at least he could no longer smell the cockatrice. Chalk grated—Marion closing the pentagram. He heard his flask uncorked, the splash of fluid as she anointed the diagram with the remaining rum. Matthew tugged restlessly against the restraints on his wrists as she began to chant and a deep uneasy curdling sensation answered.

God, too much rum. He wobbled and caught himself, fretting the handcuffs, the tightness on the bones. The sensual thrill of the magic sparking along his nerves was accentuated by the blinding darkness. He wobbled again, or maybe the world did, and gasped at the heat in his blood.

Magic and passion weren’t different. It was one reason sublimation worked.

The second gasp came cleaner, no fabric muffling his face, the air cooler if not fresher and the scent of rum less cloying. Marion seemed to have moved, by the sound of her chanting, and somehow the tightness had jumped from Matthew’s wrists to his calves. He lay belly-down on rough ground.

He pushed with his arms to try to balance himself to his feet. The chanting stopped, abruptly, and someone was restraining him, folding his arms against his side gently but with massive cautious strength. “Matthew?”

He turned his head, seeking the voice. It echoed. The . . . arms? holding him retreated. “Matthew, if you understand me, flap once.”

He extended odd-feeling arms and did so. A moment later, a half-dozen fists, it seemed, were unhooding him. He blinked at dizzy brilliance, and found himself staring into Marion’s enormous face from only a few inches away. He hopped back and fouled himself on the gaffs. Fortunately, the needle point slipped between his feathers rather than stabbing him in the wing, and he stopped, precariously balanced, wings half-bent like broken umbrellas.

He clucked.

And flapped hard, surprised to find himself lifting off the ground. He flew the two feet to Marion’s shoulder, landed awkwardly, facing the wrong way, and banged her in the eye with his wing. At least he had the sense to turn carefully, keeping the needle-tipped gaffs pointed away from her thin-skinned throat. He crouched on his heels, trying not to prick her with his claws, the alien body’s balance far better than his own.

Only if he thought about it did he realize that the warm shoulder he nestled to Marion’s warm cheek was feathered, that it was peculiar to be able to feel the beats of her heart through his feet like the footfalls of an approaching predator, that the colors he saw were abruptly so bright and saturated—so discriminate—that he had no names for them. That he balanced on her moving shoulder as easily as he would have roosted on a swaying branch, and that that was peculiar.

“Wow,” he said. And heard a soft contemplative cluck. And laughed at himself, which came out a rising, tossing crow.

Marion flinched and put a hand up on his wing. “Matthew, please. My ears.”

He ducked his head between his shoulders, abashed, and clucked sorry. Maybe she would understand.

His body stood stolidly, restrained, inside a wet circle of chalk and rum. The cockerel wearing it was quieted by the hood and the handcuffs, and Matthew turned his head right and left to center himself in his vision. He failed—he had the peripheral view, and only by turning to see it first with one eye and then the other could he reliably guess how far away it was. Almost no binocular vision, of course. But with a shock, he realized that he could see clearly around to the back of his head.

That was pretty tremendously weird. He’d have to practice that. And think about his small sharp body and its instincts, because the enemy could be along any moment.

Marion was pulling back, stepping into the shadows, an alcove near the gate concealing them. Matthew pressed against her warmth, feeling her heart beating faster. He clucked in her ear.

“Shh.”

He hoped the cockatrice would come quickly. This could be very, very awkward to explain if something happened to the glamours. Still, they had brought alcohol, talent, and innocence—symbolically speaking—and left them, special delivery, in the thing’s front yard. Wherever it was nesting, it should come to investigate before too long.

He was still thinking that when he heard the singing.

The three of them had been following for a long time, it seemed, when Doctor S. and the woman gave one another a conspiratorial glance and stepped through an archway, past a rusted gate. Gina drew up short, stepping out of the traffic flow into the shelter of a doorway. A moment later, Katie heard glass breaking and something kicked or thrown.

Katie ducked in behind Gina, rubbing her elbow nervously. This wasn’t the best neighborhood at all. “That’s a dead end, I bet,” Gina said, when Melissa came up beside them. “Either they’re going inside, or that’s where they’re going.”

“Here?”

Gina winked. “Want to sneak up and peek through the gate?” Katie and Melissa exchanged a glance, and Melissa angled her head and said, “What the heck.” Side by side, the three stepped back out onto the sidewalk, picking their way over chewing gum spots and oily, indeterminate stains. Katie somehow found herself in the lead, as Gina and Melissa fell in single file behind her. She had to glance over her shoulder to make sure they were still with her.