Chapter Twenty-Three

  Wet Dog

  Consciousness became an elusive thing for Wesley, as he lay far from his childhood home, in a place he didn’t know.

  Even his magical awareness, his third eye, was wonky. Like something was suppressing it. A cloud trying to stop it from stretching beyond him.

  His other senses seemed so dulled that he couldn’t quite even feel them. No sight, obviously. No touch. No hearing. He could smell, but it was only the light stench of stuffy dryness.

  All he really knew was the dream inside the dream. He was stuck reliving his mother’s murder. Contemplating the dark shape that had attacked them.

  How it had lifted the Nocturne off his feet. How Wesley’s own father had gone berserk, like he saw nothing but red. It was not an entirely alien experience for him. He’d seen similar things in his work.

  Old magicks. Mind magic that scrambled the receptors and played tricks. But his father was powerful, far too powerful to be tricked or cajoled so easily. So it must’ve been an uber powerful being that had done it.

  The Shadow, as his mind saw it, was a mystery.

  What forces had they meddled with that such a thing had presented itself that night?

  Questions plagued him as the answers eluded. His own father hadn’t told him of that thing. It was possible he didn’t remember it. If his mind had been compromised then it could be he saw only the Nocturne that night, nothing else.

  And the Nocturne had come for the blade. The hilt of Excalibur.

  Then Wesley’s mind was flowing like a river of memory. Away from his mother’s death and away from the menace of the Nocturne. He shot through his childhood, through his time at the Academy in the clouds.

  Down, down, down into his recent past.

  He saw his cases.

  The werewolf from Nottingham rampaging toward London. Wesley watched himself running through dark woods, his wand in one and a silver blade in the other. Then there was a flash and fangs biting for his throat.

  Then a banshee in the home of an old woman. Her screams mixed with the creature's mind melding weeping wails.

  A troll under a bridge, asking him to answer riddles three.

  A band of goblins robbing jewels and old artefacts from countryside homes, their wicked little grins stretching as they closed in around him…

  Wesley woke with a violent jolt, sitting bolt upright.

  He would have twisted out of bed had it not been for the amount of blankets that covered him. It felt like a bucket of bricks pressed to his chest. Except they were warm and cozy. The second his head hit the pillow again he wanted to drift off.

  Until the smell of something sweet and smoky filled his nostrils.

  He blinked. Or at least it felt like he did. It didn’t clear his vision at all. Everything was still blurry.

  The smell hit him again in a big waft of smoke.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, blinking slowly to try and clear his eyes. His voice was barely recognizable of his own. His throat was so dry and cracky it pained him even to speak.

  “Finally,” said a bored, annoyed voice. “Was wondering if you’d ever wake up.”

  He recognized that voice but his mind was an absolute jumble of confusion so he couldn’t place it. But it was a woman. A girl, even. And she had an attitude.

  “Who?” he asked again.

  “Cecelia.”

  Wesley remembered the girl holding the rifle at the gates of the Morningstar Estate and firing straight into the Nocturne's faceplate. “Where are we?”

  “In a small castle on the edge of a very big mountain.”

  “How long have–”

  “Three days,” she said quickly.

  Wesley almost blanched. “Three days? What–”

  “You’ve been barely alive for two of those days,” she explained. “You were injured in the battle. Quite badly, actually.”

  Wesley did not remember that. “What happened?”

  “Besides the severed magical injuries you sustained, most of which were blocked by your breastplate, you seem to have been…scratched by a werewolf.”

  Cecelia said it so matter of factly.

  Wesley waited for her to tell him the punchline. But when the pause became a silence, he began to sit up, looking down at himself. Through the bright, searing bleariness he saw only the blankets, which he’d forgotten about.

  Then he understood.

  They weren’t just blankets. They were chains.

  “Where?” he croaked out.

  “Ah, well,” she began. “You were cut in two places. Not deeply, but enough to give us…pause. You’ve got one on your left arm, just above your elbow. The other was on your cheek.”

  “We’ve determined though you probably won’t be a full fledged werewolf, you will have some…effects of the curse,” she explained.

  Wesley’s eyes cleared a little more and he saw her outline. She was reclined in an ancient looking threadbare chair, smoking a pipe. Behind her was a tall, translucent window, casting her in a dull kind of yellow light.

  “What effects?”

  “Esther thinks you’ll probably get hairier, possibly grow fangs, and most likely claws. Her physician says it’ll affect your appetite, eyesight, and hearing.” She blew smoke rings toward him. “Tell me what you smell?”

  “Smoke,” he growled.

  She grunted. “You don’t need to be so grumpy. You’re alive. Better than your friends from Scotland Yard.”

  Wesley remembered how the whip had struck Mora. He wondered if that meant the twins had been lost as well.

  “What of…everyone else?” he asked slowly

  “We’ve heard little. Esther can’t contact her father. I’ve been unable to make contact with your father either. So, we aren’t sure what has happened. When we left, things weren’t going well.”

  When the next puff of smoke came towards him, he breathed it in, taking a moment to try and separate the elements. He smelled…

  Spearmint…a kind of dagga, and…mugwort…

  He realized he could smell the wood of the pipe too. Bog oak.

  The same as his father smoked.

  “Shit,” Wesley said, the implications settling on him.

  He could make out her face just enough to see her eyebrows raise. “Yes, shit.” Then her eyes narrowed. “You can smell it?”

  Wesley nodded.

  “Well, then we have another problem,” she said, leaning forward. “Your father, the rash man that he is, bestowed upon you the hilt of Excalibur.”

  He didn’t remember that part. “Why is that a problem?”

  “He made it one of your ribs.”

  As if on cue, Wesley coughed and a spray of red expanded before him. A little cloud of blood. Bright red and moist. Now, he remembered the punch. Instead of a hug, he’d been given yet another goddamn rib.

  He was getting tired of people messing with his ribs.

  “Why…the hell,” he said choking, “would he do that?”

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  “How would I know?” she asked. “But we’re going to have to remove it. It is made of some kind of silver. And as your body is currently changing, it will most likely kill you in a few days.”

  Wesley forced himself up, his arms shaking. At last he felt the chains on his legs and the long metal strip over his waist.

  “Can we get this shit off me?”

  Cecelia sat back, puffing. “No can do, mate. You’re on bed rest until we know you aren’t going to wolf out.”

  The girl watched him with a cold, almost angry glance. Disapproving at the very least.

  “What?”

  She shrugged. “Oh nothing. I’m just annoyed with you.”

  “So am I. But why are you?”

  “Because if you hadn’t gotten dragged back then we would have had more time to prepare.”

  “Yes, well, I didn’t exactly want to come back. Or maybe you don’t remember the shackles.”

  She grunted. “Oh, I remember them. I just don’t care. You got caught by your own people.”

  Wesley narrowed his eyes at her. “What happened to you?”

  Her head cocked sideways, her eyes flaring. “I’ve no idea what you mean,” she said sweetly.

  Oh, but there was venom in her tone.

  “I’m sorry your best laid plans were disrupted by me getting kidnaped by the Nocturne, turned into his little playtoy, and then arrested by my own damn people,” he snarled.

  A kind of animal rage was boiling inside him now. This woman…no, this girl was blaming him. Impossible.

  “You should be. You might have gotten your father killed. Not to mention everyone else that was there,” she shot back. “Years. Bloody damn years in the making.”

  Wesley strained against his shackles. So many shackles. It was all his life had become. One shackle after another. One rib after another.

  The cool metal dug painfully into his skin, into his bone. Blood bubbled from his mouth and he relaxed, wheezing.

  “Oh, did I forget to mention that Esther had her werewolf chains brought in special for you?”

  So, they were in the vampire’s castle. No surprise there. No wonder it was so dark and dreary.

  Wesley spoke through his teeth. “How do you suggest we get the hilt out of my stomach?” he asked.

  Cecelia smiled in a way that probably meant he wasn’t going to like it. “Esther is working on that right now.”

  Now he was trusting his life to the vampire.

  “She says you smell like wet dog,” Cecelia mused. “I can’t say I disagree with her.”

  “Whatever will I do,” he said, lulling his head around.

  Wesley thought back only a week or so. He’d been a detective then. Pretty clear cut, as things go.

  Then he’d been a knight for the man who’d killed his mother.

  Dragged his friends into that one. Briefly he wondered what had been made of them. Maronie would hopefully only be on foot duty. Walking the streets of London really wasn’t as bad as everyone thought. She’d be good there.

  But Oliver…his old friend. He might have been in a jail cell. More than likely he was. Wesley smiled to himself. He’d have to get him out, of course. When he had a chance to.

  No old friends left behind.

  Wesley then remembered the basilisk and its poison on him.

  Then how the Nocturne had spoken of his latent power.

  Which gave him an idea.

  He reached down to feel the metal bar over his hips. They’d covered it in a thin blanket. It took him a moment to find the metal through the fabric and he wrapped his fingers around it.

  Ignoring the burgeoning pain near his new rib, he tried to focus solely on the coolness of the silver-steel alloy. Once he began to feel the pulsing in the edges of the metal bracket.

  The magic he tried to push into the metal resisted him. It was like dragging a fishing net through weeds. It just wouldn’t come to him. So distant was the feeling of magick that he was sure even with a wand he wouldn’t have been able to produce so much as sparks.

  When he couldn’t concentrate any longer, he fell back, panting.

  “If you’re trying to access your magic, you probably won’t be able to,” Cece said.

  Wesley sighed. “Why is that?”

  “Well, the metal for one. The house and its stones, for two. It nullifies any magic. Well, mostly,” she added. “It's a pretty genius defense. Vampires are stronger and faster which gives them a big advantage if any wizards attempt to raid this place. Which has happened, I asked.” She glared at him as if he’d been questioning her deductions. “You aren’t going anywhere until that thing is out of you.”

  Wesley took a moment to look at Cece. To really look at her. To actually take in how much she’d changed. The dark color of her hair, the blonde streaks, the sharp gleam of it as it ran up her neck to sit in a messy bun. She was pretty now and she had her mother’s small nose and her father’s fierce, blustery blue eyes.

  She’d always hung around him, when they’d been young. There had been few kids around the estate and its surrounding acres. Now that he really thought about it, there were few memories, after a certain age, that she wasn’t there.

  Eventually, Cece looked back at him expectantly. “Yes?”

  “You aren’t a witch, are you?” he asked.

  His mind was working more slowly but in none of his memories did she use magic. Though her father had. Her mother…hadn’t, he didn’t think.

  She frowned at him. “No…Wesley, I can’t use magic. Can’t you remember that?”

  “To be honest, a lot of it is blurry after my mother died and I went off to school,” he said.

  “I can tell. You blame your father for that,” she said bluntly.

  Wesley glanced up at the ceiling. “From where I’m standing, it is mostly his fault. But I don’t blame him for it.”

  Not anymore, anyway.

  “Sure,” she said, half shrugging in her chair.

  Wesley blinked. “You don’t like me, do you?”

  Cece bit her bottom lip and considered the question, but only for a second. “No.”

  “Care to tell me why?”

  “No.”

  “You blame me for ruining your best laid plans. I get that. You might also not like that I have blamed my father for my mother’s death.” He thought some more. “And you don’t like me for destroying the estate?”

  She nodded slowly, then exaggeratingly. “Sounds like you’ve gotten it all figured out.”

  “Then what am I missing?” he asked.

  “You left,” she said. “You fucking left your father alone.”

  Wesley tried not to let his mouth fall open. “He sent me away.”

  She chuckled dryly. “And you stayed away. You could have come back and helped if you weren’t so damn proud.”

  He laid his head back. “I wasn’t proud. I was angry. And it was a two way road. He could have reached out too. He didn’t.”

  “Oh god,” she sighed. “You men are all the same.”

  That actually made Wesley smile and he grimaced. “Are you telling me I’m just like my father?”

  She snorted. “Annoyingly so.”

  They sat in silence for a while and Wesley didn’t try to get up again. He just let the silence surround him. Felt its weight. The way it crept into his mind and only highlighted the parts he didn’t want to think about.

  It helped the mess spill over. Which he knew he couldn’t hide from. Even if he was in a vampire’s castle waiting to see if he’d turn into a snarling beast.

  Cece’s words played in his mind. You left. You left your father alone.

  The pang of truth rang deeply.

  It was deepened by the Nocturne’s memory. The shadow being. How it had thrown her. They had been wrong, then. If the memory could be trusted, of course.

  The picture of her face as she hung in the air kept flashing in his mind.

  And if there had been a time to weep this would have been it. But he was saved by the door flying open.

  Esther strode in, her hair cast down on her shoulders, her face set in a stony, emotionless glare. It was a stark contrast to her cold, ebbing beauty. The contradiction was annoying.

  Waddling in behind her was an old woman. Well, old was actually maybe not accurate. She was ancient. As if she’d just been dug up out of her grave.

  The lines on her face seemed to have been etched in century-old granite and the white hair atop her head, well, what was left of it anyway, fell in wispy, short strands. The perpetual scowl on her face didn’t help either.

  “Barstow, this is the Babushka,” Esther said. “She is going to remove your rib.”

  Wesley laughed as if it was a bad joke.

  Then the Babushka slammed an old leather doctor case on the table at the end of the bed. Without looking at Wesley she began pulling wicked-looking tools out of the bag.

  His laugh died in his throat. “Wait–”

  “No time to wait,” Esther said, coming to his side. “If we don’t remove that thing then you’ll die. And my father would be very displeased with me. I’ve already brought a dog into his home. Letting an ally pass would get me locked up for a century.”

  Wesley frowned. “How old are you?”

  “Don’t you know not to ask that?” she said, her mouth curling into a small smile.

  “I thought that was weight,” he said, eyeing the sharp tools the old woman was admiring. “There is no way this is the best way to do this.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “We don’t have many options.”

  What Wesley heard was: You don’t have any options.

  He was beginning to panic. “Don’t let that woman touch me.”

  Esther’s smile had widened. “You wizard’s are so touchy. She’s been doing this for centuries, Barstow.” She crossed her arms. “Like I said, I will not let you die here. We’ve too much to do.”

  The old woman came around, a needle the size of a small sword in her hand, dripping a blue liquid.

  Wesley began to struggle against the restraints again. His fear was rising and he could feel something moving in his mouth, pushing his teeth. Then on his fingers. A terrible kind of pressure…

  And his vision, it was darkening…becoming a kind of crimson…

  “Now, that is unfortunate,” Esther said, watching him dispassionately.

  Pain burgeoned in Wesley’s head like one giant spike being pushed up through his brain. Then again in his guts…

  That would be the hilt, he knew.

  He pushed hard against the metal straps and they burned him but it was little compared to what was happening inside him. Metal screeched and threads were torn.

  From the corner of his blurring vision he saw Esther tense.

  Then a cool hand touched his shoulder. Cece leaned over him, looking him in the eyes.

  “Relax, Wesley. It's going to be alright. You don’t need to fight it. I’ll be here.” Her voice played like a soft tune in his chaotic mind. Her lips gently to his ear and she squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll be here.”

  Something sharp jabbed his other arm and he flinched. The Babushka was there, her devilish needle stuck fully into Wesley’s skin.

  “No–” he tried to say. “Not–”

  But it was over. It was over and he was drifting away. Left to the devices of these strangers. To this old woman and her torture.

  The last thing he remembered seeing was Cece, looking down at him, concern touching her eyes. It did little to assuage his nerves.

  But it did do something, no matter how small.

  A sliver of hope to keep him while he was left to them.

  And that was all he could ask for as he fell into darkness.