If the song playing just on the thin edge of audible through the speakers at the rest area wasn’t the most annoying song currently on the radio, it was at least in the top ten. Martin glanced at his watch as he threaded his way through the crowd and wondered if it would have been worth losing the extra sleep to have taken a more direct route.
He estimated that it had been the longest week of his life, not even excepting the weeks he’d spent in Nikola Orsinov’s lair. As he’d suspected, there hadn’t been any answers in Chicago, other than a vague reference to calliope music in West Pullman Park while Gerry and Gertrude were staying there. He’d gone on to Pittsburgh, managed to find a nurse who remembered Gerry being admitted, and almost had a heart attack when the man referred to your mother after he told him he was Gerry’s brother. He’d ended up accidentally compelling answers out of the nurse, a man named Louis Brown, which he felt guilty about, but it had at least reassured him that Mary Keay really had been burnt out of the book and Liliana Blackwood hadn’t managed to somehow get across the pond; it had just been Gertrude playing one of her sick little jokes, he supposed. Louis had also told him, though, that Gertrude had been arrested.
He’d brushed off Jon’s concern with a few lighthearted jokes and soothing words when he called to get details about that, but the truth was he’d been holding himself together through sheer force of will at that point. Elias, the bastard, had known what was going on, something Martin found out when he got a phone call from the front desk while he was trying, without success, to get some sleep about a letter that had been sent for him. Said letter had turned out to contain a statement—to tide you over, the note said—and once Martin read it into the recorder, he’d felt the shaking stop and the ache ease and been able to sleep. So…that was a thing now. It meant he’d finally crossed the line he’d spoken to Jon about the night after the attack on the Institute, the one that kept him thoroughly human. He’d known he was getting there, but he had hoped that if he kept himself from Seeing, he’d be able to slow the progress, maybe even halt it altogether. Somehow, he hadn’t reckoned on the Knowing adding to that, especially since he hadn’t been doing it on purpose. The fact that the statement he’d recorded in Beijing hadn’t lasted a week told him things were way, way worse than he’d thought.
Still. The statement, rubbish though it was for anything else, had at least given him enough…sustenance, he supposed, to get moving again. It also put him on a much tighter deadline than he’d previously anticipated. He had originally planned to stick around in Pittsburgh for a day or two at least, maybe see if he could figure out why Gertrude had left the Book behind after talking the officers into dropping the trespassing charges, but the risk of him getting so weak he couldn’t function if he went too much longer without a statement was too high. The one Elias had sent him was the rough supernatural equivalent of a Mars Bar—enough to fool his stomach into thinking he was full, maybe even give him a short burst of energy, but there was practically nothing to it and it was going to burn off quick. He estimated he had two, maybe three days at best.
Fortunately, he had options. The Usher Foundation in Washington, DC was another sister organization to the Institute, and while he wasn’t sure if they even took statements themselves, he figured it would be his best shot. And if Xiaoling, or her assistant, had indeed forwarded statements there for Gertrude, they might still have them. Their number was unlisted—naturally—so he would have to go down in person, present his credentials, and hope he was convincing enough to get in the door. Or call Elias for a reference, which he absolutely did not want to do.
In a pinch, he figured he could compel something out of the guard, or Know something personal about them, but that was even further down his list than calling Elias.
Both Greyhound and Amtrak had routes from Pittsburgh to DC, and since the stops were about equidistant from his hotel and the prices were close enough that he didn’t figure Elias would care which one he took, he’d opted for the train. The one that afforded him two extra hours of sleep—an hour and fifteen minutes beyond the early bus—meant a transfer in Philadelphia, but he didn’t mind; he was used to having to change trains when he traveled.
Actually, if it weren’t for the looming deadline and the fact that he was pretty sure he was being followed, he would rather have enjoyed the trip.
He felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck, and his stomach twisted itself into a knot. What cemented the feeling that something wasn’t right was the faint click followed by the vibration in his inner jacket pocket as his tape recorder switched itself on. Casually, he reached in and pulled it out.
“I’m at the train station in Philadelphia,” he said quietly into the microphone. “I have to change lines here, and it’s…I mean, this is a major city with a lot of tourists, there are a lot of people here. But I’ve got that same sense of being followed that I had in Chicago. I haven’t seen any cops, or at least not any that don’t look like station security ready for lunch, but…”
He trailed off momentarily as he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. There was nothing particularly outstanding about the figure, but his mouth went dry all the same. He swallowed hard. “There’s a woman over by one of the junctions in this corridor. She was in Pittsburgh, but I don’t think she got on the train with me. And yet…here she is. She’s dressed fairly nondescript—hard-wearing denim, old leather. Most people wouldn’t pick her out of a crowd, but…she’s a Hunter. I can sense it. And she can definitely sense me. I might be able to run if—ah.”
As he was contemplating making a break for it—there were plenty of people hustling for trains, it wasn’t like he would stand out if he did—the woman moved with a lithe, easy grace, so casually that you would have thought it was an accident that she stepped directly into Martin’s path unless you were aware of what she was.
“Uh, e-excuse me,” Martin said, trying to sound like any other nervous passenger in a hurry. He tried to move around her, but as he’d suspected, she shifted easily to block his path. “Um, I—I don’t have any cash, sorry—”
“Not looking for cash,” the woman said, and Martin’s brain pulled up short at her accent—she sounded like home. Almost. She was, at the very least, English.
He straightened without conscious thought and looked at her full on. Her eyes were green as bloodstone and twice as hard. Her blonde hair was cropped short, what Melanie had always referred to as the “butch special”, with the part on the right. Directly between her hairline and her eyebrow was a scar, white against the paleness of her skin, like a check mark.
Realization slammed into Martin with the force of a hammer’s blow. His first instinct was to bolt, to strike out at the woman and run while she was still off balance, but he made himself stay rational. She was a Hunter, after all, if he ran she would only chase him. And this was almost certainly not a fight he was going to easily win.
“Who are you?” he asked, and it was only after he said it that he tasted the static on his tongue and almost bit it in half.
If the woman noticed, she gave no sign. “Julia. Who are you?”
At least she wasn’t calling him Archivist, which meant she probably wasn’t as tapped into things as…most of the beings he’d met, and was hopefully less likely to want him dead. On the other hand, she also definitely had him pegged as something worth killing, or at least worth hunting. “Uh. I’m Martin. Martin Blackwood. I’m an as—an Archivist at the Magnus Institute. London.”
“Oh, you don’t say,” Julia said dryly. “So what brings you to the Amtrak station. Philadelphia.”
“A train.”
“Funny guy.” Julia crossed her arms over her chest. “We were told you were asking some interesting questions around a few places back in Pittsburgh. And you seem to have attracted the attention of something we’ve been watching for a while.”
Which meant Julia’s partner, the old man Gerry’s statement—no, Gerry—had mentioned, wasn’t the ersatz cop who’d been following him in Chicago. Great. Martin hadn’t really expected that particular piece of luck, but it would have been nice. “Well, look, I’m, I’m happy to be bait and all, you’re welcome to whatever it is, but I’ve got a train to catch, so—”
“Leave it. You’re riding with me,” Julia ordered.
Martin thought about asking how she knew he wasn’t a serial killer, or trying to argue the point, or making that break for it, but frankly, he didn’t want to risk overextending himself and bringing back that shaky, flu-like feeling he’d had two days previously. He sighed and adjusted the strap of his bag. “I’ve got to say, this is definitely the most polite way I’ve been kidnapped lately.”
“Think of it like…an escort. Personal bodyguard.” Julia smirked. “You’re going to DC, right? Come on, we can chat in the car. I’m sure you’ve got lots of librarian stories. The miles will just fly by.”
“An Archivist isn’t—fine. Fine,” Martin huffed. “Let’s just get this over with.”
At least he probably wasn’t her prey, he thought as he followed her out of the station. She wouldn’t have given up so easily if he was really what she wanted. And the recorder had turned off, which probably meant he was okay.
He tried not to think about how long he’d been in Orsinov’s lair without the recorder running.
The car she led him to was, much like her, nondescript and hard-wearing, a battered black sedan with an equally battered license plate that seemed just slightly off from most of the other plates in the lot. Julia took his bag from him, unlocked the door, and tossed it into the backseat, then waved for him to get in. He complied, thankful he wasn’t the one having to drive on the wrong side of the road, and barely managed to get his seatbelt fastened before she pulled out of the parking space and drove away.
They were silent for the first part of the drive. Once she pulled onto a large highway designated with a blue shield bearing the number 95, she said, “You were asking about Gerard Keay, then.”
“Yeah, I was.” Martin wasn’t going to volunteer more than that, and before Julia could press him, he quickly hit her with a question of his own. “You didn’t tell me your last name.”
“Does it matter?”
“I thought I’d add you to the Christmas card list. It’s a courtesy I extend to all my kidnappers,” Martin sniped. “If you don’t have a permanent address, I can send it care of general delivery.”
Julia snorted, but didn’t answer. From the way her hands tightened on the steering wheel, Martin rather suspected he’d hit a nerve. Either she was on the run for something…or her last name was something she wanted to get away from. Escape her family’s legacy, something like that. Which might explain why she was in the States.
Martin watched her for a minute, then decided to try an experiment. He called on the Eye the same way he did when he tried to Look at something, but tried to direct his power towards his tongue. “So. What’s your last name?”
“Montauk,” Julia replied immediately. Her hands tightened further, and she shot him a defiant glower. “My name’s Julia Montauk.”
“Ah.” Martin knew the next line, which was to identify her as Robert Montauk’s daughter and start a whole annoying discussion, but awareness of something else nudged at his brain instead and he blurted without considering what he was saying, “I think you dated my sister.”
Julia raised an eyebrow. “Did I now.”
“Ten, eleven years ago maybe? Her name’s Melanie, she’s technically my stepsister. You went on one date, she went over to your flat, she wasn’t there when you woke up the next day and never called you back.”
“Oh. Her. Yeah, I remember her. Bit of a tease really.”
“She was seventeen,” Martin said, and had the small satisfaction of seeing Julia flinch. “And she didn’t break up with you because you’re Robert Montauk’s daughter. She broke it off because you tried to get her drunk and seduce her and she wasn’t having it.”
“You really know how to start a conversation,” Julia grumbled, but she didn’t sound terribly annoyed.
Martin crossed his arms over his chest. “You pick the topic, then.”
At that, Julia actually laughed. “How about why you’re on this side of the pond? Or why you were asking questions about Gerard Keay?”
“I’m in America trying to pick up a trail that went cold,” Martin said. The interested little noise Julia made told him he’d just bought himself a bit of time. “Gerard Keay is sort of rolled into that. Also, he’s—an old family friend.”
“Mm. Didn’t know he was dead?”
“No, I did, just…trying to get the details.”
Before anyone could say another word, Martin’s phone rang. He fished it out and glanced at the display. “Uh, sorry, have to take this. It’s, um, it’s my boss.”
Julia didn’t take her eyes off the road. She reached over, plucked the phone from his hand, rolled down the window, and tossed the phone out onto the interstate, all before he could get more than a breath out.
He tried to protest anyway. “Hey! H-hey, I need that!”
“You can get another one. Later.” Julia rolled the window back up. “We don’t need anyone interfering in our little chat.”
Martin touched the pocket with the recorder in it, but said nothing. While he wasn’t…entirely sure what would happen if Julia tossed it out after his phone, he didn’t want to risk it.
He was worried, though. The call hadn’t actually been from Jon—it had been from Gerry—and there was no way Gerry wouldn’t have called if something wasn’t wrong. The call had probably abruptly disconnected when the phone smashed on the road, or at the very least when a car behind them ran it over, which meant Gerry was going to be worried about him. And now neither he nor Jon had any way of contacting Martin.
God, Jon was going to go out of his mind.
Martin let his gaze drift out the window. He began humming under his breath, then singing softly. He didn’t know if it would work, but hey, he and Melanie had heard Gerry singing “Bones in the Ocean” when the Book had burnt, so maybe they’d sense him singing it somehow and know he was okay. Or at least alive. It was worth a shot.
He didn’t think he’d been loud enough to be heard, but when he was done, Julia asked, “What was that?”
“Uh, ‘Eliza Lee’. It’s, um, it’s a sea shanty.” Martin shrugged. “Just calms me down, I guess.”
“Huh. Didn’t have you pegged as the sailing type.” Julia glanced at him. “Sing another one, then.”
Now that, Martin could do. They usually sang “The Coast of High Barbary” when they were burning Slaughter Leitners, so he launched into that one—and because the gleam in Julia’s eye told him he’d hit the right note, so to speak, he sang a couple more.
At the same time, he was trying to get an idea of where he was headed. South, ish, was about all he could really come up with. There weren’t nearly as many cars as he would have expected on the road, considering it seemed like a fairly major thoroughfare and it was the middle of the afternoon. The signs on the side of the road flashed at him, advertising restaurants he’d never heard of in cities he didn’t know, and he couldn’t even begin to guess what Julia was looking for. Because she was definitely looking for something.
“Are you all right?” he finally asked. “You seem, uh…”
“Sure,” Julia said easily. “Just keeping an eye out.”
“For whatever I’ve got the attention of?” Martin asked.
Instead of answering, Julia eyed him again. “So you’re from the Magnus Institute?”
“Yep.” Martin frowned at a garish billboard featuring an atrocious pun and wondered why anyone would feel the need to advertise a place that was almost five hundred miles away—did people really take trips that long? “You’ve been, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Julia agreed. “Checked myself in there a while back. Ended up spilling my guts to this old woman about my dad. Just let it all out.”
“Gertrude Robinson,” Martin murmured. “She used to be the Head Archivist.”
“Didn’t catch her name. So she’s your boss?”
“Uh, no, I never actually met her. My boss’s name is Jon. She died a couple years ago.”
Julia grunted. Her eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror briefly. “Weirdest thing, really. Didn’t mean to spill half of it, but…really helped me put the pieces together, you know?”
“Yeah, we get that a lot. It’s kind of our thing.” Martin glanced in the wing mirror, but he couldn’t see anything, which could mean there was nothing to see or could mean Julia just had it angled for her own viewing needs and his weren’t important.
“Hm.” Julia glanced at him for a moment before resuming her scan of the road. “So. What about that trail you said you were chasing?”
Martin guessed she was intrigued by the idea of a hunt, whether she wanted to admit it or not. “Would you believe me if I said I was trying to save the world?”
“Probably not.”
Martin supposed that was fair. He didn’t exactly look like a hero. Which was what had saved him for most of his life. He didn’t look like a threat, and he was fairly certain that most of the things that met him were surprised by his appearance.
“What about you?” he asked, more to deflect the conversation off himself than because he had real interest. “What brings the daughter of Robert Montauk all the way out here? And what exactly are you—”
The wail of a police siren directly behind them almost made Martin jump through the roof. Julia pulled the car over to the side of the interstate and set it in park. For just a moment, a smile crossed her face—an almost feral look of delight.
Quietly, she said, “Hunting.”
Before Martin could tell her that he knew that, actually, a figure appeared at Julia’s window; she rolled it down as if this was perfectly normal, which for all he knew it was. A cop leaned into the window; Martin instantly recognized him as the cop that had been following him in Chicago, or his identical twin brother, but he couldn’t see the badge on his chest clearly enough to see which city it claimed he was an officer of.
A stabbing pain between his eyes was all the warning he got before the information that American interstate highways were under the jurisdiction of state troopers rather than city cops unfolded in his brain.
“License and registration,” the cop said, and he sounded American, at least, but Martin wasn’t all that familiar with American accents, so he couldn’t say if it was out of place or not (it’s a Midwestern accent, it’s not necessarily out of place if he moved but it’s also bland and generic and inoffensive—okay, that was going to get annoying fast).
Julia didn’t make a move towards her wallet or the glove compartment where the registration would presumably be. “Can I see some identification, please?”
“Of course.” The officer reached into his pocket and pulled out a badge, which he held up for her to see. Casually, he added, “You British?”
“I have my green card, Officer…Mustermann,” Julia said with a glance at the badge.
Martin bit back a groan. Of fucking course. Mustermann turned his attention to him anyway. “And your friend?”
“Visiting from home!” Julia said cheerfully.
“Does he have his passport on him?” Mustermann was still talking to Julia, but looking at Martin.
“He can hear you perfectly well,” Martin snapped. It would probably have been smarter to hold his tongue, but, well, it wasn’t like there was anywhere for him to go, was there? He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s in my bag.”
“Step out of the car, please, sir.”
That was clearly not in the script, and Julia actually bristled. “Now, hold on a minute.”
“Step. Out. Of the car,” Mustermann repeated, and his tone was decidedly unfriendly.
Martin was already reaching for the door handle. If he was being honest, he actually rather liked their odds with this one. The Stranger and the Beholder were in opposition to one another, so it was just a matter of who gained the upper hand first, and he had a Hunter…well, not exactly on his side, but at least she seemed more interested in Mustermann than him. If this was the thing she was talking about, that was—for all he knew he’d attracted something else, too. Still…maybe he could survive this.
Before he could get out, though, there were two metallic clunking noises, and Mustermann frowned at the back end of the car. “Pop the trunk, ma’am.”
Julia shrugged. “I mean, there’s nothing in there.”
“I’m not gonna ask you again.” Mustermann narrowed his eyes at her.
After a beat or two, Julia nodded. “Fine.” She leaned down and pulled something at her feet, and there was a dull clunk as—presumably—the lock on the boot disengaged.
“Don’t move. Either of you,” Mustermann ordered.
Martin eased back into a sitting position, hands resting on his lap as nonthreateningly as possible. Julia, too, stayed where she was, one arm draped out the open window and the other resting on the steering wheel, her eyes fixed on the rearview mirror as Mustermann walked to the back of the car. Martin didn’t dare turn his head, but he heard the creak as the lid was raised.
“Holy sh—” Mustermann suddenly shouted.
There was a gunshot, which made Martin jump and cover his head. Julia just started laughing as Mustermann swore and started yelling. There was a second gunshot, a grunting, and silence before footsteps came up alongside the car again.
“Oh, bloody hell, Jule,” a voice that was more Mancunian than Midwestern grumbled. “You said you’d stop after a couple of miles. Been near on an hour.”
Martin looked up, and his lungs flattened against the back of his chest as he recognized the man now leaning into the car, rubbing at his neck and groaning dramatically. “Ohh, look at my neck, it don’t feel right…”
“Oh, you knew it might take a while,” Julia said dismissively.
Martin tried not to flinch back as the man locked eyes with him. Like Julia’s, they were the keen eyes of a Hunter, although his were a watery blue-grey. “This him, then?”
“It is. Martin, Trevor.” Julia gestured between the two of them.
“I know who he is.” Martin tried to keep his voice even. He wasn’t sure why Trevor Herbert scared him so much more than Julia did, except that he’d been at it longer than she’d been alive and therefore was more likely to be a real danger to him. “Trevor Herbert, the vampire killer.”
“He’s from the Magnus Institute,” Julia told Trevor.
Trevor smirked. “Oh. Well, isn’t that something.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“L-look, you came to us,” Martin pointed out. “It’s not like, like anybody made either of you come in.”
Trevor ignored him. “Time for that later. You two come help me now, this one needs its head off.”
“You didn’t kill it?” Julia said incredulously.
“We don’t know what it is yet, do we?” Trevor snapped back. Julia threw up her hands in disgust.
Martin hesitated. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I do know what it is. Or at least have some idea.”
“Oh-ho, do you now?” Trevor looked at him with a bit more interest. “Then you get the axe. It’s in the boot.”
Martin tried to channel his inner Melanie. “You’re giving me a weapon.”
Trevor pulled aside the lapel of his coat and showed Martin the butt of the gun at his waistband. “A short-range one.”
Which…was a fair point. Martin sighed in mingled frustration and resignation. “Fine.” He got out of the car.
He hadn’t used an axe in a while, but it wasn’t exactly difficult. The one in the boot was a decent enough size. A quick glance at the road to make sure no one was coming—oh, there was the traffic, but it was far enough off that he could get one good swing in before they pulled up level with him, so he’d have to make it count. He lined up, hauled the axe backwards, swung it overhand, and brought it down on Mustermann’s neck, hard. It gave a faint clink as it encountered the asphalt beneath, but the head rolled away from the body without issue.
“Nice one,” Trevor said, sounding a bit grudging.
Martin lifted the axe and studied the blade. “Might need to sharpen it later. I think there’s a nick on the edge now.” He turned to toss it into the boot.
“Are you going to clean that?” Julia said pointedly.
“No need. Look.” Martin pointed at the body. Despite two holes punched in it—one in the chest and one in the forehead—and the fact that he’d just cut off the bloody head, there wasn’t a drop of blood to be seen. “They haven’t figured out circulatory systems yet, I guess.”
“They?” Trevor’s head snapped up.
Martin nodded. “Six that I know of. Probably more…look, we should maybe get going before someone sees us?”
“Right.” Julia grabbed Mustermann’s head and tossed it into the boot after the axe. “We’ve got time before it comes back. Come on. Just a few more exits.”
It turned out to be a roughly ten-minute drive before Julia took an exit labeled 5 A-B; Martin couldn’t see whether she took the A or B half of it, but they merged onto another highway that nevertheless seemed to be passing through a city rather than over it. The name Christiana on several signs tickled at something in Martin’s brain, but he ruthlessly told the Eye to get stuffed. He needed to conserve his energy.
“Why did you pick this place?” he asked, for want of anything better to do.
Trevor snorted from the backseat. “Well, it’s convenient, isn’t it? Just a place to lay our heads. Meets all our needs.”
“It’s warm,” Julia said.
“Dry,” Trevor agreed. “For the most part.”
“Keeps the weather off.”
“Secluded.”
“Near enough to town for supplies.”
“Good hunting.”
“Be perfect if they didn’t keep finding us.”
That caught Martin’s attention. “If who didn’t keep finding you?”
Trevor scowled, but it was directed at Julia, not Martin, which surprised him a bit. “Never you mind.”
Since they currently held the majority of the power, and also a gun, Martin decided to let it go for the moment.
Julia made a couple of turns that seemed to loop them back around on themselves—Martin was fairly certain they passed under the road they’d previously been traveling on—until she reached what looked like some sort of factory or processing plant. It definitely didn’t look like they were supposed to be on this property, but Martin spotted a sticker on the windscreen of a couple cars parked nearby that seemed to be the same general shape and color of the one tacked to the windscreen of the car Julia was driving. She’d either stolen the sticker or stolen the car. Either way, it kept them relatively unnoticed as she threaded her way through the buildings and out the back way.
Calling the place they found themselves on a “road” was generous. It was obvious this part of the complex had been disused for years. Cracked and broken pavement wended its way past buildings that had been taken down to the foundations and into an overhang of trees. After a couple of minutes, the road curved past yet another shell of a building, and Julia turned off onto a dirt path that looked to be more traveled by bicycles and off-road vehicles than actual cars.
Martin was starting to understand how Jon might have felt when Daisy kidnapped him.
Eventually, they came to stop outside a cabin that had probably once been a caretaker’s cabin of some sort. It looked surprisingly sturdy, built of square logs chinked with what was probably mud, and while the windows were dark and dirty they seemed mostly intact. Julia threw the car into park and jerked her head at Martin. “Right. In you get. Then you can tell us what we’re dealing with here.”
The interior of the cabin was about what Martin had expected from the outside. It was more or less square, with a door in the back wall that was firmly shut and a ladder leading up to what Martin assumed was a storage loft; the ladder looked half-rotted through and he wouldn’t have trusted it. There was a dilapidated table with three rickety chairs clustered around it, one shoved casually to the side as if it more commonly got used for putting stuff on, a counter built along one wall with a tiny portable camping stove resting on top of it, and a washbasin Martin didn’t have to try too hard to notice wasn’t actually hooked up to any kind of plumbing. There were a couple of cupboards that looked like they might have something in them, but no refrigerator. The lantern Julia clicked on, which actually did a lot to illuminate the space, was battery-operated.
Trevor pulled the door shut behind them, locked it, and unceremoniously dumped Mustermann’s head on the table. The eyes rolled around and gave Martin a hateful, malicious glare that he tried to ignore. Interestingly, while Martin knew he had severed the head from the shoulders cleanly, there were a number of…almost tendrils growing from the wound. The nub of a spine. A few spidery nerves. A long tube that was probably the trachea.
“Interesting,” Julia said, drawing out the word. “It regenerates. At least the important bits.”
“The bits it’s figured out, anyway,” Martin said, a bit absently. He was trying to remember—had Dr. Elliot’s statement mentioned the circulatory system? It must have, they’d been dissecting hearts at one point, but had they figured out the whole system or just the bit nearest the heart? Mustermann hadn’t bled, after all…
Trevor reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “What is it?” he asked, tapping out a cigarette.
“It’s…complicated.”
Julia reached over and took the cigarette packet from Trevor. “We’ve got until it regenerates for you to un-complicate it.”
“Hey!” Trevor complained. “That’s my last one!”
“Oh, shut it, old man, I’ll buy you another pack.” Julia stuck the cigarette in her mouth and fished out a lighter.
“Those things will kill you, you know,” Martin said, more out of habit than anything.
“Something will, eventually.” Julia struck a match—not a lighter, Martin noticed—and got her cigarette lit, then shook the match out and dropped it in an ashtray before handing the matchbook over to Trevor. “Well?”
Martin waited for Trevor to light his own cigarette while he marshaled his thoughts. Finally, he said, “Okay. You know how you said you’re both…Hunters?”
“Yeah?” Julia didn’t seem impressed.
“Well…this thing is a Stranger. It’s…it’s part of a big fear…god…thing. And they’re kind of trying to take over the world.”
Explaining it wasn’t nearly as easy as it had been to explain it to Jon and the others, but Martin did his best. To their credit, both Trevor and Julia seemed to believe every word he said, or at least not to openly doubt him. When he finished, there was silence, save for the extremely unpleasant popping, cracking sound of Mustermann regrowing vertebrae.
“Huh,” Trevor said finally.
“Look, hold on,” Martin said. “I’m going to turn on my tape recorder, okay? Then…I don’t know. Make this a bit more official.”
Julia eyed him suspiciously, then blew a cloud of smoke in his face. “Fine. Turn it on.”
Martin fished the recorder out and checked to make sure there was still tape left on the cassette, then pressed the RECORD button. He set the tape player on the table, far enough away from Mustermann’s head that the sounds wouldn’t overwhelm the talking but central enough that it would pick all of them up. “Well?”
Trevor flicked ash off the end of his cigarette. “She said you could turn it on. Didn’t say anything about talking.”
“Yeah, okay, fair enough,” Martin acknowledged. “Fine. Then you can deal with me talking a bit more. We have evidence of…as much of this as we can possibly have evidence of. I’ve seen the preparations for the Unknowing. Whether this idiot here is part of it or not, you’ll just have to wait until he’s able to talk again to find out, but I’m telling the truth. And it’s not like I’m asking you to help with it, I’m just asking you to let me go back and help stop it.”
Julia snorted. “Well, if you are telling the truth, it won’t be long before Officer Mustermann here can talk. That should be interesting.”
“He’s almost got his lungs again!” Trevor marveled, looking at the twin balloons beginning to form at the split ends of the bronchi. “If you can call those lungs.”
“Eh, as long as they can move air about, that’ll do.” Julia blew a smoke ring into the air.
Martin glanced at Mustermann, who was still glowering and gritting his teeth. “And if you don’t like what he has to say?”
“Then this cabin is a long way from anything that can hear you.” Julia laughed, and Trevor joined in.
The factory wasn’t that far away, but it was loud, and those train tracks had looked active, so Martin decided she was probably right. He just hoped that Mustermann did know about the Unknowing and did need him for it, because if he lied and said Martin had made it all up, there wouldn’t be enough of him to be of any use to Orsinov, and he strongly suspected she was going to try to get him again instead of going back to her Plan B of using Jon. A part of him felt guilty for not telling Jon his suspicions the last time they’d been able to talk, but fuck it, if it kept him safe to think he was still an option…
Mustermann took a shallow, rasping breath as the partially regrown lungs began to inflate and deflate. Martin tried not to look directly at him. “Can we possibly keep that somewhere else?”
“I want it where I can see it,” Trevor said darkly.
Martin sighed. “Okay, sure, fine. But may I possibly suggest a better way to pass the time than just listening to…this?”
The lungs grew another centimeter or so with a sound that reminded Martin of forced rhubarb. Julia stubbed the remains of her cigarette out in an ashtray. “Sure. Want our story?”
Trevor grunted. “Gave your people plenty already.”
“There’s a page or two missing, I think,” Martin said slowly. “Also, you were dying of lung cancer at the time, and now you…don’t appear to be.”
“Nope.” Trevor huffed out a small laugh.
Martin waited, but that appeared to be the end of it. “Great! So, what about you, Julia? Care to make another statement—maybe about how you met Trevor? Pretty sure that’s a different track than the one you gave Gertrude.”
Julia shrugged. “Sure, why not.” As Martin pulled out a chair to sit down, she added, “Not like you or your tape recorder get to leave here without us.”
“Yeah, all right.” Martin huffed. He was starting to get tired and…itchy, and honestly, if he was going to have to make a break for it, he’d need all the strength he could get, so…“Statement of Julia Montauk, regarding her initial encounter with the hunter Trevor Herbert. Statement taken direct from subject, twenty-fifth June, 2017, by Martin Blackwood, Archivist, the Magnus Institute, London.” He gestured to Julia, who spun the chair around backwards and sat astride it the same way Melanie often did. “Statement begins.”
He didn’t even have to prompt her. She started talking, and other than Trevor occasionally interjecting—and, despite his initial reluctance, adding his own part of the story—she just…kept going. Live statements had a different power to them than the written ones did, and Martin realized, with the small part of himself not drinking in her words, that this could quickly become intoxicating, even addicting, if he let it.
He could not let it.
“And we’ve been hunting together going on seven years now,” Julia concluded.
“She ain’t too bad at it,” Trevor conceded.
Julia poked at him lightly. “You’re starting to slow down a bit, though.”
Trevor laughed—actually laughed. It wasn’t cruel or malicious, it was genuinely lighthearted. “It’s the lack of respect that gets to me.”
Turning to Martin with a twinkle in her eyes that made her look, well, more her age, Julia added, “And he’s starting to go a bit senile, which is a shame.”
“Least I’m not so soft I need a featherbed,” Trevor sniped.
“Beds are good, old man! And I keep telling you—so are baths.”
Trevor rolled his eyes, but there was genuine affection in his voice as he turned to Martin. “You see what I gotta put up with, Mr. Blackwood?”
Martin smiled feebly. “Hey, it could definitely be worse. At least you have her around to put up with.”
Trevor’s expression suddenly hardened. “And what’s that supposed to mean, eh?”
“No, no, not—” Martin put up both his hands quickly. “I-it’s just—you know I was asking about Gerard Keay? He’s an old family friend. Like a brother. We used to talk to each other like you two are and…” He swallowed hard against the sudden lump that came to his throat, remembering the dark, agonizing months after he’d got the phone call from Pittsburgh. “Cancer sucks.”
For just a second, something flickered over Julia’s face—a genuine concern as she looked quickly over at Trevor, who had pressed a hand uneasily to his chest. Martin decided this was probably a good time to change the subject. “Anyway, um—you, you never really answered my question in the car. Why America?”
It was apparently the right thing to say, because Trevor got a sheepish look on his face and Julia laughed. “Heard tell there was a wolfman. Old Davey—he’s down in Plymouth—swore blind his brother had seen one on the Pacific Crest trail—”
Martin raised a finger. “Um, actually—”
“I told Trevor he was a liar—” Julia began at the same time, then stopped and frowned at him. “What?”
“No, it’s—we, we actually had a statement about that? From someone who saw the wolfman, too. And, well…it was true. I can just…tell.” Martin decided not to go into the recording issues, or his eyes. “But, um, it wasn’t the Pacific Crest trail. At least not the statement we heard. It was the Appalachian Trail. Somewhere north of Richmond, I think.”
Trevor blinked at him, then smiled, a slow, feral smile. “Huh. Well. That might even be worth the price of admission.”
Something inside Martin relaxed. “Well, if there’s—”
There was a hoarse, rattling wheeze from the table, and then Mustermann spoke, forced, stammering words. “Sh-sh-shut uuuuuup…”
“Oh-ho! Look who’s talking!” Trevor said brightly. Julia laughed.
“You could have at least chopped my ears off, too. You people just won’t shut up!” Mustermann rasped out. “Hhhhow am I supposed to get the lungs lined up right, when I can’t even con-concentrate…”
“I’m fit to chop them off again, if you need the practice,” Julia offered.
Mustermann rolled his eyes at her. “Doooo it! You’re the ones who want to talk!”
Martin stood up and approached the head, arms folded over his chest as he glared down on it. Drawing on the Eye—which didn’t take as much energy as it could have, since he’d just taken Julia and Trevor’s statement—he asked, “Why were you looking for me?”
“Wh-why do you think?” Mustermann gasped out. “Out here, exposed and unaware, on your own. At least I thought so. Thought it was a, a good chance to get you home, and get you ready for the Dance.”
Martin snorted derisively. Julia cocked an eyebrow at him. “This that ‘Unknowing’ dance?”
“That’s the one.” Martin looked down at Mustermann. “Okay, ‘Mustermann,’ if that’s what you want to go by—”
“Just turn it off,” Mustermann interrupted. “You got more questions, then you turn that thing off!”
“I don’t think you’re in any position to make demands,” Martin said pointedly, gesturing at the lack of appendages.
Mustermann didn’t look remotely intimidated. “Maybe not, but are you sure you know what’s listening in?”
Trevor and Julia both looked up at Martin, rather sharply. Martin didn’t blink, though. “Do you?”
“No, but I don’t like it,” Mustermann answered immediately.
“What’s he mean, ‘listening in’?” Trevor asked, getting to his feet with a scowl.
Martin shrugged. “I don’t know what he thinks he means, but…” He turned at the recorder and gave it a stern look. “I think we’re safe enough for the moment. A little privacy, please?”
Click! The recorder promptly shut itself off.
That was…unsettling. Martin decided it was a problem for future him and turned back to Trevor and Julia with as nonchalant an expression as he could. “There. Satisfied?”
Their expressions could not more clearly have said no if they had screamed it themselves, but neither of them said a word. Martin tucked the recorder into his pocket and turned back to Mustermann’s head. “Right. Now then. Back to those questions.”
Now Mustermann looked slightly intimidated, or at least uneasy, but he tried for defiance. “And if I don’t…wwwwant to answer?”
“You will,” Martin said simply.
“Mmmmmake me.”
“Fine.” Martin rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and fixed Mustermann with the hardest, coldest stare he could. “Where will the Dance be held?”
“I don’t know,” Mustermann replied instantly.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been…here…since the old woman left. Waiting for someone to come back. The Dancer sent word on where to meet when I returned.”
“Where are you going to meet?”
“The old shipping office in Newcastle. The one we don’t use anymore.”
Well, that was a wash. They already knew about that. Martin tried a different tack. “When?”
“When I get back.”
“You damn well know what I mean. When will the Dance be held?”
“When all is ready.”
Martin bit back a growl of frustration. “When will it be ready?”
Mustermann gritted his teeth. There was another popping, squeaking sound as the lungs expanded further. “It will be ready…when it’s ready.”
“I will make your head explode,” Martin warned. “Don’t push me.”
Mustermann laughed hoarsely. The lungs were almost fully formed, at least as far as Martin could see. “Do it, then. Prove you can.”
“Right.” Martin took a deep breath. This was…almost certainly an incredibly stupid move, and it was going to take almost all the energy he had, but if it got the information they needed, so be it. He took off his glasses, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and stared directly at Mustermann. “Tell me when the Dancer will be ready to begin the Dance.”
Static crackled in his ears and across his tongue. Mustermann glowed an intense indigo; out of the corner of his eye, he could See the red-orange mark of the Hunt radiating from Julia’s heart like a target and spiraling like plumes of smoke from Trevor’s lungs. The light from the lantern seemed to dim—or was it just his vision focusing on this thing he was compelling?
Mustermann clenched his teeth harder, a scream of frustration and pain building in the exposed throat, his whole being vibrating as the Stranger tried to push back the Ceaseless Watcher. Finally he yelled, “When she has the skin! She only needs a powerful skin that’s fit to be worn as her costume, and then she will call the rest of the Chorus and the Corps, and three days later we will dance the world new.”
The static died instantly. The glows faded from Martin’s eyes, and his energy left him a rush. He tried not to audibly gasp for air as he slid his glasses back onto his face with a slightly trembling hand, then turned to Trevor and Julia.
“If you have anything else you want to ask,” he said, in as steady a voice as he could, “ask it now.”
Trevor was staring at Martin like he might have just found a new target. Julia managed to recover and turned to Mustermann. “Are there more like you? Here in America?”
Mustermann didn’t answer for a moment, but when Martin straightened and reached for his glasses again, that was all it took. “The Stranger is everywhere. It just…doesn’t always look the same.” He actually laughed. “It wouldn’t be strange if it was familiar.”
“Yeah, all right,” Julia growled. “Can we kill you?”
“You can try.”
“Good.” Julia grabbed a meat cleaver off the counter and brought it down on the stump of Mustermann’s neck, severing the lungs again. Mustermann’s mouth opened in a silent scream as she tossed the cleaver towards the washbasin. “That’ll be fun later.”
Trevor shook his head slowly. “Bloody hell.”
“Yeah.” Martin took a couple of careful steps away from Mustermann and leaned heavily on the table. He felt a little dizzy and slightly sick. “Thanks for letting me talk to him.”
“Yeah, well…least we could do, seeing as how you helped us catch him.” Trevor reached for his jacket before seeming to remember that Julia had taken his last cigarette. “You do that sort of thing a lot, then?”
Martin shook his head. “First time.”
Julia hummed slightly. “Impressive. Shame we can’t give you more help, but…” Her eyes darkened slightly. “We don’t have Gerard anymore.”
“You’ve been plenty help,” Martin assured her. “And Gerry doesn’t have anything of use anyway.”
Trevor suddenly straightened and fixed Martin with a look. “Wait. How do you know that?”
Martin froze. It suddenly occurred to him just how much energy he had used and exactly how tired he was, because he had just made a major error. He tried to backpedal. “I, I mean, he’s, he was my brother, he—”
“You know he’s still around.” Trevor’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve already seen him.”
“N-no—no, I—l-look, sometimes I just Know things without—”
“Where is he, then?” Trevor’s face was getting darker and darker. “We owe him a little payback.”
“For what?” Martin’s anger at the way Gerry had been treated, what he’d suffered, momentarily eclipsed his own fear. “For escaping? He’s not your damned monster manual.”
“He nearly got Jule killed,” Trevor snarled. “Maybe I’ll repay the favor.”
Faster than Martin could blink, faster than he could react, faster than he would have credited an old man whose lungs should have choked him seven years ago, Trevor lunged forward, pulling a knife from some inner pocket and drove it through Martin’s hand and into the table beneath. By some miracle, he missed the bone. Martin cried out in pain—he didn’t normally react to his own injuries, but he hadn’t had time to prepare—and couldn’t hold back a whimper when Trevor immediately withdrew the blade. His knees nearly buckled and he grabbed his hand and pressed it to his chest, squeezing harder than maybe he should.
Trevor brandished the dripping blade at him. “At least you still bleed,” he muttered darkly. He grabbed Martin’s arm and yanked it, forcing him to let go of his injured hand. “C’mon, Jule. Grab his other arm. Let’s lock ‘im up for a bit while we decide whether to carve him up and mail him back to London…or call that Institute up and use him as bait.”