Tim Powers - Hide Me Among the Graves

Christina surprised Crawford by stepping forward and saying, “You can call me Diamonds.”

“Hah!” said Gabriel. “At that rate I’m Hearts.”

Christina gave McKee a frail smile. “A childhood game,” she said. “We have a sister we called Clubs and a brother we called Spades.”

“You,” said Trelawny, pointing at McKee, “I’ll call Rahab.”

McKee blinked and frowned, and Crawford guessed that she wasn’t entirely pleased to be given the name of the Biblical ex-prostitute who betrayed Jericho to the Hebrews; but she nodded.

She pointed at the violin case in the old man’s hand. “Are you a musician?”

“Not me, no.” Trelawny turned to Crawford and went on, “You’re a medical man, I heard, so I’ll call you Medicus. In fact, you look uncannily like a medical man I knew in Italy years ago, but we’ll let that go.”

“If you like,” said Crawford. His father had been a physician, and had been in Italy in the 1820s, but Crawford couldn’t recall his parents mentioning Edward Trelawny.

“And call me Samson,” Trelawny said. “My spiritual hair has almost completely grown back, I believe. I hope.” He glanced at the scattered cloths and the mound of dirt on the grass, and then looked up at all four of them. “You’ve left me unchaperoned, for a few days at least. It may be that we can help one another. Where were you walking to, so carefree?”

Christina nodded toward the long wall at the north end of the lawn. “The zoo cages outside the wall,” she said, “on the north side of the outer circle just below the canal. They’re for cassowaries and zebras, and they’re empty in the winter. If we could find one around the back where nobody’s likely to be, on a day like this, and get into it, with cold iron bars on all sides—”

“Ah!” said Trelawny. “I could see from the start that you’re the only one of your lot with any sense, Diamonds. The iron bars, yes, they should hide our auras just as a Faraday cage deflects electric fields — block our radiances, keep the other big one from sniffing us.”

“The other big one,” said Gabriel.

“We can discuss it when we’re caged,” said Trelawny, “like a pack of sickly cassowaries.”

WHAT IS ‘THE other big one’?” asked McKee.

They had found a row of empty and unlocked cages well west of the offices of the superintendent and ducked into the farthest one, pulling the barred door nearly closed behind them. Bare trees hid them from most of the park.

“If anyone should stroll by,” advised Trelawny, “all of us just make hooting sounds and hop up and down. Scratch.”

Gabriel giggled. “One of us sh-should — be outside to t-take money,” he stammered, and then he coughed and scowled around at the others.

They were shaded from the bright sunlight by a wooden roof that extended out past the rows of vertical bars confining them, and the wind that whistled through seemed much colder than it had outside. The black bars were ornate with stylized ironwork vines and flowers at the tops, but the cage was no more than ten feet square, and though wide shelves had been bolted to the bars at various heights, all five of them remained standing. Any smells the cage might once have had were lost in the stinging astringence of the icy air. Crawford thought of taking off his hat, but neither of the other two men did, so he left it on.

“The other one,” said Trelawny, sliding his violin case onto a shelf and pulling a cigar from inside his coat. Crawford noticed that the old man wore no gloves or scarf. “Miss B., who you just now shot, has a partner. He was a doctor too,” the old man said, nodding to Crawford, “when he was a normally living man. Name of Polidori. I never met him, but we had friends in common.”

Christina had collapsed her parasol and laid it on one of the metal shelves, and now leaned back against the shelf and made the sign of the cross. Gabriel rolled his eyes. McKee glanced at the palm of her gloved hand.

“You know of him,” said Trelawny, raising his white eyebrows as he struck a match to his cigar.

“He is,” said Gabriel, “the one who menaces my wife and unborn child — and the daughter of,” he added with a sideways wave, “of Rahab and Medicus here.” Then a thought seemed to strike him. “Could they,” Gabriel went on quickly, and Crawford was surprised to see sweat on Gabriel’s face now, in spite of the freezing breeze, “Miss B. and Polidori — could it ever happen that they might share possession of a person?”

Trelawny cocked his head at him. “I suppose so, if the person were so unwise as to welcome one of them and then welcome the other one as well.”

Gabriel’s expression didn’t change, but Crawford got the impression that some effort had been required for it not to.

“Who is this Miss B.?” asked Christina. “How was she quickened?”

Trelawny puffed smoke for several seconds, staring at Christina. “You seem to know how the Polidori creature was quickened,” he said. “I’ll want to hear about that. But — as for Miss B. — I’m afraid it was my fault.”

The breeze whistled through the bars, and flurries of snow spun around their boots.

“Your fault,” prompted McKee impatiently, hugging herself in her coat.

Trelawny eyed his companions speculatively and spoke around the cigar. “Do you all know about statues? Living statues?”

“A little,” said Christina softly.

Trelawny went on, “I have made it possible — well, others forced it on me, actually — I have made it possible again to do what Deucalion and Pyrrha did, in the old Greek stories: establish a link between humans and the stony tribe, those pre-Adamite creatures that the ancient Hebrews called the Nephilim.”

A moment went by in which no one spoke.

“Forced it on you,” said Crawford, remembering the story his parents had told him.

“I’d say forced is too mild a word, to be honest,” said Trelawny testily. “A mountain bandit who hoped to establish an alliance with these creatures arranged for me to be shot in the back — and one of the two balls the gun was loaded with was a tiny statue. It broke, bouncing around among my bones, and I spat half of it out, along with several teeth. The other ball was silver, and it’s lodged in me somewhere, and it kept me safe for a long time. Balanced. Net zero.”

Ash blew away from the tip of his cigar, and the coal glowed as he inhaled. “But — the problem is — the other half of the stone ball, the little statue”—he lifted his chin and patted his collar—“is, I’m afraid … growing. And as it grows, the Nephilim become stronger.” He snapped his fingers. “What’s the word? Rosetta!”

“Yes? What word?” said Gabriel. He seemed distracted.

“Rosetta,” said Trelawny impatiently. “I just said it. The stone, you know? I’m the Rosetta stone in this — I make translation between the two species possible.”

“It could be cut out,” said Crawford.

“And pulverized and scattered in the sea!” added Christina.

“You’re a good girl,” said Trelawny, smiling crookedly at her. “But it’s in under the jugular vein, and I haven’t yet met a medical man I’d trust to cut it out.” He shrugged deprecatingly. “And, to be honest, it gives me a certain immunity, with them.”