Caitlin Kittredge - The Nightmare Garden

“Stop it!” I shouted, and every one of my injuries throbbed, but I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from flinching. “You are both,” I enunciated carefully, so there would be no mistake, “behaving like complete idiots.”

I stretched out my hand to Cal. “Can you please help me up? We should get moving before Draven sends out men on the ground to track us.”

“Sure thing,” Cal said quickly, easing between Dean and Conrad and taking my hand. I left them crouched on the moss, glaring at each other. I wasn’t a shiny brass trophy, and I wasn’t in the mood to be batted back and forth in Dean and Conrad’s little contest to see who was the biggest, baddest boy in our group. Right now, Bethina would do a better job of leading us to safety, and she’d scream a lot less too.

There was no path through the fog, just spongy ground punctuated by vernal pools that seeped into my boots whenever I mistakenly splashed down in one. The dead forest was endless, as if a blight crept ahead of us through the fog, washing all life out of the world. This was even eerier than the ancient forest we’d come to when we crossed from Lovecraft. The creeping sensation up my spine told me we shouldn’t be here.

“What happened to this place?” I asked Dean, when he caught up with my limping steps.

“Fire,” he said. “Long time ago, before I was born. Maybe before my mother, too.”

“Big fire,” I said. The fog swirled back and forth, thinning to lace. The dead forest went on as far as the eye could see.

“The Fae set it,” Dean said. “They were looking for insurgents, some of my kind who’d set off an explosion in the silver mines in the Thorn Land. They burned the entire forest to the ground. Killed thousands.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. I understood then why Shard had looked at me with such coldness. It didn’t excuse her locking me up and refusing to believe a word I said, but it at least explained it.

Dean shrugged. “Not my world. I left as soon as I was able.”

“Shard and Skip,” I said, “they both call you Nails. Why do you have two names?” Cal had two names, but he was a ghoul—wholly other. Dean was more human by a mile than he was Erlkin, from what I could see, and I wanted to know what his name in the Mists meant. I wanted to know everything about him, not that he’d tell me without a lot of effort on my part. But I was willing to try.

“Nails isn’t my name,” Dean said tightly. He fished in his pockets and pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes, crushed beyond recognition. “Dammit,” he muttered, shoving the twisted cardboard back into his jeans.

“Your mother seems to think it is,” I said. Dean shook his head.

“You have to understand, the Erlkin are a slave race. Way back in the primordial ooze they lived underground, and when the Fae dug down looking for silver, they enslaved the creatures they found. They wouldn’t give us real names, names with meaning and magic, so they called us after scraps—glass and silver, drill bits and rock crushers.”

“Nails,” I offered.

“Yup,” Dean said. “When the first generation of free Erlkin named their children, they gave them slave names as a way to tell the Fae they didn’t own us anymore. It’s tradition now.” His mouth twitched. “But I’m not Erlkin, and I don’t need to be reminded that I was ever anyone’s slave.”

“I noticed your mother doesn’t have any problem with your being a half-breed, unlike her problems with me,” I muttered.

“Oh, she has plenty of problems with it,” Dean said with a laugh drier than the dead trees all around us. “But she knows that I’m her fault, too. Stealing away and meeting a human—tsk, tsk and all that. I know it was a lot easier for her in her position at Windhaven after I lit out for Lovecraft and decided to live with my old man. She got that nice shiny captain’s promotion the minute I left.” Bitterness tinged his voice like unsweetened tea on the tongue.

“You really have a brother?” I asked. Dean had only mentioned him in passing, but I was realizing that in spite of spending nearly all my waking moments with him since we’d met, I still knew virtually nothing about his family or his life before me.

“Half-brother,” Dean said. “One hundred percent pure boring human. Older than me by a good few years—my pops had a wife before Shard bewitched his poor dumb self. The woman ditched him and Kurt—that’s my brother. Kurt was never too fond of me, even though his old lady was long gone. Didn’t blame him except when he and I were slugging it out. I wouldn’t be itching to bond with the bastard child of my father’s new girlfriend if I were him either.”

“And where’s Kurt now?” I prompted, racking my brain to remember what else Dean had told me about his past.

“Hell if I know,” Dean said. “He went MIA fighting the Crimson Guard, ’bout a year before you and I crossed paths.” He sighed, and I could tell from his twitchy gait and fingers that he wanted a cigarette. “Truth is, Aoife, I never really felt like I was part of the family. I was a wayward kid and I wasn’t at home much. But it beat the pants off staying in Windhaven and marching in lockstep like my good little Erlkin relatives.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “About Kurt.”

“It’s all right,” Dean said. “Like I told you, we were never close. Not like you and Conrad.”

“Conrad and I haven’t been that close for a while,” I said quietly. “And we’ve been apart since he ran away a year ago.”

“You’ll get it back,” Dean said. “He looks out for you, and even if he’s a cranky bastard, he cares about you. I can tell by the way he’s giving me the hairy eyeball right now.”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Conrad was indeed staring a hole into the back of Dean’s head as we walked. I sighed and dropped back to match my stride to my brother’s.

“Will you quit glaring? You’re embarrassing me.”

“I don’t like your friend, Aoife,” Conrad told me. “Not one bit. He’s too familiar with you.”

“He’s familiar because I want him to be familiar,” I snapped. “Stop acting like you’re our father, Conrad, because you’re not.”

He flinched, and I felt as if I might as well have smacked him across the face. “I know that,” he muttered. “But he’s not here, is he? Nobody knows where he is or if he’s even alive.”

I stayed quiet for few steps, our feet squashing into the bog the only sound besides the faint murmur of Cal and Bethina’s conversation. Conrad was right—we didn’t know. None of the Erlkin would admit to knowing where Archie had gone. And he’d made no attempt to contact us. Not that he could, even if he was in a position to. After the Engine exploded Conrad and I had effectively vanished from the Iron Land without a trace.

No matter how much I wished Archie would appear again and make it right, as he had when I’d been in Draven’s prison, he wasn’t going to, and it was time I accepted that. I bit down hard on my lip to hold back my tears. “We know where Nerissa is,” I said after a time, when I could speak without a break in my voice.

“No,” Conrad said instantly. “Don’t even think of that, Aoife. We can’t go back there.”

“Draven already found us,” I said. “He’ll find us no matter where we go, and I have to get Nerissa out of Lovecraft.” Or what was left of Lovecraft. I imagined a wasteland overrun with ghouls and pockets of vicious survivors barricaded in their homes while black-clad Proctor squads roamed the streets and their clockwork ravens swooped overhead, watching every living thing left in the desolation.

“Why?” Conrad demanded. “She was locked up in a madhouse when everything went sideways. Those places are fortresses. She’s probably safer there than on the run with us anyway. And honestly, Aoife—that woman never did one bit of good for us our entire lives. She’s crazy.”