The Iron Thorn

“You call it brothers,” October said. “Are we ditching the meat or taking it along?”

“Don’t,” Cal warned him. “They saved my life back there.”

“Bah.” Toby flicked his tongue out, tasted the air. “No intruders in the hearth. We don’t make friends with meatsacks, we eat them.”

“Toby,” Cal growled. “Enough.”

The tall, blue-skinned ghoul grunted. “Enough when I say it’s enough.” With that, he loped down the tunnel ahead of us. I hung back, not sure that I wouldn’t be turned into supper if I followed Cal’s brother. Cal shook his head sadly.

“I apologize for him. Not all of us can take the skin—look human—and he’s not used to people.”

“No need to apologize for your brother not being a rat-fink liar like you, Calvin,” Dean said cheerfully. “Or, not Calvin—it’s Carver, right? Fits a slimy, ground-dwelling nasty like you.”

Cal bared his teeth, but he brought up the rear as we hurried away from the underside of Ravenhouse and the Proctors and their shouts.

I gave Dean a look, one he answered with a shrug. I didn’t really blame him. I was furious and frightened, but most of all I just couldn’t believe Cal had deceived me so thoroughly. That I hadn’t seen, in all his toothy grins and odd habits, the ghoul within. I was supposed to be smarter than that.

The slog through the sewers and forgotten places of Lovecraft was arduous and wore on endlessly.

Eventually, we reached an abandoned metro station, a subterranean jitney car still sitting on its tracks. The windows were smashed, the station number in the glass above the driver’s seat was obscured by decades of dirt, and bright round eyes watched us from the shadows under the seats.

Lovecraft had shut down the Metrocar after the ghouls came into the underground, nearly fifty years ago by my count. The station was as it must have been the day the Proctors bolted steel plates over the entry stairs and cut the aether feed. The sign worked into the tile of the wall read DERLETH STREET STATION, and the long, echoing drip of water all around confirmed we were close to the river.

“You feeling all right, doll?” Dean said as we crossed the tracks and ducked into a hole broken through the scarred, sooty tiles of the jitney tunnel.

“My shoulder hurts,” I said. The Proctors hadn’t lied about the ghoul infestation. Just about everything else.

“This is a terrible idea.” Toby clambered up the wall and walked along the ceiling, suspended overhead like a great spider. “They’ve both got blood in the wind. They’re food, Carver.”

I flinched at the hunger underlying Toby’s words. Everything I knew about ghouls screamed at me to run before I was in six pieces, but everything I knew came from the Academy. They’d lied about the necrovirus … what else had they been wrong about?

Cal sighed. “Toby, shut up. I told you, I owe Aoife a debt, one of blood, and she’ll be safe in the nest.” He fixed his brother with a glare. “One way or another.”

Eventually the tunnel became brick, older than the Metrocar line, and mud sluiced around my ankles. Toby dropped back to the floor, his way across the ceiling blocked by glowing stalactites of fungus.

“Carver paid a heavy price for your skin, girl. He’s still paying it.”

I instinctively flinched away from his humped form and gravel-grinding voice, then felt myself flush. Whatever he was, whatever he thought of me, Toby had saved our lives.

“I—I had no idea about Draven and his assignment,” I said. “Cal told me he had a family, but obviously I didn’t know his … situation.”

“His situation is that he’s bringing humans to the nest,” Toby snarled. “In case you’re dumb as you look, that doesn’t happen. Not with live ones, anyway.”

“Toby, I know that Cal had to do what he did,” I said gently. “But he helped us escape and I bear him … you … no ill will.” I hoped he couldn’t tell I was only marginally sure he wouldn’t eat me.

“How about you?” Toby jerked his pointed chin at Dean. “You smell like the wind and wet. You’re no more human than we are … you going to be trouble?”

“You know, you can keep walking down that road, friend, but you sure as hell aren’t going to like where it ends,” Dean told him. “ ‘We ain’t got a quarrel unless you’re fixing to start one.” He glanced behind us, back down the tunnel.

“The Proctors won’t follow us beyond Derleth Street,” Toby said. “The tunnels beyond aren’t clear.” He grinned at me, and it was like looking at a basketful of razors. “The tunnels north of Derleth Street belong to us. The people of ghul.”

I turned away from his grim smile and fell back to walk with Cal. I forced myself to look at his face—his new face—and his hunched body with his plate-shaped hands and black razor claws. What could a girl possibly talk about with a ghoul?

“Have you …” My voice was rough and squeaky, and I abhorred Cal thinking I was frightened of him, even though he unsettled me. I cleared my throat behind my hand. “Have you always been able to turn into a human?”

“It’s called taking the skin.” Cal’s tongue darted out and over his lips. “It’s shape-shifting. I’m not human. Isn’t that what you’re trying to say?”

I tossed up my hands. “Hell, Cal. You’re a monster that mothers threaten children with and you’re still touchy as an ugly girl in a pretty dress.”

After a moment, I heard a gentle snorting in the dark. The snorting turned into chuckling, Cal’s laughter, familiar and safe.

I joined, unable to keep a most unladylike giggle from rising to the surface.

“Do you remember when we hid an aethervox under Marcos’s bed and convinced him his room was haunted?” Cal asked finally, gasping for breath.

I nodded, clapping a hand over my mouth. “He was ready to take orders for the Master Builder’s seminary to make it stop.”

“You know,” Cal said abruptly, “I have plenty of hearth mates in my nest. We grew together, we learned to hunt together—hunt humans together—and Toby is my twin.” He lowered his head. “But I never had a friend until I met you.”

The fear ebbed. That was Cal talking, even if his face was strange.

“I didn’t even have that,” I said after a moment. “I grew up in group homes. Conrad and I …” I trailed off, hoping he’d understand.

“Survival doesn’t make for fast friendships,” Cal agreed. “The goddess Hecate teaches us that any one of us might die on any hunt. Her faces are the Huntress and the Hunger. She forbids frivolity. Friendship and love make the ghul weak.”

“People, too,” I said. Cal reached for me, then realized there was no way we could clasp hands with his elongated digits, and pulled his paw away.

“Don’t say that, Aoife. You showed me yourself it isn’t always true.”

We came to a junction in the tunnel. Toby stood on his hind legs and scented the air, making himself a head taller than I was. I backed up.

“We’re alone,” Toby said. “We can head for home. If you still insist on bringing the meat.”

“I do! And stop calling them meat,” Cal growled.

Toby gave a wet sniff. “Whatever you say. They’re your problem.”

He scampered down the left-hand tunnel, and Cal padded after him, mumbling under his breath. I followed, glad that I was bringing up the rear with Dean, where nothing could surprise me.

The tunnel widened into a disused water main. Old clay crumbled under my feet. I watched my tread, and nearly plowed into Cal when he stopped abruptly.

Cal pointed to a glow in the distance, where three massive mains made a junction half collapsed from age and disuse. “Up there. It’s home.”