The Iron Thorn

35 The Gift of the Ghouls

THE GHOUL NEST crouched under the junction like a giant spider, the long fibrous ribbons of the nest tunnels clinging to the ancient drainage main that swept debris from old Lovecraft south and out to the river.

“Go slow,” Cal said. “Let them smell you and see that you’re not hostile.”

I had no desire to rush into the heart of the city’s worst nightmare, and I stopped a few yards from the waist-high hole that was the nest’s entrance.

The ghoul nest was woven from snatches of metal and leather, canvas and fabric, humped tents clustered around a central hub wafting gentle smoke that smelled of char and something richer and darker. An old, old memory, of a madhouse surgery after my mother broke her mirror into a knifelike shard, called back to me. I was smelling blood.

An ancient jitney, so old it still bore the seal of the Massachusetts Transit Authority rather than the City seal, contained a horde of ghoul pups, all jockeying for position at the windows. They bared their teeth, pocketknives instead of wicked blades, but still sharp enough to eat me.

“Ever feel like an entrée?” Dean muttered. “All we need is a little drawn butter.”

“Mother!” Toby called, dropping onto all four limbs so he could pass easily into the nest. “We’re home. We’re all home!”

“Your mother lives in there?” I said, then realized I sounded as spoiled as any typical Uptown princess. “I mean, of course she does.”

Cal looked to me. “This is what Draven said he’d come and burn to ashes.” His eyes begged me to understand.

A female ghoul half my height came forth, an ivory-handled walking stick in her grasp. Though she limped on two legs, her hair was only half silver, and twisted into gypsy braids, and her arms and legs were banded with iron muscle. There was a scar across her smushed nose, and unlike Cal, nothing human glinted in her gaze. “We?” she demanded. “I sent you out for a simple errand, October, and you return with—”

Cal lifted one paw. “It’s me, Mother. I came back.”

The woman’s walking stick clattered out of her grasp, and she let out a sound that was half shriek and half sob. “Carver!” she gasped. “I thought we’d next see you in the hunting halls beyond.…”

They met halfway between the nest and where I stood, and I couldn’t help but feel a stab close to my heart when Cal threw his arms around his mother.

I wouldn’t get the chance to do the same with Nerissa. I wouldn’t ever see Conrad again.

The pups bounded forward from the doors and windows of the jitney, chattering to Cal and Toby and, thankfully, ignoring Dean and me.

Toby laid his hands on the heads of the two smallest and growled gently, shaking them by their scruffs. The rest mobbed Cal, climbing up his legs and into his arms, demanding to know where he’d been and if he’d brought them presents from aboveground.

Cal and Toby’s mother turned her eyes on Dean and me while Cal roughhoused with the pups.

“Does some kind soul wish to tell me why there is live meat at my door?”

Dean stepped forward and extended his hand. “Dean Harrison, ma’am.”

Cal’s mother snarled at his fingers, and Dean snapped his hand out of range. I felt my eyes widen at the sight and size of her teeth.

“Erlkin,” she snarled. “We’ll have none of your trickery here.”

“No, ma’am,” Dean assured her, eyes the size of quarters. The crone humphed, and picked up her stick once more, jabbing it at me.

“A female, young … you’re the bag of bones my boy was taken and tortured over.”

My knees knocked at her cut-glass gaze. Her eyes were the same color as Cal’s but sharper, tempered with anger and more sights of the hard world. “Yes,” I said quietly. “I suppose I am. My name’s Aoife Grayson.”

“I don’t give a tinker’s damn what your name is, meat,” she croaked, reaching up to pinch my arm. Her claws dug into my skin. “You’re barely fit for a cook pot, never mind my boy’s life.”

“Mother …” Cal shifted in place.

“I’m sorry that Draven took Cal away from you,” I said. “But we’ve helped each other get free of him, and I don’t have anywhere else to go.” I stiffened my spine against the next words, which I could hardly believe flew out in the face of something that could tear me limb from limb. “If you don’t like it, I suggest you ask your son about me.”

“Carver, what foolishness is she spouting?” Cal’s mother demanded, jabbing one clawed finger at me. There was something dark and crusted at the end of her talon.

“The Proctors want to burn me,” I elucidated. “The Kindly Folk have threatened to kill me, and I may or may not be going mad inside of a week. So if it pleases you …” I paused and waited for her name.

“Reason.” She spat it at me, with a hiss on the end.

“If it pleases you, Reason, I’m here to fulfill my duty to my father and my friends and then accept whatever fate is mine, and being called names and threatened is, frankly, nothing new.”

Cal’s mother looked me up and down, a pale white tongue flicking over her spotted lips. I didn’t know if she was about to slap me or eat me, but I stood fast.

“You’re still meat,” she said at last, and then tapped Cal on the leg with her cane. “But for the life of my son, you gain yours.” She put her teeth away, her grimace becoming something marginally less terrifying. “Bring them inside, Carver. Who taught you manners?”

“You did,” Cal shot back. Reason gave him a quick box on the ear, and when Cal hissed in pain her smile vanished.

“You’re hurt,” she exclaimed.

“It’s my fault,” I piped up. “The Proctors said they wanted information. But I really think Draven just paid him back for not stopping me soon enough.”

Reason glared at me over the top of Cal’s head. “You think that you’re special, little girl? You have something extra the other meatbags don’t?”

“I have a task,” I said quietly. “And I’m sorry that Cal got caught up in it, but he was protecting me. You can be proud of him for that.”

Reason put her arm around Cal and drew him away from me. “I don’t need to hear from human meat that my boy is a good boy. I know it.”

They disappeared into the nest, and Toby followed them. “You can wait with me,” he grumbled. “Cal’s the baby of our litter. Mother fusses, but he’ll be fine soon enough.”

I ducked my head to fit into the door of the nest, the scent of burnt meat and wood smoke filling my nostrils. My eyes watered from the close, hot atmosphere, but the nest was clean and dry, and soon enough we came through the woven tunnel to a center point.

Toby flopped down on his haunches with a sigh. “This is our hearth. Never had any humans sitting at it before.”

“First time for everything,” Dean said, sitting cross-legged next to Toby. Dean’s shoulders were tight, but he took pains to settle himself close enough to Toby that the ghoul could have leaned over and bitten him in the throat.

I sat on Toby’s other side, showing the same trust. Beds of shredded rags and hay and small coal fires dotted the ground of the central nest. The air was close and heavy but not spoiled, laden with spice and tang. The hearth