The Nightmare Garden

iron rather than soft, slippery flesh. That was the only hint I had that it wasn’t something entirely of the sea.

The submersible floated where it was for a moment, and then a hatch clanged faintly. A red light joined the blue, the pinpoint of a lamp. It flashed Morse code, a simple sequence asking if there was anyone on shore. My Morse wasn’t the best, but I grabbed one of the dock lanterns and flashed back, using the blue glass filter in place for just such a purpose.

Come quickly, the red light said.

I was about to flash back that I didn’t have a boat and they’d have to come closer when I picked up another sound over the buoy bell and the waves. A powerful spring-wound motor, the kind that could move a craft along at tremendous speed. I caught the movement of blacker on black, a craft with no running lights.

Proctors. I swore under my breath.

Though Draven had surely told them to steer clear, the crew of the submersible didn’t know that, and one of the faceless crew opened fire on them with some sort of gun that rattled fast and loud, striking sparks against the patrol boat’s metal hull.

I cried out, even though they couldn’t hear me, but then realized I had both an advantage and a much bigger problem. I wouldn’t be marked as one of Draven’s agents if the Proctors engaged the Russians. But then again, I wouldn’t have a ride in another minute, if the sub crew was being shot at.

The submersible was barely a hundred yards offshore. I could do this. I could reach the ship and be gone from this place, on my way toward fixing everything I’d broken. My fear couldn’t stop me. Not this time.

I stepped to the edge of the dock, wriggled out of my shoes and coat, strapped my satchel across my back and jumped into the ocean.

At first, when the water hit me, I felt nothing. It was like burning myself on an acetylene torch—my nerves simply went dead, and a great envelope of unfeeling covered me.

I surfaced and swallowed a mouthful of salt water, choking and sputtering as I tried to keep my head above the waves. I wasn’t a horrible swimmer—everyone at the Academy had had to take a swimming unit—but I wasn’t a great one either, and with my clothes and satchel weighing me down, I wasn’t making much progress.

I stroked against the aching cold, straining toward the row of lights on the side of the submersible, the tracers of light from the guns as they exchanged fire with the Proctors. I didn’t hear any screaming—the Proctors were aiming wide, their shots splashing on the sub’s hull and coming nowhere near the crew. Draven really wanted me on board the sub, wanted me heading north to the Brotherhood.

The cold came to me by degrees and was heavy as any lead. It compressed my lungs and dulled my nerves, until I knew that I was freezing, sinking, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I was so close. I could almost touch the sub, could see its running lights dazzling my salt-stung eyes, but I would never get there on my own. I was swallowing more water than air, and I could feel the cold tugging my numb body down.

Light engulfed me, bizarrely, as if the moon had at last shown its face. I had the absurd notion I was in the grip of one of the creatures said to live under the waves, enfolded in clammy, webbed hands. And then there was the brightest flash of all, a searing, stabbing pain through my chest, and everything went dark.

The glass dome of dreams was black now, smoke and thunderheads swirling outside. The gear ticked frantically, sending spiderweb cracks through the glass. Lightning illuminated the dark figure, and he looked at me in profile. His nose was sharp, his skin the gray of something long dead and buried. It was the first time I had glimpsed anything of him besides his eyes, and I was frightened by what I saw.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he rasped at me, hands buried in the mechanism of the great gear, fiddling with bolts and tiny components that even my hands weren’t delicate enough to manage. Lightning flashed over the dome again, and I realized that I stood on fresh-turned earth rather than transparent glass. All around me, flowers bloomed, their buds opening to reveal skeletal hands reaching toward the dark sky.

“What happened?” I asked. It seemed a question far too small to encompass the destruction all around me.

“You happened,” the figure snarled. “You stole into my world, and you were the first I’d seen in so long, I was careless. You listened to me whisper secrets and now the barriers have broken, because you were never supposed to come here.”

“I … I did this?” I whispered in confusion.

“You will,” the figure whispered as the glass began to shatter and fall, slicing through the stems of the bone flowers as it rained around us. “When you die.”

The flowers oozed blood, red and wet, that stained the dirt. I stood rooted where I was. “I’m dying?”

“Not yet,” the figure said. “Go away. Stop dreaming about this, or do like the others you care for and stop dreaming at all. Stop stealing into my world, Aoife. Or you’ll be here much sooner than you think.”

Something bright and hot cut through me when the lightning flashed again, and the dome cracked completely, vanishing from before my eyes.

“There’s a good girl,” a cigarette-tinged voice boomed in my ear. I rolled away from the voice, from the blinding light in my dazzled eyes, and vomited what even in my delirious state I could tell was an impressive amount of seawater.

I blinked the sparks from my vision while I coughed. I was lying on a brass walkway, mesh digging into my legs through my soaked stockings. The walls around me were curved, riveted, and painted a humorless gray. Iron pierced my brain, all around me. Lettering spun before my eyes until I realized I wasn’t delusional but was merely seeing a language I couldn’t read.

“Am I …,” I gasped. Breathing, never mind talking, embedded a cluster of small knives in my chest when I tried it. The light dazzled me again, and I slumped. Strong hands caught me, and my nostrils were invaded by the smell of pipe tobacco.

“Take it easy,” said the same voice. “Back from the dead and trying to walk so soon. Tough little thing.”

“Or desperate,” said another voice, strongly accented and female.

“Or that,” the smoker agreed.

“I made it,” I gasped as I lay staring at the round ship’s hatch above me. “I’m on the submersible.” I was honestly surprised not to be dead. I remembered the suffocating feeling of the water, the hands of the sea tugging me down, and shivered uncontrollably.

A face came into view, wavering around the edges as my eyes worked to dispel the ocean’s tears. “You are indeed aboard,” agreed the female voice. “And that brings us to the thorny question of who you might be.”

The face, when my eyes focused, belonged to a woman, her rich brown hair woven into two meticulous braids. She wore a coat the same gray as the walls, with red trim at the collar and cuffs and two spots on the breast pocket where insignia had been ripped off.

“I’m Aoife Grayson,” I said. “Dean Harrison sent me to meet Rasputina Ivanova. He told me to ask her about the Hallows’ Eve they spent in New Amsterdam.”

The woman flushed bright pink and then drew back out of my line of sight. She snapped a few orders in Russian, and before I knew it I was on my feet, being helped down a walkway by a bear-sized man in an undershirt, red suspenders and filthy, oil-stained pants. “Easy, sweetheart,” he rumbled, in an accent twice as thick as the woman’s. “You’ll be walking on your own in no time.” We came to a galley where a half-dozen sailors stopped eating and stared at me. Another command from the woman and their eyes dropped back to their plates.

The man shoved a ratty blanket at me, along with a steel cup full of tea.

“Drink,” he ordered. “Or you’ll never get warm.”

Now that I wasn’t seeing things or drowning, I became aware that I was shivering so violently my muscles were spasming. Still, I hesitated to take a drink from a stranger.

“Drink,” he insisted, shoving it at me again and slopping a little on my skin this time. I could see every vein, every freckle and every scrape on the back of my hand painted in stark relief. It was as if the sea had sucked every drop of blood from me and left icy water in its place.

I grabbed the cup and drained it. The tea burned my tongue, but the pain reassured me at least that I was thawed enough to feel something. I wrapped the blanket around myself, still shivering hard enough to rattle the bench I sat on.

“You weren’t in the water very long,” said the man, refilling the cup, “but you might still have the hypothermia. Keep warm and keep drinking, if you please.” His English was good, but each word was as heavy and