Chapter 12: Commiserations

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I get the impression the vehicle must be expensive, because when Lydia sees it, her jaw drops.

Then she closes it again, tilts her head, and says: “No, wait, yeah. This makes sense. Rich and entitled. It fits.”

Lucas left his car parked just on the edge of Capital, draped with a ragged tarp. The tarp was to keep off the elements - but mostly to conceal it from prying eyes. I get the distinct impression that it pained my host to leave it behind, and there’s even a little thrill when he sees it again through my eyes. I allow it for a few moments - I’ll be interrogating him later about Dakota Hunter and I want some leverage - before shoving him back down in his hole. I’m not in the mood to deal with him.

“A Rrrrrolls Rr-rrrroyce,” Lydia mumbles as she slips into the passenger seat. “J-j-j….esus.” Her shivering intensified as we walked, but every time I tried to move closer to her, she insisted she was fine. I locate the keys to the car underneath a pile of unassuming rocks. I can see there are other cars scattered about here - a small collection of junk. I have to admit, it was a clever place to hide the vehicle on short notice.

Tapping into Lucas’s knowledge, I turn the car on and activate the heat. I find myself grateful that it warms up almost instantly, and Lydia lets out a sigh of relief as she sinks back, arms wrapped tightly around her chest.

We just sit there for a while, my hands on the wheel, her feet on the dashboard. She’s slipped off her soaking shoes, letting her feet feel the warmth. I notice her toenails are painted purple.

I’m infuriated that Avidia gave away my name. Not my full name, not my True Name - I would have hunted her down and killed her host for that, in spite of her assistance. Even with a fraction of it, though, it’s just one step closer to allowing Lydia more power over me. In truth, I have no desire to take her to the Archive. I know what they’ll do with someone of her potential. Shapers are rare - and rarer still are those of her talent. That she could even see the Aetheric script Avidia laid out is telling. I shudder to think what she will be capable of with some honing. Some training.

I wonder what she will Shape you into, my dear peata. Dorothy’s voice again. Low. Mocking. I hate that I am not free of her, even long after stopping her heart. My sweet little ball of clay. What fun she will have with you.

“William?”

I draw in a breath and look towards the woman in the passenger seat, forcing a smile.

She peers up at me. There’s such an intensity in those blue eyes of hers. Even with her face smeared with dirt, I have to admit that she’s quite beautiful. She’s young - twenty, I think, or just past it - but there’s such a severity to her that sometimes peeks through. It occurs to me that I know less about her than she does about me at this point. So little of her has leaked across our bond to me.

I must remedy that. I cannot allow her to have that much power.

“I would never do those things to you.” When she speaks, her voice is trembling. I realize that there are tears in her eyes. “Do you hear me? Do you understand? Never. I would never.” She draws in a deep breath, swallowing. “Look, we’ll figure out a way to free you, or something. Alright? And then we can go our separate ways. No harm, no foul. I’m just. I’m sorry you got tangled up in all of this.”

I find it is a rare occasion I am rendered speechless. I am old - ancient, compared to this young creature beside me, and yet she seeks to comfort me. To tell me that she’s sorry I’m involved with sordid affairs. Me. An incubus. A demon.

“Do you not understand what I am?” I ask. I cannot keep the incredulity out of my voice.

“You told me what you are. You’re a ghost. A ghost that was once a person.” She rubs her hand along her face. “Listen, I’ve never been the sort to wrap my head around this kind of shit. I’m not one for all the. Right brain stuff, the ethereal or whatever. No horoscopes, no crystals.” She laughs. “The only reason I own a tarot deck is because I liked the pretty pictures.”

I stare at her blankly. She groans.

“God, stop giving me that look. It’s so creepy. My point is, I’m way out of my depth here. I’ve been out of my depth since those three morons snatched me off my campus. What I do know is that I want to get back to normal. And.”

She sighs. She looks so exhausted, sagging down into her seat.

“And I know that I don’t care if you’re a ghost or a demon or some eldritch abomination from hell. Nobody deserves that. It’s okay that you’re afraid. I get it. I can tell you’ve never had a chance to heal.” She snorts. “I mean, how could you? She even tricked that ink-thing out just so she could mock you.” Lydia’s features twist with disgust, and she turns her head to look out the window, propping her elbow up to rest her chin in her hand. “God, what an unbelievable cunt.”

I want to ask so many things. I want to ask her how she knew it was Dorothy’s voice coming out of that creature. I want to ask her how, with everything that she’s seen, with everything she’s experienced, it is Dorothy Cain’s treatment of me that horrifies her most.

I confess a part of me wants to lean towards her. To press my heat into her. To warm her, and taste the skin of her pale throat on my lips.

“William?” she says softly. She’s turned back to face me again, studying my face with knitted brows. “You alright?”

“Eldritch abominations,” I reply, “Now there is something you never want to run into.”

I put the car in reverse and begin pulling out of the little scrap yard. Lydia laughs.

“You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding.”

I give her a sober look. Her laughter dies like a bird flying into a window.

“No. Oh god, please no.”

“Oh yes, I’m afraid so,” I reply. I slip out onto the road. I marvel at the smoothness with which this vehicle drives - I’ve had my hands on a wheel before, but there’s a vast difference between what was available in 1926 and what exists now. “I was around in Lovecraft’s heyday, mind you. Eldritch creatures are notorious. Uncontrollable. Deadly. Liable to slip their leash.”

“Slip their leash?”

I mentally kick myself for the turn of phrase.

“A demon,” I reply, “Can be controlled - by the proper hand, at least. The running theory among certain circles is that it has to do with their mythos. There are countless stories of demons being bound, trapped, tricked, and enslaved into service. And telling these stories, again and again and again, has some sort of effect on the Aether. To boot, even in their genesis, they were being overpowered by their nemesis.”

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“…Nemesis?” she asks.

I flick my gaze skyward and briefly put my hands together as if giving supplication.

“Ohhhh.” She wrinkles her nose. “Wait, are you saying…?”

“I cannot comment on the realness or lack thereof in that department. I do know that our dear Templar friend’s bullets certainly would have been enough to send me back beyond the veil between our worlds - back to the Aether. There is true power to be found. Now, whether it is the belief that lends that power, or a genuine force behind that belief, well…”

I shrug. “What is the phrase? Which came first?”

“The chicken or the egg,” she mumbles, frowning. “Wait, but you said before that a spirit needed a host.”

“I said it needed a host unless it was particularly powerful,” I remind her.

“…And an eldritch horror would certainly fit that description,” she murmurs.

“Unfortunately so. They’re rare, of course - it still requires a lot of energy to create such a creature. A great nexus of fear and rage and pain. There also needs to be a spot in the veil thin enough to let it seep through.”

Lydia rubs her hands over her face. She lets out a long, low groan. “Yeah. Let’s, uh. Let’s not run into one of those. Alright?”

I laugh despite myself. “I shall do my utmost to avoid it.”

She drums her fingers over her knees idly for a moment, staring out the windshield at the coming night. She watches the stars for a while, thoughts drifting - I catch soft murmurings of them. She’s considering calling her mother. Thinking about whether she should notify Nathan about where she’s headed. Wondering if she should warn him about Dakota.

“He won’t hurt them,” I say, trying to soothe her. “Him or the dog. In spite of his incivility towards us, his only motivation was to protect the others. He and his Order view anyone of our ilk with suspicion and disdain.”

Not without reason, I add, careful to keep that part out of her thoughts.

“Wh-oh.” She grimaces. “Sorry. I probably sound so obnoxious right now. Is there some way I can…?” She lifts a hand, pressing it against the side of her face like she’s making a wall.

I tighten my fingers on the wheel for a moment. Lying to her is difficult - I know by now she can sense it. I’ll skirt around it, then. Give her a non-answer. I’m not ready to teach her how to throw up defenses quite yet.

I don’t have an advantage. I still need some leverage against her.

I swear I hear mocking laughter in the back of my head. Her laughter, low and mocking.

“It is no trouble,” I say, lending her a smile. “I’ll teach you some tricks later. You won’t want to be tired for that. Perhaps you should get some sleep.”

She watches me, and I’m again struck by her attentiveness. I note that she has yet to ask me where we’re going - to even think about it, really. Her mind is too busy swarming with her concern for others. I could be driving her off a cliff and she wouldn’t know it until it was too late.

Perhaps I should give her lessons on self-preservation as well.

“What’s a gancanagh?” She asks abruptly.

The question startles me. The name alone is enough to conjure potent memories. There’s a flash of someone sitting in front of a fire, fingers curled in front of his face, his mouth curved in a rictus smile. He’s telling a story. Acting it out for an audience of children gathered at his feet. His hair is a striking red, his eyes green and vivid and alive.

With a start, I realize it is a memory of myself.

“A gancanagh?” I echo, blinking. She’d butchered the word, of course, but I try to keep the wince off my face.

“Yeah. I read it somewhere,” she says. “Some mythical being. Figured you might know what it is.” She chuckles. “Nothing eldritch, I hope.”

I laugh. “No, but it isn’t much better.”

She waits, fingers still drumming on her knees, staring at me expectantly.

I cannot say what compels me to do it - perhaps it is the memory still clinging to me, bringing back a piece of myself lost by the years. But I smile, and when I speak again, I let my tongue lilt with its full brogue. “Ahhh. You wish to hear the tale of the gancanagh, do you? Are you certain? It isn’t for the faint of heart, dear lass.”

Lydia stares at me for a moment, then breaks out in a wide grin. “Well now I really want to hear it.”

“I suppose it’s better that you know,” I say, effecting mock sobriety. “If ever you should find yourself afield - especially on a bright and sunny day, with the heat on your face and the wind in your hair - if you should ever on that day see a beautiful man walking towards you, more beautiful than you’ve ever seen before, you know what you should do?”

She widens her eyes at me. “No. What?”

“You should run,” I whisper.

She leans towards me. The night outside the car has darkened fully, and there’s a sudden feeling of intimacy between us. It isn’t sensual or carnal. It’s something else. Something more. It feels precious to me. Fragile. I find myself wanting to cling to it. Wanting her to lean in closer.

“Why should I run?”

“Ah, well. One touch of a gancanagh will seal your fate forever, I’m afraid. He’ll mold his shape to suit your tastes - yours in particular. He’ll make himself the sweetest honey for you, the finest wine. And the moment you let him get close enough, the moment you let him run his fingers up your arm, you’ll fall hopelessly, madly in love.”

She lets out a laugh. “That doesn’t sound so bad,” she says.

“No?” I arch a brow. “Are you certain? For the gancanagh will not stay with you. He is one of the Fae, the people who live in the otherworld. Powerful and hungry. And once he’s had his fill of you, lass, he’ll leave you longing and alone. You’ll languish in his absence, wasting away, until your broken heart shatters to pieces and you die along with your good name.” I pause, letting the words settle between us. Lydia has a sad look in her eyes, and I find myself regretful. Perhaps I should have changed the story, made it more…

“It’s a good story,” she murmurs. “Tragic, though. Where did you hear it?”

“I’m not sure, but I know I used to tell it. Often, I suspect.” I smile fondly. “I had a sister who was rather precocious as a young woman. I suppose I sought to ward off her suitors preemptively. Maybe I hoped she would react to anyone sufficiently handsome by beating them with a stick.”

Lydia laughs. The sound is warm and full - grounding, somehow. I forget that this body is not my body, that this is not my life. I forget, for a few precious beats, that I am not William Doherty, sitting beside this woman as we drive through the night.

“What happened to your sister?” she asks, and the moment shatters. The memory of my own smiling face shifts, and I realize that the children are faceless save for one: a sweet young girl, barely sixteen, with cracked black boils oozing on her skin.

William, she says, her tongue leaden and bleeding. William, please. I don’t want to die.

“Willia…”

“At any rate,” I interrupt. I do not know how much she got from me, but I blur my thoughts from hers, throwing up a wall to prevent them from spilling into her mind. From infesting her.

From giving her another tool to use against me.

“The Fae are another creature that most do not bother to bond with. More recently they’re known for trickery and treachery - hardly an easy entity to keep a handle on. But before that - the further back one goes - they become more. They become the winter and the spring. The reason the crops fail and the cows die in the fields. They’re forces of nature, the remnants of old gods, old traditions.” I shrug. “Put simply, trying to mold a spirit into such a creature would grant it far, far too much power.”

I glance sidelong at her. I can tell that she sensed something from me - that she wants to pry - but she doesn’t. She accepts my change in subject graciously, and in that moment I feel something for her that creeps dangerously close to affection.

“So they can’t be controlled, is that it?”

I chuckle. “Have you ever heard the stories of human interactions with Fae? It matters little whether it’s giving milk to pixies or begging them to give you a mild winter, they all have one thing in common.”

“…What’s that?”

I turn my head briefly to peer at her, looking her in the eye.

“You make an offering, Lydia Grace. And then you pray.”

Her throat constricts as she swallows. “…Oh.”

“So no. They don’t make particularly good puppets.” I turn back to face the road. There’s not much to be said of the scenery, but I’m not worried about direction quite yet. I’ll figure that out in the morning. For now, I’m aiming for somewhere warm and dry. There are dark circles under Lydia’s eyes. She needs to sleep, and I need to feed. “Only a conceited fool would mold legends of the fair folk into the essence of a spirit.”

“…Right.” I can tell she’s chewing something over in her head. A furrow appears between her brows, then deepens. “Oh, unrelated, but you said that thing - Mr. Darcy, he’ll be chasing after us, right? After the book?”

I nod. “That’s correct.”

“Good.” She sighs. “So it’ll leave Nathan and Ms. Peterson alone.”

I snort. “You’ll think it’s good right up until it finds us again. An amalgam is no easy thing to fight.”

“Yeah.” She leans back in her seat, and I can tell she’s fighting sleep. Her eyelids begin drooping, her head bobbing up and down. I begin to hum quietly under my breath, some old song that comes to mind. A lullaby whose origin I cannot remember.

I swear she’s just about to nod off when she abruptly jerks awake again, letting out a bark of “FUCK!”

I nearly jump out of my skin. “What? What is it?!”

She looks at me, her eyes wide with horror.

“I forgot about Purrcifer!”