A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(103)

“Is that going to help us?” Nan asked doubtfully.

“It won’t hurt,” Sarah pointed out. “We really need to know how the thing does that, and they’ll be in the best position to tell us that before it happens to one of us. And, I hope, warn us in time to save us from such a fate!”

Robin, who was, as usual of late, looking like a completely ordinary young man of the “country yeoman” sort, wandered up to them. Nan noticed that even after being “within housen” for days now, he still smelled pleasantly of ferns, moss, and a faint hint of pine. He looked grim. “The question I have, which I am going to put to you young ladies, since you have been witness to it in action, is this. I have many of the older, more dangerous Earth Elementals at my disposal now, like trolls—though I have been careful to pick the ones that have never tasted human flesh, so I can direct them against the monsters that will come. But this may be a battle in which we need everything. Do I call the Wild Hunt?”

Nan looked up at him, and so did Neville. “What is your concern?” she asked him. “I know they are dangerous, and I know they can affect spirits as well has the living. But what about them has you worried?”

“The Hunt is . . . neither good nor evil, and I do not control it, though I can summon it. It answers only to the Huntsman. He determines who or what is fair prey. Normally, on the rare occasions when I’ve summoned it, there is been someone obviously very wicked that needs to be dealt with. But this time. . . .” He shook his head. “Is that monster wicked? Are its subjects?”

“Robin, it’s been ripping souls out of innocent girls!” Sarah replied, in a scandalized tone of voice. “It tried to kill us! It’s certainly been killing other people!”

“Yes, but . . . by the standards of the world it is in, that might not be wicked. That might just be survival. And I don’t know what the Huntsman will think of that.” He looked helplessly from Nan to Sarah and back again. “And as if that isn’t bad enough, some of the people here have probably done things in their lives that the Huntsman would deem sufficiently wicked to make them prey. What if he turns on us rather than on the monster and its minions?”

And Neville made a rude sound at him. Astonished, Robin looked down at the black-feathered head poking out of the front of Nan’s cloak. “And what exactly does that mean, bird of ill omen?” he demanded.

“Monster wins, Huntsman dies. Stupid,” Neville replied, and made another rude noise, expressing with tone rather than words just what at idiot he thought Robin was. “Huntsman is not stupid!”

Robin stood there with his jaw working back and forth for a very long moment. “I hate to admit that I have been bested by a bird, but you are right,” he said at last. “This is the Huntsman’s world as well. I think I’ll be safe in summoning him.”

“You’re overthinking,” Sarah said in a kindly tone of voice. “I’m not surprised; this is probably the longest you’ve spent among the Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve in a very, very long time. We’re contaminating you with our prevarication and indecision.”

He shook himself not unlike a dog. “Brrrr. I think you are. After this, I am going to take a very long time among the wild sheep of the Orkneys. And I am not sure that will be far enough to get my mind set back where it belongs.”

Let’s just all get through this alive, please, was Nan’s only thought.



Morning light streamed through the high windows in the hall. The fireplaces here were fed with wood, not coal, and the pleasant scent of woodsmoke flavored everything. The soldiers were set up against the walls along both sides of the room, rifles at the ready, ammunition piled beside each of them. Some special ammunition, too: all of it had been blessed by their chaplain, and some of it was dipped in silver. Memsa’b and Sahib fronted a small group of psychical workers in one corner. A handful of magicians, including John and Mary and fronted by Lord Alderscroft, waited in the opposite corner—that would be the members of the White Lodge who were capable of offensive magic, most of which were Fire Masters like Alderscroft himself. Nan and Sarah stood with the psychics. They were dressed for action, Sarah in a divided skirt and boiled-wool jacket, with leather guards on her forearms, Nan in men’s riding jodhpurs, stout boots, and a heavy leather vest over a tunic of boiled wool.

Sherlock led the seventh girl into the room with the others. “Stand there,” he told her, positioning her in the midst of their beds. Then he moved to the fireplace behind their beds.

A hush fell over the room. No one moved.

The silence held for so long that for a moment Nan was afraid that nothing was going to happen. That they had been mistaken, that the seven girls had nothing to do with the creature’s intentions, and that it would cross—or had already crossed—somewhere else and its invasion had already begun.

But then, abruptly, she felt the temperature drop, and her breath puffed out in clouds in the suddenly frigid air.

She didn’t need to see the other six girls rising from their beds and joining the seventh to know that her fears had been wrong. The thing was coming, and coming now.





19





THE girls all suddenly rose from their prone positions at exactly the same moment. As one, they swung their legs over the sides of their beds, and the soldiers tightened their grips on their rifles. As one, they stood up and began walking until they converged on the new one. With a strangely sinuous motion, eerily reminiscent of the writhing of tentacles, they entwined their arms until they were bound in a tight circle. They tilted their heads back, opened their mouths, and began to chant.