Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,61

backs to me. Each was wearing an identical velvet robe the same shade as the night sky. I leaned against one of the trees, feeling queasy and weak, trying to ignore my discomfort and focus on nothing but those two. Their white hair had been twined together into a single ivory braid that hung between them, down past their hips. Something lay on the altar, but I couldn’t quite make it out. One of the twins raised a crude dagger, a blade chipped from flint and set into a wooden handle. A fucking caveman’s Neolithic knife. It rose up almost high as the moon, and both twins were calling out to “gods” even fouler than the things ghouls worship.

“Shub-Niggurath!” they cried in unison. “Iä! Mighty Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, accept this oblation in thy name!”

And the flint knife came down.

Whatever was on the altar screamed, and I heard the crunch of bone, and the whole fucking night suddenly smelled of blood.

Then I got hit by both barrels of Charlee’s flashbulb again: boom, boom. I’d been right; there was way more to that kid than questionable fashion sense, a wicked pretty face, and a headful of idiotic slang.

“Where the hell did you find him?” I heard myself ask, without ever having moved my lips.

“Where the hell did I find you, precious?” B replied.

In the motherfucking gutter, B.

Down in the motherfucking gutter, a needle in my arm.

There was that pell-mell tumbling sensation again, but it went on longer than before. When it ended, I felt like I was being splashed with icy water, jolted awake from a nightmare. But the truth of it, I was being jolted awake into one.

I was underground, and I knew where, even if I didn’t know how I knew. A tunnel below Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston, a secret path the ghouls had scratched out centuries before. There was orange torchlight flickering off the damp walls, off moldering heaps of bones and skulls, off rubbery fungi growing in fleshy clumps on the exposed granite. I took a step, and mud sucked at my boots.

Ghouls crouched on either side of me, dozens of them, squatting in filth and half-devoured corpses. Their bristling hides seethed with lice and fleas, with maggots, and their eyes shimmered iridescent gold in the gloom. The air was cold, dank, and stank of mushrooms, rot, blood, shit, and wet dogs. I took a step backwards, just wanting to be anywhere except fucking right fucking there, but I tripped over my own clumsy feet and landed hard on my ass in the mud. I looked up, and the Snow twins had entered the passageway. They stood together, hand in hand—Isaac on the right, Isobel on the left—and the creatures crowded into the tunnels averted their gaze and murmured incoherent prayers.

I didn’t look away.

I’m sure there are those who’d have called them beautiful. There’s never a shortage of people in the world ready to look at the grotesque and the warped and call it lovely. I just don’t happen to be one of them. Isaac’s and Isobel’s skin seemed to have been dusted in flour, it was so pale. Their irises could have been cut from the reddest rubies ever mined. They were tall, lanky, long-boned, and thin, frail, and I couldn’t help but think that one good, hard shove and they’d have both shattered like antique porcelain dolls. They were completely naked, save for the mud and decay caking their pale bodies.

“Well,” said Isobel, looking directly at me, “from somewhere and somewhen, somehow she’s finally found her way to us.” She grinned ear to ear and flashed a crooked mouthful of stained teeth filed almost as sharp as a vamp’s or a loup’s . . . or, hey, a goddamn Tyrannosaurus’.

“Clever bitch,” her brother whispered. “So, she’s a sorceress after all.”

“No, brother. No, it’s not her magic. She has no magic to call her own. Only curses. There is another guiding her. Pushing her.”

Some of the ghouls were watching me now.

Oh, and I had to piss.

Funny how I remember how badly I suddenly had to piss. But, see, vampires do not actually pee, so I suppose that part was, by definition, rather memorable.

“Where is she?” I heard myself ask, taking myself my surprise. “Where is Selwyn?”

Like cartoon villains, the twins exchanged curious, amused glances.

“She believes we have the traitor,” said Isobel to her brother. And, “So, that’s how we’ll get your attention, Twice-Damned,” Isaac said to me. “I