“You’d know if I were stopping you,” Hel promised darkly, and embarrassingly, Sam couldn’t help but feel a flutter at what that might look like, at how she might stop her words. Why was it that even furious, Hel consumed her?
“I?—I’ve been having these...”Dreamsseemed inadequate, but they weren’t visions, either, not like she was used to. “Death omens.”
“Death omens?” Hel’s eyes flashed. “And you didn’t think your partners needed to know?”
“You didn’t think your partner needed to know you might have killed her grandfather?” Sam countered. But she looked away. “Anyway, there was nothing you could do about it. It’s a death omen, not a near-death-experience omen. It’s a courtesy, not a way to avert fate.”
“Fate is the coward’s way out of trying,” Hel said. Sam decided to ignore that. There was a certain bravery, she thought, in accepting that which you could not change instead of bailing water until you breathed it. But she had to admit that wasn’t what she had been doing.
“The strange thing is, I’m not certain it wasmydeath omen.” Sam closed her eyes, drawing the dream down. “The landscape was ashen, a battlefield, swords driven into the ground like tombstones, veined with great cataracts of blood that led to a river. At the river crouched a crone, washing a man’s armor with knobby hands. Somehow, shesawme, and her mouth opened in a scream, but all that came out were”?—not ravens, not given what she knew now?—“crows. The first time, I woke up choking on a crow feather. I saw it again while waking, before pulling another out of my arm. The washer at the ford, I know, but?—”
“That,” Hel said, “isn’t the washer at the ford.”
“What else could it be?” Sam said. “A crone, bent backed, washing...”
“Armor.The washer at the ford washes clothing,” Hel said with finality. “Tell me, what did you do to snag the attention of the Mórrígan?”
Sam went cold at the name. The Mórrígan. One of the greatest of the Tuatha Dé Danann?—one of the old gods, or the Folk, or whatever you named them. By some accounts a triplicate goddess, by all accounts a shapeshifter, associated with battle, destiny, and death. A goddess of the land, whom kings married to bind themselves to Ireland and gain the right of kingship.
She was also the queen of demons, known as the phantom queen, associated with crows, the triple moon, and Samhain.
And suddenly, it seemed impossible she hadn’t realized it before. This was theherfrom Mr. Bishop’s ranting.You have no idea what she’s capable of,he’d said.
“The Mórrígan is the one behind all this, isn’t she?” Sam breathed.
“And the Vespertine are her targets,” Hel said grimly. Not the rich, though they were that. Not the Protestants or the Unionists, though most of them were those things as well, and not those who stood in Professor Moriarty’s way.
“But why?” Sam protested. “What have they done?”
“Whatever it is, Mr. Bishop knows about it,” Hel said.
“We have to stop her,” Sam said. The dozens of bells on the wall of her grandfather’s workshop?—the ghosts the Mórrígan seemed to be using to track her prey. How many of those people were actually Vespertine? How many were like Sam and Hel, merely impediments to Professor Moriarty’s plans?
Without taking her eyes from Sam, Hel raised her voice. “Van Helsing!”
There was a muffled shouting from the room next door, and a few moments later, Jakob burst jingling into the room in his brown duster, his revolver in hand.
“What is it? Where?—” His eyes fell on Sam, and his face bent into a scowl. He holstered his revolver. “You.You aren’t supposed to be here.”
“I?—” Sam began, but Hel cut her off.
“Grab your kit,” Hel said, slinging her long tan coat over her shoulders. “We’re going to Bishop’s.”
Jakob’s eyes narrowed. “Why on earth should I want to do that?”
“Because it’s not her grandfather,” Hel said shortly. “And if we don’t act quickly, an unholy number of people are going to die. Including Miss Harker.”
“Miss Harker wouldn’t be at risk if she’d just followed orders and gotten on that ferry!” Jakob said.
“Just listen,” Hel said, and she caught him up on the other Otherworldly incursions, the feathers, the Mórrígan. Bishop.
“You were pullingfeathersout of your throat, and you didn’t think it worth mentioning?” Jakob exclaimed.
“And you can’t think of any reason why I might not have felt entirely comfortable confiding in you?” Sam echoed Hel.
“Fuck,” Jakob said with feeling, slamming his fist on the door. “Fuck! All right, I’m coming. But not until I’ve seen Miss Harker board that ferry.”
“Miss Harkerhas managed to catch the attention of the Mórrígan,” Hel said. “And until we know why, she stays.”
