Lords of Misrule

Part One - The Written Word

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!"
Lewis Carroll (1871)

Contemplation

First off, let me just say I'm not here by choice. Given the option I'd still be in Berlin. But it wasn't up to us; we go where the bones point. Which puts us in the US of A, trying to track down an irritation the Elders can't shake. Koto's off on her shiny new bike and I'm stuck here in fashionable, old-money Boston, hoping Homeland don't realise we're back in their country. They're very possessive. And I don't like it here. I've never liked it here. Too many old ghosts.

Thomas English sat cross-legged on an uncomfortable bed, in a low-rent motel, facing the room's only doorway. A pistol rested in his lap; a precaution, nothing more. Just like the glyphs chalked over the fading blue paint on the inside of the door, the charms sewn into his clothing, or the medicine bag and oak wheel hung about his neck.

Despite an open window the room smelled musty, a faint exhalation of dry rot. The odour had English reminiscing of the Berchtesgaden library in Berlin; of dust motes spiralling in shafts of light thrown down from stained-glass windows, punctuating a gloom that lay over the reading room like a dirty gauze sheet. He liked the archaic library; it drew calm across him and banished the hustle of his disordered life. No, that was imprecise. His life had an order, but not of his choosing; not since he'd stumbled upon the Sisterhood. They'd caught him in one of their chapterhouses, gloved fingers clutching an ugly Byzantine statuette. A dozen inscrutable eyes had held him, like a fly in amber, while an Elder circled him, nostrils flaring. The stench of his talent, the sixth sense he'd always relied upon, had saved him. Over the long years since he'd come to wonder if it hadn't damned him too.

The Sisterhood enslaved him and gave him over to one of their own for training and control. Koto Kannon had made his life... interesting! And sometimes all he wanted was to break a window or pick someone's pocket and live for a while on the proceeds; to not worry about the things that observed humanity from the shadows.

Arrival

Two miles off Interstate 93 and 11 miles north of the city of Boston sat the village of Lexford. An eclectic mix of French colonial châteaux and austere Quaker houses, strewn haphazardly along a network of turnpikes radiating out from a small tree-lined common. In the tranquillity of a lazy autumn afternoon the intrusion of the two motorcycles was akin to an act of vandalism.

Way too quaint, thought English, who's preferred surroundings encompassed skyscrapers, noodle bars and bookshops. Kannon's opinion of Lexford remained hidden behind her helmet's smoked visor; not that her dark eyes ever gave much away. She slowed her bike as she neared the common, before swinging onto the east road toward Ballardvale.

A mile further on English slowed to a standstill behind Kannon's halted cycle, where she'd stopped outside the tumble-down stone wall encircling a house that, only charitably, could be called impressive. Kudzu, Virginia creeper and Devil's Hair vied to reach the building's rooftops, having already swallowed much of the first floor.

Kannon dismounted, perching her helmet on the bike's saddle, and began following a gravel path round the side of the house.
Pausing momentarily to remove his own helmet, survey the front of the building - its heavy front door, closed window shutters - English trailed in his partner's wake. He caught up with Kannon beside a rear porch, as she stood examining a sturdy oak door.

Within a swamp hickory thicket, somewhere behind the house, a lone whippoorwill sang to itself.