Chapter 8

Bestirring the Dead Warlord

ix sat on the bench and just enjoyed the greenery. The dog park (that’s what it was) was designed beautifully in a Capability Brown sort of style, inasmuch as a roof could be designed in a Capability Brown sort of style, with full grown trees and shrubs, and the roof was not merely flat but had a tower on each corner, and some sloping roof that had been covered in wildflowers and the like, plus the long, bent pyramid of the lightwell, which was separated from the dogs without the use of fencing. Where Central Park was a Victorian idea of nature (very much a Disneyfication of nature in that way, Aix always thought), this park was much more natural, and there was some barking from the other dogs, but as they were outside, it didn’t bother Aix. Barking was Outside Noise, and if it wasn’t the distressed kind, it didn’t bother them.

Warren brought all the dogs up, and Ticky in particular seemed to have saved up all her barks for outside because she started to practically vibrate on the elevator ride up, and then exploded out of the open doors, yelling her head off. The other dogs burst into excited gambolling as well, but not nearly so extremely as the husky. Aix found a bench and sat, watching Warren run with the dogs. There were more than a few wolves among the dogs, playing and rolling around in the clover and dandelions with them just the same, and it was a lovely New York Summer sort of day, very balmy but mostly clear-skied, so Aix’s joints weren’t fussing about it. Their feet still hurt, as did all the joints affected by the collapse of their arches—ankle, knee, hip—but it wasn’t even as intolerable as it could be. Staying with someone that understood and also helped encourage Aix doing morning stretches helped a lot.

The noise of the city, from this high up, was just a dull roar—the closest you could get to quiet, in New York City. Eventually, the sun came out, and Aix got too hot in their oversized well-worn hoodie with their favourite cartoon clown on it, and had a decision to make. They weren’t wearing anything beneath it, which meant if they took it off, they would expose themselves to commentary about the scar, and they didn’t think they could tolerate it being called ‘disgusting’ or having people rear back like a startled horse one more time, or they would scream. On the other hand, the people in this dog park were all non-human, for the most part, or somehow connected to them. Surely they wouldn’t react so disrespectfully to scars? But even medical professionals recoiled in disgust and fear from Aix’s scars, so they didn’t really trust that line of reasoning.

Warren came up to them, sparkle-eyed and not at all out of breath, sitting next to Aix. ‘You look hot.’

‘I am,’ Aix said, and waited, then said, with the sudden bravery of the terrified, ‘Do you think anyone will be mean about scars?’

Warren, Aix was pleased to note, did the question the respect of thinking about it, scanning the people in the park. ‘No,’ he said, after a while, in his very earnest sort of way. ‘Scars are greatly respected, among Tiermenschen.’

Aix canted their head. ‘Why do you call yourselves in German? I’ve been wondering.’

‘That’s what the first visitors from this realm called us. It was the first time we’d been given a word that wasn’t insulting.’

‘So…’ Aix blinked. ‘Wait, the first visitors to your realm? They didn’t happen to be two brothers that were linguists, name of Grimm?’

‘Yes! Oh, you know them!’

‘Of course I do,’ Aix said, ‘I’m a bard, like a real one. I’ve been studying folklore my whole life.’

‘Then you know that nobody from Eglenor would dare say something Unkind to you. That’s a great way to get a Curse.’ He paused, then added, hastily, ‘Not that you don’t deserve kindness for it’s own sake—’

Aix chuckled. ‘It’s okay, I understand—when everyone knows there are such things as Consequences, everyone errs on the side of Kindness just in case the person they’re talking to has, like, a knife. That’s logic I can get behind. It’s refreshing, actually. It’s sensible. You don’t poke a bear and then complain when you get mauled. And,’ they added, rather pleased they were talking to someone who understood, ‘I’m a witch. It would be nice to be around folk that respected that. Properly.’

‘I’d ask if you’re a good witch or a bad one, but I’ve lived here long enough to know better.’

‘I’m the sort that doesn’t do things so much as see truths and speak, if that makes sense. I lay the cards, I have been gifted with insight. The planchette doesn’t move without me touching it, but I also won’t touch it, at this stage of my life.’

‘Why not?’

‘Would you cold call a stranger and expect them to tell you intimate things, or, indeed, any things?’ Aix asked, raising a brow. ‘If they come to you, that’s different.’

‘…Do you know what Dmitri does?’ Warren asked, trying and failing to hide a smile.

‘He’s… a vampire?’

‘No, that’s what he is. Do you know what he does?’

‘…Bakes?’ Aix was starting to feel out of their depth.

‘He’s a necromancer.’

‘Hmmmmm, that scans, for a vampire.’ Aix shook their head. ‘Shouldn’t do that, in my opinion. Leave the dead alone, they’re tired. But I’m also not surprised. Vampires transgress the laws of life and death by existing, so it makes sense they would explore further taboos.’ Aix paused, biting their lip. ‘If necromancy means what I think it means, anyway. Does he raise the dead or just talk to them, what?’

‘Lady Victoria says it isn’t a matter of speaking to individuals. Ghosts aren’t really humans, they’re… feelings.’

‘Oh! Like Japanese ideas of ghosts!’ Aix said, nodding. ‘Yeah, I always thought so too. Any kind of entity is something different; though I was never interested in anything to do with ghosts or anything,’ Aix added. ‘Was more interested in the living monsters—sorry, um, I don’t use the word “monster” in a derogatory way, but I know it has that connotation.’

‘Go on,’ Warren said, eagerly. ‘I’ve never actually spoken to a real witch before. Well, except Lady Victoria, but she’s not really a witch, she says. She’s just an Averay.’

Aix thought on that. ‘Yeah, I see what she means,’ they said. ‘The Averays are monsters. Or monster-adjacent, I suppose. I have a more… what is your realm called?’

‘Eglenor.’

‘I think—that is, if Eglenor is anything like I’m imagining—I think I may have a more Eglentine vibe with my witchiness. Have you seen Into the Woods? The musical, not the film.’

‘Oh! Oh yes, that was one of the first musicals that came to Eglenor! It’s very popular.’

Aix smiled, humming. ‘The Witch in that, is more my style. I’m ruthless, in that I don’t really think or feel much for the squeamish misgivings other people have about what it takes to get to something. That said,’ Aix added, ‘I also know what my own moral code is, and I never break from it, and I don’t find it difficult to keep to. I add this because apparently that is hard,’ Aix said, and paused, ‘for humans,’ he said, which felt far more comfortable than merely saying ‘for allistics’. Like some people, Aix rather liked the Story that autistic people were changelings, that the signs and symptoms were merely what it was to be fae-blooded—considering the fae were themselves descended of deities, it was only English colonialism that would see the idea as somehow demeaning.

‘ “and so one at a time we all become human—human werewolves, human dwarfs, human trolls… The melting pot melts in one direction only” ,’ Warren quoted.

‘Ha,’ Aix said, recognising and appreciating the Terry Pratchett. ‘I was just thinking of that quote. And may I say: Fuck. That. Who the fuck wants to be human, anyway? I’m a monster, and I’d rather be a monster. We never bit and clawed and killed one another and called it morality.’ It was, Aix reflected, so good to be around people that were working off the same allusions as they were.

Warren huffed a laugh, shaking his head. ‘I spent my whole life doing the opposite, because… huff puff, you didn’t want to be a Wolf, in Eglenor. But here… there’s a lot more people like you. Goths, furries, pride and protests—of all kinds! It’s… cripes, I don’t know. It’s something.’

‘It’s challenging the status quo,’ Aix said, with a sardonic smile. ‘It’s the essence of what a Witch is—what a Trickster is. And I worship Trickster Gods—Hermes, Loki, Bes, even Jocosa¹—as well as the gods of more sombre truths—Hades, Poseidon, Apollo, Odin, Anubis.’

Aix still felt odd, worshipping gods from more than one pantheon; but they were trying to get used to it. Modern culture was an amalgamation of many cultures, it followed that one would need gods from many different families too. And after all, Aix reasoned, they had a mixed heritage; why shouldn’t their families of gods also be as diverse?

Warren watched the dogs for a bit, as he thought on what Aix had said; they were well-socialised dogs, by now, and had already done the business that needed cleaning up, and a few of Warren’s pack were making sure all the dogs off leash played nice with one another; but he still wanted to keep an eye on them, like any parent with their pups. Watching them was really more of a way to think on what Aix had said, though.

Warren had been thinking about Aix since they’d arrived—everyone in the Tower was, once they had word there was a Witch—a realio, trulio witch—coming into the City, one that had been given a Doom.² Witches were both common and rare, in the Grimmwelt; common because there were many people who said they were witches; but rare in that true witches were even fewer and farther between here than anywhere else, particularly the kind that prophesied. It was more common to find people using the trappings to desperately cover up and avoid their own foibles, and any real witches were Crafters—those that made objects, usually weapons. The sort of Witch that Victoria had said Aix was, the Prophesying Witch, the Talk-to-Old-Gods Witch, that kind was rare—and they tended to get hunted down by a mob about as often as any Wolf or other monster, precisely for the reason Aix had outlined.

People were not usually Good. They were not usually Evil, either. They were worse than both of these things—they were Nice. Nice People didn’t like the Truth, because the Truth was often Ugly, and Painful, and could often be Horrifying. Nice People liked what they wanted the truth to be. But Witches weren’t Nice, they were incapable of and unwilling to be Nice, and that upended society something fierce; but—critically—society did need to be upended, and regularly, or tyranny would take hold….

It was sort of like boiling caramel, Warren thought, as always turning to food as a metaphor (well, he was a half-wolf)—if you didn’t keep an eye on it, and stir it all the time, it not only boiled over and ruined itself, but it also made a sticky ruin of the pot, the stove, and everything else it touched, and once it cooled was nigh-impossible to clean up.

‘Fuck it,’ Aix muttered softly, beside him, and took off their loveworn hoodie, revealing the scar in question went from behind one armpit to behind the other, was ever so slightly asymmetrical, and made very clear they’d had things removed. Warren understood enough, by now, to know it was the kind of scar that outed you as someone vulnerable. Fortunately for Aix, this building and the people they were now around were not the sorts that would do anything but admire said scar, and possibly congratulate them.

Warren wished he could say something to that effect, but Virginia had taught him not to comment on something a person couldn’t choose. This scar, though, surely it had somewhat been chosen? Scars were strength, were having survived.

‘I know I should put on sunblock,’ Aix said, laying down on the grass in the sun, holding their phone. ‘I’m setting a timer for twenty minutes, that should be short enough.’

‘I could get you some sunblock,’ Warren offered.

‘I actually kind of hate it, but thanks,’ Aix said, putting their phone down. ‘Always wanted to get up on the roof of my old building in Brooklyn and sunbathe. I know it’s bad for you, but…. The Snake Instinct.’

Warren had pups young enough to understand the joke, and chuckled. They sat in silence for a bit, Aix’s eyes closed, before Aix said,

‘I think I wanna live here. I don’t know if I want to take the job Virginia offered, but I like the apartment.’

Predictably, Aix was met with concern-trolling³ from their mother, and was surprised at how easy it was to brush her off; talking to their older friend Sam was a much better grounding. Auntie Sam was not technically old enough to be an aunt, but that’s what Aix called her anyway, at her behest. Aix had met her fairly recently, but they had immediately connected, and Sam had the fortitude, distance, and expertise to actually help Aix avoid the sort of crisis that had led to suicide attempts in the past, in a way therapists hadn’t even been willing or able to. So, Aix tended to run things like this past her, and her approval counted.

After that, it was time to pack—but Aix’s new social network seemed to stretch across the country, because Victoria introduced them via video call to four people that had volunteered to help them move and do the final clean of their old apartment. Heather, Michaela, and St Croix were all of the Very Strong variety of help, and St Croix and Erastos were both savvy to every in and out of government wrangling. Erastos and St Croix showed up in a large van, Erastos in a wheelchair, and helped more with Aix’s anxiety and sorting their paperwork; but morale was terribly important stuff, and Aix wasn’t shy about telling them about how badly their little complex needed a tenants’ union.

‘…But I don’t know how to do that sort of thing, I’m not very good with people and all.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Erastos said, with a grin at St Croix. ‘We are.’

So that was that; with three people helping, and Erastos offering his help with bureaucracy, it was all so very easy, suddenly, when it had seemed impossible before; and Aix broke down crying in the middle of the boxes and bubble wrap.

‘It was so hard!’ Aix sobbed. ‘All—all I wanted—was some help—just—just someone to—and—I’m sorry—’ They sniffled, taking off their glasses. ‘I just feel so stupid—why—why is just getting answers so hard—’ They reached under their niqab to try and futilely wipe away tears, vaguely wondering how other niqabi managed to deal with crying. ‘Why now? Why—why did all of this happen to me and—’ Aix took the offered handkerchief Michaela had plucked off their desk. The apartment had gotten cramped even for one person in the two years Aix had lived there, but the past few hours of work had made room for all of them, and it was still tight, but comfortably.

‘Didn’t you say you’d sacrificed your own flesh to Apollo?’ Erastos pointed out, gently. ‘And in the fullness of time, and showing a great generosity and prosocial practise with your boosted powers, you showed you could handle the power you now have.’

Erastos, Aix had learned almost immediately, was pagan like Aix, though slightly different in his god-family—he worshipped the Greek and Egyptian gods, where Aix worshipped mostly Greek but had newly begun worshipping a few of the Norse and some others, carefully. Aix’s main worship had shifted from Hermes, since their fleeing their abusive ex-husband, to Apollo—particularly when it came to the idea of Truth, as their ex had been a liar from the beginning. Aix rarely met other pagans that were sensible and respectful of closed practises, so they’d eagerly chattered to Erastos for the past few hours, while they’d been going through the many, papers Aix had always been too scared to organize other than shoving them into a random filing folder.

The surprise that Aix felt at Erastos showing he’d been paying attention to Aix’s chatter made them stop crying, as did the logic. They blew their nose, and sniffled. ‘I appreciate you not saying Chosen One,’ they said, rather thickly.

‘Well you’ve been chosen,’ Michaela pointed out, ‘but you ain’t Christian, and the thing choosin’ sure ain’t Christian neither. So,’ she said, grabbing the tape. ‘Ergo, cain’t be a Chosen One.’

‘…Madam,’ Erastos said, ‘it is impressive that you can use “ergo” and “cain’t” in the same sentence so casually.’

‘Appalachian Dialect’s closer to Shakespeare than the current Queen herself,’ Michaela said, tossing her red hair. ‘You oughta hear my Daddy do Marc Antony’s funeral speech.’

The sliding glass door opened, signalling Heather and St Croix—both smokers—had come back inside.

‘I smell tears, what’s happened?’ Heather said, and Aix froze.

‘Wh… why can you smell tears?’ Aix asked in a small voice.

‘I’m sea-folk, boyo, we can smell the sea wherever it is.’ She settled down beside him—there were no chairs in the house that fit her. ‘Didn’t you wonder why I had whiskers an’ all?’

‘No,’ Aix said. ‘Why would I wonder about someone else’s body? That’s rude.’

‘You know, you hear about polite people but you never meet them,’ Heather said with a laugh. ‘Then again, you are People.’

Aix put that together immediately, but didn’t quite believe… until Heather’s skin suddenly turned silver with black spots, and her face was unmistakably phoecidine.

People.

Aix’s eyes widened. She was a selkie, a realio, trulio selkie. Somehow, meeting elves while in a shiny building in midtown Manhattan didn’t hit the same way as having a selkie in your tiny, dark living room, sitting on your dark brown carpet.

More to the point, however, she’d confirmed Aix’s playful I-choose-to-pretend-to-believe about their combination of disabilities existing ‘because I’m a fae baby left with humans’. It was not a lie because they didn’t believe it to the exclusion of scientific explanation; but it wasn’t not a lie, because they didn’t like medicalising their existence, and were definitely not a regular garden-variety human, because other humans never understood them, and they couldn’t understand humans, and things that bothered Aix never bothered them, and a list of medical diagnoses was not comforting, nor did it really feel like much of an explanation. It was just a list of big cold Latin words that didn’t describe what a person was, just what they weren’t and what made them broken and what made them fail at being a person.

‘I’m… I’m Folk? Really? I’m a real Changeling?’ It hurt how pathetically hopeful that sounded, even to Aix.

‘Aye,’ Heather said, much more gently than she had spoken before. She didn’t voice what else she saw—that Aix was sidhe. Given the child’s tone, and how abandoned they already were by their relations, Heather wasn’t about to burden them with an emotional bomb like news that they were faerie nobility and therefore either abandoned, bought, or owed by their faerie relations. The way the Gentry treated their children like currency was… well, humans did it sometimes, but no matter the era such a thing was still out-of-the-ordinary for humans—it was not so with the Gentry.

‘Anybody feel like it’s about time for a meal?’ St Croix asked, and Heather was grateful for the change in subject.

The general agreement was that yes, a break would be nice, and so they went out, letting Aix pick where they could eat, since the only food restrictions anybody else had were that Heather was an obligate carnivore, and Michaela had the cilantro-tastes-like-soap gene. Aix wanted to partake of their extremely local comfort foods before they couldn’t anymore, and so they went to Rubio’s for fish tacos. While they ate in the back of the van, Aix talked about their comfort foods, which is all they would miss about California, and Michaela said that she knew for certain that one of Virginia’s pups was fixated on copycat recipes, and that Aix should talk to them about making such things. That sparked Aix mentioning the fact that they’d no idea how to find a local Chinese restaurant, since the one they liked had been found by their parents before they’d been born, and St Croix assured Aix that the skill in finding a good place was mostly befriending locals who could recommend, which Aix already had done.

Packing up took the rest of the day and some of the day after, which meant all four of Aix’s new friends met Aix’s mother. Aix was a little nervous about that, but also secretly glad, because after turning in the keys to the landlord and terminating the lease, they assured her everything was fine and she could just go back home. It made Aix realise she was a lot easier to deal with when she had no power and Aix didn’t need to trust her or rely on her for anything.

‘She’s nice, for a bougie white republican,’ St Croix said.

‘She’s California Nice,’ Heather declared, snapping closed the cap on her water bottle. ‘She’ll smile and say she’s sorry while leaving you on the side of the road with a flat tire.’ She shook her head with very New Englander disdain for such things.

‘Would not trust her farther than I can throw her,’ Erastos said, with a wry agreement. ‘So, Aix, do you want to start the road trip right away?’

‘I’ve never been on a road trip,’ Aix said, excited.

‘You need a lot of stuff,’ Michaela said. ‘Let’s see what we can find at that outlet mall in Palm Springs.’

‘Goody! Palm Springs is where I wish I could have lived this whole time,’ Aix said. ‘It’s so pretty.’

‘And I’ll get you a new laptop,’ Heather said, and Aix startled, staring at her. Their own laptop had bluescreened the previous day, and they’d gone out into the backyard and smashed it with a hammer (as was traditional).

‘I… thank you,’ they said, but they really meant Why??? Why would you buy me something so expensive when we only met yesterday?? But they were old enough now to not voice such things, not question gifts. Just accept them. Being homeless for their entire adult life had taught Aix that you had to ask for as much as you possibly could, and if that meant taking the first ‘yes’ even though you weren’t supposed to? So be it, you had to survive, and manners took a back seat to survival. People were going to hate you for being poor anyway, so why try to even pretend you had virtues when requiring charity at all meant you were scum?

Not a great outlook, Aix was aware; but it had kept them alive, and staying alive was the first goal. Principles were a privilege for those who had what they needed. A laptop felt like a luxury, but Aix knew in their heart that for them, constant access to a computer was necessary—humans needed their support network to stay alive, Aix knew this intimately from their own experience relying on only one person and having that one person slowly eliminate all of the other people in Aix’s life, and then suddenly try and murder Aix, necessitating Aix run… and end up on the street with no friends and no family. Even the System had no idea what to do with someone who had no connections.

But Aix had possessed a laptop, then, and the laptop had been both art medium (Aix was a writer) and a way to connect to other people, people that Aix had tirelessly searched for. Being alone had been what had made life as unbearable as it was, had been what tipped them into lethal despair over and over—so, they had determined to work as hard as they could to build a network of multiple people, so that if one was not there then Aix still had others. And the laptop had been necessary for all of that, so… it was definitely a need, no matter what Aix’s upbringing said about it being a luxury toy.

Heather insisted Aix get a very good laptop, and not worry about the price, and so Aix ended up with a nicer one that they’d ever had in their life, and the prospect of being on the road suddenly became much more fun. Now, they could write. They could sit in a café and catch up with their friends from across the country. They could write. That was important.

All five of them started back. Michaela had an old school bus she’d converted into a camper that felt more like some kind of fantasy train cabin than it did a camper; this fit her and Heather comfortably, and there were two bunks as well as the large bed in the back, and Aix slept on them alternately. St Croix and Erastos’ van was not only big enough to hold Erastos’ rather steampunky chair, but also for them to sleep in. The van was not from the seventies, but it had been done up that way, airbrushed wizards on the outside and shag on the inside and all. Aix loved it, and said so many times.

Their first night, they made it out to where the light from the cities gave way to the desert’s wide open dark, and the sky was properly black, and covered in stars. They all laid outside looking up at them and talking for hours about everything.

Aix woke up in the cave, and there was… something soft beneath them now, not really a bed but not… not a bed. It was recognisable as bed-like, and Aix smiled at it.

Hello.

Aix looked toward the light given off by the large hand wrapping around the column, following the light it gave to the betentacled face, the soft yellow eyes that were joined by more as he opened more of them. ‘Hello.’

Do you like the nest?

‘It’s very soft, and welcoming,’ Aix said, ‘I appreciate the effort to be hospitable.’

Shob-Zhiggurath suggested it would be seen as respectful.

‘Oh hey,’ Aix said, ‘I know that name. The Goat Of A Thousand Young, isn’t she?’

…She? Oh, a bearer. Yes.

‘Ah, yeah, gender is… complicated, with humans.’ Aix gesticulated. ‘Sort of… layered. How does reproduction work with y’all folks?’

I would like to hear you explain yours first, Shob-Zhiggurath’s account is… confusing.

Aix wrapped the not-blanket around themselves like a little hooded cape and nestled into the soft not-pillows. ‘Okay! I love talking about it. Humans have two adults participate in reproduction. They come together at the hips, and one type of human comes with a sort of insertable injector organ that goes into the specialised orifice of the other type of human, and doing this is very fun by the way. It feels good and fun. Anyway, so because our species is fertile all times of the year, we can just do this whenever and it is likely to fertilise an egg or two eventually, if you do it enough times. Make sense so far?’

How many times?

Aix paused. ‘Uh, hm. I need to draw things… oh wait, this is Dreamspace!’ Aix concentrated, and a big chalkboard on a stand appeared, only it was a white chalkboard, and the chalk in the tray was pink. Aix got up and started to draw.

They started with explaining genital anatomy for both basic types, explaining that humans fell on a kind of spectrum but mostly clumped to one or the other side. Those born in between, like Aix themself, were usually infertile. After that, Aix had to explain menstruation and erection, and only then could the actual sexual interaction make sense. And then there was pregnancy, of course.

It was his human’s favourite subject, and that was very clear to Cthulhu from the enthusiasm and willingness to teach.

And the human was a good teacher. He said over and over that this was only the basic ‘sciency parts’, and that there was much more to it.

Yes, there is play-sex.

‘Oh like… sex for pleasure only? Yes! That’s the best kind.’ His human erased the board, and started on a much more detailed drawing, a little tip of something familiar poking out of his mouth. It took a moment for Cthulhu to realise that was the tentacle humans had, the little one they kept—funny little things!—inside their mouths.

He wondered why it was emerging; was it curious? There was little about how humans expressed themselves with it, other than in articulating their sonant manner of communicating. Did it even have a proper ganglion at the base?

His human was still drawing—much more carefully, as carefully as Azathoth when showing them a new glyph. It was beautiful, whatever it was, strange and symmetrical and made of many layered petals.

‘This is what my genitalia look like,’ his human said. ‘I’m about…’ he referred back to the continuum line he’d drawn when explaining earlier. ‘…here, as far as my genitals. But here,’ A little further toward the middle, ‘When it comes to how my body chemistry works. This is incompatible so my menstrual cycle doesn’t… cycle… correctly. But that doesn’t mean orgasms don’t work!’ he said cheerfully. ‘Orgasm is what we call the height of sexual pleasure, and in the cock-having sort of humans it results in the release of gametes.’

Fertilisation is reliant on pleasure?

‘Well,’ Aix said, sobering. ‘Only for this kind. Which has, historically and presently, caused a lot of problems.’

Cthulhu thought on this, and Aix was pleased to note that apparently, the head-tilt was a shared piece of body language.

Particularly because of pregnancy being so taxing on the physiology of the bearer?

‘Exactly. Without medicine, people die at a rate of like… half? Half of all pregnancies? It’s catastrophic, and our science still hasn’t figured out why this is a thing we evolved. It isn’t just head size versus pelvic size, there’s more to it. No other animal with this kind of reproduction has the embryo take so much from them, and control so much. That’s the only thing that really frightens me, is that we don’t know why humans are like this, and because of prejudice and bias, it’s hard to investigate it scientifically. Nothing is more poorly understood than reproduction, particularly in the humans that have bearing organs.’ Aix paused. ‘So… there’s this thought, among humans that have had encounters with y’all folks, that y’all have more advanced science and tech than we do? Is that true or not?’

It is unclear. From what I’ve learned from you, humans develop rapidly, and yet unevenly.

‘That makes sense,’ Aix said, sighing softly.

You have no answers about your glitches, and why your body fails you, and it is upsetting. He reached slowly, carefully, toward the little human with one hand. His human went still, but didn’t move away, and reached back with both of his smaller hands, holding to the outside of the curve of Cthulhu’s fingers.

‘It is upsetting, sometimes,’ Aix said softly, pressing their face against the warmth, the skin that was hairless and had scales in the places Aix had small hairs. ‘Mostly because the idea of being full and growing fuller with a new life, of my body creating a new little person, is so… powerful. And arousing.’ Aix sighed. ‘But I can’t do it, is the great irony. I’m one of the few that wants to, and I can’t. Not that I’d be able to raise a human baby very well anyway,’ they added, bitterly.

Why not? You teach well, and have the necessary desire and awareness.

‘Because I can barely take care of myself,’ Aix said, ‘because I’m so without resources.’ They paused. ‘Though… that’s changing. You changed that, by finding me. That set off a chain reaction, and… now my life is getting so much better.’ Aix wasn’t exactly sure how to hug a hand that size of themself, but they tried anyway. ‘Thank you,’ they said. ‘But,’ they added, ‘I still shouldn’t have a kid. I never got a chance to live my own life, or figure out who I am all the way. I need time to do that, before I put it on hold again for someone else—if I ever do.’

Aix didn’t know if this would make any sense to a being that may not reproduce like humans did. They were talking, now, and while on the one hand it was important to support someone trying to learn a language, on the other hand… Aix suddenly couldn’t fill in any gaps with the telepathic exchange of emotions and images.

Oh. Did you miss that?

Aix opened their eyes, looking up into all the orange ones, arranged in a way that reminded them of the pre-Cambrian animals. ‘Yeah. I… I want to learn your language, too.’

A warm feeling of surprised happiness. You’re quite good already.

‘I am?’ Aix said, pleased. Unbidden, a joke materialised in clear phrasing, and Cthulhu paused, canting his head and then giving a low noise that was unmistakeably a laugh. It was comforting to know laughter, humour, was something native to his culture.

This is not a test of knowledge, but I understand the sentiment too well. I often feel it when receiving praise from Azathoth.

‘Oh, are you a student? Is he your teacher?’

He is elder to us, and has long been head of studying your planet.

‘Do you study other ones?’

There are few with anything to study, in this universe. It is so new.

‘Huh. So humans are like… some of the earliest civilisations in this universe. Cool. I’m not gonna think about that too hard, I’ll get sad.’

Aix felt the frustration, the desire to be close enough to offer physical comfort; the chains didn’t rattle, but that was because they were pulled too taut. They moved to nestle inside the hand, which curved very slowly, very gently, around them, aware of its strength in a way that was reassuring.

‘I’m on my way to my new home now,’ Aix said. ‘We just started, it will be a few more days until we get there. Then I have to rest, and unpack, and—I wanted to talk to you about what happens after I get to you. Can you… it would be hard to take you home, the size you are now.’

Home. The word thrummed with intense power, and meaning. But Cthulhu didn’t need to have that explained—home was a universal concept, at least between their two cultures. Everyone had a home; and his human had longed for one more than most, having been denied that safety and belonging. A place to sleep wasn’t Home. A place cut off from needs wasn’t Home. A place with hostile conspecifics wasn’t Home.

His human had never had a Home, until… until now. There was a waxing excitement, and fear, now that he had met so many humans connected with this, with Cthulhu finding him. The Baby’s family was extensive, spread across a huge and hive-like settlement called The City.

When do we begin to call one another names?

Aix paused. ‘You can call me Aix,’ they said, and tried to make clear that just because they knew his name, didn’t mean Cthulhu had given it; and, moreover, that ‘Aix’ wasn’t a Name, just a Call.

So much caution, it was painful to witness such pain; but remarking on it was very like a threat, from someone so big to someone so small. Cthulhu thought, for a time.

I have never been called anything but my name. Will you help me find a Call?

‘It is traditional for someone else to give you a Call. Let’s see…’ Aix thought, leaning against Cthulhu’s hand. ‘You most resemble one of my favourite earth animals…’

Aix showed him all the memories they had of octopuses, which sort of bled into everything they knew about the ocean and the animals and… ‘Sorry,’ Aix said, ‘it’s a lot.’

Not to me, little one.

The moniker did something, to Aix; Cthulhu felt the images collapse and morph into something more playful and imaginative, something more to the kind of nature that made him curious, that he wanted, that would free him. The runes picked up on it, and one of the chains—the one nearest Aix—vanished. Aix startled, which interrupted the concentration—or lack of, which Cthulhu suspected was more likely, given how guarded Aix was.

Unfortunately, the jolt of fear was enough to actually yank Aix back to consciousness, which meant they woke up in Michaela’s camper, more suddenly than they were used to. They lay still, opening their eyes and slowly figuring out where they were. There was the soft noise of the humidifier, which meant they didn’t smell blood, or have difficulty opening their eyes, despite the desert outside.

So, someone had put Aix in the big back bedroom, on the big bed; they had no sooner thought this than they felt the shifting that meant someone was coming toward the back of the converted bus, and there was a tapping on the narrow sliding door—because it was a real wooden door, and slid into a pocket and everything—and Michaela’s voice.

‘Aix? Darlin, it’s Mike.’

‘Come in,’ Aix said, and the door slid open, Michaela coming through and sitting on the wooden edge of the bed.

‘Hey, sweetpea,’ she said softly. ‘How you feelin’?’

‘He called me “little one” and then one of the chains… snapped?’ Aix said, sitting up and folding their legs beneath them. ‘We talked about sex, finally. Well,’ Aix amended, pursing their lips in a frown, ‘I talked about sex. We didn’t quite get to him talking about sex. Oh,’ they brightened, ‘but I finally introduced myself! And we were just trying to figure out a Call for him….’

Michaela smiled. ‘Well, I expect the internet will be helpful for that. You were out for a couple-few hours, Heather and I are on watch.’

Aix raised a brow. ‘On watch?’

‘We’re Hunters,’ Michaela said. ‘Didn’t Victoria tell you?’

‘I—yeah, I just… like, I didn’t… put it together.’ Aix paused. ‘So um, possibly silly question?’

‘No silly questions, sugar, what’s on your mind?’

‘So that one show… you know the one…’

‘I might,’ Michaela said, careful not to laugh at Aix.

‘It’s a terrible show, but I like terrible horror to a certain extent. And Mark Sheppard.’

‘And Mark Sheppard,’ Michaela said with emphatic agreement, fanning herself with one hand. ‘Mercy, I could listen to that man read the phone book.’

‘Right?!’ Aix said, with more enthusiasm.

‘The idea of saving people by hunting monsters is right enough,’ Michaela said. ‘We do it in pairs at least, and we have people that work the field and people that run support; but we don’t just hunt monsters for bein’ monsters. My Opa did, but Daddy’s a lawyer, and when he was done passin’ the bar he went out there to Mr Drăculești and they set down and had themselves a talk, and drew up a treaty. We stick to that.’

‘Hang on. Hang on. I need to parse that Dracula exists.’

Michaela chuckled. ‘My last name is Van Helsing, baby.’

‘Ahhhhhhhh holy fuck.’

‘Heather bein’ a selkie isn’t mind-blowing, but this is?’

‘You know Dracula. You know him?? Your dad knows him??’

‘You were into vampires as a teen weren’t you?’

‘I’m still into vampires!’

‘They’s just people, sugar. Ain’t you met Dmitri?’

Aix covered their face and made a distressed moan. ‘He’s so hot.’

Michaela chuckled softly. ‘He is.’

‘Victoria’s hot toooooo,’ Aix said, slowly falling over to the side and curling up. ‘Everyone is so hot I don’t know how to deal with thiiiiis.’

Michaela leaned over and rubbed their back. ‘I know, sweetpea.’ She made mental note to inform her friends that their attraction to Aix was mutual, but she also understood that Aix likely wasn’t in a place to accept that other people were attracted to them, not yet. ‘You want some tea, honey-lamb?’

‘Yeah,’ Aix said, glad she wasn’t pursuing the conversation, sitting up. ‘My nose is probably bleeding, huh?’

Michaela shook her head. ‘Not that I can see, but—’ she pointed at where a tissue was sticking out of the tissue-box holder she’d built into the headboard cabinets. Aix grabbed one and blew their nose, looking to make sure.

‘Huh. No blood. He did say I was getting better at the telepathy thing…’

Michaela got up. ‘Heather’s got a fire going outside, let’s get you some tea.’

‘Oooh, fire,’ Aix commented, following her cheerfully, grabbing their stuffed pegasus on the way. Michaela stopped them trying to go down the stairs.

‘Bupbup,’ she said, ‘I’ll lift you down, sweetpea. Can you walk from here to the fire, or you want your chair?’

‘I can walk that far, it’s okay,’ Aix said, trying not to feel embarrassed; but why should they? It wasn’t an unreasonable question, nor was needing this much help strange. They just weren’t used to it yet.

‘Mkay, gimmie luvvy, I’ll put them in my tits.’

Aix hesitated; you never realised that you didn’t let other people touch your stuffed animal until they asked to; but Michaela was a nice lady, and Aix believed their pegasus could fit in her prodigious cleavage. ‘Okay,’ they said, and Michaela tucked the little black plush into her cleavage.

‘Okay, we’re gonna do a fireman carry because you’re higher up. You know what that means?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay, so, you’re gonna have your hips at my shoulder, and let yourself bend over, I won’t drop you. Ready?’

Aix nodded, and she slowly manoeuvred him and got him down.

‘Goodness, you’re a dream to pick up.’

‘Thanks, I used to be a dancer,’ Aix said, not really sure how else to explain how good their balance and muscle control were any other way. Yet… saying so just broke their own heart over and over. They took their pegasus back and cuddled her, feeling like they shouldn’t have said anything, not sure if they wanted someone to say they were sorry or not.

Michaela wrapped an arm around their shoulders and squeezed them in a hug, and Aix heard themself start talking.

‘I don’t—I would need lots of physical therapy but—I think aerial silks are non-loadbearing, and I’ve always wanted to learn that, and get back into swimming. I want to learn to do mermaid tail swimming…’

‘You could do that, I know swimmin’ is safe for wobbly joints, and I’m sure my boyfriend knows at least one mermaid, probably more. He owns a freakshow on Coney Island,’ she added. ‘His family’s been down there for a real long time. Hey, Heather,’ Michaela said.

Heather didn’t answer but to swing the iron kettle back over the fire, but that didn’t seem to bother Michaela. She let Aix have the roomy sling chair that was obviously hand-made, and took the wooden stool (also hand-made; Aix admired Michaela’s commitment to always having comfortable furniture).

Aix didn’t feel awkward when there was a fire to look at, because there was a fire to look at, and so nobody had to talk, because there was a fire talking in any silences.

On the drive, Aix had found out—because they’d been riding in the camper with Michaela and Heather—that Heather was from Rhode Island, just like Auntie Sam, and ran a sex shop on Thayer Street. After learning that, Aix was able to completely recalibrate their expectations, and Heather’s laconic and abrasive manner of speaking suddenly made sense. It didn’t sting less, but at least the silences stopped being frightening. Still, reading someone by their actions felt better, because Aix had been so fucked up by manipulators and liars that words now meant very little, unless they were nasty.

Michaela glanced at Heather, who gave a small nod; Michaela got up to go on a perimeter walk. Everyone knew that, now that Cthulhu had chosen them, Aix had a target on their back. Lovecraft may have gotten everything about as wrong as it was possible to get it, but even a broken clock was right twice a day, and unfortunately one of the things that broken clock had been right about was all the cults. Oh, he had made up most of the details out of racism and paranoia about air-conditioning, but there were indeed cults, and they were a lot scarier than anything a sheltered white man could ever imagine.

Everett and his people had already been tasked with removing Aix from the entirety of the internet, and that was apparently a bit of a feat, because Aix had been all over the country, and had changed their name once and gotten married and then divorced, and had multiple accounts all over the place, and it was difficult to tell which ones they were still using. They were not terrible at cybersecurity, but they were inconsistent.

And only humans used paper and digital trails, anyway. There were ways they couldn’t erase Aix—vampires and others had their own mediums, and they would take marked interest in activity that probably registered as highly as one of the Great Old Ones.

St Croix and Erastos were great at human danger—St Croix was mainly there because he was a Cultbreaker, and cults fucking loved remote one-horse towns in the middle of the country like deer loved salt; but for anything other than human that might be hunting them, they needed Aix to be around a heavy hitter like Michaela or Heather. Both women were over six feet tall and Michaela was both fat (something which she had been raised to not be ashamed of) and strong enough that she’d nearly qualified as an Olympian weightlifter; Heather’s size strained human credulity, but marine life was just like that—everything was scaled up, in the sea, and the kind of seal selkies were had given rise to both leopard and elephant seals. Even with her coat off, Heather couldn’t shed that kind of bulk.

She could, also, throw around a car, when she felt moved to, and monsters and animals alike tended to pick up on the fact that Heather was large, unbothered, and too old to put up with guff of any kind.

Even so, they were experienced enough to stay cautious, and stick to safe procedures. Their route to Manhattan was ever-changing, reliant on reports that came in through the network that was coordinated through a central hub in Rochester. They were staying out of public transit, and the choice to stay off highways was a tough one—public spaces were both safer and more dangerous, it was just trading one kind of danger for another. Luckily, Aix seemed savvy enough about being out in the wilderness for the rural tactic to be safe. Michaela preferred the danger of being remote to the dangers offered by cities.

Her night vision was good enough, and the moon was full enough, that she could see almost as though it were early morning, and she made use of that, thoroughly scanning for tracks and other signs they were not as alone as they should be. There was a coyote that had been sniffing around, and she gently shooed a rattlesnake and a few scorpions away from their camp, but that was all very normal for being this far out in the desert, in the off season. She left offerings for the ghosts wrongfully killed (in this country, every square inch of land had ghosts wrongfully and horrifically killed in it), and felt odd that there were so few signs of the Folk out here. But there weren’t many west of Appalachia, and even fewer west of the Mississippi. The wide plains and deserts were too far to cross, even for the great rainforests and heaving tide of the pacific coast.

Just as she was closing the perimeter, she got a buzz on her pager. Phones were a liability in the field, too fragile to carry around, and too prone to going off—or losing signal—at the worst possible time. Pagers were more reliable. She waited until she was sure all was well, going back to the fire. Aix’s back was to her—and the camper, smart kid—and Michaela just mutely held up her pager to Heather, who didn’t respond, but surely saw it. Heather didn’t miss a trick, but they didn’t want Aix spooked, and the kid was intensely—and reasonably—very spookable. And prone to curiosity.

Michaela went inside the camper, into the back bedroom, and shut the door, grabbing her phone as she went, and checking the pager number.

410. Baltimore. That meant it was René, because only the vampires ever paged Michaela, despite Baltimore being a haven for shapeshifters who weren’t wolves. She called him back.

‘Mademoiselle Van Helsing,’ came René’s smooth greeting.

‘Hi, sugar. Whatcha got?’

‘You asked me to keep abreast of anything that seemed cult-like and to do with, ah, les gens des étoiles. I believe there may be some. Mel’s people have observed some shipments of relics coming in from Ilam, Iran. Without papers. Labelled as other than relics, and certainly not resembling anything… known.’

‘You know I don’t like when you’re vague, darlin.’

‘Mel also said there were clearly human remains, from the smell of them mummified in some way.’

‘And we know this isn’t the usual smugglers?’

‘The Christians are not involved, you know I keep them out of my city.’

And René was one of the few who could—Baltimore had been under vampire control since its founding. The Christian church out there was toothless, which meant certain Christian businesses that traded in black market antiquities did not have operations out of Baltimore’s harbour. Still, Michaela had to be sure. ‘Can you get at least one of the crates open, so we can do more than have a smell at this shit?’

‘Perhaps, but you know the local Hunter here is… untrustworthy.’

‘Mister Charbonneau, you aren’t tryin’ to get me to do your dirty work for you, are you?’ Michaela asked, sweet as nightshade.

The “Hunter” in question was in bed with the cops, and that was the biggest taboo in the Hunting community—but she was also a powerful raise-dead-corpses-and-command-them kind of necromancer, and those were tricky to get rid of, particularly when they were violent and had cops as friends. Ana Heeren been on the shit list for a while, and many people were gunning for her to be put on the list without an S on it. The problem was, doing so without proper cause violated the Treaty, and the Treaty had to remain sacrosanct, or the whole Arrangement fell apart.

‘Why no, Mademoiselle; merely expressing how difficult it is to investigate anything when one’s local Hunter is of the old school.’

Michaela hummed in a particularly southern way.

‘Given how serious you said signs of this sort of cult were, I may feel the need to call the Voivode…’

Michaela was silent for a while, actually thinking through what would happen if he followed through on that threat. She hadn’t disclosed much information, but vampires could count, and any sign of the Great Old Ones outside of New England was Serious Business, particularly if it was sudden like this. However, Michaela had no doubt Charbonneau was being teasing—he was playful with his threats, when they were spoken like this—but he wasn’t able to see the whole picture, he just wanted leverage for getting rid of Heeren

‘You know what? Go ahead,’ Michaela heard how biting her voice was. ‘You go on ahead and call the Voivode. In fact, I might call him too.’ She heard him making surprised noises, but kept talking. ‘I think I will. Right now. What time is it in Bucharest right now, late morning?’ Michaela was used to converting any time zone in America to Bucharest.

‘Is— Je suis tellement désolé, Madame Van Helsing,’ René’s voice was much more sober, now. ‘I did not know it was this grave. I will do all I can.’

‘I might be able to stop by later this week. I’m calling Bucharest after hanging up with you, but not to get you in trouble. You’re right, I should call them about this. Thanks for making me realise that.’ It paid to be clear and courteous with vampire lords.

‘Bon chance, Madame Van Helsing.’

‘Au revoir, cher,’ Michaela said. She took a minute to get into gear for talking to the Voivode, before calling. It rang thrice before Claudiu answered.

‘Bună, Cine este la telefon, vă rog?’

‘Well, hi, sugar, it’s Michaela, how’s every little thing?’ Michaela said warmly, thickening her accent because she knew they found it charming, particularly Claudiu, and she needed all the charming she could muster for calling the Voivode during the day.

‘Miss Van Helsing! Hello,’ Claudiu said, his English pleasantly accented, but less so than his father. ‘Things are well here.’

‘Glad to hear it, darlin. Can I talk to the Voivode? It’s mighty important.’

‘Yes, a moment please.’ There was the sound of the phone being gently set down—Michaela felt the pain of realising how nostalgic that sounded, these days. But there weren’t cell phones or electronics in the castle, or the village; the vampire eldest’s hearing wouldn’t tolerate such noise. The copper line of the phone and electricity was quite enough to tolerate. A lower, more archaic version of Claudiu’s accent spoke, after the phone was picked up again.

‘Domnișoară Van Helsing.’

‘Voivodul Drăculești,’ Michaela said politely. ‘I have news of something that concerns all of us, though I think it is for the better rather than the worse. What do you know of Cthulhu?’

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