Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2)

SOLATIUM

Emanations, Book 2

Becca Mills

Nolander

Solatium

“Theriac,” a short story

To my readers. I know some of you have waited a long while. Thank you.

A great number of people helped me with this book. My husband, who supports my writing so generously. My children, who are wonderfully patient for such wee folk. Those who provided feedback on drafts, including Bonnie, Carolynn, Daniel, Jesse, and Leanne. Their insight and suggestions made
Solatium
much better than it would otherwise have been. And especially Sue, who read multiple versions, providing astute feedback and enthusiastic support at every opportunity. Thank you all.

I have placed a fairly extensive
Glossary of Places, Terms, and Individuals
at the back of this book. For ease of searching, I’ve alphabetized people according to what the main character, Beth Ryder, usually calls them. For example, Andrew Duff would be found under “A,” for “Andy,” whereas Lodovico Yellin would be found under “Y,” for Yellin.

The great wolf Ghosteater crept up the dry streambed.

He traveled in the silence. Given his quarry, approaching unseen was the only option. But the silence made it hard to mind the things of reality: dips and pebbles and stray eddies in the wind that might wrap around his small presence in the world and carry his scent.

The streambed grew shallow, rising toward the level of the plain.

The wolf stopped, crouching.

There
, the wind whispered faintly in his ear. This far into the silence, he could barely hear it.

Staying low, he edged his nose into the warm currents sweeping across the plain. The scent of dragon overwhelmed him: time, moss, enamel, cloudless skies, old blood. The odor reached back into his deepest mind, finding the remnant of the blind, helpless pup he once was, for a short time, long ago. He shivered, the filaments on his back stiffening.

Ghosteater did not fear much, but he feared dragons — their size; their power; the strangeness of their ways, which were like those of other beasts, and yet not. He would fight one like this, if need be, but he would not expect to win.

Focusing, he let his nose map the plain that stretched before him — a hundred square miles of ancient dry-land vegetation, littered with shed teeth, feces, and the remnants of carcasses. In the center, lay the dragon. She was sleeping. She had been asleep for some time.

The wind blew over her massive form and reached Ghosteater’s nose.
Here
, it said.
Come and see
.
For the she-pup.

But the next gust said,
Danger. Run
.

The wolf hesitated. He had come a long way to reach this place, through stratum after stratum, always following the wind’s ambivalent messages. So far, his curiosity had prevailed, but to approach a dragon, and one of the oldest, at that … it was madness.

What could a dragon possibly have to do with a human girl, anyway? A connection seemed impossible, but the wind did not lie. It told different stories, yes, but that was because it touched many things, flowed through many futures.

Ghosteater wanted to understand. He always did. Curiosity gnawed on him like a bone.

He opened his mouth slightly, tasting the scents to test the progress of the night. Dawn was still some time away.

Carefully, he settled his large, silvery body back into the streambed. Then he pushed himself far into the silence, withdrawing into the no-place between, keeping the merest toehold on the world.

He needed to think this through. His curiosity had gotten him in trouble before.

Fortunately, he had time.

Dragons liked to sleep.

Andy helped me jump down to the tracks, then stood there monkeying with a set of night-vision goggles. The Subway station’s anemic fluorescent lights gave his brown skin a greenish tone that didn’t look entirely healthy — especially paired with the freshly healed gash on his forehead.

“Did you get hurt on patrol this morning?”

He looked at me blankly for a moment. Then understanding flashed across his face, and he touched his brow.

“This? Naw. I cut myself making lunch.”

“Chopping veggies with your head?”

“Ha, ha. No.”

He went back to adjusting his goggles.

“So?” I said. “What happened?”

“Nothing. It’s no big deal.”

“You did something stupid, didn’t you?”

He grinned. “Who, me? Never.”

“Right. Theo egged you on, didn’t he?”

“He might’ve been there.”

Theo was Andy’s big brother. When I’d first laid eyes on the two of them, I’d pretty much written them off as heavies. But they were way more than that. Over the four months I’d been in New York, we’d become good friends. Their mischief-making was part of their appeal — when you do the kind of work we do for the kind of boss we had, you need some silliness in your life. Plus, they were really nice guys.

“There with bells on, I bet.” I looked around nervously. “Hey, can we get going?”

“Yeah. Just a sec. I think the batteries in this thing are going.”

I shifted from one foot to the other, trying not to show my anxiety.

We were at the 6 train’s downtown terminus — Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall. It was still rush hour, so people were milling around all over. I felt exposed, standing there next to the platform, but Andy’s barrier must’ve been up and working properly because no one gave us so much as a glance.

“Okay,” he said, settling the goggles over my face and tightening the straps. “That feel snug?”

I nodded, jostling them out of position. “Sorry.”

“S’okay.” He readjusted them. “How’s that?”

“I can’t see anything.”

“They’re not turned on.”

“Oh. Right.”

Andy folded the goggles up toward my forehead like a massive set of those goofy flip-up sunglasses.

He pointed down. “Remember the third rail. Don’t touch.”

“Third rail bad. Got it.”

I must’ve looked nervous.

“Don’t worry, Beth. Just stick close to me ’til the track widens out.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t shoot ’til you see the whites of their eyes.”

“Rats’ eyes don’t have whites.”

“Details, details.” He turned away, then paused and looked back. “Um … you know I was kidding about the shooting part, right?”

“Yes! Oh my god, can we just go?”

Andy grinned and chucked me on the chin. “Yup.”

I smiled back and tried to banish my butterflies.

This was my fourth time down in the city’s train tunnels. I hadn’t gotten used to it yet. Hadn’t gotten used to going places normal people weren’t supposed to go and doing things normal people didn’t do.

I took a deep breath.
This sort of thing’s my job, now.

Plus, I was only a trainee. I wouldn’t be here if the job were dangerous. Mentally, I girded my loins.

Andy started walking. I followed him into the darkness.

Even with the night-vision goggles, I heard the rats before I saw them — a strange mixture of scratching, rubbing, and squeaking. Looking into a small alcove off to my right, I saw a foot-high pile of dark, writhing bodies.

“Over here!”

“You got something?” Andy came up beside me. “Huh. Talk about natural rodent packing behavior gone nuts.”

I glanced over at him.

He shrugged. “I looked up rats on Wikipedia. Seriously, ask me anything.”

“What’s the meaning of life?”

“Gonna do you a favor and pretend you didn’t make that joke.”

I grinned, then sobered up. “Why don’t we try to save them, this time? Take them to Duncan or something.”

“Duncan’s not a vet. Even if he were, he’d curl up and die if you brought him that.”

“We’ve killed so many.”

Andy shook his head. “They are the way they are. It can’t be changed. Well, not by the likes of us, anyway.”

I knew what he meant. Cordus could’ve fixed them. Mind manipulation was his thing. But no one had seen our boss in months.

Not that he would have bothered fixing rats, anyway. The great powers had bigger fish to fry.

We stood there for a few more seconds.

Andy said, “Come on, Beth. You know they’re suffering.”

That’s something I liked about Andy. He sought my agreement before acting. He treated me like I was a real partner even though, in reality, I was mostly baggage.

“Yeah,” I said, “I know.”

Clearly, the rats were suffering. As we got closer to the pile, I could see that a number of the animals were dead, and that some of them had died long enough ago that they were decaying. They flopped sickeningly among their live brethren, greasy and bloated.

It still bothered me.

Don’t get me wrong — sewer rats are nasty, and I know people gas, bait, and trap them to death by the thousands every day in a city like New York. But these rats were victims of Graham Ryzik’s peculiar gift: luck. Three months earlier, he’d sent me to a bad place and then been chased through Manhattan by those trying to rescue me. His luck had caused several hundred disruptive events — shoot-outs, car accidents, masonry collapses, rat swarms — all designed to hinder pursuit. The city was thrown into chaos. The media dubbed it the “Day of Disasters.”

Not good, from the point of view of someone whose main job is to keep weird things under wraps.

Fortunately, the day seemed to fade pretty quickly from people’s memories. All those accidents were one-off events: they happened and were dealt with, and that was that. People generally try to block out stuff that doesn’t fit their frame of reference. Give them an opportunity to forget, and most of them will.

What wasn’t fading from public discourse were the rat-kings. The city was having an epidemic of them: sixteen had been discovered in the last four months. The first one had been a fascinating curiosity, but they’d long since started freaking people out.

A rat king is a bunch of rats that have gotten tangled together by their tails. It’s a natural phenomenon, but really rare. Our best guess was that Graham’s luck had created a whole generation of screwed-up rats, rats that really, really liked to hang out together. Their sociability had blossomed into above-ground swarms just when Graham needed distractions to help him stay ahead of his pursuers.