Moonscorn

Chapter Thirteen

"I mean, sort of."

"OK, I'm going to need a little more to go on than that. Got anything more definite that I can put in my report?"

"Yeah, you're a real bitch sometimes."

"A mother might slap you for that. Unfortunately, despite essentially being your mother right now, I'm not allowed to. On the record. So before I go off-book, I'll ask again."

Hysteria reached into the compartment behind the handbrake and took out a tin of mint imperials. She grabbed three, twizzled them between her fingers absent-mindedly, then, applying inhuman pressure, put them in her mouth and crunched them one after another. The sound was the same as cracking bone.

"You know Raven said that there was a glitch with his device-thing? His smell-detector? He reckoned something came up on the screen that looked like a werewolf but it was too faint. It was a smell version of that. Like... what do you call smell stuff?"

"Olfactory?"

"Old factory, yeah. Smelled like it. It was there, but there was something else. Something rotten in it. Something corrupt in it, naughty, even." She paused. "Turned me on a bit."

"Hysteria!"

"I'm a grown woman, and so are you. And you're not my mother, so I'll tell you when I'm turned on. And it was only a bit. Like a thought that passes through your head that you know you shouldn't have, but at the same time..."

"We'll get into that when I'm not about to slide off the road from you telling me you've got the horn, alright?"

Hysteria smirked. Persephone gave her a side-eye, then smiled a little herself. Soon both of them were laughing deep from the belly, and Persephone eased off the gas to stop the aforementioned road-sliding from occurring.

Two minutes later they turned onto a track with thick grass growing up the middle of it. The car dug its wheels in as they bounced over ruts and potholes, doing no more than fifteen miles an hour. Empty fields flanked them on either side. A small pond rippled grimly on their left as they rounded a final corner.

"Home sweet home," Persephone announced.

They parked and got out. The building was a timber-framed cottage, decently sized but not massive, somehow managing to get arounds strict planning laws through sheer age. Worn slates threatened to drop off in high winds, plummeting past dusty glass windows and smashing on the hard, compact ground. On a front door with white paint chipped and flaked was a black round knocker with a little sign above it: SECRET COTTAGE.

"They having a laugh?" Hysteria asked.

"How many people would think a secret supernatural investigation team would name their base 'Secret Cottage?'"

"That The Conservatory think double bluffing the public will work, says something damning about how much faith they put in the general public to have two working braincells between them."

"As much as I despise agreeing with you, I do."

The inside looked like any normal cottage. A TV sat on a wooden unit in the corner. Logs were piled high in a wicker basket next to the fire. A staircase led up to the top floor, running up and over a creaky painted door with a latch that didn't properly latch leading to the kitchen.

"I see distinctly nothing that says this might be anything to do with us," Hysteria said.

"Same here. However..."

Persephone walked over to the TV and picked up the remote that was by its side. A post-it note was stuck on the front. LEFT SOME BEERS IN THE FRIDGE. MAYBE EGGS AS WELL. COLD.

"Isn't that nice of him?"

"Sure. I claim the biggest room."

"As you would."

Hysteria clambered up the stairs with her case and walked down a surprisingly-level landing to the last room on the left. Finding a room with a good double bed, solid chest of drawers, and, judging from her phone, a half-decent Wi-Fi connection, she propped her case against the wall and sat on the bed. It would do. She preferred more modern accommodation, but it wasn't too far from where she'd lived before. A previous lifetime ago, a previous reincarnation ago.

Through the window she looked out over the fields. Empty, devoid of life of any kind, even a stray sheep running from the farmers with his shears. Scratch that, there was a wood pigeon sat in a tree not far from her window. It looked at her, and she looked back at it, and it resumed its watching over the locale.

Not scared of me, she thought. Either that or its too stupid to sense what's inside me. What I am.

She doubted that. Birds, she knew, are clever. Obviously this one knew it could flap a few times and get away whenever it needed to. Pigeons see in much quicker speeds than humans do; what is normal speed for people is slow motion for them. Her friend in the tree would know danger was on the way before she'd even decided to lunge for it, and it would be off into the sky before a claw snicked the branch.

"Hysteria!"

Can't let me rest even for a second, can you?

Hysteria found her boss pointing the TV remote at the kitchen island unit. "Please don't tell me it's going to be like Laurie's kitchen unit in the 2018 Halloween movie."

"Get ready to channel your inner Jamie Lee."

She pushed a button on the remote and the unit swung away smoothly atop the stone floor to reveal a staircase leading into the ground. Turning the lights on, Persephone led the way, Hysteria following behind.

The secret basement was kitted out with banks of monitors, racks of guns and other weapons, and a stock of tinned food and drink to last a lifetime. A regular MI6 safehouse hidden in plain sight.

"Now it feels like The Conservatory," Hysteria said. She was about to follow up this first quip with a second sarcastic remark, but her humour left her when she saw the thing propped up in the corner of the room. "They were prepared for me, weren't they?"

A great metal slab stood like an old-fashioned iron maiden. The restrains were snapped open, ready and waiting to receive its gift.

"I guess it's there for anyone," Persephone said. "You're not the only supernatural they'll have had here."

Hysteria knew she was right, but that didn't mean she didn't still feel like it was a vendetta against her. The Conservatory, for all its manpower and scientific expertise and political sway, didn't want to let a young woman out of control. They didn't trust her. They feared her.

Fear you. Scared. Makes their blood run cold. Blood. Lap it up, drink it, taste it, bathe in it.

Hysteria closed her eyes. Calmed the beast down. Hoped Persephone hadn't noticed.

She had, but she didn't say anything. "I'll let Raven know we're in town," she said. "He can drive over and we'll talk battle-plans."

"Good. I want to rip someone's throat out."

"Metaphorically."

Hysteria smiled, though she wasn't sure which part of her was doing the smiling.