An Inheritance of Monsters, page 1
Copyright © 2022 by Cate Corvin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by JoY Cover Design
Contents
1. Juno
2. Juno
3. Juno
4. Voraal
5. Juno
6. Juno
7. Juno
8. Juno
9. Zirin
10. Juno
11. Juno
12. Juno
13. Juno
14. Rask
15. Juno
16. Juno
17. Juno
18. Juno
19. Juno
20. Juno
21. Juno
22. Juno
23. Voraal
24. Juno
25. Juno
26. Juno
27. Juno
28. Juno
29. Rask
30. Juno
31. Juno
32. Juno
33. Juno
34. Zirin
35. Juno
36. Juno
37. Juno
38. Juno
39. Juno
40. Juno
41. Juno
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter 1
Juno
My first thought upon sight of Duskwood Island’s dock was that we’d made a mistake in coming here.
The second was that it felt, a little ominously, like coming home.
“Are you getting this, Crispy?” I pulled my raincoat tighter around myself, but the ocean spray coming off the ferry’s bow was as cold as ice and ate right through the thin plastic and the fleece hoodie underneath, sinking into my bones.
Crispiano Hernandez, Spirit Squad’s lone camera crewman, already had his handheld recorder out and was leaning over the side of the ferry. “You bet your ass. This is perfect intro material.”
“It’s so creepy.” Sierra Maloney frowned at the dock of Duskwood Island, shivering in her handwoven wool caftan, blonde curls piled on her head and fingers covered with thin gold rings.
I’d tried to give her one of my coats, but she liked to look like the crunchy, bohemian medium she was—at least while on camera for Spirit Squad.
Even at the cost of freezing her ass off.
The thing waiting for us at the dock was creepy, for sure. Beyond the near-rotten planks that were overgrown with slick green algae and hundreds of barnacles, a twelve-foot-tall stone statue waited for us, glaring out into the bay.
Actually, statue might not have been the right word. Carved of the native granite of the northeastern coastal town of Innsmouth, it looked more like… an idol.
An idol of swirling lines that made me dizzy to look at, with the suggestion of claws and octopus tentacles, but there was no mistaking the main event: a face screaming towards the bay, mouth gaping wide.
“Super welcoming of them.” I pulled out my phone and stood far enough back to snap several pictures without getting my phone soaked. Usually I’d have my thick black-covered notebook out, pencil in hand, sketching the material for later use—but that wasn’t happening on this ferry.
Crispy had already collected a ton of footage of me sitting in a coffee shop in Innsmouth, notebook out while I interviewed several locals, so it wasn’t a complete loss. I’d just bust out the Black Book, as our viewers liked to call it, when we got up to the mansion proper.
I tucked my phone away, squinting through another faceful of sea spray at the idol. “We’ll have to run the intro from here. That statue is too good to pass up.”
For some reason, I didn’t want to use the word idol out loud.
It wasn’t like Crispy or Sierra would laugh at me, but as the host of Spirit Squad, I had to maintain a certain level of detachedness behind the scenes.
No matter how deeply a place drew me in.
No matter if I saw pale spirits teeming around us while we were filming.
Because nobody else would see them, and the last thing I needed was either one of my crewmates deciding I was a liability. Not while Carson West, the host of Deadspace, was sniffing around for the same Sci-Fi Network paranormal investigation show slot.
Duskwood Island, and the mysterious manor named for it, was going to net us that slot, taking us from our homegrown YouVid channel to an actual cable network.
I frowned at the idol. It had been mentioned by several Innsmouth residents last week, while I did our preliminary interviews that Crispy would cut into the final footage.
For six months I’d been balls-deep in research on Duskwood Island, but nothing compared to talking to the people who actually lived here and looked out over the bay every day, seeing the sliver of the island on the horizon.
They said it was an omen. One woman, who had refused to release her name or face for interviews but had agreed to chat over coffee, had told me that the fishermen of Innsmouth never looked northeast of the bay in the morning.
If the morning was clear enough, and they saw the statue looming on the island, they’d drown that very day.
I’d chewed my pencil, knowing Crispy would get on me about it later for ruining his footage, and asked if that wasn’t just an old folk tale.
The woman’s eyes had been cool, calm, and dead serious when she told me no. If it was a superstition, then it was one that was ingrained into the very fabric of Innsmouth society.
Even Sierra, who never missed an opportunity to interject about auras or apparitions, had been silent and focused on the interviewee.
I wasn’t one to laugh at superstitions. Hell, I’d seen proof of the afterworld my entire life.
But we were going to be on this island for an entire month, cut off from the world. That had been the owner’s stipulation; the ferry would only arrive in the event of an emergency.
Otherwise, we were on our own.
And, seeing as how I believed in superstitions pretty damn well, I wondered if seeing the statue from the deck of the ferry was in fact a very bad omen.
I was so lost in thought, staring at the idol and its cavernous mouth, that I didn’t realize Sierra was calling my name.
“Juno!”
She was at the head with Crispy, and we were floating alongside the dock. I’d been so intent on the idol I hadn’t even noticed we’d docked, and the ferry captain had finally emerged from the bridge.
His head never turned towards the idol as a crewmate brought our luggage from the bridge. “Good luck. Can’t say I’d want to be in your shoes.”
The itch to interview came over me. Now that we’d docked, the sea spray was gone. A cool wind breezed off the island, ruffling my hair.
I pulled out the Black Book, the eponymous notebook our viewers loved. “Have you ever been on the island yourself?”
He snorted, then leaned over the side of the ferry and spit in the water. “That’s as close as I get.”
Gross. I noted that beneath the quick sketch of the ferry I’d done at six in the morning while waiting to board. “Have you ever seen the Lady of—”
The captain held up a hand, cutting me off. “We don’t talk about that here.”
His tone was so hard that even Crispy’s head swung around, his brows knit with concern.
A tense moment passed, and then the captain’s leathery, sea-worn face broke into a forced smile. “Sorry. But you should know, we don’t bring that up on the water. Ever.”
He wasn’t the only one. The minute I brought up the Lady of Dark Waters, who had been mentioned in one historical text but seemed to contain a wealth of information behind that solitary paragraph, all the locals instantly shut down.
I also hadn’t missed that he was always careful to keep his head turned away from the idol.
“That’s fine. Maybe we could arrange an interview for next month?”
The captain worked his lips for a moment, staring into the distance, then shook his head.
And hawked another loogie in the water.
“I don’t do interviews.”
His crewmate finished unloading our luggage onto the dock, which creaked dangerously. A visible shiver ran through the man as he jumped back up onto the ferry, and the captain held out a hand.
He couldn’t have made it more obvious he wanted us gone if he’d had a flashing neon sign over his head.
“See you next month.”
I forced my own smile as I followed Crispy and Sierra off the ferry. It wasn’t like I didn’t have experience with unwilling interviewees; at least this wasn’t like the time we’d run into an asylum security guard who wasn’t willing to be paid off, and had a slavering Doberman on a leash to boot.
But as I stepped onto the dock, wood creaking under my boots, the captain added a, “Maybe,” under his breath.
I whirled around, but he was already striding into the bridge, and the crewmate’s back was conspicuously turned towards me.
Crispy whipped out the camera, and Sierra and I stepped aside as he filmed it plowing back towards Innsmouth, leaving white, foamy swells behind it. “Aaaand there goes our ride, ladies. We are officially stuck here.”
“Group pic!” Sierra darted to my side, phone in hand, and Crispy squeezed in on my left, holding the camera. “One, two, three!”
“Spirit Squad!” we yelled, laughing and grinning, arms slung around each other.
A shiver ran down my spine as the picture froze on Sierra’s phone.
“The fuck?” Crispy muttered.
We did this before every show. It was a commemoration of every single place we’d filmed and investigated, and provided the cover photo for every YouVid episode we uploaded.
This time, Crispy and Sierra were clear, the stone idol visible in the background.
My hair, dyed sky blue and peach, was visible…but beneath it, my face was nothing but a smear. Black marks streaked across my face, as though wiping me from existence.
Sierra frowned and snapped another photo.
This time, we were all there. No dark marks. No smearing.
And none of us were smiling. We were all frowning intensely at the camera.
“Weird.” She flicked back through to the one with the smeared face. “Probably just a glitch.”
“Don’t worry, chicas, I brought the holy water,” Crispy teased. He thumped my shoulder, his rosary gleaming on his chest.
I returned the gesture with a light elbow to his ribs, and turned back towards the idol.
The statue. I needed to stop calling it an idol in my mind, because the more power I assigned to it there, the more power it would hold over me in the real world.
Neither Sierra nor Crispy would believe me if I veered off-course from my ‘investigative host’ persona and started spouting that sort of nonsense…but deep inside, I felt it was true.
There was something about that towering stone.
Like I could climb up, and slip inside that cavernous mouth…and find something in there.
“We’ll come back and get our cover photo when it’s lighter out,” Sierra said. “We’re going to be late for the first meeting.”
That brought me back to reality.
We were only here on this island because the owner of Duskwood Manor—and by extension, the island itself—had invited five teams of paranormal investigators to live here for a month.
It was an offer that had never been made before, and would never be repeated. Investigators with far more money than us had tried to pay their way in for decades, but the owner had always coldly rebuffed them.
So, when I’d received a thick parchment envelope addressed to Juno Weaver in copperplate cursive, at first I’d thought it was some sort of prank.
Reading the letter inside had made my jaw drop.
But a few carefully-worded questions on our usual investigators forum had netted me some answers: we weren’t the only ones who’d gotten the invitation to visit what was supposedly the most haunted mansion in the world.
I’d responded immediately, and the return letter had arrived with three ferry tickets.
It was real. We were going to Duskwood Manor at the most crucial time in our careers: when the Sci-Fi Network had requested an unaired episode for consideration.
The location was perfect. It would be completely new material that not even their massive cable network had managed to air on a previous paranormal show.
All we had to do was be on this island and at the manor’s doors by 9 a.m., April 30th, and we’d be given housing for a month and free reign to film.
But that was exactly fifteen minutes from now, and we still needed to lug our bags and equipment over several steep hills to reach Duskwood Manor.
I slung my backpack on, heaped my duffel bag on top, supporting the weight on my shoulders, and took one of Crispy’s metal equipment cases.
“Go, go, go!” he shouted, thundering across the dock, loaded with equipment like an oversized aluminum tortoise. “¡Vamos!”
The wood swayed and warped under my feet, and we were panting within moments, but we charged past the idol and up the first hill.
Away from the bay where fishermen drowned and the Lady of Dark Waters stalked the waves.
Away from the ferry, where safety lay.
And towards the manor with a three-hundred year history of death, torture, destruction, and despair.
Chapter 2
Juno
Duskwood Manor was an imposing fortress, a confection of stone and ivy set within the interior of the island. Turrets pointed to the sky and a high stone wall surrounded the mass of the house itself.
We jogged up the doors with thirty seconds to spare, all of us sweating and out of breath despite the coolness of the spring day.
I rapped hard several times on the enormous oak doors, a twist of fear knotting deep in my belly.
What if the owner considered this late?
What if they were a hound for punctuality and our invitations had expired fifteen minutes ago?
The sound of a lock unclasping on the other side of the door quelled my fears. One of them opened with a creak, and I turned my raised fist into a wave. “We’re here! I’m—”
“Juno Weaver.”
I was momentarily speechless. I’d been expecting… well, I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting.
It wasn’t an older woman who exuded elegance like it seeped right out of her pores. Her pure white hair was pulled back into a thick but stylish twist, and there were real diamonds sparkling in her earlobes. Even her voice was smooth and slightly husky.
I felt like I was looking at a 1940’s movie starlet who had somehow walked into real life in front of me.
The only oddity about her was the twisted skeleton key she wore on a black ribbon around her neck. The dull iron clashed against her silk shirt, and yet it seemed like it belonged on her perfectly.
“And friends,” she added, her clear green eyes taking in Sierra (red-faced and breathing hard) and Crispy (staring at her with his mouth open).
“Sierra Maloney, Spirit Squad co-host, and Crispy Hernandez, our cameraman.” I waved a hand at each of them in turn, but the elegant woman hadn’t opened the door yet. “Are we… too late?”
That penetrating gaze turned to me, and I found myself temporarily off-kilter. She was eighty if she was a day, and yet… she seemed young, in a strange way.
“You’re right on time, Juno,” she said with a smile, and opened the door wider to allow us in. “I’m Mrs. Elizabeth Marsh.”
My breath caught in my throat as I took the invitation and stepped inside. A gleaming foyer of dark oak and polished black marble rose in front of me, nearly three stories, until it opened on a series of decorative skylights.
When my gaze dropped, I thought I saw something peering out from the closet door across from me.
A strange shadow, blacker than the shadows around it, something gleaming like pale fire… I frowned, wanting to get closer—
“I’m so pleased to finally meet you in person.” Mrs. Marsh closed the door behind Crispy, cutting off the cold breeze and drawing my attention from the closet door.
I’d been imagining things. Possibly.
I offered her a hand, and she took it, her eyes still on me.
I supposed it was only right that I should be strangely creeped out by the reclusive owner of this particular manor. From my research, I knew she was known for never leaving the island; shipments of food and goods were delivered via ferry.
It was just that I’d anticipated a windblown crone, not someone with more poise in her little finger than I had in my entire body.
“The pleasure is mine,” I murmured, shaking her warm hand.
It might have been my imagination, but for a moment, I was sure her long, lacquered nails had caressed the inside of my palm.
Like claws.
She didn’t bother offering a hand for either Sierra or Crispy.
“The others arrived early, and have gathered in the parlor.” Mrs. Marsh smoothed the front of her tailored dress and led the way through the foyer, down a long, dark hallway papered in crimson. “Now that we’re all here, I’ll do the introductions before beginning on the history of this home.”
