"At the Mountains of Madness"

Manicouagan, Quebec

March 1895

Nigel was freezing his knackers off in the cold, wondering whether frostbitten skin would be quite as invisible as healthy epidermis. Oh well, it seemed today they'd be doing a little side experiment to go with the field study of whatever globular life form they were hunting after! It might be the tail end of March, but the Quebecois winter held on tight to the land, and even now it was only thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Just below freezing.

Dashing back to Helen's foxhole he slid in the dirt, whispering earnestly, "Gimme my coat back then."

Magnus quickly pulled it off of herself and passed the heavy fur-lined overcoat to the solid mass of nothing on her left. "Any joy?" she asked, turning binoculars across the frost-bitten reservoir to allow him the privacy to make himself decent and sling on some trousers.

"Oooh God," he quivered at the icy temperature of the trousers, wishing he had his long johns, "yeah, I think so. North East of our position. There was some phosphorescent glimmers in the woods, but by the time I got there they'd scattered. Tracks indicated westwards, towards the reservoir, but it might be worth you takin' a look at whatever the hell they were eating."

"You couldn't tell?" she looked at Nigel properly, interested by this little titbit. After three years traipsing round the British Empire, Griffin had gotten pretty good at tracking, and hunting, so she was a little surprised to hear he was stumped.

"They didn't leave the bones, and they were pretty messy… to be honest I didn't hang around to take a closer look."

Helen gazed thoughtfully, trying to make sense of the new data, and knowing she properly couldn't until she saw it for herself. "Alright then," she got up, pulling their backpacks together, "we best make headway before dark."

Griffin shivered at the thought of the oncoming night, "Why was it we had to go camping in winter again?"

She smiled jovially at his reticence, and he smiled in return, following her lead and gathering his stuff.

"If we could be sure that the Memekueshu are healthy I would wait until it was a little warmer, but the minute those bears wake up they're going to disappear and we still have no idea where they go, so…"

"We freeze in the forest."

"For the time being." She replied, still smiling and very much enjoying the scenery to her first big expedition without her father, "I'm sure we'll catch them soon, and you're right, their food will probably give us a much better idea of what we're dealing with."

"When we get back to the cabin I'm goin' to build the biggest fire imaginable, and cook a proper meal, and find that bottle of whisky the old coot thinks he's hidden under the floorboards."

"Nigel," she chastised light-heartedly, chuckling as they meandered along the water edge in the direction he'd come from, "Mr Simpson's been kind enough to lend us his home-"

"Don't get me wrong," Griffin pointed out hastily, "I appreciate his help and all, but you didn't have to put up with him on month-long stints cutting lumber."

He'd recounted some of his three months of Summer labour in his letters back to London, so Magnus was already well aware of Nigel's objections to the man.

"Seriously, it's worse than Tesla when he takes one of his turns," Griffin was surprised to notice Helen didn't do the double disbelieving take he would've expected at such a remark, "Moan, moan, monologue, moan… only infinitely more dull. As if I gave a fig about precisely how many steps he had to take, or the contents of his gruel…" She was still watching her feet as the scrambled up an incline. "How is the old chap anyway? Tesla that is – I take it you landed in New York?"

She was surprisingly quiet, carefully making her way through some undergrowth before slipping a little on the rocks. Then, before he grew concerned enough to prod her she sighed, "Taking a turn as we speak…" she muttered, "well, I mean, hopefully he'll have recovered a little by now."

"Why, what happened?"

She let Nigel take the lead at the intersection of tracks she was following, but he took a good look at Magnus as he passed, concerned by the soft tone of her voice. Something serious was going on. He stopped, and she made a pointed look.

"His laboratory burned to the ground."

Nigel's eyebrows shot into his hairline, "Bloody hell." It took a moment to imagine such a thing – losing all your work, all your inventions. God if it had been Nigel losing some five years of blood sweat and tears even he'd be in a bad way, and Griffin had never really put as much of himself into his work as Tesla, or Helen, or even James.

"It was in the papers the day I arrived," she shook her head, wide-eyed as she recalled the state she'd found him in.

"That's rough luck."

"Well, you know Nikola," the hint of censure was obvious, "it's never just luck, it has to be somebody's fault-"

"And never his own," Griffin chuckled.

Helen half-smiled pensively, "If he was still human I'd be worried he was driving himself into an early grave, the way he's obsessing over it."

"He's that bad?"

"Not seen him like this since…" she just looked at him, didn't need to say it. Since the first time he'd lost control over his vampiric side, since she'd found the treatment to his unsavoury addiction to blood.

Griffin gave a low whistle, "Maybe I'll pop by and see him once we're done with the Memekushuduwlu-"

"Memekueshu?"

"Yeah, the rock people – they're slippery little buggers tho' ain't they?"

"Nigel!" she admonished him for the language, but she clearly wasn't particularly shocked.

"Huh?"

"Language." She whispered as they edged into the interior away from the main lake.

His smile was heartfelt and warm, "Sorry Helen," he chuckled, focusing back on the task on hand. "What did you say they looked like again?"

"Well" she kept her voice down, "the Innu medicine man described them as being child sized, and hairy, and making sounds like the whine of a dragonfly."

"Sounds like a winning combination."

Author's Note:

I just realised Griffin has a terrible tendency to make puns.

Thanks to tellie for reviewing already! You are awesome.

And yes, Helen is purposefully inconsistent over censoring his language, because she can be so there :p