Nightweaver #1

Chapter Thirty-Three

I think I hear myself scream from somewhere far away. I shove between Lewis and Will, lunging for Father as his knees hit the kitchen floor with a sickening crack and he topples onto his side. Lewis is at my right a moment later, tears streaking his face. He speaks to me, but his words are muffled, drowned out by the ringing in my ears.

I won’t let them take you.

“Aster.” Will sounds as if he’s speaking to me from the bottom of a deep well. He shakes me, his hand on my shoulder. “Aster, look at me.”

“Her eyes!” Lewis sobs. “What’s wrong with her eyes?”

I withdraw my hands from Father’s chest. They come away wet with blood. Had I touched him?

“Aster.” Killian’s voice is a gentle command. “Breathe.”

Did I stop breathing? I crane my neck to look at Will kneeling beside me, his hand on my cheek.

“Breathe,” Will echoes, nodding encouragingly. “Just breathe.”

No. I don’t want to breathe. I want to tear Trudy Birtwistle limb from limb. I want to bathe in her blood. I want to—

Before I can register his movement, Will’s mouth is on mine. It’s a demanding sort of kiss, meant to jar me out of this stupor. And it works. Only, the grief it leaves behind threatens to unhinge me even further.

Will draws back, scanning my face. “Aster? Can you hear me?”

I nod weakly, a sob twisting my gut. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing is wrong with you,” Will says softly, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Can you stand?”

He and Lewis help me to my feet. The moment I’m standing on my own, my brother seizes me by the shoulders, his eyes locked on mine.

“What are you?” Lewis asks, his voice cracking.

I don’t answer. Numbness spreads throughout my body, sinking bone deep. I want to weep for Father. I want to take comfort in my brother’s embrace as he wraps me in his arms, his own body racked with sobs. But as I peer over his shoulder, at Killian unscrewing a vent at the far side of the room, all I truly want is to be let out of this room—to be unleashed on the Guild of Shadows. To kill every last Sylk, Gore, and Shifter I lay eyes on. I want to burn Bludgrave to the ground. I—

Killian hefts aside the grate, and out of the vent crawls a bespectacled badger in a brocade waistcoat. The admiral meets my gaze, and I swear he looks as undone by my father’s death as Lewis and me.

“I’m sure you remember Tollith,” he says hollowly. “He’s been keeping me informed this evening.”

Tollith takes in the sight of Father lying in a pool of his own blood. The look on his face is so human, yet the sincerity in his expression goes far beyond what I’ve ever seen in our kind. “My condolences, Oberon children,” he says, bowing deeply.

Lewis releases me, stumbling back a step. “Did that badger just—”

“Indeed,” Tollith answers, pushing his spectacles up his snout. He turns to Killian, wringing his paws. “They’re growing restless. They know she’s here. They’re threatening to…” He glances at me, rather uneasily. “They’re threatening to begin with the children first.”

The children.

I start forward, toward the door that leads to the servants’ corridor. Lewis is close on my heels, wiping the tears from his face, now taut with determination.

“Aster, wait.” Will reaches out, but I narrowly avoid his grasp.

“I’m going in there.” I take two blades from the collection of knives laid out on the counter. “You can’t stop me.”

Will reaches out again, but I point one of the blades at his throat just as his fingers graze my arm.

“Don’t even try.”

He scowls. “I’m going with you.”

“Fine,” I say, lowering the blade. “Just stay out of my way.”

The servants’ corridor is dark, all but for a few dim, flickering lights. The entrance to the ballroom is hidden within a panel of the wall, so that from the outside, it appears as if there is no door at all. Will and I stand shoulder to shoulder, peering through the faux grate that marks the passageway.

I’m ill-prepared for what awaits on the other side of the ornate filigree that separates me from the rest of my family. Corpses litter the room, lying in a shallow sea of blood. One of the two girls who clung to Will’s arm, now without arms herself, is the least horrific of the shredded, mangled bodies strewn about the floor. At the center of it all, Elsie, Annie, and Albert sit back-to-back, gagged with dinner napkins, their hands and feet bound with ropes.

Henry alone stands above the children, his hands outstretched in the direction of something just beyond my viewpoint.

“Dorothy, please—”

A shrill laugh cuts across him. “ Dorothy, please ,” comes a mocking voice. Footsteps click, and a familiar-looking girl steps into view. Her lip curls with a sneer, and my stomach plummets as I recognize her—Dorothy, the servant girl for whom Henry secretly pines. Her dark hair—always pulled back and tied neatly with a black ribbon—hangs in matted clumps; her skin is caked with dirt and excrement. Her once carefully pressed uniform has been torn, leaving large portions of her body exposed to reveal various cuts, scratches, and bruises. Dorothy may have been taken, but it’s clear she didn’t go without a fight.

Dorothy prods at a severed leg with mild curiosity. “Is that your plan?” A different voice is speaking—the voice of the Sylk possessing Dorothy’s body. I don’t recognize it as the voice of the Sylk that possessed Percy; this one is deeper, more feral. “To ask nicely?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Dorothy,” Henry says, his voice breaking.

“Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy,” she echoes derisively. “I’m sure the poor girl would have loved to hear you say her name so sweetly. But Dorothy isn’t home. I can ask her to come out and play, if you’d like?”

An instant later, Dorothy blinks, looking around, her mouth gaping in terror. “Henry?” she cries, glancing at her hands, at her missing fingers. “Henry!” She collapses to the floor in a sobbing heap. “Oh, what have I done!”

“Nothing, my darling, nothing,” Henry says gently, taking a cautious step toward her. “You’re going to be all right. Everything’s going to be—”

Another cackle of laughter bursts from Dorothy, and she stands lazily. “‘ My darling ,’” she says, faking a pout. “How sweet.”

Sparks of electricity jump from Henry’s palms as he grits his teeth, body trembling with fury. “Let her go.”

“Now, now. If I did, poor, innocent Dorothy would be dead. Surely you don’t want that?”

A tear glazes Henry’s pale, scarred face. “I won’t let you do this.” He fortifies his stance, and even though his hands shake, he doesn’t drop them. “Dorothy, if you can hear me, I’m sorry. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

Sparks leap from his palms, and in the instant Dorothy’s body falls, jerking violently, I know what he did. He found the switch in Dorothy’s brain and turned it off. He tried to make it quick—painless.

Henry looks like he’s on the verge of collapse, his mouth twisting as he fights back sobs.

But Dorothy doesn’t stay down. The girl’s body rises again. She sticks out her tongue, swiping at the blood dripping from her face, a derisive grin on her lips. “ Cute trick ,” the Sylk says, cracking Dorothy’s neck. “But your power is weak.”

She takes a step toward him, but Henry holds his ground. And though his attempt to shut off the electricity in Dorothy’s brain didn’t work, he looks somewhat relieved. Because if it didn’t work, that means Dorothy is still in there, somewhere.

“Take me,” he says quickly. “Leave the children. Take me. I’ll serve the Guild. Please, just don’t hurt them.”

Dorothy’s lips purse in another mock pout. “I’m sorry, little lord. That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“New deal,” I say, stepping out of the dank passageway and into the brilliant light of the ballroom, Will close at my heels. “I send you back to where you came from, and the Guild leaves me and my family alone.”

A slow, echoing clap comes from my left, where Trudy Birtwistle sits on the edge of the makeshift dais. Mascara streaks her blood-spattered face, and she peels what looks to be an ear from the front of her ravaged gown as she stands, her bare feet submerged in the pool of crimson.

“ I was wondering when you’d decide to show up ,” comes the voice of a Sylk. I recognize it this time, from the night Percy died. “Violent Aster…” Trudy tsks. “Did you enjoy my bouquet?”

She tosses the ear to her right, where a gruesome, hunched creature appears in a burst of purple smoke, and I know—based on descriptions Killian shared with me—that I’m seeing for the first time the type of Underling that murdered the Hackneys. The Gore—built like the gorillas I saw in one of Elsie’s books—towers over Trudy by at least three feet, with skin like red leather and a face made of raw flesh. Its six reptilian eyes swivel in different directions as it catches the human ear in its wide, gaping mouth, shredding it with razor-like teeth. It laughs, the unnatural sound grating against my senses, its unhinged jaw giving it the appearance of always smiling.

Trudy grins at the expression on my face. “ Don’t be afraid ,” says the Sylk. “He doesn’t bite unless I tell him to.”

I cut my eyes at Henry and see his shoulders sag in relief. He was prepared to take them all on his own. Which makes me wonder…

“Where are the others?” I ask him, keeping Trudy in my sights.

“Oh, of course!” Trudy claps her hands, and in an instant, it’s as if a veil lifts—revealing Margaret, Jack, Charlie, and Mother huddled near Lord Bludgrave and Lady Isabelle on the floor near the musicians’ alcove, where the remaining guests have been corralled, their mouths gagged, hands and feet bound.

Despite the binds, Margaret and Jack clasp fingers, and he keeps his head pressed to hers, his eyes shut tight.

“Now, who am I forgetting…?” Trudy taps her chin. “Ah! That’s right.…”

She claps her hands once more, and another figure blinks into sight, nailed to the wall above the dais by his hands and feet. In the instant he appears, I don’t recognize him, but… his black uniform, his blond hair, streaked with blood…

Titus’s face has been bludgeoned beyond recognition. His head hangs limp, but his chest rises with an unsteady breath. He’s alive. For now.

“ Tell me ,” the Sylk says, kicking George Birtwistle’s severed head from her path as Trudy slowly makes her way toward us. “What good is a prince if he cannot protect his people?” She snorts a laugh. “He couldn’t even protect himself!” Trudy pauses, examining her nails, crusted with dried blood. “Well, to be fair, I suppose he did put up quite the struggle. Banished twelve of my Gores before this one knocked him unconscious.”

“I’d almost forgotten just how much you liked to talk,” I say, starting toward Trudy. “Is that all you came here to do, or would you like to settle this once and for all?”

“‘ Settle this once and for all, ’” the Sylk echoes, cackling with derisive laughter. “My, my, you really are a pirate.”

I glance to my right as I pass Henry and the children, avoiding looking too closely at Albert’s red tear-streaked face. Henry doesn’t take his eyes off Dorothy, who has fallen still, as if awaiting further command.

“This ends tonight,” I say, keeping one eye on Dorothy to my right and the other on Trudy. I tighten my grip on the kitchen knives in either fist, cutting my eyes at the ceiling. One more step, and I’ll be below the grate.…

“What are you going to do?” Trudy shrieks with laughter. “Stab me with a kitchen knife? Even if you managed to kill this host, I’d just take hold of another. Perhaps your little sister or that darling stable boy?”

I take another step, standing directly below the grate. Come on, Lewis. Where are you?

“This is your last host, Underling,” I say. “I intend to make you wish you’d never heard the name Aster Oberon.”

More laughter as Trudy takes another step, merely ten feet from me now. “ Owen was right about you, ” the Sylk says, grinning maliciously. “You really don’t give up.”

Owen?

I shake my head. This is just another game—another trick. But I won’t fall for it this time.

“No, I don’t,” I say, glancing at the ceiling, where I catch a glint of silver peeking out from the grate. “And I never will.”

In a flash, two daggers drop from the grate above, falling like shooting stars from the heavens. I drop the kitchen knives, catching a dagger in either hand. The black Elysian Iron glimmers with iridescent shades of purple, blue, and green, the citrine jewels adoring the hilts like fragments of crystallized light.

Something in Trudy’s placid expression falters. “ Abominations ,” the Sylk hisses, cringing at the sight of the daggers I used to cut off its previous host’s hands. “ No matter ,” Trudy says, attempting to recover her composure. “You failed to finish me off last time. You will fail again.”

Will draws my flintlock from his coat pocket, points it at Dorothy’s head, and Henry turns his palms toward the Gore at Trudy’s side.

“You’re finished, Underling,” I say, giving my daggers a twirl. “Time for you to go home.”

“Oh!” Trudy giggles. “ Owen warned me that you wouldn’t be so trusting, but it appears you’ve been misled ,” the Sylk says, its voice gritty and hollow. Trudy claps her hands together, and in a flash of purple smoke, seven Gores blink into sight. Butchered Nightweaver corpses rise from the blood-soaked floor, some headless, some with their jaws hanging from their skulls, sliced wide by the banana-size claws protruding from the Gore’s fleshy stump of a hand.

Trudy smiles as the whites of her eyes turn inky black, her irises glowing red. “I’m just getting started.”