Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
She stripped from her ruined wedding gown, leaving it on the floor, and then slowly donned the dress.
The fabric was tough but flexible, shining in emerald tones so dark they were almost obsidian.
When she’d cinched the bodice and clasped the high collar, she assessed herself in the mirror.
The gown was simple, with a tight-fitting bodice and long slits up the skirt for ease of movement.
The stiff collar protected her neck, as did the full-length sleeves that tapered to points and looped around her middle fingers.
The design maximized the protection of the gown, while leaving her hands free enough to use floromancy.
The gown was woven from floromantically created fabric, which Elswyth had perfected in the lonely weeks after she’d been stabbed.
She’d experimented with hybridizations of the most durable plants known to science—sisal, ebony, lignum vitae, dozens of others—and spun threads made almost entirely of concentrated carbon.
Ferrosilk, she called it, a fabric strong enough to stop a blade but still lightweight and flexible enough to wear.
Since the incident with Mr. Clipper, Elswyth had feared that such a gown would one day be necessary. And she’d been right.
Elswyth took the assassin’s blade and fastened it to the leather belt around her waist. Then she looked at herself in the mirror once more: her furious, scarred face. The blade at her side. And something unfamiliar in her eyes—something deadly.
She turned to leave but was interrupted by a thought.
If Silas truly was the Reaper, then he’d been responsible for the mandrake as well.
Perhaps he was not an exceptional floromancer, but the amberheart made him exceptionally powerful.
With that much vitae at his disposal, perhaps he could have created something like the mandrake.
Perhaps he and the prince had been working together to ensure that Elswyth never came close to the truth.
She turned and raised her lantern, moving across the creaking floor toward the jar where she’d left the creature.
Her foot landed on something that snapped under her weight.
She lifted the hem of her dress and saw that the floor in this corner of her bedroom was covered in shards of shimmering glass.
She raised her lantern higher, stepping slowly forward. The floor was slick with something foul-smelling. Formaldehyde, she realized. When she reached the shelf where the mandrake’s jar had been kept, there was only a puddle, and the remains of its container.
Her blood cooled. To the right of the shelves, a series of smaller puddles moved toward the stairs.
She knelt, examining the nearest one. There, stamped on the floor in pungent formaldehyde, was a three-pronged shape, almost like a footprint.
Identical prints led toward the door, one after another.
The first prints were small—around the size of the mandrake as she knew it.
But as they moved toward the stairs, the prints grew larger.
Cat-sized prints grew into dog-sized prints, which grew to the size of a woman’s foot, then a man’s… and then larger.
A crash sounded downstairs. The sound of wood cracking and then glass shattering. Then the boom of a rifle and the roar of something unearthly echoing through the house.
Elswyth dropped her lantern and ran. She sprinted from her chambers and down the stairs, exiting into the great hall. Another crash, followed by Percival shouting, and then the roar again, piercing the air.
She unsheathed the knife from her belt and ran toward the sound, racing into the drawing room. The only light was the fire in the hearth, casting eerie shadows about the scene before her. Percival stood in one corner, a pistol in his hands. And in the other corner, a monster.
It was difficult to describe. It was shaped like a man—with arms and legs and a torso—but its skin was the coarse flesh of a buried root, twisted into gray knots.
Instead of hands, its arms ended in claws made from pale, smooth wood.
Rootlike tentacles hung beneath the talons, wet and shining.
The creature towered over the room, at least seven feet tall, and its arms were far too long. Its claws dragged on the floor.
The strangest part was its face. It appeared at first to have no face at all, only mottled gray skin.
But a seam traced from the top of the creature’s skull to its jaw and then down over its neck and chest, finishing at the bottom of its torso.
Spikes of the same gray flesh fanned from the vertical seam, creating a zigzag effect down the creature’s face and torso.
It turned to look at her with its eyeless stare.
It struck her then what the seam and spikes were: the mouth of a Venus flytrap. The very same one the infant mandrake had shown.
The mandrake’s face cracked open slightly. The seam split apart, revealing a thin line of red. Then the face opened completely, the spikes of the flytrap mouth flaring out. The creature’s throat waited beneath the flytrap, little more than a black hole lined with countless teeth.
The creature turned from Elswyth. The petals of its flytrap mouth rattled, and it moved sideways, circling Percival like a predator.
Then the mandrake screamed. The sound seemed to shatter the air. The room shook, and she clapped her hands over her ears; the glass in the windows exploded.
As the creature screamed, its chest unfurled in the same manner as its face. The entire torso opened into a second flytrap, its ribs spreading like wings, its cilia flaring. Within it was red, wet flesh. Rows of sharp canines lined the inside of its chest.
Percival covered one bleeding ear with a hand, wincing. With the other, he fired his pistol: once, twice, three times. The bullets struck the mandrake in the chest, which spilled green ichor onto the floor.
The creature flashed its hand at Percival, and the tentacles that hung there whipped outward. Percival dove behind his massive stuffed lion. The mandrake’s tentacles closed around the taxidermied beast, then ripped it back.
The lion flew across the room as if it weighed nothing.
It collided with the mandrake’s chest, and the riblike mouth clamped shut.
The lion exploded into a spray of fur and stuffing.
The torso-mouth worked around the wire and the fur, secreting an acid that made the stuffing hiss away into smoke.
When the mandrake realized there was no meat to be had, it spat out the mangled taxidermy on the floor, a pile of wire and steaming ichor.
The mandrake’s flytrap mouth chittered. It searched the room until its eyeless gaze settled on Percival.
It raised a hand and tentacles shot across the room, wrapping around Percival’s waist. It began to pull him in, spreading its two sets of jaws wide.
Percival unloaded his pistol at the tentacles, sending sprays of ichor across the room, but the mandrake only dragged him closer.
Percival inched toward the jaws of the creature’s open torso.
He fired again, point blank, taking a chunk of the thing’s shoulder.
“Percival!” Elswyth shouted. She sprinted toward him, climbing over broken furniture, and tore the assassin’s blade from its sheath.
The mandrake raised its right claw and stabbed it through Percival’s stomach.
Elswyth slid to a stop. Shock froze her in place.
Percival’s eyes widened. He gasped as the mandrake’s claw slid deeper, protruding from his back. Blood spilled from his chest, into the mandrake’s open face, and Elswyth saw it chitter, petals fluttering, as if it were pleased. It flexed its open torso mouth, lowering Percival down to swallow him.
Percival coughed. Blood spurted out of his mouth and onto his beard. The pistol dropped from his hand, clattering to the floor.
Elswyth screamed. She swept her hand down, firing thorns from her fingertips. They stuck into the creature’s green skin, but the poison did nothing.
The mandrake turned, featureless face settling on her. Its flytrap mouth opened, and it screamed again, mandibles shaking, dripping saliva onto the floor. Elswyth clutched her ears and blood trickled onto her hands.
The mandrake flung Percival to the side. He flew across the room, slamming into the far wall. The head of a water buffalo crashed on top of him, shaken down from the impact. Blood sprayed on the mahogany boards.
The mandrake circled her. It knelt down on its forelimbs, dragging its long claws on the floor. Then its face opened wide again, tilting upward, almost sniffing the air. The petals fluttered as it drew close.
Elswyth scrambled backward, blade outstretched. She pushed the broken table down in front of her, blocking the creature’s path, but it easily climbed over, limbs moving like an insect’s.
The mandrake drew near, rising on its hind legs, towering above her. She moved backward until her back found the wall. There was nowhere else to go. It reached out with a clawed hand, almost curiously. Did it remember her? Did it remember what she did, her face as she drowned it in formaldehyde?
Elswyth swiped at it with her blade. The mandrake retreated for a moment but then crept forward again. Once more, it reached out its clawed hand as if to touch her.
She screamed and brought her blade down, cutting off its hand at the wrist.
The claw fell to the ground with a thud.
Green ichor spurted from the mandrake’s wrist, and it backed away, cradling the stump to its chest. It looked down at the place where its hand used to be—and then it charged her.
Its face opened, and Elswyth saw into its throat, into the endless churning teeth, into the wide-spread flytrap mouth.
It screamed into her face, and she dropped the knife.
The stink of rotting meat on the creature’s breath made her stomach turn.