Chapter Five
CHAPTER
FIVE
IT FELT, FOR a moment, like time had stopped.
Lyssa leaned back against the wall of the alley to steady herself; the cold brick cut through the sudden wash of dizziness that had overtaken her, but her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might burst, and she rubbed surreptitiously at the scar on her left palm for comfort.
“The Beast of Buxton Fields hasn’t been seen since the massacre where it got that name,” she said.
“Well, I found it.”
“Where?”
“It resides in the forest outside of Bleakhaven.” He gestured to the dark mass of trees beyond the poorly lit streets, and a shiver clawed its way up Lyssa’s spine, completely unrelated to the cold night.
“It’s here?”
Alderic pursed his lips, looking annoyed.
“Of course it’s here. Why else would a gentleman of my social standing voluntarily exile himself to a place like this?
I established the location of its lair not too long ago, and have been stuck here, keeping an eye on it, until I found somebody who could kill it. ”
Maybe that was why that faerie-lover from the pub was here, too—keeping his own eye on the Beast, ensuring that Lyssa didn’t try to destroy it.
But he wouldn’t be able to protect it on his own.
Either there were Hound-wardens already in town, or reinforcements would be arriving shortly, now that she was here and had made herself known.
“How did you find it?” she demanded, furious with herself. She had dedicated her life to tracking down the Beast, and this ruffle-shirted asshole had found it first.
“I sort of … stumbled into it by mistake,” he said with a shrug that made Lyssa grit her teeth. By mistake. She had been searching for the thing for almost thirteen years, and he had found it by mistake. “What do you say? Will you do it?”
Lyssa chewed her split lip, the pain helping her focus.
“Each glyph—the glowing mark—requires a special weapon to unmake it. Unmaking the glyph allows the monster to be killed,” she explained.
“In order to craft a weapon that can kill the Beast of Buxton Fields, I’ll need a piece of the creature itself. ”
“Is that typical?”
“Yes.” It was the reason she didn’t already have the weapon handy, should the damned thing ever resurface.
Ragnhild always used parts from the Hounds in her spellcraft, first to determine what specific ingredients they would need in order to make a weapon that could kill it, and then to tie that weapon to the creature it was meant to destroy.
Fur, teeth, claws, scales, even blood or saliva would do if they could get enough of it.
“Why?” he asked, and she rolled her eyes.
“Oh, come on, Al. You don’t really need to know how it works, and I don’t really feel like explaining it to you.
Not when I’m this fucking cold.” It wasn’t that.
Not really. Lyssa rarely had the patience to discuss magic under normal circumstances, but with the Beast finally within her grasp and her entire body buzzing with anticipation, the idea of standing in this alleyway a minute longer than she had to was unbearable.
A look of irritation flitted over Alderic’s face, but it was gone in a blink. “Well, it won’t be a problem, in any case.”
Lyssa snorted. “Yes, it will be. I have scoured every market, legal and otherwise, in this entire country. No one has ever gotten their hands on so much as a hair. If you know where the thing has been hiding, I can sneak in and try to hack a piece off it, but I might not survive the attempt.”
“You misunderstand me,” Alderic said. “I have a piece of it already.”
“Bullshit,” she said, her heart stumbling in her chest.
He drew himself up to his full height, an inch or two taller than her own five-foot-ten stature. “I assure you, madam, I am not lying to you.”
She scowled up at him. “How, then? How did a drunken fop like you get something no one else on this whole fucking island could?”
“I’ve hired someone to kill the Beast before,” he said.
“Several someones, in fact, before I realized that it would require more than a good rifle to take the thing down. One of them went missing during the hunt, and when his body was finally found—or what was left of it, anyway—there was a broken-off claw stuck in his skull. I pried it out and kept it.”
Lyssa’s stomach was so jittery with excitement that it felt like the pints she’d had at the Morningstar were going to come up any minute now. She crossed her arms, willing herself not to puke on Alderic’s fancy shoes.
“I’m going to need proof that you have the claw before I agree to anything,” she said, and Alderic smiled.
“I would expect nothing less from a businesswoman such as yourself. The claw is at my current residence. Maybe in the morning you could—”
“No. We’re going tonight. Right now.” Lyssa pushed past him and stalked back out into the street, Brandy at her heels. “How far is it?” she asked over her shoulder, and Alderic huffed a laugh, his breath steaming from his lips as he jogged to catch up with her.
“Too far to walk, and far too cold. We’ll take my cab.” He raised his arm, waving at the driver of a hansom parked close outside the Morningstar. The driver waved back and rattled the reins.
“A cab?” Lyssa said tightly as the horses clopped closer. “Do you know how many people die in those things every year?” She had seen a dozen accidents a week when she had lived on the streets of Warham as a kid, the injuries and deaths so horrific that she had sworn never to get into a cab herself.
Alderic frowned. “Why, Miss Butcher! Is that a trace of fear in your voice? How unexpected.”
“I’m not afraid,” she snarled. The last thing she wanted was for him to change his mind about her. To decide that she wasn’t right for this job. “I just wouldn’t want that pretty little neck of yours to get snapped before you give me the claw.”
His laugh was oddly bitter. “I am wholly confident in my ability to survive a carriage ride.”
Lyssa’s cheeks burned, but before she could think of a cutting retort, the hansom cab stopped and the driver climbed down to open the door for them.
“Back home, sir?” he asked, tipping his hat.
“Please,” Alderic replied, climbing into the cramped carriage.
The driver offered Lyssa his hand, but she ignored it—along with the clench of anxiety in her belly—and climbed up after her new employer.
Brandy settled himself atop Lyssa’s feet with a sigh, as there was no room on the bench seat for him.
“I would have expected a rich sod like yourself to have a larger conveyance,” Lyssa admitted, fidgeting. She didn’t understand why anyone chose to ride in these horse-drawn death traps when they weren’t even comfortable.
Alderic shrugged, his shoulder jabbing against Lyssa’s with the movement. “It’s not mine, it’s a for-hire. And since I never bring anyone home, there’s no need for me to pay for anything bigger. I could sit up with the driver, if you’d like.”
But before seating arrangements could be switched, the cab lurched forward. Lyssa gripped the bench, desperate to steady herself.
“So,” Alderic said brightly, as if the jolting motion didn’t bother him in the slightest, “does this mean you’ve accepted my offer?” His words weren’t nearly as slurred as they had been when they’d left the Morningstar. The cold air must have sobered him up.
“Not until I see the claw,” she reminded him. “And you haven’t exactly offered me anything, yet.”
“Oh. Right. Well, how much would you like?”
She’d do the job for free, if she had to.
The promise of the claw—of actually being able to forge the weapon she’d need to kill the Beast—as well as the monster’s exact location were payment enough for her.
But Rags would kill her if she didn’t get as much as she could out of a rich patron when she had the chance.
Ingredients for magical weapons were expensive, and cake wasn’t cheap, either.
“How much did you pay the last person you hired?”
He rattled off an impossibly large sum, and she turned to look out the window so that he wouldn’t see her shock.
“Then I want double,” she said, as casually as she could.
“Estimated expenses up front, the rest to be paid in full as soon as the job is done.” She’d have him send the final payment to her post office box for Nadia to retrieve on one of her grocery runs, just in case Lyssa wasn’t alive to collect.
“Done.”
“Really?” She turned back to stare at him. “No bartering, no negotiation, no haggling? You must really want this thing dead.”
A flicker of pain passed over his features before he flashed a smile at her. “Money is of no consequence to me.”
She studied him in the pale moonlight shining through the cab window. “Who are you?” she asked. “Why do you want to kill the Beast?”
“I don’t want to kill it,” he corrected her. “I want you to kill it.”
“But why?” she insisted.
“Because,” he said, turning away from her to look out the window. “It deserves to die.”
The desolation in his voice spoke volumes. The Beast had killed someone he loved.
Lyssa’s throat tightened in sympathy, but she had no idea what to say in the awkward silence that followed.
Talking to people, offering comfort … those weren’t exactly her strengths.
Eddie had always been the charmer, the chatterbox, the one who knew the right words to use.
She was just the muscle. Normally it wouldn’t have bothered her, but she knew what it was like, to have someone stolen from her by this monster, and that connection between them gave her a sudden, intense urge to ease Alderic’s pain.
Or, barring that, to at least draw him out of the misery that had descended on him like a pall.
“Hear, hear,” she said, raising an imaginary glass. Alderic glanced at her uplifted hand, his eyebrows drawn together, but after a moment’s hesitation he pretended to clink a second glass against hers.
“To the Beast,” she said. “May it get the end that it deserves.”