Chapter Twenty-Four
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
THE GLYPH BLAZED to life on the Beast’s chest, the blue-white glow searing Lyssa’s eyes. But that wasn’t the reason her vision blurred with tears.
Alderic was gone, and with him, the dim hope Lyssa hadn’t even known she’d been harboring. That maybe he wouldn’t transform. That maybe her doubts at the forge meant she could solve this without driving a sword through his heart.
She should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. Nothing ever was.
The Beast lunged.
Lyssa’s instincts screamed at her to stab it, to run it through with the witch’s blade, to get her revenge at last. But she hesitated. And in that moment, the Beast slammed into her, pinning her to the wall, one of its tusks piercing her left shoulder.
She screamed as white fire seared through her, kept screaming as the Beast yanked its tusk out of her with a wet squelch and a glut of blood.
With her sword in her other hand, there was no way to put pressure on the wound, and it bled freely as she swayed on her feet, shock taking the place of fury.
Alderic would never have hurt you.
The thought came unbidden, but the realization was like a knife in her heart as the monster lowered its head for another attack.
When it lunged again, Lyssa was ready. She slashed at its face, opening a deep gash beneath its eye, and something inside of her broke at the sight of the blood dripping through its fur.
It’s not him it’s not him it’s not him she repeated like a frantic mantra, but it didn’t stop the tears from spilling down her cheeks as the Beast howled in pain, pawing at the wound she had dealt it.
It would take more than a cut like that to kill it—Lyssa would have to drive the sword through its glyph to end its life.
She would have to stab Alderic through the heart.
The Beast shook itself, flecks of blood spattering Lyssa’s face like coppery rain, and snarled.
She fled before it could lunge for her again. The dungeon was too small—she was like cornered prey down there. She needed to find somewhere she could take control of the situation.
More importantly, she needed to buy herself some time.
Because that thing was not Alderic, not even a little bit.
There was no part of him that had taken those lives, no part of him that had earned a fate as horrific as this.
Maybe he had been beastly, once, when that faerie had cursed him, but he certainly wasn’t anymore.
And no matter how Lyssa had tried to rationalize it before, she knew deep in her heart that he didn’t deserve to die.
But the Beast did, and she had no idea how to kill one without killing the other.
Her entire world was tilting wildly beneath her feet, and she felt like she was going to slide off the edge at any moment. She needed a second to think, a second to figure out what to do. If she could just get some distance …
She burst out of the dungeon and into the hallway beyond, but the Beast shoved its way through the door right behind her, and she barely dodged its claws, its tusks, in the narrow corridor.
She slashed its muzzle open with her sword, biting back a sob as it recoiled with a howl she felt in the marrow of her bones.
Adrenaline pumped dizzily through her, urging her to go without looking back.
The reinforced metal doors along the hallway were useless to her now; the Beast recovered quickly from the wound she had dealt it and was on her tail again as she ran through the next one, leaving her no time to even slam the door closed behind her, let alone bolt it.
She clanged up the iron staircase and ran down the hallway bisecting the ground floor of the manor, tripping over Alderic’s boxes, her boots slipping over loose trinkets and abandoned craft projects.
The stairs’ tight turns had slowed the Beast down, buying her a few moments, but it wasn’t enough to figure out a plan.
She could already hear the iron groaning beneath the monster’s weight as it crested the top step.
Could hear its claws clicking on the wood floor behind her.
Lyssa forced her way into the parlor just as the Beast began barreling down the hallway with all the momentum of a runaway carriage.
If it came after her, she would be fucked, as unable to fight in the cluttered space as she had been in the dungeon.
But the gamble paid off—it ran past her and blasted through the front door, instead.
She collapsed atop a velvet divan piled high with shirts in a rainbow of colors, letting out a shaky breath. The manor’s outer walls would cage the Beast for a little while, at least. Long enough for her to tie a tourniquet around her wounded shoulder and—
There was a clang and screech of metal from outside, so eerily similar to the sound of the Beast escaping its cage at the circus that her blood went cold, the fine hairs along her arms standing at attention.
The gates.
Alderic had left them open for her, and she hadn’t even thought to padlock them behind her.
Lyssa got to her feet and staggered out into the hall, barely conscious of her own body through the fog of dread now spreading through her.
Slashes of morning sunlight bright with the promise of spring speared through the splintered remains of the front door, blinding her for a moment.
She ducked outside, shards of wood catching in her hair, and stumbled onto the porch.
The gates were wide open.
“Fuck,” she spat, and ran down the gravel drive to where it connected with the forest path. There were claw marks scarring the dirt, enormous paw prints headed toward Bleakhaven.
In the distance, she could hear the faint sound of music, the cheer of a crowd.
The spring festival.
“Fuck,” she said again, but it came out more of a sob than a swear.
She could picture it in her mind—the Beast emerging from the forest like a god of death, the music faltering before anyone thought to scream.
The children with their little candy baskets, slaughtered like spring lambs.
Ribbons and garlands sprayed with blood, trodden underfoot as people tried and failed to flee.
It would be another massacre, like Buxton Fields.
Lyssa didn’t have time to think. She sprinted down the forest path, her breath sharp in her lungs and her left shoulder screaming, her arm hanging limp and useless.
It didn’t take long to catch up with the Beast, thank the Lady—she rounded a curve in the path and saw it disappearing around another bend. Screamed Alderic’s name, to no avail.
She sheathed the sword, drew her pistol. Kept running.
The creature was around the next bend, trotting along the straightaway, slower now that it wasn’t chasing Lyssa.
Its white fur was stark against the rusty red of the nightmarish thorned trees lining the path, its spiked tail lashing in agitation as it sniffed the air.
When it tilted its head, as if listening to the distant sounds of revelry—louder, now that they were closer to town—Lyssa cocked her pistol.
“Hey!” she shouted at it, and as the thing turned to look at her, she fired.
She was close enough for the bullet to make impact. It didn’t do anything more than piss the monster off, of course, but that was all Lyssa needed—to distract it from the potential prey in Bleakhaven. To force it to focus on her, instead.
She pressed her fingers to the wound in her shoulder with a grimace and waggled them. “Smell that? Fresh meat. Why go shopping in town when we can have a picnic right here?”
The Beast bared its teeth and charged.
Lyssa turned and fled, luring the monster deeper into the woods, away from Bleakhaven.
The Beast howled as it chased after her, its paws thudding on the forest floor, its huffing breaths punctuated by the snap of branches and crunch of leaves.
The heady aroma of the woods enveloped them both, the scent of rot and decay lurking beneath the fresh green burst of life.
Lyssa didn’t dare turn around to see how close the creature was to catching her.
Instead, she focused on zigzagging through the murder-trees without getting disemboweled by them, cursing every time her clothes got caught on the thorns jutting out from the trunks.
The Beast howled again, and she could feel its hot breath behind her—too close.
It was right on her heels. She pushed her body harder, surging ahead with a burst of speed she knew would cost her later.
She was getting tired already, her head swimming with adrenaline and fear, blood loss and heartbreak.
A stream bisected her path, and Lyssa plunged into the frigid water, boots slipping on the mossy rocks lining the bottom.
Her feet went out from under her and she fell hard, cutting her knee on a sharp stone.
She was up again a moment later, ignoring the pain and the slide of blood down her skin as she scrabbled up the mud-slick bank on the other side.
The Beast splashed into the water only a few heartbeats after she had climbed out of it.
Lyssa spat obscenities as she forced herself to run faster, and though it didn’t do her labored breathing any favors, it kept a fire burning within her—a fire that might keep her alive a few moments longer.
If only she knew this forest better, knew somewhere she could trap the Beast. If it got stuck somewhere, even for a few minutes, she could catch her damned breath and think. Anything but this mindless, panicked flight, the monster a few seconds behind her.
Her shirtsleeve got caught on another murder-tree and she swore, yanking herself free.
An idea flashed within her, as sudden as an electric bulb flaring to life, and she looked around frantically. Spotted something that might work for what she had in mind.