A Cold Legacy (14 page)

M
OVING THROUGH THE PASSAGEWAYS
was starting to feel like second nature. I could see why Hensley liked them. Once I learned to navigate the jagged nails and the uneven stairs, they felt so removed from the rest of the world that anything seemed possible.

I reached the trapdoor to the chapel and knocked out a quick melody I knew Balthazar would recognize: “Winter's Tale,” the song my mother used to sing. Sure enough, the door swung open and his wonderfully ugly face looked back at me.

“We have to move fast.” I pulled out the basket of weapons and handed them out to the staff. For the littlest girls, scalpels—the small blades would make them feel safe, but they wouldn't hurt themselves accidentally. For McKenna and Elizabeth, the largest of the surgical knives. Elizabeth took one look at hers and shook her head, reaching in the basket instead for a heavy metal clamp.

“I prefer my weapons blunt and powerful,” she said.

“Did you find Miss Lucy?” Balthazar asked, folding his lips in concern.

“She's in the kitchen. I've instructed her where to hide once things get dangerous. Now, I'm going to lead you all to an outside door, where you can make it to the barn. Balthazar, I want you to take the rear, just in case . . .” I paused, looking at the impossibly narrow opening of the passageway. He'd never fit. “Well, dash it all. You'll have to stay here. Montgomery or I will come to unlock the cellar door as soon as we can.”

He scratched the back of his head. “I don't like it, miss. You and Montgomery up there on your own against that creature.”

I gave him a smile, trying to look brave, but something about Balthazar always crumbled the walls around my heart. I leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I learned a thing or two on the island. I can sneak around this manor without the Beast hearing a single peep. We'll see you soon.”

I crawled through first, with Moira behind me, and the younger girls behind her, and Elizabeth and McKenna at the end.

“Follow my path exactly,” I said to the girls. “Don't touch the walls, if you can avoid them—there are loose nails. And don't veer off to the sides—there are some tunnels that plunge down into nothing.” In the near darkness, I could make out their eyes, wide and frightened. “Let's go,” I said.

We crawled as quickly as the younger girls could. My heart pounded in fear over what might be happening outside: if the Beast had discovered Montgomery, or worse, had
already come back inside. What would he do if he discovered the chapel empty save Balthazar? Could Balthazar defeat him alone?

I touched my dress pocket, where the silver pistol dragged against the ground. If I got the chance to take a shot, I couldn't afford to miss.

The line of women continued through the walls, down a precarious ladder, and into the sewer system, where we were finally able to stand. Light winked around the corners of a square grate that I kicked open with Elizabeth's help. Fresh air poured in. It was freezing outside, but after being trapped in the frigid cellar, the touch of sunlight was heavenly.

I climbed through the grate, jumping down on the other side. I scanned the southern gardens and moors beyond but saw no movement. Wherever Montgomery had led the Beast, it seemed to have worked.

“All right,” I said. “Pass the girls to me, Elizabeth.”

They crawled through, one at a time, dusting off their clothes.

“We can take it from here,” Elizabeth said. “Do what you must, but be careful.”

“I will.”

She and McKenna led the girls to the barn, where they disappeared one by one inside. Now that they were safe, I hurried to the windmill, which was spinning briskly in the midday breeze, and climbed the ladder attached to the side of the building. Reaching into my basket, I took out four vials of Elizabeth's beetroot iodine solution and, as each white sheet passed, splashed it with the dark red liquid. When I
gazed up at them, the white sails looked streaked with blood. An unsettling signal, but an effective one.

I left the basket, taking only the knife tucked in my boot and the silver pistol, and went to the front door, pacing, shading my eyes to search the moors for any sign of Montgomery. There were few hours of daylight left. We had to confront the Beast before night fell; with the electricity cut off in the manor, only the Beast, with his superior animal vision, would be able to see.

In another second, my signal worked. Montgomery appeared around the side of the house, running as fast as he could without jarring his wounded shoulder. “Get inside. He's right behind me!”

I threw open the main door. The Beast rounded the corner behind him, twenty feet away, lumbering as if he wasn't used to his restrictive human body. Fury gleamed in his eyes.

“Hurry!” I called to Montgomery.

He took the steps two at a time, wincing at the pain in his shoulder. I squeezed the doorknob harder, urging him on. At last he reached the doorway and I slammed the door and locked it. Half a breath later, the Beast collided into the other side of the door, growling with frustration.

“There's more than one way inside!” he bellowed through the thick wood.

I ran to Montgomery, touching his shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

“He caught me once, but without the claws he wasn't as powerful.”

“It won't take him long to break through a window,” I said. “Everyone's safe in the barn, except for Balthazar. He's still in the cellar. Go fetch him, and I'll check on Lucy. We'll meet back here.”

As he stumbled off toward the cellar, I paused long enough to take the pistol out of my pocket and make sure it was loaded, then headed for the kitchen. It was empty save the vat of untouched potatoes and a dozen overturned pots and pans on the floor—Lucy must have set them out as a trap to announce if someone was coming.

“Lucy?” I called, but heard nothing in return. I threw open the door to the pickling closet. “Lucy, are you there?”

The sound of shattering glass came from some unseen room, and I jerked upright. It had to be the Beast breaking into the house, which meant I didn't have much time. I crawled on one hand and my knees to the trapdoor, knocking on it frantically.

“Lucy, answer me!”

There was still no response, and I felt paralyzed. Where would she have gone?

Two hands suddenly grabbed my ankles, dragging me out of the closet with terrifying strength. I screamed, clawing at the floor for grip, but my fingernails tore uselessly on the tile. As soon as we were back in the kitchen, I was released abruptly.

I scrambled onto my back.

The Beast stared at me.

His face was just as mercurial and mysterious as ever. He was made with Montgomery's blood, though I had never
seen any similarities in their features. Now, however, there
was
an echo. It wasn't the shape of his nose or the spacing of his ears, but a depth to his eyes that looked so much like Montgomery's, just for a flash, that I nearly forgot who I was looking at.

I fumbled for the pistol and aimed it at him. “Don't come any closer.”

He cocked his head, unconcerned. A strange voice whispered in the back of my head that he'd never looked more human before.

“Why aren't you attacking?” I demanded.

“Why aren't you?” he countered.

I aimed the gun at him again. This was just another game to him—show a well-calculated flash of humanity, confuse me, then once I started questioning myself he'd tear me to pieces. I clenched my jaw. I aimed the pistol between his eyes, at the diseased brain that was his origin. At only ten feet, I couldn't miss. And yet my finger wouldn't pull that trigger.

“Well?” He even moved a step closer to make my aim better. “Now that you're faced with killing me, it isn't so appealing, is it? Because without me, there's nothing darker than your own heart. I've always been more ruthless than you. Without me, you'll be left to stare at your own capacity for evil.”

“Stop talking,” I hissed, cocking the pistol. I urged my finger to shoot.
He's toying with you. He'd say anything to make you spare his life
.

And yet try as I might, I couldn't pull that trigger. In
some terrible way, I agreed with part of what he said. Having the Beast meant I wasn't the most violent person in the room, nor the darkest. Besides, it was Edward's face looking at me, and a little bit of Montgomery's as well, and even a bit of my own.

“You can't do it, can you?” There was a ring of sympathy to his voice that had never been there before.

Suddenly, one of the cabinets flew open, and Lucy sprang down, the surgical knife gripped tightly in her hand. At last I understood why the pots and pans were on the floor—she'd emptied the cabinet as a place to hide.

She hurled herself at the Beast. “Maybe she can't, but I can.”

L
UCY DUG THE BLADE
into the side of the Beast's neck before he could react. I froze. This was Lucy, who was afraid of practically everything, who had never so much as smashed a spider under her shoe.

“I should have done that the first time!” she yelled.

She drove the blade deeper into his neck, letting his blood spill out onto the floor, but he overpowered her. I screamed as he pulled away, wrenching the knife from her, letting it clatter to the floor.

At the same time, Montgomery and Balthazar appeared in the kitchen doorway with rifles. Shock flickered over Montgomery's face but died quickly: he was a trained hunter, and it didn't take him but a second to raise the rifle.

The Beast clamped a hand over the bleeding wound on his neck, stumbling out of the kitchen's rear exit toward the winter garden. Balthazar lumbered after him, while Montgomery knelt by my side.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Hurry. If he goes back outside, he might find the girls.”

A bellow sounded from the direction of the winter garden, interrupting me, and we all jerked our heads around.

“That was Balthazar!” Lucy gasped.

The three of us raced toward the winter garden. Visions flashed in my head of terrible things: the Beast with a knife through Balthazar's gut, carving him up like his victims in London.

Montgomery made it to the winter garden first and stopped short. I caught up to him and my hand shot to my mouth.

“Dear God.”

Balthazar stood by the side of the glass-enclosed garden between the white statuary of a deer and a fox. He was perfectly unharmed, though I'd never seen such a look of shock on his face. He let out another bellow—not one of pain, but of fear.

In the center of the room, within a growing pool of blood, lay the Beast. I didn't need to see his face to know he was dead. I'd seen enough dead bodies in my day to recognize a chest that didn't rise for breath, limbs that sagged lifelessly.

Behind him, standing perfectly still, was Hensley. His hands were covered in blood up to the elbow, bits of blood and flesh splattered across his face and high-collared shirt. In his hands he clutched the Beast's heart, red and dripping.

He looked at us calmly, then wiped the back of one hand over his blood-splattered cheek. “I was tired of him,”
Hensley said. “He wasn't much fun.”

He dropped the heart to the floor, where it splashed in the puddle of blood.

A shiver of terror ran up my spine, vertebra by vertebra. I had thought there couldn't be a creature more dangerous than the Beast, and yet now he lay dead at my feet, defeated so easily by a little boy who had died three times over. When I glanced at Montgomery and Lucy, they were both as white faced as I was.

Hensley turned to me.

“
Now
can I have a story?”

I
WATCHED THE SUN
fall on Ballentyne from the windows of the library, where I sat on the green velvet couch, still dressed in my bloodstained clothes, reading to Hensley from a book of Scottish folktales. My hands were unsteady as I turned the pages, and my voice shook. Montgomery sat across from me with the silver pistol hidden under his coat, aimed at Hensley should his mood suddenly shift.

I finished the story, and Hensley burrowed closer to me with sleepy eyes. “Another one, please.”

I glanced at Montgomery, who nodded solemnly. I kept reading. After his startling display of violence, we had decided to do whatever Hensley asked while the others ran outside to fetch Elizabeth. I wasn't quite sure what to make of the little boy nestled at my side. It was hard to imagine him capable of such violence while he was listening to bedtime stories.

Footsteps sounded at the door and Elizabeth rushed
in, panic on her face—Lucy must have told her what happened. Moira was right behind her. Elizabeth swept into the room and pulled Hensley into her arms.

“Enough stories, darling,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “Look at you—dirty through and through. Moira will give you a bath and then read all the stories you like.”

She passed the sleepy boy, even now nodding off and rubbing his eyes with little fists, into Moira's arms. Only once they were gone, and the library door was closed and locked, did I let out a ragged breath.

“Blast it all, Elizabeth, you didn't tell us he was
that
dangerous.”

She gave me a hard stare. “He saved your lives, didn't he?”

“You didn't see the look on his face! He killed the Beast on a lark because he was bored with him. He ripped his heart out of his chest like he was pulling weeds.”

Elizabeth pulled at her collar, pacing. “He doesn't ever do it from malice. He'd never hurt any of us intentionally.”

“As long as we do what he wants,” I said. “What if we refuse to play games and read him stories?” My gaze dropped to the ring of bruises around her wrist, and she tugged on her sleeve anxiously.

“I've managed him for fifteen years,” she said. “I can keep him under control now. I'll have two girls watch him at all times. In the meantime, I sent Lily to clean up the kitchen and winter garden and to attend to the Beast's body. You should all change clothes. You're covered in blood.”

Lucy looked down at her dress as if only just realizing
this. “I want to help,” she said in a shaky voice. “With the body. That was Edward once, and the least I can do for him is take care of him now.”

She started for the door.

“Wait,” Elizabeth said, and Lucy paused. “There's something else we need to discuss, and you're an important part of it, Lucy.” She turned to Montgomery and me. “When the Beast locked us in the cellar, Balthazar told me what happened when you pursued Valentina.”

I exchanged a glance with Montgomery. “Her death was an accident. We didn't kill her.”

“I believe you,” Elizabeth said. “Her death is unfortunate—she was an essential part of this place. We shall notify the younger girls in due time, but at the moment I'm more concerned with Mr. Radcliffe. Balthazar told me he's the one who's been looking for you. Are you positive he didn't follow you back here?”

“Beyond a doubt,” Montgomery said. “Balthazar would have smelled horses following us. We'll have to avoid any cities for a few months, maybe even a year or two, but that's a small price to pay for our safety.”

Lucy had flinched at the sound of her father's name. “
Papa
is the one after us?”

I cast her a worried look. “Oh, Lucy, I'm sorry. I hadn't wanted you to find out. Don't worry, we were able to lose him in Inverness. The manor's location is still secret.”

“B . . . but the article Papa wrote in the newspaper,” Lucy stammered. “He said he repented his association with the King's Club. He said it was all a mistake on his part.”

“We think he was just trying to clear his name and cast off any suspicion about his true intentions,” Montgomery said.

“His true intentions?” Her face had gone quite white.

“Retaliation, we think. For killing his colleagues.”

“But what about the part where he said he and Mother were worried about me? Couldn't that be why he's after us, to find me?”

“I don't think so,” I said softly. “I can't imagine it was anything other than a ruse to draw you out and lead him to us. I'm sorry. I know what it feels like. My father used my affections for him as well.”

Lucy hugged her arms over her bloody dress as though she refused to believe it. “So they don't care about me at all?” She dragged a hand through her wild hair and started for the hall in a daze, choking out a sob. I went after her, but Montgomery shook his head.

“Give her some time. It's a lot to take in.”

Elizabeth reached for the bottle of gin, hands shaking slightly, pouring herself a glass. “The poor girl.” She took a sip, closing her eyes, leaning one hand against the wooden bookshelves. “And I still can't believe Valentina would turn on you like that. I thought I knew her better. We shall have to hold a funeral for her, regardless. For the Beast as well, I suppose, even if he was a monster.”

“No,” I said. “We'll mourn Edward's passing, not the Beast's. It was Edward we all cared about, particularly Lucy. You saw how distraught she was just now. . . .” I paused, head cocked toward the door where Lucy had disappeared. She
had been upset over the news of her father's pursuit, yes, but she hadn't actually said a word about Edward. It felt strange, given how in love with Edward she had been, that she wasn't mourning his death more.

An itch tickled behind my left ear, the start of an idea. Or rather, a suspicion.

Lucy had wanted Edward dead all along so we could cure him through reanimation. She'd admitted to unfastening the chains and planning to slit his throat while he was sleeping. That was all before the Beast's wild rampage, of course, but the fact was, she had achieved what she'd set out to do.

Edward was dead—just as she'd wanted.

Was it possible that she still held on to some desire to bring him back?

I shook myself out of such dark thoughts. No, of course Lucy wouldn't be thinking of such extreme possibilities. Why was
I
even thinking of them?

“As far as Radcliffe goes,” Elizabeth said, “I know a bit about him, and he isn't a man who gives up easily. My guess is that he'll only expand his search now with renewed vigor. We should send someone to look into what he's planning and make sure he doesn't discover our location.” She glanced out the window, toward the south fields where we'd held the Twelfth Night bonfire. “I suggest we send Jack Serra. He has a talent for slipping in and out of the shadows. His troupe left a few days ago, but they can't be further than Galspie. Carlyle can send him a message.”

Montgomery frowned. “Jack Serra?”

“He's one of the carnival performers,” Elizabeth explained. “You must not have met him at the bonfire. Troupes like his are always on the move this time of year. He'll be able to enter London unnoticed to spy on Radcliffe.”

Montgomery and I exchanged a glance, and he nodded. “Then send him, with our thanks.”

Elizabeth stood. “I should check on Hensley. For the love of God, take a bath, both of you. Get a meal, and then a good night's sleep.” She opened the door, then paused. “I am sorry about Edward.” She cleared her throat. “And I know this sounds a bit petty right now, but the dressmaker in Quick sent several pairs of shoes for you to try on, Juliet, to go with the dress she's making. I'll have them brought to you tomorrow.”

She left, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

A wedding, and a funeral, and my best friend's father scouring the country to hunt us down for vengeance.

“I thought life at Ballentyne would be simple,” I said.

Montgomery came over and pressed a kiss against my temple. “It will be. But not yet.”