Hesitantly, I took a step onto the creaking stairs. Montgomery and Lucy followed a few steps behind, treading as quietly as they dared. Halfway down Lucy stumbled and landed on a creaky stair that squealed like a wounded animal.
The footsteps behind the cellar door froze. I was only one step away and could peer within the barred window if I stood on my tiptoes. I leaned closer, breath half frozen in the abnormal silence.
“Edward?” I whispered. “Are you still there?”
There was nothing but silence, and then the scraping sound of claws on the stone floor. I stood higher on tiptoe.
Suddenly a jerk of the rug at my feet hurled me to the floor with a painful crack. I cried out as gnarled fingers reached from the inch-wide gap under the door to grasp my feet, pulling me closer. Montgomery slammed his boot into the Beast’s hand, and I scrambled away.
A great howl came from within as the Beast hurled himself against the door, again and again, beating himself to a bloody mess.
Was Edward still in there somewhere, fighting against him?
“Lucy, fetch a candle,” I gasped.
Lucy raced up the stairs as Montgomery helped me to my feet. The Beast’s writhing made a terrible sound. I wanted to cover my ears. Lucy returned with one of the grand silver candlesticks from the dining room, but her fingers were shaking too much to light the match. I fumbled to do it while Montgomery rechecked the lock on the chains. I held the candle to the window, peering within.
A gasp came from my lips.
The Beast writhed on the floor, caught somewhere between man and creature in the midst of a transformation. He was doubled over in pain as claws slid into his bloody joints and then out again. His back buckled and strained as the two sides of him fought for control. In one instant he was the Beast, snarling and furious; in the next he was Edward, reaching out a hand toward me and trying to form words, and then back again.
“Montgomery, get a sedative!” I said. “And as much valerian as we have. He’s going to rip himself apart unless we stop him.”
Montgomery took the stairs two at a time, and I turned to Lucy, who was breathing so rapidly I thought she might burst.
“It’ll be all right,” I said.
“It won’t be!” she screamed. She threw her hands over her head and ran upstairs, tripping on her skirt, tears streaking down her cheeks.
I’d been a fool to let her down here. Hearing about it was one thing, but watching the transformation happen was another. Lucy had a crush on a different boy every week—why had I thought her love for Edward would stand up to seeing the truth of what he was?
Montgomery soon returned with a glass jar of chloroform and syringe of valerian. “We’ll have to be quick,” he said.
The growls from within the cellar came louder. Montgomery removed the chains from the door and handed me the syringe. “I’ll hold him. You go for the neck.”
I nodded, and he threw the door open.
The creature on the floor—Edward or the Beast, I knew not what to call it—was so tortured in its rapid transitions that it seemed hardly aware we were there. Montgomery threw himself upon it, pressing a chloroform-soaked rag to its mouth.
“Now, Juliet!” he cried.
I aimed for the neck, but the transformation made Edward’s body shift and twist. At last I threw myself upon him, plunging the needle deep. His body shook like a death rattle, then he slumped unconscious, smelling thickly of blood and fever sweat.
“He’ll be out for at least a few hours,” Montgomery said, wiping his brow. He helped me up and his hand lingered on my waist, as though afraid to let me go. When we made our way back to the kitchen, Lucy wasn’t there. I found her at last on the second floor landing, sitting on the top stair. She’d stopped crying, but the dazed look in her eye frightened me even more.
“Come into my room and let me clean your face,” I said, pulling her up gently. My bedroom fire had gone out, but the air still held its lingering warmth. I sat her on the bed, wiping the dried tears from her cheeks, petting her head as gently as if she were a frightened little creature like Sharkey.
“Shh now,” I soothed. “I know it’s terrible to see.”
She squeezed her eyes closed. “Oh, Juliet . . .”
“I won’t let him hurt you, I swear.”
“Hurt me?” she whispered. Her green eyes snapped to mine. “It isn’t me I’m worried about. It’s him who’s suffering. My god, to hear him cry out like that! He’s in such pain. I can’t bear it.”
The soothing words I was poised to say disappeared. I had assumed Lucy’s tears came from fear. I wasn’t sure how to understand what she was saying.
She was crying for him?