I hit him too hard. Then the smell hit me in return—I dropped down into a crouch, recognizing it, atavistic shivers running through ageless flesh. The lykanthe hung on the far wall, a writhing mass of fur held fast in silver chains, ivory teeth wired together by a muzzle cruelly spiked on the inside with more silver.
It was no threat, but still. For a moment I hesitated. Then I turned back to the human, who was making a thin high whistling sound. One of his arms hung at an odd angle.
They are so breakable.
My fingers, slim and strong, tangled in the front of the mortal’s black turtleneck. There were leather straps too, holding knives and other implements. He was still trying to gain enough breath to scream.
I selected one knife, slid it free. Broad-bladed, double-edged, it gleamed in the cellar’s gloom. Would anyone hear him? It was not likely; the alley and the blind walls above would mock his cries.
Good, I thought, and rammed the knife through his shoulder. He whisper-screamed again.
I closed off the scream with my free hand, clamping it over his mouth. Hot sweat and saliva greased my cold hard palm. I found words, for the first time since I had left Leonidas’s nightclub.
“I will ask you questions.” My voice was soft, my native tongue wearing through the syllables. “If you answer, I will not hurt you more.”
It was only half a lie.
*
I did not drink from the filth. I was still gorged from last night’s hunting. As fitting as it would have been to drain him, no cursed drop of his fluid would pass my lips.
His scarecrow body hung against the wall, twitching as the nerves realized life had fled. The lykanthe on the other wall moved slightly, silver chains biting its flesh. But it made no sound, not even whining through the muzzle.
I should have left it there. Their kind is anathema.
But I am a Preserver, and the waste of anything irks me. Especially any part of the twilight world where I fed and sheltered my charges.
There was a long table full of silver-plated instruments, gleaming in the low sullen light. The ones closest to the thing on the wall were crusted with blood and other fluids. I allowed myself a single nose-wrinkle. The stews I had found Virginia in had smelled worse.
A glimmer of eye showed between puffed, marred lids. It was madness to consider letting the thing free. There was probably nothing human left inside that hairy shell.
As much or as little was left human inside my own hard pale shell, perhaps.
The silver-coated metal of the manacles crumpled like wet clay in my fist. Raw welts rubbed the hair from the skin everywhere they touched. They are dangerously allergic to the moon’s metal, a goddess’s curse. Or so I have always heard.
I twisted, and one collection of bright amber claws dangled free. One hand. I bent and soon the legs were free as well, hanging bare inches from the floor. I glanced up—yes, the hook in the ceiling, there, they had hoisted it to deprive it of leverage. It hung like a piece of Amelie’s washing—she had not yet lost the habit of cleaning her clothes after every night’s rising, though her body did not sweat or secrete.
Now that body lay in perishing earth. A sob caught at my throat. I denied it.
My voice sounded strange. “I hope you can understand me. I am not your enemy. I hunt those who did this to you. Go to ground and sleep until you become human again, if you can.”
It made no reply, merely hung there and watched me. Or perhaps it was dying, and the gleam of eyes was a fever-glitter. The shoulder looked agonizingly strained, sinews creaking.
“Mad,” I muttered. “I am mad.”
But I freed the last manacle anyway, the silver-plated trash bending and buckling. By the time its heavy body thudded to the ground to lie in its own filth, I was already gone. Straight up the brownstone’s wall and over the rooftop.
Behind me, a long inhuman howl ribboned away. So it was alive, after all.
*