Jackaby shook his head and began back up the path. I scooped up the old books and stuffed the sinker like a bulky bookmark into one of them as I scrambled up after him.
“All you said was that lead could kill it. Shouldn’t it be silver, anyway? Isn’t it usually silver in the stories?”
Jackaby pushed his way through the foliage ahead of me, pulling out a little collection of tinted lenses to hold up in the moonlight. He peered through a few of them before seeming to lock onto a path, which he followed with increased intensity.
“First of all,” he responded on the move in a hushed voice, “I never said lead would kill him. It won’t. I only said it would help slow him down. Second, silver appears in the lore as a weapon against werewolves, occasionally witches, and, in one brilliantly odd legend, a Bulgarian tailor—but not against . . .” Jackaby froze, his head cocked to one side, and I thundered into him, almost knocking us both to the ground.
“Not against what?” I whispered after we had stood still for several seconds. “If he isn’t a werewolf, then what . . . ?”
“Hush!” Jackaby hushed me, clapping a hand over my mouth and listening intently.
After another long pause I heard the rustling of something moving very quickly through the trees. It seemed to be ahead of us at first, and then fading back in the direction of the bridge, moving impossibly quickly through the brush. I thought it must be gone, and was about to speak again when a sudden, strangled cry cut through the forest. A gunshot rang out, and Jackaby burst into a run, his gangly legs hurdling bushes and vaulting him toward the sound.
I leapt after him, catching a tree root with my foot and pitching forward. I had one arm loaded with books, and the other was too slow to catch my fall. My head thudded against a mossy stump and the forest flashed before me, bright and colorful. When I picked myself up again, I had lost sight of Jackaby. I tried to follow the sound of crunching branches for a few long strides, but it was useless. I was lost in the woods, totally and entirely.
The clouds were thinning, at least, and through the thick cover of the trees, I could see sparkling patches of stars. The moon hung full and bright almost directly overhead, flooding the woods with light, but offering little help navigating. I crept forward, not knowing what else to do. Should I call for Jackaby? Would that only make me a bigger target? Should I hide?
A flurry of motion nearby set my heart racing, and I flattened against a tree trunk as a uniformed officer careened through the bushes, slapping leaves from his face in a panic. It was O’Doyle, the brute of a policeman with the hawk nose, only he looked far less intimidating now. He was pale, dripping with sweat, and wheezing. He was running with his gun drawn, looking backward over his shoulder every other step. I called out, but he only fired his weapon in my general direction and kept moving.
I ducked instinctively, though the shots were wild and high. I stayed frozen until he had disappeared into the woods, but I wasn’t going to stay to find out what had frightened him.
I pushed through the brush as quickly and quietly as I could, following O’Doyle’s noisy flight. I was squeezing through a small copse of trees when those sounds abruptly stopped. Crouched in the shadows, I strained to hear anything. More gunshots sounded in the distance. I peered around the trees into a small mossy clearing and saw O’Doyle’s feet first. He was lying on his back in a pool of crimson that was spreading across the moonlit grass, but he was not alone. A dark figure crouched beside him, its back to me. Once more, my heart raced and thudded against my ribs . . . until I made sense of what I was seeing. The figure was not the creature—not Charlie. The beast was nowhere in sight.
It was Commissioner Swift. He had slid down to one knee with his legs splayed stiffly, the iron braces only barely accommodating the position. His charcoal gray coat wrinkled as its hem brushed the ground. He had removed his hat, and from behind him I could see his graying hair and small bald spot as he bowed his head reverently over the body of the fallen officer. Contrary to his public bluster and bravado, his reaction to the grisly tragedy was heartbreakingly human.There came a shuffling of leaves in the nearby bushes, and I was jolted back to the reality of the situation. This was not the time to mourn. I crept toward Swift, doing my best to stay to the shadows, scanning the dark branches and creeping vines around us for any sign of the beast. “Commissioner!” I called in an urgent whisper. “Please, sir. It isn’t safe. The monster is close and still on the hunt.”
The commissioner slowly slid his hat back on to his head. “You’re right. Of course, young lady.” His voice was quiet and very low. The red velvet of the derby was a grim echo of the pool spreading at his feet. Swift steadied himself on his cane and began to turn and rise, but with agonizing slowness. His leg braces squealed and clinked in objection to the motion. And then an alarm sounded in the deep recesses of my brain. The sole of the man’s shoe, to which the brace attached by little screws, was not stiff leather. It bounced the moonlight across my eyes like a polished mirror, and I saw that it looked like the flat of an iron, pointed at the toe and made entirely of metal. As he stood, the shoes sank heavily into the mossy sod, and the braces straightened with a soft clink-clink.
The derby glistened and its brim dripped crimson as he straightened it, gradually raising his eyes to me. The hat cast a shadowy mask across the top half of his face, but his eyes cut through, bloodshot and full of venom and fire. A spray of dark red had splashed across his chin and up his cheek, and his lips parted in a wide, wicked, sharp-toothed grin. “Yes, right you are,” he said. “The hunt is still very much on.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I stumbled backward, the forest spinning around me. I turned to flee, but the commissioner was already beside me. I threw myself into a staggering run in the opposite direction, but he was there at once, moving with inhuman speed. Only the clank and squeak of his metal braces revealed that he was moving at all, and not simply appearing in each new location by magic.