“I’ll do it,” she said, her heart in her throat, and felt the thrum of the promise she’d made tighten around her. She would not see another man die, not when they might do something about it. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Miss Shinagh said helplessly. “He was never supposed to be in danger.”
“I think I know,” Hel said grimly, nodding at the starry sky, at the dark specks of a murmuration against the gibbous moon.
“He’s not far from the train station,” Van Helsing said. “If we can hold off the Wild Hunt until the train arrives, he might live.”
“Thank you?—” Sam started.
But Van Helsing cut her off. “We,” he said, “are not done with this conversation.” But he took off at a punishing pace.
There wasn’t time to argue; the rest of them followed. Night drained the color from the fields through which they ran, the cries of foxes echoing around them. The ground was soft and uneven, and the wind tangled Sam’s skirt around her legs. She stumbled over one of the crumbling stone walls, and suddenly, Hel was at her side.
“You have to find his ghost,” Sam murmured as Hel checked her ankle with cool fingers. “The one haunting him. If we can take it out?—”
“We?” Hel raised an eyebrow. “What were you intending to do if I didn’t come?”
“You said to trust you.”
“Trust me, not force my hand,” Hel said sharply. “Do you know how many ghosts there will be? The unforgiven dead are legion. Besides which, we don’t know for certain that the ghost is what marks him. It could be the selenic tattoo itself, at which point there will be nothing we can do.”
“I know,” Sam whispered. But it was possible. It had to be. Otherwise, what hope was there for Sam?
“Stay by me.” Hel’s lips pressed together as if she wanted to say a great deal more. But they were falling behind, the glow of Miss Shinagh’s lantern bouncing into the night like a will-o’-the-wisp. Hel pulled Sam to her feet, and they ran, the barley giving way to wheat, undulating in the wind like the ocean at night. To Sam’s horror, when the winds rose, the song rose with them?—not from outside, but from somewhere inside her. As if the song weren’t something trying to get in, but trying to getout.
You could save him. If only you?—
Sam shut the song out.No.Not again. She didn’t need it. She could do this herself.
Hel and Sam burst into an expanse of flattened wheat. There, in the ravenous heart of the storm, stood Lord Lusk, his lantern guttering. The air soured with the stench of the Wild Hunt, rancid as rotting flesh, with a sulfurous musk about it that stung tears from Sam’s eyes. She could feel the thrumming of their wings like a vibration in her bones.
This close, it was impossible to mistake them for birds. You could say they were like angels, if all their glory had gone to ash?—their wings of fire snuffed out, leaving only smoke, trailing up into the midnight sky. Their skin was shrunken and withered, their stringy flesh clinging to the bone, their fingers blackened and curled into birdlike talons.
But it was their faces that would haunt Sam’s nightmares, more like a plague doctor’s mask than anything human. Their eyes were overlarge and glassy, their beaks wet with gore, as if they’d been feasting on carrion, and yet, there remained small details of the people they had once been. A trilby hat. A pocket handkerchief embroidered with a heart. A pair of wire-framed glasses.
“Jack!” Miss Shinagh shouted, the storm swallowing her words as she ran to her fiancé.
“Róisín, you can’t be here.” Lord Lusk’s teeth were gritted. Twisting the top of his fox-headed cane, he drew an iron rapier, wincing as his left leg gave out.
“I’m not leaving without you,” Miss Shinagh cried.
But Lord Lusk only turned to Van Helsing. “Get her away from here, I beg you. I would not have her see this.”
Help us help you help him,the song crooned. For a terrifying moment, she saw Lord Lusk’s face riddled with worms, his flesh shriveling down to bone, the song pulling her reason out from under her, like the tide.
“Hel!”Sam cried as the vision faded, praying it wasn’t an omen, that it was only her fears preying on her fragile mind. Wishing she weren’t souseless.
“Working on it.” Hel’s teeth were bared, the lantern light making hellfire circles of her spectacles. Her revolver was held loosely in her hand as she searched the swarm for the one that marked him.
Lord Lusk lashed out with his iron rapier, driving the Wild Hunt back, only for one of the creatures to close in behind him, tearing at his back with blackened claws. He spun, slashing, but too late; another latched onto his shoulders, smoke wings flapping furiously. With a cry, Lord Lusk collapsed to one knee, his rapier tumbling from his grasp.
And then Van Helsing was there, the links of an iron chain flashing as he flicked it like a whip. With a mind-rendingskreee, two of the Wild Hunt burst into ash, leaving Lord Lusk panting as more took their place, swarming the man like ants on sweet cream.
“Do something!” Miss Shinagh cried.
Let us in,the song urged as Lord Lusk began rising into the night sky, like Mr. Enfield before him. Like Sam would when her time came.He doesn’t have to diiie?—
The crack of gunfire split the night. Sam looked back to see smoke twining up from the barrel of Hel’s revolver. The wind tunnel of the Wild Hunt collapsed, and Lord Lusk crumpled to the ground like a husk.
