Page 56 of The Dagger and the Flame
Nadia hopped up onto the bar. ‘Poor old Kipp,’ she said, surveying the destruction from her new vantage point. ‘Do you really think he was kidnapped?’
Lark frowned. ‘Kipp is the crankiest bastard I’ve ever met. A barrel of a man, six foot of muscle and swearing. Why wouldanyonewant to kidnap him?’
‘Then he’s dead,’ said Nadia, with a huff. ‘This tavern was his one true love. He’d never leave it willingly.’ She looked down at them, silver eyes dancing. ‘Remember when we came here for your eighteenth birthday?’
‘How could I ever forget?’ Lark chuckled. ‘We drank an entire bottle of whiskey and you danced a jig on this bar.’He leaned back to look up at her, his eyes so soft they looked molten. ‘You should have been a dancer, Nadia.’
‘Maybe one day.’ She smiled, shadows crawling to kiss those nimble, graceful feet. Not her shadows, but Lark’s. They laced her ankles, as if coaxing her to dance again. For him.
Ransom had the sudden sense he was intruding on a moment. ‘Every sailor in the place fell in love with you,’ Lark went on. ‘If I remember rightly, Kipp offered you a job on the spot.’
‘Maybe I should have taken it,’ she said, sinking back down. There was a note of wistfulness in her voice that Ransom recognized from his own thoughts, a sense that a part of her really did wish for a simpler life. A kinder life. ‘Hung up my shadows for an apron…’
‘And then get eaten by a monster anyway?’ Lark shook his head. ‘I can’t think of anything more tragic. You’d have been bored shitless. Your mind wanders every time you have to lace up your boots.’
She smirked. ‘That’s true.’
He grabbed the bottle Ransom had plucked from the floor and ripped out the cork. ‘How about one last drink?’ he said, pouring out three glasses of dark syrupy wine. ‘To the people we left behind.’
‘And the Daggers we became,’ said Nadia, picking up a glass. She wrinkled her nose as she took a sniff. ‘Ugh.I’m not drinking this. It smells like my grandfather.’
‘Your grandfather’s dead,’ said Lark.
‘Exactly.’
Ransom didn’t even reach for his glass. Even if he’d likedthe taste of wine, he was too restless to drink. While Lark shoved the bottle aside and grabbed the whiskey instead, Ransom stepped away from the bar entirely.
‘I’m going to take a look upstairs.’ He stalked across the tavern, to where a wooden door led to a narrow staircase. Their voices faded as he climbed. At the top, a familiar sulphuric stench hung in the air. The hairs on Ransom’s arms stood up, the Shade inside him jerking to attention. Shadows darted along his knuckles, poised to strike.
There was only one room on the second floor of the Lucky Shell. Kipp used it mainly for storage, and to snatch sleep in the slow hours between dawn and dusk. It was filled with barrels of ale and crates of various other kinds of alcohol. There was an unmade bed over by the window, a nightstand littered with flakes of tobacco, a threadbare armchair and a fireplace that had been boarded up to keep out the rats.
Ransom stood on the threshold, his arms braced on the doorframe as he peered inside. It might have seemed ordinary to anyone else – an abandoned room in an abandoned tavern – but with Shade in his system, he noticed something that made his breath swell in his chest.
There was a shadow in the room. A gathering of darkness Ransom could not see through. It was crouched behind the barrels in the corner, and moaning softly, as though it was in pain. The sound was so human Ransom wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him. But the smell was even stronger now, the air so cold he could see his breath in it. There was a wrongness in here. A wrongness he had encountered once before on the banks of the Verne.
He stepped into the room. ‘Hello?’
The shadow stilled. Shade was a second heartbeat inside Ransom, pushing him towards the darkness.
Go and look,he imagined it whispering.Don’t be afraid.
A part of Ransom was afraid, but he was curious, too. If this truly was a wounded monster, hiding upstairs in the Lucky Shell, then he would capture it and drag it home to Dufort.
The creature trembled as Ransom approached. He peered at it, trying to make out a face in the shadow, but its misshapen head was bowed, its sinewy limbs pulled around itself until it was no bigger than the barrel it was hiding behind.
Another step, the floorboards creaking. It occurred to Ransom that he should alert Lark and Nadia to his find, but he was so close now he was afraid of spooking the creature. ‘Hello?’ he said, softer now. ‘Can you hear me?’
He stopped at the barrel. The creature snapped its head up, revealing a gaping mouth of jagged teeth. Its lidless silver eyes flashed a half-second before it lunged.
Ransom let out a shout as the beast landed on him, pinning him to the floor. A terrible coldness swept through him. He swung his fist, searching for purchase in the sudden swarm of shadows, and it met bone with a sickening crack.
The monster howled.
Ransom bolted upright, grabbing its neck. He shuddered through another shock of cold. It was like staring into the face of Shade, watching Shade stare back. The monster bared its fangs, a growl coming on fetid breath. They wrestled, shadows folding around them until Ransom found himself in the darkness too. The room faded away until all he could see werethose wide glowing eyes, inches from his own. Beneath their shine, there was something oddly familiar about them but Ransom’s thoughts were turning sluggish, his heart slowing until it ached with every beat.
The Shade inside him was quickly fading. He knew, with chilling certainty, that he would have no protection against death without it. The monster knew it too.
Ransom flexed his fingers, trying to command the shadows that surrounded them, but they belonged to the monster – they werepartof the monster.
