Page 12 of Kill the Beast
“Making sure your little friend Birch doesn’t eavesdrop any more than he already has,” Lyssa replied, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering. She wrapped her arms around herself, her breath fogging in the air, wishing she still had her troll-fur coat. The woolen replacement she had purchased was a poor substitute.
Brandy resumed his throaty growl the moment Alderic joined them.
“He hates you as much as he hates the faerie-lover,” Lyssa observed. “Or maybe it’s just your outfit.”
“Then he has very poor taste,” Alderic said, lifting his chin.
Lyssa smirked. “Oh, I don’t think the dog is the one with poor taste. Now, out with it, Al. There’s a creature you want me to kill—one with a glowing mark on it, like the Serpent of Ire?”
“Right. This monster has had m-many names, throughout the c-centuries,” he said, his teeth chattering. “But you might know it as the Beast of Buxton Fields.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
IT FELT, FORa moment, like time had stopped.
Lyssa leaned back against the wall of the alley to steady herself; the cold brick cut through the sudden wash of dizziness that had overtaken her, but her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might burst, and she rubbed surreptitiously at the scar on her left palm for comfort.
“The Beast of Buxton Fields hasn’t been seen since the massacre where it got that name,” she said.
“Well, I found it.”
“Where?”
“It resides in the forest outside of Bleakhaven.” He gestured to the dark mass of trees beyond the poorly lit streets, and a shiver clawed its way up Lyssa’s spine, completely unrelated to the cold night.
“It’shere?”
Alderic pursed his lips, looking annoyed. “Of course it’s here. Why else would a gentleman of my social standing voluntarily exile himself to a place like this? I established the location of its lair not too long ago, and have been stuck here, keeping an eye on it, until I found somebody who could kill it.”
Maybe that was why that faerie-lover from the pub was here, too—keeping his own eye on the Beast, ensuring that Lyssa didn’t try to destroy it. But he wouldn’t be able to protect it on his own. Either there were Hound-wardens already in town, or reinforcements would be arriving shortly, now that she was here and had made herself known.
“How did you find it?” she demanded, furious with herself. Shehad dedicated herlifeto tracking down the Beast, and this ruffle-shirted asshole had found it first.
“I sort of… stumbled into it by mistake,” he said with a shrug that made Lyssa grit her teeth.By mistake.She had been searching for the thing for almost thirteen years, and he had found itby mistake.“What do you say? Will you do it?”
Lyssa chewed her split lip, the pain helping her focus. “Each glyph—the glowing mark—requires a special weapon to unmake it. Unmaking the glyph allows the monster to be killed,” she explained. “In order to craft a weapon that can kill the Beast of Buxton Fields, I’ll need a piece of the creature itself.”
“Is that typical?”
“Yes.” It was the reason she didn’t already have the weapon handy, should the damned thing ever resurface. Ragnhild always used parts from the Hounds in her spellcraft, first to determine what specific ingredients they would need in order to make a weapon that could kill it, and then to tie that weapon to the creature it was meant to destroy. Fur, teeth, claws, scales, even blood or saliva would do if they could get enough of it.
“Why?” he asked, and she rolled her eyes.
“Oh, come on, Al. You don’t really need to know how it works, and I don’t really feel like explaining it to you. Not when I’m this fucking cold.” It wasn’t that. Not really. Lyssa rarely had the patience to discuss magic under normal circumstances, but with the Beast finally within her grasp and her entire body buzzing with anticipation, the idea of standing in this alleyway a minute longer than she had to was unbearable.
A look of irritation flitted over Alderic’s face, but it was gone in a blink. “Well, it won’t be a problem, in any case.”
Lyssa snorted. “Yes, it will be. I have scoured every market, legal and otherwise, in this entire country. No one has ever gotten their hands on so much as a hair. If you know where the thing has been hiding, I can sneak in and try to hack a piece off it, but I might not survive the attempt.”
“You misunderstand me,” Alderic said. “I have a piece of it already.”
“Bullshit,” she said, her heart stumbling in her chest.
He drew himself up to his full height, an inch or two taller than her own five-foot-ten stature. “I assure you, madam, I am not lying to you.”
She scowled up at him. “How, then? How did a drunken fop likeyouget something no one else on this whole fucking island could?”
