Page 24 of Killer of the Bells
Why was I out there during the day when I just told you we couldn’t be active until sunset? Because I wasn’t going after the bells. I was engaging in vandalism. Both illegal, but two entirely different things when it came to the rules of the bell hunt. And since I wasn’t planning on getting caught in either case, I was hoping to avoid jail time for both crimes.
Once I’d trapped the landscape, I moved on to the tower itself. I’d taken creative license on my tower traps, and I was especially proud of them. I’d modified the oldarrows coming out of the walltrap and made it less lethal. Instead of arrows, I employed nets covered in sticky tar. Once they wrapped arounda person, they stayed that way unless the person got help. Even if they did, it took ages to get free, which gave me plenty of time to sneak in and get ahead.
It was tricky to set up without the nets getting gummed together and being unable to deploy, but I’d managed a workaround.
I’m quite clever. Have you noticed?
I had a few more (mostly) non-lethal traps to set, so after getting the nets installed, I continued up the stairs. The next trap was a bit dangerous to set up, so I had to be careful.
I wasn’t going for my regular brand of laissez-faire carefulness, either. I was in-it-to-win-it for the bells, and I wasn’t going out until I gave it my all.
The trap involved me climbing the wall up to the second level of exposed beams supporting the massive bell tower. Everyone expected the first level to be where my ambushes happened, because it was nigh-suicidal to set up traps in the higher levels, so they were wary of my usual tricks now. But since I was going all out, I’d chosen to risk the forty-foot drop onto stone flooring to set a classic rope trap.
I didn’t usually go for those because they were so obvious to spot, but the tower had no electric lighting. It was all restored perfectly to be as it was in the seventeen hundreds. The tower was a huge tourist attraction, and the town council probably only allowed the bell hunt because we weren’t allowed to destroy the place and couldn’t operate during the day, so we couldn’t scare the tourists away.
So, I was hanging carefully from a beam by my legs, installing the mechanism that would yank the unlucky soul off their feet and straight to heaven (metaphorical heaven, hopefully, but there was a potential for it to be literal.) when I heard Vale’s silky voice above me.
“There are easier ways to die, you know.”
I slung an arm around the beam so I could look up, and there was Vale, standing in the window, silhouetted perfectly against the sun. His coat even flapped in the breeze.
“Hmph,” I said and let go of the beam to swing back down so I could focus on my trap.
Vale dropped down to land on the beam. He landed lightly, missing my feet by mere inches.
I swung myself back up to glare at him and then let go once more to continue working.
He crouched low to inspect me, leaning over in a way physics didn’t generally allow for, and asked. “Is it common for you to be here?”
“Areyoucommon?” I hissed. I wanted to say so much more, but I was trapped behind a wall of wordlessness.
It had been a stupid thing to say, but it was a stupid situation, so fuck it, right?
Chapter
Eight
VALE
“Why are you still here?” Wraith drawled as he sprawled lazily on the pitched roof of the bell tower. “I assumed you’d fuck off as soon as you handed your snack over to Gareth.”
I shrugged noncommittally, which was a mistake. Wraith chose to take my non-response as encouragement to fill the air with chatter.
“It’s the hunt, isn’t it?” Wraith said as if it wasn’t completely obvious, given our location. He nodded to himself and continued. “I don’t understand the appeal, really. Any smart fae will beat it back to Underhill or out of town in December. Besides, the bells only last for a handful of days. The humans are invested enough in the game now that none of us need to participate.”
“I’m not fae,” I growl. “I have a human life that I can’t interrupt, and unlike some, I can’t hide in the fairy realm.”
“Won’t,” Wraith corrected. “If you weren’t such a chicken shit loser, you’d give our real home a try. And you’re fae enough for the bells to burn your magic.”
I shuddered. The bells were brutal, even with the muted dose I got, which was proof I’d lost more than enough of my humanity. Visiting Underhill would finish the job, and Wraith and I both knew it.
It was an old argument, so I said the words I needed to in order to get him off my back. “The only reason you want me to go is because you’re afraid of going there alone, but you miss it, so sometimes you have to go back and get a reminder of what assholes most of your race are.”
My barb hit its mark as intended, and for once, Wraith was lucid enough to feel it rather than blithely wandering away from the topic as usual.
Wraith’s glamor rippled, and for a moment, I could see his true form. It wasn’t ghastly, but it was decidedly inhuman, and I had no desire to join him in needing to glamor myself every time I left my house, so the fairy realm could go fuck itself.
Wraith’s eyes burned with an unholy purple fire, and I thought he was going to get angry, but he pulled himself together and his human disguise appeared once more.
