Dead Iron (4 page)

Shard LeFel tipped his face skyward, and gazed at the velvet night caught between the tangle of branches. Soon, soon, the witch would be his.

Cedar threw the brace of wood across his door, and pulled to be sure the hinges were secure. He had already banked the fire, leaving a heart of oak to parcel out heat for the next eight hours, and set a pot on the hook above it. He had already hung the bucket of water up on the ceiling hook in the corner of the room and shuttered the cabin’s single window.

The last thing, the most necessary thing, he did not want to do.

A heavy iron chain thick as his wrist lay across the bricks of the hearth, one end welded through the iron ring pounded into the stone, the other end connected to a wide leather collar.

Cedar knew the chain and collar were unbreakable. He had fashioned both with his own hands.

He turned away from the door and paced in front of the fireplace, careful not to disturb the chain at his feet.

The missing Gregor boy weighed heavy on his mind. There was little information he could rely on. Grieving parents could conjure any sort of story to explain how their child had gone to death—wolf, wandering, or even the bogeyman come stealing in the night.

If the boy had been taken by beast, there would be no hope he was still alive. If the child wandered off, there could still be time to find him. And if it was the bogeyman or some Strange thing that put hands on that small a boy and stole him away . . .

Cedar rubbed his hand over his face. If it was a thing of the Strange, he hoped the child was lucky enough to receive a quick death.

He stopped pacing and took up a cup from above the fireplace in front of the small mirror there. He swallowed the last cold dregs of coffee. He hated the chain, hated the collar. And hated that he’d have to wait out the moonrise to begin his hunt for the boy.

Cedar placed the empty cup on the mantel next to his brother’s pocket watch, then crouched in front of the chain, taking it up in his hands. The call of moonlight in the air burned like whiskey in his blood. He knew just how long he could resist the change. Had spent four years tied to the moon, ever since he’d hunted the red wolf Bloodpaw in Pawnee country, and instead caught the attention of the Pawnee gods.

There was no time left for memories, no time left for bucking fate. He was losing control. Even now, his hands stretched wide, his joints and bones loosened for the change. A haze of luxurious pleasure clouded his eyes and mind like opium, promising unearthly pleasures.

It was a lie. He knew what would happen after the change. The beast inside him would be free. He would kill. And he would not remember any of it until he woke in the morn.

Cedar bent his head and, with clumsy fingers, fastened the collar around his neck.

He stood and stared at his reflection in the small mirror there.

Still a man’s face, strong nose, hard jaw, his skin tanned with something more than pure European heritage. His eyes were his own, hazel, with long lashes, above them dark brows and waves of thick walnut hair. Lines at the edges of his eyes hinted of past laughter, while other lines, at his mouth and forehead, mapped his sorrow. Clean-shaven, he was not a plain man, nor an old man, nor an unhandsome man.

He was, however, a cursed man.

The moon rose, inching higher, pushing his heartbeat to quicken. Fast. Faster.

One single silver ray poured through the shutter. Cedar moaned, not from pain, but from pleasure and sin, as his body twisted, stretched, changed. He clung to humanity, clung to the mind of a man, as long as he could.

But moonlight loosed a flood of quicksilver heat through him and dragged him down with the weight of an ocean. He drowned in moonlight, drowned in the need for blood, flesh, death. He threw his head back and yelled as his humanity shattered. The only sound that escaped his throat was a blood-hungry howl.

The first finger of moonlight slipped like a serpent’s tongue through the canopy of trees. Shard LeFel smiled.

“This is your end, Mr. Lindson,” LeFel said. “Your third and last death by my hand. They say a man can kill another man only three times in this world. Therefore I have gone through considerable measures to see that you stay dead.”

LeFel slid his fingers into his coat pocket. He withdrew a palm-sized silver box and a tiny wrought iron key. The silver box was fine lacework. Held just so, it seemed as if the lace fashioned the box into a tree: thicker silver lines creating the trunk at the base, and thin, beautiful arcs of silver reaching out in branches, leaves, and crown that wove together to make the cage whole.

Within the box was a tiny clockwork dragonfly, gold and crystal wings thin as paper, glinting like dying sunlight as they fluttered beneath the cage that held them. The unearthly green light of pure glim—the rarest of all things—shone out from the dragonfly’s body, blending with the sunlight-flecked wings.

“This trinket is worth more money than you have ever known, Mr. Lindson. Kings, emperors, a history worth of conquerors, have fought for this treasure, have torn kingdoms and civilizations down to splinters and dust to possess it.

“Rare . . .” LeFel’s voice, for just that moment, lost its anger and hatred. For just that moment, his voice was a thing of unearthly beauty, clear and full of song. The animals in the night paused at the sound, and even the trees bent to be nearer him.

Mr. Shunt moaned softly, and LeFel seemed to remember himself.

“I think it a shame, really,” he said with cold disinterest, all the song gone from his words. “A shame that it will be wasted on a scrap of meat such as yourself.”

LeFel held the box by its corners, pinched between the black silk fingertips of his gloves.

“This treasure will be the last thing you will ever feel, Mr. Lindson.

LeFel slammed his foot into the bucket, kicking it free from beneath Jeb. The rope groaned beneath the man’s full weight.

Jeb Lindson’s swollen lips mouthed one word, even though no sound came out:
Mae
. His heart beat slowly once, twice.

LeFel turned away from him and stepped over to the child. “Such a dream, little maker,” he cooed. “Such a strange and wonderful dream you see.” He knelt and picked up the child’s hand. “Can you catch the moonlight, little dreamer?”

The boy did not respond. LeFel had not expected he would. He didn’t need his response. He needed his blood.

LeFel held the boy’s hand toward Mr. Shunt.

“Mr. Shunt, if you please.”

Mr. Shunt extended one long knobby finger, the tip of which ended in a silver needle. He pricked the boy’s thumb.

The boy did not even flinch, but the wolf growled. LeFel met the wolf’s copper brown gaze with his own. “You will play your part, my pet. But not now.”

Then, to the child: “Just a bit of blood and shred of dream, little maker,” he said. “That and moonlight is all I need this night.”

LeFel pressed the boy’s thumb against the silver box until one thick drop of blood fell upon the dragonfly, turning it slick and dark as rubies.

“Such a beautiful child.” LeFel rose to stand in front of the boy. “And so useful.” He held the box over his shoulder. “Mr. Shunt, your service.”

Mr. Shunt stirred free of the shadows and lifted the box from LeFel’s fingers. He crossed the short distance to the hanging man, coats of silk and wool licking his steps.

Then he stretched his arm out to touch Jeb Lindson.

Mr. Shunt’s overly long, knob-knuckled fingers suddenly bristled with delicate tools, things meant for cutting, for hooking, for binding. He made quick work of tearing apart the last of Jeb’s coat and shirt, digging a hole through the cloth to the skin beneath.

He took his time fastening the box into Jeb’s flesh, savoring the dying man’s gasps of pain, batting away his feeble swings.

Once satisfied with his work, he stepped back.

LeFel turned to face Jeb. He removed his own glove, and tipped his bare palm upward, catching moonlight. He closed his fist, pressed his lips against the knot his thumb and forefinger created, and whispered to the moonlight.

A spell. Not of the magic of this world. A Strange spell. Poison from a Strange man’s lips. LeFel released the spell, blowing the captured moonlight like a kiss across his hand toward the man who was still not dead enough.

Moonlight poured into the tiny box in Jeb’s chest, catching like dewdrops on a spider’s web. The ruby clockwork dragonfly clattered faster, wings beating to escape a flame that burned too near, or to shake a poison swallowed down.

Silver threads from the lacework shot out of the cage and sank like roots seeking Jeb’s lifeblood, digging deeper and deeper until they caught hold in his heart.

Jeb stiffened and no longer struggled against the rope.

“Now, Mr. Shunt.”

Mr. Shunt fitted the wrought iron key into the neatly hidden slot in the silver cage. Then he turned the key counterclockwise: once, twice, thrice. The bloody dragonfly’s wings slowed and slowed with each turn. Until it was still.

And then Jeb Lindson’s heart beat no more.

Mae clutched the soil beneath her hands. Moonlight poured through the window, tarnishing her world with pewter light. She held her breath as Jeb’s heartbeat went silent beneath her palms. “No,” she whispered, “don’t leave me.”

The cold scent of winter, of death, drifted up from the soil and filled her with a bone chill. He was gone. Her husband, her lover, her soul.

Mae pulled her hands out of the basket. She wrapped her arms about herself and rocked and rocked until the fire died and the hearthstones beneath her had gone cold. She did not cry. Tears were for sorrow. And sorrow would wait until anger had its due.

In the deepest dark of the night, long before the dawn could grant light’s mercy to the world again, Mae placed her fingers into the ashes of the fire and sang a much different song, wove a much darker spell, and vowed revenge upon her husband’s killer.

C
edar woke facedown on the floor, his left arm curled up and numb beneath him. Half-remembered visions sifted like sand through his mind. Though he tried to hold tight to them, only fragments of the night remained, wrapped in old echoes of anger, fear, and the moon-crazy hunger for blood.

He took a deep breath and pushed all that aside, wanting to forget, for another day, the curse that plagued him, wanting with a sure desperation to be nothing more than just a man. But all the wanting in the world couldn’t erase the beast within him. And every day he refused to slake the hunger, it took more to deny the beast’s needs.

He rolled to one hip to get the blood flowing back into his arm, then lay all the way onto his back. He groaned at the stiffness in his muscles and joints. The chain next to him shifted and rattled against floorboards—a comforting sound. He dragged his right hand alongside his neck, checking to see if the collar was still there. Loose, but whole. He had not run free in the night.

Cedar blew out the breath he’d been holding and stared up at the ceiling. The light of dawn slipped the edge of the shutter, a single shaft of yellow burning down upon the floor like a gold coin.

But no coin could be more precious than the humanity morning provided—stiffness, aches, and all.

Clearheaded and hungry, Cedar savored the sense of revival the change always left upon him. He felt like he’d just plunged naked into a river in the brace of winter and come out the other side into summer’s heat.

Except this time he’d also come out with a numb arm, an empty belly, and a headache banging away like a steam hammer.

Food. Water. Clothes. In that order. He knew the aches and pains would pass quickly once his most basic needs were tended. It was one of the only gifts to his curse—he healed rapidly during the full moon.

He should be healed and whole in just a few hours. And in that time, he’d go out to the Gregors’, and talk to them about their missing boy. He planned to find little Elbert. He planned to bring him home if he was still alive.

Cedar sat and hissed at the pain that clamored through his skull and arm. He used his right hand to pull his left up on his thigh, and something slipped from his left hand and clattered to the floor. Something metal. A cup?

Whatever it was, it didn’t move, and Cedar wasn’t aiming to move either, until the grip of his headache eased off some.

A trickle of sweat licked down the side of his temple and jaw, then hit his thigh. He stared at the red splatter mark. That wasn’t sweat. It was blood.

Cedar felt along the side of his eye and up to a lump and cut at the edge of his hairline. He sighed. Bleeding and hungry had to be two of his least favorite ways to start a day.

The cut and lump weren’t more than he’d had before, but would need cleaning and a cloth to stanch the flow.

The headache settled a bit, so Cedar got to his feet. Like he’d thought, the stiffness was already fading, but his arm had taken to tingling with a toothy vengeance. He walked across the room to his trunk and worked the lock, trying not to move his left arm much. He lifted the lid, dug out a handkerchief, and dabbed at the cut. The blood was already slowing.

Good. He did not much care for doctors, nor to aiming their attention at his pain.

As he turned toward the bucket hanging from the ceiling, a flash of metal on the floor caught his eye.

His brother’s watch. That must have been what slipped out of his hand.

What had he been doing with that in the night? He paced over and picked it up. Still warm, the watch didn’t seem to have suffered. Not a scratch upon it.

Cedar rubbed his thumb over it, smearing blood across the crystal face. He swore softly. The last thing he wanted to see on the watch was blood.

Two steps toward the hearth and he stopped cold.

The watch was ticking.