by Eve Silver
She kept her tone as even as she could, though her whole body trembled now with sick terror that left her clammy and choked. He would not agree. Of course he would not agree. But that was not what she wanted of him, anyway.
Silence greeted her request. Cold sweat trickled down her back.
Her gaze flicked to the open coffin.
“Please,” she croaked, strangled by horror and fear. “I promise to be a good girl.”
She heard only the horrible pounding of her blood in her ears, a violent throb, the scrape of his foot as he stepped away. She held her breath, then exhaled in a whimpering rush as he shoved her—with his foot?—along the ground toward the coffin.
He was going to bury her. Bury her alive. In a tight little box with her shoulders banging the wood on each side—
Breathe!
One-two-three-four. She counted the beats like the toll of a bell, slow and even, drawing air in equal measure.
You are intelligent and courageous, Miss Canham, stronger than all your terrors combined. You can master this. You have mastered this.
Griffin’s words sounded in her thoughts and the memory of the way he had looked at her, admiring, caring. She drew on that recollection, made his confidence her own. There was no one to save her but... her.
“Please, sir,” she rasped, imbuing her tone with docility. “I have no wish to soil myself and displease you. N-n-no wish to provide a nest for vermin.”
Silence.
She trembled so hard that she twitched and jerked, her knees bent up, her bound hands on her thighs, her head bowed.
Please. Please.
“Use the bucket,” he said, not in a whisper, but in a crisp tone.
She knew him then.
A monster in the guise of a man. Not outstanding. Not memorable. Thin, sandy hair. Pale eyes.
It was he she had spied that morning in Northallerton. Not the gentleman from the coach, but someone of similar unremarkable coloring and build.
The trustee, Mr. Moorecroft.
He had stood there, in Griffin’s library only hours past and accused Griffin of these heinous crimes. To distract any investigation from himself.
She barely had time to register the shock of her realization, when he grabbed her, his fingers biting into her arm. He jerked her to her feet, spun her to face him.
The candlelight flickered and danced, reflecting off the length of the blade he held. Long. Sharp. Her gaze locked on that and her body went cold clear down to the marrow of her bones.
“I see no vermin,” he said, and with careful concentration, he drew forward a lock of her hair and sliced it neatly away, close to her scalp.
Beth sank her teeth hard into her lower lip to hold back her cry of horror. He had done this to the others, the other women, the ones he had killed. But he had not stopped at a single lock.
He had shorn off their hair and their scalps.
With a hideous grin, he drew a silver watch from his pocket. A large watch, like the one she remembered from when she was very small. Her grandfather had had a watch like that.
Why did she think of that now?
Pressing a button at the top of the pocket-watch, he released the lid, flipped it open and tucked her hair inside. It was pale against a darker gold lock already within. The sight of that, the knowledge that it was the hair of one of the women he had killed, made her weave in place, her fear so great she thought she might die of it.
He had something else in his hand, something small. Reaching out, he touched her bodice, his fingers working there for a moment. Nausea churned in her belly.
“A gift,” he said, and ran his palm along her hair. “You gave me a lock of your hair and I give you a trinket in return.”
She glanced down. There was a small watch pinned to her bodice.
As she raised her gaze to his, he smiled. “Do you like your gift, Beth?”
Her fear was so strong she thought she would collapse under the weight of it, but she managed a shaky nod.
“Now you may use the bucket,” he said, and put his hand to the small of her back to shove her forward. She stumbled forward.
This was her chance. This was her one chance.
Dare she take it?
The candlelight caught the edge of the knife, bounced off and away, accentuating its length. In her mind’s eye, Beth saw Sarah Ashton, saw her body lying in the woods, saw the things he had done to her.
And she knew that it was not a question of daring to take this one chance in the face of his murderous blade. She would be dead if she did not take it, carved like a Christmas goose.
Using her skirt to hide her actions, she bent and closed her numbed finger not on her hem, but on the bucket handle.
She must not focus on her fear. She must not.
She thought of the pocket watch, and she thought of her grandfather, dead these many years.
“Who was the first?” she whispered, staring at the bucket, knowing that he understood exactly what she asked. Knowing his answer before he said it.
“A girl in a tavern. In Stepney. It was a messy business. Too quick. Not well planned. There were too many people in attendance.” He sighed. “So that was a muted pleasure. But I got better with practice. Much better.” He sounded proud and pleased, bragging of some great accomplishment. “The first? Her name was Ginnie George. Pretty Ginnie, with her bouncing curls.”
Beth closed her eyes, tightened her fingers on the bucket handle.
He had killed them. All of them. Her grandmother. Her grandfather. He had butchered them on the floor of the Black Swan Tavern, and killed Ginnie in the parlor.
It had been so long ago, she barely remembered their faces. Or perhaps she could not bear to remember. But the watch, his watch had brought the horror of it flooding back, bright and clear.
He had left her on the floor by her grandmother’s body, left her to bleed and die, while he had gone to the parlor to kill Ginnie. But Beth had lived. She had crawled up the stairs to hide in a box, certain he would come, certain he would butcher her as he had butchered them.
She remembered huddling in the linen chest in the dark, the metallic stink of blood filling the close, thick air, and the horror of her grandparents’ murders fresh in her thoughts. She remembered her fear. She remembered the pain. One doctor, many years later, had said it was the way she curled in the tight box that saved her life, her position pressing on the wound in her side and slowing her bleeding.
From the corner of her eye, she could see the blade glinting in the candlelight.
He had stolen everything from her. Her family. Her childhood. Her sanity. He had left her damaged and afraid.
Always and forever afraid.
Crimson rage surged and swallowed her, monstrous and strong. Stronger than her fear. She took a tight hold of the handle of the bucket and knew her moment had come.
Drawing in the deepest breath she could, she opened her mouth and let free a violent cry, loud and wild, a testament to her terror and the crashing torrent of her rage.
She swung the heavy bucket up and around, throwing everything she had, everything she was into the movement, feeding the momentum, wielding the thing like a club. She swung from the bottom up, so the heavy base of the bucket caught him square on the underside of his chin.
The crack of wood on bone was loud. Louder than her pounding heart. Louder than the harsh grunt that followed her scream.
He made a sound of surprise and pain, and sagged down onto one knee.
Heart slamming against her ribs, she hit him again, this time in the temple, the force of the second blow far weaker than the first.
Tossing aside the bucket, she spun, ran.
The door. The door. She threw herself against it, her bound hands reaching above her head for the rope that would free the latch.
Silent screams ricocheted through her like bats in a cave, and she sealed her lips against freeing the sound, pressed them tight together and bit down until her teeth cut through and she tasted blood.
To free the screams was to free her panic, her terror, to leave her weak in the face of it.
To hold it back, to control it, was her only hope.
Straining up on her toes, she scrabbled at the rope, her heart hammering, her vision tunneled to a narrow black tube. She saw only the rope, high above her.
She could hear stirring behind her. A scraping sound.
Oh, dear God.
The knife. He still had his knife.
He was coming.
One chance. One chance.
She yanked hard on the rope, and the door opened, pushed wide by the thrust of her shoulder. Stumbling, she nearly fell, but with two lurching steps, she righted herself and ran into the night, her bound hands twisted in her skirt, holding it up as high as she could.
Her feet flew toward the dark outline of the trees. Not far. Trees and shadows. Places to hide.
She dared glance back only once. He was there, behind her, a dark shadow with a long, glinting knife.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Griffin was not subtle in his approach. He came upon Moorecroft’s house on the outskirts of Northallerton, and rode past, beyond the courtyard and manicured lawns to the orchard that spread in neatly aligned rows.
At the far end of the orchard was a shack. Isolated. Abandoned. Griffin knew of it only because Moorecroft had once allowed the girls from Burndale Academy to come to the orchard to pick apples.
Griffin had been there that day, watching the girls put apples in their baskets, because the trustees were to meet and discuss the school’s finances. He recalled Miss Stillwell standing under a tree, engaged in conversation with Moorecroft, the two of them alone and apart from the rest of the group, the moment frozen in his mind like a vivid painting.
The event took on sinister significance now, having taken place the fall that Katherine Stillwell was killed.
Hindsight made all so clear.
With new understanding he recalled the look on Moorecroft’s face, intent, a hunter stalking its prey.
He would die before he let Beth become Moorecroft’s prey.
Leaning low against the horse’s neck, he rode to the wind, reining the beast to a halt when he reached the shack at the end of the property. He could only pray that his instincts were true, that Moorecroft had indeed brought Beth here.
He threw himself from his mount, landing on the balls of his feet, knees bent, senses alert. Reaching down, he drew his blade from his boot.
The door to the shack was open. Peering around it, he took in all at a glance. The coffin. The candle. And the fact that there was no one there.
Agony speared him, the horror of possibilities. Was she dead? Had he killed her already? Taken her somewhere in the woods?
Too late. I am too late. As I was too late for Amelia.
Dread sank talons deep into his heart.
He forced himself to stay in the moment, to study the scene.
There was no blood on the ground. No blood in the coffin.
She was alive. Beth had to be alive.
He could not lose her. Could not lose the light she had brought him after so many years of darkness. Could not lose her warmth.
She had woken his child from her life of silence.
Woken him from a frozen death sleep, woken his heart, woken his spirit.
Beth. His light. His love.
And he had not told her. He needed to tell her, to touch her, to love her for a lifetime.
She deserved a lifetime, his Beth.
He recalled the look on her face, the tone of her voice as she had stood by the window last night. He has done this before. Will do it again. He likes it more each time. He likes to kill.
That eerie knowledge should have alerted him even then. She knew the monster because she had met him before, seen him every night in her nightmares. But this nightmare was real, and Griffin meant to end it, meant to save her and make certain that the monster never killed again.
He knew who she was: the child who had survived all those years ago at the Black Swan Tavern. Beth had escaped this madman then. She would escape him now.
And Griffin would find her.
Spinning, he studied the orchard, the road, the manicured expanse of lawn that spread toward the dark shape of the house. Nothing stirred. Nothing breathed.
He rounded the shack, scanned the woods that encroached on Moorecroft’s land, the trees shaded black against the night sky. His gaze was unhurried, careful.
He forced himself to stay calm, to beat back the anger that threatened to burst free of its confines. Such emotion was dangerous now. He needed calm. He needed intellect.
If he was to save her, he must find her.
Where? Where?
There. He saw a hint of movement, slate-black shadow against blacker trees, but it moved, slithered, a snake about to strike.
The bastard is after Beth.
His brilliant, brave Beth. Somehow, she had escaped Moorecroft, escaped the coffin, the shack, and now Moorecroft hunted her in the woods. Worry and anger melded into an icy mélange, and Griffin tapped the rush of emotion, waiting for his moment.
Shifting his grip on his knife, the heft familiar and smooth, he was glad for his years on the streets of Stepney. Glad for the villainy he had learned and done.
Glad that he knew how to kill a man with a single, deep thrust of his blade.
Watching, he waited for a clear view, and then his patience saw its reward. The shadow he had glimpsed a moment past swayed and danced, Moorecroft weaving through the trees. Griffin freed his primitive instincts, let primal emotion and impulse fuel him as, with a dark sense of purpose, he moved forward.
The predator had become his prey.
o0o
Beth knew that attempting to outrun Moorecroft was a fool’s errand. He knew the orchard and woods as she did not. He was unencumbered by either skirt or terror.
So she found a place beyond the orchard, deep in the gloom of the forest. A place to hide. She made herself very small and very quiet, and let the shadows cloak her.
Shivering with cold and fear, she dragged the rope binding her hands rapidly up and down against the rough bark of the tree. At her feet lay a thick branch she had stumbled over. Fate had smiled upon her, for it was a worthy weapon, one that offered her hope. All she needed to do was fray the rope enough that she could tear her hands free.
Fear was a poison oozing through her veins, making her heart clutch and her throat close. Every sound, even the whisper of the wind through the leaves, made stark terror bite at her.
He was out there. Looking for her. And he might well find her.
Faster, faster, she dragged her hands over the bark, feeling the warmth of her own blood as she tore her skin. The rope was thick. The bark broke away from the trunk in chunks.
Choking back a sob of frustration and despair, she crunched her back teeth together to stop them chattering and gave up on fraying the rope. With her back pressed to the tree, she bent her knees, squatted down, and closed her fists around the thick branch. Her weapon. Her hope.
She was grateful that Moorecroft had tied her hands before her rather than behind.
A sound came from her left, the crack of a twig, and she forced herself to stay still when every nerve screamed at her to leap up, to run. But he would hear her. He would chase her.
He would catch her. Do to her what he had done to the others.
Never.
She stayed where she was, made herself just another shadow, her back braced against the tree, her feet set flat, her body angled so she could spring to her feet if she must. Before her, she held the branch like a club, her bound hands making it difficult, but not impossible.
Her father had taught her ways to defend herself. Henry Pugh had seen far too much of the dark ways of evil men to trust Beth’s safety to a whim of fate.
Footsteps, drawing closer, slow, careful, crushing the dry leaves with a faint crackling noise.
She dared not move.
Another step, clos
er.
Tightening her grip on the branch, she strained to see in the shifting gloom, faint beams of moonlight filtering through the foliage, dancing about as the leaves swayed in the wind. She remembered another night when this predator had stalked her, not in a forest but in her grandparents’ home.
The memories that had haunted her for a lifetime coalesced now in flesh and bone, the monster from her past come for her in truth.
Pressing her back to the tree, she pushed herself to her feet, her thigh muscles screaming at the slow rise, her back scraping the rough bark. She held her weapon ready, her heart pounding a rhythm so wild and frantic it hurt.
And then the shadows moved and he was there before her, perhaps ten feet away—
No... two shadows, facing each other.
Moorecroft and Griffin.
Oh, dear God.
“He has a knife,” Beth cried, and neither man turned.
“As do I, my love. As do I.” Griffin’s voice, calm, smooth. A pause, and then he said, “I am pleased to find you well.”
He did not sound pleased. He sounded grim and savage and saturated with rage. Still she did not doubt the sentiment. He was pleased that she was alive. That he had found her. That he had a chance to use his knife.
The men circled each other. Moorecroft shifted, either to attack or to run, Beth could not say. Griffin shifted to block him. Beth thought Moorecroft tested him, tested his skill and his patience, learning his opponent.
She ached to run to Griffin, to let him envelop her in the safety and warmth of his embrace. But it was not time yet, there was still Moorecroft to face with his knife and his horrific intent.
My love.
A tumult of emotion raced through her, the words dampening her terror just a bit. She knew he would never say such a thing as a casual endearment. He was a man who said only what he meant. She had learned that much of him by now.
In the pallid light that filtered through the trees, she saw the set line of Griffin’s jaw, the ease of his posture, the glitter of his eyes as he followed Moorecroft’s every move.
Here was the man she had seen that very first day on the road before the stonebuilt church, the man who made her think of the panther in the cage. Only, the bars were gone, the panther set free. He was lithe and dangerous, and he was here for her. To protect her. Griffin.