Chapter 12 Ransom

Chapter 12 Ransom

Ransom was half-dead by the time Seraphine disappeared. High on the balcony of Villa Roman, he lay slumped in a pool of blood and shattered glass, trying to fight the blackness in his mind. Beneath the serrated edge of his pain, he felt a ripple of anger. Worse, humiliation . For nearly ten years he had stalked the streets of Fantome, without fear of anyone or anything. He was a weapon, honed by Shade. Unstoppable, unbeatable. And in less than ten seconds, a mouthy farmgirl had brought him to his knees.

With a letter opener.

Fuck.

He had felt bad about having to kill her before – hesitated, even, and more than once – but now… Now , he really was going to murder her.

If he didn't die first.

He braced himself against the bloody stones, feeling a twinge in his right hand. The skin of his palm was smooth, but a moment ago it had sizzled. Something had flared out of her at his touch, shoving against him. It had burned him. She had burned him. One moment, he was holding her up like a ragdoll, willing her heart to stop quickly and painlessly, and the next, she was glowing like the sun.

She had looked just as surprised as he was.

And then she had stabbed him.

His head lolled dangerously, his sight fading. The night had grown dark again. Seraphine and her little magic trick had scoured the Shade from his bones. He fumbled in the pocket of his coat and found another vial. His spare. He pulled out the stopper with his teeth and tipped it all down his gullet.

His teeth chattered as the cold set in, familiar shadows spreading out inside him. They filled his veins, staunched the flow of his blood, just long enough for him to remove the knife lodged in his lower right side.

He hissed as it came free, the blade slick, then pulled up his shirt, examining the wound. The blood around it was so dark, it joined the whorls of his shadow-marks, congealing in a long narrow strip. He pressed his hands against the gash, sweat pouring from his brow as the Shade went to work. A temporary solution, but with any luck, it would be enough to get him off this balcony and back to Hugo's Passage.

‘ Seraphine .' Ransom muttered the name like a swearword. He had been a fool for hesitating, for talking to her at all. He cursed the primal instinct that had urged him to be gentle with her, that had roared at him as he curled his hands around her throat.

Never again. Never .

His gaze slid over the bloodied knife. That little spitfire was going to regret this.

He managed to drag himself to his feet. His body was weak, but the Shade was strong. He pulled a shadow from the roof and held onto it with both hands, carefully lowering himself into the garden. When he reached the ground his wound screamed but he stumbled across the garden before pulling himself over the railings and onto the street.

He stopped on the banks of the Verne, slowed by indecision. A part of him wanted to track Seraphine all the way back to the Hollows and finish what he started, tonight. Throw a brick through her window, scale the walls of House Armand, scream her name until his throat went raw. Pin her, kill her, make her suffer this time. Make her beg.

Get a hold of yourself, Ransom.

Pain was making him irrational, and the Shade was stoking his impulsiveness. If he set foot in House Armand tonight, in this state, he'd be in a cell by sunrise. Cordelia Mercure would make sure of it. And then Ransom would never untangle the mystery of this maddening spitfire and the magic she wore around her neck.

He thought fleetingly of her mother's farmhouse engulfed in flames, and wondered what other secrets Sylvie Marchant had hidden there. What other secrets Gaspard Dufort had tried to burn.

He hadn't destroyed them all.

But Ransom now understood this: Seraphine Marchant was no ordinary farmgirl. She was more dangerous than he could have imagined. More infuriating. He imagined her triumphant smile, that fleck of bronze glowing fiercely in her eye as she uttered those taunting words. Bleeding swan.

He bit off another swearword. He would have his revenge. But first, he had to survive the night. So, he set out on the long, agonizing walk home.

He was almost at the Bridge of Tears when a distant scream rang out. He snapped his chin up, just in time to catch the streetlamps flickering. A swathe of shadows moved up from the south. The air filled with a sudden putrid stench. It turned Ransom's stomach, setting him on high alert.

There was someone else here.

Something else.

He stalked in the direction of the scream, following the streetlamps as they faded, one by one. When he reached Merchant's Way, the taverns were dark, empty. The revellers had fled.

There was a body on the ground. An old woman in a ragged coat. A fresh kill. Her cerise lipstick was smeared along her cheek, and her papery skin was as grey as the Verne in winter. Her eyeballs were black.

His heart began to thunder, the Shade inside him surging to attention. It was not the body that unsettled him, but the thing he saw loping away from it. A darkness he could not see through. It moved like a man. Only it was taller, bigger. A beast.

A monster , he realized, with a sickening jolt.

Every instinct inside Ransom told him to turn on his heel and run in the opposite direction. But curiosity rooted him to the spot. Here was one of the monsters that had crawled up from the harbour or out of the sewers to terrorize the streets of Fantome. The rumours were true.

If Ransom could catch this beast – or better, kill it – he would curry favour with Dufort. And more importantly, he'd be able to rectify the damage that Seraphine Marchant had just done to his reputation.

As if it could hear the spiral of his thoughts, the beast turned, suddenly.

Ransom froze, trying to make sense of its face. Its silver eyes were far too large, its pinprick pupils lost in the searing brightness of the rest. Its wide mouth was slack and toothless, its long black tongue hanging out to one side. Its shadowed form looked almost human, but it had no hair and its long arms hung strangely, like its shoulders had been dislocated.

The beast cocked its head, pinning Ransom with those awful glowing eyes. Suddenly weak, Ransom searched for his voice and managed to say, ‘What are you?'

The monster's nostrils flared. Then it charged.

If Ransom wasn't injured, he might have been quicker, smarter. But there was no time to reach for a shadow or even to leap out of the way as the monster thundered towards him and then, with a terrible ragged howl, passed right through him.

The agony was so startling, so corrosive, that Ransom's heart stopped. He collapsed on the banks of the Verne. This time, when the blackness swept in, he couldn't fight it.