Page 297 of Rage

“The farmers will starve this winter, Lord Stilton. Many of them will die. Who will tend your fields in the spring, hm? Who will plant the seeds that grow the food to fill your tables?”

The crowd murmurs at his words, sharing glances. Lady Stilton darts a look at her husband, and my eyes catch the mottled purpling dotting her neck and disappearing beneath her collar.

Rage simmers in my poisoned blood. If my heart could beat, it would be thundering. Instead, a stillness settles deeper in my chest. I must remain calm because Declan Margrave is weak and cruel and far from done.

“Put her there,” he directs his men. My night sister’s body slams against the cage. Her screams rise in pitch as silver burns her back and arms. She twitches and jerks against them, and I spot the wounds on her arms, the backs of her calves, and across her ankles.

Yellowed tendons curl against pink muscle. Blood crusts the edges of the wounds like chapped lips, but none falls. At the sight, my night sister’s inability to walk makes a gruesome sort of sense—Declan’s men took a blade to her Achilles. The stink ofrotting meat and burnt garlic reeks from the wounds, explaining the lack of healing and blood. I gag, and Declan’s blade slashes down my back.

My scream brings a smile to his face. His eyes flutter closed as he straightens and tips his head back, inhaling deeply and stretching his arms high. His vest stretches tight across his chest, leather creaking as the toggles strain against the swell of muscle.

Above me, my night sister pants against the bars, her screams reduced to rasping wheezes. Silver eats into her flesh like acid, filling my cage with more of the putrid stench of a rotting carcass. Even if she could walk, I doubt she could move now. Chunks of skin and meat drip from her back and arms, splattering against the floor and pushing me further into the corner. Closer to those wretched bars.

“As I was saying, anything that bleeds can die.” Declan strides around the cage, running a hand through russet brown hair to sweep the long strands away from his face. “You just have to do it right.”

He pulls the leather tassels at the end of his stake, removing it from his belt and spinning the holywood in his fingers, torchlight glaring off the tip as he holds it high for all to see.

“Silvered weapons will wound them if you’re lucky, but it only slows their healing.” He grips her jaw, fingers digging into her cheeks to force her mouth open. The assembled crowd gasps at what I know is a stub of meat capped in silver. A precaution he adopted to prevent us from using our allure against him and his parade of men. “Now, if you douse your weapons in holy water and rub garlic into the wounds”—he stands before my night sister and presses the tip of his stake just off the center of her chest—“you might stand a chance of surviving long enough to do this.”

He raises his arm high. Her shoulders twitch, her wheezes rising in pitch as panic overwhelms what remains of her ability to think. I want to reach for her hand and grasp her fingers in this final moment. I want my night sister to know that her death serves a greater purpose. That she will be avenged; I will reign down a fury on these men so terrible it will become a moment of legend.

Instead, I cast my gaze out among the crowd, searching. There’s always one. Someone hurt or hurting, someone who sees these cruel men for what they are: weak.

“I’ll give you this one for free, Lord Stilton.” Declan grins and drives the stake through her heart.

Her chest shatters like an eggshell. Declan is weak, but his body is muscled and strong—an armor he wears to disguise his failings. The silvered tip pierces through my night sister’s back and ash crawls out from the wound. With a final rasp, she dissolves. Gore and viscera pour through the silver bars, and the ash that was her settles like a grim snow on my skin and hair.

A deadly silence blankets the hall, pierced by a high-pitched, drunken giggle. It takes me a moment to realize the sound comes from Lord Stilton.

“Good show,” he says between giggles. He grips both arms of his chair, kicking his feet out to gain enough leverage to rise. Lady Stilton grabs his arm, attempting to help her husband stand, and he rips it out of her grasp, backhanding his wife in front of the hall.

I freeze in my cage, eyes fixed on the blooming of red on her cheek. Whether she senses my keen attention or simply needs a place to look that is not one of the people who allow her to suffer her husband’s hand day in and day out, I do not know.

All I know is that she looks at me, her chin lifted and eyes sharp.

It takes every bit of my restraint not to smile.

There is always one.

Chapter Two

“Fifty pieces of gold for every vampire we gather in a week’s time.” Declan jabs the table with a finger. Only the two of them remain, the hall long emptied by Stilton’s demand. After hours of their back and forth, I understand why. The man is an abysmal negotiator and has spent more time pushing ale into Declan’s hands and peppering him with questions about his weapons, tactics, and training than discussing terms. It is clear he wants to use Declan for his knowledge, no doubt planning to form his own hunting party and attempt to handle the matter of my night siblings himself.

It is also clear that Lord Stilton is not only cruel but a fool as well.

Weak men and all.

“And what happens after a week?” Stilton counters. “You continue to rob me blind, dragging your feet as you ‘handle the matter’?”

Declan’s face remains calm, and a sharp, knowing grin curls his lips, a suggestion of the capabilities he possesses. It reminds me of the many reasons I keep finding myself in this cage.

“If we haven’t cleared your lands of the vermin by then,” he says, “we can negotiate a lower rate for the remaining pests.”

“What guarantee do I have that you won’t draw this out?”

“I’ll sign a contract if you are so inclined, and if you find me in breach, I’ll accompany you to whatever passes in these lands as a court.”

His bravado only angers Stilton. He casts a toad’s gaze around the hall, watery pale eyes landing on my cage. The man is repulsive, his cheeks mottled red and fleshy lips permanently pursed. Even if I had not noticed his treatment of Lady Stilton, my loathing for this lordling would remain. The wooden beams transversing the hall’s ceiling are rotted and darkened by mold, and his servants skitter along the edges of the room, heads ducked and shoulders stooped, all of them winter lean in the flush of summer.

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