Page 44 of Wynter's Bite

The man’s face reddened. “I do not know what you presume to accomplish from this menacing crime. If you think Miss Mead’s parents will pay a ransom, you will be deeply disappointed. They haven’t written so much as a letter to her in three years.”

“I don’t want any bloody money,” Justus growled, appalled that her own family had abandoned her like that. “Just her.” He didn’t elaborate, as the less people knew about Bethany’s liberation, the better. He did not doubt that this incident would spread to the London papers. But as long as nothing preternatural was assumed, he could manage.

At last, Bronson and the doctor turned down a shadowy corridor and stopped in front of a narrow oak door secured with a massive iron lock.

The keys clanked and rattled as Bronson unlocked the door with shaking hands. Justus kept the blunderbuss fixed on her and the doctor as the door slid open to reveal a dark, closet-sized room lined floor to ceiling with yellowing padding. Bethany lay on the floor in a crumpled heap.

“Bethany!” Justus called out, praying she was unhurt.

“Justus?” she groaned, voice slurred.

“Come to me,” he said. “Let us leave this place. Hurry.”

She lifted herself on her elbows and blinked at him hazily, eyes dilated and confused.

Justus rounded on the doctor. “You drugged her.”

“She was hysterical,” he protested.

“I should kill you,” Justus growled before turning back to Bethany. “Come to me,” he repeated. If he put down the blunderbuss, he had no doubt that the louts behind him would tackle him. Not that it wouldn’t be easy to dispense with them, but it was imperative that these idiot humans believed him to be a mortal.

Bethany grasped the padded wall and tried to pull herself to her feet, but fell back to her knees. “I’m so dizzy and my limbs won’t obey me.”

“You must try,” he said, willing her to have strength.

Inch by painful inch, she crawled towards him as Justus backed into the doorway of the cell so he could keep an eye on the doctor and his cohorts while she reached him. When he felt her delicate fingers grasp his leg, he knelt and scooped her up with one arm. The angle was awkward, but he cursed under his breath at how light and frail Bethany felt in his grip. Had they starved her here as well?

Another set of footsteps clattered down the hall.

“Doctor,” an irritated voice called from around the corner. “What in the bloody hell is going on? This place sounds like a, well... madhouse.” A wiry, rat-faced man came into view. His eyes bulged out of his sockets at the sight of Justus holding Bethany, armed with the blunderbuss.

But it was Bethany’s reaction that made him take note of the newcomer. “Greeves,” she whimpered with a cringe and clung tighter to Justus.

“He’s the one who was going to assault you when the doctor left town?” Justus snarled. He pointed the weapon at Greeves. “I’ll kill him!”

“No!” Bethany cried out the same time as the doctor gasped.

“What do you mean assault?” The doctor narrowed his gaze at Greeves.

Justus looked between the doctor, Greeves, and Bethany.

“I’d kill him myself,” she whispered, “but then we’d be wanted for murder.”

Justus sighed. She was right. However, there was a way to at least ensure this worm never harmed another patient again. Capturing Greeves’s gaze, he commanded, “Tell the doctor what you do to his patients when he is not around.”

Greeves flinched like a whipped cur and launched into a sordid confession, his chin wobbling like a jelly mold. The things he said he’d done to defenseless people made the doctor suck in a breath and inflamed Justus’s urge to kill him even more.

The doctor recovered first. “You will leave this place at once! You’re relieved from your position here and you will not receive a reference.”

“But Doctor Keene,” Greeves protested. “Don’t you need my assistance with this man holding you at gunpoint?”

“Never mind that.” Keene actually sounded bored. “Since he is not willing to kill you, I assume I am quite safe. The authorities will be searching for him at once at any rate.”

While that was true, Justus planned on leaving the area so fast that they’d be long gone before the constable made it to the asylum to hear Keene’s tale. And with any luck, they’d be safe in Cornwall before the story was printed in the papers.

Still, nervousness churned in his gut and he resisted the urge to reach up and make certain that no stray red hairs had escaped his woolen cap.

Just then, a sharp point dug into his neck. Justus seized Keene’s hand before the doctor could depress the plunger of the syringe. Bones crunched beneath his grasp, making Keene cry out like an injured rabbit.

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