Page 51

A GREAT SHUDDER COURSED through Catherine as she stared at the enormous beast. Though it had terrified her in the glen outside Hatta’s shop, it had been too dark then to get a clear look at the beast. But now it towered over her, all claws and scales and rolling muscles.

She could see the saliva clinging to its fangs. She could smell its rotted breath.

“Cath, back away, slowly,” Jest whispered.

The beast fixed its burning eyes on them and hissed. Catherine stumbled back and Jest shifted, putting himself between them. “Run.”

She gripped the railing, but her body wouldn’t move. The Jabberwock crawled toward her on its massive limbs. Steam hissed from its nostrils.

With a gurgle in its throat, the Jabberwock leaped forward, jaw unhinged. Catherine screamed. Jest braced himself.

There was a screech and a storm of black feathers.

A drop of ink fell from the sky—Raven, fast as a dart, plunged his beak into one of the monster’s ember eyes.

The Jabberwock screeched and reared back on its hind legs.

When it dropped back to the ground, the entire theater shook and Cath could see that one of the embers in its eyes had been extinguished.

Charcoal-tinged blood leaked down the right side of its face.

With another roar, it swiped its claws toward the sky, but Raven was already out of reach, beating his wings against the theater’s ceiling .

“Now! Go!” Jest yelled, holding his scepter like a weapon.

He leaped onto the stair’s balustrade and dashed toward the beast like running up a slanted tightrope.

The scepter twirled. One leather boot pressed off a marble statue.

He rolled in the air, landed on the back of the monster’s long neck, and grabbed one of the spindly whiskers that grew from its head as if he were gripping a leash.

Jest yanked the monster’s head back. The Jabberwock screeched and bucked but Jest held firm.

Cath trembled, still rooted to the stair.

Raven darted again, aiming for the second eye, but the Jabberwock careened away, batting Raven back with a flailing claw.

“Cath! Run!”

She managed to tear her eyes away and spin around, but she had taken only a step when her toes caught on the voluminous fabric of her gown. Cath screamed and lurched, felt herself falling, crashing down the stairs in a tangle of satin and petticoats.

Her ankle snapped.

Her scream was lost in a torrent of shrieks and the thunder of footsteps.

The lobby filled with guests fleeing the theater, surging down the staircase, lobbing themselves over the balcony rails, flooding toward the exit.

Catherine curled into the pillow of her gown, her vision white with pain, and hoped not to be trampled.

“Pinkerton?”

She looked up through her cascade of tangled hair and spotted Jack a few feet away, his back pressed against the same pillar she’d hidden behind.

“Jack! Help me—my ankle—I think it’s—” She swallowed back a sob.

Nostrils flared, Jack took a step toward her, but was halted by another piercing cry from the Jabberwock.

He glanced up and paled. After a moment of indecision, he shook his head.

“Not even you’re worth it, Lady Pinkerton!

” he yelled, before turning on his heels and bolting toward the exit along with the rest of the stampeding crowd .

“Jack! Come back here, you knave!”

But he was gone, lost in the chaos.

Locking her jaw, Catherine rolled onto her back, trying not to disturb her ankle. The sharp pain had turned to agony, but she didn’t see any blood.

With stars sparking in the corners of her eyes, she dared to look up. Jest had his scepter hooked around the Jabberwock’s neck and Raven’s talons had left a series of claw marks between the beast’s leathery wings.

Cath curled her fingers into her gown and thought of the stories she’d heard as a child. Fairy tales in which the beast was slain, its monstrous head cut clean from its shoulders like a gruesome trophy.

“Off with its head,” she whispered to herself, tossing her gaze wildly around the lobby. There had to be a weapon—something sharper than Jest’s polished-wood scepter. “We have to chop off its head.”

She had spoken so quietly she could barely hear her own words in the turmoil, yet at that moment, Raven landed on the stair’s railing and cocked his head, his fathomless eyes peering into her.

Jest grunted, his face contorted with the effort to control the Jabberwock. The beast suddenly hurled itself upward. Jest lost his grip and slipped back, struck by the monster’s whipping tail.

He flipped in the air, landing on his feet with only a slight stumble.

The Jabberwock beat its great wings. All around the lobby, candle flames flickered and blew out.

But one of the monster’s wings was off-kilter.

It was wounded.

Raven tore his focus from Catherine and soared upward, targeting the monster’s remaining eye. With a snap of its jaws, the Jabberwock caught a tail feather in its mouth. Raven retreated with a cry.

The Jabberwock warbled in the air. It reached for a chandelier but missed and crumpled back toward the lobby’s floor. What was left of the crowd scattered. The tiles cracked under the impact. The walls quaked .

The creature panted and gurgled. One burning eye darted around the destruction. A curl of steam spiraled from its nostrils.

It fixed its eye on Catherine again, like a predator singling out the weakest from the herd. Its tongue lolled as it shuddered itself up onto all four legs.

Cath pushed back, her palms slipping on her gown’s fabric. She was tangled and trapped and the very idea of putting weight on her ankle brought hysteria clawing up her throat.

The beast lumbered toward her, great globs of saliva dripping from its teeth.

“No!” Jest yelled. “You’re fighting me, you great smelly beast! Leave her alone!”

He launched himself off the mezzanine and swung down from a chandelier.

The candles were still swinging, splattering wax on the floor, when he landed between the beast’s wings.

His brow was beaded with sweat, lines of kohl running down his cheeks, yet he managed to make it look like a choreographed dance.

It was like being at the circus. Cath could see it all in her pain-filled delirium. For our next act, please welcome Jest and the Jubilant Jabberwock, best acrobatic team in all of Hearts!

She started to laugh hysterically.

Raven puffed his wings, still watching her.

Raging and twisting, the Jabberwock tried to shake off the Joker again, but Jest latched on to the soft tissue where its wings met its back, his scepter raised to strike.

Catherine didn’t believe he could kill it with a wooden stick.

Take out another eye, perhaps. Wound and maim, no doubt.

But soon the Jabberwock’s teeth would find Jest and end this act.

Feathered wings beat at her hair. She screamed and ducked away, but it was only Raven. He dropped to the ground beside her, his chest fluttering with quick breaths. He had Jest’s hat in his talons, the bells silenced against the broken ground .

He fixed his eyes on her and nudged the hat forward.

Cath grabbed it. The fabric was worn and soft. It felt like an ancient thing, not a recent addition to a joker’s motley. The bells twinkled as she thrust her arm inside.

No fabric lining, no worn seams. The inside of the hat was a void, deep and endless. She pressed her arm in up to her shoulder, her fingers reaching and stretching until they wrapped around something cool and hard.

She pulled her arm back and gasped.

She was gripping the handle of a sword.

No—the Vorpal Sword. She knew it to her bones. Its blade shone silver in the theater’s warm light, its hilt encrusted with the teeth and bones of the creatures it had slain before.

She thought of the stories. The brave king who had sought the Jabberwock in the forest and slain it with the righteous Vorpal Sword.

She looked up. Jest was still clinging to the monster’s back. He spotted her and his eyes widened. “Catherine—!”

The Jabberwock bucked. This time Jest was flung at the ground, landing on his side with a groan.

His scepter skittered into the crowd, the few who were stuck by the theater doors, too afraid to make a run for the exit.

They stood huddled in terrified groups, some fleeing back into the theater, others hunching into what safety the staircase could afford them.

The Jabberwock rounded on Catherine again, as if Jest had been nothing but a pestering gnat and she was the true target. Its next meal.

The beast saw the sword in her hand and froze.

The weapon warmed in her hand as if it, too, sensed its prey.

Catherine gulped and allowed herself one whimper of denial. One panicked moment of refusal in which she absolutely, positively, was not going to stand on her broken ankle and face this monster with an ancient, mythical weapon.

Then she clenched her jaw and yanked her skirt out from beneath her tangled limbs, ignoring the sound of ripping fabric.

She stumbled onto her good leg first, pain jolting up her wounded ankle with each movement.

With one hand gripping the sword, she used the other to brace herself on the staircase banister.

Her breath had gone ragged, her skin clammy.

She was already dizzy from the exertion required to stand.

But standing she was.

Exhaling, she released the handrail and put her weight onto her injured leg. She bit back a shriek, but refused to crumple. She wrapped both hands around the sword’s handle and lifted the blade, ignoring the tremble of her arms.

The Jabberwock prowled closer, wary now. It sniffed, like it could smell the steel, or maybe the blood that had once coated it.

Another slow step closer, prowling on all fours.

Catherine tried to gulp but her scratchy throat rebelled.

Another step.

She imagined herself doing it. Swinging the sword as hard as she could. Chopping through sinew and spine. She imagined the creature’s head rolling, thumping across the lobby.

She imagined it over and over and over again.

Off with its head.

The words churned through her thoughts.

The creature took another step. Then two.

A salty bead of sweat fell into her eye, stinging her. She blinked it away.

“Catherine…” Jest’s voice was strained.

The Jabberwock watched her with its one burning coal of an eye, the blood still dribbling down its opposite cheek. Its mouth was open and she could see all of its teeth lined up along its huge jaws. Row upon row of fangs, so big that she wasn’t sure it could close its mouth even if it wanted to.

She bared her own teeth.

Off with its head. Off with its head. Off with its—

The Jabberwock shuddered suddenly and turned away. It darted across the floor, claws scratching and scrabbling, and squeezed its wings against its back so it could fit through the doors that had been left open. The crisp twilight air shimmered over the empty streets.

On the outside steps, the Jabberwock spread its wings. The left one trembled at first, but with a snap, the beast lobbed its body into the air. A rush of air blew back into the theater and then the creature was gone, a shadow on the rooftops, its pained cries fading into the night.