Page 2 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

openly for a moment. “We should have a strategy in case we get caught,” she said quickly. “If we get captured—”

“We’re not going to be captured,” Aaron said.

“But if we do, we’re the only people in this world who know that Eleanor changed the timeline. The Lius will know that there

was something better before this, but they’ll only have fragments. We have to make sure at least one of us makes it to safety.”

“We’ll make it across,” Aaron insisted.

Did he believe that—or did he just want to? “Aaron, if the guards see us—”

“They won’t,” Aaron said. “We’re going to keep our heads down and move with the crowd. The guards up there will be too busy

directing traffic to bother with pedestrians.”

“Might have been a little optimistic,” Aaron added when they reached the top.

“Might have been?” Nick said evenly, his hair and clothes whipping in the wind.

The bridge crawled with guards, pacing up and down, checking pedestrians and cars. Unlike the ones on the walkway, these were

in uniform: red coats and charcoal trousers. Winged lions of the Court were embroidered in gold on their sleeves.

Farther ahead, past the guardhouse castle with its severed heads, the scene became surreal: charming shops and houses lined

the road in clustered terraces, interrupted by buildings that had been plonked in the middle of the street, their lowest levels

cut out to allow traffic to pass.

“It’s like the Very Hungry Caterpillar made a tunnel,” Nick said.

“The what?” Aaron said absently.

Joan opened her mouth to explain it, but then just shook her head. Aaron didn’t have many cultural touchstones after the Victorian era. “We can’t cross here,” she said. “There are too many guards.”

“We can’t climb back down!” Ruth argued. “Someone will see us. They’d find that suspicious.”

“There’s no guarantee of a safer way across,” Jamie said. “ Look. ” He nodded toward the water. “Southwark Bridge is gone. The Millennium Bridge is gone. At least this route is busy.”

“Eleanor’s controlling the crossings,” Joan realized. She’d gotten rid of Tower Bridge too.

“We can’t hang about here,” Ruth said impatiently. “We can’t look suspicious. Come on .” She grabbed Joan’s arm, pulling her into the stream of people heading north, and the others fell into step behind them.

As they walked, the sounds of the crowd merged with the roaring water and squawks from seagulls and pigeons. The atmosphere

was strange. Bad vibes , Ruth had said. Joan could feel it. Londoners were generally alert to their surroundings, but the people of this timeline

seemed different. They watched each other with hard eyes as if anyone around them might be dangerous.

Joan rolled her shoulders, trying to loosen her tension. Fat drops of rain were beginning to fall. She took a deep breath

of wet wood and stone, and glanced back at Jamie. “Okay?” she whispered to him. He hated the wet.

Jamie blinked as if he hadn’t even noticed the weather.

If anything, that worried Joan more. Jamie had hardly spoken since they’d arrived here without his husband, Tom.

Right at the end, Joan had used her power to protect them all from Eleanor’s changes to the timeline.

But Tom had still been charging at Eleanor, trying to stop her.

When the changes had hit, he’d been outside Joan’s protection.

Joan slowed a little so that she was alongside Jamie. “We’re going to find him,” she whispered.

Jamie dropped his gaze for a moment, his long lashes fanning down. To Joan’s relief, he focused on her when he lifted his

eyes again. “He’s a survivor,” he agreed. “He has to be out there somewhere.”

“On the river or the canals,” Joan said. The Lius would know where to find him—the Lius and Hathaways were allies. They’d

have to know where he was.

Jamie lifted the flap of his jacket slightly to check on his toy bulldog, Frankie—as if reassuring himself that she, at least,

was still here. He’d tucked her warmly in, her flat nose snuffling into his shirt.

Jamie opened his mouth to speak again, but then frowned as something caught his attention.

Joan followed his line of sight. The crowd had thinned up ahead, making space around a strange sculpture on the pavement,

about fifty paces away. It was a bronze cage about the size of a beer barrel, and a royal seal had been soldered to its side:

a lion’s head, crowned and snarling, against a backdrop of fanned peacock feathers and roses. The cage was in a set of three.

Was it public art? Maybe they were intended to be seats.

Except... a strange shadow moved inside the first cage. Joan peered closer, trying to make sense of it. And then she drew a sharp breath.

There was a person in that cage; he’d been forced into a curled-over position, knees clutched to his chest, back bent painfully. And now Joan

realized that the other cages held people too. She opened her mouth and closed it. She could almost hear Aaron’s voice in

her head: It’s not safe to stare. But it was like her brain couldn’t process it. There were men in cages on a London street. A wave of horror washed over her,

worse than when she’d seen the heads on the spikes.

Ahead of them, a woman paused at the first cage, her basket of red roses tipping precariously. For a second, Joan thought

she was going to whisper something reassuring to the man within, but instead she spat at him, hitting the side of his face.

He flinched, and Joan winced involuntarily too. Her heart was suddenly thundering.

Nick’s breath caught. He’d seen it.

“Keep walking,” Aaron ground out.

“Are those men human?” Nick growled, and Joan’s stomach churned at the thought.

“Are you going to lose it if they are?” Aaron said to him.

“ Are they?” Nick said.

“I’m not close enough to see.”

Aaron had made that sound like a refusal, but when they passed the first cage, he rapped two elegant knuckles against the

top bars, making its occupant glance up fearfully; he thought Aaron was going to hurt him.

Joan felt sick to her stomach. The man was already hurting— she could hear his short, pained gasps for breath—and the cage was far too small for him.

The cage itself was obscenely beautiful for such a terrible purpose, the brass polished, the royal seal rendered with such mastery that the lion’s fur, the peacock feathers, the roses could have been real.

A small golden plaque on the top read Damnatio ad bestias .

The next cage over read Damnatio ad gladium .

The words were familiar—Joan had heard them before, maybe in a history class. But what did they mean?

Aaron waited until they reached an empty pocket of the bridge—a gap between buildings, the river foaming below. “Yes,” he

said. “All three are human.”

Nick stopped, his eyes all pupil. His expression was so dangerous that Joan was sure he was going to turn back and wrench

open those cage doors. She felt it too. She wanted to go back and get those men out. They couldn’t just leave them there.

Aaron stepped in front of Nick. “You can’t help them. You understand that, right?”

“Get out of my face,” Nick ground out. His muscled build made Aaron seem slighter and younger than he was.

Joan saw a flash of red at the corner of her eye. “Couple of red coats coming this way,” she whispered.

Aaron’s hands clenched by his sides. He was afraid of the guards, but he was afraid of Nick too. Nick had once been a figure

of far more terror than guards. “We need to keep moving,” Aaron whispered.

Nick’s gaze flicked to the guards, jaw tightening.

But Aaron was right, and he knew it. If they got themselves killed, it was over.

There’d be no one to fix the timeline, and they had to fix it.

He closed his eyes, and for a second Joan could read everything on his face.

I did this. Those men are caged because of me.

Then he nodded tightly, and forced himself to start walking again.

They passed through the cutout of a cross building, and emerged to find a huge stone arch ahead marking the northern extent

of the bridge. And... Joan’s heart sank. Checkpoints had been set up like passport control at an airport.

There were five queues, with guards checking bags and chops—the seals that monsters used as identification.

Shit. Neither she nor Nick had chops. And Aaron, Ruth, and Jamie would be discovered if they used theirs .

She slowed as they approached the queues, watching the guards and trying to decide what to do.

“Leftmost guard isn’t checking as often,” she murmured. “Maybe one in ten.”

“There are five of us,” Ruth whispered back.

Joan didn’t like the odds either. “Maybe we should turn back.” But as she said it, a woman slipped away from a middle queue,

heading south again. A guard jogged over to her, shouting for her ID. The guards were watching.

“Left line it is,” Ruth said.

Joan ended up behind a woman with mousy brown hair, cut brutally straight. The others filed in behind her.

“Keep things moving!” the checkpoint guard shouted up ahead. He had a booming voice—a thespian voice. It matched his thick

black beard and mustache. “We all want our dinner!”

There were about fifteen people between Joan and the guard.

She was already close enough to see the details of his uniform.

His heavy wool coat was stained with rain, but the brass buttons had been polished to a high shine.

The winged lion of the Monster Court was embroidered on his left sleeve in gold thread.

The line shuffled forward, and Joan and the others shuffled with it. All around, people rummaged in bags and pockets, pulling

out monster chops.

Beyond the checkpoint, Liu territory was tantalizingly close. Joan had never been so desperate to get to an ordinary road

lined with dreary office buildings.

The woman in front of Joan smiled at her. “I wouldn’t look so worried, my love. These checks are just precautionary. People

always say they’ve spotted rebels, but they never really have. They’re always crying wolf.” Her smile turned toothy, as if

she’d made a small joke.

The woman had a basket of roses, and Joan recognized her suddenly. This was the woman who’d spat at the caged man. On her

wrist, she wore a silver bracelet with a large charm—a griffin. She was a member of the Griffith family, with the power to

induce truths. Joan felt herself tensing even more.

“They only care about IDs at sunset,” the woman said, as if Joan had asked. “This time of day, it’s just quota filling. The

guards want to nab a few humans out after curfew.”

The hairs rose on the back of Joan’s neck. “Curfew?” she blurted. As soon as she’d spoken, she wished she hadn’t. She felt

more than heard Nick shift his weight behind her.

The woman misinterpreted Joan’s expression. “I know it’s not quite sunset yet,” she said. “But close enough. I always say

that humans should be kept on a short leash.”

The woman’s roses smelled cloyingly sweet—as if they’d been sprayed with perfume. Joan could taste it like bile at the back of her throat.

“Clear to come through!” the guard said, making the woman turn. “Next!”

And then, finally, Joan was next. The guard beckoned, white gloves bright. Joan held her breath, willing him to just let them all through. Not to

check their IDs. But as she got closer, he tilted his head, frowning.

Joan swallowed hard. She’d forgotten to keep her eyes down. Was he an Oliver like Aaron? Could he differentiate monsters and

humans just by looking at them? As she tensed to run, the guard raised his voice, shouting, “Someone stop him!”

There was a flurry behind them. Joan turned just in time to see a redheaded man sprinting south, maybe hoping to get past

the cross building and jump off the bridge. Joan shuddered; if that was his plan, then that plan was death. No one could survive

that jump. Old London Bridge was nothing like the bridges of Joan’s own London. Below, the water boiled in violent rapids.

Red coats converged, though, and within seconds, the man had been caught. He’d barely made it twenty paces.

“It’s not sunset yet!” the man said desperately. “I’m not breaking curfew! I’m—” The word was cut off by a punch to his gut.

He retched.

“ Joan! ” Ruth whispered urgently.

The crowd surged, pushing Joan forward. Up ahead, the guard was waving her through impatiently. “Come through!” he told her,

his white gloves bright.

Behind Joan, fists and boots thudded against flesh. Joan forced her attention back to the road, forced herself to walk. After a reluctant second, she heard Nick following.

Halt! she imagined the guard shouting. Show your ID!

Instead, he said impatiently: “Move on, move on!” He waved them through. “Don’t hold people up! Keep walking!”

Joan didn’t breathe again until they were past the arch. Until they were down the road and around the corner, and the bridge

was out of sight. Then she sucked in air with a shudder, the horror of the last few minutes catching up to her.

Ruth bent double, as if she’d just run a race. “My hair’s gray now, isn’t it? I went gray in the last two minutes.”

Joan pushed a dark curl from Ruth’s face, trying to ignore the shake in her own hand. “Yeah, completely gray.” She couldn’t

believe they were still alive. That they’d actually made it to safe territory.

If anywhere in this world could still be considered safe.

They’d ended up on a gloomy street of tall buildings in a style that struck Joan as not quite Victorian: narrow terraces in

charcoal brick, with small prisonlike windows. The Liu house had to be somewhere around here—they just had to find it.

“We might have a problem,” Jamie said. There was a strange note in his voice.

“A problem?” Joan followed his gaze to an innocuous-looking bronze disk embedded in the pavement. It was etched with a splayed

tree, leafless and withered. “That’s a burnt elm,” she said slowly. “The Argent sigil.” Ahead, she spotted another disk—about

five paces away. And then another and another, all the way to the end of the street. “I thought this was Liu territory.”

“It’s supposed to be.” Jamie sounded unnerved. “I guess the territories have shifted....”

Joan saw the dawning realization on all their faces then. They didn’t know this city anymore.

“New world. New rules,” Aaron murmured.

A shard of the lowering sun streaked the windows above. The sun was setting. Joan pictured guards roaming the streets, searching

for humans out after curfew, and a thread of ice slid down her spine.

They’d need to figure out the new rules fast if they were going to survive.