Page 5 of The Howling (Monsters of the Yeavering #2)

I ’m shaking so hard I can’t hold onto the broom any longer. It clatters to my feet as a long, low howl comes from the opening in the stone floor which I’m sure wasn’t there a second ago.

“Barghest.” Lilburn appears out of the shadow shaking her head. “Hates everything,” she says, then looks me up and down. “Except you it seems. Nice work with the broom.”

I take a step back, hit the wall, and slide down it, my breath coming in stuttering rasps. Those eyes, those dark pools of danger. And the teeth. The jaws.

I’m not sure, given how much I’ve seen in the Yeavering, but I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in my life.

I still can’t believe I had the presence of mind to use the brush against him. And I certainly don’t care where he has gone. I have to hope it is a long, long way away from me.

“The jailer will put him back in his cell.” Lilburn looks over at one of the iron cages, where the bars are bent and twisted. “And fix it,” she adds. “He won’t get out again.”

I shake my head, hardly able to trust my voice. “That was a Barghest?”

“That was the Barghest. Reavely is the last of his kind.”

“Reavely?”

“The Barghest has a name.” Lilburn chuckles.

She holds out her small hand to me. I take it, and she lifts me to my feet with a strength I wouldn’t have thought she possessed.

“Are you sure you’re not the jailer?” I eye the hole in the floor again, the one I know wasn’t there before.

“I have a few tricks,” she says with a twinkle in her purple eyes, “but like you, I’m here to skivvy.”

I finally tear my eyes from the black space where Reavely disappeared. “What exactly am I expected to do?”

Lilburn shrugs. “Clean, feed the prisoners, try not to die.”

“Oh, nothing important then.” My words have a growl to them which still hasn’t been beaten out of me by the Yeavering.

Lilburn laughs. “You have more of a spark than I would expect for a human.”

I refrain from saying I still don’t quite know how I found the courage to tackle the big terrifying beast as he broke into Lilburn’s quarters. It’s not me, not now. Not after I lost everything and ended up here, in the Yeavering.

The low howl comes again out of the hole, mournful and long. There’s pain there, somewhere, and it claws at my insides.

“I haven’t killed him, have I?”

Lilburn chuckles. “He’ll be fine. The Reaper walks with him. Reavely has an immunity most of us can only dream of,” she says. “Now, would you like a cup of tea?”

She walks past me.

“What about all of this?” I gesture to the ruined door.

“Don’t worry. There’s one thing you need to know about Lord Guyzance’s dungeons, my dear,” Lilburn calls over her shoulder. “You’ll never die of a heart attack.”

Her words do not make me feel any better at all. I give the cages once last glance, seeing the reflection from several pairs of eyes. I hurry after Lilburn.

The next few hours pass in a whirlwind. We have tea, she shows me the small comfortable room which is, apparently, mine. Almost as if she was expecting me. Lilburn runs through my duties and takes me on a tour of the dungeons.

They are as expected. But as I make my way around, trailing after her, while the place might stink to high heaven, the floors are swept, and while I’m not sure I’d describe the place as clean , it’s certainly tidy .

My feet are aching as we return to Lilburn’s quarters. The door is mended, and although I can still see the way the Barghest’s claws sliced through it from one side to the other, it makes me feel a little more secure.

The bars are fixed on the cage opposite too. In fact, more bars have been added, both lengthwise and horizontally. A large body lies in the back, dark and foreboding. It doesn’t move.

“What’s wrong with him?” I whisper to Lilburn.

“Wolfsbane. It’s the only thing which will subdue a shifter like him. The jailer has the only stash as far as I know.”

As she speaks, Reavely groans. I shrink back against the Hedley Kow.

“You’re going to have to get used to him,” she says. “He’s our responsibility now.”

Because my life couldn’t get any worse. Now I have a slobbering, terrifying monster I have to clean up after and feed. One who burst out of an iron cell in order to tell me he wants to eat me.

Lord Guyzance truly knew what he was doing when he put me down here. If I had any doubts this wasn’t a punishment for trying to escape, one which didn’t involve being turned into a frog, they fly away on the wind.

The Faerie lord is punishing me harder than I’ve ever seen him do to anyone else who displeases him. It’s only because humans are prized possessions for a Faerie he hasn’t had me killed.

But spending the rest of my days down in this pit of hell is a living death, and escape is impossible.

I’m doomed to the dungeons until the dungeons take me.