I whirl around. Whoever is controlling the Sluagh could be anywhere. But for this attack to be so pointed and directed at this one person, the cauldron and its owner must be near…
There.
Inside the butcher’s shop, I see a man watching through the doorway as the Sluagh shred their victim’s doublet, talons tangling in vivid red hair. The man in the butcher shop is entirely impassive, unafraid.
No…he’s gleeful, eyes eagerly shining as blood spills.
And in the crook of his arms is a small cauldron.
I slam the wind into the man controlling the Sluagh, and he goes flying, crashing into the butcher’s bloodstained countertop.
The Sluagh falter long enough for their victim to scramble a few yards away before they refocus on him. The man controlling them hasn’t dropped the cauldron.
When he straightens, his eyes go right to me.
He’s human—maybe just a drop of fae blood in him. But men can be just as cruel as fae, and the snarl of his lip tells me that he welcomes my intrusion. Welcomes the chance to hurt me.
I won’t let him.
The cauldron is full of dirt—a bit of earth where each corpse of the Sluagh fell. Spilling the contents out isn’t enough to release the Sluagh from this man’s control.
Only killing the man will do that.
“You’re next, fae bitch,” the man growls. His aura sparks with rage and power. He strides outside, toward me, slinging his fist like a hammer. It connects with my jaw, and my teeth clack over my tongue, a burst of metallic blood filling my mouth as I’m sent spinning. My body crashes into the wall of the butcher shop, the back of my head cracking against timber.
Dazed, I struggle to keep my eyes focused as the man points at the red-haired victim who managed to make it to the butcher’s gate. The Sluagh converge on him, and the victim shouts, his voice choking and horrible but his words full of defiant, angry curses at the monsters.
“Turn, damn you, turn!” the man with the cauldron shouts as he strides away from me, closer to the man he’s tormenting.
Turn? Is he trying to get the red-haired man to become a Sluagh and join the horde? It doesn’t work like that.
A curse on the Red Caps and their weapons and the way men use them without knowing how to control them.
I shake my head, using the wall behind me for support as I struggle to stand.
It’s the attacker’s shirt that grabs my focus.
The same shirt the bean-nighe was washing, rough-woven and pale brown.
The shirt of the man I have to kill.
And I know exactly how I’m going to do it.
My hands go to my bodice, where I tucked the needle Mary found. It too is a Red Cap weapon.
Before this moment, I never thought I’d use something made by those monsters.
But I don’t hesitate as I cross the butcher’s yard. The man’s back is to me, his arm clutching the cauldron close.
Right there—I see the exact spot on the man’s tunic where the bean-nighe was washing away a tiny bloodstain.
I drive the needle straight into his shoulder, pushing with my palm and using my sleeve as a protective cushion as the iron pierces his skin and digs into his muscle.
He jerks at the pain, but it’s just a needle jab, not a slash with a sword or a cut with an ax. He sneers at me, his free hand already rising in a fist.
And then he staggers.
The cauldron drops, spilling dirt and rolling away as the man’s face goes slack.
