And as he was thinking this, suddenly RakeHell Lizzie lived up to her name by sinking her claws into the man’s sides. While he screamed and thrashed to no avail, she drew the deadly gloves up along the bleeding sides to his armpits … and then she did it again, slowly and methodically. The claws left his sides and went to his face. In a matter of two seconds they had torn away chunks of flesh and the crimson blood streamed down in rivulets. She pressed herself against the bleeding body, her legs locked around his hips, and to the beat of the drum and the whistle’s eerie tune she began to shred the flesh from his back with long, slow strokes. Through his pain the constable tried to bite at her face but she was too quick for him; her head jerked from side to side, and Matthew saw the terrible smile on her twisted mouth.

Now the claws really went to work. RakeHell Lizzie was so fast her movements were nearly a blur. Matthew realized how she had gained the musculature of her upper arms; it was hard work to butcher a human being, but she made it look easy. Before Matthew’s eyes the constable was being shredded to pieces, and though the man’s tortured body violently shook the chains he could not shake her off. His ragged screams filled the chamber but there was no mercy for him. He was doomed. Blood had pooled on the dirt below him and he was only a few minutes from being a ghost.

A few minutes? No, not that long.

The claws crisscrossed his chest, piercing deep. A mist of blood swirled in the air. The smell of it made Matthew’s temples pound and his stomach writhe. He must’ve shuddered as if he were fighting off sickness, because suddenly Julian’s hand was gripping his shoulder like a clasp of iron, and when he looked into the bad man’s painted face Julian mouthed a single word: No.

RakeHell Lizzie dropped off the dying man. She stepped back a few paces to admire her work. Her head cocked to one side, deliberating.

And then, like an artist completing her work, she darted back in. With a flurry of strikes that threw bits of flesh and streamers of blood into the air she opened up his stomach. All the blue-tinged, ruddy and pink-edged insides that the body concealed slid out from the gaping wounds, and at this someone—Montague?—gave a shout of appreciation for the kind of art he obviously admired. The constable’s hollowed-out body continued to thrash and writhe, but the mouth was open and the eyes stared blankly in the fish-belly-white face, and Matthew knew it was just the muscles contracting at the last moment of life. He looked down at his boots, his own face flaming red with shame behind the white powder of his masquerade.