With a pitiful cry Nack broke loose from his captors, but one leg had already been trapped by a manacle and so all he did was fall into the blood and guts left by the previous victim. He was hauled up, stretched out and his wrists cuffed to the chains above him, then the other leg was locked in the second iron and he was shackled and ready for the kiss of Lizzie’s blades. The guards once more took up positions of watch within the pit.

Matthew again gave a shudder. He had never been able to stand Dippen Nack—who could, but his mate in stupidity Gardner Lillehorne?—and yet … God, this was a terrible way for any man to leave the earth, sobbing and trussed up for the slaughter, soon to have his insides sliding down his legs like so much wet garbage. Matthew put a hand to his forehead, both to think and to determine what he should do, for it seemed to him that sitting watching these murders along with the others made him too much of a bad man for his comfort.

“Listen to me,” whispered Julian, leaning close to Matthew’s ear. “I know you by now and I know what you’re thinking. Firstly, drop your hand before you rub the powder off that scar. Secondly, you can do nothing. Hear me? Nothing. Nod your head that you understand.”

Matthew dropped his hand, but he did not nod. He had already scarred himself with a deeper mark by sitting still while that first innocent man was murdered … now, to sit still a second time knowing what was to happen? Dippen Nack or not … it was a mark of cardinal black against his soul.

The drumbeat started up again, slow and methodical. The penny whistle began a different tune, but still eerie. Matthew saw RakeHell Lizzie turn over on her belly and begin to crawl toward Dippen Nack, and Nack shook his chains and screamed like a little child, his pudgy nude body ripe for the slashing.

“Mark this,” Julian whispered, but now with grit in his voice. “You say anything, and we are dead. Your ladyfriend is lost forever. So whatever you’re thinking in that primrose garden of your mind, come back to reality. Hear me?”

RakeHell Lizzie was up on one knee. She held her deadly gloves out toward Nack and clacked the blades together … clack clack … clack clack …

“Swing on him!” Merda called. “Go to it, dearie!”

She stood up from the bloodied dirt. She circled him, as she had the first man, as Nack whimpered and fought weakly against chains that would not be broken.

Then she leapt upon him.

Once more she climbed up his body and then shimmied back down to peer into his swollen face. Her legs locked around his hips. The claws caressed his cheeks, and this time she kissed his forehead as a prelude to murder.