The Curse of the Beta のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

The ship's bell rang three times that night and then stopped, and I stood on the shingle until the cold got into my bones and the tide turned, and then I went up to my own room under the eaves and slept for four hours and dreamed of a boy with copper red hair holding out a cup.At first light I went to Thomas.He was in the custom house with the shutters open and a ledger on the desk and a pot of tea at his elbow, and he looked at me once and got up and closed the shutters again and poured a second cup without being asked."Sit down," he said. "You have the face of a man who has heard a ship's bell.""You heard it too.""The whole harbour heard it. I was down on the pier at the time and I counted the strokes and I have been counting them all night in my head." Thomas sat down and pushed the tea across the desk. "Three strokes is the old signal for a boat to come out and take cargo. Nobody has used it on this coast in fifteen years.""Somebody used it last night.""Somebody did." He lo

I did not go back at four. I went back at half past three because I could not stay away, and when I came up the path to the schoolhouse I heard the noise through the wall.It was children's noise, but it was the wrong kind. There was a boy shouting and a girl crying and under it all a sound I did not like at all, a low sound that came and went, and I went through the gate and up the step and opened the door without knocking.The schoolroom was in a state. Slates were on the floor and a bench was over on its side and the little ones were crowded into the corner by the stove with their hands over their ears, and Ivy was standing in front of them with her arms out like a girl herding sheep. In the middle of the room Clara was on her knees with her hands pressed flat over her mouth.Her eyes were wrong.They were her eyes, blue green and wide, and there was something behind them looking out at me. The low sound was coming from her chest and her jaw was set and her shoulders were shaking,

I ran down the hill with Bram behind me and the wind in my face, and by the time I came to the shore the lantern was already halfway across the sand.It was Clara's lantern. I knew the swing of it. She was out past the channel with her shawl blowing and her boots leaving a line of prints in the wet sand, and she was walking fast and straight toward the island with the water lying flat and silver all round her and the moon not yet up.I shouted her name. She did not stop."Clara!" I put everything I had into it and the wind took it and threw it back at me. Bram came up beside me and I said, "Get Nina. Run. Tell her the schoolteacher is on the sand and the tide is at its lowest and to bring whatever she has that will stop a wolf." He went, and I went after her.The sand was hard and cold and full of small pools that took the light. I crossed the channel at a run and the water came up to my knees and I did not slow down, and I came up onto the shingle of the island with my coat wet to th

Rook stood at the edge of our lantern light and took his time about putting his hat back on.He was not what I expected. The men who had come ashore in the dark had been thin and quick and one of them had been a fool with a knife, and I had built a picture in my head of a rogue Alpha out of them. Rook was a big man with a broad flat face and a broken nose and pale grey eyes, and he had a way of standing with his hands loose at his sides and his weight on the balls of his feet, and he did not look at any of us for longer than a moment. He looked at the island, and at the water, and then at Clara."I have been in this village three days," he said. "I have eaten in the tavern and I have bought a paper at the custom house and I have stood on your green and watched your schoolchildren play. Nobody looked at me twice. That is the trouble with a pack that has an Alpha who forgets his own Beta's name. The eyes go soft.""You have been on the pier," I said."I have been on the pier. I have bee

The yard was full of smoke and the smell of hot metal, and the front door of the pack house stood open on a hall that was lit from the wrong end."Where is he?" I said."Gone," Father Callum said. "Ten minutes, perhaps a quarter of an hour. He came out of the study with the cup in his hand and he walked past me in the hall and he did not look at me and I said, Marcus, where are you going with that, and he said, I am going to put it back where it belongs. Then he went out through the yard and down the hill and the door was open behind him.""Which way down the hill?""Toward the shore."Bram was already running. I caught him by the shoulder and held him."Not alone," I said. "Go and find Thomas at the custom house and tell him the Alpha is on the shore with the cup. Tell him to bring men and lamps and to come by the shore path and not the road. Go."He went. I turned to the priest."The book," I said. "Ivy's drawing. The page with the wolf on it and the names after it. Agnes says you h