I do not own Black Butler.
Chapter 10: Poor, Poor Pitiful Them
Helix- English Countryside, London 1888
"We're going on vacation. We're going on vacation," The trio chanted in the carriage behind the one Ciel, Sebastian and I were in. I desperately wanted bang my head against something hard repeatedly and I had thought that I was going to get a break for once. Why did those three have to come along?
"How much longer till we get there," I grumbled as I leaned further back in the seat wondering if my growing headache was Ciel's punishment for the training session I had given him the other day.
"Do you hear how happy they are?' Sebastian asked as he gave me a smirk that had me glaring daggers at his back. "They're very grateful to you. Such a kind young master."
"I couldn't leave them there alone. I might come home to find the manor in shambles," Ciel said.
That was quite true. Those three could cause trouble just about anywhere they went, so maybe this was better in the long run. In the short run, they were going to nearly end up six feet under.
"It seems we've arrived at the village, everyone," Sebastian said as wooden sign covered with dog collars appeared out of the mist next to the road along with a tree that a multitude of collars was hung on and was surrounded by bones.
"Oh great," I muttered "Remind me again why I agreed to come along?"
"All right," the trio shouted before their faces dropped as they took in the desolate landscape.
Yeah, maybe I was going to enjoy this little vacation if I wasn't going to have to babysit those three the whole time.
"Oh yes, I forgot to mention something," Ciel started as I leveled a glare at him. What was with it with him giving vital information at the last possible minute? "The resort that the Queen is planning has yet to be constructed."
Never mind. He wasn't holding back information that I didn't already know. Though, Ciel could have outlined what this unknown mess that I voluntarily decided to walk into a bit better than he had.
Of course things, just had to get worse. The moment that Finny decided to pick up the old woman's baby carriage, should have been a sign that this was no where near a normal case of remove the criminal.
"Finny," I said with a warning clear in my tone of voice as Meyrin scolded him as well. Of course, Finny being Finny slammed the baby carriage into the ground and I just wanted to blend into the seats.
"oh, this is awful! Is the baby okay?" Meyrin asked as the blanket was pulled away to reveal the skeleton of a dog.
I turned and glared at Ciel as I tuned out the rest of their conversation with the old woman. "I don't think this was what you meant about dog baiting," I hissed as double checked to make sure my daggers were in place in the sleeves of the maid uniform I wore. I did not want to be empty handed when things headed to the climax of the case.
The eerie song the old woman sang as she walked away into the mist, made goosebumps form on my arms. This was really going to go downhill fast. If what had just occurred was any indication of what was to come, I was more than ready to start interfering if the morons of the village gave me a reason to. After all, I have to start baiting a trap at some point if I hoped to draw out the Organization's members. I would just have to try to not show all of my tricks at once, especially in front of the servants. They never would be able to figure out that there was something odd about me, other than I preferred to wear my outfit from the future when there were no guests at the manor, if they weren't given the chance to find the truth.
A few minutes later, when we finally reached the town, I could Meyrin squealing about a man training a puppy.
Sebastian scoffed at the sight. "He manipulate the creature with rewards and punishments. He commands the mutt's obedience, but the dog isn't blameless either. It fawns on it's human and welcomes the chain around its neck. I can't understand it."
I chuckled. "An interesting look at the situation, but is the way that life goes around here. Both the dog and its owner benefit from working together and to work as a team there needs to be someone who leads as well as a set of norms that each expects each other to follow that takes time to set up. You are currently doing the exact same thing that you do not understand since you started working for Ciel."
"You do not understand the contract I hold with the young master," He said as he glared at me.
"I'm speaking the truth from where I am standing. You don't seem to realize that I understand and know your contract with Ciel far more than you are currently giving me credit for and each time you doubt that, you are making it harder for me to fully help you find out the whole truth hidden within this world," I said as I looked around at the gloomy little town. "And the truth around here is a tricky and dangerous thing."
"If you are trying to get at something deeper, Sebastian, just say it," Ciel said clearly getting sick of the two of us arguing.
"No, it's nothing of import my Lord. Simply that while I love cats, I'm not especially fond of dogs. To be completely frank, I hate them," Sebastian said.
"Woof," Ciel said causing me to start laughing, earning a glare from the annoying butler.
I ignored the other conversations occurring around me as I watched a dark, brooding castle like building at the opposite edge of the village grow in size as we drew closer and closer to the home of the moron the Queen had sent us to deal with, instead of dealing with it herself. I always hated playing the loyal lap dog that was a messenger, because things always went wrong the second I walked through the door. As the carriage drew to a halt, I let out a sigh of frustration upon seeing the maid of the owner's home standing outside of the door waiting for us.
"I presume this is the Earl of Phantomhive," the young, white haired woman said as she curtsied to us when Sebastian nodded.
"Welcome to Barrymore Castle," The maid said as we walked through the dark halls. "My master awaits your arrival."
"Helix, Sebastian," Ciel said as he followed the maid into the creepy place.
I followed them a distance behind, scrutinizing the maid. The faint white aura around her that I could see, made me very wary. I had read reports about her kind of supernatural and I couldn't help, but wonder what she was doing there. By the glare that she was giving Sebastian, she defiantly knew what he was. Since their kinds were enemies, the only conclusion that I could come to was that she was there to cause a hitch or two to the plan. In the end that meant that I should probably let it play out and not interfere her attempts to give Ciel a headache. After all, this case was not my battle.
Of course when we walked into the sitting room, with a large fire crackling away in the fireplace, where her master was waiting, I wished that someone else had been sent to handle the whole mess.
"Who the hell is this chihuahua?!I told you to bring me the Queen's Guard Dog when he arrived!"the man shouted as he delivered blows from a whip to the kneeling maid.
"Didn't your mother teach you how to treat others the right way," I hissed, ignoring all previous thought of stepping in. I darted towards the coward intent on delivering a warning to both the man and the maid at the same exact time. I grabbed his hand from behind and twisted his wrist behind the man's back with enough force that the whip clattered to the ground.
"Much better," I whispered as he squealed in pain. "Now are you done yet?"
The man started to shaking, as the coldness of my tone sent shivers down his spine. Warning delivered.
Sebastian gave me a slight smirk from where he stood behind Ciel and Ciel was struggling to keep his face devoid of emotion.
"Get your Shepherd under control and train her better," My captive hissed before I twisted his arm harder behind his back in response to his words.
"I believe she is trained quite well, since I didn't even have to speak my order before she acted,"Ciel said as he gave me a hard glare in way of telling me to release the moron.
"Just count yourself lucky, that I didn't want you dead," I whispered in his ear before I released his arm and moved to stand next to Sebastian.
"Who are you," the man asked as he quickly tried to put more distance between himself and me.
I smirked in response to the man's fear as Ciel answered the question, "From the sounds of it, you have already received the letter I sent. My name is Ciel, the Earl of Phantomhive."
That got the idiot's attention off of me, as I watched Sebastian help the maid to her feet.
"Do you mean to me that a toy poodle like you is the Queen's emissary?"
I sighed. Maybe I should have knocked the fool unconscious, so that he couldn't try to insult people by calling them small dogs that have more bark than bite.
"You don't like small breeds, Lord Henry? Now that's hardly fair," Ciel said as he began to redirect Barrymore to the reason for our visit as the maid disappeared to presumably get tea.
I mentally sighed. It wouldn't be long before I could go back to HQ to make my report and get a cup of coffee, instead of all of this tea.
"There is nothing to discuss," Barrymore said as he slammed the papers on to the table that he and Ciel sat at. "Under no circumstances will I sell Barrymore Castle to anybody."
My eyes narrowed as I spotted a weakness in the moron. He had issues controlling his temper when it looked like he was losing his power over the little kingdom he had created. I glanced towards Sebastian and the maid, trying to see if he had seen what I had, but he was too busy pouring tea in the place of the still shaking maid.
If scenes like today where a common occurrence, why didn't she just quit and move far away? Better yet, she was a supernatural who was a lot stronger than she appeared to be. So why didn't she stop the beatings herself? My eyes narrowed as my suspicions began to drag away her humble servant act, trying to see what her plans truly where.
"Why is that?" Ciel asked, clearly baiting the Lord to reveal something that would be able to be used to trip him up in the future.
"Because of the curse," Barrymore said as I rolled my eyes. That was defiantly something the moron had made up, if this was just being revealed now and by himself.
Sebastian placed the cups of tea in front of Ciel and the moron, before retreating to stand next to me behind where Ciel was sitting.
"Oh, what curse?"Ciel just had to ask. Maybe I would have to pull a disappearing act later in the afternoon to snoop around the town to come up with answer or two, just so I could screw with the moron some more.
"This village and its dogs have existed for centuries. Anyone who interferes with us will be cursed in the most horrible way."
I sighed. That was still not answer to the question at hand and I highly doubted that Ciel hadn't noticed that either.
"Even the Queen cannot lift the curse," Barrymore continued on, completely oblivious to the glare I was giving him. "Your mission is pointless."
Okay, now I really wanted to screw with the idiot. If not that, I would help Ciel plan his demise and maybe give Ciel a lesson in battle strategy.
"My how interesting," Ceil said calmly as he took a sip of his tea.
"What?!" Barrymore shouted as he spilled his tea on to the table.
You've pipped my curiosity. I'd like to see this dreadful curse of yours, Lord Henry," Ciel said in away that challenged Barrymore's words about the curse.
I smirked as I slipped out of the room, intent on making sure the servants hadn't made a mess of everything, while the rest of us were preoccupied with the mission.
"Everything alright in here?" I asked as I walked into the kitchen to find the white haired maid there as well.
"Everything is going just marvelous, yes," Meyrin said causing me to raise an eyebrow in disbelief.
"You mean, Bard hasn't attempted to char-grill everything?" I asked a little worried about seeing nothing in the room that had been destroyed, yet.
"You seem a little uneasy," Barrymore's maid said as she glanced over at me from where she was washing the dishes from preparing the afternoon tea.
"You would be too, if there were three other servants that always seem to be getting into some kind of trouble. When things happen to get this calm, I happen to get a little nervous that there will be a big explosion that I will end up cleaning up the results of," I said as I found a glass and poured some water from a pitcher into it. "So how do you manage this circus all on your own?"
"It's nothing that impressive, I promise you. I'm a mess most of the time," the maid said very humbly.
I raised an eyebrow. "Everyone screws up, it's what makes us normal."
"You have a very interesting way of speaking..." the maid trailed off realizing that she and I hadn't been introduced yet.
"Helix" I said as she gave me a strange look, reminding me how out of place my name was in the late seventeenth century.
"I'm Angela," she said with a false smile.
Here I was trying to play a normal maid and Angela was getting on my nerves with her lies and half truths that had the other three servants thinking she was so amazing. Urg, if that kept up, I was going to do more than just help Ciel plan Barrymore's downfall. I was going to be the one who brought both him and the maid at the same exact time, if possible.
As the other three servants asked a million questions, I ducked out and headed to find Ciel and Sebastian, hopefully without any of our hosts around.
It took a couple of minutes to find the guest room that Ciel had been given, and with no hesitation I knocked on the thick oak door.
When Sebastian opened the door, I could see the case papers lying on a desk near the window of the room.
"You may want to pick those up, before the maid of this place finds them," I said as I walked into the room. "Especially if you want to take down Barrymore."
"Is that so?" Ciel asked as he smirked.
"Oh, yeah. the maid is in it as deep as the idiot that owns this place is," I said with a smirk. "And I believe I know how to take both of them down at the same time."
"And how is that Miss. Helix?" Sebastian asked as his eyes narrowed.
"I know you two were cooking up your own plan, but you're going to need proof that Barrymore is not going to give you easily. Even then, you'll have to convince the villagers that he is the true murder," I said as I sat at a chair and looked at the chess board Ciel had brought with him.
"And how do you suggest that I do that?" Ciel asked with a glare.
"I'm not going to tell you that. Think of this as another one of my lessons, except this one is in battle strategy."
Ciel's silence and glare made me sigh.
"I'm not always going to be around to feed you the information that you need. You'll have to study your opponents reactions and body language on your own. I also know that you noticed the same weaknesses I did, so quit playing games with me," I said as Ciel's eyes went wide with realization of what I was saying.
"So we call his bluff," Ciel said as Sebastian began to smirk.
"That is very much like the plan the young master and I have already come up with," Sebastian said trying to out do me.
"But the bluff is not the key to this plan, it's the trigger that will get us to the end result," I said. "Barrymore's anger is his biggest weakness. The angrier he gets..."
"The easier it will be to collect the evidence to call his bluff," Ciel said with a smirk.
"Now you're beginning to catch on," I whispered with a mischievous smile as the three of us began to plan just how to get Barrymore to do just what we wanted. Of course all of our fun had to end, and end it did with a timid knock on the door as Sebastian helped Ciel get ready for bed.
"Come in," Sebastian said as I quickly moved all of the chess pieces to their starting positions to hide the fact we had been using them as a visual for our plan.
The door opened to reveal the one of the two people I really didn't want to deal with at that moment.
"I apologize for calling so late," Angela said in her humble way that I was quite sure, by that point, was covering up the fact that she was far more dangerous than she was pretending to be.
"What is it you need?" I asked sweetly as I stood up from my seat. "The Earl was just about to retire for the evening, if you needed my help preparing for breakfast tomorrow."
"No, I don't need your assistance. I'm here to make a request," She said as she curtsied to Ciel. "Leave the castle, leave the village completely! You must stay here."
"Why is that?" Ciel asked as I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. Those two had better not have created a plan to get rid of us. If they did, I was going to sabotage it as soon as possible. After all of this work, I wanted get a good laugh when Barrymore went down hard and it was going to happen if I had anything to say about it.
"I, I cannot say," Angela started before the loud howl of a dog cut through the night. "No! The Demon Hound! It's coming!"
I sighed. "The what is coming?"
Of course my question had to get answered that second by the silhouette of a dog in the window and Angela's shriek that probably woke up everyone else in the gloomy place.
"Right that," I said as Sebastian threw open the curtains only to see nothing outside.
"Sebastian! What was that thing?" Ciel asked once it was clear that there was nothing there, only glowing paw prints outside the window.
"Well' why don't we go outside and take a closer look," I said with a sigh.
We didn't get to spend much time looking into the glowing footprints about the same time the other servants had joined us outside in the chilly night air.
"Master," Meyrin shouted as she moved closer to us.
"Don't worry it was nothing," I said with a fake smile as I was internally trying to figure out how to undermine what was clearly a warning from Barrymore about what would happen to us if Ciel continued to follow civic duty to England's Queen.
"Angela," Finny shouted as he dashed out, causing me to roll my eyes. Only a few hours here and He was already smitten with someone who could care less about him.
"What's going on here! What's all the fuss about!"Bard shouted as he and Tanaka came outside still in their nightclothes. Finally someone had the right reaction to this craziness around here.
"The Demon Hound is here," Angela said bringing everyone's attention back to the phony curse.
"Demon Hound," all of the servants shouted at once.
"Yeah, that's what we are dealing with alright," I said as I gazed deeper in the fog trying to piece together where Barrymore was hiding out.
"It brings great catastrophe to the village. Anyone who dares to defy my master will be punished by the demon hound," Angela said as I got ready to lead her further into the trap.
"He rules this place like a dictator," I said with a sigh. "Is there anyway to stop the stupid thing?"
The sound of running feet and shouting pulled me out of my line of questions to find a mob of villagers holding a variety of farm implements. I sighed. So much for getting the truth out of Miss. Maid.
"Angela," One of the villagers said as they stepped closer to our misfit group. "Please wake Lord Barrymore at once. THe demon hound has come again."
I rolled my eyes. We had already established that fact at least fifteen minutes prior to them telling us that.
Angela gasped, keeping up her innocent appearance. "Who was the punished one?"
Of course when we couldn't find Barrymore, we ended up walking to arena with a tall wall of stone on the backside to prevent escape and spiked logs that were thrust deep into the ground. Against that stone wall was the bloody body of the young man we had seen training the puppy when we had entered the village earlier that day.
"So that's it then," Ciel muttered as I moved to inspect the bit marks on the body.
I began to frown at some of the discrepancies I began to see. Real dog bites did not look the way these were.
As I began to move closer, Barrymore shoved me away from the crime scene shouting, "Stand back, Don't touch!"
I rolled my eyes. He was doing a horrible job of covering up that this was all faked to allow him to keep control of his town.
"I see, it was James then. He was the bad dog," Barrymore said as without truly looking at the body.
A villager then stepped forward. "Yes. He broke the legal restriction on dog ownership. He had six dogs, one more than was allowed."
"A sixth dog. Then it was inevitable," Barrymore said causing me to try with everything I had to not punch his lights out.
"Not every crime needs to lead to death and not every death was inevitable. With every death there is a chance to stop it," I said as I stared down Barrymore causing him to pale.
"Lord Phantomhive, control your pit bull," Barrymore said as he broke eye contact with me, "Before she becomes the Demon Hound's next victim."
"That's all you can say? Really?" Bard asked as he moved closer to where I was standing.
"This village is under my rule and no other. The Demon Hound protects that rule. As the guardian of the Barrymore Family, it punishes anyone and everyone who dares to challenge me!"Barrymore shouted as lightning streaked across the sky.
I laughed. "You only rule this town in your mind and it's about time someone proved that to you."
Sebastian gave me his closed eyed smirk that I took as a sign of approval. While Angela gasped and Ciel was trying to keep his face natural.
"I was sure that you outsides were going to be its next prey," Barrymore said as he looked at Ciel.
I rolled my eyes. "I'm going to head back and get some rest. Anyone else with me?"
Without waiting for any answers, I headed back towards the castle intent on getting some shut eye before everything hit hard because this was more than likely just the beginning.