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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A chill slid up Caim’s backbone and lodged in the base of his skull. How could Ral know? They must have been followed. He had to get back to the cabin. But first he’d finish his business here.

He approached Ral with measured steps, balanced on the balls of his feet. His knives came up like steel extensions of his hands, ready to carve out the life of this man who had turned his existence inside out. Ral stood calmly, hand resting on the sideboard. Caim didn’t care. The bastard had to die.

As Caim gathered himself for a rush, a tingle ran across his body. Ral didn’t move a muscle, but the room grew darker. For a moment, Caim thought his powers had emerged, unbidden again, but something was different. He didn’t feel the pressure behind his breastbone. And yet, a prickling tingle danced along his skin like a march of ten thousand ants. The lamp wick flickered.

Caim half turned, keeping Ral in view, as a cloaked figure stepped out of the shadows of the other room and stopped under the archway. Sweat broke out under Caim’s arms. He hadn’t heard a sound. Shadows played across the man’s ruined, colorless features. The eyes staring back at him, cold and black, catapulted Caim into a maelstrom of dark memories.

He had seen those eyes in his dreams, night after night, but never thought to see them again in the flesh. He was sure of it, as sure as he knew his own name. Once again he stood behind the fence on his father’s estate. Bodies littered the bloodied courtyard. His father knelt before a man in black robes. White hands held his father’s sword as if examining its balance. Then, the blade struck with stunning swiftness and Caim’s father crumbled. A tiny voice screamed in the night, but Caim pushed past the cacophony to focus on the mysterious figure. The cowl was pulled back to reveal pale, ruined features like melted tallow, features without remorse or pity. And those eyes, sunken within their hollow sockets. Just as he saw them now.

Caim shifted to face his father’s killer.

The stranger didn’t move. Wrapped in his voluminous cloak, he watched Caim in the manner of someone observing the movements of an insect. Caim eyeballed the span between them. Six paces. A long lunge, but he could cover that distance in a heartbeat. He ignored his jangling nerves as his fingers tightened around the hilts of his knives.

Pasty hands emerged from the cloaked man’s sleeves. Each held a short dagger, no longer than an eating knife, but their blades were as black as the stranger’s cloak. Black as his father’s sword. A greasy finger slid down Caim’s spine, but he shook it off. He wouldn’t be put off by odd weaponry or eerie stares. He was beginning his leap when a flash to his right triggered long-honed instincts. He stopped and ducked as Ral’s stiletto traced a path over his head.

A spasm pulsed in Caim’s chest, sudden and painful, as if his heart were trying to escape from his rib cage. He clamped down on the feeling and pushed it back down into the depths. He couldn’t lose control. Not now.

Sword in hand, Ral advanced beside the cloaked man. Caim edged away. He could take Ral, but the stranger was a wild card. He didn’t look like a fighter, but his movements were sure and quick. Caim didn’t know if he could beat them both at once.

“I’ll give you one last chance.” Ral sounded genuine despite the patronizing sneer plastered across his too-perfect face. “Join us and reap the benefits. You can be my lieutenant, elevated above the slime of this city. You’ll have power, money, women—everything you’ve ever wanted.”

Caim didn’t bother answering. Because of him Josey was going to die. She might be dead already, but he could still perform one last act as penance for his failure. He eyed Ral’s guard, sword held off-center, ready to strike at any angle, but it left a lot of territory unprotected. Caim bent his knees. The pressure in his chest expanded, making it hard to breathe.

“Your words are wasted on this one,” the cloaked figure hissed. “Kill him and be done.”

“Yes,” Ral replied with a sigh. “Perhaps you’re right, Levictus.”

Levictus. Caim allowed his rage to filter through his body, down through his arms and legs, and banish the tingles from his flesh. His vengeance had a name.

Caim feinted at Ral, but shifted in midstride. His suete knives stabbed, and aimed for the chest and gut of his father’s killer, but they found only air as the cloaked man drifted away like smoke on the breeze, then flowed back with astounding speed. The black blades wove at Caim in a complicated pattern. It was a fighting style he had never encountered before. The man flitted like a hummingbird, first coming from the left, and then the right, faster than anything Caim had ever seen.

At the same time, something wriggled in his peripheral vision. He spared a glance and was almost spitted on the cloaked man’s knives before he extricated himself with a fast parry-and-backpedal. Tiny blobs of darkness detached from the room’s shadows. They ran down the walls like monstrous black tears. For a moment, he panicked, thinking he had lost control of his powers again. But he still felt the pressure, bursting to be free. The inky things resembled the shadows he had summoned before, but they were different in some ineffable way. Meaner, perhaps. He thought he could hear them hissing like a nest of asps as they crawled across the floor. He deflected a thrust from Ral’s sword. When he looked down, the darknesses were all around him.

But where had they come from? A sibilant hiss made him focus his attention forward as the cloaked man launched a concerted series of attacks. Caim dodged and wove. He spun his blades in circles to disengage, and then stomped forward to press an attack, anything to evade the cloaked man’s sinister weapons. It was him. Somehow, the stranger had called the shadows, and that meant…

Caim swallowed hard. He had never met anyone like him, someone who could also interact with shadows. If the cloaked man shared his abilities, what else might they have in common?

Caim hissed as a host of teeth, like tiny needles of ice, pierced his boots. He stomped on the floor to dislodge the tiny beasts, and received a nick across his left forearm as a black knife slipped past his guard. He jumped back before the next flurry of attacks could strike home.

Caim couldn’t afford to examine the wound, but it burned like fire. He flexed his forearm as the sensation crept up into his shoulder. His side was beginning to throb from the exertion. Step by step Ral and Levictus backed him into a corner, away from the window. Something cold and revolting crawled up his calf. An image of his father’s face, racked with pain, emerged from the depths of his mind. His mother was screaming. Caim dipped under a swipe and lunged, and his side erupted in agony, but he blocked out the pain and extended to his fullest range. Levictus knocked the thrust aside, but Caim’s left-hand knife followed behind with a high slash. The cloaked man jerked back just in time to save his eyes. Instead, the knife’s tip cut a gash across his face from mouth to temple.

He recovered faster than Caim anticipated and came at him fiercer than before. Dark red blood coursed down his cheek. Caim hopped away from the teeming darknesses and maneuvered closer to the bed. Caim glanced across the coverlets. Ral had circled around the other side. The killer had one foot on the mattress, sword poised to strike. A lamp of blown glass hung over their heads.

As his enemies closed in, Caim leapt up onto the bed. He batted aside a cut from Ral and swung his other knife in a high arc as he dove from the bed to the tinkle of shattering glass. He landed behind his opponents, hit the carpet in a soft roll with a grunt, and spun around as he came to his feet. Burning oil rained from the ceiling. The bed’s fine covers went up like tissue paper. In seconds the fire spread to a drapery on the wall and up the ceiling.

The cloaked man wheeled like an angry serpent as his shadowy minions flew across the room. Caim dove through the open window. He caught hold of a shutter as his legs cleared the sill. He hung there for a moment. Then, the silvery blur of a throwing knife sped past his face.

He let go and the pavement rushed up to meet him.

* * *

“Get down!”

Josey slid under the table as Kas tore the spear down from its mounts. Its steely head shone with an oily glint. He rushed to the door just as the latch broke and a mob of Sacred Brothers poured inside.

Kas skewered the first Brother through the door. As the soldier fell, Kas whipped the spearhead around and stabbed another through the arm. Bright spurts of blood splashed on the floor. For a moment Josey saw a glimmer of hope. Maybe the old man could fend them off. But as Kas yanked his weapon free for another strike, the press of bodies shoved him back. His spear seemed a pitiful weapon against so many swords.

Josey screamed as something crashed through the window. A heavily built soldier with thick arms and a scraggly yellow beard crawled over the sill. She reached up onto the table for something to use as a weapon. Her fingers found a smooth, cool surface. She grabbed the half-empty bottle and hurled it at the invader. It struck him on the arm and broke, drenching his uniform in wine. The Brother yelped and clutched his elbow. Heartened, Josey reached for more ammunition. She threw plates and cutlery, but he batted the missiles aside and leapt at her. He caught her by the ankle. She kicked and screamed as he reeled her in like a fish on a line.

Kas staggered in the middle of the room. Blood streamed down his clothes from a host of wounds. He plied the spear with failing strength until a blade smote him across the brow. He stumbled to the floor with a gasp.

Josey shivered in the embrace of her captor. Wine from his soaked arm wetted her dress. His horrid breath whistled in her ear. He chuckled and took liberties in the placement of his hands as he hauled her to her feet. She squirmed and tried to bite him, and was rewarded with a sharp slap across the face.

“Now, none of that, Josephine,” a voice spoke from the cabin’s entrance.

A shudder seized hold of Josey as Markus stepped into the cabin. Bandages peeked from underneath a striking new uniform: a white jacket and pants with golden insignia along the sleeves and stiff collar. It was the uniform of the grand master of the Sacred Brotherhood. Why is he…?

Josey’s questions fled at the hideous sight of his face. The flesh of his sunken cheeks was rippled and crusted black. Drool leaked from the wet sores where his lips had been; they pulled back in a terrible grimace as he stood over Kas. The big man’s eyes were open, but glassy and unfocused. Blood seeped between the fingers clutching his ample belly.

“Another valiant defender,” Markus said. “You seem to collect them like pets.”

“Leave him alone! Take me, but let him be.”

Markus held up a gloved finger as the Brothers surrounded Kas. “Don’t waste your breath. There’s no rescue coming for you this time.”

While their brethren stomped the old man with their hobnailed boots, two soldiers drew long daggers and approached Josey. A scream hovered in Josey’s breast as the sharp instruments came toward her, but she refused to release it. She was a princess, heir to the throne of Nimea. She wouldn’t debase herself with pleading or crying. She would show them how a lady of imperial blood could die.

Markus straightened his cuffs. “Do you like my new look?”

Josey hurled her most defiant glare at him over the shoulders of the soldiers. “How much gold did it take to convince you to betray your oath?”

“Times are changing, Princess,” he said. “You would be wise to change with them.”

“Go to hell.”

He chuckled as the knives sliced off her clothing. “I was too kind before on the waterfront. This time, I’m going to take my time and enjoy it.”

Josey gasped as she was lifted onto the table, the rough wood abrading her naked skin. Calloused hands pried apart her legs and exposed her intimate parts for all to see. She kicked and connected with something squishy. A gloved fist smashed into her mouth. Blood dripped from her lips, but she smiled through the pain. Let them do their worst. She wouldn’t go quietly.

But a cold worm twisted in Josey’s belly as Markus appeared over her. The scars on his face oozed clear pus.

“Don’t worry, girl. I was told to return you alive and unharmed. We’re not going to hurt you.”

He unbuckled his trousers. “Just a little tickle.”

Josey screamed as a lance of red-hot pain penetrated between her thighs. Golden starbursts filled the black space behind her clenched eyelids. So lovely, they carried her away from the horrors of the waking world.


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