19. Chapter 19
19
Graysen
J ett locked our Bird of Prey in his car and together we silently made our way through the sludge, tracking Red and her killer.
Red had tripped up near the rows of corn and struggled to get to her feet. She pushed and slid against the messy, slippery earth. I could hear her whimpers, the curse as her ankle twisted painfully beneath her.
Her hunter slowed his pace as mud sucked at his boots and dirty water flicked up to stain his jeans. He glanced over his shoulder, back toward his rig, and I used the opportunity to scrutinize his features. He had a gap between his front teeth and was young with a pleasant face, which was why she’d felt safe choosing a ride with him. But Unbroken Shards normally had an unnatural sense of danger. She realized far too late what kind of monster she was traveling with.
A breeze picked up, and Gaptooth’s scent slunk over me. He stunk of sweat and lust and excitement. He wasn’t uneasy that she’d gotten away. It exhilarated him. He loved the chase, it fevered his blood. He’d killed before, plenty of times, and this was part of the fun.
Cold mud soiled most of her clothing and dripped from Red’s hands. She got her feet under her and surged into the first row of corn to disappear amongst the stalks. But I could scent her fear, the panic and pain, the determination to keep a clear wit. She’d gone ahead, cut down a row, shot forward several more, and huddled down. The sound of her panting breaths was muffled. She’d probably pressed a hand against her mouth to stop them from being heard.
Gaptooth weaved through the cornstalks, unaware that Jett and I were stealthily tracking him.
Red might have gotten free if the guy hunting her hadn’t a bit of other about him. Most serial killers did. They all seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to their prey. He found her soon enough.
He lunged—
Her scream sliced through the soft whispering of corn.
She scrambled away and got only two paces before he grabbed hold of her hoodie, yanking her back. She fell against him, twisted around, and kicked out with a sneakered foot.
But he was bigger, faster, and he easily grabbed hold of her hair. He cut short her second scream when he backhanded her, and the crack of his hand meeting her cheek resounded across the cornfield.
Dazed, she swayed and crumpled.
He was on top of her a moment later.
Jett and I hung back, crouching low, watching through the swaying green stalks.
“How far do you want to go?” Jett whispered, frowning, his hands fisted.
I pinched my lower lip between my thumb and finger, contemplating. I still wasn’t sure.
Gaptooth had her arms pincered at her side between his thighs. He unzipped her hoodie, ripped her t-shirt in half, and freed one of her pale, freckled breasts from her bra.
Red sucked in a breath and then started shrieking. She didn’t beg. She didn’t utter a single word for mercy. She cursed him. Swore vengeance. Spat at him. Fat gobs of phlegm speckled his face and streaked his cheeks.
He wiped the spit away. The creepy motherfucker hadn’t spoken. Keeping her tightly locked beneath him, he drew a necklace over his head—a silver cross. He dug into his back pocket, producing a zippo, and he flicked it on, using the flame to heat the metal cross.
Jett hissed at me, “Fuck, isn’t this enough?”
I shot him a dark look. He’d run both hands through his hair, feathering the long locks through his fingers. His sharply-cut features twisted into a fierce glare, but I could taste his unease, his disgust, his worry.
I went to remind him. “The Horned Gods—”
“Fuck them,” he snarled, cutting me off.
I grabbed hold of his arm, squeezing hard. He needed reminding of who the hells we were. “They’ll expect to see it. They’ll be stealing their last memories. And this… this is what they’ll want to see.”
Red struggled, her eyes were wide and fixated on that metal cross that was turning orange and blacken with the flames licking it. Gaptooth lowered the chain until the heated cross draped against the softness of her breast. Her shrieks, as the skin burned and blistered, warbled through the night air. The stench of burning flesh wafted over me, mingling with her terror and pain, and his excitement.
He slung the necklace back over his head and the cross slipped beneath his shirt. A muscle feathered in his cheek and his jaw sawed as if he fought a wave of agony. I’d be willing to bet there were several scars of crosses scorched into his chest too.
Sitting on his heels with his hand wrapped around her throat, he dragged her with him as he rose to stand so Red stood on tippy-toes. Gaptooth’s fingers tightened. Tight enough that her eyes seemed to bulge. Then he squeezed. Hard. Choking her. He’d pulled back a little, watching her. Like we were watching him. Her feet kicked out, trying to strike him in the balls. But she was young, vulnerable, and much smaller than him. She flailed with horrible noises coming from her throat, scrabbling at his clenched fingers with her own, desperate to free herself. His chuckle in response was breathy, and he was growing hard at her anguished fight.
“Gray,” my brother murmured.
I lifted a hand— Wait. Just wait.
Like my brothers, my senses were heightened. Unlike them, I could taste emotions if they screamed loudly enough.
And this… this was intoxicating.
I closed my eyes, hearing the scuffle, knuckles creaking with the force he put her under, his breath coming faster, heartbeat racing. I drew in the scent of terror, the despair, the exhilaration. The heady mixture was a tang that coated my mouth with a pure, exquisite taste.
“Gray.” This time Jett growled it in a warning.
Opening my eyes, I found my brother had risen and had a hunting knife in his fist. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, ready to end this.
Red’s lips had gone blue.
She was seconds from having her windpipe crushed.
I cracked my neck.
Surging forward as swift and bitter as a winter wind, I burst out of our hiding place and drove one elbow down on his extended arm, the heel of my other hand into his jaw, knocking him from Red. He flew off his feet sideways, slamming through the stalks of corn and crunching the plants beneath him as he careened, tumbling over and over, sliding into a messy tangle of limbs on the ground. Shaking his dazed head, he tried to push himself up before collapsing into the sludge.
Jett caught Red as she crumpled, sucking air into her burning lungs with horrid, rasping sounds. Like the fighter I knew she had to be, she struggled against him too, trying to extricate herself from his iron grip. She didn’t know if we were saviors or villains.
Gaptooth moaned, his arms shaking as he tried to rise again, but I raced forward to kick him in the ribcage, breaking several bones. He didn’t need ribs where he was going.
He screamed, curling into himself.
This was the target we’d been hunting. Not her. His murders had been in the news for over a year. No one had a clue who he was, and he left his victims in random places, scattered all over the country. But his MO tied the murders to one person. He liked to burn a cross into the left breast of his victims, all of whom were young women, no more than twenty years old.
That’s what Jett had whispered to our Bird in the rookery—the clues the mortal police had given out. And we waited until our Bird dreamed and honed in on his next victim.
I grabbed him by the throat, lifting him to his feet, exactly as he’d done to Red.
“It isn’t what you think,” he coughed, spitting blood. This was the first time he’d spoken. His voice was soft, enticing, promising me I’d misunderstood. What I suppose all his victims thought they saw in him, someone disarming, and a safe choice to travel with when he’d picked them up—no doubt hitching like Red had been.
I shook him viciously and snarled. “I think I saw you burn a fucking cross into her breast. I think I saw you choking the life out of her. I think you’ve done this a lot. I think you get off on it . ” And what’s more, he was a virgin. Which, in a sick way, made him an even more interesting tithe.
“Let me go,” he rasped, his hands digging at mine, trying to loosen my grip. “I’ll give you anything you want. Money. My rig. Anything.”
“I don’t want anything.” And that was the truth of it all.
“What do you want with me?” he croaked out.
Now, that was the right question to ask.
I released Gaptooth’s throat, only to snap my fingers around his wrists. “Every body part you possess. Starting with those hands of yours.” He was a big guy, almost as big as me, and though he was probably putting up a fight, I barely felt it. I simply flexed my wrists, twisting his around until his knees buckled and he whimpered in pain. “Hands that have killed…how many?”
He knew what I was asking. “I-I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.” All serial killers knew their kill count.
“Seventeen. I’ve killed seventeen.”
Ah, the cops had only discovered nine of those bodies. More of his victims lay decomposing in shallow graves, and maybe they’d never be found.
Overhearing his kill count, Red drew in a startled, raw gasp. Jett held her tightly with an arm around her waist. Either she or possibly even Jett had tied the two pieces of her muddied t-shirt together.
“I bet someone will want these hands because of that.” I squinted at his irises, a rather bright cobalt blue. “And those pretty eyes too. Someone will want them because of what you’ve seen. Your heart, too, because it pulses for death.”
Red wisely chose silence, but I could feel her terrified gaze darting between Jett and me, processing what I’d said. Her mind came up with the right assumption—we might be worse than Gaptooth.
“These things are valuable,” I continued smoothly. “They’ll harvest every body part that’ll be of interest. The rest discarded.”
Gaptooth gasped, going even paler, and shook his head a little, as if convincing himself that this was some kind of nightmare from which he could simply wake up. I let go of him suddenly, only to shove a leg forward to kick his feet from under him and he slammed sideways onto the ground with an oomph . Another kick to the head left him with a split lip, dazed and acquiescent.
Jett murmured, “Changeling?”
We both shared a look—utter revulsion. Neither of us was keen to touch the creature that lurked in the back of Jett’s car.
“Knuckles, parchment, blades,” Jett proposed.
I clicked my tongue, rolling my eyes skyward. Gods, he was such a child. But sometimes so was I. And this was the way my brothers and I usually sorted out matters. Fuck tossing a coin. This was much more fun.
We shared a grin and shook our hands to Jett’s count. “Parchment… Blades… Knuckles…”
I drew a fist. Jett—two split fingers.
“Knuckles beats blades every time, motherfucker,” I crowed, thumping him hard in the arm.
He winced, snarling. “Fuck you, Gray,” and left Red with me to storm back through the swaying corn.
I stabbed a finger in her face and warned, “Don’t dare move. ”
She froze in place, her muddy arms wrapped around her middle, watching me warily.
A few heartbeats later, Jett reappeared, the changeling slung over a shoulder. He dumped it on the matted, broken stalks, taking several swift steps away within the area of crushed corn we’d created. Red’s eyes widened as her mortal mind tried to make sense of the thing before her. Drawing closer to Jett, she shrank slightly behind him, only to peer around his side at the otherworldly creature curled up at my feet.
The creature unfurled itself. It was a tall, long-limbed, translucent beast, humanoid in shape. However, its face was utterly featureless. There were slits where a nose would be and they flared as it drew in a hissing breath. Flesh, soft. Like the cookie dough Wychthorn had mixed that time she kept me stuck in the kitchen. Gods, a whole day of sitting and pacing the kitchen, with batch after batch after batch of endless sugary shit being baked, wearing down my thin patience. And then to think she’d wanted to send me home with a box of cookies like I’d come over for a girls’ tea party with a bunch of teddy bears. As if I hadn’t seen her switch the sugar for salt. Nice try Wychthorn. That day—not good enough.
I slid aside as the changeling slunk up to the guy on the ground with a strange movement of its limbs, as if its bones had been shattered and put back together wrong.
A shudder ran down my spine at the strangeness of the beast.
Gaptooth scooted backward, eyes wide and fearful. “Wh-what is that thing?”
The changeling pounced—
Gaptooth had no chance to get away—
It landed on top of him on all fours, pinning him into the folds of broken greenery and sludgy earth. Its distended hands went for Gaptooth’s face. He struggled futilely, much like Red had done when he was strangling her.
The slits of the changeling’s nose pressed against Gaptooth’s open mouth, drawing in his scent, his breath, his very DNA. The beast threw its head back and a keening noise cut through the air that chilled my blood.
Moonlight glanced off its shimmering body as it shivered and warped, almost like it was melting—
Blinding light exploded within the field of corn—
Both Jett and I spun away, shielding ourselves with a flung arm—
Jett covered Red, too—
The light abruptly died, and darkness descended .
Lowering my arm, I peered at the two Gaptooths. They wore identical outfits. But only one of them was equal parts terrified and bewildered.
The changeling, transformed into a replica of Gaptooth, rose to its feet while I hauled the real Gaptooth to standing before knocking him out with a punch to the temple that felt good.
Shaking the sting from my fist, I spoke to Jett. “I’ll bring him in. You deal with Red.” I tossed him the key to the Ducati. “Take my bike and take her as far as she wants to go. Somewhere safe.” Somewhere safe from us. Because she was an Unbroken Shard and that soul-bleeding brightness of hers would get her stolen by one of the Houses that hunted on the Horned Gods’ behalf. And no one wanted to be in their hands. That was no life for anyone, but for someone like Gaptooth, the Horned Gods were the perfect retribution. They would carve him up into tiny little pieces and put him into tiny little jars to gather dust, awaiting some vile spell.
Red’s breath had quickened in fear. She glanced between the two Gaptooths, and pivoted, spinning around to flee.
Jett grabbed her with a tsk, lifted her off her feet, and easily swung her over a shoulder. Tossing over the keys to his car, I snatched them out of the air and slid them into the jacket pocket of my armor.
Jett tipped a hand up to me. “See you later, brother.”
He was gone in a blur of speed.
A moment later, I heard the rumble of my bike roaring into life, pulling away and gaining momentum as he hit the road, the sound of the engine fading as he cut east.
I kicked Gaptooth. Maybe just to see if he was still out for the count, but mostly because he was a sick cunt that enjoyed murdering young women.
Stooping down to pick him up, I stilled as a distinctive scent of anticipation, excitement, and a generous dose of fear washed through my nostrils.
Leaving Gaptooth where he lay on the ground, I straightened, unable to suppress the grin. I had been waiting for this all night, which is why I had an abundance of blades.
Rolling my neck from side to side, I sent my senses swirling outward, listening, scenting the air.
They were pinning me in. Flanking me. Eight of them in total split into two teams that were coming in from either side. I cracked my knuckles, bouncing on the balls of my feet, loosening limbs and joints— Well then, at least I get to have some real fun tonight .
I didn’t know who they were, but I knew who had given them the order to come after me.
Byron Wychthorn.
It wasn’t the first time he’d sent men and women to kill me. It wouldn’t be the last time either.
My grin was feral— stupid, stupid Byron— all he was doing was stripping away his soldiers.
It was as easy as whipping small knives from my bandoleer, one after the other, sending them soaring through the corn like bullets—hearing the satisfying sound of four falling thuds.
The world erupted into motion as the remaining four struck.
My blade sang as I unsheathed my sword, whirling as the opponent to my right attacked. The clash of metal rang against my deadly wyrmblade. They were fast. But I was faster, honed, and skilled as I had all the time for training. While the world slept, I didn’t. I used the time for drills.
I emptied everything out of my head. All that beat was the pounding of my heart, a death drum in my ears. Whispering breath and blood hissing. Moving—simply pure instinctive reflexes and muscle memory.
It was a dance, a symphony of ringing steel and razor-sharp bone—
A step back, a whirl, a lunge, a strike—
A death punch to the larynx, snapping a neck.
My blade drove into a skull.
A severed throat.
Warm blood sprayed over my face in a gush of crimson.
Soon it was only me and one other. I recognized him. Garen was almost a worthy opponent. His strength was bolstered by the potion he swilled back every morning.
Shame, because I actually respected the guy.
I slowed my speed, and toyed with him a bit, just because I could and I loved a good sword fight. But the guy wasn’t good with his sword. Mediocre at best.
“I’ll give you a choice, Garen,” I said, drawing into the green arms of the cornfield, letting the leaves and shadows embrace my figure. Garen hunted me—his footfall loud, his breathing louder. “An out if you like,” I continued, stealthily moving sideways. “You can disappear from this life and leave the Horned Gods. As far as Byron will believe—you died tonight. And you get to live out there with the mortals. You can live a normal life away from all of this.”
“Give her up,” he replied with a grimace, slashing his scimitar, and hacking through the corn to find me.
“Or what? You’ll kill me?” I laughed, dodging his strike. My laugh sounded rusty and bloodthirsty.
He grunted, shoving forward. A whirl of steel easily parried aside.
“What did he promise you?” I asked, darting back out into the clearing. The crunching sound of corn stalks being trampled beneath my feet and weight as I moved fast, whirling around to defend myself against a wild strike.
Garen was breathing harder, the pulse in his throat a frantic beat.
“Don’t try bullshitting me, Garen.” I easily blocked his thrust, pivoting, my boots splashing through the muddy water. Moonlight glinted off the keen edge of my wyrmblade, spinning away into darkness.
“Kill you and become a new Lower House.”
I laughed, shaking my head, my hair sliding across my forehead. “Oh, you didn’t believe that shit, did you?”
Garen had the smarts to at least look unsettled.
“You don’t get it, do you? You have to be born into the right family to become a new House.” There was no fucking way Byron could make a nobody foot soldier the Head of a new House without it causing a revolt amongst the Lower Houses. “You and the rest of the minions are our lap dogs, running errands for us.” I surged forward, driving him back with a flurry of strikes, hammering his scimitar so hard it shuddered in his weakening grip. He retreated, stumbling. “But not you, you’re greedy—”
“I’m also not stupid, Crowther,” he barked, getting his footing beneath him and shoving my blade to the side. “Turning down an order from Byron. I’d be good as dead.”
“You’re good as dead facing me.”
He lunged, attempting to drive his sword into my shoulder. I spun aside and smashed my fist into his face. He jerked back, shaking his head, spitting blood. He snarled, “I’ll take my chances against you.”
“One last chance Garen—”
“Fuck off!”
The conversation was boring me. I decided to end it. End him. He didn’t even see it coming. I was a tornado of speed, whirling around to slash and gut him. His entrails spilled like unspooling ribbons. The shock on Garen’s face turned to utter disbelief as his scimitar dropped from his slackened grip. He stared down at those bloody stringy organs tangled at his booted feet.
He fell to his knees, trying to scoop his guts, trying to stuff them back inside. Incredulity scored his ashen features, that he was going to end this way.
I tilted my head to the side, watching him. He really thought he was going to kill me. How odd.
My sword was cursed. Not from House Simonis, which dealt with those kinds of deadly spells. My sword heralded from the Final War. It was ancient. Made from wyrmbone and stronger than adamere. A gift from the Horned Gods themselves, when my family held the seat of the Great House.
Garen gasped, blinking sluggishly as he stared at his gutted, red-slick stomach. There was something more terrifying than his guts hanging out of the gaping wound. And his terror coated the night air as he loosened a blood-curdling scream.
The agonizing curse from my blade spread from the lesion and poisoned the blood in his veins. He toppled over, writhing in pain, his screams becoming more warbled, more frantic. The curse expanded—a crisscrossing of dark webbing—and his flesh erupted into ebony, pulsing pustules that suddenly burst into inky flames that flared high and hot and consumed his entire body. Plumes of smoke, the stench foul and searing, stained the night air. The cursed dark flames devoured Garen’s flesh, blood, and bones, rendering him to nothing but ash.
I collected his scimitar—the same thing had happened to all of Byron’s assassins I’d killed with my cursed sword. Only ash and their weapons remained.
Popping the dome open in a pocket on my bandoleer, I fished out a green vial. Digging my foot back, bracing myself against the powerful recoil, I released the winged scarabs from their containment. They burst forth with a violent kickback that would have knocked anyone else onto their ass. Dark emerald, like a sheen of oil, a thick swirl of the tiny chittering insects swarmed through the corn. They eagerly fell upon the corpses and devoured the dead flesh and bones and clothes of the other men and women I’d cut down with my small knives.
Pursing my lips, I steeled myself once again, almost like a catcher with a mitt, and gave a loud whistle. The scarabs returned like a wild wind, flying straight into the vial with a brutal hit. Flexing the burn from my palms, I capped the vial and shoved it back into the pocket of my bandoleer. Green leaves stroked across my face and shoulder, against my thighs as I strode through the cornstalks, shivering with the breeze that had picked up from the oncoming storm. It didn’t take long to collect my small knives and the fallen weapons of the deceased too. Now no evidence remained that they’d ever been here.
I found our tithe, still unconscious, laying on the sludgy earth. I threw Gaptooth over a shoulder, and the changeling kept pace beside me as I made my way out of the cornfield, across the rutted field back to the Mustang where the Bird of Prey was locked up and awaiting my arrival.
Taking a moment, I whispered my orders into the changeling’s ear and left the creature by the side of the road. Shoving the unconscious man into the backseat of the Mustang, I took Jett’s car and began the drive toward my family estate, where I’d meet up with my elder brother somewhere along the way. I’d hand Kenton the tithe and our Bird of Prey before I split, heading back to the Wychthorns.
As I pulled away from the roadside, I glanced at the rear-view mirror, spotting the bright lights of a rig approaching from behind. I watched in the mirrored reflection as the changeling stepped right in front of the fast-moving truck. The sound of screeching, metal clanging, and rubber groaning crashed through the air as the driver slammed on the rig’s brakes.
But the truck driver was too late.
The truck hit the changeling, swallowing it beneath its metal body, and running over it with a sickly thud .
The changeling had done what it had been created to do—kill itself.
To the world, Gaptooth died that night, hiding the truth, that we’d stolen him as a tithe for the Horned Gods.
It was the early hours of the morning by the time I arrived back at the Wychthorn mansion. Byron was still in his study, drinking. The bottle of cognac was almost empty. His jacket lay discarded on the chair across from him, his sleeves rolled up.
I stalked in, my boots silently traversing the floor and rugs.
Byron didn’t seem surprised to see me, merely resigned.
I tossed the swords onto his glass desk, the clanging metal ringing loudly in the room.
“Let her go,” his slurred voice rumbled out.
Like earlier this evening, I didn’t wait for dismissal or give him an answer. I spun around and left.
But my night wasn’t over. Now I’d returned to the Wychthorn estate, it was time to head out on a hunt of a different nature to the one I’d come back from.
This one was for my family.
And my prey was Byron’s daughter.