Rage

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Edwige

T he pain wasn’t receding. I’d thought it would. That the gnawing, burning agony would fade as I slipped closer and closer to death. But it wasn’t, it was just… there. Front and center and agonizing with every stuttering, gasping breath, as I tried to inhale past my shattered jaw and into my lungs, their delicate tissues shredded by the shards of my shattered ribs. No, the pain was not diminishing; the pain seemed to grow the longer I existed within its grasp, unable to move, barely able to breathe. Trapped against its razor sharp hold as my mind faded into the blackness of the afterlife. I couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. The sudden fear that perhaps the pain would travel with me, leap across the barrier between life and death, shot a bolt of fear through my ruined chest.

“Hush, be easy now.” A low, feminine voice crooned.

I flinched in response, and the pull of what remained of my musculature against my ruined bones was positively agonizing. I released a weak, desperate wail, beyond terrified of the foreign presence coalescing above me.

That I was finally alone, allowed to die in what little peace that could be found amidst the roiling waves of agony, had been the only blessing offered since that feral nest of vampires had arrived at my front porch. When they’d surrounded my cottage and burned it to the ground, along with my herbiaries, my grimoires. All of it gone, and soon I would be too. I’d been relieved to finally be alone with my end, as painful as it was, because the end was in sight after days of agony at the hands of another.

“Broken little thing.” The strange presence whispered, her voice even softer, as though she had regretted startling me, like she had regretted the pain she’d caused. Was that even possible in this world ?

My remaining eye fluttered open, blurred gaze catching on sharp, angular features in a feminine, catlike face. The strange woman was the same deathly color as the underbelly of a dead fish, of the endless snows that blanketed the moors during the depths of winter. When the cold was so bitter and biting that even venturing outside felt fraught and perilous. When it seemed like the wolves of Maslenitsa were waiting in the shadows of the trees. Slavering behind the drifts that piled as high as my little cottage, their sharp teeth and jaws poised to snatch the breath from my throat and the beating heart from my chest. She was death; she was ice; she was darkness.

A glacial digit trailed its way over the bare flesh of my leg, awakening the forgotten ache of bruises and the sharper pain of the deep, torn bites that littered the flesh of my thighs. The pain stretched on for an endless agonizing moment, then abruptly ceased, replaced with... nothing. My eye shot down to where she touched me. Her fingers, blue and glittering in the dim light that filtered through the trees to where I lay, rested lightly on my flesh, the soft tissue frozen and stiff now, nearly as pale as her face.

It doesn’t hurt.

The dawning understanding was a sweet comfort, a stark contrast to the bitter landscape of pain and fear I’d been dragged into. I wanted to tell her, but my shattered jaw couldn’t form the words. She seemed to follow though, moving her hand up my other thigh, the icy balm of her fingers killing any sensation in its path.

“How cruel they were to you, my little witch.” The woman murmured, one hand brushing my knotted, filthy hair back from my forehead. The other drew swirling patterns over my belly and breasts, leaving trails of ice in her wake, deadening the agony that had chewed at me, making every second an eternity of torment. “So much pain, so much cruelty. They painted it on your skin for me. I can read it like a tapestry. Your flesh, my love, it is a record of the horror.”

I winced as she lifted my fingers. They were the first casualties in my kidnapper’s attempts to stop me from fighting back. The goddess pressed her full, lavender lips to each of them, her touch fighting back the pain, forcing it to retreat. I could think for the first time in ages, enough to realize that even the balm of her touch couldn’t keep my shredded lungs from killing me, from sending me into the darkness of death.

“Tell me, my poor creature, do you want peace?”

She turned my face towards hers, so gentle and careful with the shattered remains of my jaw. That tiny gesture brought tears to my eyes, the salty fluid burning in the shredded flesh of the one they had taken. She tutted her concern at the agony that stole over my face, burying her finger into the ruined socket up to the knuckle, making me squeal in shocked protest. For a moment, pain bloomed again, and I wanted to rail against it, to rail against her. But then, it was gone, so thoroughly replaced by nothingness that I wondered if I’d ever had a second eye to begin with. I pawed clumsily at the lovely creature that loomed over me, trying to touch her, to somehow show my gratitude.

“You are dying,” she told me, her tone soft but words taking none of the brutality away from the statement. I gave a jerky nod, agreeing with her. I was dying. Her deathly pale face and wide eyes would be the last thing I saw.

“You don’t have to go, lovely one, if you aren’t ready yet. If you are bold enough to seek vengeance against those who have wronged you. Do you want to end them before they find another creature to torment? Do you want to use your wrath, your revenge, in service of something more?”

Vengeance... Did I want that?

I allowed myself to picture it, letting the knowledge of what she would make me sink into the threads of my consciousness. I would be a monster, a bloodthirsty, cruel creature, like the ones who’d tormented me if I denied myself the peace of death. I would be driven by need like them, satiated by blood like them. I would become a thing of rage. Would that be worth it? I was already so changed from who I’d been. Did I dare twist myself a little more? Would I break? Was the shattering worth it?

Yes. Yes. Yes. It would all be worth it to seek my vengeance. To give back the fear and torment those creatures had visited upon me.

I caught her gaze, grasping ineffectively at her silken slip, the wisp of fabric barely covering the emaciated form of the goddess.

“Teeth.” I slurred, the words barely comprehensible coming from my swollen, bruised lips. Thinking about my broken jaw, and my cracked molars, only one thing was on my mind, “I want their teeth.”

Hargrave

“Toothtaker!”

“Toothtaker!”

“Toothtaker!”

The word was echoing back and forth through the agitated crowd, all of them wearing their promenade finest, trying to catch a glimpse of the third gruesome murder of the week. The killing had been conducted with the same brazen viciousness on the grimy, gas-lit streets as the last two. Violence was commonplace here, but whoever conducted these latest killings had gone above and beyond, their cruelty documented down to the last salacious detail in every penny-rag and tabloid being printed.

I’d done my share of savagery, both as an orc and as the head of my criminal organization, but something about teeth and their removal had me shuddering along with the slowly panicking masses.

“Get out of the fucking way,” my second-in-command, an unassuming wood-elf whose bite was far worse that her bark, demanded. Immer Venro’s voice was as sharp as the crack of a whip and incredibly effective at creating a path through the milling crowd of frightened onlookers. I wasn’t sure what they were so concerned about. It wasn’t as though a toothtaker killed indiscriminately. They were made monsters, created by their tormentors and reborn with only one purpose in their vicious hearts.

Vengeance, and this toothtaker was getting theirs to the fullest extent.

The scene was gruesome, the hastily erected barricades stopping just before the initial splashes of drying blood. My eyes trailed over the splashes of gore. They caught for a moment on sprays of sliced flesh and viscera, cataloguing it as the mess grew worse, as the flayed flesh continued to multiply until the grime and slime covered cobbles of the street were entirely hidden by shredded remains.

Then there was the corpse.

Another vampire, based on his paper-white skin, though the mess of his mouth made it impossible to tell for sure. Every tooth had been removed, his tongue and gums pulped into nearly unrecognizable masses of red, the ribboned flesh marred by brilliant white shards of shattered bone. The mob was right for once. This was another killing by the toothtaker. Behind me, the sun continued to rise. It’s rays brilliant enough to pierce the thick veil of fog that rolled in from the sea and blanketed the already damp city in a layer of salt and moisture that served only to make the sooty buildings dirtier and more depressing.

“Someone better do something before the corpse disintegrates,” Immer muttered from her place beside me.

She was right. The rare sunlight shone down on us all, making the golden caps on my tusks gleam and wisps of ash rise from the dead vampire.

The sudden brilliance of gold was enough to catch the eyes of the milling constabulary, of whom there were many, each more useless than the last. I scoffed as they all froze. The silvery eyes of shifters, the black and orange gaze of other orcs, and the myriad of colors sported by humans all rising in unison to fall upon me. They took in the curled brim of my jet black Homberg hat, the razor sharp lines of my suit, and the sheen of my leather shoes an instant before pretending they hadn’t noticed me at all. I scoffed as they continued their milling and muttering.

The body before us was decaying more rapidly, the plumes of ash scattering with the morning breeze. Soon there would be no evidence to examine, though anyone with half a brain wouldn’t really need it. But it may make my life easier if all the evidence were to disappear into a plume of dust and smoke. I wanted to find the toothtaker before these bumbling buffoons got their hands on it.

I watched with interest as a bespectacled human, scuttling about so anxiously he could be mistaken for a goblin, approached the corpse with so much trepidation I had to wonder if this was his first crime scene. It certainly wouldn’t be his last. Murder was rampant here. It usually just wasn’t this messy. He would have to get used to being in the presence of corpses, especially in this line of work.

“Whatever the lad is up to, he better get to it soon. That body has about thirty more seconds of sunlight before its dust,” my second grumbled.

I nodded my agreement. There was no point in pussyfooting about death. Accept it, hold your nose if you’re squeamish, and do what needs to be done.

The trembling man pulled a vial full of candy-floss pink powder out of his worn coat, sprinkling it over the remains as thoroughly as he could while trembling like a kitten in a rainstorm. A brilliant gold light bloomed, followed by the scent of caramelized sugar and raspberries.

“That is-” I said with a laugh, “the most adorable spell I’ve ever seen.” I looked more closely at the mage before us. He stood a little straighter now, using the confidence of success to unbend his anxious spine. The man was lithe, his smooth skin rich and dark, accented by a smattering of nearly black freckles over his button nose and cheeks. He ignored the uniformed creatures around him, tucked the nearly empty vial back into the recesses of his coat before stepping back into the sea of navy-clad officers.

“Ridiculous,” Immer scoffed, turning away from the magical display, the now preserved crime scene and eyeing the increasingly fractious crowd. Only the most prestigious bloodsuckers who could afford the expensive charms needed to survive the daylight were present. Their thralls did most of the protesting on their creature’s behalf, filling the morning air with despair and dudgeon in turn.

“Look him up, see if he’ll be of any use to us,” I replied, sweeping my gaze over the gory scene once more, still not catching sight of anything that could assist me in locating the toothtaker. I wanted a monster like that on my side, and I planned to find it before the milling, mewling vampires all around us did.

“Let’s get out of here,” I added with a jerk of my head towards the gaping maw of an adjacent alleyway. It would only get more and more difficult to stave off the rising panic of the citizenry.

I fought the urge to face them, to remind the gathered creatures they knew perfectly well this mess was their fault. But they knew that, provided they hadn’t committed acts of barbarity against a witch and been stupid enough to leave her breathing, then they were safe from the wrath of their only predator.

There was just one way to make a toothtaker. They were created when a nest of vampires fed from a mage. At least, according to the lore, which I had to track down after the first brutally de-faced vampire had been found. But it was more than just a simple feeding, otherwise half the blood brothels in the red district would produce a toothtaker or two every night. No, these fiends were created when the vampires dragged out the process, when they kept their victim alive and tormented them, and fed them their own blood to ensure the wretched creature didn’t expire too soon. Toothtakers were made from pain, from violation. They were reborn with only a few goals, vengeance, and teeth.

So far, the Toothtaker had taken her due from each of the corpses.