Chapter Twenty- Three
Callum
A little past sunrise, Callum found his body double.
A more perfect victim couldn’t be found.
They shared similar muddy brown scales with yellow belly lining.
Unless someone memorized his pattern, which if they did they’d gotten too close, they’d have no way to tell that his diamonds were wider.
And I have a tiny cluster that are missing near the tip.
However, he wasn’t worried anyone would care.
They needed a charred body as proof, and the only person who might have an inkling would be halfway to Eshorion by the time they started looking.
His victim lingered out by the barns, smoking a pipe.
He lazily leaned against the outside wall, watching the sun rise.
The horses within the wooden structure began to stir.
Their huffs and stomping covered Callum’s approach.
His victim didn’t even see it coming. He was bleary eyed and soaking in the golden glitter that brushed across his face.
Callum slid up, dagger drawn. There wasn’t time to scream.
The only proof Callum was there was the sharp glint of his blade.
One moment, his victim was eyes closed, inhaling the cool morning air mixed with the warm, herbal smoke that surrounded his face.
The next, he was a collapsed corpse bleeding into the grass.
Callum dug a hole quickly with the rusty shovel from the barn, his tail tip pushing down where boots normally would.
It wasn’t clean work, but his victim wasn’t the only body buried near the tavern.
No one looked too hard at fresh graves. By the time they started to suspect, it’d be too late.
He buried his victims’ bloodied clothes and pipe in the hole but fed the torso from the waist up to the pigs.
They only squealed a little but the hungry beasts were too busy to care about the intrusion.
A horde of thirty pigs swarmed the carcass chunks tossed into their feeding trough.
Callum even dumped some of their feed from the giant, tin trashcan bolted to the fence inside their part of the barn over the body.
Enough to encourage their feast, not too much to fill them up.
Not that I’m worried. The pigs gobbled down his victim, bones and all.
Callum was left with a tail that he curled up in the base of a wagon.
He filled the rest with what had been in the wagon already.
It was the usual assortment of goods that needed to be delivered to the city.
The driver was a dwarven man. Scraggly beard full of wiry, copper and salt hairs and knots around old beads.
Callum waited by the horses, feeding them bribery apples to appease them.
“What’s this?” Barnaby, the driver, stopped by the reins to glare at Callum.
“I got a bag in the back. Four gold you take her into the city and don’t unload till I catch up?” Callum held up all his fingers, gold coins between his fingers. He waggled his hand a little so that the sunlight would catch them and reflect the yellow beams into Barnaby’s face.
“Ten gold,” Barnaby spat, tossing his own duffle into the front portion of the wagon.
“A man who knows his worth, I like it. Six gold.” Callum smirked, closing his fist so all the coins pooled back into his palm.
“Eight.” Barnaby dusted off his old, worn gloves.
The driver was in all leather, but there were stripes of metal throughout, key places to deflect daggers or arrows.
Years of playing these games, he knew better.
Barnaby kept his gaze lowered, as if to give the impression he was unenthused.
But Callum knew the delivery man well, much like any other denizen who had product brought into the Stronghold.
He did this for a living. His only care was for coin.
The others had already paid for him to bring the caravan into Parandor, this was his adding icing to the top of his cake.
“Seven and my boys do all your deliveries?” Callum fished out the added coin from his pockets and held out his fist to Barnaby. “Last offer.”
“Deal.” Barnaby opened his palm. Seven coins dropped into his gloves with a soft plink, plink, plink. The driver pocketed the coin and hoisted himself up into the seat. “I’m parking this bad boy at the pony barns. You’ll get your sack when your boys come collect my deliveries.”
“We’ll see ya there this evenin’,” Callum beamed. “Pleasure doin’ business with ya, Barnaby.”
“Yeah, just know if this carriage explodes or the Paladins search it, I’m ratting you out, Cottonmouth.” Barnaby glared at the steadily retreating outlaw.
“Wouldn’t expect different from a businessman such as yerself, Barnaby,” he snickered, flipping a hand to shoo the driver off from the tavern. “Don’t get yer knickers in a twist, just a bag full of odds ‘n ends. They won’t even blink at it.”
It was a lie, of course, but he was betting they’d never dig deep enough to find the slathair tail wrapped up in a tarp at the bottom.
A shame, really, that he had to gut Barnaby, but there was no way around it.
He waited outside the tavern, watching the carriage trundle off toward the city.
The worst case, Barnaby didn’t wait and unloaded the carriage himself.
He’d find the tail and go to tell the Paladins, but by then he’d already be in the city.
However, he had a feeling that Barnaby would wait for hours more just on the hope that Callum kept his word.
The outlaw slithered inside finally, taking up a table near the back.
He took a mug of ale and a plate of chicken drenched in gravy.
It was a slow, torturous few hours waiting for his crew.
Callum was too proud to be suspicious…at first. He didn’t consider maybe they’d betrayed him till after noon.
Another hour went by and he considered maybe they were all back at the swamp, laughing at him.
Then another and he was more worried for Avelina.
The warlock could probably hold her own against those fools if she was frightened enough.
It was the frightened part that twisted up his guts.
He got up from his table and slithered toward the front door.
The sound of her screaming in pain on the dock haunted him.
The darkness had been so thick he couldn’t see her.
There was no point searching her out when he could tell the casting was her doing.
There was something to the sound that he also couldn’t put his finger on until he lingered by one of the tavern windows…
her scream of pain was anguished. The kind of furious pain that ate a person alive, he’d only heard it one other time.
When he buried his blade into Mad Madeline. He hadn’t gotten her as clean as he wanted. She tore around, carving up her own insides, with eyes burning. The scream she filled his ears with were full of that betrayed anguish. He could still feel her bloody fingers wrapping around his neck.
Once upon a time, when he wanted to be king of the castle more than anything, he worked for the meanest lady this side of the train tracks.
Even Murderin’ Mary couldn’t hold a light to Mads, and Mary used people’s dead loved ones in their demise.
Madeline was truly the most bloodthirsty outlaw he knew.
Which is why he wanted to learn from her.
She ruled with a cruel, iron fist. Everyone did as she asked because she had them all on short leashes with poisoned spike collars.
Callum learned of one person who ran away was found hung from their own intestine.
And they just owed her money…people she actually hated got it worse. Didn’t help she hated everyone.
One day he decided he was ready and followed her back to her dwelling, the shed.
Their fight was cataclysmic, because even bleeding out, the older outlaw didn’t pull punches.
She was a mean, feral beast, with poison tipped wings and talons.
He probably shouldn’t have gone toe to tail with a pissed off harpy.
It wasn’t till later, when he sat on his throne of bones that he realized why she laughed.
When he pinned her to the mud, her shed having fallen from its perch in the trees like a corpse hung from a noose.
She laid beneath him, guts spilling from the open wound in her belly.
And she laughed. Over and over, the pitched, grating sound as she looked up into her protégé’s face.
He thought she was mocking him, but she was pitying him.
Madeline knew what happened when he got to the top and finally took a good look at his new kingdom.
Callum loathed that either she knew he was making a fool of himself…or she was just so mad that she was entertained by his kill in the end.
But that first scream, the sound echoed in his ears for a long time.
It filled the swamp. He would wake up, drenched in sweat, hearing it pressed against his ear.
Avelina’s was much the same. He didn’t know why she sounded so betrayed, so hurt in that moment.
His focus was on the Paladins, on killing them and getting away.
His stomach twisted up as he thought for a moment he’d never get to ask her.
He glared through the grimy windowpanes, watching for his crew.
All the while his mind was on his warlock.
Is she alright? Did she go with them willingly?
Regret churned hard in his stomach as faces finally emerged from the tall grass.
It was only when Avelina emerged, storming ahead of Grahm with her features pinched in fury, that he finally took a deep breath.
This is why I can’t take her with me. This worry? This guilt? This anguish…I’ll never live a life unburdened with her. Callum slithered out the door, unwilling to wait another minute. He needed to be free of the crushing weight of growing a heart.
Avelina’s gaze met his for only a moment. The organ he forsook for power, coin, and prestige painfully clamped down. She stared at him with vile contempt. Every inch of her lovely face was twisted in her loathing of him.
Good, hate me darlin’. Loathe me entirely. Curse my name.
If she hated him, then she’d never miss him. And knowing she was safe in the capital city with her precious best friend, not thinking of him, would bring him peace. At least if she spit on his fake grave, it meant she was alive and seeking a life beyond her books, her dead parents, and him.