City of Scars (The Skullborn Trilogy, Book 1) (27 page)

“You idiots!” Maddox shouted.  “The stairs don’t lead anywhere!  It’s a dead end!”

Goddess
, Dane thought. 
We’re trapped.

Forty

Jorias Targo looked around the warehouse.  It had once been a lumber storage facility, but for the past several months he’d used it as a sorting station for contraband goods he smuggled in and out of the city.  Now it was a temporary refuge, a place where he could gather himself before he had to leave Ebonmark, possibly forever.

The Black Guild had been destroying Targo’s city inch by inch with their wars against the Jlantrians and the Phage, and now they’d destroyed him, as well.  First they’d unleashed their magic diseases with utter disregard for the effects they might have on the city, and then they’d had the audacity to deploy some Vossian nightmare into his arena and ruin the biggest fight of the year.  Half of his men and even more of his regular clientele were gone, killed in a blaze of light. 

Without the fights and the arena Targo had next to nothing left.  He could carry on with business, but his profits would be abysmally low until he could attract new spectators and build another arena, and that wouldn’t be easy.  Nobody wanted to go to an event where they might lose their
own
life.

Everything had gone so wrong.  It had taken him years to build Knuckle-Night up to its level of popularity and success, to organize the betting stations and spread word of mouth about the bouts, to build the hidden arena and contract slave traders to provide the bizarre and exotic fighters his customers paid to see. 

Years of work, all gone in a single blast.  The arena had been constructed by specially purchased slaves over the course of an entire year, and he’d had to acquire all manner of false identities and forged documents to purchase the warehouse and paid numerous bribes to keep the city Watch away while the work was being done.  Now, after less than six months of operation, it was gone, blown to bits at the Guild’s behest. 

He’d make them pay.  But how? 

Targo stood at the center of the crate-filled building, a tall figure with thick biceps and a broad frame.  His clothes were black, and his skin was well tanned from decades spent in the Scorpion Isles, where he’d smuggled exotic oils and whores.  It was there he’d first discovered his affinity for mixing potions, and just a year before coming to Ebonmark he’d created the formula which would forever make him different.  He’d once been a fighter, a soldier in the White Dragon Army who’d patrolled the distant borders of the Skull outside the fortress city of Tarek Non, but that felt like an entirely different life, back when he’d been young and foolish and as poor as a street urchin…before he’d built up his small niche in the smuggling world, and later a larger niche there in Ebonmark. 

He was one of the few criminals in the city who’d refused to sell out to the Black Guild or the Phage, and he was proud of the fact he'd been able to maintain his operations in spite of numerous attempts made by his rivals to shut him down. 

Until now
. 

They’d ruined him that night.  His Knuckle-Night business was as good as done, and it was unlikely he’d ever be able to restore it.  He'd never really made back the money he’d poured into constructing the arena in the first place.  He should’ve been more careful – the Guild’s device never should have gotten through the door, and Targo knew he only had himself to blame.  He’d grown overconfident from his success, and that had spilled over to his men, as well.  He only had a handful of people left with him now, all specially treated by his formula to be like himself.

The warehouse windows were darkly orange in the dawn’s early light.  He and his soldiers had lingered too long.  It was a dangerous to move around during the day, when they were at their weakest, but Targo had no time to lose – he wasn't safe in Ebonmark anymore. 

A large backpack sat open on the floor, filled with odd trinkets and supplies he’d pilfered from his home and his various hideouts.  He’d gathered notes and documents, money and gems, maps and forgeries, and a healthy supply of his formula, more than enough to last until he could get to a safe location and set up a new lab.  Kleiderhorn could help him – Bordrec wouldn't turn him away, not after all they’d been through together.  Targo had bent over backwards to support Kleiderhorn in the past, so the least the Drage could do was help Targo get out of the city in one piece.  Despite what he'd told Azander Dane, Targo and Kleiderhorn had a good professional relationship.  Targo never intended to give Dane Bordrec’s location – had the knight not been killed in the explosion, Kleiderhorn already had something special planned for the troublesome mercenary.

Targo rummaged through the last few crates in search of anything else useful.  He was taken by an absence of feeling.  Jorias remembered the notion of fear, but he couldn’t remember what it actually felt like.  It was just one of the many emotions purged from his mind ever since he’d started taking his own serum.  Fear, remorse, sadness – the concepts still existed, but they no longer held any meaning.  The colorless narcotic made Targo cold and calculating, just as it made him take on the form of a humanoid wolf.  What few arcane texts he’d found on the illegal topic claimed it couldn’t be done, but Targo hadn’t given up.  If the Voss could blend living matter with machines then he could certainly mesh man and wolf to create werewolves, which prior to his intervention had been little more than a myth. 

And he’d done it – he’d made those fairy tale beasts a reality.  It didn't matter that two of every four of the early test subjects had died, or that an even a larger number went insane.  Even in those cases the damned thing had still
worked
.  Unfortunately, now that Knuckle-Night had fallen apart, Targo’s dreams of having enough money to fund a full-scale trade based on his special elixir seemed impossible.  It was just another shattered dream for which he’d exact full payment from the Black Guild.

Targo’s powerful hands pulled the crates apart; even in his human form he was twice as strong as any normal man.  Most of the containers were filled with various bits of unimportant contraband – bottles of stolen wine, ivory statuettes of forbidden deities, bags of illegal herbs and spices sealed in cloth bags, dice made from human bones.  His sharp senses were almost overwhelmed by the blend of powerful odors in the crates, and his eyes watered from the presence of dried peppers and spices he sometimes used to mask the scent of particularly foul-smelling drugs.  He eventually decided there wasn’t anything more he needed in the warehouse, so he grabbed his pack to leave.   

He froze.  Something wasn't right. 

Targo’s nostrils flared as he took in the smells from nearby.  Jorias pinpointed the pungent aroma of his soldiers stationed outside the doors, and the fresh smell of blood. 

He drew his short curved axe as he sifted through the scents, picking them apart and identifying them.  He located Verrix and Molson and Rhuneglaive, but there were more, nearly a dozen normal humans he didn’t know.  One of the intruders was covered in sweet oils and perfume; the rest were covered with sweat.  All of them moved fast, closing in on the warehouse from different directions. 

He was nearly to the doors.  He heard whispered voices and boots on stone, the flow of the river and the distant creak of the old wooden docks, the whoosh of arrows and bolts and the ringing of blades. 

Targo came to the doors and stopped.  He didn't have many henchmen left, and it was a shame to punish their loyalty by abandoning them, but he wasn't about to let himself be captured.  Without another thought Jorias bolted back towards the far end of the warehouse, where a small door led to the network of alleys next to the docks.  His chest pounded as he raced across the room. 

The doors flew open behind him.  Rhuneglaive burst through in her lupine form, a white-furred and wolf-headed humanoid with black claws wrapped around the haft of a long axe.  Her leather armor was stained with blood.  She wrapped one arm around her wounded chest and let out a pitiful howl. 

Targo ran.  He was a few paces short of the back door when he smelled something on the other side.  He was trapped.  He had no choice now, no other way out.  His blood ran like fire.  Pain shot through his mouth and hands as his bones and muscles twisted and realigned.  His teeth warped into canine fangs.  Claws ripped from the ends of his fingers.  Sharp needles of fur pushed out through his flesh, and his vision blurred.

The wolf inside him took control.

Cloaked men with blades run at him.  Twisted silhouettes around beating hearts, meat-sack shells pulsing with warm blood.  He smells their fear.  His gums ache with hunger. 

He dives into them.  Skin rips and bones crunch between his claws.  He swims in a sea of brittle bodies.  Fur soaked with salt blood and bits of wet flesh.  He bites down around a face and breaks it like fruit.  Warm fluid gushes through his teeth. 

Pain flashes across his back.  Skin dangles from his mouth as he wheels about.  Everything is spinning.  He feels bolts in his hide.

A thin man and a long-haired warrior aim crossbows at him.  He feels their hearts, smells their fear. 

An axe-blade sinks into his side.  Intestines dangle from his stomach like dripping vines.  He lashes through bodies, tears away limbs, howls with glee.  Men are crushed beneath his immense weight.  Blood splashes his eyes. 

Blades hack at him from every side, a storm of edges.  His strength is failing.  Darkness creeps across his vision.  He hears his prey’s heartbeat, feels the pulsing motion through what’s left of the ruined chest, but he’ll never reach it. 

His life drains away.  The room dissolves.   

Targo hadn’t realized he'd fallen onto his back until a weight pressed down on his chest.  He heard someone screaming in pain, but the sound seemed to come from far away. 

“Targo…”  It was a woman's voice.  An angel?  Surely he deserved no angels.  “You're going to pay for that, Jorias,” she said.  Her voice was cold and angry. 

No angel, then.
 

The small part of Targo’s mind still clinging to reason realized he’d have been better off if they’d killed him.

Forty-One

Vellexa cursed the Iron Count and his frozen heart.  She cursed everyone. 

Targo was alive, but barely, so they’d taken him to Vellexa’s small manor on Ice Street.  The seldom-used two-story house was located in a relatively quiet residential district on the east side of town, where thriving merchants and scholars lived in small estates separated by thick walls of trees. 

Sammeus and the others took Targo and the gravely wounded Cronak through the gate to Vellexa’s property and up the narrow path to the manor.  Vellexa sat alone in her black coach on the side of the road.  The grounds to either side of the gate were littered with dry leaves, and the morning sun punched needles of light through the branches overhead.  She smelled apples and pumpkins.  A pair of Vellexa’s mercenaries stood guard outside the carriage door, their eyes on the road and the nearby homes. 

All was quiet in the dark leather cabin.  Vellexa needed time to think. 

Her immediate concern was Cronak.  Targo had been easy to locate but not nearly so easy to apprehend, and capturing him had cost several lives.  She’d heard rumors of his unusual lycanthopic drug, and part of her snickered when she recalled how Aram Keyes had dismissed the possibility of the potion’s existence.  But now it was no laughing matter. Vellexa had hoped to probe Targo’s mind with the Veil and uncover Bordrec Kleiderhorn’s whereabouts without a fight, but her magic had had no effect on Targo at all.  Now Cronak was a breath away from dying.  Vellexa hadn’t been able to heal his wounds with the Veil, which meant whatever it was about Targo’s serum that rendered him resistant to magic had affected Cronak, as well. 

Vellexa’s lip quivered.  Cronak couldn’t die.  He was her responsibility, and both he and Sammeus looked to her for guidance.  He didn’t deserve this.  She’d make Targo pay for what he’d done.  It would prove to be to his own detriment that her magic was incapable of reading his thoughts, because she and Sammeus had plenty of experience with less subtle methods of interrogation. 

Cold wind whipped across the road and battered the coach. Vellexa pulled her cloak tight.  She knew she was being foolish…they didn’t have time for extended torture.  She needed to find Kleiderhorn and that bitch Ijanna as quickly as possible.  Worse, she had to find Dane.  He was another person who’d pay, if only because he’d put her through so much trouble.  She didn't know why the Iron Count insisted the former knight be found, but Dane was likely dead and gone.  She'd been to the site of the explosion – no one could have survived that.  The Count had given her an impossible task, and now the few lives she held dear would suffer if she failed. 

Vellexa opened the door to the coach and grit her teeth against the icy chill.  Leaves whipped by.  She stepped onto the road and strode past her guards, through the old gate and up the short and winding path to her manor.  The mansion appeared through the maze of trees.  A heavy parapet of stone ran around the length of the wide square roof, and a trio of old gargoyles leered at Vellexa from above.  Two more of the statues watched as she ascended the wide stone steps to the landing.  The manor was old and grey and the windows were black with soot.  Vellexa passed into the wide foyer.  Layers of dust covered the floor, and dead leaves had blown into the hall through the main entrance. 

What a tomb this place has become. 
Vellexa sighed.  It had been too long since she’d last been there.  She’d never had the opportunity to properly fix the place up for herself and Kyver, and now she regretted it.