Renegade Read online

  Something wet dripped on his face. Sweat from the flushed face of a throater who leaned over him, pulling on a rope they’d slung over the thickest branch high above.

  The full realization of what he was up against hit Billos, and he jerked his legs in a moment of panic. Pain shot down his bones. They’d tied his arms and legs back like a hog’s, so that any movement from his arms only pulled his legs back behind his hips and vice versa.

  “String him up,” Claude said.

  “Wait!” Billos cried, or tried to cry—he managed only a grunt.

  They hauled him up by a rope. He left the ground facedown, arms and legs arched behind his back, barely able to hold back his screams.

  The rope jerked with each pull, sending stabs of pain through his joints.

  He heard the cackling then, from a porch on the back side of the temple where they’d dragged him. Black watched with arms crossed, smiling.

  “Go ahead and let it all out, baby. They deserve a scream.”

  Billos stared into the man’s eyes, set above curling lips. Black eyes that didn’t appear to have any pupils. And in those dark, oily pools, Billos could see himself screaming. Clawing his way up, as if the man’s eye was a tunnel into the abyss, and he, Billos, was being sucked in.

  He blinked, and the image was gone. Only Black now, smiling at him with shiny white teeth and dark eyes.

  “The books, Billos,” Black said. “I need the books.”

  “I … I don’t know …”

  The throaters tied the rope off to one of the porch posts, leaving Billos to sway a few feet above a large circle the men formed. The rope creaked above him.

  Black paced, arms still crossed. “If that’s the truth, then I have no use for you; you do realize that, don’t you?”

  He hadn’t thought of it that way. Words failed him in the face of the pain. Below, one of the villagers approached, dragging the Scab’s large Horde sword. He gripped it with both hands and looked up at Billos.

  “Do you know what happens to the stomach when it’s sliced open in your particular position?” Black asked.

  It was with those words that Billos knew his fate was sealed. How he’d missed the plain signs along the way he didn’t know, but his meeting Marsuvees Black had not been a chance encounter.

  Billos had been warned that entering the books was dangerous, and he was now snared by that danger. Black was the Dark One, and he’d wanted nothing but the books the whole time. Now that Billos was powerless to deliver the books, Black would simply kill him.

  “I believe you,” Black said. “You’re a complete idiot and know nothing. Which means you have only one slim chance. Short of that, you take the long trip to the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

  Billos’s vision blurred. What have I done? His heart broke, nine feet from the ground, facing down at death. And all he could think was, What have I done?

  “Darsal,” he croaked.

  “The name’s Black,” the man said. “Marsuvees Black. Cut him up!”

  The throater with the sword drew it back. One cut was all it would take to spill his intestines to the ground.

  Billos began to weep.

  “No! Let him go.”

  He twisted in his ropes and looked at Darsal, who stood beyond the circle of throaters, staring up at him.

  Karas, the little girl, stepped up beside Darsal. “Let him go,” she said, matching Darsal’s intensity.

  Darsal whispered something in harsh tones, but the young girl didn’t appear interested in listening. She held her ground, jaw set.

  Darsal laced Black. “I’m the one you want. I know where the books are. Take me.”

  “We’re the ones you want. We know where the books are. Take us,” the young girl repeated.

  “Well, well, well,” Black muttered. “Lucky for you, Billy-boy, fools come in pairs.” Then louder so that they could all hear: “Cut him down!”

  It took only a few jerky, painful moments for Billos to reach the ground again. But it was more than enough time for the implications of what was occurring to rack his mind.

  Darsal was giving herself for him. Did she think she could survive the experience? Surely she wasn’t doing this out of some misguided sense called “love.” He couldn’t accept that. Wouldn’t accept that.

  Two throaters hauled Billos to his feet, where he stood shakily.

  “You may leave,” Black said. “If I ever see you alive again, I’ll fix the problem.”

  Claude shoved Darsal and Karas into the circle.

  “Go, Billos,” Darsal said.

  “Darsal?” What could he say? “You can’t do this.”

  “Go, Billos!” she snapped. “Before you do even more damage, just go!”

  “And do what? I don’t know where the books are! I can’t get back! And what about you? I can’t let them—”

  “It’s too late!” she interrupted. “Do you have any suhupow in your fingers?”

  He snapped his fingers. The smack of his fingers against his palm sounded stupidly weak.

  “Just go,” she said. Tears filled her eyes, “Please, go now, before I change my mind.”

  Raw horror set into Billos’s chest. He couldn’t go, he realized. How could he five with the knowledge that Darsal had died for him?

  “I can’t,” he said. A knot rose into his throat. “I can’t, Darsal!”

  He looked down at Karas, glaring at him through silent tears. She’d been saved only a few days ago and was now returning the favor for another. But not without a struggle. A misguided fool! And now a misguided fool on his conscience.

  “I suppose I could have all three of you hanged,” Black said. “Romeo and Juliet and all that crap.”

  “Go, you fool,” Karas said. “I will do what I can to save my sister. Go before her sacrifice becomes meaningless!”

  Billos took a step backward, fighting waves of remorse and fear all wrapped into one terrible bundle.

  Darsal added her insistence. “Go!”

  He blinked, unable to hold back streams of tears. “Darsal …”

  “Go!” she screamed.

  “I think she means it,” Black said.

  Billos stumbled forward, through the throaters who parted for him, to the corner of the temple, powerless to stop Black or Darsal or any of them, including himself.

  “Kill the little girl first,” Black said behind him.

  They are both dead, he realized. Dead by Billos.

  And then he ran blindly into the street, wishing it was he who was dead.

  he stairs curved to Johnis’s left as they descended, much the same as in Teeleh’s lair. He guided himself by letting the tips of his right-hand fingers drag along the stones on his right, refusing to consider the makeup of the slippery, musky substance covering them.

  Silvie rested her hand on his shoulder and followed close. Her breath was warm on his neck, and he drew a small amount of comfort from the human contact.

  He stopped after a good twenty steps and stared ahead, trying to make something, anything, out. The odor down here was worse than above. He lifted his elbow to his nose and tried to get a few filtered draws of air without blanching, but his sleeve proved useless, so he gave up.

  A sizzle on the steps below startled him. “What?”

  “Water,” Silvie said after a moment. “The ground doesn’t like our water.”

  She was using more of the precious fluid and had spilled some on the stones, where it sizzled in protest.

  “Don’t use too much,” Johnis said, resuming his descent.

  The steps ended on flat ground in pitch darkness. Johnis felt his way toward a door on the right, again positioned in exactly the same place as in Teeleh’s lair. They were each replicas of the same design.

  He pulled the heavy door open and saw light for the first time. An orange glow ebbed and swayed in a tunnel to their right.

  “It’s the same as before,” he said.

  “You recognize it?” Her voice was thin and shaky,


  Johnis took her hand. “Identical,” he said. “This is his lair.”

  “Whose lair?”

  “The prince or whatever they call him that rules this forest.”

  “Not Teeleh himself, then,”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe. I think we’ll know soon enough.”

  He led her forward, but she pulled her hand free after a few steps, preferring to keep the water bag close instead.

  Johnis stopped when they saw the first worm on the tunnel wall. Ten feet long, perhaps three inches thick, sliding though its own milky mucus. He studied it for a moment, then flicked water on it.

  The worm uttered a soft, alien shriek and thrashed on the wall, skin smoking where the water had made contact. It fell to the ground with a loud splat that echoed down the tunnel.

  Johnis looked at Silvie. Neither said a word. They went in, deeper.

  The orange light was coming from a flame fixed to the entrance of what Johnis assumed was a library or a study, like the one in Teeleh’s lair.

  He stopped and nodded. “This is it.”

  “If Darsal’s alive, she’s staying quiet.”

  Johnis didn’t want to dwell on the implications of the statement. It was bad enough that they’d seen no sign of their comrades since entering the Black Forest.

  “Keep your water ready,” he said, but he didn’t need to. Silvie had her right hand submerged already.

  They strode up to the gated entrance and found it open.

  “Come in.”

  The voice was thin and rasped like a file on a sword. Johnis took out a dripping hand and stepped into the underground library.

  The room was small, maybe ten paces square, with a bank of bookcases on his right, a short table in the center, and several stuffed chairs situated haphazardly around. A torch flame licked at the wall opposite the entrance. All very much like in Teeleh’s lair.

  But the tall, mangy Shataiki seated at the desk to Johnis’s left was not Teeleh.

  “I knew you would eventually make it,” the Shataiki said.

  “Alucard,” Silvie whispered.

  “You remember.”

  The bat stood. He was taller than most Shataiki by a foot or two, but shorter than Teeleh by as much. Thinner, much thinner. His mangy carcass hung off his bones like cobwebs. Vivid images of what this creature had done to them sent shivers down Johnis’s spine.

  “I could kill you,” Johnis said.

  Alucard lowered his eyes to the water bag in Johnis’s hands. “Yes, I suppose you could. You’re growing more clever by the day.”

  The bat had no fear, which could only mean he knew something they did not.

  “Where’s Darsal?”

  “You amaze me, you humans,” Alucard said. “All this way to save one lousy slab of meat? You’re not fearless; I can see that by the twitching of your lips, however slight. Which means you’re facing your fears. A noble thing.”

  “Loyalty,” Johnis said. “Something you have no inkling about.”

  “True. I would as quickly slit Teeleh’s throat as yours; he knows that. But I can’t.”

  “Darsal,” Johnis snapped. “If you can’t lead me to her, you’re worthless to me.”

  “So you come into my home with your precious water and play master.”

  “I have no interest in being your master.”

  Alucard sat down and turned back to a book on his desk. The torch cast light over an obscured title. “Your friends aren’t here,” the Shataiki said. “They left with a very precious possession of mine.”

  “One of the books,” Johnis said.

  “Do you know what the books can do?” Alucard asked, tracing a single black talon over the cover of the book in front of him. Then he told them, relishing his words.

  “All seven and the rules which bind them are broken. Used together the original seven books can undo it all.”

  “For evil,” Silvie said. “I wouldn’t think you’d need the books to ply your trade.”

  “Not just evil.” Alucard turned his head and stared at them with red eyes, unable to hide the smirk on his jaw. “Good always wins. You wonder why? Because it’s more powerful. Evil ultimately leads to the discovery of good. Even the death of the Maker would end in some kind of good.” He spat a thick wad of green mucus at the wall, where it slowly slid down to the floor.

  “But all seven books used together changes that. The glory is hardly imaginable. It would change everything.” Alucard slammed a fist on the desk. “Everything!”

  “The Dark One seeks seven,” Johnis muttered.

  “The Dark One.” Alucard chuckled, a phlegm-popping, raspy affair. “Unfortunately, only four of the books are here. Or should I say were here before your friends disappeared with them. A bad thing, because those four are needed to find the three books in the lesser reality.”

  Johnis knew he was learning more than he could hope to understand in one sitting. Being here in this underground lair was maybe not as much a consequence of Billos’s indiscretion as part of their mission to find the books.

  “What lesser reality?” Silvie asked,

  “Open a book and find out. And it’s not the place your friends went off to, not unless they have all four and opened one, in which case we’re all wasting time.”

  A faint clicking sound ran down the tunnel behind them. Johnis focused his thoughts on the task at hand. Darsal.

  “She’s not here. Then why shouldn’t I just kill you and leave?”

  “Because I’m not as stupid as your friends,” Alucard said. “You think I would just hand over my sole book out of kindness?”

  “What have you done?”

  “It’s not me. Darsal took the book after making a binding vow on the books to return all four to me if she is able to find Billos.”

  Johnis felt his pulse surge. “Or?”

  “She is mine,” Alucard said.

  “Not good,” Silvie said.

  The statement needed no response and received none.

  “So then I should kill you.”

  “Then by the bond of her vow, Darsal will share my fate. Kill me, and you kill her.”

  True? Johnis didn’t know, but the notion had a ring of authenticity to it.

  Alucard continued. “You’re alive because you have the water, but it won’t last forever. If I were you, I’d head out now, while you still have an advantage.”

  Hearing Alucard speak with such reasoned skill cast him in a totally different light than the Shataiki Johnis had suffered under in Teeleh’s forest or the one who’d sat upon Witch’s head in the Horde city. Alucard was an enemy to be feared. And at the moment, he had spoken the truth. They had to get out of the Black Forest while they still had water. Once in the desert, they could regroup with Hunter,

  Johnis stepped back. “Let’s go, Silvie.” To Alucard: “Just know that in the end, Elyon honors his chosen ones.”

  The bat cackled, unimpressed.

  Johnis backed out of the library, eyes on the beast who drilled him with a red stare.

  “Johnis?”

  He spun at Silvie’s urgent tone. The source of the clicking he’d heard earlier suddenly became apparent: dozens of worms sliding slowly toward them from deeper underground. The clicking was their popping of mucus.

  This was no place for them.

  “Go!”

  No further encouragement needed, they ran toward the entrance together. Out into the atrium. Into darkness again. Up the stone steps, sloshing water as they stumbled forward.

  Out into the open air.

  “This way!” Johnis said, veering back toward the horses. The bats still ringed the lake, even more now than before. A hundred thousand, maybe two hundred thousand. A sea of red eyes peering in silence except for the odd hissing.

  “Save your water …”

  It was as fat as Johnis got. He slid to a halt and stared ahead into the dim glow of red. The horses lay on their sides, butchered and stripped of flesh.

  “They’re dead!�
�� Silvie cried.

  An understatement.

  The hissing and clicking from the trees swelled as the Shataiki became aware that their deed had been discovered. Still, not one of them moved.

  “We’ll never make it out on foot,” Silvie said. “We don’t have enough water!”

  “We have to go back down,” Johnis said.

  Silvie stared at him. Then at her horse.

  They both knew that he was right.

  illos ran blind into the blowing wind, across the center of the town, past Smither’s Barbeque, and into the alley before pulling up, panting. He spun back and tried to make sense of what was happening, but his mind wasn’t working right.

  His heart, on the other hand, was pumping on overload, shoving pain through his veins. Details that seemed so vague only minutes ago now sat vividly on the horizon of his mind, like statues to the dead.

  He’d accepted the invitation of the Dark One to enter the books and had woken in a place in which Black gave and took powers to serve his purpose. But it was Billos’s own ambition that had blinded him to the danger.

  Darsal had seen what he had not. Like a child ignoring his father’s warning not to touch the fire, Billos had touched, had shoved his hand into the flames, had thrown his body onto the coals.

  He paced, scrambling for a course of action that made sense, snapping his fingers uselessly A gun still hung on his hip, but one futile pull of its lever and he knew the suhupow was gone forever. Without it he didn’t stand a chance against the throaters, whose guns would still shoot this suhupow called bullets.

  “Darsal …” Billos whimpered, hands gripped in fists. He paced, desperate to be dead, his only escape now. But Black didn’t want him, not even as a sacrifice for Darsal. Only Elyon knew what atrocity was building behind that temple.

  Billos lifted his chin to the black sky, let his mouth open in the face of the wind, and sank slowly to his knees. His body shook with each sob, but each cry only brought a greater sense of finality.

  A lone cry drifted on the wind. It was light and too high-pitched to be Darsal. Why had the stubborn wench insisted on offering herself as well? Wasn’t Darsal enough? Karas was a fool, a Scab pretending to be clean, a runt of a girl who had no business being here.