Death's Reckoning (11 page)

“Ya got it?”

Marko’s nod was vigorous. “Yes, sir! I have the uniforms right here. Eight of them.”

Jerrod grunted. “That’s all you could get, huh? Fuck it, should be enough. Hand them over. Wear one yourself and lead the first wave. We’ll hit them shits like they never been hit before.”

“Yes, sir!”

Jerrod sent him away. Marko’s enthusiasm was irritating at times but useful. He met with Delios at another location. Another member of his assassin cadre slinked up to him in the darkened alley. He gave a hand signal known only to certain members of their credo.

“How many we got?” Jerrod said.

Delios looked uncomfortable for a moment. The shifty man wore all black, his face hidden by his hood. He was rail thin but possessed of an inky smoothness in his movements. He licked his lips. “Two others.”

Jerrod frowned. Four assassins total including himself and Delios. With Marko and his men, it might work, but it would be a tight thing.

Wearing the disguise Marko procured allowed him entry to the betting tents. It pumped with sound, bodies, and hot air blasted out from the inside. Torches billowed smoke and cluttered air.

Jerrod wore a mutton chop beard and a bushy wig, brown and scrubby. He entered the tents while Delios and the two other assassins waited outside at the preordained location. They waited to clean up the fallout of whatever happened. All Jerrod and the toughs had to do was funnel some morons.

The cheating swine went about their business as normal, laughing and drinking, spilling ale and wine, and acting like drunken jackasses. They’d get theirs soon enough. At least the workers and their direct bosses would. All of them all looked so smug and confident in their positions.

It was delicious to think about what was going to happen. He would twist and turn and crunch some bones. Someone bumped into Jerrod’s elbow and interrupted his train of thought. They spilled liquid on his back.

“Hey fella! You big lug, watch it! What do you think you’re doing?”

Jerrod had the loud mouth fat man by the throat in an instant and squeezed hard enough to make his eyes bulge. “You were saying somethin’, bub?”

The man tried to speak and grabbed Jerrod’s arms, but he was a pathetic weakling like most men were. He shoved the puissant back into the crowd, who shouted obscenities at the disruption, but they could all burn.

At the bar, the man behind the counter looked at him askance for a moment, but Jerrod wasn’t having it. “Give me a damn drink.”

He sipped at it, not feeling like getting drunk, for it was necessary to be sharp, vicious, and quick. There would be plenty of time for more after they were done. Maybe a few days at the cabin would be nice, nuzzled up with a fire and some bottles of whiskey.

Jerrod sat back and enjoyed the smug looks on the faces of the workers and the game bosses. He let them revel the last few fleeting moments of freedom. They cheated players every night, but the stupid fools had not the guts to do something about it. Jerrod never minded before.

He shook his head with disgust when the realization of how far he had fallen struck. A few short months ago, they wouldn’t have dared to cheat him. Now they treated him the same as any other slugs wasting their money here, worse in fact. Working with Castellan brought him extra prestige and added to his aura of fear and respect. When the disgraced man went away in chains, Jerrod lost that edge.

This night he would make do with what he had to work with: muscle and guts. Let the pigs wallow around in despondency and complacency. The strong took what was theirs. Jerrod couldn’t wait to wipe the dumb looks off their faces and make them eat shit.

Several minutes later it began. Jerrod smirked as a ruckus started near the front door. Marko and his cronies busted through and shoved people around. They wore police uniforms. Several more toughs, dressed as city watch, came on their heels, and all of a sudden the room plunged into ordered chaos.

“Everyone move away from the tables!” Marko said and people listened to his booming voice. “Employees to the side! Move it!”

Marko spoke the words with command and authority that impressed even Jerrod. The brawny man had his uses after all. His resonant bass echoed through the space. The brawny toughs dressed as police, with several others garbed as city watch, simple brown chemises with dark leggings and red badges on their right arms; together they rounded up the employees. They were stunned and afraid.

Most were anyway. Others, the bouncers in particular, tried to settle things on their own terms by shoving back the ‘police’ where they could. Jerrod wouldn’t let that happen. He went straight into their midst’s, hearing part of their conversation before knocking one man forward.

“You got no right to do this! We’re paid up for the month, we’re clean, you can’t—”

The disguised Jerrod punched this man in the side of his head, and he dropped like a bag of potatoes, knocking into another one. A few of them turned to him, but the toughs already stepped forward and wove into their formation. Other patrons were getting in the way as well, and this only helped Jerrod and his crew.

The other security tried to push through the throng and attempted to come to bear with Jerrod. They thought he was nothing more than a drunken patron that needed thumping, but some of the toughs were already there and stopped them from getting to him.

“Hey! Who is this guy?”

“He ain’t no cop!”

The toughs pushed them back with full force, and the bouncers had lost some of their ire and were mollified. The man Jerrod punched was their leader. They lost their direction and fire, though several other employees ran for the exits. Jerrod smiled and bolted towards the door, throwing elbows and knocking people out of his way.

Jerrod’s long strides caught up to the floor manager like a shot. He grabbed him by the scruff of his collar and tossed him backwards like a dog. Marko and his men took it from there, rounding up all the others into the center of the room.

Jerrod left the chaotic scene and stepped outside. People shouted and cursed at his back. He laughed and caught sight of a man he recognized, one of the bosses of the dice tables. He scurried away like a frightened rat down an alleyway. Jerrod ran off after him.

Turning a corner Jerrod brought the man sprawling on his back, his eyes blinking. Chuckling, Jerrod turned the man over to his stomach and twisted rope around his wrists. He let one of Marko’s toughs take over as the young man came running up.

“Cart him up,” Jerrod said and smiled. “There’s plenty more out there to get.”

The night was turning out fine. And it had only begun.

Chapter Eight

Sea Haven’s only house of ill repute bustled with activity, filled to capacity. Men and women with similar interests and agendas mingled together, talked together, prepared to do business with each other. The conversations on the surface were light and airy.

“How have you been?”

“Oh, fine. So nice to see you again.”

“Did you hear about the betting tents?”

“Oh, yes! So terrible! They shut it down for a night.”

Others were more business appropriate but still only surface topics as people felt each other out.

“How is your export business?”

“Very fine, very fine. Back into it.”

“They have the embargo lifted I see….”

“Some weather we’re having this time of year.”

“Yes, just dreadful! Can’t believe it. This heat is too much, too soon.”

“Me too. I much prefer the autumnal season you know. This is much too drafty, this nonsense.”

“Well I don’t mind it.”

“Each to his own I suppose….”

Madam Dreary circulated amongst the crowd, smiling, laughing when appropriate, touching each client as she passed. Even if it was a mere squeeze on the arm or gentle pat on the back, she knew it made the men feel wanted, desired, and it gave them the necessary vibe of intimacy. It, along with the alcohol, helped loosen their purse string, the foolish creatures.

“Ah, Count Strickland,” she said to a nobleman and squeezed his arm. “So nice to see you here. It’s been far too long, me love.”

The lord kissed her preferred hand and bowed. “I apologize for the lapse, beautiful one. Business affairs in Thessolai you see. Horrible business, they kept me away from the warm embrace of your house.”

“And we are all the lesser for your absence, my lord.”

Count Strickland inclined his head. “You are too kind.”

One of his aides whispered in his ear while Madam Dreary glanced at another man in his retinue, a strapping, hulking brute of a bodyguard. He looked at her, lust in his eyes, and she smiled a genuine demure grin. She fluffed her hair with one hand.

Here was a prime candidate, a man for her to get to know better. A strong impulse to be with him, to court him, to mate with him, struck her. It was overwhelming. The count excused himself for a moment to speak more with his aide, and she stepped closer to the armored bodyguard.

“What a wonderful design your armor has” she said and traced the embossed symbol on his chest, an eagle with its wings spread. “I believe this to be a derivative of the Walchester line, if I’m not mistaken.”

The handsome man blinked and looked impressed. “Why, why yes. My family line can be traced back to the original Walchester dynasty across the sea to the east.”

“Wonderful. And now your line of knights pays homage to the count.”

“Yes. My family is attached to Count Strickland’s duchy by way of blood. Excuse me, but how did you recognize this crest, a derivative as it is?”

“I study history, my stalwart fellow. I am more than a pretty face and have other, more savory skills.”

He smiled and kissed her knuckles in a very sensual way. It was a boon the count allowed his men to enjoy themselves. She wondered how far it would go.

“I have no doubt of your claim, lady.”

“Tell me love, do your duties allow you free reign by choice? Or does the count require all of your attention? I hope not.”

He smiled. “The count is a generous man. And my sworn duty allows me a wide latitude of activities. I assure you.”

Madam Dreary smiled and ran her hand down his arm, feeling the hardness of his muscles. “Come with me. I have some literary tomes on your ancestors you might enjoy.”

He kissed her hand again. “That would be wonderful.”

The noble guard was an energetic lover and fit, although a bit too enthusiastic to her tastes. She had him slow things down at times, but seconds later his ego would turn the intensity up again. An older man would have more patience.

Afterwards she let him sleep on her silken red sheets where even his bulky form was swallowed up by the huge splash of red, like a fleshy rock in a bucket of blood. Her room was in the back of the building and thus had access to the alleyway beyond. She entered a small anteroom and approached the back door.

A heavy lock and straight bar propped against the center metal framework. A steel rod also connected with that to the floor. Numbness griped her body as she undid the latch, and with no small effort lifted the bar. She opened the door, and a warm gust of air wafted through and brought with it the stink of death.

“I have something for you,” she said, and her demeanor slackened and vacant eyed like a sleepwalker.

Malthus Benaire stepped into the anteroom. His face exposed to her for that one brief moment, and had she been herself, she might had grown mad at the glimpse of those unreadable features. So deep and dull were his eyes, they might have been attached to a corpse. A zombie lord, a dead thing full of hunger and avarice.

His voice was the whisper of the grave. “Show me.”

Madam Dreary, like a sorcerer’s golem, walked back into her room and pointed to the prone form of the man she had enticed. Her arm stayed rigid like a fox hound pointing to its fallen prey.

Malthus Benaire swooped by her, a carrion bird, smooth and fierce. His cape swept the ground behind, a dark black blot of ink across a red sea of carpet. Madam Dreary’s arm slumped, and she was no more a part of the proceedings than the paint on the walls. Benaire glided over to the bed and stared down at the motionless form, his eyes the blackest pit of earnest.

The man, young and virile, snored and drooled on his back. His neck sloughed to the side as if drugged. Malthus reached into the folds of his black leather vest and plucked out a gleaming scalpel amongst a row of similar instruments. He held it up in the light. The edge gleamed.

Tone of body was a beefy flesh that was both prideful and boastful. He could smell the man’s incredible ego, feel the very smugness of his attitude, and how he treated others from his elevated position. How delicious.

Malthus poked the muscular shoulder with his gloved finger, and the man shot awake. His warrior instinct kicked in, and his face grew fierce. “Who are—”

The question never finished. Malthus sprinkled powder over the man’s body with one swift motion, and it went stiff. The sinews on his neck bulged and strained under his mental alert. His muscles locked tight, and the tendons in his back popped and bucked as his bones protested the sudden paralysis.

All that wasted effort. The concoction was ancient and infallible. The man’s body rocked on its backside like a ship at dock, bobbing from the false momentum of his initial movement.

Malthus stabbed him below his left upper arm muscle a few inches above the elbow and carved a wide swath of loose meat up the side. The skin and underlying flesh peeled away smooth and clean with no loss of muscle or spillage of blood.

His tool shone in the candlelight as the macabre work continued. The meat of the doomed body created a wicked collection, the metal the only piece with any blood. It hung there and did not drip down to the bed as it
should
have.

Continuing with the bigger muscles of his torso, Malthus carved and stacked the muscles around the body like stones around a cairn. Malthus went slow, relishing his work. Soon he had every major muscle in its proper place while the man stared at him. Life clung to his ruined form. Disbelief mixed with morbid fascination at the evidence of his own demise, for indeed he felt every single cut, every pull of tendon, sinew, and muscle.

Malthus Benaire paused his work for a moment, laying the scalpel down on one of the many cushions on the bed. He reached into a pouch at his belt and drew out a small box. Therein was a blunt stone, a dull looking block, rectangular with irregular edges like a chipped sharpening stone. It sat in his palm lifeless as he studied the eviscerated form of the still living man.

Waving the stone over the exposed muscles, the object glowed with a yellowish light similar to a warm candle flame. The stone sucked in the pulp of muscles, and the separate pieces disappeared like scattered leaves. The stone pulsed and glowed brighter with eldritch energy.

He drained every available piece of flesh and filled the stone, along with three others before the work was finished. The man’s eyes stared in horror, and Malthus knew the inner workings of that tortured mind. He could read the disbelief that the body still lived. He, could feel the extra energy the man gave him and provided to his stones by the soul’s tie to his corporeal form, knew this pain was far beyond what a human could endure, and he soaked in every ounce of life force he could.

In a way the man was dead. His physical form drained, but his soul lingered, Malthus Benaire’s leeched off the man’s pain. So intense the physical pain, it translated into a tremendous pool of power for him. This was the best way to work, for it brought the most delicious end product.

Malthus put away the smaller, more delicate scalpel. It was time to delve deeper with a serrated knife as long as his forearm and half as wide. It plunged into the man’s chest, where the upper ribs met the sternum.

The chest cracked open, and with an effortless sawing motion, Malthus split the upper chest down through the rest of the torso, all the way to the pubic area. He flayed two flaps from the newly formed hole and pinned them to the side. The man’s entire abdominal cavity exposed. The man’s eyes bulged, and his face contorted.

Malthus smiled and stood back for a moment. The torchlight flickered on his malevolent features. He studied the marvelous intricacies of the human form sprawled out on the bed. The internal organs packed tight. The rippling, snaking intestines pulled together with sinew, the large flap of the liver on the left center, the half covered stomach on the center right, and below, the still beating heart.

The evil entity looked in his victim’s eyes, and in that instant a deep understanding, far more intimate than the sex he shared a few minutes ago with the madam, passed between them. Malthus kept the man’s soul trapped within the tortured frame and pumped in his life force. Malthus in turn fed the stones.

He used a single stone for each organ, as these were far more valuable than the mere musculature of a man. A brown stone, dark and almost full, sucked out the essence of his intestines, large and small alike. The stone grew darker and heavier as it neared completion. The ropey entrails dried and shriveled, snaking into the stone like a gross worm burrowing into the earth.

A greenish stone was used on the liver, minor, gall bladder, and spleen. This man was very healthy and prime, though his intestines had been a bit dirty. It was evidence of a poor diet of foul meat and sweets, and he was either a teetotaler or at the very least a light drinker.

Next came an orange stone for the kidneys and stomach. He reaped a rather disappointing bounty from them. Malthus would study this strangeness in detail later; most times a healthy liver equated healthy kidney and stomach but not here. Fascinating.

A yellow stone evaporated his lungs. It glowed bright and full due to his robust health and probable exercise regimen. Malthus almost cackled as he filled this stone.

At last, the job finished with a red stone for the heart, the strongest, most important muscle in a human’s body. He had no disappointment there. It was a much more difficult stone to fill, and thus more powerful and important to his vocation. He was almost done with this one. Perhaps two or three more able-bodied men, and he would have another full red. Fantastic.

Malthus left the brain and those wonderful, staring eyes. Tidying up his tools, he exited the room the same way he had entered. The man screamed a voiceless wail as the dark entity Malthus Benaire disappeared into the night.

* * * * *

The tavern was more subdued than ever before. So quiet, it seemed the people feared to speak lest someone overhear their innermost thoughts. Cubbins sat back in his chair with his favorite brew, an imported beer from the far south. It was an exotic, spicy draft. The night had garnered new information. There was the tiniest undercurrent of fear of a nameless entity.

Whatever it was hovered about the city, but only in the seediest parts of town, the hovels, the broken down wrecks. There was some talk, a slight buzz over several missing vagrants, homeless men, and women most people would never miss, but the sheer number in recent days drew suspicion. Sometimes it was near the docks, sometimes the dirty taverns, but it was always in the cold, lonely places in town where people begged for handouts.

Rumors were often hyperbole, exaggerated tales, but Cubbins had no choice but to accept these stories and whisperings of dark happenings in recent days. There was a solid grain of truth to the words because the people had no reason to lie when they thought no one was listening.

If he asked them a direct question, even if they liked and respected him, most of these men and women would lie or stretch the truth, unless they were being paid, coerced or in their best interest to tell him.

He sat for some time past midnight and spoke with a few old chums about unrelated topics while the rest of the tavern spoke of other things as well, the conversations shifting back and forth from the missing people to the continued presence of the Janisberg soldiers to whatever they wanted to bitch and moan about.