Seven Devils

by J A Stone

  Across the street, Shadoweye watched from the rooftops, waiting for her moment to run, tracing the vents and fixtures to the edge and leaping across the alleyway for the next—her bait was on the move.

  Less than an hour later, Tawnee observed from nearby rooftop as Snowman talked to his contact, Jimmy.

  “I’m looking for a Dane, male, royal tattoo on the inside of the thigh?”

  “Tommy-boy, they’ve already marked ya with the two women coming into town. Yes I seen the Huntsman’s Hound—they put him down. Their gonna kill ya friends too Son and capture ya alive as one of the Seven Devils,” Jimmy never did mess around with the truth.

  “Where are they?” Snow asked.

  “I am not about to…”

  Tom struck fast with a ridge-hand jab, bringing a left hook across the jaw, and then shoving the cold barrel of his pistol beneath the cracked mandible—Jimmy never got a fist up.

  “You are telling me now Jimbo, or I drop you dead right here,”

  “We’ve known each other too long Snowman, I gave the signal on the street...”

  CRACK!

  Tom fired without blinking, tossing Jimmy’s brains to the brick wall and bolting away at full speed before the body bounced. Above, Shadoweye remained perfectly still as three goons rounded the corner and gave chase deeper into the maze between the scattered buildings. She knew Snow could handle it—time to check on Brooke.

  At that very moment, six blocks away, Brooke held a wooden Longbow up, but Fawnesa shook her head again with a scrunched-up nose.

  “I’m not a mind reader here, what style is your favor?”

  “That,” Fawnesa could already whisper at a rasp. She pointed to a compound-composite, double-cabled Longbow—the kind used by professional Archers and hired Assassins.

  “Yeah, let’s try a basic model first honey. Find some hunting arrows and a good quiver while I pay the man,” Brooke said aloud, hefting the wooden piece.

  Bitch knows her bows, she thought as she approached the counter. The clerk was sweating, looked a touch nervous.

  “Is she eighteen?” he asked, staring hard into Brooke’s green eyes.

  “She is now,” said the tinkle of blue sapphires on the counter glass.

  “I don’t—want to,” he stammered and Ezra Brooke looked up.

  Time stood still as the Good Knight of Salvos refocused on the mirror behind the counter revealing Fawnesa with the sharpshooter’s bow, fully drawn and beading on the back of her head. She was too late to move, feeling only the forceful push from behind—no pain at all.

  Still standing, Ezra saw the second arrow lodge in the clerk’s eye socket, nailing his skull to the mirror with a muffled ‘TINK,’ spider-webbing hundreds of splintered images of Fawnesa smiling like a demon, drawing back on another bolt. Brooke’s eyes flushed with blood from her brow as she fell and her Soul thankfully left the body.

  It was her first mission—all she wanted was to make British and Danica proud.

  Tibor Proper, Eastgate

  “HEY! DUDE!” the cute pixie called back to the Gateman. “If you’re full of shit, which I know you are, tell your people I’ll be waiting for them to come and get me at the East Market—same place where they took my friend. You tell them that. I’ll scoop back this-a-way and take care of you later.”

  The Gateman ran for his life. They let him go.

  “Smooth move criminal, do we want to get captured straightaway?” Warfell asked as she cantered Rarity.

  “Thinkin’ about it—quickest way in,” said British.

  “Good point, works for me. Do we cull the ranks first?”

  “I don’t know, what do you think?”

  “I think if we go without a scrap, they’ll know we are up to something.”

  “Full of good points today.”

  “So we are? Um—up to something?”

  “Always. This way please.”

  “But the East Market Square is that way.”

  “I know goober-head are you trying to get captured? Again?”

  Warfell sighed and followed, clueless if for only a moment.

  Not far from British and Danica, Tom Snow bolted around a corner, sliding to a stop and thrusting his back to the wall on the dark side of a restaurant. Two seconds of delay and he thrust his honeycomb-barreled shotgun to the side, firing and removing runner number one’s face. A quick spin of the butt caught runner number two on the clavicle, snapping it clean with a crack and a scream.

  Runner number three was sliding on the pavement too late, straight up to the tip of Tom’s extended Epee Foil.

  “Who are you working for buddy,” BOOM! Tom’s barrel finished broken collar-bone and moved over to replace the sword point on slider. “Talk now or die.”

  The man held palms up, tears streaming down his face.

  “Please! I work for Solace! Madam Solace and her Daughter!”

  “Okay,” Snowman drew his face closer with an evil eye, “where?”

  “Underground, beneath the Silver Cup, it’s a pub. The tunnel entrance is in the office behind the bar, gun cabinet on the right.”

  “Thanks you saved a life—just not yours,” Tom pulled the trigger, jerking his head sideways to avoid the backsplash…

  And there were British and Danica, hands on hips, not ten paces away.

  “What’cha doing there Tom-Tom?” British smiled.

  “Gathering intel.”

  “Where are the others?” Warfell looked down on his handy work with approval.

  “We are the bait,” Snow’s blue eyes scanned the rooftops. “Shadow must be watching over the girls. Did you hear my boy there?” he pointed to the hot corpse.

  “Yeah, the Silver Cup, you ready for a beer?” Danica grinned.

  “Sure, just let me get my wife,” he replied, already jogging for the rented room with Warfell and Fey right behind.

  “They should be back by now,” Tom spun about in the small apartment.

  “Where did they go?” asked British.

  “Stables, saddle-smiths and traders, looking for Dare, and to pick up a bow for Fawnesa.”

  “Who?” Warfell moved a curtain glancing out the window for unfriendlies.

  “The kid—Tawnee named her,” Tom answered, but Danica leaned in with a stern look.

  “And you gave her a weapon? Lieutenant?” Warfell’s fleeting calm flipped her a tiny finger and shot out of there.

  “Hold for a second. Tom, come with me,” British turned to walk away and paused with a calm eye to her partner. “We’ll look for Brooke, Warfell get started on the Silver Cup—feel free to unbridle, Tung-Vohra looks hungry.”

  “We both are boss, good luck,” Danica bolted through the archway impossibly fast, snatching the hat off a drunk’s head at fifty paces as she rounded the corner, disappearing into the equifade. British motioned Tom to follow.

  “Stick close, eyes are on us,” she whispered to her Knight.

  “Where to?”

  “Doesn’t matter, out in the open, East Square is good. Listen, when they come for us, you and me are gonna start a fight, savvy?”

  “Let them take us?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “What about Brooke?”

  British stopped to stare at the cobble.

  “What does your heart say Tom?”

  “She didn’t make it…”

  British gazed into Snow’s eyes for a lost moment in time, allowing a tear to tumble down her cheek as they walked to the street in solemn silence.

  Raven Stronghold

  Iris feigned unconsciousness when the cell door clacked open. She peeked through her right eye at the reflection in the polished iron bars—a skinny girl was dragging a body.

  Save the gods, oh sweetheart, the impaled Arenthian thought when she recognized the scent—it was Brooke!

  The girl slid the limp frame inside the cage and flopped the shoulders down at Iris’ feet.

  “Not one of the Seven, but we know she’s yours,” Fawnesa whisp
ered hoarsely and then spit on the back of the corpse’s head. Iris turned her face and looked the girl in the eye.

  “Rip ya apart with meh hands,” the Arenthian snarled.

  “Should have done that when you first saw me at the Reform School. My Mother is Mica Solace,” she grinned evil and Iris’ grey orbs shot wide in recognition.

  “Whaaaat? You know that name don’t ya?” again with the sputum.

  Iris knew about the Solace bloodline—self-proclaimed Masters of the Black Art Sciences, Witches—a powerful Matriarchy dating back for centuries on Aleutha. Known to the Arenthians as the Black Souls, the Solace women were infamous for their cruel acts of violence as Renth Hunters. In the Old World, they were Assassins, Usurpers and the hidden voices through hazy-eyed Kings.

  “We got a bead on your precious elfin magic right now, so hang tight bloodsucker,” Fawnesa slammed the iron bars shut and whistled for the bullpen door release.

  The Silver Cup

  Warfell entered the bar with the large-brimmed hat down low over her face—her long white hair tucked neatly inside.

  Maybe it was her determined walk, or her unusual height that gave her away so quickly. Regardless, the men and women immediately peeled away from their tables to face her, mumbled curses rifling through the now fully aware crowd of rebel loyalists.

  She removed the hat, shook the platinum silk free and forcefully unsheathed Tung-Vohra with an ear-splitting ring.

  “No one walks away,” Warfell whispered to the sword in her hand as the Ravens surrounded her tall slender frame, shouting, breaking glass and exposing weapons.

  In the East Market Square, British turned on Tom when she spotted the first hit squad making way toward them through the crowd.

  “You think I wouldn’t HEAR ABOUT IT?” she suddenly slapped Tom hard across the cheek, drew the Blunderbuss and fired past his left ear. “I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!” She threw the weapon at Tom and ran like a child crying, straight into the arms of six men.

  Snowman watched them take British like a dolt, waiting for his man to sneak up from the side and strike the back of his noggin.

  From the rooftops, Tawnee observed with her heart below on the street in the gutters. British and Danica had followed her into town. They didn’t trust her to do the job and why not? Brooke was done, Fawnesa working for the enemy.

  Guess I messed this one up too, she thought with tears pouring down the back of her mind’s eye. It was obvious British and Tom allowed capture—quickest way in. Tawnee gathered her resolve, took a deep breath and followed at a distance.

  Three blocks away, Tom and British were shoved through a guarded warehouse door and then down a substrata stairwell—the rear entrance to the rebel stronghold. At least now she had a location. She waited quietly as it began to rain, thunder hammering away in the distance. A storm was approaching from the west.

  Across the street, Shadoweye heard fighting in a bar, The Silver Cup. She saw the flashes of gunfire, muffled by the encroaching wind, pelting rain and thunderclaps. She decided to move, crawling into position above the two guards standing outside in the torrent watching the windows on the bar. Several seconds of calculation and Shadoweye dropped from the roof.

  Behind the bar at the Silver Cup, Warfell smeared the hot blood across her cheek with the back of her hand. Okay, that was a thousand times better than bird, but still.

  Thirty seconds of sucking gave the remnants of her enemy a quick opportunity to regroup. Twelve men crunched over the broken glass, bodies, chairs and tables—closing in on her position.

  “Nowhere left to run bitch,” one said from behind the barrel of a pistol.

  Nothing.

  “Where’d she go!” another peeked behind the massive counter.

  Danica was now on the opposing side of the secret entrance. She pushed the wooden door to with a ‘click’ and bent the retaining bar over the lock, using her sudden flush of adrenaline to overcome the steel.

  “THERE!” the men shouted, pushing-way through the door to the office, but it was too late—Warfell now sealed in tight.

  Raven Stronghold

  Mica Solace was a very old woman. The decades had not been kind to her at all. Her bones were brittle—muscles simply gone—pain dominated her life.

  As she lay still on the padded couch, she fondly remembered her own Mother giving her an infusion of Arenthian blood for the first time so many years ago. She was just a kid but the bite from the snake was fatal, and as the last surviving female Solace—her Mother had no choice. That was more than two hundred years ago and it seemed like yesterday.

  “I’m ready,” she said to her Daughter, a Daughter she never named. All of the Matriarchy held the last name of Solace, but the girls were always free to choose and change first names at will.

  “It’s going to hurt Momma,” Fawnesa Solace whispered back as she pushed the needle in deep.

  Mica’s screams echoed tight in the sealed chamber.

  Once the hidden palace of Gran-Matron Greta Solace, the complex had four levels, twenty apartments, a communal bathhouse, infirmary, and a vaulted echo chamber with a loft and a natural waterfall door to the Master’s Suite. The Solace family maintained a residence there for one reason—proximity to the Tiborean Royals in the city above.

  After two centuries of silence, Mica Solace carefully revealed her secret palace to selected Raven insurgents, seeing an opportunity to fund, feed and command the rebellion, thus usurping the Throne of Tibor from Good King Atria. Once in total control, she would scour the facility clean and execute every man or woman with possible knowledge of its location. Quite a day for an elderly woman of frailty, yet when Mica learned of a confirmed living Arenthian, she acted swiftly, because she knew about the sweet blood and the aggressive virus it contained.

  Fawnesa’s smile broadened and twisted to the precipice of insanity as her Mother’s skin lesions cleared, wrinkles disappeared, and her hair flushed deep auburn with youth and vibrancy.

  She pushed a warm bottle of Iris’ blood to her lips and Mica drank like a starving prisoner.

  Two levels down, Iris somehow smiled past the insanity.

  “Good ta see ya boss,” she spoke through the pain of the pin, freshly reinserted. British and the Snowman’s faces were agape—total astonishment over what they just witnessed Doctor Khin do to their friend.

  “I swear, we are gonna get you out of here honey,” Tom spoke for a speechless British.

  “I seriously doubt that Mister Snow,” a woman’s voice came from the shadows. It was Mica Solace, now appearing to be in her forties. Fawnesa entered the chamber behind her, giving British the finger with a smirk.

  “Three Devils and a dead Knight—so far,” Fawnesa whispered. “I retake the field,” the skinny girl with evil talent turned to leave, pausing to ask of her Mother.

  “Will you wait for me? I would like to kill Elfin Magic myself.”

  “We shall wait but not long, other Devils are probably already here, secure this palace Daughter.”

  “As you wish,” Fawnesa’s voice was returning. Madam Solace bowed, and then faced her new captives.

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked Fey with a spark of humor on her full lips.

  “You know? I really don’t,” British answered at a rare loss.

  “You need to brush up on your Aleuthian History Lady Fey. Did you know that the Feys and Solaces once knew each other? We had a dispute over an unauthorized marriage resulting in an assassination thus ending our family ties more than six hundred years ago.”

  Solace…British’s keen intellect raced for a connection, so much stuff in there now.

  “The Black Souls of the Old World, your Kin hunted the Arenthians to extinction and then disappeared from the public eye,” Tom Snow recited from school memories, jolting British in the right direction.

  “Very good Mister Snow. Tell me, where is Danica Warfell, Robert John Stone, Logos Gravari and Tawnee Shadoweye? Where are they right this moment?”

&
nbsp; “You can bet your ass they are close,” Tom looked to British and they both smiled as if they knew something, because of course, they did.

  “I expect nothing less,” Madam Solace knew a little something too. “If you were better read, you would also know that my Kin are Swordsmen and I’ve had two centuries of practice. Stay here, all three of you.”

  Mica abruptly left the chamber, shouting orders to her brutes guarding the steel doors. After a moment, British finally spoke to the air.

  “Dad, did you hear?”

  I did, be perfectly still

  For once, Tom was relieved to see the Aequitas Caelum Vindictis materializing before him. He looked down to his manacled wrists and ankles, then jumped in fright when British appeared at his side, already free of her chains and actively picking the locks on his. The hazy Spirit floated to the impaled Iris.

  You have saved me so many times—I love you, my Good Knight of Salvos. Iris, can you be silent, can you endure it one more time?

  “I…can,” the Arenthian stammered, grabbing her breath as best she could, bracing herself for it. The Ghost did not wait, bending the metal from the welds, pulling swiftly on the retaining pin, yanking the instrument free with a surge of blackened blood and a gasp from the brave Knight.

  British and Tom ran to her side as the benevolent Spirit removed strips of cloth from Brooke’s body.

  Bind her wound and be ready, I cannot stay long, your weapons are in the armory, I will see you both soon…

  And the Spirit dissipated, no longer able to maintain his fading strength.

  “Thank you Father,” British scrambled to the side of the doors and knocked three times on the metal. The door clacked open and three huge men stared at Tom holding Iris in his arms.