“Kelc,” Shaia urged, shooing him toward the alley. “You can think later,” she said, unaware of his aims. “We need to get out this town. It’s making my skin crawl. And this smoke,” she added, screwing her face up in disgust.
The smoke caught up with them only a little while before, the fire the deputies started getting big enough to issue the grotesque fumes into the air, depositing the uniquely biting odor and brown taint to the usually crisp winter air. It forced them to cover their faces, the thought of breathing in the immolated, disease–wracked corpses too much to tolerate. Their eyes, however, lay bare to the smoke, causes them to burn and tear as they made their way.
Kelc blinked hard, hoping to relieve his eyes before getting back to his feet and crossing the street, glancing both right and left, but focusing on left where the curtain still lazily flapped on the weak breeze.
The alley was only a few paces across and the eaves of the houses nearly touched, cutting what little light struggled past the grey clouds overhead down enough that there were areas where Kelc couldn’t see. Something could hide in there, he thought, looking at a particularly dark spot, and I’d know naught of it.
The idea quickened his pace. Shaia sped up right behind him, happy to expedite their escape.
“Kelc,” she gasped, keeping her voice down as much as she could. He spun to her and she gestured to a narrow gap between houses that crowded each other.
Kelc looked and saw nothing in the dim light. He drew his skiver, favoring the short blade in such a confined area. “What?” he finally whispered.
“Something moved right over there,” she said. “I felt like…” She shook her head violently. “It was watching us and when I felt it there watching… It vanished before I could see what it was.”
“How big was it?”
Shaia shrugged. “I couldn’t tell. It was there, then gone.” Her breath came in quick shallow pulls. “Let’s just go.”
Kelc agreed. He dared not squeeze in between the two houses. The space where Shy saw whatever it was offered only a half reach of opening, the houses close enough that one eave reached beneath the next. He waved for her to continue up the alley while he remained staring into the gap between the houses, his skin tingling.
He yearned to reach out for nearby spirits or to access his skiver and draw out energy that he could use…somehow. A bitter snort escaped him at the thought. Within a thousand paces were three men bent on killing him and the one power he possessed that might stop them was the one with which he had the least confidence.
He slowly turned and followed Shaia, who stood still after noticing that her brother had yet to follow. He nodded at her, offering a gesture that everything was alright, regardless of what he felt.
The end of the alleyway came abruptly after weaving through only six or seven houses, ending at another narrow road. On the ground, there was nothing. “No buttons,” Kelc murmured to himself.
Shy spun slowly, her eyes scouring the packed dirt for any sign of the brass buttons that were supposed to indicate their path. “None?” she asked quietly. “Did he leave us?” she asked, her voice low. “Kelc?” she said louder. “Did he abandon us?”
“No,” came an oily voice, Pyter Dell’s voice. “He didn’t leave you behind.”
Shaia spun so fast to him that she stumbled and fell onto her rump. She instantly scrambled back to her feet.
Kelc already held his sword and skiver as he looked at the deputy, who stood across the narrow street in the opening of another alley.
His grey eyes spoke of mirth while his posture seemed closer to a man ambling through a sunny day than a predator catching his prey. His long leather overcoat hung open displaying his loose tunic and wool pants, and his sword still in its sheath. He wore shoes Kelc saw men wear only on festival days, low on his ankle with hose or socks rather than hard boots.
“Where is Micah?” Kelc asked, his eyes darting from side to side. He even hazarded a glance back up the alleyway from which he and his sister had just emerged.
“Micah?” Pyter said, a lazy smile spreading on his lips. “You mean the vampire?” he asked with a slow shake of his head. “He’s back there.”
“Good,” Kelc said, “then let us pass.”
The deputy actually laughed out loud, a high-pitched sound that only reduced to a sound more likely to come from a man as his enjoyment tapered. “Just like your father. All bluster.” He shifted his posture, changing which hip bore his weight. “There’s no way you’re leaving here, witch man. You hid it from us before, but just your presence here explains a lot. And running around with a vampire?” His tongue clicked in his mouth. “I don’t think you’ll be able to explain that one away.” Pyter shifted into a more combat-ready position. “So,” he said, drawing the word out, “will you yield voluntarily or must we bring you down?”
Kelc’s mind raced as he searched for the other deputies, seeing none. Someone must have been up the alleyway behind Pyter, holding Micah. But that still left one more of them.
“That depends, I guess,” Kelc said, trying to sound as unperturbed as the deputy did. “What will you do with us, and Micah?”
“You,” he said, “must die per Symean law, copper dust filling your evil eyes and sorcerous mouth, your soul rent to Reman.” A look of content formed on Pyter’s face. “Micah,” he said, glancing back, “will be escorted back to Reman.” As if on cue, the gaunt man poked his head from the dim alley, his hair ruffled, his brown eyes wide and hunted. “It’s not what we’d normally do with a vampire, but that was his price.”
“For what?” Kelc asked, knowing the answer. He narrowed his eyes, hoping that all the anger he felt poured through them. It was enough to cause Micah to retreat back into the alley.
A grin shone on Pyter’s face. “For you, of course.”
Pyter flicked his hand, which appeared to be empty, snapping his fingers away from him in the hazy air. Light dully reflected off of a number of nearly invisible needles. That’s what they seemed to be to Kelc’s eyes.
The act could only be a threat. Kelc reached out with his senses, his mind ripping through the small town searching for spirits. As the tiny rods that Pyter tossed into the air neared Kelc, they doused his sense of spirit. To his spiritual vision, it appeared that the world now hid behind a curtain that wrapped almost all the way around him despite the fact that he could still see everything as before.
The deputy leapt at him, his sword clearing his scabbard with a smooth ring of steel. Kelc raked his blade across the face of the deputy, forcing the more experienced man to set a parry, deflecting Kelc’s scimitar.
“Up the alley!” Kelc barked to his sister as he crossed his sword and skiver, catching Pyter’s shot, twisting it to the ground. “Go!” he grunted, finding that the thin man possessed surprising strength.
“Nah!” announced the deputy, ripping his sword from beneath his opponent’s parry. His blade caught Shaia on the ankle and cut through her boot into her flesh, though the swing held too little force.
She howled in pain as she simultaneously tripped and collapsed. “Kelc!”
“Crawl!” he yelled, pouring anger into his shots, raining one after the other on Pyter, the lawman’s eyes darting from blade to blade, counting the rhythm as he deflected each blade to the side.
Kelc had watched his father do much the same thing. He feinted with his sword, slowing it and using it to hold the deputy’s sword wide as he rammed the skiver at him, catching his gut, the short blade sinking a knuckle into him.
“Hells,” Pyter snapped. “Damned witch!”
He responded with a feint of his own, driving into Kelc before pulling his steel up and charging into his foe. Too many times had Kelc seen the attack at home. He drew both blades back in and set them like pikes, forcing Pyter to back off.
With a quick glance Kelc could see that Shaia had managed to scramble into the alley a short way, giving him some space. He gave ground, careful to keep his blades up and ready while his senses r
anged, searching for spirits.
“No!” Pyter commanded him, his hand darting into a pouch as he saw Kelc’s eyes turn purple. The deputy now stood within the arc of copper orts he’d cast out, rather than beyond them, leaving him open to Kelc’s witchcraft.
Kelc brought two attacks into the man just then, a blade from each side. One hand in a pouch, Pyter could only jump away, trailing his sword. But Kelc didn’t follow. He had no intention of following.
“None,” he growled, realizing that the deputies were rending the people before they burned them. “No one left?” he asked aloud in disbelief. Jista and Tasher had worked quickly.
Again Pyter splayed his fingers out, sending spirit foils into the air, their nature cutting Kelc’s spirit sense off.
“Hells!” Kelc held his skiver in reserve, holding his scimitar out before him in a sideways stance, limited in the narrow alleyway.
He leapt in with a jab, but Pyter easily smacked it downward before his own thrust ran over the top, driving the younger man back.
Kelc could hear Shaia’s whimpers as she forced herself to crawl along the alley floor, her leg wound trailing blood on the ground.
“Huh!” Kelc grunted as he waived his sword before the deputy, inviting an attack while turning his dagger into a reverse grip. Pyter dived in with his sword and Kelc took it along his side, keeping his own steel between it and his adversary’s. While Pyter stood extended, Kelc drove the skiver into him. It dug into the man’s shoulder until bone stopped it.
“Greech!” he rasped, stumbling back, dragging his blade against Kelc’s in defense. “Greeching bastard!”
Kelc leapt after him, jabbing wildly. Sword. Dagger. Sword. Sword.
Pyter gave ground, never truly gaining his balance until he fell against a home beyond the alley and across the narrow street.
Kelc brought both blades into the deputy in the same path, driving Pyter’s sword to the side. He followed the motion and skulled him with the crown of his head. Pyter’s nose cracked audibly.
“Uhhhn!” He slid down the building to the ground, landing on his backside. Kelc started to stand up as he felt it.
Pyter rammed his blade, two handed and blind, straight into Kelc’s gut. It felt like the steel reached his spine.
“Skeesh!” he grunted as his own weight carried him over backwards onto his back.
“Kelc!” Shy’s screech tore the air. “No!”
Kelc desperately scoured his surroundings for spirit. Behind now, the orts blacked his sight. He reached into the ground, feeling some type of spirit there, but it seemed nonresponsive to him.
Pain lanced through him suddenly, reaching from his injury outward, driving his breath from him. “Ut,” he gasped.
Spirit. He suddenly felt some, but it seemed bound somehow. Close though.
His leg seemed afire. Pyter, now kneeling over him, his face covered in his own blood, his shoulder a dark wet mess, recoiled after hacking at Kelc’s leg, leaving a gash in his calf.
“Come now!” Kelc grunted, doing his best to ignore the pain, struggling to grasp the spirit he’d found.
“Use the knife, fool!” Shy screamed.
Too late, Kelc thought. Pyter climbed to his feet, his teeth clenched. He dug one hand into a pouch while turning his sword to deliver the killing blow.
Kelc scrabbled after weapons he hadn’t realized he’d dropped. His fingernails clawed at dry dirt. Several broke in his desperate efforts but they hardly registered pain.
Mine! Kelc’s thoughts raged.
With the first taste of spirit, Kelc could suddenly see each ort as Pyter tossed them into the air, their locations creating an imperfect dome over the both of them where, so far as spirit sense was concerned, existence ended.
Within the dome, however, was Kelc, Pyter and the spirit Kelc now tapped. He willed it to himself despite its singular intent to defy him. He wrenched it away, the result astounding him.
Pyter’s skin seemed to break into a zillion particles as his innards instantaneously detonated. The deputy erupted into a brume of black blood and bits, his spirit coming to Kelc through every pore, every follicle, every single cell of his being.
The bitter smell of iron coated everything as dark fluid rained down on Kelc, the droplets and unnamed clumps of flesh hitting him with such force that they stung. Even as his gorge rose, strength poured through him.
Coated in another man’s blood, Kelc lay back and sent his sense through his body, searching out his wounds, eager to close them with all or part of the dead deputy’s spirit.
He felt his flesh forcing the blood and tissue from Pyter out of his wounds as they knitted. No sooner than he had them closed and the structures of his body more or less in decent shape, he opened his eyes.
“Shy!” he nearly yelled, though his sister already knelt over him, her face pale. Even as she turned from Kelc to vomit, he reached out and sent himself into her. She gasped as his essence bounded through her.
The wound on her leg was fairly shallow and it took little time and effort to close. There was plenty of work he could have done to both of their injuries to restore them perfectly, but this was hardly the time.
“Let’s go, Shy,” he announced as he withdrew himself, the glow leaving his eyes. He climbed to his feet, standing for only a moment before he fell to one knee, the world tipping to a side.
Shaia spat yellow fluid on the ground. “Hells, Kelc,” she wept. “I can’t even look at you.”
“Here.” Strong hands grasped Kelc under each armpit. “Come on! Those other two are searching for you even as we speak.” Shy snatched both of Kelc’s blades from the ground, feebly leveling the scimitar at Micah.
“Traitor,” she snarled. “You brought us straight to him. A greeching trap! Nearly killed us!”
“We can discuss it later,” Micah offered. “Right now, he can’t even walk and I daresay he can’t do that again.” Even as his eyes reflected his vampiric nature, Micah’s face shone disgust. “Let’s go.”
“Let him go,” Shy snarled, edging closer to both Micah and her brother.
“Shy!” Kelc shouted, halting her. He raised his head, turning his blood-caked face to Micah’s. “My body is weak,” he said, “but I can reduce you to a fine ash with no more than a thought.” He pulled a breath, trying to steady himself as the world again seemed to lurch around him. “And since you brought this on us, I’ll not even blink if I feel you’re wronging us again.” Kelc closed his eyes as he looked away from the vampire. “Give me the skiver, Shy. It holds enough spirit to leave this whole greeching town in flames.”
Shaia handed her brother the heavy black dagger, her eyes never leaving Micah’s. “I may not be able to do what he just did, but I can bring about your end just as easily.”
The statement sounded like an unfounded boast to Kelc, but he allowed a smile to momentarily play across his lips as he considered how stout was his sister’s defense of him.
“Let’s go,” Kelc said. “Now.”
As claustrophobic as the tight-packed buildings that filled Wemmerton felt to Kelc he reconsidered them as he entered the wide open low grasslands beyond.
Dressed in browns, greens and greys, Kelc, Shaia and Micah couldn’t have stood out more on the snow-covered plain.
Kelc felt weak. Micah practically carried him as he stumbled along, clumsiness and nausea alternating in his body, rendering him unable to stand at times and definitely unable to walk with any sustained success.
Kelc marveled at the surprising strength and stamina Micah possessed, carrying Kelc with only minimal loss of speed, though he breathed heavily as he pushed onward in a straight line north.
Shaia trailed them, walking in their tracks, gaining what little aid she could from the path Micah and Kelc forged through the ice-encrusted grass. She still clutched Kelc’s scimitar in both hands and her eyes rarely left her brother except to occasionally watch as a plume of her breath slowly eased away before her on the insistent northern breeze.
; Kelc locked his eyes on her face, struggling to keep his chin up as the world again seemed to heave beneath him. She offered a smile though it quickly left her as she again watched a cloud of her breath. Kelc, too, watched as the vapor eased generally in his direction, unable to further observe his sister’s strained expression.
The cloud stayed fairly consistent riding the freezing air, the edges beginning to dissipate as it coasted up over Kelc’s right shoulder. He dropped his chin again to quash his nausea, driving it into his chest as he sucked in a deep breath of winter, feeling its cold as he did.
For a few moments he just listened to the snow crunch beneath Micah’s boots, enjoying the distinct sound, allowing it to fill his mind while he waited for his stomach to quiet its unrest.
Only after his innards settled did he raise his eyes, looking past Shy, her brown hair washing forward over her shoulders, forcing her to sweep it repeatedly over her ears. He looked back at the town, the buildings slowly shrinking as Micah carried him away from the two deputies that still lurked amongst the low wooden houses.
“Kelc,” Shaia said, not looking at her brother. “How did you…” Her jaw clenched. “I could feel you. Those things he threw all over the ground…”
“Orts,” Micah rasped. “They’re copper orts.”
“Those orts,” she said, “only dimmed my ability to feel you.” Kelc arched his eyebrows in surprise and Micah slowed after hearing that. the orts had completely blinded Kelc’s spirit senses and they apparently had a substantial impact on Micah somehow based on his response. “I could feel you wrenching Pyter’s spirit from him. Had I been on the other side of those things…those orts, you would have done the same to me, or anyone.”
“No,” Kelc croaked, discovering how dry his throat was. He scraped his teeth over his tongue, trying to generate some spit, and swallowing what he could get. “No, Shy. I needed spirit and his was the only spirit within the area. I had dropped my dagger,” he said, raising the black skiver before him as if to remind her of the weapon. “I knew what I wanted to do. I was in control of it, I thought. I didn’t expect it to happen as it did.”
Dread of Spirit: Rise of the Mage - Book One Page 28
