“Does their political affiliation matter?”
“Not to the hunters, but you Coalition thugs beat and either kill or imprison my kind, so it matters to me. If the hunters killed a Coalition mage, I’m more likely to throw them a party than help you with an investigation.”
“I don’t think I need to remind you of the threat the Crimson Hunters pose to you as well as to my people,” he said, “But let me also remind you that there are innocent civilians living in Devil Falls—both Native, and Outsider. Supernaturals trying to make lives for themselves away from the prying eyes and fragile minds of mortals. Tonight, a Coalition mage found his death at the hands of these savages. Tomorrow, perhaps, it will be someone who doesn’t deserve such a gruesome fate.”
I marched up to him, shirtless, defiance in my eyes. “If Outsiders are so innocent, why are they thrown into this Gods-forsaken place with impunity?” I snarled. “Why do you hunt them down and butcher them in the street, Horseman?”
“Butcher…” another lazy, half-smile crossed his lips. “I see my reputation has been greatly exaggerated.”
I moved closer to him, staring into his eyes, my chest lightly touching his. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t beat that smile off your smug face.”
“Is that really what you want to do?” he asked, his voice low.
Now would’ve been the moment. His guard was low, even though I was right in his face. I could’ve slid a knife into his abdomen, twisted it, and made him bleed out faster than he could heal his own wound. But I didn’t have a knife on hand, and the collar around my neck prevented my natural claws from manifesting.
“I suggest you move back, fiend,” he said, leaving the rest of the threat to the imagination.
I backed up, not because his threat had worked, but because I wanted to put the shirt, socks, and jacket on. “You didn’t leave me any shoes,” I said once I was done changing.
“I’m surprised I have to tell you to check behind the desk,” he said. “You’re aware I’m bringing you out tonight for your observational skills, right?”
I frowned at him. “My observational skills are fine,” I said, going around the desk and picking up the boots I found on the floor.
They were my boots, not some other inmate’s.
I stared at them, wide-eyed. They were black, steel-capped, heavy boots; scuffed up and worn out, but still totally functional and capable of putting a dent in a metal wall if I kicked it hard enough. I turned my eyes up at him. “I thought you’d have burned my clothes,” I said.
“The rest was burned,” he said, “But those are good boots. It seemed a shame to waste them.”
They were clean. Still worn out, sure, but sparkling… and they smelled like him. “Did you clean these?”
“Put them on,” he barked, not answering my question. “We’re leaving.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The rules were simple; don’t try to flee, don’t try to fight, and don’t call for help. There would be no help, there would be no running, and there would be no fight. If the guards with the guns couldn’t make sure of that, then the Horseman would.
I was being allowed out of the prison, but they weren’t removing the iron collar around my neck, and there would be rifles at my back the entire time. I wasn’t free. This wasn’t going to be a jaunt through the city in search of a good burger place to eat at. This was a field trip, with scheduled stops and a strict agenda that needed keeping.
I walked behind the Horseman through the prison, basking in his wild scent. My hands were cuffed behind my back. Guards holding rifles trailed behind me, but Sanchez wasn’t with us—neither were Brickmore and Howes.
Everybody we passed watched us in stunned silence, giving the Horseman a wide berth. He had an effect on the people around here that I hadn’t quite seen in a person before. It was fear, yes. These people were all afraid of him, afraid of what he could do, but there was also something more. Something primal, and ancient. Not quite like animals shying out of the path of an apex predator because they didn’t want to be eaten, but more out of reverence and respect because they knew his power.
These people—the prison guards, the workers—they were all mages, and they all had power of their own. But the Horseman seemed to tower above them all like some kind of dark monolith. It was as if he’d tapped into some unknown mastery of the art that was far beyond even their enlightened reach, and they knew it, respected it, and feared it, all in equal measures.
When the door to the outside opened, it wasn’t the street I was led onto, but the prison’s inner courtyard. From here I could see parked, military trucks with canvas tarps, the fences marking the boundaries of the yards—each belonging to a different cellblock—and a huge iron gate that looked like it belonged on a castle.
Our squad moved toward one of the military trucks, and I was ushered into the back with the Horseman and the other guards. Once I was settled inside, the truck got moving and rumbled out of the prison courtyard and onto smooth tarmac.
I caught sight of Harrowgate falling away behind us through the gap at the back of the tarp and saw it now for what felt like the first time, even though it wasn’t. Harrowgate was a monstrous structure, with impossibly tall, dark walls topped with chords upon chords of razor-wire, ramparts from which guards could patrol both the inside of the courtyard and the street immediately outside of the prison, and four massive towers covered in floodlights that were never turned off, even at night.
It’s hard to believe I successfully infiltrated that place.
I shook my head, dismissing the thought just in case some Psionic caught wind of it, and started counting down in my head from a hundred. It was a trick Calder had taught me to keep my thoughts from being read. It wouldn’t work all the time, and any Psionic worth their salt would know what I was doing, would know I was hiding something, but it would take great effort to pierce through the wall.
The Horseman must’ve noticed that slight shake of my head, because I could feel his gaze fall upon me. “Nervous?” he asked.
I gave him a sidelong glance. He was sitting next to me, the guards opposite us, their guns raised. “Not for me,” I said.
“Do you think your Crimson Hunters would spare you because of what you are?”
“They aren’t my hunters, and no. They’ll kill me all the same. But they’ll kill you first—and your men—if given the chance.”
“All the more reason to investigate this gruesome murder, don’t you think? Perhaps we can find clues as to the location of their lair.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it. The Hunters aren’t nearly as stupid as you think they are.”
“Then maybe your assistance isn’t as essential as I thought?” he paused. “If that turns out to be the case, what use would I have for you?”
“None, so I guess you’ll just kill me to free up the bunk space, right?”
“Perhaps.”
He let the word linger, the rest unsaid, a trait of his I was starting to find infuriating. I wished he’d have threatened to outright kill me, instead of letting my mind run wild with all the many possible fates that would fall upon me. But that was the core of him, wasn’t it? He got into your head, even without magic. He wanted me to be scared of him. To fear him, to respect him.
Everything was a power struggle with him. But when you’ve lived the kind of life I’ve lived, you learn to fear no one and nothing; and you learn respect is earned, not taken by force. If he thought he could browbeat me or threaten me into submission, he was going to soon find out just how wrong he was.
I turned my eyes to the floor, to the space between my boots, and continued counting down in my mind. I didn’t want to keep talking to him, didn’t want to listen to what he had to say. The less I heard him speak, the better. What I needed to do was concentrate, keep my senses sharp, and find my moment.
I had counted down from a hundred just over three times before the truck came to a grumbling halt, so we hadn’t gone far from the prison. The
Horseman stepped out of the back first, turning around once his feet had touched the ground and gesturing for me to follow him.
I got up, with my hands tied behind my back, and slowly made my way to the exit. Already I could smell the blood in the air, the faint scent attacking my nose even from a distance. Shit. It was strong. Really strong. So strong it dwarfed the natural, noxious aroma of putrid magic that hung heavily in the air in Devil Falls.
Here, the stink of death danced closely with the stench of wrongness; annoying at best, a migraine in the making at worse.
Stepping out of the truck, I found myself standing on a quiet street flanked by low-rise buildings that looked a little like they were leaning against each other. All of the ground level businesses had their shutters drawn, and none of the homes above them had lights on that I could see, but that didn’t mean everyone was asleep—only that this was a lightly travelled neighborhood.
Exactly the kind of place the Crimson Hunters liked to stalk.
The hairs on my arms and the nape of my neck stood on their ends as the thought pushed through me like a chilling wind. The harsh, fluorescent street-lights above us were spaced too far apart to provide adequate light to the street. Some of them were also smashed, which made it even harder for someone to spot a threat moving their way.
One of the guards shoved my shoulder, pushing me toward the Horseman. “Move,” he grunted.
I glared at him once I’d regained my footing, then I walked.
The Horseman was headed for a small alley tucked between two buildings leaning so closely together that it was more of a tunnel, really. Already there were two other men here, both of them wearing tactical gear, holding fully automatic rifles, and clearly watching the area to keep randoms from disturbing the crime scene.
More Harrowgate men.
After a quick word of discussion with his people, the Horseman pushed deeper into the alley. There were no sounds floating from the windows along either of the dull, grey walls, no signs of life, and even less light. The darkness didn’t bother me, but it would hinder the others enough that it gave me an edge—if I wanted to use it.
The body I had come searching for hung from a spike at the furthest wall of the dead-end alley like an exclamation point. It wasn’t hard to find. In fact, it was the first thing I saw as soon as I turned into the long, dark tunnel; in part thanks to my dark vision.
At first it looked like someone had climbed on top of a dumpster, wrapped a chord around their necks, and then kicked the dumpster out from under their feet. But then I got closer, and I saw it wasn’t rope, but the man’s intestines that were holding him up to the spike smashed into the concrete wall.
He had been gutted like a pig, his stomach torn open not by a careful incision, or even by the sharp edge of a sword, but with hands. Clawed, rough, hands. Blood and guts pooled on the floor beneath the man. Under the watchful gaze of a number of cats licking their red-tinted lips and grooming themselves, flies and rats filled their bellies on the fallen remains, scattering quickly as the Horseman approached.
I heard one of the guards behind me shuffle away and hurl the contents of his stomach onto a pile of garbage bags gathering next to one of the dumpsters. The Horseman turned, cocked a disappointed eyebrow at the puking guard, then beckoned me to join him near the dead man’s feet. The stench grew stronger as I approached, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle because I had been around worse. Way worse.
“What do you make of this?” the Horseman asked, not like a man concerned that one of his men had been brutally murdered and put on display, but like a lecturer who’d just asked a student to the board to solve an equation.
I got a good look at the victim, now. A man in his forties, probably, his skin already pale, his lips blue. He had his chin tucked into his neck, and his eyes were wide open, but glassy, and vacant. I would’ve felt bad for him, if he wasn’t a bastard who worked for the Coalition.
“Are you asking for a medical opinion?” I asked, “Because I’m not a doctor.”
“Was this man killed by a fiend?”
The word grated against the back of my skull, but I swallowed the annoyance. “Yes,” I said, through gritted teeth, “He was. And not by one, but a few. I’ve seen this kind of killing before. It’s an initiation kill; someone was being brought into the fold. If you bring him down and check him, you’ll find his heart is missing.”
“Would you say he died before or after he was hanged?”
“Can’t you figure that out with your magic?”
“Maybe, but I brought you here to see if your observational skills are up to the challenge of finding the Crimson Hunters.”
I stared at the man’s glassy eyes and took a sharp breath. “After. He felt every last moment of what they were doing to him. I’d say he was alive long enough to see those cats over there start pawing around the bits of him that fell onto the floor. That wasn’t an accident, either. It looks like they just tore him open and hung him, but they knew exactly how to cut him so that he’d live long enough to witness the way he was going to die.”
“Your kind are fucking savages,” one of the guards behind me blurted out.
I turned my head and scowled at him. “What the fuck did you just say?”
He raised his rifle and aimed it at my head. “You turn the hell around and don’t even look at me, or I’ll—”
“—what, you think because you have a gun and I have this collar and these handcuffs I can’t kill you if I wanted to? You want to test that theory?”
“I detest this tedious exchange,” the Horseman said, rolling his eyes. Dark waves of power curled off his body and rolled toward me and the other guard. My muscles seized, my throat tightened, and by the way his eyes were starting to bulge, the same was happening to the guard. “You’ll both behave yourselves. I won’t say it a second time.”
The Horseman’s power lingered for another second or two, then he released us. I took a deep breath and swallowed hard, willing my throat to start working again. When I felt like myself again, I gave the Horseman an icy stare.
“Tell your men that kind of trash talk doesn’t help,” I said, “Or your guy up there won’t be the only Harrowgate thug dying tonight.”
“You understand I could make your heart stop before you laid a finger on my men,” he said, his voice cool and flat, distant.
“Are you completely sure that you can?”
I saw it. The Horseman may have not wanted me to see it, but I saw it. Doubt. An instant of hesitation, a crack in his massive, throbbing confidence. He didn’t know who I was or what I was really capable of. After all, I’d killed one of his men already. That’s how I’d gotten thrown into Harrowgate in the first place. How was he to know I couldn’t kill another, even while restrained?
The Horseman didn’t respond to my question. He didn’t have to. Instead, he turned to face the dead man again. “Can you tell me where they went from here?”
I started scanning the alley walls, now, carefully checking for the tags Crimson Hunters leave behind after they’ve made a kill. Tagging the place was part of their ritual, their calling card. It let people know they had been here, that they had killed here. They didn’t usually leave a body behind, not like this, but they always left tags.
Only, there wasn’t any graffiti of any kind on the walls—only blood.
Strange.
“Where are the tags?” I asked.
“Tags?” the Horseman cocked an eyebrow. “What tags?”
“The graffiti from the pictures you showed me. There have to be some around here somewhere.”
The Horseman turned to one of the guards standing behind me. “Sergeant, ask your men to search the mouth of the alley for signs of gang-like tags.”
The guard grabbed his small radio, clicked it to life, and turned his head to the side. I heard him ask the men at the mouth of the alley if they’d seen any graffiti on the walls with a rapidly growing sense of dread mounting in the pit of my stomach.
This wasn’t right.
The two men nearest to the street each went a different direction, disappearing out of sight for a moment and then falling back into view. The guard’s radio chirped to life, and a garbled voice came through.
“Negative, sir,” the guard repeated what he’d heard, “Nothing over there. They told me they’d searched the whole city block for signs of fi—” he paused, his eyes flickering to me, “—hunters. No trace of any markings on the walls.”
“We need to leave. Right now.”
I went to move, but the Horseman grabbed my arm and squeezed, his eyes narrowing. “I thought I told you not to try fleeing,” he said.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll flee.”
“And why’s that?”
I tried shrugging out of his grip, but it was impossible. “Because if there are no tags, then it means they aren’t done killing tonight; it means they’re still here!”
Across from the Horseman’s shoulder, a patch of darkness against the grey wall sprouted a pair of eyes swirling with amber light like fire. Another set followed, and then another. I barely had enough time to duck before three Crimson Hunters melted out of the dark and threw themselves at us.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The rattle of gunfire quickly turned to gargling screams as the Crimson Hunters descended on the Horseman’s guards. Bullets seemed to have little effect on their bodies, while their claws tore through body armor and human flesh like it was made of wet paper.
One of the hunters ripped a guard’s throat out with his claws, while the other grabbed the second guard and took off into the air with a beat of his massive wings. The third hunter went in to engage the Horseman, its claw-tipped hand coming down on the mage in a lethal arc, with the speed and strength of a sledgehammer. The Horseman, however, blocked the attack with his forearm, giving even the hunter a moment of pause.
Without the glamor that forced them to look human, the hunter were monsters of muscle and gristle wrapped in grey hide, their bodies covered in red, ritualistic scars, their fingers tipped with huge, jagged, serrated claws. But it was their enormous, dark, leathery wingspan that made them truly dwarf the humans around them.
Night Hunter (The Devil of Harrowgate Book 1) Page 8
