The woman huffed. “Finally.”
The four men hopped off the back of the pickup, their boots squishing in the mud, and gathered before the man in the black coat. One of them, a blocky man with a shaved head, said, “That was all we agreed to do, so we’ll take our payment now.”
“Yeah, all right,” said the man in the black coat. “Three thousand a piece, was it?”
The blocky man nodded. “And not a penny less.”
The man in the black coat snickered. “What, you don’t think I’m good for it?”
“I think you’re plenty rich,” the blocky man countered, “but I also think you’re a weasel.”
“Funnily enough, you’re right on both fronts. But you’re missing a very important descriptor to make it a perfect score.”
The blocky man puffed out his chest and asked, “What’s that?”
To which the man in the black coat responded by tugging off one of his leather gloves and shaking a metal charm bracelet free from his coat sleeve. “I’m also a necromancer,” he said, like it was the most normal thing in the world. Then he snapped his fingers four times, and all four of the charms on the bracelet flashed blue before disintegrating into a fine mist that was carried off by the wind.
A second later, the exact same thing happened to the heads of all four men.
Their bodies crumpled to the ground, blood oozing out from the stumps of their necks.
The man in the black coat—no, the necromancer in the black coat—eyed the bodies with total disinterest and said to the woman, “Let’s load them into the delivery truck and call it a day.”
The woman turned up her nose at the bodies. “Ugh, I hate carting around corpses.”
“I was too tired to work a more complicated spell.” He bent down and grabbed one of the corpses by the arm. “Sue me.”
“Maybe I will,” the woman quipped.
Despite her griping, the woman grabbed the corpse’s other arm, and together they dragged the body over to the empty delivery truck and tossed it into the back. They repeated this three more times, and when the last headless body flopped to a stop, the necromancer grabbed the handhold on the rolling door and yanked it down with a bang that was muffled by the wind.
Satisfied that the murders wouldn’t be noticed for a while, the two of them sauntered over to the pickup truck.
As the woman was climbing into the passenger side, she muttered, “All this work for one goddamn sword.”
Opening the driver’s-side door, the man scoffed, “This is Excalibur you’re talking about. It’s the most powerful sword in the world.”
This critical moment right here—a hairsbreadth from safety—was where Tanner made a terrible mistake. In surprise, he whispered the word “Excalibur” so softly that only the dead could hear him. And something inside the metal box strapped to the back of the pickup truck responded to that whisper.
A bright bead of light shot off the side of the box and hurtled toward the luckless man huddled behind the pallets. Before Tanner could react, the bead struck his palm, tore through his flesh, and buried itself inside his wrist.
White-hot pain lanced up Tanner’s arm, jolting his chest like an electric shock. Crying out, he recoiled from the pallets and tripped over his own two feet, falling into a deep puddle with a loud splash.
The woman and the man whipped their heads toward the pallet stack, and the woman shouted, “Someone’s there! We’re being watched.”
Panic crashed into Tanner’s chest on the back of the receding pain. He scrabbled to his feet and took off for the stack of two-by-fours in front of the fence. The twenty-foot jaunt cost him only a few seconds, but no sooner did his foot land on the board than something large and heavy crashed through the pallet stacks.
Wooden splinters shot through the air, pelting Tanner’s back and drawing blood. A hefty chunk caught his calf and nearly took him off his feet. The force of the blow spun him in a complete circle, and during that quick three-sixty, he glimpsed an enormous creature that scared him almost as much as the sable wight.
The creature had the body of a lion, the tail of a scorpion, and the deformed head of a human being. All of its parts were blended together in a distinctly unnatural way. An infected crust weeping yellow pus circled the point where the huge scorpion tail met the rear end of the lion body. Jagged lines of scarred flesh sealed the lion neck to the human head. Normally, those wounds would have been hidden by the creature’s golden fur, but the rain had flattened it out, revealing the full extent of the creature’s defects.
The creature looked like something that had been cooked up in Frankenstein’s laboratory.
As Tanner vaulted up the side of the lumber pile, his mind screamed at the void, demanding to know what hellish monster had been sicced on him this time. One of his vaguest revenant memories, so old it was practically gray in his mind’s eye, supplied the answer: It’s a manticore. And you should run away from it. Very, very fast.
At the peak of the lumber pile, he leaped for the top of the fence. He skirted over the rough-cut tips of the chain links and sailed onward—a little too far—landing in a hard tumble near the edge of the sidewalk. The sidewalk was so slick from the rain that he slid off the edge, and he had to push his body into the rushing stream in the gutter so he wouldn’t roll into the busy street.
No point in escaping from a monster just to get hit by a bus.
Pulling himself up with the help of a light pole, he darted down the sidewalk. Every part of his body throbbed from the botched landing, but he didn’t dare slow down to check himself over. He also didn’t dare to alter his course in order to evade the pedestrians. He pushed past anyone in his way and ignored their shouts and angry glares.
Right now, Tanner didn’t have the wherewithal to care if half this neighborhood classified him as a public menace. He had a far worse menace to flee.
The manticore poked its hideous head over the top of the fence and zeroed in on him, the glazed eyes boring into his back. The creature let out a noise that was a cross between a roar and a human scream, a noise that went unheard by the people who lacked the Third Sight. Then it climbed over the fence and dropped onto the sidewalk.
Its heavy body landed with a resounding thud. But either the pedestrians didn’t notice the vibrations or they attributed them to the storm. Regardless, they kept on walking toward the monster they could not see.
For a terrible moment, Tanner thought the creature was going to bat the people aside with a massive paw. When the people got within a few feet of the beast, however, all of them abruptly veered around it.
On some subconscious level, their brains sensed an obstruction, so it instructed their legs to take a slight detour. None of them appeared to realize that they maneuvered around what looked like a completely empty patch of sidewalk for no identifiable reason. Their brains just waved the discrepancy away, and they continued on with their day.
Tanner wondered how many times he’d done the exact same thing.
The manticore oriented itself to face the fleeing Tanner but didn’t pursue him immediately. Its gaze roved over the crowded sidewalk, stopping briefly here and there, like it was working out a strategy to chase him down without harming any of the bystanders.
Not out of the goodness of the heart it probably didn’t have, Tanner thought, but rather to avoid scrutiny from the human authorities. A secret underworld of preternatural beings couldn’t stay secret forever if they frequently impacted regular society in noticeable ways.
Eventually, people would figure out there was something weird going on, whether they could see it or not.
The manticore finished its calculations at the same time Tanner reached the end of the block. He was about to run through the crosswalk when the manticore sprang forward.
It flew over the heads of more than a dozen people, the hooks of its claws coming so close that they ruffled the hoods of raincoats and raked across the tops of umbrellas. The creature came down in a shallow arc, landed in the one gap i
n the crowd large enough to fit its bulk, and then jumped a second time before any of the pedestrians needed to swerve around it.
The first jump had carried it half a block. The second carried it straight to Tanner.
A shriek lodged in his throat, Tanner dove to the left, narrowly avoiding the manticore’s front claws as it made a swipe for him. The creature sailed past him and slid across the crosswalk into oncoming traffic.
Tanner bounded back up and used a blue USPS mailbox to heave himself into a hard sprint. As a garbage truck growled past, heading directly for the manticore that was trying to get traction on the wet asphalt, Tanner briefly had the stupid notion that he was going to escape.
Then the creature’s massive segmented tail shot around the back end of the parked car beside him. Tanner jerked away, but the tail struck faster. It swiped his right side, tearing through his shirt like it was made of paper and slashing the skin beneath.
The sharp barb left behind a long, curving cut that wasn’t deep enough to bleed him dry. But in under five seconds, the area around the cut grew numb. And that numbness quickly began to spread.
Oh shit! It’s venomous.
With this development, Tanner was fairly sure he was going to die. He kept on running anyway. He would rather drop dead in the streets from the effects of some painless paralytic venom than be dragged into a dirty alley and violently mauled to death.
He raced down the sidewalk, pushing pedestrians left and right, until no more sidewalk remained. A road work crew had roped off a segment of the left lane and adjoining sidewalk with orange plastic fencing.
The fencing was too high for Tanner to jump but too flexible for him to climb. So he was forced to turn off into the parking lot of a closed diner and round the building from the back side in order to reach the end of the work zone.
Unfortunately, the manticore had no issues jumping the orange fence. When Tanner came around the side of the building, planning to make a beeline back to the sidewalk, the manticore was already there, having jumped over the entire work area.
Skidding to a stop, Tanner spun around and ran the other direction.
The asphalt of the parking lot gave way to the thick grass that had plagued Tanner earlier. He found himself running parallel to the river, just past the seafood factories whose fences had convinced him to take the detour through that cursed construction site.
Not far beyond were the docks and the bait and tackle shop. On the shallow hill above the docks, which plateaued near street level, lay an expanse of closely packed white tents. The kind that were used to cover stalls at transient markets and fairs.
People milled among the stalls, the gaps between the tents so narrow that only three grown men could walk side by side. The manticore was roughly that width, so if it entered the market, it would have no room to maneuver without knocking people down, thus alerting them to its presence.
The market was the perfect hiding place, and judging by the myriad wares being sold—everything from carnival masks to kayaks—it might also be able to provide him with the tools he needed to permanently escape from the manticore.
Assuming he didn’t die before he had a chance to come up with a workable escape plan.
The numbness was spreading down his right leg and up into his right arm, weakening his muscles further with each beat of his heart. Even worse, his lungs weren’t sucking in air as easily as they had been a minute ago.
The venom’s going to paralyze my lungs soon. I’m going to suffocate.
Still, he pressed on. Because the manticore was in hot pursuit, charging through the grass like a lion hunting prey in its natural habitat. With no more pedestrians in its path, it pushed itself to a breakneck speed. Its claws flung grass and dirt through the air, leaving deep divots in the ground. Its scorpion tail whipped back and forth, as if it was impatient to strike flesh again.
Tanner pushed his failing body to the limit, moving so fast with so little oxygen that his lips tingled and his vision blacked out at the corners.
When he drew close to the market, some of the patrons and vendors noticed him coming and ogled him curiously. All the patrons were human, mostly grizzled men in their thirties and forties. All the vendors were not human. They were creatures with smooth, pale-green skin and solid red eyes.
Tanner didn’t know if these creatures were friendly or not, but right now, he’d take his chances with just about anything other than the manticore.
When he was twenty-odd feet from the outer row of stalls, men and women dressed in police-style riot gear suddenly emerged from several tents along the market’s border, raised their rifles, and demanded for all the market vendors to get on the ground and put their hands behind their heads.
Tanner had no clue who these people were, why they were here, or why they’d chosen now to make a move, but the sight of their weapons reinvigorated him. If he could get his hands on one of those rifles, he might be able to—
A tent spike someone had left sticking out of the ground caught Tanner’s foot, and he went down in a painful roll that came to a stop less than ten feet from the edge of the market. He tried to get up and lunge those last few feet to safety, but his numb right knee buckled, and he collapsed onto his injured side.
Blood seeped from his cut onto the grass, and Tanner’s willpower seeped out with it. He couldn’t get up again. He was too weak. He was too tired.
He was done.
A shadow fell over Tanner’s crumpled body, and he turned his head to see the manticore careening through the air toward him. Claws extended. Mouth wide open. Milky-white eyes fixed on him. Like the only thing in the world that mattered to the creature was ripping out Tanner’s throat and spraying the white tents bright red with his poisoned blood.
Oh dear god, Tanner thought. Why do I have to die like this? Why do I have to suffer—?
Light. Bright and gold and burning. It flared to life somewhere among the market stalls. And on the cusp of a mighty, rumbling roar, a colossal fireball hurtled out from between a row of tents and struck the manticore.
The manticore rocketed backward, and the fireball followed. Until the creature hit the ground, blowing out a crater in the earth. At which point the fireball promptly exploded into a raging inferno filled with dazzling golden sparks.
Trapped inside the fire, flesh burning black, the manticore screamed in agony.
Back where the fireball had originated, someone screamed Tanner’s name.
Chapter Eighteen
Saul
Saul felt like he was running in slow motion. Ironic, since everything that had happened in the past few minutes seemed to occur at the speed of light.
Disguised as fishermen, Saul’s and Frasier’s teams had inserted themselves into the goblin market and distracted the vendors along the border so that the SWAT agents could sneak into the backs of specific tents. The tents that contained the egress points goblins always built into their market layouts in order to make a quick escape in the event of a raid.
Once the SWAT personnel were in place, Frasier’s team moved into position to make the arrests, while Saul’s team split up and headed to the outer edges of the market to watch for Tanner.
At three minutes to five thirty, Frasier was supposed to let out a high-pitched whistle. The go signal. But the allotted time came and went, and no whistle broke through the buzz of the crowd.
Concerned, Saul backtracked to Frasier’s position, near the center of the market, and discovered the man had been made by one of the goblins. The goblin had blown a blue powder into Frasier’s face—it wasn’t poison, just powdered paint—and Frasier inhaled the substance, causing him to break out into a coughing fit.
The goblin assailant then tried to raise the alarm, only to be tackled inside his own stall by one of the SWAT agents, who gagged him so he couldn’t alert the others to the impending raid. The crowd was so thick near the market center that only a few people noticed the commotion.
One of those people, however, was another goblin.
As Saul was approaching Frasier to make sure the man wasn’t going to suffocate on sky-blue paint, he spotted that goblin skipping off to alert the others to the PTAD’s presence.
There was only one logical thing to do.
Saul shoved two fingers into his mouth and whistled.
Frasier’s two teammates and most of the SWAT agents ambushed the goblin vendors, using an assortment of spells and threats to subdue them. A few of the goblins tried to make a break for it, but with their typical exit routes blocked off, all they could do was jump over their stalls and try to disappear into the crowd.
That would’ve worked if none of the agents had the Sight—goblins looked human to people without the Sight—but the Sight was a required qualification for the PTAD. So all the agents could see the long green ears poking up half a foot higher than anything else in the crowd.
The fleeing goblins were quickly apprehended by the good men and women with the black uniforms and big guns. Whom, conveniently, the market patrons could not see. The SWAT agents wore talismans that hid them from those without the Sight. So the agents could yell as loudly as they wanted and wave their menacing weapons around without scaring any of the mundane patrons.
Every aspect of the raid, minus Frasier’s role, went exactly as planned. Only it ended over two minutes later than it was supposed to.
Consequently, at thirty seconds to half past five, Saul was out of position.
Saul checked briefly on Frasier—and got a firm “fuck off” for his kindness—before turning back to the aisle that led to his scouting point. Staring straight down that aisle, he caught a glimpse of his worst nightmare:
Tanner running full steam across the grass toward the market, with a furious manticore hot on his tail. He was bleeding from numerous wounds. His clothes were soaked and torn and dirty. And his gait was wobbly and getting worse with every step he took, like he was on the verge of passing out.
He’s not going to make it to the market, Saul thought. The manticore’s going to catch him.
Fear jolted Saul into action. He whistled three sharp notes, the signal that indicated Tanner was approaching Saul’s designated position, and dashed down the aisle. But there were so many mundane patrons milling about, unaware of the dangerous creature rapidly approaching, and so many goblins kneeling on the ground in the process of being arrested, that Saul had to laboriously zigzag his way toward the edge of the market.
A Knight of Cold Graves (The Revenant Reign Book 1) Page 15