Episode 10 Wild Hunt

by Nicolette Jinks

Blissed Season 1 Episode 10

  Wild Hunt

  by

  Nicolette Jinks

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2016 by NICOLETTE JINKS

  NICOLETTE JINKS asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  You may contact the author via email: nicolette.jinks@gmail.com or check in at Twitter, Facebook, Google+, GoodReads. To follow the author, her blog is www.nicolettejinks.wordpress.com, where she writes about writing and life.

  Independently Published by author

  doing business as Standal Publications

  393 River Road Bliss, Idaho 83314

  Thaimon has gone mad, and if Brandy can't catch him nobody knows where the killing spree will end.

  Wild Hunt

  Thaimon had chosen an odd place to loiter. The Morris Corner Grocer was located on the elbow of two little-known side streets with a weathered sign and dimly-lit windows. Whoever Morris was, they sold things that made hippy health-food stores look entirely normal. Iron elderflower water, dried anemone wreaths, black poppyseed candles, allspice rum—too many things to look at. Pity it would all be destroyed if the wraith went nuts the instant he saw me.

  Maize husks rustled against my hip as I leaned around a stack of wooden boxes. I cringed at the noise, but Thaimon's behavior remained unchanged. He moved quietly, confidently, a tiger sauntering along a jungle trail. As I adjusted the mic bothering my shoulder, Thaimon came to a halt to inspect a basket of gold-plated apples.

  A roundfaced man with rosy cheeks stepped close to me. “Welcome to Morris. This is your first visit. What do you need?”

  “Nothing, thank you,” I said, hoping to be rid of him before Thaimon noticed.

  “Then I ask you to leave.”

  Great. An exclusive place was all I needed. Giving him my best I'm-Serious-Glare, I said, “I'm hunting that wraith there.”

  Rosy-Cheeks squinted at Thaimon, who was now talking to a guy who had to be a brother to my greeter. “Arthur is no wraith.”

  “Who is Arthur?”

  Rosy-Cheeks shrugged. “Cousin.”

  I doubted that was all he was. With the way he was not speaking directly to Thaimon, rather by pretending to talk into a cell phone, I'd bet that he was in a shady deal of some kind. Too bad I wasn't Nicholas Wraithbane, scary enough to throttle the truth out of Rosy-Cheeks.

  I said, “Find a way to get your cousin away.”

  “Why? We're anti-discriminatory. Doesn't matter who or what our customer is, so long as they are a customer.”

  “Three days ago I saw that wraith jump bodies and slaughter a dozen White Knights.” To my relief, the man visibly lost the roses in his cheeks. I continued, “He's on a bloodpath, even if he looks sane now. Have you seen the Thaumaturgical Tribune about the Market Square massacre?”

  Oh, he had, if those wide eyes were any indication. With a tug on the sleeve, the man pulled me out of sight and whispered, “What's he doing here?”

  “You'd best hope it wasn't to talk to Arthur—or that Arthur gives him what he wants the first time he asks.”

  “He can't—he's not a longtime customer. New accounts need time for verification and more time for trust. Arthur can't—”

  “Arthur must, or he's—”

  A yell cut me off, chilling my blood and making my newfound companion run towards Arthur and Thaimon. Suspect as this business was, I had to admit that these storekeepers had courage in excess. Arthur was struggling with Thaimon, who was thankfully still all solid, just angry. For now. Should he go all misty, I didn't know what I'd do.

  “Soul-stealer! Soul-stealer!” screamed the man who'd been with me.

  Arthur heard and obeyed by promptly turning tail. He ran with the speed of someone who has experience dodging swift-footed cops.

  Since I had the shortest legs out of everyone present, I took a guess that the ultimate destination would be the nearest exit followed by a chase around the building. Thanks to Wraithbane insisting on walking the perimeter before letting me enter, I knew that the closest active portal was near the front door. While everyone else bolted for the back door, I ran through the front and hoped I'd cut them off.

  “What's happening?” Jay asked through the earbud.

  “They're out the back door now. I'm going to the portal.”

  “Got him,” Wraithbane said through the connection. Beyond him, I heard the plaintive wailing of the man I'd been talking to, crying out for Arthur.

  “You've got one half of the operation,” I said. “Thaimon wanted Arthur. They're black market, I think.”

  Outside, the sun was blindingly intense. I blinked frantically but fell into a fit of sneezes anyway.

  I heard Jay fall and grunt. “Your way, Silver,” he said.

  Arthur rounded the corner of the building, saw me, and ducked down a slender gap between two adjacent buildings. Thaimon started after him.

  “Don't move! Council Enforcement!”

  A gun sounded. Thaimon jerked off-course. Willow stood in a shooter's stance, ready to fire again. Not that a bullet would do a lot to a wraith, but it would distract him for a time. And Wraithbane promised that it did hurt Thaimon.

  I crossed behind Willow and took off after Arthur. Bricks snagged my shirt and dog messes squished beneath my shoes. In places the walls had leaned towards one another, making the passage so slim that I had to wriggle to get through. After what felt like ages, I found Arthur cornered against the far wall.

  “You aren't getting me!”

  I wasn't sure where he was going to go. Up? It would be fairly easy to wriggle all the way to the roof, I supposed. I said, “I'm not here to 'get' you. What did the soul-stealer want?”

  Arthur spat on the ground between us. “I didn't tell him. I'm not telling you.”

  He started to strip.

  At first I didn't know how to respond or what to do—did I stop him? How? By the time I squeezed in close enough to touch his arm, he had his trousers down and was working on his boxers. I seized a wrist and twisted.

  “Stop that!”

  He wrinkled his nose. He pulled back, making his wrist fully dislocate with a sickening grinding sound. I didn't ease up and yet his body was visibly sliding away.

  “I don't want to bust your shoulder. Knock it off.”

  “I don't want to bust your shoulder,” mocked Arthur. He yanked his arm.

  The skin slid by my fingers. Tissues stretched thin before snapping at displaced tendons, leaving me in direct contact with slippery yellow bones. As his soft tissues slurped away from bone I gaped, recognizing the radius and ulna in my grasp. Between the elbow and hand, Arthur's arm hung limp and twitching.

  “What?” I asked, then I saw the magic in him. Black shards sprayed up and down his body, marking all his bones. The bones in my hands seemed to be made of grey-speckled marble. It sparkled in the faint light.

  “You won't catch me,” Arthur said, shedding the bones in his hands and feet now. “Not even the soul-stealer will get me.”

  “I can help you,” I said. “I'm a hex-breaker.”

  Arthur spat on the ground again. This time I saw that it was made of the same material as his bones. “Hex-breakers are a myth. We're all monsters in our own way. Even you.”

  Blood sprinkled the ground from exit wounds in his flesh. Hesitantly, I extended my hand.

  “Please stop. That looks painful.”

  Arthur smirked. “What about this?” he asked and shoved his fingerless hand into a drain which would barely be big enough to fit both my thumbs.

  Breathless, I could only watch as the drain slurped and g
urgled his body down the pipe. Though it felt like it took ages, it was a matter of seconds before Arthur was gone. First it was his hand, his forearm, then his shoulder, then his neck. His skull popped out of an eye socket. After that, I stopped watching. When the drain made muffled burps and belches, I looked again to find a pile of grey-black bones shining in the light. A shadow blocked them out.

  I looked up, only to get a bunch of brick dust in my eyes. While I scrubbed my face on the sleeve of my shirt, someone landed over the pile of bones.

  “What was he?” I asked, expecting my visitor to be Wraithbane.

  “A chalkman,” said a voice which I didn't immediately recognize.

  Eyes watering, I focused on the wraith before me. He had taken on a small collection of bodies in the time that I'd known him, and I wasn't sure if this was the same body as he'd had last time, or if his fashion sense just made it look new. Barely thirty, the man had hair the color of paper after a chance encounter with coffee and eyes a couple shades darker. Fit and athletic without being muscle-bound, this body was a close match fitness-wise to Wraithbane's.

  “Thaimon, you look...” I didn't have the guts to finish the sentence. Not when I didn't know if the others could hear me.

  He dipped his head, accepting the intended compliment. “And you look a bit disheveled.” He grinned boyishly. “I find it most charming. The two of us in a tight place, alone, hiding from your chaperone, makes one think of what trouble two such star-crossed young people could get into. No, disheveled isn't the word. Different. You do look different, but what could account for the change? I wonder...”

  Blushing, I cleared