Bloodcrier: The Complete Two-Book Series

by Richard Denoncourt

  “I’m going to strip you and worship you, goddess. Oh, my goddess, apple of my eye.”

  He parted the waves of hair covering her chest, then his knobby hand went straight for the buttons or strings—Michael couldn’t tell exactly which—that held her outfit together in the front.

  He returned to a crouch. There would be no climbing through the window without making a hell of a racket.

  He had an idea, but it was risky.

  Orrigut Farnsworth the Third, great-grandson to the legendary Orrigut the First, millionaire purveyor of luxury scavenged goods from here to Old New York, shivered as a harsh gust of wind blew into the room. He took his hand away from the whore’s breasts, then made a fist.

  “Oh, spiteful wrath,” he said, shaking it. “Go, apple pie. Close the window.”

  The woman lay still, frowning at the ceiling as if deep in thought. She was so full and vibrant—a delicious fruit just waiting for his bite, her skin as pale as the meat of an apple. Before Orrigut struck it rich, he never would have merited so much as a second glance from a woman of such beauty. Now, he was the master of this young whore—the master of any whore he desired—of all whores, probably.

  Orrigut took a moment to consider his rather fortunate situation. He was a master merchant, one of the wealthiest men in all the Eastlands, protected by powerful men, including Roman, for a thousand miles in every direction. He liked to think of himself as the Harris Kole of the Eastlands; a ruler with a golden fist who could buy all the loyalty, liquor, and whores a man could want—and all the attention from beautiful women his younger self had never had.

  Except, apparently, for the attention of this unresponsive whore, who, at this moment, appeared to be immersed in a world of her own.

  Unacceptable.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said to go close the window.”

  And yet the woman lay there like a doll, staring at nothing as if her brain had been frozen. It seemed possible, too, in this cold.

  “Grrrr,” he said, and it was almost a purr. Sex with an inanimate woman was something he had never tried, and it didn’t sound half-bad. But first, the window. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  Shivering and hugging himself like the skinny, sickly boy he’d once been, Orrigut Farnsworth made his way toward the open window. He would have to lean over the table and the golden—it wasn’t even real gold—silverware to shut it, which brought a simple fear to his mind: what if his undershorts were soiled again? Sometimes he left marks down there, brown ones that even his dedicated wife had trouble getting out. Accidents happened, especially to men his age. He didn’t want this two-bit whore to bear witness to any such thing, not coming from a man of his stature.

  The woman was still staring at the ceiling—except now, she was moving her lips in what appeared to be a silent monologue. Orrigut made his move. He yanked his underwear up around his waist, twisted to get a good look, saw that everything was clean and dandy, and turned his attention to the window. A slight pressure in his abdomen told him it was almost time for a shit, one of the dozen or so he took daily.

  Something in the window shifted. A face thrust itself out of the dark, eyes narrowed into sharp slits.

  “Go to sleep,” it said. “Now, old man.”

  Orrigut Farnsworth shuddered as something hot slid down the backs of his legs. His underwear would look an absolute mess. He tried to shout for the guards but instead gave in to the most overwhelming fatigue—and embarrassment—of his life before collapsing to the carpet.

  Fran stared at Michael in shock.

  “You were the voice in my head,” she said, covering her breasts and watching him with startling green eyes. Michael was held momentarily captive by her beauty.

  “Yes, that was me,” he said, dragging the old man to the bed and trying to push him beneath it. His snoring was loud and ragged, like someone trying to blow frogs out of his sinus passages. Michael cringed as a foul smell hit his nose. The entire backside of the man’s underwear was brown and soggy with liquid shit.

  “Relax,” Fran said, coming down off the high mattress to help. “You’re not the one who has to get him off every two weeks. Trust me, it’s worse than all the shit in the world.”

  Together, they managed to slide the man beneath the bed without getting their hands dirty.

  Michael rose, breathing out of his mouth to avoid the offensive smell. He checked the door to make sure it was still shut, then closed his eyes and massaged his right temple, extending his telepathic sight to make sure the guards standing in the hallway hadn’t moved. He sensed they were bored, distracted—he could tell by the vibrations of their mental strings that neither had been roused.

  “You’re a ment,” Fran said.

  “I prefer ‘telepath,’” Michael said, opening his eyes. “My name’s Michael Cairne, from Gulch, and I came here to rescue you.”

  She smirked. “I’ll bet you’ve always wanted to say that to a girl. So, what’s your brilliant plan? This place is surrounded, but I’m sure you already know that.”

  Michael raised his eyebrows, as if about to issue a challenge. “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Trust me, cutie,” she said, pinching his chin as though he were a little boy. “Whatever it is, I’ve had to do worse.”

  A drunken man staggered down the hallway, his arm around a laughing woman. The hallway was empty except for a Legionnaire standing at the other end, his post overlooking a set of stairs leading down. The Legionnaire eyed the man and the woman with a frown.

  “Time’s up,” he said. “Get your ass down to the lobby.”

  The man had a thick beard and a dirty face. Probably a miner. He pulled a flask from his coat pocket and put it to his lips, then saw the cap was still on.

  “Slap me silly,” he said. “I’m drunk.”

  He pulled his arm off the woman, then tried to uncap the flask. His hips swayed, his torso tilting forward. A moment later, he dropped to the ground, making a loud thump against the floorboards. He sat there, blinking like an infant. The Legionnaire pulled out his sword as he approached the man.

  “I’ve warned you before, asshole. How about I make this your last visit to the Palace?”

  The miner scrambled off the floor, spilling liquor everywhere.

  “Ah, hell,” he said, almost falling over again.

  With the Legionnaire pushing him along, the man stumbled his way to the stairs. The woman helped him down.

  Despite the late hour, the second and first floors of The Emperor’s Palace were full of people smoking fancy cigarettes, talking in dark corners, and laughing too loudly. This floor was quiet, though. That was one of the rules; second and third floors were for business, quick and clean, no loitering in the rooms or hallways.

  The Legionnaire made his way to his post above the stairs. A sound from the other end of the hallway brought him to a state of full alertness. A door had creaked open, revealing a dark room.

  The door opened wider, but all he saw was darkness. He crept toward it, sword ready at his side.

  “Hello?”

  Closer.

  He was about to kick the door open when a hand reached out of the darkness and pulled him in by his armor. The arm was not strong, but the movement came with a sharp spiking sensation in his skull that caused his limbs to go soft. The sword slipped out of his hand.

  He was suddenly inside the room, swallowed by the darkness. When he tried to cry out, his lungs wouldn’t work. The overhead bulb turned on, flooding the room with light. A boy stood over him—a boy with a shaved head and a silver earring in his left lobe. He was dressed in black, every part of him except his head. Even his hands were covered with black gloves.

  The boy moved swiftly to the opening, glanced into the hallway, then shut the door quietly. He picked up the sword and turned his attention to the Legionnaire, who blinked at him in confusion.

  Die, you slaver piece of shit.

  The sword flashed. By the time the Legionnaire dropped
his gaze from the boy’s eyes, the front of his armor was already drenched in blood. His neck felt cold where the steel had kissed it.

  He wanted to say, Wait, my shift’s almost over, but all that came out was a blubbery hacking sound. His chest convulsed. A warm, metallic taste filled his mouth, and then, with the boy making shushing sounds in his ear, he lost consciousness and drifted…

  Ian stood over the dead Legionnaire.

  He tossed the sword aside, surprised at how easy it had been to kill in cold blood. The dead man didn’t even appear human with his armor and ridiculous hat. He resembled a man-sized doll, something to be propped up in a children’s museum about Ancient Rome.

  Now, he just had to make his way into the room down the hall and retrieve—what was her name?

  Oh, yeah. Sally Woodhouse. The one who had gone after his father more than the others, the one whose idea it had been to try to ruin what little family Ian had left. Of course Ian knew her name. It had been years since he’d thought about her, but he remembered her all too well.

  He dredged up memories of her from his boyhood, when, at age twelve, he’d fallen in love with her. Sally had been his father’s maid back then. That summer, Ian spent four days in his closet carving a hole in the wall so he could see into the bathroom. For an hour each morning, he’d crouch inside that closet with his face pressed to the foul-smelling plaster, which he could still smell in his memory, strong as ever, and he would watch the woman fill the tub with water heated on a wood stove before slipping off her robe to expose a white, well-rounded body, with nipples almost as orange as her hair. And every morning, as the robe slipped off her shoulders and her breasts spilled into the room, he would gawk at the patch of freckles above her belly and fantasize about counting them, one by one, his face resting on her thigh.

  Then, one day, his father had entered the bathroom.

  It was inevitable. Even at that age, Ian should have recognized the power dynamic at play. A woman that beautiful who worked for a man like his father, whose wife had been dead for seven years…

  Ian had watched, gritting his teeth and crying, quietly cursing his father for stealing this one thing from his young life. He had never seen a man rape a woman before, and the images were seared into his mind—his father’s hairy back moving as he took her against the wall, one hand clamped over her mouth to keep her quiet.

  After the third time he’d witnessed the same scene play out, Ian plugged the hole in the wall and never went into that closet again. He tried to make himself forget, then, when that hadn’t worked, he’d tried to convince himself that what his father had done was normal, just a part of life out in the Eastlands. Animals did that sort of thing all the time. Who was there to judge them?

  As he crept down the hallway, sensing the people in the rooms on either side of him humping away like beasts, he wanted to scream aloud for it to stop. He recalled the rumors of Michael Cairne having a telepathic episode and forcing those two FSD agents to kill themselves, along with an entire city block, and he wished he had that same power to cleanse this place of its filth.

  With that kind of power, he’d do away with this city entirely—whores, children, and all. He would turn Praetoria into a ghost town, and he would come back again and again to make sure it stayed that way.

  Sally was in the last room to his right. He could sense her presence. For years, he’d known the exact taste of her mind against the tongue of his own. It was like a perfume only she wore. The smell of his childhood, and of what he had lost from it.

  The door was locked. He kicked it open.

  His eyes flew open in shock at what had been done to her.

  Chapter 9

  Dominic wore a hooded jacket to cover his face.

  He was outside, on Nero Street. He glanced up to where Reggie was, but he couldn’t see him perched on the roof. The man had his talents—he even had a way of keeping his mind alert but quiet, so no telepath could sniff him out without tremendous effort. It had taken years of training in meditation, and the skill had helped the man become a master sniper.

  Dominic’s radar was on full alert. He was being blocked—not a good thing. Back in the old days, blocking each other was something he and his fellow operatives had done for fun, for practice, to see how well they could break through each other’s walls. They called it “barging.” But Dominic was out of practice, and tonight’s enemy was well trained.

  He could sense in which direction the enemy lay, which was good enough. The closer he got, the easier it would be to pinpoint him. As long as he kept up his own block, the man shouldn’t see him coming. He searched the faces of the people around him for signs of intense concentration, keeping his hands in his coat pockets, the right one wrapped around the hilt of a hunting knife. A few jabs to the throat, and he would have this nuisance eliminated in no time.

  A shiver ran along his back. He was being watched, and the person doing the watching wanted him to know. He scanned where his intuition was pointing him, spotting a man standing at the mouth of an alleyway. He was dressed in a filthy brown coat. The man stepped into the shadows and disappeared.

  Dominic took off in a sprint. When he got there, he released a gruff sigh.

  The place was empty, and his hold on the man was gone.

  A decoy.

  The man was well-trained, damned near expert level. There was no question: he worked for Harris Kole.

  “Wrath,” he said. He turned and gazed up at the roof. “Reggie.”

  The next few minutes happened in a flurry of mad running and fumbling. His mind was being clouded, as if someone had drugged him. He tried to counter the effect, but he had trouble doing so while running and climbing. A knotted rope with a grappling hook that he and the boys had hidden—one of several—took him up the backside of the building and onto the roof, where he came upon a shadow wrestling with Reggie.

  “He’s up there,” a voice shouted from below.

  Roman’s men shouting from the rooftop. He’d been seen.

  He pulled the man off Reggie, staring at his face.

  “Dominic Scalazzo,” the man said. Dominic had no idea who he was.

  The man swiped at him with the butt end of a Desert Eagle, but Dominic was too quick, even with the mind-scrambling effect making his telepathy useless. This man was middle aged. Definitely not a specialist in hand to hand, though his telepathy was strong enough to blur Dominic’s vision.

  He could hear Roman’s men making a commotion below.

  “Up there, he used a rope.”

  It was Reggie who managed to catch the enemy off-balance. He yanked him down, then began to drive the butt end of his rifle into the man’s face. Dominic went to join him, but he fell back as his mind shrieked with pain. The Desert Eagle went off. His eyes squeezed shut.

  When he opened them again, the man was gone. Reggie was doubled over in pain.

  “Shit,” Dominic said. He swept his eyes over Reggie. “You hurt?”

  “The bastard shot me,” Reggie said, exposing a shiny spot beneath his armpit where blood was running down his suit.

  “How bad is it?”

  “A scratch. Bullet grazed me.”

  “You sure?” He was practically snarling.

  “Take it easy. I’m fine.”

  “We have to abort and get the hell out of here.”

  The grappling hook shivered as someone climbed up the side of the building. Reggie pulled out a pistol, quickly taking aim. The slug hit the grapple dead on, detaching it from the edge of the roof and sending the man crashing to the alleyway.

  “Let’s go,” Dominic said. “Move it.”

  They ran and jumped onto the roof of the next building, Reggie almost falling short. They got on their bellies to avoid being seen. Dominic closed his eyes, starting to send out messages.

  Abort. Abort. Get the hell out!

  The Legionnaire’s eyelids drooped.

  His head tipped forward, snapped upright, then tipped again. It had been a long night, and he sti
ll had another hour on his shift. He thought again, for the hundredth time that night, about the whore he liked, the Spanish one with the weird name. He mentally counted all the coins he remembered stuffing into his pouch. Hopefully, they would be enough to buy at least an hour in the sack with her.

  A loud thump made his eyes spring open.

  The whores reclining on the couches were all staring wide-eyed at the door. The Legionnaire reacted swiftly; he pulled out his sword as he crossed the room, then flung the door open and stepped into darkness.

  A figure moved around him in a blur of motion, so fast he didn’t even have time to blink. He heard the door slam shut, followed by a hollow thump as something hard clubbed the back of his skull. He fell to his knees, the sword slipping from his hand.

  He toppled onto the floor as the lights turned on.

  The bigger boy—he remembered this one being stone drunk before, though now he seemed as sober as a priest—brought his fist down into the Legionnaire’s jaw. The room began to darken. Before he lost consciousness, he saw the whore he liked standing two feet away, arms crossed like she was impatiently waiting for this inconvenience to be over.

  That little two-timin’ bitch, he thought as he slipped away.

  “He’s out cold,” Peter said, holding the wooden post he and Eli had detached from the bed, causing the massive thing to tilt with one corner sagging near the floor. Part of his face was swollen beneath his left eye, and there was a spot of blood on his lip where Eli’s fist had split it. Just another addition to his disguise, though Eli could have been a little gentler.

  “Strip him,” Rocio said. She got to work removing the man’s helmet.

  Two minutes later, Eli and Rocio entered the lounge area, holding up a very drunk-looking Peter. Eli was dressed in the Legionnaire’s armor. With his sizable bulk, he didn’t appear much different than any of the other guards. The women saw what was happening, and their eyes glazed over with boredom. Another drunken customer thinking he could rough up a guard and get away with it. Amazing what alcohol did to one’s courage. The scene was so common that not a single one noticed three people where before there had been four with the unconscious guard.