NIghtbird (Empire of Masks Book 2)

by Brock Deskins

  After scanning the rooftop for any sign of company, she rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled to the edge nearest the warehouse. Peering over the side, Kiera launched her grapnel at the warehouse roof, ejected the spool from the gun, and secured her end of the line to the building upon which she was crouching. She then attached the gun to the cord, gave it a tug to test its security, and hurled herself over the side.

  Kiera’s heart hammered in her chest as she zipped across the expanse between buildings. She knew that shimmersilk was impossibly strong, but the line was less than a quarter of an inch thick, and she was using it in a manner that created the greatest amount of stress on it.

  The line sagged a good two feet at its midpoint but held. Her feet hit the roof at a great enough speed to send her into a tumble. She lay still, holding her breath for several seconds before moving once more. The thief secured her precious new toy and affixed one of her two spare spools of line to it. She gained an increased appreciation for the cord’s strength as it took several strokes of her knife to sever the material.

  She slipped the loose grapnel into a pocket, knowing that Russel would not be happy if she lost it. Shimmersilk was expensive but replaceable. Techno-arcanist gear like the gun and grapnel was not, at least not easily. Where and how Russel managed to obtain the materials to make them were a mystery he was unlikely to share.

  Kiera crawled on her belly to one of the small greenhouse-like skylights adorning the roof, wiped away a thick layer of dust from the glass, and peered through. There were a few lanterns lit, but most of the vast interior was shrouded in darkness. She saw no one moving in the pools of light, which was good seeing as how her arrival had not been as silent as she would have liked.

  Either her cohort’s assumption of the exchange taking place soon was way off its mark, or he had a very different concept of what soon meant. More than two hours passed before anything happened, and when it did, Kiera nearly bolted out of fear. She heard a pair of feet slap against the roof, off to one side, much softer than her arrival had been. The nightbird pressed her body against the surface, almost willing herself to become part of it. Her efforts failed.

  “What are you doing here?” a voice asked from behind and to one side.

  He was almost next to her, but she had not heard a single footstep of his approach.

  Kiera swallowed her fear and responded with as little emotion as she could, deepening her voice in an attempt to mask her gender. “Same as you I imagine; to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  The figure dropped down beside her, cleared his own viewport in the glass, and took a look. “Rafferty didn’t say I was going to have company.”

  Crap, crap, crap, crap! Kiera screamed inside her head. She had strongly suspected that Rafferty might be the one facilitating the transaction. Few criminal elements had the kind of money and power that was being thrown around to secure the item. She had hoped it was just some rich highborn, or at least one of the middling gangs. It did not matter. She had a job and she would do it.

  “It was a last-minute thing. Rafferty has been looking to recruit me for a while and he thought this would be a good opportunity to test my merit.”

  The figure nodded. “I don’t imagine we’ll have any problems. Someone would have to be crazy or a special kind of stupid to interfere with this exchange. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know it’s a big deal.”

  Kiera sighed. “Yeah, a special kind of stupid.”

  Another half hour passed before someone arrived and lit several more lanterns, casting a large area of the warehouse below in light. A few minutes later, a group of men arrived, one carrying a small chest made of black metal and adorned with techno-scribings. A second party soon appeared from the opposite direction. Kiera bit her lip when she saw that Langdon and his two friends accompanied Rafferty, along with at least a dozen other men.

  The man carrying the chest stepped forward and set it atop a large crate in the middle of the illuminated area, but Rafferty made no move to touch it.

  Kiera turned her head to look at the man lying next to her. “What’s he doing?”

  “The box ain’t for him. We’re just providing extra security.”

  Kiera’s heart dropped into her stomach. Rafferty was the most powerful gang leader in the city, topside at least. There was only one person who could enlist him as an underling.

  No, no, no… Kiera prayed, but as usual, her prayers went unanswered as the shadows disgorged Nimat and half a dozen bodyguards.

  CHAPTER 24

  Nimat walked ahead of her entourage and smiled down at the box before her. Her hands hovered over its ebony surface, almost caressing the aura leaking through despite the strength of its masking wards. She was sure the item she had gone to great expense to attain was inside, but she had to be certain. The soul’s aura trapped inside was muted, and it would not be impossible to mimic it under its current condition.

  Placing an alabaster hand upon the cold black metal, Nimat focused and projected her own energy into it. There was no key. She had made the box herself, and she was the key. The Undercity lord felt the soul within retreat in fear of her presence, giving near undeniable credence as to its authenticity.

  The seamless lid opened at her touch. She reached in and scooped out the arcanstone. It was almost twice as large as a man’s fist, which qualified it as a small heart stone, particularly considering the amount of power it contained. Nimat gazed upon it with longing and forced part of her consciousness into it.

  She found herself in a garden surrounded by spectacular towering buildings made of white stone. Towers whose minarets were capped in gold gleamed in the sunlight. Nimat’s presence rolled over the plaza like a dark cloud. It was all fake of course, a cleverly crafted mirage. The soul tried to hide from her by wrapping itself in illusions.

  “Come out. I want to see what I have purchased,” Nimat ordered.

  The colorful leaves of a bush turned into butterflies and fluttered away, revealing a young girl in a regal but out-of-fashion dress.

  Ashlea took a step toward Nimat; her angry gaze and confident step did not display a hint of fear. “Go away. You do not belong here.”

  “Of course I do. I went to great trouble to bring you here from the desert. You belong to me. You are going to make me the most powerful person in Eidolan.”

  “My power is not for you, creature of death. You are a blight. Your species is a rot on this world and an insult to my home. Leave now, or I will hurt you.”

  Nimat took a step forward. “You are a lost soul. You are raw energy, trapped within a crystal. Nothing more.”

  Ashlea smiled. “I am far more than that.”

  The girl’s body burst into light like a miniature sun. Her eyes glowed with even more brilliance, like two sapphires shining in a crucible of molten steel. A gleaming ray streaked from her outstretched hand and struck the Necrophage in the chest, lifting her off her feet and hurling her high into the artificial sky. Nimat stumbled but quickly composed herself as she once more gazed upon the jewel in her hand and smiled. She had paid a king’s ransom to get the stone, and seeing what she now possessed, she would have gladly paid ten times the amount.

  Someone amongst the mercenary crew tasked with retrieving the arcanstone from a Thuumian nomad moved forward. Nimat’s head snapped up and her eyes bored into the man, seeing beyond his surface and into his soul. Her face contorted with fury, and her lips twisted into a teeth-bearing snarl.

  “Kill them! Kill them all!” she screeched.

  Only the mercenaries hesitated, not understanding what had gone wrong. All but Dorian. He knew his disguise had been foiled the moment Nimat’s eyes met his. They shared an instant of surprise as each recognized the other for what they were. It was an unexpected turn of events to say the least.

  Nimat made to return the stone to its box, something Dorian could not allow. He drew his sword and willed it to return to its void-lance form as he summoned a shadow whip to his free hand. The impostor la
shed out with the whip, striking the blast box and sending it flying across the room. He managed to take a single step forward before all hell broke loose.

  ***

  Kiera stared through the dirty glass at the chaos erupting below her. People with their faces concealed behind wraps like hers kicked open the large shipping crates in which they were hiding and burst forth, attacking Rafferty and Nimat’s people. Muskets fired and blades sought out vulnerable flesh. A plan played out in her mind as swiftly as the madness unfolded.

  She kicked one of the panes of glass out of the skylight, took careful aim with her grapnel gun, and fired. The grapnel streaked down, and with more luck than skill, struck the arcanstone. Kiera thumbed the button, ripping the precious gem from Nimat’s hand.

  Nimat’s reaction was inhumanly swift. Her hand moved in a blur, seemingly conjuring a dagger from thin air, and slashed at the escaping prize. The void-steel blade parted the shimmersilk cord with ease. Nimat and Dorian’s eyes watched the stone fly over their heads in a swift arc, strike the floor, and roll into the shadows.

  Kiera saw the pair lunge after the crystal as she ejected the spool from her gun and slotted in a replacement. She sidled around the skylight in search of the stone. Someone amidst the melee sent it skittering across the floor with a kick. Kiera knocked out more of the glass panes and took aim once again.

  The man next to Kiera looked between her and the battle below as he tried to determine which side she was on. Having come to the conclusion that it was not his, he advanced on her with blade drawn.

  Nimat noted the sound of breaking glass over her head and glanced up. Unwilling to give the thief a second opportunity to steal her prize, she summoned black energy and sent it streaking upward. The onyx ray slashed at the skylight and its supporting structure, bringing it and the pair of thieves looming near its edge crashing down.

  Kiera let out a shriek when the surface beneath her feet collapsed. She rolled onto her back mid-freefall, pointed her gun at the remaining roof without aiming, and squeezed the trigger. The grapnel latched on and Kiera thumbed the spool lock, nearly ripping her arm out of the socket when she bounced to a sudden stop. She had just managed to grip the gun with her other hand when the man from the roof grabbed onto her as he plummeted past.

  The shimmersilk cord stretched a few feet, and Kiera was sure it would snap. She cried out at the additional stress on her arms, but the line held. Rafferty’s man lost the tenuous grip he had on her waist and fell an instant later, landing atop the crate Nimat had used as a table and shattering it.

  Kiera had no time to concern herself with the man’s fate. She triggered the grapnel’s release and dropped to the floor in a crouch. Her eyes flashed toward the sound of musket fire, she ducked her head, and narrowly rolled out of the path of a sword swing.

  She came up with her baton in her free hand, braced her feet, and shot the man in the chest with her grapnel. The thug gawked at the thumb-sized, mushroom-shaped piece of metal now sticking to him.

  Kiera activated the button that caused the cord to retract and heaved on it at the same time, forcing the surprised man to come stumbling toward her. His shock turned into oblivion when Kiera clobbered him between the eyes with her baton. She had no time to celebrate as another man lowered a pistol at her.

  Raising her own gun, she shot first, the grapnel attaching to the roof above and behind the shooter. Kiera launched herself upward an instant before he fired. The musket shot whizzed past just below her as she swung like a massive pendulum and kicked the would-be assassin in the chest with both feet.

  The nightbird could not contain the grin spreading across her face as several more men rushed at her with violent intent. With the grapnel still attached to the roof, she shot up over their heads and far beyond the reach of their melee weapons. Perched within the rafters, Kiera studied the battle below and sought out the arcanstone.

  ***

  Dorian was shocked to find another Necrophage not just in Eidolan, but in this very city. Their meeting stretched the bounds of mere coincidence to the breaking point and beyond. It spoke of the gods’ will at play, but for what end he could not say.

  Her, or its, as he sensed a mutational conflict in the being’s aura, reaction was as swift as it was violent. She pulled a remarkable void-steel blade, one of a matching set, from the sheath at her hip. Dorian moved just as quickly, knowing that the slightest hesitation could cost him the soul stone or possibly his life.

  His shadow whip struck the blast box, taking it out of play, at least momentarily. As he rushed forward, something akin to a crossbow bolt streaked down from above and struck the stone, but instead of bouncing off, it stuck, and the shooter jerked it from Nimat’s pale hand. The underlord’s blade, a black curved thing the length of her forearm, whistled out and cut the line attached to the bolt so fast that the movement defied belief.

  Dorian’s void lance shed its sword shape as he willed it to morph into the weapon with which he was most comfortable. He pulled strength from his soul stone and chased after the remarkable gem as it flew across the room. Nimat was not about to let her prize go so easily and gave chase.

  Fighting erupted throughout the warehouse as dozens, possibly scores of figures burst forth, some in defense of the Undercity lord, others desperate to steal the arcanstone at any cost. Musket fire added to the noise and chaos of battle and filled the air with thick, cloying smoke.

  Dorian reached the spot where the stone had come to a halt near a stack of crates, but Nimat was on him in an instant, both blades moving in a blur. Dorian’s void lance spun like a windmill’s blades in a dust storm, deflecting her strikes with uncanny speed and precision.

  A small knot of dueling men barged into the pair, kicking the arcanstone away and sending it skittering into the largest mob where more than a dozen feet batted it around like a child’s ball. Both Necrophages lashed out at the men who got in their way, heedless of whose side they might be on.

  Dorian’s shadow whip lashed out and struck Nimat in the chest, sending her stumbling backward several steps. Her blood-red lips curled into a sneer as she drew one of her knives across the top of her forearm and slung the blood against the floor, crates, and wall. From each spatter, bloody, fleshy tendrils sprang forth and wrapped around Dorian’s legs and body. He formed his whip into a blade that extended from one hand and hacked at the bands.

  The strands of gore assaulted him from every direction. It took all of his skill and concentration to weave his shadow blade with the swift precision needed to hold them at bay. Summoning the power stored in the void lance’s soul stone, Dorian raised it high and slammed the butt down onto the floor.

  Cyclonic streamers of black energy erupted around him, hewing down the tendrils before they could touch him. Dorian dropped to a knee and plunged a soul stone into the nearest corpse. The body twitched before clambering to its feet and lunging at Nimat.

  Not to be outdone, the underlord took a small arcanstone set in the center of a gold techno-scribed disc and tossed it into a pool of blood expanding around a corpse. The fluid congealed around the stone and rose from the floor. The amorphous glob formed a head, arms, and finally legs. Blades made of bone jutted forth from the wrists where its hands should have been. The two Necrophages circled each other as their monstrous creations battled.

  ***

  Perched in the rafters, Kiera studied the massive brawl going on below. She looked on in shock when a dead body rose from the floor to fight again, and choked back bile when Nimat created something far worse.

  There was so much gun smoke in the air, she was starting to have a hard time distinguishing one group from another. Some fights were nothing more than the din of parried blows, pistol shots, and curses hidden behind a veil of haze. Kiera scampered across the beams to where she thought she had seen the arcanstone roll to and lowered herself into the least battle-congested piece of real estate.

  She had just reached the floor and retracted her grapnel when a large man charged out
of the wall of smoke with a sword raised high. Kiera went low, striking him in the shin and felling him with a backhand blow to his head as he went stumbling past. She immediately forgot the man as he lay unmoving, and resumed searching for the stone.

  Keeping a wall of crates to her back, Kiera crept around the warehouse on bent knees, trying to look as inconspicuous and harmless as possible. In spite of her attempts to avoid the melee, the fight inevitably found her. There were simply too many people set on killing each other to avoid it.

  Two men spotted her and charged. She tried to back away only to collide with a third. She instinctively ducked and reeled back her baton to strike. A knife cut through the air over her head and struck one of the men in the chest. She looked back over her shoulder to see the second man lifted from the floor before being bashed with a club and tossed aside like a piece of trash.

  Kiera spun back around when a hand grabbed her shoulder and lashed out without looking. Langdon deflected the strike with his shortsword as he leapt back out of her reach.

  “Kiera, is that you? What in the Tormented Plane are you doing here?”

  The nightbird breathed a small sigh of relief as she glanced back and saw Iggy and Micah walk out of a thick pall of smoke. She tugged her face wrap down to expose her mouth so she could talk freely and reward Langdon with a smile. The thought of using his obvious affection for her to manipulate him made her sick to her stomach, but she needed all the help she could get right now.

  Kiera cast her eyes around the room, grabbed Langdon by the arm, and pulled him into a cubbyhole walled in on three sides by crates. “I came here to steal the arcanstone for Fred.”

  Langdon gaped, his eyes widening. “You want to steal from Nimat? Are you insane?”

  “No, just in a really bad situation,” she snapped in a loud whisper. “I didn’t know it was Nimat’s. Now that I do, I want to get it and return it to her so that she’ll wipe out my debt and hopefully kill Fred for crossing her.”