Vengeance

by Gail Z. Martin

  We did as ye bid, the pirate’s spirit said, and as he spoke, the figures of six more ghosts took shape behind him. Now keep your word.

  “Are they gone? The men who tried to enter the cave. Are they still above?” Rigan asked.

  The ghostly captain shook his head. No. They’ve taken their horses and gone. We gave them a fair chase, just to be certain. Aye, you should have heard them screamin’!

  “Thank you,” Rigan said, and even though Corran couldn’t see his brother, he knew the ragged tone in his voice all too well. Corran felt worn from augmenting Rigan’s magic, and he could only guess how much harder it had gone on his brother, bearing the focus on the power. “We will keep our word.”

  Corran rose to find his way next to Rigan, and together they chanted the words to the ritual that would bless the spirits of the departed and open the portal through which they could find rest in the After. One by one, the ghosts winked out, until the captain gave them a nod of farewell and followed his crew to where Doharmu awaited.

  Aiden called a flicker of witch light to his palm, and the others blinked to adjust to even its faint flame.

  “That was too damn close,” Trent muttered, voicing something Corran guessed they were all thinking.

  “Back in the city, Jorgeson was obsessed with hunting down the Wanderers,” Corran said, loathing thick in his voice. “What little I heard about him said he was cruel and relentless. He’s likely the one who killed Bant, Jott, and Pav—and all the other hunters who got caught. He won’t give up until we’re caught or he’s dead.”

  “Well, that’s easy,” Ross said in a cold, dangerous tone. “He’s going to have to die, because we aren’t going to.”

  Chapter Four

  Polly whistled as she sauntered down the street of the small town, taking her time although every instinct urged her to run. Circumstances had forced her to learn how to look out for herself at a young age, and her skill with a knife came hard-won. After all, she had done murder to protect her honor and maimed men who had threatened her. Parading down the street at night tarted up like a trollop rankled.

  Then again, on this hunt, she was the bait.

  Two weeks had passed since Corran and the others fought the nokk, fourteen tense days looking over their shoulder for bounty hunters and Jorgeson as they traveled to another monastery Polly had identified as a good location and settled in to still another new set of lightless, underground rooms.

  Once they finished moving in, Elinor, Rigan, and Aiden brought up the possibility of another hunt. Their new way of searching for monsters, looking for ripples in the magic, had turned up an oddity near the village of Eilertown, a town of little note except for its location at a busy crossroads where a peddler’s market gathered to sell to travelers.

  “Come on, be a good monster,” Polly muttered under her breath. “Don’t make me wander around here like a whore with the pox. What’s wrong with you? I’m tasty, dammit!”

  Earlier that day, Trent and Ross had gone to nose around Eilertown and returned with confirmation that their suspicions were correct. Young women began disappearing from Eilertown and several nearby villages a few months ago. There had been reports that some travelers—mostly merchants or peddlers—had also gone missing. As far as anyone could tell, none of the victims knew each other or had reason to leave on their own. No one had found any bodies, either.

  A sound made Polly freeze and look behind her, but she saw nothing. She forced down her fear and broadened her swagger, a trick she had mastered long ago. While the others might feel more exposed and endangered than back in the city, Polly found herself surrounded by people she trusted for the first time in her life. Knowing that they would all fight to the last to protect each other constantly amazed her, winning out over her cynicism until she dared to believe it.

  Best keep your mind on your mission, Polly warned herself. One hand slipped to the blade hidden in the folds of her skirt. Drunks and lechers she could handle; she had been declining their advances since before her moon days began. Monsters might require a little help.

  She hesitated a moment before heading on, moving slowly so that Trent and Ross could keep her in sight. She knew they trailed her in the shadows, keeping enough distance so as not to frighten off their quarry, but staying close enough to intervene and make the kill. At least, that was the plan.

  Polly whistled again, a tune she remembered hearing at The Lame Dragon back in Ravenwood City. Night had fallen though the evening was still young. The peddlers and tinkers had packed up their wagons until the next day, and few travelers would risk continuing their journey by night when an inn presented the opportunity for a meal and a night’s rest.

  Lanterns from the windows of the inn and the living quarters over the shops cast a dim glow into the street. Polly kept to the light, aware of how quickly monsters could move in the shadows. She had fought off ghouls and outmaneuvered the creatures that pursued them when they fled the city. Since then, Polly had insisted that the hunters teach her to fight, arguing that she was as much an outlaw as they were. She could hold her own, now more than ever.

  Still, no sense in tempting fate, more than she was already doing by trying to attract the attention of a monster that had already killed over a dozen people.

  “Lovely night, isn’t it?” The voice came from a darkened doorway, and Polly startled despite herself.

  “Nice enough, I guess.”

  A man stepped from the doorway but remained half-hidden in the shadows. “A lady shouldn’t be out at night alone. Are you in need of an escort?”

  Every survival instinct Polly had honed over the years buzzed a warning.

  “I don’t know,” she resisted, buying time for Trent and Ross to close in on her position and trying to get a better feel for exactly what type of creature they faced. “You might not be a nice man.” Polly felt certain he was not. After all, even with the rouge and powder, the tint to her lips and the socks she had shoved into the front of her dress to increase her bosom, she still looked young, and no one could doubt the nature of the agreement forged by accepting his company.

  “It’s dangerous out here in the dark,” the man replied, moving a step closer. “I can keep you safe.”

  The closer he came to her, the more Polly could feel the stranger’s allure. Dark hair and eyes, pale skin, and a handsome face offered only part of the attraction. He had a slim, well-built body and his clothing looked too expensive for this small town. A strange compulsion grew stronger as he neared, and Polly fell back a step and then two, struggling to keep her mind firmly on her mission. The dark-haired man’s presence made her feel drugged, or perhaps drunk on potent wine.

  He’s not a man. Not a man. A monster. Keep your head, girl! Polly chastised herself. But before she had moved another step, the man closed his hand around her wrist. He did not hurt her, nor did his fingers dig into her skin, but all the same, Polly knew she could not break his grip.

  “Come with me,” he said quietly, and his voice sent a thrill through her that burned low in her belly. “I’ll take care of you.”

  Polly pushed back on the compulsion in her mind, fighting his sway over her. She screamed, alerting Trent and Ross, and in one move, pulled her knife free from its hiding place and dug the point deep into the man’s shoulder. Startled, he released her wrist, and she ran, spotting Trent and Ross heading toward her from the side street.

  One moment, she stood on a deserted street in Eilertown, and in the next, Polly woke up on a dirty mattress in a darkened room.

  “You tried to set a trap for me.” The dark-haired man pushed away from the wall where he had been concealed in the shadows.

  “Go screw a pig.”

  Her captor backhanded her. Polly pivoted, grabbed his wrist, and bit down with all her strength. He shook her off, tearing his wrist from her mouth, throwing her halfway across the room for good measure. “Why did you come to Eilertown? How many are in your hunting party?”

  “I’ve got questions of my
own,” Polly snapped. “Who are you? And where am I?”

  The man regarded her, and a cold smile touched his lips. “Of late, I’m called Garrod. It’s one of many names, but it will do. And I have brought you to my house.”

  “What are you?” Polly asked, glaring at him.

  “You didn’t answer my questions. What were you trying to catch?”

  Polly regarded him for a moment. She let out her breath in a huff. “Someone’s been snatching girls from the village. Figured we’d set a trap.”

  Garrod chuckled. “I take it that part didn’t go well?”

  Polly fixed him with an uncompromising stare. “What are you?”

  Garrod shrugged. “A businessman. My clients hunger. I supply fodder for their desires—and I feed very well from all that lovely pain and fear and lust.”

  Polly’s lip curled. “I know your kind. Get your hooks into girls when they’re hungry and don’t have a place to lay their head, drug them up on opium and send them out to sell themselves in the taverns. You’re a monster all right, but nothing special.” She spat, barely missing his boot.

  Garrod smiled. “Oh, but there you’re wrong. I’m a very special kind of… monster. I really do feed on emotions. So I’m not in it for money or blood. I devour desperation.” He moved closer as she crab-walked backward, drawing herself up into as small a space as possible, wrapping her hands around her ankles.

  “You’re a vampire.”

  “A ganwau. Something much more civilized than a common blood drinker.”

  “Oh aren’t you the fancy one? Is that another word for procurer?” Polly’s sharp tone hid her fear, and worse; she knew this monster could see right through her defenses, that he savored her panic.

  Trent and Ross are coming. They’ll be here. I just have to hold him off. Keep him talking. Fight him. Anything to buy time.

  “All that anger,” Garrod murmured, dropping to his hands and knees and backing her up toward the mattress. “You’ve been at this point before, haven’t you? Such a fighter. You are going to be delicious. Quite the feast.” His smile slipped into a leer Polly had seen many times at the inn on drunken men who grabbed at her skirts or pulled at her arm.

  “Then eat this.” Polly lunged at him; silver knife pulled from her sock. The blade sank into Garrod’s belly, and the ganwau shrieked in pain. Polly dove on top of the creature, pulling out the knife with her right hand and plunging a handful of the salt-amanita-aconite mixture into the wound from a pouch in her other sock.

  “You stupid little cur,” Garrod hissed, as his body bucked and writhed. Polly held on for her life, wrapping herself tightly around him with her arms and legs to trap him, mindful to avoid his teeth.

  She had no more tricks if this did not work. It was never supposed to get this far; Trent and Ross were supposed to be right behind her. Polly remembered meeting Garrod in the street and breaking loose, running toward Trent and Ross, then her recollections blurred. That son of a bitch messed with my memory.

  Fear drove her anger; anger gave her strength. Aiden had assured them that if the creature had a vampiric nature, then the salt mixture and silver would poison it. The mix wouldn’t kill it, only taking off its head would do that, but it would weaken the creature, even the odds for the fight.

  Now what do I do? Polly thought as she hung on so tight her shoulders and thighs cramped. She still clutched the knife in her right hand, though Garrod twisted so violently in her grip that she feared he would break loose if she tried to shift for an angle to stab him again.

  He flexed and jerked up, rolling them over, trapping her beneath him and nearly crushing the air from her lungs. For a moment, another time and another place flashed through her memory, and in the remembering of that long ago violation, she felt Garrod draw strength from her pain.

  “Oh no,” she muttered. “Fuck no you don’t.” With her hands free of his weight, Polly grabbed on tight as she could with her left arm and both legs, then plunged the knife into the ganwau’s neck and sawed with the blade.

  His mouth opened, but no sound came from his savaged throat. Black blood welled in the vampire’s mouth, falling onto her in cold splatters. Polly never stopped her tirade of curses. Focusing on the curses kept her mind off her fear and the utter terror of what was happening.

  She kept sawing, ripping through flesh and sinew, tearing at the tough gristle of Garrod’s windpipe. He’s a vampire. A dead thing. He doesn’t need to breathe and he damn sure doesn’t need to talk.

  Her curses grew more creative, blasphemous, and obscene, and she combined them in ever-changing ways, twisting her face to keep from getting any of the cold ichor in her mouth. Garrod gripped her tight as rictus, and she knew that if she survived, she would be able to see the imprints of his fingers on her arms.

  The edge of her blade caught on bone, and she realized she had reached the vampire’s spine. She stabbed at it, dug at the tendons and soft parts between the bones, but she knew her blade was not sharp enough to behead the creature, and without that final blow, the lore books said he could heal even grievous wounds.

  She heard a loud crash and then heavy footsteps.

  “Polly, move your hand!”

  In the next breath, Polly heard the swish of a sword close enough that it passed over her like the breath of Doharmu. Garrod’s body seized once, hands clamping on so tightly Polly thought they might snap bone, and then with a final tremor, the ganwau collapsed into a rotting pile of flesh.

  “Polly!”

  Trent fell to his knees beside her as Ross stood guard at the door. Trent scraped off the decaying skin and viscera as Polly fought back bile. “Did he bite you? Are you hurt? Drugged?”

  Polly scrambled free, frantically raking her hands down over her crimson-soaked, ruined dress as if she could sluice more of the blood and offal off her clothing and skin. Her heaving breath seemed loud, though the pounding of her heart nearly drowned out the sound.

  “Burn him,” she ordered, wrapping her arms around herself in horror as she stared down at the remains. “Salt him and burn him and scatter him and use the vitriol to make sure he never comes back.”

  Trent reached out a hand, but Polly flinched back. “Don’t,” she said sharply. “Not now. Please, don’t.”

  Trent nodded. “Polly, we followed as quickly as we could. He moved so fast—”

  “I know,” she whispered, never taking her gaze from the dead vampire. “I know.” She forced herself to look at Trent. “Did you find the others? The ones he took?”

  Ross muttered curses, and Trent swallowed hard. “Yes,” he said in a choked voice. “And the ones the vampire sold them to. We killed his ‘customers’ on the way in. We’ll get the victims back to Eilertown, but Polly, you’ve got to understand, there isn’t much left of most of them. There are a few survivors, but not many. I’m sorry.”

  Polly tightened her arms around herself, cold as the blood that sank through her clothing. “He fed on the lust, on the fear. Not on blood.”

  “Come on,” Trent said, moving to stand beside Polly without touching her. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The villagers received their wounded children with tight-lipped stoicism. Ross collected their fee, and they moved on before too many questions could be asked. Polly refused help to swing up to her saddle, squaring her shoulders and lifting her head. She had scrubbed the blood off the night before, at a horse trough on the outskirts of the village as Ross and Trent took the handful of survivors back where they belonged.

  Go ahead. I’ll be fine. The monster’s dead—remember? She urged them to go, and Polly thought she saw a flicker of understanding in Trent’s eyes, that she needed some time alone.

  She cried as she scrubbed at her skin; hot, wild, desperate tears on the edge of sanity. The cold water in the trough numbed her, kept the pain away as she rubbed hard enough to raise bright red streaks of her own blood in her attempts to wash away the ganwau’s black ichor.

  Polly’s shoulders heaved and her breath caugh
t in her swollen throat. She wanted to rip away the clothes Garrod had touched and that had been soiled by his blood and burn them like they burned what was left of his corpse. She wanted to light candles and press her face into fresh flowers to remove the stench from her nose. The stink of the room where she had been held, the filthy mattress, and the odd, sickly sweet odor of Garrod himself lingered as both smell and taste. Polly would have willingly eaten a whole bulb of garlic to wipe it all away.

  “Polly.”

  When she finally heard Trent, she guessed that he had called her several times already. “I’m here.”

  “We can go,” Trent said in a quiet voice, as if she were a skittish horse, not to be spooked.

  “All right.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded dull and monotone.

  Garrod’s threats, the knowledge of what he used his victims to do, hit too close. She had nearly fallen prey to Garrod’s mortal counterparts, and it had taken all her wits and cunning to evade the fate of his victims. Along the way, there had been too many close calls, too many near misses, and far too many friends lost. She only realized that her skin was cold as ice when she wrapped her arms around herself once more.

  “Here.” Trent laid a cloak over her shoulders without touching her, and she drew it close.

  “Thank you.”

  “You were… amazing back there,” Trent said, standing a respectful distance away. “We thought—well, we feared the worst. It took us so damn long to catch up.”

  “I’m just that awesome,” Polly replied, falling back on her long-time jest, but the words held no humor tonight.

  “You did something none of the others were able to do,” Trent continued, quiet and persistent. “You fought back. You kept him from getting you completely under his control. And Polly, you nearly cut off that bastard’s head with a throwing knife.” Trent did not try to hide the admiration in his tone.

  “I didn’t think you’d find me,” Polly admitted, barely audible. “I knew he was fast, that he did something weird when he took me. The longer it went on, the more I was sure you couldn’t follow us.”