Cloak of Fury (Veil Knights Book 3), page 12
“Trust you?” I shook my head. “I don’t know about that. You just said you’d sell out humanity if it didn’t align with your agenda.”
“There are other races and other worlds with just as much claim to existence as humanity,” said Maleagant. “Who is to say who is more entitled to life? Certainly not me.”
“That’s bullshit. By selling out humanity, you’re passing judgment and you know it.”
Maleagant smiled. “And you’ve never operated in your own self-interests before, Mr. Fury? Never did something just for you, because you could?”
“Of course I have, but not something on such a grand scale as this.”
“Well, to each his own, I suppose.” He glanced around. “I need to get Bargest buried otherwise his soul will continue to haunt this wretched island for years to come.”
“Has he been here for long?”
“He came with me tonight for the first time,” said Maleagant. “Why?”
“No reason.” I frowned. How could Chandler have seen red eyes if they didn’t belong to Bargest the Hellhound? Unless there were other creatures out in the woods of the island that Maleagant didn’t know about.
That information might come in handy.
I rose up slowly so as not to alarm Maleagant, but he seemed unconcerned.
“If you try anything, I will know about it almost as soon as the thought forms in your mind. And I won’t hesitate to make you suffer in ways you cannot imagine.”
“Typical bad guy speech,” I said. “I get it. But don’t worry, my head is still ringing from that shot I took.”
“You should get that looked at,” said Maleagant.
“Oh yeah, I’ll get right on it as soon as we’re done scouring this island for the jacket. After all, I’m sure you’ll let me go as soon as you no longer need me.”
Maleagant laughed. “You never know.”
“Unfortunately, I do.” I walked toward him aware that he was watching me carefully. When I’d come abreast of him, I had to look up. “So, now what?”
“We venture outside,” said Maleagant. “Back into the lovely rain.”
“Again? I’ve already been out there enough. I get soaked again, my body might just decide to mutiny and succumb to hypothermia after all.”
“The rain is ending now,” said Maleagant. “It was my creation, after all.”
True to his word, as we exited the front door of the main house, the rain ceased. Clouds still remained overhead, however. When I pointed this out to Maleagant, he merely shrugged.
“I don’t want any of the townsfolk to get curious about anything they might see over here. That’s why it’s still raining in Castine.”
I looked across the Bay and saw that the rain still pummeled the town. By keeping their heads hunkered down, Maleagant was assuring himself some uninterrupted time to search for the jacket.
“What about the caretaker?”
“Caretaker?”
I sighed. “There’s a caretaker for the island. You think he’s just going to let us search this place unmolested?”
“Oh,” said Maleagant with the snap of his fingers. “That guy. Yes, well you needn’t worry about him.”
“Why…?”
He pointed off into the trees closest to the front walkway. I saw something swinging back and forth in the breeze. A creaking sound came to my ears. And then the smell.
Maleagant drew me along with him as we approached.
I knew what it was before I could see it.
The body of the caretaker hung upside down from a stout limb, secured with thick rope. At least, it was the body of the caretaker at one point. I had no idea what had happened to it.
“Bargest, that silly mutt,” said Maleagant. “He was hungry, of course, after such a long journey. Naturally I didn’t think to bring any dog food with me, so I had to adapt pretty quickly. Luckily, I happened across a ready meal source for him to dine upon.”
Maleagant let a magic orb radiate out from his hands to illuminate the scene before me in deep red.
The body of the caretaker looked as though it had been skinned alive, the layers peeled down toward the head like a banana. On the ground under the limb from which it hung, I could see blood and guts. The stench was overpowering, but I’ve smelled death enough times to have an iron stomach by now.
Maleagant sniffed. “Bargest hates eyeballs, though.” He sighed. “I shall really miss that dog.”
“Yeah, sorry about having to kill him and all.”
“We’ll even that tab by having you find the jacket for me,” said Maleagant. “Perhaps I shall even be lenient with you.”
“Well, if you’ve got a plan to find the jacket, now might be the right time to let me in on it. As I already explained-”
Maleagant waved his hands. “Yes, yes, yes...I know all about the fact that you no longer possess the compass.” He reached into the pocket of his slacks and withdrew a small object. “Fortunately, I have something just as good that should help us find the object we seek.”
“What is that?”
He frowned. “Nothing for you to know about. Now come on, the sooner we find this jacket, the sooner I can rid of you.”
And with that, I felt his immensely powerful arm sweep around me and drag me off into the direction of the thick forests.
17
The rain may have stopped, but the night still wet. Remnants of the storm still dripped from every branch we brushed through. A cold breeze blew across the bay, chilling me as we walked. I thought about using the heat I could somehow generate, but I didn’t want to exhaust my supply of it, because I knew I would need it to battle Maleagant.
For his part, the sorcerer - if that’s what he truly was - steered us through the trees and then across a field that looked like a small vineyard.
Maleagant marveled at the grapevines. “I wonder what the wine tastes like that they produce here?”
“You should have asked for a bottle before you killed the caretaker,” I said. “Too bad he’s not in any sort of condition to get you any now.”
Maleagant laughed. “Yes, he does seem a bit unwilling to help in that regard.”
“Sort of like Bargest,” I said.
Maleagant fell silent and I felt a brief surge of joy at having pricked him where it hurt. A little bit of payback for the caretaker. But it was damned little and I knew it would take a lot more than that to ever get justice for the poor guy. He was completely innocent in this and Maleagant had utterly destroyed him.
I wondered about Charade as we walked. Maleagant had mentioned his associates, so I assumed that he had henchmen of some sort. Or perhaps some sort of creature he could control. Was it a shark? Something worse? I frowned. It couldn’t have been a submarine. Nothing had the ability to hit like the way the boat had been hit. And we would have heard a metal on metal noise.
No, in all likelihood, it had to be a sea creature.
“Where’d you get the shark that attacked the boat?” I asked.
Maleagant shook his head. “Not a shark. They’re brutally difficult beasts to control. I opted for something a bit simpler minded but just as useful.”
“What?”
Maleagant smiled again. “That’s for me to know and you to find out. Eventually.” He glanced down at something in his hand and made a course correction. “We need to go this way now.”
I stayed abreast of him. If I hadn’t, he would have put his arm around me again and I didn’t want that. It felt like being hugged by death.
I also thought that if I stayed with him, there would be a chance I could grab the jacket away when we found it. At least by keeping eyes on, I would know the location of the jacket and what sorts of opponents I’d need to kill to take it back.
We made our way over to the other side of the island and I saw an outcropping of rocks by the water’s edge. Maleagant strode toward the rocks and then halted about twenty feet away, eyeballing the area, mumbling to himself, and then nodding once more.
“Is this it?”
He looked at me. “You’re soaking wet.”
I glanced down at my clothes. “Well, yeah. It’s been pouring out and your sea monster sent me into the drink.”
He nodded. “Good, so you won’t mind getting wet again.” He pointed at the rocks. “There’s a small opening at the base of them on the seafloor. I think it should be no more than ten feet deep at this point. Dive down and retrieve what is hidden there.”
“You’re kidding me.” I gestured to my clothes. “I’d need gear to do that. I can’t open my eyes underwater anyway. The salt kills my eyes. No lie.”
He frowned. “How does someone like you get through special operations training without being able to open your eyes underwater?”
“Not easily,” I said. “But I managed.”
“Exactly,” said Maleagant. “And you’ll manage here as well. Just be careful you don’t get trapped under there. You’d run out of breath and drown and that would simply be horrible for you.”
“Yeah, you seem so concerned about the possibility of me dying.”
He shrugged. “I’ve enjoyed our conversations. I can admit that freely enough. And yes, you are my enemy, but I can still appreciate the time we’ve spent together.”
I smirked. “Because I’ll certainly look back on this last hour as a turning point in my life.”
“You never know, Rick. You very well might one day in the future. If you actually have a future.” He pointed to the sea. “Now, go and get me what I seek. The ocean and its secrets await.”
I shook my head but walked to the rocks. On this side of the island, the side dropped down about five feet from the top of the cliff and then right into the drink. I’d have to jump in, dive down, retrieve the jacket, and then surface and somehow find a way to get out of the ocean. Given the cold, I gave myself maybe fifteen minutes before I got hypothermic. I wasn’t sure how my body was going to like being exposed to the cold sea again, but Maleagant wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
The shock of the cold smacked me hard when I jumped in. I surfaced, gasping, and then calmed myself down. I oriented myself, took a deep breath, and then dove under, feeling my way down the slimy rocks toward the bottom.
I’ve always been comfortable operating in the darkness. It’s just something that’s never really bothered me. As part of my training, I went through search-and-rescue training wearing a self-contained breathing apparatus. The goal was to find out how much oxygen you used while trying to find your way through a chicken wire maze in complete darkness. For some guys, they’d get inside and freak out, burning through their O2 within two minutes. The combination of darkness and the close confines of the maze totally stressed them.
I got inside and felt my way through in no time, came out, and still recall the expression on my instructor’s face as he checked my oxygen gauge. “Did you even breathe while you were inside?”
I remembered all that now as I dove down. In some ways, feeling the surface of the slimy rocks painted a picture in my head. I found the sea floor and then walked my hands back to the rocks. I felt the outline of an opening. But I resisted putting my hands in there.
What if I got stuck? What if there was an eel in there or worse?
My lungs made the final decision for me. I surfaced and gasped for air. I spotted Maleagant standing above me, peering down with a distinct look of disapproval on his face.
“Do you have it?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
He frowned. “Well, hurry up. I don’t have all night to stand here waiting.”
I took a few more gulps of air and then a final big breath and dove back down. I headed right for the opening and gingerly poked a finger into the opening. Nothing bit me so I stuck a hand in, thinking that the package would be fairly big if it contained the jacket.
But there was no jacket inside the opening. Instead, I felt a square box about the size of a hardcover book. I frowned. Where the hell was the jacket?
Unless the jacket wasn’t hidden on the island after all, only a clue to its whereabouts.
Whatever the case, I grabbed the package and surfaced, holding it above my head.
Maleagant’s face lit up when he saw what I had. “Give it to me.”
I held it firmly. “Help me get out of the water first and then I’ll give it to you.”
He sighed. “Very well.” Instantly, I felt a weird orb of energy surround me and lift me free of the waves. I floated over to where Maleagant stood with his arms crossed. The orb disappeared and I was standing on solid ground. Soaking wet, but at least I was out of the ocean.
“You couldn’t have used that to make my swim a bit easier?”
He smiled. “Perhaps I like making people suffer for no good reason but my own enjoyment.”
“You’re a real sick bastard,” I said. I tossed him the package. “I thought this was the jacket, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Of course you were wrong. Humans always make the mistake of assuming they know everything. It’s just one reason why you’ve made such a mess of your world. Honestly.” He tore the package open, revealing a small chest made of something that looked like whale bone.
“Finally,” he said.
I moved closer, eager to see what the chest contained. He caught the movement but instead of blasting me with magic, he only grinned.
“Yes, very well, you can have a look, too.”
I moved within five feet of him. I wished I’d had my my knife. I could have plunged it into his chest before he could do anything to stop me. But it was gone.
Maleagant reached into the chest and removed a roll of parchment that had miraculously been unaffected by the salt water it had lain in for years.
“How is that it wasn’t ruined by the water?”
Maleagant smiled. “A few protection spells would guard it against the elements. Provided they remained intact, the parchment could have stayed there for another several millennia before succumbing to the ocean.”
“So what’s it say?”
Maleagant unrolled the parchment and began reading it. I’d never heard a language that sounded like that before. It had no sounds that I could start to reasonable place within any of the major linguistic families.
When he was finished, he looked at me with a grin. “So, now you know the secret location of the jacket as well.”
“I do?”
“I just read it aloud to you.”
I frowned. “I have no idea what the hell you just said. And you know it. You’re just enjoying basking in my ignorance.”
“It’s a guilty pleasure of mine,” he said.
“You seem to be rife with such things,” I said. “What language was that?”
“Vandalic,” said Maleagant. “It went extinct long before your time. But there was a time when much of the Eastern Germanic peoples spoke it, wrote it, and kept records with it. It was handed down for many years, but largely fell from use around 600AD. Certain, shall we say, obscure sects used it to protect their secrets. And about a thousand years ago, one of those sects made their way to England.”
“Which sect?”
“That’s not important,” said Maleagant. “What is important is that I happen to speak Vandalic. And I now have the information I need to locate the jacket.” He held up the parchment and it burst into flames.
“No!”
I rushed forward but by then it was already too late. The parchment was so old that it basically disintegrated as soon as the flames hit it. A burnt pile of ash smoldered on the ground.
I looked down at it in dismay. I had no way of learning where the jacket was hidden now.
Maleagant laughed. “Oh, come now. It’s not like you would have been able to read it anyway. What good would it have done for you?”
“I might be able to find someone who could read it,” I said.
“You’re assuming you’d be walking off this island,” said Maleagant. “And the fact is, you won’t be.”
I tackled him then, before he could attack me. As I impacted his chest, we went down, rolling across the remnants of the parchment.
Maleagant tried to knee me and get some space between us, but I headbutted him hard above his eye and he grunted.
I had nothing to kill him with aside from my bare hands, but as soon as I launched an attack, he dodged it and then reciprocated. I tried tying him up, trying my best to keep us bound together, but with every second, Maleagant wiggled free a bit more.
And then he blasted me right in the chest with some sort of energy orb like what he’d done back at the main house.
I felt like I’d taken a kick to my sternum and flew away from him toward the cliff.
A few more of those and I’d be dead.
Maleagant rolled to his feet and came up with a evil smile on his face. “I guess this is good-bye then.”
He brought his hands together and I saw the magic coalesce within his palms, a deep, dark, crimson pulsing wave. If he hit me with that, I was a goner.
So I did the only thing I could think of; I turned and dove into the water as the energy blasted the spot where I’d just been standing.
I hit the water and went down fast and hard, praying I could manage to avoid Maleagant long enough to find some sort of help.
18
The ocean around me lit up with the power of a thousand suns as I dove down deep and hugged the seafloor. I didn’t know how long I could last on a single breath, but I was determined to put as much distance between me and Maleagant as I could.
The tough part was trying to feel my way along the coast of the island without inadvertently surfacing right back in front of the evil sorcerer. As soon as I made contact with the edge of the island underwater, I used my hands to pull me to the right and began kicking with my feet to fight the natural buoyancy that made my body want to rise to the surface. I had to make it look like I’d vanished. I was hoping that Maelagant would get restless and leave, thinking that I’d somehow died.
I hoped.
I kept pulling myself along. I was guestimating how far I’d come and had no way of knowing for sure. My lungs screamed at me to surface and get some precious air back into them. But I stuck it out. I was risking blackout, but if I came up anywhere near the sorcerer, he was going to incinerate me.
