Skulduggery 2 Read online

  Chapter 1

  I touched my side to make sure my knife was still sheathed on my belt. I never imagined this would be needed so soon, but here we were.

  Adi’s cottage.

  Dar’s black trousers and the black hooded cloak pulled up over his head made him blend into the night. He leaned against the small stone wall that crumbled off his cousin’s home, and he tilted his head back as he whispered “fuck” over and over at the moon.

  Inside the building, Adi hummed and whistled an old folk tune I had heard before. The tune was joyful and upbeat, something we could drink to.

  Maybe in another life.

  I nodded to Dar, and then I kicked open the small aged door and watched it fly across the tiny home. It crashed against the far wall with a horrific bang that cut through the night air like a drum.

  “What in the--” Adi screeched, and his chestnut eyes widened when he turned to see me dart through the splintered door frame.

  “What did I tell you?” I growled as I unsheathed my knife, pointed it at him, and slowly approached the trembling halfling.

  “If you think I-I talked, you’re wr-wr-ong,” Adi stuttered, and his already wide eyes seemed to grow bigger as he inched away until the stone counter stopped him.

  “And now you lie to my face?” I hissed. “You blabbed to a dwarf about the whiskey, so I’m going to assume you told others!”

  “A-Ask, Dar.” The baker stepped around the counter so the slab was between us. “He’ll tell ya. I don’t talk.”

  “Stop it, Adi,” Dar groaned as he finally stepped into the home to join us. His dark eyes pierced into his cousin, and all the hesitation I had seen outside was now gone.

  “Dar, I didn’t--” Adi protested.

  “You fuckin’ fool!” Dar yelled as he picked up a mixing bowl full of white paste and threw it at his cousin’s head.

  Adi managed to duck out of the way, but the bowl splattered across the small window behind him.

  “What proof? What proof do ya have?” Adi asked as his little hand rummaged through a drawer behind him.

  In one quick motion, I leaped over, shoved him away from the drawer, and pinned him against the stone counter near the stove.

  “The proof is that we’re here, you little fucking pig.” I wrapped my fingers around his thin neck and squeezed.

  “Plea--” Adi gurgled and tried to punch me, “I never said your name.”

  “But you mentioned whiskey, and we--” I leaned back to avoid his tiny fist.

  “We told you not to!” Dar shouted and threw a utensil at his cousin that clapped against him with a deep thud.

  “Please, don’t--” Adi grabbed at my hand around his throat, and his words were starting to slur.

  “We told you,” I whispered. “Don’t. Fucking. Tell. Anyone.”

  Adi’s eyes turned away from me and onto Dar, and that’s when I stabbed my knife into the side of his neck. I held him by the throat and pulled the blade out sharply, which released a red mist. His blood pooled over my hand and arm and splattered onto the floor.

  He kicked and punched, but his blows grew weaker as his strength diminished with the loss of blood. Then his eyes glazed over, and a hissing sound escaped from his throat and through his nostrils.

  Adi hung lifeless in my hand as the blood that gushed from his neck slowed. Then I moved him down to the kitchen floor behind the counter.

  I looked down at Adi, and his mouth hung open as if he were in the middle of a story. As much as I felt bad for Dar, I wanted to send a message. I wanted to send a message not only to whoever came across this bloody scene, but also to myself and Dar.

  I didn’t want to have to do this again.

  So, I leaned down and pulled Adi’s small pink tongue past his lips. I sliced it free from his mouth with my blade, and it curled into my hand as if the muscles were still working. Then I put his tongue into his open palm and clasped his thumb around it.

  “No more talkers,” I panted. I hadn’t noticed, but my heart had been busy banging against my chest. I’d killed people before, of course, but this felt different. Maybe because it was different. Adi wasn’t trying to kill me directly, but his words would put my entire operation at risk, and that would mean the death of my friends.

  “No more talkers,” Dar repeated as he slowly walked around the counter to see his dead cousin on the floor surrounded by blood.

  “You okay?” I asked my friend.

  “It had to be done.” He slowly shook his head and glanced at Adi. Then he looked up at me with haggard eyes and ran a hand through his curly hair. “I forgot my pipe. Got anything?”

  “No.” I shook my head and covered my mouth as my stomach lurched. I wanted to puke, but I held it down.

  Dar wasn’t so lucky though, and I heard him walk outside and vomit into the grass.

  I rinsed my face and washed out the bile in my mouth with the sink water. Then I ran my knife underneath the water as well and watched the murky redness flow off the blade and down the drain.

  “What’s next?” Dar asked as he leaned against the broken door frame and wiped at his mouth.

  What was next?

  The first time we’d visited Adi to distill our initial bottle of whiskey, I’d noticed the chaos of the halfling's place, and it hadn’t gotten much better in the last few weeks. Pots, pans, containers, and all kinds of food were cluttered throughout the entire cottage, and we almost couldn’t see the floor through the chaos.

  My eyes landed on a single piece of paper stuck underneath a spatula, so I picked the paper up and flipped it over in my hand.

  “What’d ya find?” Dar asked.

  “Looks like an invitation for an Elvish event,” I said.

  “Which family?” Dar wondered.

  “Eleran,” I read the name of the host. I knew that name. He was an elven council member.

  “Adi must’ve been preparing for the event,” Dar grunted as he stepped back inside.

  “You know anything about Eleran?” I asked. “The name is familiar, but I don’t keep track of all those assholes.”

  “As I recall,” Dar began as he tapped his chin, “he’s a council member who oversaw the construction of the watchtowers that encircle every district.”

  “Day elf or night elf?” I asked. I didn’t really give a shit about elven politics, but an idea was starting to form in my mind, so the information was suddenly important.

  “Day,” Dar confirmed.

  “Let’s head back to the theatre,” I said as I crumpled the invitation in my hand and tossed it among all the clutter in the front room.

  I turned toward the stove and noticed water about to boil over in a pot. I quickly moved the pot off the massive cast-iron cooking stove, and then lifted the lid to see it was filled with peeled potatoes.

  “C’mon, let’s go, I don’t want to stay here any longer,” Dar’s voice cracked as he pushed himself away from the door frame.

  “Alright,” I muttered, but my eyes were focused on the fire I could see through the grate on top of the oven. The fire was blue.

  Why was the fire so blue?

  Go to the elven party.

  A breeze entered the room and draped itself across my shoulders. Then my nostrils stung with the all too familiar smell of magic that wafted through the air.

  If you want to see what we see.

  The key’s voice hung onto my ear like the drops of water that clung to Adi’s sink.

  “I want to see,” I breathed.

  Then, go.

  “Wade? You comin’ or what?” Dar called out, hidden somewhere within the darkness outside.

  “Yeah,” I muttered, and then I followed my friend out of the cottage and into the night.

  Our trip back to the elephant stables was une
ventful, and neither one of us talked about what we did to Adi. Penny was nowhere to be found when we returned, and I guessed Cimarra was sleeping with the other dancers in the hall. So, Dar and I took our usual spots in the pile of makeshift hay and then passed out.

  I awoke to someone nibbling on my ear.

  “Hey Cimarra,” I purred as I rolled into her, but instead of the dancer’s perfectly shaped body, my hand ran against scales and hard ridges.

  “Wah?” I gaped as I opened my eyes and saw my pet blue dragon, or maybe he was really Penny’s pet blue dragon, staring at me with his yellow orbs.

  “Hey Azure,” I chuckled as I moved my fingers up to scratch behind his ears. “How ya doing buddy?”

  The dragon puffed out his chest and directed his head toward his food bowl. He was growing and growing fast. I tried not to think about that too much, though.

  “Hungry, huh?” I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and searched the high arched ceilings in the barn. I’d grown up on a farm, but I never thought I’d find my way back to a barn full-time. I could afford to get an apartment, but part of me didn’t want to do that, yet. Maybe I’d grown so used to the tiny third story loft of the guild that even a barn behind a theatre was an upgrade.

  I suspected Dar felt the same way I did. With how much whiskey we had to distill, someone needed to be here every day to ensure everything went smoothly, so we both pretty much lived here.

  I tilted my head against my pillow of hay and noticed Dar was already gone. I must have been really tired last night, since I was normally a light sleeper, and Dar was a bit of a heavy-foot in the mornings.

  Azure’s mini razor teeth nibbled at my fingers, and he willed me to my feet with his hungry eyes. I trudged through the dirt floor over to where Penny kept the closed box of salted mutton, grabbed a few mangled pieces, and tossed them into the dragon’s bowl.

  As the dragon gobbled up his breakfast, I turned my attention to my own bowl, but my bowl was an elephant tub full of germinated grain.

  “Where is--” I searched around the stable for my handy dandy club used to crush the grain, but then I heard muffled voices outside the stable doors, so I stopped mid-step and held my breath.

  “Oh, thank the Ancients,” I exhaled as Cimarra, Penny, and Dar looked over at my panicked face.

  “It’s just us,” Penny laughed as she handed me a pastry. “We thought you’d need some breakfast.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I held my eyes on hers a little longer than needed.

  “No problem.” She cleared her throat, dipped her eyes to the floor, and dragged her foot to trace a line in the dirt.

  “Well, it kinda was,” Dar chuckled. “We had to go all the way over to the north side of the Entertainment District, stand in line, talk to the baker, and--”

  “Oh stop whining,” Penny groaned as she tied her torch-red hair up into a messy ponytail.

  “Did you guys already eat?” I asked as I took a bite of the pastry.

  “Oh, you know, we had a bit of a snack,” Dar said.

  “Eight pastries is a snack?” Cimarra asked as she raised a perfect eyebrow at my friend.

  “Some of us are growing boys!” Dar laughed and smacked his stomach.

  “Growing fat bellies,” Penny sighed, and then she sat down on a hay bale, crossed her leg over her other knee, and adjusted the thin brown leather belt above her slim waist. The delicate strap held her forest green top snug to her body and hugged her curves.

  Then her eyes flickered to my face again before she quickly looked away.

  Ever since the night she almost died, I could tell she didn’t really know how to act around me.

  I shuddered at the thought of Hagan’s henchman, Randar, and his body littered with scars, and the way his voice hissed at Penny before he stabbed her in the gut. I never wanted to see her face contorted in pain like that again.

  Now, she denied she was about to declare her undying love for me before she bled out. An elephant’s stable was most fitting for us, since there was definitely an elephant that lingered in the room.

  “How’d you sleep?” Cimarra asked while she leaned her head on my shoulder and rested her hand along my lower back. She was wearing the revealing silk show-costume underneath a loose fitting flowery robe, and I reached my hand around her backside so my fingers could trace down where the silk touched her back above her perfect ass.

  I leaned my chin atop her head, and then I closed my eyes as the smell of vanilla filled my nose and calmed my nerves.

  “I slept okay,” I sighed and then kissed the top of her head. She brought me a kind of peace I desperately needed, especially lately.

  “You slept like a dead log,” Dar snickered as he began to crush the grain in the tub.

  “Where was the club?” I asked with a frown.

  “Just over there.” He nodded toward the corner of the room while he lifted the wooden stick above his head and slammed it down into the tub of grains with a grunt.

  “Not so hard, we want them crushed, not turned to dust,” I chuckled as I slipped out of Cimarra’s arms, took a bite of my pastry, and moved over to join him.

  “Like this?” Dar raised the club over his head again and then slammed it down as hard if not harder than before. He went to do it one more time, but I caught the end of the club.

  “Dar … ” I murmured and gently tugged the club away from him.

  “Sorry,” he said as his dark eyes dropped to the grain. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “I thought you were a little extra sour, I--” Penny began, but then she glanced over to me, saw the look in my eyes, and stopped mid-sentence.

  “I’m fine. Just need some time is all.” Dar slouched his shoulders and buried his face in his hands.

  I knew family was important in the halfling culture, but it’s not every day you start an illegal whiskey business and your family nearly betrays you to death. I’d just asked him to choose me and our business over his family, and he’d picked me, but now I worried he regretted it.

  “How much?” Penny asked as she stood, walked over to us, and slightly kicked the elephant tub, as if to enforce that we thieves weren’t the best when it came to feelings.

  “What happened?” Cimarra questioned and furrowed her brows in confusion.

  “We had a long night,” I answered once I realized Dar wasn’t going to.

  “And something happened?” Cimarra’s voice pitched upward at the end of her question.

  “I--” I took a long breath.

  “We had to visit my cousin, Adi.” Dar wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The idiot almost got us all killed.”

  “How?” Penny asked with concern etched on her face.

  “He talked about the whiskey with someone and … ” I hesitated, but Dar interrupted me anyway.

  “And we had to end it.” Dar punched the side of the tub, and it released a loud gong sound throughout the barn. “Fucker deserved it. That’s all.”

  “Oh,” Penny breathed, and her piercing eyes turned soft and compassionate as they moved from me and then to Dar.

  “It’s fine, he deserved it,” Dar repeated with his eyes glued to the floor. “It needed to be done … but he was still family.”

  “If someone is going to rat on us, then they deserve to die,” Cimarra said, and the three of us looked at her with wide eyes.

  “Huh, I didn’t expect that from you,” I said.

  “No?” she asked as her lips curled up into a smile. “I’m in this with you, Wade. I already told you that.”

  “And you?” I asked as I turned to Penny and Dar.

  “What do you mean?” Penny scoffed as she rubbed Dar’s back. “Are you questioning me? You don’t think I’ve got the backbone?”

  “No, no, no,” I sighed as I gestured to the elephant stables-turned-distillery. “I’m willing to do anything to protect our business, and the four of us. There is going to be a lot more blood in the streets and on our blades. So, are you both in this?”r />
  “You ass, I already took a blade for this,” Penny sniffed and swiped a strand of her hair aside. “Also, you’ve asked me this at least four times and I keep saying yes. Stop being so daft. How many times do I have to tell you I’ve got your back?”

  “This is the last time,” I chuckled, and then I turned to Dar.

  “My idiot cousin isn’t stopping me, or us, Wade,” my halfling friend promised as he nodded his head.

  “Okay,” I nodded back at him, “then let’s take an oath. There’s no turning back.”

  I unsheathed my dagger from my side. The same blade that ended Adi’s life would mark the start of our new one.

  “Okayyy … ” Penny raised an eyebrow and looked at my knife.

  I wasn’t quite sure how to do an oath, but I figured I had to say some words that mattered.

  “My father told me something I never forgot when he talked about the elves. He said, ‘only death can claim us without permission.’” I wrapped my hand around the edge of the knife. “I think that’s a fitting statement for us. So, until death claims us.”

  I swiped the blade against my palm and squeezed my hand into a tight fist. A thin red ribbon of blood unfurled down my arm and onto the dirt by my feet. Then I handed the knife to Cimarra next to me.

  We’d met only a few weeks ago, and now here she was, about to take a blood oath for our illegal whiskey clan. She held the knife away from her at first as some of my blood slid down the edge of the blade like a red tear.

  “Until death claims us,” she said through a clenched jaw, before she wrapped her hand delicately around the blade and repeated the same motion as me. A small stream of blood dripped down her wrist and onto the dirt.

  The count would not appreciate his star with a bloody hand, but she wasn’t his anymore. The beautiful dancer was my woman and business partner now.

  “Until death claims us.” Dar reached for the knife, and without hesitation, sliced his palm, tilted his hand, and allowed his blood to drip down by his feet. He then raised the bloody blade in front of Penny.

  Penny grabbed the knife with a slight eye roll aimed at me.

  “Until death claims us,” she gasped as the blade swept across her hand, too.

  “Now, what?” Cimmara asked with a slight smirk.