Child of the Ghosts (33 page)
It was coming from the bed.
Again another memory from that awful day came to her, as she crossed her father’s study, her heart pounding with terror, towards the chair at his desk…
Caina shook aside the memory. She crossed the room, flung open the curtains, and found the source of the awful stench.
Vanio himself lay sprawled across the silken sheets.
Or, rather, what was left of Vanio.
His corpulent body had been reduced to a twisted mass of black char, his fingers curled into shriveled claws, his mouth yawning in an eternal scream, his eyes and nose blackened pits. His teeth seemed shockingly white in the black ruin of his face. The smell rolled off his charred flesh in nauseating waves. Grease seeped from red cracks in his torso, staining into the silken sheets.
Impossible.
Caina stepped back, staring at the gruesome corpse. Vanio looked as if he had been roasted atop a pyre, or burned at the stake. Yet she saw no fire damage to the bed or the room, no smoke stains on the walls. Had he been burned elsewhere and carried here? That made no sense either. Caina had been able to sneak into the townhouse, but she doubted a pair of men carrying a charred corpse could have managed the same feat.
Her mouth tightened. That left only…
“Murder!” shrieked a woman’s voice from the hallway. One of the maids, no doubt. “Murder! Murder! Master Vanio!”
Time to go.
Caina tore the curtain from the bed, wrapped her fist in it, and smashed the window. Leaded glass fell in a rain to the courtyard below. She threw the ledger out the window, and then went through herself, finding easy footholds in the townhouse’s stonework. More lights came on in the windows, and Caina heard more shouts, followed by a shrill scream from the broken windows.
No doubt the poor maid had found Vanio’s corpse.
Caina dropped into the courtyard, retrieved the ledger, and scrambled over the wall. More screams and panicked shouts came from the house, but it didn’t sound as if anyone had spotted her. Caina had only wanted to get in and out with Vanio’s ledger, and she hadn’t wanted to kill anyone. How had things gone so wrong?
Well. She hadn’t planned on finding a charred corpse, for one thing.
Caina broke into a full run, the cloak billowing out behind her like a living shadow.
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Ghost in the Flames
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the readers of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series on my blog (http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/writer) for bringing such a strong interest to the Caina stories.
More specifically, I would also like to thank Marsheila Rockwell (author of “Legacy of Wolves” and “The Shard Axe” from Wizards of the Coast) for excellent suggestions concerning cover art, and for much encouragement.
I would also like to thank Chad & Jenny Heins, Dale Jordan, and Tami Board for reading the first Caina book (the sequel to this one, actually) and providing a great deal of valuable insight and encouragement. Chad is a biologist, and noted that while I spent time in the book describing architecture and landscapes, I only rarely described plants or animals - a weakness in my writing I have since tried to correct.
Finally, I would like to thank Elisabeth Waters, who bought the very first Caina story for “Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress XXII” way back in 2007.
About The Author
Standing over six feet tall, Jonathan Moeller has the piercing blue eyes of a Conan of Cimmeria, the bronze-colored hair a Visigothic warrior-king, and the stern visage of a captain of men, none of which are useful in his career as a computer repairman, alas.
He has written the “Demonsouled” trilogy of sword-and-sorcery novels, and continues to write the “Ghosts” sequence about assassin and spy Caina Amalas, the “$0.99 Beginner’s Guide” series of computer books, and numerous other works.
Visit his website at:
http://www.jonathanmoeller.com
Visit his technology blog at:
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - The Ancient Scroll
Chapter 4 - The Necromantic Sciences
Chapter 10 - Knives and Poisons
Chapter 11 - You’re Turning Her Into A Weapon
Chapter 15 - The Imperial Capital
Chapter 16 - The Price of Immortality
Chapter 19 - Countess Marianna Nereide
Chapter 29 - The Pact of the Magi
Chapter 33 - Blood And Vengeance
Chapter 34 - A Child Of The Ghosts