The Ruens of Fairstone (Aeon of Light Book 2) (34 page)

“What should we look for?” Pard says, his eyes growing wider and more eager.

Hawke chuckles. “Wouldn’t you like to know. Now, when cornered or angered, the tikba unleashes its true self upon its victims, its spirit self. Its arms and legs lengthen and grow a foot or more in height. Its head transforms into a creature, sort a cross between horse and man with long fangs. Their hair stands straight up and thickens and grows into a long mane down its back and neck. And its upper body expands with bulging muscles that can pound any foe into submission.” Hawke swipes his hand at Miles. “To beat you into a pulp and open you up and gnaw on your flesh and bones.”

Miles and Pard both suck in a breath and shake in their seats.

“In its creature form, in the center of its mane, three long silver spikes of hair show the tikba’s true nature. In the tena, they are made of gold. These spikes are worth a fortune as they are said to bring the owner of the spikes the luck of a thousand blessed lifetimes. And the golden spikes even more so.”

Cray scoffs. “Now that part, I agree with Yaz on, fairy tales and nonsense I say. I just want the sport and the purse, they can keep the luck—never had a need for it.”

Hawke shifts back to Pard and Miles. “Yes, well—” He clears his throat. “Also, the blood of the tikba is prized for its magical properties, and is worth a mint once procured to apothecaries.”

“So you kill them?” Pard says.

“Gotta find them first, boy,” Cray says. “They’re devilishly hard to find, and once you do, they fight like hell. I dare say most who search them out and find them find themselves dead quicker than they can say gold.”

“So how many tikba’s have you killed?” Miles says.

Cray grunts.

Hawke puckers his lips. “Only one.”

“And how long did that tikba take you to find?”

Cray grunts again.

“One year, four months, one week, and three days for hunting and tracking and extermination.”

“Barely worth the time if you ask me,” Cray says. “And it was a youngling at that, definitely not worth the time—hardly broke even on that endeavor.”

Hawke tilts his head to the side and looks at Cray. He talks slow and steady as if trying to convince him. “But this time it’s a tena, worth ten times the purse. It will be more than worth our time, I promise.”

“It better be. Still, we should just go after ramfinns or golocks, just as profitable and much easier prey over the span of a year, can bag twenty to one.”

“Since when does the famous Major Cray go after the easy?” Pard says.

Cray grunts, and Hawke smiles at Pard.

“Indeed, young lad,” Hawke says. “Now, back to the tikba, a curious thing happens if you can pluck the three hairs out of its mane while it still breathes.”

“What happens?” Pard and Miles both say at the same time, leaning in closer.

“You will immobilize the beast—”

The door of the inn swings open, and Deet’s eyes lock onto the black opening and the swirl of snow blowing through the entrance.

Cray, not looking at the door, he grins, but only the left side of his mouth rises.

“Is this how you subdue the beast?” Miles says, paying no mind to the door or sudden blast of chilly air filling the pub.

Hawke snorts. “Heck no. Only a fool with a death wish or an unlucky chap would ever get that close to a fully transformed tikba. It would rip your limbs off before you could pray to your gods. Nope, rifle or pistol from a safe distance is the only way to take down this mighty beast.”

“I would think that takes the sport out of it, doesn’t it?” Miles says.

“Say that to yourself when a tikba is raging and snarling a few feet away from you and fully transformed about to pound your head into a bloody pulp of mush. Then ask yourself if sport matters or not.”
 

Deet’s eyes narrow as three burly men wearing leather trench coats enter the inn, shut the door, and stroll past their table and sit at the bar.

“Aren’t you going to tell the boys what else will happen if the hairs are removed?” Cray says.

Deet momentarily shifts his gaze to Hawke and then right back to the three men sitting at the bar.

Pard follows Deet’s eyes.

Cray smacks his lips then sips the stout. “
Ah
,” he says, “that’s a tasty swill of stout, and you both have the eye.”

Pard shifts his attention curiously to Cray while Deet still keeps his attention fully on the three men.

“
The eye
?” Pard says.

Cray nods. “The eye of the killer, the one aware of what lurks in the dark of night. I see your Uncle Yaz has it in spades, as do you.”

“
I do
?”

Miles furrows his brow. “And what of me? Do I have the eye of the killer too?”

Cray lets out a halfhearted chuckle. “You, boy? No, no, not you.”

“What eye do I have?”

Cray scrunches his face and gives a raspy grunt as he scans Miles’s face. “You have the eye of a privileged rich lord that is quickly learning the way of the world since he just got tattooed on his face ‘cause he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

“
Uh
—” Miles doesn’t know what to say.

Hawke pushes away, leans back in his chair, and rests his heels on the table.

Deet tenses up and gives him the stink eye.

Cray gives Deet a faint wink through his weatherworn face. “No problem here, Yaz, no worries, keep still and relax. I like you and your nephews, even the tattooed lord.”

“You or me?” Hawke says, gesturing at Cray with a shrug.

“You think you can take all of them by yourself?” Cray says.

“I think so, I count six.”
 

Cray grunts.

Hawke’s brow rises. “Or do you want to have a go for the kids here?”

Cray takes another swig from his pint. He grunts again. “I guess I can have a go tonight.”

Deet and Pard and Miles all look at each other with blank faces, then they look at Cray, and then to Hawke.

Pard scans the bar and the three men.

The inn’s door swings open again, and two more similarly dressed large scruffy ruffians enter and fold their arms over their chests.

Two older white-haired men, sitting at the bar, appearing to be locals, inch off their stools, lower their heads, and rush through the pub and slip out the front door. Behind them, a younger man and woman, on a date and sitting at a table in the corner, quickly follow the two older gentlemen's lead and exit.

Cray sighs and slides his pint into the center of the table. “And here we go.”

The three men at the bar spring off their stools. Their trench coats fly open and they go for their pistols.

Hawke, grin on his face and heels still on the table, sips his ale. He points his tin cup at Miles and Pard. “This is where the fun begins, boys.” Then he casually hums a marching tune.

Cray slips out of his chair like he’s not human; then crouching like a cat, he flings open his duster coat while gripping the two gold handled daggers fixed to his chest. He grimaces and growls as he unleashes hell. Cray lunges forward in a blur.

The three men raise their guns to eye level just in time to meet Cray charging them.

Cray jukes to the side as a bullet zings over his head, then he punctures the back of the first man’s pistol hand with the tip of a blade while the other blade slices the man’s wrist at the same time. Cray pushes off the man and leaps onto a stool, pops onto the bar top, then launches off with a twist and over another man’s head while slicing the other man’s pistol hand.
 

Two pistols crash on the wooden floor as both men grab their bloody gashes.
 

Cray’s face and body continue to blur as he dances around the frantic men, striking and retracting and striking again. Cray bulls into the third man and thrusts up, locking the man’s arm with pistol above his head as he fires. Pieces of the ceiling explode and cascade to the floor in chunks with dust raining like snow.

Pard and Miles and Deet all cover their heads and slide out of their chairs and take cover under the table.

Hawke doesn’t budge, still sipping his ale and humming, watching the action unfold before him as if a play performed just for him, and he is in no danger.

Cray bobs and weaves, circling the men in an intimate dance, poking and slicing and dicing away leather and flesh.

The three men fall to the ground at Cray’s feet, and Cray grunts as he thrusts his golden daggers in the wooden bar top, leaving them sticking straight up in the wood.

The two men by the door fling open their trench coats and draw their pistols.

Cray does the same with blinding speed, pistols in hand, he unleashes a flurry of bullets before the men can even pull their triggers once. He twirls his pistols and slides them back into his holsters as both men stumble backward with every bullet striking their chest. They collapse, smashing into the front wall and keel over, dead.

Hawke claps with a flurry. “Bravo, bravo!”

Cray’s body does a weird tilt to the side with a shoulder undulation and spin and his duster coat completely flies off his body as if a tablecloth hovering and fluttering in a strong breeze. A small rifle fixed to his back loosens and swings freely around his midsection, and he catches it in front of his body.

Pard’s eyes, wider than they’ve ever been, never imagining seeing anything like what Cray is doing in the pub, he’s scared and excited at the same time. Intrigued and appalled and thoroughly mesmerized.

Cray spins on his toes with the ease of a ballerina as his rifle rises, and he cocks the hammer.

The fat man bursts through the kitchen door and releases a giant cleaver end over end at Cray.

Cray dips backward unnaturally, almost horizontal as the blade twirls over his body.

The cleaver zings past the candle making the flame flicker and sticks into the wood panel and vibrates like a tuning fork as it wobbles before finally coming to rest.

Hawke claps again and points at the blade stuck in the wall. “Bravo, marvelous, bravo.”

Pard glances at the cleaver and then to Miles, who’s eyes are as wide as his, and his jaw almost on the floor. Pard’s eyes snap back to Cray as Cray slings his body forward from horizontal, a motion like a hinge while pulling the trigger of his rifle.

The slug booms out the end with a puff of white smoke. The bullet strikes the fat man square in his chest, lifting the man off his feet, and propelling his huge jellylike body back through the kitchen door. He crashes to the ground, dead—pots and pans tumble off the wall and rain down on him.

Hawke continues to clap. “Bravo, bravo, bravo.” He laughs as he points his shaky finger at the fat man. “I was wondering if you pegged him as one of them.”

Cray undulates his body like a snake, swinging his rifle back to his back, then moves to the bar top. He grunts and eyes three shots of whisky lined up in front of where the men were sitting. He snatches them off the bar top one at a time and shoots them back. After each slug, he flips over the glass and slams it on the counter.

Safe to come out from hiding, Pard slowly rises from behind the table, and Miles follows him. He eyes the dead men lying at Cray’s feet, and then Cray himself, old and grizzled and amazing.

Cray clears his throat and rips his gold daggers out of the bar top, slipping one of them into its holster while twirling the other one in front of him. He turns around and strolls back toward the table. Eying Pard, he gives him a faint grin, continuing to twirl the blade with cool precision and flamboyance.

Hawke lowers his feet to the ground and continues to clap.
 

Deet rises from under the table and scans the room of carnage.

Pard’s eyes continue to stare, fixed on the twirling dagger in Cray’s hand.

And with a flick of the wrist, and not even looking, Cray’s blade shoots out of his hand to the side toward the inn’s front door.

Pard’s eyes track the blade as it twirls across the room, finding the innkeeper lady’s chest as she fires her pistol.

Bang
—

Miles ducks back under the table at the shot, and Pard flinches.

“Dang, didn’t see that one coming,” Hawke says.

Cray sits and drains his pint of stout.

“How did you know the lady was with them?” Pard says.

Cray grunts. “She looked at me funny.”

Hawke grins at Pard. “Now you know who
Cornelius Cray is.”

PAST MEMORIES

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, Deet wakes Pard and Miles from their comatose slumbers, wanting to leave immediately and have nothing to do with Cray and Hawke. Seeing their skill first hand the prior night, and their boasting triumphs as world-renowned bounty hunters, and Pard and him are, or will be, wanted for a hefty price, he doesn’t risk the chance of confronting them again. So they sneak downstairs and raid the kitchen for supplies then head out for another long day of misery.

“Deet,” Pard says, “what are we going to do about the train and Ravin Town? Cray said it’s out of commission.”

Deet stuffs his map into the inside pocket of his duster. He flips over his black hood to obscure his face. “We can’t lounge around in an inn and wait for repairs, and on foot is too slow. I suggest we catch the train to the Badlands and hide out among the scum that ask few questions, then either head north on a merchant caravan or double back in a month when the the Ravin Town line is fixed.”

Pard nods and sets his hand on Miles’s shoulder. “What do you think?”

Miles grunts, dragging his feet, cold and grumpy, even more than usual since Cray insulted him last night, and every time he passes a mirror or glass window, he sneers at his reflection and pokes at his cheek.

“Don’t worry about it,” Pard says as they cross the town’s bridge and head back toward the forest toward the train and Ravin Town.

Miles frowns. “Whatever, you have the eye of a killer, and I have the eye of a clown. You heard Cray. Does he seem like the type to joke?”

Pard glances away and toward the half-frozen river below. “No, but he also seems insensitive and a blowhard.”

Miles chuckles in sarcastic spurts. “Oh, oh, so that should make me feel better—should he have lied instead?”