Page 414 of Rage

Toothtaker

By: Cait Alvarez

Chapter One

Edwige

The pain wasn’t receding. I’d thought it would. That the gnawing, burning agony would fade as I slipped closer and closer to death. But it wasn’t, it was just… there. Front and center and agonizing with every stuttering, gasping breath, as I tried to inhale past my shattered jaw and into my lungs, their delicate tissues shredded by the shards of my shattered ribs. No, the pain was not diminishing; the pain seemed to grow the longer I existed within its grasp, unable to move, barely able to breathe. Trapped against its razor sharp hold as my mind faded into the blackness of the afterlife. I couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. The sudden fear that perhaps the pain would travel with me, leap across the barrier between life and death, shot a bolt of fear through my ruined chest.

“Hush, be easy now.” A low, feminine voice crooned.

I flinched in response, and the pull of what remained of my musculature against my ruined bones was positively agonizing. I released a weak, desperate wail, beyond terrified of the foreign presence coalescing above me.

That I was finally alone, allowed to die in what little peace that could be found amidst the roiling waves of agony, had been the only blessing offered since that feral nest of vampires had arrived at my front porch. When they’d surrounded my cottage and burned it to the ground, along with my herbiaries, my grimoires. All of it gone, and soon I would be too. I’d been relieved to finally be alone with my end, as painful as it was, because the end was in sight after days of agony at the hands of another.

“Broken little thing.” The strange presence whispered, her voice even softer, as though she had regretted startling me, like she had regretted the pain she’d caused.Was that even possible in this world?

My remaining eye fluttered open, blurred gaze catching on sharp, angular features in a feminine, catlike face. The strange woman was the same deathly color as the underbelly of a dead fish, of the endless snows that blanketed the moors during the depths of winter. When the cold was so bitter and biting that even venturing outside felt fraught and perilous. When it seemed like the wolves of Maslenitsa were waiting in the shadows of the trees. Slavering behind the drifts that piled as high as my little cottage, their sharp teeth and jaws poised to snatch the breath from my throat and the beating heart from my chest.Shewas death;shewas ice;shewas darkness.

A glacial digit trailed its way over the bare flesh of my leg, awakening the forgotten ache of bruises and the sharper pain of the deep, torn bites that littered the flesh of my thighs. The pain stretched on for an endless agonizing moment, then abruptly ceased, replaced with... nothing. My eye shot down to where she touched me. Her fingers, blue and glittering in the dim light that filtered through the trees to where I lay, rested lightly on my flesh, the soft tissue frozen and stiff now, nearly as pale as her face.

It doesn’t hurt.

The dawning understanding was a sweet comfort, a stark contrast to the bitter landscape of pain and fear I’d been dragged into. I wanted to tell her, but my shattered jaw couldn’t form the words. She seemed to follow though, moving her hand up my other thigh, the icy balm of her fingers killing any sensation in its path.

“How cruel they were to you, my little witch.” The woman murmured, one hand brushing my knotted, filthy hair back from my forehead. The other drew swirling patterns over my belly and breasts, leaving trails of ice in her wake, deadening the agony that had chewed at me, making every second an eternity of torment. “So much pain, so much cruelty. They painted it on your skin for me. I can read it like a tapestry. Your flesh, my love, it is a record of the horror.”

I winced as she lifted my fingers. They were the first casualties in my kidnapper’s attempts to stop me from fighting back. The goddess pressed her full, lavender lips to each of them, her touch fighting back the pain, forcing it to retreat. I could think for the first time in ages, enough to realize that even the balm of her touch couldn’t keep my shredded lungs from killing me, from sending me into the darkness of death.

“Tell me, my poor creature, do you want peace?”

She turned my face towards hers, so gentle and careful with the shattered remains of my jaw. That tiny gesture brought tears to my eyes, the salty fluid burning in the shredded flesh of the one they had taken. She tutted her concern at the agony that stole over my face, burying her finger into the ruined socket up to the knuckle, making me squeal in shocked protest. For a moment, pain bloomed again, and I wanted to rail against it, to rail against her. But then, it was gone, so thoroughly replaced by nothingness that I wondered if I’d ever had a second eye to beginwith. I pawed clumsily at the lovely creature that loomed over me, trying to touch her, to somehow show my gratitude.

“You are dying,” she told me, her tone soft but words taking none of the brutality away from the statement. I gave a jerky nod, agreeing with her. I was dying. Her deathly pale face and wide eyes would be the last thing I saw.

“You don’t have to go, lovely one, if you aren’t ready yet. If you are bold enough to seek vengeance against those who have wronged you. Do you want to end them before they find another creature to torment? Do you want to use your wrath, your revenge, in service of something more?”

Vengeance... Did I want that?

I allowed myself to picture it, letting the knowledge of what she would make me sink into the threads of my consciousness. I would be a monster, a bloodthirsty, cruel creature, like the ones who’d tormented me if I denied myself the peace of death. I would be driven by need like them, satiated by blood like them. I would become a thing of rage. Would that be worth it? I was already so changed from who I’d been. Did I dare twist myself a little more? Would I break? Was the shattering worth it?

Yes. Yes. Yes. It would all be worth it to seek my vengeance. To give back the fear and torment those creatures had visited upon me.

I caught her gaze, grasping ineffectively at her silken slip, the wisp of fabric barely covering the emaciated form of the goddess.

“Teeth.” I slurred, the words barely comprehensible coming from my swollen, bruised lips. Thinking about my broken jaw, and my cracked molars, only one thing was on my mind, “I want their teeth.”

Hargrave

“Toothtaker!”

“Toothtaker!”

“Toothtaker!”

The word was echoing back and forth through the agitated crowd, all of them wearing their promenade finest, trying to catch a glimpse of the third gruesome murder of the week. The killing had been conducted with the same brazen viciousness on the grimy, gas-lit streets as the last two. Violence was commonplace here, but whoever conducted these latest killings had gone above and beyond, their cruelty documented down to the last salacious detail in every penny-rag and tabloid being printed.

I’d done my share of savagery, both as an orc and as the head of my criminal organization, but something about teeth and their removal had me shuddering along with the slowly panicking masses.

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