Page 415 of Rage

“Get out of the fucking way,” my second-in-command, an unassuming wood-elf whose bite was far worse that her bark, demanded. Immer Venro’s voice was as sharp as the crack of a whip and incredibly effective at creating a path through the milling crowd of frightened onlookers. I wasn’t sure what they were so concerned about. It wasn’t as though a toothtaker killed indiscriminately. They were made monsters, created by their tormentors and reborn with only one purpose in their vicious hearts.

Vengeance, and this toothtaker was getting theirs to the fullest extent.

The scene was gruesome, the hastily erected barricades stopping just before the initial splashes of drying blood. My eyestrailed over the splashes of gore. They caught for a moment on sprays of sliced flesh and viscera, cataloguing it as the mess grew worse, as the flayed flesh continued to multiply until the grime and slime covered cobbles of the street were entirely hidden by shredded remains.

Then there was the corpse.

Another vampire, based on his paper-white skin, though the mess of his mouth made it impossible to tell for sure. Every tooth had been removed, his tongue and gums pulped into nearly unrecognizable masses of red, the ribboned flesh marred by brilliant white shards of shattered bone. The mob was right for once. This was another killing by the toothtaker. Behind me, the sun continued to rise. It’s rays brilliant enough to pierce the thick veil of fog that rolled in from the sea and blanketed the already damp city in a layer of salt and moisture that served only to make the sooty buildings dirtier and more depressing.

“Someone better do something before the corpse disintegrates,” Immer muttered from her place beside me.

She was right. The rare sunlight shone down on us all, making the golden caps on my tusks gleam and wisps of ash rise from the dead vampire.

The sudden brilliance of gold was enough to catch the eyes of the milling constabulary, of whom there were many, each more useless than the last. I scoffed as they all froze. The silvery eyes of shifters, the black and orange gaze of other orcs, and the myriad of colors sported by humans all rising in unison to fall upon me. They took in the curled brim of my jet black Homberg hat, the razor sharp lines of my suit, and the sheen of my leather shoes an instant before pretending they hadn’t noticed me at all. I scoffed as they continued their milling and muttering.

The body before us was decaying more rapidly, the plumes of ash scattering with the morning breeze. Soon there would be no evidence to examine, though anyone with half a brain wouldn’treally need it. But it may make my life easier if all the evidence were to disappear into a plume of dust and smoke. I wanted to find the toothtaker before these bumbling buffoons got their hands on it.

I watched with interest as a bespectacled human, scuttling about so anxiously he could be mistaken for a goblin, approached the corpse with so much trepidation I had to wonder if this was his first crime scene. It certainly wouldn’t be his last. Murder was rampant here. It usually just wasn’t this messy. He would have to get used to being in the presence of corpses, especially in this line of work.

“Whatever the lad is up to, he better get to it soon. That body has about thirty more seconds of sunlight before its dust,” my second grumbled.

I nodded my agreement. There was no point in pussyfooting about death. Accept it, hold your nose if you’re squeamish, and do what needs to be done.

The trembling man pulled a vial full of candy-floss pink powder out of his worn coat, sprinkling it over the remains as thoroughly as he could while trembling like a kitten in a rainstorm. A brilliant gold light bloomed, followed by the scent of caramelized sugar and raspberries.

“That is-” I said with a laugh, “the most adorable spell I’ve ever seen.” I looked more closely at the mage before us. He stood a little straighter now, using the confidence of success to unbend his anxious spine. The man was lithe, his smooth skin rich and dark, accented by a smattering of nearly black freckles over his button nose and cheeks. He ignored the uniformed creatures around him, tucked the nearly empty vial back into the recesses of his coat before stepping back into the sea of navy-clad officers.

“Ridiculous,” Immer scoffed, turning away from the magical display, the now preserved crime scene and eyeing the increasingly fractious crowd. Only the most prestigiousbloodsuckers who could afford the expensive charms needed to survive the daylight were present. Their thralls did most of the protesting on their creature’s behalf, filling the morning air with despair and dudgeon in turn.

“Look him up, see if he’ll be of any use to us,” I replied, sweeping my gaze over the gory scene once more, still not catching sight of anything that could assist me in locating the toothtaker. I wanted a monster like that on my side, and I planned to find it before the milling, mewling vampires all around us did.

“Let’s get out of here,” I added with a jerk of my head towards the gaping maw of an adjacent alleyway. It would only get more and more difficult to stave off the rising panic of the citizenry.

I fought the urge to face them, to remind the gathered creatures they knew perfectly well this mess was their fault. But they knew that, provided they hadn’t committed acts of barbarity against a witch and been stupid enough to leave her breathing, then they were safe from the wrath of their only predator.

There was just one way to make a toothtaker. They were created when a nest of vampires fed from a mage. At least, according to the lore, which I had to track down after the first brutally de-faced vampire had been found. But it was more than just a simple feeding, otherwise half the blood brothels in the red district would produce a toothtaker or two every night. No, these fiends were created when the vampires dragged out the process, when they kept their victim alive and tormented them, and fed them their own blood to ensure the wretched creature didn’t expire too soon. Toothtakers were made from pain, from violation. They were reborn with only a few goals, vengeance, and teeth.

So far, the Toothtaker had taken her due from each of the corpses.

Chapter Two

Edwige

The bloodlust receded for a moment as the sun set into the glassy sea. It’s fiery red a mirror to the crimson and rust that painted over my snow white hide, the color a perfect match to Maslenitsa, the goddess who’d found and transformed me. I enjoyed a brief, bright flash of sanity before I was engulfed by the roiling need for vengeance once again. The craving brought on as a familiar, rancid scent met my newly sensitive nose.

I hadn’t always been so attuned to smells. Witches were like humans in form and most functions. I had been able to smell about as well as anyone else, which was to say not well at all. Now…now the world was a tapestry of not just color and sound, but smell, too. There are some odors that were impossible for the beast within me to resist.

I’d found one such scent last night.

I’d followed the bloodsucker emitting it through the twining, darkened alleys on the edge of the red district and into the emptier, dirty streets that branched out to the harbor docks. Those cobbled ways were abandoned every night as all thesailors and dock workers packed into taverns and bars, drinking away the aches they earned each day.

I imagined he had planned to snag one of them, making a quick unwilling meal out of a drunkard before going back to whatever hovel he inhabited in the perpetually dark, always smelling of sex and copper red district.

He’d fucked up, and I intended to show him just how much.

They were always so confident, these creatures. So stupidly sure of themselves, swaggering through the streets like they hadn’t been in the nest that had torn up my home, my life, and my body. Like they weren’t being stalked, as if their closest confidants hadn’t been slowly picked off by me, left to burn in the sun with gaping, empty maws as testament to who’d killed them and why. Like they wouldn’t fall to the silver gilding my teeth and claws.

I clacked the aforementioned gilded teeth together in anticipation. The sound was sharp as it echoed through the damp, salty air. The scent of low tide brewing with his personal smell, metallic and too-sweet, like the air around a plum tree once the fruit ripened and began to fall. The miasma was almost enough to turn my stomach.

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