Page 419 of Rage

“I’ll help you find them,” he growled. The promise making my heart and core throb in unison, “and I will revel in your vengeance.”

Hargrave

“Word in the red district is there’s only one left from that nest,” my second-in-command, Immer, informed me, her breathless excitement making the sentence tumble from her lips.

“Who?” I growled, looking up from the wide window-seat I’d been lounging in, monitoring the toothtaker- no, Edwige’s- progress through my carefully manicured green space. She was ravishing in just one of my shirts. I’d ordered clothing in her size to be procured, but I was already regretting it. She was much lovelier in my things, with her pale legs on display, feet bare, skin shining against the darker green backdrop of the plants.

“Gyrhorn Pavalur,” she replied. “They call him ‘The Duke’ in the red district. He owns several blood brothels, all of them catering to vampires who’ve lived long enough to rise above the rabble.”

“Let me call Edwige up for this,” I said, ignoring the annoyed look on Immer’s face. She could wait a few more minutes, this directly concerned my companion.

The woman in question was in the doorway a few moments later, her clawed fingers trailing over the white trim, leaving miniscule curling peels of paint in their wake.

Edwige

The territorial rage I felt seeing Hargrave in a room with another woman, even though she was across a desk from him and clearly here in some kind of professional capacity, surprised me. It awakened the toothtaker within me, and I felt myself baring my gilded teeth as I stalked towards Hargrave and positioned myself beside the oversized wood-and-leather desk chair, shining claws and teeth on full, threatening display.

The orc in question seemed to revel in the dramatics, leaning back and enjoying in my show of possessiveness. I rested a hand on his thick shoulder, uncaring that my gilded claws dug into his woolen jacket, leaving pinprick tears behind.

“Edwige,” Hargrave purred, snaking an arm around my waist, pulling me closer. “Allow me to introduce my second-in-command, Immer Venro, formerly of clan Leaf-Fall.”

The woman rolled her eyes, and the slight movement was just enough to reveal the pointed tips of her ears. An elf then, I mused, the predator in me cataloguing the information for later use. She seemed to take me in stride, a rare occurrence. My teeth and claws were usually enough to send anyone running, vampire or not. The whispered stories of creatures like me haunted all the magical species, even though we had been made to hunt only one of them. Her face returned to impassive politeness a moment later, her dark skin and delicate features facing towards me without a hint of irritation or fear. I thought I could grow to like her.

“Immer was just telling me some fascinating information about the nest of vampires that appear to have been targeted by these recent, brutal…” he squeezed me affectionately as he purred the adjective, “killings.”

“There’s only one left, which I’m sure Edwige is more than aware of,” Immer said, raising a single, dark brow at our antics. I had been aware…though I had no plans to tell her that. The memory of my time under the attentions of the vampires was clouded by pain, fear and the odd, dizzying intoxication that being fed their blood had brought on. That had been what tied us together, what allowed me to recognize them by scent and aura, which had allowed me to trace and catalogue them.

“Gyrhorn Pavalur,” Hargrave added, though the name meant nothing to me.

I looked down at him, questions wrinkling my brow.

“He owns several blood brothels, and rarely leaves the red district,” He continued. The background information doing nothing but making my task more daunting than it had already been. I was astoundingly powerful as a toothtaker, but hunting a vampire within the borders of their territory would be incredibly stupid of me.

“Which means if you intend to finish your work, he will need to be drawn out of his hidey-hole and into the light,” Immer finished, smirking at her little play on words.

Hargrave

“I suppose you know how to lever this asshole out of his den?” I drawled, running a soothing hand over the curve of Edwige’s waist. I had felt her stiffen as we spoke. The information concerning her last target could hardly be categorized as good news.

“Gyrhorn is bored,” Immer answered. “That’s why he builds these nests, riles them up, then uses them to see how far he can push another living thing before they become-“ her eyes darted to Edwige, and the pity in them was enough to make me cry. Iwondered what horrors she had seen, that she understood the ones wrought about my moon-gift as well as she did. “But that boredom is going to work in our favor, toothtaker, because he is always seeking something, or rather someone,” her eyes flicked to me at that, “new and interesting.”

“And I’m new and interesting?” I asked, a brow raised.

“You’re a mystery. Richer than the nobility, fingers in all kinds of unsavory pies, and a house in a fashionable district that no one has seen yet. I think he’ll be more than a littleinterestedin speaking with you, seeing the inside of your lair, and possibly even luring you into his after he’d made a few overtures. Or we can continue to let Edwige do her own work, waiting for him to get bored enough to seek his next bit of fun outside of the red district.” Immer looked at her, a question in the twist of her lips.

Edwige was preternaturally still against me, and I could sense her desire to end the life of her final tormentor growing with each moment.

“How do you propose I lure this Gyrhorn into my home? Sending round a card might be suspicious when he goes missing immediately afterwards.” I said, pinning Immer in place with a hard stare.

“I imagined you would host a ball. A rather large one,” my second replied, as though she were informing me I was doing nothing more taxing than ordering lunch.

“A ball?” Edwige deadpanned, “like dresses, and dancing, and champagne?”

“Exactly like that,” Immer replied easily. “Something opulent and decadent will be like catnip to Gyrhorn and the other hundreds of citizen we invite will create an even greater draw, and if he disappears into the night, it certainly cannot be pinned on Hargrave, who was hosting the entire time, and it won’t be blamed on the phantom toothtaker either. Since he will simply vanish, along with his shiny teeth.”

I opened my mouth to protest the entire ridiculous concept, but Immer was faster, holding up a slender, dark hand to forestall my words.

“She is a wanted woman, with a trail of corpses behind her. The constabulary is more interested in stopping her than in discovering how, or why, a toothtaker was created in the first place. If her next kill is somewhere on your property, no one will know there’s another corpse missing its teeth.”

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