Red Blood (Series of Blood Book 2) by Emma Hamm (rm book recommendations .txt) 📗

He could hear the clattering of bones as Mungus followed him down the stairwell.

“Bring the lanterns!” he shouted.

There was a pause in sound as Mungus hesitated, thought about the order, and then resumed his stumbling in the opposite direction.

“Dead men,” the Graverobber muttered. “The worst material to work with. Should have found a suitable woman instead.”

He pushed his shoulder hard against a thick wooden door and burst into a well lit room. Warm yellow orbs banished the shadows from the corners. He tossed the cloak from his shoulders to reveal his disfigured body. Clothed in nothing but velvet pants, he stalked to the corner and started pawing through materials.

A spell. Not any spell, but one of his original spells. The Graverobber was one of the few people who could still create them.

“There you are.” He whirled towards the table in the center of the room. The lean muscles of his body flexed as he moved, warping the lines that wrapped around his skin.

In his hand were black tarot cards. Some were torn at the edges, others appeared to be burned, all were aged far beyond the years of the Graverobber. His hands held the cards with careless disregard.

He tossed them into the air, and they fluttered like many broken wings of butterflies. The tarots spun and twisted to reveal dark faces that would turn smiles to frowns in the blink of an eye. Magic saturated the air and made it difficult to breathe as they hung suspended over the table for a few moments.

“Decisions decisions,” the Graverobber muttered. “What is the outcome of supporting this Malachi?”

The runes upon his back burned, and he smelled the distinct scent of burning flesh. The tarot cards rearranged themselves in a frantic mass before settling down onto the well worn wood.

They were haphazardly scattered other than three cards perfectly aligned in the middle of the chaos. Those were the cards waiting for him. They were his answer.

His hand nearly shook as he flipped the first card.

“The Devil.” His nail crossed over the pentagram on the figure’s forehead. The edges of this card were charcoaled and had always felt hot to the touch. He had no doubt this card referred to Malachi and his ridiculous self obsession.

“The Magician.” The card sparked underneath his touch. This had always been a card in each of his questions. It referred to himself as a magical being.

“The Ten of Swords.” He murmured as his brow furrowed. He drew his hand away and winced as the ragged edge of the card drew blood from his fingertip. Of course it would. The Ten of Swords was, after all, a dead man with ten swords in his back.

The Graverobber shook his head. Not a good deal after all. The tarot cards had yet to be wrong, and he always abided by their decisions.

Some of his kind used a magic ball to divine what their future would be. He preferred a much less concrete method. It wasn’t fun to know every twist and turn that his life would take. Cards were much more vague, and it was up to him to determine the cause. Although sometimes the answer was clear. As in this case.

“You’re being a little dramatic,” he told them.

A card flipped over on its own. Leaning over, he scowled down at The Fool.

“Now you’re just being petty.”

A clacking sound had him turning to look at the skeleton that was awkwardly twisted so that it could fit through the door. In Mungus’s arms were three large bundles. Each one held precious objects that were critically important to the Graverobber’s work.

“Useless!” he yelled as he rushed forward to yank the bundles from the dead man’s arms. “How many times do I have to tell you? Be careful with these!”

The skeleton didn’t even have the sense to look ashamed. Its sightless eyes stared in his direction for a few moments before it turned to stand in the corner. The Graverobber wasn’t particularly certain why it always chose to stare at a wall when it was in the room with him. Mungus had always been a little strange though.

He gently set the bundles on a padded chair and unraveled the first to reveal glass vials of herbs and countless bones.

“Cat’s paw,” he muttered as he emptied containers one by one. “Liverwort. Limpweed. Dash of Fairy dust.”

He tossed all the ingredients of his spell into a bowl. He found it much easier to coax natural things into magic rather than to force magic to make itself known. The less energy he had to expend, the better.

His hands hovered above the ingredients. Between his fingers, light began to sparkle. Scars burned along his cheekbones, and runes remitted a bright light along the back of his neck. It was not an easy spell and one that always made him exhausted.

In a matter of seconds, he was done. All who were connected to this Malachi and knew of his existence were wiped clean of their memories. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck and mixed with blood that was dripping from his face.

“All done, Mungus,” he muttered. “But Malachi remains untouched. At the very least, it will slow him down.”

He had struck a wall in that mind and had the sick feeling that Malachi had known he was there. There was much power behind that mind or perhaps a lack of it. Nothing but darkness existed in that creature’s head.

There would still be memories there, but none of his followers would know how to contact the Graverobber. It would buy him some time to figure out his options. He would not move. This place was sacred to him. But perhaps it was time to consider what he had up his sleeve to prevent anyone from ever finding him again.

The challenge was one he welcomed.

Chapter 3

Gathered around a table in the center of Haven were the few people who knew that the end of the world was coming.