House of Vultures Read online

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  “All this for me? You must want me desperately, Condor. You could have just sent a message,” comes a smooth voice from the doorway. Wolf leans against the entrance, a bow pointed at Condor’s heart. Condor tenses, his fingers twitching over the hilt of the dagger sheathed on his belt. “Give me a reason to take the shot, scumbag, and I will enjoy putting you down.”

  Falcon raises her whip to attack, but a long staff smacks it out of her hand. Jackal scuttles along the rafters, waving as he passes overhead. “Fair fight, little birdie. No need for your interference.” She watches him pass over her, the bloody end of her whip snaking along behind Jackal like a leather tail.

  Condor faces Bittern, his scar reddening along his jaw as the face under the mask turns colors with his rage. “You siding with Wolf now too? Is the whole House turning against me?”

  Before Bittern can answer, Falcon intervenes, her fist connecting with Bittern’s chin, knocking her unconscious.

  “That one comes with me, Jackal. Pick her up,” Wolf commands, hand raised toward Bittern’s limp body. He raises his voice until it is loud enough to be heard upstairs. “Any others of this House that wish to join me should surrender tonight. Otherwise, our fight begins at dawn tomorrow. We will not rest until you have surrendered or you’re all dead. You decide which fate is yours.” Turning to Condor, he continues, “You and your henchwoman are the only members of the House that do not have the luxury of joining my pack. Forsake your mask, Condor, and be murdered by your whip-wielding fiend here or die with the House of Vultures. Either way, you will not survive another day if I have anything to say about it.”

  “How chivalrous of you to formally declare war. Too bad you are already surrounded by my people.” A smug smile forms on Condor’s face, slowly fading when none of his House appears to back up his claims. He turns his head to the kitchen, then glances up the rails to the second floor. “Grouse? Goldeneye? Wren? Anyone?” The only response is a thump as Jackal lands heavily on the floor, working on the binds tethering Bittern to the chair.

  “Either they are joining me or they are hiding, but I’d say that they are waiting for your demise too, Condor.” Wolf slides behind Jackal, his eyes never leaving the furious leader of the House of Vultures. “We’ll meet again tomorrow. And if you open this door even a moment before, I will skewer your body on the end of my knife.”

  A howl of rage greets Wolf’s ears as he slips down to the gate, stopping to wait for Jackal, who still totes the unconscious woman in his arms. Wolf’s eyes focus on the traitor binds attached to the fence, the ropes hanging limply from the boards. No other sign of Mynah and the boy are present. She never appeared at our rendezvous point. Wolf’s fingers trace the nick in the wood where his knife had landed to set her free.

  “What now?” Fox calls as he joins his leader, immediately attending the broken woman in Jackal’s arms.

  “We rally our people and take down this house,” Wolf answers, still focused on the binds.

  “What about Mynah?” Jackal grunts as he shifts the weight of Bittern’s body.

  “We let her go.” Wolf tries to disguise the choke of pain in his voice.

  Fox turns to his leader, a protest forming on his tongue. “But—”

  “No. She must have a good reason for taking the boy elsewhere. She is smart and resourceful, Fox. I trust her judgment. We will take Bittern back to the pack, and in the morning, we attack this place. Mynah will come to us when she chooses.” Wolf pulls at the ropes on the traitor binds, some of their threads stained with blood. Her blood. It practically screams at him for justice. “I will keep you safe, Lupe,” he whispers as he brings the rope to his lips, eyes closing as the fear in his heart takes over. What if she’s lying dead in the swamps? What if she’s swept away in the River Sangre? What if she’s caught in a trap somewhere, and I had the chance to save her but I didn’t take it?

  “Say the word, and I will track her. You don’t need me fighting anyway,” Fox offers as he watches his leader.

  “We may need your healing arts,” Wolf whispers.

  “Oh please! There are plenty of other medics in the pack,” Fox replies with a snort. “Do you want me to follow her?”

  A clawed hand grasps Fox’s arm in thanks. “Be careful.”

  “Of course! You’re not the only one that liked having that girl around.” The russet faced mask whips toward the binds, keen eyes catching sight of the footprints. Without another word, Fox lopes into the darkness.

  Chapter 9

  The creature lets me topple down to the rocks as it lands, gracefully gliding on the breeze until its clawed feet brush the ground. I roll along the jagged stones, some of the sharper pebbles slicing into my hands. My blood traces patterns down from my elbows to my wrists as I face the strange beast. Its length stretches to be at least four times my height, mostly comprised of neck and tail. Covered in opalescent scaling that almost glitters in the sunlight, its sleek head towers over me as it inches closer and closer. Its large silver eyes remind me of a cat’s pupils, with soft azure tinting the scales around their sockets. The coloration is eerily similar to my mask, I notice as I scuttle away from the hulking beast.

  “Hold out your hands to me,” the monster demands, smoke drifting around me as it snorts.

  “Why?” I stutter, clenching my eyes tight. It smells my blood. It senses an easy kill, my feral mind worries. Run away!

  “Do what I ask,” the creature insists, and I feel helpless to obey.

  “So you can eat me faster? Not a chance,” I retort, searching for a weapon, dismay threatening to choke me when I come up empty. Nothing around me looks even remotely strong enough to pierce that thick hide.

  “Look, you’re bleeding, and I think I can help you,” the creature answers softly, her voice taking on a singsong melody that dulls my senses. “You can trust me.”

  My arms stretch out before me as if they have a mind of their own. The beast’s soft tongue grazes my wounds, and when I chance a peek, the cuts and scratches are gone. “What did you do?” I wonder as I wipe the blood off my skin.

  “It is just as I suspected,” the beast exclaims excitedly.

  “What do you mean?” I cannot help but marvel at the sudden changes in my skin. Instead of my gaping wounds, I now see shimmering flesh, not quite scales but not quite human skin either. It traces my arms like fine, spider silk gloves, intricate designs swirling where my wounds had been.

  “What is your name?” The creature continues, ignoring my confusion.

  “What did you do to me?” I respond, twisting my wrist so that the strange markings dance and sparkle in the sunlight. My skin looks like the monster’s scales now.

  “Tell me your name,” the creature repeats, its voice deepening with its frustration. The beast slides back its lips to show me its elongated, sharp teeth. “Now, please.”

  I get the message. “Mynah. My name is Mynah.”

  The creature frightens me with an ear-splitting roar. “Liar!” It circles around me, tail thrashing dangerously over my head. “That is what you call yourself, but it is not your real name! What did you choose as your true name at your masking? What do you claim as your identity?”

  “Why should I share such details with you?” I demand, unwilling to divulge any personal details to this bizarre monster.

  “Your true name is extremely important,” the creature answers me cryptically, steam wafting out of its nose to shroud me in its mysterious fog. “You will need to trust me before I can help you any further.”

  “Trust you? Why should I trust you? You could use my name to control me!” I tremble and stand up straight, steeling myself against another outburst. “You’ve done nothing but terrorize me! How do I know that you don’t plan to hurt me?”

  “If I wanted to hurt you, I could do that without your name,” the beast answers, tucking its tail under its chin to form a tightly coiled circle, blocking off any chance of my escape. The only way out of the creature’s clutches would
be to climb over its body.

  I’d never make it across the monster’s physical barricade, I tell myself as I stare into the silver eyes of the beast. Her irises swirl with a thousand shades of molten metal hues. Entranced by the sight, my voice fades to a whisper. “Why do you wish to know my true name?” Before the creature roars, I raise my hands in surrender and continue. “I just want to understand how it could be so important to you.”

  “I need to hear it to confirm my own suspicions about you.” The beast stares at me expectantly, as if her words explain everything so clearly to me that I have no choice but to comply.

  What choice do I really have? If I don’t tell the beast my name, she could kill me out of frustration. If I do, she’ll have power over me. And yet, haven’t I already seen that such mind bonding can be broken? Antero snapped our connection as though it was a mere twig under his heel. Surely obedience with the possibility of survival trumps defiance with certain death, right? I consider my options carefully as I stare at her scaly skin, counting all the ways she could kill me before I even have a chance to escape. Biting, chewing, swallowing me whole, smothering, clawing, suffocating me by her smoky breath…. The list continues until I can feel my hands trembling.

  “Well?” The creature waits impatiently, her claws clicking against the rocks underneath our feet. The whole ground seems to tremble under her powerful limbs.

  Resigned to the fact that I have no true choice, I allow myself to recall the memories of my masking ritual. I was so young, but I remember it all as though it occurred yesterday. An image appears in my thoughts, the flower whose name I had taken as my own so long ago. Its soft lilac colored petals cascading around a riot of brilliant yellow, leaves fanning out like long, flat paddles. “Iris.” I barely manage to squeak out my answer. My true name, finally acknowledged, foreign to my ears. I can feel the thrum of power resonating inside me.

  The creature shivers as she absorbs the knowledge. “Irissss....” She almost seems to savor the word on her tongue, as if it holds some secret flavor that she finds delectable. She pulls herself into a tighter ball around me, and the warmth radiating from her body nearly chokes the breath out of my lungs.

  “What do you want with me?” I gasp, praying for a fresh breath of air.

  The creature opens one enormous eye, its liquid silver so molten and shiny that I am certain if I were to touch it, my fingers would be smothered in foil-like plating. Would it burn like molten metal? Would it hurt? My hands ache with the desire to find out. The creature raises her head before I get the chance to touch her, allowing a blessed breeze to finally reach my desperate body.

  “Do you really not know, Iris?”

  “Know what?” My lungs nearly burst with the strength of my inhale.

  “That nothing is chance. You are the first to come here and find your Ddraig. We have been wondering how long it would be before one of your kind came.” The beast sighs, a rumble that ripples down her body in fluid rhythms. “We’ve been waiting for such a long time that some of the Ddraigs have almost lost faith entirely. We were afraid we had been forgotten.”

  Ddraigs. I stumble over the word. “I thought your kind were a myth. My father and uncle….” The memory of Lion looms painfully near the surface, and I struggle to continue. “They used to tell me stories of winged creatures. Firebreathers. Dangerous, reckless beasts. They’d say that the stories were legends passed on by their great-grandfather. They were such fanciful tales that I had always believed they were fiction.”

  “There is a long history between the dwellers of Cassé and our kind. It is rich with stories that show our mutual respect for each other’s species. However, for most of this century, we have spent our days in hiding,” the creature explains, her voice almost sounding sorrowful.

  “How many more of you are there?” I question, wondering why none have ever been spotted. No one ever goes to the Pith, I recall. There could be hundreds or thousands of them living in that cavern, and no one would ever know, would they?

  “There are many more, Iris, but I am yours,” the Ddraig coos, a sound as intimate as the voice of a lover in my ear. “My name is Siri, Cadogan.” Siri bows her head low to me, a gesture I have seen many people use in greeting.

  “Cadogan? What is that?” I struggle to remember a time when I had heard that word before.

  Siri huffs, answering me as though her explanation is being shared with a child. “Cadogan means warrior in our tongue. You are my champion, Iris, and I am your Ddraig.”

  “You have a bad habit of saying things and then acting like you’ve explained everything perfectly. I don’t understand anything you’ve just said. I am hardly a warrior, Siri.” More like a scavenger, I add bitterly to myself. “What do you mean, you are my Ddraig?”

  Siri uncoils herself from around me, turning her great head to inspect my face closer. “It seems that the Ddraigs have spent too long in the Pith. Your people knew all about us when we first went into hiding. Now it seems our history has died with your aged ones. What has happened in your world, Iris?”

  “A great many things,” I retort as I share with her the trials that have overtaken the Cassé. When I finish, Siri roars so loudly that the rocks beneath my feet quiver with the sound. It is an echo of heartbreak, a gut-wrenching vocalization of loss and grief. My own eyes are wet with tears by the time she finishes.

  “We knew that trouble was brewing,” Siri murmurs, scuffing the gravel with her claws. “Your aged leaders believed that by us going into hiding, the people of Déchets would give up their suspicions. It seems our disappearance had the opposite effect.” She paces back and forth in front of me, her enormous feet clumping hard into the ground. Instinctively, I curl into a ball so that my toes do not land in her way. “We knew it was folly to hide. We wanted to fight! But your leaders did not trust our judgement.”

  “Are the Ddraigs the weapon?” I question as Siri rants, her arguments ranging from past mistakes to future hypotheticals. “That boy that was attacking me when you showed up—he is the son of the king of Déchets. He was coming here to find the weapon in the Pith. Is it your kind?”

  “Hardly! We are the guardians, Cadogan. Déchets seeks the thing that we protect. It is called Carreglas, and it is better for us all if it stays buried away.”

  Siri’s words make the hairs on my neck stand on end. Whatever scares a creature as large and powerful as a Ddraig is surely something to terrify mere mortals! “What does it do?”

  “I cannot explain its ways,” Siri mumbles. “In our tongue its name means ‘The Wandering Stone.’ Carreglas does what it pleases, goes where it wishes, and none can understand its methods.” Siri’s back arches, almost like a cat screeching at its enemy. “If Carreglas finds its way into the wrong hands, it could bring about ruination on us all.”

  “We have to go back! We’ve left Panther unsupervised in that cavern! He could find Carreglas and take it back to Déchets!”

  Siri rises from her stooped position, her huge, ethereal wings unfurling as she prepares to fly once more. A fire burns deep in her belly—the heat and light from its birth illuminates the scales of her underbelly. I cringe as the flames erupt from her mouth, suddenly understanding why few trees can grow in this part of the land. “We will return and deal with the stranger. However, I seriously doubt that he’s made it past the other Ddraigs, Iris. He’s wily and clever, but only one man.” Holding a clawed arm out in my direction, Siri waits patiently as she asks, “Will you join us, first Cadogan of the Ddraigs?”

  “What will you do to the boy?” I hedge, fearing I already know the answer. Was it really all for nothing? To save Antero’s life and start a war, only to have him die at the hands of this Ddraig? My thoughts swirl from guilt to apathy as rhythmically as a pendulum swings. Did I not fantasize about killing him myself? And yet I’ve sacrificed so much to keep him alive. Didn’t he throw my compassion in my face when he attacked me in the Pith? He’s been tricking me all this time! What does Antero truly deserve?
r />   “I will do whatever I must to protect the Carreglas. No one from Déchets can ever get possession of it. If they do, our lands will certainly be doomed. No amount of opposition will be able to keep Déchets from overtaking us.” Siri flutters her wings, irritated by my lack of response to her question.

  “Is that such a bad thing?” I wonder aloud as I consider her words. “I mean, life in Cassé is nothing like it once was, Siri. Death, destruction, starvation, and pain haunt the steps of all who live in our lands now. Everything I have heard shows Déchets to be a wealthy, prosperous place.”

  “But at what cost?” Siri asks, and in my mind, I remember Condor saying the same words to me about Wolf’s pack. What is the price for such wealth and freedom? Surely, he was not suggesting that Wolf was colluding with Déchets? “Yes, Déchets has everything its people desire. But you are wrong if you do not see that the very things you hate about Cassé are what Déchets values most. Now, will you join us, Iris?”

  I can hear the frustration in Siri’s voice; she will not ask me for aid a third time. You got the Ddraigs into this mess with Antero, I accuse myself guiltily. You brought the enemy right into their home. You should help fix your own mistakes. Yet the idea of jumping into a battle that I still do not understand leaves me cautious. “I will go with you, Siri,” is the best response I can manage.

  A burst of pain erupts on my face as my mask is heated by Siri’s fire. The flames burn through the wood until my face is fully exposed. Then Siri’s claws etch the skin of my cheeks, chin, and forehead, her tongue quickly licking closed the wounds. These motions are so fast that by the time the stinging pain of the scratches reaches me, they have already been healed. I have no doubt that my face now bears the same strange patterns that adorn my arms.

  “You need your mask no longer, Iris. You are the first Cadogan of the Ddraigs. You cower to none.” Siri’s long clawed talons wrap around me lightly as she flies back to the Pith, to the place where danger lurks.