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TITLE="Thief Of Lives"
AUTHOR=""
PUBLISHER=""
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\vTHIEF OF LIVES - DHAMPIR 02 - BARB & J.C. HENDEEScanned and proofed by
unknown
hero.
Additional proofing by Highroller.
For brother Al, our biggest fan
Prologue
He neither relished nor anticipated the task at hand. It was simply one more
step upon the path, and he had always been capable of doing whatever was
necessary.
Street lanterns, lit by the night watch, hung from high posts and building-side
iron mounts at more regular intervals along this street than other places in the
king's city. Dim light shimmered on wet cobblestone rather than packed earth, on
stone dwellings instead of wattle and daub or timber buildings. This was an
elite district, where gentry, dignitaries, and city officials lived just outside
the walls of the castle grounds. Light, warmth, and an aura of comfort flowed
out between half-drawn curtains hanging in windows with actual glass panes.
Here, at night, all was serene.
He watched the street from a side corner, making certain no guard or watchman
would pass by anytime soon, then stepped along the cobblestones at a quiet pace.
Night air was seasoned with the wet scent of the bay on the city's west side.
The cool breeze carried some chill, but he did not notice the cold. Still, he
shifted the long black wool cloak closer about him. Its dark color, melting into
the night, protected him from errant gazes by any occupant peering out a window
before settling to bed. He tugged his black lambskin gloves, flexing his fingers
until the material was smoothed comfortably in place.
Arriving at the house he sought, he entered the iron yard-gate and walked up the
path. His hand rested gently on a side railing as he climbed the three stone
steps to the large front door. Ornate ash wood was stained in multiple tones to
accent detailed doves and vines a patient artisan had carved in its panels. Two
lanterns glowed to either side of the door. He reached up and twisted their
knobs, first the right then the left, until the wicks retreated and their light
dimmed just short of going out altogether. Grasping the large brass knocker
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ring, he announced his arrival with two raps and no more.
Moments passed. The door cracked open.
A young feminine face peered out. She was small for sixteen, with dark brown
ringlets hanging to her shoulders and a dress of muted lavender with light
saffron trim. Her expression was hesitant at first, but then she smiled with
warm recognition.
He knew she would answer. Her father was away this same midweek evening, playing
faro with other gentlemen and nobility. This young one always took pity on their
overworked servants, giving them a secret night off without her father's
knowledge. She was alone in her house, in the quietest, most respectable of
neighborhoods.
"Oh, Father isn't home tonight," she said. "He's gone to the Knight's House for
cards again."
He did not answer her. His left hand shot out, gripped the back of her neck, and
jerked her toward his open mouth.
She heaved in a breath but never released it.
He bit her exposed throat before her hands could push at him, elongated canines
sinking through her skin. His jaws snapped closed as he ripped away flesh to
expose open veins. Pain and trauma paralyzed her body, and there was no way she
could scream. Her hands, almost to his chest, dropped limp in spasms.
Her weight was nothing, and he supported it by the hand clamped about her neck.
Her heartbeat slowed, its rhythm shallow and irregular, so he shook her until
the blood flowed freely. It soaked her collar, spreading from the wound, and he
watched the red seep into her bodice and across her chest, and downward over her
shoulder until it ran along her left arm to drip from her slender finger. The
heartbeat weakened until even he could not hear it anymore. He watched as her
eyes grew cold and vacant. A ringlet of brown hair adhered to the wet flesh on
her throat as her head rolled in his grip.
With his free hand, he ripped her dress open, exposing the bloodstained white
shift she wore underneath. He shredded that as well and dropped her body upon
the porch like a soiled, broken doll. Turning, he walked back out the front gate
to the street, stopping briefly to check both ways. Once certain the path was
clear, he returned the way he had come.
Fishing a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his mouth.
The coming days had been successfully set in motion.
Chapter 1
It was the place he'd nearly died, and here he returned every day before dawn.
Leesil stood sweating in the forest clearing's cold air, surrounded by
sparse-limbed, shaggy firs. The sun had crested the high eastern tree line, and
winking sparks of sunlight skipped between ocean wave tops below to the west.
Along the shallow bay's coastal edge sat the small port town of Miiska, its
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rooftops brightened by the dawn.
White-blond hair matted flat to Leesil's neck, shoulders, and his narrow face,
letting the blunt tips of his oblong ears peek out. Faded but still visible
scars lined his tan-colored throat and the lower right side of his jaw. The thin
beige cotton shirt clung to his back, and his feet felt wet with perspiration in
the soft leather boots. Breathing hard, he scowled in irritation, wiping away
sweat running into his eyes. He shivered briefly. The chill of a late-autumn
morning encouraged him to keep moving for warmth.
"Valhachkasej'a!" he muttered, though not completely certain of its meaning.
His mother\a151Nein'a, Father had called her\a151would whisper it under her breath
when
angered or frustrated, or when she cut herself accidentally while sharpening a
blade. Her narrow, triangular face of smooth caramel skin would wrinkle
slightly, and high, thin wisps of white-blond eyebrows would cinch together in a
scowl as she shifted unconsciously into her native Elvish.
She refused to teach Leesil her language, and her large, slanted eyes would
narrow whenever he asked. At her occasional slips, he'd listened carefully to
the way she spoke and silently mouthed the words in turn, trying to unravel
their meaning. Leesil had heard enough foul exclamations in varied tongues to
guess at the meaning of this exclamation. Childhood obsession became unconscious
habit. A few times, she had spoken his name with strange inflection\a151 Leshil\a151and
more than once referred to him or herself as "anmagl\a226hk," but he never unraveled
its meaning.
Shaking off the memory, Leesil returned to training, collapsing low in a buckled
crouch. His right leg shot out to the side.
Momentum pulled him into a backward spin toward his outstretched leg, body
pivoting quickly on his left foot. When his right heel had traced one-third of a
circle, it bit into the clearing's earth.
His torso spun around, and both arms swung over to his right side. Hands slapped
flat against the ground to brace his weight, and his left leg whipped upward.
Today he trained later than ever before. There was so much to remember, to
relearn, and it was the last morning he could slip out alone before anyone,
including his companion, Magiere, arose for the day. Their routine would soon
shift to nightlife again, as they fell back into their roles as the owners and
proprietors of the Sea Lion tavern. She would handle the bar, while he ran the
card games at their faro table.
He looked down the slope to the town again, his gaze settling upon the nearest
building with its new roof, new everything, rebuilt from the ground up. The
fresh cedar shakes looked too vibrant amidst the other weathered rooftops. The
new Sea Lion tavern was finally finished.
Farther up the shoreline before the small docks was a large empty plot of burned
earth between surrounding buildings. The vacancy was easily three times the size
of any other building in the town. Although the structure's charred remains had
been cleared away, months of fall weather hadn't washed the blackened stain from
the ground where once stood Miiska's largest warehouse. It had burned to ash and
cinders\a133 burned down by Leesil.
He looked back to the Sea Lion once more. It, too, had been a charred patch, but
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was now reborn from the ashes, a little bigger and certainly brighter than its
bleached and wind-worn predecessor. It would be home once again for him and
Magiere, and for their dog, Chap, as well.
And somewhere beneath it lay the powdered bones of monsters.
But not the one who'd been here in the forest clearing and nearly crushed the
life out of him. Not the one he'd let slip away.
He pictured in his mind the three undeads he and Magiere had faced. Two were
destroyed, but the last, Ratboy, had escaped.
Leesil turned to the clearing's east side, where a large, scarred fir tree
stood. Each morning he brought a small box wrapped in canvas sailcloth and set
it at the tree's base. The fir was old and solid, and wind and rain had carried
away soil, exposing lumps of deep roots. One bare patch revealed where bark had
been torn away and a lower limb was raggedly broken off. These injuries were not
so old.
The undead of Miiska were gone. All three of them, but this brought Leesil no
relief.
It wasn't over. He couldn't tell this to Magiere, who wasn't ready to hear it.
Not just yet.
Crossing to the scarred fir, Leesil unrolled the sail scrap to reveal the long
box of dark wood, its length equal to his forearm. It was flat enough to slip
inside a baggy shirt without leaving much of a bulge. A flick of fingertips
opened the lid, and his shoulders knotted in apprehension at its contents, gifts
from his mother on his seventeenth birthday so many years ago.
Inside lay weapons and tools the like of which could never be bought openly from
a weaponer or metalworker. Their origin unknown to him, Leesil could only guess
they'd come from his mother's people, though why the elves would make such
things he couldn't imagine.
He studied the distasteful items. A garrote, its handles and wire of the same
metal as his good stiletto, both a tone brighter than silver. A small curved
blade that could be palmed but would easily cut through flesh and bone. And
inside the lid behind a foldout cover, a row of a dozen thin struts, wires, and
hooks, again of the same metal, and suitable for picking any lock. The final
item was a hilt that matched the better of his two sheathed stilettos. Its blade
was missing, snapped off a finger's breadth from the guard.
Leesil picked up the bladeless hilt, and a rush of unwanted memories hit him.
Ratboy, the filthy undead street youth, brown eyes shining with hate and
triumph. In Leesil's pain-fogged vision that night, the little monster had
looked so human.
"Perhaps we could call this a draw?" Leesil had joked, trying to sound
confident. "I promise not to hurt you."
Ratboy's sharp features made his smile seem out of place and pasted on.
"Oh, but I want to hurt you."
The dusty undead hopped like a rat leaping at a larger opponent, and kicked
Leesil in the chest. Leesil's ribs cracked audibly as he was thrown halfway
across the clearing. Before his vision cleared, Ratboy crossed the distance to
snatch him by the shirt.
As Leesil was pulled to his feet, he curled his hands up and flicked open the
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holding straps of the sheaths on his forearms. Stilettos dropped into each hand.
He thrust both hilt-deep into Ratboy's sides.
"One good\a133 turn for another," he gasped out, and then wrenched the hilts
downward.
Beneath the sound of Ratboy's cracking ribs came a muffled metal clink. The
right blade snapped, sending a jar through Leesil's arm and into his battered
body. Ratboy's mouth gaped, soundless beneath wide eyes, and he flung Leesil at
the trunk of the old fir.
The lowest branch shattered as Leesil fell across it on his way down to the
forest floor. Impact with the ground sent so much pain through his body that it
became distant and unreal, and he dropped his one whole blade and the hilt of
the other. Clutching at the ground, he gripped the severed half of the branch.
When Ratboy came again, Leesil let the vampire's own momentum and weight do the
work.
Ratboy pulled himself up and stumbled back, face filled with anguish and fear as
he clutched at the branch protruding right of center from his chest.
"Leesil! Where are you?"
A voice called out Leesil's name, but Ratboy's gaping mouth had not moved.
Half-impaled, the dusty undead bolted into the forest before Magiere broke into
the clearing. Leesil lay on the ground trying to stay conscious.
The wiry, filthy little vampire had escaped.
And now, months later, Leesil looked over the instruments in his box. He dropped
the bladeless hilt and picked up the garrote, looping it as he gripped the
handles. With a quick jerk, he pulled it tight. The wire snapped straight, and a
thrumming tone filled the air with a vibration that made Leesil's stomach lurch.
Time to relearn lessons from his mother and father, to reclaim part of a
sickening heritage. There had been so many nights when he drank himself to sleep
so dreams of a nightmare childhood couldn't wake him. But he would never again
be caught so ill prepared.
Because it wasn't over.
Rumors would slip quietly along in one direction or another. He and Magiere had
wanted a quiet life in Miiska, but word of her deeds would reach the desperate.
They'd freed Miiska, a whole small port town on the main coastal shipping route
of the Belaski kingdom. And they'd done it right out in the open.
Magiere, hunter of the undead, would never be allowed any lasting peace.
Leesil dropped the garrote into the box, shut it, and wrapped it in the sail
scrap. He gathered his bundle and turned toward town, and the new Sea Lion
tavern, where Magiere might now be preparing for their opening night. He wished
he could speak to her, tell of his fears for her and how much he wanted to
protect her from what he knew was coming. But that was just one more thing she
wasn't ready to hear.
"Oh, Magiere\a133" he whispered sadly, heading down the forest slope toward their
new home. "It's never going to be over\a151not now. And you can't even see, can
you?"
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