The Master and The Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet series Book 2)

Days pass as we let my wound recover.

Kane makes the shed a little more livable, cleaning out some of the tools, making my cot fluffier, and clearing a spot for us to eat dinner. He cleans my ankle a couple more times and continues to keep an eye on it to make sure we avoid infection.

Today, he went back into the cellar and brought back a couple books that Wyatt kept locked away. He spent hours reading to me in a deep, soothing voice. If the story wasn’t so wonderful, I would have fallen asleep. It’s about nine children that get taken from their home, separated, and forced to travel to different worlds. The entire time they thought they were kidnapped out of cruelty, but the worlds were beautiful and full of magic. They later learned of their purpose to unite the nine worlds again. When we finished the book, he had been reading for nine hours, with a couple of breaks here and there.

“That’s my favorite book,” I yawn.

He smiles, looking up at me from the book. “Mine too.”

A creak comes from the door and we both whip our heads to investigate the sound. A broadly built DaiSzek stares at us, taking up the entire doorway.

“And that’s our cue to get moving again.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

“He may not have found any threats within his perimeter run, but a RottWeilen knows when dangers are coming.”

I sigh. “Yeah, I think I’m ready. Can you help me stand?” Kane puts an arm around my waist and lifts me to my feet. I add pressure to my foot. It still feels a little swollen, but it’s bearable enough to make another journey. I may just need to take more breaks.

“I almost forgot…” Kane walks outside and brings back a long wooden stick, sturdy and solid. “To help you walk.” He passes it to me. I test out the effectiveness of this concept, limping out of the shed to the grass. It’s just enough support to take some weight off of my foot.

“I like it!”

Luckily for me, we were only a few miles away from the spot in the mountains where the Demechnef Defects were staying. I wanted to ask him what’s the plan when we find them? How are they going to help us? What happens if Demechnef finds us there and we out everyone?

And why don’t we just do as the Nightamous Horde told us and find the next colony?

Something has shifted with his mood. He seems overly cautious. I try to be as vigilant as he is. I scan the area and keep my feet from snapping any sticks. But he is on edge. He keeps stopping us midmovement to stare ahead. It’s a mutual understanding that we don’t speak the rest of the way there.

Only a few yards away, the sanctuary is hiding among large, overgrown pine trees, just like at Kane’s childhood cottage farther back. Here there are hills of snow and ice. Kane holds his hand up in front of me to stop us. This time, his face isn’t cautious. It’s a sudden awareness of a threat. He holds my gaze with a warning that we can’t make a sound.

We close the rest of the distance and worm our way through the sharp pine trees. The clearing appears with huts, sheds, and what looks like a food market.

It’s so peaceful, so quiet, so beaut—

My mouth cracks open to scream.

But one hand flies across my vision and another secures itself over my mouth to keep me quiet and blind to the frozen horror.

Bodies everywhere, hanging from the trees. By their toes. Men, women, children. Dogs. Cats. Babies. Blood gushing through the white fur they wear on their bodies. Dripping down their necks, into their eyes. Their mouths gape open, without tongues, without teeth, without any screams left.

All of them, dead.

I buckle over in agony. My own arms circle my core as a way to put a perimeter around the pain. A pair of lips brush against my ear and whispers, “We’re not alone.”

Dessin. I stiffen. Whoever did this is still here. The agony clings to the air, fresh, new like bacteria to an infection. I want him to remove his hand so I can look around and seek out the threat he knows is here. But I never want to see the landscape of death again. The blood staining the snow, like spilled ink on white parchment.

“Keep your eyes closed, love.” The rising heat in his whisper tells me he’s about to act.

Dessin steps forward in the snow, dropping both hands from my face. Crunch. And I know I should listen. Close my eyes. Pretend like I’m somewhere else.

But in panic and fear, they snap open. There’s a movement behind a pine tree to our right. Dessin doesn’t turn to look at it but I know he’s aware. He reaches back and grabs my hand.

“Stay here.” Dessin places an old rusted knife with a wooden hilt in my palm, closing my fingers around it. To protect myself if he can’t get to me in time.

Adrenaline courses like a choppy river through my bloodstream and the drums of war come alive in the base of my chest. Dessin steps away from me, walking out into the small, dead village. An open target. A beast born and bred for destruction, for a smooth, calculated massacre.

He stops in the center of the clearing. Waiting. Breathing in the flow of his plan with ease, seeming to know where each man hides.

“I surrender,” Dessin taunts. He’s six feet, four inches of deception. A god standing among insects, unafraid of their mortal weapons.

Movement everywhere. Men in white and forest green, camouflaged into our surroundings. Swords. Daggers. Crossbows.

I am a newborn bird, left in the nest, sitting without fight in the rise of a battle.

They move closer, shuffling their boots in the snow, trapping him in a death circle.

The man who seems to be leading the ambush is tall, freakishly tall, like a circus act on stilts. His dark goatee flutters in the winter breeze. He wears a black top hat with a red symbol embroidered on it. A red X and other indistinguishable markings.

Dessin studies the men. This look of his, so certain, it makes my muscles relax. “It’s been a while since I’ve stopped a heart. And there are thirty-seven of those here. I think I’ll end with yours.” He nods at the man with the top hat.

They continue their slow steps, crossbows aimed at his head, closing in on him like a wild animal that has escaped its cage.

“I’d say we can discuss this like men, but tell me, would men hang babies by their toes?”

The men charge him.

Dessin pulls a metal ring out from under his shirt, a double-edged blade, allowing it to twirl fluidly around his index finger. The first two shots from the crossbows are dodged with precise side steps. But the next two, Dessin is waiting for. He uses the circular blade to swing, twist, and maneuver, swiftly slicing through the middle of the arrows like the snapping of a twig.

And as the men close in, Dessin unfurls his wings of power, releasing the dragon waiting to scorch them with fire.

He takes off in a sprint, slashing throats with this strange circular knife. Blood sprays over his face and chest, bursting from carotid arteries. With one hand, he snatches a flying arrow through the air and punctures it through the skull of another man to his left.

The rest happens in a blur. I see entrails spilling onto the snow, I see Dessin decapitating the men holding guns with the spinning knife, and I see the martial arts breathe life into his body, revealing the deadliest dancer alive.

About fifteen men remain, all trying to charge him at once. The sight of it gives me pause. Makes my stomach twist with worry. With that many swords being swung, with that many archers firing their shots, he’s bound to be cut down. It was as if the first twenty-one men he annihilated were the front lines. Only present to wear him down.

The arrows are all shot at once and he deflects, using a bloody sword to knock them from his line of sight. Except one. One sneaky arrow soars passed his defense, slicing over his arm with a wet ripping sound. It doesn’t strike true. It’s merely a flesh wound.

Dessin grunts at the impact. I wince as I remember his arms are already carved up from the cage he was trapped in earlier.

They take his moment of weakness and prey on it. They attack simultaneously now. Overpowering his weak arm with the crashing of swords and daggers.

It’s too much, he can’t—

But as fast as a meteor plummeting to the earth, a vision of black death thunders through the air, DaiSzek reigns over all. His roar shudders the trees, cracks the ice, and ends the fighting.

He towers on a hill, overlooking the violence, baring his teeth to show off his weapon of choice. I nearly fall over in my hiding spot. The mere majestic sight of him causing a rush of euphoria to pump through my veins.

His growl is the trumpet of death, a mix of a lion and a dragon. And in the same breath, he leaps from the hill, tackling six men into the snow. The sight is ferocious. His teeth sink into flesh, shredding different body parts into ribbons and fountains of blood, and doing it all with the sound of hell booming from his chest. I’m mortified at the massacre and yet I want to shriek in victory.

Dessin leaps over DaiSzek and the pile of bodies he devours, and with the speed of a horse he races to the freakishly tall man.

While he exacts his promise, my attention is snagged on a faint motion from behind a tree only a few yards away from me. A man crouched low into the snow, taking his aim with a crossbow. I know Dessin or DaiSzek do not see him because he hasn’t moved an inch.

He’ll hit one of them.

The shot could be fatal.

I stand to my feet, throw myself through the trees, and desperately race to the hidden soldier. He has a steady eye on one of them. His finger starts to tighten on the trigger.

No! But the cry for help doesn’t rise from my panic. Words stay clogged in my throat. There’s only a single action. A motion of my arm. A target I must strike.

But I stop, like my hand is attached to a puppet string, unable to protect, unable to kill. And before I can witness the murder of one of my friends, the sharp end of a wide sword tears through a thick layer of skin before it crashes into his spinal cord. I immediately drop the knife and fall backward onto my butt. The rich blood pours from his neck onto the snow. A ruby-red river melts the ice, steaming in the winter air.

I’m panting. Can’t look away. Can’t rip my gawking stare from the man choking, bleeding out, writhing in a puddle of himself.

But the arrow in his crossbow is gone. Did he shoot? Was I too late?

I jerk my head to the side, searching for Dessin and DaiSzek. There. Safe. They both are unharmed, staring not at me, but at someone next to me. Dessin has an actual heart in his right hand, thick, gooey strings of blood hanging from it.

Gurgling sounds come from the soldier, flinching with his last moments of breath. But I didn’t kill him. I froze. I stopped before my knife could save Dessin and DaiSzek.

Someone beat me to it.