Night Lords

Part III Chapter 1

Before The Coven Part III

Chapter 1

Three days after we saved Sally and Steve from the hospital, as Greatorex had tasked me, I was waiting for a ship to leave port. I was sitting in a pub opposite the docks, surrounded by sweaty, drunken men and shrieking drunken women.

I turned my attention to the windows, staring outside. I winced at every scream and belch—my poor ears.

With a scowling face, folded arms and legs were Tasha, as promised. For me, this was the most ludicrous match. I would have gone anywhere else with any of the others... well, maybe not Brett. He wasn't as bad as Tasha but wasn't a fan of mine. Max would be overprotective to a fault, and Greatorex... We have been on short missions before, but he was a very closed book. Our conversations were mostly kept to the running on the mansion and the Deemon kills during the month. Not fun.

The ship, made of metal this time, was to leave at five in the morning. Our job was to wait until everyone had gone to bed and sneak onboard. We had papers, just in case, and our own cabin. The crossing would take a week, but we had no idea how long we'd be in Stonehead Arrow for.

Absentmindedly, I brought the coin that Thrin had given me before we left the burnt-out husk that was Stonehead Arrow all those years ago. I would never part with it. It was always on my person.

Several years ago, a numismatist, or a coin specialist, came through Marthen, and I went down just after the stall closed and asked to speak to her. She was a young woman in her mid-twenties. She had learnt everything about coins from her parents and did take quite an interest in the coin. 'It's certainly one of the oldest coins I've seen,' she said, inspecting both sides. Shedding a bright light on it and getting out her magnifying glass, she cross-referenced some pictures of old coins and said it was made in the time of a King called Mathias over two-thousand years ago. When I questioned her about the King, there was little she could tell me. She did mention that the coin would bring me a small fortune if I were to sell it, but I declined and left.

I had told Greatorex about King Mathias, and he had visited the local library that we had built, but there was nothing there. Then, we went on small missions to other libraries. There was a small reference to King Mathias, but there was little information on him, as most records back then were not on paper but were etched in stone and were not from this continent.

Since then, Greatorex had always wanted to venture back across the sea, but now with Sally and Steve in our care, he left it to me. And though the Deemon King is most likely after me because I can kill a lot of his Deemons with my weird raw energy light, Tasha has come along to mind me like a child.

Currently, my mood was irritated. And I blatantly showed this to Tasha, by not making eye contact with her and just ignoring her. This, I was plainly aware, annoyed her. For her, it was a sign of disrespect. But currently, I could not care less. Greatorex, whether I liked it or not, wanted me out of the house to continue a mission and to give Sally and Steve space so I wouldn't mother them. Hitting two birds with one stone was good enough for him. And he knew I wouldn't return unless I got some answers.

When the pub finally closed at three in the morning, we left with the last drunken lout and watched him as he sat on an old, empty barrel holding an empty pewter mug then tried to drink from it, burped, pissed himself, then slumped into a drunken coma.

'Humans,' I sighed, pitying his state. 'They never fail to bring themselves lower.' I made a beeline for the ship ahead, and Tasha hurried to catch up with me.

'Will you stop!' Tasha hissed. 'There are humans around. If they see us-'

'They'll see passengers get on the ship early. Besides, even if the captain comes on board and discovers us, we'll pass him the papers, apologise and stay in the cabin until the end of the voyage. Simple.'