James Lowder - Realms of Infamy

He had reached the top now. There was silence, and the Shark knew that the blooder was staring at the holy symbols she'd draped across Maia's body. Carefully, quietly, the hunter continued to climb, listening all the while.

"Lathander, protect me!" came Maia's fear-shrill voice as Jander pulled the gag from her mouth. "Don't kill me! Please! She-she told me what you are. I'll do whatever you want, but, please, don't kill me!"

Stunned silence. The Shark pulled herself up over a dying archer, awaiting the blooder's response with malicious glee. "No, Maia," came Jander's voice, filled with an ancient weariness. "I won't kill you. I just-here, let me set you free."

The Shark was able to see him now. Safely invisible, she watched, tense, as Jander moved to untie the hands of the still-hysterical young girl. He successfully freed her hands and knelt to work at the knots that bound her ankles. Light exploded from the small pink medallion hidden in the folds of Maia's skirts. The Shark's spell had worked beautifully.

The vampire flung his arms up to shield his eyes, stumbled, and hurtled off the monument. The Shark hastened forward. One hand gripping a dying troll, the hunter watched Jander's fall. His body shimmered, recasting itself into a small brown bat. He began to fly back up to the top.

Behind her, the Shark heard Maia sob as she worked loose the knots. Then, whimpering, the barmaid started the climb down from the monument. The Shark ignored her; Maia had served her purpose.

Instead, the hunter kept her attention focused on the vampire. Leaning out precariously over the raised stone swords and braced javelins that pointed up from below, she clung to the troll statue and withdrew a small pouch from her pocket. Grains of wheat fell in a shower over the bat. This was the Shark's favorite trick to play on a vampire in bat form. The grain would confuse the vermin's senses, making it fly wildly. And that would give the Shark a chance to prepare another, more deadly attack.

But Jander did not veer off. The little bat flitted crazily for a moment, then continued moving directly for the Shark's face. No cloak of invisibility could protect her from the heightened senses provided to the vampire in his bat form. She could see the vermin's tiny, sharp-toothed jaws opening as it approached her eyes.

Startled, the Shark ducked. Her foot slipped from the snow-slicked perch, and she dropped toward the upturned stone javelins below. She did not cry out, merely grunted when her death plummet was abruptly cut short. A spear wielded by a bugbear had snagged her cloak. Her throat was bruised from the sudden tug, but she was alive.

The Shark hung, dangling, swinging slightly back and forth. Her mind raced, and she cursed herself. She'd prepared no spells for this eventuality-no floating, flying, or transformational magic. Grunting with the effort, she reached up, trying to grab the stone spear that held her suspended. She could not reach it. She then stretched to the right as far as she could in hopes of seizing the ugly, porcine face of an ore beating down a hapless stone hero. She grasped only empty air.

More frightened than she had been in decades, the Shark craned her neck to look upward.

The blooder was an elven silhouette against the star-filled sky as he bent to look at her. Then, slowly, he moved. One arm reached down.

Crying incoherently, the Shark twisted away. Her cloak tore a little, and she dropped four inches. At least the vampire was too far above her to reach her-but, ah gods, he could crawl… "Give me your hand."

For a moment, she couldn't comprehend the words, so unexpected were they. Jander stretched his hand farther. "Give me your hand. I can't quite reach you!"

The cloak ripped again. The Shark stared down at the next tier of battling warriors and their pointed stone weapons. It was at least a twenty-foot drop.

"I'm coming, Shakira. Hold on." And indeed, the golden vampire began to climb, headfirst, down to reach her.

She suddenly knew, knew with a deep, inner certainty, that Jander Sunstar was not coming to kill her. He was coming to save her life, to pull her back to safety. She, the Shark, the woman who had spent her life perfecting the art of murder, had finally failed to kill. And having failed, she would owe her life to the creature she had sought to destroy. If his forgiving hands closed on her, she would never be able to lift a weapon again. She would cease to be the Shark.

She didn't even have to think. Reaching up, she twined both hands in the cloak. "The Shark sends you to the Nine Hells," she said aloud, but this time the words were intended for her own ears.

As the vampire's fingers reached out to her, the Shark smiled like the predator she was, spat at his despairing, beautiful face, and tore the cloak free.

They did not look like the most dangerous of thieves. Desperate perhaps, as they sat at a wobbly table covered with half-filled tankards that clung to the wood in sticky pools of spilled drink. Drunk, too. It was barely midmorning, but already the four thieves had drained two skins of hosteler Gurin's cheapest ale, and they showed no inclination to stop.

Of course, their crimes didn't shine in their drunken faces. Nobody could look at the little one and know he was the man who'd poisoned all the pets in Lord Brion's kennel just to silence the guard dogs. Slouched over her drink, the woman hardly looked the type to spell-torch a jeweler's shop to cover her escape, nor the old man across from her the kind to settle a turf fight with a quick knife thrust on a rooftop. At Gurin's they looked like any other collection of sorry drunks.

They weren't the only ones in the alehouse. It was crowded enough with other drinkers who shared their desperate looks. The four of them huddled at a poor table near the back. In their dark corner, past the stalls and benches that made the small tavern all the more crowded, they drank and talked, their voices low out of habit. No one paid them any mind-Gurin's alehouse was for serious drinking. With its dirt floor and rickety furniture, there was no other reason to be there.

"Pour me more," demanded Sprite-Heels, a halfling and the smallest of the four. Leaning back in the big chair, the impish fellow could only waggle his furry feet impatiently above the floor. His childlike face soured with annoyance that his cup was drained.

"Yer cup's all yer caring for," grumbled the thin old man astraddle the chair beside the halfling. This one was skull-bald and pockmarked, lending the taint of walking death to his already frightening looks. "It's Therm's last day on earth. Can't you care about 'im more than yer drink?" Nonetheless, the ancient hefted a skin and poured the halfling a drink – and one for himself.

"Better him to the leafless tree than me, Corrick," the half-ling mocked as he cracked open a walnut and picked out the meat.

"Sprite, you're a horrible creature," sniffed the woman who sat on the halfling's left. She was no more sober than the rest. She might have been striking once. Now she was just hard-used. Her face was mapped by fine red veins from too many late nights and too much drink, her brown hair a disheveled cascade that tumbled down over her ample bosom. "My poor Therm, waiting to be hanged – "

"Yer poor Therin!" snorted Corrick, blowing ale-foam from his lips. "Before 'im it was yer poor Emersar, then it was that barbarian oaf – "

"Xarcas weren't no oaf! He would've been a grand one for the highwayman's law. He could ride and use a sword more than you ever could, you poxy nip," the woman snapped back. Her fingers wove patterns on the table that the other two did not notice. "Xarcas would've been a terror to coachmen on the Berdusk Road."

"If he hadn't boozed himself to death on Gurin's cheap bub," the halfling slipped in with a snigger. "You do pick them, Maeve."