The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) Read online

Dead Man’s Rain

  The Markhat Files

  Hold the Dark

  The Banshee’s Walk

  The Broken Bell

  Brown River Queen

  When the banshee howls, start looking for the lifeboats.

  Brown River Queen

  © 2013 Frank Tuttle

  The Markhat Files, Book 7

  Take a simple, three-day cruise on a lavish steamboat casino, they said. Just keep an eye out for trouble while the Regent rolls the dice, they said.

  Markhat should have known the maiden voyage of Avalante’s vampire-crewed Brown River Queen would be anything but a finder’s dream job. Especially when he charges a ridiculous fee—and gets it without a peep of protest.

  Then a pair of identical murderous maidens attack him and his lady love, and it doesn’t take a banshee’s howl to confirm his sinking suspicion he’s about to earn his fee the hard way.

  As the heavily guarded steamboat casts off, Markhat is forced to navigate shoals of old enemies, treacherous political undercurrents, and rogue waves of assassins. All to keep the walking dead from turning the Brown River Queen’s decks red with blood.

  Warning: This is a work of fiction. Please stop trying to apply it as a cream directly to your forehead. The characters depicted herein are quite real despite this disclaimer and will be deeply hurt if you peek ahead to the ending. This prose is certified gluten-free. Not intended as an emergency substitute Flight Manual, no matter what the nerds at Popular Mechanics claim.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Brown River Queen:

  Outside, wrapped in a mainsail’s worth of black silk against the midday sun, was Evis himself, peering back at me through his tinted spectacles. The halfdead don’t love sunlight the same way I don’t love being bathed in red-hot coals.

  “Hurry, please,” said Evis as I fumbled with the lock. “I can’t pay you if I’ve been baked to cinders on your doorstep.”

  I managed to swing the door open. Three-leg Cat darted out, heedless of the halfdead at the door. I’ve noticed most animals shy away from Evis, which I believe pains him deeply.

  I stood aside and motioned Evis in. He glided into the comfortable shadows of my office, not quite running but not ambling either. I closed the door quickly and resolved to fashion some sort of shade for the window-glass. Even that much light would be a nuisance for Evis and his dead-eyed kin.

  “Sorry about the light,” I said as Evis stripped off the top layer of his flowing day suit. “I’ll do something about that before your next visit.”

  Evis shrugged it off but kept his dark glasses on. “Thank you. Everything getting back to normal?”

  I sat. Evis sat. He kept his hat on and tilted his head so his face remained in deep shadow.

  “As normal as normal gets. Business has picked up. Gertriss is out working now. She’ll be sorry she missed you.”

  And she would. My junior partner and Evis were spending a lot of time together of late. Had been since their trip up the Brown River on House Avalante’s new-fangled steamboat.

  If I was Mama Hog I’d be making pointed comments about all that. Gertriss is Mama’s niece, and Mama is none too thrilled about Gertriss and her recent choice of company. But since I’m not a four-foot-tall soothsayer who claims to be a century and a half old, I don’t stick my nose where it doesn’t belong unless someone is paying me for the effort.

  Evis just nodded and put his feet on my desk. His hand moved to his jacket pocket and produced a pair of the expensive cigars he normally keeps in a humidor in his office.

  “Uh oh,” I said, opening my desk drawer. I pulled out my notepad and my good pen. “Who’s dead, who’s missing, and how much of the story are you going to leave out?”

  Evis kept his lips tightly shut but managed to feign an expression of deep and sincere injury.

  “Now is that any way to respond to an offer of a Lowland Sweet?” he asked. “The last time we smoked these you remarked that it was your absolute favorite.”

  “And you suddenly remembered that and grabbed a pair and ran all the way down here in the sun just to have a puff. Remarkable.” I put the tip of the pen in my inkwell and then down on the paper.

  Evis ignored me and began cutting off the ends with a fancy steel cigar clipper. I found my box of matches and plopped them down on the table.

  “So spill it,” I said. “And thanks. I do enjoy these.”

  Evis handed me a cigar and struck a match. I let him light it.

  It’s not every day a free Lowland Sweet walks through the door.

  “Times are changing,” Evis announced after lighting his Lowland and puffing out a perfect smoke ring. “That run at restoring the old Kingdom was the last.”

  “So say you.”

  “So I do. Care to guess where Prince got the money to rebuild?”

  Word from up the Brown is that the storm that nearly wrecked Rannit was a mere ghost of wind compared to the one the Corpsemaster loosed upon our erstwhile enemies in Prince. We’re still getting the odd rooftop or twisted shell of a building, lifted whole from streets in faraway Prince, drifting past on the lazy, muddy water of the Brown. No bodies, though. Not a one.

  The Corpsemaster’s wrath is both thorough and lingering.

  “No idea. I thought the city fathers in Prince went broke financing their invasion.”

  “They did. But our very own Regent graciously made them a loan. At thirty percent interest. Rannit owns Prince now, Markhat. And the Regent won’t be letting them forget that for a very long time.”

  I whistled. I hadn’t even heard that rumored.

  Evis grinned a brief toothy vampire grin.

  “Looks like our military careers are over,” he said. “It’ll be a hundred years before anyone takes another stab at Rannit. Maybe longer. But here we are, still drawing down a Captain’s pay. By the way, any word from the old spook lately?”

  Old spook was code for Corpsemaster. Neither Evis nor I had seen her or her black carriage since the dust-up with Prince. Evis had gone so far as to hint that open speculation in some circles indicated the Corpsemaster might have fallen in the fray, or been reduced by the effort to such a state that she’d gone into hiding or hibernation.

  I wasn’t quite ready to write her off so quickly, so I just shrugged.

  “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned ‘pay,’ you know.” I tried and failed to blow a smoke ring. “Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but what really brought you out for a stroll in the sun?”

  “I’m here to hire the famous Captain Markhat on behalf of House Avalante.”

  “Didn’t you read the placard? I’m a humble finder, not a Captain. My marching days are done. I’ve taken up pacifism and a strict philosophy of passive non-violence.”

  “What’s your philosophy on five hundred crowns—paid in gold—for taking a relaxing dinner cruise down the Brown River to Bel Loit and back? With meals, booze, and as many of these cigars as you can carry, thrown in for free?”

  I blew out a ragged column of grey-brown smoke.

  “I’m flexible on such matters. But I’m troubled by the offer of five hundred crowns.”

  “Make it six hundred, then.”

  “I will. If I decide to take it at all. Because that’s a lot of gold, Mr. Prestley. Even Avalante doesn’t just hand the stuff out to see my winning smile. What exactly is worth seven hundred crowns to House Avalante?”

  Evis winced. “You are, believe it or not. Look, Markhat. This isn’t just any old party barge outing. The Brown River Queen is a palace with a hull. The guest list reads like Yule at the High House. Ministers. Lords. Ladies. Opera stars. Generals.“

  “And? You said it was a pleasure cruise. We won the war and didn’t lose so much as a potato wagon. Handshakes and promotions all around. Why do you need me for eight hundred crowns?”

  Evis lifted his hands in surrender.

  “Because the Regent himself is coming along for the ride,” he said in a whisper. “Yes. You heard me. The
Regent. For every ten who love him there are a thousand who want to scoop out his eyes and boil them and feed them to him.”

  “On your boat.”

  “On our boat. This is it, Markhat. It’s the culmination of thirty years of negotiations and diplomacy and bribery. House Avalante is a single step away from taking its place at the right hand of the most powerful man in the world. He’ll have his bodyguards. He’ll have his staff. He’ll have his spies and his informants and his eyes and his ears, and that’s just fine with us. But Markhat, we want the man kept safe. We want trouble kept off the Queen. We want a nice quiet cruise from here to Bel Loit and back, and the House figures if anyone can spot trouble coming, it’s you.”

  “When you look at things that way, nine hundred crowns is really quite a bargain.”

  “Nine hundred crowns it is.” Evis blew another smoke ring and then sailed a second one through it. “And one more thing. Bring the missus. She eats, drinks, stays for free, courtesy of Avalante. Is that a deal?”

  “An even thousand crowns for watching rich folks drink. I think you just bought yourself a finder, Mr. Prestley.”

  “Surely you have a pair of those awful domestic beers hidden away in your icebox,” said Evis. “I believe we have a toast to make.”

  I hurried to the back, knocked damp sawdust off the bottles, and together Evis and I toasted my regrettable return to honest work.

  Evis stuck around and drank beer and we talked dates and times, which I dutifully scribbled onto my notepad. He wrapped himself in black silk and darted back out into the sun maybe an hour later, leaving me to my thoughts.

  A thousand gold crowns in good solid gold coin. All for a week of work that, on the surface, seemed to involve nothing more perilous than lounging around a floating casino while maintaining an aloof air of menace.

  A thousand crowns, though. That’s a lot of money, even in Rannit’s booming post-War economy. A fellow could live quite well on a fraction of that.

  Which meant someone high up at Avalante considered the threat of violence against the Regent quite real. Evis didn’t seem to agree. But he hadn’t blinked when I’d upped the ante, either, which meant his bosses had instructed him that money was no object.

  “An even thousand crowns,” I said aloud. Darla would be thrilled. We could put a fancy slate roof on our new place on Middling Lane. Hell, we could tear the house down to the last timber and build it back again with twice as many rooms and still have money left over.

  If, that is, a fellow lived long enough to collect his shiny gold coins.

  I pushed the thought aside, gathered up the empty bottles, and eventually followed Evis out into the bright and bustling light of day.

  Saving the love of her life could mean letting her inner darkness out to play.

  Blood of an Ancient

  © 2013 Rinda Elliott

  Beri O’Dell, Book 2

  Beri O’Dell is on a mission. She has to rip back into a hell dimension fast, but needs two things first—the blood of an ancient and a fix for her friend Blythe’s magic, which careened out of control after the battle with the Dweller.

  Finding ancient blood isn’t easy when the old ones are rare and unwilling to donate. She needs to find Blythe’s former mentor…except the woman has lost her mind and joined a traveling band of singing witches.

  That’s not the only magical monkey on her back. Nikolos is imprisoned, and after a screwed-up spell lets her witness the horror that has become his life, her fear for him grows by the day. Now there’s another problem—a powerful being unleashed during the battle with the Dweller likes her gluttonous new existence, and will kill anyone who threatens it.

  But Beri has a few tricks up her costumed sleeve, even if it means mining the darkness of her soul to set everything right…and get Nikolos back in her arms.

  Warning: Sleazy ancients. Random fires. Nosy teenage hackers. Hints of off-screen torture. Battles with...Beri doesn't know what. And one scary boyfriend who keeps inching toward insanity.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Blood of an Ancient:

  Later in the day while Blythe packed, I rummaged in a greenhouse I discovered behind the house. It was obviously under construction because no actual plant life resided inside, just a lot of boards and tools. I assumed Nikolos planned to build more of the long tables he had in here. There were two.

  The sprite was still sleeping—I hoped—in the windowless bathroom, but I needed something to put him in for the trip. I wasn’t letting him out of my sight. Who knew when we’d find another ancient?

  I ended up building a kind of rudimentary mini-coffin. It wasn’t pretty, but I glued the hell out of every corner so I was sure no sunlight could get inside. We couldn’t just keep him wrapped in shirts the whole way.

  I was wondering if vampires could suffocate later as I watched Blythe pull up a search engine. Dooby and Castor had grocery shopped, so Blythe and I made a quick dinner of sandwiches and chips before settling in front of the computer to find this band.

  “The witch who answered the phone said the band is called Staglina.”

  It wasn’t hard to find them. They must have been popular because they came up on the first search page. Their website was a dark, serene blue with an image of the moon hovering over an ocean. There were no concert locations, no band member biographies…nothing but a link to a video.

  Blythe clicked and sat back with a thump against her chair when the music started. So did I. My heart pounded harder, warmth filled my chest. Women’s voices raised in a harmony like nothing I’d ever heard filled the room. Castor and Dooby left the table where they’d been poring over the ancient spell book translations and approached the computer.

  We all waited until the last note played, then I released a shaky breath. “Whoa.”

  Blythe shook her head. “Sophie can’t be in that. This is magic.”

  “Of course it’s magic—they’re witches.” I managed to stop myself from rolling my eyes. I was trying not to do that so much around Blythe with her habit of stating the obvious. I did catch Phro’s eye roll in my peripheral vision. The goddess couldn’t care less about the little witch’s feelings.

  Castor leaned over my shoulder and used the mouse to restart the video. He turned the speakers down. “Look at their faces.”

  I squinted at the small video. All I saw was a blur of women in blue dresses. “What faces? This is obviously a poorly recorded phone video from a concert.”

  “And Staglina linked to it?”

  I shrugged. “Sure. Why not? That song alone would pull a lot of people to their concerts.”

  “Nothing around them is blurred—just their faces.”

  The stage, the trees behind it, everything else showed up sharp and crystal clear. “Creepy.”

  “Suspicious,” Blythe replied. “Wonder what Staglina means?” She clicked back to the home page. “And why wouldn’t they have a concert listing? I was told Sophie called them from Alabama. Some small town near Birmingham.”

  “I think Staglina is Norse.” I searched the memories of my stint with an obsessive Norse mythology fascination. I’d been trying to find a troll and got completely caught up in the old stories. I wouldn’t be telling Aphrodite this, but I never got quite as fascinated with the Greek myths. “I’m sure Nikolos has some books on Norse myth in his library, but I think I remember it having something to do with a chain and anchor.”

  Blythe clicked on another page. Empty again. “I don’t get it. What kind of band has no useful information on their site? How are fans supposed to find them?”

  “See if you can find a mention of their concert.” I took a bite of the ham sandwich, enjoyed the extra kick of sharp cheddar. “Maybe someone who went to the last concert blogged or something.”

  An hour later, all we had was the location of the last show in Alabama and that came from a small news piece on cops being called out to break up a concert they couldn’t find.

  Blythe sighed and stretched her neck back and forth
. “I’ll stay on this and read comments on the video page. There were hundreds.” She picked up a potato chip and crunched it.

  “Have fun with that. Comment sections on any website never fail to sap at my belief in the general goodness of human beings.” Grimacing, I reached for the mini-coffin I’d built. “I’m too tired to deal with that little creature in the bathroom tonight. Have Elsa or Castor… Wait.” I turned to Dooby, who’d gone back to the book. “You have power over the dead, right, Dooby?”

  He looked up. “Yeah, but vampires aren’t technically all-the-way dead.”

  “Do you think you could figure out how to feed him so he doesn’t starve before we can get to the spell?”

  He shrugged. “Sure. Give me the little coffin.”

  I didn’t trust that ornery expression but I walked over and gave the box to him, then walked to the door. “Hey Blythe, don’t stay up too late. We have a long trip tomorrow.”

  “In the car?” Blythe avoided my gaze.

  Suspicion gave me sudden goose bumps. “I think taking a vampire sprite on an airplane would be a bad idea, don’t you? Why?”

  “Nothing. I just don’t like long car rides. But before you go to bed, I want to try something.”

  I waited for her to go on. Tapped my foot when she didn’t.

  “I think I know how you can see Nikolos again. I have some yerba santa. If we pour boiling water over it and pour it over your ankhs, I think he might come to you in your dreams.”

  Even the thought had my heart pounding hard. “Let’s do it then.”

  It only took a few minutes to boil the water and strain the concoction over my necklaces. It took me forever to fall asleep because I couldn’t help wondering if it would work. I wiggled so much the sheets tangled about my legs.

  When I finally slept, I realized that once again, Blythe had gotten a spell wrong. Instead of Nikolos coming to me…I went to him.

  The Five Faces

  Frank Tuttle