Daud paused and took stock of the situation. Whoever had come in had not only been vicious, but highly capable, carefully staking out each target before silently dispatching them. Oh, they were good. Daud’s lips curled into a silent snarl. It was just what he would have done, back in the day. Take out the lights, stalk the targets, eliminate them one by one. Efficient. Ruthless. Professional.
He proceeded with the utmost caution. He kept a count of the bodies he discovered on his path, and soon had tallied more guards than he had seen on his grand tour with Norcross. There were occasional signs of a struggle, as the intruders had penetrated further into the house after the alarm had been sounded. But the quiet of the building was unnerving. It was like walking through a mausoleum. Somewhere below, in his secure room, Norcross and his bodyguard hid. Daud began to wonder if they were the only three people left alive.
That none of the exhibits showed any sign of damage was worrying. As far as he could tell, nothing had been opened or smashed—every display case was intact, the treasures within undisturbed.
The intruders had come to steal from Norcross but Daud began to formulate a theory he didn’t much like; they weren’t just after treasure or art. No, they were here for something else.
Daud’s blood ran cold.
Norcross’s private collection. That was their target.The tower room, where the heretical artifacts were kept—those were worth a fortune on the black market.
That was, if you even wanted to sell them.
But what they wanted wasn’t his concern. The only thing that mattered was the Twin-bladed Knife.
With no sign of the intruders and nobody in the galleries except dead guards, Daud threw caution to the wind. He sprinted through the remaining galleries and reached the tower stairs, pausing only to judge distance, angle and height before clenching his fist and summoning the power of the Void. He transversed onto the bottom step from across the passage, then he traveled up, his power carrying him up the curves of the wide spiral. He arrived in the lobby of Norcross’s private vault in just three seconds.
There he stopped, the Mark of the Outsider burning on his hand, his own reserves of energy sapped by the sudden effort. He craved a vial or two of Piero’s Spiritual Remedy, but even as he wondered if Norcross had any in his collection, he saw that the black metal doors of the vault were open, two bloodied bodies—castle guards, both dead—lying on the floor in front of them.
Daud’s eyes were on the black plinths at the far end of the tower room. He felt the tight grip of panic close around his chest, and without thinking he moved forward into the room, crossing the distance in a heartbeat. In his haste he came to halt a fraction too close to the plinth, his sudden reappearance knocking the ornate glass framework off the top. He watched it fall, moving almost in slow motion as it hit the floor and shattered. As the shards bounced around his feet, his heart thundered, a thousand thoughts screaming for attention in his mind.
The Twin-bladed Knife was gone. The intruders, thethieves—whoever they were—had come in and taken it while he had been strapped to the table, ready for Norcross’s obscene entertainment. They’d left everything else exactly where it was. The cases that circled the room, filled with runes and bonecharms and other heretical artifacts, were sealed, their contents secure. They had wanted just one particular object.
He had been close—so very, very close—to his goal. The Knife had been here. And now it was gone, the opportunity to acquire the weapon he had been chasing for months taken from him.
He cursed himself for being so cautious, so slow to act. He had denied his instincts, his experience, even his training. He had been an assassin, a murderer, ruthless in the pursuit of his missions. And now he was on the most important mission of his life, and his own desire to flee from his past had resulted in failure. He had allowed Norcross to play his twisted games when he could have—no, should have—taken the Knife as soon as he’d set eyes on it, even if he’d had to kill everyone in the building on the way out.
The one thing—the only thing—that could do the Outsider harm, that could kill that immortal bastard, the single essential tool he had spent so much time following whispers and rumors, tracking from island to island, country to country, was gone.
Gone.
Daud yelled in frustration. He kicked at the fragments of the shattered glass stand at his feet, sending razor-sharp pieces flying across the room. He curled his left hand into a fist, then spun around and punched through the glass-fronted cabinet behind him. The door shattered, the runes inside the case jumping on their shelves as the whole unit shook under Daud’s anger.
Daud yelled again, feeling the power already swelling into a wave that threatened to crash down upon him. He didn’t even know what he was doing as he reached forward and grabbed the first rune he touched. The scrimshaw artifact began to glow in his hand—he could feel the heat of it through his glove, feel the power locked within the whalebone, and for a moment he knew he could take that power, use it to augment his own abilities. He hadn’t done it in years, but he still knew how, and with the object of his quest stolen right from under him, perhaps he needed more power now than ever.
But as Daud drew on the rune’s power, the artifact grew hotter and hotter, the glow from within the whalebone soon a blinding white light.
He fell to his knees, screaming in rage. It was a terrible roar from the very depths of his being. He
