“Filbert. I’m a dealer.” The man thrust his hand out, offering it to Erich to shake. But the gleam in his eye made the hairs rise on the back of Erich’s neck.
“What sort of dealer?” Erich asked, though he had a good idea of what the man was after.
“Information.” He smiled, revealing his one golden tooth.
Erich eyed him up and down. He was well-dressed in the gaudy, sort of flashy way of men of his kind—golden chains dangling from his neck, a pearl-encrusted walking stick.
“What sort of information?”
“In this city, there’s plenty to be found. But in your case, I can tell you how to get in contact with the avatar directly.”
“Can you now?” Erich said with an uninterested and skeptical tone. With this many in the city desperate to get in contact with the avatar, he sincerely doubted this man could help.
“For the right price,” the man said with a wink.
“No thanks,” Erich said.
“It’ll be worth it, I can assure you.”
Erich didn’t reply as he lengthened his stride and turned two corners in an attempt to get away from the man. He took a winding path down a few city streets before returning to the alleyway where he’d been waiting. There was no sign of Liane as the third, and final, warning bell rang. If he didn’t retreat and leave for the inn, the Midnight Guard would arrest him. And if he were caught, there was no Ivar to rescue him. But he remained glued in place.
His eyes bored into the back gate, closed tight, not even the faintest glow of candlelight beyond it. This was a fool’s errand. He should have known it was too easy to try and reach her this way. What should he do next? Storm the temple and kidnap her? Risk his life and perhaps hers in a desperate attempt to remove her from the church’s clutches? He’d never been one to rush in, but something about Liane made him reckless.
Someone had snuck up behind him and pressed a knife to his kidney. He tried to draw his dagger, but they put a hand over his wrist.
“Don’t move too quickly, if you want to keep your insides... in,” the dealer said.
“What do you want? Money?” Erich asked, tensing his muscles, readying to land a blow into the man’s gut with an elbow, but before he could, the man stepped back, and Erich spun around to face him.
His assailant swung his cane, and the strike burned, as if the cane had been coated in hot embers. Erich caught a quick glimpse of the runes circling around the shaft. This wasn’t some dealer in secrets. But a hunter undercover. Erich hit him with an uppercut, and he stumbled backward, clutching his bleeding nose. Which gave Erich a chance to run, but as soon as he reached the end of the alleyway, his path was blocked by two hulking figures—a man with a scar across his face who was wielding an axe, and the other man who was missing his thumb and pointer finger. These were the same hunters who’d cornered him before. Erich sized them up and rushed the short one, whom he assumed was their leader, catching his arm and twisting it behind his back before pressing his dagger against his throat.
“You’re rather quick on your feet.” He laughed.
“Do you find this funny?” Erich replied.
“Extremely. You think my associates over there give a damn if you slit my throat?”
The hunters laughed, and Erich hesitated. If they were merely out to kill him, they could have done it already. But they’d hesitated. Why?
“What do you want?” Erich repeated.
“I have a business proposition for you.” He gestured away down the alley.
“What if I said I’m not interested?” Erich snarled.
“Then we do this the hard way,” the man said, his tone shifting.
The two hulking figures approached, and Erich scored a line along their leader’s neck, and even as blood rolled down, they didn’t slow their pursuit. Erich shoved him to the ground and made a run for it. The dragon rose to defend him, but he fought the urge to use its power. It would have been fruitless anyway. They tossed something onto him—a net or something similar—that knocked him to the ground, and Erich crumpled, limp as a doll. His arms and legs were too heavy to lift, and he saw the binding marks twirling around the fibers of the net they’d used to capture him. There must have been a sleeping spell woven in as well because his eyelids were growing heavy despite the rush of adrenaline in his veins. He had to fight it, but he couldn’t resist its pull.
His captors stalked closer to him, the man he’d cut holding a handkerchief to his wound.
“Bring him—” The second half of his sentence was lost to the fog of Erich’s fading mind. The last thing he saw before they put a bag over his head was the gold-toothed smile smirking down at him.
“You should have come quietly.”
Erich woke with his face pressed against a very plush carpet and his hands and feet bound. The runes in the ropes burned against his skin, pulsing like an infection. It was unusual for hunters to leave their targets alive. Not that it boded well for Erich’s chance of survival. Maybe he wasn’t as valuable in human form, and they planned to torture and kill him until he transformed or simply hold him captive until the full moon, when he’d have no choice but to transform. He’d been too consumed with reaching Liane to watch out for hunters. They were mercenaries of a secret order, which hunted and harvested corrupted like himself for profit.
A door out of view creaked as it opened, and heavy footsteps approached. Erich twisted in his bindings to face a man. He was tall and lean, with a neatly cropped goatee and shrewd eyes. His sleeves were rolled up and revealed a hunter’s tattoo on his forearm, with dozens of hash marks. Each one represented a dead corrupted. It was a dangerous profession. Most didn’t make it to middle age, and this man had survived more encounters than most. He leaned over, studying Erich as if he were some curios on a shelf.
