Hold The Dark: A Markhat story (21 page)

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Dead Man’s Rain

The Mister Trophy

Can a haunted man help the dead find peace?

Dead Man’s Rain

© 2008 Frank Tuttle

Markhat is a Finder, charged with the post-war task of tracking down sons and fathers gone suddenly missing when an outbreak of peace left the army abandoned where they stood. But now it’s ten years on after the war, and about all he’s finding is trouble.

This time, trouble comes in the form of a rich widow with a problem. Her dearly departed husband, Ebed Merlat, keeps ambling back from the grave for nocturnal visits. Markhat saw a lot of during the war, but he’s never seen anyone, rich or poor, rise from the grave and go tromping around the landscape. But for the right price, he’s willing to look into it.

As a storm gathers and night falls, Markhat finds darker things than even murder lurk amid the shadows of House Merlat.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Dead Man’s Rain:

Curfew in Rannit falls with the sun. The night belongs to the half-dead, the Watch and anybody crazy enough to risk running afoul of the former or tripping over the recumbent, snoring forms of the latter.

Curfew fell, and the big old bells on the Square clanged nine times. Before the last notes had faded Mama Hog herself was yelling “Boy, wake up,” and banging on my door.

I swung my feet off my desk, put my sandwich down on a plate and hurried to the door.

Mama Hog looked up and grinned. “The Widow Merlat found you,” she said, not asking but reporting.

“She did indeed,” I said, opening the door. “What a chucklesome old dear. She’s coming by later for tea and a séance.”

Mama cackled and trundled inside. “The Widow Merlat’s got the fear, boy,” she said. “Got it bad.” Mama plopped down into my client’s chair and started eyeing my sandwich.

“You make that?”

“It’s from Eddie’s,” I said. “Tear off a hunk.”

She tore, bit, chewed.

“You sent me a lunatic, Mama,” I said, shaking my finger. “Shame on you.”

Bite, chew, swallow. Then Mama wiped her lips on her sleeve and grinned. “She ain’t crazy, boy,” Mama said. “She’s ec-cen-tric. Ain’t that the word for rich folks?”

“She thinks her dead husband spends his evening knock-knock-knocking at her door,” I said. “Eccentric doesn’t cover that, Mama, and you know it.”

Mama shrugged and chewed.

“I have no love for the idle rich,” I said. “But I’ve got no desire to fleece sad old widow women, either.” I went behind my desk, pulled back my chair and sat. “Why not send her to a doctor or a priest, Mama?” I said. “Why me? Why a finder?”

My sandwich—melted Lowridge cheese on smoked Pinford ham—was vanishing fast. I grabbed a hunk when Mama paused to speak.

“The widow ain’t crazy, boy,” she said. “Could be she ain’t seeing things, either.”

I shook my head and swallowed. “Your cards tell you that?”

Mama Hog nodded. “Cards say she’s got a hard rain coming, boy,” she said. “Turned up the Dead Man, and the Storm, and the Last Dancer, all in the same hand. Dead Man’s Rain. That ain’t good.” Mama grabbed another morsel of sandwich, guffawed around it. “But I don’t need cards to see the sun. The Widow Merlat is headed for a bad time. She knows it. I know it. You’d best know it, too.”

“Dead is dead, Mama,” I said. “That’s what I know.”

Mama grinned. “There’s other things you need to know, boy. Things about the ones that come back.”

“First thing being that they don’t,” I said.

Mama pretended not to hear.

“Rev’nants only walk at night,” she said. “It’s got to be pitch dark.”

“Do tell.”

“You can’t catch ’em coming out of the ground,” said Mama. “It’s no good trying. They’re like haunts, that way. Solid as rock one minute, thin as fog the next.”

“Sounds handy,” I said. “Do their underbritches get all misty and ethereal too, or is that one of the things man was not meant to know?”

“Don’t look in his eyes, boy. Don’t look in his eyes, or breathe air he’s breathed.”

“I won’t even ask about borrowing his toothbrush,” I said.

Mama slapped my desktop with both her hands.

“You listen,” she hissed. “Believe or not, but you listen.”

“I’ve got all night.”

“His mouth will be open,” said Mama. “Wide open. He’s been saving a scream, all that time in the ground. Saving up a scream for the one that put him there.” Mama lifted a stubby finger and shook it in my face. “Don’t you listen when he screams. You put your hands over your ears and you yell loud as you can, but don’t you listen. Cause if you do, you’ll hear that scream for the rest of your days, and there ain’t nothing nobody nowhere can do for you then.”

Silence fell. Only after Curfew do we get any silence, in my neighborhood. I let it linger for a moment.

I leaned forward, put my eyes down even with Mama’s, motioned her closer, spoke.

“Boo.”

Mama glared. “Don’t get in his way, boy,” she said. “He didn’t come back for you. But that won’t mean nothing if you get in the way.”

“Dead is dead, Mama,” I said.

Mama sighed. “Dead is dead,” she agreed. “Sometimes, though, good and dead ain’t dead enough.”

A troll’s missing head could cause Markhat to lose his own.

The Mister Trophy

© 2008 Frank Tuttle

All the finder Markhat wanted was a beer at Eddie’s. Instead he gets a case that will bring him face to fang with crazed, blood-craving halfdead, a trio of vengeful Troll warriors, and Mama Hog’s backstreet magic. Plus, the possible resurgence of the Troll War.

All right in his own none-too-quiet neighborhood.

Through the town of Rannit’s narrow alleys and mean streets, Markhat tries to stay one step ahead of disaster. And ignore Mama Hog’s dire warnings that this time, the head that rolls could be his own.

Warning: This book contains well-dressed vampires, extremely polite Trolls, and occasional bursts of humor. Avoid reading it when landing aircraft, welding in the nude or taunting grumpy jackals while wearing pork chop earmuffs.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Mister Trophy:

Eddie the barkeep stared at the Troll and then at the “Dead Troll Tavern” emblem carved into the bar-top and then back at the Troll. The Troll grinned. Forty-eight finger-long incisors popped out, sharper and shinier than anything Eddie might have hidden behind the bar and dripping with poisonous Troll saliva to boot.

Eddie deftly dropped his drying rag on the Dead Troll carving, wiped his grubby hands on his equally grubby apron and donned a shaky tough-guy scowl. “Yeah?” he said to the Troll. “You want something?”

The Troll boomed something back. A second later, Kingdom words rang out in a flat male human voice. “I come for the finder Markhat.”

I choked on my beer. The Troll’s neckless head swiveled, owl-fashion, to face me. It gargled more words in Troll, and its translator spell spoke again. “You are the finder named Markhat.”

“Nope,” I said quickly. “Not me. Not Markhat. Never met the gent.”

The Troll glided over, flashing me that mouthful of nightmares smile. “I was told you would deny your name,” it said. “Shameful. I am—” The Troll spoke its name, and the translator gave up, leaving me with the sound of dishwater gurgling down a sink-drain.

“Honored to meet you, Walking Stone,” I said, as the Troll reached my table. “May your shadow fall tall and your soul grow to meet it.” I rose, my knowledge of Troll etiquette nearly exhausted. “I am not he that you seek, though, and anyway I hear he married a centaur and retired to the Fiti Coast. Why don’t you finish my ale and—”

The Troll’s grin split wider. It made a very human gesture for silence, finger at lips, and then it pulled back its greatcloak just far enough to reveal three fist-sized chunks of shiny solid gold on a fat wrought silver chain. Trolls don’t value gold themselves, but they do use it to barter with the other races. Word is that Trolls don’t haggle; they just stack money in big piles until someone says “yes”.

I sat down. Hard. The Troll shoved a rickety chair aside and squatted on the floor across from me.

“I walked fifty sunsets to see you, finder,” it said. “I wade wide swamps, swim deep rivers, sleep on brother stones.”

“I live three blocks from here,” I replied. “So, I suppose, I walked fifteen minutes and drank two beers and sat on cousin chair.”

The Troll’s translator choked my words slowly out. The bar cleared, except Eddie, whose right eye—the blue one—hovered unsteadily behind a wide crack in the storeroom door.

The Troll barked and gurgled. My hackles rose, though I recognized booming Trollish laughter. “You jest with me, finder Markhat,” it said. “You are brave. I admire bravery.” It leaned closer, yellow slitted owl-eyes narrowing. “I pay well for bravery.”

I shook my head. “Someone usually does, Walking Stone,” I said. “Just how much bravery are you wanting to buy?”

“You will go to a place I shall name,” said the Troll. “You will contrive to be admitted therein, and you shall determine if a certain object is displayed there. If so, you shall communicate my message to the masters of the place.”

Boots scuffed at the door, but hushed voices warned them off and Eddie lost another customer.

“This isn’t very private, Walking Stone,” I said. “And before I say yes or no, I need names. What place, what masters and what object?”

The Troll leaned close. My hair tried to stand on end. I’d been that close to a Troll only once before, twenty years ago. If a fat Marine sergeant hadn’t put a harpoon through its skull, I’d be laid out with the other war heroes up on the Hill.

“The place is called Haverlock, finder,” whispered the Troll’s translator. “Its masters bear the same name. The object is a trophy taken during the War. A head, stuffed and mounted. A Walking Stone head.”

I finished my beer. “What’s the message, Walking Stone?”

The Troll grinned again. “You have what is ours,” he said. “Return it. With apologies. At once.”

Love is the wiliest thief of all

The Scroll Thief

© 2009 R. F. Long

A Tale of Ithian

Malachy and his sister rely on his talents as a thief to survive the dangerous streets of Klathport, former capital of the once-great kingdom of Ithian. Stealing a few papers should have been a simple job. Instead, it nearly costs their lives and throws them into an improbable alliance with a shape-shifting official, a desert tribeswoman, and a healer of enchanting beauty.

Cerys is far more than a simple healer—and the roots of her mission go deeper into the past than anyone can know. She needs Malachy’s skills to recover a stolen scroll, one that can be used to rewrite history and, in the wrong hands, release the dark powers of the Demon Realm.

Her mission was supposed to atone for a dreadful, long-ago act. Instead, it unleashes a chain of events which sees them pursued through city and desert by the fearsome Dune Witch and a killer known only as His Lordship. Romance, tragedy, and adventure blend in a tale of a magical land on the brink of war, and five unlikely allies who, by putting their lives—and their hearts—on the line, have the opportunity to finally set things right.

But at a terrible cost.

Warning: Contains scenes of graphic violence and torture, captivating magic and beauty, two dashing heroes, three gutsy heroines, several love stories and a heartbreaking sacrifice.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Scroll Thief:

Malachy wandered on, so lost in thought that he didn’t realise at first what the tug on his cloak meant. Even as his mind caught up with his instincts, he caught only a glimpse of the child disappearing through the stalls, her long hair trailing behind her like a scent.

Malachy didn’t bother shouting out. He could feel the lightness on his belt where his purse should have been. He gave chase, saw her round a corner, and plunged after her. He collided with a woman and they tumbled down in a tangle of limbs and exclamations.

Struggling free, he was confronted with a flushed and outraged face and angry copper eyes. The chestnut-haired northerner. The contents of a small pack lay strewn over the cobbles, vials of liquids, packages of dried and fresh herbs, a roll of bandages and, in their midst, his purse.

Malachy scrambled to his feet, snatched the pouch up and opened it to count the gold pieces. Of the tiny thief, he saw no sign, but that was his least concern now.