Anachronistic: Endless Masquerade

12 | For the Sake of Revenge

- 12 -

Before he knew it, Gamal had spent the entire day thinking of how best to get back at that witch. Not only had her mere presence taken half his earnings on the last job, but her greed to take the kill for herself had led to his pay being docked. Their fight had ended with him forced to waste 100 mils worth of blood to mend a broken nose. Add in another 100 for the humiliation and he figured she owed him a sizable debt.

        He overturned his coin purse, letting his money rain out over the heavy wooden writing desk that sat in his suite's far corner. He could already tell it wasn't enough by the meager size of the pile, but he set to counting it anyway. The succubus job was meant to recoup his losses, especially since the one-eyed bitch wouldn't be around to ruin things, but it had been a waste of time.

        His employers waited until well past dawn to let him know he was hunting Gregor's little brat and they didn't know where she had fled to. He should have left then, but blinded by the pay he decided to stay and track her anyway. Pandora left for Lunden the minute she was paid; a payment that included one of those tickets. She knew they were missing. Knew and said nothing because it was obvious why the tickets had disappeared. She meant to take the youkai for herself and leave him running around the sticks looking for something that was half-way to Eden already.

        Thanks to those incompetent church hunters she nearly got away with it. They had let night fall again before they decided to mention the missing tickets to him. A near 24-hour head start for Pandora. Then, when he told them exactly where they could find their youkai, they had the nerve to not even pay him for the lead. They wanted it killed first. He couldn't help but notice, they had still acted on the information; posted up outside the ship. Not that it mattered. Those idiots couldn't hunt an apple from a tree branch, let alone something intelligent. The succubus would find its way onto the ship, then would get back every coin.

        Gamal added the last of his coins to the neat stacks he had formed while counting then wrote the total in his notebook. All in, he had ended up with less than half his expected payout. Barely enough for the blood he needed to stave off graft rejection, let alone to pay for more supplies. Not wasting a day in Coventry would have helped. At least then he could have avoided first-class prices when he bought a scalped ticket. Another 3200 milliliters of his meager pay wasted.

        No, even before that Pandora had made the entire trip to Brittania wasted effort. Leaving Coventry in silence had only been the final straw. To get any worth out of this trip he needed to find that succubus before she did. If he captured it alive it would be worth way more than the church could have ever given him. There were so many more payment options that way.

        He could stick a tap in it and make a blood fountain. Succubus blood was valuable if you found the right buyer. Keeping it alive would require upkeep though; more trouble than it was worth. He could sell it as a slave, but youkai with human intelligence were hard to handle. They made buyers nervous. No, his best option was to cut it up and sell the pieces as grafts.

        But how would he handle Pandora. Killing her would be easy enough. Getting away with it would be harder. The witch hunts ended a decade ago; you couldn't just lynch them anymore. Oh, how he wished to go back to those days. Now, it either had to look justified or accidental.

        Gamal lined up all the blood vials he had remaining and took stock. He counted 32 vials of Minotaur blood. That would last him until Eden with a few weeks extra. He noted the number down in his journal and moved to the next blood type. A smile rose on his lips.