Bloodrush (Scarlet Star Trilogy #1)

Chapter 18 - Leech

'Almost caught again today. Three months since the suitcase and today I decide to let my guard down. Karrigan was in his study. I stupidly knocked a table. Rookie error. The man moves fast, that's for sure. Far too fast for my liking. His fingers must have brushed my wings as I made it to the fireplace. Thank the Roots it wasn't alight. There's something about him that makes my skin crawl, and I can't figure it. Merion must know.'

19th May, 1867

It was almost three o'clock when Merion strode out into the roasting sun. He had not waited to watch Mister Khurt get sewn up. He had barely waited for his aunt to seal up her alcove. There was an excitement in his heart that failed miserably to understand why he should sit around in dark basements on stools, watching corpses get poked by the needle. For the tenth time in almost as many paces, he readjusted the strap of his rucksack.

'Will you please stop that?' Rhin hissed, flicking him through the fabric.

'Sorry,' Merion said, fingers already itching to do it again.

'All you needed was a dead body to change your tune, I see.'

'That, and a conversation I've been aching to have since I arrived in this cursed little hole,' Merion said, unable to stop his lips from curling and his eyes from narrowing. 'What's that old peasant saying? Where there is a will, there is a way? Well now I have a way, and a will.'

'So, you can rush then?'

Merion stopped dead. 'You don't mean to tell me you knew ... all this time ...?'

'No,' Rhin sighed. 'I heard Lurker say rushing. It doesn't take an idiot to figure it out. The Fae have always known about humans and your blood-magick. I just thought it had died out with your ancestors.'

Merion moved off, wiping his brow. 'Well, apparently it hasn't. I may be a leech, Rhin, a leech.'

'A blood-sucking parasite?'

'A rusher that can stomach all sorts of different shades,' Merion said, his excitement as clear as a bell.

'You've lost me,' Rhin muttered.

The boy tutted and walked on down the hill, past the houses of the Runnels and into Fell Falls. There was a subdued feel about the town. The saloons were quieter, the crowds thinner. Every worker Merion passed looked hollow-eyed and robbed of sleep. The sheriffsmen wore a little more armour than usual; sported more than the usual number of knives. When he had left, Fell Falls had been a brave outpost jutting out into the wilds. The Fell Falls he trudged through today felt like a town under siege, as though the town had suddenly realised its weakness. Everybody seemed to be mechanically going about their business as if monotony and routine would save them, as if breaking it would admit defeat to their intangible enemy.

Despite the mood lingering about the town, there was an awful lot of activity near the station and around the work-camp. Fresh scaffolding poked at the bright blue sky. The smell of cut wood and pitch was thick in the air. If this town was truly under siege, somebody was making arrangements. Merion suspected it had to do with whoever's coat of arms now streamed from the taller scaffolding poles and weathervanes: a coat of arms displaying a green wyrm coiled around a silver spinning-top. The Serpeds had come to town. Merion was still intent on seeking them out, but for now the Serpeds could wait just a little longer. He had more pressing things to attend to, namely blood, and rushing, and Lurker.

The young Hark knew that the prospector was still in town. He would not leave, not after Lilain had told him to. That was the exact reason he would stay. Lurker's face may have been a mask of dead emotion most of the time, but he had seen the little twitches in that mask on the road whenever Lil was mentioned. If Merion knew anything of men and their sorrows, Lurker would be seeking out something strong and wet, so to speak. He traipsed through the dust and heat of the streets, one by one, peering into each of the town's saloons as he went. Through each set of swinging doors he found only frowning gazes and leering, lead-toothed stares, the punch of acrid pipe-smoke and the smell of sweat and dust. There were plenty of burly men with hats pulled low over their eyes, and plenty of figures in leather, but none of them Lurker. Merion pursed his lips and moved on. There were some more saloons on the western edge of town, near the railroad and the worker camp.