The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,96

cut the cord that ran across the floor, through the waiting room, into the hall and around the filing cabinet that was balanced on the edge of the stairwell.

The filing cabinet dropped. I couldn’t see it, but I saw the effect. It was attached to another rope that ran along the ceiling, between the exposed pipes and through a gap in one of the steel supporting beams. I’d unraveled the last few feet and tied each piece to a corner of the carpet that my intruder was standing on.

It wasn’t a perfect application of the techniques I’d been taught, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t work. The carpet jumped off the ground like it had stepped on a spider, wrapped around the kid, jammed him up against the support beams, and tried to force him through a crack that even his skinny little ass wouldn’t be able to fit through.

He squealed and thrashed around inside his carpet cocoon.

“Stop moving, kid, or I’m going to make it a lot worse for you.” The shaking stopped but his hands were shuffling around inside. I picked up the broomstick I’d set nearby. “I can see you wriggling, Flyboy.”

WHACK!

He stifled his scream but I could tell I’d hit something bony. He froze.

“Good. Now, I’ve got some questions for you. If I don’t like what I hear, I have some other tools standing by that will do more than leave a bruise.”

I tapped my knife against the metal back of my desk chair. I had his attention now.

“What happened to the Vampires in the teahouse?”

He stayed still and silent. I took a guess where his backside was and poked the tip of my knife into it. He yelped. Any other day, I would have smiled.

“The Marrowkin.”

“The what?”

Another pause. I punched him hard with my fist. He groaned, but it sounded more sad than sore. He really, really didn’t want to talk but he’d also never been tortured. He was terrified. Good.

“I’m going to get it out of you eventually so you might as well tell me before I turn you inside out.”

He groaned again. This time, it was with resignation. I scraped my knife along the desk to hurry him along.

“Vampires are dying. Slowly and surely… Even if they drink the blood, the effects aren’t the same. So, they resigned themselves to their fate. Except for one. A renegade. He left The Chamber a year ago and when he returned, he was stronger. He’d changed.”

“Changed, how? He found a way to get the magic out of the blood again?”

“No. Not the blood.”

Another pause. I whacked him again. I couldn’t believe I was actually getting tired of it.

“Flyboy, speed things up or I’m gonna get stabby.”

“He discovered a secret. The renegade had been ripping open the bodies of his victims, breaking the bones, and drinking from the inside.”

My stomach turned. I unconsciously fetched a Clayfield from the pack.

“And this makes them live longer?”

“Not only that. They’re larger. Stronger. The marrow feeds their bones and muscles in a way that is… quite astonishing.”

Just like Portemus said. Elongated. But not by magic. By something else.

“Word has got out,” Flyboy continued. “Vampires around the world – not all but a few – are leaving the League and joining the Marrowkin. Those left loyal to the cause, like Samuel, Sydney and myself, are hunting the ones that have crossed over.”

Back at the teahouse, that’s what they’d trapped. An ex-Vampire who had gone rogue by eating marrow. I didn’t want to imagine it. Samuel and Sydney had asked for Rye’s help in capturing the creature. Rye had got the letter but I still didn’t know if he’d made it to the meeting.

“Professor Rye,” I said. “He was contacted by the others. They wanted his assistance in capturing this… Marrowkin. Do you know what happened to him?”

He didn’t respond right away. I looked up just in time to see the tip of a knife poke out from the top of the carpet and slice through the rope that was holding him up.

Two crashes, one after the other. The kid hit the ground and then the filing cabinet hit the ground floor. Flyboy had been moving around in the sack so carefully I hadn’t noticed. Plus, the horrific news he’d delivered had done a good job of distracting me.

I reached for the broomstick but now that the kid was out of containment he was too fast for me to handle. He kicked my legs out from under me, punched me in the