glove and mirror, back into sight and took the black-gloved hand from the hand of the corpse. He fell back into his mind, connecting with the powers of the magical device.
The eyes of the assassin's more familiar form blinked open just in time to watch the beggar's body fall stiffly to the side. Ghost spent a moment reorienting himself to his customary form, then propped himself up on his elbows.
"No magic ring?" He laughed at the beggar man's corpse. "Then you will stay dead, pitiful fool, though whoever finds your body will have no idea of how you died!" The thought widened Ghost's smile. In his earliest days with the Ghearufu, more than a hundred years before, he had hacked up his unmarked victims. His confidence had quickly grown, though, and Ghost had soon changed tactics, thinking in his budding arrogance that the mysteries surrounding the demise of an apparently healthy body would serve as an appropriate calling card.
Ghost willed the Ghearufu away and brushed the dirt from his clothes. He started down the road immediately for the distant gates of Carradoon, for his room at the Dragon's Codpiece.
The firbolg noted with distaste the apparently normal situation at the farmhouse on the outskirts of Carradoon. A few hens clucked and strutted, pecking at discarded seed here and there; the three horses in the stable beside the barn showed no signs that they had been spooked in the least; and the house itself seemed perfectly secure, not a broken window or even a visible scrape mark on any door.
Vander knew better. It was always this way, always done in absolute secrecy. It all seemed so perfectly cowardly to the warrior giant.
"\\fe could have stayed in the forest," Vander muttered, flipping his white-furred cloak back over his muscular shoulders.
The black-and-silver-outfitted assassins at the firbolg's sides looked at each other curiously. "It was by your orders ..." one of them began to reply, but Vander's upraised hand silenced him.
Not by my orders, the firbolg thought, remembering when Ghost, in Vander's magnificent body, had set the troupe into motion, while Vander could only sit and watch helplessly from inside Ghost's weak form.
"\\fe must get inside," offered the assassin after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. "This yard can be seen from the road."
"The light of day offends you," the firbolg remarked.
"It reveals us," the Night Mask replied obstinately. Vander cast him a threatening scowl but did follow the two men to the door. The portal was large enough so that Vander did not have to alter his size, and he was glad, for he did not enjoy wearing a human frame, especially not around the treacherous murderers. He liked the imposing strength of his giant body, the long and muscled limbs that could reach an enemy from across a room and easily throttle him.
\knder hesitated at the threshold. "The house is secure," one of the assassins inside assured the firbolg, misunderstanding his dismay. "Only the elder daughter remains alive, and she is held" - the lewd way the man spoke that word irritated %nder profoundly - "in the bedroom."
Vander strode in. "Where?" he demanded, purposely redirecting his gaze from the bloodied male and female bodies in the corner of the small kitchen. The human assassin, obviously unbothered by the gruesome sight, sat at the table, casually eating breakfast. He motioned to a door at the back of the room.
Propelled by his mounting rage, Vander was across the kitchen and through the door in an instant. He nearly tripped over a smaller bloodied form just inside the second room, and that moved him along only faster, more determinedly.
This room connected to a side bedroom, its door open a crack. A whimpering sound came from within, revealing to kinder what was going on before the firbolg even shoved the door wide.
The girl lay on the bed, half-dressed and securely tied to the posts by her wrists and ankles, with the sides of her mouth pulled tightly back by a cloth gag. An assassin lay on each side of her, teasing her and taking delight at her terrified movements.
Vander had to stoop low in this room to avoid the ceiling beams, but that didn't slow him. He swept aside the three Night Masks standing in his way with a single movement, then stepped to the foot of the bed.
One of the prone assassins looked up and grinned wickedly, misconstruing the firbolg's urgency. The fool motioned for Vander to join in the fun.
Chapter Seven
Vander's great hands caught