but this brought Leesil no relief.

It wasn't over. He couldn't tell this to Magiere, who wasn't ready to hear it. Not just yet.

Crossing to the scarred fir, Leesil unrolled the sail scrap to reveal the long box of dark wood, its length equal to his forearm. It was flat enough to slip inside a baggy shirt without leaving much of a bulge. A flick of fingertips opened the lid, and his shoulders knotted in apprehension at its contents, gifts from his mother on his seventeenth birthday so many years ago.

Inside lay weapons and tools the like of which could never be bought openly from a weaponer or metalworker. Their origin unknown to him, Leesil could only guess they'd come from his mother's people, though why the elves would make such things he couldn't imagine.

He studied the distasteful items. A garrote, its handles and wire of the same metal as his good stiletto, both a tone brighter than silver. A small curved blade that could be palmed but would easily cut through flesh and bone. And inside the lid behind a foldout cover, a row of a dozen thin struts, wires, and hooks, again of the same metal, and suitable for picking any lock. The final item was a hilt that matched the better of his two sheathed stilettos. Its blade was missing, snapped off a finger's breadth from the guard.

Leesil picked up the bladeless hilt, and a rush of unwanted memories hit him.

Ratboy, the filthy undead street youth, brown eyes shining with hate and triumph. In Leesil's pain-fogged vision that night, the little monster had looked so human.

"Perhaps we could call this a draw?" Leesil had joked, trying to sound confident. "I promise not to hurt you."

Ratboy's sharp features made his smile seem out of place and pasted on.

"Oh, but I want to hurt you."

The dusty undead hopped like a rat leaping at a larger opponent, and kicked Leesil in the chest. Leesil's ribs cracked audibly as he was thrown halfway across the clearing. Before his vision cleared, Ratboy crossed the distance to snatch him by the shirt.

As Leesil was pulled to his feet, he curled his hands up and flicked open the holding straps of the sheaths on his forearms. Stilettos dropped into each hand. He thrust both hilt-deep into Ratboy's sides.

"One good… turn for another," he gasped out, and then wrenched the hilts downward.

Beneath the sound of Ratboy's cracking ribs came a muffled metal clink. The right blade snapped, sending a jar through Leesil's arm and into his battered body. Ratboy's mouth gaped, soundless beneath wide eyes, and he flung Leesil at the trunk of the old fir.

The lowest branch shattered as Leesil fell across it on his way down to the forest floor. Impact with the ground sent so much pain through his body that it became distant and unreal, and he dropped his one whole blade and the hilt of the other. Clutching at the ground, he gripped the severed half of the branch. When Ratboy came again, Leesil let the vampire's own momentum and weight do the work.

Ratboy pulled himself up and stumbled back, face filled with anguish and fear as he clutched at the branch protruding right of center from his chest.

"Leesil! Where are you?"

A voice called out Leesil's name, but Ratboy's gaping mouth had not moved. Half-impaled, the dusty undead bolted into the forest before Magiere broke into the clearing. Leesil lay on the ground trying to stay conscious.

The wiry, filthy little vampire had escaped.

And now, months later, Leesil looked over the instruments in his box. He dropped the bladeless hilt and picked up the garrote, looping it as he gripped the handles. With a quick jerk, he pulled it tight. The wire snapped straight, and a thrumming tone filled the air with a vibration that made Leesil's stomach lurch.

Time to relearn lessons from his mother and father, to reclaim part of a sickening heritage. There had been so many nights when he drank himself to sleep so dreams of a nightmare childhood couldn't wake him. But he would never again be caught so ill prepared.

Because it wasn't over.

Rumors would slip quietly along in one direction or another. He and Magiere had wanted a quiet life in Miiska, but word of her deeds would reach the desperate. They'd freed Miiska, a whole small port town on the main coastal shipping route of the Belaski kingdom. And they'd done it right out in the open.

Magiere, hunter of the undead, would never be allowed any