Creation Mage 6 by Dante King (detective books to read txt) 📕

“Smuggling,” she replied.

“Smuggling? Smuggling what?”

“Smuggling us, sweet-pea,” Leah said. “If you slip a coin or two into the right hand you can get smuggled right into the bowels of the Castle of Ascendance from the Underbelly.”

Leah and I meandered our way through the crowds of swearing, spitting people, as they tried to hawk all sorts of illegal, stolen, or forged goods. She pointed toward the end of the long street, at the single sewer pipe that was not ejaculating any sort of liquid. I squinted and saw a rope ladder dangling about one-hundred feet down from the lip of the pipe.

Just before we reached the end of the main thoroughfare, we were forced to slip down a sidestreet by a sudden cry of, “Manananggal stand-off!”

Two vampire-looking creatures walked out into the street, which rapidly emptied around them; bare-chested, pale, and with leathery wings in their backs, they looked pissed about something.

Leah dragged me around the corner of an adjoining alleyway just as the first creature let loose a shrill screech and raised its hand at the other. Purple splinters of light flashed from its fingertips, punching into the ground where the other figure had been only a second before. Dirt and rock exploded from where the shards of light hit, sending splinters of stone flying in all directions, shattering shop windows and knocking people off their feet.

“What the hell are manananggal?” I asked Leah. I peered around the corner and watched as the other bat-winged creature let fly with a volley of neon blue needles that chewed up the ground near the other manananggal like fifty-caliber machine gun fire.

“Cave dwellers,” Leah said, leaning against the clapboard side of the building we were sheltering behind. “Grumpy folk who can’t hold their drink too well. There’s a manananggal stand-off at least three times a week down here.”

A burst of purple magic hit the second manananggal in the chest like a hammer-blow. The figure flew across the road and smashed through the front of an alehouse, disappearing inside in a shower of glass and brittle wood. I grinned. It was a pleasing reversal of stereotypes: this was the first time I had ever seen someone get thrown into a saloon window and not out of it.

Leah led us on, through the twisting streets, until we must have only been a few minutes away from the pipe she had indicated earlier.

The muggers over the Underbelly were obviously skilled. I didn’t hear a thing until two of them stepped nonchalantly out into the skinny street in front of Leah and me. A soft scuffling noise behind us told me that a couple more had closed off the only route of escape.

A thrill of anticipation went through me, as it always did when I smelled a fight on the horizon.

“Can we help you, boys?” I asked pleasantly, taking a couple of steps so that I was in front of Leah.

One of the slinking figures moved toward me. He was a bent-backed nymph with hair like seaweed, cut short. He smelled like brine and blood. His hand dipped into the pocket of his ragged coat and reappeared holding a clasp knife. He pulled it open and pointed it at my face.

“You’ll poke an eye out if you wave your knife around like that,” I advised him.

“More than your fucking eye, pal,” the Sea Nymph said. “Coin purse out. Now!”

“Bit forward of you,” I said.

The dull light of the lanterns overhead turned the blade of the knife orange as the Sea Nymph turned it. Orange to gray to orange.

“Do it,” my twitchy mugger hissed.

“Can’t do it, lads,” I said, raising my voice so the Sea Nymph’s accomplices would be able to hear me. “No cash will be forthcoming. But I will give you a couple of words of advice that will be worth more to you than all the gold in the Castle of Ascendance.”

“I’m all fucking ears, fancy-pants,” sneered the Sea Nymph.

He wasn’t for long.

My arm shot out to grab his wrist in my hand and wrenched it upward and away from me. He could have dropped the knife, of course, but it must have been a cherished possession or something because he clung onto it even as I swept his hand past his own face and nicked off his left ear.

The Sea Nymph let go of the knife then.

He screamed, though I didn’t give him long to show his vocal range. You can’t just have some guy wailing away in a back alley. That sort of thing draws all sorts of attention—you’ll end up with unwanted company faster than you can say assault with intent to injure.

I brought my hand down in an overhead knife hand strike with all the force at my disposal, landing the Sea Nymph a banger of a blow on the carotid artery. He dropped to his knees—unconscious or merely stunned, I couldn’t say—and I brought my knee up and cracked him hard in the face.

Then all hell broke loose with the sort of alacrity that is normally reserved for a drunken brawl inside a subway car.

I had not enjoyed a bit of good old-fashioned fist fighting like that since I’d been involved in an altercation at a fraternity party in college. It felt—though I’m sure polite society would frown on me for voicing it—rather fucking good.

There was a sharp silver flash from behind me, which I caught out of the corner of my eye, and I knew that Leah had engaged with the two muggers behind us.

The elation I felt at knocking out someone with my bare hands caused me to momentarily forget about the other guy in front of me.

I came back to my senses just in time to have this second shady figure crash into me. He