As the sound of dogs and pursuit faded, Drake slowed to catch his breath. He needed to figure out what to do next, and where to go. How to get home. Once he reached his manor, he could come back with his army, free Anna, and punch Captain Crunch in the jaw.
Something sharp and cold pierced his calf from behind.
Drake howled as he went down hard in the river, then fumbled with his crossbow and raised it to scan the trees. No one was visible, yet someone had just shot him in the fucking leg. That hurt, and the stream was already filling with blood. His blood.
The murderous hunger inside him was now practically a roaring bonfire.
“That’ll be enough of that, little lord,” Captain Crunch said from behind him. “Set the crossbow down and raise your hands.”
Crunch’s rarity really did allow him to track anyone! Dammit. Drake had been so close to escaping. Still… he’d already escaped once. It wouldn’t be that hard to escape again.
“You did say you needed me alive,” Drake reminded him. “And I needed the exercise.”
Crunch didn’t chuckle or gloat as soft footsteps announced the man’s approach from behind. Drake tossed the crossbow as best he could. It landed not far away, but he couldn’t reach it without being obvious about it. He wasn’t going to try to spin and shoot.
If this man could shoot him in the leg with a crossbow from the woods, he could obviously shoot him between the eyes from close range. Best to avoid that.
“Turn around now, lord. Let’s see how bad I got you.”
From the woods, dogs barked and more shouts sounded. The rest of the men were closing fast. There would be no outrunning anyone with a shot leg.
Drake winced as he eased himself around. “Next time, maybe a warning shot?”
“I already gave you a warning. Now, it’s time for the lesson.”
As dogs burst from the woods behind him, Drake involuntarily pulled his arms and hands back against his body. He didn’t want his fingers bitten off. Fortunately, only one red-armored soldier had dogs—two of them—and they were leashed. That man slowed.
The other man approached with a grim look on his face.
Time for more bullshit superpowers. “I warn you—”
Crunch’s hand crashed into his neck with what he would swear was a karate chop. Drake gagged and coughed, clutching his throat, as the newly arriving man and Jaunty-hat grabbed his shoulders. It wasn’t fair to them to have karate!
Together, both men slammed him onto the bank. “Hey stop!” he tried to say. All that came out was a hissing rasp.
Crunch produced a small cudgel. “No one told me your rarity was double speak, lord. I don’t know how you deceived me and my men, but I do know, now, that you can change what words we hear. That’s why I’m going to gag you until my client arrives. After our lesson.”
Drake struggled and thrashed, but he could barely breathe and two large men were pinning him down in the stream.
“I’m going to break your knees now, lord. After that, you’ll whimper an apology loud enough to satisfy me. If you do, I may even let you keep your fingernails.”
The man’s cudgel descended like a falling tree. Blinding pain shot through Drake’s knee. Blood splashed visibly, and then whatever rage he’d barely managed to tamp down exploded inside him, flooding his body and consuming his mind.
He’d felt this rage back in Dickcheese’s torture dungeon. He’d wanted nothing then but to live, to fight, to kill, and he felt that now more than ever. Whatever inner restraint had been keeping these foolish men alive shattered inside him like thin paper.
His rarity manifested.
Drake smelled blood. Water. Fear. His vision narrowed down to a harsh tunnel as every sound became so loud. With a grunt, Drake easily threw off both men. He leapt to his feet, bent one man’s muscular arm like a limp noodle, and took a big bite.
The meat was fucking delicious.
As warm blood splattered Drake’s cheeks and he chewed eagerly on muscle and bone, he pulled back his claw—when had he grown a claw?—and slashed the man behind him with a snarl. Water splashed as one man shrieked and another man grunted. Drake tore something off something until movement caught his attention.
It was Captain Crunch. The man raised his crossbow to shoot, but Drake tackled him before he fired. They collided in a tangle of limbs, shrieks, and snarls.
Drake smelled warm blood and stark fear and fresh piss. The fear smelled absolutely wonderful, like the delectable sausage he’d enjoyed back at his manor. He wanted to gorge. He wanted to savor every last one of this man’s terrified screams.
Hands that proved weak and flimsy parted as he ripped and tore. Drake had only started enjoying his delicious dinner when a sharp pain lashed his back. It felt like a nail right into his side, and it really pissed him off.
Drake howled and spun about. A figure stood by the woods with two barking dogs, frantically attempting to reload his crossbow for another shot. Drake didn’t like getting shot.
As he hopped off his meal and loped across the stream, bloody spittle trailed behind him. He was on the man long before he got his crossbow reloaded. He bit down.
There was so much meat here. Fresh meat. Wet meat. Drake tore into it eagerly.
Small jaws bit him from behind, so he lashed out with one clawed foot. A dog’s yelp abruptly terminated, bringing guilt before the rage and hunger returned. While the thought of killing dogs bothered him for some reason he couldn’t remember, he also smelled men.
He could hear them as well. He could hear every single word the other men were shouting in the distant woods, even if he didn’t quite understand the language or comprehend the words. Man flesh, he knew now, was delicious.
He wanted more wet meat, and if he dashed into that forest, he’d find plenty. Branches crashed aside as the forest became his hunting round. Some fought, but most fled. Yet even those could not escape his nose, his wrath, and his hunger.
Harrying and dropping them in ones and twos, Drake tore through the shouting, panicking, fear-filled meat. He never had much time to enjoy any single meal, but he soon found the thrill came from the killing rather than the eating. He liked killing.
Soon he entered an open area that smelled of leather, iron, and piss. A few piles of meat in smelly leather armor came at him with axes and spears. The taste of their innards made the discomfort worth it, and the screams of horses joined them. Horse flesh was delicious as well.
After he’d hunted down all the men and torn through all the horses, he caught a smell even sweeter than the others. This meat was young. Sweet. Tender. And her fear... her fear was the sweetest of all.
His long nose and long teeth slammed into metal bars. Nasty metal kept him from a deliciously tiny morsel with golden hair. He gnawed hungrily on the bars that kept him from his prize, slavering, until he realized he couldn’t chew through metal. It simply hurt his teeth.
All the two and four-legged meat nearby was dead. The fires that had ripped through this camp were going out. After wandering dazedly for a bit, Drake snorted in annoyance. Other than that delectable morsel still trembling in the cage, there was no one left to hunt.
As he slowed, a weariness descended on him. He was still hungry, but he was also tired. Hunting down meat was hard work.
No more shouts sounded out in the woods. The last meat was tiny, and metal didn’t taste near so good as blood. Chewing through metal did not appeal to him.
With a yawn, Drake scratched his whiskered nose idly with one clawed hand and settled down on his… haunches? Did he have haunches now? Too sleepy to check.
He blinked lazily, snorted, then collapsed in a satisfied heap on the dirt. It was a warm night, he had a full belly, and he needed a good sleep. He gave himself one good scratch with his back leg and then rolled over onto his back. He felt more content than he’d been in ages.
That had been a delicious meal.
***
When Drake woke on his back in daylight, shirtless once more and slathered in dried blood, he immediately rolled over and started puking his guts out. He felt the ruins of a waistband and pants still around his waist, but his other clothes were gone. Shredded.
Last night was a blur—a blood-soaked, piss-soaked, nauseating blur—but he was fairly certain he had eaten people, and that made him vomit harder than he had that night he drank too much Goldschlager at a party and ended up falling asleep clutching a jug of milk.
So this was his rarity? To go berserk when injured? Was he a fucking werewolf?
No time to think about that now. He needed to finish puking up dead men and get out of here before more of Captain Crunch’s soldiers found this camp. They’d likely be annoyed Drake had murdered their leader and twenty of their men last night.
And there it was. He was a mass murderer now. He’d been hesitant enough to commit one murder, and now, he’d committed a ton of them. Fresh horror gripped him when he stumbled across the remains of a horse, one which he had literally torn in half.
The mercenaries might have deserved his wrath last night, but what about their horses? The horses hadn’t done a fucking thing to him, and he’d ripped through the poor animals without a second thought. Worse yet... what about Anna?
Drake stumbled through the savaged camp as his heart pounded inside his chest. Had he killed a child last night? Had he torn apart and ripped open a little girl? He soon found Anna’s familiar wheeled cage, and it took a moment to spot Anna inside, cowering and silent.
She was alive. He hadn’t eaten a child last night. Thank the fucking Eidolons for that.
Drake leaned against the bars in weary relief. “Morning.” He picked a fragment of bone out of his teeth, spit it out, and wiped gunk off his lips. “So, you ready to leave this time?”
The little girl and her father said absolutely nothing.
“The captain who captured you isn’t going to be a problem any longer. I’ve dealt with him. He’ll never be able to hunt you down or hurt you ever again.”
Anna spoke plaintively. “Please don’t kill us, lord.”
“I won’t, Anna. I promise. But I need you to tell me where we are now.”
“I don’t know, lord. I only know the last town we passed through before they took me to get you was Heart Grove, which isn’t far from here. They’re nice folks, so please, don’t eat them. They may be sworn to Lord Redbow, but they’re just people!”
“So these mercs were with Redbow Manor?” He was still disoriented after turning into a werewolf and eating a camp full of soldiers and horses, but he remembered that name from his discussions with Lydia. Redbow soldiers had ambushed Nicole and Valentia, his battle maids.
“I only know they own us,” Anna said. “They’ve taken us on trips before.”
“In this cage?”
“Yes, lord. Me and my father.”
“What about you, Dad? Got anything to say?”
“He can’t speak, lord.”
Had some evil manor lords ripped out her father’s tongue as well? Drake wondered if Anna’s father had been a comedian like Xutag. As he took a closer look at the man’s shallow, haunted expression, he doubted it.
This poor girl. Captain Crunch had threatened and abused her father whenever he wanted Anna to use her freaky teleport rarity to capture someone, then kept them both in this cage the rest of the time. He’d had to free her. So did that make him a hero?
Drake was pretty sure heroes generally didn’t eat the bad guys, but hey. Whatever worked. He was alive and free while his enemies were wet meat. This was not something he’d have considered himself capable of before he got dragged into this world against his will, but the Redbow soldiers had left him no luxury to be civilized. It was kill or be killed here.
They’d also made the mistake of tangling with a fucking manor lord.
Given his rarity had allowed him to single-handedly destroy a camp of twenty trained mercenaries, it seemed he was even more powerful than he’d hoped. All he needed to do, now, was find a way to not also tear his allies apart whenever he wolfed out. He’d like to avoid that.
“Where’s the keys to your dad’s manacles?” Drake asked.
Anna gasped. “You aren’t going to eat us?”
“I told you, no. I’m going to free your father, and then you’re going to show me the way back to this town you spoke of. Do that, and both of you can come live with me.”
“Captain Ro has the keys, lord.”
She must mean Captain Crunch. “The guy in the jaunty red hat?”
“Yes, lord. Did you capture him? Did you tie him up?”
Drake chuckled darkly and pushed himself off the bars. “Let’s go with that.”
He was going to have to walk all the way back down to that small stream to find Crunch—no, Ro’s body—but at least it was daylight now. He could easily see in the woods and find the corpse. He just hoped he wouldn’t stumble over too many more bodies there.
In the bright morning light, the brown forest seemed less dense than last night. The walk was also shorter than he remembered. He soon spotted one clearly visible red-armored body in the distance, and he didn’t take too close a look. It was definitely missing an arm.
It took him a bit to retrace his steps, but fortunately, streams only went two ways. He found Captain Ro right where he’d killed him, on his back on the bank with his lower half resting in the stream. That helped with the smell, but Drake still urked as he searched for keys.
The man’s chest had a big bloody hole in it. It looked like Drake had simply gnawed straight through both his armor and breastbone, then snapped his ribs out like crab legs. How could he have the strength to do that? Also... hadn’t he been wounded?
He clearly remembered Ro shooting him in the leg before he wolfed out. The man had even broken his knee. So had wolfing out and eating all those men healed him before he shifted back? That was a useful tradeoff for puking up horse and dude guts the next day.
After all his worries in his manor about Anna being some sort of assassin, it turned out he was the shapeshifting murder monster all along. Who knew? If these mercenaries hadn’t fucked around and found out, he might never have learned how to use his rarity.
After a brief and fruitless search, Drake flipped Ro over onto his face. That revealed a ring of keys hanging off the man’s belt. He freed the keys and rose, then stared down at the man he’d torn apart last night.
Drake still felt no guilt whatsoever about killing Lord Dickcheese. So what about this murder? Did he feel guilty about this one? He definitely felt guilty about killing the dog, and he absolutely felt guilty about ripping through those poor, defenseless horses.
It would have been nice to escape this camp without killing anyone. The soldiers with Ro hadn’t necessarily been bad people either, just folks doing jobs. They’d even treated him with courtesy and respect, and he’d killed them all anyway.
Still, as unpleasant as this fate was, it had solved another problem. Ro’s words before Drake wolfed out returned to haunt him.
No one told me your rarity was double speak, lord.
He’d miscalculated his escape plan in one respect. Had these men lived, they could have told others he left this camp after promising to stay. His ability to lie would only protect him so long as no one knew about it. So if these men hadn’t all died...
Lesson learned. He still wished there had been some other way to solve this little problem, but these men had all signed up to abduct people for a mercenary company. They’d kept a child in a cage. Captain Ro, who’d kept Anna as a slave, had broken his knee and intended to do far worse. Given all that, he refused to lose much sleep over this.
So because Drake wasn’t sad about killing his captors, did that make him callous? Or simply practical? He spun the keys on one extended finger and decided to ponder these questions in more depth back at his manor. In the bath. With a cup of apple mead.
He needed to wash the taste of man guts out of his mouth.
Drake left the stream and started back to the camp to free his new teleporter. Making his way up was more challenging than heading down thanks to the muddy slope, but he managed. Goosebumps rose across his skin as he realized his nice new boots were gone.
He hadn’t even noticed his missing boots. He’d rarely walked about barefoot back home, but the soles of his feet had practically become leather overnight. That was good, because wolfing out was apparently going to rip his boots to shreds every time he did it.
He returned to Anna’s cage, hopped inside, and tried keys on the manacles chaining Anna’s father by his ankles. They snapped open, but her father didn’t move. Drake sighed.
“Out, now.”
Anna scampered out first and then looked back as if to encourage her father. “We’re finally free! The lord of Gloomwood Manor really did save us!”
Drake was this close to deciding Anna’s father was deaf when the man finally lumbered into motion, then scrambled out of the cage. He hunched down when he emerged and raised his hands defensively. Drake briefly noted all the obvious burn marks and scars.
This didn’t feel like a rescue. Anna was probably going to be traumatized for life after seeing him eat a whole camp of people, and her father seemed on the verge of catatonic. It would be a real wonder if this little girl didn’t wake up screaming every night from here on out.
But none of that was his fault, so he’d focus on getting them all home.
As the sound of dogs and pursuit faded, Drake slowed to catch his breath. He needed to figure out what to do next, and where to go. How to get home. Once he reached his manor, he could come back with his army, free Anna, and punch Captain Crunch in the jaw.
Something sharp and cold pierced his calf from behind.
Drake howled as he went down hard in the river, then fumbled with his crossbow and raised it to scan the trees. No one was visible, yet someone had just shot him in the fucking leg. That hurt, and the stream was already filling with blood. His blood.
The murderous hunger inside him was now practically a roaring bonfire.
“That’ll be enough of that, little lord,” Captain Crunch said from behind him. “Set the crossbow down and raise your hands.”
Crunch’s rarity really did allow him to track anyone! Dammit. Drake had been so close to escaping. Still… he’d already escaped once. It wouldn’t be that hard to escape again.
“You did say you needed me alive,” Drake reminded him. “And I needed the exercise.”
Crunch didn’t chuckle or gloat as soft footsteps announced the man’s approach from behind. Drake tossed the crossbow as best he could. It landed not far away, but he couldn’t reach it without being obvious about it. He wasn’t going to try to spin and shoot.
If this man could shoot him in the leg with a crossbow from the woods, he could obviously shoot him between the eyes from close range. Best to avoid that.
“Turn around now, lord. Let’s see how bad I got you.”
From the woods, dogs barked and more shouts sounded. The rest of the men were closing fast. There would be no outrunning anyone with a shot leg.
Drake winced as he eased himself around. “Next time, maybe a warning shot?”
“I already gave you a warning. Now, it’s time for the lesson.”
As dogs burst from the woods behind him, Drake involuntarily pulled his arms and hands back against his body. He didn’t want his fingers bitten off. Fortunately, only one red-armored soldier had dogs—two of them—and they were leashed. That man slowed.
The other man approached with a grim look on his face.
Time for more bullshit superpowers. “I warn you—”
Crunch’s hand crashed into his neck with what he would swear was a karate chop. Drake gagged and coughed, clutching his throat, as the newly arriving man and Jaunty-hat grabbed his shoulders. It wasn’t fair to them to have karate!
Together, both men slammed him onto the bank. “Hey stop!” he tried to say. All that came out was a hissing rasp.
Crunch produced a small cudgel. “No one told me your rarity was double speak, lord. I don’t know how you deceived me and my men, but I do know, now, that you can change what words we hear. That’s why I’m going to gag you until my client arrives. After our lesson.”
Drake struggled and thrashed, but he could barely breathe and two large men were pinning him down in the stream.
“I’m going to break your knees now, lord. After that, you’ll whimper an apology loud enough to satisfy me. If you do, I may even let you keep your fingernails.”
The man’s cudgel descended like a falling tree. Blinding pain shot through Drake’s knee. Blood splashed visibly, and then whatever rage he’d barely managed to tamp down exploded inside him, flooding his body and consuming his mind.
He’d felt this rage back in Dickcheese’s torture dungeon. He’d wanted nothing then but to live, to fight, to kill, and he felt that now more than ever. Whatever inner restraint had been keeping these foolish men alive shattered inside him like thin paper.
His rarity manifested.
Drake smelled blood. Water. Fear. His vision narrowed down to a harsh tunnel as every sound became so loud. With a grunt, Drake easily threw off both men. He leapt to his feet, bent one man’s muscular arm like a limp noodle, and took a big bite.
The meat was fucking delicious.
As warm blood splattered Drake’s cheeks and he chewed eagerly on muscle and bone, he pulled back his claw—when had he grown a claw?—and slashed the man behind him with a snarl. Water splashed as one man shrieked and another man grunted. Drake tore something off something until movement caught his attention.
It was Captain Crunch. The man raised his crossbow to shoot, but Drake tackled him before he fired. They collided in a tangle of limbs, shrieks, and snarls.
Drake smelled warm blood and stark fear and fresh piss. The fear smelled absolutely wonderful, like the delectable sausage he’d enjoyed back at his manor. He wanted to gorge. He wanted to savor every last one of this man’s terrified screams.
Hands that proved weak and flimsy parted as he ripped and tore. Drake had only started enjoying his delicious dinner when a sharp pain lashed his back. It felt like a nail right into his side, and it really pissed him off.
Drake howled and spun about. A figure stood by the woods with two barking dogs, frantically attempting to reload his crossbow for another shot. Drake didn’t like getting shot.
As he hopped off his meal and loped across the stream, bloody spittle trailed behind him. He was on the man long before he got his crossbow reloaded. He bit down.
There was so much meat here. Fresh meat. Wet meat. Drake tore into it eagerly.
Small jaws bit him from behind, so he lashed out with one clawed foot. A dog’s yelp abruptly terminated, bringing guilt before the rage and hunger returned. While the thought of killing dogs bothered him for some reason he couldn’t remember, he also smelled men.
He could hear them as well. He could hear every single word the other men were shouting in the distant woods, even if he didn’t quite understand the language or comprehend the words. Man flesh, he knew now, was delicious.
He wanted more wet meat, and if he dashed into that forest, he’d find plenty. Branches crashed aside as the forest became his hunting round. Some fought, but most fled. Yet even those could not escape his nose, his wrath, and his hunger.
Harrying and dropping them in ones and twos, Drake tore through the shouting, panicking, fear-filled meat. He never had much time to enjoy any single meal, but he soon found the thrill came from the killing rather than the eating. He liked killing.
Soon he entered an open area that smelled of leather, iron, and piss. A few piles of meat in smelly leather armor came at him with axes and spears. The taste of their innards made the discomfort worth it, and the screams of horses joined them. Horse flesh was delicious as well.
After he’d hunted down all the men and torn through all the horses, he caught a smell even sweeter than the others. This meat was young. Sweet. Tender. And her fear... her fear was the sweetest of all.
His long nose and long teeth slammed into metal bars. Nasty metal kept him from a deliciously tiny morsel with golden hair. He gnawed hungrily on the bars that kept him from his prize, slavering, until he realized he couldn’t chew through metal. It simply hurt his teeth.
All the two and four-legged meat nearby was dead. The fires that had ripped through this camp were going out. After wandering dazedly for a bit, Drake snorted in annoyance. Other than that delectable morsel still trembling in the cage, there was no one left to hunt.
As he slowed, a weariness descended on him. He was still hungry, but he was also tired. Hunting down meat was hard work.
No more shouts sounded out in the woods. The last meat was tiny, and metal didn’t taste near so good as blood. Chewing through metal did not appeal to him.
With a yawn, Drake scratched his whiskered nose idly with one clawed hand and settled down on his… haunches? Did he have haunches now? Too sleepy to check.
He blinked lazily, snorted, then collapsed in a satisfied heap on the dirt. It was a warm night, he had a full belly, and he needed a good sleep. He gave himself one good scratch with his back leg and then rolled over onto his back. He felt more content than he’d been in ages.
That had been a delicious meal.
***
When Drake woke on his back in daylight, shirtless once more and slathered in dried blood, he immediately rolled over and started puking his guts out. He felt the ruins of a waistband and pants still around his waist, but his other clothes were gone. Shredded.
Last night was a blur—a blood-soaked, piss-soaked, nauseating blur—but he was fairly certain he had eaten people, and that made him vomit harder than he had that night he drank too much Goldschlager at a party and ended up falling asleep clutching a jug of milk.
So this was his rarity? To go berserk when injured? Was he a fucking werewolf?
No time to think about that now. He needed to finish puking up dead men and get out of here before more of Captain Crunch’s soldiers found this camp. They’d likely be annoyed Drake had murdered their leader and twenty of their men last night.
And there it was. He was a mass murderer now. He’d been hesitant enough to commit one murder, and now, he’d committed a ton of them. Fresh horror gripped him when he stumbled across the remains of a horse, one which he had literally torn in half.
The mercenaries might have deserved his wrath last night, but what about their horses? The horses hadn’t done a fucking thing to him, and he’d ripped through the poor animals without a second thought. Worse yet... what about Anna?
Drake stumbled through the savaged camp as his heart pounded inside his chest. Had he killed a child last night? Had he torn apart and ripped open a little girl? He soon found Anna’s familiar wheeled cage, and it took a moment to spot Anna inside, cowering and silent.
She was alive. He hadn’t eaten a child last night. Thank the fucking Eidolons for that.
Drake leaned against the bars in weary relief. “Morning.” He picked a fragment of bone out of his teeth, spit it out, and wiped gunk off his lips. “So, you ready to leave this time?”
The little girl and her father said absolutely nothing.
“The captain who captured you isn’t going to be a problem any longer. I’ve dealt with him. He’ll never be able to hunt you down or hurt you ever again.”
Anna spoke plaintively. “Please don’t kill us, lord.”
“I won’t, Anna. I promise. But I need you to tell me where we are now.”
“I don’t know, lord. I only know the last town we passed through before they took me to get you was Heart Grove, which isn’t far from here. They’re nice folks, so please, don’t eat them. They may be sworn to Lord Redbow, but they’re just people!”
“So these mercs were with Redbow Manor?” He was still disoriented after turning into a werewolf and eating a camp full of soldiers and horses, but he remembered that name from his discussions with Lydia. Redbow soldiers had ambushed Nicole and Valentia, his battle maids.
“I only know they own us,” Anna said. “They’ve taken us on trips before.”
“In this cage?”
“Yes, lord. Me and my father.”
“What about you, Dad? Got anything to say?”
“He can’t speak, lord.”
Had some evil manor lords ripped out her father’s tongue as well? Drake wondered if Anna’s father had been a comedian like Xutag. As he took a closer look at the man’s shallow, haunted expression, he doubted it.
This poor girl. Captain Crunch had threatened and abused her father whenever he wanted Anna to use her freaky teleport rarity to capture someone, then kept them both in this cage the rest of the time. He’d had to free her. So did that make him a hero?
Drake was pretty sure heroes generally didn’t eat the bad guys, but hey. Whatever worked. He was alive and free while his enemies were wet meat. This was not something he’d have considered himself capable of before he got dragged into this world against his will, but the Redbow soldiers had left him no luxury to be civilized. It was kill or be killed here.
They’d also made the mistake of tangling with a fucking manor lord.
Given his rarity had allowed him to single-handedly destroy a camp of twenty trained mercenaries, it seemed he was even more powerful than he’d hoped. All he needed to do, now, was find a way to not also tear his allies apart whenever he wolfed out. He’d like to avoid that.
“Where’s the keys to your dad’s manacles?” Drake asked.
Anna gasped. “You aren’t going to eat us?”
“I told you, no. I’m going to free your father, and then you’re going to show me the way back to this town you spoke of. Do that, and both of you can come live with me.”
“Captain Ro has the keys, lord.”
She must mean Captain Crunch. “The guy in the jaunty red hat?”
“Yes, lord. Did you capture him? Did you tie him up?”
Drake chuckled darkly and pushed himself off the bars. “Let’s go with that.”
He was going to have to walk all the way back down to that small stream to find Crunch—no, Ro’s body—but at least it was daylight now. He could easily see in the woods and find the corpse. He just hoped he wouldn’t stumble over too many more bodies there.
In the bright morning light, the brown forest seemed less dense than last night. The walk was also shorter than he remembered. He soon spotted one clearly visible red-armored body in the distance, and he didn’t take too close a look. It was definitely missing an arm.
It took him a bit to retrace his steps, but fortunately, streams only went two ways. He found Captain Ro right where he’d killed him, on his back on the bank with his lower half resting in the stream. That helped with the smell, but Drake still urked as he searched for keys.
The man’s chest had a big bloody hole in it. It looked like Drake had simply gnawed straight through both his armor and breastbone, then snapped his ribs out like crab legs. How could he have the strength to do that? Also... hadn’t he been wounded?
He clearly remembered Ro shooting him in the leg before he wolfed out. The man had even broken his knee. So had wolfing out and eating all those men healed him before he shifted back? That was a useful tradeoff for puking up horse and dude guts the next day.
After all his worries in his manor about Anna being some sort of assassin, it turned out he was the shapeshifting murder monster all along. Who knew? If these mercenaries hadn’t fucked around and found out, he might never have learned how to use his rarity.
After a brief and fruitless search, Drake flipped Ro over onto his face. That revealed a ring of keys hanging off the man’s belt. He freed the keys and rose, then stared down at the man he’d torn apart last night.
Drake still felt no guilt whatsoever about killing Lord Dickcheese. So what about this murder? Did he feel guilty about this one? He definitely felt guilty about killing the dog, and he absolutely felt guilty about ripping through those poor, defenseless horses.
It would have been nice to escape this camp without killing anyone. The soldiers with Ro hadn’t necessarily been bad people either, just folks doing jobs. They’d even treated him with courtesy and respect, and he’d killed them all anyway.
Still, as unpleasant as this fate was, it had solved another problem. Ro’s words before Drake wolfed out returned to haunt him.
No one told me your rarity was double speak, lord.
He’d miscalculated his escape plan in one respect. Had these men lived, they could have told others he left this camp after promising to stay. His ability to lie would only protect him so long as no one knew about it. So if these men hadn’t all died...
Lesson learned. He still wished there had been some other way to solve this little problem, but these men had all signed up to abduct people for a mercenary company. They’d kept a child in a cage. Captain Ro, who’d kept Anna as a slave, had broken his knee and intended to do far worse. Given all that, he refused to lose much sleep over this.
So because Drake wasn’t sad about killing his captors, did that make him callous? Or simply practical? He spun the keys on one extended finger and decided to ponder these questions in more depth back at his manor. In the bath. With a cup of apple mead.
He needed to wash the taste of man guts out of his mouth.
Drake left the stream and started back to the camp to free his new teleporter. Making his way up was more challenging than heading down thanks to the muddy slope, but he managed. Goosebumps rose across his skin as he realized his nice new boots were gone.
He hadn’t even noticed his missing boots. He’d rarely walked about barefoot back home, but the soles of his feet had practically become leather overnight. That was good, because wolfing out was apparently going to rip his boots to shreds every time he did it.
He returned to Anna’s cage, hopped inside, and tried keys on the manacles chaining Anna’s father by his ankles. They snapped open, but her father didn’t move. Drake sighed.
“Out, now.”
Anna scampered out first and then looked back as if to encourage her father. “We’re finally free! The lord of Gloomwood Manor really did save us!”
Drake was this close to deciding Anna’s father was deaf when the man finally lumbered into motion, then scrambled out of the cage. He hunched down when he emerged and raised his hands defensively. Drake briefly noted all the obvious burn marks and scars.
This didn’t feel like a rescue. Anna was probably going to be traumatized for life after seeing him eat a whole camp of people, and her father seemed on the verge of catatonic. It would be a real wonder if this little girl didn’t wake up screaming every night from here on out.
But none of that was his fault, so he’d focus on getting them all home.
