Lockhart's Legacy (Vespari Lockhart Book 1) (2 page)

Each was more revolting than the next. Brownish green, leathery skin hung in sagging rolls despite their varying sizes. Their hair was nothing but grey strands that looked like straw. Their clothes were shoddy tatters of fabric that he found himself wishing concealed more of the beldams than they did.

The grotesque women were quick, and they said nothing. They all lunged for him from different directions. Lockhart raised his revolver and fired three shots. He might as well have saved his ammunition. He struck nothing but the walls of the cave. One of the beldams grabbed the weapon from his hand before hurling it across the room. Two of the other women restrained him. They pulled him toward a pair of meat hooks wedged into the ceiling and tied each of his hands to the hooks separately. They then released him, letting him hang suspended there while they looked on.

Lockhart groaned and tried to fight against them, but they’d already bested him. He just squirmed on those hooks, unable to do anything, while they stared at him.

The fattest of them was the first to speak. “You don’t look so strong,” she said.

Lockhart glared at her, saying nothing.

“Nothing to say for yourself?” she continued.

“He killed Gunnilda!” a short one shrieked.

“Let me rip his flesh off!” a hulking one demanded.

“Wait, wait,” a slender one said, stepping in front of the others. “Perhaps we can use him.”

“What are you talking about?” the fat one asked.

As they spoke, Lockhart tried to identify them based on the voices and names he’d heard during their conversation. The fat one matched up to Alviva, he thought. She appeared to be in charge of the others. She did look the oldest, so it made sense. Given her size, it appeared she also got the majority of their meals. Beyond the others, her sagging skin consisted of rolls of fat accentuated with a flopping gut hanging below her skin. Much of her exposed flesh had large brown moles speckling it. Long, whisker-like hairs protruded from them similar to quills on a porcupine.

“I don’t want to be a wraith!” the little one repeated yet again, cowering behind Alviva’s considerable girth.

That made her Estrild. Her cowardice easily separated her from the rest of the coven. She’d been the most afraid of him when they spoke, and that was no different now. Estrild appeared younger than the others. That’s not to say she looked young, just not as decrepit as the other beldams. She was also much shorter than the others, being the only one Lockhart could look down on from where he hung. If it were possible to compare such a thing, Estrild also looked the most unkempt. Her hair was a mess of tangled knots, she had red stains on and near her mouth, and her clothes were in shambles, more so than the others.

“Shut up, Estrild!” the muscular one said. “I’m going to kill it. The only use it has is food.”

Mabilia. She was big. Not fat. Big. Mabilia looked strong. She looked like she could rip him in half if she wanted to. She definitely wanted to. One of her eyes bulged from its socket, while the other was nothing but a slit with yellow pus seeping out. As the pus reached just above her lips, she scraped her tongue up on her cheek to wipe away and consume the sludge. Lockhart had seen a great many disgusting things, but seeing her lick her own eye pus made his stomach turn.

“Wait, wait,” the last one repeated. “We’ve captured a vespari. Just think what we can do with that.”

This made her Petronila, the one who spoke in a slithering speech. She was tall and slender. Lithe. Elongated even. She would have been even taller if she didn’t hunch over, though despite holding her body curled forward, she was still taller than Lockhart. Still taller than the other beldams too. He stared up at her, seeing the warts, boils, and cysts on her face. On her back was a huge hump that protruded through a rip in her clothes. Disease covered nearly every inch of her slender frame, but she seemed no worse for wear.

For his part, Lockhart just hung there from those hooks, feeling like his guts were slowly slipping out of the wound in his stomach. Given how they’d strung him up, he felt the wound stretching and tearing ever wider. He was too weak to do anything. He was at their mercy, and they knew it.

“He just killed Gunnilda,” Mabilia reminded them, pointing to the still smoldering pile of ashes at the side of the room. “He has to die for that.”

“And he will,” Petronila told her, the words slithering out of her mouth. “He will. We can all agree that he has to die.” The beldam crept up to him and stuck a finger into his guts, making him cringe with an electric pain. She coated the tip of her finger in his blood and lifted it up for the others to see before slurping the liquid off. “See?” she asked. “Even if we don’t do anything, he’s going to die. It’s just a matter of how.”

“We could rip his legs off!” Estrild suggested, emerging from behind Alviva.

Lockhart shot her a glance, and she cowered back behind the fat beldam.

“I don’t care how he dies, as long as it’s painful,” Mabilia said.

“Again,” Petronila replied with a long nod toward the ground. “We can all agree to that. Pain is important.”

Lockhart looked over to Alviva who stared at him, licking her lips. Petronila saw this too and moved between him and the fat beldam.

“Now, now, Alviva,” she said, curling down even further so that she was eye to eye with her. “We don’t want to eat him.”

“Speak for yourself,” Alviva said, pushing the slender beldam out of her way and stomping toward Lockhart.

The fat beldam grabbed Lockhart’s left arm, shredding the rope that suspended him from one of the meat hooks and causing him to swing there, held up only by the hook they’d bound his right hand to. Alviva then pulled the hand toward her mouth, but Petronila grabbed her to stop her.

“A hex!” she shouted.

Alviva stopped, looked at Petronila, to Lockhart, his hand, and back to Petronila. “What kind of hex?”

Petronila grinned, showing off her jagged little teeth. “Think of all the power he has inside him. All the monsters he’s killed.” She ripped his shirt to the side, exposing the intricate vespari tattoos on his chest. “Through these runes, he’s bound untold scores of our kind inside him. Even Gunnilda is inside him now.”

“What’s your point?” Mabilia asked from behind them. “We kill him, and he won’t be able to do it anymore.”

“Yeah,” Estrild chimed in. “Kill him. Eat him. Suck his bones clean! Shit out his meat!”

“No,” Alviva said, dropping Lockhart’s left hand and causing him to swing again from his right arm, still held up on the single meat hook. “Petronila is onto something.”

“Thank you, Alviva,” the slender beldam said, bowing even further down. She pointed back at Lockhart. “We place a consumptive hex on him, letting the power stored inside him flow into us.”

Alviva smiled and turned to face the others. “I like it.”

All four of the beldams huddled together, discussing the hex they intended to place on him. Lockhart had a moment. He had an opportunity. Alviva had left his one hand free. That had to be enough. The beldams had taken his gun from him, but his knife remained tucked into his boot on the opposite foot.

Suppressing a groan, Lockhart lowered his hand and raised his foot up as far as he could. His fingers pawed at the knife’s handle, not quite able to reach. The wound at his gut was tearing ever more. He couldn’t give up. He refused. He gritted his teeth and reached again. Whatever stitching he’d managed to do before tore, and more blood spilled out over his belt and pants. He’d deal with that later. If there was a later. He gripped the knife in his hand.

That’s where his plan ended. Having the knife wasn’t enough. He needed the strength to use it, and he found that wavering. His eyes closed, but he forced them open again. Lockhart pushed past the weakness. He had a job to do. With his bound hand, Lockhart grabbed the hook and raised himself off it. It wasn’t enough to get him off the hook, but it was enough for him to slide the knife between the hook and his hand.

Unfortunately, Lockhart didn’t have time to cut the rope. The beldams turned back to him, and he released the knife. It stuck there between the hook and his hand, slicing into the flesh of his palm. He grimaced at the pain, doing his best to ignore it. They hadn’t noticed his escape attempt, and so he played along, continuing to dangle there like their prey.

“We’ve prepared something special for you,” Alviva told him.

The fat beldam approached him, belly jiggling and with a bowl of viscous black, almost metallic ink in one hand and a needle in the other.

“One last ingredient,” she added.

The fat beldam pursed her lips together and let a thick drop of her saliva ooze down into the bowl. Mabilia, Estrild, and Petronila all repeated this disgusting step, adding their own bodily fluids to this black substance. They bound themselves to it, and now they intended to bind it to him.

Before he could do anything, Mabilia approached him from the side and grabbed his free arm. She gripped it so tight, he thought she might break his wrist. The small one, Estrild, skulked behind the others, still afraid to look him in the eye, only occasionally looking up at him through the strands of hair that fell down and partially covered her eyes. Petronila moved to his other side and grabbed his shirt, ripping it from his chest. This exposed all of his tattooed runes, as well as the wound in his gut. Neither of these were what the beldams sought.

Alviva licked her lips and held the needle up for him. “We’re going to add a new rune to your collection,” she told him, giggling to herself.

The beldam dipped the needle into the ink and then pressed it to the flesh of his chest, just above the other tattoos. Lockhart could smell the ink, and though he couldn’t place what all they’d put in it, the black substance had a terrible odor like that of dung. Something they had concocted with their vile magics, certainly. Alviva then plucked the needle out and pushed it back in, staining his skin with the ink over and over.

Lockhart had felt much worse pain than this, so he took it as another opportunity. The vespari squirmed with each press of the needle. Mabilia held him in place, but his goal wasn’t to escape her. His intent was to cut the rope with the knife still wedged in between his palm and the meat hook. With each movement, he felt the forward section of the knife tear against the rope, but the back section of the blade was slicing his palm open further and further. That was far worse than the needle pricking his flesh, but he kept tugging against it regardless.

None of the beldams noticed what he was doing, being too preoccupied with the hex Alviva engraved on his chest with their vile ink. That fat beldam was nearly finished though, and he had to hurry. Another strain against the knife. He felt the rope begin to fray. He’d nearly made it through. Blood, however, pooled in his palm, and with nowhere for it to go, it dripped down his arm. A drop splashed against his forehead. This caught the attention of Petronila.

“What’s this?” she asked.

The slender beldam raised her long finger to his forehead, scraping the blood off, and she licked it from her finger, while tracing the drop up. Lockhart had to move fast. One more hard tug, and the rope was severed. The vespari dropped, the knife fell with him, and Alviva stumbled backward. Lockhart’s hard leather boots landed on the cave’s rocky floor, but his other hand was still in Mabilia’s clutches. He had a plan to put a stop to that.

Lockhart grabbed the falling knife in midair with his bloodied but free hand. He swiped it at Petronila, causing her to back up along with Alviva, but neither of them were his target. Lockhart turned the knife toward Mabilia and sliced down against her wrist. The runed blade swept right through her flesh and came to a hard stop at her bone. Mabilia released her grip with a deep and terrible scream, but Lockhart held tight to his knife’s handle, tugging it away from her and peeling some of her flesh off as it dislodged from her bone.

The vespari lunged for Alviva next, but she moved away from him, her fat flesh jiggling with each step. Mabilia recovered from her wound faster than he would’ve hoped, and with a roar, she began to charge him. Petronila grabbed her from behind though, having circled around to that side of the cave when Lockhart wasn’t looking.

“No,” she whispered in her ear. “Look!” Petronila pointed to Lockhart’s chest. “The hex is finished. We just have to wait now.”

Alviva started laughing, her fat jiggling with each outburst. Behind her, Estrild joined in with a high-pitched cackle though she didn’t seem to know why she was laughing. Mabilia looked over at them, pain and anger still flush on her face. Petronila, however, glared with a wicked smile. Lockhart knew that Alviva claimed to lead this coven, but he saw the slender beldam as the most devious and the most to be concerned with.

“Let’s go,” Alviva told the others. “The hex will do the rest of the work.”

“But he--” Mabilia started, gripping the wound in her wrist.

“Silence!” the fat beldam told her. “We leave. Now. I will not repeat myself.”

Alviva turned around and opened a dark swirling portal that shimmered with her sorcery. She picked Estrild up, tossed her through, and then stepped through herself. Petronila was next. Mabilia took a final look at the vespari, grumbled, and finally turned away from Lockhart, passing through the portal.

Lockhart, meanwhile, stood there, panting with the bloody knife still in hand. Stupid as he knew it to be, he couldn’t just give up. Resolving himself to kill them there and now, he stepped forward, intending to follow them through the portal. The beldams had other plans for him though, as the portal closed behind them, abandoning him in that cave with the fresh ink dripping down his flesh. Exhausted and in terrible pain, Lockhart dropped to the ground. He’d faced the beldams ill prepared, and he’d had no hope of defeating them in such a state. Sliding his finger across the design on his chest, Lockhart tried to determine what exactly they had done to him.