The speakers hidden in the old stonework played as Verin worked. He’d been studying the sample for hours. Days, maybe more? He’d only realised time had passed thanks to the mild cramping in his stomach for blood and the infuriating blurring of his thoughts.
‘The blood matches,’ Verin said into the phone. ‘The Empyreal in the alley is your Huntbringer.’
‘What’s been done to him?’ asked Callum.
Callum had swanned in and dropped off the new sample that coated a curious metal pipe a few days ago, disappearing just as quickly.
Verin had been able to isolate what in the blood had changed it so much and was fascinated to discover that it wasother blood.
‘What about the Palmers’ sample from Freya’s portrait?’ Callum asked.
‘Ah.’ Verin looked to the tiny, perfect sample.
Somethingcoiled within it, something he couldn’t quite discern. Whatever it was, it wasalmostalive,despite the years it had been outside a body.
‘The blood is, to put it bluntly … a masterpiece. Some religious part of me might think …’
‘What?’ Callum asked, intrigue adding a dark timbre to the word.
Verin sighed. ‘Nothing. Now stop bothering me, I’ll call when I have news.’
‘Grumpy menace,’ Callum said, hanging up.
Verin allowed himself a smile.
He reached through a set of bookshelves that opened onto an enclosed room where he kept his most special samples. It still had its dark panelling and a few paintings, these reminding him of the tale the Empyreals had told him and the mythographer’s daughter had spun.
He couldn’t help but feel the whisper of an answer.
Amid his many books on creature blood – which he had, in most part, written himself – there was one obscure text he treasured.
A book describing the goddessblood legend.
There, in the gilded pages, was an illustrated drop of blood. It was stylised amid a gold border of Irish knotwork, jewelled somehow, perhaps with crushed ruby.
The painting came to his mind: a lost masterpiece, the sole accurate image ever painted of an Irish god.
Whether it had been destroyed or stolen, no one knew. There were only whispers of what it looked like, or who might have painted it. All they could confirm was that it was larger than life-size and painted with oils in the academic style of the 1800s. But the story it represented …
Was it possible?
He’d collected blood from every creature imaginable. But there was one being whose blood he’d never obtained.
In all his years he’d never sampled the blood of an Old God. A Fomóir, yes. It was one of his greatest treasures, and he would guard it and its secret with his life.
But an Old God? Now, that was a sample he’d die for. Sometimes he grieved not being born thousands of years earlier for the chance. His gaze slid to the vial. He was loath to risk tasting it.
It seemed, though, that a chance to try would be forced upon him.
No matter how silent the assassin was, they still had a beating heart. It was slow, achingly so, and made Verin’s fangs extend while they made their way through his house.
Verin picked up the blood pigment the Palmers had left him and emerged from the library as the assassin came inside. FromCallum’s description, Verin had no doubt this was the infamous Huntbringer.
‘So, you’re their special weapon,’ Verin said. ‘I suspected we’d meet eventually.’
It didn’t speak. Only watched him in silence.
That was fine.
