Midnight Monster Club by Gerhard Gehrke

Author:Gerhard Gehrke [Gehrke, Gerhard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lucas Ross Publishing
Published: 2020-05-13T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

SPRAT HELLARD DECIDED he liked catacomb season.

With so many fel and purebloods intermingling in Stockade Square, he was free to move about with little notice. Sure, things might be trickier when the sun came up, but for the moment he lost himself with the revelers and the food and the music. Pretended he belonged. But as the last musical troupe put their instruments away, he knew it was time to go back to work.

Digger had vanished. The sheriff was gone too. He had missed them and didn’t spot Isabel anywhere in the crowd. More than a few faces glanced up at him now that the singing and music were over. Their giddiness of being out after curfew was yielding to cold sobriety and the realization that an ogre walked among them which wasn’t on anyone’s leash.

It was only a fantasy to assume these people would ever grow accustomed to an ogre in their midst. Even in a city with a large fel population, he would never fit in. Diregloom was a lie, and he couldn’t fathom how these people endured and celebrated games that required their blood to be spilled.

Try as he might, he hadn’t made any headway in finding others who would do anything to change matters.

He imagined for a moment how it would be if fel ruled the island. Purebloods would be sent to live in squalor while his kind could be out on a night like tonight. He chuckled at the thought. Maybe they’d have their own games, pureblood versus pureblood, and the winner would get to spittle-shine the boots of every fel who toiled in the factories and workshops.

He dismissed the fantasy. The reality was that there would have to be a fight or the fel would be gone in another twenty years, outlawed, worked to death, or hunted. Much as ogres had been. The fel on the mainland were already devastated and freely killed by Duke Tito and the other pureblood rulers.

He had tried to convince his former bandit gang of the need to unite the fel, but they were too shortsighted to see beyond their next opportunity for pillage. And then the Karanog had started allowing purebloods to run with them.

But Diregloom at least held the promise of a few who might be swayed. Just finding any brave enough to stand up to a pureblood had been hard enough, until he’d come across the card game at the Dragon and Rose. Digger and his friends had done just that. Now he had to find out where his new friends had gone off to.

Someone bumped into him. As he looked up at Hellard, the light of the overhead lanterns revealed a youthful face. The young man’s smile faded and his expression quickly filled with terror.

“You can scream now,” Hellard said.

The man fled. As Hellard watch him go, he spied another among the diminished crowd who glanced purposefully away. The figure wore a broad hat and high-collared coat and a sword dangled from his belt. But Hellard also spotted a dark mark on the side of the man’s face.

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