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BIG TOG
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WHERE ARE YOU HIDING...
The voice whispered from the same dark crevices of her mind. The voice had been calling to her ever since she’d arrived in Visanthe. Savara was beginning to wonder if it had something to do with her missing memories. Maybe someone from her past was trying to reach her, to break through the seal on her mind. But the uncomfortable sound curdled her blood. Memory or not, she couldn’t imagine anything good coming from it. Where are you hiding... It hissed again, dragging her back to consciousness.
The thick scent of black coffee filled her nostrils. It smelled like death itself. The beans must have been burnt and the coffee over-boiled to produce such a pungent smell. It kickstarted the rest of her body, speeding her resting heart as if she’d drunk it herself. She wiggled her bare toes over something plush. A carpet? she wondered. Where am I? The last thing Savara remembered was the street erupting into flames and a writhing corpse, charred beyond the point of recognition.
With another heavy breath, she blinked open her eyes. The warm glow around the room burned in the back of her head, a headache not far behind. She tried to lift her hand to shield her eyes but to no avail. Something tight ate into her wrists, locking them at her sides. No matter how hard she struggled, her arms wouldn’t budge. As the haze in her vision began to clear, she spied the coil of ropes that bound her to the chair and reminded her finally of her capture.
Griffin sat beside her, stewing irritably about the metal clasps around his wrists.
“Griffin?” Savara whispered, still woozy from the smoke. “Where are we?”
“Don’t worry,” he replied. “I’ll get us out of here.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” said a deep and heavily accented voice from the other side of the room.
“Big Tog,” scoffed Griffin, clearly acquainted with their captor enough to name him by voice alone, and by the tone of his, regretfully so.
“Griffin, my boy, how long has it been?” The man appeared from the shadows. He wasn’t big in any respect—at least not anymore if the portraits on the wall were to be believed. The man in the painting was as wide as an ox, the man before them was average in height and more on the thin side. Two thickened braids of hair curled on either side of his head like ram’s horns. His eyes glowed a vicious yellow.
“Not long enough.” Griffin raised his brows. “You look like you’ve been through the wringer.”
The man he’d called Big Tog cackled heartily, and in his gaping mouth, Savara caught a glimpse of golden incisors.
“Wife has me on diet.” He showed himself off like a butcher brandishing meat. “I told her no one would take me seriously without the weight.”
“I’m sure you’re more than capable of making them,” Griffin snarled.
Big Tog grinned. His walk suggested he’d lost the weight in little time and hadn’t quite adjusted to the new posture his body fell into.
“Too right you are, my boy. I’m sorry about the rough greeting, it seems my boys have no class.” He nonchalantly picked the remains of his dinner from his teeth. “Not like you used to.”
“How about we skip the formalities, and you tell me what you’ve done with our friends.”
“Ah yes, them.” Big Tog sat himself down at a wooden desk and kicked his feet up. “They will be returned to you once I get what I want.”
“And what is it you want?” asked Savara nervously.
His eyes consumed her greedily like a starving wolf watching fattened sheep. “Funny you should ask, my little duck. My men spoke volumes of you. They seem to think you entered the palace, but that would be impossible... unless you happen to have Orrin blood running through your veins.”
“She’s none of your concern,” Griffin warned. His fists clenched between the metal bindings.
“Griffin, my boy, I had great patience for you once, but you have long since used it up. I will thank you now to keep your mouth shut, or I will shut it for you.” The scowl disappeared from his face as he turned back to Savara, replaced by growing intrigue. “It seems you also scared them with your little display of power earlier.”
The man in the alley, she remembered. The pulse of the man’s heart in her hands, the shrivelling of his lungs in his chest. The sensations crept into her palms out of memory alone. The tingle of power gently prodded her to try again, begging to be used. She wasn’t surprised that the men were scared; she’d scared herself. Savara closed her palms, stifling their murderous tendencies.
“I will see it now,” Big Tog added.
Savara furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
“You will give me a demonstration.”
“It’s not something I can just turn on and off when I please.”
He stalked towards her with his hands clasped behind his back, scrutinising her every feature, but taking a noticeable interest in her eyes. The smell of black coffee leached from him so much so that she wondered if he’d bathed in it.
“Who are you, child?” he said under his breath, squinting at her as though searching his memory for a face she knew he couldn’t place. “No matter. You will show me now.”
“Don’t,” Griffin growled, trying to pry his wrists free.
“You will be quiet,” he snarled. “And there is no use struggling. You will not get out of those bindings unless I say so.” With a snarky grin, he added, “You will find I learned my lesson from last time.”
“You have no idea what you are getting into,” Griffin replied.
“Precisely, my boy, why I must find out.”
“She’s not one of your cogs.”
“No,” he replied, running his tongue over the gold on his teeth. “I believe she is something of a much more interesting persuasion.” Big Tog strolled over to Griffin, turning a simple sharpened dagger around in his hands behind his back. Savara sensed the malice in the act, but she knew that if she could see the blade, Griffin couldn’t. Big Tog looked back at her with a smirk, loosening his grip over the dagger.
The sharpened edge glinted in the candlelight, raised high in the air. It swung down, aimed at Griffin’s beating heart. He hadn’t even processed the strike before it was inches from his chest.
“Stop!” Savara screamed. It should’ve cut straight through his skin. There should’ve been a river of blood. The knife and the hand holding it hitched in mid-air an inch shy of Griffin’s heart. Big Tog was caught in the same curl of power that she’d used on his lackey, but unlike his lackey, he fought back, pushing against her control. She felt it, the prodding of his soul against the contours of her power. His heart sped up, intimately aware of her grasp on him. Another tingle in her palms and he released the push on the knife. In turn, Savara released her hold on him.
Big Tog grinned, the light around them distilled as it caught on his golden incisors. With a theatrical flick of his wrist, he tossed the knife, embedding it in the wall opposite them, and stalked over to her once more. His yellow eyes sparkled with curiosity. “Exhilarating,” he breathed.
Savara refused to answer, knowing all too well what he meant. She’d felt him, all of him. Every muscle, every vein, every heartbeat. He may have kept a straight face, but there was terror in him. It was the kind of terror that had slowly built up after many years of inflicting death and knowing one day his time would come. His time had come and gone, his life spared by no merit of his own, and it was this experience that lit the fire in his eyes. Savara sensed something new had woken inside him, something devious that reminded her of hope—but wasn’t.
She couldn’t bring herself to admit how much the feeling enticed her too. How it tried to coax her into using more—into taking his beating heart and stopping it, just because she could. If he wasn’t afraid now, he was a fool. Savara had never been more afraid of anything in her life. Her powers had a mind of their own. They were bloodthirsty, and it frightened her to think that maybe part of her was too.
“When they told me what they saw, I couldn’t believe it. Naturally, I had to see for myself.” He paced up and down, plotting something wicked, she imagined. When the sinister grin returned to his face, she knew her fate was sealed. “I am a man of my word, child,” he began. “I promised your companions would be returned to you once I got what I desired.”
“Why do I get the feeling the demonstration wasn’t all you wanted?” she mumbled.
“Smart you are, my little duck,” he replied, pushing a stray hair back into his braided horns. “It is not much I ask, only a simple retrieval. You bring someone to me, I give two someones to you.”
Griffin shook his head firmly. Savara was told not to trust, let alone make deals with people here, but there would be no getting out unless she agreed. Big Tog was cruelty and malice wrapped in a recently downsized bottle. She’d rendered him powerless, almost killed him, and yet, she knew he could still murder the pair of them before she batted an eyelash. After what she’d done, the power she’d shown, it was either help the devil or remain his prisoner.
Savara frowned. “You swear you’ll return them?”
“I’ll do one better.” Big Tog licked his golden incisors and grinned. “I’ll take you to them.”
“Why?”
“Don’t think I’m doing you any favours, girl. It just so happens that our interests align for this brief moment in time.” He turned up his nose. “So, do we have a deal?”
She ignored Griffin’s protests. Big Tog was one problem she’d rather be rid of sooner than later. Jasper’s life was in danger, and that was more important than any favour she would have to repay. She closed her eyes and nodded, ignoring Griffin’s disapproving glare on her shoulders.
“And so pretty boy here doesn’t think ill of me later...” He strode past her, the casual clunk of his wooden heel on the plush carpet and then on the marble floor behind them sent shivers down her spine. He returned, twirling the dagger loosely in one hand, and took her face in the other. As he leaned in, she got another whiff of coffee accompanied strangely by a lavender oil he must have patted on his neck. Savara’s jaw tensed in his hands, which only made his smile grow.
“Such a gentle face...” He contemplated the youthful curves of it before pressing the blade into the top of her cheek. Savara tried to pry her chin from his grip, but he held firm, letting some of the blood trickle from the thin line onto the dagger. “It would be a shame to leave a greater scar.” With great showmanship, he sliced through his palm with the other side of the dagger. He turned the bloody incision to both her and Griffin before waving it over a candle. “I, Andreus Tog Larsen,” he began. The flames jumped from the candle to his hand consuming it in a deep red blaze. “...vow to return you,” he waved his other hand at her, asking for her name.
“Savara.”
“Savara...” he repeated in a bloodcurdling hiss.
“And Griffin,” she added.
Big Tog rolled his eyes. “...and this traitorous wretch, to your companions, unharmed, and without hindering in any way their rescue or safety, in exchange for your hand in my vendetta against the dark.”
“She will not help you with any further power grabs,” Griffin snarled.
“Some things, my boy, are worth more than power.” The flames surrounding the wound glowed bright red then orange, flickering every colour of the rainbow until they burned black. When they disappeared, the blood had crystallised in the wound, catching the light like sinister rubies. “My soul, little duck, is bound to our promise. This wound will remain until the promise is fulfilled, or until one of us is dead.” He smiled and whistled for his goons. “Now I must make good on my part.”
The same scent of ash and old cologne wafted through the door before the men did. The brutes that had attacked them in the alleyway appeared at the door, toying with different ropes and blindfolds between their fingers. They dealt with Griffin first, covering his mouth against his violent petitions until all his struggling ceased. Savara watched him go limp in the chair as the men proceeded to exchange one set of chains for another.
She knew she was next.
Big Tog stood up from his desk and placed a damp cloth over her nose. Smiling once more with coffee-ridden breath, he leaned in close and parted her hair at her ear. As her vision blurred, he whispered, his voice a soft string of dulcet tones falling gently from his lips.
“Don’t you worry about the soul bond killing you, my little duck,” he said as he brushed his finger over something hard on her cheek. “Because if you don’t make good on your part, I’ll kill you myself before it even gets the chance.” The softness disappeared. His wicked cackle accompanied her as the world faded to black.
