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THE IMMORTAL TRIUMVIRATE were chatting in their private sitting room in their headquarters when they felt their link to Malachi break. Lord Dallinar dropped his tumbler and whiskey splashed all over the carpet.
“Damn it!” Lord Graham growled. “That’s two assassins we’ve lost now!”
“Who sent Malachi on his final mission?” Lord Kreaton asked, looking at his allies suspiciously. “Did you send him after Sebastian?” They’d decided his rival was too dangerous to send either Malachi or Sorcha after him.
“I haven’t sent any assassination orders to him for the past two nights,” the fairy said. He stepped over the puddle that was soaking into the carpet to pour himself another glass of alcohol. The fallen tumbler and stain both vanished before he reached the armoire.
“I didn’t send him after your enemy,” the alpha werewolf declared. “He murdered a shifter for me last night.”
“He completed the mission I sent him on last night as well,” Lord Kreaton said. “If none of us gave him a job tonight, then why is he dead?” A flicker of movement next to an armchair caught his eye, but nothing was there when he glanced over. He could smell the distinctive odor of a rodent and grimaced. He made a mental note to have a lackey hunt it down and kill it later.
“Perhaps Malachi ran into a rogue shifter, or a starving vampire,” Lord Dallinar said slyly. “It has become dangerous in the Vampire and Shifter Districts with so many of your kind without alphas or masters to control them.”
“Why would he be in either of our Districts if he didn’t have a mission?” Lord Graham asked in annoyance.
“He was an incubus,” the fairy lord said with a shrug. “He was probably hunting for a woman to satiate his needs.”
“Sorcha is the only assassin we have left now,” the master vampire pointed out dourly. “We’re going to need to replace Eden and Malachi.”
“We should summon Wort and advise him about this development,” Lord Graham said, then waited expectantly.
Lord Kreaton rolled his eyes that the shifter couldn’t be bothered to perform such a trivial task. “I want to send a letter to the satyr known as Wort,” he said. A sheet of paper appeared in front of him and a quill jotted down his instructions.
Lord Dallinar took a seat on the couch as the letter sped off. “We need to decide when we’re going to advise the population that we expect them all to wear a costume on Halloween,” he said.
“We should spring it on them the night before we perform the Energy Tax,” the alpha said with a malicious grin.
“That would hardly give them enough time to create a costume,” Lord Kreaton said in a cutting tone.
“Since it’s the fiftieth anniversary of Nox’s creation, I want it to be a special night,” the fairy said. “I want the costumes to look authentic, not like something that was cobbled together out of cardboard and old bedsheets.”
“This party is your idea,” Lord Graham said. “Why don’t you decide when we should tell the citizens?”
“Three months warning should give them enough time to create something suitable,” Lord Dallinar decided. He snapped his fingers as another idea came to him. “We can have a contest to see who is wearing the best costume in each District. The winner can be chosen before we extract the Energy Tax from them.”
His allies shared amused, condescending looks at his enthusiasm. “You’re more excited about this than the humans used to be before the authorities banned Halloween forever,” the leech said sardonically. They’d heard that all holidays had been cancelled and that wearing costumes had been outlawed.
A knock sounded a few minutes later, interrupting their plans to make Halloween as memorable as possible. “Enter,” Lord Kreaton said.
Wort pushed the door open and clomped inside. Not much taller than Lord Dallinar, the satyr was several hundred years old. He had a broken, mashed nose, pointy ears, coarse sandy brown hair and flat brown eyes. He had the muscular body of a man from the waist up and the gray fur, hooves and tail of a goat from the waist down. He wore a ratty pair of brown trousers and a shabby looking brown vest. “My lords,” he said and bowed. His voice was as rough as his calloused hands.
“We’ve recently lost two of our assassins,” Lord Kreaton said, forgoing any pleasantries.
Wort showed no reaction at all to that news, which didn’t surprise his masters. He was a vicious thug who didn’t care about anyone except himself. “Which one is left?” he asked curiously.
“Just Sorcha,” Lord Graham replied. “She’s good, but she can’t kill all of our enemies by herself.”
“We require you to select new candidates and begin training them immediately,” the master vampire instructed him. “Dispose of any trainees who don’t make the cut, just like you did the last time.”
“Aye, my lord,” the satyr said with a grin that showed all of his teeth. “I already have a few younglings in mind who I think will have the knack for killing.”
“Get to it, then,” Lord Dallinar said, wrinkling his nose at the filthy state of the creature’s shaggy fur. He smelled like a barn animal.
“Aye, my lord,” Wort said, then bowed again and left the room. They heard his cloven hooves stomping off down the hallway.
“I dislike that creature immensely, but he is an excellent trainer,” the fairy lord said.
“Wort has been murdering people for centuries,” Lord Kreaton said. “He’s perfect for our needs.”
“Sorcha won’t be happy when she finds out Malachi is dead,” Lord Dallinar said. “She came to visit me and demanded I tell her who killed Eden.” He snorted out a laugh as his allies exchanged another look.
“Did you tell her Sebastian was responsible for the succubus’ demise?” the master vampire asked.
His small ally’s brows furrowed. “I can’t remember,” he confessed with a shrug. “Would it matter if I did tell her?”
“She could have told Malachi,” Lord Graham said in realization. “The incubus probably tried to track Sebastian down and assassinate him out of revenge.”
“What a fool,” Lord Kreaton said contemptuously. “Eden was only his half-sister. What a waste to throw his life away for her.”
“Sorcha won’t make that mistake,” Lord Dallinar said confidently and took a sip of whiskey. “She knows she’s no match for an ancient, powerful master vampire. I told her so myself.”
“It’ll take years before the trainees will be good enough to assist her with the eliminations,” the shifter said in annoyance. “How will we keep the rebels in check if we can’t have the dissenters assassinated on a regular basis?”
“The rebels don’t stand a chance of being able to defeat us now,” Lord Kreaton reminded them smugly. “Not now that I’ve destroyed the instructions on how to use the artifact that someone smuggled into the city years ago.”
“It was clever of you to force the idiots who approached you to destroy their copies, then to have Malachi and Sorcha assassinate them,” Lord Dallinar said and raised his tumbler in a salute.
“I know,” the leech said in self-satisfaction.
“Back to the Halloween party,” the fairy said and the werewolf groaned beneath his breath. Lord Graham hauled himself to his feet and loped over to the armoire. He was going to need alcohol to get him through yet another discussion about the upcoming event.
