He was too slow.

  The cloak that they’d made out of the nather cat’s hide had kept the ability to hide the wearer in shadows. Considering that the storage room hadn’t been covered in Camadt blood, I should have known something like this was going to happen, but Starna had been so excited by the kitten that I’d forgotten that an empty room wasn’t always empty. Now that I knew that the cloak could thwart an Elementalist’s powers, I knew exactly how dangerous it could be in a Vampire’s possession, but I should have guessed that considering the Vampires were willing to move half of their coven to Hepool until we got back.

  Deflecting the first slash gouged a deep cut in the blade of my sword. The poacher had gone for Starna first, which forced me to extend myself as I moved to put my body in between the two.

  One of the upsides of being a Singiver was that I could just take an attack and then give it back to the person who had inflicted it. The downside was that there were some toxins that would destroy a body if they were forcibly removed with a Sineater ability. During the Sineater purge before the Great War, the poison had been used on everything whenever there was a conflict. This had forced Sineaters to be more reserved with their healing. While most of the plants had been destroyed over the years, with many functioning as just another flower, the threat was still very real. My father had drilled into me that even though I could win by getting stabbed or cut and then giving the wound back to my opponent, I didn’t need to rely on it every time.

  Given that this group dealt in smuggling illegal items, there was a good chance that there was some of the sineater killer somewhere in this room. So instead of removing the dagger from the fight by letting him stab me, I deflected it, earning deep gouges in the steel blade of my sword.

  I pushed the attacker back with a horizontal slash from my sword. The followup slice sheared the end of my blade off as the other man blocked it with the diamond edge. I had to take a step back as he advanced, so I threw the ruined weapon at him, but unlike the others, he ducked under it, while keeping enough space between us so I couldn’t touch him. Since he wasn’t going to let this turn into a brawl, I drew the second diamond dagger off of my belt and squared my stance.

  The outline of the man surged forward, releasing a handful of flour as he stabbed at my neck. The mist around us solidified into a red barrier as Starna used her Elemental ability to turn the blood into a liquid shield. The white powder turned red and clumps fell as the liquid turned into mud and robbed her of her ability to control it.

  The man tried to back up to avoid running into it, but his forward momentum was already carrying his arm into the barrier. The reversed slash and hesitation allowed me to slice the wrist of his right hand as I twisted to my left around the barrier he’d help to create.

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  Thunk

  CLANG

  “OWWW!!!”

  The man slipped as he grabbed the stump of his hand, falling to his rear. I reversed the grip on the dagger in my right hand and whipped the butt of the dagger across the blurry outline of his head. He twisted, falling face-first on the floor, lying there unmoving.

  I kicked the dagger as I replaced the daggers to their sheaths on my belt, then put my left knee on the center of his back while I stripped the cloak off of the man. The moment I got the bloody arm out of the sleeve, the magic failed, revealing the blood-soaked black cloak covering a fifty-something man with gray hair.

  “You okay?” I wiped the blood mist off of my face as I picked up my ruined sword.

  “We’re fine; he didn’t hit us.” Starna juggled the kitten and moonstone as she tried to get the mana battery back in its bag.

  “Can you tell if there is anyone else—” I shivered as the sticky liquid on me pulled off, taking most of the evidence of there being a fight away.

  “Thanks.” I glanced around the room, noting that the mist was gone everywhere except for the door, which was covered in a liquid wall of blood. “That’s smart.” I gestured at her barrier. “I wonder how many more of these they made.”

  “It doesn’t look like there’s any crafted gear.” The beautiful Elf’s face contorted as she looked up from a crate she was looking through. “I need a bath.”

  “What?” I took a leather cord and turned over the poacher to tie him up, but there was no need. Foam leaked out of his mouth from the poison in his tooth that my dagger had ruptured. I dropped the cord on top of the body and walked over to the horrified Elf.

  “Is that…” Starna hugged the kitten in her arms tighter.

  “Yep, that’s a Nevnua horn.” I didn’t have to touch the rhino horn to know that it didn’t belong to an animal. It was labeled with a sticker on the base. Jars of teeth and claws lined the bottom of the crate, each one labeled by which race they belonged to. I moved the wooden container and opened the one under it. That one was filled with bones. I shook my head. “This whole place needs to be burned.”

  “I can cast a fire spell.”

  “Don’t waste your magic.” I walked over to the pile of sacks by one of the drying racks and grabbed a sack. “Vin is going to be disappointed that we don’t have to hunt a nether cat anymore, but we got one of the things we came here for.”

  I put the cloak, the other diamond dagger, and my broken sword pieces in the sack. “Anything here you want?”

  Starna kissed the back of the kitten’s head. “This is all I need.”

  I nodded and motioned at the barrier. “I guess we get to keep exploring.”

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