Page 59 of Lord of Ruin (The Age of Blood #2)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Isaac

I saac waited until night had fully set over Dameral, the bustle of the evening giving way to the utter silence that only came in the dark hours between midnight and dawn.

Despite the newness of his transformations, there was a primal instinct deep inside, a predator ready to slip loose.

He could feel the ache in his bones, the way his body wanted to shift and change.

To tear through this damned city, striking down all the parasites who thrived on blood and power, leaving a trail of viscera in his wake. It was no more than they deserved.

But he held himself tight, slipping through the dark streets as nothing more than a man in the shadows. There would be time for terror soon enough, but for now, discretion was key. First, he had to find his target without drawing undue attention to himself. After, though…

Then he could have his fun.

Dabney didn’t live in one of the grand townhouses, like his previous victims did, but on the third floor of a fine building of flats—he had done well enough for himself to be able to rent out an entire level of the building for his own comfort.

He lived alone, married to the job that he had dedicated so many years of his life to, and for that Isaac was thankful.

There was no spouse or children to work around.

That was a line that Isaac wasn’t sure he would be able to cross—after all, he had been that child once upon a time.

Hell, Isaac once would have admired a man like Dabney, would have thought they were kindred spirits.

He was a Blood Worker but not a noble, a man who had risen on the merits of his cruelty and cleverness.

He had learned the truth, though, all too harshly.

They were separated by too many things to count, from the color of their skin to the very fabric of their souls.

If Dabney and the other Blood Workers like him couldn’t even be convinced to accept Unblooded as people, then Isaac wanted nothing from them.

In the new world they were building, there would be no place for people like that, not if they hoped to have any sort of equality.

But Isaac wasn’t there to explore the foolish mistakes of his past. He had a home to invade and a man to murder.

He circled around the back, slipping through the narrow gaps between the buildings.

Like the grand homes of Aeravin, most housing units of this caliber had a secondary entrance for staff and repairmen, a way to keep the riff-raff away from the tenants, and Isaac was more than willing to take advantage of that.

The door was locked, but it didn’t take much for him to crush it, summoning the strength of his transformation, letting it eke out in small waves.

The crack of his fingers shattering and shifting, his nails sharpening into vicious claws.

The ache in his mouth as his fangs descended, canine teeth sharpening and elongating.

He stopped it there, as difficult it was, like trying to hold back the tide with his bare hands, slipping through his fingers as the bones of his body shifted beneath his shirt, his abdomen burning with the pain of something he did not even understand.

But Isaac swallowed it down, creeping through the door and up the servants’ staircase, his footsteps light and silent as he moved towards Dabney’s flat.

There were no wards to protect it—whether Dabney was unskilled at making them or just plain arrogant, Isaac didn’t know or care.

But it did make this easier. He dismantled the knob and lock the same way that he did the previous one, the metal scrunching and twisting under his grip with a screech before snapping off.

The sound of it echoed in his ears, loud and startling, but there was nothing Isaac could do about it.

Isaac threw himself into the apartment, the door closing quickly behind him.

He didn’t have a chance to give the flat more than a cursory glance, the furniture fine and well made, the walls hung with custom art, the rug under his boot a lush and intricate weave that must have cost a fortune to be imported.

Dabney enjoyed the fruits of his ill-gained work, and it just stoked the fires of rage burning in Isaac’s chest even hotter.

His target stumbled into sight, perching at the edge of a hallway that led into the main living space, looking as disheveled and disoriented as if he had just rolled out of bed, a dagger held in one hand.

But even caught off guard like this, Dabney was a beast of a man, his thick shoulders taking up the entire door frame, barrel-chested and broad.

He was like a warrior out of storybooks, strength written in the thick press of muscle on a sturdy frame.

Isaac had to bite back the worry that budded, the primal fear that came with facing a man so much larger than himself.

Because this was not to be a simple bare-knuckled brawl.

Isaac had grown so much, no longer just a Blood Worker, but a monster.

A manananggal. And with the power of his fangs and claws and other gifts his experiments had wrought, he could break Dabney long before Dabney could break him.

He bared his fangs in the shine of moonlight, his tongue rolling out and scenting the air. There was a fine meal in front of him, waiting to be devoured.

“Blood and steel,” Dabney gasped, staggering back. “What in the hells are you?”

“Do you not recognize me, Dabney?” Isaac asked, the words distorted by the length of his proboscis-like tongue. “I remember you. What did you love to call me? Ah, right. An upstart.”

Dabney shivered, mouth dropping open in recognition, but he raised his blade, taking a defiant pose. The dagger was a thin, narrow bit of protection that would not help him in the slightest. “De la Cruz,” he spat, dripping venom.

Isaac shifted his footing, not enough to be seen as an outright challenge, but enough that he was ready to launch himself forward at a second’s notice. “So, you do remember me?”

“Such as you are,” Dabney returned, with an attempt at a sneer that bled out into sickening fright. “The rumors are true—you have made yourself into a monster to match what you are on the inside.”

Isaac laughed, a harsh and guttural noise that didn’t even sound human. “You haven’t seen the half of it.”

Releasing the hold he had on himself, Isaac let his body rip itself apart.

The wings grew from his shoulders, a great tear of flesh and bone that cast them in deeper shadows, blocking out the light from the window.

But despite that, he could still see every minute expression that crossed Dabney’s face as terror overtook him in stages.

First, his eyes widened, the whites of them round and clear, as the pure, primitive awareness of being prey hit him.

Second, the dagger fell from limp fingers, clattering on the ground, his only hope of protection gone.

Third, the bitter, pungent smell of urine filled the room, darkening his sleep pants.

Isaac bared his fangs and launched himself forward, roaring as a new agony took him over.

As he closed the distance between himself and Dabney, his feet remained where they were, rooted to the ground.

His torso stretched, his flesh pulling and constricting, like dough rolled out across too much space before it tore .

This wasn’t some small gash, wasn’t a small spill of guts and intestines hanging loose.

No, this was more drastic, his entire upper body splitting from his lower half with a burst of pain that nearly threatened to pull him under.

But as he landed on Dabney, claws sinking into skin and drawing blood to the surface, Isaac’s hunger sparked to life. The kind of hunger that he couldn’t even begin to quantify, all-consuming that it was, taking over every sense and blanking out his mind.

The force of impact toppled Dabney onto the floor, Isaac following him down, a disembodied torso hanging off the terrified Blood Worker.

The rest of him had been left across the room, and Isaac could feel the slick slide of his insides against Dabney’s legs as the man tried to shove a thigh up into the twisting mass of him in a desperate grapple for leverage.

But there was none to be found, and Isaac slid his way down Dabney’s body, as delicate and deliberate as a lover, before he sank his teeth into the man.

Dabney shrieked as Isaac ripped his head back, leaving an open, sopping mess of meat and blood where his stomach should be. Trashing against his attacker, Dabney struck uselessly at Isaac, his fists little more than an annoyance as he pounded at Isaac’s shoulders.

Isaac held him in place, pressed one overly large hand against the man’s large waist, claws curled delicately around it as he pinned Dabney to the floor, the bone compressing with a satisfying crunch.

His tongue pressed against the wound he had torn in Dabney’s body, the flavor of such powerful blood explosive in his mouth as he lapped at it.

As he needed more .

He delved deeper, his tongue almost prehensile as it slithered deeper into Dabney’s body, burrowing through the muscle and fat to the soft viscera beneath.

He drank it in, quite literally, the blood and small chunks of meat sucked up into his mouth.

Each little sip poured down his throat, more intoxicating that the finest whisky, more nourishing than any meal that he had ever known.

Dabney whimpered and sobbed underneath him, too taken by fear and pain to even bother fighting back as Isaac rooted around in his body, wrapped his tongue around organs, squeezing them till they burst—the sweetest juice that he had ever known as he drank the Blood Worker dry.

Each little burst of flavor on his tongue made him stronger, the magic that he had carried in his veins compounding, an exponential growth that he did not even know how to calculate.

And despite the way his own innards slid along the floor, blood smeared on the hardwood planks, he had never felt more invincible.

Soon enough, Dabney slumped back, the last of his life draining away as Isaac pulled the wound into a gash, the pulverized remains of his insides swirled around into a soup resting in a bowl of human meat.

Dipping his head forward, his mouth to the rim, Isaac fed upon it like a frenzied beast, unsure of when he would find his next meal.

He fed until it was done, till all that was left was a gaping hole in the center of Dabney’s corpse. The body pulled apart, the cavity destroyed and emptied, the pain writ into Dabney’s expression as his eyes stared up at the ceiling, never to move again.

It was finished, and so he pushed himself up on his elbows.

His stomach was so bloated with blood that he had to crawl back to where he had left the other half of his body, his wings fluttering helplessly on his back, doing little more than providing balance.

His claws left deep gouges in the carpet, the fluids spilling down his chest and out his gaping hole of a body staining it a deep russet, the color of blood dead and dying.

But he didn’t care about that. He had never intended to leave behind a clean scene, the crime clear for all to see. It was a shocking scene of horror, one that even the Guard would not be able to explain.

And his third goal was completed.

He had the power he needed to gather, that only a Blood Worker was able to provide, his full transformation to a manananggal complete at last. He had slain Dabney, Captain of the Guard, and the chaos that followed would only help their cause.

But this—this torn and mutilated corpse—was the final victory. The terror such a murder would spark, spreading through Aeravin like a wildfire. It was a message; one he knew the Eternal King would understand.

There would be no peace in Aeravin so long as Isaac lived. He had made himself into the kind of monster perfect for taking down Blood Workers, an evolution of everything they had hoped to be, and there was nothing on this earth that could stop him.

He reached his lower half, his legs kneeling on the ground and the torn, open part of his body sitting there, waiting to be rejoined. Circling around behind himself, he flapped his wings, getting enough air for him to launch himself up and over.

The two ends of himself reached for each other, like the pull of a magnet, and his body fused itself back together with much less trauma than the way it had torn itself apart.

The monstrous bits of him vanished as his body re-formed—the wings folded into his back, the claws faded away, leaving behind simple, human fingers.

The tongue receded along with the fangs, his jaw snapping back into place.

And he was left wonderfully, terribly, hopelessly human once again.

He staggered to his feet, not even bothering to look behind him and the carnage he had wrought. He moved towards the door, snatching the long winter cloak that hung on a simple wooden peg, tossing it around his shoulders to cover the mess he had made of himself.

And with that, he snuck back out into the night, disappearing back into the shadows from whence he came. All while trying to ignore the dreadful truth—that even as vicious and cruel as Isaac had been, there was a part of him that had enjoyed it.

That was already looking forward to his next kill.