[Lord Stanley]

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jacolinn Peraux steered his hovercar across the hilly land of the Vamp Empire. A wealthy businessman, entrepreneur extraordinaire, he practically had cash flowing out of his ears—at least, in his imagination. Someday, when he arrived in Rivermouth, and he opened up his new ale house down there by the coast…

He glanced at a video display sign beside the road. “314 kilometers to Rivermouth,” he sighed, and shoved the energy pedal further.

Jacolinn switched his steering over to Cruise Control. He rested one hand on the wheel and shook his head, slumping lower in his Slig-skin chair. Maybe Mother was right after all, he thought in depression. When she said to stick to the family trade as an executioner, maybe I should have put more thought into it.

The Peraux line—a name literally meaning “one who decapitates”—had been executioners for decades. But Jacolinn had been an oddity in the family: he just couldn’t stand the sight of blood, or death, and couldn’t stand to hear any screams.

That was why he’d never become a big man straight away: he couldn’t stand to have slaves in his service, since they needed whipping to work and whipping made screams. He’d always had to scrounge out a living doing menial tasks for little pay, without the use of slaves.

But now, once I get this big break in Rivermouth…The thought of arriving in the big oceanside town made his spirits rise again.

As he retook control of his hovercar, he noticed there was a being standing on the side of the road. Jacolinn squinted ahead at the figure, and saw it was one of the Fangus species, standing by the road jerking his thumb in the signal for hitchhiking.

Jacolinn thought about his response for a moment. Since the only Fangus in the Vamp Empire were slaves, and since all slaves had tracker collars when they were sent out on errands like this, this slave would not dare to harm him. There was no real harm in making some other Vamp’s business run quicker, helping his slave get his chores done quicker.

He slowly pulled the hovercar to a stop with his passenger side to the Fangus. The slave was quite large for his species—not as tall as Jacolinn, but much broader across the chest and sporting the unsightly body bulges they named ‘muscle.’ His clothes were fairly ragged and his face tight, but Jacolinn could not blame a slave for being resentful of his position in life.

He tapped a button on the dashboard, and part of the hovercar wall dissipated, leaving a fair-sized opening for the Fangus to enter. “On an errand, slave?” he asked, as the Fangus seated himself.

The slave turned his head and looked at him, a hard look that made Jacolinn freeze in his seat momentarily. “I,” the Fangus growled, in a voice deeper and darker than evil itself, “am no slave.”

Jacolinn swallowed; there was something malicious in the Fangus’ voice. And if he wasn’t a slave…?

“Then,” he whispered, “who are you?”

“They call me Fangus Klot.”

* * *

Klot reached out, grabbed the Vamp by the neck, and—ignoring the shrieks of protest and shock—tossed the car’s owner out onto the grass through the open door on the passenger side. Klot scooted into the driver’s seat, closed the door with the tap of a button, and accelerated.

He did not smile at the humorous sounds of the Vamp shouting for him to stop and come back; he put the energy pedal to the metal and the hovercar sped across the highway as if it had a demon on its tail. He threw the wheel in a tight turn that turned the nose of the car back toward the Vamp capital city.

“Here I come, Emperor Fathead,” he whispered to himself.

But soon, his words would not just be a whisper; they would be a roar that all the Vamps heard, when he stood at the pinnacle of the emperor’s palace and threw their leader to his doom.

The thought brought the first smile of the month.

* * *