The Chronicles of Breed Box Set Read online

  The Chronicles of Breed

  Books 1 - 3

  K.T. Davies

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text Copyright © 2018-2019 K.T. Davies

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author or publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by Scimitar Media

  www.scimitar-media.co.uk

  ISBN-13:97819997474

  Cover design by Scimitar Media

  Copyright © 2018-2019 Scimitar Media Ltd.

  Original cover art by Michael Gauss

  Contents

  Dedication

  Dangerous To Know

  Dangerous To Know

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Tooth And Claw

  Tooth And Claw

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Something Wicked

  Something Wicked

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Free Books

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  To Raven and Gabe,

  the best rum crew a cove could wish for

  Dangerous To Know

  Dangerous To Know

  THE CHRONICLES OF BREED: BOOK ONE

  K.T. DAVIES

  1

  There’s nothing quite as exhilarating as heedless, headlong flight, when fear of the unknown is banished by the sure and certain knowledge that whatever is ahead cannot be as dreadful as that which is behind. It’s liberating, like being a child again, free of all constraints born of thought or reason. Although, truth be told, as wild as my childhood had been this was the first time I’d ever been chased by a dragon.

  Even though my situation was sliding rapidly from dire to fatal, every fiber of my being sang with the joy of being alive. I let out a loud whoop as I leaped a boulder and glissaded at speed down an ice-sheathed slope, scattering talus in my wake. My shout rang across the mountain, a challenge as much as an exultation.

  Not to be outdone, the dragon answered with an ear-splitting roar. Thus warned, I dived into a stand of knotted pines as it spewed a mouthful of frosty bile in my direction. A wash of ice glazed the copse. Leaves shattered like glass, trunks and branches cracked like old bones. I escaped all but the merest lick of cold fire, but the slight splash was enough to peel the skin from my shoulder.

  I stumbled, arms windmilling, feet scrabbling for purchase. The second I regained my balance, I dug my claws into the frozen ground and propelled myself down the mountain. My thoasan father had blessed me with his race’s superior speed and agility, a gift that had kept me alive longer than I probably deserved. Alas, my human mother had cursed me with the stamina of her breed. The pace was hard and the dragon relentless. Though I sped downhill like an arrow, the beast was devouring my lead with every furious beat of its coriaceous wings.

  It seemed that, in this rare instance, crime had not paid. It was a sad state of affairs, but not one that I’d live long enough to regret if my icy friend had anything to do with it. Thus disillusioned, although highly motivated, I sprinted from the snarling jaws of death. Provoked by necessity to exert itself, my mind began to race as fast as my feet. The thought occurred that if I discarded the sapphire I’d stolen, the dragon might let me be, but then the wise words of Mother leaped to mind. ‘Hope is for fools, and only losers rely on luck. More wine!’ I could almost see the old dear, slouched gracelessly across the Rat Bone Throne, majestically drunk, and sneering at my predicament.

  Tossing the stone would be pointless, the last act of a desperate cull. Why on earth would the great, flying turd-sack let me go when it could retrieve its treasure after it had turned me into a frozen smear on the mountainside? It wouldn’t. Like me, the big ugly bastard was greedy and vicious. Even if throwing the gem worked and I escaped from this particular pot of arsepickle, I’d be leaping from the jaws of one monster into the arms of another, deadlier fiend. To return to Mother and the Guild empty-handed would invite a far harder death than any the dragon could mete out. My dear mama had elevated brutality to an art form, nay, a philosophy, a meditation on suffering.

  Another roar whipped snow and dirt into an icy shroud, a thunderous stomp sent jagged fractures racing down the mountain. I narrowed my eyes against the blistering glare and glanced over my shoulder. The dragon was tearing its way through the knot of pine less than thirty feet behind me. It paused a moment, fixed its pale, blue gaze upon me and bared its saber fangs. In that moment, the air was awed to stillness and the beating of my heart seemed to falter. There was death, sharp and cold. While my eyes drank in the full measure of my doom, my legs kept running, trying to save with speed what I had failed to protect with wit. They were doing well, up to the point that I stepped into nothing.

  I pitched forwards and rebounded off the rough sides of a deep fissure. The breath was hammered from my lungs. I fell, clawed at rock and earth, tried to latch onto anything to slow my descent. Darkness yawned beneath me, but before I was swallowed by the baleful unknown I managed to grab an outcrop of stone and hang there, legs swinging in the inky void. A steady drizzle of grit and snow rained from above. I adjusted my grip so that I could pull myself back up into the fissure but the rock I was holding came away in my hand.

  My thoasan instincts trumped my human ineptitude and I landed prone, arms and legs outstretched spreading the impact of the fall. Myriad stars exploded before my eyes, lighting the darkness. I squinted through the fireworks at the grey hole far above me. When the hole vanished I had wit enough to roll aside. A torrent of icy vomit gushed down the hole, turning
the ground where I had been lying into a hissing mirror of brittle glass. I laughed before I passed out, lulled by the sound of the dragon venting its impotent fury on the mountainside.

  I’m not sure how long I was unconscious, all I know is that when I came round, everything hurt. My hair spines had saved my skull from cracking like an egg against the hard floor but the brain within was feeling somewhat scrambled. I pawed my face and traced tears of dried blood to a sticky gash on my forehead. As I flexed each limb to see what still worked, a chorus of aches and pains sang a song of cuts and bruises. I sat up and brushed the grit out of the raw flesh of my frost-burned shoulder. Considering that I’d just been chased by a very angry dragon, I’d got off lightly.

  When the world stopped spinning, I peered into the darkness. I was in a cave that a human might describe as ‘pitch black’, but I could see through the varying layers of darkness. Upon inspection, I adjusted my initial appraisal. It wasn’t a cave, it was a large, carved chamber with several exits. The ravages of time had taken its toll on the room. Once beautiful sculptures and carvings had collapsed into piles of rubble. I drew breath, tasted fetid air, the musty stink of decomposition, and something else. There was another scent in the mix, something I couldn’t quite place. I drew a deeper breath, let the smell roll over the buds of my partially bifurcated breed-muddled tongue. It was an acrid-smelling taste, a mix of fear-sweat, sulfur, and anger.

  I wasn’t alone.

  Shaking off the effects of the fall, I sprang up, drew my blades, and scribed an arc in the air before me. It was my way of showing anything that might be sizing me up that it wasn’t worth the pain of trying to find out what half human, half thoasa tasted like. Nothing moved, but the smell lingered, clawing at the edge of my senses. As much as I enjoy playing ‘stab in the dark’, time was against me. I had to get out and get home with my prize before Mother sent my fellow Guild Blades to hunt me down.

  I summoned the words of a spell to mind and a fist-sized ball of light bloomed before me. I sent the pale sphere towards the recess where the smell of anger was strongest. Sure enough, hunched beneath an arch of fallen masonry was a thing.

  No bigger than a malnourished, human child, its skin was mottled grey and its wrinkled head was far too big for its spidery body. It was wearing a ragged shirt and breeches of an ancient design. It blinked a pair of large, pure black eyes, and scratched nervously at the cobweb wisps of hair that garnished its head and pointed ears. It was a pathetic looking creature, a cross between a very old human and a very young one, but I did not lower my swords just yet. I’d come across some dangerous coves prowling the sewers and back alleys of Appleton that had looked just as harmless as this scrapling.

  It raised its hands to shield its eyes from the light. “Don’t hurt me. I mean you no harm, I did you no harm as you lay there insensible.” Its voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, as though it was unused to talking.

  “What the fuck are you?” I demanded, holding it at sword point.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” it asked.

  “No, why should it be?” I didn’t give a damn what genus of goblin it belonged to, I was more concerned with how I was going to get out of here and off the mountain without being eaten by an angry dragon. The thing took a wary step towards me, mindful of the steel between us. It scratched the tiny horn buds that sprouted from its forehead, marking it as a descendent of the infernal demonspawn that fought in the Schism War. It stared at me with its huge, dark eyes and folded its arms.

  “You’re an imp of some kind.” I ventured unenthusiastically.

  It straightened up, puffed out its bony chest. “I, am a demon.”

  I snorted. “Are you indeed? A demon of what, pray tell?”

  It cleared its throat. “I am a tormentor of scribes.”

  “A who of what?” I wasn’t sure that I’d heard it correctly.

  It set its wizened face in what I suspected was supposed to be a righteous frown and planted its bony little hands on its hips. “I steal nibs, sometimes entire quills, and upon occasion, sealing wax and the odd scrap of vellum.” I didn’t hear what else it said as by this point because I was laughing too hard. Not only had I almost been frozen to death by a dragon, admittedly, one that I had provoked, but I was now stuck in a subterranean somewhere, with a mad goblin for company. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

  “That’s very petty,” I said when I finally stopped laughing.

  It did its best to glower. “I’m a specialist.”

  “I thought demons were supposed to ravage and destroy and lay waste to civilizations, that kind of thing, not steal pens.”

  “Have you ever seen a scribe hunting for a favorite nib? Or been there when one has discovered the ink has dried up because someone, me, has left the lid off the pot, hmm?”

  “I can’t say that I have.”

  It wagged a finger at me. “Well, let me tell you, it can lead to a great deal of destruction when you steal the pen of a scholarly type. They are, by and large, a highly-strung breed, given to wild fits of temper.”

  “Angry scribes, eh? I’ll be sure to watch out for them. D’you have a name, or shall I just call you Destroyer of Pens?”

  “Stupid human. Do you think I would tell you my name and give you power over me?”

  “Human?” I gave myself an exaggerated once-over. “Are you blind?”

  My feet are covered in red and orange scales, and I have seven, taloned toes on each foot. He couldn’t see the scales on my shoulders and back because of the tunic I was wearing, but the liver-red stripes on my arms and neck were plainly visible. I smiled just enough to show him the tips of my sharp canines. And even if it hadn’t noticed my feet or hair or stripes, it had looked me in my bright, yellow eyes and must have seen the flicker of my third eyelid.

  The demon shrugged dismissively. “Mortals all look the same to me. What’s your name, half-breed?”

  “Mind your own business, imp.” I gave it my best, broken bottle glare before sending the globe of light up to the ceiling. It hovered beneath the stopple of rubble and ice that choked the hole about forty feet above us. It would take days to melt even with the aid of magic and longer to dig through. I needed another way out if I was to avoid a bounty being placed on my head.

  “I came when I heard the dragon and saw you lying there. I thought you were dead,” it said while I surveyed my surroundings.

  All thought of escape was momentarily banished when I was struck by a sudden, horrifying thought. I groped at my chest. After an agonizing few seconds of panic, I found the sapphire, still nestled in the folds of my tunic where I'd stuffed it. Relieved, I chuckled. Some demon. Not only hadn’t it cut my throat while I lay senseless, but it hadn’t even bothered to search me. The youngest kinchin cove in Appleton would have had the wit to do that.

  My stomach growled. I wasn’t a natural when it came to sorcery. If I maintained the spell for much longer the hungry weakness would really start to bite. I searched through the debris and found some wood dry enough to fashion into a torch.

  The imp sneered at my efforts. “Real warspawn can see in the dark.”

  “They also rip little shits like you in half. Do you want us to go down that route?” It didn’t answer. “I didn’t think so.”

  I sparked the torch to life with my flint and tinder and wafted it towards the imp. It leaped away from the wash of amber. “That’s better.” I gave it a knowing look. “You never know when you might need to burn something and as I’m neither a real sorcerer or a real warspawn this’ll have to do me.”

  The imp snorted. “The Mage Lords were too afraid to give the warspawn the ability to use magic. They were scared that their creatures might use it against them. Cowards, the lot of them.”

  “That’s fascinating, really, it is. You should write a memoir, get some use out of all those pens that you’ve nicked.” I didn’t give two shits what had happened hundreds of years ago, but I had the distinct impression that there was more to the little scutbuck
et than merely tormenting scribes. Another time I might have delved deeper into its history but the pressing need to find my way out of here pushed all further thought on the matter to the farthest corner of my mind.

  The chamber had four exits. One was blocked, and none of them looked any more promising than the next. I tasted the air. A full-blood thoasa would have been able to discern the finest thread of freshness in the turgid atmosphere, but my human-blunted senses couldn’t pick anything out above the musty funk of ages. If indeed there was another way out.

  As I pondered which way to go, my gaze roamed over the heavily embellished walls. The sputtering torchlight sheened the drab stone with gold and lent a semblance of flickering life to the vicious demons marching towards an unseen foe. This was no ordinary dwelling or common tomb buried under a rock fall. A knot of gloom tightened my gut.