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Back Cardinal Black Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Title Page
  2. One: Into the Storm
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Two: London Calling
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Three: The Malignant Seven
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Four: Squirrels and Cats
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-One
  37. Thirty-Two
  38. Five: Revelation
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. About the Author

“Shhhhhh,” Lash whispered. “You are paid to know. And here you are, adjusting your payment downward to account for the negligent act of—”

His hands clasped the sides of the Owl’s head.

“—destroying everything,” said Lash, and suddenly his face flamed red, his eyes widened and in an instant were shot through with blood, his teeth clenched together with a ferocity that nearly shattered them from his mouth, and the muscles in his arms beneath the medalled jacket jumped and twisted into knots as his hands began to squeeze.

The Owl cried out and tried to stand, but already the power of Lash’s hands was crushing his skull inward. Four seconds after the pressure had begun the Owl’s body began to writhe and jerk, the golden eyes rolled up to show the whites, his own teeth chattered like a symphony of bones and his hands flailed as if trying to find a grip in the air.

Lash gave a bestial shout that made the wall shake behind Cardinal Black and trembled the glass window that looked upon the courtyard. His face was bloated with blood. As he continued to crush the Owl’s skull, his next shout to the god of vengeance made scarlet burst in a spray from his nostrils. Cardinal Black, for all his callous bloodlettings to the dark entity he called ‘master’, pressed himself deeper into his far corner and tried to become as thin a presence as possible, for it was apparent that Samson Lash’s rage had been released and with it the raw power of madness.

Blue veins stood out in Lash’s hands and pulsed at his throat. There was a sudden loud broomstick crack of breaking bone followed by the lesser cracklings of sinews and muscles giving way like the timbers of a house in a hurricane. The Owl’s face collapsed inward. The left eye exploded from its socket and hung down the concave cheek by its oyster-colored string. Still Lash’s hands clutched the sides of the Owl’s misshapen head, and still the head became more misshapen as Lash’s strength put paid to the bill.