Page 4 - Microsoft Word - FANG EMPIRE - NOVEL.docx

and mouth under his piercing eyes, enhancing his terrifying visage. Metal shin plates covered his

legs. His armored kneecaps were embedded with fanged vampire skulls made of ivory. A shield

with the Sabutan Sun Snake emblem hung on the tiger’s armor in front of the metal saddle. The

hunter’s brawny, battle-scarred chest was bare but his rib cage was girdled with a carved,

impenetrable sacred cassock that protected his vital organs from attack. He held a serrated

scimitar, a curved sword with vampiric glyphs tooled into the metal blade. This Sabutan was no

scout, he was a butcher, and violence was his religion.

“Ja’az dan ga’eng,” he said in Vampirian to the lead tiger—the pace cat, that wore no

armor. It snarled as if answering to the bizarre war-like language, sniffed the air and the pace

quickened. Its amber orange coat rolled like ocean waves in the gentle breeze, a vision that belied

the ferocity lurking beneath the fur.

Sygnosis ran for her life, from the cats, from the butcher’s blade. The tigers could smell

her now, the female Darkling. It was her azulin they sensed, a pure vampire’s blood. Like an

opiate, it intoxicated the great cats, filled their nostrils with fire. It was catnip to them. They

salivated as they ran. Suddenly, the Sabutan clicked his tongue twice and the tigers stopped. He

looked around, sensing something. It was not what he heard; it was what he didn’t hear. No

insects, no frogs, no birds. Silence in the land of the Mandinka meant danger so he tightened his

grip on the hilt of his blade. His instincts told him to swing, swing quickly, to his right. He did, but

not before a white streak slammed into him like a thunderbolt. The cats reacted. They turned to

protect their master, to attack the attacker. But the Sabutan was gone, snatched from his mount.

Confused, the tigers sniffed the ground for traces. After four paces, they found what was left of

him, his head, severed so quickly the saffrin was missing and his face wore no expression of

surprise. Two more paces and they found his body, lifeless. His hilt hand trembled gruesomely,

still gripping the blade, dripping with his blood.

Up ahead, the bushes crackled. The cats burst into a muscular gallop. Their long claws dug

into the dirt. Sygnosis ran against the wind, her mouth stained with blood. She cut at antelope

angles but the Sabutan overlords were vampires themselves and bred these cats not only for their