Read Online In Total Surrender by Anne Mallory - Free Book Online

welcome. And worth a few scratches.
    He kicked the man in the teeth with his left boot, then reached down and slowly pulled the knife free. The man scrambled back against the wall, the back of one hand clutching his broken wrist over his bloodied mouth, complete terror in his gaze.
    Andreas cast a look around the alley. Eyed shadows drew back, disappearing into rock-faced holes and doorways.
    Satisfied, he moved forward, towering over the man, weaving the flat handle of the knife through the knuckles of his right hand, blade flashing as it turned. A cute trick he had practiced during the long months he had been bedridden so long ago. “Now then, let’s get to business, shall we?”
    He had approximately five minutes before reinforcements or the Watch arrived.
    He wistfully pushed aside the thought to crouch at the man’s level, all bare-toothed smile in place. But if he crouched on the ground right now, he’d never get back up.
    “You, you . . .” The man was staring in abject horror at Andreas’s trousered leg. There was a thin stream of darkness there—he could feel the trickle of blood. But it was nowhere near the bloodletting the man would imagine from an embedded knife wound.
    It was luck or a curse that everyone went for his right leg.
    Andreas smiled coldly, eyes never leaving the man’s, and tested the sword in his left hand, getting a feel for it. It had been a while, but he had been raised to handle one, and he’d practiced fiercely years later, hoping that someday he’d use one to kill those who had insisted he be taught in the first place.
    “You are wasting your time,” the man croaked. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me.”
    “No? I would think it would matter quite a bit to you,” Andreas said. He lifted the man’s chin with the long steel, wryly grateful for it, as he didn’t have to bend to the man’s level. “You can make this as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.”
    “Whatever you do to me, twelve men will replace me, just like the Hydra.”
    “Twelve.” Andreas eyed the man’s limp and broken hand. He would give him credit for that last strike, but little more. “Each time I speak to one of you, I grow dimmer.”
    “Gone will be the slavers of old, of all that is decent. I fight under the banner of revolution.”
    Andreas ran the tip of the blade under the man’s jaw, stroking. These interviews always worked best when he and Roman worked in tandem, so different from each other in some ways, so similar in others that it was disconcerting. His brother made it a game to extract information easily with his glib smile, but Andreas could inspire terror without help just fine.
    “You will fight under a gravestone,” he said, his normal bored tone edged with silk. “And doubtfully a decent one.”
    There was a twitch to the man’s puffed eyes. Tiny, but perceptible. Good.
    “Or with no marker at all to show you were even of this earth once.” He forced the man to tip his head to the side and saw the diamond mark beneath the starched collar on the back of his neck, the brand. Certainty burned coldly. “No. Straight through to hell. I’ll be waiting for you there too. And your revolution will be snuffed as easily as you extinguished the lives of six men.” He might not keep track of their names from day to day, but the Merricks took care of their own.
    And Andreas was very good at revenge.
    The twitch became a swollen lurch. “I, I don’t know about any dead men. But, but . . . sometimes losses occur. For the greater good. Any who die will die in glory. And their families will be provided for in the new world.”
    “Is that what Cornelius told you?” Andreas smiled at the man’s jerk. He hated the bastard who ruled the north, but he had to be admired for the way he ruthlessly used people while at the same time making those people think plans were of their own design. “Did he also tell you that if by some remote chance I decide to turn you over, you will be