Witchbreaker (Dragon Apocalypse) by James Maxey Read Free Book Online

clues to guide her to a likely place to start digging, other than the fact that the other graves seemed to be laid out in predictable rows. Following from the row that led up the hill, the stone possibly covered a half dozen graves. She eyeballed the nearest grave and used it to locate what might be the first grave in from the edge. Brand used the same strategy to find a grave on the opposite side.
    “Shall we race?” Brand asked as he pushed his shovel into the soil.
    “It really wouldn’t be a fair contest. Trunk is far stronger and never tires.”
    “You’re on,” Brand said, as dirt flew over his shoulder. Bigsby grabbed a shovel and joined his brother.
    “Dig,” she said to Trunk, feeling a slight urge to complain that the brothers had a head start. But she’d never agreed to a contest. Why should she be concerned about who would win?
    Of course, ten minutes later, when Trunk’s shovel struck something hard, she couldn’t resist the urge to shout, “Victory!”
    Brand and Bigsby had barely dug a pit four feet deep, while Trunk was already in a hole down to his shoulders.
    “Congrats,” said Brand. “What did you find?”
    Sorrow knelt to see better. What had she found? Trunk continued to remove dirt, revealing a layer of flat black slates, looking for all the world like roofing shingles. The boulder had been as big as a house, but she hadn’t expected to find an actual structure under it.
    Brand climbed out of his hole and wandered over.
    “It looks like a roof,” Sorrow said.
    The shingles were rectangles two feet long and a foot wide, with rough edges. Once Trunk had made the hole wide enough, Brand dropped in to help clear the dirt. It soon became apparent the slates were stacked into an arch. The structure was about five feet across, but she couldn’t guess how long as they hadn’t found either end yet. So far, about six feet of the arch was exposed.
    Brand knelt and tested his luck at lifting one of the shingles. He let out a little grunt as he lifted it to his chest, then stood and pushed it out of the hole.
    “Are those heavy?” she asked.
    “They ain’t light,” he said.
    “Climb out. Let Trunk remove the stones.”
    Brand did so. Trunk lifted the shingles with no hint of effort, revealing another layer of stones beneath. Under this, something glinted through the gaps. Sorrow leaned low to be certain. As, one by one, the stones were pulled away, she could see that they were exposing what looked to be a coffin made of solid glass.
    That wasn’t the only thing being exposed, however. For as Trunk stood to lift out a slate tile, a shaft of sunlight fell upon the first rectangle of open glass, illuminating the contents. While Sorrow had little personal experience with male anatomy, she couldn’t help but think that what the light revealed strongly resembled the naked crotch of a hairy man.
    Brand and Bigsby apparently noticed as well.
    Bigsby asked, softly, “Is that... what I think it is?”
    “I’m almost certain it is,” said Brand.
    Of course, there was more beneath the glass than preserved genitalia. As Trunk continued uncovering the glass coffin, he revealed the man’s torso. The body was covered in kinky black hair over skin white as cotton. Despite his deathly pallor, the man was an impressive physical specimen. He was muscular almost to the point of grotesquerie. Sorrow wondered if he might be a half-seed of some kind, perhaps a man blended with a bear. His shoulders were far broader than any she’d ever seen on a living man. His beastly appearance was compounded by fingernails at least four inches long, thick and gnarled.
    Yet when his face was at last revealed, she abandoned any thought that the figure before her was anything other than human. Though his face was mostly concealed by a thick black beard, and despite the long hair draping around his head having the fullness of a lion’s mane, there was something deeply human about the man’s face. There was a gentleness to