Kultus Read Online Free PDF

I’m coming. The Key of Lunos. What is it? Why is it important?’
    Lord Julius snorted, almost dropping the stub of his cigar on his lounge pants. ‘This is a joke, yes? You took the trouble of breaking into my house to ask me about some useless extra-terrestrial trinket?’
    Blaklok stared hard at Julius, looking deep behind the self-satisfied grin and overconfident air. There was something he was hiding; something in the way he sat, still squirming under Blaklok’s gaze.
    ‘You don’t believe it’s worthless any more than I do.’
    ‘ Au contraire , my indefatigable friend. It is indeed worthless, despite what Duke Darian and those overzealous curators at the Repository would have you believe. Why the interest anyway?’
    ‘Mind your own fucking business,’ said Thaddeus, taking a threatening step forward.
    ‘Now, now! Don’t bother with any of the rough stuff; you know it’ll only end in tears. Besides, what possible reason would I have to lie to you?’
    ‘Let’s find out, shall we.’
    Before Blaklok could take another step he heard the creaking of a loose floorboard behind him. He spun in time to see the barrel of a blunderbuss come poking through the door, aimed at his back. His jackbooted foot rose quickly, the powerful leg striking out like a piston to impact against the door. There was a deafening explosion as the blunderbuss went off, spraying the room with iron shot and destroying a four-foot vase that took pride of place in one corner. Before the echo of the blast had subsided, Thaddeus was moving, wrenching the door open to face the gun wielder. He was big, even bigger than Blaklok but that didn’t matter, he would still go down; they all did in the end.
    Grasping the man’s shirt front, Thaddeus struck in with a head butt, feeling the crunch of nose and teeth, the sharp pain in his forehead… good pain. The man stumbled, but it was not enough, he was still on his feet. As the empty blunderbuss slipped from his fingers, Thaddeus pulled him into the room and clocked him with a right. It was a solid blow, straight to the cheek, and the thug fell back heavily into a table, knocking it over and sprawling on his back.
    Good on him though, he was still conscious, obviously a tough one. But before Thaddeus could move in to finish him off, something smacked him hard around the back of the head.
    Bloody stupid! Of course there were two of them.
    Blaklok fell to one knee, the periphery of his vision blurring, like looking through snowfall. He tried to get back up but his legs wouldn’t move.
    Bloody stupid!
    ‘As I said,’ crooned Julius, ‘you really should have knocked.’
    Through his blizzard vision, Thaddeus could see the second man standing tall, a banded cudgel in his hand. Just lucky it hadn’t been another gun.
    The one he had sat on his arse stood unsteadily, nothing but ill will drawn across his bloody face.
    ‘I would rather have avoided all this unpleasantness, but you’ve really left me with no choice, Thaddeus.’ Lord Julius was now standing in one corner, away from the hulking brutes. There was no way he would want to get blood on him, after all. ‘Make it quick,’ he said to his men. ‘And painful.’
    Blaklok was glad of the chatter; it gave his vision a chance to clear.
    The one with the cudgel raised his arm to strike again, but he was slow and ungainly. Thaddeus’s piston leg struck out, this time into the cudgel wielder’s knee. It snapped back, pointing the wrong way, and the brute screamed like a girl. His bloody-faced accomplice ran in with a vicious kick, but not vicious enough. It hit Blaklok in the face. There would be a bruise later but nothing to cry about, and it didn’t stop him rising and snatching the cudgel from the one with the broken knee.
    And then he set about them. It wasn’t pretty or graceful. In fact it was brutal and fairly ugly, but it got the job done. In the end he was panting like a lion after the hunt and his head was starting to throb, but