Page 147 of Brimstone

Archer whimpered, hanging limp in the feeder’s grip. The sprite was made of solid rock and was as heavy as one of the small boulders that lined the banks of the Darn, but the feeder lifted him as if he weighed nothing.

“It’s taking him! It’s going over the wall!” Carrion shouted behind me.

If it managed to vault over the top of the stone wall, it’d be over. Archer would never be seen again.

This time, I took Erromar in hand. I leaped up the wall after the feeder, determined to take its head, but as I lashed out with the sword, metal singing through the air in search of its mark, the feeder let out an ungodly roar and shoved backward,the vines it was clinging to ripping free from the wall. Both the feeder and Archer came toppling backward . . . ontome.

I hit the ground first.

My head lit up with pain, thoughts fracturing and then shattering completely as the feeder slammed into my chest.

“Saeris!” Carrion wasn’t far, only a few feet away. He had Simon in his hands and was charging—

“Carrion, becareful!”

I wasn’t fully Fae. A bite from a normal feeder probably wouldn’t do much to me—not that I was a hundred percentsureon that—but it could definitely kill Carrion. And this was no ordinary feeder. I hadn’t been there on the banks of the river at Irrín when those infected feeders had attacked. I hadn’t seen the devastation they had wrought, either, but I knew how quickly the rot spread. I knew howeasilyit passed to the living and the dead alike.

“Don’t touch it!” I yelled.

I needn’t have worried. The second Carrion got close to the feeder and tried to pull it off me, it snarled, batting him away.

It happened so fast.

Carrion hit the corner wall of the courtyard, a winded“Guh!”coming out of him as he tried to right himself. Behind him, the vines choking the crumbling brickwork suddenly bloomed, a thousand tiny white flowers exploding open and wilting right before my eyes. Dried petals rained down on the smuggler, landing in his hair as he shoved away from the wall.

“My lady!” On his back, Archer kicked his feet, trying to stand. The feeder had rolled off me and was on all fours, prowling forward across the dirtied snow again, hoping to secure a better angle of attack. Black ichor dripped from its awful, shattered teeth as it came.

My right hand ached, my magic pulsing, begging to be released, but Fisher’s voice was still clear in my head. He hadunleashed his magic upon the infected feeders he had faced along the banks of the Darn. Renfis had, too, and neither male’s power had injured the infected. On the contrary, the feeders had absorbed their magic and taken itintothemselves, and the very last thing I intended was to give this motherfucker free magic. I’d already given it the fucking null blade.

“It’s going to spring, Saeris!” Carrion called. “Watch out. I’ll clip it—”

“Carrion, no! Stay back!”

As he said it would, the feeder sprang. It wasn’t the smuggler that I watched leap forward to tackle the maddened monster back to the ground, though. It was Archer.

“Run, my lady!” he cried.

Flames filled my vision as a harrowing, pained scream tore through the night.

“Archer! No!”

The feeder sank its teeth into Archer’s neck and tore it wide open. I wouldn’t have known a fire sprite’s body could be penetrated by tooth or blade, but I watched as it happened, horror scaling my spine like a ladder.

Jets of glowing orange-yellow magma spewed from Archer’s throat. It glowed so bright that it burned my eyes as it sprayed all over the feeder, landing on its chest, face, and arms. The feeder didn’t react at all to the—

Wait.

No. Itwasreacting.

The monster convulsed, its ink-black eyes widening as an awareness that hadn’t been there before returned to it. Its jaw hinged, too wide, opening and closing, its mangled, black stump of a tongue protruding from its mouth as the feeder let out a silent scream. Its waxy skin started to melt from its body. Wherever the glowing hot magma touched the fell creature’s body, the black, knotted veins beneath the surface of its skinbulged to the surface and split open, disgorging the foul-smelling decay within.

Ichor hit the snow in viscous ropes. It behaved similarly to the quicksilver at first—gathering, probing, seeking—but then it began to smoke. To bubble. Toboil.

Language was a foreign concept to the putrefied mind of a feeder, and yet it sounded as if it were trying to scream for help as the rot blistered and burned inside it. It spasmed, fingers twisted into hooks, falling back into the snow . . .

“Archer!” The fire sprite’s flames had gone out. He lay on his side, his legs twitching, only a few small fissures in his craggy skin still lit from within on his arms and his chest.

“Fuck me,” Carrion whispered. He was on his knees next to the sprite in a heartbeat. “Is he dying?”