Page 20 of Brimstone

Lorreth already had Avisiéth in his hands. I left Nimerelle strapped to my back. My shadows would be enough for this. The feeders crawled out onto the ice. Further. Their hands and feet met the frozen surface in unison: left hand, right knee, left hand, right foot.

Lorreth twisted the sword in his grip. “I donotfeel good about this.”

I didn’t, either. Something foul hung in the air. Toxic. The smell of the campfires and cooking food filled my nose, but there was something else, too. Odorless, but I could feel it snaking up my nostrils and probing down into my lungs. Whatever it was, it was not go—

The feeders sprang.

All eight of them launched into the air like stags. They raced toward the middle of the river, to the point where our magic would take effect, then barreled straight through the invisible boundary without hesitation. The moment it happened, Renfis unleashed his magic, I loosed my shadows, and smoke and light streamed across the Darn. Ren’s energy hit first. The orb struck two of the feeders head-on. I diverted my shadows, sending them to the right to take on the remaining feeders, but . . .

Ren’s magic didn’t crackle and ebb, leaving bodies in its wake as it normally did. It flared, illuminating the dark, and then itabsorbedinto the two feeders that it had struck. They were male. Shirtless. And where the orb of magic had hit their chests,a network of brilliant white magic fissured outward across their ribs. The two feeders shuddered, and then suddenly all eight of them bore the same white convergence of power.

The light pulsed, glowing, and the feeders juddered again, their spines arching.

“What in all the gods?” Ren whispered.

I urged my shadows out, fanning in all directions, eight narrow tendrils of black, shimmering with my own magic.Strike hard, I thought.End this.But when they hit home, spearing the feeders through the glowing marks where Ren’s magic now appeared to be trapped in their chests, my magic was pulled into them, too. And gods, did I feel it. It was like breathing in ice water. The cold struck hard, ripping my breath away. And the loneliness. The sorrow. It coiled up in my chest and wrapped around my heart so tight that it felt as though it were breaking. In over a hundred years trapped inside Malcolm’s maze, I had never felt as bereft as I did in that instant.

I wanted it to stop. The kernel of misery felt like it was taking root of my soul. It was hard to breathe; it was as though I’d forgotten how. I gasped, eventually sucking down a lungful of air, but it tasted all wrong.

I tried to pull my shadows back, but I couldn’t. The feeders drank them in and held on tight to them. A metallic black sheen swirled at the center of their chests, roiling amid the white energy they had taken from Renfis.

I looked to Ren and found him pale, his expression full of horror. Was he feeling what I was feeling? It damned well looked like it. “Theyfedon our magic,” he whispered.

It was so much worse than being bitten. Worse than them feeding on our blood. Blood was sacred, yes, but ourmagic? I wanted to be sick. In the grand scheme of things, neither of us had expended much of our power, but I could still feel it—thatsmall piece of me that I had sent out into the world and would not be getting back.

The feeders shuddered again, half closing their eyes; they looked as if they were gripped in ecstasy. They groaned, all eight of them, running mangled tongues over their torn lips . . . and then they snapped back to attention.

“They’re still coming!” Danya screamed.

They ran, loping along, their strides unnaturally long, buoyed by their stolen power.

They had almost reached the bank.

Setting his boots in the mud, Lorreth raised Avisíeth in both hands and angled the sword out point-first before his face. “I’ll hit them all with Angel’s Breath,” he growled. “They won’t survive that.”

“No!” Ren and I cried out at the same time.

“Don’t!” I panted. “They’re siphoning from us. If they take the Angel’s Breath . . .” It didn’t even bear thinking about. Would it make them stronger still? Would . . . would they be able to wield it back at us? Fuck, my mind was upside down. More of Irrín’s warriors were joining us at the bank. “No one use any magic!” I hollered, thick plumes of fog clouding my breath. “Use silver alone. Blades and daggers. Here they come!”

They broke apart as they reached us. Where they had been moving in unison, they now acted independently, their cloudy, bloodred eyes fixing on different members of our party as they attacked.

Had Lorreth heard what I’d said? I fucking hoped so. No rippling forks of Angel’s Breath broke apart the night.

One of the feeders—a tall, stocky bastard with shorn hair and arms covered in runes—bared his ruined teeth as he came for me. I reached for the dagger at my waist and my hand closed around nothing. Fuck! I’d given Saeris that blade. There wasn’ttime to think. I clasped Nimerelle and drew her, sweeping broad as the feeder hit.

No magic. No energy, I pleaded with the sword as I swung.Just take his fucking head.

The sword heard and obeyed. When its razor-sharp edge met the feeder’s flesh, no plume of smoke or magic erupted from it. The iron drove home, sinking easily through rotten flesh and jellied muscle, skittering along the edge of bone. But where Nimerelle bit through the flesh, a thick black substance crystallized along the blade like frost.

“What the—”

Nimerellescreamed.

I heard it in my mind, deafening and full of pain. Nimerelle shook so violently that the vibrations traveled all the way up my arms and rattled my teeth. The feeder didn’t even notice that I’d run it through. It came on, teeth snapping, pulling itself along the blade so that it could get to me.

Even without her magic, Nimerelle should have caused the feeder immense pain. She was both silver and iron.Icould only hold her because of what had transpired at Ajun. The part of the feeder that had once been Fae should have recoiled from the iron, though. The part of it that was vampire should have been affected by the silver. But nothing.

I raised my boot, sliding in the mud, and kicked the feeder in the stomach, shoving it off the blade. The monster staggered back three steps, sliding back down the bank, which gave me enough time to gather myself. I couldn’t use the sword again. It had caused her pain. I jammed her back into the scabbard strapped to my back and drew another dagger from my boot, ready when the feeder came flying for me again.