Page 21 of Brimstone

Shouts and screams pierced the night.

There were bodies everywhere now—more of the camp’s warriors, rushing to join in the fray. The feeder pounced,springing into the air. It caught a silver-tipped arrow to the throat as it descended, but the weapon had no effect. As the monster landed, I snapped the arrow and drove the splintered shaft into the feeder’s eye, but even that didn’t slow it. The feeder lunged, swinging its claws at me. Where the male’s fingers had once been were now sharp claws curved into hooks, dripping black with ichor. If it so much as scratched me . . . I wouldn’t die, but it would be bad fucking news.

I darted back, out of the fiend’s reach. I couldn’t use magic or my sword on it, but I was still faster. It snarled, frustrated, as it leaped again—

“The ice!” Someone screamed. “They’re breaking it!”

A sinking feeling in my gut told me that the rushing water beneath the frozen surface of the Darn would no longer have any effect on these feeders, though. There were only two similarities between these monsters and the demons we were used to dealing with: They were dead, and they were hungry. Apart from that, thesethingswere an entirely different breed.

Sure enough, when the ice shattered below the bank and one of the other feeders toppled into the water, it didn’t make a sound. It coiled itself below the waterline, compressing its body in the ink-black water, and then sprang up from the rippling surface, falling on Renfis.

“Ren!” The cry rang out over the sea of warriors. Somewhere, Lorreth sounded like he was fighting for his life, and yet he still called out to our brother.

The feeder snaked forward, its tongue lolling out of its mouth, snagging on its serrated teeth. I spun and whirled to its right, fast as I could, plunging the dagger through the side of its skull.

I needed to take its head, but I wasn’t going to be able to do that with it swiping at me with those fucking claws. “Fire!” Ishouted. “Light them up!” We were running out of options. If fire didn’t work, we were fucked.

My warriors answered the call. In seconds, bright orange flames cast monstrous shadows along the banks of the river. Hundreds of torches appeared, glowing hot and spitting embers. A normal feeder would have balked at the sight of the open flames, but this one just kept coming.

“Stand back, Commander,” called a tall warrior with dark hair. He ducked around me, hoisting his torch forward, and I moved out of his way as he hurled the torch at the feeder. Fear whispered in my ear, or maybe it was the remnants of the quicksilver . . .

It won’t work. Won’t work, won’t work . . .

But the monster went up like bone-dry kindling as soon as the fire made contact with its moldering flesh.

The feeder didn’t make a sound as it was engulfed. Not a peep.

It didn’t flail or flee. It just crouched there, burning. Time slowed as the feeder pivoted and turned, sailing through the air and landing on the warrior who had set it alight.

“No!”I moved as quickly as I could, but it turned out Iwasn’tas fast as the cursed creature after all. I was too late. It grabbed the warrior and Elroy still had a little speed left in him yet. He grabbed my arm, holding me back long enough to look me in the eyes. Pleadingly, he said. “What if they track you down and realize what you can do? The way you can affect metal—” sank its claws into his skull, crushing bone as it wrenched his head to the side and plunged shattered teeth into his neck.

The fight was over in an instant. The warrior who had come to my aid had his head caved in and blood drained dry in a heartbeat. The feeder was a torch now. It didn’t seem to feel the pain or notice that it was slowly incinerating. It hurtled off into the gathered crowd, falling on other warriors, unfazed by theblades and swords they plunged into its chest and at its throat. I watched my men fall as it rampaged.

“Flank it!” someone shouted. Danya. She was there, on the other side of the melee, running fast to meet me. I ran, too, and we both crashed down on the feeder at the same time, grabbing it and forcing it to the ground. We held it, and it burned. The flames licked up our arms and danced as it caught on our clothes. The heat was unimaginable.

“Take it!” I bellowed.“Take the fucking head!”

I had no idea whose axe completed the task. As soon as the feeder’s head was cleaved from its shoulders, I was dragged back from the flaming corpse by a multitude of hands. The sky overhead swam with streaks of light. The ground ran thick with churned mud and stinking ichor. A thousand knives sank deep into my chest as I was thrown backward into the Darn.

Being stabbed hurt. Being poisoned by a feeder’s toxin, too. But burning alive? Thatreallyfucking hurt.

I hissed in the war tent as Te Léna administered a cooling salve to my hands. She was doing as much as she could for me, but she had exhausted her supply of magic healing Danya. Healing was her birthright magic, though. Unlike mine, it would replenish soon. She’d tried to help me when I’d been rushed into the tent, but I’d insisted she work on Danya first. I had gone up pretty quickly, but Danya had flared like a living torch. Her injuries had been significant. They would have killed her had the healer not tended to her immediately. Her blistered skin had been transformed to raw meat, her face badly burned. And her hair? Te Léna had done her best to soothe the angry burns all over Danya’s body, but her long pale hair was gone, leaving only singed stubble behind.

“In a couple of hours, I’ll be able to take a look at these,” Te Léna murmured in a hushed tone, gently applying another layer of the mashed poultice she had created from her store of medicinal healing herbs. I gritted my teeth, giving her a lopsided smile.

“It’s all right. I can barely feel a thing.”

“Liar,” she chided. Her eyes shone bright with unshed tears. “I know how bad that must hurt. You’re not doing anyone any favors by hiding it.”

“Okay, then. I’ll cry about it, shall I?” I winked at her playfully, letting her know that I was just teasing.

She said nothing to that. Just gave me a sorry smile as she went about tending the other open wounds on my hands and my arms. “A few hours,” she said again, when she was done. “As soon as I’m about—”

I closed my hand around hers, hissing a little when my skin split. “It’s okay, Te Léna. I’ll bear it fine.” She would never know it—thank the gods—but I had endured far, far worse.

Renfis and Lorreth passed the healer as they entered the war tent. Their faces were both soot stained, their armor plastered with ichor. It had taken them a long time to put down the other feeders. From what I’d been told, they had lashed them with ropes and pinned them in place while they sawed off their heads.

“We have their bodies trussed to a tree,” Renfis spat, throwing his gloves onto the chair by the fire. We’d been sitting here, only hours ago, joking about my misfortune and discussing my new inkwork. It felt like an age had passed. “They still won’t fuckingdie,” Ren seethed.