Page 64 of Brimstone

But the feral creature—the dark-haired male with the furious blue eyes—did not get off me. He bared his teeth, flashing gold-plated, engraved fangs as he snapped at me, trying to use them to rip out my throat.

“You’re done,” he snarled. So confident. So godscursed sure of himself. He grappled with me, trying to lock a massive hand around my wrists so he could pin my hands above my head . . . but he had made a grave mistake. He’d assumed that I wasn’t going to put up a fight.

He was on top of me—a very heavy problem. I rectified the situation the best way I knew how. It was a dirty move, but so was tackling someone from the shadows and catching them off guard. I brought my knee up hard and smashed it into his balls.

The vampire locked up, wheezing, but he didn’t release me. Not fully. The brief lapse in his grip gave me room to yank a hand free, though. Took me all of two seconds to find the dagger I’d dropped when he’d pinned me. I didn’t flinch as I drove the point of the blade into his side, up, between his ribs.

The vampire shuddered, pulling back. “What . . .?” He looked down in confusion. “I . . .”

“I stabbed you,” I spat. “Now I’m gonna pull out the blade and watch you bleed.”

His eyes shuttered when I did it. Blood didn’t spurt out of vampires the way it did from the living. It ebbed, escaping under a loss of pressure. I felt it, finding its way through the gaps in my leathers, saturating my shirt beneath and slicking my skin. It was unnaturally cool, but at least it didn’t reek the way a feeder’s did. It smelled stale. Strange. Unappealing.

“Sil . . . ver,” the vampire wheezed. “That blade was never . . . silver.” He sagged sideways, hitting the ground with a thump and rolling onto his back.

I was free.

I rocketed to my feet, ready to stab the fucker again if he so much as lifted a finger in my direction. He was still staring at the blade in my hand—the one Fisher had given me to wear at my coronation. I studied it, then held it up for my attacker to see. “Silver tipped. It won’t kill you, but you are not going to enjoy the next few hours. Appropriate,” I panted, “since you just tried totear out my throat. Now who the fuck are you? And why did you just try to kill me?”

But the vampire didn’t get to answer. Before he could, the interlocking runes on the back of my right hand lit up like a signal flare, and an ungodly pain blazed up my arm.

Oh, gods, no . . .

Light filled the library.

I had no control over the wave of power that rose up, up, up. . . . and thenoutof my hand in a white-blue shock wave.

The writing desk in front of medisappeared. It was there, and then it was gone. Then the bookcase behind it, and all its leather-bound tomes. Gone. The leather couch by the window, gone. The wall, with its portrait of Malcolm smirking knowingly out of its frame . . .gone.

Wind whistled into the library, a cloud of dust and pulverized stone swirling in the air like fine snow. The cold crept in and wrapped around my boots, climbing up my legs, into my bones, making me shiver as I stared at what I had done.

There was a twenty-foot hole in the side of Ammontraíeth.

AndIhad put it there.

15

VORATH

KINGFISHER

“I SWEAR ONall four winds, I didn’t want to help him. Hemademe do it!”

Carrion had caught up with the vault breaker quickly. The other man wasn’t in peak physical condition, it turned out, and Swift was light on his feet.

“Youknow Eric,” Vorath Shah said, holding his hands aloft. “He can be pretty persuasive when he wants to be.”

If Carrion didn’t ease off, he was either going to snap the human’s neck or cut off his airway until he passed out. I placed a hand on Swift’s shoulder, raising my eyebrows when he looked at me.

“You can tell him what a bad man he is later. Find out where the silver is.”

We were inside the human’s shop. It turned out he wasn’t just a vault breaker. He was a merchant, too. A purveyor of all kinds of bizarre and interesting goods. There were tiny heads in jars on his shelves. A vast array of powders and crushed herbs in small glass containers. Bones strung onto rope and knotted in strange shapes that lookedalmostlike runes. Everything was covered in a fine layer of sand.

The air was thick with the smell of unfamiliar—but not unpleasant—spices. I paid little attention to the details of our surroundings. Beyond knowing how many entrances the shop had and where they were, the rest was unimportant. The silver was all that mattered.

For the fifth time in as many minutes, Shah’s dark eyes darted to find me. He was wary of me, that much was clear. The reason for his interest was less clear.

“I don’t know where Eric took it all,” Shah rushed out. “He’s paranoid. You know he’d never let anyone else know where he was planning on housing that much capital.”