Page 67 of Brimstone

But the vault breaker didn’t give him the opportunity to change his mind; he grabbed Carrion by the arm and pulled himup the last step. “Sorry, Carrion,” he said. “I am your friend . . . buthe’sstill hungry.”

“Who’s hungry?” Swift tripped on the top step, falling forward, past Shah, who moved out of Carrion’s way, pressing his back against the archway. Carrion’s hands slapped down onto the ground, his torso crossing the boundary into the room beyond . . .

. . . and nothing happened.

Swift cursed roundly, glowering up at Shah. “The hell iswrongwith you, Vorath?”

The sound came softly at first.

Then it became ahum.

“What is that?” Carrion asked, his eyes roving upward into the dark.

Then it became aroar.

“He said it was the only way,” Shah inched away from Carrion. “I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

“Vorath?” Carrion went to get up, but as he tried to stand, he realized that he couldn’t. “Why are my hands glued to the floor?”

Gods a-fucking-live. Sighing, I trudged up the last few steps, already regretting the fact that I hadn’t just turned and left. “It’s a demon’s trap,” I said, peering down at the ground in front of Carrion. I couldn’t see anything marking the floor of the empty room beyond. Not until I kicked away the glowing vial Carrion had dropped when he’d fallen and tossed the one Vorath had given me over my shoulder, too. As soon as the green glow was gone, the marks flared to life, brilliant and white. They were everywhere: runes, scrawled messily into a layer of centuries-old dust, interlocking, hundreds of them. Thousands. The walls of the room at the top of the stairs were covered in them. The ceiling. The floor, too. And Carrion had just slapped his hands down right in the middle of them.

“What the hell is a demon trap?” Carrion asked in an oddly calm voice.

I crouched down beside him, squinting at the runes. They were Gilarian maybe. Ancient Gilarian? Or . . . Ahh. Shit. No. It wasn’t Gilarian.

“Why is your face doing that?” Carrion tugged hard, trying to free his hands from the floor without any success. “And why’s that rushing sound getting louder?”

“You might as well stop,” I grumbled, getting to my feet. “You could cut your hands off and you’d still be fucked. A demon trap is old magic. Alchimeran magic. And it’s exactly what it sounds like. A trap that catches demons.”

“Then why the hell has it trappedme?” he demanded.

“Because magic this old is powerful, yes, but it does deteriorate over time. Not enough to be broken altogether. But it can be manipulated. The beast that was imprisoned here is using the trap like a spider’s web now, isn’t it, Shah? The beast is using it so that it caneat.”

The vault breaker’s eyes sparkled with an unhinged delight.Thiswas who he was—the version of himself that he had been hiding. “My master does have aprodigiousappetite,” he said.

“What is it?” I demanded. “Arrangoth? Noltick? Bresheth?” It couldn’t have been Morthil; Morthil had been trapped in the maze with me for the past century. I couldn’t remember the names of any of the other lost demons.

From the mad excitement on Vorath Shah’s face, I knew that whatever he was about to say was going to be bad. “His holy name is Joshin. Lord of the Desert. King of the Dark Dream.”

Aaaaand I was right. It was bad. Really, really,reallybad. “Fuck.”

“Will someonepleasetell me what that sound is!” Carrion bellowed.

Drawing my hands together, I called on my primary and my secondary magic, gritting my teeth as the sword—a replica of Nimerelle, cast in silver—formed in my hands.

“Scorpions, Carrion. That is the sound of a million fuckingscorpions.”

16

THE BLOOD

SAERIS

“HOW MANY MOREtimes do I have to tell you?” I protested. “I didn’t do it on purpose!”

When I was a child, I accidentally melted my mother’s only cooking pot. I’d told her I’d left it hanging over the fire, unattended, and had forgotten about it. That hadn’t been true, of course. I’d touched it, and the metal had liquified unexpectedly, splashing to the floor like water. It had solidified there like that—a puddle of metal that had once been one of my mother’s most prized possessions. When she’d returned home and found the remains of her pot lying on the kitchen table, her anger had been the stuff of legends. I hadn’t been able to sit down for a week.

But this? This was far worse.