Page 71 of Brimstone

“It won’t work,” Shah said in a sing-song tone. “Joshin couldn’t break the wall. That was before he knew, though. Two suns. I told him, I did. Two suns and no night. No safety from the light. A thousand years, he tried. I heard him pounding from the tunnels. That’s how I found him.Boom. Boom. Boom.”

I had thought he was just evil, but there was more to it. Vorath Shah was mad. He crowed with delight as I brought my fist forward and sent it crashing into the wall.

“Joshin didn’t have . . . my magic,” I grunted. My shadows could only do so much. They could either protect my fist from the impact, or they could shock the magic that was spelled into the walls.

I sent all my power into the wall.

“Oh gods. Fisher?” Suddenly, Carrion wasn’t screaming anymore. He sounded very concerned.

I brought my fist back and smashed it into the wall again. A ripple of shadows fanned out over the stone, and an answering ripple of black energy chased after it. I frowned at the sight, not trusting what I was seeing. Why was my magic pulsing twice?

“Kingfisher. The scorpions,” Carrion rasped. “They aren’t stinging me anymore. They’re . . . they’re leaving.”

Again, I drove my fist into the wall.

Again, a shock wave of my magic shot across the surface of the wall, and again, a secondary wave of shadows chased after it. I gritted my teeth against the rope of pain that shot up my arm, into my shoulder, my jaw. “They’re not leaving, Swift,” I said grimly. “They’recoalescing.”

“What the hell doesthatmean?”

I reached deep and commanded my shadows to gather. I gave the strike everything I had. My knuckles split open this time, leaving my blood smeared on the sandstone when I drew back. I was going to break bone at this rate. From head to toe, I was raw. The throbbing behind my eyes intensified, making my vision swim.

“They can be many,” I said through gritted teeth. “Or they can be one. Right now . . . they’re becoming one.”

“I do not like the sound of that. Should I be worried?”

I pulled back and hurled my fist at the wall. “Most definitely.”

“He is magnificent. You should both behonoredby his presence,” Vorath said in an awed tone.

I knew what it would look like—the mass of writhing flesh and bone in the darkened corner of the room. I shouldn’t have looked. But I did.

If my mother’s books had contained illustrations of the demon, she hadn’t shown them to me. It was a horrible vision, all forming teeth and twisted, wet, glistening meat, pulsing andfibrous. The scorpions scuttled up the growing mass and split open along their backs, fusing with the gathering, bleeding shape. Arms were forming. Legs. A bulbous body, rising into a vaguely humanoid-shaped torso.

“Ugh. I think I’m going to throw up,” Carrion groaned.

He would definitely be throwing up soon. He had just been hit with a monumental amount of venom. It was a wonder he wasn’t hallucinating already. The edges of my vision were dancing with a shimmering green light that did not bode well for the next few hours, and Carrion had been stungwaymore than me.

I gathered my shadows faster, whispering to them, urging them to help me break the magic that protected the wall. I struck the stone again, again, again, and finally felt the bones in my hand give way.

“Wendalith cohmerin tas.” The rumbling sound shook the entire tower—many rushing, whispering, shouting voices, intertwining and layering on top of each other. It didn’t resemble the voice of any Fae or human. This voice belonged to something far, far older. A creature not born but constructed from the base elements of hell itself.

The demon’s head was not yet formed. Its lower and upper jaw were there, as were two narrow slits where a nose might have been . . . but the rest of its face was nowhere to be seen. Tiny stingers probed and struck at the air, rising up from the demon’s half-formed head. Its left arm terminated in a hand—normal, for all intents and purposes—but its right ended in a huge, glossy hard-shelled pincer that snapped open and closed reflexively. Its lower half was all scorpion, but nightmarishly large. Eight legs. A long carapace. A curved stinger dripping with venom.

Great.

“Wendalith cohmerin tas,” the demon repeated, spittle flying from its mouth as it spoke.

I turned from it and gave my attention to the wall. We were officially out of time. If I didn’t break this thing open soon, we weresofucked.

“What the hell is it saying?” Carrion called.

“He’s singing to you,” Shah cooed. “Listen to him sing.”

I snorted. “It’s asking who stands before it. Who walks its path. Something like that. It’s speaking Old Fae,which it should not know,” I said pointedly, throwing those last words over my shoulder at the ancient monster.

Click, click, click.

It scuttled forward.