Wait.Wait just a minute.“He needs you,” she said, desperately.“Needs your hands, because he can’t do this himself.He’s weak, Ignatius.You’re stronger.”
He was a male, so appealing to vanity might conceivably work.She surged against the things holding her limbs, and one of the creatures hissed again as something invisible shifted.Her necklace was gone and she had no big brawny amplifiers, but if the goddamn city overhead would just stop screaming maybe she could use that hidden force to?—
The monsters yanked her arms cruelly, and she was so tired.Kidnapped, dragged on a two-accident road trip, forced to fight horrible critters, nightmares whenever she tried to sleep—oh, it was nonsense, all of it, complete and hopelessbullshit.
“Oh, I am strong,” Ignatius said.“You’re right about that.Hehas need of a strong right hand, and is ready to welcome me back into service.”
Keep talking, keephimtalking.“You’re stronger thanhim,” she repeated, words cracking as she struggled to think of something, anything to keep him engaged just a few more seconds.“How many years did you hold out?A long time, right?”Just not long enough.
“Enough,” the thing gripping her left wrist hissed, steam curling between its clutching fingers.A terrible, sickening smell of rotten, burning meat wafted up.“Do what you promisssed,traitor.”
Ignatius’s chin dipped as the knife rose another inch, quivering in knotted fists.He was striped with monster blood, eyes glimmering with that faint blue foxfire between dark lashes, and his teeth snapped again.
As if the thing inside his skin was hungry.
Tiny black plague-dots clustered his hand, massing from the knife’s hilt, invading his skin.Liv swallowed more bile and stopped struggling, her own eyes half-lidding, and the smell of burning intensified.
Instinctive, they all said.She hoped like hell it was true—but without amplifiers, she was close to a sitting duck.
“You’re stronger.”She tried to sound certain, and also tried to sound admiring.The deep drugging languor from whatever Sara had injected her with had worn almost completely away.“Way stronger than any two-bit demigod who can’t even keep his own followers under control.Stronger than all the rest of the Sons, too.You’re far more intelligent than them, right?Be smart, Ignatius.Besmart.”
Metal clashed, and she realized they were holding her only until they could get the chains ready.Cold hard metal slithered around her right ankle, and Liv couldn’t help it—she cried out, that warm invisible force the Flame had freed inside her rippling in concentric waves.
The six-fingered bastards screeched, their fingers bursting into pale flame refracting through the spectrum, blessedly normal colors alongside shades unnamed since human eyes usually couldn’t distinguish them.Liv scooted sideways, hips wiggling, shoulders scraping glassy stone.
Ignatius lunged, with a Son’s eerie, flickering speed.
The knife blurred as he drove it down, crying out the old, foul word the Sons never said because it could drawhisattention.The god’s name scorched his lips, poured a gobbet of blood-blackened foam down his chest, and scraped through Liv’s head like a hot edge through frozen butter, fracturing what it couldn’t melt.A thin lick of fire along her hip, and her cry became a spiraling scream because ithurt, the blade’s coating burning through flannel and into her skin.
She writhed away, another pulse blooming through her and knocking the six-fingered things back a few paces.The monsters began to screech, howl, slitherclack, yap, moan, stamp, and groan in return, their voices swallowing hers, a vast dark collective pressure dropping like a bell jar, pinning her in place.
Ignatius crawled onto the altar, his knees smacking shatter-hard and his face a mask of gibbering hatred.He had no pupils left, just that soulless, devouring flame dancing in collapsing eyeballs, and that terriblesomething elsegazed at her for a moment as his right hand reared up, his entire body taut against her desperate, invisible push.He looked like a man leaning into a heavy wind; she concentrated desperately, because as soon as her strength failed the knife would descend and she couldn’t slide any further.Her body was held fast in sticky, invisible hands even if they hadn’t managed to chain her, obscene unseen spiderfingers crawling over her like the tiny black things making a living glove down Ignatius’s hand, flooding up his sticklike arm.
He strained against the power, and Liv’s hold slipped a fraction.
The knife dipped.
Critical Window
For one vertiginousmoment Erik thought he was wrong, that they’d taken a bad turn in the tangle of tunnels, that the strong, certain, but inarticulate imperative beating behind his breastbone and filling his arms and legs with wine-dark strength had failed him.
Failed themall.
Then he realized he’d simply outdistanced the others, even Grigori—the Father was quick and ruthless, dealing efficiently with scattered rearguards in the tunnels, freeing an Elder Brother to forge ahead.Consequently, Erik burst into a knot of scuttling hellspiders and was almost past the rancid bulk of yet anothershoggothwhen the pulse came, spilling through him from crown to sole, lighting up the battlefield.
The cavern was a temple-deep, of course, stalactites and their reflections corkscrewed by foul, ancient exhalations as underside creatures gathered to worship the god who promised them food and power.That terrifying, insane intelligence also twisted the creatures of the dreaming lands’ healthier corners, whispering promises, rewarding their service—when it did not consume them.
Some, like the stranglers, had probably evolved in terrestrial spaces; others, like thesarnakiwith no need to clothe themselves in flying snow now because no sunlight could possibly reach them, were of a different order entirely.
All largely loyal—or, barring that, simplyhungry.The slow torture and eventual death of aliraiwould strengthen them immeasurably, give them a feast long spoken of afterward in hellish, chittering tongues no human mouth could pronounce.
None of them mattered, because he could see the stairs at the far end, a dais rising in sickening, nonhuman angles, its flyblown steps crusted with effluvia both old and fresh.The shadowbeasts and nightmare creatures preferredlirai, of course—but potentials would do handily, and the lingering death of normal humans would grant a short-term boost as well.
This place had seen many such banquets.
The altar reared, stone like obsidian warping and shimmering as the sacrifice fought.A sticklike figure stood silhouetted against that glow, one wasted arm raised high; the creatures around Erik began to notice his presence, the chance of sating murderous hunger blunting their response.
A critical window,Ignatius would call it, and Erik understood the entire charade now, didn’t he?Elder and Younger out running sweeps at night, leaving a Father to his own devices.When had Ignatius murdered his first potential?Had it been an accident?Had the god been whispering, prodding, poking, enticing?
