Archon(119)

She reached out to pull herself forward—and stubbed her fingernails against metal. Angela hissed back the pain, taking a moment for her digits to stop throbbing. Then she searched in the darkness again, soon scraping her fingertips across a cool metal hatch. It had a ring for a handle, and on its surface someone had embossed what felt like a Tree surrounded by flames or clouds. She pulled, hard, groaning with the effort. Eventually realizing her error, she pushed in the opposite direction.

The hatch opened, smoothly and silently.

Angela paused for a moment, letting the sweat dribble into her mouth. Gathering her courage, she bit her lip and stuck her arm through the opening.

Air. Empty space. And a dismal, vacuous smell that came from everywhere at once.

“Nina!” she shouted. “Nina! What do I do now? Just go through this thing?”

No answer. Her voice sounded hollow. Lifeless.

Angela attempted to squirm backward or to turn her head more. “Nina?”

A hand wrapped around her wrist, tugging her toward the hatch. Angela screamed, instant fear shooting through her. She jerked backward, almost smacking her head on the dirt ceiling, and struggled fiercely, cursing, digging her heels into the soil and the roots. And then another hand wrapped around her other arm, and its strength was ten times greater than before.

With one swift tug she was sliding, falling. Plummeting in the grasp of a person, or a thing, that she couldn’t see.

Down and down into some dark and endless grave.





Thirty-six



Their brutality, from what I have seen, is far from human understanding. Worse yet, they believe themselves to be kind.



—BROTHER FRANCIS, An Encyclopedia of the Realms





Troy killed eight novices in less than a minute.

Her savage efficiency, the speed she’d summoned to cut their throats, bite their faces, and claw their chests, had been a spectacle of both pure horror and a macabre kind of beauty. Like all Jinn, Troy’s instincts and reflexes were honed to such a fine point that human beings trailed behind her like amoebas. But unlike most Jinn, Troy was the High Assassin, the hunter of hunters, answering only to their Queen, and she had the commanding fierceness and utmost agility to adorn the title.

Maybe she’d performed for Kim’s sake more than her own.

He was covered in blood that had spattered onto his shoes and soaked into his coat sleeves. Blood from men and women who’d tried to stand in his cousin’s way, desperate to save the lives of their fellow colleagues. He was a murderer eight times over now, having sacrificed his former friends to her evil.

Troy’s mouth and hands were painted with crimson, and she licked her lips often, probably tasting her satisfaction.

But her eyes were solely for Kim. The second Troy found the Book, the millisecond she determined the Archon’s identity, Kim’s heart would rest between her teeth. It was frustrating when he stopped to think about it. Humanity always thought small, fearing werewolves, vampires, and ghosts instead of what was truly real, what truly mattered.

Jinn lived off creatures weakened by that kind of ignorance and anxiety. The former they took down swiftly, the latter, slowly and cruelly, like cats playing with their mouse.

They were devils with a perverse code of honor, clannish and vengeful.

Yet, after witnessing Troy’s dance of death firsthand, Kim couldn’t help but admire what he’d seen. He could hate her, but he could never say she was inefficient or untalented.

Fury screeched overhead, her voice echoing out over the city.

Kim paused at the entrance to a dank tunnel, catching his breath and resting his legs. Troy paused with him, instantly growling and hissing. Her ears had folded back like fleshy daggers against her skull. “If only you’d inherited some useful traits,” she snapped at him, nastier than before. She shook her head, and the bones tied to her hair rattled ominously. “I should have left you behind with your dead friends. Who, by the way, tasted like watered-down acid. How fitting that you acquainted yourself with spineless cowards.”

“Try not to be too much of a bitch,” he said, almost snarling with her.

Troy’s eyes narrowed, their light softer. “It’s difficult when I’m suddenly the one leading the way. Tell me, Sariel, do you even know where to find the angel?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “We’re headed in the right direction, aren’t we?”

Kim resumed walking through the tunnel, his shoes clacking against the cobblestones, the sweat trickling down his neck and chest. Troy swept inside after him, latching onto the ceiling, her yellow eyes peering down at him with rabid disgust as she crawled ahead. Her mere presence had an oppressive effect on him now, as if she were constantly shoving a ticking clock in Kim’s face to show the hour of his death. Soon they emerged into the open again, and Fury glided down to the level of her master, both of them vanishing into the shadows of alleys and rooftops until they wandered down a crumbling stairway, squeezing through an alley too tight for three people side by side. Kim entered Memorial Park, somehow half dazed by the odor of the blood on his coat. It took another chilling hiss from Troy to reawaken him.