I’m dying, drip-dripping into the earth.
What do you want from me? The spiders’ silent urgency shoves me on. I can no more resist them than I can the wind. I stumble into a larger cavern, then blink as a light comes on. A globe of yellow light shines from the ceiling.
The spiders draw back as I enter, then close ranks behind me, waiting.
I stare at the golem in front of me.
I’ve never seen one like this before, not in person, not in books. The golems we fought a scant few days ago were strong, but worn and old, bulky and lumbering.
This, though. This is perfect and shining, made of some reddish-gold metal. Its lines are sleek, its limbs fluid-looking. Delicate and deadly.
Its eyes are empty. Its arms hang, useless.
“Is this your latest design? Did you build this to guard the gates? Or—?” I gasp, as a slender limb extends from the nearest spider and circles my wrist. Messages flash between us, so quickly that I cannot tell if what passed were thoughts or images or emotions or something else entirely.
But I know what these spiders are offering me. An empty metal husk, with no fuel, nothing to spark through its wires.
Nothing save me.
They’re offering me a body.
I’m cocooned and armored, protected for the first time in oh-so-long. I stretch myself atoms-thin across wires, dance and sparkle in the golem’s eyes.
I have a body again. I’m no longer just energy, no longer only flow.
After being nigh-on-insubstantial for so long, it’s strange to have so much mass. My first movements are shaky and staggering, like that of a drunkard. I feel myself indent the earth, bludgeon the very air. While my mourning cloak form was that of an assassin’s, this body is that of a warrior’s.
This will protect me long enough to get close to the salt—and the demon within it.
I know what to do. M—Jazala showed me that as she died, that last chant unspoken on her lips, as she turned her own body to energy.
I don’t need that extra step. I only need to be ready to strike.
The ground vibrates under my feet as I shuffle out of the caves. An escort of spiders accompany me down to the valley. They see me off, front legs waving in the air, as if in benediction or farewell.
I set my face toward the salt, gouging craters as I head up the ramp into Kaal Baran.
As I pass, there’s a stirring in the grove of nightwalkers, as if a breeze has gone through them.
It’s not wind. The nightwalkers are pulling themselves from the ground.
Changed, turned rocky and gritty and banded red, orange, and yellow, they’ve become part of the desert. They clip-click behind me as I shoulder my way through the gates. We cross the courtyard. I can’t be bothered to figure out how to manipulate locks and handles, so I bust the gates down.
There is something so very satisfying about the crash.
They can’t get into the glass tube. Even another smear of my blood won’t help. The Director’s tried acid and wards, blowtorches and eldritch guns. At the end, he’s screaming and banging at the tube with a wrench, like a child in the throes of a temper tantrum.
Held by soldiers, their large hands clamped on my arms, I watch in grim amusement. Daral offers occasional help, voice bland and face expressionless.
I can’t tell what game he’s playing.
The Director whirls around and faces me. The light has turned his spectacles to silver. He looks like a wide-eyed bug.
“Him!” His knotty finger jabs in my direction. “Bring him to me. Let’s see if all his blood will be enough to get through this glass.”
I can’t help a short scoffing laugh.
Daral gives me a wry, sideways look. “Only the pure of heart can wear the angel wings. Tell me, Kato, are you pure of heart?”
“No. Never have been.” My voice comes out blackly cheerful. Once I thought I was Chosen because I had the makings of greatness. I know better now.
“Ridiculous. You can’t sense or measure purity of heart.” The Director’s breathing heavily. He throws back his head and laughs. “We must approach this problem scientifically.”
He circles the glass tube, eyeing the suspended object within. It’s more than just wings—it’s breastplate, too—but that graceful sweep, the details on the feathers, that sheen which goes from milky to pearl to steel, that’s what catches the eye.
“This we know,” continues the Director, as if he’s giving a lecture to some scrubby first-year university students. “These beings you call angels fought against other beings who have come down to us known simply as demons. And if you use angels to fight demons”—he smiles and I do not like it—“you can use demon against angel, too.”
He snaps his fingers. “You,” he commands a soldier, “bring me the box.”
My muscles tighten. I have a bad feeling about this.
The soldier doesn’t need to ask which box. There’s apparently only one special one.
“You.” The Director points at Grip. “I need you.”
Grip straightens and salutes in what he imagines to be a soldierly way, grinning all the while.
The soldier presents the Director a leather-covered case. The Director spins some dials, undoes the clasps. The lid springs up on silent hinges. Inside is an array of instruments I have no names for. Daral steps forward, interest caught.
The Director removes one with a wooden handle and two short, blunt prongs. With a swift movement, he holds it to Grip’s forehead, arm held out straight and stiff.
The eerie man goes almost cross-eyed trying to look at it.
The Director’s thumb flicks a switch on the handle. Grip convulses, yelps. He tries to jerk his head back, but can’t. He’s like a fish on a hook, well and truly trapped.
“Now,” says the Director. “You were made to obey. Obey you shall.” His thumb moves the switch down even further.
Grip’s eyes
