Page 129 of Book of Night
Salt ducked away from Vince’s hand, bringing his hand up to touch the shallow cut at his throat.
The Blight looked down at them, growing so that the library lights dimmed as shadow covered them. “If no one will give me flesh, then I will take it.”
“We have to contain it,” said Malik.
“I have weapons,” Salt said. “Devices. Down through that corridor.”
But there wasn’t time.
The Hierophant lunged. Vicereine’s shadow cat leapt to meet him, claws raking, but the Blight only struck it aside. Bellamy stepped forward, holding up his shadow sword. The Hierophant grabbed hold, and the blade turned to smoke.
Charlie grabbed Vince’s arm. He looked at her the way he had that night out in the cold when he hadn’t seemed to believe she would still touch him.
“Come on,” she said. “We have to go.Now.”
He shook his head.
“I serve no longer,” the Hierophant threatened in a voice that was the rush of wind in the sky, the echo of an empty room. Not human in the least. “I was made from your kind, but I am greater than you now. I will take all that I want, and you will serve me.”
Bellamy rushed down the hall toward the great room, calling a warning ashe drew a dagger of shadow from his coat. Malik’s shadow triplets circled his body, preparing for an attack.
“No more hiding.” Vince took her hand.
His body started to blur at the edges. It was his eyes that went first, from hollow to empty to smoke. Then the gold of his hair, like sparks flying off a bonfire. Darkness licked at his body, as though threatening to devour him.
“Vince!” Charlie shouted.
The Hierophant’s voice moved through the room, like the howls of wind through trees. “All of you who bound me, who tied me to your weak wills and mewling ambitions, know me. I am Cleophes, and I will paint the—”
Vince lunged into him. They crashed together, down the hall. Shadows on the walls, but where they hit, drywall shattered, plaster rained down. A painting was knocked loose, falling and cracking its frame.
The Hierophant’s hands became long claws, each one coming to a thin point. Its mouth opened wide, full of sharp teeth. It ran for the great room, Vince’s shadow chasing after it.
Charlie moved to follow when she felt cold metal against the back of her head. A gun.
“Turn around,” said Salt.
She did. In all the commotion, no one remembered the Glock. At point-blank range, there wasn’t much she could do if he shot her, but he basked in the satisfaction of having her for a moment too long.
Charlie knocked his arm sideways. The shot went off, hitting the bookshelves and taking off a chunk of wooden trim.
He swung the gun at her head as though he was going to bludgeon her with it. She grabbed his wrist and bit down on it as hard as she could.
Howling in pain, Salt dropped the gun. She kicked it with her foot, sending it skittering across the floor.
“You’re nothing,” he told her. “A smudge. A blotch on the universe. And no blotch is going to be my downfall.”
He punched her in the head with his other hand. She staggered dizzily back and he hit her again. He was an old man, but he was strong, and used to hurting people.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” he told her.
“Oh, absolutely,” Charlie said. “Because you’re not going to kill me now.”
He grabbed hold of a poker by the fireplace and swung it toward her. Charlie ducked and grabbed for another tool from the stand. This one was disappointingly tipped with a metal dustpan, but she brought it up anyway, knocking back another attack.
The metal clanged together and she felt it all the way up her arm.
Charlie’s sole experience in this kind of fighting was playing with Posey in the lot by their old apartment, swinging sticks at one another. Unfortunately, that was the level of sucking she was bringing to this fight now.
