My hand found the edge, fingers digging into the groove. Luca nodded, bracing himself on the other side.
“On three,” I said.
“One.” I set my stance. “Two.” Muscles coiled. “Three.”
We pulled, muscles straining against something more permanent than age and rot. There was powerful magic here. “Wait. Try the sigil.”
Luca pulled the pendant out from beneath his shirt, murmured a few words, and miraculously, the doors opened of their own accord, giving way with a low, grinding groan that echoed out into the night, revealing a musty, dark interior.
“Wait out here.” I stepped inside first, and the smell grew stronger—earth, decay, and something older. The walls were lined with shelf after shelf of stone coffins, theirsmoke-blackened lids cracked. Burned on pyres, then brought in here to rot in the dark.
Luca came up beside me, a small torch flaring in his hand, casting flickering shadows across the walls. “Gods, it’s really here,” he whispered.
The Basin sat in the center of the open space, emanating the kind of power that rattled bones and made youwantto kneel. Inside me, the ifrit recoiled, hissing, diving deep into the shadows.
Up close, the thing was massive, carved from glittering rock that drank up the light, the dark, stained surface etched with those strange runes. Runes I now recognized, after all my time in the Fossa. Witch marks. The same kind carved into my bones.
No wonder the demon hated this thing.
Those runes reminded the demon of its prison.
“Right where he thought no one would ever look.” I glanced at Luca. “We owe you one. Without you, we would’ve never found this.”
He held my gaze, something unreadable flickering in his expression. “I told you I could help. It’s time you all start trusting me.”
The kid had a fair point.
I gave him a short nod. “Yeah, maybe it is. Now, let’s get this thing stashed somewhere safe and our asses to the rendezvous point, like we promised your sister.”
Our bonding moment was interrupted by a dragging sound outside the mausoleum.
“We got all the guards,” Luca whispered. “I’m sure of that.”
I trusted him on that. He knew every inch of this island, and we’d made a full sweep with a head count before we’d engaged. We didn’t miss anyone. I turned to face the door,and the darkness beyond the entrance shifted, like the mist rolling in, or…
An Ashbound burst into the mausoleum, claws extended.
“Get behind me,” I shouted, spotting a dozen more outside. “Better yet, get behind the Basin and stay the fuck down.”
They spilled into the chamber like nightmares given shape, fire glowing in their cracked skin, eyes burning with the same ancient power trapped inside me. The ifrit stirred, took one look at the Basin, and went back to sleep.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I hissed, ripping the head off the first creature. “This is no time to be shy. Here’s the bloodbath you’ve been waiting for. Now, wake the fuck up and get in the game.”
They’d tear Luca apart, and without the ifrit, I would be fighting for my life.
I rammed my body forward and met them head-on. Skeletal fingers, sharp as claws, slashed at my face, raking down my side as I shoved the writhing pack back—and back and back, out through the door and into the night.
I kicked the mausoleum door closed behind me with a boom as Ashbound circled me like a pack of starving dogs. These were old, some of the first; their skin was stone-like, so smooth, the moon glinted off the polished surface, and they were far more powerful than newer ones.
One was an old guard I recognized by his missing ear, an empty glow in his eye sockets.
They weren’t sentient.
Tools, at best, driven by a vicious hunger for blood, like the ifrit, but lacking logic.
Teeth snapped at the nape of my neck, and I pivoted,slamming my knife into the thing’s throat, yanking the blade down, shredding desiccated flesh.
“Any time now would be great,” I hissed to the demon. “I closed the door, the big, scary rock is gone. You can come out.”
