Brimborion makes a break for the door. I sweep his feet, cutting him down at the ankles so he falls on his face. Lahash shrieks like a banshee in a blender and throws himself across the bed, crawling toward us.

There’s a good twenty feet between Lahash and me. I shove Brimborion back in the corner with one hand and pull the Glock’s trigger with the other. The bullet hits Lahash above his left eye. He freezes, arms stiff. Like I caught him in mid-push-up. A second later his eyes lock back on me and he’s crawling again. Faster this time.

I put two more shots into his head. He doesn’t slow. He stands on the bed, knees bent like he’s going to jump. I put five shots into his chest dead center.

I should have stuck with head shots.

Lahash doesn’t fall. He falls apart. His bones seem to crack and separate under his skin. Holes in his chest sag into slits and open like a plastic sandwich bag, only it’s not egg salad on wheat inside. It’s bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.

Behind me Brimborion alternates between hyperventilating and doing a passable impression of Little Richard’s falsetto. I’m kind of at a loss myself. I never tried to beat up bugs before. Do you work the body or rope-a-dope them?

With nothing better to do, I fire off a few rounds into the writhing pile. No reaction from the bugs, but I’m pretty sure I murdered my bed.

The only thing that’s kept Brimborion and me alive these few seconds is that when the bugs burst out of Lahash, they began eating him. Now the first wave is getting bored with his dead ass and wants fresh meat.

I throw some arena hoodoo at the swarm, a simple slam-down move that feels like someone driving a knee into your solar plexus. The middle of the swarm stops like it smacked into an invisible wall, but the other billon little bastards flood around it.

I could do an airburst and explode all the oxygen in the room. That would kill the bugs, but in an enclosed space like this, it would blow out my lungs and turn my organs into cat food. Some kind of fire is my best weapon but this is the wrong terrain. I go for the next best thing.

I crawl to the corner of the room with Brimborion. Bite down as hard as I can on my right hand until I draw blood, and splatter it on the floor between the bugs and me. The blood is like slop to pigs. They head right for it, lapping it up. I keep flicking my hand, throwing out as much blood as I can between the bugs and me. That sucks but it’s the next part that’s really going to hurt.

Whispering some bad black Hellion hoodoo, I punch through the wall above a wall socket. Feel for the wires with my bloody hand and grab the bare copper leads where they touch the wires going to the plug.

The average human body doesn’t react well to having 120 volts blasted through it. In fact, it tries really hard to get away, so when you force it to do something as stupid as grab live wires and not let go, you get to experience the twin thrills of excruciating pain and a total revolt by your skin and bones because your body doesn’t understand what your mind is making it do. It’s pain on every level of your being. Nerves, muscles, and skin all trying to crawl away from each other. But you hold on because it’s the only thing keeping you alive and your body can goddamn well cowboy up and deal with it.

The hoodoo kicks in just as I’m starting to black out. Blood kick-starts dark magic like nothing else, and when the hoodoo hits, my bedroom turns into the Fourth of goddamn July as the electricity flowing through my bloody hand explodes from the splattered patches of blood on the floor. Writhing drifts of bugs fry instantly. Thousands are blown into the air by the force of the blast. The bugs spin like pinwheels, each trailing a tiny lightning bolt from its head to the bloody floor. It’s all skyrockets and flare guns in here. And when the bugs fall, they’re as crisp and dead as autumn leaves.

I pull my hand out of the wall and fall flat on my back. My knees are vibrating. My jaw aches from being clenched so hard. I look down at my hand. Have you ever started cooking bacon, gotten a phone call, and forgotten about it until you smelled charred pig? That’s me. I am bacon. Hear me roar. On the upside, the bite is nicely cauterized.

Behind me, I hear Brimborion push back the table he was hiding behind. He crawls over to me. There’s a neat, clean bandage wrapped around one of his hands.

“You saved me,” he says.

I look up at him sitting above me.

“What?”

He sits back on his haunches. Rests his back against the wall.

Brimborion says, “I don’t understand you. Yesterday you cut off my finger and today you save my life. What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m just really tired.”

“You could have thrown me to those things and gotten away.”

“I’ll have to remember it for next time.”

He leans over me and makes a face like he smells spoiled milk.

“Your hand looks awful.”

“ ‘Awful’ is a kind of relative term. I mean, it looks better than Lahash.”

Brimborion lifts his head to get a better look at the smear of bone and gristle on the bed.

“You knew him. Who was he?”

“An herbalist,” Brimborion says. “He worked with the palace thaumaturgists. I used to buy . . . things from him.”

“You mean he’s your dealer.”

“If you wish.”

“Did he have access to the good stuff?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like maybe hypnotics. Something that would loosen him up enough for psychic control.”

“Do you think that’s what happened to him?”

“I don’t know. What kind of persuading would it take for you to sit still while someone pumped you full of carnivorous bugs?”

Brimborion crosses his arms. Uncrosses them. Leans his head against the wall and looks at the ceiling.

I roll over onto my Kissi arm, the only part of me that doesn’t hurt, and push myself into a sitting position. I try to move my burned fingers. When they flex, flakes of black skin drop off, revealing blistered red flesh underneath. At least there’s enough good skin left to heal.

“Would you like me to get you something?” Brimborion asks.

“What?” I say, my brain and body not quite on speaking terms yet.

Brimborion points to my hand.

“Would you like me to get you something for that? The palace witches make some powerful healing potions.”

“Yeah. Sure,” I say. “And some cigarettes. I really need a cigarette.”

“I’ll be back.”

He pushes himself to his feet.

“Don’t tell anyone about this. Especially not Vetis. I don’t want to be up to my eyeballs in security,” I say. “Act like nothing happened. That should give whoever set this up something to think about.”

“You don’t even want the room cleaned?”

“Leave it just like it is.”

“I understand.”

He starts to leave.

“What did you say when you first came in?”

He goes to the end of the bed, picks up an envelope and a rectangular box from the floor, and brings them to me.

“I had your mail.”

“That all came today?”

“The box yesterday. The notes before. I don’t remember when.”

“You wouldn’t have given me any of this if we hadn’t had our little talk in the hall last night.”

“No.”

“Why these particular letters?”

He shakes his head.

“They weren’t the usual official correspondence. Holding them back would make sure you stayed isolated.”

“People pay you off to hold back certain messages and to give me others.”

Brimborion shrugs.

“Everyone in the palace has something on the side. It’s the generals who get rich. Not civil servants.”

“Who paid you to hold on to these?”

He looks at the bed.

“Lahash.”

That’s a nice way of covering your trail. Don’t just kill the guy who knows too much. Turn him into a suicide bug bomb.

“If someone wants to assassinate you, there must be easier ways,” says Brimborion.

“They tried easier. Now they tried this. Watch your ass. You work for me, so sooner or later you’re going to be on the bug list too.”