Read Online The Broken Lands by Kate Milford - Free Book Online Page A

nose. “
Messing
with daemons? I
command
daemons! And I have the right, because I figured out how. I answer to myself and no one else, no matter how anyone tries to bind my
kind
.”
    â€œWe know who you are, Basile,” Walker said quickly as another runnel of bloody sweat trickled from Christophel’s temple to the corner of his mouth.
    Christophel’s tongue darted out, tasted the drop. Abruptly, he stilled. “Blast and damn,” he muttered, yanking a handkerchief from his pocket. He ran it over his face and neck, mopping the blood away. Then he turned to the desk and rifled through the drawers until he found a mirror and examined the slick of red still popping up across his skin.
    â€œDamn, damn, damn.” He blotted his face again and examined the coppery stain around his collar. When he spoke next, his voice was tightly controlled. “Excuse me for a moment, gentlemen. I would rather not let this stain set.”
    When Basile Christophel’s footsteps on the stone stairs had faded from earshot, Walker turned to Bones and folded his arms. “And that, Bones, is why, behind his evil, evil back, we call him Doc Rawhead.”
    â€œIt isn’t possible,” Bones mused. “I really thought you were overstating the matter.”
    â€œOverstating which bit, exactly?” Walker asked casually. “The sweating blood bit, or the bit about calling up . . . whatever it is he’s going to call up?”
    â€œEither. Both.” Bones put the plum-colored candle back into its sconce and peered up the stairs after Christophel. “The other part, too. What he said about having been roaming since before Pandemonium, about having the right?”
    â€œAre you asking what he meant, or whether or not he was lying about it?”
    â€œI know what he
meant
. You never told me that part. Is it true?”
    â€œI never told you because I only suspected it. Until now. He rather completely admitted to it.” Walker took a deep breath. “Yes. Despite how twisted it seems, yes. Basile Christophel’s a jumper.”
    Quick footsteps sounded on the stairs. Christophel appeared in the doorway wearing a crisp new shirt, a thin scarlet sheen just barely visible across his nose and cheekbones. He regarded Walker and Bones calmly. “So, you fellows want to finish this or not?”
    Â 
    The pin was redressed with vinegar and bitters, and Christophel ran it through the candle flame again. He scratched four letters into the surface of the tallow packet holding the cheroot ash at the center of the table:
INIT
.
    The second he finished crossing the
T,
the little packet began to move. “Let the deal go down,” Christophel said as he poked the hatpin into the table so that it stood upright a few inches away.
    â€œNow watch,” he whispered.
    The letters took on a cold green glow, but they were only legible for a moment before the shifting of the multicolored tallow stretched them beyond recognition. The packet arched upward, curved into itself, uncurled, twitched, and writhed, and suddenly what had been a small, amorphous thing was now a hunched but recognizably human form. Its arms reached for the head of the hatpin, and leaning on it like a cane, the form slowly unbent itself.
    It stood nearly two feet tall. The many colors of its skin had mixed into a fairly uniform, oily shade of gray, and it was now stretched so thin that it was almost transparent, like blown glass. Otherwise, it looked like something fashioned from clay by a child, human-shaped in the sense that it had two legs, two arms, and a head. The hands that gripped the hatpin were fingerless mittens. It didn’t seem to have feet—the legs disappeared into the layer of fatty tallow coating the table, as if it was wading in shallow water that came up to its ankles.
    Inside the transparent head, a dull, uneven glow came to life: the stub of the cheroot. On the creature’s forehead, the