Chapter 23 · Feast of Mad Gods

"Get the hell back, Vesper!" Lucian’s voice didn't sound like his own. It was layered, a chorus of a thousand screaming things echoing from a throat that should have been too weak to speak.

Vesper didn't move. She slammed her shoulder against the clinic door, boots skidding on the blood-slicked tile. She had her twin pistols crossed, muzzles shaking. "What the fuck is happening in here? Lucian, look at me!"

He didn't look. He couldn't. Lucian was slumped in the surgical chair, his chest bare, the new mechanical spinal grafts still weeping red fluid. But he wasn't just a broken man in a chair anymore. Shadows—thick, oily, and wrong—were pouring out of his mouth and eyes like ink in water. They didn't fall; they drifted, swirling around him in a hungry vortex.

"I told you," Lucian gasped, his body jerking violently. "To guard... the door."

"Guard the door?" Vesper shouted, glancing back at the corridor where the Inquisition’s heavy breach team was currently hammering through the outer wall. The sound of steel on stone was deafening. "The walls are literally exploding, and you're turning into a goddamn ink blot!"

"Don't... touch... me," he hissed.