Twenty Palaces: A Prequel by Harry Connolly

Author:Harry Connolly
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"This world," she began grudgingly, "every world, is surrounded by predators. They're like ghosts who are always near us and they're always hungry, always searching for living planets to devour."

"I--" I stopped myself from saying I've seen this from a spell in Callin's book. Stealing spells from a peer would get me killed. "I think I understand." It sounded lame even to me.

She continued. "Certain magic--summoning magic--calls to these predators and changes them. They become partly physical, partly not, like the worm you saw emerge from that girl's mouth. That's what's inside your friends."

"Can you summon these predators?" I asked, thinking maybe she could summon them out of Jon's body.

"No." Her voice was sharp. "Summoning magic is forbidden. We destroy every summoning spell we can find, as well as anyone who knows the spell and anything they might have summoned." She leaned toward me. "I destroy predators. I don't call them to this world."

"So, those worms are... demons?"

She shook her head. "I've never seen a demon. Or an angel. I've never visited heaven or hell, and I've never spoken to God. All I know is that humans are prey and we're surrounded by hunters, that the predators like to be summoned, but hate to be held in place, that--"

"Jon and Callin cast a summoning spell." It sounded so simple when I said it that way. So straightforward.

"And now your friend is killing people. He'll keep killing people and summoning more predators--"

"Cousins," I said. "They call each other 'cousins.'"

"Which is why," she continued, as if I hadn't interrupted her, "we have to stop them by any means necessary."

"Do you do this all the time? How often does this happen?"

"You don't need to know that."

"Okay. Tell me more about these predators." She didn't like that question. "Tell me about the first predator you ever destroyed."

She stared at me. I could tell she was doing some kind of calculation about me, but she was unusually hard to read. "I won't do that," she said, "but I will tell you about the second. Did you ever hear about the Torso Killer? The press sometimes called him the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run."

I never liked to read the newspapers. "Sorry. Never heard of it."

"He wasn't an 'it'. A man did all those killings. A man with crooked teeth and big round drinker's nose. Don't ask his name because I killed him and burned down his place without asking for it. But he had a predator in his little place. It was hard to see unless it had sopped up human blood... and who knows what else. Some kind of little sponge, I think."

"And this guy was feeding it like a pet?"

"He was."

"Why?"

"I have no idea. It was doing something for him--all these assholes get some kind of power or gift or knowledge for all the killing they do, but I wasn't there to chat with him about it. I was there to start the fire that burned man and predator both to cinders."

There was something more to be said about that story, I could see it in her face.

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