Five vultures perched near the ruined temple facade. There, staring back from the stone, was the symbol for infinity that graced all the temples and that had become such a bitter irony now, four thousand years later. Infinity! Or not. Magpie watched the foul birds. The crows and imp were waiting near the mouth of the Deeps where she’d promised Calypso she would join them as soon as she’d gotten a glimpse of the devil. She shivered. Just a glimpse. Soon she would see it. Soon she would know what had laughed as it killed a Djinn.

The sun was all but gone.

Just as the last orange tinge of it drained away behind the hills, a fume issued from a crack in the facade of the temple below. It neither rose to disperse like smoke nor drifted to settle like fog. It pulsed and constricted into a tight clot of shadow far deeper than the dimming night around it.

Magpie blinked. She squinted at it. She could see the vultures’ every feather and even make out the veins in their bloodshot eyes, but of this thing that poured from the shadows she could see nothing but a darkness so profound it stole even the memory of light. And the way it moved . . . It didn’t float but seemed to siphon itself through the air with a steady, hunting will.

She lay very, very still.

Its eyes . . . Though Magpie made no sound, its eyes swiveled straight to her, finding her instantly across the distance and the darkness. A shiver thrilled through her blood. Its eyes were vertical slits like the Magruwen’s—she’d never seen eyes like that on a devil! Its gaze burned her mind. And its hunger . . . She felt it like the tug of a tide. It was tasting her on the air.

When it spoke, its disembodied voice seemed to come from within her own head, invading her mind, filling it. “What’s this? Ah, a draught of the old wine,” it rasped, and came toward her.

Magpie gathered herself into a crouch on the branch and though she was loathe to invite that voice into her head again, she cried out, “What are you?”

“I am the heavens with the stars ripped out” came its whispered reply. “I am the Blackbringer.” Magpie shook her head to clear the voice from it but it went on, “But who are you, faerie? The first taste in this pale place of the old vintage . . . A feast. Be still!”

The voice compelled her to be still. The fume rose slowly off the ground and she found herself frozen, watching it come. Closer. Closer.

“Magpie!” a voice screamed from the sky, scouring the terrible whisper from her mind. Her head jerked up and she saw a figure glide overhead.