Free The Alchemist's Flame by Becca Andre

flexed beneath the rolled up sleeve of his orange prison coveralls. Henry grinned at me over Ian’s shoulder.
    “Dumb move, Addie,” George said from behind me, his hand tightening around my throat.
    “Did you really think your pretty friend could get the drop on a couple of Hunters?” Henry asked.
    I must admit, I’m disappointed, Ian’s voice spoke in my mind.
    “What the—” Henry didn’t get to finish the statement as Ian reached up and gripped his forearm. A loud pop and Henry screamed.
    Still gripping Henry’s arm, Ian slung him aside. He did it with such ease that I jumped when Henry slammed into the bars at the front of his cell. He hit so hard, I expected to see dents in them.
    “I expected more of a challenge,” Ian said, tugging his black dinner jacket straight. The portal shimmered open, and Ian turned toward it.
    “Don’t move,” George said. “I’ll crush her wind pipe.” His fingers dug into my throat and I gagged.
    “Then I’ll kill you both,” Ian said coolly.
    “Perhaps, but she’ll already be dead.”
    Ian let the portal wink out.
    Henry groaned and rolled onto his side.
    “What are you doing here, alchemist?” George asked.
    “Brian,” I croaked around the pressure on my throat.
    “Brian’s dead,” George said, his tone flat. “The suits took him out of here and killed him.”
    “Not…PIA,” I rasped. “Neil.”
    “What?”
    “It would be easier for you to understand her words if you released her,” Ian said.
    Was it my imagination or had Ian’s eyes lightened? He could only use his magic when there was something dead to animate, and Henry was moving on his own.
    “And deny myself the pleasure of wringing her neck?” George asked. “I’ve waited a long time for this.”
    “George,” Henry whispered. “He’s not human.”
    “Not anymore,” Ian agreed.
    Henry rolled onto his hands and knees. Well, hand and knees. He cradled the other arm against his chest.
    “He’s as strong as James,” Henry added.
    “Stronger, I would wager,” Ian said. “I’ve been dead longer.”
    “There’s only one grim,” George said. “He’s a lich.”
    “Lich king,” Ian corrected. “But you are incorrect. There is another grim. That’s why we’re here.”
    “Neil used…Brian’s body…resurrect Gavin.” My words were a rough whisper under the pressure on my throat.
    “Gavin,” George repeated.
    I couldn’t decipher the emotion in his voice, if there was any emotion at all. He and his brothers had spent a little quality time with Gavin in the land of the dead last December. James had left them there before he brought them here.
    “I need…something of Brian’s,” I whispered. “To scry for Gavin.”
    “Why, so you can take him for your own?” George’s grip tightened. “Fucking alchemists.”
    “Do you feel that?” Ian asked.
    “What?” George demanded.
    “On your calf. It’s a pair of black widow spiders—or what’s left of them. I found them beneath your bunk, dead.” Ian’s eyes faded to white.
    “Necromancer,” George whispered. Apparently, he didn’t know what a lich king was.
    “They haven’t been dead long. Their venom is still potent.”
    George snorted. “Dead spiders. Is that the best you got?”
    Ian laughed, the sound so devoid of mirth that I shivered.
    “Hurt Addie, and I will not only kill you, I will Make you. And like those decaying arachnids I forced to drag their nearly limbless bodies up your trouser leg. I will do the same to you. How long will your Hunter’s spirit survive trapped inside a rotting, immobile torso?”
    My breath came in shallow gulps, and not only because of the pressure on my throat. One glance in Ian’s cold, white eyes and there was no denying that he meant every word.
    George released me.
    I took a hasty step away from the bars of his cell and turned around.
    George shook out his pant leg and a pair of dark shapes tumbled out. I didn’t get a chance to see if they were actually black widows