Free Grimoire of the Lamb by Kevin Hearne Page B

that it was now able to open. The legs functioned like articulated action figures, with stiff movements allowed by cracks in the stone around the knees and hips. The gilded bronze scepter of power that looked so fascinating when it was art turned abruptly sickening when it was wielded on living flesh. That’s what the unholy thing did—it crushed the lamb’s spine with the scepter in its right hand, then tossed away the ankh in its left, and picked up the body.
    I had a lot to process and little time to do it.
    First, how had this thing come to life? Was it, in fact, living, or was it undead? That was an important distinction for me, since Druidry forbade me to harm living things through binding or unbinding. On the one hand, its stone body and the fact that it had torn itself free of a sarcophagus suggested something undead or animated along the lines of a golem, but on the other—what if it was a manifestation of Sobek?
    That was possible but unlikely to my mind. Back in Cairo, Bast had manifested first as a cat and then took a semi-human form, so it would have made more sense for Sobek to take over the living crocodile in the next room than to animate the sculptured lid of a sarcophagus.
    Said sculpture didn’t pause to provide me with an explanation. It placed the head of the lamb between its black jaws and tore it off with limestone teeth, then spat it out hurriedly and lifted the carcass above its head, letting the blood drain from the body into its mouth.
    It didn’t swallow because it didn’t possess a throat, just a closed-off surface like a hand puppet—but the blood didn’t spill out the sides either. Instead, it was absorbed into the stone. I silently triggered my magical sight, which drained my magic down to dangerous lows, but it revealed to me that this thing wasn’t Sobek—it didn’t have the blinding white aura of a god. Instead of being suffused all over with the white power of magic, the sculpture had its power centered at the back of the mouth, where the blood was pooling and disappearing. In other words, it was ordinary rock and metal animated by an extraordinary spirit. I would ponder later whose spirit it might be and why and how it had animated that sarcophagus at that particular time. A better question to ponder right then was how I was going to prevent it from tearing off my head too and gulping my blood like an energy drink.
    Running away sounded attractive. The sheer size of the thing—seven feet tall and the width of a bookcase—would make navigating the spiral staircase difficult. But I didn’t want to leave behind the grimoire—nor did I wish this thing to grow any more powerful than it already was. How to defeat it?
    Fragarach wouldn’t do me any good. It was great against armor but not so good against rock. Few martial arts were great against rock, now that I thought of it. Probably because one so rarely sees possessed sarcophagi.
    Perhaps I could unbind its feet—which were only half feet anyway—and it would fall down and go boom. It was worth a shot, especially since I’d have nothing left afterward but some dregs to keep my injuries from distracting me.
    I banished my magical sight mentally by using my charm, but there was no way to perform the unbinding silently. I whispered the words, of course, but even that sound echoed in the stone chamber and alerted the thing that it wasn’t alone. It stopped drinking blood, cocked its head, then turned my way. It spotted me peeking from behind the altar as I finished the unbinding and energized it.
    The lamb dropped from its grasp, forgotten, and its mouth opened wide. I think it would have bellowed or hissed if it had any vocal cords, and I kind of wished it did, since its silence was creepy. It whipped its left hand down to point at the floor near its ankles. Nothing happened—visually, at least. I could imagine very well what had happened in the magical spectrum, for that gesture was familiar to me, thanks to Elkhashab. My