Bloodstone Read Free Page B

enveloping me in coziness. Nice. The floor, covered with thin, cheap commercial carpeting, was surprisingly comfy—except something dug into my thigh. I reached down to see what it was. Oh, right. My dagger in its sheath. How odd that I’d strap on a dagger before taking a nap. I adjusted the sheath so it wasn’t directly under my leg. There, that felt better.
    I let my consciousness sink toward oblivion. It felt good, so good, to rest.
    I wanted to sleep, but I couldn’t. A strong, unpleasant smell, like dirty diapers mixed with month-old body odor, wrinkled my nose. I forced my eyes open, but I could barely see through the warm, gray mist that clung to my face. Tendrils slithered into my nose and down my throat. They squeezed my body. This is bad, I thought, strangely calm. The Peccatum was cocooning me in Sloth—and that was where Sloth became a truly deadly sin. If I didn’t do something, the demon would smother me. Sloth would seep into my body until my lungs couldn’t be bothered to draw in air, until my own heart grew too lethargic to beat. Yet the realization felt far away and unimportant. Sleep was so much more appealing.
    Stinking gray tendrils clogged my nose. I couldn’t breathe. My mouth opened in a gasp; invading Sloth filled it like dirty cotton. I gagged. A spark of self-preservation flared in me, and I snorted, trying to clear the tendrils from my nose. My hand lay near the hilt of my dagger. In the tight cocoon, I couldn’t move enough to get my hand around it, but my fingers walked the dagger, inch by inch, from its sheath. Each inch felt like a mile; all I wanted was to stop and rest. But I kept going. When the blade was clear, I angled it upward and poked at the Sloth that smothered me. It gave a little, and I forced the dagger upward. Sloth dissolved around the blade, adding the stench of sulfur and brimstone to the stink in the air.
    I pressed my advantage, cutting a bigger hole in the cocoon. When I managed to grip the dagger’s hilt, I swept the blade back and forth. In a moment, my arm was free, and I sliced away the Sloth that was wrapped around my head. Sloth recoiled, the cocoon loosened, and I pushed myself into a sitting position. I drew my second dagger and sliced with both hands, cutting the tightly woven cocoon to shreds.
    More tendrils reached for me, but I severed them as they approached. Stinking yellow smoke filled the room. I crawled toward the conference table, where a bottle of holy water rested against one of the legs. I got under the table and grabbed the bottle. About a quarter of its contents remained. I splashed holy water over myself and stayed where I was, directly beneath the Peccatum. Tendrils of Sloth slithered on the floor around me, searching, but the holy water kept me hidden, even as I coughed Sloth out of my lungs. Gray clouds puffed from my mouth as I hawked up the last of it.
    Bam! An explosion shuddered the room. Fire blasted out, rife with the smell of smoke and charred meat. I ducked and covered my head, then peered out from between my arms. A massive new tentacle, red and fiery, streamed from the demon and through the wall. Anger.
    The door burst open. One of the dieters—the woman who’d told me to get out—stormed into the room like an avenging Fury. She was no longer a yellow lump of Gluttony; now she was burning with Anger. Her face was scarlet, and she was wrapped in flames. Behind her loomed two bodybuilders, both of them also in the fiery clutches of Anger.
    The woman scanned the room until her eyes locked onto me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she screamed. In the human plane, she couldn’t see the demon that wrapped her in flames. Only me. And I was the target of a massive Anger overdose.
    She rushed into the room, fingers curled into claws, and swiped at me under the table. When I drew back, she kicked. I tossed some holy water on her leg, extinguishing the flaming tendrils that clutched her. She staggered back,