Hunter's Prayer (24 page)

Dammit.

Vaulted ceiling, made of poured concrete, ribbed and beautiful, in perfect proportion. Hammered into the concrete were the Forms, the squiggles and sharp curves carved and filled with thick gold wire, glinting as they channeled etheric force. The place was humming, alive with sorcerous power.

By craning my head I could see the floor was granite blocks fitted precisely together, and was also full of wrist-thick gold lines twisting; the altar was inside a square, set inside a pentacle, set inside a triple circle that held the Nine Seals, each in its prescribed place. Between the pentacle’s outer orbit and the beginning of the triple circle was another smaller altar, this one curved like a dolphin’s back without the fin. Channels were carved into this concrete curve, deep fresh channels that were already dark and crusted.

The first sacrifices had already been performed.

Candles burned, their flames hissing in the dimness. Candles that smelled sickish-sweet. In the trade they are called perfect-tallow.

The layman would call them, with respectable horror,
made of human fat.

“Christ,” I whispered, and the sound bounced off the high vaulted roof. There were braziers, and heat simmered up from each of them. This little hole hadn’t come cheap, especially with all the gold. She must have funneled an amazing amount of cash into it.

Perhaps the final indignity was that I was naked except for the leather cuff buckled securely over the scar—
under
the chain-cuff. My ruby was gone, and I could tell the silver ring Mikhail had given me was gone too. The silver charms in my hair, each one painstakingly braided in with red thread, were gone as well. There was no comforting weight of silver in my ears either.

Which made me feel even more naked.

Crap. Well, I’m still alive, aren’t I? That’s one.
But the sinking sensation under my breastbone just wouldn’t go away. Because if Belisa had drugged me, stripped me of my jewelry, and dragged me here, there was only one reason why.

The deep sharp blood-channels cut into the smooth glassy surface of the altar underneath me told me just what they had planned for me.

Saul. Did she hurt Saul? How did she get me here?
I shut my eyes.
Don’t panic, Jill. Don’t you fucking dare panic.

How could I not panic? Had she hurt Saul?
Had
she? Or had she just dragged me out of there, content to elude him?

The prayer rose under the surface of my mind.
Thou Who hast given me strength to fight evil, protect me. Keep me from harm. Grant me strength in battle, honor in living, and a quick clean death when my time comes—

“Fuck that,” I whispered. I didn’t want to die at all.

There had to be something I could do. Even if the preliminary sacrifices had already been performed, I still had at least an hour. Or at least, I hoped I did.

Time to think fast.

25

T
he stone was cold and my head hurt. I kept my eyes closed and my breathing steady, and the scar had turned hot.
Very
hot. As if a blowtorch was held against it, the skin crisping and turning black, burning down to bone but never quite getting there,
burning.

Was Perry dead? Probably. I’d shot him in the head with silver-coated ammo. If he wasn’t dead he was very unhappy—and unlikely to forgive me. He would probably peel the scar off me himself, and overload my nervous system with sick wriggling pleasure while he did it.

If he does that, Jillian, you’ll be alive to feel it. Which will mean you’ll have escaped this. So don’t worry about it right now.

The scar was
hot.
And when the first acrid scent of burning found its way to my nostrils I was elated—but not so happy my concentration slipped.

Fire, from a hellbreed mark. Part of the bargain, even if Perry was mad at me.

He shouldn’t have called me that. Shouldn’t have threatened to have a woman raped, even if it was a Sorrow.

The thought disturbed my concentration, but the heat didn’t slip. I heard a rustling, and swallowed hard, opening my eyes just as the last shred of the tough battered leather charred. I couldn’t see it under the metal cuff that held my arm stretched at an awkward angle, just in the precise place that robbed me of any leverage. It was the same with my legs.

The Sorrows are good at trussing people up.

The soft sounds were velvet capes, brushing the floor. I heard another soft, chilling sound.

A long drugged moan, impossible to tell if the voice was male or female. The cold air brushed my skin, and I shivered.

The sudden wash of sensation from the scar was enough to make gooseflesh rise all over my body. I could, if I wanted to, look down and see if my nipples were hard.

A fine time to be naked and chained to an altar, Jill. With you the fun times never end.
I drew in a long soft breath, watching as they came in two by two.

Two. Four. Six. Eight.

I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this. I had assumed that Inez was a rogue Sorrow, but that was because Belisa had told me so. For there to be more than one Sorrow here was bad, bad news. Which one of the robed bitches was the one who had killed my teacher and maneuvered me so neatly?

Ten. Twelve; these two carrying between them a long pale shape that was a woman’s body. The shapeless moan came again, it was from
her.
Drugged.

Oh, thank God, she won’t feel a thing if I can’t save her in time. Christ, how am I going to get out of this?

They were hooded and draped in black-blue velvet, but the thirteenth entered with her hood thrown back. A sleek shock of darkish hair glowed with bloody highlights in the candlelight, and she walked to one of the brass braziers—the one nearest the curved sacrificial altar—and tossed something in. Sizzling filled the air for a moment, then sweet smoke billowed out.

Ambergris. Amber. And clove.

The incense of evocation. My skin chilled again. I was going to go into shock.

Stop it, Jillian. Listen. Look. Plan.

What plan? I was trussed up tighter than a Christmas turkey. But the stink of charred leather told me I wasn’t completely helpless.

Think, Jill. And open your goddamn eyes.

“It won’t help, you know.” Her voice was soft, accented with fluid French and wrapping its velvety ends around me; digging in, squeezing, looking for a way inside. She glided up to the altar on cat-soft feet, this blood-haired Sorrow.

I found myself looking at a strong-jawed, not unpleasant face; her eyes were black from lid to lid and the bruising of her aura was deep and severe. I caught a whiff of something else, too, a fume that shimmered out from her robe in waves of olfactory scarlet and gold.

She was far more than a Sorrows adept. That fume could only mean one thing.

I was looking at a Grand Mother of a House of Sorrows, one of the most efficient praying mantises the world has ever seen. Just one step below a Queen Mother, a brooding termite capable of hiving off Houses and
calling
potential suicides to her as Sorrows Neophyms.

In other words, I was in deep fucking shit.

My brain jittered like a rabbit; I inhaled sharply, and she smiled. Set just under her hairline, above and between her eyes, was her mark: the three circles, the black flame, and a colorless glitter that was the seal of a Grand Mother.

I cleared my throat. “Inez Germaine, I presume.” My voice was harsh, cracked, and only human after the softness of hers. Like the cawing of a raven after a dulcet song.

Quit it, Jill. She’s a fucking Sorrows mantis, she’ll chew you up if you’re not careful.
I gave her my most winning smile. She was going to have to work harder than that to squeeze her way in through my mental defenses. I was toughened by so many exorcisms that I wasn’t even sure I could let something in if I wanted to.

I didn’t want to test that theory, though. Not at all.

She put one hand down, and a velvet sleeve brushed my belly as her fingers closed around my left breast. I made my face a mask, but she smiled, a very gentle smile that sat incongruously on her strong face. Her thumb moved a little. “Inez Germaine Ayasha, if you wish to be specific.” She paused, examining me thoroughly; scalp to toenails. If I’d been embarrassed by nakedness, now would have been the time to show it. But dating a Were will give you a whole new definition of naked, and having a hellbreed kiss on your wrist will too.

But her hand let go of my breast, trailed down my ribs. I sucked in a shallow breath.
No.

Her fingertips brushed my belly, passing over old ridged scars and the furrows of abdominal muscle from hard training. I was too stringy, really, not much room for big curves when you’re fighting like hell all the time and having a hard time taking in enough protein to fuel that sort of muscle burn.

Sometimes I wondered if Saul would have liked me a little softer. A little more feminine.

The touch lightened as she brushed my pubic hair.
“Tranquille, enfante,”
she murmured. Calmly, lovingly. “I would not crack so fine a vessel.”

Her fingers dipped, and my entire body closed. My eyes rolled up into my head, and I curled up into the quiet space inside my own head. That space was small, and dark, and smelled like a kid’s closet stuffed with shoes and plush animals. Bad things could batter at the door, men could howl outside, but inside I was safe.

It was the space that I used to go to whenever Saul touched me. With Mikhail it had been heat and combat, but with Saul … it had been gentleness.

He had coaxed me out with infinite patience, one night at a time, holding me when I sobbed. Stroking my hair, reassuring me, easing me along. Until I could have my body belong to me again, and like anything that belonged to me it could be shared.

But not now. Now I didn’t want to share. I went rigid, sweating, my jaw so tight my teeth ground and sang a thin song of agony, red and black explosions playing out behind my eyelids as she probed with first one finger, then another.

I made a low harsh sound. Metal clashed as I struggled, hit my head against the stone altar, and suddenly knew that if she kept going I would beat my skull against the stone until one of us broke.

And I didn’t think it would be the altar.

She finally returned her black eyes to my face, sliding her fingers free and stroking my belly again with the flat of her palm. “You should have been born into a House,
cherie.
” Her tone was gentle, kind. “We would have known how to bring out the best in such a … delicate temperament as yours, without causing such regrettable side effects.”

High praise, from a Sorrow. “Horseshit.”
If you think I’m going to beg, bitch, think again.
“Nice trick, sending Belisa to play the Sorrow in distress. That brother bit almost got me.”

“Melisande’s brother was genuine. I picked both of them,
ma cherie.
” The smile widened. “So brave.” Her fingers stroked, came back up to cup my breast, and I could feel that my nipple was indeed hard. Hard as a chunk of rock.

Goddammit.
But six years of Perry’s scar burning on my wrist and his fiddling with my internal thermostat was now paying off in prime. My heartrate stayed the same, though my breathing was a little harsher than I liked. I felt soul-bruised, savagely stretched, and just one thin hair away from raped.

If I belong to me, then I can share or not share, and I don’t want to share with you, you bitch.

Besides, if she wanted to mindfuck me with just a paper file to work from, she was going to have to work for it. Perry was harder to deal with.

No he isn’t, goddammit. Perry’s interested in seeing you remain breathing so he can break you. This bitch is going to kill you anyway; she’s calling you “dear” as if you’re her Neophym. You’re dead. Get something for your pains, Jill.

“The bodies were to draw me out and create taplines.” I sounded steady. Steady enough for being chained naked to a rock. “Belisa was just to spice the mix, draw me in, keep me around. But why the wendigo?”

She laughed, a marvelously soft sound. I sucked in a deadly breath as her warm fingers continued to stroke my breast. “You think I’m going to make the mistake cartoon villains make and tell you my plans while you work on burning away that ridiculous leather bracelet?” She tweaked my nipple with her fingertips, I kept a straight face. Heard more soft moans.

Oh, God. They’re starting the second sequence.

“I see the lamb’s voice disturbs you more than mine does, hunter. The wendigo was a useful tool, and its habits kept you looking in the wrong place. But your first encounter with it was carefully scripted.”

“You were on the roof with a bow.” I sounded bored. But I wanted to look past her to the curving altar. Controlled myself. “Killing your own employees.”

“They were men, my darling. Useful, expendable, but overwhelmingly useless—”

“I’m female, and just as expendable.” Interrupting a Grand Mother is a good way to piss her off; they were the rulers of their Houses. Big egos and big brains, not to mention enough sorcerous ability to power a blimp. Her eyes were so
black,
from lid to lid, infinite holes in her pleasant face. Deep. So deep.

The scar on my arm was growing hotter by the moment, as if Perry had breathed on it, turning it to lava. I could almost feel acidic saliva trickling down my wrist, too. The pain scored up my arm, jolted me out of the sticky web of her eyes.

“You,
ma belle,
are not expendable. You are my greatest achievement. The pregnant victims were selected for fetal tissue, yes, but that tissue has already been harvested and sold to the highest bidder. They paid for the vault over your head.”

Well, that’s a fucking relief. Thanks for giving me that wonderful piece of news.
I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this. “You’re doing an evocation,” I said flatly. “And you want me to be the host for your psychotic little fucknut of a—”

The blow came out of nowhere, smashing across my cheek, my head rang and I saw stars again. Then her fingers were back on my breast, caressing, kneading my flesh. I felt a warm trickle of blood trace down my chin and rolled my head back to look at her. “Damaging the merchandise, bitch.” My voice was husky.

“You are merely required to be whole, not undamaged. Think of it. One of the Old Ones, the
summa
of negation, inside a body—a female body, a body capable of creation and destruction, a body strengthened with a hellbreed mark and possessing a soul gifted with murder and mayhem in the finest degree? You are a fit vessel, and once you are filled there will be enough blood, enough
destruction,
to remake this world as it once was. The Elder Gods will live through you, hunter.” Her smile was calm, beautiful, and so sane it was crazed, and I began to
really
get a bad feeling about this.

I heard the last breathless sigh of the drugged woman near the door.
Oh, God. Please, God. No.
Then a terribly final
cessation,
the act of slitting the throat down to the vertebrae. And the gurgle of life and blood leaving the body.

The golden marks on the ceiling writhed, a fresh humming charge flooding them. “Try again, you bitch,” I whispered. “I’m a hunter. Your Chaldean filth won’t stick to me.”

“A hunter who has just killed a dozen men.” Inez Germaine’s smile broadened. She stroked my breast once more, lovingly, and I jagged in a sharp breath. The gentle touch reminded me of Saul, something I couldn’t afford. “You slaughtered them like pigs,
bebe.
You heard the screams for mercy and you disregarded them. You were judge, jury, and executioner, you took your God’s place.”

It wasn’t like that.
“I did not.”

“You killed them, didn’t you?”

“They were your accessories. Willing, in Jonte’s case. Unwitting in others. But they were—”

“We’re all aware of your feelings about pimps, Judith.”

That
name
again, the name of a dead girl. The air left me as if I’d been punched. Oh, Belisa had gotten her money’s worth when she’d rifled Mikhail’s private papers.

Stop it,
the voice of reason said, desperately.
Stop it. Of course she’s dug that up. You aren’t her anymore. That girl died and you came back from Hell. That’s not you.

But my voice was ragged. “Cogs in a wheel, bitch. One steps out, the next steps in. Try another sticky-finger attempt to get inside my head. You’ve failed.”

“Pas necessaire.”
The smile that broke over her face now was a marvel of sincere serenity. I heard more velvet shushing and another slow, disoriented moan. Another victim. The second sequence.

The touch on my breast gentled. “The ritual will proceed,
cherie belle.
And when you look in the face of the Old One who will inhabit you, we will see how much your protests avail you.” A final gentle tweaking of my nipple and she was gone, shushing back in her long velvet robe. The sound of the candles hissed, and there was another soft gurgle as blood spilled, steaming, into the air. The copper reek thickened.