5. Leah #2
And it’s so much worse than I imagined.
“She’s awake,” someone says to my right. I can’t see his face. I can’t see anyone’s face, because everyone—all twelve figures in my line of sight—is wearing a cowled robe, the black hoods drawn high so their features are swathed in shadow.
The whole effect is very cult-y. Not at all what I’d expect from regular criminals. Crap. Plain old burglars or thugs would’ve been a relief right now.
I’m lying on a wide wooden table in a chamber I don’t recognize. There are no windows, only an open doorway at one end I can’t see through and a set of thick stone pillars holding up the low ceiling surrounded by lit candelabra.
It looks like a tomb.
But it doesn’t smell like one. Amid the lit candles there’s an acrid, earthy scent, like burning incense but sharper and less pleasant. After the chemical they drugged me with, it makes my head spin.
“Now we can begin,” says another voice—a female one this time.
The robed figure lifts a cup and approaches the table.
I have to tilt my head and squint to get a proper look at the object.
It’s an ornate thing with carvings on its rim—the kind of marks I’ve seen many times on the objects I’ve pulled off the plains: Cyrax runes.
Shit. These people are sorcerers, and it looks like they’re planning to mess around with some seriously black magic. As the figure presses the cup to my arm and another produces a knife, the picture becomes all too clear.
This isn’t a table I’m lying on. It’s an altar. And I’m the sacrifice.
“W—wait,” I gasp, digging up words from somewhere beneath my terror. “You don’t need to—ah!”
My pleading disappears in a hiss of pain as the knife digs into my skin, making a quick cut about two inches long on my arm. The female figure presses the cup against the split skin, and I watch my blood—red and thick—drip into the cup.
I thank the strong stomach I’ve developed over years of scavenging. Rather than going woozy at the sight, my mind sharpens, the aching in my head chased away by the rush of danger. My body knows it’s being threatened, and it’s trying to keep my wits about me.
“Begin the invocation,” comes a voice from behind me, someone I can’t see even when I tilt my head back against the altar. The hooded figures start to chant, low and steady, the demon language tripping off their tongues with horrifying ease. They’ve done this before.
When the flow of blood from my arm slows, the cupbearer moves to the end of the table, placing the vessel beside my left ankle.
I shiver, not just in fear of what might be coming next, but because I’m suddenly hyper aware of the fact I’m still in my thin, white nightgown with a lot of very cuttable skin on display.
“Look, you have my blood now,” I say, my voice rising above the chanting. “If that’s all you need…you can let me go. I swear I won’t tell—”
“Silence!” the voice behind me commands. The owner must make some gesture to the knife wielder, because next thing I know the blade is pressed to my throat.
I don’t say much after that, but I do make note of every sensation.
With the knife on me, I can’t tilt my head to look down at what the cupbearer is doing, but I can feel a finger tracing lines across my bare skin.
First, on my calves, then across my thighs.
I want badly to kick out, to shove the creeping hand away, except I’m all too aware of the cold metal next to my jugular.
When the woman’s fingers reach my arms, my suspicions are confirmed.
The runes on the cup were just the start.
She’s drawing similar marks onto my skin, using my blood as the ink.
I try to stare up into the hood to get a glimpse of the face there, but the angle is never right, not even when she draws the final runes onto my cheeks and forehead.
When she’s done, she backs away, and my stomach sinks. I have no idea what comes now, but I know it can’t be good.
The candle flames flicker in a non-existent breeze. There’s a shift in the room, and my skin breaks out in goosebumps as the temperature drops several degrees in an instant. The shadows thrown across the room by the stuttering candles aren’t behaving as they should. They’re…congregating.
“He’s close. Get in position for the offering.”
The knife wielder steps back, and I seize the moment to pull against my bindings, using all my strength to try to wrench myself free of the tight rope.
Whatever’s coming, I really don’t want to be around when it gets here.
But I’m wasting my energy. The ropes don’t budge—and it’s only a moment later that the figure with the knife is back, climbing up onto the table.
I can only see the taut line of his mouth as he kneels on either side of my legs and pins me down with one hand, his weapon held aloft in the other.
An image flashes in my mind of a fish at market, waiting to be gutted.
It’s clear this is a summoning spell, a ritual used to call on something incredibly powerful and incredibly dangerous. They’re bringing an actual demon here, no doubt to make some cursed deal with it, and I’m the tasty buffet they’re planning to serve up as the welcome dinner.
Shadows gather above me, snapping and twisting in the air.
I can’t help thinking there’s a fucked-up kind of symmetry to it.
After all, I spent all those years picking away at the vital parts of fallen demons, and now it’s their turn.
From the way the sorcerer is angling his knife as he looms over me, it looks like they might start with my heart.
Between me and the knife wielder, the air starts to shimmer.
I know I don’t have much time. My heart drums in my chest, as if it senses it only has so many beats left. I mutter a quiet prayer for Evie and, on second thought, myself too.
Goddess, keep her safe, please, and if you can, spare my soul from the worst.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen and done too much to make it to the Blessed Isles. But maybe there’s something in between that and burning in Infernum, or getting trapped for eternity in the aether, or whatever it is that happens to damaged goods like me.
Before my prayer is through, the rift splits open, small and contained, just wide enough for something to slip through.
Not a person—nothing as solid or ordinary as that—but a presence.
It crawls out of the rip in the air in a swirl of shadow, extinguishing half the candles in the room with barely a flicker of movement.
The cloud of darkness hangs, suspended above me. I think my mouth is open in a scream, but no sound comes out. It’s been stifled by the strength of that thing’s magic pressing down upon me, even as its dark surface ripples with unleashed power. I stare up at it.
And somehow I know that whatever came through that rift is staring back.