Chapter 35
the vessel above
The monastery basement reeked of iron and welding slag, crushed quartz, and a different, accelerating sense of decay. The air was thick, slow-moving, pressing in on all sides by a heat that had no source, only a direction. Upward. Toward the containment vessel that had been constructed on the altar above. Light flickered sporadically from the sigils created by dripping molten welding electrodes onto the steel plates. Bloodroot and powdered salt-glass kept the symbols from melting through the containment core.
The air should have been still. But something was moving.
Dozens of soul weld sigils paraded across the steel. Shaped with molten intent, the steel sheets had not been touched by the witches and wizards tasked with building the structure. They had been willed into shape, their seams coated with bone-infused alloy then burnished shut with ancient stone tools. The signature scent of arcing ozone still hung thick in the room.
Isabel swore softly under her breath and waved smoke from her face. A second later, the smell shifted again. A faint sweetness, burnt cinnamon, she guessed as it rose, then turned sour on the back of her tongue.
She froze. That particular smell was a warning.
Had someone lied during the vessels’ construction? Had they deviated from the precision critically necessary to safely breach the Veil membrane? One mistake and it would be absolute failure and silence. Then Isabel realized the source of the smell.
The latest soldered rune, a ward against inversion, was twitching, almost alive. It didn’t want to stay still, and it smelled wrong. Isabel’s stomach turned, seeing the quiet rhythm of the sigil match the heartbeat-like pulse of the Veil.
This was no cobbled-together attempt. The summoning architecture was precise and, with one exception, complete.
She could feel it now, like a weight dropping through the floor above them. She imagined the sound of a combination lock, with three of the four tumblers open, and the fourth, the one that would open the lock, had paused, only one notch from clicking into place and allowing chaos to spill into the world.
Virelich knew what was missing, and he wasn’t telling.
Isabel paled. Her ward tattoos prickled along her shoulders as her panic flared beneath her ribs. For the briefest moment, her hand hovered near the last control glyphs. If Virelich offered that final element to Max…
She wouldn’t be able to stop what followed.
Feeling sweat run between her shoulder blades, Isabel yanked off her over shirt and let it drop. Beneath it, a fitted black tank top clung to her in the heat, baring full sleeve tattoos, an articulate design of snaking tendrils and vines that masked defensive sigils and glyphs. For the rare person who had ever seen the colorful needlework, it was as striking as the warrior witch herself. Beautiful, yes, but now obviously straining.
Max, watching from a few feet away, raised an appreciative eyebrow, “A bit casual for channeling a death god,” he muttered. It allowed him to stare as the designs wrapped her shoulder, then cascaded down her arms in brilliant colors, stopping just ahead of her wrists. Frustrated and fearful of the communication session about to begin, Isabel turned around and glared, putting her arms out in a mock pirouette.
“Fine. Take a look,” she snarled, “you probably keep it hot down here on purpose, all your witches…” Her brow knitted, “All that musk.”
She heard a chuckle, but it hadn’t come from Max. It had come from the membrane. Virelich had joined them. Begrudgingly, Isabel placed her hand on the translucent skin. She had learned early on that to keep Virelich waiting had painful consequences.
Kneeling next to the breach, the circle next to the pulsing skin still hissed from the recent weld. A shadow crossed the window, and the source of the sardonic chuckle pressed his face close.
“Lord Virelich,” she swallowed, fighting back a visceral reaction from the warm, wet film that comprised the impenetrable membrane, “I am open to your communications.”
“Mmmm,” the face murmured, also having taken the time to admire Isabel, “I am surrounded with such lovely material,” he cooed, “I can smell the regret in the bindings. The stone was quarried with sorrow. But you, my dear, decorated with your false power, I also smell you.” Isabel winced. He was in one of his moods, and that never boded well for their conversations.
“You are struggling to maintain your composure,” Virelich added. “I understand.”
The conversation shifted, and Isable was grateful.
“Who built this prison?” he asked, looking at Max, “Who dreamed they could cage a god?”
“Temporary, I assure you,” Max responded, “in time, your reach will grow. I promise you. This full moon, we move. The vessel is almost ready.”
Isabel’s jaw clenched. Her hands twitched, and she fought the urge to cover herself. Confirmed now by Max and prophesied… Isabel’s mind froze. A blizzard of gibberish Gaelic flooded her mind. Nursery rhymes, numbers, the months of the year, anything to not think about the Seer whose very life would depend on Isabel’s discretion.
She almost slipped, then clouded her thoughts again with something that made her feel safer. Only Virelich caught the theme. “This one,” he purred, deeper now, slower, “has always preferred the sleeve to the staff,” he sniffed to Max, judging, “not taste for the rod, nor that man behind it.”
His words slithered into the room, warm with violation.
“Power, yes…but she aches for a woman’s name on her tongue, not a king’s.”
Isabel went rigid. The runes on her arms pulsed in their glow. Her mouth parted, but she made no sound. It wasn’t the jab. It was the implication. He knew.
“I’ve seen the rooms you keep hidden. Lovers you can’t name out loud.” Virelich’s restrained face pressed further into the room, “How many have you kissed in silence, fearing your secrets exposed, how many loves…lost? And, from what, shame? Because you had to keep them safe? From whom?”
Isabel’s hands went into fists. She could feel the magic surging across her shoulders, focusing, ready to burst forth.
“I can make all that disappear, you know. Kings do that. With the right tether, my love…even guilt burns clean.”
She couldn’t speak. If she did, it would be a scream.
Calm yourself, she thought, find a thread and hold firm in this gale.
“You dare hold my leash,” he added, almost softly, “yet you flinch at your own reflection.”
In fear, in anger, in frustration, held in check for what might have been her best years, Isabel snapped.
“You’re a ruin with a mouth, nothing more.”
Silence.
Then the air warped. Virelich tilted his head, his gaze locked on her. Expressionless, then not. He twitched once, then again.
The sunken contours of cheekbones bulged unnaturally, stretching his pale skin like leather pulled too tight. His lips peeled back, not in a smile but a snarl, revealing teeth that no longer belonged to anything human. His jaw lengthened with snaggled teeth growing long and canine. More beast than man. His face pushed into the membrane as a low growl sounded from the Veil.
“Kneel.”
There was no time to resist. Her limbs collapsed beneath her, not from weakness but from force. Pressure like an invisible spike drove down through the summoning circle like a hammer through bone. Her spine bowed, and her forehead cracked off the concrete floor hard enough to split her skin open.
“I said kneel and bleed.”
The circle hissed. A sigil sputtered, corrupted by her blood. A tremor jolted through the surrounding scaffolding.
Then the slap came. Not flesh because Virelich had none. It was the raw pressure of thought, a mental strike that slashed through her protective ward and slammed her body sideways. Isabel hit the floor with a grunt, half-conscious, tattoos dim.
Max exhaled slowly, “Well,” he said, mostly to himself, “that shut her up.”
He stepped back and directed an order over his shoulder, “Get her out. Give her an hour…tops.” None of the guards moved, yet the weight of the command ensured it would happen.
Isabel didn’t move either. Couldn’t.
She stayed limp, letting her body be hauled away like meat. The guards paused by Max, her body draped between. They thought she was broken. They always did.
He looked at her, watching the blood course, then fall from her cheek, staining the concrete. “Ah fuck it. Get her back to the hotel. We’re done for today.”
The membrane was clear. Meaning Virelich had gone back to the depths of the abyss. Max allowed himself the briefest moment of regret. Isabel was hauntingly beautiful, her power, her shadowed connections, more so. He had fantasized about her body, even her creativity in fending off his constant advances.
Virelich’s quiet words echoed, “Prefers the sleeve, not the staff.” Max sniffed a laugh.
Her loss. It had been twenty years since he’d been rejected for another woman. It hardly registered.
Now he knew and turned away from the membrane, already calculating.
He still had the moon and the breach.
He didn’t need her to be willing. Just present.