Chapter 43
alone at the altar
The sanctuary had begun to smell of smoke and disappointment.
Max stood at the cracked glass window, watching a dozen of his acolytes relight the sacred candles with shaking hands. From a certain angle, their haphazard movements only magnified the fear they were beginning to experience as Max’s spiraling frustration blossomed into aggression. The choreography was all wrong.
“Idiots,” he muttered.
He paced the lower level, ignoring the priests and wizards whispering in the corners, and the new initiates who had dared to start asking questions.
He couldn’t admit they had a point.
Why hadn’t the soul vessel accepted the offering? Why had the circle shimmered only to fail…twice? Why was Virelich still laughing on the other side of the membrane, rather than screaming from inside the quartzite box, painstakingly designed to hold him in place?
The sanctuary floor had been removed in a neat, blasphemous rectangle, revealing the scaffolding and the waiting quartzite box like a coffin built for a god. Virelich wasn’t meant to stay behind the membrane—Max intended to summon him up through it, through the exposed ribs of the monastery, and seal him in stone.**
Max had no answers. Worse, he had no patience. The exchange would happen tonight, or it would be another month of waiting for the moon’s cooperation.
He stormed upstairs into the sanctuary again, barking at the guards to clear the perimeter, only to find that no one had reinforced the northern ridge. He asked why, and excuses piled up like snow. No one wanted to challenge him outright, but they didn’t obey him either. Not fully.
“You think this is a game?” he snarled at a trembling scribe. “We are on the cusp of rewriting the world. You either stand with me, or I will use your bones to chalk the summoning lines.”
The young man nodded, too afraid to speak, and Max took it as insolence. He made a gesture, and the new recruit fell to the floor.
Max went up the altar steps again. Commanding the choir of witches surrounding the altar, he forced them to try the chant again. Tried the offering…again.
But still, the cage remained empty.
Below, behind the cellophane-thin membrane, Virelich hovered, smiling with disinterest.
“You are afraid,” the demon said lazily.
“I am prepared,” Max shot back.
“You are alone.”
Max growled. “They follow me.”
“They obey your tantrums. Kill or maim a few more, and you won’t have enough voices.”
Max turned his hand over. The blood there was not all someone else’s. He had begun to pay with his own skin. Little slices at first, then a cut from his own knife to deal with a witch for showing signs of wanting to escape. He’d made an example of her.
He threw back his robe and moved toward the altar. The soul vessel, beautiful in its own right, flickered once, then again. It was ready.
Why weren’t they?
“You will rise,” Max whispered to Virelich. “You will fill the stone.”
Virelich grinned. He had seen the error in the vessel’s construction—the rune that called for a special ingredient that was all around them, just not enough of it.
“Then bleed, boy,” the demon said softly. “Let’s see if pain makes you worthy.”
And Max, alone, began again.