Tonight there would be more. Tonight there would be death, and the power that came from the rending of flesh, the spilling of blood. They would not remember, she thought. She had added drugs to the blood-laced wine. With the right drugs, in the right dosage, they would do and say and be what the master wanted.
Only she and Alban would know that the master had demanded sacrifice for his protection, and the demand had been happily met.
The coven circled her, their faces hooded, their bodies swaying, as the drug, the smoke, the chanting hypnotized them. At her head stood Alban, with the boar’s mask and the athame.
“We worship the one,” he said in his clear and beautiful voice.
And the coven answered. “Satan is the one.”
“What is his, is ours.”
“Ave, Satan.”
As Alban lifted the bowl, his eyes met Selina’s. He took up a sword, thrust it at the four points of the compass. The princes of hell were called, the list long and exotic. Voices were a hum. Fire crackled in a blackened pot set on a marble slab.
She began to moan.
“Destroy our enemies.”
Yes, she thought. Destroy.
“Bring sickness and pain on those who would harm us.”
Great pain. Unbearable pain.
When Alban laid a hand on her flesh, she began to scream. “We take what we wish, in your name. Death to the weak. Fortune to the strong.”
He stepped back, and though it was his right to take the altar first, he gestured to Lobar. “Reward to the loyal. Take her,” he commanded. “Give her pain as well as pleasure.”
Lobar hesitated a moment. The sacrifice should have come first. The blood sacrifice. The goat should have been brought out and slaughtered. But he looked at Selina, and his drug-clouded brain shut off. There was woman. Bitch. She watched him with cold, taunting eyes.
He would show her, he thought. He would show her he was a man. It wouldn’t be like the last time when she had used and humiliated him.
This time, he would be in charge.
He cast aside his robe and stepped forward.
chapter eight
The steady beep of an alarm had Eve rolling over and cursing. “It can’t be time to get up. We just went to bed.”
“It’s not. That’s security.”
“What?” Now she sat up quickly. “Our security?”
Roarke was already out of bed, already pulling on slacks, and answered with a grunt. Instinctively Eve reached for her weapon first, clothes second. “Someone’s trying to break in?”
“Apparently someone has.” His voice was very calm. As the lights were still off, she could see only his silhouette in the scattered light of the moon through the sky window. And joining that silhouette was the unmistakable outline of a gun in his hand.
“Where the hell did you get that? I thought they were all locked up. Goddamn it, Roarke, that’s illegal. Put it away.”
Coolly, he plugged a round in the chamber of the antique and banned-for-use Glock nine millimeter. “No.”
“Damn it, damn it.” She snatched up her communicator, shoved it in the back pocket of her jeans out of habit. “You can’t use that thing. I’ll check it out—that’s my job. You call Dispatch, report a possible intruder.”
“No,” he said again and started for the door. She was on him in two steps.
“If someone’s on the grounds or in the house, and if you shoot him with that, I’m going to have to arrest you.”