The sweet smell of opium slunk into the hallway, mixing with that of hashish. Wallpapered rooms gave way to hazy, dim ones where gaunt men and women hovered over specialized pipes, smoking substances that had claimed human souls for centuries.
Conversation gave way to mumbling and then, as Tir moved deeper into the club, to shouts as dice were thrown and a roulette wheel spun. Smoke-filled rooms became dark paneled ones. Tapestries yielded to exotic silk and then to red velvet and the smell of cigars.
Men gathered around gaming tables, calling out numbers and calling for cards, praying to Lady Luck and cursing her, ice clinking in their glasses, the noise they made blending into that of the next room, a hybrid mix of gentleman’s club from the long ago past and sports bar from the days before The Last War.
Flesh pounded against flesh, the sound of violence instead of lovemaking. Large-screen television sets were positioned so those at the bar and in front of it could watch as two boxers fought in another part of the country.
An empty cage dominated another section of the room, a circular arena meant for fighting. Tir took it in at a glance before he found Rimmon.
The vice lord sat on a raised dais in a shadowy corner, the rest of the room fanning out in front of him as though he were a king sitting on a throne. His face was made nightmarish by the flicker of candles set in sconces on the wall on either side of him.
Rimmon spoke to the woman sitting on a cushion at his feet, her arms wrapped around his elegantly trousered legs, her head cushioned on his lap where his hand stroked over honey gold hair as if she were a pet. She was dressed similarly to the hostess Tir followed.
When Tir reached the edge of the dais, she rose to her feet and walked away with the female who’d accompanied him. The vice lord’s attention remained on them, his single emerald-colored eye alight with appreciation. “They’re magnificent creations, aren’t they?”
“Women?” Tir asked, not trusting the brandy-smooth inflection in Rimmon’s voice.
Rimmon laughed and shifted his attention to Tir. “Humans. I find them simply divine. But then, I always have. They’re my downfall, the temptation I can’t seem to turn away from. After seeing the female you were with earlier…” The burning green eye found the sigil-inscribed collar. “But perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps your time spent among humans hasn’t been as pleasurable as I imagined.”
Tir stiffened, sensing a trap wrapped in temptation. The vice lord’s words hinted at hidden knowledge, the possibility of finding out what he’d been before his enemies trapped him in flesh and wrapped his memories in darkness—if he was willing to admit to such a weakness to the being in front of him.
Rimmon was no mortal, despite his appearance.
When Tir didn’t respond, Rimmon waved casually at the cushions scattered on the dais. “Have a seat. Since I extended no invitation for you to visit my club, I assume you’re here as a petitioner? Or better yet, as a penitent?”
“I’ll stand.”
A smile twisted Rimmon’s face into a grotesque mask. “Ah, pride. What would it take to break you of it, I wonder? And make no mistake, I’d take great pleasure in doing so, almost eternal pleasure. But of course, it would come with suffering to match. That’s always the way, isn’t it?”
Rimmon leaned forward onto the armrests of his chair, his hands settling on the lion claws carved into the old wood. “I’m not someone who believes in coincidence. There is a game being played here, of that I am certain. But are you part of it? Or a pawn?” And like light striking a different facet in the same stone, the gleam of amused speculation in Rimmon’s emerald eye hardened into ruthlessness. “What name do you go by?”
“Tir.”
“Tir. It’s a name I’ve heard whispered, but what it might stand for eludes me at the moment.
And somehow I doubt you intend to enlighten me. So rather than waste the night exploring how you came to be at the occult shop at the same time I was there, I ask, what is it you want from me?”
“I want to bring a boat into the waters you control and leave it there, knowing it will be guarded until I reclaim it.”
Rimmon blinked and leaned back in his chair, not bothering to hide his surprise. “You do prod me into curiosity. And if I choose to grant this favor? What will I gain from it?”
Rather than place his trust in the Were’s rumor about the vice lord’s daughter, Tir said, “What would you ask of me?”
Rimmon laughed. “Do you expect me to ask that I be restored to my former glory? Is that the sweet temptation you bring with you to my club? If so, then you’ve failed. There is something I want more, something that will cost you not just the boat if you manage to bring it safely into the harbor, but the woman I saw you with earlier if you’re unable to deliver on your promise.”
“And the promise you’d have me make?” Tir asked, not bothering to keep the menace from his voice in response to the vice lord’s threat against Araña.
“Heal my mortal daughter. Fail and I will keep your woman in my bed until by some miracle she gives me a child. An eye for an eye. It has a familiar ring to it, doesn’t it?”
Fury surged through Tir at the thought of Araña underneath the vice lord, her legs splayed, her channel filled with another man’s cock. It took all his control not to lunge forward—and had Rimmon been human, he wouldn’t have managed it.
Tir clamped down on his anger, though possessiveness pulsed through him with every heartbeat. There was little risk; in his centuries of captivity, he’d unwillingly cured others of the disease.
“I will heal your daughter.”
Rimmon signaled, and a server appeared with a hand-drawn map spread flat on a tray. The vice lord traced a route winding through wreckage, his finger stopping on a spot deep in the harbor. “If you’re successful in getting the boat to this point, my men will greet you. They’ll stay with you until morning. Then we’ll see if you can do what you say you can.”
ARAÑA paced endlessly, moving from one barred window to another and staring out. The house was larger than the Constellation and yet it confined her in a way the boat never did.
More than once she caught herself rubbing a hand over her heart, as if somehow it would cease beating if something happened to Tir.
It wouldn’t, she assured herself, refusing to contemplate it.
She avoided looking at the candles flickering in holders mounted on the wall, but she was less successful in deflecting Levi’s impassioned words, in steeling herself against thoughts about Rebekka and, with them, her own guilty conscience.
Araña’s stomach tightened with images of the healer huddling in the same cell she’d been in as she waited to run the maze. A cold sweat added to the chill of the house as she pictured the scorpion-marked demon, the cruelty in his eyes as he’d launched himself past her to savage one of the convicts. Without any effort at all she could remember the tortured screams of the men in the maze, the seemingly endless sounds of torment following her into freedom.
Goose bumps rose on Araña’s flesh as minutes lengthened like long shadows and guilt slid through her, ripping away the thin scab covering a hundred memories of the lives she’d touched when the demon gift trapped her in unwanted vision.
She turned away from the window, her gaze settling unconsciously on the fireplace. A dusty bundle of wood waited only to be lit in order to ward off the cold and fear that came with nighttime and the ceding of the world to the supernaturals.
She’d never looked willingly into the flame, had never sought its heart and the place where whispered voices were a rushing stream underlying a thousand strands of color. Did that make her a coward?