Menessos said, “Goliath.”
Goliath lowered his head some, extended his open arms imploringly, and said, “Theodora Hennessey…forgive me.”
Energy bolted from the candles like lightning, arcing in crackling jolts until they met over our heads where the center had once been. It scoured my skin as well as the others’. Beverley cried out and hugged Nana tight.
Menessos said:
“Rise, cone of power! Rise to our call!
Deliver lunar energies to one and all!”
With that command, I knew he’d betrayed us.
In my mind, I screamed, NO! but my single note continued uninterrupted.
He added something in Latin. I only understood lux et tenebris, “light from darkness.”
The candle flames sank down to minimal embers, and the room darkened. Light burst around me like a spotlight held at my back. The final note of my song tapered off, and my knees gave way. Moonlight, like a sharply focused sunbeam, shone through the skylight and encompassed my circle.
Menessos continued:
“Search for the wolves, caress these beasts,
Loose them now, moonlight increased!”
Celia stared at the darkening hair on her arms. “No! Persephone, no! I’m changing! Stop this!”
“Feel your wolf inside you,” Nana called to her. “Stroke it, pet it, keep it calm, and turn it away!”
It sounded like good advice, but it didn’t work. Celia grabbed Erik and buried her face in his chest. He held her tight, sharing an angry look with Johnny. Johnny turned to Menessos and started forward, then stopped. His eyes had gone yellow, and his skin rippled as if a wave were crashing around underneath.
All the wærewolves began to change. Skin split like thin fabric as bones elongated, snapping like dry sticks. Brought to their knees by the power and pain of the transformation, the wæres emitted anguished cries that were piteous half-howls. Beverley screamed. Nana turned Beverley away and covered the girl’s eyes with her old hands.
“Come. Come to me, Persephone.” When Menessos said my name, I faced him squarely, looking him dangerously in the eye. He extended his hand. “Come to me.”
Unlike the time just before, his power flashed forth and imprisoned me. My conscious anger was like a smaller me locked inside a Mason jar. I heard my own thoughts distantly, as if from a radio playing in another room. They were separate from me, distanced and muffled. Though I was seething, my fury at his betrayal could not affect me or get through the bondage confining my will to Menessos.
Unable to refuse, I stood and took his offered hand. His other hand lifted before me, an elegant gesture an expert magician might use before pulling a bouquet of roses from within his sleeve. But Menessos’s intentions were not traditionally romantic. Instead, he removed my hand from his and positioned my arms so they were outstretched to either side. He fingered the bottom edges of my Superman shirt, rolling the fabric up. He bared my waist, pausing to touch my skin approvingly, before rolling the shirt up until my bra was exposed. With a word, he made me raise my arms up to allow him to pull the shirt free.
Physically, I complied without question. Mentally, inside my sealed Mason jar, I screamed to no avail.
My neatly rolled shirt dropped to the floor. His fingers glided over the lacy edge of the black bra before deftly unfastening the front clasp. Menessos removed and discarded my bra.
The exposure both horrified and thrilled me. Energy fluttered along my skin, stronger than ever before. My hands, still outstretched, turned palms up.
“Fire,” he whispered.
The biting power of fire raced over me, focusing on intimate places. I had an inkling now as to why some witches did their rituals naked—sky-clad, as they called it. It felt good.
Menessos sliced the tip of his finger open with his fang in a motion that looked more like he was dabbing at something at the corner of his mouth. Blood welled up. He licked the first drops away, savoring them, then reached out to me.
My body flowed forward, spine bowing to arch toward him—if I took an actual step, I could not tell. His index finger touched my sternum between my breasts and sank lower, leaving a smear of his blood.
Nana’s voice joined that of my bottled anger, shouting at me, calling through the fog, insistent but ineffectual.
Beverley ran at Menessos, but Goliath grabbed her and restrained her gently but firmly.
Menessos added an oblong loop above the first mark and connected them with a crossbar under the loop. He spoke. I didn’t understand the words, but the rhythm and cadence complemented his masculine tone and mimicked the melody I’d been forced to sing.
Somehow, that melody connected us.
His powerful, dark eyes met mine and bored into me, reading my thoughts. And I knew his: he would not deny what he had done. Why should I? he seemed to ask.
He knew I was disgusted and horrified.
His answering expression could have been that of a warrior demanding information from me and warning me of the means of torture he could employ, or he could even have been Arthur ensconced in the passion that led to his fathering Mordred. I began to yield.
As his chant ended, the ankh he’d drawn on my skin began to glow.
It itched.
It burned.
It felt as if every cell of my skin under his bloody mark called to intangible pieces of my soul, pieces that answered readily only to be bound tight in the thick syrup of his blood. Retreating, those little pieces took the essence of him, sinking deep inside of me to hide in places even post-mortem medical examiners wouldn’t find.
Still the energy of fire nibbled at my bare skin, and sandy earth-energy scraped my flesh sore. Water offered buoyancy, but only in waves that left me feeling heavy as they ebbed. Air, the breath of life, seemed only to enhance the heat of fire and make it hotter.
I wanted to be naked. I wanted him to see me and touch me. I wanted to feel those elements caressing other parts of me.
A new chant met my ears, words I should know but didn’t. Nana shouted at Menessos and commanded him to stop.
Suddenly the bright spotlight of moonlight waned. The howls of four fully formed wolves overpowered all the other voices.
But I couldn’t look around, couldn’t respond to what was happening. My whole world had become focused on the vampire before me, on matching the beat of my heart exactly to his. I could feel each contraction of his heart like a lover’s caressing hand squeezing me. It was quixotic, eager, and indulgent. It was blessedly comforting.
Menessos cupped my face in both of his cold hands and drew me adoringly closer, as if I were the first bloom from a seed he’d planted himself and therefore deserved his loving scrutiny. The kiss I was surprised to find I wanted was a breath away when he spoke: “Tomorrow someone will come for the stake.” His voice resonated inside my head, whispered syllables heard distinctly despite the cacophony around us. “I have honored my oath to you, Persephone Alcmedi.” His hands slid around me as if he would dance with me, and mine conceded to hold him as well. He smelled like hot cinnamon and campfires; his body flowed against mine like a hot, urgent current of fresh magma.
He put his lips to mine in a kiss as fragile as the edge of a toasted marshmallow. I thought of that sticky, melted sweetness thick on my tongue—
My mouth opened to Menessos, and I discovered a new flavor. The savory tang was unlike anything I had known. It was the taste of orgasm, of falling in love, of finding El Dorado in your own backyard.
The sudden coldness of my lips made me realize that Menessos had pulled away. The expression he wore was a complex one. Mystified. Satisfied. Not smug—no, not smug. Yearning.
I touched his cheek. I felt an instant of sadness—the kind of deep, welling misery that brings sobs of grief in choking bouts rising from your throat in tight, painful gasps.
He jerked from my touch, effectively slamming the door on me. In that instant, his surprise was clear. He turned his back on me and stepped to the edge of the circle. With his bloody finger, he traced a rectangle in the air and said, “Open now the door.” He pushed the circle of energy open and passed through.