Page 32 of Bloodgrove

Chapter 17

“Tear open your veins!”

Only the burning in his forearms pulled Will from his trance. With a curse, he pulled his fingers from the raw skin of his wrists, where his nails had been trying to rip into the blue veins beneath. His hand still twitched, wanting to dig back into his flesh until blood flowed.

His mind returned only slowly. He clenched his hands into fists, but his thoughts remained sluggish, as though wading through syrup.

“Hit yourself in the face!”

Voices cackled in his ears, laughing as he instinctively raised his hand. Drew it back. Stopped himself at the last second.

Furious, he shook his head, trying to tear away the cobwebs that reached deep into his soul. His surroundings came into focus only gradually. He stood in red-painted corridors he had never seen before. They shone wet with a thick coat of lacquer, every inch of wall and ceiling drenched in color. Even the marble floor was the shade of dried blood, and crimson moss gathered in the corners, spreading across the stairs and passageways that branched away in every direction.

Slowly, Will turned in a circle, trying to orient himself. He had no memory of how he had come here. One moment, he had been standing with Elodie in the crowded ballroom, half listening to political gossip, and then… a brief sting.

He frowned. A group of laughing nobles watched him from the top of the stairs. One of them held a thin blade as long as her finger. She raised it to her lips and licked away the blood still clinging to it.

“Watch yourself, outsider!” one of the men laughed.

“That was far too easy,” the girl agreed, her lips red.

Will instinctively touched the small cut on his neck. “You…!”

But they were already gone. Only their laughter lingered in the corridor.

He quickly checked himself over and buttoned the cuffs of his shirt. Where had he lost his jacket? He found a mirror between two paintings. His fingers moved to his lips—did they feel swollen? He pushed the thought away. His gaze settled on the small cut at the back of his neck.

“Fucking bastards!” But the curse did nothing to soothe his anger. They had stolen his blood. The blade had been so sharp that he had barely felt the cut, and then he had been left helpless, stripped of his own will.

If a few children could control him so easily, he did not want to imagine how completely the Red Hand could overpower him.

Will tightened his cravat around his throat and looked around. He was still somewhere inside the Red Hand’s mansion, and Elodie’s warning returned to him. But what good had it done when he had not even been safe in the ballroom?

With no idea where he was going, he turned into the first corridor.

He soon discovered that the ball had two faces. He passed walkways where, hidden up in shadow, he could look down at the dancing couples, where people laughed politely and swayed to the music. Elodie was somewhere among them; again and again, he caught a glimpse of her scarlet dress spinning through the crowd.

But instead of leading him back to the ball, the corridors drew him deeper into another world, one that quickened his pulse and left his skin hot. He passed through rooms where naked bodies met in a different dance, moving to the rhythm of their own music. He found places where pleasure and pain became one. Through a narrow door, he entered a room where a man hung in chains while people licked his wounds and sucked blood from his hard cock. Flickering lights, black walls. He stumbled into chambers where women sang, and statues spoke. He staggered through stairwells where guests sank into drugged stupors. He walked along passageways where the darkness lived. He touched walls that had a heartbeat.

He fled into a courtyard filled with cold autumn air.

Panting, Will stopped and drew the clean air greedily into his lungs, trying to purge the last traces of the mansion’s hot, humid breath. Here, the light was silver, the night blue, and the sky vast. His steps slowed. He retied his braid and straightened his shirt, which now clung damply to his chest.

To his surprise, the courtyard wasn’t empty. An altar stood in the center, and shadowy figures formed a broad circle around it, three rows deep. The entire scene, and the man at its heart, lay bathed in moonlight.

For one moment, Will feared he had wandered into yet another nightmare, but then he recognized the man leading the ceremony, and a faint smile touched his lips.

Mr. Arcos held one hand above the dark body on the altar and, as the ritual came to its end, let his blood drip into the monster’s mouth. Will recognized the red script suspended in the air and the swaying, chanting figures. A lifeless chimera lay before him.

“Take my blood. Serve the one who gives you life.” Mr. Arcos’s voice carried far into the night. His hand glistened, drops running down his arm. Will hated that he looked handsome even now. His trousers hugged his hips, but he wore only a black shirt, its sleeves rolled up to expose his forearm. A streak of red crossed his forehead, where he had apparently pushed back a strand of hair without thinking.

“Awaken.” The command was soft, almost tender.

The chimera’s chest rose. It sat upright—a hulking creature with grey skin, massive and crude. Mr. Arcos stroked its leathery forehead as though it were one of his dogs, and the confused creature leaned into its master’s touch. Everything about the gesture was so different from the terrible chaos of Elodie’s ritual two weeks ago.

Then the shadows at his feet moved.

Three mountains surrounded Mr. Arcos. One was the ogre-like creature on the altar, still half entranced. Around his legs coiled the reptilian tail of another chimera, a serpent with scales and too many claws, yet tame as a cat. Farther away, a third body waited for Mr. Arcos’s life-giving hands.