Hallowed Circle (Persephone Alcmedi 02) Page 11

  Touche. “Yes. It bothered me a lot.”

  “A lot,” he repeated, mockingly. “Ironic that you choose such small and insignificant words to describe what was single-handedly the most damaging event to my master’s rule in the last century. It deserves more than a simplistic, monosyllabic response.”

  He was doing it again. “Why are you being so supercilious?” I could use big words too.

  “Your conspicuous concupiscence for the jumentous wolf is distasteful.”

  My obvious desire for the animal-smelling wolf was distasteful? I wanted to say another pair of monosyllabic words: Fuck you. I opted for: “Your magniloquence is desipient.” Of course, my pompous language was just as silly as his. But I knew it.

  He sneered and moved closer to me. “We are inescapably bound to him, you and I.” He lifted his hand to my hair, pulling gently on a loose tendril as a lover would. “Most people in your position wisely fall on their knees at his feet. The rest generally flee and try to hide, denying what has happened. But you … you are learning to play the game.” His hand fell away. “I commend you. I am eagerly watching this unfold.” He stepped away. “I regret I must leave your company, Ms. Alcmedi, but I hope you have the most gratifying of evenings.”

  “Goliath.”

  He paused.

  “Did Menessos get my email message about the water fairy?”

  One corner of Goliath’s mouth turned up. “Yes. Business as usual, Ms. Alcmedi. For us.” As he walked away he added, “You, however, have but a short time to prepare and become accustomed to it.”

  “And now,” the announcer’s voice rang through the Hall as I arrived back at the overhang, “a local band!” The crowd cheered; the volume took me aback. “Is this who you came to see?” he asked. They cheered louder.

  The loft section, this side of the curtain anyway, was nearly empty, so I easily resumed my place at the rail. Below, the area in front of the stage was absolutely packed with far more people than I would have previously guessed were here. Where had they all come from?

  “Who are they?” the announcer asked.

  “Lycanthropia!” the crowd shouted, out of sync.

  “Who?”

  A chant started, and after a few syllables, everyone was together. “LY-CAN-THROPIA, LY-CAN-THROPIA!”

  It was stunning. These people were wild for Johnny’s band! They weren’t just another band, they were big shots.

  The chanting continued, even louder, as the announcer waved his arms to encourage the throng. I realized then the enthusiastic fans were predominantly female. I’d thought my jeans and lace top were sexy, but hell, some of them were wearing bikini tops paired with skirts no longer than some of Elvis’s belts were wide.

  Now I wondered about Goliath’s comment on my outfit. Maybe he’d been snarky and I hadn’t caught it. I studied the energized women below. If what they wore was normal rock show attire then, comparatively, my outfit was Amish hoedown.

  The announcer shouted, “Lycanthropia!”

  The lights went down and sporadic beams of white blasted up from the front edge of the stage. Every so often a brilliant red beam would flash.

  Erik, shirtless, stormed the stage and dropped to his seat behind a massive set of drums. Instantly he was blasting out a beat with both feet on the pair of bass drums, and throwing in trills on the toms, crashes on the cymbals. It was primitive and hardcore. Arms raised, the crowd began jumping up and down, bouncing as a group in time with his rhythm.

  Feral ran onto the stage and started up a keyboard, a series of notes running in ebbs and flows even after his hands left the keys. He strapped on a bass guitar and started thrumming a low-tone harmony that had me tapping my foot. The two of them carried on for several measures, and then Johnny crossed the stage with an all-male swagger. He wore black leather pants and from where I stood, the leather accentuated the perfect contour of his ass and accommodated his strong thighs. A sleeveless black T-shirt showed off his armband tattoos and lean biceps.

  The crowd—the women—screamed for him. He hadn’t even picked up his guitar, hadn’t played a note or sung.

  Wow.

  Shadowed behind the lights edging the stage, Johnny slipped the guitar strap over his head, adjusted the axe-shaped instrument, and readied his hands … and a chord rang out. Another and another, into a rapid-fire run on a scale that had his fingers flying up and down the fret-board. The music the three of them created hooked me and I was swaying before he even neared the microphone.

  When he sang, his voice wasn’t just on-key, it was filled with passion, as if he felt every word in his soul. By the time they got to the chorus I knew this was “Debauchery.” They had been working on the lyrics for this the night Vivian broke into my house.

  The song ended with Johnny holding a note vocally. Erik and Feral let it ring through the hall for a few long beats, then went right into the next song and Johnny followed along. Except for transitions like that, they didn’t stop playing for the entire twenty-minute set. Johnny’s black curls were dripping with sweat by the time they finished. Erik and Feral were no different. They poured every ounce of energy they had into the show.

  I couldn’t see beyond the curtains to see how the industry execs reacted, but the crowd was riveted.

  When their set was finished, Johnny said a quick “Thanks, and good night.” I moved for the escalator, had to wait. During the set, people had filled up the space behind me; they must have been in the exhibits. The crowd below continued to scream; I heard women crying out his name, saw them reaching for him.

  Johnny took off his guitar, threw some picks at the crowd, tossed out some Tshirts and CDs.

  Stepping onto the overcrowded escalator, I wondered how I could get to the Green Room. A security team took up positions just off the stage. Climbing up and walking over clearly wasn’t going to happen.

  The escalator lurched an inch and stopped.

  People around me groaned and started down the now-still steps like a staircase. My awareness returned to Johnny at the edge of the stage. He reached down, grabbed the hands of blond twins in Goth cheerleader outfits, and pulled them up onstage.

  I stopped midstep. People pushed past me.

  The women fawned over Johnny, rubbing his chest. He was grinning; his mouth moved but I couldn’t tell what he said. They laughed. He slipped an arm around each of their waists and led them off the stage. They walked toward the Green Room, where one twin opened the door while the other wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hungrily. Then they pulled him into the room.

  The door closed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I couldn’t move.

  The door opened again. Celia came stomping out. I whispered her name to myself and, as Fate would have it, she suddenly looked up and saw me. She stopped. Her mouth moved as she said my name.

  That fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. What had Johnny told me? It was part of the sympathetic nervous system? Screw him. He was going to find out there was no longer any sympathetic part of any of my “systems” toward him. Now in flight mode, I could move again. My feet descended the escalator as quick as the people around me allowed, and I headed for the front door and my car. Keys in my pocket, I didn’t even wait to retrieve my blazer from the coat check.

  Mr. I-Am-Your-Beach evidently had plenty of sand to spread around. Those two girls looked more than happy to trade in their leather pom-poms for sand buckets. Shovel away, Johnny!

  I found my Avalon, got in, and slammed the door shut. In minutes, the Rock Hall and Cleveland were in my rearview mirror.

  Only then did my cheeks get wet.

  *

  That was the longest drive home. Ever.

  Just as I pulled into the driveway, my headlights flashed on something skittering away across the edge of the yard. I wanted to think deer but something in my brain said fairy. Spooked, I pulled up as close as possible to the garage—I didn’t dare open it, the sound would surely wake Nana—and put myself on the porch in a
rush. Even as I put the key into the lock I checked the power on my perimeter wards; they were strong.

  I glanced up to make sure the horseshoe was still hanging over it, then quietly opened the door. Just inside, I removed my boots. I could hear Ares growling low in his throat from Beverley’s room, so I started whispering his name as I ascended the steps. I opened her door a crack and reached over to his cage. “Good boy,” I whispered to him. “It’s just me.” His tail whipped against the bars as I patted him. “Shhh, don’t wake your girl.”

  Shutting the door, I tiptoed to my room. After undressing, I crawled into bed.

  I shouldn’t have had sex with Johnny! I knew it.

  This was so stupid.

  I had to sleep, to get up in a couple hours and be ready for the Eximium. I’d be meeting Elders. I’d be competing. I needed to be at my peak, not rock bottom. The clock said one-forty-eight a.m.

  Fluffing the covers, flipping my pillow to the cooler dry side, I rolled over irritably. Thoughts arced through my skull like a plasma-lightning orb, scorching hope and igniting heartache.

  By three-thirty, my mind had revisited every high moment of sexual tension, every flirty remark, every shy touch, every kiss, and even the orgasms. I’d analyzed all the postsexual conduct.

  Even with my fear factored in, there was no understanding his actions. No logic. I had to chalk it up to male chromosomes, male ego, and—since this seemed to be their big break—a decision to do his best to live up to the rock’n’roll stereotype.

  Well, I’d made a decision as well.

  I was done with Johnny.

  At six a.m., the alarm blared me out of my slumber.

  I showered and dressed, towel dried my hair, and sat cross-legged on the floor at the end of my bed. With a silver candle for endurance before me, I took a moment to ground and center. Squeezing a tiger’s eye in my receptive left hand, I drew physical energy from the stone. I was going to need some help to get through this day without bottoming out from exhaustion. With tiger’s eye and enough coffee, I’d be good.

  At six-thirty, I tiptoed from my room. That is, until the light from the kitchen clued me in that being quiet was pointless. Did I go deal with Nana or run out the door and avoid her?

  Then I smelled it: she’d made a pot of coffee. My head hung. I’d barely slept; I had to have some.

  Slowly, I walked to the kitchen. She sat at the dinette wearing her robe over a flannel gown. The Codex lay open before her. A trio of stubbed-out cigarettes lay in the ashtray like bent and broken little people.

  “You’re up early,” I said.

  “Couldn’t sleep.” Her interest remained on the page as she wrote a line of translation.

  I poured a cup of coffee for myself. “Refill?”

  “Please.”

  After filling hers and replacing the pot, I sat across from her with mine. Let her do her worst. I wasn’t changing my mind and I had java to back me up if my fatigue made me weak.

  “You must have come across something good in there,” I said.

  “No—well, yes, it’s all good, and since I’m up I thought I’d get this wrapped up. The doctor’s stopping by this afternoon to go over the translation. But, no,” she added, “it wasn’t something in here keeping me awake.”

  I waited.

  She was probably going to make me very mad momentarily, then pass the blame onto me with a “you asked” reply, but I walked into her trap regardless. “What is keeping you up, then?”

  “My knee.”

  I hadn’t expected that. “You take something for it?”

  She nodded almost imperceptibly, still intent on the page before her. “Done me no good.”

  She sounded frail. Was this a trick? Was she going to try to get me to ditch the Eximium to stay here and take care of her? I scrutinized her face.

  Her jaw was set, her mouth a firm narrow line. It wasn’t unlike her defiant angry expression, but neither was it the same. Her wrinkles had a new depth. Her bed-messed beehive hair told me she was in enough pain to not care about her appearance. That, and the angle of her shoulders, told me this was real pain.

  My Nana was hurting and mere ibuprofen didn’t help.

  She was old. Eighty-four.

  I couldn’t make her young again. There was, however, something I could do—with Vivian’s money. “How about we remodel the dining room and make it your bedroom? We could put doors on it.”

  She considered it briefly. “No bath. I’d still have to travel the stairs to bathe.”

  “We’ll add a bath.”

  She sat her pencil down. “Persephone—”

  “It’s the right thing to do, Nana. I’ll take care of it.” Or we’d move. Other than my not wanting to, the downside of moving would include—in all likelihood—a higher mortgage and then dependence on the money Menessos arranged for me by getting my column nationally syndicated. If he decided to “un-arrange” it, we’d be hurting.

  For the first time since I entered the kitchen, Nana truly focused on me. She inhaled deeply as she studied me, and when she exhaled, it seemed some of the weight of her pain went with it. “I know you will.” She paused. “I’ve been hard on you. Too hard, maybe. And you always do make things right. You don’t stop until they’re as they should be.” She pulled the cigarette case from her robe pocket. “I need to accept that. You’re not your mother.”

  “What?” My resentment for my mother roused fast, deep and sharp.

  “When a situation looks like it’s too much to handle, you go meet it head-on. Baseball bat in hand. When things get hard, Persephone, you don’t run away.” She reached out and took my hand. “You could’ve slipped out the door without coming in here, knowing I’ve disagreed with you about this Eximium. Still, you came to face me.”

  She didn’t know that I had run away. I’d fled from Johnny and the Rock Hall like a cat fleeing a junkyard dog.

  She said, “You’re going to do the right thing today. I know you are.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Watch the others, Persephone, the ones around you when you go to the Eximium—and not just the other competitors. Watch the Elders. You are the Lustrata and, like it or not, they will eventually look to you for your service. So watch them, and see who is worthy to have the Lustrata call upon them.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  After I arrived at the Covenstead, Mandy directed me from the office to a back hall. I had the feeling I was going back in time.

  The walls were stone, the floor slate, and every fifty feet we went down three steps. The hall was curved, so we were probably following the perimeter of the Covenstead. Every six feet, half of a giant amethyst geode was set into the stone wall. A candle burning in the cavity of each geode illuminated the lavender spikes and lit the way. We ended up in a sub-basement level where all the doors were oversized and made of oak, with iron workings reminiscent of a castle or old church.

  “There is plumbing and electricity down here, right?”

  Mandy flashed me a smile. “Yeah. It is deceiving, though. Vivian—” She stopped. Mastering herself, she went on, “She wanted it to feel ancient, like it had been here forever.”

  “It does.”

  A few steps later, she paused before a door similar to all the others. “Here’s the holding room. The restroom is across the hall, there,” she said and pointed behind her toward an alcove farther down the hall. “Modern flushes, running water, heated-air hand dryers, and everything.”

  “Thanks.” Lifting the door’s handle, I pushed hard and entered a space about the size of an average school’s classroom. Other contestants were already waiting. Everyone looked at me, evaluating me as they surely did everyone who walked through the door. It made me uncomfortable. We weren’t here as friends, we were here as competitors all vying for the same prize. Well, they were, anyway.

  The room was also stone-walled, and—being twenty-plus feet underground—it was cool, like walking into a cave where the temperature was maintained naturally. The
scene made me think of a candle party at Goth boot camp. Black military-style cots sat in rows to either side, with a wide central walkway in the middle. Each bore a folded black name placard with silver calligraphy, atop a small pillow resting on a folded gray blanket with black-tasseled corners. Candelabra provided enough light to be functional, but didn’t do much to relieve the overall gloom of the place.

  I found my name and sat on the cot. The women returned to whispered chatting, cross-armed pacing, or fidgeting. I counted cots. Twenty-one. More than I’d expected. About fifteen were here already; Hunter was not among them.

  They were an eclectic group; all shapes, sizes, colors. They all seemed a little older than me, early thirties or forties. Three of the women I’d have guessed were in their fifties. The attire was mostly jeans and sneakers, though a few went for dressy office style with pantsuits and low heels and a few others wore jog suits. One of the fifty-ish women wore a loose broomstick skirt and long-sleeve tee. Her skin was tan and the rust-colored shirt suited her well. Her long hair, some brown but mostly gray, was braided. The name card at the foot of her cot read: Maria Morrison.

  At least my jeans and sneakers weren’t a faux pas. I’d considered wearing a flannel overshirt again just to rankle Hunter, but ended up in a plain black tank under a copper Henley, and a zippered, dark-green sweatshirt with a wide collar. Layers, practical.

  The door opened and another woman came in. She immediately struck me as Welsh: thick, shoulder-length blond hair in a bob style; pale skin; and brown eyes. A little over five feet tall, she wore camel corduroy pants, a yellow V-neck tee, and a khaki-brown hoodie. She was all the colors of a wheat field.

  Like me, she glanced around, realized there were names on the cards, and began searching for hers. It was beside mine. She whispered quietly, “Hi.”

  “Good morning,” I answered. She was young; barely twenty. It surprised me that anyone so young would be ambitious enough to compete for high priestess.

  She picked up the placard. “I’m Holly.” She flapped the paper once, peered at mine. Her brows puckered and I knew she was stuck on the pronunciation.