"Depends." He glanced at the screen where Lobar's data scrolled. He had an image of her diving deeper, spending the quiet hours of night wading through the muck. He didn't bother to sigh. "What do you need?"
"You." She could feel her color rise as he lifted a curious brow. "I know it's late, and it's been a long day. I guess I was thinking of it kind of like the shower. Something to wash away the grime." Embarrassed, she turned back, stared hard at the screen. "Stupid."
It was always hard for her to ask, he mused. For anything. "Not the most romantic proposal I've ever had." He laid his hands on her shoulders, massaged gently. "But far from stupid. Disengage," he ordered and the screen went dark. He turned her chair around, drew her to her feet. "Come to bed."
"Roarke." She put her arms around him, held tight. She couldn't explain how or why the images she'd seen that night had left something inside her shaky. With him, she didn't have to. "I love you."
Smiling a little, she lifted her head and looked into his eyes. "It's getting easier to say. I think I'm starting to like it."
With a short laugh, he pressed a kiss to her chin. "Come to bed," he repeated, "and say it again."
– =O=-***-=O=-
The rite was ancient, its purpose dark. Cloaked and masked, the coven gathered in the private chamber. The scent of blood was fresh and strong. The flames spearing above black candles flickered to send shadows slithering over the walls like spiders hunting prey.
Selina chose to be the altar and lay naked, a candle burning between her thighs, a bowl of sacrificial blood nestled between her generous breasts.
She smiled as she glanced toward the silver bowl overflowing with the cash and credits the membership had paid for the privilege to belong. Their wealth was now her wealth. The master had saved her from a scrabbling life on the streets and brought her here, into power and into comfort.
She had gladly traded her soul for them.
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."
"Fine."
"Roarke." She grabbed at him as he reached for the door. "There's procedure for something like this, and reasons for that procedure. Call it in."
His home, he thought. Their home. His woman, and the fact that she was a cop didn't mean a damn at the moment. "And won't you feel foolish, Lieutenant, if it's a mechanical malfunction?"
"Nothing of yours ever malfunctions," she muttered and made him smile despite the circumstances.
"Why, thank you." He opened the door, and there was Summerset.
"It appears someone is on the grounds."
"Where's the breech?"
"Section fifteen, southwest quadrant."
"Run a full video scan, employ full house security when we're out. Eve and I will check the grounds." Absently, he ran a hand down her back. "A good thing I live with a cop."
She looked down at the gun in his hand. Attempting to disarm him would likely prove unsuccessful. And it would take too much time. "We're going to talk about this," she said between her teeth. "I mean it."
"Of course you do."
They went side by side down the stairs, through the now silent house. "They haven't gotten in," he said as he paused by a door leading onto a wide patio. "The alarm for a breech of the house is different. But they're over the wall."
"Which means they could be anywhere."
The moon was waxing toward full, but the clouds were thick and shadowed its light. Eve scanned the dark, the sheltering trees, the huge ornamental bushes. All provided excellent cover for observation. Or ambush. She heard nothing but the air teasing leaves going brittle with age.
"We'll have to separate. For Christ's sake don't use that weapon unless your life's threatened. Most B and E men aren't armed."
And most B and E men, they both knew, didn't attempt to ply their trade on a man like Roarke. "Be careful," he said quietly and slipped like smoke into the shadows.
He was good, Eve assured herself. She could trust him to handle himself and the situation. Using the dim and shifting moonlight as a guide, she headed west, then began to circle.
The quiet was almost eerie. She could barely hear her own footsteps on the thick grass. Behind her, the house stood in darkness, a formidable structure of old stone and glass, guarded, she thought, by a skinny snob of a butler.
Her lips curled. She'd love to see an unsuspecting burglar come up against Summerset.
When she reached the wall, she scanned for any breech. It was eight feet high, three feet thick, and wired to deliver a discouraging electric shock to anything over twenty pounds. Security cameras and lights were set every twelve feet. She whispered out an oath when she noted the narrow beams were blinking red rather than green.