“I’m sorry, Chad.” Allyson’s voice sounded small, defeated. “I understand if you kick me out now.”
Chad finally looked at her again. She saw pain in his expression. The withering aspect of judgment she expected was still missing. “I’m not kicking you out.” His voice was softer now, entirely devoid of the rage and implied accusations of before. “I wish you’d told me the truth before. It would’ve saved us all some grief. But I understand why you didn’t. It’ll take me a while to come to terms with this, but I want you to know that I care about you, too.” He indicated the closed laptop with a nod. “I know how hard it must have been for you to show me those…things.”
He reached out to her, stroked her cheek with the back of a hand, and Allyson melted inside. She grabbed his hand and held on for dear life. “I’m so sorry. Chad, I’m so sorry.”
Jim said, “I take it you’re satisfied, Chad?”
Allyson blinked her tears away and watched Chad as he hesitated for only a moment before nodding. “Yeah, Jim. I’m satisfied.”
“Fair enough.”
Jim opened the rear door and swung his legs out. He paused before getting the rest of the way out. “I trust you, friend, and if you choose to place your trust in this woman, I’ll abide by that. But we’re going to a place I can’t afford to compromise. We’ll stop ahead of arriving there and blindfold young Allyson. She’ll ride the rest of the way in with me. That condition is non-negotiable. Understood?”
Allyson answered before Chad had a chance to open his mouth. “Understood. I’ll do whatever you say.”
Jim nodded. “Good.”
He departed without another word, throwing the door shut and returning to his pickup. Allyson settled back into her seat and felt her eyes flutter shut. There was so much else she wanted to say to Chad about her old life in California, so much she needed to explain, but she didn’t have the energy now.
Darkness took her as the Lexus followed the old Ford back to the highway.
CHAPTER TEN
Giselle Burkhardt opened her eyes in darkness. She was back. She felt the cold steel of the cage beneath her bottom. Giselle sat upright and grasped the bars of her prison. Then she pulled them apart as easily as a child deconstructing a clumsily assembled Lego building, the steel yielding with stunning ease to her strength. She climbed out of the cage and dropped to the floor. Instinct guided her to the room’s only point of egress, a place where the texture of reality was thinner and more susceptible to the manipulation of magic. She splayed her hands on the cool stone wall and focused her will.
It was easy.
A door formed in the wall. It swung open before her and she stepped into a large room that was a precise replica of the Master’s old chambers. The door closed behind her, its outline vanishing instantly. An odd sense of peace settled within her as she surveyed the uncannily familiar surroundings. Giselle had emerged from her dank and freezing prison a changed woman. It was as if she’d shed an old skin with her passage back through Azaroth’s portal. The missing parts of her body had been restored, obviously, but there was an inner change as well.
The murder of Eddie and his woman seemed to have erased the last traces of her conscience. She was no longer a redeemed sinner. There was fresh blood on her hands. Innocent blood. She’d taken it willingly, even eagerly. So she was no longer afraid to shrink from the core truth about herself. She was a murderer. A sadist. And by killing Eddie she’d unleashed the tamed beast she’d kept hidden in the darkest part of her soul f or so long.
She thought of Eddie and tried to feel some trace of her former feelings for him, but those feelings now seemed as dead as he was.
She had done it fast, sprinting across the apartment’s living room floor toward the oblivious couple seated on the sofa. They were watching a movie and laughing. Their arms were around each other, the woman’s head on Eddie’s shoulder. Giselle gripped a handful of Eddie’s hair and yanked his head back. Eddie gagged as his eyes rolled up to look at her. His woman screamed. There was a moment of recognition in Eddie’s terrified expression. His eyes may have expressed pain over the betrayal. The knife slashed across his throat, blood leaping from the gash as Eddie’s woman disengaged herself from the dying man and tumbled to the floor. She got to her feet and ran for the door. Giselle hurried after her, moving with the speed and grace of a wolf. Unnatural, unhuman speed. She gripped the screaming woman by the shoulder, spun her around, and slammed her against the door. Then she drove the knife through yielding flesh, plunging it in just below the sternum. The woman screamed and thrashed some more, but Giselle held her in place with a strong hand to the throat. She held the knife in place a moment, coldly holding her agonized gaze, then yanked it out and thrust it in again to the hilt. The woman died and Giselle returned to Eddie and drank blood from his still-bubbling wound, knowing the obscenity would further honor Azaroth and the other death gods.
Killing the woman hadn’t been strictly necessary. But it had seemed the right thing to do. So she had killed the woman, a primal, reptilian part of her enjoying the act of senseless murder. She had a feeling Azaroth and the other death gods would appreciate the additional blood offering. And even in the midst of those savage moments she’d known that something within her had changed forever.
Now, standing here in Ms. Wickman’s lovingly recreated version of the Master’s chambers, Giselle understood that other things had also changed, including her immediate plans for the future. The things she wanted now were no longer the things she’d coveted prior to summoning Azaroth.
A full-length oval mirror on a swivel-stand caught her attention. She walked over to it and a ppraised her reflection. She was as flawless as ever, her flesh porcelain-white, body slender and shapely. Her face was delicately beautiful, almost angelic, with exquisitely fine lines and angles that belied her capacity for savagery. Her long hair was jet-black and straight, a shimmering raven mane that starkly contrasted her pale flesh.
Giselle smiled. She looked good.
Better than ever, in fact.
She turned from the mirror and moved past the large four-poster bed to the French doors at the end of the room. One of the doors was standing open. Giselle moved through it and stood on a long balcony. She moved to the edge of the balcony, braced her hands on the metal rail and looked down. The vista that unfurled below took her breath away. The balcony was high in the air, maybe as much as a half mile above the ground. The landscape beneath was a pockmarked, blasted place. The red terrain made her think of pictures she’d seen of the surface of Mars. She spied a big bonfire in the distance and a thick haze of black smoke rising toward the horizon. Teams of men in black hoods worked together to haul huge stones of varying chiseled shapes in the direction of the bonfire. Other men with machine guns and whips prodded them onward.
These activities were likely connected to Ms. Wickman’s own efforts to appease-and draw power from-the death gods. The thought made Giselle smile. Ms. Wickman was powerful and ruthless, but she did not have Azaroth on her side.
Giselle turned away from the tableau of horrors and returned to the bedroom. This time she went directly to the bed and spread herself across the plush and luxuriant feather mattress. She let out a low groan of satisfaction and rolled across the mattress a time or two, reveling in the decadent cradle of comfort. Then she repositioned herself, propping her head on the plump pillows and staring up at the heavy velvet canopy.
She heard a cough and turned her head to see a bare-chested man with a studded leather collar around his throat. The man was lean and sinewy, the exposed flesh of his torso a map of scars and abrasions. He stared at Giselle with eyes that were wide with fear and confusion.