Annie whimpered. Dizziness swept over her: this was all wrong, she didn’t belong here, and neither did that man, whoever he was. Whoever he had been. She tried to struggle but the ropes were too tight. She could hear faint voices somewhere just out of sight, the pad of bare feet upon stone floors. And there was that sweet smoke…
Don’t breathe, try not to breathe!
She exhaled, with all her strength raised one elbow and rammed it against the stone.
She gasped. Her vision wavered; the pain curdled into nausea and a blade of fire jabbing through her arm.
Now! she thought. Because with the pain came a split second of clarity. She recognized the figure beside her on the altar.
Hasel Bright.
“No!” Annie shouted, but her voice was lost among the others singing.
They emerged from the shadows, nine priestesses forming a half circle before the raised stone table. Behind them three male acolytes carried rhytons shaped like the heads of bulls. The women were tall, breasts exposed above long shirred skirts that swept to their ankles. The skirts were striped black and gold, bold and surprisingly modern in such an archaic-seeming place. They might have been wasps given women’s form, moving in a slow measured dance. In their arms they carried a boy, a boy with very white teeth and tanned skin and sun-streaked hair.
Annie stared, entranced. They were so close that she could smell the boy’s sweat, coconut oil, and the faint chloroform odor of XTC. When the priestesses raised their arms she could see silver crescents gleaming between their breasts. She could hear the papery rustling of their skirts, their low voices—
Each word with its echo of threat and fear—
The male acolytes approached the altar, gathered Hasel’s limp form, and bore it away. Annie fought the panic boiling up inside her, but for the moment it seemed she was forgotten. The priestesses came forward, and gently placed the boy upon the altar. He lay upon his side, naked, his mouth stained from the libation. They had painted his lips and eyes with ocher, and drawn a half-moon upon his smooth chest. Against his honey-colored skin strands of ivy gleamed. He looked like a child at rest, eyes closed, his mouth in a sweet half smile; a child dreaming of his Mother. And his Mother came.
Without a sound she approached the altar, passing through the ranks of chanting women. Taller than any of them, and naked, her bronzy hair unbound and flowing past her shoulders, her lovely face calm, unsmiling. Between her bare breasts the lunula shone. Her priestesses fell silent as she stepped between them.
When she reached the altar she stopped. As Annie watched through a haze of smoke, Othiym’s fingers tightened around the lunula. She moved until she stood directly above the boy. She raised the lunula over her head. Before Annie could flinch, the glowing crescent fell to strike the boy beside her. Sudden warmth splashed onto her face.
Annie screamed. When she blinked her eyelids felt sticky. A salt-scorched taste burned her mouth. Through the roaring in her ears she heard Othiym’s voice crying Eisheth! And Eisheth came.
It was no longer the black angel she had seen earlier. It was a vulture, so vast the shadow of its wings blotted out everything behind it. The stench of rotting flesh flowed from it, and she could see white grubs and blowflies rooting in the wattled flesh of its neck. It made a soft gurgling sound, like laughter, then pecked at the boy’s eyes.
Annie gagged. The acolytes darted to the altar, vying with each other to catch the boy’s blood in their rhytons. The vulture stared at them balefully, its black tongue clicking against its beak.
“Eisheth!”
A thunderous flapping as the vulture rose into the air. Annie tuned her head.
“Angelica,” she whispered. It was almost a relief to say it.
The woman smiled. She looked improbably youthful and lovely as ever, with her tawny skin and hair, her slanted eyes. But her breasts were stippled with blood, and blood ran from her nipples to streak her belly. In her strong peasant’s hands she held a rhyton shaped like a bull’s head. Steam threaded the air above the vessel’s opening as she lifted it, tilting it until a dark stream flowed from the bull’s open mouth and into her own.
“All I have loved is mine,” she said. Her mouth and tongue and teeth were black with blood.
Annie broke into hysterical gabbling. Beneath her the cold stone altar disappeared. The smoke dispersed, and with it the vulture’s carrion stench. Once again she was crouching upon the wooden floor of the boathouse.
On the other side of the room people danced, oblivious. A few yards from Annie, Lyla and the others stood above a limp form. Annie’s voice became a sob. Virgie glanced at her, then back down at the dead boy.
His eyes were gone, and his tongue. His torso had been split, the twin arches of his rib cage pried apart and his organs removed. In the empty cavity there was only a black-and-crimson feather, like a blossom sprung from his heart.
Annie shook convulsively. A single maddening thought raced through her mind—there should be more blood, she had seen how he’d died, there should be blood everywhere…
Without warning they were upon her, clawing at her arms and face as they dragged her to her feet. Annie screamed, she kicked and fought and yelled but they were everywhere, a mindless hive tearing at her clothes, pinning her arms behind her back.
“Be careful, be careful!—
Annie saw Virgie looking at her with round black eyes.
“Agape, Annie—you’re so lucky you’ve been chosen—”
Annie moaned, closed her eyes against the pain. When she opened them again she saw a crescent flashing in the darkness. A few inches from her face someone held a battered silver vessel. She smelled blood: that choking thick smell, its ferrous taste as they prised her jaws open and it scalded her gums, blinded her where it splashed into her eyes. She couldn’t scream, there was blood everywhere, filling her nostrils and ears and mouth. Through a film of red she saw the lunula, the Moon poised to rise and blot the sun from the sky…
“Let her go!”
A voice cried out. The hands upon her tightened; then the same voice cried again.
Annie blinked. The others turned, gazing at a screen door that had blown open behind them.
Her captors let go. Annie staggered across the floor.