Sacrifice (8 page)

The Curburide thirst for human blood, it is true. But it should never be forgotten that blood is of secondary importance to these demons. Those who have tried to invoke the Curburide by sacrifice have met savage, shocking deaths before ever leaving the circle of the Calling.

It is no accident that some early sects of Gaelic druids actually worshipped an icon of a Curburide demon named Omenad. This demon was invoked at each of their ritual ceremonies, where they sacrificed a virgin to guarantee another year of fertility in the region’s crops and livestock. But the key aspect of the ritual was not, in fact, the sacrifice of the girl, but rather the sexual intercourse performed with her by all of the members of the sect, both prior to and after her disembowelment. According to some texts, the virgin had to give herself to the druids freely for the sacrifice to appease the demon. There has been some indication that both men and women belonged to this violent Curburide sect, and that a communion of sexual fluid and sacrificial blood was the ultimate consummation of the ritual.

The Curburide demon thirsts, first and foremost, for sexual perversion. The blood is the frosting, not the meat of its meal.

—Chapter Three,
The Book of the Curburide

Ariana woke to pain. She was still in the hotel room, in the bed, and her jaw throbbed. It felt like when she’d had all of her wisdom teeth pulled. And her neck ached. There was a stabbing feeling when she tried to roll over. She reached down to touch her ribs, to see if anything was broken, and realized that she had no control over her arms. Ignoring the awful blinding fire in her neck, she craned her head around and stared up at where her arms disappeared over the pillow.

Her wrists had been tied above her to the headboard. A faint trace of light was trickling through the sides of the window drapes, and in the murky shadows, she could just make out the sleeping form of the man next to her. It all came back. The bar, the easy pickup and the release of an anger more violent than her own.

She had been so stupid! He was the most burly of all the men she had picked up so far, and the only one she hadn’t managed to disable quickly, fatally, before he even knew what was going on. She’d gotten too confident, too careless. And now she was paying the price.

Damn. It would be too comical if it all ended like this. Her early fears that the cops would get to her before she forged the last link in the chain were bad enough, but this was worse. A killer never let her mark get the upper hand.

Jeremy stirred, his breath suddenly sputtering and uneven, and Ariana held her breath. She wasn’t ready for him to wake yet. Every muscle in her body screamed for her to move, to turn, to breathe. But Ariana waited, and after moving an arm to the side and shifting his head deeper into the pillow, Jeremy stilled.

Closing her eyes, Ariana drew in a quiet breath and then willed herself to relax. Her arms threatened ice-hot pins and needles, but she focused her energy on reaching out.

Reaching out with her mind.

She had twice now seen the ghostly faces of the Curburide peering at her from the air as she completed her rituals after sacrificing her victims. The last time, in Austin, she’d felt the moist, cool brush of a silvery hand slip across her brow as she’d moved the knife from side to side and then cleaned it by swiping each side on the dead man’s palm. The excess blood had sluiced off the blade and trickled down his fortune lines to pool in the well of his hand. He looked as if he’d been crucified.

They were out there. And they were watching her. Urging her on. Eager for her to reach the finish line.

She pushed with her mind, trying to see through the black sheath of her closed lids, and her internal night pulsed to flecks and clouds of red and rust and gold.

Curburide, I call you,
she bellowed inside her brain. Her lips formed the name and sent its silent syllable over and over again into the gloomy shadows of the rented room. The screaming bruises and tortured muscles faded into the background as Ariana emptied her mind of everything but her Calling, her prayer.

Curburide, I need you,
she begged. In the furthest corner of her mind, she felt a stirring, and she fed its interest, reliving the careful slaughter of each of her victims. Her inner eye grew bloody red and the whispers began.

Curburide, I love you,
she pledged, and imagined their shadowy forms positioned above her, astride and beside her. They anointed her in the foul rot of each man she’d killed, rubbing the brown remains of crushed testes and dried mucousy sperm on her forehead. In her mind’s eye she kissed the stained hand that reached for her face. A calm overcame her as she tasted its decayed offering, a communion between her and the other realm. A fleeting, disintegrating host of dead and disappearing flesh that bound her to the mortal, and promised her the future of the incorporeal.

She took its insubstantial fingers between her lips, pursing them and widening them to take the entire hand of the spirit inside her.

“I am yours,” she whispered. “I serve you. Tell me what to do now.”

The taste of salt and iron suddenly flooded her mouth, a warm broth that tasted both like seawater and blood that caught in her throat and warmed her belly as she gulped it down. Her limbs seemed to tingle, and she could feel a wetness growing from the valley between her legs. Her body seemed on fire, floating and burning.

Ariana opened her eyes, and gasped.

A man hovered in the air above her. Half a man. Only his face and torso were visible, and even those were faint. His shirt hung loose about his long, lanky frame, and seemed to shiver and sway in the air like a flag billowing under a moonlit storm. But his eyes were wide and black, and his silvery hair hung like the well-brushed, slightly curled mane of a horse; his insubstantial shoulders touched her chest. She could feel prickles of icy electricity spark where his ghostly hair trailed in feathery touches across her body. But the center of energy came from his skeletal fingers, which reached out and stroked their tips across her open lips. With each touch her mouth and lips felt more swollen and her throat more heated and thick.

“You came,” she whispered out loud.

The creature showed a row of dangerously sharp and blinding white teeth and brought its other hand out of where it had rested—in the limbo of somewhere else—and into the room to caress and massage her hair and her forehead. She almost leapt upwards to meet its touch. Every slight connection with him was like kissing a battery. Her brain was suddenly flying, exulting in a high better than any toke she’d ever inhaled. All the pain and fear and aches of her battered body faded, replaced by a silent ecstasy.

She moaned and the creature lifted a finger to its lips.

That’s when she saw the others.

She—and he—were being watched. The others were hazier, seemingly farther away, less distinct. But they were there in the room, watching. They hovered beyond his slim shoulders, most only showing a faded face or sometimes an entire head or maybe only the hint of a glowing eye in the farthest shadows of the room.

They had come for her. To nourish her. To save her from her own foolishness.

The Curburide. It was all real. Every word she’d memorized, every book she’d tracked down, they had all hinted at this. And they hadn’t lied.

If she hadn’t fully believed it before, the flickering wraith covering her body was the final evidence she needed. They were out there, waiting for her to bring them all the way over. It took power. That’s probably why even the most visible of their number wasn’t fully revealed. His legs disappeared into a line of blackness in the air above her. And the rest could barely show more than a face on this side of the veil.

“Forge the chain,” the spirit demanded. From behind it, the rest of the Curburide echoed its command.

“Forge the chain,” they said, in ghostly unity.

“But how?” she cried, a tear running down her cheek. “I can’t move.”

“Forge the chain,” the creature moaned again, slow and distinct. It pulled its nourishing finger back from her mouth, and she saw its translucent white caste had deepened to a crimson stain. It leaned down out of the air and pressed lips to her forehead and her body jolted and shivered at its kiss.

“What the fuck is that?” Jeremy whispered from beside her, and like the pull of a chain, the Curburide winked out of existence.

“Ariana,” he said, after a few seconds passed. “What’s going on here?”

“That,” she answered, with a croak that barely resembled her normally crystal pure voice, “is going to take some time to explain.”

He rolled away from her and got out of bed, walking immediately to pull the shades and let the morning light flood the room. He stood there, naked, hands on his hips, seemingly unaware of the hairy paunch and shriveled equipment that he was displaying for anyone on the street to see. He turned back and looked around the room as if searching for explosives dangling in the air.

“I’ve got all day,” he finally said. “You drink coffee?”

“With cream,” she answered. “But I’ll need my hands.”

He picked his jeans off the floor from the crumpled pile of clothing near the wall and stuck a leg in.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised.

He was out the door before he had both arms through his shirtsleeves.

New Orleans, After Ariana

Carolyn Hayes pressed the sheets down around her daughter’s shoulders, tucking them until only Hannah’s dimpled chin poked out.

“Snug as a bug,” she said, tapping a finger to the girl’s nose. “Daddy and I are right through the door there,” she pointed at the adjoining door of the room. She nodded at the empty bed next to her.

“Your sister will be back in a couple hours. You get some sleep now. Tomorrow we’ll go see Aunt Linda.”

Hannah smiled, and then opened her mouth wide to let a yawn escape.

“Okay, Mom, good night. Don’t let the buggies bite.”

“You neither.” Carolyn ruffled her daughter’s head and stood up. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She flipped the light switch off and pulled the door shut behind her as she returned to the other side of the adjoining rooms.

“She good?” Tom asked, and she nodded. “I hate to leave her in there all alone, though.”

He walked up and stood behind her, wrapping solid, strong arms around her waist and drawing his fingers slowly up the front of her thighs.

“She could stay in here with us until J.C. comes home, but then we won’t have any private time.”

Tom’s lips were on her ear and she shivered. Her body melted when he did that, and her husband knew it well. He wasn’t playing fair. She pushed his hands away and stepped to the windows to pull the blinds. The city glowed in every shade of neon below their room and she wondered how her older daughter was faring down on Bourbon.

“I know, I know,” she said. “But I’ve got one little girl out on the sin strip all by herself and another one in a strange bed all alone next door. I feel like I’ve abandoned my girls.”

Tom crossed to stand next to her at the window, looking down at the blinking reds and whites of the traffic. He was worried about his daughter wandering Bourbon Street after dark himself but, she was an adult now.

“J.C.’s a big girl,” he said, “and she’ll be fine on her own. You know she’s been doing the bar strip at college for the past year. And we showed her the ropes here this afternoon.”

He stroked her hair and pulled her closer.

“Hannah’s growing up, too. I know you think of her as your little baby, but she’s going to be eleven soon.”

He turned her to face him and ran heavy hands around her back to cup her ass, pulling her closer. “Now quit worrying about your daughters. This is
our
time.”

The door behind them opened, and Hannah stood behind them, rubbing her eyes.

“Mommy?” she said, sounding unsure.

Carolyn jumped away from her husband and ran to hug her.

“What’s a matter, baby?”

“There’s a ghost in my room.”

“A ghost?” Carolyn said. “What sort of ghost?”

“A man,” she said. “He’s all see-through and floating in the air by the window.”

Tom stifled a grin. “Honey, there’s no such thing as ghosts, you know that.”

“He asked me to come with him,” Hannah argued. “He was there, right by my bed. He said I would help him forge a chain.”

Tom stepped past both of them to the adjoining room and flicked the lights on.

“Come in here, both of you,” he said. Hannah poked her head back in, with Carolyn’s arm on her shoulder.

“Look,” he said, waving his hand in the air. The room was a mess, suitcases lay on the floor with a trail of T-shirts and socks leading away from them, and the sheets and bedspread on Hannah’s bed were dangling off the mattress and touching the floor from her hasty exit. He strode across the room and bent over until his nose nearly touched the ground, making a big show of looking behind the dresser and under the bed. When he stood up finally, he clapped his hands together.

“No ghosts,” he pronounced. He grabbed his daughter under the arms and hoisted her in the air.

“All clear,” he said. “Ghostbusters win.”

She giggled at that, but still protested as he slipped her feet back beneath the covers.

“But he was here, Daddy, I saw him.”

He kissed her on the forehead, and Carolyn ran a hand through her daughter’s hair.

“Well, he’s gone now, baby. Get some sleep now; we’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Carolyn kissed her again and then Tom pulled her by the arm away from the bed. He flipped off the light.

“Night, night, sleep tight,” he said.

“Don’t let the buggies bite,” came the ritual response from Hannah.

He pulled the door shut behind them and pulled his wife back into an embrace.

“Don’t Tom, not now.”

“She’s fine,” he promised. “Just scared of being in a new place.”

“We should let her sleep in here.”

He went for her ear again, and this time, she relaxed a little into his arms.

“This vacation is for us, too,” he reminded her. Carolyn’s hands stroked his back and slipped lower, in answer.

“Tell me again what you want to do to me?” she whispered in a girlish voice.

Tom smiled and led her to the bed.

Carolyn pulled the curtains open to let the morning sunshine fill the room. It was after eight o’clock, but Tom was still out like a light, his lips slack and open against the pillow. Her face beamed as she looked at him; it had been a good night and he had fulfilled just what he’d promised. She went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth, then pulled on one of the big white terrycloth robes from the hotel. If she had one of these at home, she might never get dressed in the morning.

She knocked lightly on the door to her daughters’ room, and then opened the door.

J.C. was still in bed, but half awake. She lifted a thin hand to scratch her head through the mess of auburn hair that covered her pillow and mumbled a “g’morning.”

“How was your night?” Carolyn asked.

J.C. smiled, and then frowned and lifted the other hand to hold her head.

“Ow. Um, it was good. I ended up at Pat O’Brien’s though.”

Carolyn laughed. “Hurricanes?”

J.C. nodded.

“You’ll learn. Rum is the devil.”

Carolyn nodded at Hannah’s empty bed. “Is the princess in the bathroom?”

J.C. frowned. “No. I thought she slept with you guys?”

“What do you mean?” Carolyn asked, alarm creeping into her voice.

“She wasn’t here when I got home, so I figured she’d crawled into bed with you and Dad.”

“Oh my God,” Carolyn said, turning back to her room and staring at the single king-size bed, where her husband still lay sleeping. Alone.

“Tom,” she said. “Tom!”

He jerked awake and looked up, squinting at her.

“What’s a matter, hon?”

“We’ve lost Hannah.”