'What do you two think you're doing?' one of the Nazis stepped forward to ask with a sneer. He slapped his bat against his gloved hand and raked us both with a look so foul it left me craving a bath to wash off the residue.
I stopped and smiled, Belinda bravely beside me. The words of the curse were on my tongue as I took a deep breath, then tapped into the darkness that Adrian carried within him, the darkness that bound him to Asmodeus. I pointed my finger at the lead Nazi, saying in my best Gothic voice of doom,' 'The guardians of the four quarters lay open their minds, filled they are with blood, guilt, and fear. Within you, loathsome beast most blind, thy tongue shall taste of… er… shall taste of…'' Crap! I'd forgotten the words of the curse. Desperately I tried to visualize the charm book, now sitting on a shelf in Christian's library.
'What's the matter? Why have you stopped?' Belinda asked me in a worried whisper, one eye on the Nazis as they moved restlessly.
'We have us a witch, lads,' the head Nazi snarled, brandishing his bat. 'And what do we do to these filthy women?'
'Kill them!' the gang yelled, raising their weapons to pump them in the air.
'I can't remember the rest of the curse,' I mumbled to Belinda, running back over the curse in my mind.' 'Within you, loathsome beast most blind, thy tongue shall taste'… hell! It's gone! I just can't remember what comes after that.'
'Beer?' Belinda suggested, stumbling backward as the men started toward us.
I shrugged. 'Works for me. I'll just wing the rest. Halt!' I held up my hand and gestured dramatically. The men ignored me, moving faster now that they smelled fear. I spoke quickly, drawing once again on Adrian's darkness, sketching the symbols of the curse that bound the words to the victims.' 'The guardians of the four quarters lay open their minds, filled they are with blood, guilt, and fear. Within you, loathsome beast most blind, thy tongue shall taste of stale beer!''
The men stopped, looking puzzled. I held my breath, waiting for them to turn into small, furry brown ratlike creatures. Although a couple of them twitched, and one started batting at his ears, they were all still human.
Well, as human as neo-Nazis could be.
'Is that it?' Belinda asked, peering around me at the men. 'Is there supposed to be more to the curse? Aren't they supposed to change, or are they more mental voles than actual voles?'
'I think there's more, but I can't remember it. Um. OK, how about this. 'Nazi, Nazi, go away. Become a vole today, I say!''
Thunder rumbled overhead, a cold breeze whipping around us. Long-dead leaves were caught up in a maelstrom, a veritable tornado of spinning fury. Belinda cried out as she ducked behind me. I covered my face to keep from being struck by the wild leaves. In the center of the windstorm, the Nazis all fell to the ground, covering their heads.
The leaves were so thick, and the wind and cold so intense, that I turned away for a moment. When I turned back, the sudden wind had died. Leaves drifted slowly to the ground in a spiral pattern on the flagstones of the courtyard. Collected in the middle of them was a group of small, squishy brown things.
'Did it work?' Belinda asked, spreading her fingers to peek through them.
'Kind of,' I said, prodding one of the small objects with the toe of my boot.
'Those aren't voles,' she commented helpfully.
'No, they're not.' I sighed, stepping around the slimy mass. 'I'm two for two on curses. I guess that's a sign I should give them up, although I think there's a certain amount of poetic justice in this.'
'Really? You think
I smiled. 'Who better to be a slug than a Nazi?'
Chapter Twenty-one
The house was strangely quiet as we entered, not a sound penetrating what seemed to be an icy, dense thickness that filled the building.
'Ew! Well, there's one Nazi slug less,' I muttered as I scraped my shoe on a carton containing several cases of beer. I paused on point like a retriever, trying to open myself up to the house.
'Can you feel Adrian?' Belinda asked in a whisper, her words emphasized by the sight of her breath on the cold air. It was evident by the number of slugs that slid their way along the hardwood floors or down the carpeted stairs that my curse had been all-encompassing, so there was really no reason for us to be whispering, but I felt just as creeped-out as she did. The house was too still. I imagined that with Adrian, Saer, and Sebastian all locked in battle, the house would shake to its foundations, but as we slowly made our way through the hall, peering into the rooms whose doors had been flung open, the house was utterly quiet, as if holding its breath, bracing itself for a blow.
'No, I don't feel him. Can you feel Saer?'
We reached the bottom of the staircase. She shook her head, her face pinched and white.
'Maybe you should try to do the mind-meld thingy with him,' I suggested, rubbing the goose bumps on my arms as I looked around. It was freezing in the house, seeming colder than outside. The Nazis hadn't been in possession of Christian's house very long, but long enough for them to spray-paint red supremacist logos all over the lovely mahogany paneling. Nothing but the slugs moved.
She shook her head again. 'I can't.'
I glanced at her, one foot on the bottom stair. 'What do you mean, you can't? You can't because you don't want Saer to know you're here?'
'No, I mean I can't. I could before we were Joined, but afterward'—she looked away for a minute—'I couldn't. Something seemed to go wrong.'
'Odd. Well, there's nothing for it—we're going to have to search the house to find them.' I added a silent prayer that we would find Adrian alive. I was more than a little shaken by the fact that I couldn't feel Adrian's presence. I knew instinctively that he would break off mental contact with me when Saer was around, no doubt feeling he was protecting me somehow, but even when I'd blocked him from speaking to me earlier, I could feel him. Now there was nothing.
We found Melissande in the basement, bound and gagged, her long blond hair a curtain around her face as she slumped in a chair to which she was tied.
'Melissande!' Belinda jumped forward and knelt before the woman. I moved behind the chair, frowning at the cloth that had been used to bind her hands. I touched it, my frown deepening as the tactile memory of sliding my hands over that shirt came back to me. 'What happened to you? Are you all right? Poor Melissande! Who did this?'
I untied Melissande's hands as Belinda carefully unknotted the matching black scrap of cloth that had been used to gag her. As Melissande lifted her head, Belinda gasped and fell back, staring in horror at her.
I moved around to look, rubbing my thumb over the warm silk. Why had Adrian ripped up a shirt to bind her? The questions that trembled on my lips died when I got a look at what had so horrified Belinda.
The symbol that had been burnt into Melissande's left cheek was one I was all too familiar with, the mere sight of it sending a cold wave skittering down my back that ended in a sick feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. 'Asmodeus.'
Her eyes closed, tears slipping from beneath the closed lids. Faint silvery trails were left as the tears traveled a path down beautiful porcelain skin until it reached the red, angry swelling that marked the brand.
'Asmodeus the demon lord?'
I waved my hand toward Melissande's feet, feeling sick, feeling worse than sick. Now I knew why the house was so cold. Someone had invoked the power of Asmodeus, and, given the fact that Belinda and I had searched every square foot of it and found no sign of Adrian, Saer, or Sebastian, the odds were that Adrian had come to some sort of grief using the ring. 'I fervently pray there's only one of him. Who did this to you, Melissande?'
