Wicked Circle

didn’t dare attach those pieces onto his own soul—that was tricky with a vampire at best—and he would not risk the tarnish of these wicked sisters tainting him. This gave him an access point to apply his punishment and kept him from having to physically touch the sisters. It was the best defense he could hope for. Though he would have shared this spell with Konstance if she could have saved him from having to perform it himself, it was not one he wanted others to know.

Preparing the small leather pouch, he felt the wool-lined interior, then slid the amber pendants within. He tucked the flap of the pouch over the chain and snapped it shut. The stones were now secure: hidden in the wool- lined leather, but still suspended from the necklace. He put the chain around his neck.

Holding the red-handled knife, he rolled each fruit to its side and cut it in half, then—without separating the top from the bottom—he set them aright with both pieces sitting as if uncut. This, if seen, would show that each apple’s core created a natural five-pointed star. That and the severed seeds were symbolic here.

He raised the top from the middle apple and let the centermost of the three selected statues fill his sight. “I call you forth, Liyliy, shabbubitu, cursed daughter of Neriglissar. Damned bride of Belsarra-usurah.”

Even as a dark vapor wafted up from the seeds, he lifted the top from the right-most apple. “I call you forth, Ailo, shabbubitu, cursed daughter of Neriglissar. Damned bride of Kurush.” He repeated the gesture for the left- most apple’s top. “I call you forth, Talto, shabbubitu, cursed daughter of Neriglissar. Damned bride of Ramesu.”

Meroveus stood and retreated, putting distance between him and the black breath filling the space. A hand formed in the air and slender fingers stretched for the necklace he now wore, but Meroveus backed further away and hid the necklace under his shirt.

For long minutes, the energy of the ley steamed up from the apples and fed the specters, solidifying them in phases. When three enormous, ethereal owls stretched their wings, their hideous hag-faces squinted at him. They screeched, and the sound shattered the glass of a pair of display cases nearby.

Alarms sounded.

Then their bodies shuddered and thinned, becoming nearly solid as they formed human shapes like the shabbubitum they had inhabited for centuries. But even as the flowing gowns of millennia past appeared, the fabric aged, growing tattered and gray, deteriorating like powder.

Three women stood before him, shoulder to shoulder. They were naked except for the fine, dark dust that used to clothe them. These women exuded erotic formidability. It dripped from the damp ebony curls of their hair and, trailing down their bodies, gathered that dust and created dark, wet lines that drew an onlooker’s gaze away from the hatefulness stabbing outward from the depths of their black eyes.

In perfect unison, they took a slow, lissome step forward. Displaying feline agility, each shifted her weight to her forward foot and advanced again. Energy blew over Mero as the menace beneath the beauty sought a source of power and found it in the Acropolis ley line.

He touched his shirt where, beneath, lay the necklace. He was ready to jolt them, but what they drew from the line was minimal.

Sandals appeared on their feet, straps wrapping up their calves like adoring snakes. Dove gray silk materialized, rippling in a wind as it wrapped around their bodies to swathe them each in unique but elegant garments with teasingly placed patches of sheerness. Quicksilver poured impossibly up their arms, then hardened into jewelry adorning their wrists, necks. The likeness of owls formed repeatedly in the gleaming metal.

Meroveus stood imperiously as they arrived before him. “Liyliy.”

She squinted in a manner both guarded and suspicious. “Vos es incompertus?” Mistress of many ancient tongues, she questioned him in Latin, the language he had used in the spell to release the sisters.

“No,” he said. “You do not know me.” He kept his voice smooth, even. “Venire.” He pointed to his chest and said, “Meroveus.” He walked away from them then, gesturing so they would follow. He led them down the stairs. At the bottom, Zevon was nervously shifting his weight and punching buttons on a control panel. The alarms were silenced. Zevon sighed in relief—at least until he saw the group descending the stairs.

He jogged to remain ahead of Meroveus and the women as they followed him toward the entrance.

When Zevon tried to unlock the door, he dropped the key. Meroveus and the others caught up to him. “I need your assistance, my English-speaking friend.”

Zevon jumped. “Wh-what do you require? I was told I would give no blood.”

“No blood,” Meroveus assured him. “You need only allow these women to hold your hands.”

Their young guide’s attention bounced from Meroveus to the trio and back. “No harm to me? I have your word?”

Harm. Such a relative term. “You will suffer no physical injury. You will bear no visible marks. You will not be mentally damaged. Of this, you have my word.”

“So specific.” Zevon swallowed hard. “Tell me what I will suffer?”

“Pain,” Mero said bluntly. “And ten thousand euros for your trouble.”

Zevon stood straighter, adjusting his suit. After a difficult swallow, he held out his hands.

Meroveus motioned the trio closer to the guide. “Perceptum English lingua?” He then dialed the local VEIN embassy on his cell phone.

The women converged on Zevon. Two stroked his hair and fawned over him as Liyliy assumed her position. The sisters each wriggled a hand between his and Liyliy’s palms, then laced their fingers behind his neck. Liyliy’s dress slithered down her body to puddle at her feet. Zevon’s sight was locked on the tips of her breasts, and he did not notice the gown reverting to mist. His mouth was open and he was panting hard . . . then the shabbubitum whispered a chant. Their voices rose, and with them, a mistlike tentacle slithered up Zevon’s body and coiled around his neck.

The air crackled as their power thickened. Mero’s phone burped static and he paced away to tell the assistant on the line to arrange a payment to poor Zevon. When Mero strode back, they had lowered Zevon to lie flat on the floor. He had begun to convulse. His body seized, and foam oozed from his open mouth.

The shabbubitum hovered over him; Liyliy sat on his chest. The notes they were singing ascended through octave after octave. When their voices had reached a pitch only dogs could hear, it was done. They laughed like delighted little girls.

Their guide’s trembling eased. He blinked. He gasped.

Liyliy flicked the foamy drool from his chin. “Zevon,” she whispered. “You are a sweet boy, untried, but with such a dirty mind.” On all fours, her body assumed a position both sexual and predatory. “Oh, what I could do with you. To you.” She kissed him, lightly, then rougher. In an instant she had heaved him upright by his head, squeezing him tightly to her. Zevon tried to shove her away.

Mero felt them tap the line again. This time, however, it was not a minimal touch but a seizing grasp, dark and barbed, with ravenous hunger. He brought the necklace out from under his shirt and clutched the amber-filled pouch, pouring his own power into the stones. “Liyliy!”

She released Zevon and spun on Mero. In an instant her smooth skin grew wrinkled, like crumpled paper, and—screeching—she attacked.

Pain stabbed through her body, but Liyliy leapt unfalteringly. Wings appeared behind her, lifted her into the air, then angled so she could descend and swing a foot—now a clenched talon—at this man’s head. Meroveus. She recognized the liar. He’d been here when she and her sisters had been tricked, bound into stone. He had not been the one who’d performed the spell, but he had been part of the ruse. For that, he deserved her wrath.

Her strike connected with enough force to cast him into the air. As he was thrown backward, her head swelled to twice its size and her body transformed.

In landing, the man’s ponytail was trapped beneath him. In skidding across the floor, his head was drawn back, thrusting his chin up and exposing his neck. The man’s elbow smacked the floor hard enough that he released the pouch.

Liyliy pinned him with her talons around each of his biceps.

“We are hungry!” she snarled, thrusting her new owl-like beak toward his throat just as her skin prickled over with gooseflesh. On either side of her hooked nose, quill tips burst forth in large circles around her eyes, and from the deepest of her wrinkles black and gray feathers sprouted. The hair atop her head retracted into her scalp at the