him. This place was just like the Master’s house in many ways. Bigger by far on the inside than out, for one thing. Populated by a coterie of wayward psycho children turned professional sadists, for another. And sustained by a brand of magic so powerful the mere contemplation of it was staggering. Surely anyone capable of wielding that kind of power was also capable of swatting aside the Camp Whiskey invaders like so many gnats.
Allyson shot him a puzzled, impatient look. “What?” Her gaze remained on the hallway ahead, occasionally drifting to the left or right as they passed open doorways. “Keep your head out of the clouds, Chad. Stay focused.”
The formerly ragged bullet hole had dwindled to a small black speck on the wall. In another moment even that was gone. “Yeah. Right.” Chad shook his head and poked the barrel of his weapon into the open doorway on his right. He peeked around the doorjamb and saw a shivering, terrified Apprentice huddled beneath a desk on the far wall. He moved past the doorway and said, “It’s not important.”
She shot him another puzzled look. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, with little blonde tufts hanging loose at her temples. Her face was grimy with sweat and soot. But it was funny. He felt a sudden and powerful urge to kiss her. She was so amazingly beautiful. He didn’t think he’d ever fully appreciated just how beautiful until this very moment. Somehow she even managed to make combat look sexy.
She arched an eyebrow. “Are you okay? Would you get that goofy grin off your face. We’re fighting for our lives here.”
Chad forced the smile away and nodded. “Right. Sorry.”
They ascended another set of stairs to yet another floor. Chad had lost track of how many floors they’d climbed, but he knew it was a ridiculously high number for a house that looked like a one-story wreck from the outside. But there was something different about this floor. It was wider and better-lit. The light fixtures and wainscoting were more ornate. And at the end of the long hallway stood a massive set of double doors that seemed to reach for the sky. Chad noticed now that the ceiling curved upward, rising dramatically toward the end of the hallway.
One of the men ahead of them said, “Goddamn. I hope we ain’t goin’ in there.”
The man to his immediate left snickered. “No shit. Look at them fuckin’ monster doors. Giants must live in there.”
The other man shuddered visibly and said, “Fuck. Don’t say that. This shit’s been weird enough already.”
Bai was at the head of the decimated column of fighters. She arrived at the double doors and turned her back to them, waited with arms crossed beneath her breasts for what remained of the Camp Whiskey force to assemble before her. Only now, clear of the smoke and exposed in this wide hallway, did Chad realize just how little was left of this force. Their numbers had been reduced by more than half.
Bai spoke. “Victory is our s.”
Then she unsheathed her sword and waded into the loose circle of surviving Camp Whiskey fighters. She was a black, untrackable blur moving side to side across the hallway, the long blade a flashing silver streak of light. The soldiers fell in rapid succession beneath her blade. Most were too startled to put up a fight. One or two tried clumsily to resist, but died in the attempt. It was over almost as soon as it had begun.
When Bai returned her sword to its sheath, the only people she’d left alive were Chad, Allyson, and Jim.
Chad gaped at her. “Why the hell did you do that?”
Bai’s expression was serene. The anger and terror in his tone failed to move her. A little smile darkened the corners of her mouth. “They were no longer necessary.”
Chad’s heart was slamming in his chest. “Yeah? And what about us? Why are we alive?”
Her smile deepened a little. “Because I am of the Order. I am merciless and I do not care about you. But I am true to my word. Survive this and you and your woman will be free.”
Chad’s chin jerked in Jim’s direction.“And what about my friend?”
“He has also cut a deal with the Order.”
Chad’s expression turned quizzical as he moved closer to Jim. “What’s she talking about?”
Jim sighed. “You wouldn’t understand. You don’t need to understand.” He turned away from Chad and looked at Bai. “Let’s end this.”
Bai nodded and moved to one of the huge doors.
She took the knob in one of her small hands, turned it, and pulled the door open. A brilliant white light made their eyes water.
Then Chad glimpsed what was waiting for them inside and gasped.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Down in the depths of a fevered sleep, Giselle’s body shook as she dreamed of blood. Blood everywhere. Spouting from freshly opened wounds. Jetting from the stumps of severed limbs like semen ejaculated from a throbbing cock. A great, crimson ocean drained from the bodies of hundreds of victims, a deep red tide filling the hallways of a very old mansion that only vaguely resembled the one she’d ruled over so mercilessly for a handful of months. Then a flashback, a jump backward in time, and the blood she sees is weeping from the wounds in her little brother’s body. Wounds she inflicted at the Master’s behest in order to save herself. He’d rewarded her for that blood betrayal, using his magic to arrest the aging process in her body, freezing her in an image of perfect late adolescent beauty. She had lived for more than fifty years, but she would never look any older than seventeen or eighteen. But the psychic price for this dubious gift was high indeed. The look of agony on her dying brother’s face was always lurking at the back of her mind, perpetually threatening to rise to the surface with its screaming accusations.
And so of course he returned to haunt and taunt her now.
Giselle awoke gasping, her psyche still reeling from the long-suppresed images of her decades-dead brother. Wakefulness failed to banish the memories. Her body shook and her heart raced like an athlete’s at the end of a series of sprints, a manic
Giselle’s scream echoed in the dark chamber.
She shook her head hard, her sweat-soaked, stringy hair flailing in the darkness. She cried and jibbered like a madwoman locked in the padded room of some asylum.
NO!NO!NO!
But the images refused to recede. It was as if, having thought of them, having allowed them room to breathe in the haunted cavern of her mind, she couldn’t
She let out another keening cry of grief, raised her hands to her face-and felt the stumps prod her cheeks.
A moment of perfect stillness elapsed. In this moment, she held her breath, not daring to breathe. Not daring to acknowledge existence itself. Her mind was blank. Then she released that breath and gently touched the stumps to her cheeks again… There was a faint phantom limb sensation, but it diminished as her mind accepted the simple physical evidence of her mutilated flesh.
Her hands were gone again. She experienced a moment of desperate, yawning disorientation, as if she were standing at the edge of a great abyss. One more step and she would plummet into forever darkness. She struggled to comprehend what had happened. There was no pain. No throbbing ache of infection. These were not fresh wounds. Rather, these were wounds that had healed over time. Months, maybe. Her “restoration” had been a kind of illusion all along, an elaborate trick played on her by the Master while he masqueraded as Azaroth and awaited her inevitable downfall. She’d even half-suspected it near the end of her reign here.
She was as she’d once been.
Completely.
Her body was real again. Not whole, but real. Unenhanced by magic. In fact, she felt not the faintest trace of magical energy lurking anywhere within her. Whatever abilities she’d possessed were gone, beyond any hope of recapture. The damping energy Dream had wrapped her in was gone, too, no longer needed.
She was as she’d once been.
Completely.
With a broken body.
And a fully functioning conscience.
This realization at last banished the memories of her brother, but there was no relief in this. Because now her mind was flooded with a ceaseless series of images of the horrible things she’d done over the last few months. A nonstop film loop of atrocity with her in the starring role. And Ursula in a second-billed role, always by her side, inflicting pain and death because they enjoyed it, because they reveled in the screams and cries of their victims. Had she really thought she loved Ursula? Because she felt no connection to that emotion now. It, too, had been an illusion.
Giselle pressed the backs of her forearms to her face and cried some more, her chest heaving with the force of emotions artifically held in check for too long.
She thought of Eddie, her blood sacrifice to “Azaroth.”
Sweet, trusting Eddie.
And that look of confused betrayal on his face in his last moments.
The crying only began to dry up as she felt the subtle vibrations in her bones. She sat very still for a moment and waited. And felt the vibrations again. Then she drew in a series of deep breaths and felt herself grow calm.
She then situated herself in a corner of the swinging cage and awaited the arrival of the ones who had come for her. She thought about them and wondered what they would do with her. She supposed they would torture her. And then kill her, of course. There would be much pain. But contemplating this failed to disturb the new, sudden sense of peace that had settled over her. She supposed she deserved whatever they had planned for her. She thought about the dragon tattoo. If she could see herself in a mirror, would she still see the dragon? She thought not.
She was as she’d once been.
