Page 127 of Soulbound

"Don't do thish," Morgana hissed around the gag she wore. "I'm your muver."

Even to the end, she sought to manipulate him. "And he's my father. He, at least, has earned my loyalty."

Tugging the leash, he dragged her forward.

"So it begins," Lucien said, tugging his gloves off as he stared up at the manor.

"Yes." Sebastian forced his mother's words away. He needed a clear mind for the coming event.

"No." Bishop strode ahead of them, his black cloak fluttering behind him. "Now it ends. Watch your backs. I doubt the demon's going to simply let us walk in here unmolested."

Torches lined the driveway as they walked through the snow. The gardens seemed far too silent, as if last night's snowfall muffled the sounds of the world. It was a hush filled with anticipation, for he couldn't escape the feeling he was being watched.

"Unless it's a trap," Lucien pointed out.

"It's a trap," Sebastian said, as the ladies fell in behind them. "But it won't spring shut until we get there. It wants us alive—for the moment—and it wants the Relics."

"And you're vringing it everyshing it wants," his mother hissed. "Are you inshane?"

"Shut up."

"Look at the clouds," Ianthe whispered, turning her face to the sky.

Thick white clouds boiled over the manor, tinged with hints of dark gray. It almost looked like they were going to birth some enormous monstrosity into the world, heavy and pregnant with portent.

"Cleo said the skies go dark when it all happens," he said, feeling an itch along his skin. "What is that hum?"

Bishop looked grim as they grew closer to the manor. "It's set up a major working. The spell must have been laid weeks ago, with the demon building the ritual day by day." His breath caught as a fluctuation in the energy suddenly burst through them all. "I've never seen anything like it. The complexity...."

"I have," Ianthe replied, her face serene and her emotions locked within as she picked her way through the snow. He'd missed the tearful goodbyes as she gave her daughter over into her apprentice's hands, and sent them north just in case this all went wrong, but Verity had mentioned it. No sign of turmoil on Ianthe's face now. This was a Prime, determined to right wrongs and face down a creature that threatened all those she was responsible for. "Drake created something like this years ago, when he was trying to set an elaborate trap for an incubus. This is merely the eye of the storm. It hasn't begun the final ritual."

If this was what it felt like before the ritual even began....

"There it is," Bishop said, as a figure in a red cloak moved onto the snowy lawns.

A ring of torches lit the stormy afternoon. The demon waited in the center of the torches, watching them come. It stood alone, but the hum of that seething magic began to pick up as they cleared the terrace. It pricked at Sebastian's skin, hungry for blood, tasting him and clearly liking what it found.

"Are you all right?" Ianthe murmured, as her husband flinched.

"The ritual's keyed to the three of us, I think," Lucien replied. "Unless you're feeling it too?"

"Drake's blood calling to yours," she muttered darkly.

"Three Relics, three brothers, three sacrifices." Bishop spoke of the long-ago prophecy that had set all this into place. "It must have used Drake's blood to set the spell into motion."

A bloodied hexagram was painted in the snow, with a discarded body at each point, their throats and wrists slit. Runes were painted around the hexagram, the kind of thing that made his vision waver every time he looked at them and tried to see what they were.

Nothing human. Nothing he could recognize. The heat shimmer of raw power hung in the air above each symbol, though the snow wasn’t melting.

An enormous wooden cross in the shape of an X stood at each of three points. A man was crucified upon one of the crosses, his clothes fine and his body slack. A woman hung from the second, blood dripping from her empty eye sockets. Suddenly this felt real, and he looked for Cleo, both heartened and disheartened not to find her.

Only the third cross remained empty.

Foreboding crept up his spine.

"Well met," the demon called, guarded safely within the hexagram.

"Where is my wife?"