Made for Sin (22 page)

Ingram shrugged. “Dead people don't testify.”

“You don't think she has people who'll come after you?” Keeping the tension out of his voice was harder than he'd expected. Shit shit, he could not take the chance of Ardeth being there. For the first time a trickle of genuine fear made its way down his spine, fear that was not soothed at all by the beast's chuckle. If they brought Ardeth in there…“You don't think the LVMPD is going to have a problem with one of their own being slaughtered? You really ought to just get them out of here. Use a memory spell or something on them—if you can build a creature like you're doing, that should be easy for you, right?”

“It would be, yes,” Ingram said. “But I think my plan is more fun.”

“The police—”

“Won't prosecute someone who can have them torn limb from limb,” Ingram finished. “Besides, I thought I was about to die? You're very inconsistent, Speare.”

Goddamn it. God
damn
it. There was nothing he could do, nothing. He couldn't protect her, from Fallerstein and Ingram or from the beast. Worse than that, he'd probably endangered her even more, because despite the fact that Majowski was apparently there, too, he couldn't help but blame himself. If he hadn't gotten involved with her, if he hadn't slept with her, Ingram might be willing to cast a memory spell and let her go. Probably not, but maybe. At least there might have been something to bargain with.

But as it was…no. The sadistic gleam in Ingram's eyes made it very clear: It wasn't just the idea of Speare's death, Laz's death, that pleased him so much. It was the idea of wounding Speare before he died, and Ingram knew—Speare knew he knew, and the beast could see he knew—that the blade of the demon-sword itself wasn't as sharp or as painful as the idea of some ramshackle demon-thing from the depths of a hellish nightmare getting its hands on Ardeth.

Whatever last argument he might have made was interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps, crisp and strong. Not Ardeth's, though, and not Majowski's. One man who smelled like evil and aftershave, and something else, another being that reeked of death and whose energy jangled in the air, so wrong Speare wanted to cringe away from it. Their monster was in the room, the patchwork creature they wanted his head to complete.

He didn't want to look at it. The beast did want to look at it—a thing that still held life energy but smelled dead sounded pretty cool to it—and it started churning in Speare's head so violently that he realized he'd be sick if he didn't let it. His head turned.

God.
It was grotesque. It lay on a wheeled table like his, its naked form invading his line of sight more and more with every foot that the table advanced. The different skin tones of its various limbs made it appear artificial, like an old doll with brand-new legs and arms to replace the ones broken by a careless child.

Arms and legs that didn't match. Both legs were the same, but the arms, the whole of its body…One large, muscular right arm reached almost to the knees of those too-short legs, while the left arm was smaller, slimmer, with gray hair. That arm looked shriveled and unhappy next to the powerful barrel chest with its pale abdomen just beginning to slack. Thick black stitches held all the various parts together.

Worst of all, of course, was the empty space above the blood-edged stump of the neck. Speare didn't want to look at it but couldn't help it; even when the beast's eyes were focused elsewhere he couldn't help but see it peripherally, the way the throat just ended, the way the shoulders looked wrong with nothing above them.

The beast, of course, was enchanted. It wanted to get close to the thing, to touch it, maybe give it a lick and see if it tasted as unique as it looked. The thought made Speare want to be sick. Not quite as sick as the thought of that thing touching Ardeth, but almost as sick.

The other figure was Fallerstein. A very different Fallerstein from the one Speare knew, though. That man had been weaselly, mean. Small, in the way of men who were more ambitious than smart and who commanded loyalty not because they deserved it but because they bought it.

This was not that Fallerstein. Whatever he'd been doing—whatever he'd done to gain the kinds of powers he now had—it had changed him completely. The man Speare saw looked like Fallerstein but didn't carry himself like him and sure as hell didn't feel like him. This Fallerstein felt even darker and more twisted than the creature made of people scraps did. Which seemed impossible, but it was true. The creature was an empty shell; Fallerstein was full of the sorts of things that scuttled up walls in the dark.

In his hand he carried a demon-sword. Speare saw the sword as a blade made of glass, glimmering translucent like black light. A real demon-sword, created from pure evil solidified through magic. It could poison water if dipped in it, destroy crops if allowed to touch them, and it could consume or trap the soul inside a body, depending on the spells used.

The beast knew all of that, and which spells to use. In its view the sword was beautiful; it glowed with darkness and devastation that made what passed for the beast's heart ache with love.

But which spells to use wasn't the only thing it knew about the sword, he realized. It had information about it, how it was made and what it required. What it could do. Maybe how to destroy it, even. As gently as possible, he tried to probe those memories, tried to glean what he could from them before the beast realized what he was doing and shut him down.

Or before the ritual reached the point where his active participation was required, which was not that far away, judging by the expectant way Fallerstein's goons started arranging themselves in a loose semicircle. Speare smiled at them. “Since you're lining up anyway, you should go ahead and get in the order you want to die in.”

For the first time, Ingram looked irritated. “You really ought to stop it. You just look delusional, you know.”

“Maybe you should rethink the whole taking-my-head thing, then.”

“I'm tired of hearing you speak,” Ingram said. He tapped something into his phone—okay, there, at least, was one phone Speare could grab when it was all over—and put it back into his pocket. “You know, we can have our creature kill the woman quickly, or slowly. We can harm her first, if we want to. Perhaps we'll let your mouth make the decision.”

Damn it, that threat was even more effective than it had been a few minutes before. Mostly because the words had barely faded into the air when Ardeth entered the room, followed by a couple of Fallerstein's men. Majowski and a similar guard came immediately after. Those guys looked like vipers, and Speare had no doubt that they'd use the long, sharp knives they carried if Ingram told them to.

Ingram's look of satisfaction was matched only by Speare's desire to kill him. “Nothing to say? No smug little taunts for me? You sure? Because Erik over there really enjoys using his knife.”

Speare said nothing. He looked at Ardeth, trying to catch her eye to reassure her or something, but she didn't look worried at all. In fact, her smile at him was almost cheerful, and when she turned slightly and lifted her elbows, he realized why. She was handcuffed. Of course. Did they think they could keep her cuffed, really?

Apparently they did. Ingram glanced at her, nodded, and turned back to Speare. “That's better. Let's get started, then.”

Fallerstein started marking a circle on the floor, chanting as he went. The words weren't familiar to Speare but they were to the beast; its glee rose to such a level that Speare couldn't help feeling it, too. It was hard not to laugh. Even thinking of Erik the knife guy practicing his fileting skills on Ardeth didn't help, because that idea didn't dull the beast's delight one bit.

In fact, the beast was quite pleased that she was in the room, and it wanted him to know how pleased it was. The images it sent him were explicit. Very explicit. Shutting it out had been the right thing to do and he didn't regret it, but he hadn't anticipated just how pissed off it would be, or that it would be willing to delay its journey back through the mirror in order to spend a few minutes with her. Which it definitely planned to do. Fuck.

It was so full of cheer that it hardly noticed when two of Fallerstein's goons approached him, each holding a set of handcuffs, with which they attached his wrists to the table on either side of him. Not what he'd expected, but still not a big deal. The beast would be able to break out of those.

Or not. Pain erupted in his wrists the second the metal touched his skin, a deep, burning pain—the beast's pain. Those weren't just any handcuffs. They'd been bespelled, or blessed, or something; probably not blessed, because using a religious item to bind a person while performing a dark rite on them might not work out too well, but something had certainly been done to them. It was agonizing.

And it was something to worry about. If those cuffs hurt the beast that much, it might not be able to break out of them. And God or the devil only knew what Fallerstein and Ingram might do if they realized they had a human-embodied demon right there already, no ritual required.

Fallerstein's circle snapped into place. Speare felt it. The beast felt it. Its fury rose higher. The power in the room, the power in the circle now being fed by that low chant, felt like an insult to it; the images in its head, pictures of blood and body parts, weren't as reassuring as they might have been if they hadn't been accompanied by that torturous pain. The beast felt trapped, more trapped than it ever had, and the tiny sense of hopelessness starting to build inside it was terrifying.

More terrifying was the way the mirror started to expand. Not the surface itself, but the entire thing, frame and all, growing wider and taller. Its surface writhed just as it had in the graveyard, but this time it was worse. This time was more threatening, because the power in that mirror wasn't the beast's—it didn't have anything to do with it. The power came from Fallerstein, from the circle, from the beings lurking beyond the silvery-black waves between the mirror's expanding frame. Those beings were coming. Something was coming. He felt it, the beast felt it, and obviously Fallerstein and Ingram and the rest of their men felt it, because they all started looking at each other with expressions whose happiness only barely covered their fear.

They were going to be a lot more scared in a minute, because the beast was starting to take over. Maybe it wouldn't be able to escape those cuffs, but it was coming out just the same. He wasn't going to be able to hold it back much longer.

The theater outside the circle was full of shadows, and so much power thrummed in the air that it blurred his vision a little, but he still managed to find Ardeth. She'd moved a few feet from where she'd originally stood; Erik the knife enthusiast still lurked at her side, but when she noticed Speare looking at her she turned slightly, just enough so he could see her right hand dart to her hip and back, free. Uncuffed.

“Get out,” he mouthed in reply.

Her brows drew together. Not like she didn't understand, but like she did, and wasn't happy.

“Get
out,
” he mouthed again.

She gave her head a subtle shake and tipped it toward Erik and then to her left, which he figured must mean Majowski was over there.

Damn it, this was not the time to argue. He tried to think of some way to indicate to her what was going to happen, that the beast was going to come after her, but the best he could do was to glare and bare his teeth and then nod at her.

Her chin lifted in a half nod and her eyes widened just a touch, enough that he knew she understood. Good. At least there was that. At least he could stop worrying about that.

And start worrying about those cuffs, because Fallerstein was at his side suddenly, Fallerstein with the demon-sword in his hand. His proximity, its proximity, made the beast scream with rage loud enough to hurt, but Speare ignored the pain and focused on that glowing black blade, a blade made of shadow, as it rose above him. One last try. He had to make at least one last try to stop it. “I wouldn't do that if I was you.”

Fallerstein's lips curled. He didn't listen—they never listened. He just kept chanting, raising the sword, and then he'd raised it as high as it could go and was bringing it back down hard and fast right over Speare's neck.

One second of fleeting fear was all Speare felt before the blade hit. It was the only emotion he had time to feel before the beast, spurred by both the threat of death and the immense rush of power it received the second the sword touched his skin, burst forth in a blinding rush of hatred and searing pain. His nerve endings shrieked from the violence of it as they split and tore; his vision went red; his body lurched forward so hard the table fell on its side.

And those fucking cuffs held.

The beast was not deterred. It flipped itself so its feet hit the ground, and leaped upward, slamming the edge of the table into Fallerstein's face.

The theater had been silent except for the low chant of Fallerstein's men. Now it erupted into a chaos of shouts and footsteps, and Speare realized too late what he hadn't seen before, hadn't thought of. Fallerstein's men ran for their weapons—maybe ran to escape—and in doing so they broke the circle. They broke the circle, and the mirror grew.

The mirror would keep growing, unbound by a closed ring of magic to hold it back. Anything could come through that mirror, and whatever came through wouldn't be held in place by an intact circle. It could go wherever it wanted. Fallerstein's men—and he himself—had managed to create a portal to hell that wouldn't close.

The beast lurched sideways, swiping Ingram and another man with the edge of the table. The first bullet drove into its chest—his chest—but it barely registered. It would fall back out anyway; the wound would heal.

What the beast did feel, what it did care about, were those damned cuffs. Its hands longed to hit, its claws to tear. Everywhere around it blood thrummed beneath thin, delicate human skin and it wanted to feel that blood hot and slick on its body, to taste it. It wanted to rip apart the bodies of those who'd taken its mirror and trapped it in this room, and then visit their souls in hell when it finally got home.