Tap. Tap. Tap.
Wheeling around, he frowned. The sound was coming from a trestle table by the hearth, and as he approached, he saw that a book lay open beside a black candle, an earthen dish, a dagger, and some herbs. As he breathed in, he caught a scent that was familiar.
His robing.
Lifting the front of the black fall that covered him, he sniffed. Yes, that was what had been pressed onto him—and within the bouquet . . . Rahvyn’s blood.
He looked at the ancient tome. There were lines of ink upon its parchment, the rusty brown color suggesting that blood had been in the quill that had stroked o’er the pages. The letters and symbols, however . . . were unlike any he had e’er seen before. However, he had a guess as to the content.
A spell, for surely these ingredients were inexplicable for any other purpose.
And Rahvyn’s vein had been opened.
He thought of the warnings carved on the outside of his coffin. It was not a difficult conclusion that some kind of containing spell had been wrought upon him, although obviously Zxysis hadnae been successful in the attempt.
Turning the cover over to close, Sahvage grimaced. He did not care for the feel of handling any part of the book. And as for what it was bound in? The ugly leather was riddled with cracks and fissures, as if it were aged beyond centuries. There was also a smell, like curdled milk or decaying flesh.
He dropped his hold and rubbed his palm upon his hip. Even after a vigorous scrub, he felt as though something was retained on his fingers, his palm—
The cover flipped back open of its own volition, the pages ruffling in a rush, sure as if ghosted hands were skimming through them. Sahvage backed away, but stopped as the book came to a rest in a different place than had been exposed previously.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Narrowing his eyes, he recognized the symbols of the language he had learned as a young. Indeed, he could now read what was upon the parchment, and he had the sense that it was a message for him. Or perhaps a calling . . . or a command—
Sahvage covered his eyes. “No.”
He knew not what he was saying, nor to whom. But the denial had to stand true, stand strong. He somehow had the conviction that if he set his gaze upon the pages, if he absorbed the symbols and translated them into words, he would embark upon a path from which he could not depart.
With a wrench, he turned away. The slatted shutters of the windows were, as the drawbridge had been, open and offering a ready exit.
Tap. Tap. Taptaptaptaptaptap—
As the summoning sound started up once more, and became so loud it was the now a pounding like heavy boots upon a wooden floor, Sahvage closed his eyes and breathed deeply of the fresh night air. He had to block out the scents that made him violent, the blood and the sex of an innocent taken by force, rendering it impossible for him to calm himself.
So he needed must put them aside.
As he focused on dematerializing, he was as the others of the household had been, compelled by a sense of survival to depart, depart, depart—
• • •
Sahvage jumped back to present awareness with a full-body jerk and a suck of air. For a moment, the now-familiar details of Tallah’s kitchen were utterly foreign. But then he saw the pots and pans he had washed drying in the rack, the refrigerator against the door, the duffle of guns and ammo on the table in front of him.
“Shit,” he breathed.
Rubbing his head, he could still picture that trestle table in the bloodied bedchamber, and what had been with the Book made him think back to what Mae and Tallah had laid out here, the salad dressing ingredients that were not for any lettuce leaves ever—
He looked around sharply. “Mae?”
His hand shot out and grabbed his phone. As he checked his texts . . . nothing from her. No calls, either. And it was over an hour and twenty minutes since he’d left her house.
Where the fuck was she?
Mae came back to consciousness slowly, and the markers that her brain was back online were mainly the physical information that she began processing: Her head hurt. She was lying on something that had thin ridges. One whole arm was numb.
And what was that smell?
She focused on the fragrance for no particular reason, and as a mental connection was made, the image that her memories coughed up was one that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
The Galleria Mall. Christmas time.
The perfume counter in Macy’s. An aggressive saleslady double-fisting spray bottles that had had hair triggers. Mae getting hit in the face with something that had made her eyes sting and her nose tickle like she had a single strand of fine cat hair up each nostril.