Idol of Blood

by Jane Kindred

  Shiva grasped him by the throat as he fell, and threw him with a heavy crack onto the stained wood of the bar. “Indeed. What is your excuse?”

  Kol tried to scramble away, but Shiva held him fast, and he was helpless before her. “What do you want with me?”

  “I?” Shiva gave him a dark smile. “Nothing at all. It’s my ‘son’ you ought to worry about. MeerRa of Rhyman has a score to settle with you.”

  Kol’s face went pale as Ra moved toward him, drawing her nails through the furrows in the wood, steady and deliberate. Darkness curled around her like a heavy cloak, seeping into her bones like midnight fog. She’d felt its embrace on Munt Zelfaal, but had turned it on herself and those she loved. Here was the rightful object of it.

  “I’ve done nothing to you!” cried Kol.

  “You touched mene Jak.” Ra plunged the nails of her fore and middle fingers through the flesh of his throat and into the wood of the bar beneath him, cutting off his strangled yelp in a gurgling puddle.

  Shiva leaned close to Kol’s petrified face, her lips almost brushing his ear. “You should have died when you had the chance.” She drew Ra away, placing a kiss on her forehead. “Let me,” she murmured. “You will be too quick.”

  Pressing a nail into the center of the pool of blood at Kol’s throat as he squirmed against the bar top, Shiva struck his scrabbling arms away with a force strong enough to crack bone. “So curious. Always curious. How much will this hurt?” She drew her finger downward, painting a zipper of red along his shirt over the length of his chest and abdomen. “Always eager to see what pain does to other creatures.” She paused at his belt and drew it off him like a lover, then opened his pants and pressed her nail into his skin once more where she’d left off, finishing the razor slit in his flesh until she stopped at the base of his flaccid cock. Shiva clucked her tongue. “Hardly any point to this anymore, is there?”

  She moved the dangle of flesh out of the way with a look of distaste. “What will happen if I do this?” Her nails pierced his scrotum, and his body jerked violently, his mouth working, but emitting only a harsh gurgling sound. Blood and urine spilled onto the polished wood. “Shameful,” she chided, shaking a blood-tipped finger at him. “Have you nothing to say? Ah, yes. That’s right. It’s what you demand of them, when by rights they should scream and rail. You take even their tongues from them. All that prodding, and stabbing, and thrusting. You expect a child to take the violation of her most sacred place in silence. Does it really make you feel powerful?”

  While Shiva took a knife from beneath the bar, Kol shrank into a shuddering ball. The Meer trimmed her nails, her face placid and still as glass, then tossed the knife to Ra. “Do what you like. He bores me.”

  Ra stood once more within young Jak’s skin, watching the white light of the owl as Kol made nothing of Jak, as though even the soul were being sundered. A scream of rage howled upward from the pit of Ra’s being, and she found the knife in her hand driving into Kol’s gut. “Taísch naiahn.” Ra twisted her hand, drawing the blade sideways as the knife went deep into the body convulsing beneath her. Fluids glistened on his exposed viscera. “You are nothing,” she said again—the words she’d said to Ahr as she’d taken his life. Blood filled the cavity like a bath of vermillion. “You are dead.”

  Once more, Shiva stepped in, and the knife dropped from Ra’s hand as she gazed into the knowing green eyes. “You mustn’t become lost, my dear.” While blood bubbled impotently from Kol’s mouth, Shiva moved Ra aside and thrust her fist into the hole Ra had opened. “How much will it hurt, little vermin? Won’t it be fascinating to find out?” The Meer yanked out her fist, entrails clutched within it, and Kol stared in shock, his body locked in paroxysm.

  Shiva stroked Ra’s cheek with the back of a bloodied hand, intestines dangling from the other. “You took the worst from your Jak. I have it now. Remember, I keep the poison in my heart.” She turned to Kol. “And now it is his.”

  Lowering her head toward Kol’s, Shiva pried his mouth open, displaying her pearl teeth in a gruesome parody of a smile. From between her brilliant canines sprayed a black-green jet of venom as from the fangs of a serpent. She held her hand against his mouth, pressing down fiercely until Kol swallowed with his shredded throat, his face twisted in horror.

  “How much will this hurt? Now you know.” Shiva let his entrails puddle onto the floor as his face went slack. There was nothing viable of him left.

  Ra dropped to her knees before MeerShiva, her legs suddenly weak and unable to hold her. Red streamed down her cheeks onto the still pristine, sandaled feet as Shiva regarded her.

  “MeerRa. Are you sorry for him?”

  Ra raised her eyes to Shiva’s unreadable glass-green stare. “Sorry? Nai. Meershivá. Not for him. I am only grateful.” Ra kissed the bloodstained feet. “Vetta, MeerShiva,” she whispered. “Bless you.”

  Shiva lifted Ra’s chin and gave her a stern look. “You are my equal. Rise as Meer.” Ra stood, overcome by the meaning of this pronouncement, as Shiva observed the remains on the tavern bar.

  Hugging her arms, Ra shuddered at the offensive stench of him. “He must not be allowed to return.”

  MeerShiva nodded and took hold of Kol’s hair, dragging him like a meaningless bag of trash through the back room of the tavern, where a door beside the privy opened onto a service alley in the rear.

  Ra followed as Shiva dragged the corpse out to the new wetlands from the flooded moor to the south and tossed it down. She took Ra aside to wait, sitting in the boggy marsh, unaffected by the damp as she drew Ra within the protective circle of her limbs. They waited until the carrion eaters of the moorland appeared, vultures and wild dogs fighting one another for the raw flesh, and watched until there was nothing left that could be conjured again to life.

  MeerShiva stroked Ra’s hair under the glittering sun as they listened to the sounds of the marsh, and Ra remembered that Shiva had lived wild in the swamps in the days before the Age of Meer. The bright sun and Shiva’s touch were lulling Ra once more into the quiet realm where Meeric wisdom flowed. The mud of the marsh and the murmuring of frogs and insects were one with the shared beating of blood through her veins. The moisture of the bog was no different from the water that coursed through her body or dashed against distant shores, ushered by the Anamnesis into the vast sea.

  In the Meeric well, there were all things and none, sorrow and joy, ecstasy and loss, time and motionlessness in a single drop of blood—or mortal tear—on the tip of an eyelash. Ra had dipped into the well and reemerged countless times over a quartet of centuries, each time reborn in more subtle ways than renaissance, reformed of Meeric desire. Jak and Ahr waited there within the fluid fabric of memory.

  MeerShiva rose without speaking, and Ra followed, no words necessary. They stepped out onto the drying hillocks dotted with clover and heather, leaving the trailing outskirts of highland society behind. The highlands, like the Delta, were no place for gods.

  Scattered herds of shaggy cattle and qirhu observed them with mild curiosity, unconcerned with the cake of mud and red matter that spattered them as they walked in the clear morning light. They were part of the qirhu, and the cattle, and the circling condors, part of the dappling light that rolled out across the heath. Beneath papery white clouds and autumn’s fragile robin’s-egg sky, falend stretched before them, the rain-swollen Filial winding through it across the heath toward its Anamnesis.

  Beyond lay only undiscovered country.

  About the Author

  Jane Kindred is the author of The Devil’s Garden and The House of Arkhangel’sk and Demons of Elysium series. Born in Billings, Montana, she spent her formative years ruining her eyes reading romance novels in the Tucson sun and watching Star Trek marathons in the dark. She now writes to the sound of San Francisco foghorns while two cats slowly but surely edge her off the side of the bed.

  You can find Jane on her Twitter ac
count and Facebook page—both of which are aptly named “janekindred”—and her website, www.janekindred.com.

  Look for these titles by Jane Kindred

  Now Available:

  Demons of Elysium

  Prince of Tricks

  King of Thieves

  Master of the Game

  Looking Glass Gods

  Idol of Bone

  Idol of Blood

  Coming Soon:

  Looking Glass Gods

  Idol of Glass

  Lost Coast

  One stranger seeks to claim her heart…another is destined to destroy her.

  Looking Glass Gods, Book 1

  Ra. Just two letters. Barely a breath. When she stumbles into the frozen Haethfalt highlands, her name is all she has—the last remnant of a past she’s managed to keep hidden, even from herself. Her magic, however, isn’t so easy to conceal—magic that’s the province of the Meer, an illicit race to which she can’t possibly belong.

  The eccentric carpenter who takes her in provides a welcome distraction from the puzzle of herself. Though Jak refuses to identify as either male or female, the unmistakable spark of desire between them leaves Ra determined to find out what lies beneath the enigmatic exterior.

  But more dangerous secrets are brewing underneath the wintry moors. Jak’s closest friend, Ahr, is haunted by his own unspeakable past. Bounty hunters seeking fugitive Meer refuse to leave him in peace.

  Harboring feelings for both Ra and Ahr, Jak nonetheless struggles to keep them apart. Because like the sun and the moon coming together, their inevitable reunion has the potential to destroy Jak’s whole world.

  When desire rises, angels will fall. One, by one, by one…

  Demons of Elysium, Book 1

  Over the past century, Belphagor has made a name for himself in Heaven’s Demon District as a cardsharp, thief, and charming rogue.

  Though the airspirit is content with his own company, he enjoys applying the sweet sting of discipline to a willing backside. Angel, demon, even the occasional human. He’s not particular. Until a hotheaded young firespirit steals his purse—and his heart. Now he’s not sure who owns whom.

  A former rent boy and cutpurse from the streets of Raqia, Vasily has never felt safer than in the arms—and at the feet—of the Prince of Tricks. He’s just not sure if Belphagor returns those feelings. There’s only one way to find out, but using a handsome, angelic duke to stir Belphagor’s jealousy backfires on them both.

  When the duke frames Vasily for an attempted assassination as part of a revolutionary conspiracy, Belphagor will do whatever it takes to clear his boy’s name and expose the real traitor. Because for the first time in his life, the Prince of Tricks has something to lose.

  There are worse things to lose than one’s good name.

  Demons of Elysium, Book 2

  Belphagor can seduce demons with a look and bring angels to their knees with a single motion, but when it comes to being in love, the Prince of Tricks is out of his element.

  At every turn, Vasily rebels against the discipline he claims to want, even refusing to use his safe word. But when Belphagor uses a scheme to shut down an underage brothel to test Vasily’s limits, he loses Vasily’s trust along with the boys he intended to set free.

  Uncovering a smuggling ring that spans two worlds, Belphagor calls on a team of Nephilim mercenaries to rescue the “Lost Boys” from earthly gangsters. But his relationship seems beyond repair—and a heartbroken Vasily beyond his reach in the arms of a sensual demon named Silk.

  Belphagor has more than enough grand schemes up his sleeve to bring down the smuggling ring for good. But when it comes to putting things right with Vasily, his bag of tricks is empty. Except for trust…and a plan to teach his boy a lesson neither will soon forget.

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

  Cincinnati OH 45249

  Idol of Blood

  Copyright © 2015 by Jane Kindred

  ISBN: 978-1-61922-372-1

  Edited by Linda Ingmanson

  Cover by Kanaxa

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: June 2015

  www.samhainpublishing.com