"Don't worry," I said. "I'm not planning to hop the Lucifer trolley into chaos town. But if I can find a way to screw him over without putting myself in harm's way...Well, what would you do to get your progeny out of his hands?"
He flashed his fangs. "I'd kill for the chance."
I shuddered at the fierceness of his expression. Sometimes it was easy to forget he was a vampire. He was amenable to me, even friendly. But like he'd said the last time I was here, I amused him. It made me wonder what would happen if I ceased to do so.
I cupped my hands over my elbows, squeezing my arms against my chest. A gleam lit in his eyes, a predatory one, and I realized my protective posture might have ignited something primal in him.
I very slowly and carefully laid my palms down on the bar and leaned away from him.
"I might be able to help with that," I said. "Do you have a portal to the shadow bazaar?"
He shook his head. "I stay away from that shit. It's hard enough keeping my head above water here in my own world let alone jumping into a portal that will take me to another one."
I cocked my head at him. "Your world?" I said. "You're from here?"
He smiled. "Most humanoid kindred are," he said. "We started as mortals here in this world, and so we are of this world. Other kindred: the Fae, sidhe, gods. All of them originate from a different world. And then there those other ones that no one knows. I learned about the world after I became a vampire. Decades later. Not everyone knows they exist."
He shook his head the way a dog might rid itself of water. "My initiation into that knowledge wasn't exactly pleasurable. But I eventually learned that we've mapped out at least nine worlds. Two of them are inactive."
"Inactive?" I said.
"Yes," either there is no portal or there is nowhere to go to."
"But the shadow bazaar," I said. "Surely it has portals to multiple worlds."
He picked up a cloth and began to mop up the counter.
"You'd have to ask Maddox how many portals into how many different worlds he created. It's his. I'm not even sure it exists on a separate plane or straddles all of the worlds. Portals are difficult magic and they're unreliable."
"So you've never gone?"
It interested me that he'd not visited Maddox's bazaar. I wondered at the reason, considering every manner of supernatural goods was up for grabs there.
"I've been," he said shortly. "Let's leave it at that."
His hand paused on the counter and he looked up at me, trying to lock eyes with mine. I quickly averted them, remembering his admission of using compulsion to get what he wanted.
I chewed the inside of my cheek. This was getting me nowhere. I had a feeling Absalom was still there in the apothecary shop, hiding out or waiting. He didn't strike me as the sort of man who would just give up.
It was in the memory of the shop that I had my answer. We'd not escaped Absalom from another world, but from right here in the ninth one. Absalom had a shop in the city.
I ran down the route in my mind, passing by the pizza shop I frequented and a pawn shop that I rarely used because it was too close to the docks for my safety.
I retraced that flight, back to the dirty walls of the back alley we'd fled to.
I knew the place.
"I have to go," I blurted out and pushed off from my stool.
I had the feeling he'd found his way back from his trip in the fire gate and was planning out his next mode of attack.
I decided I'd reroute those plans.
His shop wasn't hard to find. The skull and crossbones on the sign that formed a mortar and pestle was the dead giveaway. I pushed open the door just as the streetlights went out and heralded the end of the dark hours when most bogeymen like Fayed would be climbing into their crypts or coffins.
Absalom was reclining in a leather chair when I found him, thumbing through an old text as big as a desk top.
I pulled out the stone from the satchel I carried with me, presumably to carry the Chinese takeout back to my apartment.
He looked mildly surprised to see me, and I guessed he didn't think I'd have the nerve to show up on his doorstep after he'd tried to kill me. His mistake. I knew my body was useless to him without the real stone.
"Did you ever intend to pay this to me?" I said, holding up the replica he'd made. "Why did you even bother to make it if you planned to use me."
He shrugged. "I didn't make it for you," he said. "I've had that kicking around for a century or more."
"Meaning you planned to swap it for the real one, but Doyle gave you the slip and took the Lilith Stone with him when he disappeared." I would have chuckled at the old gent's moxy, but I didn't want to insult Absalom. I needed him.
He shrugged. "He's a crafty old fart, but yes, I originally hoped to make all this a clandestine affair."
"You can still succeed," I said. "We can make a deal."
He narrowed his eyes at me. "Says a woman who has nothing to barter."
"Who says I don't?" I said. "I have what you're looking for, and I'm willing to trade on your others skills. The ones with your unique magic."
"You couldn't possibly," he said. "The stone is gone."
"But I know who has it," I said. "And I know how to get it."
He leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows against his knees. His gaze was intent and terrifying. "And where is it?"
"In Hell."
He lost interest then, waved his hand at me. "I can't just go galivanting into Lucifer's realm. It would take too much...energy," he said.
"Not even if I provide the conduit too?"
I had him then. I could tell by the gleam in his eye. He waved over one of his greys from the shadows.
He spread his hands. "What do you know of the conduit, little girl?" he said, but he didn't take his eyes off me.
"A conduit is someone who has entered hell via the stone. A vessel that's been sanctified by its energy." I stared him down. "The stone is in Hell. Your conduit is in Hell. The math is easy. If you could call it Math."
"You make it sound as easy as going to the store."
I felt my jaw tightening.
"It's not easy," I admitted. "But some have done it. Maddox has done it. It's how he gained his immortality. Doyle has done it. I have."
"But you're not immortal," he said.
"No, I'm not. But I know who has the stone. Someone who has a blood bond with me."
I thought of all the times I'd bled under Scottie's hand. The amount of my blood he had on his. I prayed it would be enough to call out to him when he returned. It would have to be. Maddox life might depend on it.
"If you can access the gate to open the door, I know he'll find me."
He eyed me suspiciously. "If I could access the gates to hell, I would've done so long ago."
I eyed him speculatively. "Except you had no reason. The stone wasn't in hell before," I said. "But then you knew that, didn't you? It's why you sent me to tackle Maddox's father. He's had the stone forever."
"Not forever," he said.
"No," he lost it to Fate. Fate gave it to another human man. And then I ended up with it when he gave it to me. Access the gate and you'll see. The man who loves me, who is blooded to me will find me. He'll have the stone."
"And why would I risk one of my greys for that?" he said, nodding at the man who held me.
I knew then what I suspected. He could access the gates. But he'd never been able to trace the stone. He had no bond with it. No way to extract it.
"Because you can't get the stone otherwise," I said.
I'd already thought it through.
"You wanted me to be a conduit for Lilith," I said. "You want to release her from her prison."
"It does take a certain set of prerequisites."
"And one of those prerequisites is that I must have had possession of the stone at some point and used it to enter hell."
"That's true," he said.
"But you also need the stone." I walked along the wall,
letting my finger trace a path through the dust on the shelves. "You also needed Doyle," I said.
I gave him a long look. "You don't have the ability to extract Lilith, but you do have the ability to empty the soul from a living vessel in order for her to inhabit it. Doyle will do the rest."
"Why would you care?" he said. "Why would you help me release the goddess?"
"Because my ex—the bastard, may he suffer for all eternity—will be a conduit when he returns, and you can use him to release Lilith."
"And so trap him forever in unyielding, inescapable stone?" he said. "You are a heartless little thing."
"He is a bastard," I said. "And I want you to leave me alone. If I substitute him as a conduit for me, then I'm safe. I don't care what happens to him."
"So," he said. "It's not philanthropy at all. It self-preservation."
"Exactly. The way I figure it, you have time on your side. As long as that stone has the capabilities it has, and as long as I live, you could come traipsing after me at any time."
He nodded. "I do have long life."
"Exactly," I said. "And I don't. What does it matter to me if some demon is released?"
I spread my arms wide. "I have maybe 50 years left on this earth? I'd like to live them not looking over my shoulder."
He ran his thumb across his chin, leaving smudge marks from the textbook.
"All that remains is to extract the man," he said. "If I could do that," he said. "Don't you think I would've done so already?"
"Maybe," I said. "If you knew how to contact him. But you don't. You have no way of grasping onto him because you don't know who he is. You have no bond. It's why you need me. It's why you'll do as I ask."
I remembered how so many of the portals, and so many of Lucifer's tortures were bound in blood.
"If you could go to hell, I'd create my own conduit."
"Really?" I said. "Because it sounds like the round-trip is the problem. Am I right?"
I stared him down. I had the feeling I was on the right track. If he could bleed souls, surely he could tap into them somehow. Regardless of where they were. So long as he had the right key.
I faced him. "Getting in his easy, isn't it?" I said. "When was the last successful round-trip? Before me, I mean? Chuculain. And he never made it back to the ninth world at all. Lucifer sent him to the sidhe world – out of your reach."
He wore an odd expression as he looked at me but he didn't deny it.
"You're very clever," he said. "You think you've got it all figured out, don't you?"
He pushed himself up from the chair and closed the distance between us.
"You might be right in some ways. My power does stretch and tap into things beyond. I'll make you a bargain. I'll send in a minion to get your friend, but you must wait here as insurance."
I gave it a lot of thought. Was there a catch?
"So you don't want to send me to hell?"
"Why would I want to send a perfectly good conduit in case things don't work out. I have generations to wait for the stone to return."
"But I can get it back for you now."
He chuckled. "Then maybe we can make a bargain. You do know that the only way to travel to the first world is to die right?"
"Not the only way," I said. "The stone."
"A stone we don't have, but there is a way in. One gate available to all the worlds."
I nodded. I'd been expecting that.
"The death gate," he said.
At that he took a step toward me, and I knew in that moment exactly who he wanted to send through the death gate. Not a grey. Not himself.
Me.
CHAPTER 24
I sat in a dank and stinking basement, lit only by braziers whose light flickered along the cement walls like water tunneling down the side of a sunlit boat. It was like I was living in a cliché horror movie. A rusted iron cot clung to the left wall, out of my reach. Not that I would have lain on it. The mattress was stained with mould and sunk down in the middle so far that I knew the old-fashioned springs had let go years earlier. The only thing missing was the scuttling sound of mice. But that was replaced by the hum of a clothes dryer busily spinning its contents around the bin.
I suppose even alchemists needed to do laundry.
I hugged my knees to my chest, laid my chin on top of them. I wasn't sure what time it was. I wasn't even sure how long I had been chained here.
All I knew was that I was hungry. Thirsty.
Dog-tired.
I was shackled at the ankles by a length of rusty chain embedded in the mortar that held the stones together. It was laughable, really. I'd picked the lock within half an hour, then carefully arranged the chain to hide the fact that I was free. I could hear Absalom and his greys preparing upstairs for the ritual in anticipation of Scottie's arrival with the Lilith stone.
He'd taken great pleasure in explaining to me as he shoved me down the stairs that it wasn't just any old conduit Lilith would need. She would require a feminine one. So Scottie was out, but I'd do just fine, and since I'd been helpful enough to provide the blood he needed to bond to Scottie, his ritual could take place within the hour.
I wasn't sure what the heck they were doing up there, but it was noisy business. Every so often I heard heavy objects being dragged across the floor. Terrible smells were coming from up there, too. Leaking through the lintel of the ill fitting door that itself from the basement where I was being held.
There was one small window to my right, small enough that I could scurry myself through it if I could reach it, but I was short and it was well above my head. The only other thing besides me in the basement was that ratty old bed. Trying to drag that across the entire basement wouldn't do much more than make unwanted noise.
Besides, it would be ridiculous to try and escape while there was still a chance that Scottie and the stone could be retrieved. And while I was pretty sure I could sneak my way up the stairs without alerting Absalom or his greys, I wasn't exactly sure what they were doing up there.
For all I knew, I might be running straight into a trap on my way out the door.
So I waited. Eventually they would come down the stairs. They wouldn't bar the door behind them.
I looked around the cell holding me, Telling myself patience was a virtue. What I was doing was the right thing. But all the while in the back of my mind, a little voice kept telling me it was foolish to wait. A trip to hell and back wasn't something that could be made every day. What in the name of heaven made me think pulling Scottie out of there was even possible. There was no way he was getting out. All Absalom had done was send the grey to his eternal torment.
But the sounds coming from upstairs and the smells of sulfur and something else I couldn't name bolstered my hope, sending threads of it out like cobwebs.
I was rocking back and forth with my knees to my chest when lightning crackled through the chamber, like the sound of thick material being torn apart. I had to stopper up my ears with my hands to protect them from screams that cut through the air. Every hair on my body strained to attention, the muscles tensed. I felt as though I was hurtling through another portal.
The next instant, a man dropped through open space onto the cement floor in front of me.
He lay cowering in a ball, With his knees pulled up tight to his chest, arms wrapped around his shins as he protected his core. His head was tucked so tightly with his chin in that all I could see was a blondish shock of hair. Clots of blood clung to the locks, with one of them hanging down by a thread of viscous fluid that looked like spit and tissue.
Convulsions wracked his body and whatever part of him not shivering was spasming. His clothes were torn into ragged strips that reminded me of the tatters of mummy rags and where his skin showed through, it was burned and boiled and bloody.
It was a horrific sight, one that made the bile rise to my throat, but even as it did, I realized with some satisfaction that his fists were clenched tightly together.
It took him a mom
ent to realize Something was different. Whether or not he felt the coolness of the room instead of the burning blaze of hell, or that whatever torture device had ceased its assault on his skin, he lifted his gaze, peering out from between his knees with obvious trepidation.he was and as he lifted his gaze to look around him,
Scottie.
"What in the hell?" he said.
"Not anymore," I said and was surprised to hear it come out as no more than a hoarse croak.
This was a man, after all. A mortal human being with pain sensors, a psyche, and a soul. I knew what that trip had done to me, what it cost me, and I wasn't sure he would ever be the same. My heart hurt for the things he'd endured, knowing I had put the stone within his reach as a means to distance myself from guilt. I'd told myself it was his choice, his fate, to make, and that whatever happened would be on him.
I couldn't shake the fact that I had been the catalyst and the guilt ate at me.
But there was something else, too. I felt hope that maybe he would be different after the experience. Now that his body was out of physical danger, he could be grateful.
Maybe he'd change.
His eyes landed on me and I reached out for him, the chains rattling. Footsteps sounded above me. They had heard his arrival.
"It's okay," I murmured to him. He was like a wild animal, eyes darting about, muscles tensed and ready to leap into flight or fight. I could see his throat convulse as he tried to swallow down the adrenaline.
"Sis?" he whispered.
"Yes, it's me." I waggled my fingers at him, encouraging him the way I might a wild rabbit. "It's all right, Scottie," I said. "Come here. Come to me." I squirmed forward slowly on my bottom to meet him, wanting to help close the distance between us but not wanting to scare him.
He began to crawl forward on his hands and knees. My heart lurched when I saw how swollen his face was. I couldn't imagine how he could see through the slits that were his eyes.
The door opened at the top of the stairs; I could hear the sound of it being wrenched open. I waved my fingers at him.
"Please, Scottie," I said. "Come closer. I won't hurt you. You're safe with me."
Absalom's voice sounded from the top of the stairs. Feet, shod in strange looking Persian type slippers, scuffed on the treads.
Stone Goddess (Isabella Hush Series Book 3) Page 18
