17. The Devil Wears VII (Denial is a River in Hell)

For too many long nights, the dance continued.

By day, she hunted for the cryptomancer through the city’s necrotic underbelly. She wove through abandoned morgues where the dead whispered secrets, and slunk deep inside the catacombs stinking of embalming fluid and betrayal.

By midnight, she and Ashton clashed in the rusted factory’s ribcage. She with claws and her umbral vipers, he with frost and fists.

His ice carved thorny bramble scars into her shadows. He improved faster now. Too fast.

He learned with every beating she bestowed upon him. Every strike she landed taught him three counters. Every taunt about Rasputin, Henry, or Oscar blackened his veins until they pulsed like cracked obsidian under his skin.

His taunts were steel darts as they flew at her. His jealousy was a bittersweet rot in the air. Her loathed freckles flickered as the rime-glazed pain of his grip on her arm turned to pleasure. It roasted like an iron pressed to her moth-eaten soul.

She fought him harder to escape its heat. Veins molten and heart waging a catastrophic storm in her chest. Fought him to escape the memory of graves dug with her own hands.

But he got closer and closer to sneaking through her defenses and landing a blow that mattered. The bioluminescence of some of his scars radiated a coldness she felt whenever she pinned him. Her VII brand burned beneath her glamor.

She hadn’t fed on him since that damned night at the church. And she hadn’t allowed him to sink his fangs into her, though his gaze lingered longer and longer on his scar on her throat. Eying her pulse like a starved man slavering over congealed gruel.

Instead, she slit her palm every morning and let three drops of her black blood swirl into his stolen bourbon. Vanished before he woke. It was enough to keep him sharp.

Never enough to sate him.

It left them both wanting. Left him on edge when she prowled inside the suite long after he’d gotten back. One morning, she dragged herself down the hall, limbs made of lead and eyes nipping, a tremor in her muscles.

Exhaustion was a boulder grinding on her back, pulverizing her spine to dust and deadening her mind’s sharpness. His question made her pulse spike. Her sigh rattled through her shadows as she came to a halt, hand pressed to the wall beside the bathroom door.

Her black eyes met his mercury, starlight glimmering like snow in his ink-dark pupils, as she peered into the living room. Glaring with all the heat she could muster. She’d chased the cryptomancer to another state.

The thing Ashton had buried in her chest ached and froze her inside-out the entire time.

The gold veins branching up her wrists had glowed cold silver and blue as she hunted. Calming once she entered the city limits, and rode the shadows to her hotel.

“I smell nothing but me on you. Can’t find the cryptomancer, demon? You’re slacking.”

She had snarled, shadows coiling like asps around her wrists and twisting toward him. Claws itching to carve out his tongue. She would stuff it in a jar, admiring its silence while he bled out at her feet.

A flash of heat low in her belly liked that idea.

“Demons know how to hide, leech.” He fucking winked and grinned, lounging back in her violet velvet chaise. “Pray I find him before my patience for dealing with you runs dry.”

He tapped away on the cursed, humming machine in his lap. Fingers dancing over keys like a cryptomancer’s skeletal sigils as he said, “I’m praying for the opposite.”

She wanted to peel the smirk off his face and fling it down a drain. A vein in her forehead throbbed.

But the tender skin where horns used to curve from her temples threatened to split open. She couldn’t win with him.

He should run screaming. He should get on his knees and beg for her mercy. All he did was laugh.

The morning after that, her glamor faltered as she passed him in the same hallway. She rolled her eyes, shadow-fangs bared.

It was as if he hung around, waiting for her to be vulnerable enough to spill a secret he couldn’t find on his own. And she was the idiot who answered them more than she meant to.

She bit back a sigh, doing her best to pretend he wasn’t there. The vintage black silk robe she wore had slipped off her shoulder to reveal her VII.

Seven strokes of her own blade. Seven vows broken then remade. His gaze trailed the droplet of water trickling from her wet hair, down her neck, and sliding between her breasts.

All of him hard and primed to snatch and tear if she so much as hinted he could. His voice was deceptively light as he asked, “If it’s not seven souls or sins... is seven just your demonic rank, Red?”

It flashed crimson as his eyes latched onto it. As if his curiosity was a flame held against tinder.

The low, rough tone he wielded like a weapon was back. Her nipples peaked against the silk as she shoved past him. Her shoulder met ice-hard muscle.

“It marks the seven plagues I started. You’re lucky I’m retired.”

The lie tasted like grave-dirt and spoiled pomegranates on her tongue. His sarcastic reply only worsened it.

“Good job I’m immune to everything but you. Try harder, Sweetheart.”

Her gold flared amongst the black veins crawling up his neck, his grin steady, fangs gleaming with his own venom. She stared woodenly at him.

And for a stupid, reckless heartbeat, she wanted to tell him what it meant.

Why? Stupid. That was why. Sleep, her gritty eyes begged. She just needed to sleep, and it would go away. The brand itched, her succubus complained as she swallowed the confession.

It was as though she had swallowed a shard of glass.

She stormed away, slamming her bedroom door shut, locking it and leaving a strand of shadow to keep watch. In case he tried to force his way in.

He tried nothing. She still barely slept. Never more than an hour or two before it was time to prepare to handle him all night.

Her days passed in a blur of exhaustion and constant corrosive anxiety every time she found a sign of the cryptomancer.

Her untameable emotions were a ball of razors at the base of her spine. It twisted and turned, cutting into her nerves with every shift of her feet. She’d sent a legion of shadow spies to track the bastard down, after another search proved fruitless.

Barbatos could sense her coming and would move base minutes before she arrived. But he couldn’t sense the darkness that bowed to her.

She let them slither into the cracks of the Shroud. Telling them not to return until they found him.

Then she phased into her remaining shadows and returned to her suite. She kept her own hunger at bay, even as it sucked at her marrow. And her demon clamored for her attention.

This is stupid. He bares his throat whenever he sees us. Stop starving me! The meal wants to be devoured.

“Quiet,” she’d hiss back.

She evaded the vampire as best she could. The bergamot and burnt-sugar edged laurels emanating from him grew more potent by the hour. His dark amber-tinged fragrance was an inescapable perfume in the air.

Her venom pooled in her mouth every time she smelled him. Her veins heated and muscles loosened. Whole body reacting to his proximity despite her attempts to batter the need to death.

Her succubus whined over the weak, mechanical orgasm she forced each morning.

Steam and shadows curled atop the bathwater. She slid a hand between her sore legs, always wet, always ready after fighting him. She worked her clit.

Fingers circling slick flesh, jaw locked.

And her darkness flooded every crevice, ensuring her aroused scent wouldn’t leak under the bathroom door. Her practiced touch pinched that bundle of nerves relentlessly. Heat tried to crest, a sigh through her nose as her hips jerked.

She barely felt the orgasm as it lapped at the edges of the pit inside her. It was soundless. Teeth clenched as her back failed to arch.

It was a quiver, not an earthquake.

Her magic mocked her. It formed into the shape of the frost-bitten hands that had gripped her throat the night before.

She sliced claws through it. They licked at the tiles to avoid her. It was a deeply unsatisfying release but enough to cork the need building to a wildfire for another night.

She avoided Ashton’s knowing eyes when she finally left the bathroom.

I am hunger made flesh, looping in her head.

There was no way to dodge him in such close quarters.

But she could dodge his pointed comments, stop her greedy nature from ruling her.

The demon shrieked and railed against Liora’s denial. Afraid she’d allow it to kill her again. It was harder to abstain now. Something primal in her had been yelling warnings for days.

She hadn’t decided what she wanted to do yet. Feed it or let it consume? Sometimes, when she got bored, she starved herself to the point it devoured her.

A temporary suicide. Just to feel something when she awoke, buried six feet beneath the earth, locked in that familiar pine box.

Still starving, as she clawed her way out of her unmarked grave. Her rebirthed heart rattling and steaming, the demon ruling her entirely when she surfaced again.

She hadn’t partaken in that brand of self-annihilation in a long time. But Ashton made it seem appealing.

Getting away from the sound of his husked voice and the smell of his want adding to hers... heavenly. For two weary weeks, she hunted in the daylight’s knife edge. Her shadow spies slipping through the Shroud’s fraying seams while she fought or slept.

The cryptomancer, Barbatos, was a corpse-king of stolen names and histories, always one step ahead. But shadows were patient.

They waited and learned. They listened to the murmurs of demons beneath the earth and above. Parsing through the stale information until they found a new budding toxic growth.

And this morning, when she called, they finally whispered back to her.

She found him holed up in a burnt-out church two states over. Only a scorched shell remained to shield the ash and fire-eaten prayers locked inside.

Desecration was too kind a word for what he’d done with the place.

Charred church pews, crumbling and tilting precariously, lined the talon-scored walls. He kneeled in the middle of a circle of stolen teeth. Human—werewolf, vampire, and demonic teeth. Barbatos was small for a demon of his power.

He stood three inches shorter than her, almost elfin in features. And nearly two centuries younger. He hadn’t swapped his glamor since she saw him last.

He appeared young, round and rosy-cheeked. Doe-eyed, his fingers knitted glowing ghostly sigils into the dark air. Pupil-less eyes alight and cast the room into shades of burgundy and contorting shadow.

The last sigil hung for a second, flashed once and faded away. A tooth disappeared from the ashen ground with every new one he embroidered. The oppressive darkness shrouded the entire space.

The sun had been shining until she closed the door. Now only night remained. Or the illusion of it. Her watch had stopped the second she crossed the threshold.

Its hands petrified in accusatory alignment. But the ticking of multiple clocks ricocheted through the heavy atmosphere.

Each tick was out of sync, like a vein stuttering between her fangs. She daggered him with her stare until he acknowledged her.

“Liora,” he rasped, not turning to face her. “I wondered when the Shroud-Keeper would come to collect.”

Her pulse jittered, claws unsheathing, and her darkness hissed warnings in tongues older than the demon before her. That name.

No one had called her that name in over a century. Hardly anyone knew it. Only those old enough to recall the days supernaturals and mortal hunters worked together. The hunters mostly called her an executioner in this period of her eternity.

She shook off the shiver attempting to slide down her back. Spine straightening and eyes hardening. “You stole and let a leech find my name.” She stepped closer, pushing down the ice creeping up her throat. “You know the price for that.”

He laughed, the sound like maggots squirming in a tin can. “I didn’t steal it. I found it in an unmarked grave. Tell me—” his scarlet eyes flicked to her chest, and it wasn’t a leer.

His gaze had pinned to the spot where ice and hunger chewed at her like a trapped thing. “Does your vampire know you’re here?”

She huffed, shadows flying for the entity wearing a youthful trickster’s skin. The shadows’ edges had blunted. Leaching into the charcoal-dusted walls, blades turning to butter knives as she abruptly felt as if she weighed a thousand pounds.

It’s just a trick to keep me on edge. Focus.

She repeated it in her head as she said, “The vampire doesn’t get a say in where I go.”

Barbatos chuckled and uncoiled to stand, ash and shattered glass crunching under his bare dirty feet as he approached her.

Liora held still, darkness watching his every move, preparing to end him if he dared risk attacking her. She doubted he was that stupid, but it had happened before with lesser demons. She needed to feed before fighting such a battle.

His gnarled fingers trailed over the stolen relics scattered atop the broken pews. An ancient grimoire still spat sparks and reeked of sulfur.

And a shrunken skull, incubus, she guessed, as she noted the tiny fogged mirror shards embedded in its scraggly hair.

A witch’s braided ebony locks hung from his fist as he stopped before her. An old black coin rolled between his knuckles in his free hand.

He surveyed her like prized cattle. “You’re wrong, I’m afraid. Did you think they’d let you walk the Scales unleashed forever? Do you taste him even now?”

Her silence was answer enough. She had to remind herself she needed his help to keep from stabbing him, a growl lodging in her throat.

His lips curved deeper as he said, “That’s not hunger, honey, it’s the noose tightening.”

She stiffened. Vision tunneling as a spear of foreign coldness pierced her core. Power like hers demanded an anchor, a counterweight to hold the fabric of the supernatural world together.

Liora had spent centuries culling and claiming the magic of those who threatened the Balance. It had fallen once before. Long ago, well before her time.

The gossamer strands holding the Shroud together eventually strained and frayed, threatening to snap if the weight swung the other way too hard. She had assumed that her role as its guardian ensured she wouldn’t cause that problem.

The lack of satiety in her existence had seemed a fair trade to ensure she never suffered under another’s leadership again. She answered only to the universe.

And the universe, in its cruel humor, had spat out a vampire who lived and died to get under her skin.

No. No. No. But her shadows grew weaker as she stood there, as if the Shroud was unspooling her thread by thread. Fire and Ice.

Everything has an opposite. Every poison has an antidote. Two sides of the same coin. The Shroud-Keeper, Daughter of the Accords, shackled to a corpse.

Shackled to the one thing that she should’ve hunted instead.

The one thing her body and demon wanted, apparently. She just had to sever it. Find the right ritual, the right magic, and she’d be free again. She had to— “Do you still tell yourself that you can control it? Or has that lie died?” Barbatos said, breaking through her inner diatribe.

The veins in her wrists filled with snow and briefly glowed blue. Barbatos didn’t hear her demon’s loud shriek, which surprised her.

He’s hunting. For you! Go to him, ask him nicely and he’ll ruin you, little martyr.

She admonished her with an internal snarl.

Ashton won’t starve. We haven’t been gone long enough for that.

Are you sure? Can’t you feel him?

Liora huffed and didn’t entertain it any longer. She chained the bitch, and locked her muscles, locked her shadows from sneaking away from her.

They cracked like thin ice under her heels, barely fluttering her skirts’ hem around her calves as they wound around her.

“Speak plainly, corpse-whisperer. I don’t have time for your games,” she bit out, eyes flashing with amber and bruised violet.

There were about thirteen clocks hanging on the burnt walls. Not a single one worked. They just tick-tick-ticked while the hands remained stationary. Her breath fogged as she exhaled slowly, clawed fingers twitching.

Venom pooled under her tongue, warmth flickering between her thighs. It died faster than she could think to ponder why.

“Ah, still so proud! Even after this.”

Barbatos tapped her glamored collarbone with a black pointed nail. “Did you weep after the first? Or did your demon feast on the betrayal?”

Liora’s shadow lashed out. They formed spikes, a snare arcing toward the demon’s throat. He laughed and snatched a tendril before the rest fell back to her.

He licked it with a forked tongue, its split ends wriggling like worms as he tasted it.

Her stomach sank to her boots as he confirmed her suspicion that Ashton’s magic had interwoven with hers. His red eyes rolled back in his head. “Mmm. His frost is in your veins now. Your shadows in his. How deliciously tragic!”

Her magic shuddered; the abyss inside her gnawed rougher. With teeth of ice and snow, not flame and ember. What was wrong with her?

Why did she feel so... weak? Her bones seemed made of papier mâché, brittle and only a nudge away from crumpling. Was it dark outside?

There were no windows anymore. They were all boarded up. The shadows were unnaturally thick near them.

More akin to cold molasses than anything a beam of light could banish. How long had she been here? Her mind snagged on what Barbatos had said.

Her entire body jolted as her heart kicked off a racing beat. Blood rushed in her ears, muffling her venomous voice as she spat, “You know nothing of what we are. He’s a tool. Nothing more.”

He shook his head, smile widening until it stretched across his face, showing too many stained teeth. “I know a closed-loop when I see one.”

The statement pummeled her, an icicled-fist straight to her solarplexus. It was a wonder she didn’t double over, as the pain pierced her. That’s what Ashton had called it. Fuck. He scanned her.

She couldn’t glamor the trembling in her jaw as she clenched it.

“Two hungers, twin wolves circling in each other’s throats. That’s what you are. Severing is no longer an option.”

Her claws flexed, she took a step toward him as if to rake them down his chest. The air reeked of burnt sugar and pomegranates. Bergamot.

“You’re wrong. My venom created it. I can unmake it.”

Her words fell to the floor and shattered as Barbatos gave her a pitying stare.“Sweet fool, you didn’t create it. You begged the sky for it. Besides, you won’t like the price.”

A snaking cold draught curled around her ankles as her shadows buzzed, chattering amongst themselves.

They were rats nibbling on a bone, nibbling at her resolve just loud enough for Barbatos to hear and nod.

He’s ours if we want him.

Traitors. She chose not to listen and reached into them. Warmth gloved her hand as she plucked the vial her dark vipers had filled with Ashton’s tainted lifeblood.

Every training session, they collected drops of it on her orders. Sneaking them whenever she had his full focus. She eyed the viscous liquid, backlit with the ghastly glow of Barbatos’ magical work.

He sighed, sulfur and sun-dried blackberries stained his breath as he said, “You paid in memories before. What’ll it cost to keep me alive this time?”

Her fingers clenched around the vial. An ache spread behind her eyes as if a door slammed shut on her mind.

Just how many memories had she given him? She tossed the tiny bottle to him.

He plucked it from the air, grinning and rubbing the glass with his filthy, long-nailed thumb. The blood inside swirled like liquid onyx, faint cobalt veins pulsing to opalescent gold where her venom had mingled with Ashton’s curse.

Barbatos unplugged the cork and brought it to his nose, inhaling deeply. His eyes fluttered closed, smile gentling to show no teeth. Then he laughed. The sound akin to salt frying on a slug.

How rude! He smells delicious. This imp has some nerve. Let me eat him!

The succubus demanded, clawing at her sternum and roaring wordlessly.

Liora sheathed her talons; the voices in her veins were too eager to defy her. She said silently, “Not yet. He’s the only one who can find the—the tether’s extinction.”

After Barbatos stopped laughing, Liora asked, “Well, how can I break—” He cut across her, eyes pitying but alight with dark amusement. “You already know the answer.”

He stoppered the vial again, clenching it in his fist as she stifled the urge to scream. “But you’ll claw at hope, anyway, won’t you? You’re an animal caught in a trap, willing to gnaw your own leg off just to be free.”

Her shadow lurched again, but the frost seeping through her arteries halted it. Her darkness sagged, knowing they couldn’t harm the cryptomancer without due process.

The prick was annoying, but he was a walking occult black market. Useful.

“There has to be a way.”

He chortled. Fluttering around the room as he drew more sigils and plucked a gold eye-tooth off the floor. He danced back to her, showed her the tooth before closing his fist, and when his hand opened again, the tooth had vanished.

“Let’s see... you could drown him in holy water. Oh! Burn his bones in a witch’s pyre! Or, carve the runes I taught you into his ribs.”

There was a loaded, horrendous pause as her emotions swung between dangerous hope and cataclysmic despair. “But none of it will work.”

Her jaw rippled, an acidic taste at the back of her tongue, and she almost killed him then. Balance be damned.

“Liar. There is no world in which I’m chained to a leech for eternity. Tell me how to fix it before I decide you’ve outlived your usefulness.”

Her eyes were endless black pits, the VII burning a hole through her glamor.

He tip-toed closer, pointed nail tapping at her brand again. A dark droplet bled from it, dripping into the puddle of ash staining her boots.

“Seven times you’ve said that to me. Yet here I stand.”

He didn’t give her a chance to bite back. He crushed her hopes to dust as she cursed every deal she’d ever made with the demon.

“This bond is not a chain, Liora. It’s a choice you made.” He flicked the vial back to her. It shattered at her feet, beads of blood and glass skittering over the ash. “Some wishes don’t break. They twist.”

She panted as if she’d been running. Something vicious slithered down her spine. Endless coldness eroded her lungs. Claws pricked her palms as she lied to herself.

Lies.

All of it. He’s wrong. He’s wrong. He’s wrong.

It sounded hollow even to her. Here, time was thicker, and something inside her muted her magic. The sudden, relentless urge to return to the hotel nearly sent her running.

Barbatos snickered as she patched her emotional fissures with shadow-thread and stood tall again. He pulled a silver locket out of his dingy grey robes.

She watched as he opened it; a drop of demonic black blood swirled inside it. Her chest constricted. It was as if a serpent had wound itself around her torso and squeezed.

She glanced around to distract herself. Gaze skittering over machines that hummed like Ashton’s. There was a strand of sanguine liquid weaving amongst the acid green numbers and letters dripping down the mirrored screens.

The cryptomancer’s blood must aid the process, she supposed. She’d never asked. The unmoving hands of her watch glowered at her as she checked it.

Useless. All of this was useless. Then Barbatos said, “Your leech is clever. He’s stopped trying to break my fire-wards. He’s hunting hunters now. Starving himself... for you.”

She recoiled. Moving back an inch as her head shook and the freezing sensation in her heart spread fingers through the rest of her. “You’re lying.”

No, you are! You need to go to him, but you’d die before admitting it, her demon muttered, curling up in a ball low in her belly, ignoring her.

Good. It took every ounce of her energy and discipline to keep her glamor intact.

The magical and personal cost of concealing everything monstrous was—Barbatos dropped the obsidian coin into the locket, soaking it in the blood before plucking it back out.

Starlight, false, white, and glittering, danced along its edge as he inspected it.

“Am I? Then why is the cold creeping in?” He gestured to the frost crystalizing on her leather jacket sleeves.

When had that happened?

He wasn’t done. His thin lips flattened as he appraised her. She wished she hadn’t bothered coming when he spoke again.

“Do you still believe in wishes, Red Queen? Or did you carve that hope out with the rest of your past?”

Liora reeled internally. The impulse to laugh came and went as her stomach flipped and tied itself into knots.

Red Queen.

How was he finding this? Only Byron had called her that. Let a poet lick bloodied wine and honey off your tits just once, and he gets grand ideas.

She shut her mind off and glared at the cryptomancer.

She had the queerest notion she should know what he was hinting at. But the answers eluded her. Another empty spot in her brain, where the information once lived, taunted her.

Trying to summon it sent a prickle of pain across her face. “Enough. You sold me oblivion. Don’t pretend it was a kindness.”

Another phantom breeze whispered through the gutted building. It was persistent. Arctic. Tugging at the hair standing straight on her nape.

“Oblivion?” Barbatos cackled, and it ground into her ears, a sound of rusting hinges. “I sold you relief.

But the night remembers what others forget. It remembers you.”

Her tongue curdled in her mouth. Why did that phrase itch? It was an invisible flea biting at the grey-matter within the cradle of her skull.

“Stop with the riddles. What do you know?” She demanded, but he acted as though she hadn’t spoken.

The ache in her yawned wide, thighs trembling as her heat failed to break through the frigid chill encasing her. She shifted on her feet and drew in a tight breath.

This wasn’t right. None of this was.

The other demon came even closer as she wrangled with herself.

He flipped the bloody, dazzling coin between his fingers. “Since I’m feeling generous and would like to see another sunset, I’ll grant you one returned memory as penance for my oversight.”

His smirk was a shade too smug. Ashton’s face flickered in her head, superimposing over the demons. She didn’t like his smirking either, but it didn’t feel so... slimy when the vampire wielded it.

She opened her mouth to spew insults at him, to demand he give all of her memories back. A scream burst free instead as an explosion of agony ruptured her chest.

It was an intangible stake driven through her ribs, bones splintering and knees buckling. The noise bounced off the walls, a tortured lament that sent her darkness wild.

Their tendrils coiled close, inky armor, as the unasked for thing inside her throbbed and seared her nerves. Once her scream ran out of wind, the vomit erupted from her gaping mouth. Heat salted her skin wet.

Venom and black claret poured from her lips in equal measure. She hardly saw Barbatos as shivers and shudders wracked her body.

The clocks kept ticking. Faster and faster, louder and louder.

Her ribcage ached with each one, as though her skeleton were rusting inside her. It was a drill shattering through her marrow. The realization struck her like a bolt of her own lightning.

Time didn’t pass here. It decayed, thickening like congealed blood. How long had she been gone? What had happened? She hadn’t the answers.

She groaned, mouth sour and throat full of ash, hand clawing at her chest as if to pull the knife out. Her hand came away clean. She glanced down at her pristine lilac blouse, and no weapon or wound greeted her.

The agony persisted. Rising, rising in waves of glacial pain that throttled the oxygen out of her lungs. It smothered the wildfire within her, flames guttering as hoarfrost crackled in its place.

“Oh, you wished on the wrong star.” Barbatos crouched in front of her. She mustered a savage growl and bared her bloodstained teeth.

Gasping, eyes watering as the hurt burrowed deeper, she felt an incessant tugging sensation around her middle. He pressed the glimmering coin to her brow, and it burned.

It was the bite of a winter river. She thrashed her head as it rippled across her mind in a silvered wave of freezing white-light. “Run along, now, Liora. Your monster is calling. Tardiness will not serve you.”

Her magic acted without thought or command. Smoke braided her wrists, yanking her toward the pain. Toward Ashton.

She dug her talons into her palms to anchor herself, shouting, “No!”

They didn’t listen. She phased into smoke, but not before a flash of memory crossed her mind’s eye.

She blinked, and cold metal sizzled under claws. Stars smeared like pitiless tears overhead. Then a voice. (Hers?) Raw as an open wound and twice as foolish, begging to feel.

She blinked again, wrenched away, and it dissolved. The afterimage of a snake eating its own tail disintegrated with her next breath.

But the coin’s smell of overripe orchids and the seared sugar of her own hollow arousal lingered. Her smoky snakes echoed Barbatos’ final insult as they whisked her away.

“You asked for this.” A pause as her heart seemed to stop beating. “Now you’re drowning in it.

The circle must never be broken...

not even by you, did you forget that, Shroud-Keeper?”