My brain jittered like a rabbit; I inhaled sharply, and she smiled. Set just under her hairline, above and between her eyes, was her mark: the three circles, the black flame, and a colorless glitter that was the seal of a Grand Mother.

I cleared my throat. “Inez Germaine, I presume.” My voice was harsh, cracked, and only human after the softness of hers. Like the cawing of a raven after a dulcet song.

Quit it, Jill. She’s a fucking Sorrows mantis, she’ll chew you up if you’re not careful. I gave her my most winning smile. She was going to have to work harder than that to squeeze her way in through my mental defenses. I was toughened by so many exorcisms that I wasn’t even sure I could let something in if I wanted to.

I didn’t want to test that theory, though. Not at all.

She put one hand down, and a velvet sleeve brushed my belly as her fingers closed around my left breast. I made my face a mask, but she smiled, a very gentle smile that sat incongruously on her strong face. Her thumb moved a little. “Inez Germaine Ayasha, if you wish to be specific.” She paused, examining me thoroughly; scalp to toenails. If I’d been embarrassed by nakedness, now would have been the time to show it. But dating a Were will give you a whole new definition of naked, and having a hellbreed kiss on your wrist will too.

But her hand let go of my breast, trailed down my ribs. I sucked in a shallow breath. No.

Her fingertips brushed my belly, passing over old ridged scars and the furrows of abdominal muscle from hard training. I was too stringy, really, not much room for big curves when you’re fighting like hell all the time and having a hard time taking in enough protein to fuel that sort of muscle burn.

Sometimes I wondered if Saul would have liked me a little softer. A little more feminine.

The touch lightened as she brushed my pubic hair. “Tranquille, enfante,” she murmured. Calmly, lovingly. “I would not crack so fine a vessel.”

Her fingers dipped, and my entire body closed. My eyes rolled up into my head, and I curled up into the quiet space inside my own head. That space was small, and dark, and smelled like a kid’s closet stuffed with shoes and plush animals. Bad things could batter at the door, men could howl outside, but inside I was safe.

It was the space that I used to go to whenever Saul touched me. With Mikhail it had been heat and combat, but with Saul… it had been gentleness.

He had coaxed me out with infinite patience, one night at a time, holding me when I sobbed. Stroking my hair, reassuring me, easing me along. Until I could have my body belong to me again, and like anything that belonged to me it could be shared.

But not now. Now I didn’t want to share. I went rigid, sweating, my jaw so tight my teeth ground and sang a thin song of agony, red and black explosions playing out behind my eyelids as she probed with first one finger, then another.

I made a low harsh sound. Metal clashed as I struggled, hit my head against the stone altar, and suddenly knew that if she kept going I would beat my skull against the stone until one of us broke.

And I didn’t think it would be the altar.

She finally returned her black eyes to my face, sliding her fingers free and stroking my belly again with the flat of her palm. “You should have been born into a House, cherie.” Her tone was gentle, kind. “We would have known how to bring out the best in such a… delicate temperament as yours, without causing such regrettable side effects.”

High praise, from a Sorrow. “Horseshit.” If you think I’m going to beg, bitch, think again. “Nice trick, sending Belisa to play the Sorrow in distress. That brother bit almost got me.”

“Melisande’s brother was genuine. I picked both of them, ma cherie.” The smile widened. “So brave.” Her fingers stroked, came back up to cup my breast, and I could feel that my nipple was indeed hard. Hard as a chunk of rock.

Goddammit. But six years of Perry’s scar burning on my wrist and his fiddling with my internal thermostat was now paying off in prime. My heartrate stayed the same, though my breathing was a little harsher than I liked. I felt soul-bruised, savagely stretched, and just one thin hair away from raped.

If I belong to me, then I can share or not share, and I don’t want to share with you, you bitch.

Besides, if she wanted to mindfuck me with just a paper file to work from, she was going to have to work for it. Perry was harder to deal with.

No he isn’t, goddammit. Perry’s interested in seeing you remain breathing so he can break you. This bitch is going to kill you anyway; she’s calling you “dear” as if you’re her Neophym. You’re dead. Get something for your pains, Jill.

“The bodies were to draw me out and create taplines.” I sounded steady. Steady enough for being chained naked to a rock. “Belisa was just to spice the mix, draw me in, keep me around. But why the wendigo?”

She laughed, a marvelously soft sound. I sucked in a deadly breath as her warm fingers continued to stroke my breast. “You think I’m going to make the mistake cartoon villains make and tell you my plans while you work on burning away that ridiculous leather bracelet?” She tweaked my nipple with her fingertips, I kept a straight face. Heard more soft moans.

Oh, God. They’re starting the second sequence.

“I see the lamb’s voice disturbs you more than mine does, hunter. The wendigo was a useful tool, and its habits kept you looking in the wrong place. But your first encounter with it was carefully scripted.”

“You were on the roof with a bow.” I sounded bored. But I wanted to look past her to the curving altar. Controlled myself. “Killing your own employees.”

“They were men, my darling. Useful, expendable, but overwhelmingly useless—”

“I’m female, and just as expendable.” Interrupting a Grand Mother is a good way to piss her off; they were the rulers of their Houses. Big egos and big brains, not to mention enough sorcerous ability to power a blimp. Her eyes were so black, from lid to lid, infinite holes in her pleasant face. Deep. So deep.

The scar on my arm was growing hotter by the moment, as if Perry had breathed on it, turning it to lava. I could almost feel acidic saliva trickling down my wrist, too. The pain scored up my arm, jolted me out of the sticky web of her eyes.

“You, ma belle, are not expendable. You are my greatest achievement. The pregnant victims were selected for fetal tissue, yes, but that tissue has already been harvested and sold to the highest bidder. They paid for the vault over your head.”

Well, that’s a fucking relief. Thanks for giving me that wonderful piece of news. I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this. “You’re doing an evocation,” I said flatly. “And you want me to be the host for your psychotic little fucknut of a—”

The blow came out of nowhere, smashing across my cheek, my head rang and I saw stars again. Then her fingers were back on my breast, caressing, kneading my flesh. I felt a warm trickle of blood trace down my chin and rolled my head back to look at her. “Damaging the merchandise, bitch.” My voice was husky.

“You are merely required to be whole, not undamaged. Think of it. One of the Old Ones, the summa of negation, inside a body—a female body, a body capable of creation and destruction, a body strengthened with a hellbreed mark and possessing a soul gifted with murder and mayhem in the finest degree? You are a fit vessel, and once you are filled there will be enough blood, enough destruction, to remake this world as it once was. The Elder Gods will live through you, hunter.” Her smile was calm, beautiful, and so sane it was crazed, and I began to really get a bad feeling about this.

I heard the last breathless sigh of the drugged woman near the door. Oh, God. Please, God. No. Then a terribly final cessation, the act of slitting the throat down to the vertebrae. And the gurgle of life and blood leaving the body.