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“Mila.” Francis’s voice, quiet and gentle. “It’s time.”
I shook my head and took a few steps back. GC sighed, grabbed me by the arms, and pushed me toward the well. Toward her.
“N-no.”
“Mila, the quicker, the better.”
“N-no.”
GC stepped closer, hugged me from behind. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he’d scrunched up his nose the second he caught a whiff of my skin. I didn’t smell like someone who was alive and healthy. Because I was neither. I hated, hated it so much that Francis had been right. Refusing to feed the god meant rotting on my feet. My kidneys had started failing already, and only one was still functional. I was constantly sick, and I couldn’t hold down any food. Dark spots had begun popping up here and there, on my arms and thighs. I didn’t know what they meant, and didn’t want to research it, either. And, oh my God, I smelled! No matter how often I showered, no matter how much body lotion I lathered onto my skin, and no matter how many bottles of perfume I dumped on my clothes, the smell wouldn’t go away. Wouldn’t change, wouldn’t let up. I fucking stank!
So, here I was, on the first day of school, down in the cavern, with my guys, my pixie, and a very scared, very well-tied up woman who was going down the well. She was. She had to. But for the ritual to work, I had to say the right words and push her.
“Just do it,” GC whispered in my ear. I inhaled his fresh, manly scent, which made me feel even more uncomfortable in my decaying body. “It will take two minutes, and then you can put all of this behind you.”
But I couldn’t, could I?
“Mistress, you have to do it. I don’t want to lose you.” Corri’s voice was trembling. She was perched on Sariel’s shoulder, who was a few feet away. Not far enough to offend me, but not close enough to catch my distinctive scent, either. He might have been a Fallen One now, an archangel without wings or honor, but his nose was still sensitive and accustomed to noble aromas. Truth be told, since I’d turned into a revenant, Corri kind of favored Sariel and GC. She stayed away from Francis, although he was as perfect as could be, what with making his blood sacrifices on time, and usually steered clear of Pazuzu, too. Demons frightened her. Too unpredictable, she said. When he got angry, his eyes turned red, and then she’d have nightmares for days.
“You know the words,” Francis reminded me.
Yeah, I knew the words.
Pazuzu stood beside the woman, holding her firmly by the shoulders. The fight was almost out of her, but I knew that if she sensed she had a chance to escape, she’d take it. I wondered how much she understood from what was happening, from what was about to happen to her.
“Do it,” he said. There was something in his voice, something dark and cold. Distant.
Except for Francis, who was used to this sort of scene, I could tell the others weren’t in their element. They didn’t like what I had to do, nor what they had to do to help me, but they liked the consequences of not doing any of it even less. A blood sacrifice every three months. They’d accepted the idea, and now they were only waiting for me to accept it, too. I’d postponed the ritual long enough. Too long. Four months and a half had passed since I’d become a revenant, and I couldn’t prolong the pain and decay a day longer. Soon, I’d start losing parts of my body, or something. A toe, an ear…
Fuck, this is disgusting. What I am, what I have to do to stay the way I am. But once I did it, I’d be healthy again. Strong, and perfect, and good-smelling. I hadn’t had sex in a month. Sex would be nice… The moment I’d noticed there was something wrong with my body, I’d stayed away from my guys. What had I hoped to achieve? Did I really think that if I ignored the problem long enough, the god would forget what I owed him and let me be? That wasn’t how this new world I now belonged to worked, apparently.
Just do it, Mila. Just do it. Go on, you can do it. I believe in you.
But the last thing I believed in lately was me. Or my judgement.
I stepped up to the woman trembling on the floor. Pazuzu looked me in the eyes, and when I nodded firmly, he nodded back and stepped away. Francis moved to give me more space, and now it was just me and my victim in front of the well. Sensing my determination, the monster stirred in its sleep, its tentacles finding their way up the wet walls of the fountain and over the edge. I knew those walls… I’d touched them, scratched at them, climbed them…
I closed my eyes for a second, swallowed hard, then opened them, feeling like I was someone else, wanting to be someone else. If only I could detach myself from this body, this place, this moment in time… I couldn’t.
“Ancient One, hear me,” I whispered, my voice sounding like it was coming from beyond the grave. Because it kind of was. “Receive this sacrifice of flesh and blood, make me whole again. Ya stell’bsna y’bthnk orr’e syha’h. Ya kadishtu n’gha,” I continued in the nightmarish language of the cosmic being. “Zhro!” At that last word, a bouquet of tentacles covered in suction cups of all sizes, oozing green and black slime, emerged from the well, reaching out for the prey. I dragged in a breath, yanked the woman to her feet, and pushed her forward. I had to hand her to the monster myself. My steps echoed through the dark tunnels like claps of thunder. Her shuffling feet and desperate whimpers weren’t strong enough to drown them. That was all I could hear. My steps, my panicked breathing, my croaking voice saying over and over: “Ya kadishtu n’gha.” I know your darkness.
I pushed her against the low edge of the well. The tentacles enveloped her lithe body in a split second and dragged her down down down. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t struggle, couldn’t break free… And I briefly remembered how that felt.
I closed my eyes and waited.
The crunch of bones, the splash of something wet and highly abundant. Blood.
And I waited some more. We all waited.
It started with a flutter in my stomach, a stir in my heart. I knew my insides were mending.
Ten minutes later, I was young, healthy, and beautiful again. I smelled of wild roses.
CHAPTER TWO
There was this one thing I kept telling myself in hopes that one day I’d believe it. Being a revenant had its perks.
Heightened senses. As Paz pushed me onto the bed, I ran my hands through his long black hair and pulled him closer, until his lips pressed to my collarbone, and I moaned in pleasure. His tongue darted out to taste my skin, and that made my eyes roll in my head. It had been too long… My body was craving him… them. I was soaked between the legs, and my nipples were as hard as pebbles. Paz bit me hard, knowing how much I liked a little pain mixed in with his loving caresses, then looked into my eyes. His orbs were red. He was angry. Angry at himself for what he’d done, angry at me because I’d made him do it.
