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“I mean, if there’s a cover charge, I think we’re willing to pay it,” I said, giving her a grin. “Or we could negotiate.”
The server simpered. “You’re cute, but no dice.” Her eyes hardened for just the fraction of a second. “Our master knows better than to let supernatural beings intrude on his domicile.” She eyed Gil, then Sterling icily. “This one, especially. I know that your kind like to sample exotic blood, and our master’s is about as exotic as it gets.”
“That’s not what we’re here for, maenad,” Sterling spat.
The server’s face darkened. She was a maenad, then, one of Dionysus’s worshippers, which only made sense. He would have his own allies out here, mortals who could do his bidding in our reality, even while he watched and moved the chess pieces from the relative safety of his domicile, which, I finally understood, sat half in our world, and half in his.
“Look,” Gil said. “We don’t want any trouble. We’re just here to talk.”
Gil was right. That was the thing about maenads, or bacchantes, or whatever it was you wanted to call the god’s worshippers. They were famous for whipping themselves into frenzy, whether through dance or devotion or drink, with the end goal of receiving just a drop of Dionysus’s power. What that meant, in mortal terms, was that they found themselves bestowed with inhuman strength, enough to tear people apart, limb from limb. I thought back to the gazebo orgy and swallowed, very slowly.
“Talk?” The maenad bared her teeth. “You don’t just walk into a god’s haven and demand to ‘talk.’ You guys have been nursing the same cup for the last half an hour, and you didn’t even bring an offering for – ”
Her eyes glazed briefly, and the air caught in her throat. She turned her head towards the curtains, then back to us, a glimmer of fear in her eyes. The maenad’s posture adjusted as she collected herself, and she smoothed down the front of her toga with one hand.
“I – I apologize. Dionysus says he will see you. But only one of you.” She lifted a finger to point at me. “The mage.”
“Fine,” Sterling said. “Whatever. Let’s just get this over with.” I had to admit, there was a perverse sense of pleasure in knowing that the god picked to commune with me over him, but hey, this was my forte. Having great people skills, as I was happy to discover, translated pretty well when it came to communicating with ancient deities and demons and beings of myth.
“Awesome,” I said, sliding my chair back and rising from the table, when the maenad placed her hand on my chest.
“But he demands an offering. A spot of your blood.” She smiled, the same kind I’d once seen on a succubus shortly before she sucked out a tiny bit of my soul. It hurt like hell, and I watched in trepidation as the maenad pulled out something slender from the folds of her robe. I looked to Gil cautiously, but he just nodded, almost imperceptibly so.
Communing with entities – the blanket term for the beings who exist between the corners, the gods and demons who live in the reality layered over our own – came with its own rules. Many of the more powerful entities lived in their own domiciles, pocket dimensions outside of our world, and access was only granted after the right rituals and motions had been performed. In many cases it involved casting a circle, which symbolized opening a door into another plane. A gateway, if you will.
I wasn’t sure how the rules differed for the Amphora. I’d never seen an entity so bold that he would literally straddle both worlds and leave himself so vulnerable, but maybe that spoke to his actual power and how confident he was in his ability to remain safe. What I did know was what they called the slender little thing the maenad had produced.
It was a miniature version of Dionysus’s symbol, the thyrsus. A thyrsus was a pole that ended in a point made out of a pinecone, often with a sharp end, which made it both a staff and a spear. Every maenad had one, a copy of their master’s favored weapon. This thyrsus was tiny, like a wand, only a little bigger than a regular pencil, but in the firelight I could tell that the pinecone tip was razor sharp. I guess the god wanted to go with the times, shrinking the instrument the way humanity invented progressively smaller cellphones.
“A drop of blood,” the maenad said, “and you will be granted your audience with our master.” She made a light stabbing motion in the air, then giggled, the zealous worshipper melting from her expression, and the cheery, twenty-something waitress from earlier zipping back. “Just a little prick.”
“That’s.” Sterling grunted, then chuckled, in spite of his prolonged sulking. “That’s what she said.”
The maenad tittered again. “Well?”
Gil nodded. “Go on. You know what needs to be done. Ask everything Carver wanted to know, or as much of it as Dionysus will tell you.”
“Right.” I eyed the thyrsus warily. Color me dramatic, but I didn’t do well with small, pointy objects, not since someone stabbed me in the heart with a sacrificial dagger. But this was work, and it needed to be done.
I extended my hand. The maenad smiled, lowering the thyrsus and prodding the end of my thumb in what felt like a precise and, I don’t know, respectful manner. I hissed at the brief jolt of pain, then winced when she squeezed the end of my thumb and lowered herself to the floor.
No one in the Amphora seemed to think it crazy that a waitress was on her knees ready to receive some random guy’s blood in her mouth, but there we were. Offering or no offering, this was the standard: every entity expected a bare minimum of blood.
A single crimson bead dripped from my thumb and fell into the maenad’s mouth, spreading across her tongue. It hissed as it landed, dissipating into a wisp of smoke that, oddly, smelled both like copper and a little bit of sandalwood.
“Such a shame,” Sterling said, shaking his head and running his tongue over his lower lip.
“Buddy, you gotta stop doing that,” I said, retrieving my thumb and sticking it in my mouth to suck on the rest of the blood. Sterling watched quietly. Like I said: creepy. He’d threatened to suck my blood the night we met – the night I met both him and Gil, actually, when they more or less assaulted and chased me through a darkened park.
He kept grossly hinting at the possibility of it happening over the time we’d spent being roomies – housemates? – over at Carver’s hideout, and it was Gil who had to explain that vampires sought out rarer kinds of blood to sate themselves, or to stave off the boredom of immortality. I guess I was a special treat because I was a mage, but that made it clearer why the maenad was so apprehensive about letting Sterling cross over into the VIP area himself.
The maenad rose to her feet and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her gaze went distant for a moment, and she smiled again.
“The master will see you now. Right this way.”
I looked over my shoulder at Gil for any last minute advice – nothing, apparently – and maybe I threw Sterling a last little taunting look. He stirred his wine with a finger, sucked it, then rolled his eyes away from my general direction.
As I stood, I reached for my backpack, the enchanted leather satchel that Herald had given me as a loaner from the Gallery. The thing could never be filled to capacity, its insides far larger than it appeared, which made it a cinch to smuggle Vanitas into the Amphora in case I needed him. The maenad clicked her tongue and wagged her finger. Dang. Guess not. I left the backpack in my seat.
