CORRUPTION 3

Feature Writer: LoveMenLoveSex

Feature Title: CORRUPTION 3

Published: 08.10.2015

Story Codes: Erotic Horror

Synopsis: The edges of darkness and light are difficult to discern

Corruption 3

By the time the sun had risen a hand’s span above the low hills, the convent was in sight, grey walls visible above the thick woods that covered the slopes below it.

“Looks quiet,” Webster commented, looking around.

“Quiet before the storm,” Gage countered, a prickle in the nerves along the back of his neck. “Look.”

He pointed through an archway, lower on the slope and Webster’s gaze followed. Through the barred gate, they could see the blackened and decomposing remains of a garden, catching a whiff of the slimy smell as the breeze shifted a little, a thick stench of rotting vegetables and decaying crops.

“Anything else that can do that in a few days?” Gage asked his partner.

Webster shook his head. “Poison, of course, acid over the plants or a toxin delivered through the water. It would take a lot.”

If the Lady Eloise had been leading a coven, witchcraft could explain the blight to the gardens, Gage considered, following Webster up the narrowing cobbled path to the gates of the convent. But, by all the accounts that Donato had gathered, the coven, real or imaginary, had done no harm to its local inhabitants, not even a single report of a missing cow or pig.

Both men started as the bells of the convent began to peal, their deep, round tones filling the hillside and echoing down into the valley below. Gage glanced at the height of the sun, frowning.

“Lauds and Prime have passed, haven’t they?”

“By my reckoning,” Webster agreed. “It’s still at least four hours till Sext.”

“Maybe they just like the sound?”

“Maybe whoever’s in charge now doesn’t know the routine?” Webster parried, his expression drawn. “We’ve seen no one, yet this convent has lands and there would be work to be done.”

Shrugging, Gage followed the narrow road in through the gates, and stopped at the broad, shallow steps in front of the arched doors.

“Sister,” Gage called out. His partner turned in time to see a young woman hesitate by another gate, this one set into the interior wall of the convent.

“She’s a novice,” he hissed at Gage, turning to her. “Miss, do you know where the abbot is?”

Gage looked a little more closely at her as she took a few tentative steps toward them. The habit she wore was brown, not black, he realized. Under the concealing wimple, her face was young, no more than twenty. She was lovely, fresh as the breaking dawn, he thought, but not to his taste. When she raised her gaze to look at them, he heard his companion’s in-drawn whisper of breath and smiled inwardly.

“Father Martin is cloistered, my lords,” she said, her voice clear but quiet and her gaze dropping again. “No one can see him until the morrow.”

“Is there a Mother Superior here?” Webster asked, his normally pleasant tenor just slightly too high. Gage slid a sideways glance at his friend and ducked his head as he saw the tips of Web’s ears glowing red.

“Everyone is in seclusion, sir,” she told him. “Only myself and the other novices are tending to the work today.”

“Perhaps then, you could help us. We are sent from Rome, here to investigate the possibilities of evil-doing in this region. My name is Gage, this is Webster,” Gage said, smiling at her with every ounce of charm he possessed. “We’ve heard that there’ve been disturbances here?”

She looked from him to Webster, shaking her head slightly. “I cannot speak of -”

“Your gardens have died, miss,” Webster said, moving slightly to one side and looking through the gate. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, turning to look over her shoulder. “They were fine at the new moon. Then they began to blight.”

“Miss -?” Gage asked, wondering if the timing could be coincidental.

“Patience, sir, Patience Bower,” she answered, a slight tint of pink coming to her cheeks.

“How long have you been here, Patience?” Web asked.

“For six months, sir.”

Watching her, Gage noticed that she seemed unusually uncertain about the place that’d been her home for the last few months. He glanced at Web, wondering if it was due to a reciprocation of the interest his partner had in the girl, or if something else was troubling her.

“Have you seen anything else, Patience?” he asked. “Out of the commonplace, something you wouldn’t expect.”

Her cheeks colored a little more deeply. “Uh, no, sir. Not really,” she said, stumbling slightly over the denial. “The gardens – uh – we also found a number of dead birds and animals in the convent grounds?”

“Show me,” Webster suggested, his gaze flickering to his partner, neither needing to speak to know what the other was thinking.

Blighted plants and dead wildlife, he thought, and the novice was withholding something else. His partner had seen it as well, despite the rush of unexpected feeling he was obviously struggling against.

Gage indulged in another inward grin and nodded. Web would keep the young lady occupied for some time, and hopefully use the little-exercised charm he had on the girl to get whatever information he could from her. He should’ve realized the man’s preferences would run to orphaned fawns and delicate flowers, he thought, watching them walk away toward the gate. Took all kinds, he reminded himself and turned, moving fast across the half-cobbled courtyard to the corner of the building.

The new moon had been three weeks before. When Donato said the coven’s leader had been found in pieces, left just outside the village wall.

xxxxx

Walking beside Webster, Patience played nervously with the cross hanging around her neck as they passed through the gate. “Father Martin told us we must pray, that there was sin here,” she said, her gaze brushing him from beneath her lashes and returning to the path.

“So there might be,” Webster said absently, stopping and kneeling beside one of the beds and using his knife to dig into the soil around a blackened plant. On the surface, the dark loam looked normal enough, he thought, lifting the blade. The crumbly earth came up in a clod and he frowned as he saw the veins of white and yellow running through the dirt a few inches down. Lifting the knife to his nose, he caught two distinct scents from the soil adhering to the blade.

Salt. And sulfur.

It was little wonder the damned garden had died. Getting to his feet, he looked around. The walled garden held nothing but death from one side to the other.

“Do you know what happened?” Patience asked.

He turned back to her, trying to meet her gaze without looking into her eyes. They had an effect on him, he admitted reluctantly to himself. She had an effect on him. He had no idea how or why that had happened, but he wasn’t any better at lying to himself than he was to anyone else.

“Poisoned,” he told her, glad of the chance to look back at the garden bed. “You see the white, there in the soil?”

She nodded, her gaze following his hand. Had she leaned a little closer to him, he wondered, almost forgetting what he was about to say. A vagrant air moved in the walled space, and he caught the scents of meadowsweet and sandalwood, rising in the morning warmth from her hair and habit.

“That is salt,” he said, abruptly aware that he’d been standing there silently. Get your mind back to the case, he berated himself, turning away from her and running a hand over his face.

The mythology had been around for centuries, or longer. He recalled the dry voice of Father Perrin, lecturing in the stone halls. Earth protected itself from the incursions of the unnatural with the pure elements found in the ground. Salt. Iron. Copper. Even gold and silver had their places.

“What is the yellow soil there, that twists among it?”

He looked back down at the soil. “The yellow powder is sulfur. Brimstone.”

“How did it get here?”

“Salt rises when evil touches the land,” Webster said. “Sulfur is a taint carried by those of the underworld.”

He saw her mouth open, shock fill her eyes. “The un- you speak of – Hell?” she asked, her voice falling to a whisper on the last word.

“I do,” he said. “Have any new priests or nuns joined the convent recently? Strangers? Or even guests?”

She shook her head. “No, there are none like that.”

“In the time you’ve been studying here, Patience, have you noticed, uh, changes, in any here? A sudden cruelty or, uh, lasciviousness?”

Her gaze dropped. “I – I – no, sir, I haven’t seen changes in anyone.”

A lie, he wondered? She seemed not to be the type.

“When do you take your vows, Patience?”

“At midwinter’s eve,” she told him. “It takes a year.”

He nodded. “I am sorry to pry like this,” he said, his gaze cutting away. “My partner and I – we were called to this place, to find this evil that has risen. You’ve heard of what happened in the village, of course.”

xxxxx

Patience looked up at him, her thoughts befuddled. His eyes were like the pools in the forest, shadowy and still, green and grey and brown combined, and they drew her like those pools, tempting her to drown in them. She wanted to push the thick fall of chestnut hair back from his forehead. She could feel, faint but insistently, a tingle in her nipples as she stared at his mouth. What would it feel like if it were this man giving her the instruction the abbot had begun?

“You have not heard?” The question broke through both thought and sensation and she dropped her gaze instantly, heat flooding up her chest and into her cheeks at the way her thoughts had stirred her.

“Heard what?” she asked, staring at his shoes.

“Heard of -”

She looked up as he stopped. He was staring at her and she wondered guiltily if her thoughts had shown on her face.

“Uh, you – uh, you haven’t left the convent grounds?” he asked.

Shaking her head, she said, “Not since summer’s end. What happened?”

“A lot,” he said, his voice dropping. “You’ve seen nothing here? No lights or noises in the night?”

How could she answer that, she wondered? There were noises, but Father Martin and Mother Superior had told everyone that they were wild animals, being hunted through the forest and fields by the village men. They sometimes hadn’t sounded like animals, she’d thought, being awoken by them several times. But she didn’t know if an animal could scream in pain the way a person did. She hadn’t questioned the explanations.

“We – the novices, I mean – we are to bed early, and we rise early,” she said, not sure if that would answer his question. She hadn’t seen strange lights. For a second, when he’d asked her about changes in anyone at the convent, the differences in the abbot and some of the older nuns had flashed through her mind. She dismissed them. She hadn’t been here so long that she knew any of them well. People were always kind when first met, their true character appearing much later. She couldn’t be sure that what she’d perceived as changes in Father Martin were real, or simply her ignorance in the deeper ways of the Church.

A sacrifice is only worthy if one knows what it is one is giving up. The priest’s words returned to her. She couldn’t deny that.

“Patience, things are happening here – I think you’d be safer in the village,” the tall man in front of her said, reaching out to take her hand gently.

The touch of his fingers on hers sent a dazzling shock through her skin and flesh and for a second, she ached fiercely to close her hand around his. She repressed that fledgling desire, letting go and pulling back slightly as she looked up at him.

“I cannot,” she told him. “My duty is here, my – my life is here now.”

The bells pealed from the tower again, and she turned to look back at the gate.

“I must go,” she said, her face suddenly filled with doubt. Under her habit, a strange thread of feeling was spreading, curling in reaching tendrils of heat along her thighs and around her breasts. Father Martin would be waiting. She wasn’t sure if the feeling accompanying that thought was fear or anticipation.

“Patience -”

“I’m sorry, I must go.”

She turned away, hands gathering up the folds of her habit as she hurried out of the gate and started to run along the stone-flagged path to the convent. She didn’t want to be late. Between her legs, she felt hot and moist.

xxxxx

Webster stood in the gardens, watching her leave. His partner had been right, he thought. There was something here, something central to what was happening. He could’ve sworn that the girl had exhibited at least a vague sign of being under a compulsion, in the seconds before she’d turned and hurried away.

He looked around the dead beds. Salt rising and sulphur through the soil. Something had come to this place. It could be lurking in the grounds, he thought, starting to walk slowly between the garden beds toward the gate. Could be hiding, waiting for the unwary to pass through the forest nearby. Or, he considered, stopping as he saw the stiff body of a squirrel, lying on the path ahead of him, it could be in the building, in the fabric of the stone and wood – or in one of the people living there.

The thought brought an unexpected flush of fear to him. She was so young, so innocent and naïve. So very beautiful, another, less altruistic, thought murmured at the back of his mind.

Staring fixedly at the squirrel’s corpse, he noted distantly that it had been dead for at least two days, the hair dropping from the creature’s stomach as the flies had buried in, a squirming nest of maggots feeding from its organs.

xxxxx

Patience stood at the door, her hand raised to knock. She took a stumbling step backward as it opened suddenly, Father Martin standing there and looking at her.

“I am glad to see your punctuality has not been mislaid, Patience,” he said, stepping to one side and opening the door more widely. “Come in.”

Walking past him, she felt her heart begin to race in her chest, the thudding beats shaking her narrow rib cage. The room was dim, thick, heavy curtains drawn over the windows, candles burning steadily on the desk and from the wax-laden sconces around the walls.

“Take off your clothes, my dear,” Father Martin said, closing the door and turning to her. “And we shall begin with the instruction.”

Was it easier now, she wondered? Easier to slip the wimple and coif from her head, to allow the habit and her shift to puddle around her feet on the floor? She gathered up her garments and set them on a chair in front of the desk.

His eyes devoured her, she thought, dropping her gaze in the face of that intense hunger. Between her legs, her sex was pulsing, slowly and heavily, in time with her heart. She felt a trickle of liquid slip down the insides of her thighs.

“Come here.”

Stepping toward him, she risked a glance at his face. He looked greedy, she thought nervously. His eyes feasted on her breasts, on her waist and hips, on her thighs.

He raised his hands as she came within his reach, and she trembled as his fingers grazed over and around her breasts, brushing her hardening nipples and sliding down the smooth curves of her waist. He moved a little closer and slid a hand between her legs, fingers and palm cupping her for a moment, then stroking her moist folds and pushing into her.

“You look forward to your lesson, Patience?” he asked, his voice low, his breath slightly rancid against her mouth.

“Y-yes, Father,” she said. She wasn’t sure if that was true, but his touch was something she couldn’t stop thinking about, so it seemed true.

“Turn around,” he told her, pulling his fingers out of her and lifting them to his mouth. As she turned away, she heard the sounds of him licking and sucking them, wet sounds that sent a shiver down her spine.

She felt his hands slide down her back, both cupping her bottom and parting the soft flesh there for a moment. Her skin felt cool when he removed his hands, cool and bereft of the touch, nerve endings tingling.

“Lie on the bench, Patience,” the priest said, gesturing languidly toward the long, wooden settle in front of the cold hearth. “Legs to either side, if you please.”

Obeying him seemed very natural, and she turned and crossed the room, sitting and then easing herself back to lie on the hard surface, an awareness of the fact she was exposing herself to the priest completely only gradually seeping in. The skin of her chest and neck flushed with heat as she thought of what it was he was seeing.

“You are beautiful, child,” he said, following her and moving to the end of the bench, his gaze inching up her bared body. “Beauty is a rarity in this world. Like innocence.”

He straddled the end of the bench and leaned forward, and her eyes fluttered closed as his fingertips slipped up the insides of her thighs, swirling in tiny circles over her skin, drawing sensation along her nerves that made the muscles there jump.

“Would you be the Bride of our Lord, Patience?” he asked her, his voice low and throaty, almost a growl.

“Yes, Father,” she answered unthinkingly.

“And will you, as every good bride should, give your Lord whatever he desires, perform whatever tasks he ask of you?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Lift your legs, child,” he told her, sliding his hands under the backs of her thighs to guide them. “Lift them high and hold them apart.”

She complied, hands curling around her knees, her face and neck flaming a deep red as she did it. Her knees were level with her breasts, spread wide to each side of her body and she could feel the cool air, caressing her hot skin, her sex and the crease between the cheeks of her bottom.

“So good,” Father Martin crooned. His fingers slipped along the wet folds of her vagina and Patience set her teeth together, trying to hold back an involuntary moan of pleasure.

“No, no,” the priest said, his hand freezing close to the small nub of flesh. “Express yourself, Patience. Let all you feel out. This is your offering, child, this is what you will give up for Him, and it must be Seen by Him and Heard by Him and Felt by Him. Do you understand me, Patience?”

She nodded, her breath gusting out in a sub-vocalised groan. “Yes, Father.”

“Good,” he said, trailing his fingertips along her folds again. “Our Lord must see and hear all.”

His thumb touched the throbbing, sensitive nub and circled it slowly, his fingers stretching out to push into her, just a little, and Patience moaned loudly, her hips jerking against the touch.

“Do you like that, Patience?”

“Oh, yes, yes, Father,” she whispered breathlessly, the ache in her loins deepening as his fingers slid into her a little further.

The sensations were overpowering, flooding her with need, with an excruciating yearning for more. Every part of her body was trembling, it was so hard to breathe, to catch her breath, and she moaned again when his fingers thrust more forcefully into her, curling up and straightening, brushing over something inside of her that shuddered and flowered with their fleeting touch.

She flinched violently when she felt his tongue touch her, a wet lick along the inside of her thigh. It couldn’t be right, the thought dashing against the jagged rock of her desire. Nothing that felt like this could be right …

“Oh, but it is, little one,” Father Martin murmured, turning his head to lick up the other thigh, his breath hot over her. “It is more right than you could possibly imagine.”

Had she said her crazed thought aloud? The question vanished as his tongue slid past his fingers, along the inner silk of her vagina, and her breath exploded from her when he flicked his tongue over her painfully erect clitoris, a cacophony of sensation drowning her.

For a second, the face of the young man in the garden filled her mind’s eye, and she arched up against the priest’s fingers, imagining it was that man’s tongue and fingers, touching her, licking her … playing with her.

xxxxx

Father Martin paused in his ministrations, the blue of his eyes darkening as he caught a glimpse in the girl’s mind, a flash of another’s face. He probed deeper, pushing through the thick, chaotic fog of her desire, searching through memory. None had touched her. Nor had she touched herself. Everything he was doing was as new and fresh to her as the dawn to a new day.

He grunted in satisfaction and pushed his face against her flowing cunt, his thumb resuming its manipulation of her clit as he stroked his tongue down, and pushed it inside her, letting it grow and swell, twisting and uncoiling, deeper and deeper.

She was shaking, hips bucking helplessly between his hand and mouth, mewling cries gasped out with every breath. He felt the beginnings of her climax, and thrust his tongue in further, curling the forked tip along the super heated canal, allowing it swell larger. He thrust and withdrew, swirling it around, his fingers clamping around the too-sensitive erectile tissue, squeezing and stroking faster and faster.

As she cried out, muscles contracting to steel rigidity, clenching his head between her thighs, he smiled inwardly. Once tasted, this knowledge could never be unknown, the reactions along the pathways of her nervous system seared into her brain, never to be forgotten.

Within the crystal lattices of the priest’s mind, his soul shuddered too. The demon thought it highly amusing to allow Martin to feel it all with him, helpless passenger on this road to depravity. He made sure the soul could savor the taste of her, enjoy the silken softness of her skin and the moisture of her sex, breath deeply of her smell, the scents of innocence and wanton arousal inextricably entwined … and the iron-hard erection he was sporting was as much a result of the priest’s helpless lust as his own.

What say you, Martin?

It whispered to the soul trapped in its own mind, tortured by its own body.

Should we penetrate her fully? Fuck her till she’s screaming with ravenous need? Or is this enough for one day’s lessons?

Shamed silence was his only answer and he laughed at the loss of hope in the priest’s soul.

Your God cannot protect you from your own base desires, can he, my love? He is not so all-powerful. He has tested you and found you wanting, Martin. You may as well enjoy it now.

xxxxx

Patience cried out, fingers digging into her knees as scorching pleasure filled her and overflowed, breaking waves rolling over her and drowning her in its intensity, spreading outward and upward and down the length of her body to her extremities, her blood boiling, her nerves charged and sparking, not a single cell unchanged.

The tongue inside of her had grown and lengthened, whipping at the clusters of nerves, throbbing against the spasming of her muscles, pushing further and more intimately as Father Martin’s fingers tugged and ground at her. Together, the pulsing reactions blended and exploded, and she bucked and writhed, mindlessly lost, burning up in ecstatic sensation.

She couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, darkness filled with lightning filling her vision, her throat dry and parched, her body overloading under the continuous stimulation.

“Father,” she moaned. “Am I dying?”

Father Martin pinched her clitoris, the pain stabbing through the pleasure, heightening her senses further, closer to shut-down, and lifted his head. Through slitted eyes, she saw — she thought she saw — his tongue as he pulled it from her, impossibly long and thick, forked at the end and coated the fluids that spurted and filled her.

Jerking at the cessation of its probing, she tried to open her eyes wider, seeing the priest licking his lips, his tongue a man’s again, thick and short and red. The slowly diminishing aftershocks rippled through her, and she felt an immeasurable weight in her body, every muscle and tendon stretched and limp, heavy with an apathetic lassitude.

“No, my child, you are not dying,” Father Martin said, straightening and leaning over her. “You have tasted our Lord’s pleasure, for the first time and it sometimes feels like dying, but it is life you feel.”

Looking up at him, she allowed her legs to lower, feeling them tremble.

“Patience,” Father Martin said. “Put your arms around me and kiss me, child. Let me see your love for our Lord. Let me feel it.”

Lifting her arms with difficulty, she slid them around the priest’s neck, curling them tighter as he lowered himself over her. She pressed her lips to his, the contact reigniting threads of the unbearable arousal she’d felt at his touch, her lips moving of their volution, it seemed, against his.

The tip of his tongue slipped in between them, and she shuddered at that soft invasion, a tingle trilling along her exhausted nerves. She opened her mouth and felt his tongue slide along the side of hers, her nipples hardening and aching.

“Very good, Patience,” Father Martin said, pulling away. “You are progressing very well.”

“Yes, Father. Thank – you, Father,” she said, uncertain of what she was thanking him for. She could hardly think.

“I will see you again, tonight,” he said, turning away from her and going to the desk. “Come here after Compline. I believe you are able to learn more quickly than the others.”

“Yes, Father.” She walked to the chair, reaching for her garments.

“I do not need to remind you of the rules, do I, Patience?” he asked, watching her dress.

“No, Father,” Patience replied.

“Good. You are released.”

Slipping the habit over her head and fastening her belt, she left the room, every step an effort, but her loins still tingling with the memories that bombarded her now that she was out of the priest’s presence.

Was she in training as a bride of the Lord, she wondered helplessly, feeling moisture slip down the insides of her thighs with each step, its pungent aroma surrounding her. Mother Superior had not mentioned such things to her, in her interview here.

xxxxx

Following the high perimeter wall of the convent, Gage slowed as he entered the forest that encroached right up to the laid stone. The forest was silent and for the mid-morning in such a densely wooded area, the lack of noise was as blaring an alarm as a riot would’ve been, raising the hairs on the back of his neck and turning his normal, ranging stride into a stealthy prowl.

The smell hit him before he sighted the creature; a vole, swollen to twice its normal size, gassy and greenish looking where the fur had sloughed away as decomposition accelerated. The vole hadn’t been the only victim, he thought, seeing a rabbit a couple of days less putrid a few feet away and a crow, lying on its back, clawed feet in the air, on the other side of the vole.

Something had moved in here, something bad enough to have created a field of influence that was covering the forest and inching its way down to the village in the valley below. Skirting around the dead animals, he walked silently along the convent’s wall, his senses on high alert, the instincts that had served him so well for so long as a hunter for Rome, tweaking his route this way and that.

He reached the gates of the convent again in an hour, seeing the bottle-green coat of his partner against the darker forest and speeding up.

“What’d you find?” he called out to Webster, his feet kicking up the dirt of the road in dry puffs.

“I can’t locate a field here,” Web replied, chewing on the side of his cheek as he studied the forest to the south and the fields west of them. “There has to be one – the salt has risen in the soil in those gardens, and there’re sulphur streams in it as well.”

“Maybe the foci are further out?”

“Or maybe it’s in there,” the tall hunter said, nodding at the grey buildings. “No one is answering the door – which is locked,” he added.

Gage’s brow rose. “Locked?”

“Not just unusual,” Web agreed. “Unheard of.”

“Keeping something out … or something in?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Webster shrugged. “What did you find in the forest?”

“A lot of dead animals and birds,” Gage told him. “Some energy hums, but they faded out when I moved toward them.”

“You think the gate’s in the forest or the marsh?”

“The marsh. At least there are cracks, or the demons wouldn’t be able to use the mist as cover when they’re moving,” he said. “Donato thought the coven’s temple was somewhere in there, didn’t he?”

“That’s what he said,” Webster confirmed. “He won’t be able to lead us to it. He’s gone, left this morning to get word to the Prefect in Kendal.”

“Well, we can work that out when we get back,” Gage said, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “The coven members are still missing, although I doubt we’ll find them alive now.”

He turned and looked at the convent. “What’d you get out of the girl?”

Webster’s gaze cut away. “Not much. She said she hadn’t seen any changes in the people here, but she’s only been here six months, she might not have known them that well.”

“You think you can convince her to pick another life?” Gage asked, mouth curving up to one side.

“I never considered it,” Webster said stiffly.

“I’m sure you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

“That’s what I said,” Gage pointed out, ducking his head to let out a low chuckle.

“When do you want to go into the marsh?” his partner asked, changing the topic.

“Tonight, a couple of hours after sundown.” Gage turned for the road, and started walking. “We need to find some yarrow and rowan.”

The taller man nodded. “Rose said she could supply us with anything we might need.”

“Oh, Rose did, did she?” Gage turned to look at Webster. “When did you get a chance to talk to her, without her father breathing down your neck?”

“This morning,” Webster said loftily. “While you were sleeping off whatever excesses you indulged in last night.”

“I didn’t indulge in anything but sleep last night,” Gage told him. “Is that why your bed was unslept in? You were worried about making more noise than me again?”

“I – that – I – you are impossible!” Webster said, his face screwing up into a scowl.

“I don’t think it’s all that healthy for you to be carrying that load of tension, Web,” Gage said, grinning widely at his friend. “A little night exercise would clear that right up.”

“Thank you for your advice,” the younger man gritted. “And please, keep anything you might feel the need to declare to yourself!”

xxxxx

The moon had barely risen above the horizon when Rose came into the inn, closing and locking the door behind her.

“The mist is rising,” she said, turning to the two men standing over a long table by the hearth, a bowl of beaten copper between them. “It will reach the village in less than an hour.”

Gage nodded, tossing a handful of small bones into the bowl and glancing at his partner. Webster stared down at the mortar in his hand, grinding the pestle more strongly against the crumbling black stone that half-filled the stone dish.

“Every ward is in place?” Gage asked the woman.

“Yes. Everyone has been warned to stay indoors from moonrise,” she told him, taking off her dark cloak and throwing over a chair. In men’s trews and loose, linen shirt, a close-fitting boiled leather vest over her chest and her fiery hair plaited and wound in a tight coronet around her head, she could’ve passed for a lad, Gage thought, his gaze flicking over her. If you didn’t see her face, he amended a second later as she turned back to them.

“Rafe and Niall are waiting at the market gates,” she added, walking to the table and looking at the bowl in the center. “They have the iron arrows.”

Neither man would probably even see the demons, cloaked and formless within the fog, the hunter thought. It didn’t matter. This would be their hunt tonight. He looked down the table at the stone and crystal flasks of holy water, the leather and silk pouches of rock salt and iron filings. Simple, pure elements that the hellspawn could not tolerate, could not cross, that would burn if it came into contact with them.

“Where do we start?” Rose asked.

“We?” Gage cocked a skeptical brow at her. “‘We’ will start in the coven’s temple,” he said, his tone firm. “You will stay here and make sure that if anyone requires assistance, they have somewhere to go.”

He felt his partner’s surprised look and shrugged as he caught Web’s eye. “I value my manhood too highly to risk it going against Donato’s direct wishes.”

“And here I thought you were incapable of reason,” Webster muttered, grinding the stone into powder with a powerful twist of his wrist.

Gage grinned. “You underestimate me, my friend.”

“My father is not here,” Rose interrupted, a little frostily. “And will you find the ruins by yourselves? At night? With the hell mist filling the river valleys?”

“I’m confident we’ll manage to find it without the need to put your delectable person into the sort of danger your father would geld me for,” Gage told her, his smile widening.

“Have you never encountered a woman who is competent with a sword and spell book, sir? Or are all the women you know only interested in what you have between your legs?” Rose bristled at him.

“On the contrary, madam,” Gage said. “I’ve stalked my prey with many a very fine female huntress, women who know what they’re doing, trained from childhood.” He leaned against the table, green eyes darkening as they stared into hers. “And if you’re curious about what’s between my legs, you’ve only to ask. I’d be glad to show you.”

She turned away and walked out of the room, anger visible in every rigidly held line of her body.

“You really do have a way with people, Gage,” Webster said, looking up from the mortar to watch Rose leave.

“It’s a gift,” Gage agreed modestly.

Webster snorted. “This is ready. What else do we need?”

“Nine drops of holy water. That goes in last,” Gage said, looking down at the spell, and waving a hand at the flasks at the end of the table.

“And this will make us invisible to demonkind?” Webster asked, tipping the black powder into the bowl. “For how long?”

“The length of a night,” Gage answered, picking up a flask of holy water. “No longer than that.”

“Should be long enough.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said, dripping the holy water into the bowl.

The ingredients began to bubble, steam rising from the bowl in tantalisingly fragrant curls. Both men turned away, arms shielding their eyes as the contents burst into flame, the fire argentine, lighting the room in merciless detail for a eyeblink then fading away to nothing as the bowl’s contents cooled and dried.

“What was that?!” Webster lowered his arm slowly.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Gage grinned, reaching out to test the heat tentatively. “One from the vaults, Michael showed me the last time we were home.”

The bones and crushed stone, herbs and crystals had been immolated. The remains were a fine, slightly greasy, powder. Gage looked across the table and nodded, reaching for his belt.

“This needs to go over the life points, my friend,” he said, unbuckling his belt and unlacing his pants, then dragging them down. He reached for the back of his shirt, drawing it over his head. “Stings a bit at first, but it’s worth it.”

Webster nodded doubtfully, pulling his coat off. “I thought you didn’t believe in the chakras, Gage.”

The hunter scooped the powder onto his fingers and smeared the paste over his brow. “Doesn’t matter if I believe, so long as it works,” he said, rubbing a second dollop at the base of his throat. “Faith isn’t a prerequisite for everything, you know.”

“Yes, I do realize that – ow!”

Glancing at him, Gage shook his head. “Not handfuls, I told you it stings.”

The taller man scraped the excess powder gingerly from just above his pubic bone.

“You’re thinking that the coven opened the way for a demon they couldn’t control?” he asked, wincing as he dabbed a smear on his perineum.

“Donato said the bodies of the witch and five of her followers were found, scattered around the perimeter of the village,” Gage answered, wiping another smear under his rib cage. “There should have been another seven bodies. There were five men possessed in the village. Not one of which was one of the seven missing and believed to be a part of the coven.”

“Why would a coven attempt to bring through a demon of high rank?”

The hunter shrugged. “Why do people do any of the unaccountably foolish things they do?” he asked disinterestedly. “Money. Power. Attention. It doesn’t make a difference. If they let in a demon of sufficient power, it will have only one agenda.”

“To bring more through,” Webster agreed, patting more of the sticky powder onto his chest. “Yet we are not overrun by hellspawn.”

“No,” Gage said thoughtfully. “What we’ve seen have been minor, even the succubi are little more than irritants.”

His face tightened as he stroked the final dab of powder on himself, and reached down to pull up the close-fitting leather trousers.

“How are we going to find this temple?” Webster asked, rubbing the powder onto his brow. “Both Donato and Rafael said the marsh was a trackless wilderness, more than twenty square miles of bog, and there will be more things than just demons living in it.”

Gage buckled his belt, saying, “When I suggested you didn’t need faith in all things, Web, I wasn’t referring to me. Donato’s record-keeping is as good as the local inn-keeper as it was when he was running the Blood Corps, he’s got a number of maps in his office. He said they were probably using the ruins of an older church. We’ll find it.”

Waiting for his partner to get dressed, he tipped the remains of the bowl’s contents into a small leather bag, pulling the drawstring tight and tucking it into the pocket of his coat. Webster was wriggling uncomfortably into his trews and Gage ducked his head to hide a grin, turning to walk out of the room and down the narrow and low-ceilinged hall to the ex-hunter’s office. He went straight to the tall chest of shallow, wide drawers he’d seen there earlier.

Donato had left the Corp fifteen years before, after forty years in the service of the Church’s unacknowledged and secretive militant arm. He’d been worried for his family and had been discharged with honor and a full pension, leaving the country and with no remaining connections to what he’d once been.

But, Gage thought, sorting through the neatly ordered maps that filled the drawers, you could take a commander out of the battle, but not the battle out of the commander. The training and instincts had remained and would remain for the rest of his life, as embedded in his character as the faith that sustained him.

Pulling out a map of the area, he set it on the table and moved the candle closer, leaning over and peering at the careful cartography of the village and its surrounds. The marsh was indicated, showing several tracks through. Four ruins stood within it, but each were clearly labelled. The old church, designated with a Coptic cross, was marked with three such notations. It had been built on a node in the energy lines. It had also been the site of Druidic practice, long before Rome had set her footprint on this land. And following the banishment of that ancient religion, the Coptic church had been built over the site, falling into ruins only a century ago. It was, he thought, where an arrogant and wealthy dabbler of the black arts might choose to summon powers of which she’d had no earthly idea.

A soft noise drew his attention from the map and he looked around. A moment later, Webster walked into the room.

“That’s it?”

He nodded, tracing quickly with one fingertip the route from the village wall through the marshes to the ruins.

“Given the terrain, it will take us about an hour to walk there,” he said, rolling the map up and slipping it into the inside pocket of his coat. “Let’s go.”

They walked back down the hall to the public room, Webster hesitating as Gage opened the front door. “Should we let Rose know?”

“She’ll know when she finds the place empty,” Gage said impatiently. “Come on.”

xxxxx

From the servery’s small, thick window, Rose watched them walk down the street, hearing the clocking of their boot leather fade away as they turned at the end of the square and disappeared into the slowly thickening mists. She came out of the shadows, snatching up her cloak and checking the long knife sheathed on one hip.