Part 19 (1/2)
Ivan nodded, feeling a trifle unsure what she needed at this moment, but willing to follow her direction.
The pages in the grimoire opened to a double-paged spell. A musty odor rose, yet the second note sprang up, fresh thyme rubbed raw.Ivan looked over the spell. The diagrams depicted what he guessed were witches bowing before fanged men. Vampires. Blood spattered the entirety of the page. It jeweled on the paper, as if to lift the thin sheet would tilt the crimson liquid creeping to the margins. Witches' blood. Poison to vampires.
”I can't read the words. Are they even words? Doesn't look like any alphabet I've ever seen.”
Dez pressed a hand over the bottom corner of the page nearest her. ”They're not words in the sense you need to understand and define them. They're more intonations and a cadence. This spell is old. Witches once cast using thoughts and rhythm and sound.
It's an experience, like becoming one with the spell.”
”I become one with my spells. I hum...I work with incantations and tones. It's how my mother taught me. But I've never seen it written out like this before.”
He spread a hand over the diagrams. One of the drawn female faces cringed at his movement, as if he would slap her. Ivan drew back his hand. ”No reversing this spell, though, that's for sure. Unless we can find a witch who understands this. It is an amazing thing, whoever cast this spell, to free a nation of enslaved witches. Is there a picture of the original caster?”
”I don't believe so.” Dez bent over the book, dropping a billow of the sheet over the corner of the page, and spreading her hands over the pages as if to discern the very tones of the long-ago recited spell. ”There's something I need to tell you, Ivan.”
”Is this going to be a good tell or a bad tell?”
”Would it matter?”
”No.” He drew her close and kissed the top of her head. ”Whatever you want to say to me is good. It's just you and me now.
And you know things about me. My darkness. My craving for goodness. And that makes everything right.”
”That's hope, yes?”
”Maybe. It's trust, that's for sure. You can tell me anything, Dez.”
”Very well.” She let out a breath, and then reached for the grimoire, carefully closing it, and grasped it to her chest. The book was huge, and she looked a child clutching it. ”Ready?”
”I am,” came the brimstone-laced growl.
The room grew dark. And Ivan knew they'd made a terrible mistake. Before Dez could send the book away, Ivan's scream of pain halted her.
Himself held her lover before his fearsome, demonic form. The darkness secreted most of the devil's hideous appearance, but Dez had seen it before. It was an image she would never forget.
How had he gotten to her? She had always taken measures, planted devil traps and warded her surroundings-not home, but at Ivan's place.
She had let down her guard, left herself completely unprotected. She had chosen heart over logic. Yet she had not been fully prepared to face the consequences.
Himself must have been waiting for this perfect opportunity. Using Ivan as his p.a.w.n, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d had finally found a way to put his talons to the Grande Grimoire.
Fingernails digging into the white silk sheets, Dez demanded Ivan's release. ”You hand over the grimoire,” Himself said. He gouged his talons deep into Ivan's bare chest. Blood oozed out in crimson rills.
”And you can have this pitiful excuse for a fixer. I don't know what I saw in you, boy. f.u.c.king the witch was a splendid plan. But falling in love with her was not allowed.”
”I-” Ivan couldn't speak. Pain stretched his face. His arms clawed out, as an insect's legs kick when pinned.
Dez knew Himself could not simply take the book. If he could, it would have been done centuries ago. He must have her permission to even touch the grimoire. And he had never approached her personally to demand it, not until now.
Now that she was unguarded.
”You're killing him!” she shouted.
Indeed, the black talons had begun to rip open Ivan's chest. Rib bones snapped and organs were exposed in luscious gore.
Sick with the sight of her lover's suffering, Dez dropped the book and crawled to the edge of the bed. What spell could she use?
She tried wind and whipped it up to a tornado, but Himself stood firm even as the torrent whipped Ivan's legs from the floor and splattered his blood against the walls.
Dez stopped the spell, for it further tortured her lover. Rain would merely make the monster chuckle. And swarming insects he would gobble in delight.
A simple bell was all she needed.
”Hand it over, witch.”
”No!” Ivan managed to shout.
Some inner part of the vampire oozed from his body. No vampire could heal from such a wound, especially not if Himself touched his heart.
”Very well!” Dez shouted. ”The book is yours!”
And the atmosphere lifted. The darkness receded. Ivan dropped to the floor in a sprawl.
And the Grande Grimoire no longer lay on the bed.
Chapter 15.
S moke infused the bedroom. Billowing black clouds receded into the corners. A distorted figure lay on the floor against the wall.
Blood painted his chest and arms-and that looked like an organ protruding from his gut.
Dez choked out a gasp. She scrambled off the bed and rushed to Ivan's side. But she stopped two feet from his sprawled body where her toes slipped in the vampire's blood. The crimson liquid was everywhere. Thick and dark, Ivan's life invaded her senses. Exotically enticing even as the disgust pushed up her bile.
He was conscious, trying to mumble something. The pain must be beyond measure.
Don't touch. Do not comfort him.
”What have I done?”
The Grande Grimoire no longer lay on the bed. A book Dez had guarded for over a thousand years without fail.
”Gone.” And the slightest twinge of liberation allowed her, for the moment, to stand there and take it in. An exhalation washed fickle relief through her being. Gone was the responsibility. Gone was the constant worry and fear. Gone...
Her lover might die. Had she sacrificed the book to spare Ivan's life, only to see him die?