Valley of Silence
Page 32

“Appreciated.”
“There’s just one little thing I need from you.”
“Which is.”
“Blood.”
Cian did nothing more than look resigned. “Naturally.”
“Just a few drops, after I bind the poppet. I have nothing of hers—hair, nail clippings. But you mixed blood, once upon a time. I think it’ll do the job.” She hesitated, twisting the chain of her pendant around her fingers. “And maybe this is a bad idea.”
“It’s not.” Moira set the last candle. “It’s time we push into her mind, as she’s pushed into all of ours. It’s a good, hot needle under the skin, if you’re asking me. And Cian deserves to give her a taste of her own.”
She straightened. “Will we be able to watch?”
“Thirsty for some vengeance yourself?” Cian questioned.
Moira’s eyes were cold smoke. “Parched. Will we?”
“If all goes as it should.” Glenna took a breath. “Ready for some astral projection?” she asked Cian.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Step inside the circle of candles, both of you. You’ll need to achieve a meditative state, Cian. Moira and I will be your watchers, and the observers. We’ll hold your body to this plane while your mind and image travel.”
“Is it true,” Moira asked her, “that it helps hold a traveling spirit to the safety of its world if it carries something from someone of it?”
Glenna pushed at her hair again. “It’s a theory.”
“Then take this.” She tugged off the band of beads and leather that bound her braid. “In case the theory’s true.”
After giving it a dubious frown, Cian shoved it in his pocket. “I’m armed with hair trinkets.”
Glenna picked up a small bowl of balm. “Focus, open the chakras,” she said as she rubbed the balm on his skin. “Relax your body, open your mind.”
She looked at Moira. “We’ll cast the circle. Imagine light, soft, blue light. This is protection.”
While they cast, Cian focused on a white door. It was his habitual symbol when he chose to meditate. When he was ready, the door would open. And he would go through it.
“He has a strong mind,” Glenna told Moira. “And a great deal of practice. He told me he studied in Tibet. Never mind,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I’m stalling. I’m a little nervous.”
“Her wizard isn’t any stronger than you. What he can do, you can do.”
“Damn right. Gotta say though, I hope to hell Lilith is sleeping. Should be, really should be.” Glenna glanced at the window at the thinning rain. “We’re about to find out.”
She’d left an opening in the poppet, and prepared to fill it with grains of graveyard dirt, rosemary and sage, ground amethyst and quartz.
“You have to control your emotions for the binding, Moira. Set aside your hatred, your fear. We desire justice and sight. Lilith can be harmed, and we can use magic to do so, but Cian will be a conduit. I wouldn’t want any negativity to backwash on him.”
“Justice then. It’s enough.”
Glenna closed the poppet with a plug of wax.
“We call on Maat, goddess of justice and balance to guide our hand. With this image we send magic across air, across land.” She placed a white feather against the doll, wrapped it in black ribbon. “Give the creature whose image I hold, dream and memory ancient and old.”
She handed the ritual knife to Moira, nodded.
“Sealed by blood she shed, bound now with these drops of red.”
Cian showed no reaction when Moira lifted his hand to draw the knife over his palm.
“Mind and image of the life she took joins her now so he may look. And while we watch we hold him safe in hand and heart until he chooses to depart. Through us into her this magic streams. Take our messenger into her dream. Open doors so we may see. As we will, so mote it be.”
Glenna held the poppet over the cauldron, and releasing it, left it suspended on will and air.
“Take his hand,” she said to Moira. “And hold on.”
When Moira’s hand clasped his, Cian didn’t go through the door. He exploded through it. Flying through a dark even his eyes couldn’t conquer, he felt Moira’s hand tighten strong on his. In his mind, he heard her voice, cool and calm.
“We’re with you. We won’t let go.”
There was moonlight, sprinkling through the dark to bring blurry smears of shape and shadow. There were scents, flowers and earth, water and woman.
Humans.
There was heat. Temperature meant little to him, but he could feel the shift of it from the damp chill he’d left behind. A baking heat, eased only a little by a breeze off the water.
Sea, he corrected. It was an ocean with waves lapping at the sugar of sand. And there were hills rising up from the beach. Olive trees spread over the terraces of those hills. And on one of the rises—the highest—stood a temple, white as the moonlight with its marble columns overlooking that ocean, the trees, gardens and pools.
Overlooking, too, the man and woman who lay together on a white blanket edged in gold on the sparkling sand near the play of white foam.
He heard the woman’s laugh—the husky sound of a roused woman. And knew it was Lilith, knew it was Lilith’s memory, or her dream he’d fallen into. So he stood apart, and watched as the man slid the white robe from her shoulders, and bent his head to her br**sts.
S weet, so sweet, his mouth on her. Everything inside her ebbed and flowed, as the tide. How could it be forbidden, the beauty of this? Her body was meant for his. Her spirit, her mind, her soul had been created by the gods as the mate for his.
She arched, offering, with her fingers combing gently through his sun-kissed hair. He smelled of the olive trees, and the sunlight that ripened their fruit.
Her love, her only. She murmured it to him as their lips met again. And again, with a hunger that built beyond bearing.
Her eyes were full of him when at last his body joined with hers. The pleasure of it brought tears glimmering, turned her sighs to helpless gasps.
Love swarmed through her, pounded in her heart, a thousand silken fists. She held him closer, closer, crying out her joy with an abandon that dared even the gods to hear.
“Cirio, Cirio.” She cradled his head on her breast. “My heart. My love.”