The Convent of the Pure Page 4

  “No doubt. Now, let’s make a plan.”

  The spirit shook her head, her gaze steeped in regret. “I am not going to be able to help you fight.”

  “What? Why not? You are a Gyony! You are my partner! And…and…you are my own, my love. Why won’t you help me fight?”

  “Not won’t. Can’t.”

  “This is ridiculous! What could possibly keep you from helping me?”

  “Portia, don’t. You have no idea, none.”

  Portia took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “When I am finished dispatching this thing, you will explain to me what’s going on here.”

  Imogen said nothing; she only looked away.

  The incubus slunk into the room, its thickly scaled tail scraping the floor in a disturbing susurration that was not unlike the sound of a giant snake. Portia sat back on her heels and brought the crossbow up into position. She would only have one chance to use the element of surprise. She rested her finger on the trigger and waited until the incubus came closer to the split in the curtains. She could barely see the demon's charcoal-black skin from her angle, but there was no mistaking what it was. Its tattered, leathery wings veined with ropy purple vessels were folded back against a battered breastplate and a torn, woolen kilt spattered with unseemly stains. Its head swung side to side and the wide nostrils of its flat snout flared as it tested the air for her scent. And then it turned to face her, locking her in a red-filmed gaze that was cold, flat, and nearly reptilian.

  Portia aimed the crossbow and whispered a prayer before she squeezed the trigger. But her fingers froze in place, and her arms began to tremble with weakness. The incubus sat back on its massive haunches, tail tip lashing, and closed its eyes. Portia felt her eyelids sink closed as if in answer to the demon’s command. When she shook herself free of the drowsiness that rapidly spread through her, she found herself peering through the break in the curtains at a handsome young man. His face was kind and not unlike Emile’s, with tawny blond hair and crystalline blue eyes. He gave her a lopsided smile that was sheepish and endearing as he peered at her through the opening of the curtains. The diffused light of the specimen room glowed softly against his broad chest and well-muscled hips. He seemed just about to slip out of the fine tartan kilt he wore. He noticed her scrutiny and he blushed, looking aside before shyly bringing his gaze back to her face. His eyes were wide and dewy, with pupils now so dilated that she would not have been able to say at that moment if they were in fact blue or not.

  He came within a few feet of where she sat and settled down into an easy crouch. He leaned in, pushing the curtain aside with his elegant hands. The scent of his skin was magnificent, like warm amber and myrrh. His cheek brushed against hers, and the scruff of his stubble made her shiver.

  “Hello there.” His voice carried a peculiar lilting accent that took a moment for Portia to place. It was the accent of her home. Not Penemue, but the tiny hamlet where she’d been born, where no one had ever seen an automobile and the old biddies still gathered to gossip at the town well. “You’re a lovely one, aren’t you?”

  She gasped and nodded, eager to have him speak once more, desperate that he touch her.

  “I like you, my little dove. Such a sweet and tempting creature, you are.” His mouth moved along the curve of her throat until he was pressing kisses into the hollow at its base. She could feel the heat radiating from his flesh as he hovered so very close to her.

  In the deep recesses of Portia’s mind, a memory began to tickle, and then whisper; it started to prod and finally to scream. Something was not right. She struggled to piece together the events of the last few minutes, but found her thoughts as scattered as if some careless hands had been through them and cast them aside as they passed. Urgent kisses traveled up and down her neck, and she felt the tender flesh there pinched between sharp teeth that made her tremble with delight. Distantly, the warnings continued, and only when she moved to put her arms around him did Portia realize she had a crossbow in her lap. She drew back in shock and touched the weapon gingerly. It looked so utterly familiar to her, yet she could not place ever having seen it before. The man kneeling before her reached out to push it aside, but Portia closed her fingers around the stock. She shook her head, not trusting her tongue to words.

  He sat back and clucked his tongue. “I suppose a pretty girl should have pretty toys.” But he did not want her to have it, that she could tell; the furrow in his brow gave him away. She also realized she had no idea who he was and why she was allowing him to put his lips all over her. She opened her mouth to ask him plainly when half-remembered knowledge tore through the shroud of glamour. She realized that she was kneeling on the floor in a tryst with an incubus.

  Portia scuttled backward, gripping the crossbow with a white-knuckled fury. How had he been able to bewitch her? He laughed in a gentle manner that was chillingly out of place as Portia backed up against a glass case. The mute, blind occupant stood slightly slumped and oblivious.

  “What’s the matter, my darling? Do you not find me beautiful? Do you not desire me?”

  “I do not,” she whispered, feeling no conviction behind her words. But it was a good beginning, a tiny ledge to grasp to keep from falling back into the abyss of his sensual trickery.

  She buried her face into the crook of her elbow, feeling the familiar texture of the cotton canvas. It smelled like her room in the Penemue chapter house, like her soap and faintly like brimstone from her encounter with the fiend only the night before. It seemed so much longer ago than that. The comfort of these mundane scents helped clear her mind. She could understand, in some muddled fashion, that she had indeed been ensorcelled by the incubus. A feat, given her training and the protective charms laid upon her, that should have been impossible.

  Her training. It had failed her time and time again. The mistake that allowed a fiend’s shriek to turn her hair to white. The avoidable accident that had cost Imogen her life. And now this, canoodling with an incubus. Something was definitely amiss, and it was more than her training. She felt raw and exposed. So easily had the demon been able to dip into her memories without even stirring the surface of her consciousness. It was her training, Portia realized, that had saved her. That could only mean one thing. The charms were gone. And if the charms were gone, that meant Lady Hester…

  She shuddered violently and tossed the thought away from her. She had to concentrate on the matter at hand. Her arms weak with yearning, she raised the crossbow. His face was so handsome, yes, so much like Emile. Emile, who had carried Portia away from the garret of her father’s house and into a new life. Emile, who had always been so kind and doting. He was the only man for whom Portia had felt any infatuation, and it had been nothing more than a young girl’s hero-worship. Now his essence was being used to try to destroy her.

  “You chose poorly, you realize,” Portia growled, trying to muster her strength beneath a façade of bravado. “Not only the face, but the gender.”

  The young man shrugged and tossed his head to clear the lock of hair that had fallen perfectly and roguishly across his eyes. “I am limited in certain ways. But come, my dear, let me show you what I am able to do. Every lock needs a key, you know. There is nothing but pleasure in my arms.” He held out his hands to her, and for a moment, Portia was swayed. But when she looked into his face, she could see the bloody gleaming of his eyes and the dull shine of row after row of black, pointed teeth between his plump lips.

  She braced the crossbow against her belly and pulled the trigger.

  The bolt flew free in an instant and the creature froze in his motions, eyes wide, mouth agape. She heard the bolt rend through the curtain and clatter to the floor somewhere across the room. With shaking hands and nearly numb fingers, Portia dug desperately through her bag for a second bolt. But the incubus was sitting very still with a curiously blank expression on his once-handsome face. The high, firm cheekbones were drooping and the shoulders were beginning to slouch. His jaw still hung open, and as he began
slowly collapsing to the floor, she could see that she had shot him clean through the mouth and out the back of his neck. Several broken teeth dropped off his tongue and fell to the floor like bits of glass as he toppled forward, trapping Portia between him and the glass specimen case. The heady scent of amber and myrrh was gone; the body instead reeked of sweat and old blood as it quivered and began to thrash in its death throes. Congealed purple-brown blood oozed from the gaping wound and dripped slowly down her shoulder. It burned where it touched her, scalding like hot tea spilled upon her flesh. She writhed and kicked, desperate to roll the demon off of her, but his dead weight had her pinned against the bottom of the case.

  She managed to pull one arm free and push the demon’s head aside enough to look around her. “Imogen! Imogen, help me!” But there was no one to hear her. Only the dozens of specters of Imogen’s childhood friends, unheeding in their glass boxes.

  She sighed. Slowly and painfully she started to bring her knees in toward her body. With her shoulders braced against the specimen case, she could manage a good, strong kick if she could get her feet into position. The blood was seeping everywhere, along with other fluids she preferred not to try to identify. The floor was growing slick.

  “Portia? Portia, are you all right?”

  She froze, wondering if she had imagined the voice. It was not Imogen, of that she was certain. She could see the outline of a woman carrying an electrified lantern. The woman pushed the curtains aside and surveyed the scene.

  “Good gracious, child, what have you gotten yourself into this time?” Lady Hester strode forward and knelt beside her. She touched Portia’s forehead in a motherly gesture. “Hold on, let me help you.”

  Between the both of them, they were able to roll the dead incubus off of Portia. Hester offered her hand to help Portia to her feet.

  “Careful there.” She led the girl away from the pool of thickening blood and offered her a linen handkerchief, which Portia took gratefully. “Do you want to explain what’s going on here?”

  Portia took a deep breath, unsure of where to begin. “It is a long story. And I truly don’t know the half of it. We have to find Imogen.” Panic flared, but something gnawed at the edge of her thinking. “Wait, what are you doing here? Are you well?”

  “Well enough to come after you. You should have told someone where you were going. Someone else should have come with you and Imogen. This is dangerous business, no place for two young Gyony alone.”

  Portia’s mind reeled wildly between thoughts. She found it nearly impossible to think of more than one simple thing at a time. “Did you see Imogen when you arrived, Lady Hester? Can you sense her here?”

  Hester tilted her head as if listening. “Nothing.”

  Portia sighed, trying to clear the dust that seemed to be settling all over her words. “Imogen could explain this better. She used to live here, with these… children. I don’t know what’s happening here, but something is very wrong.”

  “Wrong? Like what?”

  “Besides the children kept in comas in their beds and the adolescents in glass specimen cases?” Her voice arced with fear.

  “Besides that, yes.” Lady Hester was imperturbable as always.

  Portia collected herself. “My transmitter. It started talking to me.”

  “It did?” Hester raised an eyebrow. “What did you hear?”

  “A prayer, or at least some incantation. I don’t know what it was.” Portia ran her hands through her hair. The kerchief was gone, somewhere in the congealed mess of blood. She glanced back and did not see it right off, but realized her well-loved Gladstone bag was still there, soaking up a disturbing amount of liquid.

  “What did it sound like?” Hester pressed her, and Portia forced her mind back on track.

  “Some of it I understood, but a lot of it was foreign, another language. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

  “It’s fine. I think I have an idea about this.”

  “You do? Wonderful. I was starting to feel like I was in over my head here.”

  Lady Hester chuckled and put her arm around Portia’s shoulders. They began walking toward the door. “Oh no, Portia, you are just where you are supposed to be. Everything is just fine.”

  “That’s good.” Portia relaxed against her body, feeling the stress and fear drain out of her. She leaned her head onto Lady Hester’s shoulder and the woman pressed a kiss into her silvery, blood-splattered hair. She felt sheepish for needing to be rescued, especially since she was less than a year from her age of majority and ought to be entirely self-sufficient, but it still felt so good to be caressed and coddled. To be petted and loved like her mother had never petted or loved her. She skipped a step. Her mother had never been affectionate to her in all her memory. And she had always wished in her deepest heart of hearts for Lady Hester to take that place in her life. She imagined grandiose scenarios wherein Hester played the part of Portia’s mother and kissed her elbows when they got scraped and cheered at piano recitals and taught her how to pour the perfect cup of tea. Those fantasies always ended with warm embraces and tender words. And they were all nothing but fantasies. Lady Hester was a kind woman, a devoted Edulica who deeply loved all the children in her care, but she was never one for physical intimacies of any sort. And here she was with Portia cuddled close by, fawning over her.

  “I am so very glad to see that you are well again, Lady Hester.”

  “Portia, my heart, you know that nothing could ever keep me from you. Of all the children, you have always been the most dear to my heart, my secret favorite.”

  And her soul sang with joy to hear it, although her heart sank at the stunning cold truth. Rarely did an incubus hunt alone. His mate was always nearby. And succubae were far more cunning in their seductions. The satchel full of charms and weapons was in the other room now, most likely stuck fast to the floorboards with gore. Portia had nothing but her wits and whatever protections might still be upon her. But seeing this perfect form of Lady Hester beside her, she knew those blessings could no longer be relied upon. The steadfast matron of the chapter house of Penemue was dead. She had to be, or at least completely lost to the waking world in a coma.

  “Are we going to alert the Primacy about this?” Portia indicated the rows and rows of narrow beds and their still and silent occupants. She played along, stalling until she could formulate a plan. But thinking was so difficult, everything in her head was moving so slowly and her shoulder ached like mad where the demon’s blood had burned her.

  “Of course.” Lady Hester nodded as she gazed around her at the sleeping children. “They will be made aware as soon as possible. This cannot continue.”

  “Oh, good. Imogen will be so glad to hear.” The relief surprised her. As if this creature would really help put an end to the barbaric experimentation.

  “Besides,” Lady Hester stopped and held Portia out at arm’s length. “We won’t be needing them anymore, now that we have you.”

  “You… what?”

  Lady Hester snatched the Saint Christopher medallion from around Portia’s neck, snapping the slender chain with a little spark of light. She then cupped Portia’s face and kissed her. The kiss was the single most penetrating and ravaging thing she had ever experienced. What began as a simple, human tongue swelled into a thick and nimble appendage that seemed to have a mind of its own. It forced itself down her throat, growing longer and more slender the deeper it burrowed until she felt a sharp stab of pain behind her breastbone. The last thing Portia saw was Lady Hester’s face close against hers, eyes rolled back in concentration, her jaw unnaturally unhinged. The corners of her mouth were stretched taut and the skin was pushed up and puckered around her elegant nose. Portia hated her for taking the face of the woman who had been the only mother she’d ever really known. She raked her fingers against Lady Hester’s throat and chest, but her strength faded quickly, and soon she had no more will to fight. As the succubus drank from her heart’s blood, Portia’s world went dark.
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br />   Chapter Four

  Shadow shapes played across Portia’s closed eyelids, and from somewhere distant she could hear the laughter of children. But it was not a comforting sound, it was aching and haunting, discordant. Portia struggled to shake free of sleep, but it held her tightly. Slowly the silhouettes blurred into the encroaching dimness and she briefly realized that it was night once more and the dreams came and went, leaving tears in their wake.

  In one dream, Imogen was standing over her with a bowl of cool water, bathing her hurt shoulder and rubbing in some kind of salve. She wanted so much to speak to her, to pull her close and just kiss her. The memory of Imogen’s flesh beneath her lips flared fresh and painful, choking her with nostalgia. She tried to speak, if only to overcome her encompassing weakness long enough to just say her name.

  “Mmmm-nnnnnn,” was all she could muster. It exhausted her, and she could feel the sweat gathering at the back of her neck.

  The dream Imogen tilted her head, and sunlight gleamed in her red hair. She leaned close, letting those brilliant sunset curls fall over Portia’s face. She kissed her with such delicate and restrained passion, gliding her tongue just beneath Portia’s parched lips. She tasted, as she always had, of vanilla and strawberries. Portia struggled to lift her arms and wrap them around her beloved, but they would not respond to her commands. Her left hand twitched, brushing against Imogen’s smooth hip. Portia reveled in that tiny touch as exhaustion swelled and drove the dream away into darkness as she slept deeply again.

  “Lamia was quite overzealous,” spoke a female voice in a heady drawl. “The girl will be of no use to us dead.”

  “She will live,” answered another, so familiar. “She is stronger than you think. And far more stubborn, too.”

  “Perfect,” the woman almost purred. “This is just the start for her.”

  Portia rose slowly into wakefulness, although her body remained thick and sluggish. Both voices, she realized, she had heard before. The woman’s was the same velvety tone that had come over the transmitter. And the other sounded so much like Imogen, but it could not be. Imogen no longer had a voice.