His eyes took on a brighter shade of red that indicated his temper flaring. Far from being intimidated, I lifted my chin defiantly and held his gaze without flinching. He bared his fangs at me in a way that would have had most people peeing themselves. Personally, I found it insanely sexy, in no small part because I trusted him to never harm me. But I also understood that genuine care for my welfare prompted that overprotective reaction.
“If I tell you to go, do not argue,” he said at last.
“Very well. But I will trust you not to issue that request frivolously.”
He sniffed with annoyance but didn’t insist further. A part of me wanted to ruffle his bluish-white hair like one would with a pouting child. I loved that he worried about me, but I was a trained professional on an important mission. I didn’t want to be coddled or treated like a delicate ornament. He understood that. And as much as it pained him, he was making a genuine effort to respect that and silence his instinctive need to shelter me.
To my growing dismay—not to say despair—a little over two hours went by with nothing happening. If not for the comfortable little alcove illusion Lyall had created for us, I would have started feeling quite uncomfortable, especially with the cooler fall nights. We had no other trails to follow.
And then it finally happened.
A bluish light shot up from the ground, illuminating the pentagram which served as a transportation waypoint. Secondslater, two hooded and masked people appeared. Judging by their sizes, I assumed them to be a male-female couple. They stepped off the pentagram and turned their backs to us as they stared at the empty forest in front of them. Based on the vision that Lyall had shared with me, I could only presume that they were waiting for the portal to open for them.
For some reason, I thought they had to speak a word of power to open it. But in retrospect, I hadn’t heard either of the Onis speaking anything to trigger its opening. It had simply appeared behind him.
“Fuck!” I whispered. “I hope they are not spying on who is arriving through some form of scrying. It might be a problem for us if that’s the case.”
Lyall opened his mouth to respond, but before he could do so, a whooshing sound—muffled by the distance—resonated before a massive black portal opened in front of the couple. As they started walking towards it, three more people appeared at the waypoint. Like the previous couple, they were facing our direction upon their arrival and had to turn around to enter the dark doorway.
To my utter relief, the portal didn’t close. It stayed there as an endless string of people started appearing, sometimes a single person, other times groups of varying sizes, the largest one counting six individuals.
This type of waypoint had some sort of queue system that would prevent multiple parties from appearing on top of each other at the same time. Transport would be delayed until the previous arrivals had cleared the pentagram.
We waited until the flow started slowing down a little bit before we decided to join the fray. To my shock, Lyall gave me a bone-crushing hug that had my throat tightening. There was something almost desperate about it. When he released me, I looked at his face, but it was unreadable. As much as I hatedthat he was keeping his emotions from me, I suspected that he was both trying to hide his fear for me and berating himself for showing what could be interpreted as a moment of vulnerability.
Without a word, he put his mask in place. I imitated him. After checking one last time that our disguises were sitting properly on us and that Pasha was in a safe hiding spot, I recited a short incantation to teleport to the circle so that our arrival would seem legitimate to anyone who might be spying.
Once you knew the location of a waypoint, unless it was magically locked, anyone could teleport to it. The fact that this one no longer was locked—as it had been back in the day when the cult I grew up in was using it—further reinforced my belief that we were dealing with a new group of people. As far as I could remember, we also never dealt with Onis.
Heart pounding, I followed Lyall as he stepped first through the portal. We appeared inside a massive temple with dark-gray stones on both the floor and the walls. My knees nearly buckled, and I felt myself pale as I seemed to have traveled back to the most horrendous time of my life.
Massive, ornate pillars rose to the insanely high ceilings of the circular room. Red banners embroidered in gold hung from the dark wood rafters. They depicted the monstrous faces of the demon lords the order worshipped. Over a hundred people spread throughout the front half of the room in a semi-circle around the central altar that had haunted many of my nightmare-filled nights growing up. Chained shackles were embedded in the stone at each corner of the empty altar, which sat in a recess at the bottom of three steps. A humongous magic circle surrounded the altar, with many more smaller circles inside it.
I had never seen this configuration. And although I recognized some of the runic combinations for specific spells, I couldn’t begin to imagine what all of them together would enact.The two dozen naked bodies writhing all over it in an unbridled orgy made it harder to decipher. As for the other guests, they all wore the similar black robes and masks Lyall and I had donned.
However, it was the cast of people in the other half of the room that claimed my attention.
A cold shiver ran down my spine as I stared at the high priestess—or was it the new Oracle?—sitting on a large throne.
She was ‘dressed’ in a blood red sheer outfit that leftnothingto the imagination. One long panel of see-through fabric formed the back of her ankle-length skirt, and another much narrower one hung in front, leaving her endless, slender legs exposed. Her clean-shaven sex was visible behind it as she hadn’t bothered with any underwear. The upper half of her garment was basically a cage made of a few strips of red fabric meant to form the skeleton of a spaghetti strap negligee. Her perky breasts were fully exposed, but golden nipple clamps with short tassels dangling at the tips hid her little nubs.
Straight, long black hair draped her slender shoulders. An eyeless red mask with red swirls and a twisted set of horns hid her face from the nose up. This left visible her plump lips painted in the same blood red as her outfit. She appeared to be staring at the orgy, despite her eyes being covered by the mask. Her pink tongue poked out as she licked her lips in a lascivious fashion while slipping two long painted nails between her thighs to rub her clit.
Twelve Elders dressed in red robes adorned with gold stood by the throne, six on each side. In front of them, four more cultists dressed in black robes with gold masks stood close to the edge of the recessed area leading to the altar. They were chanting over the people fornicating. Through a door at the far left of the room, a procession of eight more people dressed in gold robes but without any mask walked to the center of theroom. They discarded their garbs, letting them drop to the floor, before joining the orgy.
I couldn’t decide whether I was relieved or distraught that none of the women participating in that sex marathon were the missing clerics. Technically, they could be among the other masked attendees. But considering how Elliot had made use of Sienna and Vivian, I highly doubted that they would be here as guests instead of tools or sacrifice.
My mind was reeling. This was my birth cult’s Sanctuary. The woman on the throne could have been Mother. The blind mask implied that she was an Oracle or all-seeing. This cult was also heavily into sex magic. But I didn’t recognize this specific ritual or chants. And above the throne, a giant statue of Asmodeus—demon of lust, mischief, jealousy, anger, and revenge—dominated the scene. He was leaning forward, depicted with a leering expression as he stared at the sweaty bodies fucking before him.
However, the Harbingers of Aeshua had not worshipped Asmodeus.
That realization was the only thing that kept me from going into a full-blown panic. Asmodeus ruled the second circle of Hell and was described as having three heads: a human in the center, and a bull and ram heads on each shoulder. But those who claimed to have encountered him in the flesh asserted that he had more of a demonic human appearance with a single head—not that it mattered. As November was the month where his powers were deemed to be the strongest, it made sense for them to perform this ritual now.
Since Asmodeus was reputed to love manipulating human desires, it might explain why Onis were serving this cult. Those demons thrived on messing with people’s heads, fanning their fears and longings to drive them to an early demise.
Lyall’s intense gaze on me drew my attention, snapping me out of my semi-traumatized trance. I glanced at him and gave him a subtle nod to express that I was okay. The glimmer of worry in his eyes dimmed a bit but didn’t fully abate. It was odd to see him with blue eyes and round pupils. He morphed their appearance as his red eyes with reptilian pupils would draw too much suspicion.
For now, we couldn’t intervene. Unfortunately, unless Lyall tasted the blood of the people participating in the orgy, we couldn’t say for sure whether they were willing participants or had been mind-controlled into it. A part of me wanted to still find a discreet spot to send a message to the Curia, but with everyone else standing still as they observed the proceedings, moving would draw too much attention.
