Blood Price

head.

    "Norman!" It wasn't very loud, but it was enough to cut the laughter off. All right, so maybe there is power in a name. I've been wrong about other things lately. Vicki tried to focus on the young man's face, couldn't manage it, and gave up. The insane hysteria of the laughter had stopped. That was the result she'd spent her strength for and she'd have to be content with the victory she'd won.

    His brows drawn down into a deep vee, Norman scowled at the woman on the floor. He was glad she was going to die. She'd chased the laughter away. Still scowling, he lit the candles and flicked off the overhead light. Not even Coreen's quick intake of breath at the sudden twilight was enough to put him in a better mood. Not until he got the briquettes burning and the air in the room grew blue with the smoke from a handful of frankincense, did his expression lighten.

    Only one thing left to do.

    When Vicki next opened her eyes she came closer to panic than she had at any time that night.

    When did it get so dark?

    She could see five flickering points of light. The rest of the room, Coreen, Norman-gone.
    And the air . . . it smelled strange, heavy, it hurt to breathe.

    Dear God, am I dying?

    She tried to move, to fight, to live. Her arms and legs were still bound. That reassured her, slowed her heart and slowed her breathing. If she was tied, she wasn't dead. Not yet.

    The lights were candles, could be nothing else, and the air reeked of incense. It must have begun.

    She didn't see Norman approach, didn't even realize he was there until he gently pushed her glasses up her nose. His fingers were warm as he wrestled with her arms and pushed the ties back to expose her left wrist. She thought she could see the faint line where Henry had fed the night before and knew she was imagining it. In this light, at this time, she couldn't have seen the wound if her entire hand had been chopped off.

    She felt the cold edge of a blade against her skin and its kiss as it opened a vein. And then another. Not the safe horizontal cuts she and Tony had made but vertical cuts that left her wrist awash in darkness and a warm puddle filling the hollow of her palm.

    "You have to stay alive through the invocation," Norman told her, pulling her arms away from her body, making them part of the symbols surrounding the pentagram. "So I'm only going to do one wrist. Don't die too fast." She heard the knife clatter down on the floor behind her, and his footsteps move away.

    Fucking right I won't. . . . The anger tired her so she let it go. Essentials only now, never say die. Especially not when die meant bleeding to death on a dirty floor and delivering her city, not to mention the world, into Armageddon. Sagged over onto her left side, her heart could be no more than four inches off the floor. By concentrating everything she had remaining on her right arm, she managed to get it under her left, elevating the bleeding wrist as high as possible. Maybe not four inches, but it would help to retard the flow.

    Pressure'll be low. . . . I could hold on for . . . hours.

    It might only be a matter of time, but as much as possible she'd make it her time, not his.

    Through her ear pressed against the floor by the weight of her head, all she could hear was a soft rhythmic hissing, like the sound of the ocean in a shell. She lay listening to that, ignoring the chanting rising around her.

    * * *
    He could have identified the specific building in the complex even without the address. The power surrounding it, the expectation of evil, caused every hair on Henry's body to rise. He was out of the car before it had completely skidded to a stop and through the locked door into the lobby a moment later. The reinforced glass was not thick enough to stop the concrete planter he heaved through it.

    * * *
    Norman spat the last discordant word into the air and let his left hand fall down to the open grimoire balanced on his right. His throat hurt, his eyes stung, and he was trembling with excitement, waiting for the telltale shimmer of air that would signify his demon was arriving.

    It never came.

    One second the pentagram was empty and the throbbing beat out a glorious rhythm inside his head. A second later, with no warning, it was full, and only echoes remained in the silence.

    Norman cried out and fell to his knees, the grimoire forgotten as he raised both hands to cover his face.

    Coreen whimpered and sagged against her bonds, consciousness fleeing what