Lover Unbound(173)

Not long thereafter he stepped into the Tomb's belly, the vast, subterranean cave opening up a belly in the earth. At his will, thick black candles on stanchions lit up, illuminating the daggerlike stalactites that hung down as well as the massive black marble slabs that formed the wall behind the altar.

The slabes were what he had seen in his vision. When he'd stared down Route 22 and looked at the trees, he had pictured the memorial wall: As with the trees' interlocking branches, the inscriptions on the marble, all those names of warriors who had served in the Brotherhood for generations, formed a subtle, gentle pattern, looking like lace from afar.

In front of the wall the altar was crude, but powerful: an enormous block of stone set on two stout lintels. In the center was the ancient skull of the first member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, the most sacred relic the brothers had.

He pushed it aside and laid Jane down. She had lost her color, and her limp white hand as it fell off to the side made him shake all over. He carefully returned it to her, putting it on her chest.
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He stepped away until his back hit the etched wall. In the candlelight, and with his jacket over her upper torso, he could almost imagine she was sleeping.

Almost.

Surrounded by the subterranean vista, he thought of the cave of the warrior camp. Then he saw himself using his hand on the pretrans who had threatened him, and on his father.

He undid his glove and slid it off his glowing palm.

What he contemplated now went against the laws of both nature and his species.

Reanimation of the dead was not an appropriate or allowable course of action under any circumstances. And not just because it was the Omega's realm. The Chronicles of the race, those volumes and volumes of history, provided only two examples, and neither had resulted in anything but tragedy.

But he was different. This was different. Jane was different. He was doing this out of love, whereas the examples he read about had been done out of hatred: There had been a murderer that someone had brought back to use as a weapon, and a female returned to life as an act of revenge.

And there was more in his favor. He healed Butch on a regular basis, drawing the evil out of the cop when he did his business with the lessers. He could do the same for Jane. He absolutely could.

With iron resolve, he pushed from his mind the outcomes of those other forays into the Omega's realm of dark arts. And focused on his love for his female.

The fact that Jane was a human was not an issue, as reanimation was the act of bringing that which was dead back to life, and the dividing line was the same no matter the species. And he had what he needed. The ritual required three things: something of the Omega's, some fresh blood, and a source of electrical energy such as a harnessed lightning bolt.

Or in his case, his fucking curse.

V walked back out to the hall of jars and didn't waste time picking. He took one randomly from the shelf, its ceramic marked by fine cracks, its color a murky brown, which meant it was one of the early ones.

When he returned to the altar, he slammed the jar into the stone, shattering the thing, revealing what it had housed. The heart inside was covered with a black, oily sheen, preserved by what flowed in the Omega's veins. Though the exact nature of the induction into the Lessening Society was unknown, it was clear the Omega's "blood" went in first before the heart was removed.

So Vishous had what he needed from their enemy.

He looked at the skull of the first Brother and didn't think twice about using the sacred relic for what was an unlawful purpose. He took out one of his daggers, scored his wrist, and bled into the sterling silver cup that was mounted in the top of the skull. Then he palmed the lesser heart and squeezed it with his fist.

Black drops of distilled evil welled and fell, mixing with the red of his blood. The liquid sin had magic to it, the kind that ran against the rules of the righteous, the kind that turned torture into sport, the kind that enjoyed pain inflicted on the innocent… but it had eternity in it, too.

And that was what he needed for Jane.

"No!"

He spun around.

The Scribe Virgin had appeared behind him, her hood down, her transparent face a mask of horror. "You must not do this."

He turned away and brought the skull up next to Jane's head. On a fragmentary thought, he found an odd, reassuring parallel that she knew what the inside of his chest looked like and he was about to know the same of her.

"There is no balance in this! No price given!"

V removed his jacket from his female. The bloodstain under it, on his shirt, was like a bull's-eye right in the middle of her chest, between her breasts.

"She will come back not as you know her," his mother hissed. "She will come back evil. That shall be your result."#p#分页标题#e#