Yasmine Galenorn - Crimson Veil

Carter did a double take. “You’re friends with a paid assassin? Of course I know who she is.”

It was our turn to spit-take. “You mean you actually know her name without checking up on any files? Then she didn’t give me a false name?”

He slapped his palm to his forehead. “If you’ve run afoul of her, consider yourself lucky to still be alive. Eisha’s well paid, but not because she’s terribly discreet. No, she’s willing to take risks—put her own life on the line to go after her target. What the hell happened?”

I shrugged. “I think Lowestar hired her to kill me after I refused to sell my bar. That didn’t work, so she planted a tracer bug on me and another goon—maybe her, too—came after me.”

Carter shook his head. “Probably right on that. She’s never out to get anybody on a personal level, but the woman will do anything for money. Chances are she was paid well to make a hit. And now that she’s failed to kill you twice? She’ll probably be long gone before whoever took out the contract can catch up with her and take her down for failure. I doubt you’ll ever see her again.”

I leaned back. That was reassuring, yet not. She was still out there. Gun for hire. Or in this case, SUV for hire.

“Meanwhile, back to Lowestar and Suvika. Word has filtered through the grapevine that he’s performing the ritual tonight. So I did a little more research—I paid dearly for this information so I hope you appreciate it. The ritual to waken the demigod must take place during the first three days after the dark of the moon, in the autumn-tide. So it’s perfect timing.”

Carter tossed a dossier on the table. “Here’s what I could gather. I think there must be a temple complex beneath the Farantino Building. And I think that’s where they will be performing the rite. To do so takes blood. Human blood. The fresh, warm, sticky blood of a virgin girl and a strong young man.”

He sat back, taking another cookie.

I picked up the file and opened it. Then as Carter motioned to the blueprints, Delilah scooped them up.

The file was a treatise on how the ritual to Suvika went. It was written in a foreign tongue, but had been translated to English. I skimmed through the rites and charms to get an idea of what we were facing, and it wasn’t pretty.

“Okay, we have ritual bloodletting as part of the offering. The defloration of virgins. Throat cutting of young virile men. The offering of gold and silver. A little torture, a little tickle… the whole ball of wax. Suvika must be friends with Jakaris.” Jakaris was the Svartan god of vice and torture, and I had the feeling that they’d have a fuckton of fun together.

Delilah held up the prints. “It seems the Farantino Building is definitely hiding more than we thought. In the basement, there is a passage that leads to a stairwell going down.”

“Not back into Underground Seattle.” Camille groaned.

“No, but into the depths of a temple. From what I can tell, there’s a way to get into the temple through an old sewer line that runs there.”

“Great. What you want to bet he’s filled it with alligators?” Camille put her cookie down, looking vaguely nauseated. “The last thing I want to do is tramp through a sewer.”

“It could be worse. Maybe they’ve figured out a way to hook up electric lines through the sewage. One good turn of the switch and bingo. Crispy critters via electrocution. Crispy critters that smell .” I hadn’t meant to sound flippant, but it came out that way. “Oh, don’t give me those looks. You all know what I mean. And if that’s actually the case, better we plan on it in advance and be happily surprised if it doesn’t happen.”

“You make a good point.” Vanzir frowned. “So what—we go in there tonight and invade their temple room? Very Conan the Barbarian .”

“Very Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull ,” Delilah countered.

“Very likely to get us killed but who the fuck cares?” Camille let out a short burst of laughter. “We’ve faced worse before. Gulakah was a full-fledged god, not just some sleeping demigod. And Lowestar is a daemon. We’ve fought demon generals . But what do we know about his body guards other than he seems to have a penchant for hellhounds and Tregart-like thugs? Does he have any secondary priests—because I assume he is a priest of this god?”

“He is, indeed. I managed to scrounge up a few details about the ritual. Not many, but enough to give us a rough guideline. First, it requires that the rite be performed at four hours before midnight. Meaning eight P.M. It’s almost six now. Second, they need a virgin to sacrifice. Old school, but apparently Suvika gets into the kinky stuff. And third, they must have a virile and muscular young man—I wasn’t able to translate the reasons for that except it involves throat cutting. Lastly, the priest attempting to wake Suvika and become his favorite must offer a basket of gold and a basket of silver up to the demigod.”

“Virgin. Jock. Gold and silver. Got it.” I shook my head. This was starting to sound like a bad B-grade horror flick. Satan’s Schlong for Girls or some such movie. “So what goes down during this horror show?”

Carter repressed a snicker. “Well, they kill the virgin, which means you have to save the girl first. Then I’m not sure what they do with the jock, but the money is poured into a fire hot enough to melt it. After that it gets muddy and hard to translate, but the best I can read it, Suvika wakes up, the priest gets rewarded, and then… whatever happens, I have no clue. But it can’t be good.”

“No, it can’t be good.” You just didn’t wake up a creaky old perverted demigod and expect fruity joy to follow.

“So we go in. We stop Lowestar. I assume that means killing him because you know that if we do anything else, he’ll be back, worse than ever.” Smoky slid his hands into his jeans’ pockets and leaned back in his chair. “Our actions yesterday precipitated this, but there was nothing else we could do. We couldn’t leave the prisoners there. And they’re in danger until Lowestar is put out to pasture.”

“I have a question.” Morio leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “What the fuck do we do if he does manage to summon up Suvika? How do you fight this demigod?”

I wanted to say “perish the thought,” but the truth was, we did need to think about the possibility. “Carter, what do you know about Suvika’s vulnerabilities? The information I found earlier stated that if he’s summoned incorrectly, all hell will break loose and he’ll be totally free. Which indicates that he might be under some form of control if Lowestar manages to perform the rites correctly.”

“Suvika is one of what we call the ancient gods. They predate the Greeks and Romans. My father, Hyperion the Titan, is from that time-before-time. While some of the world had written records—Egypt, Sumer, Babylonia—there were great civilizations that you know nothing about because all record of them was lost to time. Atlantis is one of these. Predating Egypt, it was an island nation that did, indeed, sink beneath the waves when the massive volcano that was at the center of the island erupted, causing a huge quake and tsunami. There’s very little in the way of proof that it ever existed, but it was there.”

“I found evidence that he is thought to be either an ancient Mongolian or Finnish deity—at least from that area.” I frowned. “But there’s not much to go on.”

“That’s because those cultures were passed down through oral tradition. So much has been lost over the years, especially when you go back that far. But if he is from that area, then we need to find his weakness, and find the proper name of his enemy—be it iron or whatever.”