Behind the Ivory Veil
25 Dance with the Devil
Saturday, 20 August 1955, Kastraki, Greece
A SOFT STEP on the gravel near Rebecca began to rouse her out of her sleep. She leaned back against the strong hand that lifted her hair to caress her neck.
“Ah, Wes, you’re back,” she sighed.
His lips irresistibly pressed against hers and she was locked in the embrace before she was fully awake. She opened her lips to accept the invitation of his tongue and their kiss rose in passion. How odd for Wesley to make such an open demonstration in the courtyard. He took her so much by surprise while she was still in her half-waking state that she could not help responding to the intimacy.
He lifted her, dancing around the courtyard… dancing like they had on the mountain, still lost in that intimate kiss. Flickering images behind her tightly closed eyelids reminded her first of the dance on the mountain and then of the dances around the fire at Carles. Naked dancing bodies circling the fire. The intimacy of the spiral dance, of feather caresses against each of the coven dancers. Her lover was even more passionate than he had been in the City of the Gods, in their bed, on the bridge.
She felt her body lifted in the air as if she weighed nothing—perhaps supported only by the passionate kiss. She was raised and lowered horizontally to their bed, yet so much higher than the bed in their cottage. Still, the breeze began to play beneath the buttons of her blouse and she felt the fabric fall away from her. She felt his soft caress of her breasts and moaned into his mouth.
When a sharp point began caressing her flesh, dreaming fled from her head. She’d felt the bite of this knife at the stone circle when she was initiated. It traced a familiar pattern between her breasts and then slid beneath the front of her bra, slicing through the fabric and letting it spring away from her tender breasts. A sickening sensuality mixed liberally with fear and revulsion as she pushed away from her lover. He held fast to her lips with a hand clenched in her hair and the knife continuing to trace patterns on her bare torso. It generated a pain in her stomach—a sickness that made her revolt from the continued passion. She drew into the sickness and exploded outward, thrusting her sadistic would-be lover away from her, and opening her eyes to see Ryan McGuire grinning above her.
She lay stretched out on the platform that had been built to hold the old man’s funeral pallet, her breasts bare to the sky. Surrounding herself and the entire well was the shimmering light of a warded circle through which she could scarcely define the shapes of the surrounding cottages. Beside her, stood The Blade, a black leather-gloved hand still stretched out to touch her with the ritual Athamé of Cobhan Carles.
“What is this?” she demanded, taking control and pushing his gloved hand away from her. “Are you afraid to leave fingerprints in your criminal activity?” The arousal and passion had fled from her as soon as she opened her eyes. She could stand naked before this man and have no response.
He grabbed her healed hand and looked at it, then held his gloved hand up next to it.
“I am not as quick to heal as you, Hart. Or were you faking an injury at the hospital?”
“There is no faking the power of the goddess,” intoned Rebecca. “Let me help you—heal you.”
“Oh, you will help me. You will help me raise the power that I need to open the veil. Your friends failed to bring down the goddess. I will not.”
“There was no failure. You seek something that is not there.”
“I have already searched and have found nothing, but your husband’s notes. They will be helpful in opening the gates.”
“It doesn’t help to know how to search if you have no idea what you are looking for. You will find nothing on the mountain either. There is nothing there. And I’ve no interest in helping you raise power.”
“You are past choosing,” Ryan answered, pushing Rebecca back down on the pallet. “I want the goddess and you have the power. There may be more pleasant ways to raise it than under a sacrificial blade.”
“Forget it, Blade. You are not who I thought you were. Not who I ever thought you were. You are far too late for a virgin sacrifice.” Her hands darted out and clasped his gloved fist. She squeezed the injured hand with all her might, remembering the pain in her hand that she had suffered. The tender burned flesh beneath the glove tightened around the hilt of the Athamé and he yelled in anger and pain. The back of his good hand connected with her face, knocking her back down on the bier. The knife changed hands and Ryan’s anger turned to laughter. There was a manic glow in his eyes.
“So, you like pain, do you? I’m very good at that.” He moved toward her again with the knife poised, confident in his superior size and strength. This time the steel was met with her own blade and she rose upon the platform again, swinging her feet over the edge.
“A blade between us, as you told me,” she said. “I’ll leave now. I think you should, too.”
He laughed. “Leave? You have missed the point. This is my warded circle. You cannot walk through someone else’s wards. You can’t leave me. We are locked here until love or death sets us free.” Rebecca looked critically at the wards as she circled the well, staying on the opposite side from Ryan.
“Where are your pentacles, Blade?” Rebecca asked. She flicked her knife back and forth. A worn engraving caught her eye. “Did you give me something more than your Athamé when you attacked me? You did, didn’t you? You combined your Athamé and your pentacles into a single tool and now they are in my possession.”
“What difference does it make? Don’t believe all that rubbish about witch’s tools. They are merely symbols of the power held within. Magic is all in your head. The more powerful your mind the more powerful your magic.”
“I see. And is the power of your mind supposed to make me fear your wards?” He lunged at her but she slipped beneath his guard in a feinted lunge. He spun on her and tripped her. Rebecca rolled away and placed herself between Ryan and the shimmering wall of light that surrounded the well.
“You are a pretty fighter, Hart. Circle now. The power is rising. Power is neutral. It is as strong in anger as it is in sex. You can feel it swirling around you in a vortex—yours to raise, mine to command.”
“It’s about to end,” whispered Rebecca. “You don’t understand the powers you have been playing with. I can see from here that the lust for power has consumed you and controls you.” Rebecca lifted the star stone from her pocket and held it between her fingers. “Have you looked deeply into your heart? Look at my pentacles, Blade. A hungry star-shaped void in space.” The jewel sparkled in an odd way, as if the rays of light that missed it were more pronounced because of those that hit it and disappeared. She placed her stone against the engraving on the knife and could hear it hiss as the image on the blade disappeared. “It likes you, Blade. I like you, too. If we had met under other circumstances… Well, never mind about that.”
She reached toward the warded wall of light with the black shimmering jewel in her fingers. Where it touched, the light ceased to be. The empty space in the ward grew until the entire shimmering wall of light was absorbed—sucked into the jewel—and was gone.
Ryan sank to his knees and dropped the Athamé. Both hands came to the sides of his head. “Stop it, Hart! For the Goddess’s sake, please stop it!”
Rebecca placed the black void stone in her pocket. Ryan still knelt with his hands clutched against his forehead.
“My head. It tried… Battering my head.” The man choked on his own words and Rebecca was at once caught up in mothering her wayward child. She reached out a tentative hand, half expecting him to grab it in a feint. He was passive as it rested on his head. She could feel the pain—a minor thing—but the terror that accompanied it was irrational—otherworldly. It was a living being, feeding on his soul. She could do nothing about that. Ryan McGuire’s inner demons were his own to deal with. She sought deeper and found the damaged flesh and nerve endings in his hand. She could feel the burning, itching flesh beneath the glove—the heat almost soothing in comparison to the cold fear. She felt the stone in her pocket search through her for the fire in his hand and let it go. The pain of the injured hand fled as well. She opened her eyes to find Ryan staring up at her.
“What did you do?” he croaked.
“Ryan,” she said and caressed his head as he laid it against her thigh. “Take off your glove.”
“My glove?” He obediently pulled the black leather glove from his hand. The dried, burned flesh fell away and beneath it was a wholly healed hand. He flexed it as he looked in awe. “You and I could… As you say, never mind that. Still…” He picked up the Athamé, slid it into his belt sheath, and stood.
“As you said, the magic is all in your head.”
“I have never needed a tool to work magic since the time I received Creüs as guardian of the First Face of Carles. It is a good thing. You hold three of my tools in your hand. If you ever find my cup, keep it safe for me.”
“You made this knife your wand as well?” asked an astonished Rebecca. “Where did you leave your cup?”
“I don’t remember. In a desert. Or an ocean. It never seemed important.” They looked at each other and Ryan bent forward just enough to place a kiss against her unresponsive lips. “You know, I will have her eventually. I know now how to open the gates of Olympus. Together we could rule the world.”
“You’d better go now, Blade.”
“I suppose I’ll have to do it without you.”
“I suppose you will.”
Ryan bent to kiss her again, then turned to scoop up a backpack near the entrance to the courtyard. Rebecca heard voices from the village as the mourners returned from the funeral pyre.
“Here’s till next time, Hart.” He turned on his heel and left before the first of the torchbearers came in sight. Rebecca hurried to her cottage with her tools and cut the remains of her bra off her shoulders. She flung it into a corner and lay on the bed sobbing as the adrenaline ran out of her.
Sunday, 21 August 1955, Kastraki, Greece
Wesley held his beloved wife in his arms. She had been stretched on the bed when he returned with the mourners the night before. He ate from the food they brought, but felt uneasy about the crowd in the courtyard. As quickly as possible he’d entered the cottage to divest himself of the monk’s habit. He took the time to help Rebecca out of the rest of her clothes wondering that she had been so exhausted that she fell asleep before finishing undressing. He handed her a nightgown. She let it fall to the floor and held out her arms.
While the wake went on in the courtyard, Wesley and Rebecca had made love. Dawn had come before the mourners stopped singing and dancing and before Rebecca had finally slept in her husband’s arms.
It was quiet outside after the churches and monasteries had finished pealing their Sunday morning calls to worship. Through partially lidded eyes, he watched his wife sleeping and thought of the funeral and wake. Poor Father Dimitri would have a somnambulant congregation this morning.
But Wesley had noted another presence slipping away from the cluster of houses as he returned from the funeral. He was certain he had seen his and Rebecca’s nemesis. He wondered now where he had gone and what mischief he had played. Rebecca had been alone. Should he have been concerned about her virtue? Her health?
Wesley was yet attempting to resolve his internal conflict, thinking that perhaps he should have risen with the church bells to stand in the village church and recite the liturgy. But when he had made love to Rebecca in the night, he was filled with images of the goddess that commanded his loyalty. And he had the strong feeling that goddess lay here in his arms, able to sleep because he was watchful. He would protect her.
As he watched over her, sleep claimed him again and he was one with her dreams.
Rebecca bit back tears of frustration, alternately exploding in tears of rage. Something happened in the encounter with Ryan McGuire that was of great import. Something she needed to know. But the raw emotional outpourings in the wake of the encounter kept her memory at bay. She had taken out her frustrations on her husband, giving him the passion Ryan had aroused. Had she known it was Ryan all along? Had she really believed it was Wesley’s lips that held her—that it was Wesley’s arms that had lifted her to the bier? And once she had known, what kept her from giving herself to him? She could not deny that even the cold bite of his knife had aroused her. Was it only his dominance that set her on fire? If not, then in her victory over him, why had she not claimed him as her spoils? She could have bent him to her cold will.
Yet, she had not been cold in her farewell. She might, even then, have fallen into his arms. But he had no fire left in him. He was cold in his passion, those demon-lit eyes boring into her.
When she healed his hand, she had carefully left what she called his inner demon alone, but now the image tracked in her mind with horror. Was it merely the inner demons that all people carried and were haunted by, or had The Blade raised a different kind of power in his quest for the goddess?
Her dark star stone that she called pentacles—received from the hand of the goddess and embedded in her husband’s forehead—had eaten away Ryan’s wards as if they did not exist at all. And then they had turned to the gatekeeper himself, sucking at the fire within him. Sucking at the demon he had raised.
And she had stopped.
She had carefully left the demon alone as she had sucked the fire out of Ryan’s burned hand and let it return to the presence in his soul. The passion and drive to find and possess the goddess did not come from Ryan, but from the demon.
For the first time, Rebecca realized she was truly in danger. The child within her was in danger. It was not a man, but a demon that sought her.
The original schedule had been for Marcos to arrive on Sunday and return with the explorers and his son to Athens on Monday. With Rebecca’s arrival, the rush to Metéora, and the death and burial of his father, however, plans were in chaos. Seven people would scarcely fit in Marcos’s Jeep with their luggage and acquisitions. Marcos felt obligated to stay with his mother and sister a bit longer, but Helen worried about leaving the inn tended only by her one assistant.
“I suggest that we make our departure by rail in the next day or two,” Doc said. “Let us leave Marcos and his family to their grieving.”
“Most of our gear can stay here,” Margaret agreed. “The family can always use more camping gear and aside from that, we have only our personal items and notes.”
Wesley uncharacteristically laughed at that. His wife and companions looked at him.
“I’ve no notes,” he sighed. “I thought to look them over this morning, but they are gone. I assume with us all at the funerary last night, it was no problem for Ryan McGuire to search our belongings.” He looked at Rebecca. “I am surprised you slept through his invasion and am thankful you were not molested, darling.”
Rebecca heaved a sigh and tears sprang to her eyes. Wesley pulled her rapidly into his arms.
“You were,” he said angrily. “I will utterly destroy him.” Rebecca clutched him tightly.
“I prevailed. This time,” she said.
“We need to check to see if our notes are also missing,” Doc said, standing. “We’ll leave you to talk, but right now, I am in full agreement with Wesley. I’ve put up with that arrogant graverobber for fifteen years. It’s time to put a stop to it.” Doc and Margaret left the two lovers to check their packs and precious notes from the City of the Gods.
“Wes, my love, I need to tell you… There is more that you do not understand.”
“Is he your lover, Becc?”
“No! But there is a bond of sorts between us. A bond I must sever but I don’t know how.”
“Perhaps it will be severed when I separate his head from his body,” Wesley raved. Of course, he had no ability to carry out his threat in a face-to-face confrontation, and would undoubtedly come out the worse, but his head was spilling over with thoughts of his wife being molested. His wife and daughter. A sudden cold calmness swept over him. The wife and daughter he had sworn to protect. Whatever else was between Rebecca and Ryan would have to wait. The important thing was to protect his wife and child. With Wesley’s notes, Ryan would know how to access the City of the Gods, in whatever state of chaos it currently resided. He and Rebecca had freed the goddess, but the veil was still there.
Wesley spun to look at Rebecca, grasping her shoulders in his hands. She met his eyes steadily. “You know how to sever the bond,” he whispered. “I know how to eliminate the threat. What must we do?”
“I’m afraid, Wesley. Please, love me. Take me. Possess me. Tonight, we will break the spell.”
The sun had sunk beyond the pillars of Metéora as the family and a few friends continued to sit together in the courtyard. Wesley had taken his guitar outside and played a background of music as Pol juggled and did little magic tricks. Margaret sat with Thea Pariskovopolis, chatting in the meaningless way that comforts the bereaved, listening to tales of when Thea was young and so in love with the older brother of her friend Demi. Andrew’s sister joined the conversation to say that Thea was set to go off with Leo until she met Andrew. The storytelling and camaraderie continued well into the darkness of night.
Inside the small cottage, Rebecca explained to Doc what was needed.
“I forged a bond of fire with The Blade,” she explained. “I believe, in doing so, that I may have actually created the demon that resides in him. It is hungry and is as fixed on me as on the goddess he desires.”
“The Blade has been known to practice the dark arts,” Doc replied. “It would not surprise me to find he had raised a demon in himself. Nonetheless, it is completely possible that your ritual binding him could also have strengthened the presence. But I don’t know what I can do to help you here.” He smiled at her and she maintained silence as he observed her. Finally, she looked squarely into his eyes.
“When I work magic with a sister or brother of the coven, I give my true name. I give it to you. I am called Sadb.”
“I was once given a magical name by my mentor. I have not used it in many years. I am called Brand,” Doc said. “How can I help?”
“The Blade…”
“If we are to work a deep magic, you should know that his true name is Janus, the two-faced guardian of the gates,” Doc interrupted her. It was not completely in keeping with the coven protocols to reveal another witch’s name without his permission, but the entire ritual would be focused on this other.
“Janus. How appropriate. He attempted to intimidate me by creating a sacrifice, plunging his Athamé into the heart of my staff. He has very little respect for his tools, considering Creüs to be the only thing he needs. He doesn’t even know where his cup is.” Rebecca interrupted her story when Doc laughed.
“He was at a revel some seven years ago and after drinking a salute to his host, he flung his cup in the fireplace and it shattered. He has had only three tools since then.”
“Then he has none,” Rebecca said. “He had embodied all his other tools in this one knife—Athamé, pentacles, and wand. If he had been able to conceal a flask in the handle, he probably would have made it his cup as well.”
“He’s always considered the Athamé of Carles to be his own.”
“I stripped him of his own Athamé in my ritual. It nearly killed me and created such a strong bond that his hand was burned as badly as mine.”
“Burned?” Rebecca held her right hand out to Doc.
“When I arrived here a week ago, my hand was blistered and red. On the mountain, I was shown how to heal it. I worked the same cure on Janus last night.” Doc swallowed hard, wondering what kind of witch Rebecca had become. “But also, last night, I stripped the pentacles from the blade. It frightened him. It frightened the demon within him.”
“The wand. The source of the fire. That is what you want to strip away now.”
“And break forever the bond between us.” Rebecca looked at Doc’s staff. “Is that not the staff of the Vagabond Poet?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, though I fear that in my hand it is merely a walking stick.”
“It will do. We are cildru of the same circle. Just be in the same circle with me. If I lose control, stop me. Ground me. Break the spell. I do not dare to work alone.” She prepared her circle and for the first time, Doc saw the black void of the star stone in her hand. It seemed to have a life of its own, sucking at him until he turned away.
Outside, Pol’s clear high voice was joined by Wesley’s and several others as they sang a hymn, a kind of Vesper. The tones rose and fell, gradually slipping into the ancient music language. Wesley seemed to know the song—if that was what it was—as well as Pol and it reinforced the circle as she cast it. She went to the East and lit a candle from the one on her altar. She moved behind Doc to pick up the candle in the South. Doc closed his eyes to center himself and relax. He could feel the presence of the wards, but had never succeeded in casting a circle. His knowledge was in combat with his faith.
As Sadb moved to the final candle, Doc saw the shimmering glow take shape all around the room. She was pleased. She had not told Doc that she had never managed to cast a circle that was completely controlled. “Hold out your wand, Brand,” she commanded softly. Sadb presented the star stone to the altar candle and the flame shrank noticeably, sucked into the void. She then reached out to touch the iron heel of Doc’s staff. In a moment, he felt a numbness creeping into his fingertips. He flexed his fingers for a better grip and Sadb moved away with the stone.
“If anything should happen, like I lose control or pass out or something, touch your wand to the wards and blow out the altar candle. It should ground the power and get us to safety. I hope.”
With her instructions given, she turned away from Doc and he knew his role now was simply to watch and wait.
Pol and Wesley continued to sing into the night air as Rebecca picked up their rhythm, swaying, spinning, and clapping as she moved. With a sidelong glance toward Doc, she began stripping off her clothes until she danced skyclad around the room. She hummed and subvocalized with the music from outside. A force like an electrical field filled the room and raised the hairs on their necks and arms. The air crackled with power.
Sadb approached the altar, hardly able to stand for the dizziness that swept over her. She focused on the star stone jewel that had come from the center of the dais in the City of the Gods. Her words were scarcely audible, reflecting years of study and research.
“Solomon gave me pentacles, but the goddess gave them to him. Now, power of the earth, arise and hear Sadb’s blessing.” She spun around once more and collected the power in the room to focus on the stone.
“I charge you, pentacles, with earth. Take power from the air, the fire, the water, and the earth. Glow with passion deep inside. For passion is the life—a flame that burns within the soul. When the flame dies, the body cools. The soul is lost in darkness. The eyes no longer see. The tremors of the loving touch dispelled by fervent plea.”
Oh thief!
Return, return, oh Shulamite,
Place the joy back in my heart.
Return the love and pleasure
That has driven us apart.
Return. Return.
Return.
Rebecca reached out her hand so deftly that the stone seemed to jump into her palm. She turned away from Doc so that he could not see the stone. In her other hand, she took up her Athamé.
“The purity of this tool must be restored. Let the power of the South recede from this blade and its fire pass into my wand, Pele. Let the fire that bound Sadb and Janus be quenched. Everything passes. Everything changes.”
As she spoke, she pointed the Athamé at her staff, lying on the altar with her cup. Flame erupted from the point of the knife and struck the wounded heart carved in its wood. As the flame threatened higher, Sadb touched the dark star stone to the handle of the blade and the fire drained out of it. Instead, a continued small flame flickered in the wounded wood and then was absorbed.
Sadb spun rapidly like a dervish, snatching her other tools up as she passed the altar and clasping all four tools to her bare breasts as she danced. She found herself once again caught in the vortex of her own cone of power and slowly drifted again around the spiral chanting an ancient spellbinding that Hebe had taught her.
By all the powers surrounding me
This spell tied and bound shall be
To do no harm nor turn on we
Who work it here. So mote it be.
She made four full circuits around her tiny altar placing each of her tools in their respective quadrants. When she reached the North, she raised the stone above her hand and slapped it down hard beneath her palm, grounding the power. The slap stung her fingers, but the retort knocked both Rebecca and Doc off their feet. Rebecca fell back on the bed. Doc went to the floor. His walking stick, thrust out beside him, touched the wards and he felt them sucked up and dissolved in an instant. His ears rang as he stumbled to the altar on his knees and blew out the candle with as much breath as he could muster. It took two tries before it sputtered out. Only then did he realize that the surrounding candles had gone out with the wards and left them in darkness.
Doc managed to get to the shuttered window and opened it for the light that was in the courtyard. Pol and Wesley continued to sing by the well. The rest of the family and friends all seemed to have wandered off.
Rebecca rolled over and began to collect her clothes as she listened to the surreal music. She identified the pictures of the song with deep emotions and drew strength from her partner. As a finale to her performance, it washed away the footprints on the sand.
She might not be out of danger, but she was at least free.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
