She drinks from the cup, sending a rivulet of red dripping down the corner of her mouth. As her eyes fall to me, her pupils are blown. She’s not just intoxicated; she’s drugged out of her mind.
“What did you give me?” I ask, my voice hoarse, my stomach pitching in need to rid the contents.
Her backdrop of flame and disfigured herd lends to her ethereal appearance. “A little taste of ecstasy,” Devyn says, her persona fully absorbed in a frenetic state as she sways. “To reach our zenith, we have to submit to ekstasis.”
Devyn snaps her fingers, and a woman with reedy antlers and her dark, naked skin decorated in red symbols walks through the fire. She’s carrying the circlet of ivy, bone, and fawn antlers—the one Kallum designed for me to wear in his ritual, the one I gave to Devyn along with the other evidence.
Staring past the woman’s shoulder, I see the same symbols on the wall that’s marked on her skin…then the lifeless stag right below.
As Devyn offers her the chalice, I realize it’s not filled with wine.
And the stag is not the main sacrifice tonight.
After handing off the staff to the woman, Devyn sinks down in front of me and, taking my face between her palms, she begins to rock us to the rhythmic drumming. “Don’t look at them,” she whispers. “Keep your eyes on me.”
Body exposed and skin blanketed in gooseflesh, I surrender to her movements, letting her sway our bodies as I try to find her through our drug induced state. “Devyn, please listen to me—”
“The act of sparagmos was more than reenacting the god’s destruction and rebirth,” she says, cutting me short, her voice as immaterial as our scenery. “It’s a sacred rite to summon the god into the animal.” She rests her forehead to mine, intimate, comforting. “Rending and eating of the raw flesh is communing with the god, inviting him in. By consuming the animal, we in turn become one with Dionysus.”
She breaks away, her mouth stretching into a captivating smile, and my heart pangs at the sight.
There is no greater destruction than one of self. And therefore, no catalyst more powerful to wield in alchemic creation.
“Destruction isn’t an end,” I whisper, Kallum’s words falling from my lips, “it’s a beginning.”
Her dark eyes gleam brilliantly in the dancing firelight. “Exactly.”
The loss I feel carves a hollowness through my insides. I fold my arms over my chest, feeling the raw ache of mourning as I cover my breasts.
I’d closed myself off from friends, colleagues, everyone in my life, never wanting to feel that pain of loss again. Then Kallum blew my barriers wide open. But Devyn…she opened up a passage inside me, a tiny ribbon of hope. “I don’t want to lose you,” I tell her.
“You won’t.” She strokes my cheek. “We’ll be connected forever. Two halves made whole through primordial unity.”
As she takes my hands in hers, she pulls me to my feet. I stagger before she helps me gain balance, then she turns toward the woman holding the crown of bone and ivy.
Devyn brings the crown up, holding it aloft before she places it on my head, detangling my hair from the stems as she coaxes my strands over my bare shoulders. The weight of the fawn antlers bears down on me, like I’m reliving a nightmare.
My mind spins as I again tip my face toward the open sky, trying to pinpoint our location.
Come morning, wherever this place is, the aftermath will be a crime scene. There will be evidence of the people here, the objects they handled, the substances leached into the ground.
As I look around to take in the site, I view it through the eyes of a profiler. I observe the behavior, read the motives and actions in an abstract part of me that breaks down each movement and object beyond its purpose.
I see the macabre artistry, the violence, the horror. I see the shifting of dirt beneath their stomping feet. I see the staff held in reverence. I see Devyn’s core nature. I see the flickering flames rising higher. The spines on the antlers. My clothes thoughtlessly discarded in a heap.
I see the way out.
The moaning grows louder, becoming a haunting song with the intensifying drumbeat. If I can break through to just one person… A small measure of doubt is all that’s needed to stop this.
I turn in a circle, catching myself on a wave of dizziness as I stare past the fire, trying to latch on to a familiar face.
The heaving, gyrating bodies dance and grope in a display of debauchery. These people have no eyes, no ears, no tongues, yet they’re absorbed in every other sensation of the flesh, using their bodies to touch and entice. Hedonistic acts so base and depraved as they give in to their desire, I feel feverish at the lewd sight.
“Vince Lipton,” I say, my voice trembling. Then, louder: “Mr. Lipton—” The man I identify from his file doesn’t respond to his name. Antlers nearly as large as Landry’s were, he’s a massive man, currently in the throes of a vulgar act as he ruthlessly thrusts into a woman on her hands and knees, his rough grunts rising over the drumming.
“Did you really come here willingly to save them?” Devyn’s question is whispered close to my ear. She moves in behind me and wraps her arms around my waist. “Or, deep down, is it you that wants to be saved?”
The implication of her words pits out my stomach as her palms drift over my belly. Incensed, I trap her, my dirty fingernails stabbed into the backs of her hands. “I don’t believe in any of this,” I say.
“You don’t have to.” She releases me then, moving around to stand before me. “The deer didn’t believe, yet they were a pure vessel for the god. And you, Halen, are the purest vessel.”
As the priestess lifts her chin, she turns her palms up, giving herself over to the rhythmic bass imbuing the air. A cold sensation prickles my flesh, the emptiness a physical entity invading my soul.
I lower myself to the earth, knees dug into the cold soil, and search out the mark on my flesh. My hand slides between my thighs, and my fingers delicately trace the sigil. Just as I’d done before, lost in the darkness, adrift in a vulnerable state, afraid of my feelings…I seek out a connection to the man who frightens me, who challenges me. Calling to him just as I did in that moment. My connection to Kallum is tangible—more real than my fear—and my pain is a summons to him.
Kallum can feel me.
And the fact I believe this shatters all my logical defenses.
I reach up to remove the circlet, and Devyn’s hand coils around my wrist. “That’s enough indulgence,” she says, yanking me up to stand. “I’ve been patient too long.”
“Devyn, if you do this…it won’t change anything. You’ll still be the same. Whatever you’re suffering, whatever you’re trying to heal, it won’t be cured through me.”
“Us,” she stresses. Her eyes take on a furious edge, and that anger reveals a fault in her façade, if only for a heartbeat before she re-erects her guise. “We’re the path. When I saw you dancing at the Lipton’s house, I beheld your profound suffering. You were already so close to enlightenment, to experiencing transcendent Rausch…I was in awe.”
I swallow past the raw ache. “What you saw was me being seduced by Kallum. What I experienced with him has nothing to do with any of this…” I glance around at the frenzy of sex and delusion. “This is monstrous, Devyn. What you’ve done to these people is monstrous.”
Her dark eyes flash with firelight. “I’ve liberated them.”
“You’ve mutilated them.” I grab her hand. “This can’t be what you wanted, what you imagined. I refuse to believe that.” As I stay locked to her gaze, a tiny flare of hope springs within me. “What happened to you?”
What she allowed me to see within her at the ravine was real. It can’t all be a part of her mask. The moment Kallum said the site was a glimpse into what made the Overman vulnerable, I felt the truth in his words.
