Ceremony In Death

"We worship the one," he said in his clear and beautiful voice.

And the coven answered. "Satan is the one."

"What is his, is ours."

"Ave, Satan."

As Alban lifted the bowl, his eyes met Selina's. He took up a sword, thrust it at the four points of the compass. The princes of hell were called, the list long and exotic. Voices were a hum. Fire crackled in a blackened pot set on a marble slab.

She began to moan.

"Destroy our enemies."

Yes, she thought. Destroy.

"Bring sickness and pain on those who would harm us."

Great pain. Unbearable pain.

When Alban laid a hand on her flesh, she began to scream. "We take what we wish, in your name. Death to the weak. Fortune to the strong."

He stepped back, and though it was his right to take the altar first, he gestured to Lobar. "Reward to the loyal. Take her," he commanded. "Give her pain as well as pleasure."

Lobar hesitated a moment. The sacrifice should have come first. The blood sacrifice. The goat should have been brought out and slaughtered. But he looked at Selina, and his drug-clouded brain shut off. There was woman. Bitch. She watched him with cold, taunting eyes.

He would show her, he thought. He would show her he was a man. It wouldn't be like the last time when she had used and humiliated him.

This time, he would be in charge.

He cast aside his robe and stepped forward.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The steady beep of an alarm had Eve rolling over and cursing. "It can't be time to get up. We just went to bed."

"It's not. That's security."

"What?" Now she sat up quickly. "Our security?"

Roarke was already out of bed, already pulling on slacks, and answered with a grunt. Instinctively Eve reached for her weapon first, clothes second. "Someone's trying to break in?"

"Apparently someone has." His voice was very calm. As the lights were still off, she could see only his silhouette in the scattered light of the moon through the sky window. And joining that silhouette was the unmistakable outline of a gun in his hand.

"Where the hell did you get that? I thought they were all locked up. Goddamn it, Roarke, that's illegal. Put it away."

Coolly, he plugged a round in the chamber of the antique and ba

"Damn it, damn it." She snatched up her communicator, shoved it in the back pocket of her jeans out of habit. "You can't use that thing. I'll check it out – that's my job. You call Dispatch, report a possible intruder."

"No," he said again and started for the door. She was on him in two steps.

"If someone's on the grounds or in the house, and if you shoot him with that, I'm going to have to arrest you."

"Fine."

"Roarke." She grabbed at him as he reached for the door. "There's procedure for something like this, and reasons for that procedure. Call it in."

His home, he thought. Their home. His woman, and the fact that she was a cop didn't mean a damn at the moment. "And won't you feel foolish, Lieutenant, if it's a mechanical malfunction?"

"Nothing of yours ever malfunctions," she muttered and made him smile despite the circumstances.

"Why, thank you." He opened the door, and there was Summerset.

"It appears someone is on the grounds."

"Where's the breech?"

"Section fifteen, southwest quadrant."

"Run a full video scan, employ full house security when we're out. Eve and I will check the grounds." Absently, he ran a hand down her back. "A good thing I live with a cop."

She looked down at the gun in his hand. Attempting to disarm him would likely prove unsuccessful. And it would take too much time. "We're going to talk about this," she said between her teeth. "I mean it."

"Of course you do."

They went side by side down the stairs, through the now silent house. "They haven't gotten in," he said as he paused by a door leading onto a wide patio. "The alarm for a breech of the house is different. But they're over the wall."

"Which means they could be anywhere."

The moon was waxing toward full, but the clouds were thick and shadowed its light. Eve sca

"We'll have to separate. For Christ's sake don't use that weapon unless your life's threatened. Most B and E men aren't armed."

And most B and E men, they both knew, didn't attempt to ply their trade on a man like Roarke. "Be careful," he said quietly and slipped like smoke into the shadows.

He was good, Eve assured herself. She could trust him to handle himself and the situation. Using the dim and shifting moonlight as a guide, she headed west, then began to circle.

The quiet was almost eerie. She could barely hear her own footsteps on the thick grass. Behind her, the house stood in darkness, a formidable structure of old stone and glass, guarded, she thought, by a ski

Her lips curled. She'd love to see an unsuspecting burglar come up against Summerset.

When she reached the wall, she sca

Disengaged. Son of a bitch. Weapon drawn and ready, she circled to the south.

Roarke did his own circuit in silence, using the trees. He'd bought this property eight years before, had had it remodeled and rehabbed to his specifications. He'd supervised the design and implementation of the security system personally. It was in a very real sense his first home, the place he'd chosen to settle after too many years of wandering. Beneath the icy control, as he slipped from shadow to shadow, was a bubbling, grinding fury that his home had been invaded.

The night was cool, clear, quiet as a tomb. He wondered if he was up against a very ballsy thief. It could be as simple as that. Or it could be something, someone much more dangerous. A pro hired by a business competitor. An enemy – and he hadn't fought his way to where he was without making them. Particularly since many of his interests had been on the dark side of the law.

Or the target could be Eve. She, too, had made enemies. Dangerous enemies. He glanced over his shoulder, hesitated. Then told himself not to second-guess his wife. He knew of no one better equipped to take care of herself.

But it was that hesitation, that instinctive need to protect that turned his luck. As he paused in the shadows, he caught the faint sound of movement. Roarke took a firmer grip on the gun, stepped back, stepped to the side. And waited.

The figure was moving slowly, in a crouch. As the distance between them melted away, Roarke could hear the puff of nervous breathing. Though he couldn't make out features, he judged male, perhaps five-ten, and on the lean side. He could see no weapon, and thinking of the difficulty Eve might have explaining why her husband had held off an intruder with a ba

He braced, looking forward to a little hand-to-hand, then lunged when the figure slunk by. Roarke had an arm around a throat, a fist clenched and raised in anticipation of quiet, perhaps petty revenge, when he realized it wasn't a man, but a boy.

"Hey, you son of a bitch, let go. I'll kill you."

A very rude and very frightened boy, Roarke decided. The struggle was short and all one-sided. It took seconds only for Roarke to pin the boy against the trunk of a tree. "How the hell did you get inside?" Roarke demanded.