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"But why?" demanded Marcy. "What doyou get out of all this?"
Ricky actually smiled. Tomas was close enough to tear the man's nose off with his teeth, and of a mood
to do it, and the bastard smiled a wishful, faraway smile like someone contemplating an old love.
"Whatever I want," he said, savoring the words. "Anything. Wealth. Power. Women. Can you imagine?
I couldn't believe it when I managed to translate the incantation, doing my research paper on ancient
languages. I mean, who wouldn't risk a few lives in order to havewhatever they want ?"
Tomas looked at Marcy. "I'm going to kill him now."
Ricky said, "Not if you want your cat back."
Crap. Tomas saw the change in Marcy at the very possibility of it. "Snowball?" she echoed. "Where?"
Ricky said, "Or the priest." Like a footnote.
"Don't do it," warned Tomas, knowing the futility of it even as he spoke. Hell, in her place, wouldn't he
do the same?
"Where?" she demanded. "Tell me how to get them back."
Tomas let go of Ricky's left shoulder to span his throat with one hand. "And tell her the price."
He'd never killed anyone before, though he'd come close in a few fights. His own certainty that he could
do it now both unnerved and satisfied him.
"Through that door," said Ricky.
Tomas looked quickly from Ricky to Marcy, back and forth. One magic user unfazed at costing people
their lives, another who could barely dram up the willpower to do a harmless spell for her own benefit.
He knew who he'd bet on in a contest. "Marcy "
"I know what a door means." But damned if she wasn't walking slowly toward it. "It's still not Snowball's
fault, or Father Gregory's, that this happened to them."
"It's not your fault either,querida ."
"Maybe not, but they didn't even have a choice." She stood in front of the narrow door. "At least I have
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a choice. That's worth something, isn't it? And I choose to risk this."
Ricky tried to take advantage of Tomas's distraction to wriggle loose, so Tomas turned back to
him and squeezed. "If anything happens to her, you won't live long enough to get anything you want."
"I will if I get my wish before I'm dead." Ricky was wheezing as his air got cut off, but still he managed to
slant his gaze toward the book open on the altar, past Tomas's elbow, and to cry out a hoarse "Elate se
me!"
Tomas stared at him. "What?"
Marcy reached out with one hand and opened the door, loosing a blast of searing heat.
Part 5
«^
It may have been the most stupid thing she'd ever done. Marcy knew that. She wasn't just risking her
own life but the priest's, and her cat's.
And Tomas's.Oh, God. Tomas's .
But it was also her bravest moment.
Heat hit her like a shock wave, blasting across the room. Behind the door and yet not, amidst the roiling
chaos of some kind of parallel Hell dimension, reared the demon. The one who'd trapped Marcy in the
elevator. Who'd licked its flames up and down her body. Who'd forced defeating thoughts into her mind,
against her will.
But here it didn't stay behind the door.
Smoking and malformed, it shambled into the room and bravest moment or not, she took three quick
steps back. The creature swelled, larger and larger until the flickering horns of flame on its head seared
the ceiling and the orange, black and scarlet breadth of its shoulders crowded the room's crown
moldings. From behind it, lizardlike salamanders slithered through the portal and across the walls, their
tails leaving sooty streaks behind them. A fluttering of skittery, batlike creatures whirled out and around
the room like some crazed circus of evil.
Behind her, Marcy heard Ricky call, "Here she "
But his words strangled into silence.Tomas .
Turns out Sharona was right about his more violent abilities.
Here in Ricky's strange temple, the creature seemed to finally find its voice. Its gravelly words boomed
not only in Marcy's head, with splitting volume, but around her. It shook the glass in Ricky's display case
and fluttered the banners on the panel wall.Thank you , it growled in Ricky's direction.
Then it turned to loom up and over Marcy, an inferno of sadistic pleasure, of desire, of greed
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