Page 64 of Infernal Vices

He said the words over and over again as he eased into Leo, who, clearly from the pain he seemed to be in, was not drugged, and not enraptured with the influence of chemicals this time. The boy was trembling with fear, writhing to get those holding him down to release him. I felt impotent with rage. Leo was crying now,

“Stop, no, please Benjamin, I don’t want to die,”

“You are the vessel, you must be sacrificed to complete your destiny,” Benjamin bellowed.

“We will return from beyond the veil my love, now relax, and let me push it in further!” Blake insisted.

“STOP!” Sebastian roared, pulling the mask from his face and tossing it to the floor. “Damn you, Nathaniel, still up to the same old tricks after all these years! I said stop this!”

Blake stilled his forward thrust, yet said nothing. He just looked at Sebastian through the eye holes in his bull mask, as if trying to place him. Sebastian had been eighteen years old when he was seduced by the man he knew as Nathaniel Everett and now he was thirty-eight.

“Sebastian?” Blake gasped. “W…what are you doing here?”

“Birdie?” Charles exclaimed with delighted confusion.

Cavendish gripped the Atheme blade with both hands and brought the blade up, readying to stab down. “Cavendish, put that bloody knife down. End this insanity now! I will not let any harm come to the boy,” I roared. Cavendish grimaced and lowered the blade. I looked up to the men holding Leo down, “Unhand him you fools. Unhand him I say, or it will be the worse for you!” Spencer, Morehead, and Faulkner, let go and stepped back from the table.

“W…w…what’s going on?” Spencer asked his voice trembling with confusion.

I removed the mask from Leopold’s face and saw how terrified the young man was.

“I say! What the devil is going on here?” the rotund Judge Morehead blustered as he ripped the mask from his face. Everyone, even Blake, followed and pulled off their masks and tossed them to the floor. We were well past the need for anonymity now!

“Blake is a charlatan, a mountebank and a fraud,” Charles said furiously. “He’s fooled us all,”

“NO! I am the Bull, the power of creation made manifest. I pray to our heavenly father to release the power of the Staff to heal me of all ills and to give life eternal,” Blake pushed forward seating the Staff of Asklepios inside the crying young man. And still nothing happened, no magical glow, no softening of the glass to be as flesh.

“Now, do it now,” Blake cried and Cavendish grinned with such malevolence I thought he’d gone mad. Clutching the blade with both hands, his arms were raised and then plunged downward. Sebastian’s agility was a godsend at that moment for he moved swiftly and gripped a hold Cavendish’s wrists to prevent the knife plunging into Leo. The men roared as they wrestled for possession of the knife. Sebastian used a move he’d learned from his daughter and whipped Cavendish’s legs from beneath him. Both men went down onto the Turkish rug, and began rolling, wrestling for control of the silver knife.

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