4 - We Are Gathered Read Free Page A

wasn’t just blushing. He looked embarrassed enough for both of them.
    “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, and then worked at pulling her dress into place, since static cling looked to get worse if polyester rubbed along what looked to be a silken shirt. There wasn’t any help for it. Her dress clung to everything, outlining just about everything, and he probably knew that thought process, too.
    “Don’t be. I was told it would be so.”
    “What would be? And no—.” She held her hand up for emphasis, still not looking at his face. “Don’t answer that.”
    “You readied, then?”
    To meet a roomful of vampires? In a castle that didn’t exist? Sure. Why not? Rori shrugged, and he opened the door.
    o O o
    They’d gone overboard with their renovations. The castle was too authentic, from the stone making up every surface to the lack of lighting throughout the cavernous room into which he led her. They’d also kept heating to a minimum, despite the roaring fires going in all three fireplaces. At first the place looked empty, and then gradually she could make out groups of people; some sitting in chairs, some reclining on settees, others just standing about eyeing her. And all of them looked like extras in a vampire video…or perhaps the better description was a Film Noir. Rori gathered her shawl closer, and actually stepped closer to her escort, which was truly stupid.
    Her eyes adjusted, as did her ears, and now she noted how every person in the room seemed to move, standing and then sliding to where she was being marched through them. It was like being in a parade, with nothing joyous about it. She was surrounded by beings that moved like liquid and were disturbingly silent, blurred, nearly opaque. They surrounded, making a swirling ebbing mass of bodies…glaring at her, examining her, smelling and nearly tasting her, closing in as the man escorting her kept walking.
    He took her to a raised platform thing along the far wall, beneath huge banners with strange, tribal-looking demon images on them. They were all done in deep red hues – almost black - on various shades of backgrounds. They all seemed to point to a throne-like chair. It was empty. The moment she noted it, her escort must have, for he swiveled and addressed the sea of people following them.
    “Where’s Akron?”
    The force of his voice made her jump, but the only one who knew was the man holding her. The legions of wraiths following them didn’t do more than stare. And there wasn’t anything in the room containing heat anymore. She couldn’t even feel the fire at her side.
    “Oh cease. You’re ruining the ambiance.”
    Ambiance?
    One of them stepped forward and looked right at Rori’s escort, standing eye-to-eye to him. The woman was tall and lithe, and stunningly beautiful.
    “Akron?” He barked it.
    “Called away. What have you brought us?”
    “Yes, Tristan. What have you brought?”
    Tristan. His name is Tristan.
    The name fit him and that thought was even more madness. They were getting surrounded now. She could feel it and sense it. Menace wasn’t the only emotion fueling the space. Rori recognized her own stirrings of fear. If she had to go insane, she was going in her own way, and in her own fashion. There was a reason she’d joined the coven. She held out her free hand, palm outward and started chanting her order three times.
    “ Sinja Dor-A. Sinja Dor-A. Sinja Dor-A. ”
    A shove pushed an invisible barrier outward, sending them all back a step, then another. Her spell had never worked this well before, or with such effect. Usually it got her sent to solitary quarters for punishment. Rori kept the satisfaction hidden, as if every time she spoke a chant it worked.
    “Come.”
    He didn’t need to say it. She wasn’t staying here. Rori clung to him, and got lifted from the floor as they traversed another hall, and then another, and then another flight of steps, and through a series of high Gothic arches that shamed the ones in