Page 54 of Hexbound
The pair of them slammed together as the golden lines suddenly collapsed over them like a net. He wrapped his arms around her, driving her head into the protective curl of his chest and arms, as the world spun out of alignment.
—falling, tumbling, head over heels, his stomach punching up through his throat, and then back down again, as if it rebounded into his lower abdomen—
—and then they became solid again, Bishop shaking with the force of the translocation as he landed hard, slamming back into his body.
There was even less room in here, in the locker. He was practically wrapped around Verity, and the air was still and humid, tasting of old socks.
"I think I'm going to be ill," Verity said with a gasp, trying to push away from him.
He slammed the locker door open with his shoulder, the pair of them tripping as they tumbled out. Verity fell to her knees, pressing her hands to her mouth.
"Sorry, I should have warned you." He felt like joining her on his knees, but this wasn't his first trip. He just needed... a moment. "I thought you'd know what to expect."
Verity looked up after a long moment, shuddering as a train whistle echoed through the corridor. "That," she said, "was nothing like what I do. I feel like I've been pulled apart and then put back together again, but not quite properly."
He offered her a hand. "But... no flesh constructs here."
Verity dragged herself to her feet, and shuddered. "Small gains."
Bishop slammedthe journal down on the reading table and flipped it open.
"What are you reading?" Verity murmured, rubbing her wet hair with a towel. She'd taken a bath to try and wash off the slimy feeling that coated her skin from the translocation, whilst he'd been hunting through his library.
He couldn't help noticing that the midnight blue robe she wore was extremely thin, and molded to her body. What was Agatha thinking, to give her that? "Relics of the Order, a compilation by Josiah Whitmore."
He ran his finger down the contents page, trying to find the chapter he needed. It was the third time he'd done it since she'd entered the room.
"Why?" Verity tossed the towel aside, sitting on the edge of one of his stuffed armchairs near the fire and withdrawing an ivory-backed brush from her pocket.
"Because it has occurred to me that we need to know precisely what we're dealing with, and what the Chalice can do.
"Together the three Relics Infernal can be used to summon a demon through into this world in the flesh. They can also vanquish one. However, separately they all have powerful properties of their own. My father created them, along with his ex-wife, Morgana, and the Earl of Tremayne. I didn't have much time to study the Chalice when it was in my possession." He swallowed, remembering the smoky lure of it, the way it called to him. Perhaps it hadn't been lack of time, but fear in the strength of his own willpower. "I was too busy trying to help recover the Blade of Altarrh. The Blade was destroyed when we sought to recover it, which makes the other two unable to control a demon, though they still have mysterious powers on their own. I think we need to know precisely what the Chalice is capable of so that we can work out who wants it, and why."
He found what he was looking for and flipped forward to the twelfth chapter while she brushed out her hair. Steam lifted off the ends of it as the fire set to work drying it, and he was surprised to realize it curled at the ends. "There's a treatise on the Grave Arts on the third shelf. Once you're finished, do you think you could look through it?"
He looked down at the book. "The Ankh of Set," the chapter headline read. Clearly not what he needed. Bishop flipped back to the start. His mind was all over the place.
Most notably on the way her breasts shifted behind the robe as she reached up to knot her hair into a tight chignon, and then stabbed a pin through it.
Hell.
He was rock-hard, his cock straining against his breeches. Anyone would be able to see it. Thank God for the reading table.
"Third shelf?" Verity asked, setting the brush aside and circling the library. "Which one?"
He pointed to her left. "No. Next one, and another shelf up... there. Yes."
Verity reached up, and he cursed under his breath. Her robe clung to the rounded contours of her breasts as she tugged the thick treatise off the shelf. And despite the fact that he knew better, he couldn't look away. "We know the Chalice can raise the dead," she said. "In vast quantities, if today was any indication."
"I also believe it exacerbates the power of the sorcerer connected to it." At least, that was the only explanation he could find for how strong that other sorcerer had felt when they'd clashed, mind to mind. He was no slouch himself, but that other mind had rolled him under like an ant beneath its heel.
"How do you use it?"
"You use your own blood to empower it, and link it to yourself," Bishop replied. He looked up from the book he was staring uselessly at. "All three relics require a sacrifice to work."
"What sort of sacrifice?"
"Well, Drake helped create them, and he said that they worked when fuelled by blood. But he also said that they were hungry relics. They wanted more. He could hear them whispering in his head when he used them. And when Tremayne had his hands on them it is suspected that he sacrificed someone to the Chalice's cause, but he always denied it."
