Hilliard awoke in the night to a muffled murmur of voices coming from the adjacent room. He strained his ears to listen. The female voice sounded like Selma, talking in a harsh whisper. Perhaps she was simply tending to Jasper, he thought. However, the male voice was not at all his friend’s. It was much more ragged, throaty and hoarse. And besides, the adjacent room was not the master bedroom, it was a study.
The sound of the alien voice startled Hilliard. He threw back the blankets and swung his legs around the edge of the bed. He had forgotten his trist from earlier in the evening, and found himself unclothed. Groping in the darkness, he gathered up his attire and dressed himself quietly, so as to not disturb Cordelia. Before he left the room, he walked over to the bed and gazed fondly down at his lover. She slumbered peacefully, a tiny smile across her lips.
Steeling himself, Hilliard crept to the door and slowly turned the knob, inching the door open in a gruellingly delicate manner. Once he was able to slip through, he crept his way to the room situated between the guest room and the master bedroom. He slunk to the door and pressed his ear to it.
“-is nearly finished. Two remain. We can finish it tonight-”
That was Selma’s voice. What did she mean nearly finished? Who was she talking to? It couldn’t be Jasper, could it? That question was soon answered.
“I am ready, madame. Let us finish this at your command.”
That voice did not belong to his friend. It was possible that the harsh, raspy voice did not belong to anything human at all. Hilliard’s heart began to pound. What was going on? What was Selma up to? Who was this mysterious second voice?
His thoughts were broken by the sound of a door opening and closing from within. There must be an adjoining door that leads from the master bedroom to the study, thought Hilliard. He waited, counting to five in his head, then he gently, slowly opened the study door.
His eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, which made his investigation into the darkened room much easier. Creeping up to a desk in the middle of the room, Hilliard could see a small, leatherbound book. He took the book and inspected it.
The first several pages were covered in strange, foreign symbols; the first three pages had looping, swirling characters and the next four were a series of vertical lines running the length of the page with dashes and shapes bisecting at intervals. How curious, Hilliard mused. It was, however, the first page of legible text that made his heart sink.
Turning the page, Hilliard could see four familiar runes accompanied by three more. Next to each was scrawled a note. Hilliard felt a cold pit form in his stomach. His head swam and he could feel bile beginning to rise in his throat. He read the page again, and again, and again, trying hard to convince himself that this wasn’t real.
ᛜ - The harlot, sexual desirability
ᚫ - The devoted, appeasement of the gods
ᛏ - The justiciar, justice and authority
ᛟ - The landlord, inheritance and retention of lands and property
ᛗ - The companion, fostering of relationships
ᚷ - The lover, true love
ᛒ - The mother, fertility
In order for the binding to take, a sacrifice must be made to the gods, the larger the sacrifice, the more powerful the binding. The ritual must be done in a precise order, and must end within a fortnight.
Animals and property can be sacrificed, but the most powerful sacrifice is, of course, a human sacrifice.
The binding ritual will last for one generation, and must be performed each succeeding generation.
“Good God,” Hilliard gasped, “this can’t be. Selma can’t be a part of this-”
His thoughts trailed off as he put the pieces together. The companion; a friend perhaps? Did Selma mean to sacrifice her friend Cordelia?
Hilliard dropped the book and rushed back to the guest room. He couldn’t take the chance, he had to save Cordelia if his assumption was correct.
“Cordelia,” he rasped, trying to remain just quiet enough to not be caught, but loud enough to rouse his lover, “Cordelia, you must get up! We need to leave!”
Cordelia stirred slightly, but remained asleep. Hilliard rushed to her side and shook her gently. She rolled over to face him, the blankets sliding to one side to reveal part of her naked chest and torso. In any other circumstance, he might have shied away (or perhaps been aroused since his sexual awakening), but he was not concerned with such trifles.
“Hmm? Hilliard, what is it?”
Hilliard still spoke in a whisper.
“Cordelia, I think something terrible is afoot. I believe Selma may be involved in these killings! I heard voices from the room adjacent, and I went to investigate. I found a notebook with the same runes that have been found on the bodies and notes on some binding ritual. I know it sounds as if I’ve gone mad, but we can’t take any chances, we must leave! I believe that you are her next victim. She must sacrifice a companion, a friend!”
Cordelia, still bleary-eyed from fatigue, tried to take in as much as possible, but she could not make sense of what Hilliard was rambling on about.
“Hilliard, I-”
Before she could finish her sentence, Hilliard was grasped about the shoulders by cold, strong hands. He tried to wrest himself loose of the grasp, but the hands were too powerful, and simply clamped down even tighter on his shoulders, causing him to wince in pain.
“Such a shame,” came a familiar voice. It was Selma, but here timbre was no longer that of a carefree debutante, but more sinister, more focused. “I was hoping that the night would end quietly. Of course, I was a little hasty in bringing my associate to my own abode to finish the ritual. However, the fortuity was too great to pass up. Everything I needed to finish under one roof. It was three birds with one knife.”
Selma moved into view, putting herself between Hilliard and Cordelia. She sat down on the edge of the bed, a long, thin stiletto dagger clutched in hand. She placed the point of the dagger at Cordelia’s throat, but never took her eyes of Hilliard.
“You crazed bitch,” Hilliard hissed. Selma simply pushed the dagger ever so gently into Cordelia’s soft skin, a small pinprick of blood pooling.
“Tsk, tsk, Hilliard. Such language.”
Cordelia, now fully awake and aware of the situation, gasped at the introduction of the sharp point into her flesh. Selma withdrew the dagger and stood up. Pacing the room as Hilliard was held helpless by the strong hands.
“First,” Selma gloated, “let me introduce you to Simon Treacher. The newspapers like to call him Wicked John.”
The man who held Hilliard chuckled at his introduction. Hilliard could not believe his ears.
“You’ve been working with Wicked John? How?”
Selma slunk towards Hilliard, a terrible grin on her face.
“My father bought him from his mother years ago to work in our factory. He proved useful for our purposes. He grew, this boy, tremendously fast, as you can tell. He was always much larger than the other children, even most of the adults. My father saw his potential. He paid him well his first time, and I, of course, plan on compensating him just as well this time.”
“For what end?”
Selma smiled.
“The Gayhearts are from a long, Saxon lineage. We trace our heritage back to the Gerhardt name some 900 years ago. At that time, the Gerhardts were known as a cunning, manipulative clan, and rightfully so. We did everything in our power to accumulate wealth and power. When the more conventional means did not work, we turned to the help of the ancient crones. Druids of the heathen faiths. They taught us the old rituals of seithr and how to bind to ourselves the power and glory we sought.”
Selma turned from Hilliard and once again made her way to the bed. She threw the blankets off of Cordelia, revealing her naked body. Cordelia gasped and squeaked in surprise.
“Enough talk,” Selma quipped, “it is time for the next sacrifice.”
She grabbed Cordelia by the arm and stood her up. She moved behind her friend and guided her towards Hilliard, the dagger at her throat. She stopped just shy of the two being nose to nose.
“It must be done,” Selma hissed, her eyes cold and emotionless.
Then, she handed the dagger to Cordelia. Hilliard’s heart sank and his vision blurred.
“Cordie?”
Her face showed no remorse.
“My mother was a Gayheart. We have a saying in the family; fortune is fickle, but doing what must be done, even if it is risky, will take you far.”
With that, Cordelia took the dagger and slowly ran it through Hilliard’s throat. He tried to scream at first, but his throat began to fill with blood from the wound. As the dagger moved through, he began to swoon, his vision losing focus. He cried, tears of terror, sorrow, and anger. He had been seduced, exploited, and betrayed.
There was a terrible amount of gurgling and gasping before, at some length, Hilliard Purefoy slumped in the grasp of Simon Treacher, dead. Cordelia took the dripping dagger and carved the next rune on his forehead. ᛗ. The companion.
“I’m sure his friend will miss him so,” Selma said as Simon unceremoniously dropped Hilliard’s body, which fell to the ground in a dull thump. “Let us go visit his friend, shall we?”
Together, the three moved to the master bedroom. Jasper was asleep, snoring slightly in his drunken stupor. Simon and Cordelia moved to the bed as Selma stripped herself of her clothes. Simon rolled Jasper onto his back and grabbed hold of his wrists, Cordelia his ankles.
Now nude, Selma approached Jasper and straddled him, dagger in hand. She gently pulled down his trousers. Selma began the final part of the binding ritual, as Jasper groaned in his sleep.
Jasper awoke as the deed ended. He was keenly aware of several things; he was being held by his wrists and ankles, there was a body on top of him, and he had just emitted his essence.
Confused and scared, his vision focused and he saw it was Selma who sat atop of him, nude and in the throes of ecstasy. He would have been keenly aroused had he not been detained by two other people in the room.
“Selma?”
Selma brought the dagger down swiftly, the point finding its mark through his eye. She pulled it out and brought it down again, then again, and once more. Selma then carved the next symbol into Jasper’s stomach. ᚷ. The lover.
Taking her finger, Selma dipped her finger into the blood that oozed from her late beau and drew the final symbol on her belly. ᛒ. The mother.
“Here is to the prosperity of the next generation of Gayhearts,” she whispered. She looked at her colleagues. “It is finished. Let us be bound by this ancient custom.”
Cordelia and Simon nodded solemnly.
“Simon,” Selma said, now climbing off of the corpse of Jasper Merchant, “clean this up and dump the bodies in the River Thames.”
Simon, Wicked John, smiled a crooked smile. He nodded, thinking of the pay he would receive, and quickly got to work.