Page 22 of Anathema

“Where is she?”

The woman’s face soured. “You’re not taking her again, are you? We just got her back. She’s our best girl.”

“I’m sure you’ll find another to take her place.”

“My Lord, please. I’m begging you. We are a clean and safe establishment. The best in The Hovel.”

He strode past her for the staircase. “Be that as it may, she’s coming home with me.”

“She alone will bring in enough coin tonight to keep mouths fed.”

Pausing his ascent, Zevander reached into a small satchel hooked to his belt and tossed her a silver coin.

Capturing it in her palm, she stared down at it and back to him. “A keltzig. She’ll make at least three times as much.”

He fished for two more and tossed them to the woman. “Where is she?” he asked, already making his way up the staircase.

“Last room on the left. Just finished up.”

At the top of the staircase, he found an older man fucking a brunette against the wall, and he stepped past the two, catching her leering stare. Moans bled through the doors he passed, the thumping of beds against the walls keeping time with his strides. When he finally reached the end of the hallway, he knocked on the door.

“Giv’me a minu, will ya?” A familiar voice, laced with the telling slur of the mandrawyld tonic she’d taken, came from the other side.

Pressing his ear to the wooden panel, he listened, and at the sound of a heavy thud, he slammed through the door and found Rykaia passed out on the couch. On the coffee table lay the evidence of what he feared–the substances she’d consumed, set out in small black vials. The white gown she wore carried the remnants of blood, and he lifted her arm for the fresh scars undoubtedly put there by one of her johns.

Unbeknownst to some brothel keepers, clients sometimes enjoyed the practice of firebleeding–making small cuts into the woman’s flesh and sprinkling flammapul onto their tongues that they dragged over the bleeding wounds. Once in the bloodstream, the flammapul caused slight paralysis and tightening of the muscles, including the pelvic muscles. For the sexsell, it was a terrifying circumstance that made them exceptionally vulnerable. For the client, he could do whatever he wanted and manipulate their blood magic for as long as the high lasted. Most Johns paid for hours at a time, not only to take advantage of the tonic, but to allow it time to wear off.

Zevander lifted the vial from the coffee table. Raptacy–a sleeping tonic by trade, but abusers of the elixir enjoyed the effects that turned them happy and horny just before falling asleep. She’d been using it for quite some time, and it might’ve been the reason someone as strong willed as Rykaia could’ve fallen victim to the flammapul. Another dark ampoule beside it—Vermis Eye—ensured she wouldn’t have felt a thing or had any awareness of her surroundings.

He pulled the small vial of vivicantem from his pocket and filled the dropper to the halfway mark.

Taking hold of her jaw, Zevander tipped her head back and squeezed the fluid into her mouth. Pure vivicantem in the blood acted as a powerful stimulant for the unconscious, essentially banishing the tonics from the body. At first, she didn’t move, but then her throat bobbed and her eyes shot open on a gasp.

Rykaia turned over in time to expel a torrent of vomit that landed on the gritty floor. Fingers clutching the cushion of the couch, she heaved and retched as the mix of tonics exited her body. With the back of a shaky hand, she wiped the stringy bits from her lips, and the moment she glanced upward, she rolled her eyes. “What brings you here, Brother?”

“I’m taking you home.”

“And if I refuse?”

Zevander tipped his head, brow cocked. She knew the answer to that. He’d carry her out, kicking and screaming, the way he had the last time she’d left home. And the time before that.

“Please don’t make me go back. You’ve no idea what it’s like.”

He lifted her arm, turning it over for the cuts. “And this is better? Who did this?”

Frowning, she ran her fingers over the wounds, undoubtedly unaware they’d been placed there in her drugged stupor. What had made her such a coveted choice at the brothel was, although her magic was weak in her drugged state, she possessed the ability to absorb pain and emotions. For the depressed, the stressed, the physically tormented, she served as something of a tonic herself. Allowing a moment when they might experience sheer ecstasy and bliss for the first time in their lives. Pain eaters, her kind were called, as they literally consumed the agony with a particular touch, or kiss.

It was hell for Rykaia, whose mind somehow had to process all that grief and suffering, the aches and injury, the weight of which had prompted her to abuse tonics at an early age.

“I don’t remember, so what does it matter?”

“What matters is that, one day, your client is going to take his blade across your throat. And by the gods, I would burn him alive for it. I want a name. Who cut you?”

She huffed, reaching for a small glass that held an amber fluid–nectardeium, or nectar of the gods. “I couldn’t tell you,” she answered dismissively.

Her insouciance grated on him and he ground his teeth. “Tell me, or I’ll see to it you’re locked in the dungeons.”

“You would do such a thing, wouldn’t you?”

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