Free Scenting Hallowed Blood by Storm Constantine Page A

other Grigori here who
could care for her needs now. Had the time come to free herself of
him? She had a responsibility towards Lily and Owen, because she’d
promised their mother she’d always take care of them, but this
wreck? No. His apathy made her angry. It seemed so self-indulgent.
‘Owen,’ she said.
    Shem looked away from her.
‘There’s nothing I can do.’
    ‘I don’t believe you. You made
him like that, so I presume you can unmake him. You are the Great
Shemyaza, after all.’
    Shem shook his head, smiling.
‘You make me sound like a TV magician. I’m not anything, Emma.’ He
picked up a magazine and began to leaf through it.
    ‘If you stopped feeling sorry
for yourself, it might help,’ she suggested. ‘Have you been to see
Owen?’
    ‘You know that I haven’t.’
    ‘Well, if you did, it might
prick your conscience. He’s lost his mind. I have to bathe him,
dress him, feed him. Sometimes, he soils himself. It’s disgusting.
No-one should live like that. Don’t you care what it might be doing
to Lily and Daniel?’
    ‘None of them are my
responsibility,’ Shem answered. ‘Nothing you can say will change my
mind. Peverel Othman damaged Owen, not me. I can barely remember
it.’
    Emma did not believe these
words. ‘Well, let me remind you then. One Thursday night, Owen
disappeared into his room with you, and didn’t wake up for
twenty-four hours.’ She struck a pose. ‘Now, let me see, what
happened next? Ah, you took him out to the woods with you on the
Friday evening. He was like an automaton, drugged perhaps. For some
reason, Owen felt compelled to rape his lover for you, whom you had
considerately laid out for him in a similar drugged state. Of
course, I may have been hallucinating, but I swear I saw demons
that night, Shem, and an attempt at a ritual sacrifice. Now, I
might be wrong, but I can’t help feeling the condition of those
kids is your responsibility. Daniel escaped with his mind
intact because he’s — well — Daniel. Lily’s attempting to blot the
whole thing out of her memory and Owen is catatonic. Didn’t your
goddess tell you to care for the children, Shem? Have you forgotten
so quickly?’
    Shemyaza had listened to her
speech without reacting. Emma had hoped to provoke him, but
appeared to have failed. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t me. I told
you that.’
    ‘You can’t go on like this,’
Emma said.
    Shem shrugged. ‘I can’t be what
you or Daniel want me to be. I wish you’d both leave me alone.’
    Emma made an angry noise and
stormed out of the room, to secrete herself in the shadowy kitchen
areas in the basement, where she had made friends with whom she
could drink tea and whisky all day. She liked the Grigori who lived
in the Rooms, but felt unable to confide in any of them.
    Left alone, Shem put his head
on his knees and covered it with his arms. He wanted to weep but
couldn’t. If he only had some release, his mind might clear, he
could feel alive again. Neither Emma nor Daniel were aware of, or
understood, his torment. In one cruel stroke, he had been given
awareness, and although the memories of his life as Peverel Othman
were diminished, those that remained were stark in his mind, like
matt black figures on a white background. He couldn’t help Owen
because he couldn’t bear to face the boy. Also, to reverse the
process, he’d have to touch Owen, and Shemyaza felt incapable of
touching anyone now. Emma had tried once or twice when they’d first
arrived at the Rooms, turning up in his bedroom in the middle of
the night, clothed only in perfume. She had practised her art upon
his flesh, but it had been as if he were paralysed. The thought of
sex conjured murky, flickering memories of dark rituals he had
performed, debasement, torture, unspeakable defilement of spirit
and flesh. Despite his claims of indifference, he could not
disassociate himself from those events. Part of Owen lived inside
him, because he had stolen it. Only by giving it