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Marietti heard chanting as he regained consciousness, a repetition of a mantra that vibrated through him. The smell of incense lay heavy in the air and underneath it, the metallic tang of blood. He was bound upright against a pillar of some kind, ropes holding him tight.
He opened his eyes.
He was in an ancient temple with a low ceiling and walls painted with aspects of the divine. Before him, next to a bloodstained altar, was a huge statue of Kali, the black goddess of time and change, creation and destruction. At the feet of the goddess, a dreadlocked sadhu sat cross-legged, his body covered in ash, his dark eyes dilated as he sipped from a human skull. His eyes were fixed at some point beyond the physical realm. Rows of devotees knelt facing their goddess and their bodies swayed a
