Witch Water, page 25
The knife was hooked under Fanshawe’s scrotum.
“Many’s the time, sir—and believeth it—ye pleasure’s been mine to skive a man’s groin bare.” A chuckle fluttered. “’T’will make a woman of thee if thou refuse to drink.”
Fanshawe tensed as the blade’s edge threatened to break the skin.
The bowl nudged his lips. “Drink with faith.”
Shuddering, Fanshawe gulped the bowl’s contents down.
“Fine, fine Rood,” another voice seemed to sing. A graceful shape passed before the wall of candlelight. “A glorious christening it is thee’ve achieved.”
A lithe figure towered over Fanshawe. Evanore, he knew by the voice. She giggled, gliding a bare foot up the inside of his thigh. When she leaned over, he could see she was not only naked but feverishly intent on him. “A handsome one, isn’t he?”
Rood, still behind Fanshawe, only grunted.
“Calm thyself, Rood. Our ilk has naught for jealousy, hmm? Our Benefactor hath spoken it,” but her words were a mockery of their meaning. Fanshawe saw the woman’s large bare breasts moving closer—she was kneeling between his splayed legs. “Yea, I’ll pleasure in filching the cream from this one. Do taketh away thy knife, friend Rood. You’ll wither him to nothing, and what use have I of that?”
More giggles sailed off as Rood put the knife away; even in his paralysis, Fanshawe relaxed…but only for a moment.
Terror had shrunk Fanshawe’s genitals, but now Evanore purred as she applied some oily fluid to them. “Surely this even-time’s events hath affrighted our venturer out of his vitality.” Her hands worked the slick oil all around Fanshawe’s groin. “But this shall resurge him a’plenty—the juice of many blister beetles, b’mixed with but a half-dram of nightshade oil…”
Beaten, hanged, forced to drink infant’s blood, and a knife held to his genitals—it was understandable that Fanshawe had completely lost his sexual responses. In only moments, however, Evanore’s arcane concoction succeeded in arousing him.
“There now!”
Fanshawe was sick to death. Nothing in his mind was sexually aware, yet his erection throbbed, if anything, larger than ever. Evanore’s grin turned greedy when she squatted down and impaled herself on it. All the while, Rood’s hand clamped to Fanshawe’s throat, fingers pliered around the adam’s apple.
Licking her lips, Evanore began to ride Fanshawe up and down.
Slick sounds rose; Fanshawe’s eyes crossed at the abominable act. She’s raping me… Her breasts bounced with each hard impact of her groin to his. She began to moan and even drool.
“Now, Rood! Lend some spark to his spirit!” she panted.
Fanshawe’s tongue shot out of his mouth the noose was put back around his neck; Rood gave it a twist. The sight seemed to rile Evanore—her groans began to blend with muted shrieks, and in the carnal delirium, her finger reached out. First she made the sign of an upside-down cross in the blood on Fanshawe’s forehead, then a pentagram on his scarlet chest. She rode him harder and harder.
Rood gave the noose’s knot another twist.
Almost no air got into Fanshawe’s lungs. He felt worse now than when he was being hanged. His face expanded; his neck beat. When he started to gag again, Evanore touched a fingertip to the top of a tiny bottle. “My moment’s nearly beside me!” came more words through more panting.
The slick sounds drew on with the lewd motion. Fanshawe’s vision was dimming but he was able to see the glimmer of a drop of fluid on Evanore’s fingertip. “Yes, yes!” and then she drew her finger along the inside of his lower lip. Instantly, he felt a tingle.
He thought of shooting his thumbs backward, to target Rood’s eyes, but he couldn’t raise his hands off the floor. A harder thought, then: grabbing Evanore’s white, sweat-sheened throat and wringing it till a vertebra snapped, but, still…
He couldn’t move at all.
Then he began to convulse.
“The potion’s so vital!” Evanore seethed.
Fanshawe’s convulsions came like electrocution. His body began to flop beneath Evanore’s weight, causing his pelvis to lurch repeatedly up. Evidently, this was the effect she wanted. She wanted to be penetrated violently, by the throes that just preceded death…
“Just the tiniest bit of spike-fish poison can kill a man,” she drooled in glee, “but half that? It makes a man flop and flip quite a fish out of water!”
Fanshawe’s body bucked hard now, and as if on cue, Rood tightened the noose further. Evanore’s bosom heaved in and out as her climax drew near. “Yea, to the very brink he must be brought!”
Fanshawe felt her sex spasm in fits around his erection. He continued to twist on the floor, veins beating in his head. A scream of the most demented ecstasy burst from Evanore’s throat; Fanshawe’s heart beat so hard if felt as thought it were trying to churn its way out of his chest. Then his entire body heaved on the floor as his own climax broke, bringing a sensation of pleasure more potent than anything he’d ever felt.
A sound more like a death-rattle than a scream ground out of his own throat when his vision turned black and he felt heat so intense he could’ve just been dropped into a slag furnace—
—and then Fanshawe was sitting wide-eyed and fully dressed at a round wooden table inlaid with pearls. Several candles flickered; the same centuries-old paintings that hung in his suite at the inn now surrounded him, but they looked brand-new.
A glass of wine sat before him, and sitting beyond it, across the table, was Jacob Wraxall, his green eyes glittering.
“Pray, pardon the viciousness of my attendant’s hectoring,” the old man said. “His orders to do so were mine alone.”
Fanshawe could only stare.
“And an equal pardon I’ll hope you to grace upon my rather randy daughter, and ye fervid eccentricities that be her wont when coupling with a man.”
“Eccentricities is putting it mildly,” Fanshawe finally managed to speak.
“But before interview could be granted, it was required in the utmost that thy faith be proved.” Wraxall smiled ever-so-slightly. “And so it has been.”
Fanshawe’s mind felt riotous with questions; and Wraxall seemed to read this in his face.
“I can only conjecture, friend,” the man began, “what might addle thee firstmost. All these matters will be answered to thee. As anent to ye chase by Sheriff Patten and his nincompoop assignees, and ye great eruption of light, additives of sartain mineral salts provided ye strange and startling hue its illuminance—lo, just a flashpot—while ye vicious cur’s progress was forestalled forthwith by an ably bespoken Confoundment Hex. Its disorienting effect remains vital for only the passage of seconds, but seconds, as your presence indubitably ostends, were sufficient to spare thy neck. In all, ‘twas a simple thing—little more than a parlor trick, same as the Stasis Spell bespoken to you next—”
Without even thinking of it, Fanshawe remembered the words that Rood had said, words that seemed to have semi-solid substance: Nard’gurnlut do’blyn srug…
“’Twas necessary, to keep thee compliant for thine anointment, and, yea, the sequent entertainment of my most lovely and awful daughter.”
But now Fanshawe’s confusion was beginning to gain a form of coherence. “How could Rood haven’t gotten in the house so fast?”
“Thy meaning, sir?”
“The sheriff’s men and that damn dog were chasing me through the alley!” Fanshawe yelled. “But after the flash, I got into the house. It was Rood who threw them off my direction—he ran down the street with the sheriff, but the second I got into the house, Rood was waiting for me! It’s impossible! He didn’t have time to get back inside!”
“Time, good student, is a notion of which you’ll become more apprized sooner than later, I say.” Wraxall stroked his trimmed Van Dyke, as if amused. “But I should think such possibilities would already have come to thee.”
Fanshawe pounded his fist on the table. “What are you talking about!”
“’Twas the Bridle which thee rode to come hither.”
The Bridle, Fanshawe thought.
“’Tis a genius mechanism given men as me by the great dark Benefactor, whom I live to sarve. A man such as thyself, possessed of understanding, should surely see this.”
“It-it’s some occult thing… that manipulates time,” Fanshawe said to himself.
“Far more than mere manipulation it is of which we be speaking. It is an instance of one’s spirit being united with the ways of our Benefactor. Such knowledge be bestowed upon only a precious few.” Wraxall pointed. “You.”
Fanshawe continued to stare.
“Yea, you. But I shall give thee witness, to further embolden thee,” and with that, Wraxall seemed to grit his teeth and squeeze his eyes shut, and—
Now Fanshawe was standing in the silent hall, Wraxall smiling at his side. “Time? Space? Such things these, thought to be constants, but to those so gifted, they be but playthings to ye minister of Lucifer”—and then Wraxall made the facial gesture again, to leave himself and Fanshawe standing in a small bedroom occupied by a high, veiled poster bed. “Behold,” Wraxall said.
It was Evanore who lay there, with Rood standing by, leaning over intently. Evanore grunted, her face a grimace. She was nude and—
Holy shit, Fanshawe thought.
—very pregnant. But after several forceful shrieks, her belly collapsed. Rood reached between her legs and raised up a wet, new-born infant.
Fanshawe trembled. “That’s not…”
“Ye child of thy seed shared with my daughter—”
“But that was just a few minutes ago!”
“So to thee it may seem, for ye Bridle skews time, venturer, yet he who masters it owns it.”
Fanshawe looked again. The squalling newborn lay now at Evanore’s bosom. As the tiny thing suckled, Evanore grinned…right at Fanshawe.
Again, the warlock transplanted them, this time, to the foyer. A dog was heard barking outside, along with the shouts of men. Rood grinned at Fanshawe as he set down a bloody knife. Behind him on a shelf lay an indiscernible shape—a tiny shape—yet before him on a table sat two bowls of blood.
“Back, I take thee, forward—any and all!” Wraxall said. “Like a jester who juggles pins amid ye air, so do I juggle time!”
The nausea rose in Fanshawe’s gut, even after the scene disappeared, leaving him to sit in a dark parlor room. He didn’t have to be told that the blood he’d drunk was that of his own child.
“Forsooth, sir—these be ye secrets I design to teach.”
Fanshawe’s mind spun. “I don’t want your secrets! I don’t want to know any of this, and I don’t want to be here!” Spittle flew from his lips. “I’m not evil! I don’t want to be a fuckin’ warlock!”
“Nay?” Only one candle lit the room. Wraxall looked like little more than a shadow. “’Twas of thine own will that thee are here. You sought such secrets. You engaged ye looking-glass. And, you, sir, were all too eager to ride ye Bridle.”
Fanshawe went limp in his chair.
“To thee I shalt bequeath ye Two Secrets of which you hath willingly read already. The test thee hath passed. Thy mettle hath been proved. Only one other such venturer has come here, claiming to seek ye same.”
Something small and dark flapped on the table before Fanshawe. He picked it up.
It was a wallet.
Fanshawe opened it to find a New York driver’s license and a picture of—
“Eldred Karswell. So he did come here.”
“This he did, seeking secrets such as you. Aye, but at a glance I knew that his poise was but a feign. He claimed to serve ye Benefactor, yet one of such he was not.”
Karswell was a Christian mystic, Fanshawe remembered, and a former minister.
“Yet his aspect here at once introduced quite an incongruous element, and with but a glance I espied his falsehood, for his truth I glimpsed in the tone of his aura…”
Fanshawe’s gaze was dragged up by the statement. “What color? What color was Karswell’s aura?”
“White as new-felled snow—”
“And mine?” Fanshawe shook where he sat. “What color is mine?”
“Black,” the word grated from Wraxall’s throat. “Same as ye hue of thy heart, like deepests earth’s blackest ichors.” Wraxall’s shape paused; he seemed to be appraising Fanshawe’s reaction. “But this thee know already. In matters appertaining to ye imposture called Karswell, from the house he was cast, then encaptured by ye sheriff and deputies. ’Twas a joyous sight to behold—his end.”
Fanshawe remembered the image of Karswell’s face, or lack thereof. They barreled him…
Now Wraxall’s words in the dark seemed to vibrate like some suboctave groan. “You too wilst have such power as I, to play with time as thou see fit, and to thine own great gain, whereat Lucifer be praised.”
The word—Lucifer—seemed to hang in the darkness like the face of a barely seen watcher.
“To one such as thyself, such things seem impossible, since we know time to be of ye Nature God hath put upon us. How wondrous, then, must it be to have in thy hands such black endowment to corrupt God’s will, and forge the impossible into that which be more than possible? Let us look then back into the countenance of God and hurl our laughter as we subvert his givings for our whimsey!”
Fanshawe let the echos of the words melt away.
“But as bearing with all great gifts, a price must be exacted—”
“What? My soul?”
Wraxall laughed out of the darkness. “You squandered that some while back, my friend.”
“What, then? What’s the price?” Fanshawe demanded, no longer even caring.
“Something thee wilt freely give, so am I certain. Alas, our disquisition be nearly as its end. Naught remains save for this,” and then Wraxall leaned out of the darkness, green eyes ablaze. But the image of the necromancer’s face seemed to switch back and forth between glimpses of vibrant youth and great age. His hair shifted from dark to gray, back and forth; his posture stooped, then straightened, and the hand on Fanshawe’s shoulder wavered between that of a teenager and that of a hundred-year-old man. That same hand felt hot through Fanshawe’s jacket, and then he noticed tendrils of white smoke wafting off Wraxall’s head. “‘Tis history you and I shall make—a most evil history,” and then Wraxall began to whisper into Fanshawe’s ear…
««—»»
The moment felt like weeks. Fanshawe stood dazed in the barely lit foyer. Wraxall was gone, but a second later, a figure stepped out of the blocks of darkness: Rood.
Rood opened the front door, showing the twilit street.
“I don’t know what to do next!” Fanshawe exclaimed in a whisper.
Rood’s smile was like a mask of wax. “Just but one test remains—”
“Bullshit!” Fanshawe’s voice boomed. “I already passed the fuckin’ test!”
“A challenge most final of thy fiber, sir. Into the even-time you must now go—”
“But the sheriff! His men!”
“—and ride thy must upon the night-wind with all things born of darkness. Should thy heart be not as stoutly black as it must, then thou shalt die most horrible, as did the interloper called Karswell.”
“This is a pile of shit! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Yet if thy heart be so black as to please ye Benefactor, then back to thy strange time thou wilt be proper put—”
“But not before thee hath screamed to rouse the dead from their graves,” another voice floated from the darkness. In increments, Evanore emerged. It was only the icy moonlight from the door that revealed her: nude, curvaceous, her bosom thrusting, and her grin wet. “Would thou take thy leave without so much as a bid of farewell?” she asked coyly. Her white hands reached out to him. Like the last glimpses of Wraxall, Evanore’s aspect changed, shifting, from adolescence to adulthood, and back again. With each impossible metamorphosis, her blood-red hair lengthened down to her buttocks, then shrunk back up again. It was as though Fanshawe’s presence here had triggered some kind of flux that was leaking in from various time periods, which made sense once he thought about it. The same tendrils of smoke wafted off of the woman’s perfect skin. With one step, she was lissome and slim, but with each step after that her belly grew and grew till it looked close to rupture, only to shrink back down to flatness. Fanshawe stood still as a post in the ground as he watched, and he didn’t even flinch when one manner or another of Evanore wrapped her arms around him. Her mouth found his at once, her tongue invading; as she pressed closer, Fanshawe sickeningly felt her belly expand and contract, expand and contract, to mimic each infernal pregnancy. Then—
“Oww!” Fanshawe roared.
Evanore was giggling, her mouth red. She’d bitten down hard on his lower lip, drawing blood. Fanshawe’s reaction was faster than instantaneous, his rage leapt up and he clamped his hands about her throat and squeezed for all he was worth. Harder, harder. No conscious thoughts entered his head, just the reflex…
Harder, harder.
Evanore’s face turned pink, then blue, yet all through Fanshawe’s act, she smiled. Now the nameless flux showed the smoking brand-marks of crosses burned into her breasts, belly, and pubis; he could hear them sizzling. Then her face and the flesh on her head disappeared in strips as if torn by an invisible beast, then…
Fanshawe’s hands were clamped to the throat of a corpse stripped of almost all its flesh.
“To thee I bid my love forever,” the corpse said but it was with a voice like someone talking and vomiting at the same time, after which came an even more loathsome laugh.
Rood’s strong hands shoved Fanshawe out the door. The door clicked shut, then its bolt snapped closed. Fanshawe stood alone in the street; he glanced terrified back and forth. Moonlight streamed down on him. Where did they go? but the question was answered a moment later:
“There he is!”
“Wizard! Get thee hence!”
A rabble of men shambled southward down the street. They carried torches and pitchforks. Fanshawe’s heart felt like it turned inside-out—he raced across the dirt road, into the alley he’d crossed earlier, but—
