Viola Grace - Saguinary Seduction, page 30
“There’s no turning back now, Giles.”
Once inside, Jareth nailed and burnt the torches she’d brought with her around the Neolithic structure and put the book on a small stone altar.
“Come on in, Giles.”
He bent forward and crossed the doorway. Within the stone walls, it wasn’t that windy.
“Strip off your clothes and kneel down there,” said Jareth, pointing to the centre of the ruins. “You must look on the goddess in lust and despair.”
Shivering with cold and fear, he removed his clothes and knelt down where she had said. She put a black bottle, a dagger and the portrait of his wife in front of him. Then she removed her own clothes as well.
She opened her book and began to read it in a strange tongue.
Suddenly, the sky changed its colour into dark crimson and purple.
Thunder peeled the sky and a loud crash of lightning rang out, breaking her words. The Knap of Howar slowly shrouded in mist.
The coldness of that place brought him back to the coldness of his own room. His heart was still beating with fear.
He moved away from the window and walked to the bathroom. He’d been seeing Amanda almost every night since that night at the Neolithic ruins. His memories won’t go away, though. On his way to the bathroom, he saw himself again, drinking from that bottle. He could even remember the taste of its liquid—salty and metallic, like the smell of old iron. He saw Jareth cutting his arms, legs and chest with that dagger.
The vivid scene and pain he remembered made him touch his 272
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old scars by instinct.
He screamed and cried out Amanda’s name. The rain fell in heavy sheets, ceaselessly battering his naked body. The sky opened up just above him as the whole place seemed to envelop in dark energies. The stone walls became alive. A couple of cold hands touched his shoulders from behind.
The image of Jareth’s old wrinkled pussy, approaching his lips, forcing him to savour her strong taste…
His mind was a complete blank. There were no more images, no more memories. Nothing. He forced his mind to remember something else, but it was useless.
Giles entered the bathroom and had a short shower.
He stepped from the bath and towelled himself, then pulled on a robe and made his way toward the kitchen downstairs.
His trembling hand opened the fridge but there was nothing there to eat. He looked around and realised he hadn’t prepared a meal in months. Then something crossed his mind. Without knowing why, he felt an irresistible impulse to go down to the cellar of his house. Giles couldn’t remember if he had gone down there before, at least not after emptying it a couple of days before his trip to the Orkney island of Papa Westray. It seemed as if Amanda were calling him, as if she needed his company as much as he needed hers in daylight.
“You can’t be calling me, can you?” he said, going down the wooden stairs. “You must be resting now.” He stopped and tried to reason himself out of those thoughts. “It’s me, isn’t it? It’s just me.” However, the impulse he felt was stronger. His hidden secret was down there.
Giles was all of a tremble, but unlocked the door of the cellar anyway. He turned on the light, closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. He waited at the threshold. He knew he didn’t have the nerve to deal with what that cold room harboured.
“I must get out of here. I need some fresh air.”
He was about to turn his back and leave when a loud, heavy thud in front of him forced him to open his eyes. The secret he 273
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had so eagerly protected revealed itself in that bare, subterranean room.
There, in the middle of stained, unpainted walls, was a large, open marble coffin, carved in strange symbols. Yielding to curiosity, Giles came closer and walked around the coffin.
His eyes scrutinized the details on the stone. The covering slab had fallen aside, showing a huge labyrinth carved in it and a black sun painted in the centre. Giles came even closer and looked inside the coffin. A thrill of terror and genuine satisfaction ran through him on seeing his naked wife laying in repose upon a blue velvet cloth. Her hands rested together on her chest as if in supplication, her body looked fresh and free from decomposition, her skin was soft and natural to his touch, her chest and part of her chin were smeared with dry blood.
“Sleep tight, darling.”
In spite of his natural fear he felt proud of what he saw, proud of his success. All those years had been like an interminable penance without her. Yet those years had gone.
She was there, sleeping. He had brought her back from beyond to ease his sorrows, to satiate his carnal needs. What else could be more important now that he’d managed to make possible the unthinkable? What else after coming into contact with Hecate, the one who holds herself afar and defying death itself? She was no longer in his mind or in his heart, but in the flesh.
“I snatched her soul out of your hands!” he said and laughed. “You hear me?” He looked skyward as if he could meet the Maker’s face up there on the ceiling of his cellar.
Dark smoke streamed out of the stains on the walls in response to his insult. It swirled around the open coffin, forming a thick mass of black clouds. A grievous stench arose as well, spreading to every corner of the room, increasing and becoming above all measure pestilently noisome.
The light went out.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
The voice was low, rasping and unpleasant. It seemed to 274
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come from the smoke itself.
“I can scarce withhold myself from beating you to death.”
“Who…who are you?” uttered Giles and swallowed hard.
A supernatural brightness started to glow amidst the black mass of clouds that slowly evolved into a definite female form, a form that little by little became corporeal.
It was a tall, fine figure of a woman, undeniably attractive.
She had the appearance of a young maiden, her face was as white as alabaster, perfectly bloodless. Her lips were sultry, darkly rouged, but slightly drawn back. Her teeth were glaringly white and fang-like. The colour of her eyes was deep, penetrating black beneath dark-shaded eyelids. Hatred raged in those eyes. Her plaited black tresses flowed around her face.
Her skin radiated that supernatural brightness that filtered through the old strips of black fabric that covered her body.
“You’re Hecate,” Giles managed to say, kneeling in front of her like a faithful servant. “You must be Hecate.” The perspiration of intense fear stood upon his brow.
“Hush, you bastard.” Her breathing was shallow and harsh.
“Your soul is utterly useless to me. I got sick and tired of your pathetic fantasies. I thought you’d learn the delights of perversity I gave you. I thought you’d understand the superiority that comes from corruption, but you, you’re just a dull, stupid shell that will never be filled. I just wanted you to seek the evil in others and use it for my own ends. I should have never trusted you. I should have never trusted Amanda either.”
Fear paralysed Giles’s limbs and the goddess laughed a guttural noise that seemed to tear his mind in two.
“She thought you were a worthy man. She even thought you were a worthy soul.”
The goddess’s laughter was louder and louder in his head, but his eyes were fascinated with those black, metallic-looking eyes of hers. He was trembling yet couldn’t withdraw his gaze from hers. Then strong fingers gripped both his testicles and his tender cock in a clinch. Pain forced him to look down at his groin and saw how an invisible hand was rumpling his robe, 275
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squeezing him so fiercely he burst into tears.
“I called flesh unto myself to take Amanda’s soul back with me. Back where it really belongs.” The goddess’s right hand pointed to the coffin.
“But you promised me I’d…”
Then another unseen hand thrust up inside his anus, piercing through.
“Hush!”
Giles was shocked. It was an impossible pain.
“Please…don’t…take her…away,” he implored.
The goddess’s jaws opened. Her eyes burnt as red as rubies.
Her nose wrinkled, flattening back on itself. With a plunge she seized his neck. Scythe teeth sprouted, poising over his jugular.
A hideous sucking noise followed.
Giles screamed for help, but didn’t resist. He just let himself go. In his mind he saw Amanda hovering around the ceiling of that subterranean room. He felt her presence. He knew she was there to protect him. He saw her smiling at him, calling him, expecting him with open arms. All of a sudden, he quit breathing. He felt a palpable loss as if the warmth of his veins had been siphoned away, leaving his body leaden and cold. His heart stopped beating. He felt as though he were away from his body, in space by himself. He looked down and saw Hecate feeding upon him. Her bright body was awash with his blood. Actually, she was cutting him into pieces. He saw his throat ripped open, his body torn apart and dismembered. The goddess was eating him.
Hecate gazed up at him. Blood slopped from her mouth.
“There’s nowhere to go now, but I’m sure you haven’t got the foggiest idea of what is actually happening to you, have you?”
Frantic with horror and frustration he tried to grab her neck, but his hands couldn’t touch her. He was incorporeal.
“Don’t bother and wait for your Maker to pick up your petty soul. He doesn’t want you by his side and neither do I.”
Of course Giles knew he was out of his body, but he couldn’t realise that experience had anything to do with death.
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He felt nothing at all but fear and confusion. He could understand what Hecate was doing to his body, but he couldn’t figure out how he was up at the ceiling of the cellar, watching as a spectator, what the goddess had left of his body. There was no way for him to understand how his hands had passed right through Hecate’s neck. Then everything around him vanished from sight. He was floating and tumbling through a dark void. He wasn’t alone, though. He had the feeling there was somebody else there as well. Amanda. He could feel her presence and her vitality. He could even feel her moving, but he couldn’t see her.
Be receptive. He had no idea whether he heard her words or sensed her thoughts. Blend your thoughts. Absorb my strength. Just let yourself go and fill yourself with my vitality. Feel it. Let it in.
An amazing energy started to break through his soul.
Amanda was within him. He felt defenceless, but happy at the same time. Little by little his beloved wife was wrapping him in her glorious vital power, a power that dragged him into sweet oblivion.
* * * *
Amanda felt dizzy and disoriented when waking up inside the coffin. A blue-violet sheen emanated from the marble walls of the sarcophagus and from every object that she saw in that subterranean room—the walls, the ceiling, the table next to the coffin and the floor. A powerful energy surrounded her and gave her new strength. The spectres of Undeath were no longer inside her. Their torture was over. Amanda had managed to escape Hecate and her world of abominations. She’d come upon her husband’s soul. There was no other chance for her. Stealing his soul was the only way and she was sure she’ll never give up her hold on it. It hadn’t been that hard for her after all. His sick needs and desires had helped her a lot.
Yet she was still helpless against the thirst that overcame her.
Amanda made her way upstairs and prepared a hot bath for herself, lying there until the water turned cold and her 277
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fingertips began to resemble prunes.
That very night her thirst forced her out to the garden. The grounds in front of her had a funereal atmosphere. The sprawling mass of green was a barely tamed maze of mustiness.
A sap-green sheen emanated from those grounds.
Her bare feet walked the path of cracked overgrown flags, flanked either side by dense yew trees that reared up, blocking out the moonlight, but her thirst became unbearable and forced her out in the street. She had to touch warm flesh and had to be touched as well.
She opened the garden gate.
Her eyes looked for the most suitable victims among the passersby. An attractive blue-violet sheen emanated from those living bodies. Her ears detected their hearts beating at a distance. Amanda knew her woman’s body, her soft breasts and thighs would enthral any man, any creature. The whole idea made her shiver.
Soon the first victim appeared, a young girl in gaudy attire.
Amanda’s teeth tore into the young flesh of her pale neck.
Warm blood ran down her throat until her mouth overflowed.
The smell was intoxicating. Scarlet fluids cascaded down her chin and between her breasts. But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough now. She dragged the victim inside her garden and dug her fingers until her knuckles disappeared into the wound she had inflicted upon the girl’s neck. More blood poured freely from it and her bloody hands smeared her naked breasts with the fluids. Her appetite grew stronger. Raw flesh had always had that exquisite effect on her.
278
Samanthaùs Seduction
Tianna Xander
amantha knelt behind the marker, her back pressed against Sthe cold stone. Her heart hammered in her chest at the thought that the caretaker could decide he’d forgotten something and come back through the gate and find her.
Why didn’t the man just lock the gate and leave? She glanced up at the sun. It moved lower and lower in the sky every second she waited.
Her leg muscles trembled as she bore the brunt of her weight on the balls of her feet. She held a five-pound sledgehammer in one hand and two wooden stakes in the other. If she couldn’t take out the damned vampire in her grandparent’s crypt with those, she deserved whatever she got.
Reaching up, she swiped her forearm across her brow. It was hot. The sun had been beating down on the other mausoleum where she’d hid all day. She never thought it would be so difficult to hide in a cemetery. It’s not as through there wasn’t plenty of hiding places. It was just that they were all so hot. And the smell was unbearable!
She waited for the sound of the caretaker’s vehicle to fade as he drove down the street, then heaved a sigh of relief. Still, she didn’t want anyone to see her so she ran through the maze of headstones, keeping her head low. She’d kill that damned vampire if it was the last thing she’d ever do.
Smiling grimly, she tucked one stake in her back pocket and 279
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carried the other in her hand as she approached the crypt. The sun was still up so she didn’t have to worry that he’d kill her first. She’d open the crypt, walk up to him and drive the stake through his cold, dead heart before he could blink.
A vampire had taken her fiancé’s life and she’d be damned if she would ever suffer one to live if she knew where to find them. Revenge may belong to some higher power, but she didn’t care. The fewer vampires there were on the Earth, the safer everyone would be. Besides, she had a score to settle. She didn’t fall in love every day.
The door to the vault was heavy. The sound of cement scraping against cement was loud. Perhaps too loud. She looked around, wondering if cemeteries had night security.
There were grave robbers, after all. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she pushed the door open further to utilize what little sunlight remained. She needed to see to do her job properly.
Gripping the stake tighter, she crept up on the sleeping vamp and raised her arm. Her eyes narrowed as she grew closer to the man who had the audacity to house himself in her family’s mausoleum. How dare he?
The stake fell from her hand when she finally got close enough to see inside the coffin he slept in. This was her first kill? She shook her head, unable to move as she stood and stared at the man lying so still. His face was almost white. It was as though there was no blood at all in his body. He looked dead, yet his body hadn’t decomposed a bit and he didn’t smell.
Blue-black hair framed his face. His jaw showed a hint of shadow, like he’d need to shave again in a few hours. His lips were red, too red in such a pale face. Shadows hid a good portion of his features, but she was sure it was him. She’d hoped against hope to find the man who’d killed her fiancé.
Never, in her wildest dreams, had she expected to find him here.
Samantha swallowed thickly and licked her lips. The hammer followed stake to the floor. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t end the existence of this particular vampire. It didn’t 280
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matter that she’d read everything she could find on how to kill or incapacitate one. This one was different.
Looking over her shoulder, she noticed the sun had almost disappeared below the horizon. She had to run, to get out of here before he awoke.
Too late!
Sitting up, he turned to look at her. “I wondered how long it would take you to find me.” He glanced around the interior of the crypt. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you decided to visit your family.”
Where were the long, ugly teeth that ripped and tore at flesh so easily? Samantha backed up a pace, raising her hand to her neck in a defensive gesture.
He canted his head. “Are you afraid of me?” He frowned, looking hurt.
Nodding, she backed up another pace. What did he expect?
He was a vampire! It was the last thing she’d ever expected.
She’d been fully prepared to end his existence, but now…now she could no more drive a stake through this vampire’s heart than she could fly. Her hand flew to her mouth to suppress a hysterical giggle. He could probably fly.
“You’re afraid of me.” He sighed. “I didn’t plan for this.”
“Plan for what, David?”
“I never thought you’d be afraid of me. I’m still me. I still love dogs and horses.” He gave her a troubled look. “And I still love you.” He climbed from the coffin and faced her.
