Darkness In The Flames (73 page)

“I…we…” Dark attempted an apology.

“Get
out
. Get out of my sight, or the stocks will be the least of your punishment.” He turned his gaze back to Thérèse. “I know not what perverted skills your Devil worshipping has bestowed upon you, but clearly they are sufficient to coerce two of my finest witch hunters from their duty. I am convinced of your guilt. Montreaux was right.”

Thérèse swallowed, vainly trying to conceal her body from his gaze. “My Lord, I have no such skills. I am innocent. I am not a witch—no matter what allegations Simon Montreaux has made against me.”

“You would…how
dare
you…” The indignant cleric sputtered in fury. “As if the Montreaux family would lower itself to malign
you
. They are a fine and upstanding line, a noble house aware of God and their duties to the community. You indict yourself further by trying to pass the blame to them.” He turned away. “Filthy witch.”

Thérèse caught a glimpse of Dark’s eyes, sad and almost distraught as he followed Grey from the room. They had no choice but to leave her, she knew. In these uncertain times the power of life and death was held tightly in the hands of those with position and title. Sadly, those people often did not possess the wisdom to manage such power.

“I will find out the truth.” The Bishop spoke over his shoulder. “The Hun will extract the information I need.”

Another servant entered and Thérèse was bound once more. “Where are you taking me? Can I not go home?”

There was no answer to her pleas. Naked, she was led from the chamber as the Bishop ignored her and disappeared up a steep staircase.

Thérèse’s path lay downward, treading spiral stone steps worn by the passage of thousands before her. She stumbled after the servant until her head spun, aching a little from her previous night’s activities and with a hunger gnawing at her belly. She needed food and water but it appeared she would receive neither.

Instead she was pushed into a large hall at the bottom of the staircase.

“Here. His Lordship wants you to question this witch.” The words were gruff and the servant quickly departed, leaving Thérèse bound and naked—and very,
very
afraid.

The massive columns of the hall soared high above her, dirty with the grime of centuries. Fires blazed in braziers here and there but did nothing to warm the chill that percolated Thérèse’s heart. She could vaguely hear moans coming from small barred chambers ringing the perimeter, sounds that might have been human—but could easily have been animals in dreadful pain.

All these things registered in her mind, but were relegated to incidental next to the man who was staring at her.

Huge and bare to the waist, he could only be the Hun. Massive muscles bulged in his arms and shoulders, knots of strength gleaming in the firelight. He was quite bald, a contrast to the hair on his chest. He wore stained leather breeches that were held at his waist by ties.

But it was his face that froze the breath in her lungs.

Where there should have been an eye there was only twisted flesh, a terrible scar that looked red and painful. It crossed down his visage from forehead to chin, gathering the skin as it went. It twisted his mouth into a grimace of rage before fading around beneath his chin to the base of his neck.

His one good eye stared at her without expression. Then he stepped forward and without a blink dragged her to a wooden table, lifting her and tossing her onto it as if she was no more than a kitten.

Within moments she was trapped, ankles in iron bands, wrists tied high and wide above her head.

And all had been accomplished with the minimum of effort and in total silence. Her heart thundered so loudly she was amazed it didn’t echo from the walls. Scarce aware of her nudity, Thérèse watched fearfully as the Hun turned away to busy himself with some tools.

He returned almost immediately, a large mallet in one hand.

She shivered as he reached for her fingers, looking at them almost with curiosity. “Are you witch?” Finally he spoke, his voice heavily accented and a little slurred from the deformed shape of his lips.

“No.” Her answer remained the same although her voice trembled. “No, I am not a witch, good sir.”

“You
lie
.”

And he smashed her fingers with the mallet.

*~*~*~*

The pain began.

Endless waves that brought screams to Thérèse’s throat. She fainted only to be revived by water flung over her body, icy cold streams that burned her back to consciousness.

How could she endure this? She
must
. She struggled, fought for strength, tried to protest her innocence to her torturer. But he refused to listen.

It went on and on. The first day her hand was shattered, then her toenails were pulled cruelly from her feet, an agony that nearly killed her before she fainted once more.

Hours seemed like days—time blurred into a red haze of excruciating pain and periods of numbness that had her wondering if she’d died at last.

But she did not die. Something inside her, some spark of fury—of stubbornness perhaps—refused to let her succumb. She bore the savage treatment, whimpering as her body was stretched and her shoulders cracked and wrenched out of place on the rack.

She withstood the tiny branding iron in the shape of a cross as it was applied to each and every tiny mark on her body. When the Hun burned it into her pussy she screamed until she had no voice left and then continued to scream in her mind, only to find relief in the blackness of a void she could never have envisioned in her wildest nightmare.

And yet
still
she denied the charge of witchcraft.

Each night—or when she assumed night came for time had ceased to hold any meaning for her—she was flung into a small barred prison, infested with rats and vermin. There was a tiny bowl of water and sometimes a blessed piece of stale bread she gnawed hurriedly before the rats could steal it from her.

One hand had been left untouched, apparently to ensure she could make her mark on her confession when the time came. Some inner strength forced her to refuse over and over again to sign such a document.

She was innocent. It was her only handhold to reality now, her knowledge that she would most probably die protesting the fact.

Her hair had matted into a filthy mess, she was naked—although cared little for that—and could barely walk since one of the Hun’s tortures had crushed her right foot.

A heavy-handed slap had split her face open and the blood had congealed as it fell unchecked. She could not see from one eye and the other was bleary.

Weak from hunger, almost insane from the pain, Thérèse still found some inner reserve that would not let her die. Some strength, some burgeoning fury within her sustained her for longer than she could have imagined.

Fanciful notions began to creep into her mind. She wondered if she was a challenge to the Hun. If he was trying new and devious ways to make her confess—if any of his previous victims had withstood him as long as she had.

Each new torture became a battle of wills, hers against his. The tiny cuts on her belly and breasts—made to release the evil spirits within her—mere insect bites. The salt water he soaked them with—nothing more than a sting or two.

The continual branding of her body—the stench of her own flesh as it charred beneath the sign of God—a reinforcement of her innocence. Surely God could be taking no pleasure in this savage abuse of one of his children?

Eventually, the Hun reached the end of his patience. He beat her savagely with nothing more than his hard hands, leaving long bruises and open wounds that bled freely, making her even more dizzy and sending little black dots dancing in front of her eyes.

“
Are you witch
?”

The refrain had never changed throughout the torture. It was the only question he ever asked.

Her answer never changed either, whispered now between lips that were swollen and bloody and through gaps where her teeth had once gleamed straight and white.

“
No
.”

Her ribs stabbed her viciously, telling her that more than one had shattered as he’d beaten her.

It was a war of wills now, Thérèse against the Hun, or as she comforted herself—right and innocence against evil. She held that thought for a while longer, finding that the periods of blackness were longer now, the intervals between her agony stretching out into infinities of blessed unconsciousness.

Or so it seemed to her, anyway.

Until that moment when a shrill scream brought her head up from where she was chained to the wall. Until the terrified cry of a young girl sent shivers of pain and sensation back through limbs dulled to their torture.

“No, stop.
Stop it
. You’re hurting me…”

The Hun turned away from Thérèse, casually tossing the branding iron into a nearby brazier. For her part, Thérèse tried to swallow down a surprisingly large lump of horror as her breath seized in what was left of her lungs.

She knew that voice.

It was Katya
.

A servant was dragging her by the hair into the torture hall, chemise ripped and dirty as if she’d been rolled in mud.

Thérèse’s heart stopped dead.

This couldn’t be happening. It was not possible that retaliation would fall on one as innocent as Katya. She dug deep into her soul for strength, for the energy to move and protect her sister.

Katya’s eyes widened as the Hun neared her, staring hugely at the giant man with the terribly scarred face. She whimpered, then looked fleetingly around her. Thérèse wanted to sob aloud as Katya’s glance brushed over her.

Her own sister had not recognized her
.

Vainly, Thérèse tried to move, to rattle her chains, to cry out—anything to distract the Hun. All her efforts did was bring the servant’s gaze to where she sagged. He glanced at the Hun and apparently the brief nod from the giant bald head was enough to tell him what to do.

Katya’s pleas and screams echoed in Thérèse’s ears. The Hun picked her up like a bag of grain and carried her away.

The servant approached Thérèse. She parted her lips and spoke with difficulty. “I am a witch. I confess. Anything. Don’t let him hurt my sister. She’s an innocent child…”

The servant snorted as he unchained her. “Too late. You’re done for. So’s the brat. The Hun likes ‘em young.”

Collapsing on the floor, tears finally erupted and Thérèse sobbed out her pain. “
Nooo
…”

“Enough. You’ll be dead soon enough. Maybe you’ll see her again then. Although if you’re a witch, I doubt it.”

She was dragged to a different chamber this time, a larger cell with hay on the floor, some distance from the hall of horrors. There was even a tiny window high up on the walls where Thérèse’s one good eye could almost make out clouds passing in the sky.

“In here. If you’re alive next time we check, maybe we’ll hang you. If not…well, the rats’ll take care of you.”

The dull clang of the grate closing behind her barely registered. All she could hear was the echo of Katya’s screams as they reverberated through her mind. How could this happen? How could men be so brutal to one so young?

Horrid visions began a relentless dance inside her brain, images of Katya suffering the imaginatively vicious tortures. Of having her small bones crushed, her soft skin burned—Thérèse would have screamed if she’d had the strength.

Weak and disoriented, she crawled to the wall and leaned against it, ignoring the filthy straw and muddy slime that coated the floor. She was beyond all that now, wrapped in a terror and a desolation that resounded to her soul.

She prayed, prayed with every ounce of her remaining will, every fiber of her shattered body. She prayed that Katya would be freed, unharmed.

And she prayed for her own death.

There could be no more of this horror. No more infinities of pain or blackness. No more resistance. She had nothing left with which to fight. Thérèse had reached the end, pushed there by the hand of a Bishop whose powers had been challenged and whose friends had been insulted. And held fast by the sounds of her sister’s terror.

It must end. It
had
to end and end now.

Sliding to a crumpled heap, Thérèse surrendered to what she knew awaited her—the welcome darkness of death. Yet, to her surprise, no dark angel arrived to claim her soul.

Hearing a sound outside, she drifted back into consciousness only to see a light wavering beyond the barred cell door. She was still alive, apparently, numb to her injuries but still alive.

She wondered why.

The door clanged open and something was tossed inside, falling heavily across Thérèse’s legs. By the dim light she could make it out—it was a body.

Frail and limp, the flesh was cool and Thérèse instinctively shuddered away. Then a brief ray of moonlight shone from above and illuminated the corpse at her feet.

It was
Katya
.

Madness descended on Thérèse, the madness of a pain too great to bear, an agony that ripped her humanity from her and drove her past any trappings of sanity.

She sobbed and mumbled sounds that would have been screams and curses on other lips, from other throats. She cradled Katya in her one good arm, gently stroking her swollen and useless hand across her sister’s cold forehead. A sticky dampness met her touch—Katya was bloodied, mottled with the evidence of savage abuse.

Tracing the delicate skin, Thérèse sensed the wounds, freezing as she found more wetness soaking Katya’s slim thighs. She needed no light to tell her that her sister had been brutally raped.

It was a horror too great to be borne and it swamped Thérèse with a mixture of desolation and agony.

Holding the lifeless body of her sister, Thérèse cursed those who had done this. She began to curse the Hun, the Bishop, Simon Montreaux and even God himself. Wrapped in her pain, she let anger build inside her, the only emotion that could sustain life within her damaged body.

She howled at last, an animalistic sound of desperation. Her cries went on and on until her voice gave out, reducing her to whimpers. It was too much. She surely must now give up the fight.