NightWhere (21 page)

“Not my interest, at the moment,” Peter said. “But she is a character.”

“So what is your interest?” Rae asked.

Peter raised his eyebrows. “Well, that outfit you’re wearing certainly suggests some of what I’m looking for.”

Rae smirked and hooked her thumbs beneath the thin leather straps that connected the bustier to the thick leather collar around her neck. “What, this li’l ol’ dominatrix rag?”

He placed a hand on the swell of her breasts and slipped it up until his fingers stroked the metal studs on her collar.

“Yes, exactly,” he breathed. His voice was quiet.

“Have you been in the BDSM scene a long time?” she asked.

“Not at all,” he said. His eyes looked nervous, almost ashamed, and he stared into his drink.

“How did you end up here, then?” she asked, puzzled.

He shrugged. “I’m guessing someone was paying attention to the kinds of magazines that came to my P.O. box. One day I got the invitation to this place, and…after dreaming about this for so long, I couldn’t say no. I had to check it out.”

Rae smiled and took a sip of her drink. So, he was a virgin, of sorts. Hard to believe that anyone in this place could be so untried.

“Is it the leather that excites you, or the nudity, or the danger, or the pain?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, grinning. “I want it all.”

Rae considered his dark shirt and faded jeans. He looked about as casual as you could get. “You need some leather for yourself,” she said.

He made a forced smile. “I know,” he said. “But I just…I dunno… I’ve never been able to buy it. I feel stupid dressing up like that for myself, and…”

“And you’ve never had a partner who wanted to,” she finished.

He nodded.

“Hey Sin-D!” she called. In a moment, the bartendress was draping her bosom across the bar and staring up at them with eyes flashing all the over-the-top clichés for come-hither that eyes have ever invented.

Rae ignored the show. “Where do you think I could find some matching leather studs for my stud here? He needs an outfit to go with mine.”

Sin-D laughed. “Are you kidding? Drag that baby boy to my office. We’ll set him up good.”

Rae pulled Peter off the stool and around the back of the bar to a doorway. The three of them stepped inside, and Peter whistled.

“She wasn’t kidding,” he said.

The walls were completely covered with an octopus tangle of studded leather belts, codpieces, bras and more. In the corner a box overflowed with rubber phalluses and various colored vibrators. A couch was tucked against the far wall, and a plastic woman rested there, her mouth permanently open and painted exaggeratedly red.

“Welcome to the toy box,” Sin-D said. “I think I know just what you need.” She walked over to one wall and fingered several long belted devices that hung from a hook. “You a 36 waist,” she asked. “Or a 38?”

“Try a 36,” he said. “You’re good.”

“You have no idea,” she said. “Rae, strip him.”

Rae smiled and unbuttoned Peter’s shirt. There was a faint look of alarm in his eyes, but she leaned up and gave him a soft kiss on the lips. “This is what you’ve wanted,” she said. “Enjoy it.”

He swallowed hard and nodded. Meanwhile, having exposed a bushy-haired chest, Rae continued and undid his belt, then popped the button on his jeans. She felt his body shiver as she pulled them down and helped him step out of the pant legs. His gasp was audible when she pulled his briefs down, letting his already half-hard cock flop out to dangle exposed.

Rae smiled at that. Kneeling, she put her hands on his hips and moved her lips up the shaft of his penis, instantly turning it hard as rock. It pointed to the ceiling, and his breath came faster. Rae grinned at the easy effect a few touches and nakedness could have on a man. She pursed her lips and pressed them to the head of his cock in a wet, puffy kiss before she opened her lips and let him slip inside her mouth, wetting him gently and then pulling back.

“All right,” Sin-D interrupted. “None of that yet. Let’s make him a slave and earn that release, huh?”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Rae agreed and pulled her mouth away, pressing wet lips to Peter’s mouth for just a moment.

“Let’s see if we can cram that big ol’ dick into this little pouch,” Sin-D said. “And no, you making it slippery didn’t help with that.”

Moments later, they walked Peter out to the Blue Room again, but now, his outfit nearly matched Rae’s. A small leather codpiece held his manhood in, and twin leather straps crisscrossed his chest in an X. They connected to an oval ring in the center of his chest and then strapped across his shoulders to do the same X trick across his back.

A pair of black leather combat boots completed the look.

“I feel like a character in a bad gay porno shoot,” he murmured.

Sin-D giggled, and Rae pointed out, “This is what you wanted.”

He nodded, clearly embarrassed to vocally admit it.

“I think it’s time to introduce you to the racks,” Rae said. “You need a good spanking!”

Peter’s smile brightened.

“Come with me, slave,” Rae said and pulled him by the ring on his chest across the club.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Revenge

They say the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions, but Mark had the best intentions, and the road was proving very difficult to find. The bondage night had proven a bust, though he had to wonder about Selena showing up again out of nowhere. It creeped him out a bit…as if she was following him. Maybe she was acting as a spy for NightWhere.

Either way, he hadn’t gotten anything from her. He stared at her card where it sat on the kitchen counter. He wasn’t going to be calling her anytime soon. Whatever she wanted, it had nothing to do with taking him back to NightWhere.

Mark walked through his empty house and felt lonelier than he ever had before in his life. He picked up the postcard that he’d found in one of the abandoned NightWhere locations and stared at it again.

Night

Where

Your dreams…and nightmares come true

No lurid photos. No other indication of any kind about what it meant. But as he stared at the seemingly obscure phrase, he noticed that there was something more to the card that he hadn’t seen before. Faint grey lettering was just barely visible along its edge. Not much of a promotional gambit—most people would never see it. But it was there: “www.nightwhere.666”.

Mark frowned. Dot-com, sure, but there was no web suffix of .666 that he’d ever heard of. He took the card to his computer and launched an Internet browser. As soon as it loaded his home page, he typed “www.nightwhere.666” in the web address window. He bet that he’d end up with some “No Such Page” style message, but instead, his computer screen suddenly turned black.

Slowly, like a movie animation, the word
NightWhere
materialized at the top of the screen, silver letters carving through the black, in an arch over the tangled image of a snake.

Below the logo, a headline also appeared:
Do You Know This Molester?

Mark gasped.

Beneath the headline, was a photo of a man’s face. The very same face he saw in the mirror every morning. There was no question; this was no “that guy looks like me” scene.

The photo was of Mark, grinning full face at the camera.

“Holy shit.”

Beneath the photo it said:

Mark Rogacz may look like just an innocent bystander, but he has flashed dozens of girls at a local grade school near his house and is believed to have had sex with at least five children aged 8-12.

He has a long history of sexual abuse and police have speculated about the possibility that he has hidden away the bodies of some of the girls he has slept with in the basement of his home.

This man appears affable and trustworthy, but he is actually a very dangerous sociopath. Police suspect he may have even murdered his wife, who has not been seen or heard from in several weeks.

If you see him, do not interact with him; call the police immediately.

“What the fuck!” Mark sat back in his office chair and stared at his own mug shot staring back at him from the computer screen. His chest felt like ice. How could they do this to him?

He didn’t ask why…he knew why. Because he hadn’t played along. He had tried to pull Rae away from NightWhere, and when she’d gone anyway, he’d tried to find her.

But, Jesus…if this was on the Internet, how long would it be before police were at his door, ready to pull him in for questioning?

Probably not too long, he speculated.

“They’ve ruined me,” he whispered to the empty room. “First they took my wife, and now they want to take what’s left of my life too?”

Mark clicked the X with a sharp finger snap to the mouse and closed the browser. Then he sat back and took a deep breath.

He had to find Rae. For his own sake now, as well as her own.

He stood up and went into the bedroom to change out of his sweatpants and into his jeans. It was after 11:00 p.m., but he needed to go out. He knew places where the city came alive after dark. And that’s where people might have information on NightWhere.

He wasn’t going to find NightWhere sitting in his house…or looking on the Net.

And based on what he’d just seen online, it looked like he didn’t have a lot of time left to find it before the authorities came looking for him.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Dark Dreams Come True

The sound of the leather on his back sent a shiver down Rae’s spine. Mark would never have allowed her to flog him like this…and if she’d tied him up and beat him anyway…he certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it. The enjoyment of pain just wasn’t in his makeup.

But Peter couldn’t get enough.

The skin of his back was burning pink when someone asked her to stop. Rae looked up from her focus and smiled. Perplexed.

“Stop…why?” she asked.

The man, decked out in blue jeans and a leather vest, looked at Peter and said, “Because you’re really hurting him.”

“Exactly,” Rae had laughed and turned away to continue the process.

She swung her arm harder with every stroke and reveled in seeing his body shift and arch off of the rack. She could see that part of him yearned to be beaten and part was, at the same time, pulling away, afraid. She wanted to warm the skin of both sides. She would turn his fearful side into a slave of the whip.

But maybe not tonight.

Peter’s back was welting and red, and her arm tired. And at this point, what Rae honestly wanted to do to him…

A clock tolled.

A cool hand closed around her wrist. “It’s time,” a familiar voice said. Kharon removed the flogger from her hand, as two other Watchers undid Peter’s bonds.

“Tonight is a special night,” he said. “And I have something special in mind for you and Peter.” Kharon put his arm around Rae and let his lips graze the top of her head.

“You have a cruel streak that I adore,” he said. “Let’s see how deep it runs.”

He led the way to the heavy wooden door of The Red. They passed the velvet ropes and Kharon pulled the iron ring to open the way. They stepped inside to the candlelit foyer. Screams echoed from somewhere in the distance. A girl with silver hair gently rubbed down Peter’s back with a wet rag. He arched his back when she hit the tender spots, but when he looked at Rae he smiled. “Thanks,” he said.

They walked down the long hallway and passed the crucifixion room and the others that Rae was familiar with. But soon they were in a part of NightWhere that she had never been to before. The bricks seemed to change with their progress; the walls grew from modern and smooth to darker red, with uneven grout and chipped and pitted bricks. The walls all glinted with heavy moisture. In some areas, the wetness seemed to flow steadily across the bricks in what looked like a stream of blood.

“Where are we going?” Rae asked after walking a while.

“The last room before The Black.”

“What is The Black?” she asked.

“You’ll find out, depending on what you do in this room,” Kharon said. “I have every confidence that you will meet the Night Mother very soon.”

Finally, they reached the end of the hallway. The brick here seemed to weep cement, and the air smelled of heavy mold and something richer. Almost metallic. The light was low too; everything was cast in a long shadow, and scuttling sounds came from the dark places on the floor as they walked. Rae wanted to lift her feet higher than they could ever reasonably go, uncertain of what lurked along the damp floor.

They stepped into a room that looked like a medieval castle dungeon. The walls were rough-hewn grey stone, and the lighting was provided by flames in sconces set every few feet at eye level along the walls. In the center of the room was a stone table. It was raised just three feet off the ground, and its center was adorned with the ubiquitous symbol of NightWhere—a scaled serpent that ate its own tail.