NightWhere (33 page)

“Jesus,” Mark said. “I can’t hit her there. C’mon.”

“You’re going to quit now?” Damia taunted. “I knew you’d never go through with this. Rae is better off where she is—without you.”

“Fuck you,” Mark said and pulled his whip arm back. As he did, he felt something tug against the leather. He looked back to see one of Kharon’s helpers holding the last tail of the whip. A black-haired woman with deathly white fingers fastened something silver to the edge of the whip.

A metal hook.

“Time to go fishing,” Damia said. “Remember, the faster you hit it, the faster you quit it!”

Mark felt a sinking sensation in his groin. The first time he hit this woman, he was going to rip her skin. And to hit the place he was supposed to…with a hook? Jesus fuckin’ Christ! His arm felt frozen in place…he couldn’t do this.

“Rae never loved you,” Damia whispered behind him. “She only loved to be defiled. Think about that…marrying you was her way of being degraded…”

Mark struck out with the whip without thinking. The anger took him over. The hook caught just to the left of the woman’s belly button, but instantly pulled free, a trickle of blood flowing in its wake.

“Nice shot, Sherlock. Maybe aim next time? You didn’t even hit the circle!”

The next slap caught her above the belly, beneath her left breast. A jagged wound appeared as soon as Mark pulled the whip back. He held the whip in his hands for a moment then, and stared at the three-hooked implement that was tied with a heavy filament to the end of his whip. It really was just an old-fashioned, three-pronged fishhook.

“If that were me up there, would you miss?” Damia asked. Her voice was a seductive tease in his left ear.

“No,” Mark growled and readied his arm to release the whip once more.

He caught her five more times across the belly and with one horrible strike hooked her breast, stretching the skin out taut before the flesh released the hook and began to drip blood, down across her belly and down across the target Damia had drawn in the woman’s own blood.

With each miss, the woman’s body shook, and when the hooks caught her breast, she did give out a faint, gurgled scream.

And then Mark held his arm back and took a deep breath, really focusing before he let the whip go. The slap of the end of the leather hit right between her legs, in that narrow cleft where every man wanted to go, and where now, none would enter without seeing the scar that Mark had made. When he pulled the whip back, setting the hook and then gouging her as he called it back, there was skin stuck to the hooks, and the delta of the woman’s crotch instantly blossomed in angry red.

Someone stepped up and took the whip from Mark’s hand, replacing it with the hilt of something heavy. He brought his arm down and saw that he now held a black-handled dagger.

The robed figures moved as one and released the woman from the pole. Her arms fell from above her head like dead weight, and she clearly needed support as the group escorted her to a stone table in the middle of the room, behind the pole she’d been tied to.

They lifted and laid her on her back. Damia took Mark by the elbow and led him to the table. “Now comes the fun part,” she said. Mark didn’t like the way she emphasized the word
fun
.

“You’ve made your mark on her backside, but now you must make our mark on her front. She will forever be marked as a sacrifice to NightWhere.”

Mark looked at the hermaphrodite with total incredulity. He held up the knife. “Are you suggesting that I cut her with this?”

“Not just cut her,” Damia clarified. “You will follow the pattern we have drawn on her belly. And please don’t make any mistakes…you only get one shot at something like this.”

“I’m not going to stab somebody,” Mark said. “I could kill her!”

“Don’t stab too deep then.”

The Watchers moved and stood in line on either side of the table. The woman lay still. Mark held the tip of the knife to the top of the spiral snake. His hand shook visibly.

“Cut her,” Kharon commanded. “Use her flesh as your own. She is nothing. Clay to mold. Make her in our image.”

He’d come this far and already had turned the woman’s back into a bloody, torn mess. If he could keep his cuts very shallow, he wouldn’t hurt her too badly. And then this nightmare would all finally be over. Mark took a deep breath and pushed the edge of the knife against the woman’s skin. It resisted only for a second, and then the blade sank in. The blade was
sharp
. A thin trail of red instantly bloomed around the edge of the knife, and Mark struggled to keep its contact with her skin very gentle. He only wanted to break the skin, not go deeper.

He moved it a few inches, beginning to make the first arc, when Kharon stepped forward and put a hand on his wrist. “Cut her, don’t tickle her.”

“I don’t want to kill her,” Mark said.

“She is aware of the risk. Press harder. I want to see her flesh part.”

Mark’s heart beat harder, and he felt the tears well up in his eyes. He had done a lot of things in his life that he was ashamed of. He had done a lot of things that he really didn’t want to do.

Nothing had prepared him for this.

Mark pressed the knife in farther, and the woman on the table moaned. The blood flowed out from around the blade now, heavily. Drips poured over her side and spattered the rock slab.

“Much better,” Kharon said. Then he began to speak. The words were guttural, foreign, but the rest of the robed figures apparently knew them. They soon joined in, until the small room echoed with the sound of chanting in unison.

To Mark, the words sounded evil.

He pressed the knife along the snake drawn on the woman’s belly, and gulped as the blood flow increased. He could see the flesh pulling apart under his knife, opening an inch deep to reveal her insides.

Sweat poured down his sides and tears wept absently down his face.

Mark cut.

And then the knife seemed to disappear inside her as he pulled it around the final curve near her belly button. Blood sprayed out and pooled across her middle, before flowing to the table. The woman screamed faintly beneath the burlap, and Mark could see the pink of her guts inside…the blade had slipped through her dermis to breach her belly.

“Oh shit,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

He drew the blade out and stepped back from the table.

The chanting rose to a fever pitch as the woman’s cries grew. At last Kharon raised his hands, and the room went silent.

“She is ours,” Kharon announced, as four of his followers went to each corner of the table. “Now make her yours.”

Damia suddenly curled around Mark’s leg, brushing her breasts against him. With a cool hand, she stroked his penis, which despite Mark’s wishes, instantly grew erect.

“Take her,” Damia said. “Use her for your pleasure.”

Mark shook his head. “No, I can’t. We need to get her a doctor—one of those cuts is too deep. She’s going to bleed to death.”

Kharon shook his head. “She will have no help until your defilement is finished.”

Mark hesitated, and then realized that the only way to end this was to go through it. Protesting would only lengthen the time it took to get help.

He put his foot on a step at the foot of the table and crawled above the woman. “I’m sorry,” he said again and again as he positioned and pressed himself inside her. She was warm and wet. Lubricated by her own blood. As he pushed his body against her, the blood flowed faster from her belly, and Mark’s own stomach was quickly coated in the sticky warmth of her blood.

“Make her yours,” Damia urged. “Take her deeply.”

Mark stared at the black-painted breasts and the red snake cut below them and felt his cock respond to the horror in a way he would never have guessed. He was incredibly hard now, and his motion increased as he surrendered to the primal act. The woman groaned with each thrust, and soon Mark’s own moans joined hers, and he let go, spasming again and again until he was gasping for breath.

When at last he pulled back, the blood had smeared across all of her stomach and chest, washing much of the black paint away. He could see the true color of bloody, tan skin beneath the crimson.

“Get her a doctor,” Mark demanded.

“There is just one more thing you must do,” Kharon said. “Stand and wash her clean.”

“Give me a washcloth then,” Mark said.

There was laughter.

Kharon shook his head. “You were washed clean by all of us not so long ago. You have the means. Use it.”

Mark knew instantly what he meant. He shook his head. “I’ve done enough.”

“Her defilement is not complete until you have shown her how low she is to you. Worthy only of being your receptacle. Do it now.”

“I want to see Rae,” Mark said.

“When you finish here,” Kharon said. “Not before.”

“Jesus Christ,” Mark whispered.

“Not here,” Damia laughed. “I told you that.” With her hands she pushed him to stand upright above the bloody woman on the table.

“Wash the night from her,” Damia said. “And she will be reborn to NightWhere.”

Mark struggled to do as they demanded. But nothing came. He remembered all of those times he’d stood at a urinal and been flanked by men on either side and found it impossible to go…and sometimes had left without doing anything, only to return five minutes later.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus. And eventually…he felt his tubes open. When at last he released, he opened his eyes and watched his penis dissolve the black paint from the woman fully. It washed away even faster than it seemed it should have, until the woman on the table was no longer painted in anything but her blood and Mark’s piss. Kharon walked to the head of the table and untied the burlap sack from around her head, as his helpers released her arms and legs.

“I promised you that if you completed the three levels of NightWhere, you would see your wife once more,” Kharon said. “Here she is.”

Mark looked down in horror as Rae’s face stared up at him from the bloody mess he had made of her body. Her brow was creased in pain, but there was a trembling smile on her face.

“Oh my God, Rae, I didn’t know.”

He dropped to his knees and put his hand on her hair. “I would never have done this if I’d known it was you.”

“I know,” she whispered. “That’s why they covered my face. I wish that I could have watched.”

He leaned down to kiss her. She allowed him, but did not respond.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he said. “Let me take you out of here now. You need a doctor.”

Rae shook her head and pushed Mark to lie down on the slab. She rolled herself on top of him, gasping with pain as she did, as fresh blood oozed out all along the circle of the NightWhere snake.

“I’m not leaving here,” she warned, her voice hitching in pain with each word. She ground herself against his crotch, her eyes rolling back in her head as she did. She gave out a handful of guttural moans that were as filled with anguish as pleasure. To Mark she sounded hideous, but when Rae finally focused and looked down into Mark’s eyes again, she smiled.

“Thank you, baby. I have only one more trial to pass before I can go into The Black.”

“What is that?” Mark asked.

Damia stepped forward to the table and helped slip two white gloves over Rae’s hands. When the hermaphrodite stepped away, Mark saw that each of Rae’s fingertips ended in silver. The gloves had claws.

Triangular, razor-sharp blades. As the weapons registered, Mark felt hands grab his ankles and wrists.

“This is the fun part I was talking about earlier,” Damia said. “I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

She gestured to a dark corner of the room, and a figure stepped forward. Mark could have sworn she was not in the room before. “This is the Night Mother, our Midnight Queen. Yvonna,” Damia said. “She has been waiting for this for a long time.”

Yvonna was beautiful.

And horrible.

Her skin was black as pitch; Mark couldn’t tell if she’d been painted as Rae had been, but she looked just as strangely black. The thrust of her nipples was only slightly less dark than the midnight of her skin. The sign of the snake was tattooed on her midsection in the same way that Mark had carved it into Rae. But the image of the snake repeated itself over and over across her cheeks and forehead and arms and legs. Tiny snakes were visible on her eyelids and when she raised her hands Mark saw that even her palms were scored with the snake.

Mark struggled briefly against the hands that gripped him, and Damia continued speaking as Yvonna stepped closer. Damia reached up to stroke Rae’s cheek.

“Her final trial is that she must have sex with your corpse and take your death seed inside her as she feeds your life to Yvonna,” Damia said. The playful lilt of her voice no longer sounded filled with wry humor. She was unsmilingly serious. “Corpse seed will be Rae’s
danake
—her coin—to enter the door of fire and truly belong to the night.”

Yvonna smiled, revealing ice-white teeth that shone strangely against the black of her skin. She looked like some kind of denuded demon covered in dark symbology.