The Burning (26 page)

And he did. Stancie shuddered and cried out, a sound of ecstasy that cycled into pain. Stephan spurted on and on. The pain seemed to urge him on until there was no more fluid in him
.

The room was quiet. Stancie rolled off him. He gasped for breath. He had never experienced an ejaculation like that. It felt as though he had pushed his soul out through his cock. He lifted heavy eyelids. Freya and Dee were leaning over Stancie and exchanging startled looks. Stancie seemed only half-conscious
.

What had happened here?

At last, Dee straightened and looked over at him. She heaved a breath. “Well, we will have to make some adjustment in our schedule. From this moment, your ejaculations are dangerous to your partner.”

That was the first sign that he had changed forever. After that, they switched to schooling him only in restraint and the suppression of pain. He learned the chants, long strings of words in languages long dead that sometimes seemed to have meaning and sometimes seemed like nonsense. They helped him to concentrate, though.

Stephan ground his face into his pillow to steady himself. That was when they started teaching him the disciplines. Of course they opened wounds. But there were other torments, too.

“How many nights since he has eaten?” Deirdre asked, as she popped a walnut into her mouth and sipped her wine
.

Stephan knelt, light-headed, belly hollow, and watched them eat. The smell of the beef tormented him. They left the food there during the day with strict orders that he not touch it
.

“A week, I think,” Stancie said, her mouth full. “He’s had no sustenance, unless you count the female juices he has swallowed.” She laughed
.

“Then it is time he learned other disciplines. Freya, take him up to the battlements.”

Not the sunlight, Stephan thought frantically. But no, it was night. He was safe
.

Freya slipped a tiny chain around the head of his cock like a leash and headed out the door. Each tug as he followed tormented him. He thought he might faint as all the blood in his body threatened to pool in his erection. He stumbled up the stairs after her, afraid to know what was ahead
.

It was winter again. He didn’t know the month. The stone of the battlements was covered with a light dusting of snow. And the winds tore down from the mountains and plucked with icy fingers at his naked body, swirling the dry flakes up around them. His erection should have shrunk immediately, but it didn’t. He was as hard and needing as ever. What was happening to him? Freya stopped to put on furs and soft boots. She twitched up the hood around her head and led him out into the open. There, on the battlements, was a glowing cauldron of coals with several iron rods stuck in it. Deirdre and Stancie joined them, similarly attired
.

Brands? No,
thought Stephan
. They can’t do that.
His chest heaved as icy breath surged into his lungs. But of course they could. And his Companion would heal it, so they could do it as often as they liked. And there, there was a block of ice, smooth from being melted and refrozen. The ice had a hole about the size . . . About the size of a man’s cock
.

Freya motioned for him to kneel, too far from the cauldron to collect any warmth from it
.

“Let me hold his leash,” Stancie said eagerly. “Dee, you hold the rods.”

“Stephan,” Freya said, her voice taken by the wind. “This is an exercise in stamina. You must learn to hold the power of your erection in all circumstances. Use the chants to help you. We will alternate between the ice and the brands. You control the pace. You will ask for the brands, tell us where to place them and press your flesh into them. You will hold your erection through the branding and then find your release in the ice. Is that clear?”

Oh, it was clear all right. Could a man, even a vampire man, do this? Did they know what they asked? He nodded. Looking down, he saw his nipples peaked and hard from the cold through the dusting of dark hair across his chest. And in spite of his fear, his cock bobbed with the pressure of the fluid bottled up inside him, red and swollen. Stancie jerked on the delicate chain around its head rhythmically until he thought he could come right there in the cold
.

“You can do it, Stephan,” Freya said. “Or we wouldn’t ask it of you.”

“Sithfren, hondrelo, frondura, denai,”
he murmured
.

Dee took a brand from the cauldron. It glowed orange and dull red, steaming when the flakes of snow impaled themselves on it. “Where?” she asked, but it was more of a command
.

He thought the chants, willing them to protect him from the fear. “Left breast.”

She strode forward and held the brand a few inches from his chest. Chanting, his breath heaving in his chest, he leaned forward into it. The sear of pain made him grunt sharply, but he held himself against the brand. The smell of burning flesh fouled the clear, cold air. At last Dee withdrew the brand, leaving Stephan gasping. He wanted to vomit. As he leaned over, he saw the initial seared into his flesh, black and smoking
. R
was for Rubius, no doubt. He sucked in the jagged, cold air and watched it pale, then turn pink with new flesh
.

Only when Stancie said, “Excellent,” did he realize that his cock still stood to attention. Filled with revulsion, he looked around at them. What was he becoming that his need transcended even that kind of pain? Freya motioned to the block of ice. Stancie loosened the chain around the head of his cock. He crawled to it on hands and knees
.

“Put your rod in it, Stephan,” she instructed. “Work it until you come.”

He leaned over the block with both hands braced. He couldn’t do this
.

“Yes you can,” she whispered at his shoulder
.

With one hand he placed his cock inside the icy hole. The ice brought its own kind of pain. “Your chants, don’t forget your chants,” she reminded
.

He let the words flow through him and began to move his hips. The chants carried him away, until the sear of cold was just another friction on his cock, and all there was, was the boiling need inside him. His hips banged against the unyielding ice. He heard moaning and some part of him knew that it was him. And then his seed boiled up out of his balls and shot through his cock into the ice. He imagined it freezing as it pooled in the ice. He hunched over the block of ice, proud and shamed as the chants drained away. Slowly he withdrew his cock, his chest heaving, the cold creating goose pimples over his body. He looked up at them through the shock of dark hair that had fallen over his eyes. Freya was smiling at him. Stancie looked smug. Dee brought up a rod
.

“Bring yourself up,” she commanded, “and tell me where to place it.”

Unbelievably, his loins began to throb. Were they making him erect, or was he doing it himself? God help him. “Hip,” he croaked. “Right hip.”

He fainted several times during that long night, whether from hunger or cold or the pain of the brands he wasn’t sure. But they had always roused him. The respites they gave him were only from the hot irons or the ice, not from the hunger or the cold. Toward dawn, the dizziness came on him again. He reeled as Stancie ordered him to the block of ice. Could his Companion even heal when he was this tired, this hungry, this . . . empty? And how in hell could he have an erection in this condition? But he did. His cock was swollen and corded with vessels, leaking a drop of clear liquid which should be freezing on it, if not for the heat he was generating. He dragged himself across the snow. It melted around him, in spite of the predawn cold. The heat from the burn on his thigh seemed to be working its way inside him. He raised his head, sweating, and looked around. He could see everything, even more clearly than normal; the texture of stone, the crystals of ice in the snow. They gleamed and glowed. As a matter of fact, everything was glowing. He looked around again, as though from far away. Dee was inside getting warm, but Freya and Stancie had halos of light around them. Or maybe it was him. He looked down. He was . . . glowing. And he felt strong. The whoosh of his Companion running up his veins was so intense he hardly recognized it. He had a core of heat burning inside him. He stood and as he rose the rush of power inside him made him feel strong. He was bigger than they were, bigger than the night or the brands or the ice. He could do anything
.

And then the world went black
.

The next day, he was wakened from the sleep of the dead by the bolt on the door clunking back. What had happened last night? Fear fluttered in his center, not molten power. Whatever had happened, it frightened him more than the prospect of their endless training. He might be changing, somehow. And he might not be able to go back to what he was. Ever
.

He was surprised to see Stancie slip in and sit on the bench beside him
.

“They want to go slow. But there is no time and you may be getting close.” Her eyes held a gleam that was a little maniacal, though at least they did not glow red. “You need to be schooled more rigorously.” She ran her hands over his body, and grasped his organ. “Are you ready to take the next step?”

He nodded slowly, even though the last thing he wanted was an after-school tutor
.

“Then I shall teach you, and you will obey me.” She left him chained to the bench. “First I want my pleasure. Your regular training might be enough for Dee and Freya, but not for me.”

Not enough? What kind of creature was she, that those nights of sex did not satisfy her
?
But already her power had coaxed his erection. She sat astride him, and all thoughts were pushed from his head by his need to restrain himself. How in the hell could he be ready to come after last night? She had shuddered twice and cried out when she lifted herself off him, and let her skirts swing down over her hips. She knelt beside him, caressing his cock slowly, as she whispered in his ear
.

“If you do well, I’ll feed you.” He had forgotten that he still hadn’t eaten. “Think about lava, pooling in your loins,” she breathed. She took his cock full in her hand. He couldn’t help but moan. “I’m going to work you, hard, but you won’t come. You won’t let yourself come.” Her hand slipped up and down his shaft, demanding, as she whispered encouragement in his ear. The feeling ramped up inside him until he wasn’t sure he could bear it. “You have a molten core, ready to explode.” Stephan began murmuring his chant. He was in imminent danger of spraying the ceiling with his semen. “That’s right,” she whispered, but she pulled on him even harder. “Do you feel the lava inside you, backed up from your balls into your belly?” He was chanting frantically now inside his mind. “Do you?” He nodded. “Good. I want you to feel that lava. It wants to be released, but it can’t be. Does it burn?” Again he nodded, though he did not stop his chanting. God, but it burned! She scrubbed the clear fluid he was leaking over the tip of his cock. “I’m going to teach you new chants, Penitent. Now listen to me.”

Stephan took a deep breath and turned his head. Her eyes were red. She was helping him
. “Bletherdon, hargarden, slitenger, shuit!”
she said. “Now say it after me.”

“Bletherdon, hargarden, slitenger, shuit!”
he whispered
.

“Again!” she commanded. “With more feeling. The words are the chute through which your power flows.”

“Bletherdon, hargarden, slitenger, shuit!”
She pulled on him to match his pace. He felt the burning in his loins, but the feeling of invincibility he had achieved last night was nowhere to be found. Again and again he said the meaningless words as she rubbed him, his back arched, every muscle in his body tensed against the lava that churned inside him
.

“Enough!” she said sharply, after what seemed like hours. He collapsed against the stone, sore and exhausted. She rose and looked down at him, her mouth a small moue of disappointment. “We still have much work to do. But I do not despair.” He lay there, chest heaving, sweating, frustrated
.

Just leave me alone,
he thought
. Mother of Mary, just go.

“Not a word to the others, or I’ll ensure you are punished,” she tossed back over her shoulder. The energy that burned inside him ramped down only slowly. He stared at the stain in the corner, and wondered if it was his destiny to be a second stain on the stones of this room
.

And so it went. Nights with the three of them, days with Stancie. They wanted that glow of power again, he knew. But he couldn’t produce it. They worked on his stoicism. He tried to suppress all emotion other than a desire to be the perfect tool for Rubius. He ignored increasing amounts of pain for them. There were wounds, periods of starvation, of sleep deprivation, and sessions with the brands and the ice. He chanted for Stancie in the daytime as she worked him. He ached and needed constantly. In moments of weakness he didn’t care about being the perfect tool. He wished he would explode and be done with it. Let the burning inside him become manifest and end his suffering
.

In the room above the tavern he was clenching his fists in his pillow, sweating, sleep far away. Could these memories not let him be? What good were they now?

Downstairs he heard a commotion.

“Please send for Mr. Sincai.”

He would know that voice anywhere. What was she doing here? He shot up off the bed.

“I’ll do no such thing, Miss Van Helsing.” Mr. Watkins huffed his disapproval of such hoydenish behavior.

“Then I’ll go up and search your rooms myself until I find him.”

Stephan thrust his arms into his coat and reached for boots and boot pulls.

“Miss Van Helsing!” Watkins was outraged.