The Burning (46 page)

They wanted to use him. Let them. It would only ramp up his power. If they made him climax he would turn their evil back upon them and they would end like Stancie. But madness would not declaw them, necessarily. They might still kill him and prevent him from going after Ann even though he would have had his revenge on them. He had better pray instead that they suppressed him. His power would increase until he could open himself to it as he had at the lodge and stab it out to hurt them, if not kill them. That might be enough to let him get away.

All right,
he thought.
Let them think they’ve won. Go with them
. Already his body was alive with desire he had no wish to feel. He had to give himself over to it. He mustn’t fight it. He writhed as Freya cupped his balls and squeezed, gently.

“We’re not so foolish as to let you climax as Stancie did, poor dear,” Dee whispered as she slid her fingers up and down his shaft. “We can control your release of power, too.”

What?

“We can prevent your accessing it at all,” she continued, smiling at his horrified expression. Her smile was as horrible as Stephan remembered. Fear shot through him. “And then when it begins to boil . . . remember the stain on the stone wall?”

“Dee?” Freya asked, as shocked as Stephan was. “You’re not going to—”

“Decapitation is too easy, Freya. He has much to atone for, does he not?”

Stephan strained away, but there was no escaping Dee’s hand, her breath on his neck.

“Dee, I—”

“Do your job, Freya,” Dee hissed. “Obey our father. I am the eldest. Obey me in his absence. We must do this.” Suddenly she smiled at her sister. “And enjoy it.” She stared at Stephan. “I intend to.”

She lowered her lips to Stephan’s and thrust her tongue inside his mouth. He knew she wanted him to kiss her back. He did. God help him, for he couldn’t help himself. But God must be busy elsewhere, for no help came.

Freya gathered herself. “Then I want to go first, Dee, before it becomes too painful for him.” She held the translucent fabric aside and straddled Stephan. She lifted his cock and slid it inside her. The sensation should have put him over the edge. But he did not spill his seed. Dee was ramping up the feeling yet keeping him from his release. Stephan arched his back, groaning with the exquisite torture of the sensation. Already the quiescent lava in his loins began to churn.

He thought a chant. He had to keep the power from
boiling over inside him until he could think of a way out of this. He couldn’t think about what might be happening to Ann.

Tuatha denon. Beluorga lefin. Argos pantid.
Bletherdon, hargarden, slitenger, shuit!

How long could he survive this?

Ann swam through a haze of dread that seemed to shroud her. Erich was carrying her upstairs. She was limp in his arms. She knew, somewhere inside, what he was going to do. He had told her once. Alice described it. But it didn’t seem to matter nearly as much as she thought.

It was all over anyway. The Daughters had Stephan. Van Helsing had her. Over.

Erich kicked a door open. It swung aside. Burgundy velvet draperies. Bed hangings of the same. Brocade bedcover in red and gold that swam and danced. The faint odor of smoke from her uncle’s pipe cascaded over her.

“Uncle Thaddeus’s room?” she asked groggily.

“The room of the head of the household, my dear. Surely you see how appropriate that is now.” Erich laid her on the bed and began fumbling at the buttons down the front of her dress. How like a fish he looked. A particularly repulsive fish who never used tooth powder. “What I’d like is to lick up some of your blood, but I daren’t. Not while they’re around. Of course, they’ll go back to Mirso.” Erich was mumbling to himself as he worked the buttons and ties. “But will they leave you alive? Perhaps I can persuade them. And they can say they’d know and come after me. But would they?” He pulled her dress over one shoulder then grasped her arm, practically wrenching her joint as he pulled her out of the sleeve.

At his first touch of her bare flesh she knew him. But it
wasn’t like it was before, a shower of excruciating experience and a thrust of knowledge. No. It was rather like reading a book. The information was all there, pages flipping as she read, but not . . . visceral.

She saw his severe Germanic father who never thought he was good enough, the beatings. He had learned to be sly in order to avert his father’s wrath. Always he lied, taking the easy way out. Lying with the local girls of the lower classes, wanting the power over them his father exerted over him. Losing his mother—the only example of kindness in his life, though her character was not strong and she indulged him with money they didn’t have. Then being cast adrift when his father died, realizing the debts, that there would be no more money, that there had not actually been any money for years. The bitterness, the years as a wastrel gambler, learning languages in order to take advantage of people, pretending he was someone else, someone more important. His need to exert power drove him to new acts of sexual abasement, with whores and powerless women. But always he had hope. He was the only male Van Helsing. He lived on his expectations. If he could just get enough money together, he would go to England and hang on his British relations. Surely Ann’s father would help him when he was the heir. But there was never enough money. Hearing that Ann’s father was dead. Learning the terms of the will that blighted his hopes and left Maitlands to Ann. He took up drinking. Drifting into Romania, meeting a man who believed his lies about his vast circle of connections in England. The man took him to a village called Tirgu Korva. Meeting the Daughters. Promises, threats. He saw vampires as wonders of power—power he wanted for himself. Seeking out Kilkenny. Hoping to convince Kilkenny to make him. Disappointment and hatred when Kilkenny would not. How stupid he thought Kilkenny’s ideals were! Hatred of Stephan, fear. Hatred of Ann for having what he could not.

She saw it all and absorbed it through the haze of the drug, along with the weakness, the petty vengefulness, the greed. But she also saw that those qualities were magnified by his situation. If his mother had lived . . . if she had been a stronger character . . . if only things might have been different for Erich.

Her eyelids fluttered as the book closed. Erich was still talking, more to himself than her.

“It might be worth the chance.” He held her as he pulled off the other sleeve. “Of course, I’d have to leave. Sell out the property, or maybe rent it.” He let her flop back on the bed and pulled her dress off by its hem, then her shoes. “I’ll go to America. They’ll never track me there.” He stood and surveyed her. “With my laudanum-addicted wife? You’re a bit of trouble. Still”—he chuckled—“there’s nothing like a docile wife with a winsome body.” He cupped her breast above her corset. His fingers dug into her flesh through her chemise. Someone moaned. “When I tire of plowing your cunt and making your anus bleed, I shall tutor you in pleasing me with your mouth. You’ll kneel and suck my cock anytime and anywhere I choose.”

He put his wet mouth over hers, filling her senses with the taste of rancid teeth and brandy. She tried to twist away. He chuckled—a horrible sound that echoed in her ears. He licked her cheek. His saliva seemed thick, almost like mucous. It made her stomach rebel.

He straightened, took a small knife from his pocket and cut the laces of her half-corset. Then he ripped her chemise and underskirt from her body, leaving her naked on the bed. She managed to raise her head. He was unbuttoning his breeches. They swelled over an erection.

Ann couldn’t focus anymore, whether from the horror of what was about to happen or the laudanum. His face came back down over her, distorted as though by a nightmare magnifying glass. He was going to kiss her again, and then
the rape would begin in earnest. Thought was becoming difficult. So she didn’t try anymore. His wet mouth descended on hers. She gave herself to blackness.

Stephan rolled his head convulsively from side to side. Dee was riding him, about to climax. Freya pinched his nipples and ran her canines along his neck, her breath hot on his flesh. The image of the black, greasy stain on the wall of the room at Mirso seemed to fill his head. His body arched, sweating. The sensation radiating from his cock had passed from pleasure into pain almost immediately. Now the red hot core inside him heaved and pulsed. They had both already used him. He thought when Dee’s muscles contracted around him he might just explode like that other nameless would-be Harrier. He had to find a way around that, some way to shunt off the excess power surging inside him. He had to stay alive, for Ann.

How long could he manage to survive this? They could go on forever, he knew. Dee’s frantic gasps turned to small moans. He had not much time.

Ann. He would think of Ann. Not being ravished by Van Helsing. No, he would think of their lovemaking, so tender, so mindful of the other’s pleasure. Dee contracted around him, squeezing his cock rhythmically with the muscles of her womb. His body arched even harder against her.
Ann. Ann needs me,
he thought.
Ann understands me
. It was a new kind of chant.

Somehow he made it through Dee’s orgasm. She got off him. His body collapsed against the stone of the coffin.

“Ummm,” Dee said, as she shrugged on a silk robe and went to stand even closer to the flames in the gaping maw of the fireplace. “I thought he might be close that time. Keep him roused, Freya, while I rest.” Freya lay beside him, her body pressed along his. She took his cock, still
painfully erect and needing, in her hands and began to work it.

Stephan could not help the small moan of protest that escaped him.

Dee picked up a glass from a large wooden tray sitting on the hearth and ladled spiced wine from a wassail bowl into it. “Perhaps you should suck him. That would be a more intense sensation.”

“This is fine for now,” Freya murmured into Stephan’s neck as she rubbed her thumb over the head of his cock and spread the clear liquid leaking from it over the tip.

“I see you want to draw it out.” Dee chuckled. “Very well. It has been a while since I was able to truly satisfy myself.” Dee threw her head back as she stalked away in the darkness, stretching like a cat. She didn’t let her compulsion falter, though. Stephan, disoriented and distressed as he was, had been waiting to feel their guard go down, even the slightest bit.

“I’m sorry,” Freya whispered to him, as she circled his cock with her hand and pumped it. He groaned. “I really have no choice. Father thinks you are too dangerous to live.”

“There’s always a choice,” he gasped, as the sensation rose again to the unbearable point. He had to bear it for Ann’s sake.

“Not if you are my father’s daughter, and you have been for three thousand years,” Freya whispered. He felt her words in his ear, her breasts pressed against his side through the white chiffon strips that covered them, her thigh over his. Most of all he felt the molten core inside him answering the demands she made. It surged and bubbled. Why hadn’t it been like this with Ann?

“You . . . you had to kill . . . innocent . . . humans?” he groaned.

He felt her hesitate. “That was Dee.”

“So you . . . chose not to . . . to kill them.” He felt like he was being torn apart.

Again the hesitation. Then she took her mouth from his ear. “Silence,” she ordered, her voice clear so that Dee could be sure to hear it. Her hand slid along his cock more quickly. He arched again against the sensation pouring over him, gasping for breath.

Dee’s face appeared over him. “Good,” she murmured. “Excellent, Freya.” She stalked around them. Stephan could hardly breathe, hardly see. His being was centered in his loins and behind their excruciating tightness was pooled the lava, waiting to be released, but not allowed release because of the tight bands of compulsion that bound him.

“I have brought some tools to increase his sensation,” he heard Dee say, from somewhere distant. “A rod for his anus, some clips for his nipples, a ring for his cock. We could feed from him as well, as long as it doesn’t weaken him too much.”

“You . . . you planned for this?” Freya asked. The rhythm of her stroking slowed. Stephan breathed. “I thought we were going to help him if he couldn’t kill them all. We never thought he would disobey—”

“Father told me it would come to this. I came prepared.” Dee opened a small valise. Stephan saw it through a veil of desperation.

“Excuse me.”

Van Helsing’s voice came as a shock.

The Daughters jerked their heads up. Freya stopped stroking Stephan’s cock. The lava in his groin sank to a simmer. Van Helsing? What was he doing here? Where was Ann?

“What is it?” Dee barked.

“Uh . . . Ann . . . I mean, it’s the laudanum. Well, it put her out. She lost consciousness.” Stephan couldn’t see him, but he could hear the man’s fear. He wondered if Van Helsing
had imagined what he would see when he came down here to the crypts.

“And what of that?” Dee growled. “Get back upstairs. We have work to do.”

“Well, but it isn’t satisfying to have my way with her if she’s unconscious.” His pouty whine echoed in the immensity of the crypt. “It’s, well, it’s like taking a corpse.” Apparently his grievance overcame his fear.

Dee and Freya just looked at him. “Wait a few hours. She’ll come around,” Dee said absently. She began rummaging in the valise. After a moment she looked up, apparently expecting that Van Helsing would be gone. “Get out,” she said, her voice a low growl.

Stephan heard Van Helsing practically yelp like a kicked dog and his footsteps hurry away. The beast fed on his victim’s fear and distress. But Ann was safe from that, for a few hours at least. Stephan’s relief was short-lived. Dee held up two metal clips with serrated edges. She opened them like jaws and smiled.

“These will increase his awareness of his sexual sensation centers,” she said, gloating. She took the little metal jaws and clamped them around his nipples. The teeth bit into tender flesh. A jolt of feeling went through him but it was pain, not pleasure. Surely this would act as a distraction from the stimulation, not add to it. Dee stalked back to the bag and took out two metal rods. The brands! She laid the ends in the coals of the great fireplace.