“You were never enough for her,” Damia pronounced. “You are barely Blue Room material; you could never survive an hour of The Red. You should have just let her go.”
“I can’t,” Mark said. “She’s my wife. I love her. I have to see her again.”
“There is only one way that Kharon will allow that,” Damia said. “You have to take your own journey into The Red. If you can perform the tasks set for you in the first three rooms, you will find Rae waiting for you in the next.”
“And if I can’t do what you ask?”
“Then Kharon promised to give you to me,” Damia smiled. The hunger glowed in her eyes. “You will become another one of my memories,” she said. “Shall I slice off your parts, one by one, as we make love? Or would you prefer the hooks and chains? Or something more original?”
She reached beneath the table and released something there with a click. Then she lifted the cage of bones from pinning his chest and opened the locks that held his wrists tight.
Mark felt sensation rush back to his limbs in a fire of pins and needles, and he struggled to sit up. The room spun around him as he did, and he almost cried out at the sensation returning to his hands and legs. He stifled that, knowing that it would only earn him more taunts from the hermaphrodite.
Damia held out a long, thin arm, and Mark accepted her hand out of reflex. She pulled him from the table, and he almost fell. But Damia propped him up with an arm across his shoulders. Mark could feel the cold steel of studs on his skin; Damia’s arms and shoulders were pierced in a line of steel and her back was dark with a maze of hellish tattoos.
“Let us begin,” she said as he staggered towards a wooden door.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Jealousy
Amelia picked up her silken robe from the stone floor and slipped it over her shoulders. Kharon had invited her to be a part of the ceremony, one of the twenty-four voyeurs. She had been allowed to wet her blade on Peter’s flesh, but Rae held the center of attention. She rode him to death, as she and the other Watchers looked on.
First the rabbits, and now the sacrificial table. It was all about Rae anymore.
Amelia drew the sash tighter around her waist and felt a heavy weight in one pocket. She smiled. She had an answer for their new blood queen.
As the Watchers filed out of the room, Amelia approached Rae, who lay slumped over the bloody mess that had been Peter.
Amelia ran her fingers down the other woman’s spine, gently tracing the bones beneath the skin. Rae looked up, strands of hair trailing across her cheek, matted with a mix of tears and blood.
“Let me help you down,” Amelia suggested, and Rae accepted her hands, sliding her legs to the floor. Rae stood still, her face blank.
“Are you okay?” Amelia whispered. “That was intense.” The room had completely emptied; even Kharon had left. Slowly, Rae nodded.
“I killed him,” Rae said. “I really did.”
With one hand, Rae ran her index finger slowly over her left breast, smearing a thick trail of blood there in the few white spots that remained, until the white of her tit was fully painted in Peter’s death. When she looked up again, she was smiling.
“And I liked it,” Rae said.
Amelia nodded. “It’s a kick, isn’t it?”
Rae’s eyes welled up. “But I killed him,” she said again.
Amelia took Rae into her arms and hugged her. “I know, baby,” she said. “And I know what you need now.”
Rae looked up from her shoulder, eyes a mess of black mascara and smeared blood. “What?”
“You need a little of what you gave,” Amelia said. She walked to the wall near the door where a rack of whips and weapons stood. She picked up a small flogger with its black leather straps, each one capped by a small barb of metal.
“You’ve been a bad girl,” Amelia said, holding the flogger up for Rae to see. “So I’m going to have to punish you.”
Rae’s eyes widened, and then she nodded. Her knees felt weak, and something inside her thirsted for a taste of the pain she’d just delivered.
Amelia kissed her and then commanded, “Turn around.”
Rae put her hands on the edge of the stone table where Peter’s body lay and stiffened as Amelia’s hand slapped her ass. The other woman spanked her a dozen times with the palm of her hand, gradually increasing the force until the flesh reddened. Then she stopped and cupped one of Rae’s butt cheeks in her palm and squeezed, tightly.
“I see why Kharon likes you,” Amelia said. “So sexy, seemingly so innocent but…so evil. You’re deceiving.”
Amelia hit her again across the ass, this time with the back of her hand. And then Rae shivered as the first bite of the lash scored her back. The pain was perfect. She closed her eyes and let the red wash over her mental vision. The leather stung and then burned and then ripped…she could feel blood begin to drip across her flanks as Amelia surprised her with each slap. The heat moved from her back to her ass to her thighs. And then Amelia stopped.
“Turn around,” Amelia said.
Rae faced her and Amelia pushed her backwards until Rae’s ass touched against the cold edge of the stone table. Then Amelia slapped her across the face.
“Slut,” she said.
She slapped her again, harder.
“Bitch.”
And again.
“Whore.”
“Murderer.”
Amelia’s eyes were bright, and her robe undone. Rae saw the sweat glistening between her breasts. Her tummy was slick with it, and her sex was swollen and ready. Amelia stepped forward and grabbed Rae’s hair with her hand. She pulled on it until Rae cried out, and then she forced Rae to her knees and stifled her complaints with her crotch.
“Drink deep,” Amelia said, smothering Rae’s upturned face between her legs. Rae did, licking hungrily as Amelia used her, knocking Rae’s head repeatedly against the stone. And then Amelia pulled back and yanked Rae up to her feet again by her hair. “Lay next to him,” Amelia said.
Rae lay back on the table, her head just beneath the dead man’s arm.
“I have a present for you,” Amelia said and reached into her robe’s pocket. She withdrew a long imitation of a human cock. “I want you to lie there and do nothing,” she said. Amelia pinched one of Rae’s nipples between her fingers, pulling it until the skin of the breast stretched flat. With her other hand, she moved the fake phallus between Rae’s thighs. Rae spread her legs to help, pushing against Peter’s dead body to gain room on the table.
“Oh my God, is that good,” Rae moaned, as Amelia slowly worked the head of the thing inside her.
“It’s going to get better,” Amelia promised.
“Yes, it is,” a voice said from the doorway.
Kharon.
Amelia’s chest tightened.
“Take it out,” he suggested quietly.
Amelia pulled the phallus back and winced as Kharon stepped up to the table and pinched one of her well-scarred breasts just as she’d pulled on Rae’s.
“I have a different idea,” he said, motioning for Rae to get off the bloody table. “Take her place,” he said.
Amelia shook her head. “Thanks, but I don’t feel like it right now,” she said.
“Now,” he said.
Amelia climbed onto the table and lay back, closing her eyes.
“Help me,” he said to Rae, and together they bound her to the table with the chains that had been used on Peter. Amelia’s left arm was bent across the dead man’s chest and her left leg shoved Peter’s limbs almost off the table.
Kharon handed the heavy phallus to Rae. “Fuck her with this,” he said simply.
Rae was confused about the demand for turnabout, but she complied, pushing the thing into Amelia’s wet nether lips. The other woman resisted, clenching her muscles against the intrusion, but she was too damp to deny it. Rae thrust the phallus inside her, as Amelia begged for her to stop.