Secrecy had been vital in those early days. Move with stealth, build up power in secret before the Way could spread like a deadly virus throughout the world, infecting and transforming all in its path. A little death, such a little death, and their victims would be freed for ever from the fear of old age and mortality. Their total servitude to the Master seemed a tiny price to pay for the gift of eternal existence.
In the long run, they would see his point of view. They would be grateful to him.
At first, they contented themselves with experiments to test the limits of their powers. They discovered, to their great joy, that they could cloud the minds of men and women, provoke an insatiable sexual need, unbridled lust from which they, in turn, could feed. For they needed and craved these powerful sexual energies in order to grow in power. How they had laughed as they drove their victims to wild frenzies of copulation. How they sighed with pleasure as they felt their strength grow, and joined their own immortal loins in the great rites of power.
And then, growing bolder, they had begun to initiate others into the Way: bewitching them, copulating with them, biting their throats and releasing their mortality so that they might have the honour of serving the Master and his Queen throughout eternity. Only a very few victims, for fear of discovery. For the process did not always go quite according to plan. Sometimes the preparation was incorrect, or the outpouring of blood too great . . . Sometimes, the victim died.
Inevitably, they began to arouse suspicions, hostility, fear. And Sedet was too bold, too indiscreet. He felt the agony clutch at his heart – the heart he had believed invulnerable to the mortal emotions of love and grief and guilt – as he remembered his Queen’s terrible fate.
It happened one starry night, as Sedet was initiating a victim – a priest of Amun-Ra whose mind she had clouded and whose body she had bewitched. He would be a useful slave for the Master’s cause. She had lured him, unbeknown to the Master, to the inner sanctum of the Temple of Isis, and was fucking him on the stone floor, naked save for the powerful crystal which she wore perpetually on a golden chain around her neck.
As the rite neared its consummation, the Master awoke from a restless slumber and saw in his mind’s eye what was happening. It was a trap. He saw the approaching doom and – knowing he could not reach the temple in time to save her – tried to telepath a warning message to his Queen. But her mind was too full of the exultation of victorious lust to hear his urgent commands until it was too late.
The priest-magicians broke in and surrounded her. Laughing, mocking them, she had believed she was invulnerable; that no mortal could harm her. But they had been watching her, had discovered a little of the secrets of her immortality. And, knowing that it was impossible to kill her, they had learned the way to trap her and disable her magical powers through their own magical means. More than that, they craved the secrets of eternal life.
They could not kill Sedet, but they could hurt her. Protected by their own magic from her telepathic powers, they tortured her for many hours. But she would not reveal the truth which they craved, the betrayal which might have saved her.
Loyal to the end, she denied absolutely that the Master had anything to do with the ‘conspiracy’. He was a High Priest and no more. She alone had discovered the secret of immortality. She protected him and he, poor coward, had not dared to intervene, forcing himself to believe in his desperation that he would be able to rescue her later, when their enemies had forgotten about her.
And so Sedet went to her doom alone: brutally violated by a dozen lecherous priests; humiliated and scorned; taken alive and bound in the linen bands of a corpse, then placed in a sarcophagus and bound to her captivity by magic. Alone. Still living, but helpless.
This much he had learned, but no more. Too late, the Master realised that his enemies were stronger than he had thought. The priest-magicians had not only hidden his Queen from him in some faraway place: they had also hidden her from him by sorcery, casting a dark curtain about her through which the Master could not see, could not reach her . . .
Except that, from time to time, he heard her faraway voice crying to him across the darkness, alone, helpless, not knowing where she was.
No words; no sign of where he might find her. For all he could hear was the screaming.
As soon as he learned this, the Master had fled Egypt, lest he suffer the same fate. But he had not given up. Throughout the centuries and millenia to come, he would search the world and never give up until he found the one he had chosen to be his Queen. She alone had refused to betray him. None other would ever stand beside him at the head of his evil empire.
And now he, himself, was trapped. Soon, soon, he must break out of his crystal prison and wreak his revenge upon a world which had thought it could destroy him.
Bitter and crazed with lust, the Master urged Delgado’s body towards its orgasm, and – as he felt the spunk rising up his shaft – sank his teeth into the back of the slave-girl’s neck. Her back arched and she groaned beneath the yoke as she yielded to the dark force of lust and passed through the threshold of fear into the world of the undead.
Still panting, the Master looked up. The surge of sexual energy from the orgy had strengthened his powers, but this brief time of freedom was ending; already he could feel the link with Delgado’s body dissolving, the body in the crystal calling him back to endure more darkness, more blindness, more helplessness. When, when would it end? A fury of envy swept over him, and he craved his revenge.
The girl lay insensible beneath him. He climbed off her and forgot about her immediately – a broken toy, holding no further interest for him. The orgy was still raging about him, twos and threes of naked bodies, copulating frenetically, fanatically, like creatures from some medieval bestiary. No-one noticed him as he staggered weakly towards the dais and raised his hand towards the false Isis, commanding her attention.
Isis turned and looked into his eyes, still astride the writhing form of Ibrahim. She understood what the Master wanted, and raised herself off Ibrahim’s massive prick, in spite of his groans of protest. Kneeling between his muscular thighs, she began to caress the mighty prick, and he relaxed and sighed with pleasure as she used her velvety tongue to toy with the well-lubricated glans.
Within a few moments he came, spurting his abundant seed all over belly and loins, and roaring with the immense pleasure granted him by his magnificent body.
Smiling grimly, the Master raised his hand again and gazed deep into the eyes of his false Isis. She returned his smile and, obedient to the last, sank her teeth into Ibrahim’s thigh, biting through the artery and laughing like a madwoman as the scarlet blood fountained out of the wound and cascaded over her white flesh like a second skin.
Droplets of blood sprayed on to naked faces and bodies, and somewhere in the throng of copulating bodies a woman screamed, and the whole tableau froze to sudden silent stillness.
‘Oh my God,’ gasped Delgado, suddenly coming back to his own self as the Master’s mocking presence left him. ‘What are we going to do now?’ And then he remembered, with a sigh of relief, that a careful instinct had made him choose Ibrahim precisely because he was expendable. A lucky decision.
Poor Ibrahim, the sacrificial victim, scarcely had time to realise what was happening to him, as he drifted away within moments into unconsciousness, oblivion, utter darkness.
Madame LeCoeur looked puzzled as she knocked on the door of Delgado’s office.
‘Can I have a word?’
‘What’s up?’
‘I can’t understand it. That body we put in the storeroom . . .’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, you’ll never believe this, but . . . it’s disappeared.’
11: Rasputin
One of the most popular diversions at Winterbourne was the Imperial Russian room, which catered above all for the tastes of some of the house’s discerning female clientele. Delgado was delighted with the success of his attempts to bring ladies of taste and dis
cernment to Winterbourne.
All in all, the experiment had been a great success. Already he had attracted the butter-wouldn’t-melt children’s TV presenter Maggie Tinsworth (sophisticated dyke and leather fetishist – whatever would the parents say?); a couple of bored duchesses with gay husbands; Arianna Hadjopoulos, the classical percussionist with a shoe fetish; and a bevy of well-connected women who wanted their connections lubricated in style.
Tonight, the Russian room was to be dedicated to the pleasure of a real-life princess, no less. Princess Marie-Louise of Lichtenstein claimed descent back to the Romanovs, and was quite obsessed with the belief that she was the reincarnation of the ill-fated Czarina Alexandra. Added to which she had a strong masochistic streak – all of which made for great visual entertainment; so good that Delgado had arranged for a select clientele of discerning voyeurs to pay a little extra for their tickets and watch the whole spectacle from the next room, through the two-way mirror he had so thoughtfully provided for just such an eventuality.
He made sure that his six ‘special guests’ were safely installed in the adjoining room before he made the final preparations for the evening’s Russian frolics. Couldn’t risk his princess getting wind of the fact that she was being made a spectacle of . . .
The Russian room was decorated to represent the Czarina’s bedroom in one of the imperial winter palaces: opulent brocades and ornate hand-woven carpets, silks and tapestries. The central feature was a huge four-poster bed with a rich red and gold canopy and the imperial crest carved at the head of the bed. Beside it stood a carved wooden prie-dieu, worn smooth from the pressure of penitential knees, and with attachments for straps and belts so that the penitent could be secured to the prie-dieu and not escape the full wrath of the chastiser. The room was filled with religious relics and the scent of incense hung heavy on the still, silent air. Dimmed oil-lamps lit the gloom with a flickering, ghostly light. A fire burned low in the hearth. There was an atmosphere of tension, of expectancy.
The door opened and the Princess Marie-Louise entered, eyes bright with anticipation but lowered modestly to maintain the charade. She was richly dressed as the Czarina, and looked every inch the part: tight-waisted in a boned corset which pushed up her breasts and displayed their bounty at the low-cut neckline of her watered silk gown. The watchers in the next room had noted the fine white swell of her breasts and were already unzipping their trousers and teasing their pricks into enthusiastic rigidity.
Marie-Louise – or should it be Alexandra? – sat down at the dressing-table and called for her maid. A pretty girl in a maid’s uniform entered, and began to take down and brush her hair. It was long, dark and glossy, and hung in opulent waves to her slender waist.
At that moment, the door burst open and a dark, powerfully built figure thundered into the room. He was tall, unkempt, with a wild look in his eye: a very fair representation of Rasputin, in fact.
Marie-Louise looked up with fear in her eyes . . . fear, and another emotion, a troubled, turbulent lust that mingled the desire for pleasure with the desire for pain.
‘I am most displeased with you, Empress,’ thundered the wild-eyed monk, not at all cowed by the grandeur of the scene or the regal presence before him. ‘You have been neglecting your spiritual purity. If you do not purge yourself of sin, how can you expect your son to become well again? Will you not listen to my teachings?’
Marie-Louise fell to her knees, hands clasped in a gesture of exaggerated humility:
‘Forgive me, Father – it is so hard for me . . . tell me what I must do to make amends . . .’
In response, the wild-eyed monk grabbed her by the arm, squeezing the fragile flesh until she cried out and leaving red marks that would soon turn into garish bruises. He dragged her across the room towards the prie-dieu, forcing her to kneel upon it and attaching her wrists to the top with leather thongs. She was panting hoarsely, not entirely with fear . . .
‘Mortification of the flesh!’ cried Rasputin. ‘That is the only way to achieve purity of the soul.’ And he grabbed at the costly fabric of her dress and ripped it from her delicate back. Then he took a knife from his belt and slit the stay-laces that held her sweet flesh imprisoned in her corsets. The watchers gasped with pleasure and began to wank their turgid pricks enthusiastically.
A shadow within a shadow, darkness within darkness, lurked in the corner of the room. The Master was again playing the spectre at the feast, looking on with approval and preparing to join in the game. Slowly, imperceptibly, he drew nearer and entered the body of the false Rasputin, urging on his host to ever-greater obscenities, worthy of the man he represented. He tore away the dress and the corset, to reveal pure silk knee-length bloomers, open at the crotch, and a curious, rough garment – a sort of bodice which covered the Czarina’s torso from shoulder to waist.
With a grunt of satisfaction, Rasputin slit away the hair shirt to reveal the poor mortified flesh beneath, sliding his rough, dirty hands around to the front of her body to give himself the extreme satisfaction of causing her pain: rubbing his calloused skin mercilessly across her tortured flesh, and enjoying the sound of her pitiful little cries of distress. The distress which, he knew only too well, brought her sexual desire to fever-pitch.
‘Harlot!’ he cried. ‘You mortify your flesh and still my touch provokes lewd thoughts in you.’
‘What is my punishment, Father? I will accept anything you impose upon me, truly I will.’
‘Since you crave pain, then pain you shall have!’ he replied, and he ran the point of his knife down the line of her spine, very lightly but just hard enough to bring beads of bright blood leaping to the surface of her skin. ‘But first, harlot, you shall serve my pleasure and in so doing, commit a mortal sin. For, as I have taught you, it is only through sin that we can feel remorse and so attain redemption.’
He untied the girdle about his waist, and slipped off his filthy robes above his head. Underneath, he was dirty and smelt disgusting. His massive cock reeked and he was crawling with lice. Smiling grimly, he walked around to the front of the prie-dieu and lifted up the Czarina’s head, enjoying the look of terror and disgust in her eyes.
With two of his fat, grubby fingers, he forced her lips apart and – without further ado – rammed home his cock, well-nigh suffocating her as it slid down her throat. He ignored her stifled cries, and provoked a little more of the pain which so gratified them both, by leaning down and pinching her nipples very hard, between finger and thumb. Then he took his cord belt and wound it in a figure-of-eight pattern around her breasts, pulling it so tight that they stood out from her chest like twin turrets, and she gasped with pain as the rough hempen cord cut into her already-bruised and blistered flesh.
When he had amused himself with her to his – and the Master’s – satisfaction, he emptied himself into her mouth and forced her to swallow his jism, though it almost choked her and her stomach heaved with nausea. Then he walked behind her again and took the long, leather whip from the wall. Raising it above her shuddering back, he cried out:
‘Prepare to accept your penance, harlot!’
The Master was enjoying the vigour of the man’s huge, bear-like body but despised his poor intellect. The fellow had clearly been chosen for his physical attributes, not the quality of his mind – which made of him a sadly flawed representation of the real Rasputin, for that man had been far more than he had seemed – a fact which nobody knew better than the Master . . .
Over the centuries, the Master had moved like a black shadow across the face of the earth, never staying too long in one place, changing his identity frequently: his constant obsession the search for his chosen queen, the priestess Sedet. Although from time to time he heard her cries of distress across the miles, across the centuries, he was no nearer to finding her than he had been when he started.
Early in 1907, he swept like a whirlwind into the Court of Czar Nicholas of all the Russias, bewitched the Czarina with the power of his black soul, and became the most
powerful man in all Imperial Russia. Yes, the filthy, lice-ridden vagabond became more powerful than the Czar himself, who did not even realise that his own Czarina was being screwed nightly by her beloved Father Rasputin.
Little did the Czarina realise that her son’s haemophilia derived neither from God nor nature, but from the Master’s own dark intent. His power to work ‘miracles’ over the child had blinded the foolish woman to the truth: that he had made the child ill in the first place. And the energies he was able to suck out of the child through the bloodletting were making him stronger and stronger.
He had bewitched women in every village in Eastern Europe, and many had become first his mistresses and then his victims. They, in turn, had initiated their husbands and lovers. Soon, very soon, the ranks of the evil undead would become a mighty host, invincible and eternal. And when at last the Czarina fell victim to his evil kiss of death, he had truly believed that the hour of his dominion was at hand: the hour when he would call upon his mighty host to follow him to glory.
It happened one wintry evening when a blizzard was raging outside the winter palace, and the Master was at last alone with the Czarina, in her apartments.
‘Tell me, great teacher, how can I redeem my poor, unclean soul and attain the bliss of eternal life?’
‘Only through sin, remorse and penitence, as I have told you, Czarina Alexandra.’
‘But I do not understand. I am not clever. Your teachings are too complex for me. Will you not show me the true path, Father Rasputin?’
And she had gazed into his eyes as though to tell him: I know exactly what you wish to teach me, and I wish to be your willing pupil. I wish you to take me and mould me and punish me and fuck me . . .
‘If you will put yourself in my hands, Czarina . . .?’
‘I swear it.’
‘Then you must obey my every command.’
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