by Nina Mason
She looked wounded. “It’s because of that human, isn’t it?”
He rolled his eyes. “Does the reason really matter? I’m going and that’s that.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I don’t know. Maybe soon, maybe never.”
“Never? You can’t be serious.”
And yet, he was. In fact, never coming back was starting to sound better and better. He might need to live without love, but at least he wouldn’t have to live with abuse. Lighting another cigarette, he prayed she’d go away. Not that she’d ever been one for subtlety.
“Please, at least open the door so we can say a proper goodbye.”
Meaning what? A farewell shag? His jaw clenched. The door was unlocked, so even if he told her flat out to bugger off, she’d probably just barge in anyway.
“I’ll only open the door if you promise no monkeyshines.”
She laughed. “Monkeyshines? Seriously? There’s one I haven’t heard in a while.”
“Promise, Branwen. Or you’ll be saying cheerio through the bloody door.”
“Why are you always so cruel to me?” She sounded wounded, but so what?
“Gee, I don’t know.” His voice oozed sarcasm. “Maybe it’s to do with how you try to humiliate me whenever you don’t get your way...or how you mess with me while I’m sleeping...or, how you’ve got the deluded idea there’s something between us because I was daft enough to bed you once or twice.”
“It was more than twice,” she corrected him.
That warranted another roll of the eyes. As usual, she’d missed the whole bloody point. Why did he waste his breath? Suddenly, he couldn’t wait to get out of there. If he never saw Shelob again, it would still be too soon.
Another long silence raised his hopes. Had she buggered off? Returning to the desk, he began to leaf through his diaries. When he heard the door open, he spun around, gulping when he saw her standing there in nothing but a short satin robe and high heels.
His gaze narrowed and hardened. “I said no monkeyshines.”
“You said no monkeyshines if you opened the door.” She drew nearer, devouring him with her eyes. “But you didn’t open the door, did you?”
She kept one hand behind her back, making him prickle with suspicion. He stepped back, dropped the diary, and willed himself gone. She moved toward him, bringing the hidden hand around front. Just as he saw the iron spike, she thrust it into his abdomen. Groaning, he collapsed in a heap. His dogs began to growl and bark. Branwen hurried to the nightstand where he kept their treats, shook the bag to get their attention, then tossed it into the hallway. When the Westies charged after it, she kicked one of them, making it yelp in pain, before slamming and locking the door. Returning to where he lay, she looked down at him with scorn in her eyes.
“You’re not going anywhere, you ungrateful Scottish bastard.”
He just lay there on his side, helplessly immobilized. She rolled him onto his back with her foot, dropped to her knees, unbuckled his kilt, and flung it open. She stood up, kicked his legs apart, knelt between them, and bent over his crotch.
“Well hello, Angus Og. Long time no see. Have you missed me?”
She took him in her hand and began to pull and squeeze. Though he watched her ministering to his member, he could feel nothing apart from the searing iron in his gut. The hatred in his heart was just as scorching. And not just for what she was doing to him now. He’d warned her many times about mistreating his dogs, but she went right on doing as she pleased. She got up, grabbed his ankles, and dragged him—out the door, down the back stairs, his head banging on every step—through the kitchen, and down another jarring flight to the basement.
His scalp was bleeding and his brain half-scrambled by the time they reached the wine cellar. She pulled him to the middle of the limestone cavern, dropped his ankles, and locked the iron gates she’d just towed him through.
“You can forget about Scotland. You’re not going anywhere, lover.”
Concern for Cat’s safety torched his heart, but he could do nothing but lay there like a useless doll, chastising himself for not leaving sooner and for underestimating the toxicity of Shelob’s venom.
She kicked his legs apart, knelt in between, and dragged her nails across his scrotum hard enough to steal his breath.
“How about a little tamakeri, lover.”
Terror tightened his throat. Tamakeri was the Japanese term for ballbusting. She let out a wicked laugh as she clamped a hand around his bollocks. A searing bolt of pain ripped through his abdomen. His mouth opened in a silent scream. His body spasmed in protest. Dark blotches burst across his vision. He couldn’t move, couldn’t curl up, couldn’t do anything. She squeezed harder and harder, laughing and laughing. Did he hear someone else laughing too? Another woman? The pressure, the pain was agony. Just when he was sure his testes would rupture, darkness closed around him like sheltering arms.
* * *
Cat awoke exhausted, having tossed and turned the better part of the night, her angst careening from Graham to Avery to her dissertation to Maud Edenfield and back again. After washing up, she put on a pencil skirt, plain blouse, and her usual boring-but-comfortable pumps before making her way to the kitchen, where she had tea and toast before heading out. The weather was so lovely she decided to walk, despite fearing another encounter with the raven. She also felt like a zombie extra from The Walking Dead and hoped the exercise might help pump a bit of blood to her brain.
After sleepwalking her way through her morning lectures, she headed straight to Maud Edenfield’s office, relieved to find the older witch inside.
“Might I have a word?” Cat asked, peeking around the half-open door.
Maud, who resembled Emma Thompson with dark hair, lifted her blue eyes from the book on her desk and smiled. “Of course.”
The desk was large, stately, and cluttered. The shelves behind overflowed with books and assorted occult objects. Crystals, wands, chalices, figurines, tarot cards, and the like. As Cat approached, her gaze swept over the spines, taking in three seminal titles: The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot; Daemonologie by King James I; and The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore by W. B. Yeats. A pair of tufted leather wingback chairs much like those in Wicken Hall’s library stood between the door and the desk. The sight of them induced a sharp pang.
“Do sit down.” Maud gestured toward the chair on the left. “And tell me how I can help.”
Cat took the offered chair and cleared her throat. “It’s to do with vampires.”
“In general? Or one in particular?”
Heat touched Cat’s cheeks. “One in particular.”
“The ginger-haired Scot from the library?”
“Yes. But—”
Maud smiled warmly. “I have eyes haven’t I? And a heart. What is it you wish to know?”
“Can his condition be reversed?”
“That will depend on what sort he is.”
“He’s of the Unseelie Fae. Something called a dusios.”
“I see.” Maud steepled her fingers and tapped them against her chin. “And do I correctly assume his condition, as you call it, was imposed on him against his will?”
“Yes. By a dark wizard named Gerard Fitzgerald.”
Maud leaned forward in her chair, her blue eyes gleaming with interest. “Lord Gerard Fitzgerald?”
Cat nodded. “Do you know him?”
“We have never met, but I have heard stories.” Maud sat back in her chair, her expression growing thoughtful. She steepled her fingers and tapped them against her chin. Cat waited, pulse accelerated. Finally, the elder witch said, “Reversing the curse will not be an easy task.”
Despite the warning, hope sprang into Cat’s heart. “How do I do it? Please tell me.”
“Your friend—Graham, was it?—must kill him using a stake fashioned from a hawthorn branch, then consume the ash of his heart in a tea brewed from the berries of the same tree. Afterward, he must bury the wizar
d’s remains head downward under the tree and build a cairn over the grave. And finally, he must use the tree’s thorns to cast a charm to protect the site.”
The hawthorn thing made sense. Hawthorns were members of the rose family and, like their cousins, produced thorns, flowers, and berries, all of which served multiple magical and medicinal purposes. In Celtic myth, hawthorns staved off evil, eased heartbreak, attracted faeries, and protected the portals into the otherworld realm of the Fae.
Blinking across the desk at her elder, Cat’s mind sifted through various scenarios for gaining the upper hand with Fitzgerald. He was, after all, a powerful mage with the ability to sense Graham’s nearness and emotions. Even with the help of witchcraft, ensnaring him long enough to do as Maud instructed would prove challenging at best. Still, she was game to try if it meant freeing him from both his curse and Fitzgerald.
“And, if we should succeed? He will become human again?”
Maud nodded, holding her gaze. “He will be just as he was.” With a small smile, she added, “Only, let us hope, a bit wiser for his time and trouble.”
Rising from the chair, she started for the door before turning back. “One more thing. Would you happen to know how to bind a gancanagh?”
The older witch looked at her over her spectacles. “Male or female?”
“Both, actually.” What the hell? She may as well have the knowledge on hand if Avery got into serious trouble with Benedict. She was still angry with her friend, but not enough to wish her harm.
“I believe I have a suitable binding spell somewhere in this chaos.” Maud waved a hand at the overflowing bookcase. “But I will need time to track it down. Come back in a couple of days and I’ll have it for you.”
Lightened by relief, Cat thanked her colleague and left the office, heading in the direction of the library. Once there, she set up her laptop and fired up the internet. To level the playing field, she’d need to lure Fitzgerald into a trap of some sort. A summoning spell seemed the obvious method. Unfortunately, she’d never called an evil entity before. Yes, she’d summoned Graham, but he didn’t count because he wasn’t evil. So, to be on the safe side, she’d better do her research, starting with what she might be dealing with.
Calling up the Google window, she typed “dusios” in the search box. The query returned 459,000 results, most of them having nothing to do with incubi. The first link did seem relevant, so she clicked on it and scanned the introductory paragraph.
Dusii (singular dusios) were a breed of Unseelie faery known to rampantly seduce both women and men and drink human blood. Similar to the woodland gods Pan and Sylvan, though human in appearance, they descended from the Tuatha de Danann (the Children of the Goddess Danu), a divine race of magical immortals driven into the otherworld during the Christian campaign to purge Scotland and Ireland of paganism.
Danu, the most ancient of all the Celtic deities, was the Divine Mother who birthed all living things into being. Her children (the Tuatha De) also were divine beings who were skilled in the ways of magic. When they arrived in Ireland, on dark clouds that blocked out the sun for three days, they brought with them four sacred treasures: a stone, a spear, a sword, and a cauldron. After retreating “underground”, these magical immortals became known as “the Fae”.
Moving her cursor to the search frame, she typed in “spell to summon an incubus.” Google returned, to her delight—and alarm—18.6 million results. The first link took her to a discussion board called “Mystic Banana,” where someone had requested the same sort of spell.
To her dismay, almost all the responses were warnings about the dangers of consorting with incubi, which, according to one commenter, “had cocks big enough to tear their sexual partners in two.” Shuddering at the thought, she conjured an image of Angus Og. Lust and heartache burned in equal measure. Wee Angus was far from “wee,” but hardly big enough to tear her in two. Though, admittedly, he’d done his best on several occasions.
Swallowing, she hit the back button before moving to the next link, which took her to Spells.com. There, she found a long list of links promising spells to bind everything from vampires and fire dragons to goblins and dark angels, but nothing specifically to protect against dusii. Moving on, she tried another link and another. Finally, she hit pay dirt in the form of a spell advertised as being from the Victorian era. With eager eyes, she scanned the instructions.
1) Make a circle using a white cord and place around it five equidistant black candles
2) Outside the circle, place five protective talismans and sigils, and make a second circle of salt and protective herbs
3) Center yourself and visualize the circle protecting you and separating you from the rest of your dwelling, and
4) Lay down inside the circle in the pentagram position (arms straight out and legs apart) and summon the incubus by name
A final note instructed, “The spell must be cast at the new moon.”
Her heart sank. The new moon was still two weeks away. Might there be something else she could cast sooner? She searched some more, but found nothing as good, so she resigned herself to the delay. Waiting might actually prove providential since Graham was safe in Scotland, she was safe here, and another two weeks would give her time to both set her snare for Fitzgerald and finish the term and her doctorate. Somewhat consoled, she copied and pasted the spell into a word doc, filed it away, and double-clicked on the folder containing her dissertation.
Chapter 14: The Full Metal Jacket of Kink
He awoke suffocating with angst, not knowing why. When he tried to move, he began to see. He was on a padded bed-like table, flat on his back, spread-eagle, and bound. The silver manacles clamping his wrists and ankles burned like branding irons. Yanking on them, he grimaced against the pain, but the restraints held tight.
The room, dark and cool, showed him only shadowy shapes. A bouquet of smells pricked his nostrils. Tart vinegar, mellow oak, fruity wine, savory rodent. Was he still in the wine cellar? Squinting, he forced his vision to adjust to the lack of light. The casks and dusty racks of bottles lining the porous walls confirmed his suspicions.
Confusion clouded his mind. He was dimly aware of a throbbing in his groin. Actual pain, not the needful ache of unsated lust. Looking down, he saw flesh. Pale, naked, hairless flesh. Toes, knees, balls, limp prick, belly button, nipples. The body was like his, but also different in odd ways. The hairlessness, for one. The balls, for another. These looked red and swollen and had some kind of cuff around the base to make them stand up like a squeezed balloon.
Bloody fucking hell.
What had Shelob done to him?
His bowels knotted. A fine sweat broke out across his skin. Above him, a row of lights came on, nearly blinding him. Snapping his face toward the wall, his ghosted gaze landed upon a table laid with a buffet of...sex toys. And not the fun kind. Chastity devices, ball stretchers, crushes, penile cages, and assorted cock rings, genital clamps, electrodes, and urethral inserts. Anal plugs of graduating sizes lay beside them like crudités. His sphincter clenched involuntarily, its soreness telling him he’d already been used as the dip.
Suddenly queasy, he swallowed.
Having been a sexual predator for two centuries, he understood the allure of variety. Vanilla sex got dull pretty damn quick, especially without feelings involved. So, he’d branched out to spice things up. Bondage and various other forms of kink were no big deal, but he drew the line at being buggered and having his junk abused.
His heart lurched at the creak of iron hinges. A moment later, in sauntered Shelob in a full-length kimono of emerald silk. Elaborate embroidery trimmed the edges.
Glaring at her, he jerked his restraints. “What the devil are you playing at?”
“I’m sick of being rejected.”
She stepped between his legs, making every muscle in his body tense.
“What have you been doing to me?”
“I’ll give you three guesses.” She dragged a fingernail up his taint har
d enough to make him jump. “And the first two don’t count.”
Memories flickered of the twisted things she’d done to him. Caging his cock, paddling his balls, sticking things in his orifices. Clamping his teeth together, he swallowed hard. No wonder his cods felt bruised. He knew she got off on CBT, knew she had a secret chamber hereabouts where she pulled the wings off her flies, so to speak, but she’d never tried any of her sick shit on him. Until now, anyway. Handcuffs, aye. And that wee riding crop which, admittedly, felt pretty sweet when she flicked it just so against his frenulum preputii...
But nothing like this.
Never the full metal jacket of kink.
Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes and dropped his head on the table. A sharp painful whack on his trussed-up nads snapped them open again. Wide open. Bloody hell. She had that fucking paddle again. He curled his lip and snarled at her. She slipped the robe off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor, exposing forest-green bustier and garters, a barely-there thong, and thigh-high fishnet stockings. Eyes locked with his, she ran her hands over her voluptuous assets.
“Tell me you don’t want this.”
Even as he denied it, lust surged through his genitals.
Her expression hardened. “That’s too bad. Because it’s this or nothing.”
“Let me go.”
“So you can run out on me?” She laughed. “I don’t think so.”
Loathing squeezed his chest and narrowed his eyes. “We’re not a couple you dozy wee bitch, as I’ve been telling you for more than a hundred years.”
“You’re wrong, lover,” she told him. “In fact, we’ll be married soon.”
He coughed. “Married? Are you mad? You’re the last woman I’d ever bloody marry.”
She smacked his balls with the paddle. “We’ll see about that.”
“Let me go, Branwen, or so help me God—”
She laughed and whacked his scrotum so hard he nearly passed out. “Really, Graham. You’re in no position to be making threats.”