She was imagining things again. Obviously her shock had unhinged her more than she thought.
‘Come up to the studio,’ said Heimdal. ‘You look as if you need a drink.’
Mara nodded dumbly and followed him up the spiral staircase to his studio.
Over a double whisky and soda, Mara explained what had happened to her at the House of Lords. Heimdal nodded gravely.
‘Clearly some force more evil than I had anticipated has intervened to prevent you reuniting Andreas’s soul with his body. We shall require great perseverance and ingenuity to save him now.’
‘I’ll do anything, anything!’ protested Mara and Heimdal seemed pleased by her determination. ‘But tell me, please, what has happened to Andreas’s soul? Was it not destroyed forever when the dagger was consumed?’
Heimdal shook his head.
‘Evidently the destruction of the crystal dagger has freed his soul to wander as a shade in the realms of the underworld,’ he replied. ‘He is neither living nor dead but cut off from his own body, unable to be reborn within another.
‘The only way we can save him is to follow our original plan of reuniting soul and body. And to accomplish this we must consult my own spirit-guide, Hermodr, who has great knowledge of the life that dwells beyond death.
The spirit of Hermodr dwells in certain natural phenomena. He is a proud spirit and cannot be contacted, save by those who are in tune with the green heart of nature. He is a spirit of vegetation, fertility, of rebirth out of death. It would be fruitless for us to attempt to make contact with him here, in my studio, where we are surrounded by inanimate objects.
‘So we must travel to one of the places in which I have felt his presence most strongly. And there we must both undergo ordeals which will test our reserves of sexual energy to the full. Are you willing to undertake the trial of Hermodr, Mara?’
His eyes burned into hers with a ferocious intensity.
‘I am willing,’ replied Mara, her mouth dry with anticipation. She had seen so much already; been through ordeals which even she, a practitioner of the occult arts, could never have imagined.
After all that she had seen and experienced, after all that her fragile, naked body had undergone, surely nothing could shock or harm her now? She dared not believe otherwise.
Heimdal’s hand was on her breast now, cupping it like a ripe fruit, palpating the flesh as though he were judging it for sweet, juicy ripeness. The touch was comforting, though his hand felt oddly cool through the fabric of her shirt. He bent to kiss her throat and it was a strangely restrained kiss, as though it took a mighty effort of will not to go further, to be carried away by some much baser, primeval urge.
‘Don’t be afraid, Mara,’ he whispered, his tanned, muscular fingers toying with the erect stalk of her nipple. ‘It’ll be all right now. I’m here to help you . . .’
A sudden, inexplicable surge of fear clutched at Mara’s heart. But she knew it was just foolishness. She had been a true friend to Heimdal in his days of doubt and exile and now he was merely showing her his gratitude: repaying her with kindness and the offer of practical help.
Besides which, she realised with a brief stab of pain, Heimdal was her only hope. He was the only person she knew of in the entire world who had the powers necessary to help her rescue Andreas’s soul from its shadowy prison, his body from its walking death. She raised her eyes to Heimdal’s and smiled as bravely as she could.
‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t waste any more time.’
The wheels bit into the soft mud as Heimdal manoeuvred the Range Rover amongst the trees. Mara blinked apprehensively in the coppery twilight created as the watery sunshine filtered through multicoloured autumn leaves.
Mara shivered and was not quite sure why. She had spent many a day – and night – in woods just like these; her coven met regularly in a woodland clearing and danced naked in the moonlight. But ever since she had woken in a wood very like this ancient Hampshire forest, her body naked and bloody after her unspeakable ordeals, Mara had found it difficult to feel comfortable in the whispering cathedrals of nature.
She was being foolish again. Hadn’t the tree-spirits helped to guide her to safety, that time in the forest? It seemed so long ago now . . .
Heimdal got out of the car and began to unload a collection of magical paraphernalia: a small altar, with two chafing-dishes filled with sweet woods, which he lit and set at either end of the altar; a large sheet of red velvet, which he spread over the damp ground; a small leather bag which he laid down on the velvet; and a bottle of fine white powder, with which he set about describing a circle around the altar and the velvet cloth.
Mara jumped down from the Range Rover and stood shivering in the clearing as Heimdal busied himself with his work, intoning words from an ancient grimoire as he did so. He seemed lost in his preparations, oblivious to Mara’s existence. She hugged her shawl about her, and wondered what would happen next.
At length, Heimdal was satisfied that all was ready; and he took Mara by the hand and led her into the circle.
As Mara watched he began to undress, not exuberantly, as Mara had so often seen him, but with a ritualistic – almost mechanical – precision, folding each item of clothing and laying it carefully upon the top of the altar.
‘This is the symbolic casting-off of old life,’ he explained. ‘For I am about to journey beyond life, beyond death even, into the world where the undead dwell.’
Mara noticed for the first time the blemish on the side of Heimdal’s neck: a small, dark redness, rather like a love-bite, in the centre of which were several tiny puncture wounds.
‘You’ve hurt yourself!’ she exclaimed, stepping forward to get a better look at the injury.
But Heimdal put out his hand to stop her.
‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Just a little accident. One of my clients yesterday insisted that I dress her in bondage clothing before the ceremony and, whilst we were fucking, she got carried away and injured me with her spiked leather collar. It’s an occupational hazard.’
As if eager to change the subject, Heimdal silenced Mara’s protestations with a kiss and explained what they must both do to empower the ritual:
‘In order for me to travel to the kingdom of the undead, we must both shed our prejudices and preconceptions and transcend these frail vessels of flesh, so that my spirit may roam free and find the enlightenment we both seek.’
So saying, he stretched out a hand and began to unfasten the buttons of Mara’s blouse. She stood before him, meekly submitting to his touch, allowing him to strip her clothes from her and lay them, with his, upon the altar.
‘First, we must empty our bodies of sexual desire,’ Heimdal went on, stroking her nipples gently with his strong, muscular fingers. ‘We must exhaust our passions, glut them with physical pleasure, so that there is no impediment in my mind to prevent my spirit guide from entering and leading me towards enlightenment. We must fuck until we are both entirely spent, for only then shall we rise above our sensual world, our twin psychic energies combining and endowing me with the power to enter the world of the spirit.
‘If you have desires, Mara, you must articulate them,’ he continued, gazing deep into her eyes. ‘And we shall then exorcise them together. I, in turn, shall voice my own desires, and you shall assist me to experience them to the full, thus banishing them as impediments to our work. And when our desires are spent, we must go further: travel beyond desire and perform outrages upon each other’s bodies, accomplishing the final death of mortal fleshly desire.
‘Speak, Mara: tell me the lustful secrets of your heart.’
At first, Mara was somewhat taken aback. Seeing her discomfiture, Heimdal opened the leather bag, took out a bottle and poured a little honey-scented liquid into a green crystal glass, instructing her to drink it down in a single draught. It tasted cloyingly sweet, with a half-hidden aftertaste of bitter herbs, and it obviously contained a powerful drug for Mara felt an immediate warmth sp
reading through her veins, inflaming her desires and loosening her tongue.
‘These are the desires of my heart, Lord Heimdal,’ she began, toying with her own nipples and enjoying the sensation as they grew ever-harder and more erect. ‘I desire that you should force me to submit to the whip; that you should fill up my every orifice until I cry out for mercy; that you should bind me with thongs and chains and fuck me and bugger me till I can take no more.’
Heimdal’s cock was swelling hugely in his pants; and Mara could clearly make out the outline of his massive hardness through the skin-tight leather of his trousers.
‘For my part,’ began Heimdal, ‘I desire that you should mortify my prick and balls with your teeth and nails, and then suck me to a climax and make me spurt out all over your face and breasts. When I have buggered you, I desire that you should make me lick my semen out of your arse. I desire that you should sit upon my face and masturbate yourself to orgasm and force me to drink down the fruits of your self-love and the juices of my own loins.
‘Come to me,’ he commanded, and held out his arms to Mara, who stepped hesitantly towards him, shaking with cold, with fear, and with desire.
‘Kneel, Mara; get on all fours, and thrust your arse towards me, to receive the consequences of your desire.’ She obeyed, supporting herself on knees and hands as she waited for him to begin. The damp chill of the sodden ground was soaking up through the velvet, and she felt as though she was sinking, very slowly, through pack-ice into a frozen sea.
The first stroke of the lash bit into her flesh and made her arch her back with pain. The memory of her experience at Whitby Abbey still haunted her, and with each stinging blow she recalled the pain she had felt as the Master’s arm rose and fell, raining pitiless blows upon her borrowed flesh.
Pain, yes; but also an insidious pleasure, which began as the spreading heat from savaged buttocks and soon grew in intensity and scope until it filled her whole body and mind, and seemed to focus on the throbbing bud of her clitoris. Mara gave a sigh of recognition as she felt the pain ebb away, leaving only the delicious warmth of irresistible desire, the pulsating pleasure of a hot, wet, cunt which longs to be satisfied.
Instinctively, Mara shuffled her knees apart, so that the lash fell not only on her buttocks, but on the moist and tender furrow within. She writhed in an agony of pleasure as its fiery tongue began to lick at her arse, her gaping cunt, and ventured as far as her clitoris, tormenting it into savage, ecstatic life.
At last the rain of blows ceased and Mara slumped gratefully to the ground, her erect nipples grinding into the damp red velvet.
‘Well done, Mara,’ breathed Heimdal, a little out of breath after his exertions. ‘Can you not feel the power generated by your sexual energies, by your pleasure and pain? Can you not feel it all around you?’
And in truth there was an electricity within the circle, like static crackling across the damp night air. And there was a presence, like an unseen, watching eye; like a hooded figure half-glimpsed before it vanishes round a corner; like dark shadows at the edges of her vision . . .
Heimdal reached into the leather bag and took out leather thongs and chains. Mara wondered vaguely how he could have known the desires she would speak before him. Were his powers greater than she had thought?
‘Lie on your back.’ Mara obeyed, and Heimdal fastened her wrists in heavy iron manacles, linked together by a long chain. He attached a leather thong to either wrist and tied each to a ring set into the base of the heavy altar.
She now lay before him, spreadeagled and utterly helpless; her most intimate places offered up to him like some delectable human sacrifice.
If she had expected him to fuck her there and then, she was to be sorely disappointed. For Heimdal turned back to his leather bag and, this time, he took out a strange assortment of objects: a long, bleached-white thigh-bone; a wand made from green malachite; and a dish containing an assortment of wild berries.
He turned to Mara and smiled: a chilling, inhuman smile now, which both terrified and excited her. It reminded her so acutely of the Master’s cruel smile . . .
‘Animal, vegetable, and mineral,’ explained Heimdal, laying out the items in the red velvet triangle between Mara’s legs. Together, they symbolise the wholeness of creation.
‘In inserting these items into your body, I shall be bringing us closer to the nature-spirit who shall be my guide.’
He took hold of Mara’s thighs and forced them further apart, making her draw up her knees, the better to display the treasures of cunt and arse.
Taking the bone, he crushed some of the berries onto it and smeared the juice over the smooth, white surface. Then he slid his finger down through Mara’s intimate crack until he found the hidden gateway to her most secret place.
The bone was thick and Mara’s arse was tight, despite the mingling of cunt-juice and crushed berries which Heimdal used to lubricate it. Seemingly indifferent to her discomfort, he prised open her arse with his fingers and inserted the tip of the bone, pushing it home with one long thrust. Mara cried out with the pain of it, but as it lodged deep inside her she realised that the sensation was beginning to be pleasurable.
Next came the stone wand, gleaming in the car headlights which Heimdal had left switched on to illuminate the scene. He felt for Mara’s cunt and slid the wand between her outer lips. It slid home without resistance, for Mara’s cunt was dripping with natural moisture.
This done, Heimdal turned his attentions to his own prick. He took the rest of the berries and crushed them onto his stiffened flesh, letting the juice run down the shaft. Then he knelt astride Mara’s face, facing her feet, and teased open her mouth with his fingers.
His shaft slipped easily into Mara’s welcoming mouth. The crushed berries and their juice slid onto her tongue, mingling their piquant taste with the salty tang of his prick, already well lubricated with its own juice.
Bending forward, he took hold of the malachite wand and began to thrust it in and out of Mara’s cunt, working it up and down like the piston of some phantasmagorical engine. She could not cry out at his roughness, for his shaft filled her mouth and throat, and all she could do was suck on it as a babe sucks at the breast.
Her juices flowed as he masturbated her; and her arse began to pulsate in time with the rhythms of her cunt, opening and closing on the bone which distended its delicate tissues. She felt herself coming to orgasm and thrust her hips upwards to meet the stone wand which was gratifying her.
Coming with a muffled groan of pleasure, Mara fell back onto the sodden velvet and received the salty tribute of Heimdal’s spunk, which flooded her mouth and almost choked her.
Heimdal climbed off Mara, took the wand from her cunt and unfastened the thongs which held her fast to the altar. But, far from letting her go, he merely flipped her onto her stomach and then fastened her once more with thongs attached to her manacles.
The bone was still protruding obscenely from Mara’s arse, like some ghastly skeleton penis, its white surface stained red with a liquid which might have been berry-juice or blood . . . Heimdal took hold of its end and began to move it in and out of Mara, manipulating it with expert skill. He knew just how much pleasure to give, just how much pain . . .
And then, almost before Mara had realised what he was doing, he had withdrawn the bone and cast it to one side and he was upon her, his cock searching for her, finding her secret entrance, forcing its way in through the bruised curtains of her martyred flesh. And she could hear a far-off voice – her own voice – screaming:
‘Bugger me! Yes, bugger me!’
He rode her as though she were some pretty boy he had picked up off the streets: a pretty boy who would fuck any man in return for a meal and a few pounds to pay the rent. He buggered Mara hungrily but without passion, as a starving man might accept and devour any meal that was placed before him. And he paid no heed to her cries as he rode her beyond the barriers of suffering, into the realms of delirious, forbidden pleasure.
With a roar of satisfaction, he poured his second tribute into her, and they lay for a few moments, locked together, panting with exertion.
Heimdal released Mara from her chains and drew her to her feet. Rivulets of semen and berry-juice stained her lips and were trickling down her thighs, soiling the flesh of her buttocks and her face. She swayed a little, and held onto him for support.
‘Now you must exorcise my desires, Mara,’ whispered Heimdal. ‘You must take my body and purge it of its need to fuck and be fucked.’
Still half-dazed, Mara watched as Heimdal lay down upon the ground and beckoned her to him. Amazingly, his cock was fully erect once more, and its magnificence began to awaken new depths of lust within her. She knelt between his parted thighs and, remembering the desires which he had confessed to her, began to work upon his cock and balls with her teeth and nails. To her surprise, his desire seemed not dampened, but heightened, by her savagery: the harder she bit him, the deeper she sank her nails into the flesh of his balls, the harder his penis became. It began to dance deliriously against his belly, as though the spunk within were desperately struggling to pour forth its bounty.
At last, she took pity on him and began to suck the tip of his prick – all the while digging her fingernails into his scrotum. Within a few seconds he came: spurting copious amounts of creamy-white sperm into her willing mouth.
She gave him no time to recover – kneeling on all-fours before him, and ordering him to lick his own spunk from her arse. The sensation was quite new to her and its novelty was entirely pleasurable. It felt as though a tiny warm, wet, wriggling creature was burrowing its way into her most intimate places and the thought set her clitty throbbing once again with unsatisfied desire.
She felt the tip of his prick nudging against her buttocks but diverted it from her arse and repositioned it at the entrance to her cunt.
‘Fuck me,’ she commanded Heimdal.
He thrust into her and she took hold of his right hand and guided it to her clitoris.
The Phallus of Osiris Page 11