Catacombs

by Addison Cain

  “Had you sat as you’d been told, I would have cuddled you dry with sweet kisses and soft words.” Drawing up a soft towel from where it rested beside the bath, he began to blot droplets away from her bowed back. He palmed her ass, squeezed that bruised flesh, and grinned when she looked away in shame. “I’m only teasing, Pearl. Who could resist such a view?”

  Gently he turned her, sat the shamefaced woman on his knee and pressed a tender kiss to her temple. “We were playing a game before you fell asleep. I think we should play another.”

  Aching, aroused, unwell, and starving, she sighed. “I’m not very good at games.”

  Nuzzling her wet hair, he whispered, “But you win so often.”

  “I’m cold.”

  “You owe me one more kiss.” He was already at her mouth, sucking the trapped lip from her teeth before he added, “One more kiss, then we play a new game.”

  The pressure, the friction, even the sharp edges of his teeth, all of it was his doing. She was trapped under the onslaught, gasping for air and shocked to feel the stirrings return between her thighs. But as it was, she could not kiss him, not with his tongue already in her mouth. If that was his game, she had no way to win. All she could do was try to make words that were swallowed, ignored, and grunted at.

  But she was growing warm again. Every last attention he lavished on her felt… nice.

  A rush grew in the place he’d explored under the water, a plumpness Pearl did not recognize that made her want to press harder to his thigh, and forget the lingering soreness of her ass.

  When he gave her a moment of breath, she panted, found herself squirming, and just about fainted when he suddenly took her nipple between his teeth. “Is this the game?”

  Grunting a non-answer, those long teeth he’d used to cut her thumb were planted into her breast. Sucking her nipple, tonguing it, a mix of searing pain and unknown pleasure mingled as he drank the scant blood that ran.

  Pulling his mouth from her breast, teeth red with her blood, those eyes burned with hellfire. “Bite me.”

  Gawking at the small trickle of blood that ran from her skin, staring at the man who’d left the mark of his mouth on her, Pearl felt her gums tingle. When she tongued each tip, she found two teeth descended, far too short to even break skin.

  Reaching up to touch the useless tips with her finger, shocked she hadn’t noticed earlier, she balked. “They’re gone.”

  The fervent stranger didn’t care. He took her hair and drew her mouth to his neck.

  The smell she found there set her to salivating. The needle-like pain on her scalp from his overly enthusiastic grip forgotten as her tongue traced a pulsating vein.

  The man moaned in a way Pearl had only ever heard when men were finished with her.

  For once, she liked it.

  She bit and gnawed, did everything she could to get that vein to burst open and spray her mouth with what was hidden inside.

  Nothing worked.

  Well, something was working. The man’s hand had delved into his trousers and between their tangled bodies he was pumping his fist.

  Unfed hunger led to sharp frustration. Her teeth were too short to pierce, her jaw too weak to break salty skin. Everything she needed was right there, so close but unattainable.

  But then the smell of blood filled her nose.

  His warm, perfect blood.

  Yet it was not coming from his neck.

  She slunk to the floor without thought, hand around an organ that dripped rubies from an even more generously throbbing vein. When she tried to suck just from the side of that thing, strong hands repositioned her skull. It was put between her teeth, forced toward her throat until she gagged and had trouble swallowing the pooling blood.

  All she wanted was a rich drink, annoyed with the man bobbing her head up and down.

  Swallowing with that thick organ down her throat became necessary. Breath was forgotten, all that mattered was the struggle against what held her down and wasted blood she needed in her belly. Just as the vein closed and her meal was cut short, something salty sprayed against her tongue.

  Made to swallow it in her quest for the final drops of perfection, Pearl retched.

  Flailing, half drowning and unable to breathe, she felt the weight on her skull give in. Falling back in a graceless pile, sucking in air as if she’d been under water, Pearl saw the man, his trousers gaping, his mouth open and head thrown back.

  It was then she realized just what she’d so ravenously drunk from.

  His cock.

  That part of a man they liked to stick like a brand into a woman—the thing that burned and brought pain.

  That had been his game.

  Something was running from the corner of her lips, a wasted drop both salty and sweet.

  Darius caught it with his thumb, pushed it back between her shocked lips before using the tip of his finger to close her gaping mouth. “Did you enjoy your dinner?”

  There was no answer. The blood had been overly delicious, the things he’d been doing during her feast unrecognized. It couldn’t be normal, a woman’s mouth on a man’s body that way. Embarrassed, unsure if she could bring herself to stop cringing on the floor, Pearl muttered, “Why would you do that?”

  Stroking her cheek, Darius smiled. “Swallow my cum like a good girl. Taste it on your velvet tongue. Next I’ll leave it dripping from your tight cunt. After that, there is another place on your body I like to bury my seed. Play nicely, and I’ll fill your belly with another mouthful of what makes you swoon before I fuck your ass.”

  Pearl looked back at the thing she’d just had down her throat, not at all eager for it to be back inside any part of her body. Just as she was no longer eager to pretend this was a pleasant dream.

  He was still hard.

  Usually, after they had pushed in, thrust about, and told her to stop screaming, those things got smaller.

  Taking the meat of his cock in hand, the man crooned, “You still owe me a kiss. Press your lips here, and thank me for all I gave you.”

  She didn’t want it in her throat again; all she had wanted to taste was the blood.

  This dream was no longer enticing. In fact, now that she’d had a meal, it didn’t feel dream-like at all.

  It was real.

  Darius was real.

  She was in a room with a man who had put his organ in her mouth.

  An organ she had licked manically for drops of blood that did not make her retch as human blood did...

  Semen did not taste appealing, the belief confirmed a moment later when he fisted her hair, and led her mouth to the tip where a drop of tang remained.

  She kissed it as she was told to, felt her stomach rumble and her throat itch.

  Mostly, she felt unclean.

  “Are you thinking of the mean old priest?”

  A flood of terrible memories intruded as if a dam had broken behind her eyes. This interlude had not been the first time she’d done this. How could she have forgotten something so horrible?

  A cry caught in her throat, one that turned to a whimper of degradation.

  A hand came to her bowed head and stroked her hair. “And that, kara sevde, is why I do not allow you to remember. That is why every night for you starts new and clean.”

  Who would want to have such dark things always lurking in their mind? The stranger had given her blood that had not made her sick, he had given her pleasure in the tub, and then he had given her the memory of a terrible past. Falling to his feet, she put her lips to his shoes and begged he take the nightmares away again.

  Voice like iron, Darius warned his treasure, “I shall take all he did from your mind, but remember this fractured moment tonight should you question your life in my care, buck my requests, or shy from my attention. There is no suffering in this room but the torment you bring upon yourself. I would give you the bliss of permanent innocence. I would fill you with pleasure. Thank me for it.”

  Sobbing, she vigorously held to his leg. “Thank you
.”

  And then the rancid memories that had broken her heart were gone. Confused why she was even upset, the tears stopped.

  Cupping her face, he wiped wet trails from her cheeks. “Your life with me, in this place, can be sunshine or it can be darkness. Every night, the choice is yours.”

  Chapter Nine

  Over several hours, Darius taught her the meaning of rapture.

  And the price…

  His attention had been so wondrous that she’d almost forgotten how degrading it was to be used. Yet no matter how he kissed and touched, under her joy she knew all he did was for his own entertainment. He wanted to see her beg like a whore, knew what nerves to manipulate to earn a slattern’s response.

  Twisted by the expertise of a practiced lecher, she’d cried out, unsure of the exact moment his body had pushed her past sanity. For only a mad woman would have thanked him for fucking her so raw she’d bled.

  She’d even tangled her hands in his hair when he’d pulled her cunt to his mouth so he might feast on their shared fluids.

  When his cum and her blood were smeared over his chin, red eyes burned and his long teeth shone in the candlelight. “Turn over. Bow your head to the covers.”

  She’d obeyed without question.

  “Tell me you love me.” Glistening cockhead notched between her cleft, he’d raked his nails over her hips.

  More of her blood spilled from the gashes, just as the foul words fell from a drunken tongue. “I love you.”

  “Call me your God!” He spread her cheeks, sluicing forward through all the mess that dripped from her cunt.

  It felt as if there was a knock on the door of her skull, a mental caution to refuse such blasphemy. There was only one God. The God. The creator of the world who’d promised to deliver her from evil.

  Evil shunted in, straight into a hole that was unslick, upstretched, and unprepared. Bawling, flailing while tears fell, she screamed, “You are my God!”

  The creature tearing her ass apart roared. It was not the sound of a man in pleasure, but a demon set free from the abyss. Unwilling to turn her head, she imagined great wings had spread behind her tormentor to beat the air as he pulled her down that blood-stained cock.

  The damage was extensive, for the devil had been unshackled.

  He claimed his due from her flesh.

  A single, worthless soul.

  One that God had rejected long ago. One that was treasured by a monster who relished perverting love into pain.

  Empty of hope, full of cock.

  That was how she died inside. Any proselyte knew there would be no forgiveness in the eyes of the Lord for this.

  The flesh agreed, twisting up around the pulsating intrusion. Her cunt fluttered, opening up like a little mouth seeking a sweet kiss. The nub at the top of her sex throbbed as if an overripe berry near bursting.

  Despite how he ravaged her hips, it was her touch that found that pulped flesh and dove in to fill the empty hole. He bellowed a sickening laugh to see little fingers play.

  When she came, it was while riding a scream of pain.

  He sprayed white globs of stinging grossness so far inside her, it would linger like a stain she could never push out.

  What had she done?

  On fire, pinned under the weight of a monster lazy with slaked lust, her tears fell hot and free.

  At last that organ was shrinking, slowly worming its way out of her ass. But the mark he’d made on her, the blasphemy he’d drawn from foolish lips would never seep out, no matter how many holes she tore in her flesh.

  “I am lost…”

  Filth crusted nails raked her chin, forcing her to twist her neck at an impossible angle so that one large blue eye might find his devious smile. “I so ador—”

  The floor dropped out from under them, and with an earsplitting crash, dust and debris snowed down upon her room. It was as if the earth itself shook, as if it worked its jaws, intent on devouring the vampire whore and the beast panting on her back.

  “HE WOULDN’T DARE!” Darius pulled away, careless of the damage he caused, or the detritus that followed the path of his dick from her anus. Once on his feet, the ground wrenched again, almost upsetting the devil’s balance. “You.” Turning his fury on the bleeding woman soiling the coverlet. “Stay there! This insurrection will be crushed at once.”

  Through tears, Pearl saw the air bend, distort, and Darius, the devil she’d named as her God, vanished.

  It would be easy to say that the rocking of the earth which sent her candelabras toppling over was a sign of her salvation. It would be easy to claim divinity smiled upon her.

  It didn’t.

  In fact, no one came to smile, threaten, bleed her, or denounce.

  Hours she lay under a ceiling that dusted her room in a fog of ancient dirt. In that time her body mended.

  Darius did not return.

  One by one the candles began to flicker and wane. All the soft golden light of her cell faded, snuffed out to scent the air with a wisp of smoke. It was not until the last three had almost met their end before Pearl found the will to rise from the bed. New tapers were lit, and had she been wiser, she would have rationed her meager supply.

  Rocking herself in the shadowy room, surrounding by fine paintings, by jewels, by sumptuous furnishing and a tub grown cold, she saw the cell for what it was.

  A tomb.

  Her tomb.

  Day’s passed, Pearl sleeping anywhere but the soiled bed.

  Starving, down to her last candle, she read through the book she’d found on the desk, and knew the gnawing in her gut was more than hunger.

  This was a bad place.

  A bad place where she had been tempted, and spoken terrible words.

  When she opened the filigreed box on the desk, when she found the notes, she didn’t weep. After all, didn’t the church teach that there was no such thing as victims of the devil? She had come to him of her own accord.

  She had killed Chadwick Parker. She had served as the demon’s slut.

  She had renounced her God under the ecstasies only the prince of darkness might offer.

  And every word on those torn notes was true.

  She was in Hell.

  Damned, Pearl snuffed out the last candle before it might burn away. Pitch black filled her vision. Shuffling through the furniture, she found the stinking bed, and pulled the covers crusted in all things unholy over her body. There she lay, forgotten, abandoned, and without hope.

  Just as she deserved.

  Starvation drained her flesh over weeks. Shriveled, desiccated, she lay like an age worn corpse unable to blink. Yet, where the body failed the mind persevered.

  She couldn’t scream into that endless night. Eventually, even her chest no longer rose to draw breath. But awareness and desolation never faded.

  Hell was a dedicated custodian. It refused to release her stolen soul.

  Years, decades, passed trapped on that bed staring up into unyielding dark.

  Alone.

  Forgotten.

  Forsaken.

  Another corpse in the catacombs.

  Thank you for reading CATACOMBS: CRADLE OF DARKNESS.

  What became of Darius? More tales from the Cradle of Darkness will be coming soon!

  I hope this horror left your skin crawling in the best possible way. Please review. I cherish every single one, so share your thoughts with me, tell your friends, and spread the love!

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