His presence was replaced by that of the commander of the army. “My lord. We await your orders. The enemy closes on all sides.”
Belok clenched his fists, shaking them to the heavens. “I have been cheated!” Where is my miracle?”
“My lord, come to me,” whispered the princess.
Belok knelt beside the bed. It had taken more and more of her precious life fluid to sustain him, to maintain the expanding empire. All had hinged on him, his ability to locate and defeat enemy armies, to govern territories. He’d needed more and more mind power, more and more fuel for the Chalice. And only her blood would do. Not that of the hundreds of slaves he’d tried, not even the women of captured nobles. Not even two years together as man and wife, lord and slave, partners in blood and empire, him taking her blood and trickling it into the Chalice to sustain his power, and this was the result. Too little of the stuff in her veins to keep him alive.
Belok cursed himself now, and cursed their love. “Damn you, for stealing my heart!”
“It is my fault,” she agreed, her breaths numbered. “Before me, you could steal the life blood of anyone at all. The chalice would accept any offering from you.”
It must have been the passion between them. It had given her fluid a tastiness that the Chalice—and the dark force behind it—now demanded exclusively in exchange for their unearthly services.
“Love,” he drew the dagger from his belt, acknowledging his fatal weakness. “What greater curse can there be?”
She reached up to touch his fevered brow. The infinite worry etched beneath. So much worry borrowed, bought and stolen. “I would trade my life for yours, beloved.”
“We are both doomed,” he laughed with all the bitterness and bile of a tyrant who knows he has finally been thwarted, made impotent and reduced to a tantruming child by those stronger and fresher than he.
“Do not curse life, Belok…please.”
“I am damned,” he ripped open his tunic, pressing the blade to his breast. “What matters anything now?”
“No,” said the Princess Vistya. “There is another way.”
“What way?”
“Bleed me dry. Cast my carcass to everlasting night. Put us both to sleep.”
He shook his head. “No, that is too much.”
“Do it,” she seized his wrist with surprising strength. “Fill the cup. Fill it to overflow.”
“The world will end…”
“Yes,” she licked her lips, “and then be reborn.”
***
Merritt made a bizarre bride. In her dress of white, barefoot, naked beneath the sheer, curve hugging silk. She was shivering and her nipples were poking prominently through the material that might as well have been a nightie for all the protection it offered.
The erect nipples were also the result of Becca having licked her over and over to the brink of orgasm as she dressed her and helped her with her hair, which was exquisitely combed, a thousand strokes with a camel’s hair brush and woven with flowers.
Naked Becca, jingling in chains had laughed over her work, licking and combing, combing and licking, lost for good now it seemed in her own little world.
The masturbating was not Merritt’s choice but a requirement. The bride must be at the point of sexual climax according to the ritual but not over it.
The room itself—the chapel for all intents and purposes—was lit with candles. Lines of them along the stone walls like soldiers, silent guards upon stands of bronze, each rising to a height of five or more feet. They seemed perilously thin like icicles of white, the flames flickering and dancing in the black air, against the moss eaten stone. This particular chamber had not been opened in living memory. It had served once, according to the records, as a wine cellar. Deep underground, it was one of only two chambers not destroyed in the final attack upon Belok’s castle.
It had been a vicious assault, the culmination of a siege lasting months. The combined allied armies, those of the Ten Nations, had taken the field that night, sending out every man able to bear a sword or swing an axe. The various kings and princes had vied among themselves for the privilege of leading the final charge, clawing at the walls with bloodied fingers, pounding at the stone with battering rams.
It was Roulag who’d won the right by virtue of what was done to his daughter. Having been freed by Belok at Vistya’s entreaty, he had worked tirelessly for revenge ever since. Hundreds of his men fell beneath the defenders weapons that final hour, the arrows thick as locusts, the boiling oil, red hot in the darkness, like rivers of death cutting living swaths through the tightly packed ranks. Onward they pushed, assault after assault, until the main doors gave way and they swarmed over the castle.
“Light the fires,” had ordered the kings and princes of the Ten Nations, “burn all that may be burnt, melt all which can be melt, allow nothing to remain.”
For three days the fires raged as they cleansed and purified the land. The screams of victims, the cry of the blood raged in the warriors' ears. Many were said to go mad from the sound of it, the effect like combat only the foe was invisible, internal.
The bodies were burned, too. Belok’s and Vistya’s said not to be among them. There were reports of a man flying from the ramparts, descending like a bat, arms spread, his body lit by an eerie blue flame, but this was only superstition.
Perhaps it was him, perhaps not. In truth, the body did not matter for the prince had sealed himself within the cup. The Cup of Hrabon, the only surviving piece from the castle.
The very same cup the red-robed Ileana, the apparent priestess for the service, was now filling with a substance of red.
Merritt hoped it was wine.
“Bind the bride,” she ordered, resting the brimming goblet upon the end of the stone slab some eight feet long and fitted with leather straps for wrists and ankles.
Two hooded figures in red took Merritt by the arms and conveyed her forward. The altar was black marble, polished smooth as glass. Merritt looked into their hoods as they strapped her down but could see nothing in the shadows.
“Let the will of Belok be done,” declared Ileana as soon as the prisoner was rendered helpless.
Helpless, indeed. Pretty and soft, barefoot, legs spread, the thinnest covering over her lightly trembling breasts and pulsing sex, a covering begging to be torn away by some brutal lover.
But who or what was coming for her?
“The will of Belok,” repeated the hooded initiates, their voices soft and feminine.
“Bring in the priests.”
The men wore robes of brown. They entered in single file between the lines of candles. When all were in the chamber, they lowered their hoods. Merritt recognized many of them from the dinner the other night. The portly man with the glasses, the hook nosed man with the prominent ears and…Simon.
She gasped at the sight of him. Was he here to finish her off, to finalize her betrayal, or did he intend yet to save her? She dared not reveal herself, dared not speak.
“Strip the prisoner,” said Ileana.
The initiates had knives of gold, the gleams of the blades brilliant in the reflected candlelight. Patterns of it danced off the walls as they applied the knives, cutting open the white dress of the prisoner. One knife would easily have done the trick, but this was more for art’s sake. Or terror’s sake. Merritt shuddered from the touch of the cold blades lightly pricking her skin, tracing lines and sharp enough to scratch, drawing tiny drops of blood that were quickly absorbed by the scraps of the decimated dress.
Up and down they went, tracing patterns, possessing her like a many-clawed lover.
“Enough,” said Ileana. “Gag the bride.”
For some reason, this struck Merritt as funny.
One of the initiates took a piece of white cloth and swabbed Merritt’s cunt with the thirsty material. Merritt blushed as she saw how much liquid was collected. When the initiate was satisfied, she took the material, balled it up and held it in front of Merritt’s mouth.
She did no
t have to be told to open wide. The taste shamed her, but there was no hiding now. With a longer strip, they secured the gag, rendering her mute. The perfect victim. Merritt thought of Vistya, sacrificed in lust to Belok’s men, to the man himself and ultimately to his insane dreams of power.
The men were crowding closer. They were here as men like this always were for the sex. One of them, the man who had worn the medallion the other night at dinner had taken a place beside Ileana. Opening a book that Merritt recognized as the Journal of Night, he began to read. The words were not ones she recalled. Perhaps the book was enchanted, its pages layered in several dimensions that allowed its contents to change for the occasion.
Should anything surprise her now after what she’d seen through Vistya’s long dead eyes? Indeed, there was nothing to frighten her now, not rape or torture or even death. How she pitied and admired Vistya—the sacrifice she had made, suspending herself possibly forever between the two realms of life and death so that he might have a chance to return one day.
Hundreds of years of unspeakable loneliness and emptiness, all culminating here tonight.
“By black of night,” she heard the man saying now. “By sacred store of darkness, awaken ye minds and souls of men. Dread possibility, carnal opportunity, fated slaughter.”
The words were repeated by the others like some hellish congregation.
“Let no woman look upon these proceedings,” the man added. This was the signal to blindfold Merritt. The last thing she saw before her eyes were sealed by a length of black silk were the other initiates, bending down in front of the men, their backsides exposed, naked under their robes as they grasped their own ankles. It did not take a seer to see what would happen next. The groans alone gave it away. The men were fucking the women even as the priest continued his ritual chant.
Merritt was lulled by the words, exotic and high sounding. It was not until she felt the wax pouring over her breasts that she was brought back to her senses. She could not help but scream into the gag and squirm. Resistance, however, even of so futile a manner, was not allowed.
“Be still, bitch,” growled the priest.
Merritt felt the lash of a riding crop, hot on her belly, but not so quite as hot as the liquid wax. She did her best to lie still, contenting herself with grinding her teeth and clenching her feet and toes as they poured out more of the melted candles, little pools of it over her belly and cunt. More and more of them until she was coated with the stuff like a woman of plastic or porcelain.
Hands strayed over her body now. The sensation was strange, diminished through the wax, and yet potent in ways she’d never before imagined. Her flesh was hungry, yearning to touch, to feel, to be the center of the men’s power
“We call upon thee, oh Lord,” the man chanted, “with thy seed and thy potency. We are but your slaves, your arms and legs and cocks. Let the Cup be filled.”
She heard the men groaning. By instinct she knew they were jerking off in the Cup, filling it with sperm mixed with wine. She would drink it. And that would be the beginning.
“So now you know everything,” said the voice, long overdue.
“Enough to know you for what you really are,” her mind replied.
“She made the sacrifice willingly,” Belok reminded.
“If it makes you feel better to think that.”
“She is mine,” he hissed, reheating the wax, this time to boiling. “And so are you.”
She was split wide. “So take me,” she opted to fall between the cracks of her agony.
“Indeed…I shall.”
Belok descended to rape her. The chamber was filled with flashing light. The pathetic followers and so-called priests fell to their knees at the sight of it as such men always do.
“You can’t stop me,” he gnawed her breasts.
Merritt cradled the pain. “So what’s keeping you?”
She wasn’t sure herself. She was only bluffing. But something was delaying the matter for real.
A force like a hurricane pressed at her womb. In her mind’s eye she saw him and all his killing as much a part of him as the power and beauty of his penis.
Belok the Proud. Belok the Unstoppable. And Unkillable.
But he wasn’t getting in.
“Ileana!” he screamed, calling for his nearest minion. “What is the meaning of this?”
“I don’t know, my lord. We have performed all the ritual. It is no deficiency on our side.”
The Dark Prince blasted his rage to every mind in the room. “My Vistya. Where is my Vistya?”
Merritt was dangling from the edge of a cliff, but she was still Merritt. And Vistya…she was still a memory, a vision inside of her.
“Hold on, baby. Hold on.”
It was Simon.
That was it! Her love for him was keeping her alive.The Dark Prince hissed like a snake, a wolf. Teeth bared, he lunged. But Simon was there to protect her as he had been in the hotel room. All the events swirled in Merritt’s mind now, everything that had occurred from the airport to here. So much submission. So much lust.
They were wrestling. The agent and the wolf. Short black hair against long silver.
Simon was winning. “Not…this…time.”
A cold ripping followed. Shock in the eyes of Belok. The twenty-first was not his century either, it seemed.
“Back to hell,” Simon dispatched, throwing him over the abyss.
The one from which Merritt hung…holding the memory of Vistya.
“Simon!” she cried.
He had her by the wrist, pulling her up.
“Merritt,” he tore off the covering from her eyes and undid the straps, the fury of a madman behind him.
“Baby,” she croaked. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said.
He didn’t want her to stand, but she did anyway. She wanted to, so she could give him a proper kiss. It was hot and deep just like she imagined it would be. “Is he really gone?” she whispered.
He nodded his head. “Uh huh.”
Then he went rigid.
“Simon?”
Becca was behind him holding the knife handle, the blade freshly plunged into the man’s back.
“Better luck next time,” she winked at Merritt. “Sweetheart.”
“I don’t…understand,” she stammered.
“It’s called a double cross,” said Colonel Ladislak, slipping an arm round the nude, cat-like girl. “Rather ironic, don’t you think? The one most educated in the legend and least suspected of capitalizing on its power should be the one? Many years have I waited, Doctor Fisher, always in the wings, always toadying to the ones in power. But ever watching to see the mistakes, to learn the things I must know. Rochescu, you see, was fundamentally right. Whatever power the Chalice had, wherever it came from, however Belok got hold of it and whatever the words in that old book mean, it all comes down to you. The fulcrum between past and present. You must have an amazing mind, doctor, to draw an entity from so far away. To some extent Belok conceived you, but you, too, have conceived him. It goes back to Vistya. She captured his essence in her death, and you are somehow the link to her. Rochescu knew all that when he brought you here. Unfortunately for him, he was sloppy in his choice of allies.”
Merritt noted the sprawled body of the man’s killer, Ileana. The bearded priest lay next to her, one of the colonel’s paratroopers leaning over him with a wire garrote he’d used to kill them both. Around the room were other bodies and more of the black bereted soldiers. Many more.
“I’ve been a pawn,” she said.
“That is an accurate description,” conceded the little man, the woman at his side some five inches taller than him and kissing on his baldhead.
She looked at Simon, lying at her feet. “May I…may I go to him?”
“By all means.”
“Who was he?” she choked back her tears as she cradled the man’s lifeless body. “He never would tell me.”
“He was what he said,” shru
gged the future president of the republic. “A representative of a super secret organization run by me.”
“He was a dupe, too.” Becca supplied.
“What about her?” Merritt inquired, refusing to speak to the girl directly.
“I’m a gift, honey, from the gods…”
Merritt laughed coldly. She was sure now that if there was something otherworldly in all this, it traced its way to her. The common denominator in all the dreams and experiences she’d had. “Same ones that gave the world the Chalice, right?”
“Something like that.”
Merritt beheld them. The diminutive would be Napoleon and the she-demon.
“So, what happens now?” she wondered aloud.
“It’s quite simple, really,” he began to unzip his pants. “You make me a baby to take over the world.”
Epilogue
The former Professor Fisher shivered in the dank, alleyway. It was cold this time of year in the Pristiene, and she was ill equipped in her halter-top, miniskirt and boots.
“Give it to me,” Petrok snatched the handful of bills from out of her hand. The hooker who generally went by the name of bitch or slut these days, tried to cover the shortfall with excuses. “There’s hardly anyone out today with the national holiday and—“
“Shut the fuck up,” he backhanded her.
The whore hung her head. “Yes, sir,” she replied meekly.
“You stay out two extra hours now,” he informed her, stuffing the money into the pocket of his long camel’s hair jacket, bought with money from selling the girl’s cunt, mouth and arse.
“But Petrok, I’m so cold and I haven’t eaten all day!” she whined, risking another slap or worse.
The pimp sighed. He had a lot of girls now, he and his partner Marco both, so he could afford to be a little generous.
“Here,” he took a half-eaten candy bar from his pocket, tossing it to the ground.
The girl fell to all fours, being forbidden to ever use her hands. Using her mouth and face as best she could, she nibbled through the paper and foil to get at the sweet, succulent chocolate. The sight of the blonde American humiliating herself like this on the filthy cobblestones made Petrok hard and thick under his silk trousers.
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