As ridiculous as Elic felt enveloped in white silk, at least it was a fairly simple, straightforward garment. Dashwood, as chief friar and primary celebrant in the mass, sported gold buttons on his hoodless robe, a stole embroidered with phalli and demonic symbols, and a tall red cardinal’s hat trimmed in rabbit fur. The hat was particularly remarkable, so much so that Elic had to chew on the inside of his mouth to keep from smirking. Oblivious of the figure he cut, Dashwood carried himself with regal bearing, clearly confident that he looked entirely as solemn and dignified as he felt.
How on earth, Elic wondered, could his distaff counterpart have found this man sexually alluring? For Elle had not simply appreciated Dashwood’s amiable disposition and many accomplishments, as Elic did; she had desired him, intensely. Elic could not have re-created that desire in himself even if he wanted to, his bodily humors, which governed his sexual appetites, having reverted to the masculine. He recalled all too clearly, though, how much Elle had wanted Dashwood, how exciting it had been to feel him thrusting inside her, unhurriedly at first, then with quivering urgency as their pleasure crested together—all the while surrounded by revelers who had no idea what was transpiring beneath the great silken mass of her skirts.
Dashwood asked whether Elic was fully acquainted with his role in the upcoming ceremony.
“I am,” said Elic, withdrawing from a pocket of his robe the little red leather missal stamped Order of the Friars of St. Francis, which he’d been given during his induction into the Hellfires yesterday. It had been little trouble to memorize the verses and responses, given his familiarity with Latin from the half-millennium during which Grotte Cachée had been under Roman rule. What amused Elic about the order of service for the Hellfires’ missa niger was that it was patterned after that of a standard Roman Catholic mass. If Dashwood was as contemptuous of religion as he purported, he would simply turn his back on its rituals, put them altogether out of his mind. Instead, he chose to celebrate his decadent ideology by conducting his own solemn, albeit obscene, versions of those rituals, thus betraying their true importance in his mind.
“Archie.” Dashwood caught the eye of the acolyte with the candles and motioned him into the chapel.
The young man straightened his back and strode between the two fat columns that separated the narthex from the chapel proper.
“Slowly,” Dashwood whispered.
Archie duly adjusted his pace. When he was halfway up the center aisle, the white-robed congregants noticed him and rose to their feet, flipping up the seats in their small double bank of ornately carved misericord chairs.
Grotte Cachée’s unconsecrated chapel, constructed when the castle was rebuilt in the early 1400s, was quite small, its walls and low, vaulted ceiling crafted from the same dark volcanic rock with which the castle had been built. Red glass lanterns, installed by the Hellfires along with various other trappings, cast a sinister, ruddy luminescence. The effect was reinforced by the smoke rising from braziers in which a mixture of herbs crackled over hot coals. The mousy stink of hemlock was predominant, but Elic’s keen nose detected a bittersweet note that had to be belladonna, and a whiff of something else that smelled almost, but not quite, like tobacco: henbane.
The sanctuary at the far end of the chapel was a raised, semicircular niche, its curved rear wall draped in black velvet to cover a large stained-glass window. Against this funereal backdrop hung an oil portrait of a demonically handsome young man with wings and horns floating on a plume of smoke—a laughably romanticized rendering of Lucifer perfectly in keeping with the overwrought tone of the proceedings. Built onto a platform in the center of the sanctuary was an altar table of volcanic stone some eight feet long and half as wide, its top inlaid with a geometric mosaic of darkly shimmering black lava glass. Archie placed the candelabras to either side of a tiny black pillow on the left edge of the table, then struck a Chinese gong once with a hammer padded in black leather.
“Harry,” Dashwood whispered.
The other acolyte carried his censer and boat up the aisle, followed at stately intervals by Elic and Dashwood, who entered the sanctuary with heads bowed and hands clasped before them. On the altar table, arranged around the candelabras, were such accoutrements as a silver chalice topped with a black cloth-covered plate, a tiny silver ladle, a dish of fragrant olive oil warming over a little brazier, a small silver cauldron half-filled with water, and a jewelry casket of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl in the shape of a six-pointed star within a circle. Most curious was a brass aspergillum such as those used for sprinkling holy water, which was shaped like a dildo with a bulbous, perforated glans. To these paraphernalia Elic added the missal, which he laid with feigned veneration on the black satin pillow.
Harry took his place next to an iron censer stand forged to look like a rearing serpent, while Archie struck the gong three times. The congregants turned en masse toward the narthex in anticipation of the Bona Dea’s entrance—all save one, who stood motionless, staring straight ahead. Like the other congregants, including Elic, he wore his hood low over his face, casting his eyes into deep shadow. From his powder-paleness and the grim set of his jaw, Elic recognized him as Anton Turek.
Between the two columns flanking the entrance to the narthex there appeared a dark form that seemed to hesitate for a moment before advancing slowly up the aisle. Elic had assumed that Lili would make her entrance naked, but in fact she wore a mantle of fur-lined black satin that trailed heavily behind her. Over it she was swathed head to toe in a sheer black veil that floated and fluttered as she walked, making her look like a specter materializing from the smoky pall.
As she came closer, Elic saw that the mantle was secured at the throat with a pair of cloakpins connected by a chain, causing it to fall open and reveal, through the gauzy veil, the tantalizing promise of bare, golden flesh and a glimpse of the shadowy arbor between her thighs. She smelled like jasmine and desire.
Elic’s cock filled and rose as he watched Lili walk toward him. As Elle, he had thought this woman lovely, but in an abstract, purely esthetic sense; more than her beauty, he had admired her character and intellect. As a man, he was struck by her in a far more corporeal way. She was a magnificent creature, exquisite in mind and body, serenely sensual, and, it would appear, in thrall to the appetites of the flesh—as, for better and for worse, was he.
Lili ascended the altar steps and turned to face the congregants, who executed a deep bow in unison. She turned back toward the sanctuary, whereupon Elic, Dashwood, and the two acolytes reverenced her in the same manner.
Reaching beneath her veil, the acolytes removed the luxuriant mantle and laid it on the table like an altar cloth, fur side up; it was mink, Elic saw, dyed jet-black. Escorting Lili onto the platform, they handed her up onto the table’s right-hand edge. She sat with the veil stretched out behind her over the lustrous black fur but still cloaking her in front to her feet, around one of which she wore an anklet of hammered gold.
Elic glanced up to find her regarding him with interest through the shroudlike veil. He’d seen that look many times before, when someone who’d already made the acquaintance of one of his alter egos met the other and found the resemblance astonishing. He gave her a slight smile, which she acknowledged with a little nod.
Dashwood executed another profoundly deep bow toward Lili and made a left-handed, backward sign of the cross. “In nomine magni Dei nostri Satanas introibo ad altare Domini Inferi,” he intoned. “In the name of our great God Satan, I shall enter the altar of the Infernal Lord.” He opened his robe and produced his half-hard member.
“Ad Eum qui laetificat meum,” Elic responded. To Him who gives joy unto me.
The acolyte Harry lifted the little dish from its brazier and offered it to Dashwood, who dipped his fingertips in the warm oil and smoothed it over his member. “Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini Inferi.” Our sustenance is the Name of the Infernal Lord.
Who reigns on earth. “Qui regit terram,” responded Elic as he dippe
d his own fingers into the dish, coating them with oil.
Elic turned toward Lili, who, in keeping with her instructions, leaned back with her weight on her hands behind her and her legs spread wide. The position caused the veil to cling to the contours of her flat belly and high, full breasts. Her nipples were wine-red through the whispery muslin.
Elic slipped his oiled hand up under the hem of Lili’s veil until he reached the thatch shielding her sex, as soft and black as the fur on which she sat. She closed her eyes as he parted the tufts of hair, then the soft, damp purse within, sucking in a breath when he pushed two fingers deep inside. The flesh there was hot, snug, and already slippery, but he oiled it anyway, per his own instructions. He took his time about it, using slow, rhythmic strokes, gratified when he noticed her nipples stiffen and push against the veil.
“Domine Satanas, Tua est terra.” Dashwood stroked himself to full erection, his gaze on the portrait of Lucifer as he delivered an encomium of praise to his dark lord and the world of luxury and gratification that was his creation and his domain.
As Dashwood concluded his statement, Elic reluctantly slid his fingers from Lili’s sweet little chatte, stepping aside so that the chief friar could take his place between her widespread legs.
Entreating Satan for strength, Dashwood lifted the bottom part of Lili’s veil, bunching it around her hips, and brought her closer by tugging the mantle on which she was poised.
“Et plebs Tua laetabitur in te,” Elic responded. And Thy people shall rejoice in Thee. Elic moved behind Dashwood, gripping Lili’s ankles as she stretched her legs out so that he could keep them positioned, during the Introit, “as high and wide as possible to either side of the chief friar,” in keeping with his duties as set forth in the little red missal.
Thanks to his being a good head taller than Dashwood, Elic had an unobstructed view as the chief friar seated the oil-sheened head of his cock just inside the belle-chose that had been prepared for him, while pleading with Satan to demonstrate his power. “Ostende nobis, Domine Satanas, potentiam Tuam.”
Elic delivered his line, something about soliciting Lucifer’s beneficence, as he grappled with the sudden, baffling urge to seize Dashwood and tear him away from the altare he was about to introi.
Steadying Lili by clutching her hips, Dashwood entreated his Infernal Lord to hear him clearly—“Domine Satanas exaudi orationem meam”—as he rammed himself into her.
Lili, still leaning back on her arms, gasped at the abrupt impalement, her body arching as she threw her head back. Elic fretted for one missed heartbeat that she might have been hurt, until he looked at her veiled face and saw, in her eyes, an expression of utter bliss.
This was what she lived for, he realized—sexual possession, the thrill and succor of fleshly delights.
Elic managed, despite his maelstrom of conflicting emotions, to recall and recite his responsum. “Et clamor meus ad Te veniat,” he said. And let my cry come unto Thee.
Lili opened her eyes and looked beyond Dashwood to Elic, curious, no doubt, as to the stress in his voice, or perhaps to the tension in his grip as he held her legs open for another man. Elic could not, for the life of him, wrest his gaze from hers as Dashwood slowly withdrew and resheathed his cock while offering a demonic version of the familiar salutation, “The Lord be with you.” “Dominus Inferus vobiscum.”
“Et cum tuo,” Elic replied, along with the entire congregation—the first time they had participated in the response, although they would do so throughout the remainder of the missa niger. A glance revealed that several of them were fondling themselves through their robes as they took in the lascivious ritual.
“Gloria Deo Domino Inferi,” chanted the chief friar, his thrusts echoing the slow, measured cadence of the incantation as he glorified, praised, and thanked Lord Satan, his Infernal King and Almighty Emperor.
Dashwood uncoupled from Lili without spending and rebuttoned his robe. He strode solemnly to the opposite end of the table, bowing to Lili as he crossed in front of her, and removed the black cloth from the silver paten that sat atop the chalice. The little plate held a reddish, triangular biscuit made from angelica root, which the Hellfires waggishly referred to as “Holy Ghost Pye.” Lifting it in both hands toward the portrait of Lucifer, he beseeched his lord to accept the offering of their “host.”
Elic, in keeping with his role in the profane pageant, helped Lili to lie down on the mink-draped altar table so that she was stretched out faceup along its length. He peeled back the sheer muslin only as far as her throat, leaving her face veiled and the rest of her utterly, breathtakingly nude. Bathed in the sanguine haze that filled the little chapel, she could have been Aphrodite herself, rendered in Titian’s supple, luminous brushstrokes. She was, indeed, the very embodiment of beauty and erotic desire.
Setting the wafer back on the paten, Dashwood lifted it from the chalice. Uncovered, the silver goblet’s contents released the sweetly noxious aroma of brandy infused with what could only be sulphur. He raised it to the image of Satan while reciting a prayer of offering of the “chalice of fleshly lust.”
Setting the chalice on the altar, Dashwood held his arms out, palms down, and implored his “dark Lord and Sovereign” to arise, that his servants might kneel before him in adoration. Harry handed him the incense boat, opening the censer to be filled. Spooning up a few of the tarry little nuggets from the boat, Dashwood sprinkled them onto the hot coals, producing a thick, resinous smoke unlike anything Elic had ever smelled before. Not so Lili, whose eyes, even through the veil, widened with surprised recognition.
Holding the censer by its chain in his left hand, Dashwood encircled the chalice and wafer three times counterclockwise. He bowed, swung the censer thrice in the direction of the Satanic portrait, and bowed again.
Archie offered the dish of warm oil to Elic, who dampened the fingers of both hands and rubbed his palms together to slicken them. Lifting Lili’s left arm, he oiled it with long, sleek strokes up to the wrist, then did the same to the right. Re-oiling his hands, he smoothed them down over Lili’s shoulders and chest. He paused at the upper slopes of her breasts. They were round and ripe, in contrast to her slender limbs and exquisitely tiny waist.
Dashwood, meanwhile, set about censing the altar itself by walking slowly around it with the censer spewing smoke as it rocked back and forth. Passing behind Elic as he anointed the Bona Dea, the chief friar said, “Dominus Inferus vobiscum.”
“Et cum tuo.” Elic kneaded the lush mounds until they glistened. His fingers were so long that most breasts felt small when he cupped them, but these were a perfect handful—warm, full, and wonderfully soft.
Lili’s eyes drifted shut on a sigh as he squeezed and stroked. Her tight little nipples grazed his palms, making his cock stir.
Oiling his hands yet again, Elic glided them over Lili’s stomach and mons veneris, burrowing his fingers through her silken muff. Although it was not part of the protocol for this segment of the missa niger, he couldn’t resist the urge to glide a finger lightly along the gaping slit. Her hips twitched; her breathing quickened.
Reluctantly, Elic moved on to Lili’s legs, feeling the muscles beneath the supple flesh; she was strong for a woman. The gold anklet was an archaic, even primitive-looking piece of jewelry, burnished with age. Hanging from it was a deep blue, gold-rimmed disc that looked like lapis lazuli.
“Sursum corda,” Dashwood said as he completed the first of three slow circumambulations of the altar. Lift up your hearts, brothers.
“Habemus ad Dominum Inferum,” responded Elic, along with the rest of the congregation. We lift them up to the Infernal Lord.
Harry brought the ebony jewelry chest to Elic and raised its lid. Tucked into its velvet-lined interior were two pairs of gleaming gold circlets in the shape of snakes, one pair bracelet-sized, the other somewhat larger, each circlet dangling a short length of chain. Elic chose one of the smaller bands and slid it onto Lili’s upper arm close to the elbow. Making sure the
little chain was in front, he snugged the armlet in place by squeezing the soft gold until the snake’s head was almost touching its tail. The chain terminated in a little clasp made to look like the talons of a bird of prey. Taking hold of Lili’s right nipple, Elic affixed the clasp to it.
After adorning her left arm and nipple in the same manner, he raised both arms over her head, wrapping her hands around the shafts of the two iron candelabras just above their heavy bases. This position arched her back and pulled the chains taut, thrusting her breasts up high and tugging her nipples in a manner that Elic surmised, from her expression, to be more productive of pleasure than of pain.
Still circling the altar, Dashwood said, “Gratias agamus Domino Inferno Deo Nostro” as he swung his censer, adding to the cloud of darkly aromatic smoke hovering overhead. Let us give thanks to the Infernal Lord our God.
“Dignum et justum est”—It is right and just to do so—replied Elic as he withdrew one of the larger gold circlets from the casket. He slid it up Lili’s right leg to the very top of her thigh and squeezed it in place with the chain once again positioned in front. At the end of the chain was another talon clasp. This he attached, very carefully, to her right outer labium.
A sort of drunken wooziness overtook Elic as he repeated this process on the left side, although he’d taken not a drop all evening. He saw himself as if from above, adorning this naked, faceless stranger with these obscene ornaments, and experienced a peculiar detachment, as if he were watching the actions of another man through the eyes of Satan in that ridiculous painting. Noticing Dashwood’s glassy eyes as he handed the censer back to Harry, it occurred to Elic that the incense, or whatever it was, must have some sort of narcotic power.
House of Dark Delights Page 8
