by John Everson
“What do you mean?”
“We gain strength from the energy of your emotions. The more primal the emotion, the better.”
“So when demons manage to find a door and come to Earth, you rape and kill… to eat?”
Helone nodded. “That’s the easiest way to release your energy. You’re most open to the Curburide when you’re in the midst of passion – whether from fear, pain or sexual intercourse.”
“You play with your food,” Alex said.
The demoness shrugged.
“My mother always told me not to do that,” Alex said.
Helone laughed. “Your food is dead. There’s no point in playing with it.”
“Are you feeding off me now?” Alex asked.
“Look at my hand,” Helone said. She extended it across the table.
The skin was wrinkled and thin. But the demon’s fingers looked fuller than earlier, when Helone had first clutched the back of the couch and sat up.
“You can see the difference already.”
Alex nodded. “So you don’t have to kill to feed from us.”
“No, but we have to be able to be around you for a long period. And most of the time when we have access to your world, it is only for moments or a couple hours.”
“What do you do when you can’t feed on us?” Alex asked.
“We have creatures here that we feed on, and we open doorways to other places, too,” Helone said. “We’re not dependent on humans for food. You are a novelty. A dessert. Many Curburide will never even have the chance to taste human energy.”
“But you have before?” Alex asked.
Helone nodded.
“Have you ever had other humans right here, in your house?”
Helone nodded again. But she didn’t elaborate.
Alex thought of the skulls and bones she had seen when she had first entered the house. A chill traced her spine.
“Have you ever let one of them leave?”
Helone’s eyes flashed. She clearly didn’t want to follow this line of conversation. “There have been some.”
Alex took a breath and felt her face burn, as she braved the question she had to ask. “Will you let me leave?”
The demon stood up, and walked to the kitchen sink with Alex’s bowl.
“Perhaps,” Helone said. “We’ll have to see how things go.”
“What can I do to convince you?” Alex asked softly.
“Just be yourself,” Helone said. “Keep me company for a while, and we will see.”
CHAPTER 27
JOE HEARD VOICES somewhere close. But they were voices speaking nonsense. Or at least a language that he couldn’t understand. None of the syllables made sense. His eyes felt glued shut, too heavy or stuck to try to open. But when someone screamed, he broke the seal. His eyes shot open and he saw a nightmare before him.
He was back in the mission chapel, lying on the floor. The scene was blurry at first, fuzzy yellow as he struggled to focus. The air was thick with incense and his head still felt foggy from the drug. In front of him was the ritual circle. The five captive women remained there, but now they were clearly all awake. They struggled against their bonds, rolling and writhing on the floor as their captors periodically used their feet to push them back into their places within the arms of the inner star. And their captors were all as naked as they were, spread out around the circle and chanting in unison with Darin and Sienna. The two stood together at the center of the circle, with the feet of the women all pointing at them.
Joe tried to sit up and realized that he couldn’t move his arms or legs easily. His wrists and ankles were tied. Just like the women in front of him. He hadn’t ended up as one of the sacrifices, but he didn’t have much choice but to watch the murders unfold.
Where was Cheyenne?
He turned his head away from the ritual, and saw her. She lay right next to him, wrists tied and lying still on her belly. They had removed his jacket from her so she lay naked, just like the other women. Her skin was pale; he could see the goosebumps on her shoulder. He realized he was cold himself, and it finally occurred to him that they’d stripped him as well. What the hell.
They had plans for him. He didn’t know what, but he guessed he was now to be part of the proceedings, somehow, not a bystander. He was still outside the ritual circle, so he guessed that was a good thing. Maybe. At least he wasn’t going to be sacrificed.
The chanting continued, over and over. It sounded tribal. It had a rhythm Joe imagined the chants of ancient druids had. Strong and guttural. But lulling too. Sienna and Darin said the first half: “Kibu Ana Baten Sa.” And their followers responded with, “Childis Mota Sien Ra.”
Over and over they chanted, as the women on the floor begged for mercy. “Please don’t do this,” one of them cried over and over. “I have kids,” another said. “Don’t kill their mama.” They received no answer. Mike and Telly stood with their feet on either side of their victim’s heads, holding the women in place with their ankles.
“Cheyenne,” Joe whispered. He was only a foot or two away, so he used his feet and butt to slowly inchworm a little closer to her. When their hips touched, he tapped his feet against hers. “Cheyenne, wake up,” he whispered in her ear. The chanting kept the group from hearing him. He hoped they wouldn’t notice that he’d scooted closer to her.
Finally, he saw her chest rise in a deeper breath, and her head shifted. She was stirring. When she opened her eyes and they met his own, he smiled with relief. Cheyenne blinked a few times and then looked past his head to see what was going on in the center of the room.
“Some rescue,” she whispered.
Joe raised an eyebrow. “You get what you pay for,” he answered.
She moved her arms, testing the bindings. Joe realized that the wrist cuff and chain from her cell below ground had been removed. Replaced by a new restraint. “Too tight,” she said finally.
Joe nodded after testing his own as well. There was no give in the twine. In fact, he realized his fingers felt a bit numb.
The chanting suddenly ceased, and the room was silent.
“Now we offer the blood of our hearts for the soul of the Curburide,” Sienna said, raising a silver blade high in the air. The others did the same, and then brought the knives down, in a slow, careful arc until the blades met their bare chests. The smooth cleft of the Indian woman’s butt was closest to him, as she faced the center of the circle, focused on Darin and Sienna.
But Joe could see Telly clearly as he moved his knife. The big man stood on the opposite side of the circle from him, and as soon as the blade touched the man’s nearly hairless chest, the blood sprang up. A trail quickly ran down his sternum, and then hung at his bellybutton before finally dripping down onto the shriveled retracted head of his penis. Joe couldn’t help but muse that either Telly was simply not aroused by the current proceedings, or he wasn’t much to speak of in bed.
“We offer our blood to you,” Sienna continued, “but not only that.”
All of the captors held their knives out in front of them in unison, tips pointed towards the center of the ritual circle. And then they knelt, their knees on either side of their sacrifice’s heads, and placed the blades at straight out. Joe could see that the Indian woman’s blade nearly touched her intended victim’s bellybutton.
“Obi dai sra vamen ki!” Sienna said. The group answered her with the same words.
They said it again, and again, slowly drawing their knives up from belly to breast of their sacrifices.
“No, please!” one woman screamed. One simply cried, while another called her captor names. “Get off of me you fucking asshole,” she yelled. But the chanting didn’t waver.
“Taste our blood with theirs,” Darin said.
“A communion unholy,” Sienna answered. As she did, Telly and Mike and the Indian girl a
ll moved from their sacrifice’s heads to their feet. They crawled up and over the women then, draping their bodies atop the bound women on the floor. Darin left Sienna’s side and draped himself over the body of one of the women.
“We offer our blood to you,” Sienna intoned. “We offer our passion. Show them our passion my children. Umu dos.”
Mike and Telly and the rest answered her. “Umu dos.”
Sienna called the words again.
Again the group answered. The words became a call and response chant between their leader and those on the ground. It took on a sexual, erotic rhythm as the hips of the demon callers began to shift and grind atop their sacrifices. Joe could see the smooth rump of the Indian woman rising and falling in the air above the blonde she lay on top of. Her body moved slowly, serpentine. Her long, straight black hair draped over her face, obscuring her features, but when he caught a glimpse of her eyes, he could see they were slitted, her gaze distant.
The woman beneath her struggled, trying to roll one way or the other, but the Indian girl kept her pinned. She leaned her chest in to press against her captive’s, and came up each time with more and more blood smeared across small slope of her breasts.
Cheyenne broke his prurient fascination with the ritualistic rutting.
“Joe,” she hissed.
He turned away from the lurid scene and saw her lifting both eyebrows – in essence, pointing with her face and eyes.
“Look on the pew over there.”
There was a familiar pair of jeans rumpled up, along with shoes and a shirt. “My clothes?” he asked.
“Next to them.”
He raised his head slightly from the ground and saw what she was talking about. The ball of twine sat there, along with a box cutter.
The pew was just a few feet away, but getting to it would be a trick. Even in their current orgiastic state, one of the demon callers was bound to see him get up. And with his hands tied, he wasn’t going to be able to use the blade very easily or quickly regardless.
“Roll towards me on your side,” Cheyenne whispered.
He did as she asked, and instantly felt cool fingers on his wrist.
“Try to watch them,” she said. “It will be less obvious if you’re not looking at me. Tell me if anyone starts looking at us.”
He tried to arch his back so that his hips faced her while his head tilted up. He could stare straight up at the dim ceiling of the chapel, or force his gaze sidelong to see the sacrificial circle.
“Nobody’s paying attention right now,” he whispered. “Sienna has her eyes closed. The rest are… busy.”
The intensity of the chant was slowly growing, the words accompanied by groans and gasps and as Joe spied around the circle, he could see that the men were no longer “simulating” sexual excitement. They raised their hips high above the women, and then speared themselves down. He caught a glimpse of Telly, and saw the big man no longer appeared to be hung like a boy. His shriveled sex had unfurled and he was, if not hung like a horse, certainly long enough to do the job.
He couldn’t tell if violation or consummation was their aim, with them still raising their bodies high above the women before slipping their arousal back between their captives’ legs.
“Umu dos. Umu dos.” The chant continued.
Fingers worked at his wrist.
“How’s it going?” he asked after a minute.
“They aren’t boy scouts,” she whispered back.
“That’s good, right?”
“Yes.”
A few seconds later, he felt the pressure on his wrists release.
“Got it,” she said.
He looked back at her and saw the white of a smile on her face.
“You have a gift for getting out of things,” he whispered.
She made a wry face. “That’s what all my exes say. Try to do me.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to…”
“Shut up and untie my hands, asshole. I’ll watch the party.”
Joe found the knot and began to push the loose strand of rope back through the thick of it. Cheyenne may have been a master at escape, but he had not ever been a boy scout. He sucked at knots.
“What about our feet?” he whispered. “They may not be paying much attention, but they’re bound to see if I move down to untie them.”
“That’s what the knife is for,” she hissed.
“That’s going to be a little dicey,” he said. “They’ll definitely see me as soon as I move over there to grab it.”
“One step at a time,” she answered. “Stop enjoying the view and undo my wrists.”
Joe started. He realized with embarrassment that he had actually been staring at her chest as he worked on the knot. It was worth the look. He had never been this close to a naked woman before and not been engaged in some sexual exploration with her, so, to not look at the pink nipples just inches from his face with a bit of interest… Jesus, he said to himself. Focus.
Joe threaded the rope through itself, and then again. It stuck and he squeezed the twine hard between his fingers, trying to give it some tautness. It was a lousy kind of rope for untying, as the hundreds of individual threads that made up the rope split apart easily.
The chanting behind them continued to grow in volume.
“Stop” Cheyenne whispered.
He froze, just as Sienna addressed the group.
“Yes, my children,” she intoned. “Give yourselves to them. Give your seed. Give your blood. Give your soul.”
“She’s looking at everyone,” Cheyenne warned.
“I can’t roll back to my back,” he said. “She’ll see my hands are free.”
“Just don’t move.”
One of the women on the floor screamed.
“Yes, that’s it, my children,” Sienna encouraged. “Umu dos!”
The circle responded with a frenzied cry and Sienna’s voice raised. “Umu dos!”
The group answered, and now there were more cries from the bound women. If the men hadn’t been forcing their way inside their captives before, they certainly were now. The cries were no longer of fear, but pain. Joe wondered about the point of the Indian woman’s simulated sex; there would be no penetration or “sharing of seed” from that coupling. Ejaculate must not have been critical to the ceremony. Or maybe these idiots were just making it up as they went along.
“Your spirits are raised,” Sienna called from the center of the circle. “Your vessels are wanting. Get it done.”
Joe kept working on the rope, but whispered, “Seems to be the prevailing sentiment.”
“You are an ass.”
Joe pulled the twine and looked up to meet Cheyenne’s eyes. “Yeah, well, I’m the ass that just untied your hands.”
She grinned as the rope slipped off and she flexed her wrists.
“OK,” she said. “You’re half an ass.”
“Half-assed?” Joe whispered. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“Inch forward,” she said. “Just a little at a time. If we can get closer to the bench, when I go for the knife, it will save us a second or two.”
He nodded. Slowly, they each began to shift along the floor, inching their way towards the pew with the twine, and the box cutter. The rhythm and the cries behind them escalated. Joe kept an eye on the ceremony, making sure that nobody broke their salacious focus and paid attention to them. It was a low risk. The four men were deep in the throes of fucking now; their asses moved in a steady, brutal rhythm; they were not looking up. The Indian woman was much the same. She had forcibly locked lips with her captive, and now her whole body clung close to the woman on the ground. Joe saw that she had shifted so that could grind her pelvis up and down on one thigh of the woman. Her hair was a black drape that shifted and hid both of their faces.
Sienna, the high pr
iestess of it all, stood naked in the center of the ritual circle, her sagging, wrinkled body not engaged in forced fornication, but she kept one hand moving between her thighs as she held a small book in her hand; presumably the book that described this ritual. Her voice grew stronger and faster as she led the entire group towards violent, obscene orgasm.
No, nobody was going to notice that they had gotten a foot or two closer to one of the pews. Joe inched along with Cheyenne.
“It is time,” Sienna called. “Oh, Curburide hear me. Hear us. We call you now from the circle of pain. From the circle of ecstasy. We call you with blood on our hearts and seed in our loins. We call you to open the door and take us as your own. We are your children. We are your servants. We are your lovers. We are your playthings. We offer our passion to you. We offer our bodies. We offer our blood. We offer this sacrifice of sex. As we spill ourselves inside these vessels, we give their lives to you.”
While she spoke, Sienna’s hand moved faster, more forcefully between her wrinkled, age-spotted thighs and her steady voice broke as she screamed to the room. “Now my children, take them now! Raise your hands to the sky.”
Two of the men groaned in undisguised orgasm. At the same time, Mike, Darin, Telly and the other man, as well as the Indian woman right in front of Joe, all reached out to the floor. It was like choreography. A second later they lifted their arms in the air as one. Their hips never stopped moving. The chapel suddenly echoed in screams of terror as it became clear what was about to occur. All of the demon callers held knives above their heads.
“Now,” Cheyenne said.
She stopped inching and instead rolled to her hands and knees and pulled herself forward the last five feet in a second. Joe stayed on the floor, but flipped his body around so that his feet pointed at her. Cheyenne picked up the blade from the pew and fingered the trigger to extend the razor. Then she got back close to the ground, and sliced the twine that held Joe’s ankles tight.
He felt the pressure on his legs abruptly ease, and then she was pressing the metal handle into his hand.
