Redemption (Covenant Book 3)

by John Everson

  Alex looked at the tangled mess of tubes that led from Meldut’s pale flesh and up into the air. Now and then, one of the fleshy things pulsed. Meldut was being milked.

  “How long have you been here?” she whispered.

  “Too long,” Meldut said. “Longer than you have… lived.”

  Alex toyed with the idea of trying to rescue Meldut. She couldn’t free the factory of victims, but she could help the one who helped her. Maybe.

  “Could you take me to a door? I could pull these things off of you,” she offered. Her voice, however, betrayed her doubts about that. The end points of the tubes looked to be perfectly merged with Meldut’s flesh, as if they literally had grown out from him. There were no seams. Even if she could pull them off… would he simply bleed to death from all the holes in his flesh?

  “You can’t separate… the juice… from the grape,” Meldut said. His eyes narrowed. “I am part… of the machine… now.”

  “I don’t think I can find it on my own,” Alex said. The impossible nature of finding a single building in a strange city weighed her down even heavier now. She had a clue, but how could she ever seek it out alone without being caught? At first she had simply focused on getting free from Elotan, and then from Helone. But now that she was free… she had no idea where to go. And it was only a matter of time before she stumbled back into the clutches of a demon. This was their world, not hers.

  “Focus… and you will see,” Meldut said.

  A new scream. This one just a couple racks away. Alex took a breath as she looked at all the things connecting Meldut to his prison. He was a part of the machine… and the eye of the machine was coming this way.

  “Go,” Meldut whispered, and Alex nodded.

  She backed away and struggled for something to say. Good luck? Goodbye? What do you say to someone you’re abandoning to eternal suffering?

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally.

  Alex backed away from the Sildren until she was near the outer wall of the factory room. The trolley thing now poised over Meldut’s body, and she watched as a tube dropped from its center. The thing had a spherical end to it, but on that sphere, she could see a series of pointed barbs. When the sphere dropped and landed on Meldut’s belly, he screamed once, and then was silent. The tube then withdrew back to the trolley, which began to roll away, turned on the aerial track to begin its work on the next row.

  The Curburide lived on pain, Alex realized. So that was what they were really “milking” here.

  “Jeez,” she whispered. Being whipped and chained in her parents’ basement while wearing sackcloth no longer seemed so bad.

  Alex felt her eyes well up as she imagined the constant suffering that was present in this room. This was truly hell, for the Sildren anyway. She imagined herself lying there on a rack hour after hour, year after year, constantly being sliced and bled. This was definitely not where she wanted to be caught.

  She began to walk down the long aisle on the outer perimeter to the far side of the milking room. The room seemed endless, as she hurried along the wall. There were moans from the figures on the racks periodically, but with all of the hundreds of bodies here, it was actually eerily quiet.

  Her steps quickened with every rack she passed. She did not want to end up here. For a second, she thought of Ariana, and wondered if Elotan’s torture would have been worse than this. What was he doing to her now? Alex didn’t really want to find out.

  She had to find her way home.

  Fast.

  CHAPTER 36

  “TIME FOR WHAT?” Ariana asked, as Elotan dragged her by the hand towards the bloody stage.

  “Your performance,” he said. “I didn’t bring you here to be entertained. You are the entertainment.”

  Ariana shook her head vehemently. “No, Elotan, don’t do this. Keep me for your own, don’t…”

  The demon backhanded her across the mouth. She felt the heat rise in her cheek as her lip instantly swelled. The grip on her wrist did not loosen. “You are mine to do with as I wish,” he said. “I rescued you from the mob that chased you. You exist or don’t, by my whim. Don’t forget that.”

  Ariana still tried to resist, but he thrust her forward until she had no choice but to step up or fall face-first onto the stage. Elotan growled, “Perform well and I will reward you. Make me look bad and I will punish you. And I promise that I can give you more than any pain you feel here tonight.”

  She knew in her heart that what he threatened was true. Elotan was using her to buy status… or something. If she screwed that up for him, he would be deadly.

  “Don’t let them kill me,” she whispered.

  The demon nodded, slightly, and answered in an equally quiet tone. “That would do me no good at all.”

  Then Elotan raised his voice so the whole bar could hear. “For your pleasure,” he said. “A seductress and a killer. She was not stolen here against her will; she wanted to be here. Can you believe it? She wished she could be with the Curburide!”

  The room exploded with laughter. Someone shouted, “She won’t wish that after tonight!”

  Elotan put a hand up.

  “This is her first time, so let’s be gentle, eh?”

  “I’m hungry,” someone said. “Can she spare a kidney?”

  A ripple of low laughs again.

  “You’re cut off, Bimini!” Elotan warned.

  “Fine, you can take home her kidneys, but we get everything else,” the demon taunted.

  Elotan looked towards the bartender, and nodded. “Play something so she can dance,” he said.

  Ariana felt more nervous now than she ever had in her entire life. She had once joined a convent and masqueraded as someone with a conscience, and managed to play it cool. She had worn a skintight catsuit and gone to clubs to pick up men she wanted to kill, no problem. She had slit men’s throats and licked the blood from the knife. Or, more commonly, the razor’s edge. She had delighted in causing pain to the idiots she lived among – on earth. But now, the tables were turned. She was no longer in control.

  “Entertain my friends,” Elotan said, and waved his hand at her. “Dance like you’re dancing for me.”

  Ariana looked at him sharply when he said that. She had never danced for him. He had raped her on his bed, but there’d certainly been no dancing involved. The beat of the music had resolved to a slow, steady grind, and in the back of the room, someone began to clap along with the music. He wasn’t the only one. Another joined, and then another.

  The demons were taunting her, pushing her to perform. Meanwhile, Elotan stepped back from the stage and moved to stand by the bar. He wasn’t going back to his seat, but he was no longer standing at her side as protection.

  Ariana was on her own. In a roomful of demons who wanted to toy with her, to drink from her fears and lusts. She stepped back to the dancer’s pole that occupied the center of the stage. There were bloody finger smears across the bar, and she really didn’t want to touch them. But this was not the place to be shy. They would eat her alive if she showed fear or hesitation. In fact, those were exactly the emotions they thirsted for. She wouldn’t feed them those. She refused. But they also thirsted for the baser lusts. She could work with that. She understood those. Ariana took a breath, and willed herself to be calm. No, not calm. Sexy. She was in a see-through yellow silk wrap in front of a room full of men who didn’t cover their cocks. Who wore no clothes at all. She would be able to tell really quickly if she was dancing effectively or not.

  “Let’s see if we can get a rise,” she challenged herself. And with that, she began to walk around the pole. Slowly at first, testing the room. She let just the tips of her fingers maintain contact with the pole as she moved around it. The music seemed to grow louder, to surround her; maybe the bartender turned it up, or maybe she just was feeling it as she let herself slip into the mood. She didn’t c
are. Ariana felt her heat rise. Blood pulsed faster through her skin as she twirled herself around the pole, letting the silk trail behind her. She flexed her thighs, testing the sensation of opening herself.

  It felt good.

  It felt unholy.

  Ariana grinned. She lived for that.

  She stepped in front of the pole and with one hand pulled the yellow silk first one way and then the other, back and forth across her breasts. It would have been more of a tease if the material wasn’t already almost transparent. She didn’t know the song, but the drum pounded steadily, tribal, as the bass wound around it like a serpent, throbbing, throbbing, twining…

  Ariana surrendered herself to the music, and arched her chest forward, taunting the demons with her barely covered breasts before yanking at the yellow silk and releasing them completely. She didn’t need any warmup help, she thought, wrapping the silk around her ass and then pulling it forward between her legs before tossing it out in front of her, beyond the stage. It settled in the lap of a demoness who sat hand in hand with a male. Ariana couldn’t help but stare at the thin sinuous neck and unashamedly bare chest of the demoness; her skin was glossy black and perfect. Her breasts were small but full; the nipples were pronounced, dark fleshy caps, and very erect. She was clearly engaged by Ariana’s dance, and now held the silk to her face and inhaled before handing it over to her partner. Ariana played on that, and dropped to her knees on the stage in front of the two of them swaying back and forth to the beat as she massaged her breasts just a couple feet from their faces. Playing it.

  The male’s eyes were inscrutable, though the evidence in his lap was irrefutable. The demoness though – she made no effort to hide that she was enjoying the show. She drew a coal-black tongue across her open lips as Ariana shook her breasts while moving on hands and knees, crawling in the wet spatters of blood remaining on the stage to hang over the very edge.

  The demoness nodded, and Ariana focused on returning the lip lick with a slow reveal of her own tongue. She drew the tip across her front teeth, and closed her eyes as she stuck it out until she could touch the tip to her top lip. Ariana could lose herself in moments like these; the feeling of sexual tension engulfed her in a dizzying blanket as her thighs clenched and her middle gyrated of its own volition. She was electrified by the rhythm of the music and the teasing black, wet tongue of the demoness.

  As she swayed, eyes closed while she imagined touching the creature just beyond the stage, there was suddenly another wet feeling on her lips, and Ariana’s eyes shot open to see the black pupils of the demoness staring into her own. While she’d been lost in the feeling, the woman had stood up from her chair to lean towards Ariana across the stage. The demoness’s silky dark tongue was tracing the edge of her own, and Ariana suddenly felt faint. She could feel the needles of the demoness’s tongue rake against the soft vulnerable flesh of her own, and each pricking movement sent shivers down her spine and across her ass. The hidden nerves between her thighs instantly ached with a yearning to be touched and prodded and plumbed like she had not ever known. Ariana felt lightheaded and sauna-hot, dizzy with the excitement and unthinkable need. She reached out to grab the shoulders of the demoness to steady herself before she fell forward off the stage. But as she touched the silky skin of the woman, a heavy hand suddenly grabbed her left nipple and squeezed. The pain was instant, sharp and unexpected.

  Ariana jumped backwards on impulse, which only made the hurt worse, because the demon didn’t let go. Instead, he yanked her forward by her nipple, so that she lost her balance and fell into him. A palm caught her in the face and pushed her with so much force that she toppled backwards, skidding towards the pole on her ass.

  “No touching,” the demon said. He sounded angry. And jealous. “Dance,” he commanded.

  The voices around the room echoed his demand. Ariana blinked away the sting and welling tears, and pushed herself up from the sticky stage. She had been getting into the dance, but now…

  Something hit her across the temple and clattered to the stage floor nearby. She heard the sound of something rolling and grabbed the pole for support before looking down. An empty glass. Probably from bloodwine.

  The natives were restless and some of them were drunk. She needed to get back in the mood, and fast.

  Ariana grabbed onto the pole with both hands and swung herself around, shaking her backside at the audience as it swiveled, and then stopping when she came around to make eye contact with the patrons again. She touched the glass that had hit her head with her foot, and then slipped her toes up to the edge. With a deft motion she rolled it up onto the top of her foot where it rested for a second, and then with a calculated kick, launched it in the air towards the bar with her toes.

  The barkeep reached up a hand and caught it mid-air. Someone let out a catcall. Another clapped.

  She had their attention again now.

  Ariana ran a fingernail across the nipple that the demon had pinched (it was still throbbing, but she kind of liked that) and then slid that finger down to the tiny cup of her bellybutton, before driving it across the thin line of hair that arrowed its way lower, to the apex of her thighs. She shimmied and thrust her pelvis forward and back several times with her hand buried there. An overtly sexual grind with a hula shake. When she brought the finger back out and held it up, it glistened with her excitement.

  Ariana enjoyed being naked.

  Ariana enjoyed teasing.

  Ariana enjoyed pain.

  So did the Curburide. Someone yelled from the middle of the tables, and she could hear the clink of bloodwine glasses as they lifted and returned to their tables. In front of her, the demoness had leaned back in her chair, spreading her legs suggestively for Ariana to see. The thick black petals of her sex looked ready; moist and swollen. Open and wanton. They were no more shy than she was. Ariana threw her head back and ground her hips against the pole. She imagined it was Elotan’s own pole; his girth felt almost as wide and hard as this when he was aroused. She had feared the first time that if his spines didn’t kill her, his width would.

  The beat suddenly changed, and the hypnotic throb of the bass turned to a gunfire of slapping, pounding intensity. Ariana followed it, gyrating faster first to the left of the stage, and then the right. She felt her breasts rippling with the motion, jiggling for the crowd like unfettered flesh balloons. Out of control and in the moment. She was caught up in it again now, and let the feeling own her.

  Ariana threw her body to the floor to roll around in a breakdancing sort of circle before she kicked her legs to the sky. She pulled her fingers from calf to thigh as if she were drawing on a pair of nylons, and then she moved to face the bar and spread herself for all to see. The noise from the crowd answered her with claps and hoots and growls. Ariana rolled to the right to rise. But as she did, she felt a wet spot beneath her shoulder. She looked down and saw there was actually a wide puddle of crimson there, bled from the last dancer.

  Ariana smiled as a twisted idea struck her. The Curburide loved sex. And they also loved blood. She’d give them both.

  She pressed both her hands into the still somewhat warm blood, and then stood up quickly, still shaking her hips to the pounding beat.

  But her hands...

  Her hands moved to their own melody. They grabbed her breasts and then slid, slow and moist downward, down, down to the place where her middle ended and her legs began. That place that every demon in the room wanted to split.

  She rubbed the blood of the last dancer across her and laughed, her teeth flashing in the bar lights as she twirled and painted her skin red.

  There was applause from somewhere but she didn’t look for the source. Instead she looked right into the front row and caught the eyes of the demoness who was masturbating at the edge of the stage.

  Ariana crooked one finger and caught the dark woman’s eye. She made a hooking motion with her finger, drawing the
demoness up and out of her seat.

  The demoness stepped up onto the stage and met Ariana in an embrace that made Ariana’s knees grow weak. The black woman pulled her tight, pressing breast to breast, hips to hips. And when Ariana looked into the depths of the creature’s eyes, she saw hunger there. Raw, animal desire. Her mouth was suddenly filled with the demon’s slick tongue and she answered with the press of her own back.

  Together, they began to dance, bound together as one being by their arms, which explored each other’s backsides. Ariana marveled at the silky smoothness of the demoness’s ass; her flesh was firm, hinting at the wicked strength beneath, yet it felt as if her fingers would skate off the skin because she was so velvety smooth. Ariana grabbed the demoness’s ass and pulled her body even tighter. The creature responded by digging her fingers into Ariana’s back like claws.

  Ariana’s eyes widened and she coughed a cry of hurt. But the demoness wouldn’t take her tongue back. She pressed it deeper into Ariana’s throat while her claws dug trails in Ariana’s back.

  The demoness tilted Ariana backwards, and she went with it, throwing herself into the dip. But that was only a feint. The demoness held Ariana, almost horizontal from the ground, and then grinned, a white flash of hungry teeth just before she released her clawing hands.

  Ariana fell to the stage and the demoness squatted on top of her face, smothering her in black demon sex lips already very moist from excitement. She breathed in the scent of demon arousal and felt her own sex swell. The scent was wicked and sharp; not like human spice, yet still recognizable as a scent of arousal. The demoness was horny, and wanted to use Ariana’s tongue to plumb her need.

  Ariana complied, sticking her tongue out to taste the other woman. Her tongue felt first hot, and then numb as the sensation of white ice crept down the back of her throat. She couldn’t taste, couldn’t feel, and then it all suddenly came back, a bitchslap surprise in her face and neck. An explosion of sensation that made her scream. She was howling into the dark maw of the demon’s sex, and somehow, Ariana was okay with that. She closed her eyes and let the demon grind against her lips, using her to find her own pleasure as she wanted. Ariana stuck out her frozen tongue and let it do what it could. She wasn’t sure what that was, because she could barely feel it. The intensity of the sensations had short circuited her nerves. But she was reminded of the explosion that had come with her first taste of bloodwine. She was lost in this moment, and she let the demoness smother her.