by Logan Fox
They’d drugged her; she knew that much at least. That’s why she felt so heavy. Why her thoughts came and went like the froth of a wave as it crashed over your head.
Candles. Stale air. The echo of sound reverberating from bare walls.
She was still in the Earth. But was the wolf still here? His brother?
The cloth went up her nose, wriggling in her nostril, stifling breath. She slapped at the hand trying to suffocate her and received a rough, guttural laugh for her efforts. She made a pitiful sound of protest.
“Hush now.” The cloth drew away. “And hold still. I ain’t gonna do this again.”
A metallic lid rasped as it was screwed open. That oily stench rose into Pearl’s nose, almost obliterating the faint scent of roses coming from her neck.
And her hair.
It shifted around her head, soft and silky.
Someone had washed her hair.
Pearl whimpered, shoulders caving in as she tried to pull her legs against her chest. They refused, weak and unresponsive. Something bulky covered her. A robe. But thick… fluffy.
A fur robe. Like the ones they’d worn over their dresses during roll call. But as air swirled around her, against her, Pearl could feel it was all she wore.
At least her leg didn’t hurt anymore. Her feet either. In fact, she could barely feel anything from her neck down. But her vision was growing clearer — she could see the man’s thumb near her face, a pile of thick, red paint heaped on the side of it.
A hand caught the back of her head, the man holding her still as he drew his thumb down her forehead, over her nose. It dragged through her lips, teeth scraping paint into her mouth as her lips parted reluctantly for that determined finger. Down to her chin. There, it stopped.
“Close those peepers,” the man said. His face was slowly swimming into focus. “Wouldn’t wanna blind you would we, lover?”
Memory crashed back like a waterfall over broken rocks. Pearl reeled with the vivacity of them, clinging to the man’s wrist as the world wheeled around her.
“There ya go…”
She’d squeezed her eyes shut — to close off those memories, those black eyes, that cruelly curving mouth — and the man swiped more of that thick paint over her eyes and the bridge of her nose.
That was why her eyes had felt so heavy. The paint clung to her lids, sticking her lashes together. Some of it did get into her eyes — when she blinked, the world was washed with blood.
The man’s blood-soaked face ducked closer, black eyes darting over her face as he studied her face.
God, how many times had Seth done that to her? An artist, making sure his paintbrush had landed true. He blinked, eyebrows lifting.
And, for a moment, he looked like the man she remembered. The man she’d once thought she was falling for.
He stepped back, glancing over his shoulder, head turning as he scanned behind him. Pearl’s eyes followed, narrowing as that spotlight speared into her pupils. The man turned back to her, again studying her face from where he stood as if to make sure the crucifix he’d drawn on her face was straight.
But Pearl’s eyes were fixed on the pews a few feet away. They were difficult to see with the spotlight shining in her eyes, but their shape was unmistakable — those sharp, rectangular blocks, so evenly placed — as were the shapes positioned on them.
People.
Two rows of silent, watching people.
They all wore hoods — some fur-lined, some not — but they all sat identically still. Mirroring each other’s silence. Staring straight ahead.
No, not all of them stared ahead. Some of the smaller figures had their heads dipped.
In prayer?
Perhaps a quiet consultation with whatever bloodthirsty god they served before this ritual — because that’s what this was, right? — began.
The Chair stepped in front of her, blotting out the spotlight.
She stiffened, a few of those hooded figures now more distinct. Some of their features now recognizable.
All of them recognizable.
The Chair stepped aside, washing Pearl’s eyes with white. She blinked, eventually focusing on the man’s face again.
That look of pedantic concentration vanished replaced by a leer. Those black eyes slid to her mouth. Then further down, to the gaping halves of her robe. He stepped up to her, grin widening as his hand slid under that fur, grasping roughly at her breast.
The Chair opened his mouth, but whatever he’d been going to say was cut off by another — just as familiar — voice. A voice that had once made her quiver with hedonistic anticipation.
A voice she’d once felt compelled to obey… and to serve.
“Camera’s rolling. Are you ready?” Owen, or his brother? Her fogged mind was having difficulty telling their voices apart.
The Chair smiled at her, giving her a slow wink as his eyes lingered on her red-painted mouth. He slid a salty thumb between her lips, rubbing paint from her teeth. Her mouth watered at that intrusion, at the thick blobs she swallowed down.
“We are,” the man said. Then his gaze focused on Pearl’s eyes again. For a moment, a different light flickered in them. Concern. Perhaps even regret.
“Are you?” the black-eyed man whispered to her, voice no longer hoarse.
12
A Date with the Devil
Rope whisked — a sullen whisper of a sound in the hushed silence of the Earth. Pearl’s body was slowly slipping out from under the drug’s numbing paralysis. Each reinvigorated nerve ending sparked back to life, sending pins and needles coursing through her limbs.
A tug on her ankle. Pearl’s eyes fluttered open, fixing on the blank, concrete wall ahead. For a moment, memory flooded her mind.
Jarred’s hand as it trailed up her thigh, shifting her skirt over the curve of her ass. Jarred’s clean, fresh scent as he moved around her, preparing her for—
The wolf yanked her ankle, drawing it up so that it nestled in the curve of her ass.
Pearl let out a wail as the crude stitches sewing together the flesh on her thigh tore open.
Her hands were already behind her back, forced against each other and wound with twist after twist of rope from wrist to elbow. The wolf grabbed hold of those bonds and drew them back until her curled fingers brushed against her heels.
Pearl’s back arched reluctantly, her hips and the bottom of her ribs all that still touched the icy marble beneath her.
They hadn’t bothered with any padding.
Her comfort was the last thing on their minds.
Spots of pain bloomed out from the gashes on her back, but their fire was almost immediately extinguished by a dull, aching throb from the wound on her leg.
The marble slab under her felt wet. The air smelled like an old woman’s coin purse.
The wolf jerked on her bonds, moving around the altar as if to make sure that — regardless of what angle he stood — Pearl’s trussed up body made a perfect still portrait on his blood-specked canvas.
No, not still. Pearl squirmed, her fingers reaching out in furtive investigation of the bonds around her ankle.
But if this wolf was as practised in shibari as Gia’s…
A blond girl, red rope biting into her flesh, her head thrown back in ecstasy.
Why couldn’t that have been her? Enjoying the attention of a man skilled in erotic bondage, instead of someone’s prey… waiting for the touch of a knife against her skin.
Or did that come later?
Her mind was a scrambled mess; so much fury, frustration, and righteous indignation stuffed it that normal thought was a terribly difficult thing. What had Ethan said about the others? They’d all been bound, of course, like her. Someone had sliced those ropes off, but carefully. So a knife wasn’t going to end her.
What was?
Had Ethan actually told her how the girls had been murdered?
Judging from the frantic pounding of her little rabbit heart, perhaps they’d all had strokes or myo-whatever infa
rctions. Dying from broken hearts and bruised minds.
A pair of hands ran over the length of her body, caressing the skin between those too-tight ropes.
Then another joined them.
Pearl’s head hung between her shoulders, the muscle running down her neck and alongside her spine stretching.
I want you to show me just how obedient and pliable you are. Can you do that, sweetheart? Can you be obedient?
She shook her head, denying that fragment of her past. Trying to eradicate the memory of Owen’s eyes on her, the feel of his hands on her, his tongue.
A tear trickled down Pearl’s face, gathering at her cheekbone before falling.
She stared at the pink drop where it had landed on the pale marble beneath her.
Why the face paint?
And why the silently watching crowd? Was this all just theatrics, or was some demon craving the arrival of her abortive soul deep in its hellish catacomb?
Pearl turned her head. Her hair fell into her eyes, obscuring most of the audience — except for the tallest, and the one beside him.
Tanner and Caden. Silently observing.
Why the fuck weren’t they calling the cops? Why the fuck weren’t they storming up here and saving her? Trafficking was one thing, but watching someone get murdered right in front of you and not batting a fucking eyelash?
Pearl blinked back another tear. The Chair had spent several minutes fussing around that glaring spotlight, carefully tweaking its position to put the shadows and light falling on the altar — on her — to best use.
The Chair. Pearl let out a soft, disgusted snort through her nose. She understood now. Some of it, anyway. Narrowing her eyes, Pearl focused past that spotlight, into the shadows beyond.
The black-eyed man sat in front of the dais, arms resting on either side of his director’s chair, ankles hooked, knees splayed. He gave her a lecherous smile, his fingers curling over the end of the wooden arm rests, muscles bunching. His lips parted, nostrils flaring as if he could smell that sudden swell of hatred that coursed through her.
Smelled it… tasted it… and reveled in it.
A director, careful eyes flickering over the scene in front of him, making sure the lighting, the actors, and the script played out perfectly.
Except… she wasn’t acting, was she? The substance pooling under her leg wasn’t the cinematic equivalent of ketchup — it was her own sticky blood.
Cooling, just like her body would cool.
Pearl’s eyes slid away, fixing on the man to her left. She shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut before the image of that staring, horizontal pupil could burn itself into her retinas. They wore identical outfits, the Morrison brothers. Those terrifyingly passive masks with the curved horns. Shaggy, matted hair cascading around their shoulders and blending almost seamlessly with their dark, flowing robes. And were those pentagrams carved into the beasts’s foreheads?
“Lustror.”
Pearl jerked. No one had said a word — to her or otherwise — since the black-eyed man’s last, whispered question of ‘Are you ready?’
“Lustror.”
To hear that unexpected word sent a sickening wave of dread through her. What did it mean? How was she supposed to—
She glanced back, feeling air move around her.
Jarred.
Pearl’s heart fluttered. Her breath caught tight in her throat. Jarred’s tall, dark form blurred as tears brimmed on her lids.
No. It wasn’t possible.
He’d been adamant that what Owen had done to her had been wrong. Had been…
But it had been a show, hadn’t it?
As fake as everything else in the fucked up Fox Pit.
Jarred’s dark eyes didn’t touch her face. He instead ran his gaze over her trussed up body, his face expressionless and unreadable. That sumptuous mouth was unmoving, that skin carved from ebony, as he finished his slow scan of her.
He wore the same robe as the day he’d laid those slaps to her ass.
And he wasn’t wearing a mask.
Wait, why wasn’t he wearing a mask? Weren’t they filming this? Was he that unconcerned about appearing in a snuff film that he couldn’t even be bothered with concealing his features from the camera?
Pearl could see the camera from the corner of her eye. It stood in the middle of the pews, tripod flush against the first step leading up to the dais. It had a perfect view of her profile — the lens focused on the broad side of the altar — and, now, of Jarred’s.
The man took a step back and gave his head a furious shake.
“No.” That deep voice, so mellifluous, made Pearl shiver.
“Cut!”
Pearl’s head turned to the side. The Chair had risen, tugging a shapeless hood over his head as he stalked up to the altar. Pearl stiffened, wriggling furiously in her bonds the closer he came.
“Do I need to remind you how this works, coon?” The Chair grabbed the back of Jarred’s neck in a meaty hand, giving the man a shake. He was shorter than Jarred, sturdier, but the man’s neck muscles bunched as he resisted that tug and stood straight and unmoving, eyes still fixed on Pearl’s hogtied body.
“Do what you want,” Jarred said. “I refuse to partake in this demented game.”
“Game?” Owen released the grip he had on Pearl’s waist and turned to Jarred. “This isn’t a game. Those whips, your rules — that was a game. This is art.”
“Whatever it is,” Jarred said with a frown, “I refuse to participate.”
The Chair slid his hand around the front of Jarred’s throat. The black man’s eyes bulged. His hands shot up, grabbing The Chair’s wrists as he tried to disentangle those fingers from his throat.
“You’d rather die?” The Chair asked, leaning in close. “You sure this little cunt’s worth it?”
Jarred choked, tugging furiously at The Chair’s wrists. His lips parted as he gasped for air.
There was a shuffle from the pews, a scrape of wood against concrete. Pearl’s head shot to the side, breaking free a tear as she faced her audience.
Caden and Tanner both shifted in their seats. Pearl blinked hard, clearing her blurry vision.
No, they weren’t shifting. They were struggling.
They’d been bound to the wooden seats.
Tanner’s hood fell back as he gave a violent heave against his bonds. His sandy hair stuck up every which way, swaying as he tried to pull himself free. Duct tape had been plastered over his mouth, but his lips twisted against the tape as he tried to speak, tried to scream. Caden’s hood was still on — the man’s head was down as he jerked his shoulders and arms in an attempt to wrestle free. Their combined efforts shifted the pew again, sending another scrape echoing through the Earth.
Jarred let out a gasping choke and then took a long, shuddering breath.
Pearl’s head whipped around, watching wide-eyed as the man brought a hand to his freed throat, massaging the flesh around his windpipe.
“Good,” The Chair murmured. “Let’s take it from the top, people.”
Jarred’s hands were hesitant. His fingers — chilled now — trembled against Pearl’s flesh as he smeared more of that red paint over the exposed portions of Pearl’s rump and thighs. He kept repeating that word, until it lost all shape and form and turned into a low, rumbling hiss that could have raised the dead.
“Lustror, lustror, lustror.”
The Morrison brothers came to stand at either end of her, folding their hands together at their waists, watching with those impassive masks as Jarred’s hands moved up her body. He halted beside her, facing the camera.
Pearl flinched as something cool and slick touched the base of her neck.
A blade.
Her lungs contracted painfully, eyes squeezing shut. She would have screamed right then — shrieked until her throat was raw and her vocal chords had swollen — but that sudden swell of fear rendered her paralyzed and rigor-mortis stiff.
The brothers dipped their heads, perhaps in sil
ent signal for Jarred because the knife moved to the front of her throat, drawing a line of icy fire in its wake. Pearl shuddered, face contorting as a sob pushed to get out of her, to overwhelm her.
In the darkness behind her eyes, light flickered.
A tear trickled down her cheek, slipping into the corner of her shivering lip. It filled her mouth with salt — sudden and sickening — and she trembled to avoid a gag that would surely push that blade into the taut skin stretched over her windpipe.
“Lustror,” Jarred murmured above her as he moved in front of her. His voice shook. It became thin and reedy. The blade quivered against her throat, its coldness spreading into her muscles the longer Jarred held it against her.
Do it.
The voice was a whisper — a cerebral breeze that wafted through her mind like the precursor of an approaching storm.
End it.
But he wasn’t. Jarred just held the knife to her throat, as if the courage he had to muster up to slice it along her skin was too taxing on him. As if he was reconsidering the value of his life, compared with hers.
Pearl jutted out her chin. She forced her eyelids to lever apart. Forced her gaze up, until it fixed on Jarred.
For a moment, her resolve shook just as much as that knife did. Because now, so perfectly framed by those infernal eyes on either side of him, Jarred didn’t look like he was having second thoughts. His dark eyes were cool and considering. His lips trembled, but not with fright or apprehension.
Something else flickered in those eyes. And it made Pearl’s stomach coil.
“Let me have her,” Jarred murmured.
Pearl recoiled from him, burrowing her head between her shoulders. The knife dropped away from her throat, the back of its serpent-sheathed handle tapping on the marble.
The man glanced over his shoulder, addressing the motionless pair behind him.
“I want her. Now. Before…” Jarred’s hand slid an inch down the marble, away from Pearl. Her eyes fixed to that sliver of metal that had so recently been caressing her throat.
He wanted her?
Bile rose in her throat, its acidic burn scorching her. She swallowed hard, dipping her head down as she tried to keep back a wave of nausea. But why should she? She could puke all over Jarred’s immaculate fucking robe. All over herself too. Then would he still want her, if she was dripping with vomit and reeking of stomach acid? Would he still want to stick it in her a last time before slitting her throat in front of that emotionless void of a lens that The Chair hunkered behind?
