by K D Grace
Marie yelped and tried to pull back, but Deacon held her there, only a breath away from the surface of the water. ‘What? Do you not recognize your predecessor, Marie? Rayna, Guardian of the West and of Water.’ He chuckled. ‘Not a very good guardian, I fear, but you cannot imagine how much pleasure I had with her in her element of water, nor how long it can take one to drown when one is not pressed for time. Perhaps I will show you one day.’ He pulled her to his chest and tenderly stroked her hair, then her back. ‘But that shall not soon be your fate, my darling. With Serina’s unfortunate demise, I am left without a Help Meet, a companion, if you will, and though my lovely witch at Rosthwaite is brighter than my poor little Serina was, she is nowhere near as interesting as you are, with your delicious aroma of fear, and your spirited defiance – when you’re not pissing yourself in panic, that is. I find the combination so very intriguing.’
He lifted her chin with a finger, forcing her to meet his gaze. ‘Are you skilled with a knife, my darling? No I suppose you wouldn’t be, would you? Never mind. You will become so after enough practice.’ He pushed her head down toward the surface of the water again. ‘And I have devised such a perfect training exercise for you.’
The water rippled, then cleared and she saw Tim tied to a post, his hands above his head, his body exposed to the knife she wielded.
‘When I lived and breathed as you do, Marie Warren, I used to hunt for sport,’ Deacon whispered next to her ear. ‘I took many trophies in my day, and my skills at skinning an animal, any kind of an animal, were admirable. I am so longing to pass on that skill to a worthy servant.’
Her stomach lurched and she swallowed bile. ‘I would never –’
The hand in her hair migrated to an uncomfortably tight caress of her throat. ‘Ah, but you will, my darling.’ He pressed closer to her, in a tight embrace from behind that forced the breath from her lungs. His voice was a humid whisper against her ear. ‘Soon, I will fuck you, Marie, and you will beg me for it, you will want it as you have never in your life wanted anything. And when I have given you ecstasy you cannot yet imagine, you will gladly do my bidding. Oh yes, you will wield the knife gladly, all the while your lust will burn for the reward you know only I can give you.’
The image of Tim on the dark surface of the water writhed in anguish as she watched herself take the knife to the tender skin just below his navel.
‘You will know what you are doing, and you will loath the very act, my darling, but you will not stop, you will not stop no matter how Mr Meriwether begs, for he will never be able to reward you as I can.’
‘No!’ With an effort that wrenched muscles and practically dislocated her shoulder, Marie thrust her bloodied hand into the water and it shimmered and sizzled and the image darkened and disappeared.
Deacon caught a sharp breath, roared like a maddened bull and back-handed her, sending her sprawling on the earth. ‘Stupid child! I make the future this night, and neither you nor any of your paltry friends can undo what I foresee, what I …’
His words died in his throat as Tim tackled him from behind and the two rolled and tussled, while Marie struggled not to pass out from the panic.
‘He’s doing this to you, Marie. Fight it!’ Tim gasped from the fray. ‘It’s just panic. Fight it.’ For the briefest of seconds, Tim was mounted astride Deacon punching him in the face, and there was blood, Marie couldn’t tell who it belonged to. Frantically she looked around the paddock for anything she could use as a weapon. She tugged and pulled at the brick that had been set beneath one corner of the water trough to level it, but before it gave into her hand, Deacon rose from the dust, with Tim in front of him, a beefy forearm locked around his neck.
He laughed as though he had just heard the funniest joke ever. ‘Impressive, Mr Meriwether. And I do like a good brawl on occasion, a part of my journey among the living that I miss from time to time. You acquitted yourself well, and I am diverted. Perhaps it is you I shall compel to be my servant. Men, after all, do understand each other so much better, do they not?’
‘Leave her alone, Deacon.’ Tim forced the words up through his constrained throat.
‘Of course, Mr Meriwether, I will gladly leave our Marie alone if I can have you.’ He ran a hand down Tim’s chest to rest against his cock, and Tim shuddered. It was not the shudder of pain.
‘Fight him, Tim. You have to fight him.’
‘Shut up, little girl!’ Deacon’s voice was softer now, but it chilled Marie to the bone. ‘If you will give me what I want, Mr Meriwether, I will let her go. For now.’
‘He’s a liar, Tim. Don’t listen to him.’
This time, as he back handed her, Tim lunged for her, but Deacon held him tight. ‘Of course I am a liar, Mr Meriwether. And no one knows better than you how easily I twist the truth to fit my needs.’ He guided Tim’s hand to the erection pressed against his trousers. ‘What I offer you is time. Perhaps you will be able to fight my influence for a while. Certainly our Fiori did.’ He waved a hand as though he swatted away a fly. ‘I could kill you both now this very instant, and it would cause a certain amount anguish for my dear Tara Stone.’ He stroked Tim’s cock again. ‘But like any good lover, I want the pleasure to last as long as possible.’
‘Then take me and leave her alone,’ Tim repeated. ‘I’ll take my chances that Tara and the Elementals will kick your arse long before I become your boot licker.’
‘Are you crazy?’ Marie shouted, coming to her feet, this time with the brick in her hand. ‘Tim, you don’t know what it’s like, you don’t know what he’ll do to you, what he wants. Please.’
But Tim was already pulling down his jeans, his eyes locked on Deacon. As he turned to offer the demon his arse, Deacon shook his head. ‘I don’t fuck men’s arses, Mr Meriwether, and that is why you are so perfect.’ He reached out and stroked Tim’s penis and it was instantly erect. ‘You are a rider. You will have no problem keeping yourself hard enough to pleasure me. And I promise, when you have emptied yourself into my backside, you will know pleasure you have only ever dreamed of. And though you will try heroically to be loyal to your friends,’ he took Tim’s face in his hands and held his gaze. ‘You will be mine with every fibre of your being.’ With that, he lowered his trousers and offered Tim his arse.
As Tim positioned himself, suddenly Marie’s injured hand throbbed and burned. In truth she had barely been aware of the pain with everything else that was happening. It was slick with blood, and the copper sweet smell of it hit the back of her throat like whiskey, making her eyes water. With her other hand, she held the brick. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t really any threat to Deacon.
The heady scent of her blood made it feel as though her whole body were pulsing, as though it were her Tim were about to push into, and she knew without a doubt he felt what she felt. Her heart raced, and this time not from fear, but from something else. She opened herself mentally, squeezing her hand shut until it throbbed angrily, and Tim was there, and suddenly she understood. As her hand throbbed with the beat of her heart, with the beat of Tim’s heart, she understood completely. Their struggle wasn’t about getting Deacon out of the flesh. What they had to do now was keep Deacon in the flesh. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew it as surely as she knew her own breath. And in her mind’s eye, she could see the spell she needed as clear as day. Slowly, carefully, she began to weave it. She would only get one chance.
‘Put your cock in me now!’ Deacon roared.
Tim spat on his hand and lubricated his cock. His eyes locked on Marie’s. Her hand, warm and slick with her life’s blood, pulsated with the beat of their two living hearts. They both understood, and Tara was right, two were so much more powerful than one.
Slowly, deliberately, she moved in front of Deacon, unbuttoning her blouse as she did so.
He chuckled. ‘Shall I have you both then? It is, after all, what you really want, isn’t it, my dear Marie.’
With a slight nod of his head, Tim pushed in hard, Deacon groaned,
and as he opened his mouth, Marie pressed the tip of one bloody finger against her chest, against her racing heart, then she slipped it between his parted lips. She felt the sizzle along every nerve ending in her body, she felt it race down Deacon’s spine and up through Tim’s groin. Tim thrust only once, Deacon roared like thunder and ejaculated in heavy spurts onto the dusty earth.
As understanding dawned in his eyes, Marie squared her shoulders. ‘I don’t want you out of the flesh, Deacon. In fact I have every intention of keeping you in the flesh. Forever.’ She lifted the brick and with the force of all of her rage and Tim’s, slammed against his temple. He shuddered and dropped to the ground like a stone.
It was Fiori who appeared first. She was already rucking up her skirt, as she moved toward Tim. ‘You need relief,’ she said. ‘And it’s not the kind that would be safe for the living to give you.’ She took his hand. ‘If you’d be more comfortable, we can go in the barn, but it’s best not to wait.’
‘Best not,’ he said, pulling her into a hungry kiss that seemed somehow tender in spite of his need. Then he leaned back against the fence, lifted her onto him and began to thrust as though he really didn’t care who saw.
It didn’t take long. Marie knew only too well the intensity of his need, and so did Fiori. Before Tim grunted his release, Anderson was already tending to Marie’s hand, reassuring her that he had never been lost in the Ether, that it was only another of Deacon’s lies, Sky and Tara arrived immediately in the Land Rover and knelt to inspect Deacon’s body.
‘Is he dead?’ Marie asked.
‘He’s been dead a long time,’ Tara replied.
‘What then,’ Tim said, tucking in his shirt. ‘A coma?’
Tara shook her head. ‘You’re mountain rescue, Tim. If we had called you for him, you would say he’s dead. There are no vitals, and he’s cold.’ Tara studied the body laying sprawled in the stable yard. ‘However this flesh won’t decay, nor change, not if we leave it here in your paddock for a thousand years. It’s conjured to be the perfect, incorruptible vessel for a demon, and demons, for the most part, aren’t at all pressed for time. As Marie intuited, the perfect incorruptible vessel is also the perfect, inescapable prison when just the right blood magic is added to sex magic.’
‘Then what do we do with him’ Tim asked. ‘I don’t want him left in my paddock for a thousand years.’
‘No, I imagine not.’ Tara heaved a sigh and looked around her. ‘We’ll bury him on the boundary between our two properties to strengthen the binding, cast as many protection spells as we can and hope that his slumber is a very, very long one.’ She ran a hand over his face and closed his eyes. ‘For now, at least, he won’t be bothering anyone.’
Chapter 22
Marie and Tim slept in each other’s arms most of the way there. In fact, they didn’t even know where there was. They slept in the bed Sky had made out in the back of a little camper van that belonged to the Elementals. Marie remembered very little of what happened after she’d hit Deacon with the brick. She remembered being aroused at the sight of Tim fucking Fiori. She remembered stuffing a sandwich in her mouth like a starving woman. She remembered Anderson and Sky carefully tending her hand, which didn’t seem to be nearly as badly cut as she feared it would be. In fact, it seemed to be healing at amazing speed. One of the fringe benefits of being a rider, Sky had reminded her.
She vaguely remembered a hot shower with Anderson carefully scrubbing away the grime, steaming out the aches and very gently bringing her to release, which she needed in spite of, or perhaps because of, all that had happened. Then she and Tim were loaded into the van, stripped naked and tucked into clean sheets with lots of kisses and caresses, which she was sure she would have appreciated a lot more had she not been so exhausted. They were told to rest.
It was late afternoon when Tara woke them both. She was naked. Without offering them clothes, she led them out to the edge of a tarn sparkling like glass against the bronzing sunlight. Insects buzzed in the warm air and the resident blackbird sang from the top of an oak tree. Marie would have asked about Deacon, but Tara stopped her words with a lingering kiss. ‘We’ll not speak about that now. It’s been dealt with, as we said it would be.’ She smiled and opened her arms as though to embrace the lovely landscape. ‘The heatwave has made it warm enough for us to do our ritual outdoors in comfort, something we seldom get the chance to do in Lakeland. Come.’ She led them to the edge of the water. Anderson, Sky and Fiori, all equally naked, were already waist deep in the tarn.
Tara joined them and motioned Tim and Marie to do the same. As they stepped into the water, the Elementals moved to circle them. And Tara spoke. ‘The two of you have borne a burden that should not have been yours to bear. You have, in doing so, come in contact with anger, hate, bitterness, and all manner of unwholesomeness. Our hearts rejoice that you’ve returned to us successful, but most of all we rejoice that you’ve returned to us safe.
‘You’ve returned to us. You belong with us. You’re a part of us. And it’s with joy and celebration that we offer ourselves to ease your weariness and cleanse away the efforts of your trials.’ With that, she took each of them into her arms and gave them a long, lingering kiss. She laughed softly at Tim’s surprised look. ‘You’re about to learn the cleansing powers of sex, Tim Meriwether.’ She shrugged, ‘Though the water is a nice touch, I thought, especially in this heat. Welcome to the Elemental Coven.’
The other coven members followed Tara’s example and suddenly it was as though the water effervesced with tiny shimmers of gold, tiny droplets of sunlight that caressed and lingered on their skin wherever they touched, and the groping and stroking and fondling by the rest of the coven made certain that the effervescing waters didn’t miss any place.
When the waters had done their job, the party migrated, still wet and dripping, to a place in the shade of the large oak where the Elementals had spread blankets and pillows on the moss.
Tim wasn’t sure if it was magic or just lust, but the tangle of arms and legs on the makeshift bed seemed to buzz with power he felt not only between his hip bones, but up his spine and into his head. It was better than any alcohol induced buzz he’d ever remembered feeling. Before he could think about it very much, Fiori straddled him and settled herself onto his cock. ‘I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,’ she said, as she began to undulate against him. ‘And it feels like you might just be all right with it now.’
He reached up and caressed her breasts, loving the way her dark eyelashes fluttered over amber eyes and her already erect nipples pearled still harder against his thumbs. ‘I’ve been all right with it for a while. You’ve been the prickly one.’ Then he rolled with her, pinning her beneath him. She wrapped her legs around him and giggled breathlessly. ‘I might just get prickly again, so I would suggest you fuck me hard while I’m not.’ Then suddenly her eyes were serious, misting slightly. ‘I’m sorry, Tim. I’m sorry it all had to happen this way.’
‘Shh.’ He dropped a kiss onto her lips. ‘I’m sorry too, that I couldn’t understand, but it doesn’t matter now. Now it feels right, and it hasn’t felt that way in a long time.’ In his peripheral vision he could see Anderson riding Sky from behind while Marie writhed with Tara’s face between her legs.
‘Is it always like this?’ Tim grunted as Fiori put the squeeze on him.
‘No. Sometimes there’s a lot more sex.’
He came then, and she with him. He eased his weight off her just enough to maintain the connection. Before they both dozed, he whispered next to her ear, ‘I don’t want to lose you again, Fiori.’
‘You couldn’t even if you wanted to now,’ she sighed. ‘You’re stuck with me, stuck with all of us.’
He couldn’t really imagine there being more sex. That’s all they did, and it was bliss. By the time they broke for the delicious picnic Fiori had packed, he’d romped with everyone, and so had Marie. Bonding, Sky had called it. She said it was very important for healing and for coven morale. She had s
aid that when she came up from sucking his cock while Marie licked her from behind. No one had made any attempt to pack up when the sun set. There had been talk of training, talk of the new dimension the coven now had with two new living members, and it felt as though the pain and the suffering of the last few months and especially the last few days had been washed away, or at least pushed back a bit to where it didn’t hurt quite so bad to think about.
Long toward morning, Marie woke feeling as though someone had called her name. She could just make out Tim and Tara in mid grope sitting by the tarn. Any other time, it would have felt rude to approach a couple so intimately involved, but tonight it seemed like the thing to do. In spite of herself, the voyeur in her lingered just a little while to watch. Tim was practically on top of Tara, their mouths were engaged in mutual exploration and he was alternately nudging her legs open and fingering her hole. His cock was like a homing missile right on target, until Tara pushed him away and caught her breath. ‘There you are, Marie,’ she breathed, ‘and just in time. Tim has need of a pussy.’
The look of confusion on his face was followed in rapid succession by irritation, then pain. Tara held his gaze. ‘I’m sorry, Tim, really I am. But Deacon’s not gone, and until he is, or until so many years pass that I can forget what he’s done, then I still won’t fuck the living. It’s a bond I can’t afford.’
Tim kissed her hungrily, then gently, caressing her face as he pulled back. ‘You’re fooling yourself, Tara. You’ve already made that bond, and you know it as well as we do.’
‘Perhaps, you’re right, but it’s a deception I can live with for now.’
There was a shuffling on the blankets behind them and Anderson disentangled himself from where he slept between Fiori and Sky and came to Tara’s side. She gave Tim one more kiss with lots of extra tongue and pulled Anderson down next to her. ‘Besides, I don’t think either of us will suffer overly much from lack of … comfort.’
