Winter Spire: Den of Desire

by Anya Merchant

  He started walking. The last time he’d been in Undercliff City, he’d been nine years old. None of it looked familiar, and even if it had, he had no idea where to start looking.

  Victor shifted his bag on his shoulder and turned so that he was heading toward the skyscrapers in the distance, into the heart of the city. A homeless woman sat half on the sidewalk and half in an alleyway and jingled a cup as he walked by.

  “Please,” she said in a wispy voice. “I’m sleeping out here.”

  Victor stopped, pulled a few quarters that he hadn’t ended up needing for bus fare out of his pocket, and dropped them into her cup. He turned to continue and heard the woman speak again, louder this time.

  “It’s red. Burning red.”

  A flash of red flickered across Victor’s vision, accompanied by a sharp stab of searing pain in his temples. He looked back at the woman.

  “What did you say?”

  “You haven’t realized yet, have you?” The woman broke out into cackles as the rain intensified, splashing water into her change cup. “You’ll have to choose, you know. You could be a hero, or you could be a villain. But you must hurry. It will kill you if you don’t.”

  There was something about her words that made a shiver run down Victor’s spine. She sounded coherently crazy, the type of madness that was unsettling to parse out as a bystander.

  I’m just paranoid. Mentally ill homeless women are a dime a dozen.

  Victor took a step back from her and started making his way back toward the city center. Another burst of fire shot through his stomach, and he almost doubled over in shock.

  “Hurry! Please hurry!” The woman’s shouts were lost to the rain as Victor forced himself forward. There was no turning back.

  CHAPTER 2

  The rain didn’t let up, and neither did Victor’s pain. Every step forward was a struggle against his sensitive nerves. He felt his body more intimately than he ever had before, and every ounce of that awareness screamed with the gentle caress of fire pokers and cattle prods.

  This is too much.

  Victor remembered an article he’d read about people with chronic pain and the struggle that it turned every day into for them. It made him feel anxiety on top of the fire, to the point of rattling each of the already aching breaths he took.

  He slowed to a stop as he neared the edge of the city’s center. There was a tavern on the corner of the block with a sign out front that read “Sammy’s Place.” Victor stumbled as much as walked down the stairs and inside, his legs carrying him with wobbly steps as though he’d already had too much to drink.

  Victor was tall, and looked a good bit older than most men his age. A few dim lights lit the tavern, and it was still early enough in the night that there weren’t too many patrons milling about. A pool table took up space in the back, and a single flat screen hung from the wall behind the bar.

  He collapsed down into one of the stools. The bartender was a stoic looking woman with short cut dark brown hair and a bored expression on her face. She lifted her head slightly in acknowledgment of him but said nothing.

  “I’ll have a beer,” Victor muttered. The bartender moved to grab it for him without asking for ID, thankfully. Victor busied himself by pulling out the photo and taking another look at it. Long lines of smudging from the rain ran vertically across the woman’s face, making it nearly impossible to make out her features.

  Maybe if I just keep drinking, the pain will go away, and I won’t need to find her.

  He grimaced to himself as the bartender slid a beer in front of him. Victor took a small sip of it and noticed that a woman was watching him to his right, a few bar stools down.

  “I think this fella is going to need more than one, Sammy,” she said. The bartender responded with a monosyllabic grunt and returned to polishing a glass from the counter behind her.

  The woman slipped off her bar stool and moved to the one next to Victor. She stared at him intently for a second. Victor tried to stay focused on the beer, and the picture, and anything but his pain.

  “Is that your girlfriend?” asked the woman. Victor blinked, keeping his attention focused on the bar.

  “No.”

  “Oh, sorry. Ex-girlfriend?”

  Victor finally looked over at her, trying to keep his eyes from narrowing into a glare. She wore a striped sleeveless top and a short black skirt, and she wore the outfit well.

  “She’s actually the woman I’ve been sent back in time to protect,” he said. “Have you seen her around? The fate of the world depends on it.”

  The sarcasm in his voice came off a bit flatter than he’d intended. The woman rolled her eyes and let out an annoyed sigh. Victor was about to push the line a bit further when something strange happened.

  He caught the woman’s eye for a second and saw red. He wasn’t angry, and he wasn’t frustrated, but he saw the actual color red, shading his vision and everything else he could see like a photo filter. And even more strangely, his pain vanished, as though transfigured into something else in an instant.

  A sharp noise buzzed in his ears as his vision returned to normal. The woman was still staring at him, her mouth hanging open in surprise, along with a hint of something new in her eyes.

  Why is she looking at me like that?

  The woman slipped forward, letting one of her legs slide in between Victor’s thighs. She pushed in closer, close enough for Victor to be acutely aware of her breasts and cleavage, and then pushed her lips against his.

  Holy shit.

  The kiss was hungry and primal. Victor felt her sliding her tongue into his mouth and moving her lips eagerly. She put her hands around him and arched her back slightly, opening her legs and trying to get even more contact going between the two of them. It felt good, and with the pain absent, it was an almost celebratory moment for Victor.

  “What the fuck?”

  Victor pulled back as he heard an angry voice shouting over the soft ambient noise of the TV and tavern talk. A tall, muscular, and very angry looking man was heading his way, shifting his gaze back and forth between Victor and the woman, who was still holding his hand.

  “Uh…” Victor tried not to smile as he looked up at the man. “Any chance that this is just your sister, or cousin, maybe?”

  “That’s my fucking girlfriend that you’re kissing, punk.”

  Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

  Victor stuffed the photo back into his pocket and slowly stood up from the stool, holding both hands up and open in a harmless gesture.

  “Take it outside.” The bartender, Sammy, spoke for the first time. “Not in my bar.”

  “I’m comfortable inside, though,” said Victor. “Really. I, uh, was just getting settled.”

  The man snarled and grabbed Victor by the shirt. Victor shot a sidelong glance at the bartender, who shook her head and smiled faintly.

  “Sorry kid,” she said. “You’re lucky I even let you have a drink.”

  Victor stood to his feet, and the man immediately started pushing him backward. He carried his bag with him and hurried up the stairs in a futile attempt to get far enough down the street to avoid getting his ass kicked.

  He didn’t move quickly enough. The man grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.

  “Hold on, let’s-“

  A fist collided with Victor’s jaw and exploded stars into his field of view. The force of the blow knocked him back, and his arms flailed uselessly in an attempt to break his fall as he dropped to the ground.

  “You’re lucky I don’t go to the police on your pervert ass.”

  “Hey man, she kissed me.” Victor spoke into the concrete for the first few words, sputtering to spit blood and dirt out of his mouth.

  That’s right. She kissed me. How the hell did that happen?

  “Bullshit!” The man pulled back his leg.

  This time, Victor saw the blow coming. He moved his hands to block his face as his attacker’s foot flew toward his head. Another painful hot flash passed over him, an
d his vision became tinted red, just as it had before.

  The kick slammed through Victor’s hands and landed a glancing blow on his forehead. Victor let out a pained gasp and then almost did a double take as he refocused his eyes.

  The man’s pant leg was on fire, and so was Victor’s hand. He pushed it down against the ground and saw, rather than felt, the flames extinguish. The man was staring at him, and after a moment, he followed Victor’s gaze down to his leg.

  “What the fuck?”

  The man jumped backward, patting at the flames and howling. Victor blinked and took a closer look at his palm.

  I’m not burned. But my hand… It was definitely just on fire.

  A woman screamed from a few hundred feet down the street. The flames were spreading up the man’s leg, despite his best efforts to extinguish them. Victor hesitated for only a second before jumping up and lending his aid.

  “What did you do to me?” The man took a step back from him as he approached, and then immediately dropped to the ground and began rolling from side to side.

  “Nothing,” said Victor. “I mean, I don’t think.”

  “Someone call 911!” The woman screamed from down the street. The man had managed to get the flames out and was still inching backward from Victor.

  “You fucking psycho!”

  “Hey, hey, let’s not jump to conclusions.” Victor held up his hands. “See, I’m just as harmless as I look. I swear."

  He tried to take another step forward toward the man and got the same reaction.

  “He tried to kill me! He tried to light me on fire!”

  Victor cringed as a small crowd of tavern patrons and pedestrians began to coalesce around them. A cop car, lights flashing and siren on, pulled up to the scene. Victor sighed and held his hands up.

  What the hell just happened?

  CHAPTER 3

  “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in the court of law.”

  Victor stared at the shiny hood of the police car as the cuffs went on. He blinked, and tried to focus on what was happening.

  “I thought that was just something out of the movies,” he said, still dumbfounded. “I didn’t realize you said that in real life.”

  The police officer, a short woman, was actually somewhat attractive. She was on the plumper side of voluptuous, and had listened to Victor and the other man’s stories before coming to a decision on what to do.

  I told her the truth. I don’t know what the hell happened.

  Unfortunately, she was now searching Victor for weapons with rough, unforgiving movements. A couple of people were still watching, including the supposed victim.

  “He tried to kill me, and before that, he was sexually harassing my girlfriend!”

  “That’s… well, it’s an exaggeration, at the least,” replied Victor.

  “Where is it?” asked the female officer. “This would go a lot easier if you just cooperated.”

  “Where is what?”

  She pulled on his cuffs so that Victor was fully upright and then turned him around to face her.

  “The lighter.” She locked eyes with him, and Victor tried to take the situation as seriously as everyone else was. “None of the witnesses saw you drop anything, or try to ditch it.”

  Victor started to answer when a blindingly hot headache exploded into his temples. He gritted his teeth and cursed in pain.

  “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” said the cop. Victor chuckled through his pain and forced out a response.

  “Okay, now that’s definitely something you ganked from a movie.”

  The cop looked as though she was about to hit him. Victor regretted his words for only the briefest of instants before red light filled his vision again, and the heat moved out of him.

  The same ringing filled his ears, as though he’d been standing next a powerful speaker crackling with feedback. The cop’s expression looked totally different, and yet still focused on him. She was blushing slightly and waved a dismissive hand at the people watching.

  “Nothing to see here, folks. Head on back to whatever you were doing. I’m taking this one down to the station.”

  She led Victor into the back of the squad car, the lighter apparently forgotten, and closed him in. With a strange urgency, she took her place behind the wheel, started the car up, and began driving down the street.

  “Uh…” Victor felt a strange tension in the car and spoke mainly just to break through it. “What exactly am I being charged with?”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” said the officer. Her voice had a suspicious, flirtatious tone to it.

  The cop pulled the car down a one-way street, and then into an alleyway. Victor raised an eyebrow as she killed the engine and the lights and then climbed out. He watched as she walked around to the other back seat door, opened it, and then climbed inside.

  “You’re an interesting fellow,” said the officer. “Clearly, you’re guilty, but it seems a shame that we can’t find some way to work all of this out.”

  Victor stared at the woman blankly.

  I’m reading this situation wrong. I have to be.

  Victor still saw a red glow in his peripheral vision. He opened his mouth to speak, and it spread to the rest of his field of view, flashing as though he’d just put on a pair of colored lens glasses.

  The female police officer inhaled sharply and then licked her lips.

  “You’ve been bad tonight,” she said, her voice soft and filled with lust. “I think you need to be punished.”

  She leaned into him, letting her lips rub across Victor’s cheek. An electric thrill of excitement ran through his body, along with the growing suspicion that he was in a dream.

  “I don’t even know your name,” he said.

  “You can call me Officer Matthews.” The woman ran a hand over his crotch. Victor was instantly hard.

  “Okay, uh, Officer Matthews. I think we might be moving a little fast.”

  Victor didn’t exactly have sexual experience in spades. His escapades stretched a single summer of romance he’d had with Ella, the girl next door. Even just thinking about how it had ended brought back painful memories and emotions.

  His vision flashed brighter red, and the cop let out a sharp gasp, as though Victor had just turned on a vibrator inside of her. She pressed herself against him, rubbing his hardness slowly as she pulled open the buttons of her uniform.

  “Stop resisting,” she whispered.

  I don’t think it’s supposed to sound like that when a cop say those words.

  Victor opened his mouth to object one final time when Officer Matthews managed to pull her breasts free from the confines of her shirt. She was wearing a sports bra that looked fit for an Olympic athlete, but discarded it almost immediately, letting two large, shapely breasts fall into view. Despite himself, Victor began to stare.

  “Do you like what you see?” Officer Mathew cupped one arm under her bosom, framing them as though posing for an erotic picture.

  Victor nodded slowly, feeling his cock staging a coup.

  It’s not really like I can stop her anyway. I’m handcuffed. Better to have fun now and sort it all out later.

  “Can you uncuff me so that we can do this properly?” he asked.

  Officer Matthews laughed and pushed her breasts in his face.

  “Oh, now you know I can’t do that.” Her perfume smelled rugged, with a hint of cinnamon mixed in.

  She let her hands run down Victor’s chest and stomach, pausing for a second before unbuttoning and unzipping his jeans. Victor’s cock strained against his boxers, and she pulled those down, too. His cock was painfully hard. Officer Matthews looked at him with playful seduction in her eyes as she wrapped a firm hand around it.

  “Oh.” Victor felt a smile creeping onto his face. “That feels nice.”

  For a moment, he became paranoid that someone might walk down the alleyway and peer into the car thro
ugh one of the windows.

  She’s a cop, and we’re in her squad car. I think that gives us impunity.

  “Mmmm,” moaned Officer Matthews. “You’ve been a bad, bad boy.”

  She stroked Victor off slowly, kneading his stiff cock with her soft fingers. Victor felt more aroused than he ever remembered being, to the point where it was impossible to think about anything other than cumming. His issues and his pain were forgotten, outside of the issue of his erection, and the pain of its hardness.

  “Oh yeah,” he whispered.

  Officer Matthews ran a hand across her hair, still pulled back into a ponytail, and then leaned forward. She paused to flash him a temptress’s smile before pressing her soft, luscious lips against the head of his cock and giving it a kiss.

  “Oh wow!” Victor’s hips bucked up of their own accord, pushing the tip of his erection into the warm, wet confines of her mouth. Officer Matthews pushed him back into a flattened sitting position and shot him an authoritative look.

  “Easy there. Don’t forget who is in control, here.”

  Victor opened his mouth to respond and saw his vision flash red. Officer Matthews responded as though she was an actor who’d just received encouragement from her director. She dropped her lips down onto Victor’s cock and began sucking him off with gentle intensity and focus.

  Victor shook his head slowly, unable to think straight through the pleasure, but at the same time sure that he needed to try.

  I’m doing something to her, without meaning to. The pain, the hot flashes, they fade out whenever I see red.

  He felt Officer Matthews swirling her tongue against the bottom side of his hard, sensitive shaft and let out a moan. She pulled her mouth off his cock, making a small popping noise as her lips broke the seal, and then began pleasuring it with long, sensual licks, from the base to the tip.

  “Mmmmm.” She paused for a second and smiled at him before pulling her breasts into position on either side of Victor’s erection.