"Maureen disappeared in the commotion. It isn't a super regular occurrence, but it happens, unfortunately. If I had to guess, based on what Maureen just told us, that he was just blessed with his Elemental gifts."
"But why did the enforcers chase him?"
Looking down, Catherine replies, "We were just told; if he finds his intended or they create an intended for him, he will then come into his full power. Who do we know who is always after more power?" she ends in a hushed whisper, her eyes now darting about.
The president, the man responsible for this academy is who she is referring to. I know this, but I still can't help it. "I hope the Water Elemental finds his intended and can have a full life."
Catherine's eyes go wide, panicked. "Shh! You don't want to end up back in the testing room, do you?"
I shiver, thinking of the Gregory and his torture room. "I won't say another word," I promise as we gather our trays to throw out the forgotten food. On our way back to our room I whisper, barely audible, "I am getting out of here, Catherine."
Chapter Five
I lay in bed, snuggled in the blanket. I can hear Catherine breathing heavily, sleeping deeply. She showed me all around the academy. The grounds, while beautiful, still appear like a prison to outsiders, but it is a huge academy with three separate buildings and an open court in the middle.
My thoughts stray to Maureen and the story she told us earlier. People were blessed with power from an Elemental, yet greedy people ruined it, like they ruin everything. My blood just heats thinking about all the lives ruined because people can't respect what they are given.
After taking a few deep breaths, I think. When the sky is dark, the grass is dead, the water is still and the wind doesn't blow and you can feel it in your chest, what do you do? I have heard it before, but where...
I am looking down at this beautiful woman with stunning white hair who is laying sprawled across a large bed. The bed looks like a large dark cloud, with her pale skin contrasting against the navy sheets. She has a beautiful man above her, one on either side, and one sitting off to the side of the bed, admiring, watching. Everywhere I look hands are caressing chests, abs, lower still.
I know I shouldn’t be watching this, being such a personal moment, yet I can feel myself getting hotter, watching these men worship this woman's body with their lips, hands, words, and cocks. The man on top is setting an impressive pace, in and out, faster still. I can hear the love he gives to her in his words. Sweet nothings whispered into her ear while groans and sighs of pleaser ricochet around the room. Her hands are wrapped around the other two men's dicks, stroking in time with the thrusts. My core throbs, knowing how close they all are, even the man watching off to the side.
I can feel the climax in the room building. I can feel my own core clench in anticipation. I don't know these people. Heck, I can't even see their faces. But I can see the love, the devotion they all have for each other. It is such an intimate moment between them. I try to watch their faces but all the faces are blurry, even their voices aren’t completely clear, except the man on top.
Is this one of the women Maureen mentioned? White hair seems to match... A loud cry resonates around the room, the woman shuddering as her climax powers through her. The song of her cry milks the men of their orgasm too.
The three of them lay on either side of her while she cuddles in as the watcher gets up and walks away to come back with a cloth. He then proceeds to clean the woman, as she whimpers as he caresses her. He moves in close, they all move like a wave, like a dance they have all completed a hundred times.
My heart hurts, like it is being squeezed by a vice. I yearn for a relationship like the one before me, knowing that it isn't likely.
My eyes open, a light streaming in through our door that is swung open. Sitting up, I grasp the blanket to my chest, heart thundering in my ears. I see someone coming into the room, before I can open my mouth to call out a voice reaches my ears. "Hi, Viviana." I know that voice; I just heard it in my dream. My eyes flash up to the eyes I saw the day before, "It's time to get you out of here."
The End
Want to continue reading? Viviana's Story continues in Elemental Awakening! Click here to know when her story continues and when Catherine’s story begins. Enjoyed this story? Be sure to leave a review!
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USA Today bestselling author M.M. Chabot is a former private investigator who lives off Starbucks and chocolate. If she isn’t working you will find her reading Kelly Armstrong and Penelope Ward or watching The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or Bones.
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Cellblock Sorcery
Tiegan Clyne
Chapter One
My name is Kathleen Goode, which has got to be someone’s idea of a joke. I’m a witch, and the Brotherhood doesn’t care much for my kind.
They run everything around these parts. They’re the so-called moral authority of the world, the ones in charge, the ones who call the shots. The men who decided that we womenfolk need to be barefoot and pregnant and silent until spoken to.
Well, fuck that shit.
Oh, I play the part for a while. I keep my thoughts to myself. I go to the temple every morning and pretend to worship their judgmental god. I run a boarding house for single women, and I convince the Brothers that I’m a shepherdess for my wayward sisters, keeping their virtue intact until they find husbands and fulfill their destinies as women by becoming wives and mothers.
Yech. Still makes me throw up in my mouth a little when I say it like that.
Well, the local temple loves me. They think I’m just a little gem, and when the Brotherhood’s Temple Captain starts coming around, everybody thinks we’re the absolute image of propriety. We’re getting holy house calls, right? Only that’s not quite what’s happening.
My wayward girls? They’re all witches, and that boarding house is the way our coven sticks together, hiding in plain sight. We work our spells and make our potions in secret, undermining the Brotherhood and being just as subversive as we possibly can. Even better, when the men in the town are sleeping, their women sneak away to my house, and we do things that would make their husbands’ hair turn white. The proper ladies of the town all come flocking, and my sisters and I welcome them with open arms and open beds.
What can I say? Nobody knows how to make a woman cum like another woman.
A few men in town catch wind of their wives showing up, and those who we can’t silence, we convert. Our worship sessions in the basement get more fun with the addition of a little willing man meat.
It’s going so well.
Then the Temple Captain gets suspicious. When he comes around to snoop, I seduce him. He would lose everything if anybody found out, so I have major blackmail material. I think I have the bull by the horns.
I am so wrong.
The pious little idiot trots right back to the Temple, tells his Confessor and voluntarily goes to prison for the sins of the flesh. My girls run into the woods, and I stand my ground, making a scene so they have time to get away.
My trial is a local sensation. There are news cameras from the city, and people stand on the courthouse steps to jeer me when the constables drag me in for the show. I smile for the cameras, try to make sure they get my best angle, and ignore the hoots and hollers.
At trial, some of the men who converted to my coven testify against me. I had apparently used my witchy ways and potions and spells to turn them from the good. I guess some guys just can’t handle morning-after guilt.
One of our converts doesn’t testify against me, though. He actually tries to testif
y on my behalf, saying what a wonderful person I am and how much good I’ve done in the community with my tinctures and herbs. Bless his little pointed head. Corwin Jones is his name, and he stands tall and handsome in court, looks the judge in the eye, and confesses that he’s a witch, as well.
I still don’t know what he was trying to prove.
Anyway, predictably, Corwin and I are convicted and sent to the same prison where former Temple Captain Jacob Harris is doing time. Blackwater Gaol is what it’s called, and it’s about as cozy as the name would suggest. It’s out in the middle of a saltwater swamp where the black oaks hang heavy with moss and reptiles with big appetites live in the water. It stands on a man-made island standing in the middle of the salty water, and it’s tall, dark and imposing. The day we arrive, as our boat is being rowed toward the island where the gaol stands, Corwin catches sight of a black snake that’s longer than a semi-truck. He bumps his shoulder against mine and points it out to me with his chin, his blue eyes wide. He can’t point because of his handcuffs.
I see it. I’m impressed, but I’m not afraid.
Witches have a way with the natural world, and it’s funny how the Brotherhood thinks that putting us out here and trusting big, bad, evil nature to keep us hemmed in is somehow going to work. Witches don’t quiver in the dark and hide when the night birds call. We call back. These snakes and crocodiles were meant to be an added means of keeping us contained.
Heh. Reptiles and me, we have an understanding.
We’re brought through Blackwater Gaol’s water gate. Besides Corwin and me, there’s another convict on our boat, a surly-faced man from another village who’s been convicted of adultery. I don’t know what happened to his lover. I hope she got away. Or maybe it was he? I don’t judge.
The gate opens into a parade ground where a squad of Brothers in black tactical jumpsuits are waiting. There are six of them, wearing visored helmets with the golden sigil of their order big and bold on their chests. They have rifles in their hands and batons at their sides, and they’re led by a monk who could only be the warden, Brother John.
Brother John is heavy-set and fat, with a bulbous nose and a gray monk’s tonsure that probably doesn’t take much work to maintain. A bald man doesn’t have to shave his pate. He’s in brown cowled robes held shut with a rope belt, and he clasps his hands primly beneath the swell of his belly. Our guards push us to stand in a line, Corwin on my left, the adulterer on the right and me in the middle. They take our handcuffs off and hang them on their belts.
Brother John holds out his hand, and one of the guards gives him the condemnation scroll. He unfurls the parchment and reads the contents.
“Corwin Jones. Witch.”
My boy lifts his chin and firms his square jaw, his blond curls sticking to his forehead from the swamp humidity. “Aye,” he answers proudly.
“Kathleen Goode,” he reads, and smiles. “Witch.”
I toss my own blonde hair back and nod. “Here.”
He looks me in the eye for a long moment, staring at me as if he thinks I’ll be intimidated. I stare back. I win, because he blinks first.
Brother John looks down again. “Lucas Mason. Adulterer.”
The man hangs his head and doesn’t answer. That sort of automatic submission makes the warden smile. “I see that you are already repentant. That’s good. It will make your time here pass more swiftly.”
I’m not sure how guilt affects time, but okay.
He tucks the condemnation scroll into his sleeve and looks at us sternly. “You are guilty of heinous betrayals of the faith and of the society in which you live. You are here to be punished for your sins and, in the case of the adulterer, reformed and returned to your village. There is no reformation for witches.”
“Damn right,” I say. Corwin smiles.
The guards aren’t as amused, and one of them hits me with a baton, the blow landing on the backs of my knees. It knocks me forward so I land on my hands and knees in the mud. The guard steps forward and puts his foot on my back, pushing me flat. If we were back in my basement, I’d think a little fun is about to get started, but that’s not what these boys are about.
Not yet, anyway.
Corwin breaks rank and grabs the man, pushing him off me. That brings the rest of the guards down on him with their batons, and the end result is Corwin in the mud, too. I look over at him, and he’s wincing from the abuse, his nose bleeding.
That’s my Corwin. Brave and stupid to the last. Bless his hot little hands.
“Respect,” Brother John intones. “That is what you will show while you are here. We know we cannot save your miserable souls, and if it were up to me, we would just end you and spare the world your darkness. But we are tasked with containing you for the duration of your miserable lives, until the Evil One comes to take you to his fiery home. If you show respect, you will be kept in something similar to comfort. The opposite is also true. The quality of your life is in your hands. You have both just earned a night in solitary confinement.”
“Good,” I grunt. “I like privacy.”
“Laugh while you can,” the warden says. “You won’t be laughing long.”
Solitary confinement is three enclosed spaces in the basement of the main building. The cells are basically holes scratched into the ground, with metal slab doors. dirt floors and cinder block walls. There are puddles where the groundwater has seeped up from the swamp beneath the island, and there are clouds of mosquitoes. I can hear scratching in the walls, probably rats trying to get in.
“See you in the morning,” says the guard who’d brought me here. “Or maybe sooner.”
I turn my back on him as he closes and locks the door. I kind of hope he will come back, and maybe bring buddies. A good old prison gang bang might be just the thing to pass the time.
The silence in the cell is thick, and as the night wears on, it seems like the darkness gets deeper. I’m normally not bothered by things like that, but when morning comes, I’m pretty happy to get out of there.
A guard takes me up to the parade ground where the rest of the prisoners are waiting, standing in rows. I see Corwin at the end of the second row, his face covered in mosquito bites and bruises. He’s watching for me, and when I come out into the light, he looks relieved. I wink at him and take my place in the third row.
There’s a platform set up in front of the parade ground, equipped with a stock and a lectern. My old friend Temple Captain Jacob Harris is bolted into the stocks, stripped to the waist. His back shows marks of old beatings, and we are obviously here to witness him having another session.
I guess that’s what the Brotherhood calls “reform”.
Brother John gets up on the platform and starts preaching, and I ignore everything he says. Instead, I look around at my fellow prisoners. They’re all dirty and gaunt, and the clothes they’re wearing are nothing but rags and tatters. Most of the inmates are women, but there are a few men who stand together in a separate row off to the side of our main group. They have a prime location to see Jacob’s whipping, which is now underway.
“Face forward,” one of the prisoners near me hisses, “or you’ll be next.”
I turn and watch the beating continue. Jacob’s face is bright red, and he’s struggling not to cry out as Brother John flogs him with a short whip, the lashes landing across his bare back. I remember putting fingernail scratches on that broad back, and I feel bad for him. I’m the reason he’s here.
Scratch that. His idiotic adherence to piety and the old saw that confession is good for the soul is why he’s here. It’s not my fault that he decided to go to the Temple and come clean. More to the point, by my lights, is that I’m here because of him. He should be feeling bad for me.
I’m not so upset for him anymore.
When the beating is over, they unlock him from the stocks and drag him, insensible, into the building behind the platform. I’m thinking that’s where the infirmary is, because the stone structure is smaller than the one whose
basement I’ve been enjoying for the last several hours. I hope he’ll be okay. I could make a salve for those wounds that would keep them from scarring, but I doubt they’d let me. Besides, the masochistic twerp probably wants the marks.
Brother John starts pontificating to the group of men, and I see Lucas Mason, the other man from the boat that brought me here, standing with them. I guess that’s the adulterers, and I’m with the witches. I prefer my companions.
I can only count six guards, which can’t possibly be right. We witches outnumber them three to one. Despite their numerical disadvantage, they look confident and unbothered. They think they’re absolutely in control. I guess it’s the rifles that make them feel that way, and the fact that we don’t have any weapons.
Well… we don’t have any weapons they can see.
I don’t feel any anti-magic effects on this jail, and I don’t see any charms or sigils that would prevent me from using my powers. It’s confusing, because all of these witches with me should be able to just summon an elemental or some other conjured beastie and fly out of here. I can’t figure out what’s keeping them from acting.
I roll my neck and stretch my arms, and in the process, I draw a little sigil. It’s a simple spell, just a water purification spell, and I can feel the magic rolling out of my solar plexus through my hands. It slides out into the air, and the spell goes off. The puddle at my feet turns crystal clear.
Nobody seems to notice, and nothing blocked the magic. So why are all of these other witches so cowed?
Hexes and Handcuffs: A Limited Edition Collection of Supernatural Prison Stories Page 16
