The mulatto abruptly let me go and I sank to the ground. I lay there for a few minutes before I dragged myself to my knees and looked around me in confusion. I couldn’t be sure if I had lost consciousness for a few minutes, or if the mulatto had leapt from the clearing to an entirely different location by some supernatural means, dragging me with her. We were in some vast underground room that could have been some chamber in the deepest depths of hell. Several sconces lining the walls lit the room in a fiery light, making our shadows form large, grotesque shapes that leered at me from the walls. At the farthest end of the chamber was a gold altar that took up the entire wall. There were pagan markings etched on the altar I could not make out. Clustered around it were hundreds of skulls, human skulls, painted black. A tall gold staff tapering to a sharp point lay against the altar.
A few feet away from me were four black coffins inlaid with gold. They had been placed on stone slabs about half a metre high. I shuddered at the thought of human remains in those coffins, but the dirt floor was littered with human bones. And it appeared as if some of the bones had been there for decades, for they crumbled beneath me as I rose to my feet. My head reeled with images of Julia lying beneath the trees, her head at an odd angle. I closed my eyes, fighting the nausea that rose unbidden, weakening me.
When I opened them again, Auria was gazing at me, a curious light in her eyes. She spoke to the mulatto without taking her eyes off me.
“Onyx, help me take this off.” She began pulling on the clasps of her gown. “I want to experience him before I turn him.”
Onyx moved to her and began undoing the clasps of her gown.
“You intend to turn him?” the male said, his voice dropping to a whisper, the subtlest hint of anger riding behind his words. “You didn’t say anything about turning him.”
Auria stopped and faced him as she pulled the gold gown away from her, letting it fall to her feet.
“Do I have to ask your permission, Emory?” she said.
He was silent. She gave him an icy smile and then moved toward him as if it was the most natural thing to be dressed only in her undergarments whilst in the company of others.
She grasped Emory’s chin in a hard grip and kissed him. “Don’t worry, my dear. No one will ever take your place,” she purred.
She released him and turned her gaze to me again. My thoughts were still swirling with images of what had taken place in the clearing.
The savage twist of Onyx’s hand.
Julia falling lifeless to the ground.
Rage swelled within me along with abject misery. I lunged at Auria and wrapped my fingers around her neck.
“You killed her!” I cried. “You killed her!”
In my grief and rage, it did not immediately register that her skin was cool and hard to the touch, and that no matter how hard I squeezed, it did not scare the smile away from her lips. The other two did nothing to stop me, but seemed rather amused by my actions.
Auria laughed and then did the damnedest thing. She carefully placed her hands over mine and pulled them away from her neck effortlessly as if I had the strength of a sick child rather than that of an adult male. Her hands felt like iron around my wrists. I stared at her in astonishment and tried to back away. But she locked her gaze on mine and I found I could not move.
Malignant, alien images flooded my brain, images of her without the flimsy undergarment she wore, her ripe, naked flesh assaulting my senses.
Knowing I was in the grip of some unholy power, I again tried to step away, but could not. She released my wrists at that moment, her smile ripening. As if I were a puppet under her control, my hands moved to her breasts.
Horror burgeoned in my mind, but my hands pawed at her as if I were a schoolboy who was seeing such a sight for the first time. I watched my hands take hold of her chemise and tear it away from her, exposing her full, firm bosom.
She released whatever control she had over me, and like someone whose head had been held underwater, I broke through to the surface, able to breathe again. I staggered backward as they laughed.
In the feverish light of the underground room, they undressed. I felt an ice cold lump in the pit of my stomach as I began to question why they had kept me alive and what it was they planned to do.
“What are you?” I eventually said.
Auria was completely naked now. She had an unearthly beauty and her body was one that would have filled any warm-blooded male with longing. But I felt nothing but disgust when I looked at her.
“I am a god,” she said, moving within inches of me. “So forget your Jesus, your old life, and that little runt you had for a wife. I am your life now.”
In that moment, I realised Julia was the lucky one.
They undressed me. Auria took great pleasure in ripping my white necktie from my neck, and with it I felt the last link I had to the comfort and safety of my old life torn in two. Naked before them, the golden altar like a malevolent fifth presence in the underground room, I could not help shivering although the room was hot and close, the air thick and stale.
“Tell me he isn’t beautiful. Have you seen a man this beautiful?” Auria said.
“He is one of a kind,” Emory said grudgingly. “You chose well.” The strangest smile touched his lips, one that spoke of tenderness, although it was seeped in bitterness. “You always choose well.”
The bitterness deepened into angst because it was as though she hadn’t heard him. Her avaricious gaze was on me, and again my mind began to bend as she penetrated it with her supernatural power. My body was a slave to her whims once more and I moved to her and trailed my hands over her naked flesh.
Hot bile rose to my throat as she began to caress me and my body yielded to her touch, my manhood hardening with desire even though I felt nothing but fear and loathing for the monster before me. I tried to speak but could not will my lips to move, and although I strained against my renegade body, it would not yield to me. My breath caught painfully when I felt Emory close at my side, his lean, cold body against mine, his erect manhood pressing against my hip. I was able to breathe again when he moved back, until another cold image crawled into my mind: An image of my hand on his male member.
I thought my mind would break when my hand began to move toward it. More images wormed their way into my mind and the full horror of what it was they intended to do with my body bore down on me like a runaway horse.
Thankfully, before I could touch him, Auria took hold of my hand.
“No,” she said to Emory with a slight chuckle. “I can see he will never forgive me if I let you. An eternity is a long time to live with a grudge.”
“Then I’ll have to wait.” He placed the softest of kisses on my cheek, lingering, letting his rough stubble graze my cheek. He moved to Onyx.
His touch was anything but gentle when he took hold of her and pulled her against him. He yanked her hair back and ravaged her mouth with his. When he pulled away, there was blood on her lips and his, and, even more startling, excitement in her eyes. Onyx smiled as he threw her against a wall. She lunged at him and they both fell to the ground, their long, pale limbs entwined, making them look like a large, bleached arachnid as they grappled with each other amidst the broken bones all around. My mind screaming in protest, my mutinous body moved to Auria.
Under whatever hold she placed on me, I ravaged Auria. I hit, bit and slapped her, taking her with a brutality that shocked me, often closing my eyes against her ruby lips spread in pleasure, her stygian eyes an abyss which was swallowing me whole.
At one moment during that agonising night she had been astride me, gripped in the carnal sensations as she rode me. I moaned in pain as her wickedly long nails raked deep, fiery gashes down my chest. For a brief moment, whatever hold she had on me disappeared. Finding myself free, I pushed her away.
Before I could even scramble to my knees, she was on me and knocked me back onto the ground with such force my teeth ground painfully together. White-hot pain lanced across the back of my head and back. My vision blurred for a few seconds, and when it cleared, I saw her looming over me, her face inches away from mine. Her teeth were bared in a snarl, long, wickedly sharp fangs glinting in the eerie light in the room. My blood turned to ice and I could not move beneath that soulless gaze.
But what terrified me more was the sudden appearance of those fangs which were inches from my cheek. The fangs slowly receded as her anger cooled. Then she savaged my lips with hers and my body belonged to her once more.
To add to the assault on my body, I saw levels of depravity from Onyx and Emory that sickens me even to this day. Whether it was so they could feel something—even if it was just pain or shame—or to numb mental pain, they brutally savaged each other’s bodies and there was nothing sensual or pleasurable about the many acrobatic and shocking positions they undertook. It wasn’t about desire. It was about pain, inflicting pain, receiving pain, and a lesson in endurance, of pushing the body beyond its limits. And beneath it all was a bitter, soulless desperation.
At one point during their violent coupling, Onyx strapped a golden, phallic object about eleven inches long and three inches in diameter to her groin with leather straps. Evil looking spikes were imbedded along its shaft. She would have appeared less alien to me if she had turned into a Minotaur. She was utterly ruthless as she rammed it into Emory’s back passage, lashing him with a studded whip along his back. He groaned whilst I watched, unable to tear my gaze away from the horrifying spectacle.
Then Emory glanced at me, and again I was unable to look away as images slithered into my mind, images of being caught in his embrace as he did to me as was done unto him. A smile passed over his lips before he grimaced in pain as Onyx lashed the whip across his back.
Auria seemed to be done with me by then and moved to join them as I retreated to a corner as far away from them as I could get.
Onyx and Emory paused long enough for Auria to lie beneath Emory. He proceeded to copulate with her whilst Onyx continued her assault on him from behind, their moans and cries a dark song in the glow of the underground room.
Exhausted, dripping with perspiration, my body battered, bruised and bloodied, I curled into a ball and wept.
Julia, Julia.
Of course there was no answer, only the sound of their guttural groans.
I wept uncontrollably for what seemed like hours, and for the first time in my life, I wanted death’s morbid embrace.
But they had something much worse in store for me.
It was probably a few minutes before I became aware that their cries of passion had ceased.
I looked up. They were standing before me in a semicircle, their naked waxlike bodies unearthly in the wicked light cast by the sconces on the wall. I tried to dart away, but Onyx caught me by the hair. I tried to strike out at her, but she hit me across the face and I went crashing to the ground. They descended on me like a pack of lions. I screamed when I felt teeth puncture the flesh of my neck, wrist and thigh and thrashed against them but to no avail. I began to feel myself sinking as I weakened, eventually ceasing to struggle.
My limbs felt cold and my head felt dipped in lead, my thought processes slowing. As if from a distant place, I felt the pressure ease from the wounds on my thigh and neck. But the pressure on my wrist intensified.
Auria’s voice seemed to reach me from a faraway place.
“Stop, Emory!”
I opened my eyes to thin slits in time to see Auria grasp Emory by the hair, yanking his head away from my wrist. He bit down hard as she wrenched him away, and a burst of pain radiated along my wrist as he tore the flesh. I only uttered a low moan.
Auria struck him, sending him flying roughly three metres through the air before he was able to right himself, springing into a crouch like some sinewy feline. His fangs were bared and his mouth covered in blood as he snarled at me.
“What are you trying to do? Kill him?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, merely slunk away to the corner where he sat and glowered at me.
She loomed over me for a few seconds, her face drawn, her brow creased. Using a small gold knife, she cut herself on the upper part of her breast. Then she knelt down and forced my lips against her breast and the weeping cut she had made.
I lay against her breast, too weak to resist, and it was a moment or two before I realised she was using her unnatural power to make me drink her blood. But at that moment, my will was broken and I didn’t even try to resist.
Noxious, hot blood saturated my mouth and I spluttered. But as more of it entered my mouth, it began to taste sweet.
“Yes, drink, my prince. I am your mother, your god. Drink from me and join us for all eternity.”
As I drank, a curious sensation began to course through me, as if my veins were being lit from within, gently warming me from the inside out. It tugged on my wounds, and, to my hazy astonishment, the pain ceased and my wounds began to heal.
“Stop now, Auria,” Onyx said behind her. “You’re giving him too much.”
Auria ignored her as acute pain seized me. My flesh was on fire and my internal organs were being squeezed and tightened. I wanted to scream, but she was still forcing me to drink her blood although she was straining now to keep her control over me. Abruptly she let me go and I slumped to the ground where I writhed in pain.
Onyx grasped me by the foot and dragged me over to the coffins. She opened one of the coffins and then hoisted me off the ground with one hand.
“No!” I screamed.
She threw me inside the coffin, which was much deeper than the average coffin. She slammed a hand against my chest and held me down as Emory appeared by her side and poured what looked like earth into the coffin from a wooden bucket. Auria did the same whilst I screamed and fought as the coffin began to fill with earth. I eventually stopped screaming when the earth was poured over my face, obscuring my vision, earth filling my nostrils and mouth. I coughed and grunted in desperation, merely succeeding in drawing more earth into my mouth. My chest was on fire as my body fought against the suffocation.
I don’t know how long I struggled, but I was dimly aware of the sound of the coffin being closed over me, shutting out the faint sounds of their laughter. Eventually I began to weaken, my mind clouded over, and the world, along with life, melted away from me.
I succumbed to the superior darkness.