Chapter Nine

The cast gathered in a handful of caravan trailers, a semi-trailer following behind. Hors d’oeuvres would be provided at the venue, but the golems passed around some easy food to eat while they traveled.

“Trust me.” Kitty handed Neve bottled water and a sandwich. “You’ll need it.”

Neve was in Kitty’s trailer, which carried more women than men, despite the fact everyone seemed less concerned with gender separation the rest of the time.

She still refused to be on a bed. The conjoined twins and the Spider took that honor. Neve wore her white terrycloth robe, but she still felt there weren’t enough layers between her and the intrinsic suggestiveness of a bed. Caroline, the youngest member of Arcanium—although since no one aged, it was hard for Neve to tell whether Caroline really was the youngest or just looked like it—offered to let her sit on the small dining bench, but Neve took a spot on the floor instead. She wanted to stay uncomfortable. It was a good distraction from her nerves and the vibrations of anticipation her body decided was desire. Arousal was arousal. Her body saw it all the same way.

After about an hour, the golems pulled up to the loading dock of an empty warehouse. Neve was used to feeling underdressed in the circus, but the rough alley made her feel overdressed instead, and she suddenly had to worry about tetanus. She was so used to going barefoot in the circus, like many cast members, that she hadn’t even thought to bring shoes.

“Do you meet in abandoned warehouses often?” she asked.

“Not often, but we’ve been to this one before,” Kitty said. “It isn’t abandoned. From what I understand, it’s a tax shelter of some kind, and we’re not the only esoterica the owner hires to fill it. I think they do some other kind of urban haunted house in October.”

“You mean we’re not the only ones who do that?”

Kitty laughed. “You’d be surprised how often extralegal extreme horror pops up. We’re far from the only show in the country.”

The interior of the warehouse was more or less clean as they entered through the loading bay and climbed the concrete stairs to the third floor. Dust was more of a problem than splintered crates, nails or squatters. The golems poured in first with their industrial-size mops and swept through like fairy godmothers, turning on lights, clearing dust away, hanging black tarpaulin over windows and setting up ceiling-high partitions into a winding, labyrinthine pathway. They were quiet and efficient.

At the top of the stairs, Bell greeted a man who wore an expensive charcoal-gray business suit—hardly the kind of person Neve would have seen as someone interested in esoterica, but she knew from experience that the scene took all sorts.

“Most of you have met Samuel Amendola before,” Bell said, “but we do have some new blood. Samuel is the one responsible for us being here today. He provides the venue, he sent out the invitations and he’s paying for our time. He’s brought with him quite a few friends—some business, some personal—for this private party. Everyone has been apprised of the rules and will wait on the second floor until we’re ready for them to ascend. We have the whole third floor to ourselves. Thank you, Samuel. We’ll see you at ten.”

“Very much looking forward to it.” Mr. Amendola gave an officious bow that Neve didn’t like. He peered over the small crowd of performers and freaks with lust that was startlingly possessive. Neve held the top of her robe to keep his gaze from crawling anywhere on her.

From the way the third floor was laid out, smooth concrete broken with cinderblock columns to provide structure, the ceilings and floor below were thick enough that she could barely hear the party Bell had said was going on below. If laughter and loud conversations hadn’t drifted up the open staircase, she wouldn’t have known that guests were already there.

Still unsure what Bell had in mind for her, Neve stayed out of everyone’s way, even as the performers and actors shed their outer layers and tended to their makeup, which Neve would do if she had any idea what she was supposed to look like. Bell went with each exhibit into the maze, one by one. She thought he might be doing something to finish them off onsite, because when they left, most of them weren’t particularly horrifying. She didn’t doubt Bell was capable of making them so.

Neve sat in a corner, watching what little she could see now that the golems had set up all the temporary walls and the black curtains that separated cast and crew from guests. She ruminated over the same things that had been running through her head since the afternoon. It certainly didn’t help that Bell had left his intentions for her a mystery. How could she decide what to do if she didn’t know what she’d be agreeing to?

Kitty and Victor each asked whether she was all right, and she nodded to both. Because she was all right. Bell wasn’t going to ask her to literally kill someone and get off on doing it. He wasn’t going to make her do anything that was destructive or that would hurt someone—more than they wanted, which was again something she knew from personal experience. He wouldn’t make her do anything if she didn’t want to. But she was here, so she might as well at least play haunted exhibit like she did for the circus—unless Bell’s vision was just too horrible for words, and she doubted that would be the case, because he’d already know what she’d refuse.

‘How would you like the hands on you to do more?’

Maybe not a shot of whiskey, but a glass of wine sounded good right about now. She sighed. That way lay madness and mind-numbing agents. It was far too easy to settle into a routine of oblivion. The empty bottles in the Spider’s trailer proved that.

“You’re the last one, my dear.” Bell stood above her, holding out a hand to help her to stand, which she took. He wore his usual leather trousers, but also a loose, thin, white cotton shirt. Neve hadn’t thought he owned anything that covered his upper body. “I’d like to start you from the very beginning. You’ve never attended a Funhouse function before, and being a part of the haunted funhouse doesn’t quite prepare you for what we do here.”

He eased the robe down her shoulder. She untied the knot at her waist to allow him to remove it from her like a gentleman with his lady’s coat.

She still wore her wedding ring, which Bell didn’t comment on. She assumed that at least some of the people who would be joining them were also married—and likely not with their partners at this event, based on her unkind assumptions about people in the higher echelons of business and other power structures. But infidelity was also a powerful fetish, even when it was mere illusion. Guests to the Funhouse wouldn’t know the difference, and she wasn’t ready to take it off, even if she’d basically agreed to adultery. But at this point, that adultery couldn’t hurt her husband, which was the only reason she let Bell lead her to the edge of the black curtain that separated the green room from the rest of the floor. He pulled it back and gestured her through.

The guests wore outfits that wouldn’t have been out of place at a cocktail party or high-end charity function. Little black dresses glittering with jet beads, long slinky backless gowns, tailored suits with silver pinstripes, shining patent leather shoes, stilettos that would make a dominatrix weep with envy.

Neve caught sight of a few fine leather vests under suit jackets, and in some cases, corsets or harnesses. Chokers that were actually collars. Bracelets that could become handcuffs. Braided decorative belts that could become a flogger in less than a minute. Most of the guests were merely done up, suggesting little more than a fat bank account, but there were enough people displaying unconventionality that Neve was even more curious. What kind of business did Samuel run? How had he come to bring business associates into something like this? How had Kitty put it? ’Extralegal.’

Fringe sexualities weren’t inherently shady by any means, but this whole setup was. And Neve was a part of that now.

All seventy-five or so people turned when Bell led her through the curtain.

The guests stared at her with expressions that varied from hard and unforgiving to indulgent, kind to lascivious. She wasn’t wearing anything under the black silk negligee that could only be called a dress in the most generous sense. Bra and underwear would have interrupted the cutout of lace that led from under her arms down to the hem, which reached less than halfway down her thighs. It was one thing to be covered with groping hands, but she felt entirely naked under these strangers’ scrutiny. It was somehow worse that they were all clearly rich. It made her feel sold.

Bell hooked his arm through hers when shyness and a dose of fear made her hesitate, the curtain swinging against her leg.

“You look lovely. I think we can lose this, though.” He pulled the rubber band from her hair, which flipped down from the loose bun she’d made and fell to the small of her back. Bell tousled it to drape over her shoulders and wave with its own shape.

Golems walked through the clusters of guests with champagne on trays. Bell grabbed a flute and handed it to her.

Samuel Amendola stood with a small cluster of other men with watches just as ugly as his, some wearing wedding rings of their own. “A charming young woman, Bell. Were you intending to introduce her?”

“Not to you,” Bell replied, with a deliberate snap of insult that had Samuel as well as his guests laughing. “She’s new to the circus, and I wanted to show her what we have in store for the rest of you. If you would indulge me for a little while longer, I promise it’ll be worth the wait.”

“It always is,” one of the other men with Samuel said.

“Especially if she’s a part of it.” Another one of Samuel’s companions reached out, hooking a lock of her hair in his hand.

Bell smoothly insinuated himself between the men and Neve, ever polite but not allowing anyone to confuse politeness with permission. He clicked his tongue in disapproval. “No touching. Not yet, and certainly not without an invitation.”

“And here I thought she was the invitation,” the man replied.

Samuel took the man’s wrist and pulled it back. “I made it clear, Allen, that there are consequences to intemperance. If you can’t follow Bell’s rules, you might as well leave now, for your own sake.”

The arch loftiness of his manner didn’t quite hide the tightness in his shoulders as he held Allen back. He’d encountered ‘consequences’ before, then.

The petulant curve to Allen’s lips suggested he didn’t take Samuel or Bell seriously enough, but he yielded, his attention alone bridging the gap between him and Neve.

“It’s a privilege to have us here,” Bell said.

“A privilege we paid for,” Allen countered.

“A privilege nonetheless. I agree to bring my people only under certain conditions. You may think you’re safe. You may think you can get away with anything, with your lawyer on call and a secure Swiss bank account. But once you step through that curtain, you’re in my territory, and none of the people here nor any amount of money or bribe to the law will save you from me. Are we understood?”

Had anyone but Bell said that while wearing black leather pants and holding the hand of a scantily clad woman in a crowd of wealthy associates, he would have been laughed out of the warehouse and probably beaten within an inch of his life by very expensive security personnel, perhaps with homophobic epithets rained down upon him. He was wearing eyeliner tonight, his dense curly hair gleaming close to his head, and with his body covered, it was more difficult to see his strength. However, he was so much less delicate than he appeared, so much more in control than his wardrobe suggested, and it was impossible for him to hide that completely within his human façade.

Allen finally nodded.

“Good. Now if you can wait a few more minutes, I need to introduce Neve to what she’s going to be a part of.” Bell brought Neve forward again, kissing her shoulder in a proprietary way. He looked up at Allen as he did so, as though to show that he could but Allen couldn’t. But even so, the place where he kissed her awoke the rest of her skin, a stone in the pond of her desire. “You can enjoy the sight of her then. Excuse me.”

“You’re not helping,” Neve whispered at him as they reached the split in the black curtain that acted as the entrance to the Funhouse.

He pulled her through into the near pitch darkness within. His white shirt was just about the only thing she could see, but in a matter of moments, she could feel plenty. He slid his arm around her waist and brought her against him, slowly, gently, though no rude erection pushed against her abdomen.

“I’m uncomfortable with this,” Neve murmured. His breath was cool against her lips, so he wasn’t about to kiss her, but she couldn’t help but feel like she was still being scrutinized and that he could see much better in the dark than she could.

“I keep expecting you to slap me, but you’re so very polite. There’s no need to be so nice, my dear.”

“I’d slap you now, but I can’t find your face.”

He laughed, pulling away and hooking his arm in hers again. “I appreciate that you agreed to join me here, despite your reservations. I think the same enthusiasm you have for the haunted funhouse will be served well by this one. Shall we?”

“How exactly is it going to be different from the haunted funhouse, other than my not being able to see? I’m barefoot, but some of those women were wearing scary high heels. They’re going to need to know where they’re going.”

“There are pieces of glow tape to delineate the path. For someone so observant, I shouldn’t have to point them out to you.”

“Them’s fighting words, Bell.” She wasn’t feeling playful, but he was keeping her mind off of what had been bothering her since he’d invited her to the Funhouse. Pretending she was confident made her feel more confident, and it changed the way he interacted with her, even if he could see beyond the bravado.

“Drink your champagne, Neveline, and relax. It’s like your funhouse, but better.”

She swallowed the rest of the champagne. Bell plucked the glass from her fingers. She didn’t know whether he set it down on the path or made it disappear. She just followed the ghost of his shirt through the darkness and around a corner. The line of the partitions stopped at a black platform, where red lights shone down upon a figure Neve didn’t immediately notice, because it was just as black as the rest.

Then the figure lifted its head, and Neve saw the dark blue flame at the ends of her hair, purple in the red light. The Spider had been airbrushed—or magicked—completely black from head to toe. She rose on all eight limbs, wearing nothing but a satin underbust corset with red lace detail over her abdomen.

The Spider moved with the kind of jerky grace of the tarantulas she liked to keep with her in the creepy-crawly tent. She was all angles, long legs, long arms, long fingers, except for her exposed breasts, which were full for her frame, especially when there was nothing to contain them. Neve tried to be circumspect when she checked, but she confirmed the Spider wore only the corset. Neve hoped the airbrushing was magical, because she could only imagine the dedication and discipline to have every last bit of her painted, even to the inside of her lips and over her labia.

The Spider tilted her head, reaching one sharp-nailed hand out to stroke the pointed tips along Neve’s jaw, drawing her closer. The Spider trailed her fingers down the shadow of Neve’s cleavage to the bodice of the dress, curling a claw in to draw her still closer, until Neve had to grip the edge of the platform. The Spider looked directly in her eyes, and though she didn’t speak, Neve heard her as though she had Bell’s telepathy.

‘What does Neve want?’

Neve didn’t let herself think. Or rather, she ignored every thought, even as she leaned in to close what little distance the Spider had left. She moved slowly enough that the Spider could have stopped her, even if she wasn’t capable or willing to speak, but instead, the Spider angled herself to meet Neve’s shy kiss.

She’d never kissed a woman before. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it beyond the pleasure of a kiss, the way anything could shiver over the surface of her skin like a tongue of fire blossoming through fumes. If she hadn’t been standing and the Spider bent on the platform at an awkward angle, Neve might have parted her lips, explored more.

When Neve broke the kiss, the Spider had both of her right hands flipping Bell off. The Spider grinned, kissed Neve’s cheek then retreated, lowering herself almost flat again with impressive flexibility.

Bell kept his gaze on Neve, though he didn’t say anything until they rounded the corner. “Interesting.”

“Just don’t.”

“I don’t mean because of the undeniably erotic image of the two of you together, especially in that light. I mean that the Spider chose you to kiss. When she doesn’t have her spiders, she prefers working without a partition, because she’s still mildly claustrophobic. But she won’t let anyone touch her, which is why the Gentleman waits unseen in the corner in case he’s needed. She’s spare with her friendship, sparer still with desire. I knew you’d gone to her to discuss your decision. I believed it wise. I hadn’t realized you’d made such an impression.”

“I think you’re the one who made the impression, modeling me after her—which she’s angry at you for, and so am I.” Though she doubted that devastated him.

“And is that what you wanted, Neve?”

She didn’t answer him, continued instead down the path until the next break in the partition.

This time, the two performers stood in a glass case, blue light pouring over them. Seth and Lars were bound together in a deep kiss, their bodies naked, their legs interlocked, their hips so close together that their cocks weren’t visible—or at least that was what Neve thought, until she stopped in front of the glass case to stare.

Their skin melded, molded together, sinking into the other’s body everywhere their skin met. When Seth lifted his hand from Lars’ shoulder, for a moment the skin struggled to stay in contact, stringing like molasses, the blend of contrasting flesh tones like the mingling of watercolors. Even their mouths were trapped together, their lips pulled tightly against the other whenever they’d withdraw from the kiss—as though their curse had intensified beyond mere contact, making them closer than ever, closer to one body than two. It was as hot as it was horrifying.

“It may look awful, love, but they, like you and the Spider, are here of their own volition, and they agreed to this particular horror,” Bell murmured in her ear, although he didn’t touch her as he watched over her shoulder. “I promise they quite enjoy themselves as long as they don’t have to see who’s watching them. They’re more open with their affection than they once were, but they haven’t grown used to other people enjoying the sight of it.”

She licked her lower lip, shifting from one foot to the other. She rethought her decision not to wear underwear under the dress.

“Come along.”

The next glass case sent light wavering into the hall. The mermaid swam close to the glass, though when she saw Bell behind Neve, she swam back again, glaring with large, iridescent eyes. She was topless, the way most mermaids were when not in a children’s story. Frills ridged over her shoulder blades, and webbing stretched between her fingers and under her arms. The gills on her neck opened and closed. Her lips were blue, but only because the patches of scales along her cheeks and down her torso were also a light blue and green. Professional mermaids were nothing new, but even a woman who knew how to use a fake mermaid tail underwater needed to breathe. There were no obvious places for a woman to breathe above water, no human ways to breathe underwater. Guests from outside Arcanium would wonder what the trick was, as they did with every aspect of Arcanium. And as usual, there wasn’t a trick.

Neve continued on, leaving the wavering lights behind her.

This was the second time Bell had followed her through a maze. It occurred to her that he rarely got to watch someone experience his circus in real-time. She sensed Bell’s hunger for her reactions and wished she didn’t feed him so well, but she couldn’t help it. She liked haunted houses, she liked freak shows, and she was now in the perfect position to like sexual exhibitions as well.

The next tableau had been set up on a low platform, no glass partition. Carlo was bound, naked, to a St. Andrew’s cross, the bindings black leather and false legs attached to the stumps of his thighs.

Misha didn’t look any healthier than usual, but he appeared pleased that he didn’t have to swallow anything. Instead, he started pounding nails into the false legs, which spurted blood as though they were real.

Carlo arched, his erection unflagged. But he shouted as Misha took a toothed cock ring and snapped it around the base.

“Carlo’s a little bit of everything,” Bell said. “He and Misha alternate from Funhouse to Funhouse on who gets tortured, but Carlo gets to have his legs chopped off before he’s sodomized, which is always a satisfying visual, and he never tires of it. I’ve gotten more use out of him than anyone would give him credit for…although Misha can swallow anything, which makes watching a dildo the size of Ciarán’s cock go down his throat also quite satisfying. You know a little something about that, don’t you, love?”

“Stop.” Neve didn’t need to be reminded of how much he knew, what he’d experienced in his secondhand way. “If you’re going to be cruel…”

“I’m not saying it to be cruel. There’s nothing wrong with a throat yielding to an incubus. Jinn in general can find their way into just about anything with ease when they choose to make it sweet. If it gives you some sense of balance, I’ve had my own throat around the cock of another jinni myself.”

Carlo was weeping and moaning at the same time, but Neve actually looked away from him to stare at Bell. He raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know why that surprises you. Most jinn are shapeshifters one way or another, which makes the shape of one’s genitalia quite inconsequential. I prefer surrounding myself with fierce women because they are so rarely appreciated, but when I choose the company of men, I’m partial to equally underappreciated men who don’t try to dominate me. I decide if I allow them to, just as I allow the women who choose my bed to decide.”

She blinked.

“I still don’t know why that surprises you. But you’ve experienced something I’ve never been able to try myself. I’m as subject to the destructive effect of a sex demon’s feed as any other creature. Until you came along, I had never experienced the other side of an incubus’ feed from a human woman’s perspective. I’m quite envious of you, love.”

Neve had no idea what to say to that.

Bell gestured her onward.

Lady Sasha was next, in a glass case set on a pedestal. The succubus reclined on a reticulated python that had to weigh over two hundred pounds and filled almost the entire base of the container. Three albino ball pythons were wrapped around her body. Yellow-white scales slid and clung along her firm breasts. Muscles flexed around the curve of her nipple. A thick body moved between her legs to cover her, although it hardly seemed like modesty.

Lady Sasha wore very little as a rule, but it was amazing the difference made by removing the last strips of leather from a figure like hers. She lay there like a pin-up parody of a Genesis painting. All she was missing was an apple, although she’d painted her lips a cherry red.

Neve kept a certain distance from the case, unsure what Lady Sasha thought of her, especially as angry as she was with Mikhail.

The succubus turned her head, opened her dark eyes. The irises were red, not a glow in shadows like Mikhail’s—more like garnets under white light. She moved under the slithering serpents around her, stroking along the firm bodies as she lifted herself upright. The python underneath her didn’t seem to be bothered by the shift in weight.

There was ferocity in those eyes that Lady Sasha didn’t soften with a smile. Neve didn’t necessarily sense animosity, but she still backed away. Lady Sasha’s fierce gaze followed her until Neve turned the corner, trying to catch her breath and crossing her arms over her breasts to cover her nipples. They were hard as diamonds against her forearms, and the silk only stimulated them more.

Neve ducked away from Bell’s hand when he touched her shoulder.

“On Oddity Row, she’s compelled to be pleasant. Though she’s kind enough for a demon, she’s not nice and doesn’t particularly like being nice.”

He didn’t pursue contact again. The bastard knew exactly why she didn’t want him to touch her now.

It certainly didn’t help that Lord Mikhail was next on display.

He was dressed like a warrior out of a video game, but one that objectified men as much as its women, with harnesses and armor meant to enhance rather than protect the appearance of his physical strength and Atlas figure. He was an executioner in gay culture leather, but the harness around his cock was what drew the eye.

Leather wrapped around his scrotum and the base, keeping his erection impossibly large, hard and curved under a leather-edged blade that extended beyond the head of his cock. From the sides of the leather cock ring, two more leather-edged blades curved outward. He wore leather gloves with razor claws over his nails. The helmet through which he wore his long hair in a tail covered the lower half of his face like a muzzle, but with serrated blades like teeth over his mouth.

He was delicious, his dark skin gleaming and tattooed, at its best from every angle, and at every angle dangerous as hell—a not-so-subtle warning of what he was that so many would still ignore if he pulled them in hard enough.

He could have been a wax sculpture, except for his breathing and the way his eyes followed her as she backed away from him as well. There was ferocity in his own gaze almost identical to Lady Sasha’s and also without any outright animosity. His cock twitched, pulsed, making the blade over it glint in the light.

Neve thought getting away from him would help, but his magic followed her, and it had apparently reached the conjoined twins on their own platform as well.

The twins were blindfolded, gagged, their arms tied over their heads. Rope bound their ankles wide apart to spread their legs and give them no purchase or solid ground to brace themselves. They were poised in a seated position above an indifferent machine that slowly pushed thick red dildos into their pussies.

The pale tumbler wore a mask that concealed everything except the glee in his eyes as he walked around the girls with the remote in one hand and a flogger in the other. Even though the dildos were slow, the twins were already writhing with the same fervid need that had wrapped itself so firmly around Neve’s own desire.

Lennon winked at her as she passed, grinned underneath the leather mask. The stretch of the leather over his smile made it decidedly creepy. Lennon flicked the flogger over one of the twins’ breasts. When one twin flinched, the place at the base of their spine where they were connected meant both of them jumped. The twin’s skin went white where the flogger had struck her then flushed into pink lines. He trailed the tails over their shoulders, the bulge in his loose leather trousers prominent, not contained like Lord Mikhail’s.

“Seth and Lars used to scene with them, all four bodies melded together, and Lennon used to swim with Melanie in the mermaid tank, but I think they prefer spending the Funhouse events apart, despite their entanglements the rest of the time. The Funhouse is a chance to step out of the usual boxes…into other boxes, true, but different ones. Arcanium is so similar from week to week. These parties allow for some variety. If you ever have an idea for a change here in the Funhouse events or in your usual funhouse tableau, do not hesitate to ask. I don’t want my children bored.”

“What do you do to keep from getting bored? Figure out how to make the people who’ve been with you longest miserable? Bring new people in to make new people miserable, too?”

He took her by the wrist and whirled her through the dark until she hit a corner in the makeshift hallway. The partition shuddered, but it didn’t fall or collapse. When she raised her arms to protect herself, he grasped her wrists like cuffs and pressed them against her shoulders, which pushed her deeper into the niche.

“If you’re still miserable here, Neve, you’ve no one to blame but yourself.” This time his breath brushed hot across her cheek and over her ear, close. “The price for bringing interesting women into my circus is that those women are often their own worst enemies, but while I’m no hero, I’ll thank you not to make me your villain. You were the one who wanted to know what this was like. I’ve gifted you with opportunities, protections, sensations that most women and even some men would kill for, and all you can do is condemn yourself for what you have because it’s new, strong, something you were unprepared for. Instead of attacking me, why don’t you take the Spider’s advice, love? Why don’t you just fucking take what you want?”

Neve leaned her forehead against his, tilting her head to bring her mouth closer to his until she could almost taste him. “What makes you think I want you?”

He closed the brief gap between them with a surprisingly gentle kiss, moving his hands from her wrists to the walls on either side of her. He broke the kiss with a groan when she ran her palm over the front of his trousers.

“What is it with demons and dicks? Is it a man thing?” Neve asked. “You know, average is perfectly fine.”

Bell laughed as Neve worked his leather trousers open one-handed, but his laughter caught when she wrapped her fingers around him without warning. She didn’t have anything for lubrication, but he didn’t seem to mind as she stroked over the shaft. She advanced, stepping between his legs, forcing him to retreat in an awkward dance, because she still stroked him with a too-tight grip. Even so, he threaded his fingers through her hair and caught her lip in a tender bite.

“Demons are larger to intimidate. It’s the nature of the beast, darling.”

“Why do I doubt female demons have the same inclinations?”

They passed the platform of the human knot that usually resided in the haunted funhouse. They were still missing parts, but now mouths and hands were sewn and working over breasts, balls, clits, cocks, their bodies oiled and slick, a surgical orgy in progress—and by all appearances, as pleasurable for the people in the knot as their time in the haunted funhouse had been terrible.

Bell stopped her against the wall, holding onto the edge of the partition before the tableau as he thrust into her hand. Pre-cum was now more than adequate, as though he’d called it forth, and although he wasn’t as big as Mikhail became, he was still well above average, which would have made her nervous prior to becoming part of Arcanium.

“For most female demons, the only thing they need for intimidation is mere aggression, to take what they want and not need a man to do it, but wanting him anyway. Also the nature of the beast, I’m afraid.”

“Am I intimidating you, then?”

He brushed one of the broad straps of her dress to the side, exposing the swell of her breast almost to the areola, but he seemed in no hurry to bare her entirely. Instead, he claimed the line of her collarbone with his thumb, nearly bruising the hollow, as though he could hook her if he wanted to. “I said ‘most’.”

“Oh, yeah, because you’re so special, so different. You like a good, strong female because that means you’re better and stronger if you get to have her. And you treat her like crap because it reminds her that she’s here at your behest. It’s still an ego trip, just like this whole clockwork circus, or else you’d set us all free, let us all be voluntary, instead of working us until you’re ready to let us go.”

“I’m not making you do this.” He tried to kiss her, but she turned her head.

Neve didn’t stop him, though, as he lowered his mouth to her neck instead. That felt almost as good—tasting over her pulse, down the cord to her shoulder—as they stumbled back into darkness. He made no effort to hold back his moans. Why would he, when he was getting exactly what he wanted from her and he could let anyone know it?

She was the one to shove him into the wall this time, her hand over his cock quickening. He was hot to the touch, as much of a furnace as Mikhail, his cock hotter than the rest of him but his tongue feverish under her jaw. Sweat formed at her temples, at her lower back, and she squeezed her thighs together.

“You’re right. You’re not making me do this. You also can’t make me finish it.” She abruptly pushed herself back, using the fabric draped over the partition to wipe her hand. No one would see the damage in the dark. “Suck on that. Suck on that yourself if you want it done.”

“You bitch.” But he laughed again—laughed and panted with his trousers open on either side of the cock sticking out, hard and needful. “If I were the vengeful sort, you just put yourself in a terrible position, because I’m the one who decides whether you come tonight.”

“What else is new?” She brought her strap up, adjusting her dress back to normal. “Maybe now you’ll understand a little of what you did, what you’ve made me feel ever since you granted my wish.”

He carefully tucked himself into his trousers fully erect, which left a good portion of the head still over the waistband. He covered it with his shirt as though he was barely bothered, which just made Neve more annoyed. He hadn’t spontaneously lost his erection to make himself more comfortable, though, and that assuaged some of her annoyance.

“I’m more than familiar with the sensation of dissatisfaction,” he said, “of lust without an outlet. I’ve been fighting the influence of the incubus and succubus far longer than you, and although it’s been a while since I’ve had a dry streak, I have gone quite a stretch without sex, you know, even when I didn’t have to.”

“I get it. You can have whatever you want whenever you want it, and you’re only without what you want because you choose to be, because you’re such a nice guy.”

He caught her by the hair from behind, pulled her back gently but inexorably, gathering more of her hair in his hands until her neck strained from how far back he’d pulled her head. He bent over her, peering at her upside-down.

“Like Sasha, my dear, I’m not nice.” Bell kissed her forehead then abruptly released her. She bent her knees to catch herself before she collapsed on her ass.

The Tall Man sat on a stool in the next glass case. The Short Man stood on a platform next to him so that he was half a head taller than his companion. Neve bit back a rare expletive at the erection the Tall Man held in his thick-clawed hand. Both men were in full demon mode—sharp teeth, black eyes and certain parts of their anatomy quite exceptional in comparison to humans. Although the Short Man was giant in proportion to his height, he seemed much more manageable when next to the Tall Man’s erection, easily twice the size of Mikhail’s, which was already impossible. Sure, it fit in his giant hand in a proportional way, but still… How did a penis like that even work? Was there enough blood in his body for his heart to pump through it?

“Why don’t you ask them to find out?” Bell sauntered by her. His demeanor suggested a complete lack of the distress and frustration that she’d tried to give him. Now she wanted to slap him again.

The Short Man jerked his cock more quickly as he peered down at her, his grin wide and wicked.

Neve blushed as she realized he probably had an excellent angle down her dress from where he stood.

The Tall Man turned his ponderous head toward her as well, as though he’d only noticed her once the Short Man did. His teeth were so large that they pushed his lips out. When he opened his mouth, he looked like some kind of prehistoric predator, like a dire wolf or a sabretooth tiger. Yet his black eyes were surprisingly placid, his only apparent tension held in the hand moving just as ponderously over his massive cock.

“Neve?” Bell called from the other end of the hall.

But she looked between the two men, the two demons, Mikhail’s magic surrounding her like thick fog as though he’d sent it after her in particular. What she’d done with Bell hadn’t come to any fruition, and fruition was all Mikhail’s magic wanted from her.

She shrugged the straps off her shoulders, pushed them down until the fabric over her breasts folded away. The ruching under her bust kept the dress from sliding down. She watched the two demons intently, watched their reactions to what she let them see.

Moss grunted, nearly doubling over as he swept his hand in a blur over the shaft. Semen spurted over the glass, spilled over his hand.

Ciarán narrowed his eyes into slits like black ink across his face. He found his own faster rhythm, startling for a hand of his size, and he spread his legs wider as he leaned toward her.

Moss muttered something Neve couldn’t understand as he continued to stroke his own cock through the last thin flows. Ciarán gave a series of groans like the Earth itself moving. Moss grinned, needle teeth glinting as he whispered one more unintelligible thing.

The Tall Man snapped his cock into his grip, closing his eyes entirely as jet after impressively thick jet of cum struck the glass right in front of her.

Bell signed in exasperation as he stepped next to her. When he waved his hand, the cum on the glass disappeared as though never there. Moss threw back his head to laugh. Ciarán’s lips curved, pulled back to reveal the full measure of his inhuman teeth.

Bell took Neve’s forearm to lead her on. “Was that really necessary? Not that I’m disappointed you’re having fun, but now Moss and Ciarán are going to have to work twice as hard to build another erection, and as you’ve probably noticed, Ciarán’s takes a bit more effort.”

“You didn’t have to lead me through either funhouse. You could have just put me where you wanted me, turned the key and set me off like a wind-up toy. If you didn’t want me to do things like this, maybe you should have made me different. Or not done anything to me at all.”

“Then you’d still be married to the man who fucked another woman not minutes after trying to fuck you behind my tent, which would have been much better, I’m sure.”

“He was only with her because Arcanium’s a honeytrap,” Neve snapped.

As soon as they were around the corner and in front of the Creature—chained onto his knees, with his wings forced into their full twenty-five-foot span by hooks buried in the leathery skin—Bell shoved her into the light. She flinched when he reached for the straps down her arms, but to her surprise, he yanked them back up her shoulders. The fabric didn’t completely cover her breasts until she adjusted them, but it was clear he’d wanted them to.

“You think Joseph only fucked Maya because of the succubus? Without Sasha plying her trade, your husband still wouldn’t have said no when Maya made her move. Even if she hadn’t gone after him that day, if I hadn’t granted the wish—which I’m incapable of doing, by the way, when I hear one—it would have taken only two weeks before he’d found someone else. By the time you realized he was having affairs, he would have slept with five different women.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know it as surely as you stand here now.” Bell had raised his voice, though he wasn’t quite shouting. “What is this, Neve? I thought we’d reached an agreement that, of my many faults, saving you from your husband wasn’t one of them.”

“What are you doing, Bell? Why are you wasting your time with me like this? Why allow me to do what I did to you? Why take the time to put me through the Funhouse so you can watch my reaction? Do you really think I’m going to come up to you, sway out of my dress and beg you to do for me what my husband couldn’t? Do you think that because Maya is ignoring you and everyone else is paired off, as long as we have similar figures, I might be an adequate substitute?”

Bell stepped forward, pointing at her with such restrained anger that Neve nearly cowered. “No. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t want you warming my bed some nights. But if you think for one second that I made you the rebound when I didn’t even know Maya was going to leave… What I want from you is nothing like what I wanted from her.”

His fine cheekbones twitched from clenching his teeth as he attempted to rein himself in. “I’m not wasting my time with you. If you want to tease me every day without bringing me to completion, I won’t deny you. If you never slide between my sheets, I won’t ever force you. There’s no subterfuge here, no nefarious plan. I wanted to show you the Funhouse because I believed you would appreciate it, and you do.”

The Creature had stopped pretending to be a prisoner. He watched them, snapping his head from one to the other as though watching a tennis match.

“And just as I didn’t change you for my bed, Neve, I certainly didn’t change you for Mikhail’s, regardless of what Lady Sasha believes. I thought you’d enjoy Mikhail, not the other way around. If you haven’t liked what he gives you, why don’t you instruct him on how to properly serve a woman like yourself? Or you can continue distracting yourself with Victor. It’s no skin off my nose, love. I enjoy playing games, but not I’m not playing you. Believe it or not, Neve, I simply enjoy our time together, and I want you to be happy here. Is that a fucking crime?”

Neve blinked. She was pretty sure the Creature did, too. Because Bell almost sounded like he was hurt. She wondered whether Maya’s absence was getting to him more than he thought.

She crossed her arms under her breasts. “How did you not know Maya was going to leave you?”

“I’m not actually omniscient. I seem so to a human being, but there are gaps in my knowledge. Seeing things profoundly relevant to my own fate is one of those gaps. The closer someone is to me, the less I see their future in relation to mine. It’s why Arcanium still needs watchdogs, along with the fact I can’t be in two places at once.”

He made himself small. Neve knew that much. He was two or three inches taller than her, just under average for a man, too lithe for most to see his power, and Neve couldn’t help but think it had to take a certain kind of man to choose to underwhelm, to camouflage himself as unthreatening. There were two kinds of men who did that—those who used it to give themselves the perfect moment to strike when no one expected it, and those with no need to strike. Neve suspected he was a bit of both, and she suspected the latter was the one standing in front of her, because she’d given him every last chance to strike, and he still seemed to take offense that she thought he would.

Bell didn’t say another word as she considered him, didn’t glower or even sulk, didn’t get defensive, didn’t loom. He was a puzzle box she turned over and over in her mind, unsure if solving it would release the cenobites or not.

Finally, without saying anything else, she approached him and tucked her arm around his elbow again.

“How’d that taste?” Bell asked over Neve’s shoulder.

“Barely enough to spread over my tongue. She’s wary, Bell, but she’s not afraid of you.”

Bell covered her hand in the crook of his elbow. “Good.”

Neve looked over her shoulder at the Creature as he put himself back into imprisoned animal mode. “What was that about?”

“Just getting a second opinion. We should complete the visit and set you up in your exhibit now. We don’t necessarily have to rush through the rest, but we really shouldn’t stop again. Under less formal circumstances, you’d be able to take your time, but I sent the Ringmaster to the front to entertain, which I’ll have to compensate him for. He intensely dislikes direct interaction with guests. I want to relieve him as soon as possible.”

“If he dislikes people so much, he might have chosen the wrong profession,” Neve said.

“There are perks, and as a rule, he rarely has to deal with people he’d rather be torturing in a similarly fashioned dungeon.” Bell eased them away from the werewolf, enclosed in a metal cage framed like an open Iron Maiden. In the haunted funhouse, he wore pants. Not so in the Funhouse event, where he’d been stripped completely to display his hairiness and the strangeness of his transformation. His cock and scrotum were shackled like the rest of him, and he surged against the chains strapping him into the cage. He’d also been muzzled in metal, which concealed his teeth but not his seeking tongue.

Neve stopped a few feet behind Bell. “Is he a prisoner or not?”

“He’s on probation. He’s calm enough when released but quite an animal in the sack. He’s sometimes put on the circuit if he’s been a good boy.”

“The circuit?”

“You’ll see. There has to be some mystery in life.”

“That’s where you want me, isn’t it?”

His silence in the darkness was answer enough.

Maya rested on the next platform, reclined supine on an inclined bench and wearing only a pair of black panties. Her gaze followed Bell and Neve until they were right in front of her. Bell stepped onto the platform, trailing his fingertips up the valley of Maya’s spine.

She rolled her shoulders to shrug him away. “I agreed that you could hurt me, Bell. But don’t think I agreed to it because I wanted everything back. This is for the Funhouse. That’s it.” She turned her head around to face the back of the wall. “Save it for the audience.”

“Of course,” he said quietly. Bell turned to a surgical tray of hooks, rings and a coil of silver chain. “Maya’s a genuine masochist with an appetite for contrition. Sometimes she chooses scarification. Needleplay. Branding. In this case, corset piercing. I have a potion that heals wounds as though they were never there. It gives me and the Ringmaster a perpetually blank canvas, and Funhouse regulars believe we’re not truly hurting her, because her skin remains flawless from session to session.”

“The Ringmaster?”

“He’ll whip her during tonight’s entertainment.”

Neve furrowed her brow, staring at the back of Maya’s head as though she could send concern through the woman’s scalp. “You mean that great big bullwhip he uses in the haunted funhouse? I’ve seen them used only once in a scene, and it wasn’t the way the Ringmaster uses it.”

“He’s still pissed I won’t let him wield the glass-knotted whip in the funhouse anymore,” Bell said.

“Do you know the damage it does? Not just surface damage. It can crack ribs, traumatize organs. I don’t understand how that can feel good, and I don’t understand how you can let it happen…”

Maya turned back around, offering a weak smile to Neve, although she wouldn’t acknowledge Bell as he stepped down from the platform. “Whatever damage he does can be undone. It’s not about feeling good. Sometimes I don’t want to feel good. It isn’t like the scenes you might be more familiar with. Safety and sanity aren’t concerns here. Only consent. Nothing’s happening that I didn’t choose.” She nodded toward the darkness ahead. “Go on. Don’t worry about me.”

“She’s been doing this for years, and she’s still healthy, not a single scar on her that she didn’t want to keep. She’ll be fine.” Bell guided Neve with his hand on the small of her back, but he stared at the brushed concrete floor instead of at Maya, keeping his head down until they’d turned the corner.

Neve bit back the impulse to ask if he was okay, but Bell straightened, inhaled sharply as though to bring himself back and hide the feelings deeper. He clearly didn’t want to discuss it, and she wasn’t his therapist.

The Horned God was next. She’d never heard him say a word, and on the occasions he ate with the rest of them, he sat with the demons. His eyes weren’t black and his teeth weren’t sharp, but he bore several racks of antlers—one set on his head, one on the tops of his shoulders and one emerging from the back of his shoulder blades. He was furred from the V of his hips down, his penis visible through the thicket of thick, white hair but not as proudly shown off as many of the others’, and not erect.

He was just an oddity, his skin so gray it was almost blue, his nipples pierced with delicate silver rings, his white-irised eyes wide and unblinking. There was something terribly penetrating about those eyes, as though they could see more deeply than the impenetrable eyes of the demons.

Neve cried out at the next glass-case tableau. A man done up in thick leather over his ripped fireplug body held the head of the carousel engineer, Caroline.

Just her head.

It had been severed halfway down her neck, sinew swaying from the bottom, the uneven place on her spine and opening of her throat visible from the base. Her blonde and blue-streaked hair was wound around the thick man’s hand so that her head poised just over where his cock would be.

The rest of her body was on the other side of the tableau, on her knees while a whipcord-thin man strapped head to toe in similar thick leather felt up the naked body of a headless woman.

Caroline twisted around in the shorter man’s hand from where she’d been nuzzling the leather over his cock. She smiled. The headless body waved to Neve.

“That…that…” If Neve hadn’t known any better, she probably would have assumed there was some kind of mirror making it seem like two women were one. Knowing it was real was what made it so awful. “That’s not okay, Bell.”

He laughed. “It was her idea. We moved the torture carousel to later in the event because she wanted to do this in the Funhouse instead.”

Valorie came tearing through the halls in a translucent white latex bodysuit, with only nose holes for her to breathe. She skittered like a ghostly, possessed demon in an impossibly contorted body, her mouth open and eyes rolled back. Neve gave another little scream, but it wasn’t nearly as terrible as Caroline’s literally beheaded body being used, which bordered on necrophilia and reminded her of a disturbing series of true crimes.

The next tableau showed Christina, the Human Torso without any limbs, roped up with rubber tubing. The places where her limbs had been reduced to nubs appeared more cleanly removed, the visible interior not flesh but mechanical, as though she were an android who had been mined for spare parts. She sparked with malfunction as she struggled against the tubing holding her aloft.

On his knees, the tattooed man was nearly unrecognizable because his whole body was airbrushed a light green. She only recognized him because he’d kept his piercings, which looked even stranger on a man made to look like an alien. Troy teased Christina’s biomechanical folds with his split tongue, both sides surprisingly dexterous.

The man in the next glass case could hardly be called a man. If Neve had thought Caroline was the most disturbing thing the Funhouse could offer, she stood corrected.

He wasn’t just another Human Torso, although he was missing his limbs. His had been severed farther up his legs and arms, leaving him nothing but a torso alone. There were obvious scars where he’d been stitched together.

A tube had been inserted into his throat to allow him to breathe, another one lower for feeding, because his nose had been removed and his mouth had been sewn and healed shut. His eyes had been removed, the eyelids grafted closed. His ears had been removed and covered. He had the barest features of a face, his skull left intact but everything else scarred over, and not in the clean, featureless way of the Gentleman.

What was left showed signs of having been a man once, with black tattoos all over his skin, his chest and abdomen those of someone who had clearly wanted to look good, a five o’clock shadow over his chin and scalp.

He’d been left only his head, torso, cock, balls and anus. A silver plug had been inserted into his ass, and a golem in a tight nurse’s dress, face mask and the usual deadened eyes of her kind worked lubricated, gloved hands over his genitals without enthusiasm. The lube glistened over his nearly purple cock.

In case anyone thought the man was nothing but a rubber mannequin, his muscles twitched when the nurse stroked over his lower abdomen to his navel, and when she focused on his tight, dark sac, his cock pulsed and moved as though blindly searching for what had given it pleasure. He shook his head, tried to arch. It was like watching a man wearing a straitjacket in a sensory deprivation room. Touch was all he got to experience, and he fought to feel it.

“My God, Bell. What did you do?”

“Why not ask what he did?” Bell’s voice was exceedingly pleasant and exceedingly cold. “We sometimes display the Blob in Oddity Row if there’s a cool breeze, but otherwise, we mostly bring him out for Funhouse events, because it’s the only time he gets to come these days. It’s not like he can take care of it himself or ask someone else, can he? I’ll eventually give him some of his senses back, perhaps once he’s gone completely mad and earns the mercy of a clean slate. But I explained plainly what it was he would do in my Funhouse, and he wants to be here. He told me himself. So don’t you ‘my God’ me.”

Bell brought her to the next glass-case tableau, this one empty except for a luxurious four-poster bed turned down in red silk that wasn’t practical at all but looked amazing. The walls had been draped in red velvet like the oddity tent curtains. The entire feel of it was like some gothic fantasy boudoir, lit by a pair of golden lamps on either end.

The glass wall slid to the side.

His lips brushed her ear as he ran his hands down her arms. “This is your stop.”