Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (6 page)

Julia.

I had been so wrapped up in the
extraordinary things I was witnessing that I had completely
forgotten about Julia.

I turned and ran toward the trees only
to come to an abrupt stop. The mulatto was already back in the
clearing and Julia was caught in her grasp. I watched, horrified,
as the mulatto grasped one of Julia’s breasts, causing her to wince
in pain. Julia struggled fruitlessly as the mulatto’s lips closed
around her ear. The mulatto sucked on her ear and then glanced up
at the dark-haired woman. I stumbled toward Julia.

“
L-Let her go!”

But it was as if I hadn’t spoken and
the mulatto pulled her lips away from Julia’s ear to address the
dark-haired woman.

“
I like this one, Auria.
Can we keep her for a few days?”

“
No!” Her voice was sharp
and shrill with anger. “I have had to watch her fawn over what is
mine for far too long. Kill her.”

The mulatto shrugged. One moment Julia
was struggling in the monster’s grip. The next moment, the mulatto
grasped my darling wife by the hair and snapped her neck in a
quick, merciless motion. I heard it snap from where I stood and
then Julia sagged lifeless against the monster, her eyes open as if
she were gazing at something only she could see in the twilight
sky. The monster let her fall to the ground and stepped over her as
if she were a log in her path.

The Bible fell from my grasp, as
ineffectual as the leaves it fell among. I wasn’t aware I had
fallen to my knees until I felt the grass against my hands. I
fought to control nausea as I stared at Julia’s body, not wanting
to believe what I had just seen.

“
Julia,” I whispered,
trying to crawl toward her.

But the mulatto was before me. She
moved past me, grasping the collar at the back of my neck. She
dragged me backward with strength beyond that of any human
being.

The clearing wavered as the world
seemed to cave in before my eyes, hurtling toward me. I closed my
eyes against the sight, and when I opened them again, I was in a
completely different place.

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.