Bloodrush Read online

  She stared at him without speaking for several moments. During the silence, he found himself entranced by her lips, which looked…delicious. He felt guilty for even thinking it. It’d been a long time since he’d allowed himself to think of another woman in even a vaguely sexual way. It often wasn’t easy, but until now he’d managed to still his roving eye, which had been so active prior to Janine. No other woman could ever seriously tempt him when he had her to come home to every day. But this woman’s mouth changed that. He wondered if her lips were as soft as they looked. He wondered whether they would be as cold as the hand on his knee if he were to kiss them.

  Her hand came away from his knee.

  He drew in another big breath and expelled it. He only became aware of his physical reaction to her touch after she’d removed her hand. He was hard. Achingly hard.

  A corner of her mouth subtly twitched, hinting at a hidden emotion. Was she smirking or smiling at him? Maybe a little bit of both. She was playing with him. Toying with him, like a spider prolonging the misery of a bug ensnared in its web. And it amused her to do so. This was her idea of entertainment. It should have bothered him, but he found he was oddly okay with it.

  “Very well, David.”

  He shook his head. “Um…what?”

  “Here’s the rest of it, as you put it.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Here is your other choice. Please listen carefully.”

  He shrugged, his brow furrowing again. “Okay.”

  “Excellent.”

  She clasped hands with him. He felt that bone deep chill again, only now it was many times more intense, probably because of the direct skin-to-skin contact. The chill spread from his hands up the length of his arms. She leaned closer to him, peered into his eyes, her expression very intent. There was still no obvious emotion he could read, but she was studying him as closely as anyone ever had.

  “You can come with me to my secret place.”

  “You mean…your home?”

  “Yes. We can go there now, be there in a matter of moments, if you accept my offer. I’ll show you pleasures beyond anything you ever dreamed possible. You’ll have power. You’ll live forever.” A hint of a smile. “In a manner of speaking.”

  David managed a nervous laugh. “You make it sound like an offer I can’t refuse.”

  “I’ve already told you, you can refuse it.”

  Obviously she’d never seen The Godfather.

  “Wait. What do you mean…’in a manner of speaking’?”

  She ignored the question and leaned closer still, until their faces were separated by just inches. Her cold breath frosted his cheeks. “If you choose to come with me, you can never return to your former life. I will own you. Completely and forever. You will do my bidding as long as you exist.”

  Another nervous laugh. “Oh. Really?”

  “Yes.”

  The cast of her features still conveyed an intense curiosity, but was that a hint of something predatory in her eyes he was seeing now? Her grip on his hands tightened by a very small—but perceptible—degree. The chill her touch conveyed now permeated his entire body. She licked her lips. His heart stuttered at the sight of that pink wedge of tongue. She tilted her head slightly and her face came closer. Their lips were no more than an inch apart now.

  “Do you mind if I kiss you, David?”

  He blinked moisture from his eyes.

  Janine, he thought.

  He knew he had to keep thinking of her. Understood suddenly that it was the only way to break this spell. More than anything else, he knew he couldn’t allow this woman to kiss him. Because if that happened, what remained of his free will would evaporate in an instant.

  Janine.

  I can’t do this.

  I can’t.

  I CAN’T!

  Her lips grazed his mouth. He felt her cold breath steal between his lips. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I need your answer, David. Now.”

  He sniffled.

  Janine…oh, God…I’m so sorry…

  He swallowed thickly. “Yes.”

  For the first time, a fully formed smile spread across her pale as snow face. “Yes.” Her voice dropped to a slightly huskier register. “You’re mine, David. All mine.” She cupped his face in her ice-cold hands and kissed him fully on the mouth. He groaned. An arctic chill filled his lungs, took root deep inside him, making his whole body tremble uncontrollably.

  She broke the kiss off and clasped hands with him again.

  “Now we go to my secret place.”

  “And then what?”

  She smiled for a second time. This time there was something secretive in it.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Okay.”

  It was strange. Now that she’d kissed him, thoughts of Janine seemed far away. He was betraying her, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  And yet, this woman scared him. No amount of mental trickery could disguise that. Or perhaps she was allowing him to remain in touch with his fear of her for obscure reasons.

  He knew only one thing with absolute certainty.

  She was right.

  He belonged to her now.

  Completely.

  4: HER SECRET PLACE

  She was nuzzling his neck now. Her cold lips raised goose bumps on his trembling flesh. Something…unnatural was happening. There was power in her kisses. Real, palpable power. Each application of her lips to his flesh was like a shot of anesthetic. He was becoming numb. He felt disconnected from his body. It was scary and fascinating at the same time. They were still sitting on the bench in the mall, but the mall was swathed in a shimmering white light. The shoppers walking past the bench were indistinct gray shapes moving in the light, nothing more than vague outlines. They didn’t seem real at all now, more like suggestions of people, faint pencil sketches on an otherwise empty sheet of white paper. He felt sort of like a suggestion of a person himself, able to cling only to the faintest notion of who he was. I’m…David? But the matter of his identity seemed of little consequence. He felt lighter than air, like a balloon floating in the sky on a warm summer breeze, drifting ever higher and higher. It was the most wonderfully freeing sensation he’d ever experienced.

  And then it was gone.

  Total blackness displaced the tableau of shimmering white light.

  The feeling of near weightlessness verging on non-existence ceased in the same abrupt instant. He was in his body again. He felt the ground beneath his feet. He heard sounds. A metallic clinking. Followed by someone moaning. Though he couldn’t see anything, it was immediately clear this was not a sexual sound. It was the sound of someone in misery. The moan trailed off into a pitiable whine, followed by a deep inhalation of tortured breath.

  A disturbing thought occurred to him. He was dead. This was Hell. He’d died on that bench in the mall. The nameless girl hadn’t been a girl at all, but was instead some kind of demon. He recalled the way her kisses had numbed him. Wasn’t it possible that, with each kiss, she’d been draining the life out of him through some unfathomable supernatural means?

  He’d been in a crowded shopping mall a few moments ago. Now he was in this dark place of misery and pain, transported here by some inexplicable method. In a world in which something that incredible could happen, of course it was possible.

  He heard a thump, followed by a wet, squelching sound. A scream followed. High and piercing. Then another squelching sound. David didn’t need to see what was happening to know what had occurred. What he’d heard was the sound of a blade, likely a rather large one, being thrust into living human flesh and then withdrawn. The victim screamed again. This time the sound was abruptly cut off after another loud thump, which David guessed was the big blade hacking into flesh again. Something hit the ground somewhere just ahead of him and came rolling toward him.

  A head, he thought.

  That’s what I just heard. Some poor bastard just got his head chopped off and it came sailing in my direction. Shit.


  The smart thing to do was obvious—get as far away from the invisible murderer as possible. He turned slowly in the perfect darkness, moving with utmost care as he searched in vain for some dim source of light. His whole body was trembling—and not just from the wintry chill in the air. There was nothing. Nowhere to go. Any possible escape route, in the unlikely event one even existed, was perfectly hidden.

  The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he became aware of a presence somewhere behind him. A presence coming toward him—from the direction he’d been facing a moment ago.

  Death is coming for me. This is the end of my life.

  If this was truly the end, he could at least face it with some degree of dignity. Better that than to go stumbling blindly into the featureless darkness. He’d trip over something and go sprawling to the ground within moments, then wind up crawling and begging pitifully for his life as Death bore down on him. And probably pissing his pants in the bargain.

  Screw that.

  He turned slowly around again, willing the tremors to leave his body as the thing in the darkness came closer still. He could sense it out there, moving slowly, coming straight at him, able somehow to see him despite the unbroken blackness.

  The voice, when it spoke, was what he expected to hear.

  “You are mine.”

  Her.

  He sighed. “Yeah. I suppose I am.”

  At the sound of his voice, a chorus of moans and entreaties arose from the darkness. It was the sound of the helpless begging for succor, for release from their bonds. Other voices urged him to run before it was too late. He ignored them all. Everyone here was beyond any hope of rescue, himself included.

  “You know what amuses me, David?”

  Her voice was as chilly and devoid of emotion as it had been during their strange conversation on that mall bench. It was impossible to imagine this creature being ‘amused’ by anything, but this was her game. Her rules. He was nothing but a pawn. A puppet. He had no choice but to play along.

  “No. But I suppose you’ll tell me.”

  She was very close now, perhaps only a few feet away. Her proximity triggered the same mixture of terror and arousal he remembered from before.

  “Your notion of dying with dignity. You must know by now you’ll only have as much dignity as I allow you. If I want you to beg for your life, you will beg. Understand?”

  David took an involuntary step backward. “Stay out of my head, lady. This reading my thoughts thing is freaking me out.”

  Another step back.

  And another.

  He sensed her rushing toward him. There was no sound of footsteps. It was as if she were gliding above the ground.

  Hell, she probably is. Maybe she’s not a demon at all. Maybe she’s some kind of fucking witch.

  “Stay where you are!”

  Her tone was stentorian, louder than usual and with a discernible tinge of anger. It was a terrible sound, more awful by far than the now silenced screams of the person she’d just killed. Her voice thrummed with power, conveying her will through streams of energy that effectively locked his feet to the ground. Further retreat was impossible. Disobedience was unthinkable. His head was hurting and his stomach was in knots. He hunched down, hiding his face with his shaking hands. Somewhere very nearby someone was whimpering. In a moment he realized the sound was coming from his own throat. He felt like something low, something less than a man. He was a worm beneath her boot, waiting to be stepped on and crushed out of existence.

  “I’m sorry. I-I…”

  “Shut up.”

  His mouth snapped shut.

  “Drop your hands and stand up straight. And stop cringing.”

  He did as she said without hesitation—there was no other choice.

  She said nothing further for a while, but she was even closer now. He felt her frosty breath on his cheeks. He was turned on again. It was insane. He was in a place of horror, a place that felt like a chamber of hell, a repository of damned souls. Her “secret place,” as she’d called it, was a nightmare land inhabited by people like himself, other flies she’d drawn effortlessly into her web, and here he would spend what remained of his life, probably being tortured without mercy until he was just another pitiful moaning husk lurking in the darkness. And yet, in this moment, the terror he felt at the prospect of this bleak future was not enough to suppress his desire for this creature. When he felt her cold fingertips caress his chin, the light touch was nearly enough to bring him to orgasm. The feeling was so intensely pleasurable that tears welled in his eyes when she pulled her hand away.

  A cold exhalation of breath touched his cheeks. Accompanying it was a soft, almost inaudible sound, uncharacteristic for her—soft laughter. It should have angered him, but all he felt now was a deep sense of resignation. And regret. He knew he would never see Janine again, would never have a chance to apologize for his weakness.

  “Stop thinking about her.”

  David shoved any further thoughts of Janine back down into his subconscious. It wasn’t easy, but the primal terror evoked by the fierceness of her tone provided all the motivation necessary.

  “Would you like a better look at your surroundings?”

  Well, that was a strange way to phrase it. A better look implied he’d had some kind of actual glimpse of the place at some point. Such was not the case. And, listening again to the low moans and whimpers issuing from seemingly every direction, he wasn’t sure that was a bad thing.

  “Um…”

  “I sense reluctance.”

  David scratched the back of his head and frowned. “Um…yeah. It’s just all this screaming and so forth. The moans and the carrying on. I find it sort of disturbing.”

  To understate.

  “I see.” A brief, contemplative pause ensued. When she spoke again, there was a note of genuine curiosity in her voice. “Tell me something, David. Whom would you rather be—the person suffering, or the person inflicting the pain?”

  “Neither.”

  “That isn’t a choice.”

  “Oh. Well. Shit.” There was no good answer to her question, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what she wanted to hear. “The latter, I guess.”

  “Smart boy. Too many of your kind are constricted by artificial notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ I sensed you were better than that from the moment I set eyes on you.”

  David’s frown deepened. “What do you mean?”

  “On the surface, you are like most other humans, a believer in morality and the concept of consequences for misdeeds. Beneath the surface, though, lurks a capacity for boundless cruelty. For infinite sadism. It was this quality that first drew me to you.”

  “Well, that’s just crazy talk. I’m not a bad person. I’m not…cruel.”

  She laughed. “But you are, David, as you’ll soon discover. I’ll show you the truth about yourself. But before I can do that, I have to show you my truth.”

  Countless flickering pinpoints of light flared to life all around him, tall candles burning in thousands of sconces embedded in the high walls of a vast cavern. The moans of the suffering were suddenly louder, as was the metallic clanking of chain links as they cringed away from the glare of the dancing columns of flame. It was hard to tell how many people were imprisoned here, but the number had to be in the high hundreds, at least. Most of them were bound by chains bolted into the stone walls of the cavern. Iron manacles fastened about their wrists and ankles severely limited range of motion, which meant they were forced to intermittently move their bowels and empty their bladders wherever they happened to be chained. They were forced to wallow in filth. The entire place reeked of piss and shit and vomit. How had he not noticed that until now? Dozens of other prisoners hung suspended from chains dangling from the roof of the cavern. A closer look revealed that a number of the chained men and women were dead. Some had been dead a long while, their bodies mere husks. Others were freshly dead, the scent of their ripe and rotting corpses battling for supremacy amongst all
the other putrid odors. Those still alive were nude and emaciated, their flesh ghostly pale from the lack of sunlight.

  In the midst of the cavern were a number of roughly constructed wooden tables, upon which were strapped other emaciated persons (some living, some decidedly not), as well as numerous devices of torture David recognized as being from the middle ages. He couldn’t name them all, but he was able to identify an Iron Maiden, a Breaking Wheel, and a Spanish Tickler, which was used to tear skin from the bodies of its victims. He recalled being fascinated by descriptions of such devices when he read about them in a long ago history class. Now, however, he only felt repulsion. These devices weren’t museum piece curiosities. Here, in this stinking section of Hell, they were all in active use.

  “This isn’t Hell, David.”

  David choked back a tide of nausea and focused on the girl again. In the darkness, he’d thought of her only as a creature, as a thing, an…it. An evil thing. The Devil posing as a human female. But the notion was hard to hold on to now that he could see her again. She was evil. Of that he was certain. The evidence was all around him. Whatever manner of thing she was, though, human or not, he was certain she was actually female. A thing composed of flesh and blood rather than a demonic spirit. And he suspected much of her power was in some way rooted in her femininity.

  “About that you’re right, David. I am not the Devil.” She smiled. “I’m something better.”

  David was close to losing the battle against the tide of nausea that had been rising within him. The rich stink of the place was thick in his nostrils. His throat felt constricted. He hunched down and braced his hands on his knees, struggling for breath.

  He glanced up at her and managed to squeak out a few words. “Help…I’m…dying.”

  Her smile broadened. “About that, David, you are also right.”

  He went very still.

  Something in her eyes told him she wasn’t joking. His gaze went to the long sword she was holding. Dark red blood dripped from the tip of the curved blade. The blood, he realized, of the man he’d heard her decapitate only moments earlier. He tensed. Any second now she’d raise the sword again and the razor-sharp steel would chop through his own neck and liberate his head from his body, which at least would have the benefit of putting him out of his goddamn misery.