CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There’s a note on my bed when I arrive back in my room. ‘My chambers,’ it says, ‘midnight’ in gold script.
I sit on the bed and place the note aside wondering if I can summon the energy to even move. Another murder scene and I should be hysterical, out of my mind, but when I search myself, I find I’m oddly numb—not as affected as I should be, as would be common in any kind of civilized society.
But that’s the thing, apart from the redhead, no one really seemed too concerned about the boy with half his head missing, or poor Stephanie, or any of this madness, really.
So I’ll go. Having the lockdown lifted will help. I’ll go to the Professor and have him replace these thoughts with fresh horrors, let the heaviness of his hand strip away whatever humanity is left inside this husk.
Come the hour, I put on Gran’s coat and shuffle out into the castle proper. I do my best to avoid the area where the boy was found, skirting around the perimeter halls and only once having to pull myself into the shadows to avoid being seen.
I mean, it’s far from smart, prancing around the castle half-naked when a serial killer is on the loose, but such is my desperation I’m willing to take the risk.
I arrive at the Professor’s chambers nervous and unsettled. The murders, the imaginary fight against Cassandra, Darkwood practically throwing me out last time… These negative emotions fester inside me. They grow.
I consider asking Darkwood about the murders again, but would that be prudent? He did seem upset when that Stephanie girl was discovered. Nevertheless, concern and knowledge are two very different things. Just because Damien wants the killer to be found, to be punished, doesn’t mean he knows who they are. And punish them he would. Of that I have no doubt.
Unless he is the killer, I remind myself, thinking back to his former occupation.
But I’m here all the same. I don’t know what waits for me beyond this door, what he has in store tonight, but I need this, this release.
Pleasure, a deeper part of me considers, and deeper still, power.
The door opens and the Professor gives me a look-over, ushering me inside.
A chill runs through me in the little time it takes him to move around me. He waves the door shut and crosses his arms, his look just as inquisitive as it was during my first visit to these chambers.
“I hear there’s been another incident,” he says, but there’s no air of sorrow in his expression. His eyes have been overtaken by something else, by that same, unquenchable hunger I’ve seen before.
“A boy,” I tell him, swallowing down the lump in my throat.
“Mmm,” he murmurs, continuing to pace around me.
“You’re not upset?” I remark, too curious to keep this to myself.
“On the contrary, my lamb,” he says, his tone steady. “Devastated.” He stops in front of me. “But I must tend to the living. It is they who require my assistance, not the dead.”
I nod. “And the rogue shadows? What are they?”
“That can wait until class, for I have a different kind of education in mind tonight. The coat,” he says.
As before, I let the coat fall away and the chilled air of the Professor’s chambers envelop me.
A light smile brushes its way across his lips. “Follow me. I have something special to show you tonight.”
He extends a hand, a space in the wall that was stone opening into a perfect oval, the edges sparking with energy and only a black void beyond.
And you’re going to do it, aren’t you? I ask myself. You’re going to follow him right into that murder hole.
But, as per usual, whatever power Darkwood has over me forces my feet into capitulation. They move of their own accord until I’m beyond the wall, the Professor moving downwards in front of me.
I’m surprised to find it’s a staircase, spiraling down into the depths of the castle.
Light disappears, leaving only the glow of the wall on my left. Shards of light illuminate the top landing and two steps below. After clearing those, it’s pitch-black. I begin to lose my bearings as we coil down into the darkness.
I sense yet another change in temperature. Humidity is high in the air. Just a minute into our descent, it’s sticky against my skin. An iron door opens, and we come into a low-roofed dungeon.
Because that’s what this is. There is no question about it.
It takes my eyes a while to adjust, for the dungeon is only lit by firelight. It’s nothing like the strange mix of ancient modernity in the rest of the castle. But when my eyes do adjust, I stop in my tracks.
Adorning every wall are sinister implements of torture—chains, whips, cages and coffins, iron, metal, and leather. The dungeon floor itself is no less empty. Odd machines and contraptions fill it—wheels, boxes, some spiked, others with channels and blades.
It’s a serial killer’s wet dream.
Told you.
With horror, I realize the rumors are true. Darkwood’s personal dungeon is no myth. It’s a reality—a sickening truth. If Sabrina laid her eyes on this, she’d straight up hit the floor.
The Professor himself turns before me, arms wide. “How do you like my office, my pet?”
I can’t reply. How the hell am I supposed to answer that?
But he’s proud of it, a toddler showing off their toy room.
He steps forward, stroking my face with the back of his hand.
I flinch away.
“So soft,’ he says. “A petal. But,” he looks around, “which device is worthy of such a rose, because that is what’s required of the next trial.”
Him and his fucking trials.
I shake quietly, my heart thundering against my ribcage.
I try and comfort myself, but no implement I can see looks like it was built for anything other than pain.
I don’t know why, but I try to cover myself.
Darkwood smiles, moving forward and taking my arms. He stretches them out, holding me naked and exposed before him.
He admires my body. “A petal indeed.” He runs his hand over my abdomen and down towards my sex.
“The rack,” he says, which sounds ominous as fuck.
He lifts me easily, hands under my thighs, walking me to what appears to be a wooden table in the center of the room.
As we get closer, I see the table is actually a rectangular frame with multiple wooden rollers down the center.
Leave, I think, but my body will not comply.
The Professor lifts me onto the table, laying me on my back on the rollers. He binds my wrists tight with rope above my head, lashing my ankles together likewise. Satisfied, he pulls the bonds once more, smiling wider when I cry out.
Because I’m not sure if I signed up for this, to be literally tortured, but I’m snared in his trap now. There’s no more freedom to be found.
The spanking? That I could handle, painful as it was. And the Fire Lash…that too was bearable, just, but this? I’m not so sure.
With me secured, the Professor takes his time savoring my submission. There’s no denying the pleasure in his eyes as he studies my prone body.
He leans close to my ear, his seductive voice doing little to make this more tolerable. “You don’t know what you’re in for, little lamb, but know the pain I produce here, and it will be substantial, will increase your power significantly.” He looks to the corner of the room. “See already how the shadows hunger for it.”
Flat on my back, I can only turn my head to the side, my breathing increasing with my panic as I see spectral shapes and shadows dancing there.
I feel them, the pull.
To my side, Darkwood begins to strip, removing his shirt and pants carefully, folding them and placing them on a nearby table.
He motions his head at a large handle attached to the side of the table. “That, my pet, increases tension on your bonds. Each crank will bring with it more pain, slowing stretching you out until your joints dislocate or simply separate completely. Sometimes things go ‘pop,’” he says, emphasizing the ‘p.’ “Bone, cartilage, ligaments.”
He strips off his underwear and his cock comes free big as a baby’s arm. Forked veins run across the shaft, the plumb head smooth.
The Professor catches me looking. “Does it please you, my cock? It soon will, I assure you. You will beg for it before we are done here.”
I shift uneasily.
“Shall we begin?” he says. “Simply say ‘stop’ when you’re ready for me to fuck you, to take your innocence.”
I stiffen. So that is what he intends—to deflower me.
What else? I consider. The whole time, this whole dance, has been leading to this. It’s here and I want to what? Run away?
But I never pictured I would lose my virginity in a dungeon strapped to a torture table.
“And now,” he says, “the spell, to transfer pain to power.”
He speaks it, lips barely moving and the spell itself largely inaudible, but I feel it coursing through me, my skin becoming sensitive and hot.
I will try, I tell myself. I will take whatever he has in store for me.
But with the first crank of the lever, I start to think otherwise.
My ankles and wrists pull away from my body, stretching me out, my spine straight against the rollers. I breathe in rapid puffs.
The shadows scatter, running out to my extremities.
The Professor cranks the lever again, his thick cock standing to attention. I scream as my joints are pulled to their limits.
Already? I think, concern welling up.
I’m dizzy, the room starting to spin at the edges. I scream out in agony, my vision beginning to blur.
“Any time,” he reminds me in a steady voice, and cranks the lever again.
The pain is so excruciating now I cannot let out another scream. It seems like all the energy has left my muscles, my vocal cords paralyzed. Instead, I leave my mouth open as my breasts flatten into pancakes and my joints pull to their absolute extremity.
This can’t be happening.
Told you, says stupid Imaginary Sabrina.
“Are you ready to be fucked yet, little lamb?”
Yes, no. I cannot decide. Anything to end this pain, to be free of it even for a few minutes.
“Very well.” Another pull of the lever and my broken body actually cracks. Something gives way—I’m not sure what. I am on the very edge of destruction. Of absolute dismemberment. I can only inhale in short rasps, shadows, pale light, and Darkwood’s figure blurred into a shapeless mass.
“The next pull of this lever will break you. Trust me on this.”
Darkwood holds the lever, baiting me.
I relent.
I thought I was stronger than this, but my body can’t take any more.
All that bravado and I tap out so soon.
“Stop,” I pant.
He smiles, hand lifting off the lever. “As you wish.”
He moves to the foot of the rack, stepping free of the shadows. I see more scars there, magical mishaps, but also the rigid muscle of a man in his prime. His tattoos swim, cover almost every inch of his torso and chest.
He takes hold of a smaller lever in the corner and begins to turn it. My legs begin to spread apart.
“There we go.”
The Professor keeps turning until I’m spread-eagled on the table, stretched to breaking point, my sex yawning open before him.
He kneels up onto the roller between my legs, eyes fixed on my pussy.
The chamber is dim but for the firelight. Shadowy figures crawl out behind instruments of torture and cruelty all around me. Darkwood kneels between my legs like an Adonis, all playfulness gone and stripped away to reveal nothing but the sadistic devil below.
He leans over and buries his face between my ample breasts, now flattened by the rack. He licks down the center, the warmth of his tongue offering me a hint of pleasure. He runs his tongue up and down the side of a breast, sounds of delight leaving his scarred lips. I squeeze my eyes shut, mixed waves of agony and pleasure roaring through my system as his teeth close around a nipple.
I cannot help the feeling it has on me. Even captured, his prisoner, my body responds. My cunt grows wet as his teeth graze the rosy soldiers on my chest.
His big hand cups my sex, the heel of his palm pressing into my clit. He leans further and nibbles at my lower lip before kissing me in full. I press my tongue forward to meet his, desire and arousal flooding me fast.
He breaks away, looks into my very soul. He stares at me, gauging the reaction of his prey, this wolf. The tender folds of my sex are swollen. They welcome his fingers as they slip easily into the warmth beyond.
He holds his beautiful cock out, the head of it like a mace.
This is it, I realize. This is the weapon he plans to take my virginity with.
“And now,” he says, guiding his cock towards my folds. “We begin.”
His smile grows crooked, the corners of his mouth lifting. “Say it, little lamb. Say you want my cock.”
Fighting is useless. I know this now.
My lips part, each syllable falling softly. “I want your cock.”
The word is dirty in my mouth, foreign.
The head of the Professor’s cock presses up against the opening of my hole as his body rocks over me. He draws it out, letting out a long grunt, his eyes half-shut. He is keenly watching my face as he shifts forward and into my tight little entrance.
I grimace. I can’t help it. His dick is far too big for my me, even prepared as I am, soaking wet around him.
He thrusts gently forward again, and his cock head slides in.
“Yes,” he hisses, clearly amused. “There we are.”
Doubt floods my head, but the desire to be taken is stronger. It soars through, makes me drunk for him.
“Please,” I whimper.
He rocks his hips back and then thrusts forward brutally, my ankles pulling in pain as he buries half his shaft into the tight confines of my young cunt.
And just like that, with a bright burn of pain, I am a virgin no longer.
I roll my head from side to side on the roller as he moves out and shifts forward again, pressing deeper into my pussy.
It’s strange at first, the initial unpleasantness quickly giving way to something new. Each time I welcome him back inside of me, low noises erupt from my throat, the discomfort slowly dissipating to be replaced with something new and terrifying.
He drowns in the folds of my flesh as he thrusts into me, concentric waves moving over my skin as he fucks me senseless.
I squirm as much as my bonds will allow, my pussy tight, holding him in a vice as his hand roams across my breasts, nails brushing my nipples and sending fresh arousal flowing below. He slaps them one at a time and pulls at my hair as he takes me, fucking me harder and harder until I find myself lifting upwards as best I can to meet his thrusts.
“Yes,” he whispers, clearly enjoying himself, “what a good little slut you are. Say it.”
I scream out as he backhands a breast, the nipple flushing a hot, ruby red.
The pleasure rises. “I’m a good little slut,” I say, panting hard.
“Tell me you’re a dirty fucking whore, bleeding all over my cock.”
The way he’s filling me, stretching me out…
“I’m a dirty fucking whore,” I repeat, breathlessness starting to set in.
The initial pain of the intrusion is slowly replaced with fulfilment, a shift from that primary bee sting to a taboo pleasure and desire to be filled, heat building between my legs as I allow this monster to have his way with me.
Because that’s what the Professor is. I have no doubt about it. This is a man born of the darkness, a man who delights in it. I can see that, see myself in him, my own inky soul, and there I am free. This is what this ritual really is—a union. Of wills. Of desires.
Of darkness.
My nipples stand tall, fiercely pink in the firelight. Beyond, the crevice of my navel bobs up and down. All that remains below is the meeting of our bodies, his dark thatch brushing my sex, his thick shaft lifting out and plunging back into me, glistening with desire.
The pressure on my clit grows, filters back in a loop.
I begin to moan, softly at first but rising in volume while the Professor thrusts on, fingers digging into the soft, puppy flesh of my thighs.
I rise, about to fall into orgasm, when he withdraws.
I gasp as he reaches between my legs, his fingers coming away bloody and wet. He runs them across his chest, marking himself the conqueror. Three streaks of red, a bear claw, remain. He looks down at his handiwork, bringing those same fingers to his mouth and slowly sucking them clean. His eyes shutter closed, and he groans, so low I start to question if he is, in fact, animal.
Why am I not repulsed? I wonder.
He removes his fingers, running them forward towards me slick and hot.
“Open,” he says.
This is all kinds of fucked up, but any compulsion I have to protest or complain is pushed away by a strange lassitude.
I open my mouth and he runs three twined fingers inside.
“Suck.”
I suck and taste myself, the iron bite of my blood and deeper, earthier taste of my arousal.
“That’s a good little lamb,” the Professor purrs, lightly fucking my mouth with his fingers.
Satisfied, he lets them slide free and steps back.
Naked, cock still a stiff arm between his legs, he shifts around me, undoing my bonds.
“Let me see that pretty ass of yours,” he says, halting in front of me. I flip over and lie on my stomach. I wait patiently for him to reattach the bonds, which he does with practiced ease, because this is a man well used to such devices. Torture to him may as well be preparing dinner—a box to tick off in the humdrum of everyday life.
In a way, I’m grateful for the relief of this little interlude, but it’s short-lived. He cranks the lever again, sending the same arrows of pain through my limbs and extremities.
Again, the smaller lever at the corner of the table is turned until my legs are spread, but this time the center wooden roller rises underneath my belly, lifting my ass and hips high, bending me over.
I know he is admiring the symmetrical orbs of my ass and what lies below, freshly fucked and deflowered.
The wood of the top roller is warm pressed against my cheek. I wonder how many bodies have been broken on this cruel device. How many young, na?ve girls has he taken right here? If I quiet myself enough, the entire room seems to scream.
But the Professor was right. The power is growing within me—deflowered, yes, but now flowering anew with something greater.
Something terrible.
The Professor steps in front of me. His cock is stiff as a post, head coated with my juices and balls swelled up tight to his body big as baby apples.
I almost beg him to fill me again, to finish what he started, but I remain quiet, waiting.
He turns another lever and my legs spread further apart. Pain flares in my joints, already stretched far past any natural angle. It feels like my limbs are on the verge of being ripped right off of my body.
I scream aloud.
“Yes,” he laughs, “louder. No one can hear you down here, my pet. Let it out.”
I can’t take it. The pain is becoming too great, this submission…
Spread like this, my ass is exposed to him, I burn with embarrassment, tears of shame staining the wood below a dark umber as I sob quietly.
A coarse hand falls on my left buttock, pushing the fleshy mass to the side to reveal the tight pucker of my anus. I cry harder, the shame all-encompassing.
Darkwood spits against it, using his thumb to massage the spittle into my hole. He rubs the tip of his finger around the tight ring of it, murmuring with delight. “You have a beautiful asshole, my pet. I’ll be most pleased to defile it, but not tonight.”
His thumb leaves and I sigh in relief, but again, it’s short-lived.
Darkwood slides a finger into my pussy and eases it out, a light burn remaining from where he took me.
He pulls it free, a grotesque sucking sound following as he cleans it in his mouth, savoring once more the taste of my demise and debasement.
“I can taste your fear—your lost innocence,” he whispers in my ear, his cock trapped in the crack of my ass, his balls resting on my slit. “But I can also taste your willingness, your need, the very sin that so infests your mind and will inform the power to come, and it is coming, isn’t it, little lamb?”
It is with shock I realize my pelvis is rocking forward against the rack, the first tendrils of pleasure already snaking their way between my legs, flashing out through my core and fixing me with a mix of morbid fascination.
My body has betrayed me, and I know all I can do is submit to it fully, damn myself to the eternal flames that no doubt burn beneath us.
My hair is caught in my mouth. I breathe through it in a steady huff.
The Professor lifts away from my ear.
The telltale catch of the lever comes again, my limbs pulled apart. Another shift, another ratchet, and surely, I am going to be torn apart.
“One more, I think,” he says.
No.
I can’t…the pain is excruciating.
Another turn and I cannot speak. Instead, my mouth rounds out into an oval, my lips stretched wide, and my eyes closed as I begin to slip from consciousness. With the next turn I will break. My young body cannot take this kind of abuse, the pressure against my sex alone threatens to carry me to some unnatural plain. I fear it will kill me, a last glimpse of life before I pass into the next world.
Perhaps that would be a mercy.
Isn’t it what you’ve always wanted? I ask myself. An exit?
The lever cranks again and I scream aloud, my lungs burning with the effort.
No more.
A cold sweat breaks out over my skin as I slip from consciousness.
*
I awaken struggling to breathe, cold water in my mouth and nostrils shocking me back to life. I gasp as another bucket of water is thrown over me, shaking involuntarily as it runs over my back. My hair sticks to my face, tendrils of it stuck fast to the body of the rack.
How long was I out?
There’s no way to know.
The Professor places the bucket down. “Welcome back, my pet.”
He walks behind me, my chest heaving against the wood.
“You want my cock, don’t you?” the Professor queries.
I bite my tongue, unwilling to give him the reply he wants.
“Death knocks at your door and yet you refuse to open it.”
Again, I do not respond. I don’t wish to give him the satisfaction of an answer. Let him have a bit of delayed gratification for once.
“Let me help,” he says, kneeling on the rack. It groans under his weight as he positions himself, his cock running forward into the depths of my pussy.
The unexpectedness of the action drives all air from my lungs.
The bonds around my ankles pull tight as he jerks back and plows back into me deeper. With any resistance out of the way, he is able to explore my depths. I take him all the way in, crying out in pleasure and shock and the sheer exhaustion this is forcing upon me.
Darkwood moans in delight, congratulates me on how tight I am, how I grip his cock. He thrusts forward again until his hairs tickle my asshole, and my cheeks are splayed apart against his hips.
“Feel the shadows,” he says. “Allow them in.”
I do, letting them fill me while he pounds and thrusts.
It’s strange. They’re cold, but hot, spreading and fanning out somewhere deep inside me where no one, not even the Professor, has been before. They take a stranglehold there, build against my defenses.
With every push forward the tender bud at the top of my sex is pressed firmer and firmer against the rack. I find myself rocking against it, pulling at my bonds to grind every ounce of pleasure out of it as he takes me from behind, slowly digging himself deeper into my body.
He places his hand on my head, pressing on my skull as he fucks me harder, driving his cock long and hard into my poor pussy. It’s split around his cock, doing its best to get used to his size, but it’s a struggle. I grit my teeth, losing myself.
I’m still wet, shivering involuntarily and close to passing out again. It’s all so overwhelming.
I rub against the rack all the while, the feelings growing stronger and stronger until with a short cry of surprise something snaps, and infinite pleasure explodes inside me.
I cry and shake, pulling at my bonds until I’m bloody, my sex squeezing around his cock in rapid palpitations as I grunt and moan in guttural staccato.
It only makes him fuck me harder. He does so with wild abandon, the entire rack shifting against the stone. I fall again, stars and strange galaxies flying before me as my body revolts, and I want to scream ‘Yes! Yes!’
But I cannot seem to form intelligible words—only a loose spill of nonsensical syllables falling from my mouth.
The Professor is building to his own, terrible crescendo. His fingers claw so hard into my scalp I worry he means to crush me, my body a sweaty mess on the rack as he groans one final time. A hot flood of seed follows as he jerks once, hard against me. He twitches in my depths. It doesn’t seem like it will ever end, cum flowing out around his cock and dripping from the rack as he shudders and lurches against me, that patent restraint of his lost.
I smile at that, at his undoing. That is my work. I have done that to him.
With this in mind, an aftershock flows through my entire body, shadows chasing pain and pleasure and all of swirling and shifting inside me until I’m not sure I know myself any longer.
With a strained grunt, the Professor withdraws, the rest of his release spilling out between my legs. His seed dribbles down my inner thighs while my chest swells with pride and satisfaction.
Because this is a win.
But with this also comes a deeper concern—that this will be the end, that the Professor has had his fill and will now discard me.
I look back over my shoulder and watch as he walks to a nearby washbasin and towels his cock down.
The firelight makes him look inhuman, carving out his body as if it were stone.
He strolls back to the rack, his relaxed posture speaking volumes. “And with that, witchling, you ascend.”
I close my eyes for a brief moment, a tremendous blanket of fatigue falling over me stretched and used as I am.
When I open my eyes, the Professor, the Wolf, is swimming before me.
He disappears from view, winding the levers back on the rack and allowing my limbs to fall back into position. My bones ache, my joints loose and fragile. I may never be the same.
My bonds are undone, and the Professor lifts me back into his arms. Leading me away from the rack, he steps in and out of the shadows, the fire casting its light upon most of his chest and shoulders. Already the blood around my wrists and ankles is starting to cool and grow sticky. I imagine my wounds will take days to heal. I know the situation between my legs is probably the same, not to mention the river of cum still leaving my body, but I’m too tired to care.
Correction: too satisfied to care.
The firelight continues to flicker as we move up the stairs, the last thing I see as a crushing wave of fatigue consumes me.
“Sleep,” he whispers.
And a single second after that word leaves his lips, I do.