Chapter 16
Sera
Vincent’s eyes find mine as I descend the stairs, and in them I see a flicker of something stupid.
Hope. He heard the doorbell. He heard the voices. He thinks rescue is a possibility.
Fucking idiot.
James and Eddie follow me down. Daddy is a pillar of cold shadow by the furnace.
“We don’t have time for a marathon,” I say, my voice flat. “We need him gone. Soon.”
“A bullet,” James suggests. “Quick in the dick.”
It’s fast and final, but it’s not enough. A bullet is a period. I need an ellipsis, a lingering scream that echoes in the bones of this house long after he’s stopped breathing.
“No,” I say with a smile. “Castration. It’s slower, messier. It’s exactly what he deserves.”
Vincent whimpers.
“He’ll scream,” Eddie says. “The whole block might hear, and those officers might ask them questions either before or after they come back here.”
I look at Daddy. “Can you keep him quiet again?”
The shadows around Daddy coalesce, thickening into tendrils of absolute night. They slide across the floor, silent as oil, and wrap around Vincent’s throat like a dark promise. A collar of void.
Vincent’s eyes bulge. He tries to draw a breath, but the shadows are in his mouth, down his throat, filling his lungs with silence. He makes a wet, gurgling sound, his body straining against the shadow-chains.
“Good. But let’s warm him up first. And me.” I turn to Eddie. “James, make some pretty decorations on him first while Eddie fucks the memory of those cops on my front porch out of my head.”
Eddie meets me halfway across the floor. His hands find my waist, his mouth seeking mine, and I taste his need on his tongue. He lifts me onto the workbench and takes me with a desperation that feels like worship.
His cock is hard and thick, and after dragging my leggings and panties halfway down, he slides into my pussy like he’s always belonged there.
I wrap my legs around his waist, pull him deeper, and let myself feel something other than rage and panic.
For a moment, I am just a woman being fucked by a man who loves her.
For a moment, I am almost human.
"Fuck me," I whisper against his mouth. "Fuck me like you mean it."
He does. He grips my hips and drives into me, hard and fast, his breath hot against my neck. Shadows seep from him and curl around me, a single tendril playing with my clit. Another snakes up his cock inside me and strokes both him and me.
I dig my nails into his shoulders, arch my back, and take everything he gives me. The workbench creaks beneath us. My head falls back, and I moan, a sound that feels like it’s been locked in my chest for years.
In my periphery, James approaches Vincent, knife in hand, while he watches us fuck. His erection presses against his black jeans, and he palms it. The blade catches the overhead light, and I see my reflection in it, distorted and strange while Eddie pounds into me.
My body locks around him, every nerve ending lit and screaming. The pleasure is vicious, the kind that leaves bruises on the inside, the kind that makes you wonder if you're breaking or finally putting yourself back together.
He comes inside me with a groan, his body shuddering against mine. I hold him there, feeling him pulse, feeling his cum spread through me. Then he kisses me until I’m full and complete.
"Rapist," James says, testing the word on his tongue. "Seven letters. Fits nicely across the ribs, aye?"
Both of us turn toward James slowly advancing on Vincent, not bothering to hide our nudity. Daddy slides in behind me, and his shadows lick up my inner thighs to collect our combined cum and push it back inside me.
I post my arms on the workbench to brace myself against the force of him inside my pussy, my whole body quivering.
Vincent tenses, tries to pull away from James’s approach, but the shadow-chains hold him fast.
"Ye know what that word means, Vincent? Rapist?" He says it slowly, savoring each syllable. "It means ye took something that was nae yours. It means ye used your power to break someone smaller than ye. It means you're a coward who could nae get what he wanted without force."
He presses the tip of the knife against Vincent's skin, just below the sternum.
"I'm carving this into ye so that you'll remember what ye are. Not a sheriff. Not a man. A rapist. And Hell will know it, even if it's only the four of us, ye, and the dark."
Daddy pulls me back toward him while his shadows continue to slowly fuck me.
James begins to carve.
The knife is sharp, so it parts the flesh like water, leaving a thin red line that wells with blood. Vincent whimpers, twitches, but with Daddy’s shadows down his throat, he can’t scream. James works slowly, deliberately, his tongue poking out between his lips in concentration.
The first letter takes shape, curved and elegant, a work of art.
"R," James says. "For ruin. For rot. For the refuse of humanity that ye are."
He moves to the second letter.
"A," he says. "For animal. For the way ye hunted. For the way ye took what was nae offered."
The third letter.
"P," he says. "For predator. For the way ye stalked. For the way ye struck when no one was watching."
He continues, letter by letter, each one accompanied by a word, a judgment, a condemnation. I for infection. S for stain. T for truth.
By the time he reaches the final letter, the word is clear and red, running from Vincent's sternum to his flank. RAPIST. Seven letters. Seven wounds surrounded by countless cigar burns. Seven truths carved into his flesh.
“Och, what was I thinking?” James taps his forehead. “Skin dries up so quickly when you’re dead. Better to carve the word into bone.”
Vincent moans, a low, animal sound.
James peels away Vincent’s skin over his ribs with the edge of the knife, exposing the white surface of his ribs beneath, and begins to carve again.
The sound is different here—a grinding, a scratching, a deep vibration that travels through Vincent's body and makes him tremble.
"R," James says again, his knife scraping against bone. "For reminder. Even if ye forget, the bone will still bear the mark of what ye are."
He carves the rest of the word into his rib bones, letter by letter, each stroke a permanence that will outlast his skin, his muscle, his very life.
When James finishes, he throws me a feral grin.
I moan at both the beauty of it and the emptiness I feel when Daddy pulls out and away from me.
My turn to end this. My turn to begin something new.
I walk to James and take the knife from his hand, the handle warm from his grip. Vincent watches me, and there’s not a damn thing he can do about what comes next. I had so many plans for his torture, but this will have to do.
I cut away his pants and nick the skin beneath.
His pathetic shrunken cock flops between his legs.
I grip it and pull the skin taut.
The first cut is shallow, just to break the skin, and a thin line of red wells. Vincent jerks, a full-body spasm, but the shadows hold him fast, choking his scream into a muffled whimper.
I cut deeper.
The blade parts flesh, finds the cord, the root of him, and it’s tougher than I expected. I saw back and forth, my arm burning with the effort. Blood flows now, hot and sudden, pouring over my hand, my wrist, splashing onto the floor.
Vincent is shaking violently, his back arched. His face is purple, veins standing out on his forehead. The shadows let him breathe just enough to keep him conscious, to keep him feeling.
The final cut is a twist, a severing. Something gives with a wet, rubbery snap.
And then it’s done.
I hold the small, bloody piece of flesh in my hand, a warm and insignificant thing, high enough so he can see it with his bulging eyes. Then I drop it to the ground with a wet splat and step back.
The blood is a river now, spreading from between his legs, pooling on the floor, dark and glossy under the bare overhead bulb. His chest heaves in ragged, shallow hitches. His eyes are fixed on the ceiling, already losing focus, but his heart is still beating, pumping his life out onto the ground.
Turning to me, James strokes his straining cock through his jeans.
“Fuck,” he breathes, his voice thick with lust. “Look at ye, Prayer. A queen of darkness.”
Eddie strips off his shirt, now completely naked, his eyes never leaving mine. Hunger radiates from him. He closes the distance and kisses me, deep and filthy, tasting of smoke and copper. His hands are in my hair, pulling me closer.
Daddy’s shadows release Vincent’s throat because it’s too late for him to scream. His cool, silken tendrils wrap around my ankles, my wrists, my thighs, caressing my clit, and fuck inside me so hard that my body jerks forward.
I sink to my knees right here, in the warm, spreading pool of Vincent’s blood.
James pushes me forward, my hands landing in the slick, sticky wetness.
Eddie is in front of me, fisting his cock, which is impossibly hard again.
I take him into my mouth, the taste of both him and me from our earlier fuck mixing with the metallic tang of blood I didn’t realize speckled my lips.
James enters me from behind in one brutal, perfect thrust. I cry out around Eddie, the sound muffled, vibrating through both of us.
Daddy is everywhere. His shadows strum my clit, lick my nipples into aching peaks, and pump up inside me alongside James’s cock.
With a loud groan, Eddie comes in my mouth.
I swallow all of his salty cum, and he sinks down to kiss me, sharing the taste.
James pounds into me, his grunts loud in my ear, his fingers digging bruises into my hips.
When he orgasms, he holds me there, pinned, while Daddy’s shadows take over, moving inside me with a rhythm that is slow, deep, and inhuman.
I am filled, utterly, completely. Owned by all of them at once.
This is our glorious sacrament, a marathon ritual of blood and lust.
It feeds our need in continuous cycles. When one orgasm fades, I’m already reaching toward the next. When one cock comes, it’s already hard seconds later.
It is endless. It is perfect.
I lose track of who is where, of what is flesh and what is shadow.
I am fucked on my hands and knees in a dead man’s blood.
I am lifted and braced against the wall, James entering my pussy again while Eddie watches, violently stroking himself, his eyes glazed with pleasure.
Then Daddy lays me back on the bloody floor, his formless weight on top of me, between my thighs, inside my ass.
James holds his knife to my thigh and carves out today’s date. The knife bites just enough to sting, a bright line of fire blooming across my skin, and I arch into it, into him, into all of them. Blood wells up in the shallow cut, tracing the date like a promise etched in red ink.
The day my revenge reached its pinnacle.
James's eyes lock on mine, that boyish grin splitting his face as he leans down to lick the wound clean, his tongue making me shiver.
Eddie traces the curve of my breast, his thumb circling my nipple and making me whimper.
Leaning down to suck my nipple into his mouth, he slides his fingers lower, joining Daddy's shadows at my clit, rubbing in tandem until I'm bucking against the dual assault, the pressure building like a storm in my veins.
Daddy pulses deeper into my ass, his essence stretching me, filling me with that hot-cold, scaled invasion that feels like drowning in midnight. He's devouring me, his shadows coiling tighter, thrusting in time with James's renewed rhythm in my pussy.
I can feel Daddy everywhere—in my mind, tendrils wrapping my throat just shy of choking, forcing my head back so James can claim my mouth in a kiss that's all teeth and blood and desperation.
The blood beneath us is cooling, sticky, a reminder of Vincent's end, but it only heightens everything. The metallic scent mixing with sweat and sex, the slick slide of bodies on a battlefield we've claimed as our bed.
Eddie straddles my neck and nudges my mouth open with the tip of his cock. I take him inside and hollow my cheeks, sucking hard until darkness eclipses the blue in his eyes.
I come apart then, shattering with a scream that's half euphoria, half ecstasy, my body clenching around them all. James follows, growling low as he spills inside me, marking me from within. Eddie’s balls slap my chin as he bucks his hips, his release shooting down my throat in hot streaks.
Daddy lingers, drawing out the aftershocks until I'm boneless, trembling, utterly spent.
We collapse in a tangle of shadows and gore, the room reeking of our unholy communion. I lie there, staring at the ceiling, feeling the date on my thigh throb like a heartbeat.
Vincent has long since stopped breathing. He is a pale, empty shell in a vast, dark lake of his own making.
We lie there for a moment, panting, tangled together in the cooling blood.
Then James sits up, his eyes bright. He fetches the bone saw from his toolkit next to the workbench. It’s a small, brutal thing with wicked teeth. He goes to Vincent’s body and, with a few efficient strokes, severs several bones, but leaves his tattooed ribs intact.
He brings them to the workbench, dripping with gore, and uses wire to bind them together into a crude, jagged circlet.
Then he presents it to me with a flourish, kneeling in the blood before me. “Your crown, my queen.”
I take it, and it’s heavier than I expected.
I place it on my head and stand, and my court rises with me. We are a tableau of blood and bone and spent desire.
I look at Vincent’s ruined body, then at the men who helped me break him.
“The queen,” James says, his voice reverent.
“Has risen,” Eddie finishes, his hand finding mine.
Daddy’s shadows curl around my ankles.
I am bathed in my enemy’s blood. I am crowned with his bones.
It is finally done.