Chapter 2 #2
“Billy,” I breathe automatically, something that, despite our long separation, still feels so very natural to me, comforting.
Billy groans, his hands closing over my hips, fingers and thumbs tightening in their clasp as he pushes me back against the doors, “Penelope,” he rasps, using my full name like it’s a special occasion.
“I can’t fuck you again, baby girl,” his breath is hot against the side of my neck, the thick coils of his dark hair tickling against my cheek.
“I mean, I can, but fuck. I can’t. We don’t have time. ”
He pulls back, splaying his hands on the closed barrier at my back, pinning me to the wood with his palms on either side of my head. In the pitch darkness of the room, I can still see his eyes. Shadows cast across the rest of his features, carving him up in the shade.
“Billy,” I say breathily, his eyes dropping down the length of my body as though he can see me perfectly. “What’s The Obsidian?”
His eyes snap to mine, one of his hands squeaking as it drags down the shined wood beside my head, folding over my trapezius, thumb brushing along my collarbone.
He grips me hard, his other hand still pressing against the door at my back, but his chest is still and his breath is held, and I feel sweat starting to bead at my nape.
“There are some questions I will never quite be able to answer,” he says calmly, licking his lips, “but this one, I shall try.”
He pulls back, breaking our connection, his hands falling from the wall, from me, and then a click is sounding beside my ear, soft light flooding the space, illuminating the vast sitting room at Billy’s back.
The same wood flooring runs throughout the room, but there is a large antique patterned rug covering most of it.
The walls are a deep, dark pink and black damask wallpaper, the black swirling pattern on the pink base looks like it might be textured.
Something that as a child I would scratch my nails through, picking off the raised pieces in rich houses I was sent to like a little rebellion.
Rich housewives feel a certain way about their fancy decor.
I’ve had more slaps across the face for destroying wallpaper than I ever had hot dinners in those places.
Strangely, though, I like it in here, it doesn’t make me feel destructive like it would have triggered in me as a small girl. With the warm lighting, the oversized, comfortable looking, dark grey sofas, the worn vintage rug beneath, it just sort of feels like home.
The whole space feels like it was designed just for me.
I lift my feet out of my shoes before I take a tentative step onto the carpet, craning my head back to stare up at the ridiculously high ceilings. Wooden structures and beams carved into curls and swirls, and squinting hard, I think I can make out-
“Spiders,” Billy says quietly, appearing beside me, drawing my eye, my head still craned back. “They always make me think of you.”
My eyes burn with the sudden fill of tears, and I can’t look at him, turning my gaze back to the ceiling. A lump forming in my throat as I stare up at the delicately crafted spider carvings. They seem so real, like mahogany creatures ready to crawl to life.
“All of this space makes me think of you,” he whispers then, my shoulder brushing his bicep as he leans closer. “I’ve been waiting for you for a really long time, Nellie.”
A tear streaks down the side of my face, rushing over my temple and into my hairline with the way my neck is arched, it’s quick enough for him not to notice, for me to pretend not to feel it. But Billy Blackwell sees everything. Especially when it comes to me.
“The Obsidian is an underworld organisation,” he states calmly, shocking me into straightening my head on my shoulders, peering up at him, his own head still tilted back, up towards the ceiling, a mimicry of how my own just was, but his eyes are rolled down onto mine.
Those bright, ice-chip blues boring into me.
“We are led by one god,” the way he says the word god, so casually, like it’s normal to call anyone that in a serious context.
“Father Black, Milus, is our ruler, and we follow him in everything we do. We kill for him, we die for him, we breed for him.”
I feel my own breath catch, that word sending a vibration of fear rattling through my bones. Breed. Like I’m nothing more than a womb. That’s what I agreed to in Italy. That ritual we performed, our Pairing, everything we went through.
‘Now we need to consummate, to breed.’
That phrase rolls around inside my skull, and fear crawls its way up my spine like the carved wooden spiders really have come to life.
“We are a community,” Billy stresses, but there’s horror on my face that I know he can see, in the flush of my cheeks, in the parting of my lips, the dryness of my tongue. “A family.”
Every wound on my body from the last however many hours suddenly aches, “I only bled for you,” I find myself confessing. “Only for you, Billy.” Because you are my god, my love, my monster in the light as well as in the dark. “I don’t want to be part of a fucking cult.”
I’m not sure where the venom in my voice comes from, but I spit the words like they are rotten on my tongue. I’ve been in institutes led by religious rulers most of my life. I didn’t escape those just to run straight to another.
For a moment, a mere second of time, everything is still, silent. And then his hand is wrapping around my neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. He yanks me into him, our fronts colliding, my toes only just brushing the carpet where he holds me up by my throat.
“Watch your fucking mouth, Little Lamb,” he snarls over my mouth, my hands curled around his forearm as he drags me up higher, cracking my neck. “Blasphemy is punishable by so. Many. Things.”
My nails gouge into his skin, the slice in my palm burning as the freshly knitted skin reopens, and he feels it at the same time I do, my blood dribbling down his arm.
“You need to trust me,” he stresses, his eyes softening from the momentary anger, his hold on my neck relaxing, slowly lowering me back to my feet, but he doesn’t let go, doesn’t release me, keeping his fingers curled around my throat. “The only way I can have you, keep you, is like this.”
Billy’s other hand lifts, gliding over the top of my head, smoothing back my hair, cupping the back of my skull. He looks into my eyes, my hands still curling around his forearm, but barely, my grip nothing more than a touch, just my skin on his.
“Don’t you want to stay with me, Little Lamb?” he swallows as he asks, his throat rolling, Adam’s apple prominent, his eyes flickering over my own, searching.
It’s faux nervousness.
All of it to coerce me into doing what he wants.
I am so submissive to him, in all ways. It’s just easier, sometimes, to have someone else tell you what to do, take control. And I do trust Billy, even if I shouldn’t.
My love for him overrules everything else.
Always has.
“I want to stay with you,” I tell him honestly, focussing on his eyes and not the rough stroke of his thumb along my jaw.
“But?” he questions soothingly, holding my gaze, his voice almost a purr. “Tell me, Nellie, let me reassure you that everything is going to be okay.”
It feels so sincere, his words, but they’re also desperate.
Desperate because he wants to keep me, which I believe, we may have been separated for years, but I do know that much to be true.
And desperate because he doesn’t want to scare me.
Because whatever this cult, The Obsidian, really is, whether it’s family or a community or whatever else he tells me it is, I’m already in.
He saw to that when he turned up in Italy. When he ripped open a live woman, removed a bone from her throat with his teeth. Tore the beating organ from her chest with his bare hands. Fucked me in a baptismal pool covered in blood, and then fed me a piece of her heart.
He said he’d keep me safe.
That this is the only way.
He read the rites.
‘Do you willingly give The Obsidian your blood, your body, your womb?’
Even if I didn’t understand them, I took them as a vow.
‘I do.’
I swallow, my mouth so dry, my throat aching from his harsh grip only moments ago, “Are you going to make me do those things again?” It comes out soft, shy, something I never was before, when we first met.
I don’t need to specify what I mean, he knows all of the things I’m thinking about in this moment, because we did them together.
The ceremony.
Ritual.
Blood and bone and death.
Rebirth.
“No,” he breathes, lowering his mouth back to mine, brushing my lips with a whispered kiss. “No, Nellie. No, I’m not.”
Billy Blackwell has always been the most beautiful liar.