Chapter 16 Sangrel
SANGREL
Roxana and I are in an antechamber reeking of incense and myrrh. The university chapel.
My raging erection strains against my trousers—the only thing I’m wearing—as my eyes rake over Roxana’s body. She’s stark naked, bar the chain wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl, one of its ends snaking down her back and pooling at her feet.
She is swaying a little, her head leaning close to the poster board behind, nearly touching the ‘Jesus loves you’ flyer.
Yes. I think. That’s his biggest flaw.
Me, I know better than to have affection for the horse I need to whip into submission and work to the skin and bone. For the dog I must teach to bite. For the pig destined for slaughter.
But then I feel something I haven’t felt for eternity.
Unease. Almost alarm. Because I have developed a perilous breed of fondness for one particular mortal.
Wanting more power than I have ever had, I have entered a new, uncertain game.
One where I have nothing but a soft-hearted pawn to play with, but on the board with me, there is a queen, and she has not shown her colours yet.
“Lead the way, dark darling.” I slap Roxana’s arse as she walks past me to push through the swinging door into the main chapel area. “Let’s go pay the Enemy our due respects. Let’s show him where your devotion lies.”
The smack echoes sharply, and she giggles. My hand tingles from the contact with her skin, sending violent ripples of excitement down my spine.
I hold the door wide open for her, and we both walk into the main chapel.
Candles had already been lit in the sconces on the walls and in the tall, thin candelabras running parallel to the two rows of lacquered pews.
Gothic arch windows with stained glass line the long side walls, the candlelight reflecting on them and dancing a colourful dance.
Roxana walks on, the chain scraping on the gritstone floor as she drags its end behind her, the sound magnified by the chapel’s acoustics.
My blood rages with a thrumming thirst, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from tearing Roxana to the ground and ravishing her so savagely she would never recover.
Even as I sense my Enemy’s repugnant presence, even as I feel myself weakened by His efforts to drive me out, I can scarcely focus on anything but her.
A willing mortal leading me voluntarily through His door.
She is my shield, and as long as I have her by my side, I can walk through these hallowed halls unscathed.
My desire for her is too vast for a human mind to comprehend, like the endless expanse of the universe.
No mortal man has ever felt that mighty swell of an inferno raging inside me at the sight of her walking around the altar in her unsteady step, heading for the human-height stone cross in the alcove behind it.
Made of a single block of Shap granite, the freestanding cross is the oldest part of the campus, predating the surrounding buildings by three centuries. The chapel was built around this relic of an old monastery estate, rumoured to bring bad luck to whoever tries to move it. Foolish superstitions.
Roxana reaches it just as I’m passing the front row of pews. I notice a bracelet-sized ring of Anglican prayer beads made of smooth turquoise-blue plastic lying abandoned on the bench right next to the aisle. I snatch it off and slide it into my pocket.
I round the corner of the altar. Roxana shrugs the chain off her shoulders, and it falls to the ground, coiling around her feet with a loud clatter. Then she steps closer to the cross, and her foot catches in the chain, and she stumbles.
“Shit!” she swears and then cackles, leaning back against the cross.
“That’s it, my dark darling, swear! Swear!” I encourage her, throwing my arms wide. “With each filthy word, the Enemy’s power grows weaker!”
“Shit ... fuck ... cock ... cunt,” Roxana chants in a sing-song voice.
Pushing herself from it with her rear, she steps away from the cross and begins spinning in a circle with her arms outstretched.
“Cum ... twat ... piss ... bollocks .... oh, bugger!” she squeals as she drunkenly trips over the chain in earnest this time.
She almost crashes to the ground, but I shoot forward to catch her, all the muscles in my pawn’s body tensing. My hands close around her lithe, firm body. The heat of her skin and her faint, musky scent are almost too much for me.
I groan, panting, feeling like I’m about to tip over the brink of sanity.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Roxana croons, running her fingers down my chest.
I should not like it so much when she calls me that.
“Stand with your back to the cross and spread your arms,” I growl at her.
“Oooo,” she trills, her eyes glazed and unfocused.
I guide her to the cross, pushing her against it. She stares vacantly ahead, her pupils large and her breathing a little uneven, her chest hardly rising at all for a few heartbeats, only to then expand tremendously in a mighty inhale.
The chain rattles ominously as I pick it up from the ground.
When I straighten, I can see that Roxana has closed her eyes, as if falling asleep.
But they flutter open when I grab her right arm, extend it and then start weaving the chain tightly around it and the crossbar.
I repeat the same on the other side until she is tied up in a crucifixion pose, her toes barely touching the ground.
“Here.” I extract a flask from my pocket. “Drink, dark darling.”
I unscrew the cap and press the opening against her ruby-red lips, smearing her lipstick. Her delicate neck bobs up and down as she takes a sip. She’d likely want to have more, the way her face pursues the trajectory of the flask when I take it away, her head tilting forward.
But I don’t let her. Instead, I pour the rest of the clear alcohol over her bare chest and rub the area between and beneath her breasts. Judging by the smell, it’s palinka, the potent fruit spirit Roxana’s mother always brings with her when she comes to visit.
“Hey, I wanted that,” Roxana slurs, but then she inhales sharply when I brandish a small, ornate knife from my pocket and press it into that soft spot between her ribs, right below the sternum.
“Yes!” She cheers, utterly demented, looking and sounding like she has no grasp on reality anymore. “Brand me! Brand me, Daddy, brand me!”
I dive my spare hand into my pocket again and shoot it forward with a flash of turquoise-blue, shoving the prayer beads in her mouth before she gets a chance to close it.
“Bite down,” I instruct her.
She does as she’s told, not caring at all where the beads may have been and who may have touched them. Filthy girl.
I put pressure on the knife until its tip burrows into her flesh with a bloom of bright red blood.
And I drag it through her skin in a circle, feeling the resistance of her tissue through the handle like a multitude of small tears and snaps.
Roxana groans, and her chest heaves. But she doesn’t appear in agony; clearly, the pills are doing their thing.
I work fast, adding lines; three triangles that meet and intersect in the middle.
I pull on Roxana’s skin this way or that to aid my efforts, my hand slick with her sweat and the blood welling from her new wounds.
When I finish, I straighten up to admire my handiwork in the dance of candlelight.
An introverted pentagram.
Her nostrils flaring with sharp breaths, she tips her head forward and spits the prayer beads out. They fall to the ground with a clatter disproportionate to their size, magnified by the acoustics of the chapel.
Roxana lowers her head further yet, until her chin touches her clavicle, and she examines my creation. Then she raises her eyes to me, the look in them a little less unfocused and a little more present.
“I give you my blood.” Despite its sardonic edge, her voice echoes eerily.
My heart speeds up, my mouth waters, and my dick is so hard that it hurts.
I crouch so that my face is level with her fresh brand, oozing that ruby-red liquid, which is the foundation of all mortal life, that nutritious infusion of minerals with its primordial scent.
I run my tongue all around Roxana’s injury, my taste buds exploding with the rich, metallic flavour; hot but not scalding, and so similar in texture to the fluids of her arousal that I’m instantly thinking of her pussy and of the way its delicate, slippery flesh would feel on my tongue.
And my own blood seems to increase in volume a thousandfold, drumming fast and loud in my ears and flooding my erection until my balls ache with sharp, rhythmic tugs like a heartbeat.
I lap Roxana’s blood until its flow eases and until my pawn’s feeble stomach’s churning with it, bouts of nausea coursing through me along with my unquenchable thirst, lust radiating in pain waves from my crotch deep into my belly.
When I stop and lean away from her, she gives me a dizzy, drunken smile.
“I give you my body,” she purrs.
Straining her abdominal muscles, she lifts her legs to the sides a little, her thighs parting in invitation.
I drop to my knees like I am nothing but a mortal man besotted with devout rapture.
I press my face against her stomach, tracing my lips from hip to hip, knowing how much she enjoys the scratch of the pawn’s beard on her skin.
And as I start planting kisses on her navel, I picture my seed taking root inside of her and her womb swelling with my legacy, nothing but a few inches of skin and flesh separating me from the site of my greatest triumph to come, my key to ruling the world of mortals and immortals alike.