Doctor D’Arco, Sorcerer of London

44. The Throne of Doctor D’Arco

Chapter 44

The Throne of Doctor D’Arco

“Absolon,” I called quietly at Victor’s locked door, the passage down from Hargrave’s library behind me. Only the sound of water dripping somewhere in the dark softened the silence that followed.

Knocking would be some effort now: I dared not set my precious bundle on the ground, now that the floor of the subterranean tunnel was damp with seeping rainwater from the nighttime world above—and yet knock, it seemed, I must. I could not wait long. While I discovered that I had no trouble holding my own against a professor of the Order in matters of sorcery, I did not know what the rest of the Order might do once they found Reeve lying face-down on the sooty floor of the ruin of my room; I did not know how many of them might follow me, avenging the robber who broke into my chamber in the small hours of the morning, and whether they would be armed.

And I did not know whether I had killed a man.

Surely they would guess where to find me, were any of them brave enough to venture the descent toward Victor’s dominion. I had locked the doors along the way after I passed through each, imagining and willing them to become impenetrably shut, preferring to buy time via whatever obstacle they would afford than to attempt any pretense of secrecy. I heard nothing yet to suggest their breach, and yet still as I waited for Absolon to respond to my voice I looked over my shoulder, listening, my fingers gripping tighter into the fabric of the sheet that bound together all I had taken from my chamber.

All I could hear was another drip of water in the distance, its fall lonely and ominous somehow.

The bundle seemed to grow heavier; the strength of my arms began to fail. I balanced my ungainly burden against the door itself (drier than the floor, at least), knocked quickly and called Absolon’s name again, and then heaved the bundle back into my grasp just in time: the door opened with a long creak of damp hinges and moisture-swollen wood, and around the side of my great bundle I saw in my lamplight a pair of staring red eyes with slit black pupils, the scar-like Cartesian organ on the broken-horned forehead distended with interest as Absolon regarded what I carried in my arms.

Then he stepped aside. After I crossed the threshold he shut and locked the entrance, and I allowed myself to exhale what felt as if it were a long-held breath: the Order would not dare that door. Their fear of Victor, I thought, would make certain of that.

All that they dreaded would keep me safe.

As I set out for the narrow stairway down—hefting my sagging bundle again, striving not to tread on the hem of my dress—I thought that I heard a kind of rasping noise, and I imagined, somewhere behind me, Absolon’s nostrils snuffling for scent.

“Heavy?”

His voice caught me by surprise, and I turned to look back at him.

“A little,” I said, forcing something like a smile.

Absolon’s sharp teeth flashed in my lantern light.

I did not know entirely what to make of such a gesture—a rather stilted, gruesome impersonation of a human smile, if that were what it was meant to be—but he held out his pale, fleshy hands with their thick bristling fur, flexing the broad mole-claws at the ends of his stubby fingers.

“I can carry.” Absolon’s blind crimson eyes seemed to sparkle with mischief. “Trust me?”

“Ought I to?” I asked, finding myself feeling somehow more amused that accusatory. “After that time you nearly trapped me between the falling gates?”

“No, no, yes, yes, maybe,” he replied, his dry chuckling quickly turning into raucous, hissing laughter as he seemed to think this terribly funny.

It made me smile again, weakly but genuinely this time: after all I had been through with the Order—with all the self-satisfied structure of the society of man, built to perpetuate its own artifice—there was something refreshing in Absolon’s lawless, impish inhumanity. Perhaps it was merely what his presence signified now, the knowledge that an encounter with Absolon underground nearly always meant that Victor was not far away; but after all, I thought, I would sooner now trust this capricious disprite of the dark earth with my possessions than I would ever trust again any member of the Order of Magisophists.

“Doctor D’Arco made me promise,” he continued once his laughter died down.

“Promise what, Absolon?”

“Doctor D’Arco made me promise to be very genial to Elizabeth.”

I set the bundle down before me, in part to give myself the freedom to wipe the back of my sleeve at the warm tears that welled suddenly in my eyes.

“Did he?”

The creature before me nodded, flashing another unnatural, toothy imitation of a human grin.

“All right, then, Absolon. I’ll trust you.” Not without reservation I watched him stoop slightly, grip the bundle in his short, thick arms and lift it with little effort at all, his mole-like clawed hands holding it fast. “Take care, please; it’s mostly books and some small boxes, but they are important to Victor and me.”

“Very careful,” he answered, nostrils twitching, his mouth still frozen in that disconcerting smile. “Smells like sorcery.”

Something inside me froze. Could Absolon have smelt, have sensed somehow what I had done? And if so, was it the trace of the spell itself that he detected—the singe, perhaps, of my own faerie fire—or was he privy to some unspoken knowledge of its effect?

Could he have known what I had done better than I knew myself?

“I shan’t be surprised if it does,” I said, holding my voice as even as I could. “Where is Victor?”

“In the great hall,” Absolon replied. “Summoning.”

“Would he still receive me, so occupied?”

“Always.”

And just as my heart had begun to falter, that single word rallied me. I was not physically cold—the heat of Victor’s shadow still kept all but the memory of the night’s chill from my skin—yet now the promise of Absolon’s always began to warm me anew: it gave me a moment’s hope, delicate and hesitant though that hope must by its nature be.

But for the sound of Absolon’s steps and mine, we walked in silence, he with my bundle and I with the lantern I had taken from my chamber: down the narrow winding stair, down the familiar first hallway; only a few of the candles were lighted, the furrows of the half-human faces of their gargoyle keepers seeming almost to shift as the shadows changed. I noted that the long iron teeth of the twin portcullis gates dripped low on either side of the hallway, no longer hidden high up in their stone gums; a black shroud still hung where the parlor door once had been, the latter shattered in the battle with Gremio, and I wondered if the absence of a proper door for Victor’s summoning parlor had caused him to use the great hall instead.

None of it frightened me—not in itself—but for the pensive tension of waiting which I knew was my own.

“Very quiet, Elizabeth.”

So lost was I in thought that Absolon’s voice nearly made me start. I had, in fact, meant to speak to him: if he were now making an effort at friendship, or at least some manner of greater geniality, I thought that I ought to do the same. But in my state of abstracted anticipation, the words did not come easily.

“Yes,” I replied simply. “I suppose I have a lot on my mind.”

“Him?”

I nodded faintly. There was no need to hide it; I was not so foolish as to think that Absolon did not know. But I said no more.

How could I not think of Victor now, the close atmosphere of the underground so thick with the heady sensation of his art? Whether it were my imagination or not, I could not tell for certain—and had even I imagined it, that would not preclude it from being or becoming true—but I thought that the unmooring of my own shadow drew Victor’s in deeper: I felt my nerves begin to tingle as with every step towards him his art sank in closer through my skin, the shivering thrill no longer an abstract suggestion of titillation but a memory and promise of deep pleasure, and at its spreading roots a warm, haunting feeling of home.

But would this be home? Could this be home? Could I presume that Victor would take me in, if he knew I had no home anymore?

Could I be so willfully obtuse as to think that he would not?

But if he came to know— when he came to know, for I wished to keep no secrets from him now—when he came to know what I had done to Reeve, what then? I could not think that Victor would object, not given his own past and the dire circumstance in which I had found myself, and the justice I knew that I had done. And yet more and more the sight of Reeve face-down on the floor of my chamber returned to me, my relief and my triumph now joined by the creeping unease of reconsideration: I envisioned again and again his utter stillness, searching my memory for any sign of life as I fell slowly into the realization that there had been none, waiting for the weight of guilt that I understood must soon come.

Or would I prove remorseless?

And would even the man who loved me love me still, deeply and strongly and recklessly enough to harbor in his home and in his heart so unrepentant a killer, if that were what I had become?

My steps slowed, as if of their own accord.

For the few moments remaining until I would be reunited with Victor—until the question would come inevitably to its crisis—could I not still live, even now, in the dream of innocent hope?

Yet still, slowly, I pressed on. Absolon led me to the end of the passage: the immense carven doors that I knew so well, clad in iron and rising to a peak inside their grand Gothic archway; as I drew near to them once again, it occurred to me how much had changed since I crossed their threshold last: I was a member of the Order then, the Talisman of Thoth concealed against my bosom as I sat between Reinhardt and Walker on the student side of the table across from Victor’s throne, contemplating in secret my futile, mad designs upon the life of the man I could not bring myself to abhor: the man who kept me after class to teach me to cast a circle, innocent of any knowledge of my villainy—in love with me, ready to die for me, before I knew that it was so—with the rough hands that had freed me from my husband, that held me and turned with me with a touch that made it feel like a slow dance.

And all I wanted now was to feel that touch again, to hear that deep, dark voice tell me I could stay.

When Absolon reached to knock on one of the twin doors, I felt my lips press into a strange, bittersweet smile as I looked to the last gargoyle of that first hallway, hoping to read in the lineaments of its stone scowl some manner of sign that I would know to mean yes, yes, you’re coming home.

But though he reached, no single knuckle or claw of Absolon’s hairy hand so much as scraped the wood: I felt a long, slow ripple of Victor’s art, making my skin tingle and my heart leap as I drew a sharp, deep breath: slowly, smoothly, the great doors were opening, and at the far end of the hall I saw the black edifice of Victor’s throne silhouetted before the inferno of the Hellmouth hearth.

And while I saw no one else in the vast room, I sensed a second presence that I could not place. I smelt a faint, bitter scent of acrid smoke.

“You may depart, Arasha,” I heard Victor’s low voice, his tone relaxed, “if you prefer.”

“Am I interrupting—” I began, extinguishing my lantern and setting it down on the stone floor at my side, but it was the certainty of his reply which interrupted me:

“No. Come in. This is Arasha of the Lost City, one of my daughters: a great queen of the infernal City of Fury, as it has come to be called, until the last war with Tartarus brought down its blood-red gates. And as an enemy of Tartarus, she has an interest,” Victor’s voice darkened, “in having some part to play in Gremio’s undoing. We were finishing our conversation regarding the masquerade.”

Then I heard an uncanny sound nearly like a woman’s voice, but hollow and strange, at once distant and uncomfortably, eerily close: an echo resounding on its own with no original, a half-voice out of the air and the stone of the earth: “I am not above staying to allow her to banish me, Vittorio, as you asked of me at first. Yet I doubt its necessity now. This is your apprentice, father? Your Elizabeth? I know little of the sensations of mortal sorcery, yet I sense that she has banished already—and within the past hour.”

“Yes,” Victor intoned; I heard the low rumble of his voice despite the distance, and I wondered if he had willed his words into the back of my mind. “She has.”

My breath caught in my throat.

My feet inside my little shoes felt as if they were weighted to the floor.

I could no longer detect the acrid smoke-scent—I did not hear the woman’s voice again—and for a moment I wondered whether it was her presence or my senses which had faded, so fixed did I suddenly find myself upon Victor’s form: at the far end of the hall I saw that he had risen from his throne, drawn up to his full, impressive height, his vital darkness wreathed in the crimson glow of the flames behind him.

Could it be that even from so far away I sensed the taut anticipation in his strong body, the quickening fascination in the flash of his shadowed eyes?

I do not know why I hung back, why I did not run to him at once, but for my own poor trepidation: not of him now, nevermore of him; only for the horrible thought that until I told him, until I heard him say yes , there remained the chance—however remote, it is true—that he would not take me in. And so I waited, caught for a moment more between dread and hope, the comfort and the terror of possibility holding me fast.

“All of this is hers? Very well,” I heard Victor say as Absolon went ahead of me and set my wrapped bundle down on the long table. “That will do. You may depart. Remind any stray students that classes are cancelled, at least for a while.”

Soon Absolon passed me by unburdened. I cannot say that I had at the time the presence of mind to note his manner or expression, but I heard his footsteps hastening and fading behind me—he was happy, perhaps, to be relieved for the moment of the need for further human contact—and then I heard the great iron-clad doors close with that familiar, resounding boom , and I knew that Victor and I were alone.

“Simon Buckingham’s strongbox was not enough in itself?” Victor asked, and from his posture I knew that he was eyeing my sizable bundle on the table. “Nothing forgotten, I hope?”

There was a hint of teasing amusement in his voice—had he meant, I wondered, to put me at ease, as when I was injured he distracted me from the pain with his brutal jokes?—and despite all that weighed upon my mind, I pressed myself to venture a small smile. “I took all that I could carry.”

He grunted quietly in interest. Then I felt his regard sharpen again, his gaze turn to me once more and grow yet more intent, and I wondered whether that subtle, insatiable mind had in a moment already come to understand.

And then I wondered whether the time had become right.

With my damp hands I picked up my skirts and walked to him, my head held as high as I could manage; I did not wait for him to round the end of the table with that long, sure, commanding stride, his great black cloak rippling at his back: I was at his side of the table before he had taken a single step; the still air of the hall was almost uncomfortably hot, so close to the fire of his Hellmouth hearth.

“Elizabeth,” he whispered, “what have you done?”

It was what he had first said to me when he returned from the road to find me in my chamber in a weakened state, the herb required to cure me in his hand, and with that ominous interrogation I had dreaded that he would find the Talisman—but while the words were the same now, his tone was entirely changed. Had he spoken in accusation then? It little mattered. In his whisper now was warmth, and something almost like wonder.

Something almost like pride and strange delight.

It stopped me where I stood, the corners of my eyes growing hot as it melted my restraint.

A moment later he overtook me, seizing me fast in his enveloping embrace; I fell through his shadow and into his strong arms, burying my face against his broad chest and holding him tight as I let myself relax into his power, allowing the weight and the tension of my tormenting suspense to fall from me like a shed skin, and with a sigh like a shuddering sob my fingers curled into fistfuls of his great black cloak.

“My Elizabeth,” he whispered again, nearly a sigh, his voice thick and heavy behind the steel mask as his hand stroked my throat, running his warm fingers over what skin he could reach and then settling them under my jaw. I felt myself close my eyes and exhale against his hard body as he pressed his fingers against my pulse, his other hand trailing down my spine to hold me by the small of my back—holding me so closely that I could feel the resonance of his voice against my cheek, my breasts, my beating heart: “What have you done now ?”

“I quit the Order, sir.” I wished for him to know. And it was all at first that I could bring myself to say.

Feeling a deep growl of satisfaction rumble through his body into mine, I allowed a distant, desperate smile against the familiar black robes that covered his chest. The fingers that had pressed into the soft place under my jaw trailed around to the nape of my neck, caressing me in light, ghostly strokes between the collar of my dress and the line of my hair, and as I shivered reflexively against him I wondered whether he could tell how every soft strand that escaped the knot of my bun felt as if it were pricked on end.

He knew what else I had done. He had to have known, after his exchange with his demoness daughter—after all that now he must have felt when he touched that betraying pulse in my throat.

He knew, and he did not turn me away.

Nor did he press me to speak.

He only held me, stroking my back slowly as if to comfort me, and I listened to the quiet chafe of his coarse, scarred hand against the smooth silk fabric of my black mourning dress.

I knew that the next words ought to be mine. And I knew that I must be brave.

“And…” I whispered, recoiling mentally at the sound of my own voice breaking. I drew a deep breath. I waited. And I began again. “And I think I killed a man.”

I felt his chest swell against me as he inhaled, his broad hand holding my head against his heartbeat as he slowly released the breath. “My Elizabeth,” he replied, an unmistakable intimacy in the low rumble of his voice. “Yes. You did.”

He did not let go. Nor did I. My arms tightened around him, my cheek and my soft breasts crushed against his body as I waited to weep, or to faint, or to feel his revelation sink through me with some dread weight of conscience, leaving me forever altered?—

But there was nothing. A few paltry tears of frustration, perhaps, for the time spent awaiting an emotion that did not come.

And nothing more.

Then I knew myself to be remorseless, remorseless and mad, a piece of my heart breaking with the broken hairpin-box—so tender a heart, so racked by the destruction of such a small thing, so entirely untouched by the killing of a man.

“What do you feel,” I felt Victor’s deep voice rumble against me, “Elizabeth?”

And what was I to say?

“I don’t know, sir,” I murmured against him with a faint shake of my head. “I don’t know how to feel… I don’t know if I can feel anymore. They broke the box when they ransacked my chamber—the little hairpin-box you gave me, that I loved so well—I never found it until after he was dead—they’ll find the corpse, won’t they?” I was rambling and I knew it, I knew my own madness; I felt my body tense in Victor’s arms as the notion of Reeve’s remains being discovered gripped suddenly at my mind. “He was face-down in my room, completely still, face-down on the floor by the bookshelf; I was so proud and relieved to have overcome him, to see him lying at my feet—I didn’t—I didn’t think of what would come next—he was lying in black shadows, and I don’t know anymore if they were shadows or blood—I don’t know what they’ll see…”

“The corpse will likely dissipate.”

I did not understand, not entirely—was Reeve’s body to melt, or quickly decompose, or disintegrate like a disprite’s into ash and smoke?—but never had so gruesome a notion felt so consoling as it did in those words, spoken with such warmth; Victor’s arms were still around me, unfaltering; his hand stroked my hair, and from the way he touched my ear I thought he had tucked some stray strand behind it.

He pulled away then, but only just enough to look down at me, his scarred fingers tracing over my cheek. I did not know whether I could bring myself to meet those dark eyes, the question of whether he would take me in still looming unanswered in its promise and terror; my senses were at once reeling and dulled, and it was not until I felt a mild sting that I realized I was biting at the inside of my lower lip: some kind of surreptitious instinct to stay myself from another torrent of foolish words.

Not surreptitious enough. In a stolen glance—the kind that seemed so suited to that great hall, his makeshift classroom where once he sat across the table from me on his massive throne, where I dared now and again to meet my professor’s gaze—in a stolen glance, I saw something change in his regard, a flash of the reflection of the Hellmouth hearth beside us burning in his dark eyes. He touched the corner of my mouth and trailed his middle finger slowly, lightly across my lips, making them relax for him as I felt my pulse quiver, the deep scar on his fingertip catching a little at the warming skin. In mere moments I was breathless for that same spectral caress that he knew made me tremble: he had learned already how to make my defenses faint for him with a single finger, leaving me waiting to be overwhelmed by him again; I let my eyes fall closed, but he began to draw away, easing what felt nearly like a spell, my parted lips sensitive and tingling with the lingering trace of his touch and his art.

Had he meant to relax me? To prepare me? To convince me that I could still feel?

One touch, and I felt as if I had already been kissed.

“Then I’ll be safer once the corpse dissipates. Once they can’t find it anymore.” More mad, meaningless words: some part of me strove to steady myself, so pleasurably unsettled by the mere brush of his fingertip.

His hand moved, wandering down my spine as he closed again the small distance between us; I felt his massive shoulders shift, the firelight changing. The touch of steel was cool against my ear, a counterpoint to the heat of the hearth, and I heard his low whisper behind the mask:

“You’re safe here.”

Time itself seemed to shudder and halt in anticipation. Victor’s words hung in the air, echoing in my mind. Was this already the answer I had awaited? Did I dare to presume it was so? I might have asked him then if I could stay, if he would keep me in his dark domain beneath the earth, but I could not speak. I could not even bring myself to breathe, lest the disturbance of an indrawn breath would alter the course of whatever was to come.

I blinked as if to clear away all possibility of a dream, my heart taut and poised and too tremulously light, like a bird about to leap into the blue.

“And so you will stay here,” he continued, speaking slowly as if he sensed my anticipation, “here with me underground, where they will never find you.”

My heart soared as I breathed again, and as that breath of life filled my lungs in quiet, sobbing gasps I knew only that I had to touch him, I had to touch him somehow; with my eyes clenched closed in elated disbelief I reached up for the mask, my shaking hand unsuccessfully fumbling the latch and then settling against his temple where the steel was lower on the side, my fingers pushing up through the coarse whiskers, curling into his thick, silver-streaked black hair.

There were no words. His strong grasp captured my hand, moving it up and back so that together we drew down his deep black hood until it fell around his shoulders; I sensed the shift of his cloak and robes as he moved, then the sound of something solid skidding across the heavy wood table, thrown aside in abandon as he leaned in closer over me, his hand gripping into the twist of my hair bun to tilt back my head—and as I closed my eyes, I felt just above the neckline of my dress not the cool touch of steel but the slick, sinuous heat of his tongue and his lips on my throat. My own shadow seemed to spread, the very air coming alive to the pop and crackle of a log splitting on the hearth—some aspect of my own darkness seemed to open with my rising desire—and then his art surged into me, flooding through my body and my senses like the drowning rush of a black tide.

I was dimly aware of my own strangled gasp of surprise at how suddenly and deeply it affected me, my aroused body shaking for the sheer force, my hands grasping weakly at his massive shoulders, trying as desperately to brace myself as to urge him closer against me while my pulse raced under his hot, stroking lips; I scarcely had time to understand the depth of my defenselessness against him, to feel my thighs spread instinctively for his shadow before they started to tingle and quiver; the last thought in my head, as my equilibrium began to melt, was to wonder whether I had drawn too much of his shadow in at once, or whether he had simply imagined me lying overcome in his grasp and then willed it to be so. The very idea made a deep shiver of the uncanny creep faster up my spine—I was helpless to hold back—another gasp and I was throbbing, throbbing in climax for the pleasure of his dark art, so swiftly and so completely overtaken, my arched spine bent backward in his grip, his great black cloak falling around me; I heard myself sighing with each quick, panting breath, until the caress of his tongue trailed up over the sensitive edge of my chin and he silenced my little sounds of stunned pleasure with a long, deep kiss.

My tongue was still stroking his, warm and weak, when the tremors finally faded. His hand on the back of my head was working apart my bun, my loosened hair falling free between his fingers; I found that I was touching his unmasked face, my hand drifting idly through his thick side-whiskers and over his strong jaw, down his muscular neck, my fingertips hooking into the closure of his cloak.

Without breaking the kiss he pulled me back up, my feet becoming steadier again on the stone floor between the student table and the professor’s throne. I felt so soft, so spent, that for a moment all I could do was moan languidly against his lips as his deft fingers unbuttoned the high neck of my black bodice—and yet in the wake of my sudden climax under his art I felt also my strength returning little by little, a renewed madness rising slowly in me with every button he unfastened; by the time his touch was at my back again, strong hands sliding up under the fabric of my bodice to loosen my corset, it felt like a fever in the blood.

His fingers pushed into the gaps between the ribbon laces just as I began to sweat, my spine damp and hot under his touch as in reflex I arched for him again, pulling at the clasp of his cloak until the great black mantle fell rippling to the floor, but even this could not distract him from his single-minded work to unhook my busk while I forced my hands into his black robes, my palms and fingers savoring the heat of his dark olive skin as I tried to part the midnight fabric and push it over his shoulders, listening to his quiet grunts of satisfaction as my hands eagerly explored his chest—the contours of heavy muscle and bone, the blurred tattoos, the coarse black hair; the bandages were gone now, new scars from the battle with Gremio joining the old. I watched his formidable body heave beneath my hands as his breathing deepened, my fingers tensing in a thrill of danger as his powerful muscles flexed under my caress, and I touched him with such indulgent fascination that in my distracted state I had all but forgotten the hunger of his own hands.

Suddenly my full breasts were released from the restraint of my corset, the feeling of wanton freedom as they fell heavily against the thin cotton of my chemise so sensual that I could do nothing to prevent my own stuttered moan of pleasure and surprise—neither at the sensation itself, nor again at the erotic shock of him tearing down the low neckline of my chemise and grabbing my desire-swollen breasts in his powerful hands, hefting and nearly covering them in his broad palms, skin against skin at long last. I looked down to see my nipples tighten under his thumbs as he stroked them with so maddeningly light a touch—I gasped at the little jolt as he caught them both in an unexpected pinch—and in my moment of abstraction he was already half-crouched before me, his mouth closing over the peak of my right breast as he began to kiss and suck deeply on the sensitized flesh, his hot tongue stroking and swirling over my hardened nipple; I could watch for only a moment before my eyes fluttered and rolled closed, my head falling back in pleasure as a new wave of heat spread between my thighs.

The next moments were a blur of sensation—my hands were in his hair and on his bare back, holding him against me; his possessive hands were kneading my breasts, stroking my hips, their touch growing firm with the heavy rhythm of his breath—my black mourning dress was on the ground with my petticoats and drawers, the stone floor cool against my bare feet; he was standing before me, the naked skin of his muscular thighs hot under my hands—I stepped back for balance and my foot caught in our clothes on the floor, something solid hitting me in the back of the thigh—I might have fallen, if not for him, but though he nearly stumbled as well he caught me somehow, and before I understood how it had happened I found myself leaning back with both hands braced against the edge of the student table behind me, watching Victor slump down heavily into his massive throne across from me with a deep, low chuckle as he regained his balance.

I smiled. For that fleeting moment of our discomposure, he was human after all. And ominous though it always sounded, that familiar laugh made him yet more human somehow—this perilous man on his dark throne, silhouetted by the light of the Hellmouth hearth behind him—and though I could see neither his eyes nor the details of his body for the shadows cast by the flames, I knew he was as naked as was I.

And I knew from the sobering of his laughter and the gravity of his unseen gaze that he was watching me, the weight and heat of his regard fixed on me, taking in the sight of every uncovered inch of my skin. I found that I was not shy, not ashamed that he should see me so, and it struck me that he would see now how wet I had become for him—my thighs clenched instinctively at the thought—and then my breath caught, and I wondered whether he had watched me clench as well.

I sensed his tension, no less than I knew he must have sensed mine.

His shadow was close around me, nearly quivering with restraint.

I stood up straight from my perch against the student table, and scarcely had I taken a full step to erase the distance between us when the candles of the dim chandelier high above flared to brighter life—Victor’s art, I knew; I felt the shivering ripple of it course through me—and I saw him, all of him, for the first time.

He did not need the mask, nor the hood, nor the midnight mantle and robes for me to know him—the great black Hessian boots, I noted, lay on the ground to the side of his bare feet—because even were it not for the sensation of his shadow, the gravity of his gaze, I would have known him by the dominance of his bearing alone. There was still the same effortless command in the way he sat on his throne, the same unpolished, natural power, all the more impressive now with no garments to conceal him. He had no use for the polite social artifice of a gentleman’s board-straight spine: the weight of his massive, muscled body was shifted somewhat to the left armrest, his broad shoulders relaxed against the high back of the great chair, his strong thighs more than halfway apart?—

But it was what rose between those thighs that made my breath stop—that made me unable to look away, my skin flushing with heat at the sight. Victor’s immense cock was standing entirely erect for me, veined and heavy and muscular, so hard it seemed to strain at its own taut skin, and I watched a slick drip of his desire slip over the ridge of the bared head and slide slowly down the long, thick shaft.

I felt my lips part—and close—and part again as I released my held breath in a trembling sigh, my stomach tensing with a little quiver of erotic terror even as my clenched quim began to ache with anticipation. I did not count myself as inexperienced, nor incurious, nor as having any particular lack in the more prurient aspects of imagination, and yet never had I seen nor conceived of such a massive prick. I had touched him through his black robes, it is true, and from what I felt I had never expected him to be any less than large—and yet to see his engorged cock standing erect before me in anticipation of my body, ready to spread me and sink into me, was another matter entirely. That flutter of trepidation—the twinge of fascinated fear in my quickening pulse as I wondered how I could encompass his unyielding girth and length, how it would feel to be so utterly filled by him—only made me desire him all the more.

“But how, sir?” I whispered, not realizing I had said it aloud until I heard my own breathless voice.

He smiled in the fiery darkness with a shrug of his great shoulders, spreading his muscular thighs a little wider, and I would have thought that he looked to relax but for the tension in his hands as they gripped the carven armrests of his throne. “Imagination and will,” he replied, affecting a professorial tone, “as always.”

I started to bite my lip to hold back my laughter, but no—I let myself laugh, and he laughed a little with me; I let my hand rest on the back of his, caressing the scarred skin, but the heat and the hardness of the muscles beneath made me shiver again.

“But first,” his deep voice rumbled, “I suggest you relax .”

His voice had precisely the opposite effect: something in the way he almost whispered the last word made my bare toes clutch at the stone floor as another chill slipped down my spine. “Then teach me how, professor.”

It was a wicked request, a purposeful tease, and he knew it well. With a soft grunt of fond amusement, he shook his head. “No. Not this time. This time,” he tapped the arm of his throne with his scarred hand, and I thought I saw his heavy cock twitch, “I’m going to do it for you. Kneel.”

With only the briefest hesitation, I began to sink to my knees. I was not averse at all to the prospect of learning to pleasure him—indeed, quite the opposite—yet I could not understand his words in relation to?—

“No. Not on the floor.” His low voice was thick and coarse and abrupt as it interrupted my train of thought, as if the very idea of whatever he meant to do for me threatened to undo the last of his restraint. “On the throne.”

As if to emphasize the point he reached down, his eyes never leaving me as he picked up two of his black garments from the floor and arranged them as makeshift cushions atop the great carven armrests—and slowly I began to understand the position he so desired, if not yet entirely its purpose. With his help I climbed up on the throne facing him, my hands held in his until he gripped the backs of my legs instead, securing me in an upright kneeling posture with my knees and shins on the cushioned armrests. While it was hardly relaxing, it was not difficult to balance thus: my legs were spread across him a considerable distance above his lap; my thighs were parted open nearly to their limit, the muscles stretched. I felt so terribly, arousingly exposed—I glanced down to judge how far I was above the waiting, glistening head of his rigid erection, tantalizing in its promise and menace, yet so long as my legs held I did not think I could easily lower myself onto him from there—my knees on the armrests were high enough above the seat of his throne that I saw no clear way for him to rise upward into me—the consideration alone made my sinews tense, my eyes close, my back begin to arch, but I knew that my position must be meant for something—else?—

“Relax,” his deep voice rumbled, no more than a slow vibration in the fire-warm air, and then all the stretched muscles of my legs stiffened at once: my eyes were still closed as I felt a strange sensation of new warmth, and I understood directly that it was the heat of his exhalation as he breathed against my inner thigh.

I sensed the change in his shadow as he inhaled deeply, savoringly; I felt the slick, subtle drag of the side of his lower lip over the tightening flesh; the first ticklish abrasion of his rough side-whiskers against the sensitive skin of my thigh was so intimate and carnal and true that I could scarcely help but tremble.

He laughed with his lips against me, teasing me with the light touch of the tip of his tongue.

“So tense,” he breathed into a kiss against the skin, and I felt his lips and tongue moving slowly, slowly up my inner thigh, pausing now and again to suck and taste with an epicurean relish at once unhurried and increasingly urgent, as if one moment more—one more inch inward along my spread thighs—might sink him into obsession.

“You look—” My voice broke into a gasp, and then a sigh—I could not help myself—he was so close now, so excruciatingly close, his whiskers chafing the tender flesh he had a moment ago kissed and licked, the clever tip of his tongue tracing the natural crease where my thigh met my body. “You look,” I rushed out my observation on the state of his prick before becoming so interrupted again, “more than a little tense yourself, sir.”

I thought that I felt him smile against me in a kind of fond, wicked satisfaction—and then I thought that I would lose my mind.

One hungry stroke of his hot, slick tongue over my clenching quim, slipping in just deep enough to slide between the parted folds, and my knees went so weak that I grabbed and held onto the back of the throne to steady myself, my fingers gripping into the carved furrows of the scrollwork and the monstrous grotesques; I shuddered so deeply that Victor’s strong hands grasped my thighs, firm and supportive and entirely inescapable. For the moment he seemed content to let me settle the panting rhythm of my breath, though from the closeness of the bristling touch of his whiskers and the sheer heat of him I knew I would not have long—not long at all before I felt his tongue again—I stole a glance downward, past my swelling, heaving breasts, and I caught a glimpse of how he had positioned himself: he had slid himself down low in the throne underneath me, looking as if he were lounging decadently in the great carven chair, his hands trapping me in place by their grip on my outspread thighs and his head just before and below me, the perfect angle by which to?—

Again I gasped; the inferno of the Hellmouth hearth was the last thing I saw before my head whipped back, my eyes clenching closed as my lips parted: he licked me again, hot and full and slow—and this time, he did not stop. His bold tongue explored me, overwhelmed me, until all I could feel was him: the thorough stroking and swirling of that tongue, the rich caress of his lips, the darkness of his art spreading into me from his hands as they so possessively kneaded my quaking thighs, the subtle vibration through my sensitized flesh of his low, luxuriant growls of lust. In mere moments I was melting for him, sighing with every quickening breath; one of my hands stroked the back of his head, my fingers curling into his thick black hair in instinctive attempt to hold him closer against me, and I felt a little frisson shiver through that massive, invincible body; his guttural grunt of satisfaction felt as if it were nearly inside me as he pleasured me closer, deeper, faster, and I knew from the succulent sounds of his mouth as he glutted himself on my tightening quim that I was dripping into his thirsty lips; my breasts felt so impossibly heavy as I braced myself with both hands on the backs of his powerful shoulders, feeling the muscles ripple beneath the scarred and tattooed skin, letting myself lean back just a little, just enough to press myself closer against him, the straining muscles of my wide-open thighs fluttering helplessly against his palms as he gripped me tighter—the insistent, stroking heat of his tongue was at once so primal and so terrifyingly precise, penetrating deep into my soaking warmth and then sliding up my spread folds; when he circled that place where I ached the most, I knew that I was quivering under his masterful tongue, taut and swollen on the verge of release—and then his thumbs caressed my quaking thighs with so spectral a touch—his lips closed over my clitoris—and no sooner had he begun to lightly suck, to tease with the tip of his tongue, than I heard my own sigh of pleasure sink into a soul-deep moan: I shuddered so profoundly that I bucked against his mouth as he held me in place, my soft inner thighs contracting in rhythm against his side-whiskers as he stayed with me, his tongue still caressing me, still drinking in my heat as I pulsed for him, the tremors so deep and prolonged that I wondered with some distant, conscious corner of my mind how many more seconds I could endure before my spent muscles entirely gave way…

And then, whether he had read my mind or my body, he rose back up before me in the throne and took me into his powerful arms.

Relax, had he said? I felt so entirely limp, so utterly pleasured and spent that were it not for the sensation of his shadow surrounding me, seeping into me, I should have thought that I had already swooned into his dark embrace. Yet his uncanny art seemed now to sustain and revive me somewhat; my muscles still were warm and pliant and relaxed, my body still twitching faintly, when I remembered—with a thrill of anticipation—what awaited me below.

And I wanted him inside me now, all of him, no matter the strain; I wanted him to fill me, now more than ever.

I reached down between us, down between and past my legs, shivering when my hand found him—his cock was so hot and slick against my fingers, harder even than before—and I stroked him lightly as I tried to move my right knee, trying somehow to negate the last distance between us that was forced by the high armrests of the throne. I could not entirely tell how my will was done, but through some combination of my own volition and the support of his strong body and sure hands I found myself sinking slowly down toward him, gasping as the wet heat of his blunt tip first brushed my pleasured, swollen folds, making me tingle as his shadow spread into me—I lingered there for a moment only, listening to him murmur something between a low groan and a muttered spell as I imagined him pushing into me, taking me, already inside me—and then I lowered myself onto him, unable to hold back a quivering moan at the feeling of the initial penetration, the consuming satisfaction of being pricked and parted by his broad cockhead followed by the long, slow stimulation of his thick shaft sliding gradually deeper into me, somehow stretching and filling me without pain, making my eyes roll and my hips tremble until I could scarcely tell whether I was still shaky from my last deep release or whether I was coming again. A few moments more and I began to feel increasingly certain of Victor’s thick thighs beneath me; though the throne had little room to spare, my legs were small enough that I could settle my knees and shins on either side of him, straddling him—a moment more, and I heard his deep grunt of pleasure as I felt the coarse hair between his thighs press against mine.

Then, only then, did I allow myself to breathe again.

Whether due to his thorough pleasuring of me or to our sorcery, I had taken him in—all of him, impossibly; all of him down to the hilt, the knowledge and the sensation conspiring to rob me of all further thought or action: I was sitting in his lap facing him, completely filled by him, my skin warming, my eyes closed and my lips apart, feeling each subtle twitch of his cock inside me pull me deeper into the strange, quiet valley between satiation and new desire.

He ran the fingers of one scarred hand slowly through my long, loose hair as the other stroked my spine and then pulled me closer, my full breasts pressing against the heavy muscles of his chest, his tongue tracing sensually across my parted lips before slipping inside. I sighed quietly into his slow, deep kiss, savoring the unexpected comfort of tasting myself on his lips and his tongue as his thighs began to flex under mine. Had I worried he would turn me away for what I did to Reeve in my own defense? I could nearly have smiled against his mouth: the very question seemed so foolish now, a voice out of the past a thousand miles away, and as he kissed me harder—grunting softly into my mouth, holding me closer, his left hand stroking so sensually against the small of my back as my tongue caressed his own—he drove it entirely from my mind.

“My Elizabeth,” he murmured against my flushed skin, his lips slipping from mine only to trail a line of hot, slick kisses down my arching throat as I gripped his broad back, stroking him deeply, delighting in the subtle shudder of his strong spine beneath my hand, feeling the massive muscles tense as his hips flexed back and then pushed deeper into me with a slow, smooth thrust.

“Oh… sir,” was all I could manage in reply, at once fascinated and almost unsettled by the proof of his strength, my muscles clenching in futile reflex around the impossible girth of the base of his shaft. “Victor,” I began again, half-breathless, “I thought when the moment came at last, I’d—” I felt the heat of his lips leave my neck, and I opened my eyes to find myself gazing into the darkness of his. “I thought I’d have something more suitable to say.”

It was in itself so awkward a statement that I regretted it at once—until he looked so deeply into my eyes and smiled, so truly smiled, that I thought my heart would burst for the rush of warm obsession that swelled it.

“My Elizabeth,” he whispered, and I heard the tension of restraint as clearly in his rumbling voice as I felt it in his body beneath my caressing hands, “you need never?—”

“I love you, sir,” I breathed against his ear, his side-whiskers rough across my cheek as I gripped him closer, achingly close, one hand tangled in his thick black hair and the other clutching at his shoulder, holding him as fast and as desperately against me as my strength allowed. “I love you; that’s all.”

Before even I finished those few words he had already begun, and I sighed with pleasure as I felt each flexion of his powerful thighs between my legs, each movement of his heavy cock inside me; after a few false, excited starts I fell into his cadence, shivering in his arms as I found the angle and the timing to lengthen and deepen his stroke, my hips rocking down against his lap every time he thrust up into me, my swollen breasts and firm nipples trapped between us to rub in rhythm against the tightening muscles of his sweat-slick chest, my fevered kisses growing soft and slack against his tensing neck. I felt his hot skin quiver beneath my lips and tongue as he began to groan, and the urgency of his arousal stoked my own until I was almost mindless for the flood of sensation, so dazed by pleasure that I was aware only of his stroking hands all over my hips and my sides and my breasts, the muscles of my thighs quivering in his lap as I felt my stomach tighten and draw in, the dark shadow of his eldritch art spreading inexorably through my tingling body, drawing me deeper and deeper with every warm thrust up into me until I heard myself gasp against his skin—I felt my hands grip him tighter, my quim shiver and clench—he did not stop—another stroking thrust and I was sighing for him again, my bare toes curling and my thighs squeezing his as I pulsed in deep, quaking spasms around the unyielding girth of his rock-hard cock, and all I could think was to wonder how long he could last—to attempt, however weakly, to push my own shadow into him, to pleasure him with my art as he had now so many times pleasured me with his?—

No sooner had the half-thought flashed through my reeling mind than I felt his breathing change, the muscles of his thighs rippling under mine as the entirety of his powerful body clenched so hard that he shivered as he struggled for control, growling with every heaving breath—and then his low grunt sank into a profound shudder, my own climax prolonged by the wild pulsing of his cock inside me, the warm inundation of being filled by his soaking heat, and with it came a blinding flood of his dark art like a burst dam: the uncanny shiver of his shadow surged from my spread thighs to my head, overwhelming me like an inexorable tide, and as I felt myself tremble and then swoon so pleasurably into his darkness, sinking limp and faint against his chest with his strong arms around me, I could feel my helpless muscles fluttering, weakly quivering around the rigid girth of Victor’s still-throbbing cock.

I knew next only that his lips were on mine, their caress soft and even tender now, and then that I heard his heartbeat against my ear. Slowly I became aware that his powerful arms were underneath me, supporting me—one beneath the crook of my knees, the other behind my back—and that somehow my own arms were yoked loosely around his shoulders and neck, and that his skin was still warm and bare against mine, and that I had for safety nothing but him: no throne, no cool stone floor, only the slow, sure pace of his footsteps, quiet now without his great black boots.

I needed and desired no more.

I needed not even open my eyes.

I recovered gently in his arms as he carried me with what seemed to be no effort at all, my body still soft and spent, my senses still warmed by a lingering haze of relaxed satisfaction. One of my palms was resting on his solid collarbone, my languid fingers curling lightly against the thick muscle where his shoulder met his neck, and I let myself stroke him there, something between a massage and a caress, tracing vague circles on the skin—any more, I feared, would break a moment I did not want to ever end.

He held me closer, and as I felt a subtle sound of comfort rumble in his chest, I smiled.

The stairs changed his gait, but only a little—the darkness of his art, as it shivered through me, felt different in a way I could not entirely place—he carried me through a doorway, to tell from the sound of the hinge, and I felt the sudden flare of candlelight brighten the blackness of my closed eyes.

Then he laid me down with care on his bed—I knew its softness, its scent, the touch of its fine fur coverlet—and I felt the mattress sink with his weight as he climbed in behind me, his muscular arms soon around me beneath the bedclothes, his hand drawing aside my long, loose hair.

His presence was too comforting now, and while I knew I could not keep myself awake much longer, I resolved nonetheless to miss as little as I could. And for my efforts, I was rewarded: I felt him close in behind me, holding me against him so intimately that every inch of my skin seemed to touch his; another ripple of his art sifted through me, its lingering shadow soothing now, and I smelt the faint, waxy burn of candle smoke as his chamber fell back into utter darkness. Hidden away in his domain in the depths of the earth I shifted deeper into his protective grasp, touching the ridges of the now-familiar scars on the back of one of his hands, feeling the soft rhythm of his lips caress the slackening pulse in my throat until I fell asleep into that warm, slow kiss.