Still, she craved that weak, tingling feeling that spread through her spine as he stared into her eyes.
Then he broke the contact, straightened up and led her and Perry to where the other rabbit was chained. He clipped Perry’s chain to the wall and walked to the corner, where a long row of whips and flogs were hung. There were also some metal devices which, Rae had to admit, were completely alien to her. She really wasn’t sure what they were for. Kharon didn’t demonstrate them to illustrate their function though. He pulled a simple black-leather whip from the wall and presented it to her. “You’ve done well,” he said. “This is for you. Your first mark of honor. Use it well tonight, and perhaps someday, you may even reach The Black and meet the Night Mother.”
Rae opened her mouth to ask what The Black was but Kharon had already turned away. “It is time for the race,” he called out. Another pale-faced Watcher came into the room then, leading a burly man in his wake.
“Rae,” Kharon said. “This is Gordon. He brought in Travis, our other rabbit. Perhaps you’ll play together one of these nights.”
Rae looked at Gordon and had her doubts about that. The man looked ugly, fat and mean. There was no attraction there for her, though his arms looked thick enough to handle giving a good flogging.
The other Watcher unhooked Travis from the wall and handed his leash to Gordon, while Kharon handed Perry’s to Rae.
“They are your catches, so you will start them down the course.”
He led them out of the room and down the dark hall.
“Where are we going?” Perry asked. His voice sounded lonely in the dark. The Watchers didn’t answer. Instead, they continued silently down the long hall, passing the torture rooms one at a time until they emptied into a long, cavernous hall.
The hall felt like a sauna. Red steam hung low to the floor, lit by the bloody glow of the ceiling. Two rows of people stood facing each other, several feet apart. They were clothed solely in weapons. To protect their bare skin they held chains, whips, cudgels…
“Here are the rules,” Kharon said. “There are thirteen red snakes, and thirteen black snakes. The Living Path has these snakes pinned to their bodies-I have chosen where, so you will find them in different places on each person. Perry is to collect all of the red snakes and put them in his bag. Travis will search for all of the black. Whoever gets all thirteen of their color first is the winner and will be allowed to Crossover.” He pointed to the shape of an arched bridge on the far end of the room. It was half-hidden in eerily swirling, colored fog, and Rae couldn’t see its end.
“The loser will face the pit,” Kharon pointed to a glowing hole in the floor beneath the bridge. Rae could see the occasional flare of flame from the glowing hole. Now she realized why the room was so warm.
“You can see how it might be beneficial to work your way quickly past the hardships. Because…there will be hardships in this race. The Living Path cannot move from their places or they will also face the pit…but they
Kharon led Gordon and Rae to the start of the Living Path and raised his hand in the air. Rae felt Perry straining against the leash, anxious to run to the first person in the Living Path to search him for a snake.
Kharon’s hand flagged down. “And…let the rabbits run!” he said.
Rae released her leash and watched as Travis and Perry ran to the first two people in the human line.
She watched as Perry ran to the first naked man who began the Living Path on the left. And she cringed as the man brought a long iron chain down to smack against Perry’s ass.
Travis had been excited at first about this scene. It was far more imaginative than most of the scenarios the bondage magazines dreamed up. When Kharon’s hand signaled the start of the race, he ran to the right and saw a small black snake pinned through a woman’s belly button. The snake was just a couple inches long-and fake. It was a rubber representation of a serpent. He bent to try to undo the safety pin that cut through the snake and into the woman’s skin. He slipped his fingers against the warmth of the woman’s belly, trying to cup the snake so that he could press the safety pin open, when all at once the air cracked behind him, and he felt the sting of a whip across his back. Then another whip cracked. And another. Travis fell to his knees, as the leather cut him deep across the ribs. He tried to fumble with the pin again and the woman hissed, “Just rip it off, you idiot.”
“I’ll hurt you!” he said, which only drove the woman to laugh.
“Why do you think we’re here?”
Travis grinned. He couldn’t disagree with that. He grabbed the snake and yanked as the woman rained a flogger down across his back. When he grabbed the snake, however, her attack subsided, and instead the woman gasped, as the pin that had held the snake to her skin came away with a sliver of her flesh still attached.
Travis moved to the next person in line, a brown-skinned Middle Eastern man. A black snake was pinned to the skin of his hairy inner thigh.
“Sorry,” Travis said, and this time he wasn’t gentle or tentative. He yanked hard on the snake. At the same time, three more whip cracks split the air, and one of them sank a hook into Travis’s ass. “Fuck,” he cried out, and stumbled away from the man with another snake. He shoved it in the small leather satchel that Kharon had given both “rabbits” to hold their prizes in. It was the only item they were allowed to have on their bodies. The sting on his backside was starting to make him question the ingenuity of this game…
On the other side of the aisle, Perry was having a similar experience. The people with the black snakes whipped at his legs and back as he pulled red snakes from the arms and breasts and legs of the Living Path. Soon his hands were slippery with blood from the skin he tore out of those who’d held the snake, but it wasn’t nearly as much blood as was now coating his back.
Part of him loved the pain, but part of him cried in agony. And he knew, with ten more snakes to claim, that it was going to get much, much worse.
Back at the starting line, Kharon took Rae and Gordon by the elbows. “Come with me,” he said. “You began the race, and you will end it.” He led them behind the Living Path until they arrived at the foot of the bridge of The Crossing.
“Take off your clothes,” he commanded. Despite her usual lack of inhibitions, Rae felt funny releasing the hooks of her bra in front of Gordon. But he had no problems stripping off his T-shirt and letting the bulge of his belly hang free as he dropped his jeans. Rae thought his cock looked like a stub, not a stalk. No, she decided, pulling her panties down to expose herself to him, Gordon would not be a man she played with. She needed more than just a hand that could use a whip. And he clearly didn’t have it. Maybe that was why he needed so badly to dole out the pain.
Kharon reached into a deep, wide bucket and pulled out a snake with two hands. It must have been twelve feet long, Rae thought, staring at the copper-red scales. Its head was a diamond, eyes beady and yellow-green. Its tongue flickered nervously as Kharon brought it to her. “You are the red flag, and Gordon the black.” Carefully, he draped the snake around her, laying its head in one of her hands and then wrapping the cool scales of its belly around her breasts and middle. Its tail curled and tightened around her thigh.
“Be calm, and it won’t bite,” Kharon warned.
“Is it poisonous?” she asked, an edge in her voice.
He grinned, lips pale and wide. “Only if it bites you.”
Then he stepped to Gordon and repeated the same thing, this time with a snake as dark and glossy as obsidian.
Rae turned towards the Living Path and watched the whips cracking down on the two men. Perry had reached the halfway point. He was a person ahead of Travis, and quietly she rooted for him to win. He was her rabbit, after all.
But then suddenly Perry yelped and fell to the ground, his head disappearing into the low-hanging cloud of bloody fog.
When he came back up, he was holding his leg and screaming. The steel fangs of a wolf trap gripped his ankle. “Jesus Christ,” he cried, struggling to pull the jaws apart to release his foot.
Every time he tried to loosen it, the trap only snapped back and his screams grew more horrendous. Meanwhile, the whips continued to lash out at him, now catching him in the face and the balls as he rolled around trying to loosen the jaws.
