“Let him go,” a voice behind him begged.
Kharon opened his eyes in surprise. Nobody disturbed him at this secret moment between the death of night and the birth of day.
She stood nearby, pale skin aglow in the black.
He smiled and slowly shook his head. “He demanded to be here,” Kharon said. “I explained to him what the toll would be. I offered him the chance to turn back.”
“He doesn’t understand, not really,” she said. A tear glistened on the marble of her cheek. A liquid ruby against the pale marble of her skin.
“He has free will. He made his decision. I cannot make you leave, but you cannot interfere. If you do… Then you lose-eternally. I will make sure you decorate a cross in the pit and no one will be able to stop me. Do not go beyond your bounds. His path is nearly done. For better or worse.”
“You mock those words,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he grinned. “Yes, I do.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Mark opened his eyes to a room that glowed faintly from the corners of the floor and ceiling. The room’s edges bled a reddish light, enough to lift the darkness and wreathe the walls in bloody shadow. Everything seemed blurry at first, and he wondered for a split second where he was before he reached up to wipe his eyes.
He realized as he did so that he
Without help. Or pain.
The events of the last night flashed in his head and he took a deep breath. The pain had been…unbearable. He had been sure that despite making it through the fire and blades, he was a dead man once he reached the other side. So much of his body had been burned, so much blood lost… Hesitantly, he tried to move his legs.
They slid across the cool silk of the sheets without problem. They felt a little achy maybe, but no more so than after any good, deep night’s sleep. He felt rested. As the fog completely cleared, Mark realized that he felt… good.
He sat up.
No pain.
Mark held his arms out, palms up, and studied them in the faint light. When he’d exited the tunnel of blades, his forearms had been covered with blood, and the palms of his hands had been hamburger.
Now? They were clean. The skin unbroken.
Had he dreamed it all? The whole scenario seemed ridiculous when you thought about it. What sex club would really have moats of fire and acid tucked in its back hall…or a tunnel designed to kill you with a thousand cuts by the time you reached the other side?
Had they slipped him a hallucinogenic?
Mark stared closer at his hands. The normal, familiar creases extended from his wrists up to the center of the palm and then slipped across in a double-lined fold at the center.
But there were other marks on his hands as well. A lattice of pale-pink lines. And on his left hand, a faintly puckered circular pattern. As he stared, he remembered putting that hand down right on top of a blade protruding from the floor. He’d only seen it as the edge was slipping past the skin and into his palm. The pain at lifting that hand back off the knife had been excruciating.
The cut was healed. It looked like a scar from years before.
Mark slipped his feet off the bed and stood up, staring down at his legs, which also, on the surface, looked unblemished. But when he bent over, he could see that parts of the skin, where it had literally been burned away, were paler than the rest. He saw the faint pink scars where the blades had cut beneath the dark hair of his legs.
“How long have I been asleep?” he whispered.
Something moved in the other room.
Mark turned towards the sound just in time to see the glint of red light flicker off a couple dozen silver studs and posts decorating the otherwise flawless skin of a hermaphrodite’s shoulders and ears.
“Did you dream about me?” Damia asked with a knowing lilt. “No worries, I’m here for you!”
“No,” Mark refuted. “But how long was I out-last night I was…”
“A bloody mess?” Damia finished for him. “Yes, you were. But a good night’s sleep in NightWhere cures everything. If you
Mark shook his head. “No, I didn’t know. But how…”
Damia stepped closer, pushing her chest out until the studded tips of her nipples brushed against his. “Don’t ask,” she said, lifting her mouth to cover his. Mark felt something warm and hard move against the skin of his thigh, and felt a surge of disgust. He pushed her away. “No,” he said.
“Still not ready for the best, huh?” she grinned. She pinched a nipple with one hand and held up a turgid penis with the other. “I guess I’ll have to take you to the rest then. Last chance.”
Mark shook his head.
“Suit yourself. You would have enjoyed me a lot more than what you’re about to do. Trust me.”
Mark said nothing, but followed the tattooed skulls for the third time down a dark hall. They passed the room they had entered on the first day, and Mark recognized the doorway that they had entered last night.
He slowed down a moment to look inside, but there was nothing there…just darkness, with the hint of an orange glow far away.
“I know how you enjoyed it, but we’re done there,” Damia joked. She slipped a hand around his wrist and pulled.
Mark grabbed at the doorframe and missed. But his hand slid along the wall and felt something warm and wet there. When he pulled it away, his palm was slicked in red.
“What is this?” he asked.
“Just what it looks like,” Damia laughed. “It flows from the flaying beds to irrigate all of our walls. Pain is the lifeblood of NightWhere.”
Mark stared at his hand in disgust. With no place to clean it, he finally wiped it off on his thigh.
Damia walked on. The corridor grew narrower, the ceiling constricting until it was just above their heads. At times, Damia ducked as she walked to avoid a gnarled outcropping in the rock.
Mark was more aware than ever of how the walls glistened…he imagined Damia and he were microscopic, walking inside a vein.
The corridor ended in a doorway. It looked heavy and medieval-dark, rough-hewn boards held together by dark iron strips. Damia pulled it open and waved Mark inside. “It’s time for you to do your part to keep our corridors wet,” he/she said.
Mark shivered at the words. He didn’t like the sound of that.
The room was a torture chamber. Unlike the last two places they had taken him, which had seemed to extend on and on, this room was very contained. Maybe fifteen feet long in one direction and twenty in the other.
A circle of the robed figures stood just ahead. As Mark stepped forward, the front of the circle parted to reveal what was at the center.
A woman. She was nude, but appeared to have been painted; her skin was black as pitch. Her head was covered in a burlap bag that was tied with twine around her neck, and the NightWhere logo of a snake curled in a spiral to eat its own tail was painted across the midnight color of her belly in red. Her arms were tied above her head to a pole. Her ankles were also fastened.
Kharon stepped out of the mob. His ghoulish face showed what was supposed to be a smile, Mark thought. Yellowing teeth spread beneath lips so pale they appeared grey.
A corpse smile, he thought.
