He leaned down to kiss her. She allowed him, but did not respond.
“I’ve missed you so much,” he said. “Let me take you out of here now. You need a doctor.”
Rae shook her head and pushed Mark to lie down on the slab. She rolled herself on top of him, gasping with pain as she did, as fresh blood oozed out all along the circle of the NightWhere snake.
“I’m not leaving here,” she warned, her voice hitching in pain with each word. She ground herself against his crotch, her eyes rolling back in her head as she did. She gave out a handful of guttural moans that were as filled with anguish as pleasure. To Mark she sounded hideous, but when Rae finally focused and looked down into Mark’s eyes again, she smiled.
“Thank you, baby. I have only one more trial to pass before I can go into The Black.”
“What is that?” Mark asked.
Damia stepped forward to the table and helped slip two white gloves over Rae’s hands. When the hermaphrodite stepped away, Mark saw that each of Rae’s fingertips ended in silver. The gloves had claws.
Triangular, razor-sharp blades. As the weapons registered, Mark felt hands grab his ankles and wrists.
“This is the fun part I was talking about earlier,” Damia said. “I’d like to introduce you to someone.”
She gestured to a dark corner of the room, and a figure stepped forward. Mark could have sworn she was not in the room before. “This is the Night Mother, our Midnight Queen. Yvonna,” Damia said. “She has been waiting for this for a long time.”
Yvonna was beautiful.
And horrible.
Her skin was black as pitch; Mark couldn’t tell if she’d been painted as Rae had been, but she looked just as strangely black. The thrust of her nipples was only slightly less dark than the midnight of her skin. The sign of the snake was tattooed on her midsection in the same way that Mark had carved it into Rae. But the image of the snake repeated itself over and over across her cheeks and forehead and arms and legs. Tiny snakes were visible on her eyelids and when she raised her hands Mark saw that even her palms were scored with the snake.
Mark struggled briefly against the hands that gripped him, and Damia continued speaking as Yvonna stepped closer. Damia reached up to stroke Rae’s cheek.
“Her final trial is that she must have sex with your corpse and take your death seed inside her as she feeds your life to Yvonna,” Damia said. The playful lilt of her voice no longer sounded filled with wry humor. She was unsmilingly serious. “Corpse seed will be Rae’s
Yvonna smiled, revealing ice-white teeth that shone strangely against the black of her skin. She looked like some kind of denuded demon covered in dark symbology.
Rae flexed her steel-clad fingers and smiled down at Mark’s face.
“You always said you’d give your life for me,” she said, her voice a playful whisper. “Well, honey…now I
Chapter Forty-Three
Mark looked back and forth between the sigil-covered demon-woman, Yvonna, and his blood-spattered, demonically grinning wife. He wasn’t sure how she could even be kneeling upright with all of her wounds. He could see the pink coils of her intestines through the slit in her belly. Yet she was not only upright, she was menacing. Rae reached down with her forefinger and drew its blade across his chest. She didn’t press, yet instantly a line of crimson welled on his skin.
“I won’t take too long, I promise,” she grinned, moving her legs to straddle him, getting in position for the fuck of his life. And death.
Mark made a sudden lunge with his hip, knocking Rae off balance. She gave out a cry of pain as her wounds gaped open. She fell to her side. As the Watchers were distracted for a second by Rae’s fall, he yanked his right hand out of the grip that held it, slamming the Watcher hard against the edge of the table with his sudden pull.
As the Watchers grabbed at his arm to restrain him again, Mark wrapped his fingers around the dagger that he’d used on Rae. He swung it in an arc across the side of the table, slicing arms and hands that reached for him. Rae grabbed him around the neck, trying to pull him down. Mark looked up once at her eyes, and saw a woman that he had never seen before.
She looked hateful. Murderous. The love that he had once imagined in her face was completely gone. She only wanted him for one thing.
Mark was willing to sacrifice a lot for Rae. He’d already given more than he thought possible. But he didn’t intend to give her his life.
He stabbed her in the chest with the knife, and she screamed in anger, falling back. Then he sliced the wrist of the Watcher holding his other hand, and leapt forward off the table right at the two who held his feet.
After two quick stabs, they released him and Mark didn’t waste a second. He ran for the door without looking back.
He sprinted down the long corridor, past the rooms of pain and degradation, and darted through an open arch to a small foyer where dozens of candles burned. Noise grew behind him. Mark yanked open the heavy wooden door and then pulled it shut behind him.
He recognized the room as soon as he stepped into it.
The Blue Room. He’d managed to get back to the front facade of the club. He now knew that this was just a false face-the real NightWhere was behind the medieval doors. In The Red and The Black.
The outer room of the club was alive with people still. They danced in a half-clad bacchanal to the gothic tones of the band, and a handful of people were lined up to get drinks from Sin-D’s bar. The bartendress looked up as he took stock of the club, and her eyes widened when she saw him.
Mark didn’t waste time. He bolted to the front door, pushing aside the ever-present doorman as the pale man’s long fingers grabbed futilely at his shoulder.
“You can’t go out now,” Tailor insisted, but Mark threw himself against the door and forced his way through.
“I have to,” Mark said.
“Wait!” someone screamed from the club, but Mark pulled the door shut. Then he turned around and looked at where he’d ended up.
Instead of leading outside, the exit from NightWhere had put him in another room. This one had a large window on one side, and a desk and rolling chair on the other. It appeared to be someone’s office. Only, the chair lay on its side, and the window was so dirty you could barely see outside. It didn’t look like a place that had been used in a long, long time.
Mark ran to the door on the other side and turned the knob, but it wouldn’t open. And the lock appeared to be on the other side. There was no button to press or knob to twist to unlock it from within.
Behind him, the door opened up and Tailor stepped out. “You can’t leave,” the doorman said. “Come back inside.”
Mark laughed. “No fuckin’ way.”
He grabbed a paperweight from the desk and threw it as hard as he could. It caught Tailor right in the forehead, and the doorman collapsed with a grunt to his knees.
Mark grabbed the chair from beneath the desk and lifted it over his head. With a yell of anger, he flung it against the window. The glass exploded and a cool draught of dawn rushed into the room. The doorman was getting to his feet, and Mark righted the chair from where it had fallen sideways on the floor. Then he stepped up on the chair and jumped like a diver to arc through the window.
He landed with a
