Witch Water

“I know thy prank, sir,” the thick-jawed man said down to him. “Yet there be reason why feigning death wilt fool me not,” and then Rood leaned over and grinned broadly down at him.

Fanshawe leapt up, grabbed a knife from a rack on the table, then lunged at Rood.

Rood’s mouth ejected words thick as half-formed objects: “Nard’gurnlut do’blyn srug…”

Fanshawe fell limp. He could see and think, he could feel, but he couldn’t move. Had the alien words really caused his paralysis or had his neck been broken during the hoist into the attic. Suddenly rough hands were on him— “Venturer, first, thy garb must be got rid of,” Rood said, amused. Fanshawe felt his shoes pulled off, then his slacks, then his underpants, and his sports jacket and shirt. Then—

SPLAT!

—a bowl of something warm suddenly slapped Fanshawe’s face. The copper-salt taste that leaked into his mouth told him it was blood.

“Now,” Rood’s voice fluttered from above, “thine fit and proper anointment.”

Blood drooled down Fanshawe’s face and stung his eyes.

“And afore ye most unholy of imprecations—as mine Squire sayeth—thy gullet must be filled,” and then another bowl was wielded, and put to Fanshawe’s lips. “Drink all this up, good sarvant.”

Revolted, Fanshawe kept his lips sealed; he shook his head no. He knew it wasn’t merely blood Rood wanted him to swallow, but baby’s blood.

“Nay? Why dare displease the Squire?”

The edge of the bowl pushed at the seam of his lips.

“Heed, and take this down into thy belly, stranger. Thy worth must first be proved.”

Fanshawe kept shaking his head, eyes squeezed shut as tightly as his lips.

“Be an encumbrance not, or suffer…” and then Rood picked up a hand-forged linoleum knife whose inner curve had been honed to the sharpness of broken glass.

The knife was hooked under Fanshawe’s scrotum.

“Many’s the time, sir—and believeth it—ye pleasure’s been mine to skive a man’s groin bare.” A chuckle fluttered. “’T’will make a woman of thee if thou refuse to drink.”

Fanshawe tensed as the blade’s edge threatened to break the skin.

The bowl nudged his lips. “Drink with faith.”

Shuddering, Fanshawe gulped the bowl’s contents down.

“Fine, fine Rood,” another voice seemed to sing. A graceful shape passed before the wall of candlelight. “A glorious christening it is thee’ve achieved.”

A lithe figure towered over Fanshawe. Evanore, he knew by the voice. She giggled, gliding a bare foot up the inside of his thigh. When she leaned over, he could see she was not only naked but feverishly intent on him. “A handsome one, isn’t he?”

Rood, still behind Fanshawe, only grunted.

“Calm thyself, Rood. Our ilk has naught for jealousy, hmm? Our Benefactor hath spoken it,” but her words were a mockery of their meaning. Fanshawe saw the woman’s large bare breasts moving closer—she was kneeling between his splayed legs. “Yea, I’ll pleasure in filching the cream from this one. Do taketh away thy knife, friend Rood. You’ll wither him to nothing, and what use have I of that?”

More giggles sailed off as Rood put the knife away; even in his paralysis, Fanshawe relaxed…but only for a moment.

Terror had shrunk Fanshawe’s genitals, but now Evanore purred as she applied some oily fluid to them. “Surely this even-time’s events hath affrighted our venturer out of his vitality.” Her hands worked the slick oil all around Fanshawe’s groin. “But this shall resurge him a’plenty—the juice of many blister beetles, b’mixed with but a half-dram of nightshade oil…”

Beaten, hanged, forced to drink infant’s blood, and a knife held to his genitals—it was understandable that Fanshawe had completely lost his sexual responses. In only moments, however, Evanore’s arcane concoction succeeded in arousing him.

“There now!”

Fanshawe was sick to death. Nothing in his mind was sexually aware, yet his erection throbbed, if anything, larger than ever. Evanore’s grin turned greedy when she squatted down and impaled herself on it. All the while, Rood’s hand clamped to Fanshawe’s throat, fingers pliered around the adam’s apple.

Licking her lips, Evanore began to ride Fanshawe up and down.

Slick sounds rose; Fanshawe’s eyes crossed at the abominable act. She’s raping me… Her breasts bounced with each hard impact of her groin to his. She began to moan and even drool.

“Now, Rood! Lend some spark to his spirit!” she panted.

Fanshawe’s tongue shot out of his mouth the noose was put back around his neck; Rood gave it a twist. The sight seemed to rile Evanore—her groans began to blend with muted shrieks, and in the carnal delirium, her finger reached out. First she made the sign of an upside-down cross in the blood on Fanshawe’s forehead, then a pentagram on his scarlet chest. She rode him harder and harder.

Rood gave the noose’s knot another twist.

Almost no air got into Fanshawe’s lungs. He felt worse now than when he was being hanged. His face expanded; his neck beat. When he started to gag again, Evanore touched a fingertip to the top of a tiny bottle. “My moment’s nearly beside me!” came more words through more panting.

The slick sounds drew on with the lewd motion. Fanshawe’s vision was dimming but he was able to see the glimmer of a drop of fluid on Evanore’s fingertip. “Yes, yes!” and then she drew her finger along the inside of his lower lip. Instantly, he felt a tingle.

He thought of shooting his thumbs backward, to target Rood’s eyes, but he couldn’t raise his hands off the floor. A harder thought, then: grabbing Evanore’s white, sweat-sheened throat and wringing it till a vertebra snapped, but, still…

He couldn’t move at all.

Then he began to convulse.

“The potion’s so vital!” Evanore seethed.

Fanshawe’s convulsions came like electrocution. His body began to flop beneath Evanore’s weight, causing his pelvis to lurch repeatedly up. Evidently, this was the effect she wanted. She wanted to be penetrated violently, by the throes that just preceded death…

“Just the tiniest bit of spike-fish poison can kill a man,” she drooled in glee, “but half that? It makes a man flop and flip quite a fish out of water!”

Fanshawe’s body bucked hard now, and as if on cue, Rood tightened the noose further. Evanore’s bosom heaved in and out as her climax drew near. “Yea, to the very brink he must be brought!”

Fanshawe felt her sex spasm in fits around his erection. He continued to twist on the floor, veins beating in his head. A scream of the most demented ecstasy burst from Evanore’s throat; Fanshawe’s heart beat so hard if felt as thought it were trying to churn its way out of his chest. Then his entire body heaved on the floor as his own climax broke, bringing a sensation of pleasure more potent than anything he’d ever felt.

A sound more like a death-rattle than a scream ground out of his own throat when his vision turned black and he felt heat so intense he could’ve just been dropped into a slag furnace—

—and then Fanshawe was sitting wide-eyed and fully dressed at a round wooden table inlaid with pearls. Several candles flickered; the same centuries-old paintings that hung in his suite at the inn now surrounded him, but they looked brand-new.

A glass of wine sat before him, and sitting beyond it, across the table, was Jacob Wraxall, his green eyes glittering.

“Pray, pardon the viciousness of my attendant’s hectoring,” the old man said. “His orders to do so were mine alone.”

Fanshawe could only stare.

“And an equal pardon I’ll hope you to grace upon my rather randy daughter, and ye fervid eccentricities that be her wont when coupling with a man.”

“Eccentricities is putting it mildly,” Fanshawe finally managed to speak.