like a sign of salvation. Pale skin an offering of white against the dark.
“You’re supposed to be in the car,” he whispered. A trace of anger entered his tone. He didn’t need her here, complicating an already difficult situation.
“I can’t let you do this,” she said. “I don’t care if you love me…but I can’t let you give them your soul. Not after all this…”
“I can’t let them take hers,” he said, backing away. “I have to do this. You know that.”
Selena stepped forward, slipping her arms around his neck and pulling the soft, luscious flesh of her body close to his own. He couldn’t help but melt when her breasts meshed against his chest.
But Mark felt something else too. Duty. Promise.
“I can’t,” he said. “I appreciate it but…”
“If you go in there, then I have failed. Everything I’ve given up was for nothing.”
Mark turned away from her when he saw the blood tears begin. He stared at the dark door that led to Rae. A voice inside him screamed to leave this alone. Walk away. Be with Selena.
But the part of him that mattered knew that he would never sleep well again if he walked now. He was here. He had to do his best, one last try, to save Rae. Mark pushed the door open and entered the room. It looked as if he’d entered a medieval torture chamber. The walls held dangling chains and manacles. A rack stretched all across one wall and whips, floggers, chains and other devices hung in a neat row. Nearby, a line of three tall steel boxes, vaguely human shaped, was against the wall. Mark recognized them as iron maidens.
But the focus of the room was the wide stone dais in the center. And that’s what everyone in the room was gathered around.
He stepped forward and the robed figure at the front of the table turned to stare directly at him.
Mark knew those evil eyes immediately, without even seeing the rest of the man’s face.
Kharon.
The Watcher.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” the ghoul said.
The rest of the robed figures turned as one to stare at Mark.
Rae looked up from her ministrations to see what Kharon was talking about, and her mouth split into a happy smile.
Watchers filed past Mark, exiting the room. Only…they weren’t leaving the ceremony. They were capturing Mark’s salvation.
They pulled Selena into the torture chamber and stripped her naked. She didn’t protest. Mark’s heart sank as he saw the cream globes of her ass step and shift as they led her to the table where the man’s corpse lay.
When the figures stopped near Rae, she looked directly at Mark, her lips wet with orgasm. “Hi, baby,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
At that moment, the dark woman stepped out of the shadows and picked up the head of the man on the table from where it lay abandoned on the floor. A smear of blood from its neck brushed against the black skin of her belly, and Mark thought she looked even more evil with that smear on her naked skin.
“Yvonna,” Rae smiled, greeting the woman.
The Midnight Queen only nodded and stepped forward with the head.
Rae rose from her crouch at the crotch of the dead man and grinned at Mark. He couldn’t help but stare at the snake pattern that covered her midsection. A tattoo that marked her forever as the property of sin.
Mark swallowed, thinking about that. He intended to drag her out of here, and she had NightWhere scarred into her flesh. Of course, he had put it there…
She teased her tongue out into the air at him, a teasing sensual display. Her face was smeared with blood and something almost clear; Mark knew it for what it was-a glazed mess of semen.
He thought she was going to walk towards him, but instead, she turned away.
The arms of the Night Mother wrapped around his wife’s pale shoulder blades, and Mark found himself watching his wife’s lips lock with the dark lips of Yvonna. The Midnight Queen’s long black fingers slipped around Rae’s back. His wife’s skin seemed to meld into the body of the other, despite the fact that they looked like representative figures of night and day.
Kharon walked forward to take Selena’s hand from the grasp of the other Watchers. His grin was vile.
“I’ve waited a long time for this,” he said. “Your blood will make us stronger for decades.”
Mark barely registered the words; he was already reaching for the gun he’d bought at the pawnshop. This was the moment, the reason that he’d gone to the lengths he had to own it.
He would never have crossed the law to own a gun before this night. He would never have thought that he’d be chasing his wife into the depths of hell though, either.
Yet, here they were.
Mark pulled out the gun, aimed it quickly at Kharon and fired.
The report was loud and somehow solemn.
Kharon collapsed to the floor, the pale skin of his forehead suddenly blossoming an explosion, not of red, but of black.
Then he turned the gun on the woman of midnight and shot her in the chest. The snakes on her black skin exploded in a rain of dark blood.
Mark didn’t slow; instead, he turned his gun on the hooded Watchers and opened fire on each of them. Some ran from the room, and Mark had to pause to reload, but very quickly the room changed from being driven by a line of black-hooded, druid-like creatures to being the grave of the same. Two hands grabbed him by the shoulders and hugged him from behind.
“C’mon, baby, you give me your gun, and I’ll give you mine,” Damia’s voice growled in his ear. “I know you still want it.”
Mark tried to raise the weapon, but something smashed his wrist, and it dropped and skittered away on the floor. Then Damia pushed him forward and planted a foot in the small of his back.
Mark lost his balance and fell, just as a chain slapped against his ribs.
“Fuck!” he yelled and rolled into a ball trying to protect himself as Damia rained the chain down. The hermaphrodite had lost any of the gentleness of its feminine side; Damia was fiercely angry. Her eyes flashed; even her tattoos seemed to glow with hatred.
“Shoulda taken advantage of me while you had the chance,” Damia huffed, spitting the words out in time to the beating.
Mark struggled to roll out of range, at the same time reaching a hand into his back pocket. The steel bruised his back and thighs and knocked stars into his eyes when a link caught the back of his head.
And then he rolled to his feet and sprang at Damia, slicing upward with the hunting knife he’d had tucked away.
The blade caught Damia right in the crotch. The chain dropped to the ground and the hermaphrodite let out a hideous high-pitched wail.
Mark shoved the knife as hard as he could and twisted, before staggering back. His hand was warm and wet, and Damia’s normally perfect, snow-white skin was spattered in what looked like ink. He/she hadn’t stopped screaming.
“There, now I’ve fucked you,” Mark breathed. “I hope you’re happy. Now you can keep that, and fuck yourself whenever you want. Isn’t that what your kind does anyway?”
Mark rushed forward, grabbed at Rae’s arm, and twisted her about. She punched him repeatedly in the chest with her free hand. “Are you crazy!” she screamed.
Mark grabbed her with both hands, preventing her from hitting him further. “I came to take you home,” he said.
He had hoped that her lips would split into a smile, that her eyes would raise and widen, that her cheeks would expand as they always did when she was happy.
Instead, Rae laughed at him.
“You are an idiot,” she spat. “I don’t want to go to your home. This is my home now…and you just shit all over it.”
Rae kneed Mark in the groin and he fell back as she stepped around the table and grabbed the arms of Selena.
