NightWhere (11 page)

Then she slammed the wooden paddle across his penis, and the kid screamed even louder as he lost his balance and fell backwards, impaling his ass and shoulders on the nails. The woman jumped on him then, straddling his abused cock and forcing her tongue into his mouth even as he continued to scream. She closed his lips with hers and then reached down and guided his cock inside her. How it had remained erect, Mark couldn’t fathom. The kid wrapped his arms around the woman as if he truly loved her. The sound of his pain was dulled, but not stopped, by the suction of her lips, but soon her own bleats of pain joined his as he pushed against the floor and rolled her over, pinning her wrists and her back to the nails with his body. His cock never left her, as they fucked and rolled, fucked and rolled, until both of their bodies were nothing but a bloody rash.

Mark felt sick.

This was not sex play.

This was horror.

It had only taken him a minute to confirm that Rae, thankfully, was not in this room, but…where was she?

He slipped back out of the room and walked a few steps farther down the hall. He heard the sound of the whips before he reached the door. They slapped wet and sharp, with a rhythm that was unmistakable. And the screams that answered each crack told the rest of the story.

Mark peered around the edge of the door and saw three men, nude from the waist up, standing around a woman who appeared to be hanging from the ceiling. At first he wondered why there were so
many
ropes stretching from the ceiling to her naked flesh, but then one of the men shifted his stance and Mark understood.

She was hung from the ceiling by hooks. Each rope ended in a steel barb that pierced the skin, in sequence, from her shoulders all the way down to her calves. Six crank wheels surrounded her, and when one of the men turned the handle on one, the ropes that held the hooks in her calves and thighs began to pull up until her body hung at a forty-five-degree angle. One of the other men reached out and pinched one of her nipples between his fingers, pulling on it until it stretched from her body like almond taffy. The woman cried no, and someone in the room laughed. That’s when the man abusing her breast pulled a long knife from a sheath in his leather pants.

Mark shook his head and hurried on. Now he knew he was right to come here…he had to find Rae before they did something horrible to her. This was wrong, all wrong. He understood a little bit about the pain and pleasure dichotomy, but this was something else.

This was hell.

The next room was full of people, and Mark strained to see what was happening. He could hear the bleats of pain, but the light was so faint, he couldn’t make out anyone’s face.

But then he didn’t need the light. He heard Rae scream. Mark abandoned stealth mode and rushed into the room, pushing people aside as he struggled to see in the darkness.

That’s when the lights came up, and the room suddenly glowed in a harsh white. It brought tears to his eyes and he blinked to clear them. But when he could see again, he wanted to cry in earnest.

Rae stood in the center of a circle of nude men and women, her arms outstretched. Her wrists had leather bands around them, and chains were hooked to each of those bands connecting her arms to the ceiling. Her ankles were similarly bound, the chains extending to walls on either side of the room, forcing her to stand with her legs spread wide.

All of the circle around her held whips or floggers with long leather straps. Some of those straps glimmered with the silver of steel.

Rae’s face was run with black from mascara…her tears had turned her into a ghastly clown. The marks of whips crisscrossed her breasts and back, angry red welts wrapped around her like red rope.

Mark pushed the people away from her and screamed, “Leave her alone!”

Nobody stopped him as he stepped into the center of the circle, reached up and unhooked the leather bracelets on Rae’s wrists from the chains and then did the same with her feet. As he did, her blood smeared across his hands; her back and legs were a mess of bleeding cuts.

“Mark, what are you doing? No,” Rae complained blurrily. She almost seemed drunk. Mark wondered if they’d drugged her before doing this. Fuckers!

Hands grabbed at his shoulders then, as well as at Rae’s. But Mark’s fists fended them off. He felt someone’s nose crush in a warm rush beneath his fingers, and a second later he punched a woman in the gut who was still holding a whip. She doubled over before the next guy grabbed at Mark and tried to stop them from leaving.

“Enough,” he yelled. “You’ve hurt her enough. I’m taking her home.”

He held her around the waist and began to push their way from the room. “Wait a minute,” Rae begged, pounding on his back. “I want my clothes!”

He stopped and she bent to pick them up. As she did, Mark realized the room had gone silent, and Rae’s torturers all stood still, in a single file along one wall. None resisted him. The one who had refused him entrance to The Red when he’d come with Selena stood in the center. “I told you this was for her alone,” he said quietly.

“Not anymore,” Mark said and pulled her from the room. He wouldn’t let her stop until they were back in the Blue Room, with the familiar sounds of ’80s goth rock pounding from across the stage. Then he let Rae pull her skirt up over her hips and half shrug on her corset (he clasped some of the hooks) before he dragged her from the club.

Rae didn’t speak on the way home. Mark knew better than to press her, but after a few miles, he couldn’t stop himself. Her clothes were ripped and bloody. He could see the pale skin of her ribs through the side of the corset that exposed the flesh just beneath her shoulder. She looked like someone who’d been attacked by a man with knives.

“Why did you let them do that?” he asked. “Did they drug you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know why, or you don’t know if you were drugged?”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Mark felt his anger surge. “I thought our deal was full disclosure,” he said. “If we do this, there are no secrets—isn’t that what you said?”

Rae turned her head to stare out the window. In the glass, she no longer saw the night neon of the city passing by the car. She could see the shadows of The Red moving. Nude forms shifting this way and the other. Hands with long fingernails reaching out.

The crack of the whip…

Already, she yearned to go back.

Chapter Fourteen

Rabbit in a Cage

Travis had a feeling that something was wrong. Deadly wrong. He remembered tending bar. And then there had been someone coming in and asking him to go to a club…a place where he’d be comfortable…

And the next thing he knew he was waking up in a dark, cold place. His back was stiff. He couldn’t feel his legs.

And then he heard the voice speaking somewhere nearby.

“Now,” the voice said. “Make him wake up.”

The pain was almost instant. It cut across his belly like a steel ruler slapped down hard. He felt cold and then fire in the same breath. Travis opened his eyes.

Wide.

“What the fuck?” he cried out, and around him he heard a dozen people begin to laugh.

“What the…” he echoed, but nobody responded.

The pain came again.

Travis saw something glow in the far corner of the room. Then another light grew closer. And another.

It looked as if a dozen candles had been lit, and little by little, they moved in tighter.

Travis could see the faces behind the candles now. Faces with dark eyes and creased brows and smiles that looked more hungry than amused.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Just your pain,” someone answered.

And that’s when the hurt began.

When he woke up, they were still there. Waiting to begin again.

The ugliest one spoke.

“Here’s what we need from you,” the Watcher said. “We need pain. You need to bring it. You need to feed us. And in return…”

“What?”

“We know what you want,” the voice whispered.

Travis felt a stir. If they would just tie him up and make the world change in his head… All he wanted was someone to make him feel used.

“Think harder,” the voice laughed. “We will make you feel more than used. We will make you feel dead.”

“Pass?” Travis said, growing more and more afraid as the pale lights closed in, illuminating faces that did not smile.

“Too late” a voice said. “Once you’re in NightWhere, there are no passes. Or safe words. Everything is dangerous.”

Chapter Fifteen

Going It Alone

The doorbell rang, but by the time Rae made it downstairs, whoever had come had already gone.

But there was something left behind. A red envelope.

Her heart began beating faster. She knew what it was without picking it up. An invitation to NightWhere. She pulled it from the mailbox and let the door slam behind her as she ripped the seal open. Inside, an ornate script read:

It’s time for a rabbit hunt.

And there can only be one hunter.

Come alone to NightWhere tonight at 7 p.m.

Beneath that was a handwritten address. Rae didn’t recognize it, and so she crumpled the envelope, dropped it on the table and walked upstairs to the computer in the den to map it. As she did so, she knew in her heart that she had to leave the house before Mark came home. The invitation said to come alone. It didn’t specify which of them was to come, but she knew.

This time was not for him.

NightWhere was for her, and her alone.

As for the rabbit hunt…she had no idea…but she could feel her teeth ache at the words. Her stomach shifted at the possibilities. A rabbit was soft and defenseless…a hunt meant someone would be trapped…maybe hurt in the course of the chase. The more she pondered the words, the more she was dying to know.

She stripped and pulled open her underwear drawer. In the mirror, she noted that the bleached ends of her hair looked even lighter against the tan of her bare shoulders. Her breasts were creamy in the evening light, luminous. Rae made a face at herself and then laughed. She looked good. And she knew it. She loved that confidence…and would use that tonight with someone. Maybe Kharon? The lash marks from her last time at NightWhere had nearly faded completely, she noted, turning halfway around to see her back in the mirror. Some of the places where she’d been whipped still told the story in pale-pink lines across her skin. She suspected that, after tonight, she would have new scars on the brown of her back.

She selected a red silk bra that was nearly see-through and matching panties from the drawer and pulled them on. Then she found a red silk dress rimmed in black lace—more of a slip than a dress, really—and shrugged that over her head. It was tight at the waist and dipped low down her chest, exposing both cleavage and a hint of her bra. She checked it in the mirror, and nodded at the low swell of tantalizing flesh against and beyond the black lace.

Grabbing a pair of black-and-red heels, she hurried downstairs and snatched the car keys from the kitchen counter. A moment later she was pulling out onto their subdivision street and checking behind her to make sure the garage door had begun to close.

She didn’t notice the slate-grey Sonata that did a U-turn and began to follow her down the main street a few seconds later.

If he had turned the corner any later, he would have missed her. It was a Wednesday night, and Mark had been thinking that he was coming home after a shitty hump day to a quiet, relaxing dinner. Alternately, he’d thought, since he was getting home a little early for the first time in a week, maybe they might head out to dinner. But both of those plans hit the sewer just before he reached their subdivision, when he saw Rae’s little silver Mazda sitting at the light across from him. Heading in the opposite direction.

At first he wasn’t sure it was Rae. But then the car in front of him moved up a few feet and he could see the FU at the end of the Mazda’s license plate. Rae’s little in-joke at dirty personalization. The plate read
LUV FU
. To most it looked like a drunken
Love You
. Mark knew it stood for
Love (to) Fuck You
.

He wondered if she was heading up to the store to get something for dinner, and on a lark, he decided to follow her. He figured he would pull up in the parking lot right next to her at the grocery to freak her out. Make her laugh.

When the light changed, Mark crossed the intersection, but a block away did a U-turn. Then he worked his way back through traffic until he was just a couple cars behind the silver Mazda. He didn’t think she’d seen him. He couldn’t wait to see her face when he pulled up right next to her at the Meyers.

But Rae didn’t drive to the supermarket.

She drove right past the Meyers they always went to.

Where was she going then?

At the next light, Mark picked up the cell phone and dialed her number. She was just a car ahead of him now, and before the light changed, he saw her reach away from the steering wheel and then look at something in her hand. But she didn’t put it to her ear. After a couple more rings, Mark heard his wife’s recorded voice ask him to leave a message.