Paranormal Erotic Romance Box Set (24 page)

I paused and looked up at Adelaide and her stone cracked
as she looked down at me.

“On your knees, Sophia,” Adelaide said.

I sunk to my knees and Jonas knelt in front of me and
placed the book in his lap. He stabbed at the earth with the knife and brought
the blade out of the soil. He touched the tip of the blade to my forehead and
ran it lightly down the center of my face to my chin.

“Continue now, Sophia,” Adelaide said as Jonas stuck the
knife in the dirt and held the book up.

“The angrier you become, Father,” I said, “the more
dangerous you are. I plead to thee, bearer of sorrow, aid me in my journey with
all the darkness of my heart.”

“So mote it be,” Adelaide’s voice boomed as more of her
stone chipped off and rained down atop Jonas and I. “Long live Hades, the God
of the Underworld!”

“Long live Hades!” the others said.

Jonas bowed his head and rested his forehead on the pages
of the book and James came up behind me and picked me up and held me in his
arms.

“Long live Hades and long live Sophia,” James said and
kissed me.

James carried me over to Adelaide and held me up to her
face.

“He is the fire within your heart, Sophia,” Adelaide said,
“for it is He who stands in the darkness bright. He is the untamed wind, the
fury of storm and the passion in your soul. On swift night wings, it was He who
laid you at His feet to be reborn and return. It is He who teaches you the
secrets of death and peace and it is He who will support your revenge. Now, go
forth and dance and sing, live and smile, for this is your life.”

“Thank you,” I said.

James carried me to the stone altar and laid me upon it.

“Is it time for cake and ice cream?” I said.

“Almost,” James said and chuckled as he stroked my hair.
“The Gods will come into you now, Sophia.”

“No, thank you. You’ve already come into me enough this
week,” I said and giggled.

James stared down at me and did not smile as he stroked my
forehead. The others gathered around me and Céline stood behind me, reached
over and held my arms above my head. Jonas Dashiell stood at my feet and
grabbed my ankles.

“James?” I said.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” James said into my ear. “Just relax.”

“From the depths of thy pit where Thanatos lies, let thy
chariot bear thee and rise to us!” Adelaide said. “Come Hades, come Thanatos,
come Eros and Chaos! Come and take Sophia onto thee!”

“James,” I said.

“Sophia, close your eyes now,” James said.

I closed my eyes as a violent, hot wind kicked up around
me. I felt Jonas Dashiell’s hands grip my ankles and pull my legs apart.
Céline’s hands held my wrists tight as she pulled back on my arms as if I was
stretched on a rack. My robe was ripped open and the sultry, ebullient wind
pelted against my naked body as if filled with sand. Someone held my head down
and I tried to resist as my scalp grated against the rough stone.

Claws scraped up and down my naked body and I kept my eyes
closed, knowing I should not see what was about to be done. I felt heaviness on
top of my body as if I was being pressed by stone as whatever was weighing me
down crawled on top of me.

Jonas pulled my legs apart wider and something stabbed at
the opening of my pussy and then slammed into me. I tried to rise up as I
screamed and the hands of the others held me down.

I was being fucked, this I know, and the pain which was
considerable soon melted into exquisite ecstasy as I tried to meet the crazed
thrusts of the thing that impaled me.

“More?” A deep voice said from above.

“More!” I said.

He plunged himself in and out of me, inflating me with
chaos and leaving chasms filled with ruthless serenity as He ravaged my body.
He filled my hollow form with rapture, stuffing me until I felt I would burst.
I met his every assault as the others called forth the Goddess Nemesis and the
God Arawn to aid me on my journey.

I screamed as he drilled deep into me and he released,
filling every space left inside my body with the courage and the will to do
what had to be done.

The heaviness lifted and I opened my eyes as my arms and
legs were released. I was no longer who I was. I was something different
entirely.

James helped me sit up on the altar and stared into my
eyes.

“Sophia, are you okay?”

Am I okay? I thought as I squeezed my arms, ran my hands
over my belly and patted my legs. Am I okay?

I felt a current zigzagging through my body, as if charged
tendrils of electricity pulsated inside me. It was neither painful nor
worrisome, just distracting as I wondered if I was--

“Sophia, are you okay?” James said.

Okay. And I knew at that moment after I was fucked by the
Gods that I would forevermore be--

“Okay,” I said and looked into James’ eyes and nodded. “I
am okay.”

He lifted me off the altar and hugged me.

“Sophia,” Adelaide said, “meet your brothers and sisters.”

All of the others lined up in an orderly, single-file line
and waited for me to receive them.

“Are you ready?” James said as he tilted his head down to
mine.

I looked at the line and the smiling faces and shook my
head.

“I am as ready as I’m ever going to be,” I said and
touched my head to his.

“Excellent, let’s get started shall we?”

All of my new family members were exceptional. They
greeted me warmly and, as in life, some were more talkative than others and
excited to share their stories of how they arrived at the Battleroy Hotel.

I first met Dr. Hans Newlander, a psychiatrist from
Germany and his friend Mr. Paul Greenly, a former elevator operator at the
Battleroy.

On March 14, 1911, during an elaborate celebration, the
Battleroy Hotel unveiled their exquisite new crystal and copper elevator car,
boasting that it was the most ornamental elevator car in the world. The hotel
sold raffle tickets to their guests and many hoped to be the first to ride in
such an exquisite car. Mr. Newlander won the raffle and he, with Mr. Greenly at
the helm, began their ascent as all of the guests looked on.

Suddenly, the elevator car flew up an entire floor and
then bounced back down and came to a stop. The shaken Dr. Newlander huddled
next to Mr. Greenly as he worked on the controls to solve the problem. The
guests reported a terrible screech as Dr. Newlander and Mr. Greenly looked up
the moment the 500-ton elevator cable and its drum mechanism crashed through
the ceiling of the elevator and crushed the car’s occupants.

Patrick Lucien greeted me next and was Céline’s lover.

An extremely handsome writer from California, Patrick came
to the Battleroy chasing down a lead as an investigative journalist for the
San
Francisco Chronicle
. There was a particularly gruesome and illusive Russian
mob family in New York at the time and the
Chronicle
received a tip that
the family dumped a slew of bodies in a flooded secluded cranberry bog located
to the south of the Battleroy’s forest. But Patrick’s cover was blown as one of
the Russian mobsters spotted him snooping around the bog on September 20, 1961
and followed Patrick back to the Battleroy.

That evening as Patrick showered, the mobster gained
access to Room 424 and restrained Patrick in the bathroom. He injected Patrick
in the neck with a syringe filled with dimethylmercury. The two paramedics who
transported Patrick’s body, three morgue workers and the doctor who performed
Patrick Lucien’s autopsy also died from dimethylmercury poisoning a short time
later.

A man suspected to be the Russian gangster who injected
Patrick with the poison was found dead in his car parked under the Sagamore
Bridge on the Canal Service Road. The area was evacuated and the car, with the
gangster’s body still inside, was incinerated where it sat until there was
nothing left of it or him.

Next up were Tara Holderman and Jennie-Lynn Yardley, best
friends and respectable housewives from Seabrook, New Hampshire.

On May 12, 1935, Tara and Jennie-Lynn left their children
with their parents and lied to their respectable husbands when they told them
they were going to spend the weekend together in Concord to attend a pie baking
class. The only pie that was involved was the metaphoric flavor because Tara
and Jennie-Lynn were lovers.

Tara’s husband Charles found their story suspect and
followed the girls to the Battleroy. Charles was a police officer in Seabrook
and was able to obtain the key to Room 218 easily from the front desk.

Charles waited outside the girls’ room for three hours
before he let himself in, found his wife and her friend nude in their bed,
muzzled his gun with a pillow and shot each of the girls twice in the chest.
Charles Holderman then left the hotel and drove himself to a police station in
Truro where he confessed to his crime. Charles never spent a moment in jail as
the crime was brushed away and deemed justifiable homicide since the girls were
found in what was called, a grotesque embrace.

As it turned out, Céline’s wasn’t the only botched
attempted suicide at the Battleroy. Perry Alden was a seventeen-year-old,
love-struck local boy who was in love with Mary McDonald, a young girl who
worked as a maid on the sixth floor of the Battleroy.

Perry memorized Mary’s schedule and, armed with a bottle
of his mother Althea’s Dilaudid, stowed away in the vacant Room 623 on November
26, 1960. Perry penned an emotional note professing his eternal love for Mary.
He was certain that after Mary found him and took him to the hospital to have
his stomach pumped, she would fall madly in love with the passionate boy. Perry
who witnessed his junky mother knock back the pills as if they were Life
Savers, completely failed to take his weight, or lack thereof, into
consideration as he swallowed about ten pills too many.

Perry put the empty bottle of pills on the bedside table,
arranged himself on the bed and laid the note on the pillow next to his head.
After the hallucinations subsided, during which he saw the armoire in front of
the bed morph into General Custer, Perry slipped into an unresuscitatable
unconsciousness and died without Mary ever coming to the room.

Luckily for Perry, he did not die in the spirit of
Shakespearean tragedy for too long. Seventeen-year-old Mary McDonald worked at
the Battleroy for only three months after quitting high school to obtain a job
to help support her poverty-stricken family. Mary took the bus in to the
Battleroy from her Buzzards Bay home and was unaware that Perry Alden was the
boy who sat behind her every day on that bus.

Perry’s death was big news in the community and even though
Mary McDonald was not working on the day Perry’s body was found, she was
questioned thoroughly as his love letter seemed to indicate she and Perry were
in a whirl-wind relationship. After it was ascertained that the whirl-wind
relationship was only a relationship in Perry’s whirl-wind head, the wholly
innocent Mary McDonald kept her job at the Battleroy. However, Perry’s
despondent and junked-out mother Althea blamed Mary for taking her son away
from her. On April 17, 1961, Althea followed Mary into the stairwell on the
sixth floor of the Battleroy.

Althea confronted Mary and in a fit of rage, lifted the
petite girl and held her over the railing by her feet. When Mary refused to
admit she was responsible for her son’s murder, Althea released her grip on the
girl’s feet and watched her plunge the six floors down to her death.

Shortly after Mary’s transformation, Perry went to the
girl and apologized for his role in her death. Perry and Mary became lovers and
Althea Alden remains incarcerated in Walpole Prison for the murder of Mary
McDonald.

Anthony Porcco lumbered up to me next and told me his
tragic tale.

On August 10, 1928, the Battleroy hosted a strange contest
they called the International Potato Eating Contest which was hardly
international in scope and thought up to counter the newly opened Trident
Hotel’s International Clam Eating Contest. As they’ve always been, those
running the Battleroy were masters at rousing the interest of the media and the
press descended on the Battleroy that day as if the hotel was hosting Queen
Elizabeth.

Thirty potatoes were baked in the Battleroy’s signature
manner--each raw potato slathered in butter and salt and placed on a bed of
onions before it was wrapped tightly in tin foil and baked. One of the
Battleroy’s employees weight profiled the guests on that day and chose a
particularly unfortunate-looking, chubby boy, twenty-two-year-old Anthony
Porcco who was vacationing with his mother, to compete among the other four
participants of the contest.

The other three contestants chosen were Battleroy
employees and were poised to lose the contest to ensure a win for their guest.
Anthony, who never won anything in his life, was excited to be in the contest
and hoped to make his mother proud. As Anthony inhaled his first baked potato,
he commented to his fellow eaters that he thought the potato tasted like metal.
The others noticed the same, but urged Anthony on, themselves never touching
another of the foul things.

Anthony managed to stuff twenty-four potatoes down his
throat before the paralysis that accompanies botulism attacked his facial
muscles as he sat at the table. Unable to keep his head up any longer, the
employees and guests figured he passed out from too much food and six men
carried the unconscious man to Room 562 where they gave him some water and left
him alone in his bed. As the paralysis overtook his body, Anthony Porcco
aspirated on his own vomit. In the second freak gastronomical poisoning in the
Battleroy’s history, the potatoes later tested positive for high concentrations
of botulism after the spores were allowed to flourish inside the foil-wrapped
potatoes.

I then met the esteemed Professor Judah Roderick who came
to the Battleroy Hotel in 1949 for a symposium that was arranged by the faculty
members of MIT where Judah taught Chemistry. The Battleroy hosted many esteemed
members of academia, but this was the first time the revered professors of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology graced the hotel with their presence. But
they never imagined what a wild bunch these men were.