Phoenix (dystopian romance) (Theta Waves: Episode 1) (6 page)

"Erich," she hears herself say. Her eyes won't open no matter how hard she tries. She can feel Markus beside her, moving about and guesses he's pulling up his breeches, trying to find some dignified way to face his best friend. She might not be able to see, but she can feel the tension charging hairs on her body, the sense that at any moment things will spiral out of control. She hears boots scuffling across the wooden floor. Still, she won't open her eyes.

"Look at me, Cathrin." It's an order from a familiar voice. She chews on her lip, ashamed of herself for giving in, of wanting Markus so badly.

"I said look at me," Erich's finger touches her beneath the chin. There is a shift in the sound of his voice. She swallows hard; her eyes flutter open. Even as she discovers that her fingers are clenching the sheets, she realizes that the face in front of her is not contorted in anger. She licks her lips. Waiting.

"You should be punished, Cathrin," he whispers. His thumb moves from chin to earlobe. Snakes around the back of her neck, pulling her closer to him. There's the fleeting thought that she should wonder where Markus is, but she so absorbed in her fear and shame, that she doesn't dare resist. Erich's mouth descends on hers, forcing her lips open. He suctions her tongue, pulling it into his mouth just to the point of pain, then releases it. He nibbles at her top lip, bites down.

"You will be punished." His lips move from hers but his gaze bores into her, commanding her without speech to stay perfectly still.

"I can't blame you for wanting my wife, Markus," he says. "She's very beautiful; Lucifer in disguise, I think."

It's a strange description, and she tries to study his face, but can't make out the emotion beneath the careful mask. His hands descend to her bodice and tear at the material. He doesn't stop until it's fully rent, her belly straining for the air. Only then does his mouth descend again, this time to her navel, where he nibbles at the skin and sends trails of shivers down her legs. It's then that she knows this will be her punishment, to be taken in front of the man beside her, to be used forcefully, with no thought to love or tenderness. Her husband thinks it will shame them both, but he's wrong.

The thought of Markus still standing next to the bed, watching, sends a thrill up her spine. She's dreamed of such a session; she's wild, she knows, but it doesn't matter in this moment. She revels in it. The nights she's succumbed to her husband's expert touch, all the while dreaming of having two men trailing kisses along her skin, of filling her, all those times she'd known she was wanton, but she'd fired to it just the same. Before Erich, she'd foolishly believed it was a woman's chore to please her husband, and when she'd realized he knew how to turn the chore into a pleasure, it became the one thing that decided her. Not his wealth and position. No. She needed a man to thrill her body, and Erich did.

His mouth leaves her skin only long enough to curse at her, to tell her how she will be punished. To tell her all the delightfully delicious ways he will make her suffer. She can feel her lip trembling in anticipation and her eyes lock on Markus's even as her husband's mouth descends below her navel, to scour between her legs with his tongue. She can see the bulge in Markus's breeches, and knows he feels the same. Her husband might think to punish her with his touch, find his way to dignity through treating her like a harlot, but he can't imagine how badly she wants it.

"Punish her, Markus," he says. "Make her suffer for making you wait, for cuckolding me."

She half expects Markus to resist; he's a gentleman, after all. He's Erich's best friend. He should be mortified at his betrayal.

But he isn't. He shifts onto the bed, facing her, on his knees with his cock insisting she open her mouth for him, and they throttle her together these two. Yet Erich's expression is never more than controlled complacency while Markus's is pure abandonment and surrender. Even in the heat of orgasm, Erich watches her carefully, as though he's examining her, searching for something.

It's a fortnight before the truth of the punishment finally comes out and she realizes the depth of her betrayal, how profoundly Erich feels that his examination is nowhere near done.

She's in the parlour when they come for her. At first, she's confused, thinking that Herr Schönenberg is there simply to pay his respects, to introduce her to the newest member of his diocese, Constable Fritzaen. She's seen the man about the village, dressed in cloth of gold as though he were royalty, his wife ingratiating herself among the nobility as though they always belonged. Of course they didn't; Erich would have organized a masque if it were so and he hadn't.

No, this constable had no lineage but what came from the cesspools of execution and theft.

She lays down her needlepoint at any rate, smoothing her skirts as she stands to welcome them. She's about to ask them if they'd like some tea when she notices that Erich is coming in behind them. He doesn't so much as point a finger at her, or lock his eyes on hers when he speaks.

"There she is," Erich says. "The mark is on her."

"The mark?" she asks her husband, confused. "What mark are you talking about?"

No one answers her. The only response she receives is to be manhandled by the constable. He's an ugly man, his face full of scars from the smallpox, his eyes a blue as hard as his grip on her elbow, even bluer against the purple of his doublet.

"Where has the devil marked you, child?" he asks her.

"The devil..." The panic is rising now, twisting its way up through the confusion as she searches for her husband's face. "What are they talking about, Erich?"

"She's lain with the devil," Erich says to the Herr Schönenberg "You'll see his mark there on her thigh."

Herr Schönenberg jerks his head at her, flaring that bulbous nose of his, his strip of mustache wriggling grossly as he chews at his thin lip. Without so much as a sense of proprietary, the hard-eyed parishioner, the witch Hunter she realizes now, yanks her skirts up as he leans in.

"Yes," he says as his fingers pinch the tender flesh of her inner thigh. She knows what he sees. It's been there since Erich bit her a fortnight ago and has now healed into a perfect half-moon still as red and tender as a newborn bottom.

"That's not the devil's Mark," she protests. "Erich, tell him what it is." She tries her best to wrench her skirts back down, to twist herself out of the hard grasp of the constable.

"Quiet, witch," Erich says. He makes a great show of being unable to meet her gaze. "The devil has you; the devil take you." His face is such a contortion of disgust, that she's unsure whether he's acting or whether he's genuinely afraid of her.

"Please, Erich." She gets no more out as the archbishop takes her other arm and together with the constable, they twist her, shoeless, through the parlour and out the back kitchen onto the cobblestone streets. Her servants move aside like a wake.

It's cold even for March, and the frost of the stones bite into her heels as she takes her first steps from her warm home. She can't help stumbling.

"See how the devil faints in the face of divinity," the constable says.

"A woman falls when she's dragged shoeless into the street," she corrects him then quickly realizes her mistake. Innocent or not, she'll pay for that haughtiness; that pride will fuel the constable's prejudice now; he has the scent of her wealth in his nose. He'll never see her as innocent.

She twists her head to peer back at Erich as he stands just within the doorframe, shadowed by the inside. She hopes she can catch his eye, beseech him, remind him of all the nights they'd shared, how pleased he was to have her on his arm, consorting about Trier with such pride. While his fists are clenched at his sides, his mouth is now a controlled line. A sob catches in her throat as she begins to realize the full extent of what's happening. She won't get out of this, not alive.

"Please, Erich," she says, resisting now. She drags against their arms, twists, kicks. He loves her, he wouldn't accuse her so. She can make it better, take it all back. She can be genteel for him, bear his children if he likes. "Please."

A sharp sting in her cheek brings blood to her mouth. Her legs turn to water as the pain washes down to her jaw. From one knee she tries to regain her composure, closes her eyes as she drags in a breath.

She's pulling in air, probing through the blood in her mouth when she's yanked back to her feet. Everything blurs: the house with its brown beams and stucco, the cobble stoned street, the faces about her. She could be swimming underwater with her eyes open as those images twists together, move forward, backward, around on each other.

There's another sting in her cheek, this time rattling her teeth together and sending a scream of pain down her jaw.

She fights to open her eyes, but the blackness that seeps in from the edges makes her lids too heavy.

When she wakes, it's to pain in her wrists. She lifts a feeble head to the blackness around her, lit by torches in their sconces, the smell of sweat and blood heavy on the air. She tries to move and discovers she's manacled to a chair. Her expensive dress has been stripped away, and the shift she's left in is made of coarse flax instead of linen. Someone has undressed her, redressed her in something befitting a criminal or a lowborn peasant. She's cold; the goose bumps on her skin strain painfully away from her flesh. She tries to work through the muddle of thoughts, each trying to find its own prominence. Erich, she thinks. A flash of his face comes to her in the dark.

"Your husband can't help you," a voice says. "He's the very one who accuses you."

She lifts her gaze toward the voice. Herr Schönenberg, she realizes. Flanked by two other men, one of them the constable from earlier, the other she recognizes as a magistrate of the court. All of them sit at a table in front of her, one of them with a quill and ink.

"Why am I here?" She manages to say. Her voice is feeble, as though she's been screaming, and then she realizes that's exactly what has been happening. She remembers that she's been here in front of these men for hours. The memory of that time tries to swim in front of her, but she bats it away, unwilling to revisit the images; they are too painful, that much she knows.

"You've been charged with heinous crimes against God, surely you remember."

She struggles with that. "I... I don't want to remember."

"That's because your master, Lucifer, has taken away your memory. We can help you."

She hears the scuffling of boots from her left, but before she can protest, searing agony burns up her arm. The smell of roasting skin and unbelievable pain twist the last bits of bile from her stomach, flooding her mouth. It burbles from her lips onto her chest. The stink of it sears her nostrils.

"Do you remember now? You've been questioned, Frau Bach. You denied the charges."

Questioned, yes. There had been plenty of questions; all of them ludicrous. She tries to swallow but her mouth is so dry the flesh sticks together. The judges take her silence as some sort of assent.

"The devil has stolen your tongue, child. We've been charged by the holy church to discover the truth and divest this community of evil."

She realizes she needs to speak, but she's too weak. The pain has indeed refreshed her memory. Hours of torture, demands of her to admit to witchcraft. Nothing she says seems to make any difference.

"It's a misunderstanding, my lords," she croaks out.

At that, one of the men, the magistrate she supposes, waves an arm and the hooded torturer trudges his way to the door. It's a heavy, oaken thing that creaks when he opens it, and Cathrin can see that just beyond in the torchlight and shadows of another room, another figure is hunched forward on a bed of straw. The figure is lifted by his arm, and dragged into the room. His legs are obviously broken; they bend at abnormal angles.

"Markus," she murmurs.

"Yes," the magistrate says. "A man who has confessed to being lured and tempted by you to perform unholy acts. What say you to that?"

Unholy indeed. Each one of them at the time felt so delicious, that they couldn't possibly be anything but sanctified. She can't explain that to these men, though. Their agenda is set and nothing can sway them from it. They'd never see a difference between witchcraft and wantonness now that the former has been brought into question. She's seen the condemned women over the last months as they're dragged to their deaths. Each of them so beaten and bloody by the time they are tied to their wooden crosses that even she had come to believe that some physical wrestling of the soul had occurred deep in the dungeons. Now she knows the truth.

"I say I'm innocent," she says, trying to see Markus, trying to will him to lift his gaze to hers. Surely they will see that all that is between them is the love of a man and a woman. Nothing more.

"And yet the man confesses you a witch. Thankfully for him, his end will be swift and painless."

Markus groans, but when he tries to lift his head, it falls again so that his chin nestles onto his chest as though he's fallen into a tender slumber. Seeing it, Cathrin seethes with anger. Never has she believed Erich could be so hateful as to do such an evil thing.

"Then you have what you need," she says, the old spite and fire finding some way to the surface through all of the fear. Let them kill her. Let them kill them both. At least this would be over. Maybe the others had been foolish enough to protest their innocence until the last, leaving them bound to crosses with patches of gunpowder tied around their necks. Maybe many others have been naïve enough to think their protestations would end in something other than death. She wasn't that foolish.