Worlds of BBW Erotic Romance - Box Set (2 page)

That night, the weather was fearsome—a torrential downpour of a summer storm, raining down like the spit of heaven.

Constable Ed Bolt was so soaked from the rain that he thought his bones might be soggy. He made his way through the trees, stumbling along as best he could with his bad foot. He swore as thorns pierced his legs through the cloth of his trousers, and winced when a branch smacked him wetly in the face.

What was he doing out here, in the middle of this miserable storm, chasing demons?

Rutting hell.

There was another flash of lightning. In its light, he glimpsed a bright, shiny object. Was there some kind of giant needle on top of the little hill near the Rector’s house that the locals called the “faerie mound?”

Something tall and… silvery… a pole or blade, sticking out of the ground? Was that what they’d been building with all of the materials the Rector had ordered?

He decided to investigate. Orders or not, his curiosity was piqued.

His mind made up, he left the cover of the trees and started for the fence that bordered the Rector’s property.

Much to his frustration, he found the heavy iron lock on the thick oaken gate to be tightly secured. With no way to open it, his only option was to climb over the fence itself. It was only shoulder height, but the wood was slick and wet. He gritted his teeth and boosted himself up, seeking a foothold on the rough horizontal slats. After what seemed like an eternity of fumbling, he hauled himself over the top.
             

He slid down on the other side of the fence, but his bad foot touched the ground first, and he fell. His face pressed into the damp ground, and he tasted earth in his mouth. Swearing, Ed picked himself up and made his way towards the steep faerie mound.

The side of it was slick, and with his less-than-expert footing, he had to be very careful. When he made it to the top, he found himself on a rough stone platform.

Mother Henne had said she’d seen a demon? Well, there were no signs of such… Ed certainly was no expert, but he imagined that a demon summoning might leave some trace. But there were no scorch marks from hellfire, no traces of ash or sulfur smell.

But there WAS a giant needle there, about half the height of a flagpole, mounted in the center of the stone platform. It was made of iron, but with thick lines of inlaid silver running up it, and a small glass sphere at the top.

So they had built this recently… Ed couldn’t remember it from when he’d last seen the faerie mound several months ago.

He carefully made his way around the outside edge of the platform.

On the far side of the mound—the southward side—he paused, looking down. There was something there: an opening, set into the side of the mound, high as a man and a few feet wide.

He eased his way down for a closer look. There was a pale light inside the opening, and he could see what looked like the glassy stone walls of some odd cave. He felt compelled to see more. But did he really want to risk going down and—

“FOULES
HT SSSINNER!”

Ed jumped when he heard the shout. The voice came from his left; he jerked his head that way, and saw the shadow of a man running towards him from about sixty paces, robes fluttering around his body and a hood hiding his face. Was this one of the Rector’s people?

Ed tried not to panic. But something about this just felt… very wrong, somehow. His heart was pounding and his head spun and his instinct was to bolt for cover.

“Why dosht thou wallowww in thy sssacrilege? Filllth be thine until the end of dayssh!” hissed the newcomer. His voice was lisping and raspy, like that of an old man, but his tone was that of a preacher—as the youngest son of the right Reverend Daniel Bolt, Ed recognized that immediately.

But why was this one screaming sermons out here in the rain?

“I’m the Constable!” Ed tried to shout, but his words were muffled by the storm. “I just wanted to—“

And then there was a flash of lightning, and Ed saw something that made his legs tremble under him, and the bile rise in his throat. In that moment of brilliance, he saw the mouth of the screaming man under the hood.

The grin was impossibly wide—because the mouth itself was lipless. It was the grin of a skull. The flesh around the mouth was rotted, filled with holes, and he could see glistening bone underneath.

Ed didn’t think. His body just started to move, his primitive mind knowing that he had to get away. Following his instincts, he plunged into the shadowed opening in the mound.

The walls and floor of the cavern inside were made of a dark, glassy stone like he’d never seen before. The floor sloped sharply down into the bowl of the cavern, and faceted dark crystal columns supported the roof of the place. The light illuminating the chamber was faint, and he couldn’t see its source.

There had to be some other way out, some passage or door—right?

That was his only chance. That preacher-thing out there meant to murder him, he was sure.

In the center of the chamber was a pedestal, and upon it sat a glass sphere, like an exhibit in some wealthy man’s art collection. A framework of wood was set up above and around the pedestal, supporting a shiny silver claw which hung suspended just over the glass sphere. A silver canister sitting on the floor nearby cast white light from a hair-thin slit; it was apparently a kind of lantern, the source of the light in the chamber.

As he approached the far wall, Ed saw a wooden door set into it. A way out! Some kind of shiny silver rope was stuck under the door, trailing into the chamber, but he barely registered this.

He ran faster, as fast he could manage with his lame foot anyway …

… And was so intent on reaching the door that he neglected to look down as he went. Suddenly, his bad foot caught on something on the floor, and flew forward—only to find himself sliding down a steep shaft in the darkness. His body twisted around as he panicked, trying to find a hand-hold.

There was a sharp, throbbing pain as his head hit stone. His body felt numb, and he dimly realized that he had struck bottom.

But he was not alone.

There was
something
else in the pit. He could smell the rancid stench of it, hear the leathery rustling as it moved, the clacking of claws on stone.

This wasn’t the preacher-thing, but some new terror--something that had been lying in wait in this cursed pit.

And then, the thing was on him …

The weight of it crushed the air out of his lungs. He smelled its meaty breath, and moaned as taloned fingers wrapped themselves in his hair and wrenched his head up.

There was hardly any light, but he could see its eyes. They glowed in the darkness as if illuminated from within…

…and the color was a lambent red.

The thing hissed:
“Yao si Croatoan? Yao si en draen?”

Ed could only moan again. He felt like he was drifting far away, his vision darkening, those red eyes dimming in his view, and he was glad.

“
Draen!
” the thing repeated, an urgency in its terrible voice. “
Waron si?
”

“I don’t know what you … mean,” Ed managed to groan.

A moment later, he was swallowed up by the welcome oblivion of unconsciousness.

The storm was keeping Julia awake
.

She was disturbed not only by the thunder, but by the periodically echoing howls and shouts from outside. Her father had said that the Master was hoping to capture some of the energy of the lightning using the needle they had erected on the faerie mound. Perhaps all the noise was part of this experiment…

Suddenly, Julia heard Reverend Mott’s hideous, deathly voice shrieking and screeching from outside. She thought she heard another voice, muffled by the storm…

She rose from her bed and peered out of her barred window, squinting to see through the rain. In a flash of lightning, she saw a figure running—a young man with a limp, moving fast despite his loping gait.

Constable Bolt? It had to be…

But another figure was chasing him, catching up with stiff, unnaturally long strides which were nonetheless carrying him quickly towards the young man.

And then, the young man dodged around the faerie mound, looking like he was entering the Master’s den.

NO!
Julia thought. She’d never been permitted inside there, but if he disturbed the Master.

“Don’t go that way, Constable!” she shouted. But of course it was useless, her high, girlish voice all too feeble to penetrate the glass of her window and the noise of the storm.

He had disappeared, presumably now inside the Master’s cave under the mound.

A minute later, there was a ruckus from downstairs. She heard her father shouting orders to the servants, heard feet stomping urgently about.

Clad in her night-clothes, she opened her bedroom door—which upon this occasion had been left unlocked, thankfully—and crept down the steps to the parlor. It was now deserted. She went down the hall and tried the door to the basement… locked from the other side. She had to assume that her father and the others had gone down there.

Several long minutes passed until she heard voices, then footfalls coming up the steps from the basement. The basement door flew open and suddenly, her father, the Rector’s stern face met her gaze, his unholy crimson eyes looking at her with perplexity.

“Julia?” the Rector exclaimed. “What are you doing here? You should return to your bed, this matter does not—“

“Is it the Constable?” she asked him. “Is he all right?”

“What… How did you know that?” he asked.

Just then, Mister Starks and one of the other large servant men ascended the steps from behind her father, carrying a body.

It was indeed Constable Bolt, though he appeared to be breathing, at least. There was a bruise on his forehead and he had undoubtedly been knocked unconscious.

The laid him down on the couch, and she studied him for a moment. The dark hair, which hung down over his eyes, was wet from the storm… His powerful, well-muscled arms showed that he had some experience with labor despite his impaired leg. The bad foot itself—the right one—was covered in a large boot, and didn’t seem that awful to her gaze.

In fact, she thought him quite handsome, with the sharp, masculine angles of his face softened by his dark, close-cropped beard.

“Father,” she pleaded. “Let me nurse him. He needs aid…”

“Julia,” her father sighed. “That’s no duty for a young lady, and it wouldn’t look proper to—“

“If you take him to my room, Mrs. Starks can look in on us?” Julia pleaded.

“Very well,” he sighed, appearing wearied and not wanting an argument. He turned to the male servants. “Attend to it, please.”

Ed Bolt floated in semi-consciousness for a long while, listening to a tinkling melody that was soothing in its simplicity. His face and chest were lavished with warm caresses, and there seemed to be no reason to stir. He had never felt so much at peace.

It was not until the pain came again, spiking through his head like a cold iron needle, that he was finally forced to open his eyes.

A young girl looked down at him, her big, pale blue eyes wide with curiosity. Her red-orange hair hung around her freckled face like a flaming veil, and her mouth was half-open as if she was about to speak, the parted pink lips revealing her pearly teeth and a dainty, pointed tongue.

“Little girl,” Ed said. “Who else … uhh … your parents, where am I …”

“I’m
not
a little girl,” she said in a squeaky voice, and closed her eyes, as if embarrassed. “I’m twenty years of age.”

“Okay.” Ed breathed in deeply, tried to focus. The hurt in his head throbbed hard, threatening to scramble his thoughts. “Who are … parents? I’m Constable Bolt, I need to tell …”

“I know who you are, Constable,” the girl said. “I am so pleased to finally meet you! I’m Julia Powell. My father is Rector Powell.” She said this last bit without a hint of pride in her voice, as if she had simply announced that her father was the village butcher.

“The Rector?” Ed tried to pick his head up from the pillow, but a wave of dizziness hit him. He sucked in a breath and tried again.

This time, he was able to look up and around the room. It was definitely the domain of a wealthy female. There was lace everywhere, bottles and boxes of every color, a painting of trumpeting girl-angels dancing on a cloud in their gilded frame.

The music came from a music box set on top of a chest of drawers, two figures twirling upon it in a mechanical dance. Next to the chest of drawers was a case lined with books—though Ed’s vision was blurred and he could not make out the titles on the volumes. The single small window above the book-case had iron bars set on the other side of the glass.

“I told him I’d watch over you,” she said. “He wanted Reverend Mott to do it, but I asked him to let me. It’s a lady’s work, tending a wounded hero.”

“Hero?” Ed asked groggily.

“Well … " she looked down for a moment, embarrassed. Patches of crimson bloomed on her pale cheeks. “I didn’t use that exact word with father, but … You went into the cave, right? You saw the flashes of light, and the silver needle… and you knew you had to investigate. You would not let yourself be … umm … discouraged.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.” He didn’t bother to tell her that he had only entered the cave because a screeching thing with a skull’s grin had been chasing him at the time.

“What is your first name, Constable Bolt?” she asked, blinking rapidly, those sad blue eyes holding some expectation that he didn’t understand.

“Edwin,” he said.

“Edwin,” she repeated slowly, as if savoring the sound of it, “you have a very dark and stormy countenance.”

“Huh?”

She fumbled for something on a table beside the bed. He tried to sit up to see what she was doing, and this time he succeeded without too much dizziness. The covers fell down as he rose, and he realized that his chest was bare.

Julia lifted an opened book from the table. Next to it was a small bowl filled with water, with a wet cloth soaking in it. To his slight embarrassment, Ed realized that the warm sensation he’d felt earlier had been Julia bathing him.

She flipped through the book to a certain page, then placed it in Ed’s blanketed lap to show him. There was a picture in the book there, a woodcut illustration showing a man in plate armor like that worn many centuries past. The visor of his helm was raised, and he wore a stern expression that was almost a scowl, his dark hair billowing out from the helmet around his face. He stood in the cobwebbed corridor of some ancient castle, where a hooded spectre was prepared to spring at him from behind a pillar. At the bottom of the picture was the caption:
“He had a dark and stormy countenance.”

“It’s called ‘The Exiled Knight and the Damsel,’” she explained, pointing at the book. “It’s a romance. I’ve always adored romances. The knight is trapped in the castle, but his hard heart is melted by the love of the young maiden, and he rescues her from her evil uncle, who is a necromancer.” She shuddered as she said this, as if the fiction held some special truth for her.

“The church condemns these books,” she continued, and sighed. “Father doesn’t like them, but he lets me keep them because they were my mother’s.”

“Do you think I look like the knight?” Ed asked, trying to understand what she was getting at. He could see only the slightest resemblance himself … perhaps the dark hair was similar?

“Well,” she said, “you might not directly resemble him, but in spirit …”

It was silly, perhaps, but her romantic notions of him—unfounded as they might be—stirred something deep inside Ed’s chest. He’d never, ever heard any lady speak of him in such terms before. Not for him such flowery words, not for Edwin Bolt the cripple, the disfigured…The few ladies he’d bedded had praised his “stallion-like” endowment, and Jenny had once told him he had an angry sort of handsomeness… But to compare him to a knight, a hero?

And now that he got a better look at the girl herself, he could see that she was no child. Her round, pale, freckle-dusted face might have a childish cast, true… But her body was that of a fully-ripened woman.

Under her pink cotton dress, trimmed with lace, she had ample curves. Her bosom strained against the top of her dress. Although the cut of the dress was not particularly immodest, her breasts seemed to test the very strength of the bodice. He saw the heavily freckled nape of her neck, and wondered how far down her chest the freckles went…

Further down, the dress flared out dramatically at the waist. He had the notion that it wasn’t all just the dress. Her hips were wide, accentuating her femininity. There was soft, womanly flesh on those hips, a surfeit of it.

Ed has always been entranced by pretty ladies who had plush bodies with a bit of extra padding about them.

Like that curvy Constance Clement in my youth… Look what I got for that infatuation…

Under the bed sheets and inside his trousers, Ed’s manhood began to stir… Ed bit his lip and tried to fight that sense of arousal. His organ sometimes seemed to have a mind of its own, and had often embarrassed him by asserting itself at inopportune times.

“I watched you from my window,” Julia said. “You were running in the rain, did you see someth-”

She went silent when she heard a man clearing in his voice in the hallway outside. The door to the room swung inward, and a middle-aged man in the black robes of a churchman appeared, an awkward smile on his chiseled face.

Rector Powell.

His eyes were a deep red color, far beyond bloodshot.

Almost … demonic.

Ed shuddered. But there had to be some explanation? He’d heard that the Rector had not been feeling well as of late.

Ed nodded to the Rector, suddenly remembering that he had wanted to speak to the man about all he had witnessed outside: the screaming preacher-thing with the dead face, and then, that unseen horror in the cave… He sucked in a deep breath and fought against his nerves. He had to report what he had seen.

Unless the Rector
already knew?

“I am glad that you are well, Constable,” the Rector said. “You seem to have taken a bit of a spill.”

“Yes, Sir,” Ed said. “But I need to explain how—“

“Indeed! I would like to talk to you about that—in good time, of course. When you feel a bit better. For now, just know that you have done well in your investigations and should be proud.”

Proud?
The Rector held his odd smile, and Ed wondered if he were patronizing him.             

“Thank you … sir,” Ed choked out, embarrassed by his own nervousness. He tried not to stare at the Rector’s eyes, but he couldn’t help it.

“Why are you—? Oh, my
eyes
.” The Rector chuckled. “I was using a caustic solution to clean some old family silver. Too delicate a matter to leave to the servants, you see. But I splashed some of the acid in my eyes. Have to sleep with a plaster across my face, but they should heal up soon.” 

“Father,” Julia said, “can we get Constable Bolt something to eat?”

“Of course, dear child. In fact, Constable—why don’t you join us for a late dinner? Reverend Mott will lead you down in a moment. Julia, come with me now, please.”

“But father,” she protested, “I need to help him. Please?”

The Rector shook his head. “It wouldn’t be proper, child. I am sure that the Constable can get dressed on his own.”

She nodded meekly, but her desperate eyes never left Ed as her father escorted her out the door.

Ed found his shirt and jacket on a nearby chair, and tugged them on. He used his fingers to straighten his hair, watching himself in the mirror which hung opposite the door to the hall. Suddenly, the door creaked open. In the mirror he could see that someone in black robes stood there, waiting half inside the room.

“Err … Reverend Mott?” Ed asked.

The newcomer stepped into the room, and raised an arm to point at Ed.

His hand was skeletal, with pink strands of muscle barely covered by shreds of grey flesh. His hood slipped back, and Ed could see the too-wide grin of his corpse-like face.

Ed’s chest clenched up, his legs quivered, and he gasped feebly, paralyzed by fear.

Ed watched in the mirror as the deathly finger curled up, beckoning to him, and the thing hissed:

“The t-t-table of the Lord is sset for thee, and thou art late to come into Hisss presenshh. Do not mock Hisss grayshhh!”
             

“Rutting hell,” Ed whispered.