Darkling Tower

But she didn't do that. Instead, she rose and fell on me. Her nude body swayed and rocked in a show better than any porn star could put on. Her sex slid over my cock in a fast but uneven rhythm, always keeping me off kilter and holding me back - just barely - from ejaculating inside her. I felt the reservoir of cum inside me, but I knew, strangely, that Charlotte alone controlled my body and governed when I would come. I gave myself over to her.

Her nude body rose and fell on my nude body.

Lust and drugs clouded my vision. My head rocked back and forth, trying with difficulty to figure out what was happening around me. Across the circle, I saw Aronson, and a nude woman was rising and falling on his cock as Charlotte was falling on mine. She held something shiny and pointy and long in her hand. But I couldn't tell what it was.

"Charlotte," I said, but the word hit my brain as though from another planet.

"Darren," Charlotte said back, and when I looked her in the face I saw a smile, feral and triumphant.

"It's time, Darren," Charlotte said.

Then her body rocked against me harder and faster, and I felt my cock, longer and harder than it had ever been, pierce her and fill her in a way it had never done inside another woman. I felt her body grab and engulf and devour my cock in a way no other woman had done.

Here it comes, I thought.

But before I came, Charlotte spoke again, in that language I couldn't understand. She called, and all the other women in the room responded. And then at last, after all that rising and falling, I felt the cum inside me well up and spout and spill inside her. And as that happened Charlotte shouted one final word, which I did not recognize. I woozily looked across the circle, where I thought Aronson was, although I couldn't really be certain anymore, the room moving around as it was, and the naked woman moving over the naked man raised the long pointy thing over her head and chanted with gusto and brought the long pointy thing down into the throat of something I thought was a man and perhaps might have been Aronson. A burst of red spray filled the air around him, staining the white tunics of the women around him. Instead of recoiling, they drew closer to him, taking turns to let his blood paint them in crimson.

I closed my eyes, and I came inside Charlotte Darkling. At the same time, I thought I heard a man scream. But I wasn't sure. Nothing was sure.

Lust tamped down my fear. I emptied a lifetime of cum and desire and lust inside Charlotte Darkling. And then my head swam, and everything switched to black.

November 1.

In the fog of my dream, I tried to run somewhere. I didn't know where - just anywhere away from where I was. But every time I tried to run faster, I ran into something. I reached my hand through the fog, and the thing I touched - the thing that stopped me - felt warm and pleasant. But when I looked at it, I couldn't see anything. It was nothing more than a thickness in the fog.

It was enough, though, to make me want to stop running. So, I stood on uncertain ground and pushed against the thickness, and I watched as my hand disappeared into it. And when the edge of the mist reached beyond my elbow, I woke up.

I was startled to find myself seated and bound by rope to a chair. I sat in Charlotte Darkling's office. She sat in another chair in front of me, and a security guard and a woman I didn't recognize stood to either side of her.

"Good morning, Darren," Charlotte said.

I pulled against my restraints, my head rocking to either side. But the restraints held fast. I wasn't going anywhere. I looked up from the ropes and from my chair to Charlotte. Fear pulsed through me.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

She didn't answer at first. Her eyes bored into mine. They were dark and inscrutable, and they were a thousand years old.

"Are you fully awake now, Darren?" she asked.

"Yes," I answered. I felt my voice quaver.

"Do you remember what happened last night, Darren?" she asked.

My brain searched its memory as though walking through a maze. It took a while for the images to coalesce, but they did.

"I do," I said. "You killed someone."

Charlotte smiled the coldest smile I'd ever seen.

"That's right, Darren," she said. "We killed someone. A man. We slaughtered him. As we had to. But not you. Do you know why?"

I slumped in my chair.

"I'm the new guy."

Charlotte nodded.

"That's right. You're the new guy. And the new guy is not killed. He witnesses the ceremony. He shares in it. But he isn't killed. Not until the next ceremony."

My eyes widened and my skin grew cold.

"Ah yes," Charlotte said with a thin smile. "You're afraid. You should be afraid. I'm glad you're afraid. It makes it so much more pleasurable."

"What is this?" I asked. "Who are you?"

"We are a very old circle, Darren," she said. "We draw strength and sustenance from men like you. Smart, confident, narcissistic men. You play an essential role in our rituals."

Charlotte stood up from her chair. She loomed impossibly tall and severe over me.

"I am what you might call the high priestess of this group, Darren," she said. "I have been the high priestess for a long, long time. Longer than you've been alive. Longer than your parents have been alive."

"It's not possible," I said.

"Oh, it's possible," she said. "Every year we've killed men like you."

My mouth flapped open and shut.

"You can't do this," I said. "You can't get away with it."

Charlotte looked amused.

"Of course, I can get away with it, Darren."

Charlotte inclined her head to the restraints on my limbs. She sat down and scooted her chair close to me. The feet of the chair screeched across the floor like nails on a chalkboard.

"People believe what they want to believe, Darren," Charlotte said, her eyes dark and steady on mine. "I know everyone who matters in this city. I have . . . ways . . . of convincing them to see things the way I see them. I'm sure you can understand what I mean."

"No," I said.

"Yes," she said. "A resident of my apartment building disappeared. But that's not what people will see. He moved - back home, to another state, to a new job, whatever. It's surprisingly easy to get the powers that be - especially if they're men - to see things the way I want them to see them."

Charlotte turned to the security guard.

"Untie him," she said. He untied me.

I rubbed my wrists.

"I'll run," I said. "I'll tell everyone what you're doing."

Charlotte smiled - a smile that spoke of a millennium of amusement at having heard similar words.

"No, you won't," she said. "Try it. It won't be the way you think it will be."

Charlotte stood over me, tall and forbidding. I felt small in my chair.

"You are free to do and to go as you wish, Darren," she said. "But what will you do with that freedom? Not what you think you will do."

Her smile faded, and for a moment I saw the darkness and horror of her laid bare, a darkness that had spanned centuries. I'd fallen into that darkness, and I doubted I could escape it.

"You'll receive an invitation to our next Halloween party," she said. "We look forward to seeing you there. You won't be the new guy, anymore."

She turned on her heels, and she walked away from me.

I bounded out of my chair and ran from her office. I sprinted through the twisty corridors of the building's bowels until I burst into the atrium. The glass doors to the street outside were no more than 100 feet away. I slowed my pace and walked toward them. I worried that if I rushed I'd attract attention. Someone might grab me. They might pull me back.

No one paid attention to me. People came and went as though nothing strange had happened the night before. I could do this. I could be free of Charlotte Darkling, and of her building.

But with every step I took closer to the exit, the path grew more difficult. I felt a weight on my back. The air ahead grew thick and pressed against me. Doubt rose in my heart. My determination waned.

After all, the building had its benefits. I had the view from my window. I could do my work from my room. I could work out at the gym. The building had everything I could possibly want. And the women, oh, the women -

I turned to the side and saw myself reflected in a mirror on the wall. For a moment - just a moment - I saw myself as a frightened little boy. But the image faded and was replaced with that of a confident, handsome man, youthful for his age.

The Darkling Tower had done wonders for my looks. I looked great. It would be a shame not to take advantage of what the building offered.

After all, I had a year. I could leave any time. There was no need to do so now.

I closed to within thirty feet of the glass doors. Freedom lay just beyond, but it no longer felt like freedom. Surely, real freedom meant enjoying the benefits of the Darkling Tower and leaving it on my own terms later - later - when it was more convenient. I stopped walking. Leaving the building no longer seemed important. It didn't make any sense to me, anymore. I was Darren Pierce, damn it. I'd show Charlotte Darkling. I'd leave on my own terms, when and where I wanted to. My jaw clenched. I turned around, and with the confidence of a conqueror, I retreated to my apartment on the eighth floor.

November 7.

For the next few days, I threw myself into my work. It consumed me, and I forgot all about Halloween. It did not consume me so much that I neglected my time in the gym. The gym became my other home, and I watched with satisfaction as the muscles in my arms took on more definition. I discreetly checked out the many lovely women who passed through the gym doors, as well.

I thought fleetingly of my friend Raul. I had not called him, and he had not called me. I wondered if he had given up on me.

One afternoon I took a break from my work and stared outside the window, to the eclectic urban splendor of San Francisco. I could not imagine a better view.

A knock sounded at the door.

I opened it, and a gorgeous, slender woman with a blond bob of hair smiled at me. She looked vaguely familiar.

"I'm Anne," she said. "I saw you in the gym. Wondered whether you might like to get acquainted."

She raised a hand, which carried a bottle of Scotch.

"That's my favorite brand," I said. "How'd you know?"

"It doesn't matter," she said.

"Do you like Scotch?" I asked.

"I like you."

She entered my apartment and set the Scotch aside on a small table in the foyer. Her hands went to the buttons on her creamy blouse.

Four minutes later our naked bodies writhed against each other on my bed. Every touch of her skin set off an electric charge, and the sum of those charges soon powered me to an intense orgasm. Not long after, I lay spent and still on my bed with my arm curled loosely around her.

I pulled my arm back and sat up in the bed when I noticed the light fading. I jumped out of the bed, naked, and I walked to the window.

Before me spread the city of San Francisco, the tops of its buildings fringed in sunlight and the rest of it enveloped in shadow. Night drew near. The city, the bay, and the hills on the far side of the water reflected the dim and dying light of the day that would end soon.

"358 sunsets to go," I said to myself. A moment of panic gripped me, but I shook it off. Darkness would fall on me, sooner than I wanted. But it would not fall for a while, and in the days and nights that remained, the pleasure would be exquisite.