Ink, Sex, Magic Pt. 03

In his bedroom, I gazed trembling at the bondage table set off in a corner, images of being tied down, spread eagle and whipped coming to mind unbidden. But after pulling out a long, thin piece of black material from a drawer, my father brought us to the side of his bed. He passed the woven hempen cloth over my breasts so I could feel how soft it was.

"Relax, love, I don't want to hurt you- just tie you up and make you cum. I promise you'll enjoy it..."

Though my torso was partially bound already, Kiernan still began by wrapping the flat rope around my chest in criss-crossing patterns. As the ropes tightened, constricting me further, my breasts became plumper and more sensitive, blood pooling in their flush pink tips. Passing the rope through the harness ring next, he continued making elaborate twists around my abdomen, making a secure net over my core that aroused even as it constrained. Then he began passing the ropes through my legs, binding my buttocks and sex. After making a few more twists in the back, he secured the end of the rope in the ring between my shoulder blades.

There was a large knot in the rope that ran over my seam and it rested on my labia majora, stimulating it even when I was still. But when I arched my back, and the ropes drew tighter, it ground into my clit. I still had the use of my arms, and I certainly wasn't immobilized, but when he tugged the rope, I was powerless to the full-body erotic tension it produced.

Holding me from behind, Kiernan grazed his palms over my erect nipples, and I thought I might come apart just like that, wiggling my hips against his clothed hard-on. "Let your weight fall forward, I got you," he whispered, and when I did, my binds hit pressure points on the front of my body and dug into my pussy and ass.

After a moment of thrashing against the ropes and his touch, all he had to do was tweak one of my nipples sharply enough and I was crying out, my whole body bowing as an intense orgasm skimmed over my nervous system.

Kiernan laid me face down on the bed and bent back my arms and legs until I was shaped like a bow, then held me in that pose a moment, rocking me slightly on my pelvis. When he rolled me into a prone position, relieving the strain I'd felt, his arm went under the small of my back, bending me in the opposition direction, and his mouth latched onto one of my tits. I came again, or kept cumming, I couldn't quite tell.

"Do you want me to untie you or can I fuck you now?" My father's fingers pushed against the knot over my pussy as he suckled my other breast.

"Fuck me, Kiernan- please fuck me," I managed to beg, needing him to be inside of me.

In a flash, he'd put me on my side and was naked behind me, undoing the knot on my back before parting the two ropes running parallel to my sex, fulling exposing my vagina. I threw my leg over Kiernan's before he plowed into my cunt, both of us moaning hoarsely as we moved together.

Even with the binds slackened, it still was incredibly erotic to be tied up and under his control while we fucked- and I'm sure my father felt the same way. When I felt his hand wrap around my throat, I turned my head so we could kiss while I came. My womb still contracting with waves of orgasms, Kiernan seized up, biting my shoulder as hard as he came, as bound to me as I was by him.

***

When I called my mom to tell her how successfully UnderGround's grand opening had gone, she asked tersely if I was still planning on throwing my education away at a tattoo parlor.

"Is that what I'm doing? Oh, I thought I was taking up a career."

"Not a respectable one- or a lucrative one either."

"Then why did you become one?"

"Your father told you?"

"No. Sylas did."

"Sylas? How is he?"

"Ask him yourself?"

"I'm a married woman- that would hardly be appropriate."

"God forbid you should do anything scandalous in Stepford."

"Kiernan might put up with your disrespectful manner, but I will not."

I held my tongue, not wanting to bring my father into this.

"I just wish you'd reconsider," she resumed in a calmer tone. "Bruce says he can help you find a job in marketing or PR- one that will go places you want to be."

"I'm exactly where I want to be."

My mother sighed. "That's what I'm afraid of."

"Mom, I really don't want to argue about this anymore. I'm happy for once- really happy. Isn't that what you always wanted?"

After a long pause, she finally conceded the point. "Of course I want you to be happy. I just want to make sure you're not doing this for your father. I'm glad he's back in your life, but I know he can be a bad influence."

So can I... "He can be a good one too."

We managed to end the conversation on better terms, with me agreeing to come over later. She invited me over for dinner at seven-thirty, so I told Kiernan I was leaving for my old casa around ten after.

"Good luck," he said wryly, doing his best to give me a fatherly kiss on the forehead since we were still at work.

I was on a quiet stretch of road leading out to the suburban neighborhood where I spent most of my teenage years, with Arab Strap playing on the radio, when I got blue-lighted. My tags and driver's license were legit, so if he was just pulling me for going ten over, I hoped to get out of it with a few bats of my eyelashes. But when I watched through the side mirror as the officer got out of his cruiser, I could tell by his gait that he was going to be a hard-ass.

My license and registration were in hand when he appeared by my open window, but he bypassed all of the preliminaries, asked me to turn off my car and get out with my hands where he could see them. It was a first for me, so I wasn't even sure how else to respond but to set my documents aside and comply.

"Is there a problem, offi-" I began as I stepped out, but he grabbed be by my elbow and spun me around, pinning me to the car with his legs.

"Lean against the vehicle with your hands behind your back," he ordered gruffly. Then he reached around me, removed my keys from the ignition and pocketed them. There was definitely something off.

"What the fu-"

"Miss, I'm placing you under arrest," he bellowed over me, retrieving his handcuffs.

"Like hell you are! You can't just arrest me for no reason!" I was struggling against his hold by now, determined not to let him detain me, because whatever I was fighting against wasn't human.

"Oh, I have plenty of reasons, Alice. So don't resist or I'll have to use force." My blood went cold at the quiet, waspish way he said my name: His face and voice might have changed, but the malevolent energy that was wearing the cop on my back had been one of my rapists all those years ago.

Unnerved as I was, my instincts and training kicked in- I activated one of my tattoos and used the resulting surge of strength to free myself. When I whipped around, energy swirling around me as I gathered my force, I saw that the face he wore was only a mask, moving over his real visage like an oil slick on dirty water.

The purple dusk was swiftly fading to black, meaning that while Light powers diminished, Dark powers were magnified. There were no other cars in sight and I certainly couldn't outrun him. But then it came back to me- I had a spare key under my bumper. If I could fend him off long enough to find it, I had a chance to put some distance between us while I called for backup- which I assumed he'd already done. I went to the back of the car and fell to the ground, feeling around underneath for the magnetized plastic box.

As soon as I felt it, though, he seized my ankles, dragging me along the asphalt away from my car. The gravelly surface scraped open my skin as I tried to claw and crawl away. I conjured a jolt of repelling energy that made him release me, swearing. Even weaker now, I resumed my attempt to get my key, but then he was on top of me, straddling my hips, his strength greater now that the only light left came from the waxing crescent moon.

"Doesn't this take you back?" he growled, slamming my head down so hard that I heard a sickening crack in my skull. Thankfully, my buffing tattoos absorbed enough of the impact to keep me from passing out. As I recovered from the blow, he succeeded in cuffing one of my hands with an unusually heavy shackle.

"Darkness will- always- beat the Light," he bit out, wrenching my other arm behind my back. I felt my powers fading, then his steely grip on my wrist.

"No, it won't," I heard from nowhere, and before the second shackle could close, my attacker was thrown off of my back by a charging figure moving too fast to be human. But when the cop's body hit the ground with a thud some ten feet away, a man landed gracefully next to it, posed to strike.

"Sylas!"

"Alice, get out of here- now!" he yelled, tossing me my keys, which he must have expertly swiped whilst grappling the police officer.

But his opponent had started to rise, waves of miasma radiating from his hands, and I hesitated. Sylas looked so small compared to him, so much weaker, that I wanted to help. But none of my battle tattoos were ready to use again and the iron on my wrist prevented me from using my natural powers.

"I'll send help!" I shouted feebly, limping to my car. As I fumbled with my keys, I noticed that the lock on the cuff looked old-fashioned and easy to pick. It took me what felt like forever to spring it with a hairpin, my hands were shaking so violently, but that gave me time to figure out what I could possibly do to help. When the cuff dropped away, I reached behind me and started feeling around until I found a box of that contained what I would need, thankful for once that I always had art supplies rattling around the backseat.

Slipping out of the passenger side, I assessed the situation. Sylas was in full battle mode, tattoos lit up, aura aglow with fiery light, eyes bright as embers. But if the other two abominations who raped me were on their way, he didn't stand a chance. I had to act quickly so I scrabbled around on my knees drawing out a Solomon's Seal for trapping evil spirits with a piece of chalk. Then I sliced across my open hand an X-acto knife and pressed my bloody palm to the middle. Stepping out of the circle before closing it with the chalk, I reached into the deepest part of my soul and called out my enemy.

"Are you really going to let me get away so easily?" I taunted, my fingertips sparking like Tesla coils as I tapped into years worth of anger and hatred. "Because I'm not letting you walk away from this alive!"

"Alice what the hell are you doing!" Sylas cried out, clearly winded, his face battered and shirt bloodied.

"Doing what a Delaney does best," the cop jeered, tossing Sylas aside like he was throwing a Frisbee. "Being a fool."

I spoke, but not to respond to him. I invoked the trap, which flashed an eerie blue the moment he stepped inside. A column of light enclosed him, humming and crackling like a bug zapper, and when I saw that he was immobilized, I ran over to Sylas. He'd picked himself up, but was looking worse for wear.

"Are you okay?" I panted.

"Forget about me. You trapped him? Well done."

"We need to get out of here, it won't hold long." The steady hum was already faltering.

"Not yet." Sylas took my cut hand and pulled me closer to the trap. "Do you know any Latin?"

"Yes..." The academy I attended in Seattle stressed the Classics and that included languages.

"Then hold on and chant with me as soon as you pick up the words," he instructed as placidly as if this was an oral exam, and I centered myself so I wouldn't miss one syllable.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica protestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diobolica. Obsecro, audi nos."

In essence, we were calling on the powers of Light- which is fluent in every language- to cast out our infernal adversary and return him to his accursed realm. We repeated the last line- 'please hear us'- three times after I finally got the first one right. A blinding ray of Light came from Sylas, joining with trap's guttering flame, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut as the dark entity was burned into a pile of ash, and borne away by an eddy of wind.

"Holy shit, what did you do?" I said softly, though it sounded like I was shouting over the sudden quiet.

"What did we do. I merely focused our energy, like a lens; I wouldn't have had enough power on my own."

"Oh, wow..." I stumbled when he let go of my hand, but held my own, adrenaline still pumping through my veins.

"We have to get out of here," Sylas said flatly, glancing in either direction.

"What about the cop car? Are you just going to steal it?"

"No, I'm going to get rid of it. Then we're leaving in your car."

"Wait a minute- how did you get here?"

"That's not important now."

I was about to ask him how he planned on disposing of a cop car, but then he showed me. I'd never witnessed magic like it before- Sylas circled it, drawing little spirals in the air, and as he did, it was like a hole opened in the fabric of reality. When he returned to his starting point, he performed some clever sleight of hand to close it back again, swallowing the cruiser as he did.

"Is it... invisible?" I asked, walking forward with outstretched arms as if I would bump into it. But it no, it had completely vanished.

"I'll explain later. Right now, we have to go. And you're in no shape to drive," he added, when I automatically went to get behind the wheel.

Being that I was also in no shape to argue, I sprinted instead for the passenger's, the dim glow of a vehicle coming towards us. When Sylas started the car, I let out a long sigh as a car with a broken headlight passed us by, into the night. As fatigued as I was on one level, I also had an abundance of nervous energy that wouldn't let me stay silent.

"Not that I don't appreciate your intervention- which, by the way, I am very grateful for- but did Kiernan put you up to following me?"

Sylas grimaced, eyes fixed on the road. "I don't think your father would appreciate my following you one bit. The truth is... I overheard you tell him that you were leaving to see your mother and well, Tessa has made it difficult for me to find her, so I tailed you."

"My mother is happily married. Well, she's married. Maybe she doesn't have anything else to say."

"I wasn't going to try to talk to her, just..."

"Creep on her?"

"See her again, in the flesh."

The way he said 'flesh' was undeniably erotic.

"That sounded creepy, didn't it?" Sylas asked, unable to suppress a grin.

"You were like a slurp away from sounding like Hannibal Lector," I teased good-naturedly. "But it's okay. I think I understand."

"I hardly see how you could," he mumbled.

I ignored his condescending comment and asked "So how did you follow me? And where did the car go?"

"I'm a very fast runner. And the cop car is now floating somewhere on the Dream Plane."

"Fine, keep your secrets. Where are we going?"

"My cabin. It's the closest place that's safe, in case we're being followed."

"Good. That... thing we fought back there- it and two others like it assaulted me when I was a child. It was a caustic energy, but it wasn't like the sluagh that tried to possess me in June."

"No, it wasn't. It was a Soul that has been brought back to the Mortal Plane with necromancy, using a very literal piece of the Soul's Mortal Manifestation- a patch of skin, to be precise, that bears a tattoo they received in life to bring them back in death. In this case, it was none other than one of the three brothers."

"I'm sorry, but unless you're talking about some guys who run a pizzeria, I'm not really sure who you mean."

"The sons of Carman, of course," he answered, glancing over at me curiously.

"I've heard stories about them, but I don't see the connection."

"Didn't your father tell you?"

"The entire truth about something in one sitting? No, surprisingly not. Sorry, would you mind filling me in?"

"It might be best if you spoke to Kiernan."

"Please, Sylas- I feel like with every secret he tells me, there's a lie; and beneath every lie, a bigger secret."

He sighed heavily before answering. "The three men who raped you when you were a girl- they were incarnations of Dub, Dother and Dian. I can only assume Dub was using that cop as his vessel."

"Did my father know this whole time?"

"Yes. I presumed you did too. I'm sorry."

"They told me they'd come to make him live up to his end of the bargain. Why would he have made a deal with them?"

"Actually, the deal was struck with Carman, and I'm not exactly sure why myself- I wasn't involved in that. I was involved in trying to find her, though, to undo it. The original Sectio Divina crew was able to vanquish Carman, but the deal wasn't nullified. The hold on the contract passed to her sons- who, though in the Anwnn, still had links to the Mortal Plane, and they were being kept safe by Carman's former servant, a powerful demon bound to her for eternity.

"Kiernan thought that if he could only find Carman's Factotum, he could destroy Dub, Dother and Dian's Phylacteries. Unfortunately, in all of our searching, we haven't heard a whisper of where he could be."

"So I was sent to my mother's to be protected from them, and so Kiernan could hunt them down?"

"Essentially."

"And they're after me again to, what- punish him for not living up to his end of the deal?"

"No- he gave them what he'd agreed upon." Sylas' voice was as cold as ice.

"Which was?"

"Permission to... I know I shouldn't be the one telling you this."

"Please- I have to know."

"Kiernan gave them permission to perform a ritual with you on the night you became a woman- though I'm sure he didn't know it would involve raping you."

"How could he not?"

"He thought by 'the night you became a woman', Carman meant the night you lost your virginity- hopefully a man of your choosing."

I laughed bitterly, remembering the other reason that night had been so difficult was because I'd gotten my first period at school and didn't want to tell my mother about it. "She meant my menarche. Though it really didn't matter. Just assuming that I would lose my virginity to a man of my choosing was absolute folly. Why couldn't he have locked me away somewhere in the forest, like with Aurora in Sleeping Beauty," I mused more to myself really.

"Did it help her escape fate? Besides, a clause in the contract stipulated that if Kiernan didn't made good on his deal, you would die."

Which was exactly what I felt like doing at that moment.

***

When we stepped inside his quaint, remote cabin, I found that it was streamlined and calming like the man himself. "Sorry, it's not much."

"My place is about the same. Well was."

"What do you mean?"

"I have an apartment of my own, but I put my thirty day notice in a couple of weeks ago when I moved in with Kiernan."

"Oh?" Sylas shuddered. "I would have hated moving back in with my father."

"He said he would protect me. But I see now that was a fucking joke. I can't believe I thought he'd changed."

"Don't blame yourself. Kiernan's skilled at deception- he has a way of hiding things in plain sight, even from people with sharp eyes."

"I take it that's part of why you two don't get along."

"Yeesss," he said slowly, and not in a way that invited clarification.

"I don't know what to do, Sylas. I've spent half my life wanting my father back in it, and now that he is, I don't know how to get away from him."

"Move out, quit your apprenticeship, tell him to fuck off. There are other people you can depend on with no strings attached- me for instance."