Succubus Rising Ch. 10

NOTES:

This is one of the more violent chapters, feel free to skip the first two sections if this isn't your sort of thing.

As has been the thing lately, this has been proofread but not actually edited.

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~~ I was back in Asher's room, swinging from the hook and watching blood run down toward the drain. I must have passed out because he wasn't in the room with me now. My back was on fire where he had cut me and I did my best not to whimper or make a sound that might draw his attention back to me. ~~

"Jezza!" Bane was standing over me, shaking my shoulders to wake me up. I screamed at the pain in my back and he almost fell in his haste to get away from me, thinking he had hurt me somehow. I curled on my side, whimpering when the sheet stuck to my back where the cuts were still bleeding. Why the fuck was I bleeding?

"Holy shit," Chaz cursed and I heard him leave the room and start talking to someone in the other room. When I heard no response I assumed he was on his phone. Bane was kneeling on the floor beside the bed, eyes wide with terror and hands outstretched, though he was afraid to touch me. I turned my face into the pillow, breathing slowly and then feeling my power heal my back.

When the last of the cuts healed, I slumped against the bed. "What the fuck?" I mumbled into the pillow.

"I think it's a recall spell," Bane whispered.

I turned my head enough to look at him and see his hands hovering over me.

"It's a very complicated spell that hasn't been used much since the last major war," he pushed himself back up, but didn't move to touch me or get back in bed. "It can be used to reopen old wounds. The person relives every moment attached to the spell, and their body does the same."

"Can you get it off me?" I was starting to panic. The pain was gone, but I felt if I got out of bed I would be sick.

He shook his head. "It can be unraveled by someone who knows what they're doing, but it has to be done slowly. One memory at a time."

"Turq can unravel it," Chaz said from the door. "He'll be here as soon as he can, but said to stay with her when they hit and make sure she heals between each one." He sat on the bed next to me, "You're going to have to go through at least this one twice, more depending how long it takes Turq to get here."

"Why?" I wanted to know why I would have to relive it all, why Bane was suddenly terrified to touch me but Chaz wasn't, why this had even been done in the first place. So many questions in that single word.

"The spell has to be unraveled from each memory it's attached to," I gasped as Chaz put a cool wet cloth against my back and started cleaning the blood off me. I hadn't even known he'd gotten it. "So if you've gone through a memory and the spell wasn't undone, you have to go through it again to have it undone."

~~ The room faded around me and the bed became hard as marble. My face was pressed against the cold floor as Asher drove himself into me. The sex was about normal with him, but he dug his fingers into the slash marks from the whip, trying to get me to scream. When I wouldn't give him the reactions he wanted, he pulled out of me and jerked me to my knees and dragged me to the hook. From there I swung into the air until my toes couldn't reach the floor. His mouth moved, but the memory didn't seem to have sound, but I could remember him talking. He always talked. I was lasting so long, no other girls could make it through a session with him without screaming and begging him to stop. He hated them for their weakness. I had no idea what kept me awake most of the time other than a fear that I might not wake up if I passed out. He reached out and twisted my nipple until I grunted and bit my lip to keep from making too much noise. This just seemed to amuse him.

Leaving me hanging, he turned to a dresser where he kept his toys. He enjoyed pulling them out and talking about them, like they were people and not tools. His knives were meticulously kept, his whips were spotless. It might have been impressive in another situation, keeping blood out of leather couldn't be easy. I must have said something this time because he tensed and spun around. That's right, I had said something about how small his penis was and it had pissed him off enough that he grabbed the thing closest to his hand at the time and whipped me until I blacked out. ~~

I was back on the bed in the apartment, my arms stretched above me just like I was hanging on that hook, my body bloody and broken on the sheets as I struggled to stop screaming and just breathe. He couldn't hear me scream now. I finally came back to myself enough to heal the whip marks.

Chaz and Bane were both on the bed, but they weren't touching me. I don't think they knew where to put their hands.

"She never came back looking like this," Chaz whispered.

"That was..." my voice cracked and I felt the bed move when Bane got up. He returned a minute later with a glass of water and helped me sit up enough to sip it. "That was the third time you sent me to him. I said he had such a small dick for a man who thought he was so grand. I blacked out after about the third or fourth blow."

"That's when you started screaming," Bane said.

"That pissed him off a lot. I didn't scream often for him, but he's not here." I tried to set the water on the bedside table, but my hand shook so bad I nearly spilled it. Bane took it from me and set it aside.

"How often did this happen?" Bane asked. Chaz stared at him but I just sighed and rolled over.

"Every few days for about a year," I muttered. "Every single time I was there."

"He wouldn't have had the energy to spell every session, then. Maybe once or twice a month."

I groaned and rolled back onto my stomach. There was only one time when he did anything to my front, and that was almost the last time I saw him. Then I thought better of it and started trying to get out of the bed.

"Stay in the bed, Jezza," Chaz gently pushed me back down when I kept trying to get up.

"I don't want to ruin the bed."

"There are two others in this apartment," Bane said. "We can change the sheets if we need to and you have the energy to stand up for that long later."

There was a soft knock at the bedroom door, and I saw the same servant who had shown us into the apartment standing there. He looked horrified when Chaz walked out with him. The door shut and Bane leaned back against the headboard. For the first time, I noticed he was wearing only his boxer briefs and Chaz hadn't had anything else on either. His chest and thighs were streaked with blood like he had tried to hold me down. When I was able to look around more, I noticed the bed was already ruined, my blood soaking through the sheets and into the mattress.

"Don't worry about the bed," he shifted and pulled a wet towel from somewhere beside the bed and started to wipe the blood from my back just as Chaz had been doing.

"Turq's here," Chaz came back through the door. "He's changing in the other room and making sure he has everything."

"He got here fast," I mumbled, drifting in and out of sleep. It had taken a few hours to get back to Bane's from Turq's house.

"You've been in this room for about eight hours, Jezza," Chaz kept his voice low. "He didn't get here until the last memory ended. I, ah, had to send him a short video of what was going on just so he could convince Sitri to give him this location."

The door opened and the bed shifted as Turq sat on the edge and the other two moved away. "Jezza, love," his voice was gentle and I opened my eyes to look at him so he knew I heard. "I'm going to need you to open your mind to me completely for this. It's going to feel like the worst kind of violation, but I need to be able to see what he did to you so I can unravel this spell."

When I nodded he stretched out next to me, seeming not to mind the blood that soaked the bed. He prodded until I turned to face him and he was able to put his forehead against mine. His hands stayed on my arms, but if he had to do this for the entire thing he might wind up only able to touch my face.

The feel of his mind against mine was weird and the comparison to a violation wasn't altogether wrong. I could feel him in my thoughts, probing and searching, and I cringed away from him. He moved his hand to my face, sliding his fingers across my cheek and jaw and up into my hair, trying to get me to relax. "Let me in," he whispered. "They won't see anything and I won't tell them."

"How can I trust you?" There was nothing in my life at home that worried me, but he was both Bane's and Chaz's lawyer. Everything connected to Asher was also connected to Chaz.

That worry must have been very loud in my mind because he broke the connection and turned to the others, "Can you two go out into the hall for a while? Give me at least five minutes, but try to stay out a little longer. And dampen the mate-bond as much as you possibly can."

They grumbled, but eventually I heard the door open and shut.

"That will only buy us so much time, love," he said. "I can give you the same attorney-client privilege they have if that will help, but if you're worried about a conflict of interest for me, don't be. I'm not going to be disbarred or anything, and you can't let me see anything about these men I don't already know. What I can do is keep all the details away from them aside from what they see in this room, okay? But you have to let me in, trust only makes it easier. Start thinking about everything since you got taken from your house, and I'll handle the rest. The less you fight me, the less intrusive this will feel."

I sighed and closed my eyes as he pressed his forehead back against mine. I thought about the day I was taken, making fun of the guy's stupid voice, the goon who I kneed in the crotch, Turq healing me. Through it all I could feel him there, picking through the tiniest details like the feel of the other goon's jeans on my forehead when I curled around the broken ribs, how hot Chaz's hands felt in that trip to his house and how he felt between my legs when he healed me after I got blood on my first uniform.

At some point I let go and he took over, moving quickly through some memories and only lingering where he felt my fear or disgust. The first one that tripped the spell dropped me screaming into Asher's room.

~~ I was swinging from the hook, the room swaying around me as he swung the whip. Blood was splattered nearly to the bed with the force of his strikes, but I didn't scream in the memory. I clenched my teeth, bit my lip until I bled myself, and grunted at the blows that landed on new skin, but I refused to scream for him. He was breathing hard when he circled around me, dragging his fingers through the blood dripping down my body. The hook lowered, but only until my toes just reached the ground. I knew by now not to try to catch my balance. He healed me only enough so he would pull my legs around his waist and push into me. This wasn't as rough as when he had more leverage and might have been fun if I actually liked him. My head rolled and I felt my power take over enough to let me enjoy this part. By the time he finished, he had healed more of the wounds, too. That level of healing usually meant our time was almost up. ~~

I came out of the memory gasping, writhing on the bed while they all three tried to hold me down. Someone was yelling, but Turq was still somehow in front of me with his forehead against mine until I felt a sensation of falling and he pulled away.

His power washed over me, healing what the spell had brought back. I moved my legs from around him, apparently living through the memory a little more than I had expected and he rolled away from me onto his back.

"We need to shower and sleep before we work through anymore of the spell," he croaked, his voice almost gone. After a few tries to reply I just nodded. "I put a block in to stop the spell from progressing to buy some time, but don't linger in the shower too long. Chaz, have the staff here strip this bed and lay down towels over the mattress. Don't try to replace it yet, and make sure she sleeps in one of the others. We'll need to continue in here in a few hours."

Bane pulled me from the bed and carried me into the bathroom, setting me on the floor of the shower and turning on the water. He peeled my clothes off and helped me stand and I was almost clean when Chaz joined us. I felt steadier when both of them were touching me, more grounded.

Once we were clean, they wrapped me in a towel and grabbed their own and walked me out of the room. Servants in the same fine uniforms were already stripping the bed, and there were some industrial looking towels in a stack nearby. I wanted to apologize, more for them having to clean it than for making the mess, but Bane squeezed my hand and shook his head. He led me into one of the other rooms, Chaz trailing behind me. They dropped their towels right inside the door and pulled mine off as well. Bane pulled me into the bed with him so I was cradled against his side and Chaz climbed in behind me. One of them whispered something I couldn't make out and then the world went black.

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~~ I was hanging by my hands again. Asher was back in front of me with the knife, but this time it did not move in his hand. He was angry at something. Chaz had told him something when he came to get me and he was made about it. The cuts were quick this time; nothing slow. He wasn't trying to make me scream. I could see the struggle in his face as he tried to think of reasons not to just kill me for whatever Chaz had said. As he began to tire in this game he stepped back and looked at me. I could feel the blood dripping from the wounds; hear it splashing on the floor. With a final thrust he stabbed the knife into my stomach, and I screamed. ~~

I writhed on the bed as Turq unraveled the spell and I tried to heal the bloody wound in my abdomen. I didn't even care about all the other smaller cuts, that one needed to be gone. Someone was retching nearby but I couldn't bring myself to care. Finally, I managed to heal the stab wound and relaxed. Turq let me go and rolled away, tears running down his face.

"Was that the last of it?" His voice was all but non-existent now, and he grabbed the glass of water beside the bed.

"No, but it was the worst. Not by much, but it was the closest I think he got to actually killing me," I rolled onto my side and hugged my arms around my middle, still cramping though the wound was completely gone.

"Who healed you?" Bane was coming out of the bathroom. I think he was the one who had been retching.

"Asher," I said. "He would heal me enough to make sure I wasn't going to die and then take me back to Chaz. I always broke the rules just so Chaz would punish me because he would always completely heal me after. It was the only relief I had aside from the couple times Larian healed me. He could see the bruises that Asher somehow hid from Chaz. I think the others saw them, too, but were too afraid to say anything."

"They told me after the fact," Chaz was sitting at the foot of the bed where he could reach me but stay out of the way. "Ferrel made a passing comment when you left with Bane that maybe you would survive after all, when I questioned them they all told me how you would come back from him covered in bruises, bloody to the point of staining the shower and several sets of sheets each time. They didn't comment because they thought I knew and didn't want to be punished for speaking out."

"How much more did you go to him?" Turq asked.

"About another month," he nodded when I answered and held up a single finger. Enough time for him to have spelled at least one more session. "And then there are the first two when you were trying to get here."

"Can you do them all at once?"

"I think so." He slid back down beside me but looked at me before setting his forehead against mine. "Just touch my face. He never did anything to my face. If it's what I think it is, Chaz, you and Bane can hold my hands but that's going to be about all he didn't touch."

They both cursed as I rested my arms against Turq so they could grab my hands. I was fairly certain my arms would be fine. Then Turq was back in my head and I was back in Asher's tender care.

~~ Asher was on top of me, driving himself into me, and I did my best to stay as still as possible. If I didn't move, maybe he wouldn't hurt me. I had learned long ago that if I moved, it would last longer. If I moved, he seemed to think I also wanted to hurt. The beatings during sex were almost as bad as the ones with no sex involved, and sometimes they were worse. When he finished he pulled himself from me and shoved me over. I knew the drill. We only used the bed for his comfort, not mine. I dropped onto the floor and crawled toward the door. I had just reached for the doorknob when the whip lash caught me across my back. I gasped at the sudden pain but swallowed the small pain sounds that had tried to follow it. I held onto the doorknob for all I was worth as the next blows came. The blood was dripping down the backs of my thighs when I lost the strength to hold on to the door. He was laughing as I slid down to the floor. He kept up with the lashes, moving down my legs and to the bottoms of my feet. That was a new pain altogether, and I did scream. My feet aren't particularly sensitive to touch and I've never been ticklish, but I've never had the bottoms of my feet torn open before, either. The pain was indescribable.

I had passed out some time ago and I woke up on Asher's bed. This was unusual because he never left me on his bed. I heard him moving in the room and I tried to pretend to still be unconscious, but I must have moved because he stopped moving. The searing pain of the knife cutting across my shoulders drew a sound from me I had hoped to never hear. I sounded like a dying animal. He rewarded the noise with a blow to my ribs. I felt him punch me two more times before I passed out again. I woke up in the back of Asher's car, lying across the bench seat. I wasn't bleeding anymore. The pain was a constant signal that something had been done to knock me out, but when I looked down at my body I could see no bruises. The car stopped and I sat up. My back was on fire and I could barely touch my feet to the floorboards without wincing, but out the window I could see Chaz's house. I opened the door and walked slowly and painfully to the front of Chaz's house. Letting myself in, I walked as silently and quickly as possible up to my room and fell into bed. ~~

Turq unraveled the spell from around the memory and let me go with a sigh so I could heal myself. I squeezed the hands in mine before letting them go so we could all move. There were still two more memories I had already gone through, but Turq waved at me behind his back to take a minute. I don't think his voice was working anymore. I got up to go to the bathroom and had to wave both Bane and Chaz away when they tried to help.

I tried my best to avoid the mirror, but seeing as it was directly across from the toilet I got to stare at myself while I peed. I looked like shit. My hair was matted from having slept on it while it was wet and then not brushing it for two days. There were dark bruises around my eyes, and my cheeks were sunken. This was what zombies must look like. I finished my business and got the hell away from the mirror.

The only memories still spelled were the two Turq had missed the day before. They were tame by comparison. When we were done, Turq was crying and smiling. He kissed me and then made some rude gestures between the three of us before heading out to the third bedroom and a shower. It took a few minutes of just lying there to really start to feel like it was over. I didn't know how long it had taken, but I hadn't been able to feed for fear that a memory would trigger and now that was foremost in my mind.