The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 04

Chapter Four: Goddess Under the Earth

Good Lord, I swear these updates are going to get faster. Thank you for your patience and for reading! It's wonderful to have you here!

For my cub.

Full work summary: Cast out of his village and freezing to death in the snow, Sparrow finds himself rescued by a mysterious and beautiful woman, living in a grand house in the mountains. As he falls under the spell of his strange host, he finds himself brought into a dark world that presents a destiny he never could have imagined. Submission to a vampire is only the beginning.

Previously: Sandu interrupted Sparrow and Vestalia's love-making and spoke with Vestalia in private, referring to a territorial border set out in an old treaty. Sparrow overheard Sandu demanding the return of prisoners, while Vestalia denied any knowledge. Sparrow burst in on them and drew Sandu's curiosity. Vestalia turned Sandu away and reclaimed Sparrow as her own, sending him to bed in bliss and confusion. Sandu set out for a mountain village to break her journey home.

Chapter summary: Sparrow discovers Vestalia's dark secret, while Sandu investigates his.

CW: Dub-con through vampiric hypnosis. Blood.

"I'm scared to go to sleep."

"That's good."

"No, it isn't! I need to sleep!"

"Yes, you do, and you will. But it's good to be frightened from time to time, Little Bird."

"Why?"

"Because fear means you still have a chance. Fear is your body and soul saying 'Hey, I'm alive and I belong to myself, and I want to keep it that way.' The only way you stop feeling fear forever is by giving yourself up to the darkness. And we can't have that."

"This is stupid. I'm tired and I don't want nightmares. Or monsters."

"I wouldn't worry too much about the monsters you don't want. It's the monsters you do want that are the real danger."

"I don't want any monsters."

"Not tonight. But the vampire is a seducer. Most of the people lost to the vampire begged for it with all their being."

"That's horrible."

"Yes, it is. So stay frightened."

*

The air is as fresh as if the world has just been made, just presented clean by the artisan that crafted it. The first spray of purple crocus flecks the pale green grass, making it prettier, the way freckles and blushes and blemishes do people. Brooks trickle through the crags of the rocky ground, the vitality at the core of the thrumming mountain bubbling through its sparkling veins. Around and ahead of him, the goats bleat tonelessly, their block teeth grinding on scrubs of grazing. Sparrow ambles among them, watching them in their utter ignorance of the rapturous beauty around them - the purifying turquoise of the cloudless, spring sky, the way the peaks above them stand proud and ancient and powerful. The song of bleating and babbling water skips under his feet. It turns his gait into a light, lazy dance. The occasional whistle of a wheeling swift whisks the tune higher and draws his voice with it in nonsensical, rambling hums. He lets it carry him a little away from the herd. As long as he can hear them, he'll know if something is amiss.

He fits his feet along one of the crooked streams ribboning through the grass, walking childishly heel to toe with his arms spread. He twirls his staff in his outstretched hand, giggles popping in his chest whenever he nearly topples. The stream giggles with him, spurring him on,Play with me, Little Bird.

He takes a deep, invigorating breath of the cool, fine air and lets it out in a happy, relaxed laugh.

Play with me, Little Bird. Flutter your wings and I'll flicker my waters.

He spins on his heel and hops with the bounce of sunlight on the waves.

Let's dance, Little Bird, let's dance, dance with me, da-

The water runs red.

I hurt, Little Bird.

Sparrow's breath stops. The stream has flooded crimson, running like spilled wine, dying the fringe of grass dipping into it. He goes cold, cold at his core. He breaks into a run, panting like a dog, as his heart drums his larynx. He hastens over the rocks. They bite at him as he skids. He follows the red thread, like Theseus. He doesn't know he's already lost. He runs upstream and rises over a mound in the crooked land.

There.

Just at the crest where the brook flows down over the rise.

There's a body. A body leaking blood into the water.

Sparrow dashes to it and falls to his knees, his staff clattering to the ground, tears already stinging his eyes. It's a girl. Her rust brown hair is tangled with dry grass and matted over her face. It gums into a deep wound in her skull, the bone shattered and peppering the ghastly, black, mulching hollow with glinting white. Sparrow's stomach heaves.

"No..."

The girl is sprawled on her front, her limbs thrown out around her, as if caught in the middle of some macabre, fiddle-and-flute jig, her clothes streaked with dirt and blood. People speak of the peaceful sleep of the dead. But this is not peace. There is no mistaking this for sleep. Her body is broken and dragged and misshapen by death, left as nothing but a collection of crumpled odds and ends. Everything that made her Forina is gone. Sparrow will never feel her drum her hands on the ground in front of the bonfire. He will never see the stars reflected in her pupils. He will never hear the way she snorts like a boar when she laughs. The horror of it overwhelms him, it is inside him, it tunnels through him, it bores new cavities into his being, another hollowness for another loss. Death always does this to him. But Forina was only a child. The best sort of child. The messy, loud, rude, gleeful, dreaming sort of child. The really alive sort of child.

"Forina..."

His shaking hand moves for him. His eyes swim, his throat and nose clog. He steadies himself, touches her as lightly as possible. He strokes her hair from her face.

His stomach heaves more violently and he recoils. Her eyes are open, their glassy, unseeing, doll-like gaze haunting and so piercingly sad. He presses his lips together around a sob. He touches her cheek.

She cannot be dead.

It is wrong for her to be dead.

How can everything have its time if a time can look like this?

Death is a robber. Death is heartless. There is no forgiving death.

It starts to snow. The flakes fall on Forina's grey cheeks.

Life is a gift, so death should learn to cherish it.

His tears splash over the frozen flakes lacing her flesh, melting them and glazing her, turning her to porcelain.

Why should we not live? Why should we meet death with grace? Why should we not face him and say "You have no place here"?

The cold swirls around them. The mountains disappear. The bleating and the tweeting and the trickling are smothered in the howl of wind. Snow casts across Forina's face. Sparrow hunches over her to protect her. He wraps her in his arms, her cold, sticky blood on his clothes, in his hair, under his fingernails. He sobs. He sobs louder than the wind. Snowflakes bite him, like mosquitos.

"He's a demon!" A voice, a screech of horror.

Sparrow looks up in alarm. The villagers are trudging towards him, carrying torches that blaze behind the veil of whirling snow and stream into the white air.

"He's possessed!"

"Fire! Cast fire upon the creature!"

Sparrow chokes on terror. "Don't hurt her!"

Snow. Flame. Flames like the petals of exotic flowers. Screams. Pain. Hands grabbing. Eyes flint hard. His shoulder hitting rock. More pain. More snow.

Snow.

Snow.

Snow.

Sparrow wakes with a choking gasp in the dark. He feels a hand stroke softly over his chest.

"Carissime?" a smooth, lilting voice slows his speeding heart.

"Mistress?" he whispers to the darkness.

"I'm here, Passer."

Hands stroke around his body, kneading the muscle and teasing his sensitive skin. He feels weight on him, then he's adrift in the scent of floral smoke. He burrows into the warm, soft flesh pressing to him, burying himself in comfort. His cock slides in hot, wet furrows and he shivers with pleasure. He rolls onto his side, gathering her into his arms, holding her close against him. Her lips find his and crush like petals. Her tongue ties his, snaking in his mouth. He kisses her feverishly, pressing to her breasts and belly, his cock wrapped in heat and sending pulses across his abdomen and down his legs.

Snow needles his back.

"Boy." A harsh voice breaks in. "Boy, stop kissing her."

Sparrow clings tighter to the kiss. There is only the kiss. Only the kiss in the whole world.

"She's trying to make you forget something," the voice says strictly.

Sparrow grumbles at the intrusion. He rolls onto his back. Warm, pressing, lips dance over his torso, each kiss bursting to life on his skin and filling him with fluttering.

"Who are you? What are you talking about?" he sighs.

A face looms over him out of the darkness, a hard, carved face with a crooked nose and relentless eyes. "You know who I am."

Sparrow frowns, his hand floating to stroke silken coils of hair tumbling over his abs, as the kisses steal south. He blinks in recognition. "Oh, you're the one who looked at me." He giggles and arches his spine, balletically raises a leg with his toe pointed. "Watch me now."

The hot mouth glances the head of his hard cock. He gasps and giggles again.

A painful strike across his face shocks him.

"Concentrate, Boy!" The stranger snaps. "I was here looking for something. What was I looking for?"

Sparrow opens his mouth to answer. A scorching tongue saws over the tip of his cock. His speech turns into a moan. "Oh God... Do you think I'm pretty? Do you like looking?"

A purr from between his spread legs. "Oh, so much, Carissime."

Sparrow purrs too and writhes on his back, tingling all over.

"Slut," the stranger snarls.

Sparrow is flooded with cold delight. He hisses through his teeth. "Mmm... Call me that again. Watch me being fucked and call me dirty things."

Another slap to his cheek. "Concentrate! What was I looking for?"

Clever fingers ring the skin of his ballsack, tightening it so his balls stand proud. The tip of that wonderful tongue serpentines around the firmness, turning Sparrow's whole lower body into a trembling river of pleasure. He moans long and loud, chased by a playful murmur, "Do you like that sound?"

The tongue flickers away and hisses, "Absolutely, Passer. Moan for me again."

He does.

A boot stamps and sends a tremor under his back. "Concentrate!"

Sparrow whines sulkily. "I don't know! Please, just let me..."

A kick to his shoulder that bangs through his body and thuds in his taunted cock. "No! If you let her fuck you in this dream, you'll forget."

"What will I forget?"

"Exactly!" The boot stamps on his chest and crushes him to the ground. "Think!"

"Umm..." Sparrow wracks his brain. "You said she was holding them somewhere here."

"Holding what, Boy? Think!"

The boot grinds its heel on his nipple, he shudders with pleasure. His tingling balls are released and the hot, hungry, satin mouth sinks over his cock. His mind bleaches. He moans wildly and bucks. Before he can bring his ass back down, something slick and smooth teases its entrance. His core sets alight. His heart hammers. He begins to pant and giggle foolishly. "Oh! Please! Yes!"

"No!" The stranger drives her boot down on his pounding heart.

But Sparrow is flying. That beautiful mouth consumes his cock, pumping and sucking and sliding, the long tongue coiling around it and lashing the tip and strangling the head, holding all the need there in one focused point of desperation, then drizzling it with saliva and kissing and gobbling, then taking him deep, deep, deep. The cool, quartz tip teases his entrance until he aches inside.

"Please... Please..." he begs through his teeth.

The boot grows heavier, he can hardly breathe, he goes light-headed. "Resist her!" the stranger barks.

"Why?" he asks through a spray of giggles, rocking his hips to invite the stone tip massaging him open. His cock slides into heat and the fiery dance of that tongue. He shudders. He moans. He gasps. He laughs. "Oh, I want this, watch me want this."

The column of quartz ploughs into him and unleashes pleasure through his body. He squeals and draws his knees up, his abs crunching as he lifts his pelvis, his whole body angled willingly to be fucked into a new shape. He closes his eyes. Sensation spins out of control in his body, his cock pounding and drenched and sucked swollen. His core is filled, smouldering as the smooth quartz drives gently and rhythmically inside him. The boot pins him to the ground. Every feeling threatens to tear him apart, like sunlight erupting from through the cracks in cloud.

"Yes!" Sparrow cries elatedly. "Yes, God, yes!"

"God doesn't lend aid under this roof." Hot breath on his cock as a soothing voice corrects him.

Sparrow blinks. "What?"

"She had something of mine! What was it?" the stranger insists.

"I don't know!" Sparrow wails. "Please, just let this happen! I feel so good! Let me feel good!"

"She's in our dream, Carissime," his mistress growls. "This is meant to be just our dream, why did you put her in it?"

"You can't have a dream of this woman forever, Boy," the stranger's voice softens.

Sparrow goes cold. His mistress is gone. The boot is gone. There's a distant stumbling and a scuffling and a growling and a choked, struggling sound.

And then everything is bliss. Her scent and her taste and her fleshy weight drown his senses. Her clit forces his lips apart and rubs his tongue. Her juices flood his mouth. The mist on her ass sticks to his face and roasts him. Her hand curls around his cock and twists and pumps and kneads. Her other hand grasps the end of the thick length of quartz and thrusts it over and over into his centre with vigour. Sparrow is filled and clasped and suffocated. Her body is his cosmos.

He needs this. He has always needed this. Without knowing it. Without wishing for it. It's like faith. It strikes you and then you're hopeless if you lose it. He moves his tongue in the intricacy of her folds, feeling her flesh part and swell and slick and quiver. He scoops his laps through her opulence with the same pleasurable push of moving through a snowdrift...

Snow.

No. Don't think about that. He will never be cold again. He is drowning in his mistress' embracing heat. It has saved him. Somewhere through the smothering he can hear her delicious moaning, her pride in him, her desire for his hungry, servile mouth. He sucks and kisses and spirals his tongue. He finds her seam. He massages it open and screws his tongue into her core, revolving inside her, sensing her tense and shiver through his skull. Let her feel just how hungry he is. Let her reward him for it. The cornucopia of her cunt would be enough, but, oh, how she rewards him. Her grasp tightens and eases on his cock in tormenting cycles. Her touch is thorough and expert, it teases and gratifies every nerve ending in perfect sequence, the sensations rolling down his legs and fizzing in his belly. She turns his insides liquid with the quartz cock. It churns him to butter. Each strike of his prostate trembles through him and makes him whine into her folds.

The utter, overtaking relaxation wrestles with the speedy hedonism of nuzzling into her vulva and the bowstring need for release in his cock. Coloured lights pop in his pressed eyes. His tongue lashes. His lips grind. He gorges on the storm of flesh over him. Her hand works his cock to the very edge, to the rim where pleasure meets pain, balmed by the honeyed sensation of satin stone sliding deeper and deeper.

His climax races over him in a sudden surge that makes him howl into her clit, the pulses hitting him like blows, then calming into lulling, cleansing waves as the quartz cock softly sinks into him beyond his break, drawing out the pleasure until he is thoroughly unravelled.

He feels movement around him. He lies limp and peaceful in his mistress' arms.

His eyes open slowly.

His heart thuds in shock. The stranger is nearby on her knees, tipping forward and supported by one hand, the other clawing at her throat. She retches grotesquely, cheeks hollow, eyes popping. Out of her mouth spill the bright red and yellow petals of flame lilies.

"No! They're poisonous!" Sparrow screeches. He scrambles to her, clutching her shoulders, rubbing her back. "You'll die!"

The petals keep coming, gushing mangled and sodden out of her mouth. She tries to speak. More come in a horrible, grating retch.

"You were trying to tell me something!" Sparrow cries. "What is it?"

She tries to speak. She vomits another wad of petals. Sparrow shakes her, cradles her, weeps into her thicket of brown hair. He draws back. She is small and her hair is smeared with smashed organ matter and her eyes are empty.

"Don't die!" He screams. "Please!"

And it's snowing. The petals are buried under it. Forina is buried. He is buried. He's lost in snow and death.

Death.

Snow.

Snow.

Snow.

Sparrow hurtled from his nightmare and slammed onto the bed with a gasp. His brain flooded with oxygen, stinging with the overload of panic and harsh, ripping wakefulness. He gulped for air and rolled over roughly, hugging his pillow to him and burying his face in it. He doused the horror in the soothing scent of lavender.

He breathed and trembled for a long moment. The clamour gradually dimmed, replaced with the muffled rhythm of his own breathing and the quiet snapping of the hearth. He swam in lavender and shut his eyes tight against welling tears. He closed his teeth on the corner of the pillowcase.

Somewhere deep inside him, a caressing voice whispered in his heart.

Go back to sleep, Carissime. There is no snow here. And death does not dare face me. I am his mistress and he obeys me. Hush, my sweet one. Go to sleep.

Darkness curled around him, and he did as he was told.

*

"Thank you for your kindness." Sandu rubbed her dry, square hands together by the rumbling fire in the village priest's cottage. The cold melted off her, stiffness leaking out of her joints.

"What else do we have in treacherous lands?" Father Petru said with a strained smile.

He placed a mug of small beer onto the wooden table by Sandu's shoulder. The low stool by the fire brought her great height down so her knees drew up under her coat, making her look somewhat like a troll squatting on a boulder. She took the drink gratefully and let the sour liquid wash over her tongue, turning her taste buds briefly brittle. She hid her wince against the poor flavour and raised the cup brusquely to Father Petru standing hunched over the table, then to his elderly mother sitting squat at it. The woman was wrapped in so many blankets, she had become completely oval and looked to be stitched together out of patchwork, the many haggard lines in her dust brown face like tracks of thread.

Father Petru began to slice bread. The rhythmic scuffing of the knife through the loaf was homey and comforting, a wonderfully human sound. He was a short man, both thin and pot-bellied. The tiny, stone cottage was furnished with animal skins and solid, plain wood, clogging the room with the thick, cosy scents of fur and pine. Images of saints painted onto wooden plaques hung on the walls, their beady eyes solemn and expectant. A small number of extremely well cared for books were stacked on a shelf as far from the fire as the room would allow.

"Treacherous lands indeed," Sandu said solemnly. "An awful blizzard we had a few days ago, may I ask if everyone in the village came out alright?"

The knife crunched and halted. Father Petru twitched.

Sandu levelled her sharp gaze on him. The curious boy at the creature's manor had told her he'd been lost in the blizzard while wandering from his village. Perhaps, in a stroke of luck, this was the place he'd come from.