The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 05

Sandu pushed her voice over him. "But Vasile didn't think that's what it was?"

Cristian cleared his throat, like the last sigh of air leaving ragged bellows. "I had no idea what Vasile thought, until this night. He said to Father Petru that they prosper while we die, and the only difference between us is that we turn to God, while they have a..." He gulped and halted. The candle stub burned to a glimmering, flat medallion of wax, silver smoke curling between them and blurring the mist of Cristian's hair around his brow. His voice rasped with the strain of telling. "A patron who rewards them."

Sandu kept her face still. "A patron?"

He nodded, quaking. "They spoke of some dark spirit, some ancient being that protects our neighbours in exchange for their worship. Their abandonment of Christ."

Sandu's jaw clenched.

He went on hoarsely. "Then, just when I thought I could not feel more cold in my blood, then the father said," he took a tremulous breath, "'But the cost - human sacrifice!'"

Sandu's hand curled into a fist, her nails scoring her palms. She crushed her lips together and waited for the trembling, frail man to continue.

"And Vasile said it was one death to prevent a dozen. And Petru couldn't argue with him. I knelt under the idol of Christ himself, the one who died so that we might live, the one who died so that no more innocents would be offered up, and I said nothing. And the good father said nothing." His tone turned bitter, strengthening surprisingly, his eyes brimming and flashing in the red light. "And then Petru said, as if he thought this redeemed him, that they must make a kind choice. Perhaps from one of the families with too many children. One less mouth to feed." He glared agonised into Sandu's face. "From a priest, Captain! Killing an innocent like he was counting grain!"

Sandu held his glare gravely. She levelled her voice, chest tight. "Did they say the girl's name? Forina?"

Cristian shook his head. "But she fits. She has many brothers and sisters and she is easily the biggest handful of them. Or she was." He sniffed and tugged a wrinkled handkerchief from his pocket. He dabbed his eyes and nose, fissures in his voice. "But it was just her age. She was nine years old. It's a wild age. She was..." He choked and put the handkerchief to his mouth and screwed his eyes tight shut. "I'm sorry..." he mumbled into the cloth.

Sandu reached across the table, not touching his hand, but putting hers within reach. "Take your time," she said gently.

Cristian rocked a little, silently stuffing his face into the handkerchief for a long moment. Then he took a quaking breath and lowered it, shining under his eyes. He coughed and continued in a wheeze. "And then Petru asked if they should do it here in the church. To rededicate it. Rededicate it? Steal from God Himself! But Vasile said no, to tread carefully. Let it be as if she was lost out walking, slipped on the rocks, her body never found." He gulped again, tone dark. "And see if the patron collects her and if it leaves anything as reward. Mark her in some way as an offering." He crumpled the grey cloth in his hand, twisting it and staring down at it, as if he might vomit. "I don't remember what they said to conclude their meeting, my ears were ringing with the shock. And I stayed hidden for a long time. It felt like more than an hour. Because imagine if they had known I had heard them! If I had become their chosen one!" He scoffed in miserable derision. "Then again, if I had, poor Forina might have been spared."

Sandu stretched the final inch and clutched his wrist firmly, her fierce face ducking into the glimmer. "But then who would there have been to tell me?"

His face softened, all the more grief-stricken for it. "So I was right to tell you? You don't think I'm mad? I'm old, my memory isn't what it was. I kept telling myself that I must have misheard, misunderstood, that I do sometimes have reason to doubt my senses, why not this time? So I said nothing. And then the next day..." His wrist shook under her fingers.

"And then the incident with Forina and Sparrow," she finished quietly.

He nodded. He craned his neck to look towards the door, as if listening for eavesdroppers, then he stared desperately at her, whispering quickly. "You see? They're saying that Sparrow killed her and tried to take her body as some slave. But it was Vasile and Petru! I think my poor boy found her on the rocks and tried to help her, but this 'patron', this heathen horror they have turned to, must have possessed her or cursed her or claimed her in some other way, and Sparrow just arrived as it was taking place." He spoke in a breathless stream. His wrist twisted out of her grasp and he grabbed her sleeve. "You believe me, don't you? Sparrow couldn't do such a thing! He wouldn't know how! And even if he did, why would he? He loved Forina. She used to sit beside him at the bonfires. But Sparrow is trusting and he's easily startled and he gets so flustered if he's shouted at and they knew he couldn't defend himself! I tried! No one would give me the time to speak! No one would... And then..." He took a shuddering breath and stopped, his tongue knotting behind his crooked teeth.

Sandu let him paw at her sleeve. She chewed over his words. "They said they would mark her," she said, more to herself than to Cristian. "So that's why they had to burn her, that's why they had to act fast against Sparrow, because they had to hide the evidence of sacrifice."

"Exactly! Yes!" Cristian hissed frantically. "Yes, you do see!"

She hesitated, but nodded.

"So I was right to tell you? You believe me? I was right?"

She gently unhooked his fingers from her sleeve and closed his bony hand in her large, warm ones. "You were right to tell me, Cristian. Whatever the truth is, I need to know as much as can be told. So I know it's very difficult for you, but I need you to think back and tell me if you heard any details of this patron they were sacrificing to."

His wiry brows writhed on his forehead. Sandu waited and let him think. If what he was saying was true... Her heart ached, her gut burned. God had not abandoned this place. Sang Mortel had. That cursed treaty. She should have set it alight on her first day as Captain. How different might fortune have been if Sang Mortel had been here to protect them from the beasts of the night who call to the desperate.

"I'm sorry," Cristian said heavily. "It's too faded after I got frightened. There's too much noise."

Sandu pressed his hand. "That's alright. You've still told me a great deal. I thank you. I will look into this right away."

A tear quivered on his creased lower eyelid, then spilled down his gaunt cheek. "Thank you," he whispered. "And if you travel in the mountains and you find him, will you make sure he's alright? Maybe take him back to Skarpo. He'd like a busy town, I think."

Sandu raised an eyebrow, regarding him. "Ioana assumed he was dead."

Cristian's lips tightened. "No. He can't be." He let out a soft sob. "He so hates death."

*

A screeching wind caught Sparrow in its clutches and almost lifted him off his light feet. He gasped and choked as it speared his throat. He kept running, hurling himself forward with the howling gale at his back, shoving him hard and making him trip on the rocky, knotted grass. The howls were split by a shout, a roar, deep and resonant in his body, ensnaring his mind.

"SPARROW!"

He told himself vehemently not to look, but the voice had chilled him, webbed him, he couldn't not turn towards it. Still trying to keep up his pace, he twisted and stumbled, his eyes raising to the sky.

His heart froze.

Soaring overhead was Vestalia.

But not Vestalia.

She was naked as a moonbeam, her body like the flash of light on a blade cutting through the darkness. The red tips to her hair had ignited into real flames, blazing in a swarm of lashing firelight around her. It cast her contorted face into warped, crimson shadows. The red blaze sank into the mask of black veins across her vibrant, ravenous eyes and glinted on her long, keen, curved fangs. A pair of immense, black wings, like those of a bat, spread from her back, blocking out the moon shimmering opalescent through the dark hide. The wings didn't end, they morphed into smoke, then shadow, then the darkness, weaving her into the fabric of night. She swooped down on him like vengeful Lucifer hurtling from Heaven, all hunger and fury. She sliced through the wind as if it was barely more than breath, calling out in a commanding voice that made the earth tremble under Sparrow's feet.

"SPARROW!"

Sparrow screamed in terror. He flung himself back into running and tore down the uneven slopes. He ran like he had never run before, he sped and sped until he felt like he was ripping apart into the wind. His pulse galloped around his body, punching his stomach and making it hurl. His panting breath grated his mouth. He bounded and bolted...

And tripped.

His toe drove hard into a dip in the ground, grass lassoing his foot. He lurched and gasped. He pitched forward. The rise of the mountain fell away from beneath him, a collapse in the rock face yawning into engulfing black.

His scream was lost in the banshee wind.

He plummeted through nothingness. His organs floated in his rib cage.

The beating of wings cracked the air.

He tumbled into softness and the tight clasp of strong arms. Embers and flowers and blood charged into his senses. He gasped back to awareness and found himself surrounded by writhing flame and teaming stars. His vision filled with a pair of enraged, bloodshot, Hell-pit eyes. Talons scored his back through his clothes. She was holding him to her in a twisted embrace, one hand clutching his back, one scooped under his thigh and hoisting him close.

He gagged on another cry. His arms were free. He tried to bring them up to push her away, but the fires in her hair lashed his fingers. He yelped and gripped her hard biceps, his voice coursing senselessly out of him. "Let me go! Let me go!"

"I will not!" Vestalia hissed. "You'll fall! There's no path where you're running!"

He didn't hear her. The heat of the flames was biting his face, rushing air slamming his ears. "No! Let me go! No!" He flailed like a fish, pushing against her arms and arching his spine until it burned. He screwed his eyes tight shut to blind himself to the dazzle of fire and the horror of her transformed face.

"Stay still! You'll fall!" she snapped in a leonine voice.

"NO!" he shouted as much to himself as to her. The press of her body was bleeding through him, confusing his terror, threatening to numb it. He gulped in the racing, icy air and released it in frantic, vulpine bursts of noise.

"Sparrow! Do as I say! Let me hold you!"

"NO! I never want you to hold me again! Let me go!" Tears scorched his closed eyes and squeezed from the corners, frosting on his cheeks. He writhed and whipped in her arms. Her talons spiking his flesh. The grind of her naked body heated him brutally through his clothes.

They climbed higher and higher into the sky, shroud-grey clouds and gleaming, colourless stars wheeling over them. The air thinned, spinning Sparrow's head. The earth was dissolving beneath them, the only world here in limbo between the celestial and the infernal. The fall below looked eternal.

Vestalia's grip turned to iron. He could feel as he threw all his strength into struggling that she was barely using half of hers to keep him in her arms. She wrenched his thigh to her hip. His groin pressed to hers. Electricity seized his spine and his eyes flew open. They filled with the stars in her cavernous pupils. Her breath pumped the raw smell of hot blood over him. She pulled his face close to hers, their lips almost grazing, filling his mouth with the taste. Her lip curled in a snarl. "Don't make me do something I can't undo."

Sparrow's cheeks smouldered. His heart hammered. He bedded his fingers into her muscle and hissed like a cat. "Let. Me. GO!"

Her wings flared with moonlight and sent the galloping wind back, shadow and smoke wreathing her bestial face. Saliva dripped from her pink-tinged fangs. In a sizzle of flame, Sparrow could see the veins thick on her face pulsate with the pump of blood. That man's blood. He half sobbed and half shrieked. He squirmed and writhed and beat his small fists uselessly on her broad, solid shoulders. The deadly plummet below him was like a fish hook in his gut, pulling him petrifyingly.

"Stop this!" she roared.

"No!"

"DO AS I SAY!"

"NO! NEVER AGAIN!"

He glared with boiling, weeping defiance into her demonic stare, viscous and clinging like bubbling tar. Her blazing hair flailed across the black sky, swirling red like carp in a dark pool. Her grasp burned hotter than the fires. Her mouth warped around her prominent teeth. Her voice turned bitter as charcoal. "Oh, you don't want to be my boy anymore? Then you don't get your privileges."

The hand on his back slid to his ass and clutched him hard, shooting sensation to his core, holding him firm with her powerful arm cradling his body. She tipped him back to expose his torso, his head whooshing with the plummet below. The wind snatched and pulled at his coat and hair. She dashed her hand harshly from his thigh, ripping four gashes in his britches, only just not breaking the skin. She raised her black claws, long and curved to lethal points, and snicked them over his waistcoat and shirt. Sparrow gasped and jumped with each strike, every sudden movement stamping his mind with the image of slipping and hurtling to his death. She slashed at his clothes, leaving them in fluttering tatters around him. Her talons skimmed his skin, but never wounded him, leaving his flesh agonisingly alive. The freezing air rushed him, sharpening the sting, making him shiver until his joints rattled.

She leered over him. Fire turned her cheeks to carved carnelian, heating his face so he flushed rose. She severed the lacing of his britches. His chest constricted. His cock swelled into the cold, then incredible heat as her vulva smothered it. He was shocked with unsettling pleasure. He tried to bow backwards, but her hand on his ass held him firm. He grit his teeth and tensed his back and whined. "Let... Let me go... Please..." The final word was imploring, his gaze going wide and watery and searching the chasms of her eyes for the kindness he'd known what seemed like an age ago.

"No," she replied in a low voice.

Pain skewered his chest. "Let me go!" He wrenched his body sideways, heedless of the drop, scrabbling his fingers on her bare arms.

She seized one of his wrists and crushed it in a vice-like grasp that shot an ache to his shoulder. "Do you want me to let you fall? Really? Shall I throw you into the night and we'll see if the little bird spreads his wings? Do you want to hurt yourself?"

A tearful surge poured from Sparrow's trembling lips into the wailing gale. "It doesn't matter. You'll hurt me. Like you hurt that man. Like you..."

Her clit slicked over the tip of his cock. He arched his spine instinctively, moaning, whimpering, driving himself deeper into her flesh. The pleasure shocked him still. He hung in her arms with his clothes wilting away and the wind skating speedily over him, biting his nipples and abs and neck.

"I'll tell you what, Sparrow," she murmured in a voice like frost and embers, firelight dancing on her satin lips. "I'll let you go, if you can call me my name. Go on, that's all you have to do. Call me Vestalia. Call me anything apart from Mistress." Her thigh sneaked between his legs, pushing them open and pressuring his balls.

Sparrow's breath wisped. His exposed flesh pressed to hers, rubbing his body scalding hot. Her blinding hair and gargantuan wings flowed across his vision with the cold moon behind them. His lips parted. No sound escaped. He swallowed hard. The wind pushed him against her, her arm wrapping him tight. He shivered. He tried again. "V..." His tongue thickened and plugged his mouth. He coughed. "V..." The shreds of his clothes rippled around him. He twisted his wrist in her impossible grip. He snaked his hips and drew pleasure into his quivering cock. He whined. His voice rose. "Ves..." His voice fled, chased by a heavy sob. The nearness of her mouth was torture. Images of the murdered man whirled through his mind, turning to images of himself, falling beneath her, holding her, kissing her, dying with delight. He burst into trembling and threw his arms around her, breaking his wrist free. He buried his hands in her hair, not caring about the graze of flame. He hooked his leg around hers and plunged his face into her still perfumed neck. He shook with tears in her cradling arms and the cradling gale spiralling around them, drawing them together. "I can't, Mistress..."

Her free hand drifted to his back and she held him close, her breasts cushioning his sore chest. The fires in the ends of her hair snuffed out to save his hands, glowing like pokers. She kissed his hair and rubbed his back, talons tickling. "There, there, Passer, hush, hush. Don't be afraid. Mistress has you."

Gut-wrenching, shivering sobs gushed out of him, he was crushingly hot and snow cold. "I don't want to be afraid of you."

"Don't you?"

"Not like this."

Her talons teased up and down his spine. Her clit kissed his cock wet. Her voice ran like silk ribbon around the rim of his ear as she leaned to it. "Hush, it's alright. This fear isn't so different to the sweet kind. Feel." She dragged her folds around his head, hoisting him deeper with a pinch to his ass. "You're still so hard."

"Oh..." Sparrow sighed. "Please..."

"Please what?"

The wind whistled, the fall below making Sparrow feel weightless. He clung even closer to her fragrant, comforting body. He burrowed his face into her neck and shuddered. "I'm begging you..."

Her body rolled against his, her wings cloaking him in darkness. "Don't beg, Pretty One. You'll only make me crueller. The temptation is too much."

"Oh... Oh, God..."

"I told you not to make me do something I can't undo." Her teeth pricked his throat.

Sparrow flooded with exhilarating panic. He took a sharp, dizzying breath and pulled frantically back from her embrace. Her face drifted into view. The veins had faded and now lay in a crimson, lace mask over eyes rekindling with the amber treasure-glimmer. But her teeth remained, two vicious scimitars protruding from full, bloodied lips. A rush of wind whirled her hair and its hearth glow, reflecting on her pearl skin. Her wings spread wide and cupped the hail of stars above them. Sparrow realised with a jolt of horror that they were moving, that she was carrying him over the mountain, the air flowing under them, bearing them back towards the manor. His throat clogged. He began to struggle again. She gripped him harder. He twisted and ground, fiercely ignoring the pleasure striking up in his cock. He bit his lip and looked helplessly into her dazzling eyes, appealing to her, feverishly trying to summon her sympathy.

Her ravenous gaze glittered. Colour rose in her cheeks, or was it the halo of red light from her hair? "Oh, Carissime. I was almost a good woman." She ran the tip of her tongue down and up the length of one stained fang. "But then you gave me that irresistible look." Her voice was darkening. So was her face, the veins re-emerging across her eyes, turning her flesh to rotting fruit. "That delicious look."

Fear made Sparrow high. Adrenaline drugged him, poisoned him, burned like venom in his blood. It sharpened all his senses wickedly, so the roaring gale felt like it might shatter his body and the stroke of her vulva became hot honey pouring into his core. He whimpered and shivered. He planted his hands to her shoulders and pushed hard, but it only pushed his lower body against her. She groaned hungrily. The sound possessed him.