Belok's Bride Read online

  The elevator opened into a narrow, dank passageway.

  “Follow me,” he instructed, as if she had a choice.

  Merritt enjoyed this underground level even less than the cell blocks upstairs. She felt like she was choking this far down. Like some of the pedestrian tunnels in the really deep tube stations she’d seen in the London underground, the ones with areas still cordoned off from damage during Hitler’s Blitz. She hadn’t been able to imagine how people could get used to those tunnels every day. But this was like being buried alive.

  In an effort to suppress her fears, Merritt tried to calculate the age of the place. The architecture was a mishmash of styles, the walls made of ancient stone adorned with both medieval torch holders and modern, caged incandescent bulbs. At one point, she spotted a carved gargoyle that appeared to be staring at an aerial bombardment warning on the opposite wall.

  “You will find down here many of the devices preferred by Belok,” the director explained as he waddled down the vaulted corridor. “For use in his…inquiries.”

  Merritt was left to fill in the blanks. He was obviously referring to torture devices, though the man seemed to enjoy speaking elliptically and obliquely.

  “I'm surprised they didn’t just tear the place down,” she vented, hugging herself against the damp chill in the air.

  “This is history, doctor. The great, great uncle of The Prince was the first to burrow down here in times of trouble. In the Second World War, it was occupied by the Nazis, then finally the communists.”

  Merritt’s breath caught in her chest as it occurred to her that this had been his place, too. The Dark One. Had he walked this very corridor, throwing some prisoner in a cell or visiting mayhem on some female?

  “Belok is often misjudged,” the director was saying now, as if carrying on some dialogue in his head. “When it comes to brutality, what can compare with the records of the world’s largest companies today? All the pollution, the environmental destruction, the abuse of the workers and the elderly.”

  He fished in his pocket for a set of keys. The iron door was rusty with a grate-like opening towards the bottom. Merritt felt a wave of panic. The scraping of the key in the lock was cutting her open, baring her heart and soul. What was on the other side? Who had been here before? Clenching her fists, she had an almost irresistible urge to throw herself on the man’s mercy, begging him to let her go or else to tear the dress from her body and throw her to the floor. She pictured him as the jailer and her, the naked prisoner, desperate to avoid her punishment. She would do anything just like Ileana said. Cringing while licking the man’s body, her sandpaper tongue cleaning the sweat from him inch-by-inch, over his face and back, his heavy balls, his hanging penis, even his huge arse if he were to command it.

  On her knees before him, obsequious, shivering in her chains and collar, not a stitch of clothing to protect her skin. Her own body, her tiny tongue, her surrender to her pain the only bargaining mechanism. And yet knowing she has nothing to give that does not already belong to him, to the prison, to the state. She is property, and she must lick well if she is to have any hope of escaping torture.

  “Are you quite well, Doctor Fisher?”

  She snapped from her reverie, forcing a business-like smile. “Quite well. Just anxious to get on with my research.”

  “Of course. I think you shall find the answers in here. Maybe not just the professional ones, but your personal, ones, too.”

  Merritt stiffened. Was this a promise of mayhem or just another riddle? Her mind flashed with an image of Simon, and for a split second she wished for her aloof, cruel protector. Over his knee, she told herself, was an infinitely better place to be than this cold darkness.

  “Belok did not invent the notion of justice through physical correction,” the director’s voice echoed in the sterile darkness. “But he was perhaps the most creative practitioner of the art.”

  The overhead lights clicked on dramatically and Merritt beheld the gray stone room, gray and dismal. The only other color was the floor, which was painted bright red. It was perhaps thirty feet by thirty feet and along every wall were machines, medieval contraptions of metal and wood, intended to cause excruciating pain to victims, most of whom had been female and naked.

  “The so-called iron maiden was popular throughout all of Europe,” he gestured to the mummy-shaped cage of metal with inward facing spikes. “Though to our knowledge, only Belok added the feature of sexual mayhem.”

  Merritt regarded the prongs, crotch level, mounted on swinging brackets. With these, a female could be violated fore and aft the whole time of her torture.

  “The wooden dowels on this otherwise garden variety rack serve the same purpose. And here is one of my favorites,” he waddled down the line like some sort of toy wind-up doll. “A prisoner could be suspended upside down with her head in a small cage at the same time.”

  Merritt felt the room begin to spin. On every side were things to hurt and subjugate, things to make a woman crawl and beg and long for the simple pleasure of being raped by a man, of kneeling in a well-lighted throne room sucking her prince in front of an enthusiastic audience.

  For support, she gripped the heavy armrest of a punishment chair, complete with leather straps and a wedge to splay the thighs. If she didn’t steady herself now, she’d wind up fainting again like at the airport. And she couldn’t afford that, not now, not here. Seeking her discipline, she focused on the stern face of Simon, his statue-like presence in her hotel room chair, legs casually spread, arms relaxed, eyes and voice fearsome and dictatorial.

  Strip and shower, fix me a drink, girl, and lie across my la; your cunt here, and your arse there.

  How angry he’d made her then. And how angry she was now. He’d told her to be intent on obeying him. So where was he now to guide her? Why was he allowing her to be exposed to such obvious danger? And what kind of academic institution established itself in a former totalitarian prison? And what sort of director had assistants who caged visitors, collared and electrocuted them and then, in full witness of these guests, caned the arse of his naked secretary?

  “Doctor Fisher, are you in need of some water?”

  The voice was coming out of the end of an auditory tunnel. She could feel his fleshy fingers on her bare arm, but she couldn’t make her body respond. Dimly, she knew she was leaning forward across the machine and that it was holding her up.

  “No,” she said, thinking of the bowls from which the special detention prisoners drank, with little more dignity than dogs. “That won’t be necessary.”

  A jolt of the collar was what she needed. Irrationally, she felt for it, confirming its absence on her neck. Did the prisoners come to treasure that kind of control; that sure sign from the brutalizing males around them that they were worth possessing and intimately dominating?

  “The Chalice,” Merritt straightened bravely, refusing to abase herself before yet another male. “I should like to see the Chalice of Hrabon now.”

  The director, his huge frame flanked by a reclining spiked table and a display of whips and metal scourges, pinched his face, bending towards her in what nearly passed for intimate concern. “The Chalice,” he agreed, his thoughts flitting off again like a butterfly. “The secret of Belok’s power, no? If one puts stock in such…stories.”

  There were many stories. Some said he’d forged the cup from armor stolen from a demon horde, others that he had bargained with the devil himself, trading his soul for uncanny powers, and perhaps even immortality. In all the stories was a common denominator. The Chalice required blood to work. Drops of it, spilt one by one from the bodies of his slave girls while incantations were spoken. Vistya’s blood, too, was said to have been taken in great quantities by the man.

  “The air is so damp. Is the Chalice down here? I should be concerned with its preservation,” she said.

  Karisvan licked his lips, a quick dart of tongue. Merritt imagined the drops of sweat were something sweet to him like lemonade or a bi
t of root beer. “It is hermetically sealed. Utterly protected from all enemies, natural and artificial. Even a modern army, Doctor Fisher, would find this place impregnable. Our chairman has spared no expense.”

  “You mean Count Rochescu? The Head of the Institute Board?”

  She knew of him, of course. He was a powerful man in Zuravia, patriarch of one of the oldest land owning families and the leaded of the ultra nationalist party. Already twice during the campaign he had come under fire from liberals for remarks seeming to praise aspects of the law and order prevalent under Belok’s reign. It didn’t take a world class detective to figure out he was one of the ones Colonel Ladislak had been talking about. Maybe even the ringleader.

  Was this who Simon was after, too?

  The director appeared to be screening an invisible movie once again, somewhere over her shoulder. “The count, yes. Such a complicated title.”

  “I guess it fits for an old country, though, doesn’t it?”

  The director nodded, his face scrunching into a pained smile, though the gesture appeared to have nothing to do with her question. “We should go, doctor.”

  As he closed and meticulously locked the door it occurred to Merritt for the first time that this so-called defunct prison with all its museum pieces could quite easily be made functional once again. In one sense it was to the extent the cages had held her and would have continued to hold her forever if Ileana had willed it.

  The thought also crossed her mind that Belok’s terror equipment seemed remarkably well preserved. The ropes were fresh, the metal free from rust and oiled. The floor was conveniently painted blood red with grates opening beneath.

  “I'm amazed that you have been able to preserve the Cup all these centuries,” Merritt remarked, forcing the casual tone even as she hustled to catch up with the fast walking director, putting as much distance between her and the torture room.

  “Yes, quite a story, in itself,” he huffed, the exertion of the corridor walk taking its toll. “At the time of the Desecration, it was nearly lost to the invaders. A foot soldier, loyal to the Prince found it amidst the rubble and preserved it. It passed through the ranks of his descendants, one of whom eventually donated it to us.”

  Merritt was quite familiar with this Desecration. Elsewhere in Europe it was referred to as the Liberation, a monumental battle in which the forces of ten surrounding kingdoms finally succeeded in destroying Belok’s army and sacking his castle.

  “A piece of history,” he continued. “And yet there are those who say the Chalice will be brought to life once more and the Prince will return to make Zuravia strong again.”

  “Old superstitions die hard.”

  The director laughed, his voice hollow and tinny. “Quite so, doctor.”

  Was it her imagination, or was there a tinge of irony in his tone?

  The Chalice of Hrabon was located in an old solitary confinement cell at the other end of the passageway. It was a high tech affair with laser trip lights, a state of the art humidification system and a bulletproof glass chamber.

  The man’s voice lowered to a near whisper as they beheld it together in all its brilliance “Some say that the cup Belok placed in the city square was a double of this one.”

  “No one touched it for the entire period of his reign,” Merritt recited the famous tale.

  “Would you like to touch this one?” The director’s face was suddenly animated. Before she could even respond, his thick fingers were working the buttons on the faceplate of the glass chamber. A few seconds later, there was a mechanical whir and a portion of the glass slid aside. The man’s tongue was thrust through his lips as he reached for it, his eyes reflecting the red of the encrusted rubies, the pink of his flesh vibrating against the brilliant gold as he clenched the stem of the ancient goblet lifting and pulling it towards her.

  “I couldn’t,” said Merritt, but it was too late, she was already cradling it, feeling its weight against her breast. It was heavy and took two hands to hold. “It’s so cold.”

  “The blood of Vistya,” the director was repeating under his breath, almost like a chant.

  She looked down into the black depths of the bowl. The thing was so heavy and ponderous. Where it touched her was like frostbite. But she couldn’t let go. She had to see for herself. Had the blood of Belok’s wife really spilled into this chalice? Had he used it to collect her life force to perpetuate some devil’s bargain?

  Merritt felt herself collapsing. Her energy being sapped where her fingers touched the metal, the edge of the gold, the rim almost rubbing on her nipples. The director was chanting, and she felt so very sexy, so totally horny. From left to right, she slid the object, punishing her breasts, flattening them. She wanted to be naked, wanted it to be on her bare flesh. Here at her bosom and lower down.

  Yes, Merritt wanted to be taken. To bathe in the wine of this cup, the juice of her submission, the red blood of the pierced virgin. Cold, cruel metal hammered upon the anvil of the gods into the shape of male superiority. Chains for her to wear, shackles, anklets and a collar, smooth permanent fixtures, marks of her possession. And then the red-hot iron, itself kissing her flesh. Branding her with the master’s mark. Then and only then will she be ready for what she craves. Complete and utter sexual vanquishment. On the floor, at his feet, writhing under his whip, succumbing to his cock in her every orifice.

  “Now?” she asks, not sure if she is speaking the words or merely thinking them.

  “Not yet,” comes the reply, and she is not sure if it is the director speaking or someone else.

  A chasm opens beneath her, and for a moment she is drawn down, along with everything else in the world, beginning with the prison, its machines new and old, its blood soaked walls, its scream choked cells, and beyond this, the city herself, Lady Vistya’s city with its whores and pimps and Western style drug dealers and punk rockers and bitter, plotting old communists and the ghosts of the courtiers and rapier wielders and the armor wearers all the way back to the men in skins of animals who ran over these plains evading the great beasts.

  And before this, Creation Herself.

  “I am Lord,” the voice of Belok rips the sky like lightning, tearing the tender flesh between her legs. “Of all things.”

  Soon…very soon…

  Merritt opened her eyes. The director was putting the goblet back in the case, locking the door as though nothing at all had happened. She touched her breast, to feel what was real. Where were these dreams coming from and why were they becoming more difficult to distinguish from reality? In one way, this should comfort her, that it was more than likely all a figment of her own rich storehouse of Belok knowledge, but in another way it terrified her, because what if she, of her own accord, were symbolically crawling right now into a tiny cage which would be locked and from which she would never leave or even want to leave.

  “Forgive me, doctor. I am somewhat fatigued. I wonder if I could go back to my hotel now,” Merritt addressed her host, taking what for her was an unusual risk of appearing rude.

  He showed no visible emotion. “I will have Piko tend to it at once. In the morning I should like you to examine the manuscripts.”

  Her heart tripped over the man’s reference to the priceless works of the Institute, chief among them the original copy of the Journal of Night, penned in Belok’s own hand, poured from Belok’s own mind and written, according to legend, in the blood of a hundred virgins.

  “The dream of my life,” she smiled weakly, “has been to see the original Journal of Night.”

  Except now there was a new ambivalence, a combination of world-weariness and futility mixed with a rekindled adolescence. Merritt wanted to run away from this place and from her heavy, onerous life of study. She wanted to run free in a meadow. Better still, into the arms of some wicked young lover. As the elevator took her back to the surface, she felt almost giddy. Giddy and drunk and also deliciously jealous. Jealous of the little Italian girl who’d found the perfect bliss of loving contr
ol, a boy who would make her a woman. Flirtatious and silly, like Ileana had said.

  Piko was waiting for her in the courtyard, holding the car door open for her. Merritt was so filled with joy at that moment, she could not resist the impulse to bend down and kiss him on the cheek. She wanted to do more but sensed his reticence.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he mumbled, clearly distraught. “I don’t deserve it.”

  That was nothing, she thought, imagining herself down on all fours, taking the man’s penis in her mouth. Good heavens, there was a wicked thought. What was getting into her?

  “Do you think a woman can be changed by a new country, Pico? Overnight, I mean?”

  .“I couldn’t say ma’am. I’m only a little boy.”

  She reached down discretely to brush his hard on. “Don’t be ridiculous, Piko. You’re a man.”

  The little chauffer leaped backwards like she’d touched him with fire. “I must take you back to the hotel. That is what I must do.”

  The ride back was silent. Merritt was still confronting the audacity of her own behavior, while she sensed the tiny man with the lion’s heart was wrestling with something deeper. She wanted to tell him to fight, to stand up for who he was inside. It was obvious enough that Ileana terrorized him the way she did the willowy, submissive Rebecca. Black haired Ileana, long and lean like a spider, beautiful and dangerous.

  The part Merritt could not figure out was her connection to the Institute. The director seemed wary of her, and yet she’d been very anxious that Merritt not speak to him of their extracurricular activities. She certainly didn’t act like a scholar nor would she, by virtue of her gender, fit into the traditionalist ideas of Rochescu about male supremacy.

  She was like a piece that didn’t fit.

  Then again, what two pieces of this enormous, headache-inducing puzzle did fit? The only common denominator to all of it was her own surging lust, the nearly overwhelming feelings and needs she was having. By the hour it grew worse as her normally rational thoughts were being pushed to the limit by her sex drive. A rising river. Dammed, but only for the moment.