Disclaimer: All characters, world, etc. are property of Anne Bishop (amazing author) and I credit nothing to myself other than an imagination.
Author's Note from Erkith: Just a little one-shot on Dorothea while I finish chap 2 of Predators' Dance. If you object to the rating let me know… I'll change it. But as a warning, I didn't exactly skimp on the descriptions.
Dedicated to Lady Occult for her birthday (although belated).
As always, please ENJOY!
Erkith
Ps. Check out Coven by Lady Occult! Wicked fic and BETA'd by yours truly!
And when the dark burns your soul
There it was again. That whispered sibilant voice that murmured like prophesy.
When the hatred betrays your honour, you will lose all your innocence.
When the terror rips through your body, you will lose all your humanity.
When the blood drips from your veins, you will lose all your power.
When the pain shatters your mind, you will lose all your will.
And when the dark burns your soul, you will truly have lost everything.
Witchblood.
Damn Sadi. Damn that backstabbing bitch, Hekatah. She hoped that the bastard torched that rotting carcass.
Pain unlike anything she'd known gripped her abdomen. Pain. Powerful. Throbbing. Focused. Inescapable.
Her hands pushed frantically against her belly and crotch, applying a desperate pressure, trying to hold her self together as blood flushed from her body, seeping freely through her fingers. Pressure and pain releasing it in gushing waves.
She rocked against hands offering no relief.
Blood pooled around her. She tried not to whimper as she lay there; she'd once slain a puppy in disgust, she remembered, for nothing more than sitting in a pool of its own piss.
Fuck. Suffering a stronger, vicing contraction, she screamed.
She wished Sadi had been so merciful. But he was the same sadistic bastard he'd always been, and he'd left her here to die slowly, in pure agony. Bastard. "Looks like Witchblood was part of last night's brew."
She could have killed him. Zulaman be damned. Why the hell did she care?
As pain swamped her, she thought of death. She craved the offered release. Prayed it would come soon.
Witchblood is a pretty poison. There is no cure for Witchblood.
Witch…blood, she mused bitterly, how appropriate. There was a lot of blood on her hands. How many good queens and witches had she had broken, destroyed? How many had suffered, and died as she'd stripped the Blood of the Old Ways?
She'd torn away the framework of who they were.
The Priestess of Hayll ruled the Blood. Her taint flourishing through her people.
Children raped. Witches broken. Landens slaughtered. Princes enslaved beneath her ruling ring. It was embedded in the bloodied Terreillean soil.
She fed well on that hatred she'd cultivated – betraying promise after promise, witch after witch, House after House, Queen after Queen, and Territory after Territory. She felt no remorse for the lives she'd ruined.
When the hatred betrays your honour, you will lose all your innocence.
When the terror rips through your body, you will lose all your humanity.
When the blood drips from your veins, you will lose all your power.
When the pain shatters your mind, you will lose all your will.
And when the dark burns your soul, you will truly have lost everything.
He'd threatened her – threatened the Priestess of Hayll – actually threatened her! She remembered. Those cold golden eyes had locked on her, unwavering and furious; though they had been bathed in a false calm. Ice had run up the walls. It had been literally hard to breathe.
His power, dark power, filled the room with a swirling rage of energy.
"Have you heard of Zulaman, Priestess?" the old gentleman's voice asked mildly.
She remembered shaking in terror and hating it. It had been all she could do to nod. It had been all she could do not to scream. Zulaman had never existed, but she'd been there. She remembered its beaches – had felt their sands under her feet. Zulaman had never existed.
"The day my sons no longer walk this earth, Terreille will join it. I trust I make myself clear."
She had taken a step back from the High Priest of Hell, staggered, unable to take a breath past the fear lodged in her throat – her hand shielding her vulnerable neck in face of the predator in her midst.
She had run from her own study, trampling obstacles underfoot, blasting a path of retreat. A stampede, by definition, an uncontrolled flee from danger, she'd been an animal.
She had never again known terror like that.
She'd cursed his name, and cursed his sons to witness her twisted nature, uninhibited by morality.
Bedroom games. Shavings. Mindless torture. She mixed pain and pleasure until they were synonymous.
And now she'd looked into another set of golden orbs, just as terrifying. The Sadist had not needed his father to inspire fear. It was bred into him – that binding, savage power that hypnotized its prey even as it sped the pulse and its teeth sank in.
Oh, he was his father's mirror.
When the hatred betrays your honour, you will lose all your innocence.
When the terror rips through your body, you will lose all your humanity.
When the blood drips from your veins, you will lose all your power.
When the pain shatters your mind, you will lose all your will.
And when the dark burns your soul, you will truly have lost everything.
Stars scattered across her vision. She was dizzy with blood loss and pain. But he'd made sure she could not slip into oblivion. That cold bastard.
She was left to feel her fluids juicing, gushing around her legs.
He'd left her an undignified mess. Her thighs red and rank. Her bedclothes soaked and sticky with sweat and blood. Lying there, her blood pooling outwards, ever-extending over the floor, lying there as it climbed to her shoulders she could not stand it.
Sickened at the sight, she attempted to drag herself free of it, but a fresh gushing of pain and fluids pinned her down. She screamed her agony, knowing there was no one to hear her.
Physically exhausted, she threw her strength behind her craft. Clean. She thought. Clean. But she felt not even a flicker of power.
When the hatred betrays your honour, you will lose all your innocence.
When the terror rips through your body, you will lose all your humanity.
When the blood drips from your veins, you will lose all your power.
When the pain shatters your mind, you will lose all your will.
And when the dark burns your soul, you will truly have lost everything.
Contractions were coming harder, faster, like the childbirth she experienced centuries before, but this was worse. A dagger of pain was slicing through her matrix, carving her sins and cruelties upon her womb. She writhed in agony. The contractions centered terribly in her back and abdomen. She was beyond screaming, beyond breathing.
She could feel some part of her tearing away. Some piece of her pushing its way out of her body. Panic swamped her.
Adrenaline rushed through her blood, giving her the strength to move again, and her hands still lying in a mocking pose of carnal pleasure against her crotch cupped her tormented flesh, pressing mercilessly. Scarlet pulsed though her fingers. She could feel it almost sitting in her hand.
In desperation, she clawed at herself, trying to push it back in. A bolt of pain shot through her body as her sharp nails shaved her, but she was beyond that now. Her whole entity was focused on that single point.
Another agonizing contraction folded her body until it almost sat, then forced the organ into her hands; she fell to her side, staring at the object she held.
Her womb.
She dropped it, vomiting in big bloody mouthfuls of bile.
But even in her horror, she understood. That womb had born nothing but evil and destruction. She had stolen life from this land, and the debt would be repaid. The Sadist could have devised no better.
Everything has a price.
The toll was high, she realised with mounting hysteria, and she would pay.
When the hatred betrays your honour, you will lose all your innocence.
When the terror rips through your body, you will lose all your humanity.
When the blood drips from your veins, you will lose all your power.
When the pain shatters your mind, you will lose all your will.
And when the dark burns your soul, you will truly have lost everything.
She felt the maelstrom coming with a mixture of relief and regret.
And when the darkness finally crashed upon her, flooded her mind, breeching barriers, breaking her, burning her away, she let her soul be bruised, bleached, and blackened.
Again the sibilant voice whispered.
And when the dark burns your soul, you will truly have lost everything.
The darkness will not be merciful.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed it. Drop me a review please; I'm always happy to answer them whether they be criticism, compliments, requests, questions, or flames.
Thanks for reading!
Erkith