A bit of reference to torture in this chappi. Hope you all like the story so far. I know we aren't in Nosgoth as of yet but please bear with me, it will be a few chapters until Katrina actually gets there.
Edits done by my dear Beta Ellara Levellan. Yay!
Chapter two: Out of the Frying Pan...
I wasn't sure how much time had passed before I finally woke up from my drug induced slumber. I couldn't be sure of how long it had been, as there were no windows nor signs of a clock anywhere within the room I had woken up in. Perhaps it had been hours or maybe even a day or more had gone by, as I found that I felt hungry and thirsty as all hell. I blinked awake slowly and, as I glanced down to check my present physical state, I took a brief moment to count myself lucky that I was at least still alive after being jumped the way I had been. Alive meant that I had a chance to get free. I seemed to be in good physical condition as well; nothing felt broken, I wasn't bleeding from any visible injury, nor did I feel any aches that signaled bruising. Another plus was that my clothing all seemed to be in one piece. So far things were... as okay as they could be all things considered.
I wasn't entirely certain if I could trust my still drug addled senses though. There might be potential injuries that were not obviously apparent, but at the same time I wasn't sure if I should bother trying to analyze the true state my body was in. There was no reason to make a bad situation worse by focusing on any wounds that I just had not yet noticed. I didn't need to have a panic attack. I needed to keep as level a head as I could. If I could... Shit...
I realized a few seconds, minutes perhaps, after regaining my senses that I had at some point been securely chained to the wall I had been leaning against. I took a slow breath and the scent of blood and of death hung thick in the air around me. I let out a huff of breath to try to clear the scent from my nose. It was a unique scent that normally lingered in a desert for a long time near road-kill, so it was a scent I sadly knew and knew well. In the distance, outside of the room I was held in and perhaps close by, I thought I could hear... what sounded like pain and fear filled screams and sobbing cries. I turned my head from side to side and looked around at my surroundings as I tried to fight off the growing fear. I frowned a bit in confusion as I glanced about at the dimly lit room.
The only description I had for where I was would be that of a dungeon room. There was even an old fashioned rack to the right of me, about fifteen feet away. As I focused I realized there was actually dried blood on the wood, which made it frighteningly clear that it was not a prop of some sort but something that was put to use quite regularly. A... disturbing and terrifying thought that. I swallowed roughly to stifle a small sound of fear that wanted to escape me.
I looked up, away from the rack, and saw that the ceiling of the room was about twenty feet up and, hanging from it, I saw that there a kind of steel cage. The bottom of the cage was about ten feet above my head and positioned more near the center of the room. I had to bite my lip in disgust as I realized that laying inside of it was the old, decaying remains of someone. I felt horrible seeing that body, the dull thought of 'Oh... poor guy... gal...?' ran through my shocked mind. One rotting arm hung out of the side of the cage, held together by only a few bits of rotting flesh and sinew. The arm swung back and forth slowly like a decayed pendulum and looked ready to fall apart at any moment. It looked... it looked like some of the muscle or sinew had finally snapped which had freed the limb to swing so as the cage that the decayed body lay in was completely still. I had to close my eyes for several long seconds as I counted slowly until my stomach stopped churning from the disgust and horror I felt. The reality of where I was began to thoroughly sink into my skull.
As I re-opened my eyes and continued to take in the horrors of the room, I suddenly noticed the body of a man hanging upside-down from his ankles on the wall directly across from me. He was dressed in what seemed to be a black business suit and looked as if he had either just recently left for work or had been heading home from work and he seemed to be completely out of place in this dungeon, save for one, small thing. The man's throat and both wrists had been slit wide and his blood was slowly pouring out of the gaping wounds to freely run down his arms in thick rivulets to drip from his fingers into a pitcher that had been set up directly beneath him.
Just by looking at that still form, and by the slow thickness of the blood that dripped from his body, I could tell that he was dead and had been for some time. Only gravity was causing the remaining blood in his body to flow out of him, not the pumping of a heart. I looked closer at the pitcher that was collecting the dark red liquid that flowed out of the man and saw, as if to confirm the fact the man had been there for a long time, that the pitcher itself was full, overflowing actually. There was actually a large, wide puddle of cooled and congealing blood that had spread in a wide circle around it.
I fought to make sense of just where I could possibly be and what in the hell could be going on, as well as continued to fight to keep whatever contents that were still in my stomach in my stomach. I tugged at the chains that held me to the wall, testing the bindings, as I tried to figure out why the hell I had been placed in here, exactly where 'here' could be, and why... just why had the man across from me had been killed? More importantly, why he had been killed in such a way? Why had his throat been slit? Why his blood was being collected in a pitcher? Was I trapped here, waiting helplessly for the same thing to be done to me? Fuck, shit and damnation, I hoped not. I didn't want to die... and I also didn't want to end up on the obviously used rack either!
Minutes later, a door that I had not noticed opened with a loud, shrill squeak that caused me to freeze in the middle of my continued struggles to get free of the shackles that held me. Through the door stepped a lone figure. A person that I, briefly, hoped would give me some kind of answer to my questions and let me free of this... this place. Little did I realize it at the time, but my hopes were well and truly in vain.
The man that entered the room seemed to be about half a foot taller than I was, which would put him at roughly six-foot-three as I stood at five-foot-six. His skin was pale white, like that of polished ivory. His form was framed by the robe that he wore and added to the natural, physical beauty that he possessed. The robe itself was a deep purple color, dark enough that it was nearly black. The color stood out sharply against the stark paleness of his flesh.
His clothing looked to be of very fine make, almost like that of an old noble style of dress, though he seemed to be wearing very little clothing other than said robe and a pair of leather pants. The purple folds of the robe, not bound by a tie of any sort, fell half open as he walked and showed off his toned, bare chest. His hair was long, past his shoulders and was a dark silver in color. He had it tied back in a loose ponytail with some kind of dark-green silk ribbon.
As he turned his gaze to me I noticed that his eyes were a dark, deep forest green color that made the ribbon in his hair seem dull and lifeless. Eyes that were also flecked with odd silver highlights. In all, he was more beautiful than handsome and yet there was a deadly energy around him that made me nervous. No, not just nervous, but frightened beyond any fear I had ever felt before even counting the fear I had felt upon waking up in a fucking dungeon. Some deep instinct within me screamed 'predator', 'danger' and 'run'. I did not want this man anywhere near me, as something about him made me think that the simple slit throat and wrists of the business man across the room would be a blessing compared to the evils that this man normally enjoyed inflicting upon others. I kept my head down, my own softer green eyes half-lidded and my chin tucked in order to try to hide the fact that I was awake.
My body screamed for me to run, to escape, to do something besides hang there in my bindings and stare at him in numb shock. I swallowed slowly and I couldn't help but give another small, hesitant and testing tug to the chains that bound me to the wall. He turned his full attention to me and smiled widely when he saw that I was awake and I felt myself recoil at the sight of his smile.
He has fangs, I thought to myself, why does he have fangs? Was he some kind of Vampire wannabe...?
His voice was yet another shock to my system as he spoke and my body shuddered violently with a sudden flash of . . . desire? The hell?
His voice was smooth and... sweet, yet it held such a tantalizingly dark energy to it. Like a chocolate treat that you knew was poisoned, but oh lord what a way to go. His voice somehow held me still and kept me from struggling any further to get free of my bindings. My body shook with a mix of fear and unreasonable desire that couldn't have been natural. It took all of my self control to focus on his words instead of on his voice and... that lithe body. I shook my head violently. It was like he was trying to control me simply by speaking.
"Awake at last, my newest pet?" he said, "Bon . . . Bon."
He said something else in French before he laughed. A soft, sultry sound of noise. He flashed another fanged grin at me as he moved past me to the hanging body and the pitcher that sat on the ground beneath said form. He picked the container up in his right hand then made his way back to my side. As he moved he kept his gaze locked on mine and he took a slow sip from the pitcher. Somehow he turned the act of drinking blood, something that should have been completely and utterly disgusting, into something that bordered on sensual. I shuddered as disgust and desire flared within me in equal measures.
He stopped in front of me and began to caress my cheek with his left hand as I shivered a bit in apprehension from that same touch. His flesh seemed as cold as ice yet also burned like fire. I opened my mouth in order to try to ask who he was, what in the world he was doing and perhaps a half-dozen of the other fear-filled questions that ran through my mind and at that same moment he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine in an almost gentle kiss. His tongue pushed into my mouth and forced my mouth open wide. I let out a muffled, startled sound, my eyes widening, and did nothing as I was, for a moment, frozen in absolute shock from the action. Another moment passed and then the blood poured from his mouth and into my own.
The blood was luke warm and... had a sweet and coppery taste to it. Salty, yet it had a faint, bitter aftertaste, almost like smoke. He pulled back once all of the blood was transferred to my mouth. He flashed me a satisfied sneer and there was a dark, almost lustful, look in his eye. He licked his lips clean of the blood slowly. I'd yet to swallow the blood that was held within my mouth and, instead of swallowing it as I suddenly desired so badly to do for some strange reason, I lifted my head a bit and spat the blood straight into his face in a sudden act of near-instinctual defiance. The blood hit its' intended mark and splattered, then dribbled down that alabaster skin, along his cheek bones and flowed to drip from his chin.
His eyes narrowed on me angrily and flashed a bright silvery-white so that it suddenly seemed that he had no pupil nor iris, just a solid white gaze for a brief moment. He then made a sound almost like he was amused by my actions. The next thing I knew was pain as he back-handed me with his left hand hard enough that I almost passed out from the force of the blow. I felt my body go limp as it slumped heavily against the wall behind me. I shook my head faintly and tried to clear my now entirely scrambled thoughts. I gave a single small, dry heave, a gasp for breath really, and I struggled against the urge to throw up. I blinked up at him once more, still reeling from the strong blow.
Again he took a drink from the pitcher and, whilst pressing his body hard along the length of my own, his legs forcing mine apart so I could feel his . . . blatant excitement, he tried once more to force the cooling blood into my mouth. I reacted again, this time by shifting my body as quickly as I could so I could get one leg between his own. I drove my left knee into his groin as hard as I could just like I had learned in self-defense classes. He let out a snarling, sputtering noise and blood spilled from his mouth and splattered over both his face and my own. I flinched back from the red droplets and could feel the tracks the thicker drops left as they trailed down my cheeks.
After a few long moments of silence while he glared at me, seemingly to yet be partially amused as well as angered by my actions, he finally moved. He grabbed the back of my neck in such a way that it caused the rest of my body to go completely limp with agony. I let out a hissing squeak of pain at the grip. He wrenched my head back as he forced the rim of the pitcher to my mouth, forced the blood to pour into my mouth and he left me no choice but to drink the blood or to choke upon it, to drown in it. Once he'd forced me to finish the entire pitcher full of liquid, he pressed his mouth once more to mine in a bruising, violent kiss and forced his tongue into my mouth. I let out an angry sound at his actions and tried to pull away, tried to bite, tried to kick free. As he drew back, he smirked darkly and then once again struck me. This time hard enough that I couldn't resist falling into painful unconsciousness.
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