.

Souls of the Night

20.

Trigger warning: Sexual violence/rape

I had a headache. It was a dull, vague throbbing and I wanted to bury my head in my pillow and sleep the discomfort away but as soon as I turned my head, the part of my skull that had obviously been injured by whatever rubbed not against soft fabric but against a hard, rough slab of stone.

"Ahhhh," I groaned, sucking the cool air through my teeth, smelling of blood and earthy night air, the pain in my head almost exploding. I wanted to grab my head but couldn't. I wanted to turn into the fetal position and couldn't. I opened my eyes, one clotted with what could only be my own blood, and though it hurt to twist, I saw that my hands were bound. There was a clink as I tugged at the iron chains around my wrists and from the feel of it, around my ankles too. Now I remembered. Someone had tricked me, lured me here and then knocked me unconscious.

And now I was ... although every movement hurt and I was breathing heavily with fear and anger, I looked around. I was still where I had been attacked. In the open monument surrounded by slender columns in the middle of the abandoned Green Wood cemetery in Brooklyn. Bound to the massive stone sarcophagus like a maiden offered in sacrifice to a grim god of death. Alone. No, not alone. A millisecond of relief gave way to the horrible certainty that whoever had beaten me and pinned me here ... was moving around the sarcophagus. I heard claws scraping over stone. Quadrupedal, light, almost hopping. Or ... wasn't it my attacker? It sounded so familiar.

"Lex!" I gasped, another wave of joy alongside the pain that my beloved had obviously found me and would set me free. My prince, my spark, my thread to hold on to. Everything here had just been a vicious prank by gargoyle-haters, Lexington had scared them away, he would untie me and in an hour we would be lying in bed together and I would be washing down a dozen painkillers with tea while he stroked my head.

I heard a low rumble. Even that sounded like him. He was visibly angry that someone had hurt me, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered as long as he was with me. My heart jumped and I shuddered as claws raked across the dark fabric of my shirt over my ribcage on one side. Strange- wasn't I wearing my Kevlar vest? I jerked my head around and saw only a head disappearing downwards from my field of vision. Bald, no horns. Maybe I had a concussion and that did something to my color perception because that piece of skin hadn't looked olive green. Then he tugged at the chains pulling my arms apart, almost dislocating a shoulder joint. I whimpered. My wings hurt because my upper body was bound so tightly against the stone that the skin and connection to the shoulder blades was unnaturally squeezed.

What was going on here?

I turned my head to the other side as claws scurried across the floor there. I felt four-limbed hands controlling the chains on my ankles. Then, without paying particular attention to gentleness and claws, these same hands run up my calves and my bare thighs. Thighs! Where were my pants?! I growled in frustration. WHY was I constantly losing my pants in one way or another? Or why did my attackers always have the tendency to take them away from me? It would have been laughable if I hadn't been the one with the miserable wrecked pants to night ratio.

I jerked my head up as I felt a weight on my chest but immediately my head was roughly twisted to the side, claws digging into my cheeks and I groaned in pain. Someone smelled my neck and licked it as if they were tasting me, making me cringe with disgust. I felt familiar fangs scrape across my skin, but not gently as usual but with a clumsy, greedy quality. I recognized the hands, his breath on my skin, his scent but it was all wrong, somehow phony as if the favorite restaurant had changed the recipe for the best sauce in the world by just one ingredient and it would ruin everything, everything, everything. Why was Lexington doing this? Why was he like this? I didn't understand what I had done to make him be like that to me? I sobbed because my aching head just didn't grasp why the gargoyle I loved had tied me up here and was playing this cruel game. It wasn't his normal teasing. He was frightening me.

"Please. Lex," I whimpered. And now the rumble was right above me. My face was released but immediately yanked to the other side as someone delivered a massive slap to my face with a loud smack that sent fire into my skin and caused deep hurt to flood my system. I looked at my loved one with probably wide glassy eyes. Only to see a monster whose aggressively red (RED?) glowing large eyes illuminated his deep purple skin.

"You don't call me that," the thing rumbled in Lexington's voice.

An icy chill ran through me, making all my muscles clench in horror and smothering any magical fire as if it had never been there.

"You're not Lexington!" I screamed, tugging at the chains that bound my arms.

"I am Brentwood," chirped the thing that resembled Lexington and yet was completely different. A word - a strange word - washed over me from my memories. Clone! And with this word, its name also made sense, because I had read it in Goliath's book, in a life that seemed centuries ago and yet was only a few months behind me. The red gleam in his eyes, typically characteristic for female gargoyles, faded, but now that my eyes and head had cleared with the shock, I didn't understand how I could have believed for a second that this thing was Lexington. Hope must have been the mother of thought, nonsensical as it was.

"Set me free! What do you want from me?"

Now I cursed my night vision. I saw too much and all I saw was abomination. Brentwood was grinning- black teeth in a strangely bright mouth, white pupils in red eyeballs- a figure straight out of a nightmare- and ten times scarier because it looked so much like my love. The clone seemed to be amused by the situation.

"You Lexington's mate?" Again his claws stroked my ribcage- now on both sides and he cut the fabric like butter and scratched my skin too. His every touch disgusted me and I fought back the urge to retch because this treatment, full of disregard or indifference for my physical well-being, reminded me so much of Jussuf.

Still tugging at my chains and tensing painfully, I nodded. Basically it was a lie - he had never said the word to me - never offered me that status and had he done so I would probably have collapsed emotionally from fear of not being able to fill that position. But the thing in front of me didn't know all that and if it helped to free me, I'd lie through my teeth.

"Yes - his mate. Release me!"

I could feel the supernatural heat flaring up inside me. Partly from fear, but also from anger. Brentwood pressed a hand to my chest, squeezing so hard I thought his claws would tear my skin open. He seemed to want to feel my heartbeat

"Calm down," he ordered, still leering at me with that ominous smile.

I bit my own lips and forced myself to take a few deep breaths in and out, even though his hand on my quivering chest disgusted me.

"What do you want?" I rumbled between clenched teeth.

"Name?"

"What?"

"Yours! Name."

"My name is Nathaniel... Nate."

"Which clan?"

"Manhattan -Clan."

He narrowed his eyes.

"No. Manhattan clan now, maybe. But before that. Which clan?"

Again, I rebelled against the chains so that they cut into my wrists. They had gotten warm, and I didn't know if it was because I could feel offshoots of the fire inside me or because they were just reacting to my natural body heat. But the clone didn't seem to want to release me from my restraints anytime soon and my annoyance at this kept the heat simmering. At that moment, I wished for nothing more than to have my unnatural abilities under better control in times of stress. I could have destroyed the chains and escaped. But so far, I was neither able to concentrate nor agitated enough. The latter could change, however.

"What clan, bitch!" Brentwood yelled again, impatient and shrill, and the following slap didn't hurt nearly as much as that disgusting word. It shocked me to the core to hear it in a voice so similar to Lexington's. When my frog prince whispered to me that I was beautiful, sexy, sometimes horny or thirsty - that was tolerable, it fueled me because it was almost like prayer and flattered me in a strange way, like I was more to Lexington than the ridiculous creature I was. A little dirty talk was okay when you were in the middle of consensual lovemaking and both partners felt comfortable and safe and the words were spoken with love or even adoration. But this was very totally different and that one word made me tear up and grit my teeth.

"I won't tell you shit if you don't untie me!" I screamed and kicked at him. But my rearing up was stopped after 10 inches, my knee didn't come up enough to kick him off me, instead he seemed amused by my words. He giggled a strangely childish laugh.

"Reluctant slut," he purred, sounding almost affectionate now. I scrunched up my face at his strange demeanor.

"I belong to the Manhattan clan," I gasped. "I am Lexington's mate. And if you don't release me, they'll find me and kick your ass."

For a moment he looked at me in amazement, then he opened his mouth and laughed. A bright, strange and somehow insane laugh.

He didn't stop for a long time, hitting me several times on the chest. Not hard - but as if we were playmates and as if I had made a delicious joke. I had to pull myself together to concentrate. To remember what Goliath's book had said about the clones and about Brentwood. The clones were part of the Labyrinth Clan. All except Brentwood, who had chosen Thailog - Goliath's evil clone - at that time. And most of the early clones were very simple-minded. Perhaps, even with intensive training and promotion at the level of a thirteen year old in most aspects even if their bodys were grown up. Linguistically and emotionally even more underdeveloped depending on the situation. Hollywood had also reverted to his less articulate earlier self when I had upset him. But was Brentwood even comparable to the male Labyrinth Gargoyles? Was he less cognitively developed since he had stayed with Thailog? I couldn't imagine a megalomaniacal evil Goliath clone as Brentwood's teacher with a first-reader book. No matter how Brentwood had spent his last 25 years, he was a deviant creature. One I had to work with to get out of this situation somehow.

If Brentwood was simple - even after more than 25 years - perhaps I could convince him to release me. He was a child. Brutal, freakish, careless using his claws but somehow a child. And most children were manipulable.

"Brentwood," I called over his laughter which made him instantly fall silent and look at me seriously. Hearing his name come out of my mouth for the first time seemed special to him.

I took a breath and tried to smile at him even though everything in me resisted playing Mister Nice Guy.

"Brentwood. You don't have to tie me up. We can talk without that. I won't run away if you untie me."

He pushed his face forward mine that our noses almost touched and I turned my head to avoid seeing those monstrous eyes.

"No need to talk."

"Then what do you want? I haven't done anything to you."

"Lexington's mate."

At the mention of the name of his genetic paragon, I looked at him again.

"Is this about him? Just because he's the original you can't not-"

Brentwood snarled, raised his flat hand again and hit me in the face once more. When I looked at him again, panting, his voice was low and threatening, the wind in the leaves of the ancient trees around the mausoleum his background music.

"HE maybe template! But I'm- . " He squinted his eyes as if he needed to think hard. And then spoke a full sentence as if this were an accomplishment he could be proud of. "I am my own original."

I nodded strained. "Okay. Okay, you're an original yourself. I'll admit that. But Brentwood. Please. Let me go. Other than Lexington and the other Gargoyles getting awfully mad at you, you're not accomplishing anything."

"Yes. Achieve enough."

"Achieve what?"

"You." I blinked at him, puzzled, and a smirk stole into the corners of his mouth.

"You," he whispered. "Mate of my own."

For the first time, I looked down at myself. To where he was squatting. And saw the bulge in his pants.

"Oh fuck! You can't be serious," I screeched, squirming under him more than ever.

So that's why no pants. This was a nightmare! A nightmare come true!

"Serious enough. You my mate now." Brentwood fiddled with my shirt, not bothering with the Velcro in the back, which he couldn't reach anyway because I was lying on it, but slitting it open with his claw. Just like Lexington had done once or twice to turn me on. My heart was now racing with fear and panic. For the first time, I remembered my wings and reared up, trying to flap them, to beat Brentwood with them. But I only scraped them bloody on the rough stone of the sarcophagus and a rough tear from Brentwood on one of my wings stopped me from my efforts. It hurt so much, even though I knew he hadn't broken anything. I already had his hands on the waistband of my boxers.

"No! No, stop it, Brentwood. This isn't right!" I cried in a panic, throwing my head left and right. This couldn't be happening! It couldn't be true. This wasn't some crappy soap opera where the main character found love only to be raped by the evil twin brother. Jussuf had ruined my human life. Brentwood couldn't be allowed to ruin my life as a gargoyle, my enjoyment of physicality with my boyfriend.

"It will be right," he said, briefly dismissing my pleas. He stroked my chest intently with a childlike inquiring mind, briefly inspecting my soft underbelly with my belly button, but didn't seem overly irritated. What was worse for me was that he had started to rock himself on top of me. He was preparing himself and I knew exactly for what.

I yanked again on my restraints so hard that I thought I was going to dislocate my hands and shoulder joints. They were hot and the rest of my body felt like it was spasming. I let my tail lash and with a rough but purposeful movement of both his hands I heard it crack and he had broken it close to my rump, rendering it almost immobile. I gasped in pain, so breathless that my bloodcurdling scream was just a guttural mewl. When I got my breath back I tried to appeal to his mind one last time.

"Please… You don't know what you're doing. For this - for what you want to do, it takes love. Mates need to love each other."

"Love will come. You will love me."

"No! I only love Lexington! He's my mate. It takes more than two bodies. You're confusing sex with love."

He pressed a hand over my mouth, his claws digging into my cheeks as he glared at me angrily.

"Know the difference. You think I'm doing it wrong. But I'm practicing. Will have plenty of time to practice with you, boy slut. And you'll forget about the other one. I'll make you do."

He crawled down my body, his tail flicking out as he stroked my head and chest in a strangely playful way. He tugged my elastic underpants down as far as he could, enough to expose all my private parts to the air. Instantly I had his hand on my penis.

I shrieked at the touch - from hands that were just like Lexington's - but the giggles of this dark figure, now creeping back into my field of vision grinning gleefully, were a far cry from my mate's laughter. As was the awkward sloppy kiss that was forced upon me. I bit him out of reflex and he flinched back, crouching wide-legged on my abdomen and staring at me for a second, his hand on his lip. I felt his blood on my tongue.

"Get off me, you lunatic! I don't want this!" I hissed through my tears and had to watch as he briefly stood up on top of me to pull down his own pants. Even his throbbing hard cock looked like Lexington's even if the color was off and heavens no, my abdomen tightened greedily despite everything.

"Now you're right! My twat! Brentwood seen you! You and him," he said, not angrily but almost enthusiastically, as if my massive rejection and my bite had confirmed him in his actions.

"When?" I whimpered, squinting my eyes. I didn't want to, but his hand on my member was starting to arouse me and I hated my body for being like this.

"Last month. Roof in the Village. He fucks you. I fuck you. No difference," Brentwood growled as if feeling the erection beginning to build inside me, wanting to humiliate me by refuting my words.

"Yes, there is a difference! You're crazy!", I yelled while he pumped on my member. He pulled on it as if to instantly punish me for my words and I whimpered.

"I deserve mate like Lexington," he insisted, growling. "Deserve love like Lexington."

I tossed my head, tormented by the unloving touches at the front of my body and the boiling heat in my back where my hands were tied.

"You're not getting either of them like this," I cried. "You don't even get what love is! "

He, tired of just pumping me, had crawled down my body, now sitting between my legs, which he roughly pushed apart more. His hands stroked around my thighs, pressing his claws into the soft flesh there. He pushed my lifeless, broken tail to the side so that the pain chased up my spine into my injured skull. I felt his cock rubbing against my hole while his other hand still clutched my penis.

And suddenly it was all there again. Jussuf and his torture of me. The years of pain. And his weekly rapes of me. Again and again and again. But instead of these emotions paralyzing me as they had done before, a growl erupted from my throat, I arched my back and felt bloodthirsty, ash-tasting rage displace everything else.

"Hands - off - my - cock!" I roared thunderously and at the last sound, the magic ripped through me. The pressure wave of wind energy, which I generated abruptly without being able to consciously control it, hurled Brentwood away from me and catapulted him against one of the stone pillars, which broke under the impact and buckled backwards.

I heard myself growl inhumanly in an effort to control the fire that had spread across my body in the blink of an eye. Without pants, no fire extinguisher chips to go off either. I felt the heat without it burning me, felt the flames smouldering the shreds of my T-shirt and forced the heat back to its source. I could almost hear the metal around my wrists and ankles begin to vibrate as I concentrated on drawing the flames back from the rest of my body, gathering them there and increasing their energy level. It sounded almost like a gas-powered Bunsen burner and within seconds the rough iron chains at my back were as soft as butter.

I ripped them apart and jumped up, seeing orange glowing fragments and sizzling drops of metal on the ground. I heard the adrenaline-fueled blood rushing in my ears as I slid off the sarcophagus on which my blood was sticking. Snarling, I straightened up, turned to Brentwood and strode towards him. My threat was only slightly weakened by the fact that I pulled my fireproof pants over my hips. He wasn't dead, the impact with the pillar hadn't broken his spine. Instead, he looked up at me with wide eyes, trying to escape the blue monster that was a gargoyle and yet more, scrambling backwards up the column like a spider. I grabbed him by the neck when he was at my eye level and in his red glassy eyeballs I saw the reflection of my own glowing ones.

I bared my teeth and the being full of power in the reflection did the same. Something inside me crooned that this was so good and right. That this was the real me. I was not a pawn of fate and had all the power to burn any unworthy creature that did not recognize my omnipotence to dust and it would be my birthright to cleanse this world. I pushed the voice back and focused on the pathetic replica of a gargoyle whose windpipe I was currently constricting.

"YOU will never touch me again!" I shouted, not knowing whether I was shouting to the Jussuf of my memory in my head or to this freak that resembled my beloved and had almost done the same to me as my sister's fiancé at the time. "You will not hurt anyone of my clan or I will kill you!" I threatened, seeing smoke rising from my hand where I had grabbed him by the throat. I felt his larynx quiver under my palm and knew within moments, I could burn a crater in his neck. I smelled his flesh as my power began to sear the skin there and he shrieked soundlessly at the incomprehensible thing that had just happened to him. I flung him away, not with my abilities but with my own physical strength. Staring down at the whimpering creature, I hissed.

"I will burn you from the inside out! If you ever do anything bad again and I find out, I will burn you. Do you understand that!"

Brentwood looked at me from huge eyes like I was his god, breathing heavily and whistling through a half-burnt windpipe. He had his hands on his throat, his pants still at his ankles, and his member was limp and shriveled with fear. He averted his eyes and crouched down as I took a threatening step towards him. His tail between his legs and trembling, he presented his hands to me, palms up, his slender wrists exposed to my claws as a gesture that I was free to hurt him. But just as his now pathetic sight unsettled me (pathetic because of me, burnt because of me) so did the idea that he would somehow like it, that it would confirm some deviant thought in his head if I took my anger out on him now.

"Fuck off and hide under the rock you crawled out of," I hissed coldly, turned and strode away. As I stepped onto the grass, I realized how hot I still was - it immediately began to smoulder. I also left black scorch marks on the gravestone where I took wing. Behind me, below me, Brentwood's throaty laughter, distorted by pain, rumbled into the night. I didn't know what he was laughing about - that alone had to hurt his trachea immensely. But the fact that it sounded remotely like the laughter of my beloved made me cry in disgust.

Why do you keep losing your pants, Nate? Because I want to.

Jokes aside- a chapter that's been in my digital drawer for a long time. I knew I wanted to include Brent in the story and that he's " harassing" Nathaniel because he thinks he deserves at least exactly what his "original" has. And like a child in a sandpit who steals the other's shovel, he tries to usurp Nathaniel. It is clear that his plan is not well thought out. He simply wants to "have". He hasn't even thought about what happens next. And you won't fully understand why Brent is the way he is until I write "Crimson Claws" - the story that takes place in 2009. Now he and Enya are books with seven seals - you don't have to like them, you're welcome to hate them for their abnormality - but you'll understand them at some point and, despite everything, you won't find them quite so terrible - I'll make sure of that.

Ah, you can google the monument where Nate was bound. Just google: Green-Wood Cemetery, Pierrepont Catafalque or Hezekiah Pierrepont Memorial von Richard Upjohn

Thanks for reading, Q.T.