Worlds of BBW Erotic Romance - Box Set (10 page)

Ed drew the dinner knife and lunged forward towards the demon Croatoan’s pit—only to be jerked back as something grabbed his arm.

Suddenly, bony fingers were at his throat, and the fetid maw of Mott’s mouth was leaning close, as if the preacher-thing meant to bite off his face.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Julia rushing for the closed door to outside.

The Rector was still standing where he’d been, stunned.

But Mott’s charred hands were crushing Ed’s throat …

Time seemed to slow as Ed drew back the knife, searching for a place to strike. He looked into the hole where Mott’s nose had once been. Deep up inside that bony tunnel, he thought he could see a gray mass pulsing and glistening.

“Bas … tard!” Ed choked, and stabbed upward with the knife, thrusting it into Mott’s nose-hole. He wiggled it and pushed, felt it slide in several more inches with a crunch.

Suddenly, the pressure on his throat was gone. There was a terrible racket as Mott’s jaws spasmed, his blackened teeth clicking together again and again. His arms popped and crunched as they bent at unnatural angles, and his knees buckled.

Ed grabbed at the knife, trying to pull it loose—but it was stuck fast. He only succeeded in pulling Mott forward, and the dying thing tumbled forward onto the ground.

The Rector was watching Ed now, his red eyes slitted in fury. “You!” he bellowed. “Will … kill … you!”
             

But Ed was already springing forward. The pit loomed up in front of him …

At the last moment, his bad foot caught on the silver cord than ran into the pit.

Flung forward, he found himself falling towards the pit, then plunging head-first into the shaft …

#

Betrayer!

Rector Powell blamed himself for not seeing the truth earlier.

So young Bolt had been plotting this all along! He’d turned against the Master, practically spit in the faces of himself and his dear child Julia …

“Father!”

Powell heard his daughter’s voice now, calling out to him. He looked that way to see that she stood by the heavy dark crystal door which lead to the outside.

What was she doing there?

Only he could open that door … but surely she wasn’t trying to leave him
now?

“Father!” she shouted again. “Leave my Edwin alone!”

“I have to kill him!” he replied. “He can’t join us in the communion with the Master now. He doesn’t deserve that, doesn’t even deserve to live.”

“NO!!!!!!!!!!!” Julia screeched back, her hands clenched at her sides, her face red with fury. “Stay away from him! I HATE YOU!!!!”

Her words made Powell’s legs feel weak and his veins feel cold, as if the Master’s fire within them had been momentarily quenched.

“I hate you!” she repeated. “You’re … no good! You love that monster more than me. Mother knew you weren’t any good, she knew … that’s why she died! All you’re good for is death!”

She waved her hands at the servant-things, who had now left their orderly lines and were marching forward to defend their master in the pit.

Just then, an inhuman scream of pain arose from the pit, a sound halfway between the yell of a man and the gurgling squeal of a drowning beast.

The Master is hurting!

“I can’t let him harm the Master!” he told her. “Let me finish this, and then we’ll all join with Croatoan, have a new and blissful life! Please, Julia!”

“I don’t want to join with him and I don’t want to join with YOU!” she screamed. “I’d rather DIE with Edwin!”

She picked up her skirts and started running for the Master’s pit.

“No!” he shouted.

The Rector ran forward and caught her, snatched her up in his arms, held her up. With the Master’s strength in him, he could lift her easily…

She shrieked and pummeled him with her fists.

He blinked away the blurriness from his eyes … and only then did he realize that his face was slick with tears.

#

Driven by his momentum, Ed rushed head–first down into the darkness of the shaft.

He hadn’t even had time to draw the fork—his only remaining weapon—before he’d tripped and found himself plunging down into Croatoan’s nest.

As he slid, he got a glimpse of lambent red eyes rushing towards him in the darkness. They came closer and closer and then he hit the
thing
itself, felt the leathery body give under him as they both tumbled to the very bottom.

Croatoan’s breath was like the odor of a trash pit on a hot summer day, and when he howled it was a wet noise, as if the sound had to gurgle through a maze of mucous-filled passages before reaching the air.

The demon did not hesitate to fight back.

Ed felt its claws in his back, tearing through his jacket, lines of hot pain pulsing where it ripped his flesh.

But he pushed the hurt away, shoved it down into the same place where his fear had gone. He kept only his anger, only that which gave him strength …

He tried to reach into the jacket for the fork, but a sharp wet
something
grabbed his right arm, piercing deep.

He bit me!
, Ed realized.
Rutting bastard!

He shook his arm and tried to throw the biting demon off, but it was no use. Trying to struggle only brought agonizing bursts of pain, as if the arm had been pierced by a thousand cold needles.

Somewhere up above, he heard Julia’s voice shouting, though he couldn’t make out the words.

No!
She was in trouble, he had to …

But there was nothing he could do now but fight. Kill the bastard and hope she made it through all right.

Ed felt his head wrenched forward as Croatoan grabbed his hair and tore out a clump of it. Then, the thing’s clawed hand was on his face.

He closed his eyes and tried to turn his head away as the sharp nails raked his cheek. As he struggled, the writhing fingers brushed his chin, prying at his mouth …

He opened wide, and when several of the thing’s fingers slid inside, he bit down hard.

A thick, soupy liquid filled his mouth, tasting like curdled milk. There was so much of it that it ran up into his nose and spurted from his nostrils, burning all the way.

Ed bit down harder, and he felt bone under his teeth.

It cracked between his jaws like sugar candy, and then Croatoan screamed an animal howl and tugged away.

With a ripping, popping noise, the fingers came loose in Ed’s mouth and he fell back, free of the beast for a moment.

Spitting out the foul fingers and gasping for breath, Ed reached into his jacket for the fork.

I thought it might help
, Julia had said.
Just in case.

Now it was their only hope …

He gripped the fork’s handle and drew it out.

Croatoan was hissing in the darkness, only a few feet away. Ed could still see his red eyes.

“
En draen!!!”
the thing rasped.

Ed sneered. “It’s Ed Bolt who’s killing you now, bastard! Feel
my
hate!”

Drawing up every last reserve of strength, he pushed himself up and lunged, focusing only on his enemy’s eyes.

Croatoan jumped forward—

And Ed struck. The thing’s own momentum helped to skewer it as it flew forward, meeting Ed’s strike.

The fork pierced the eye’s membrane as easily as it might have punched through the congealed skin of a boiled pudding.

Driving it in deep, Ed twisted the implement and wriggled it back and forth as hot liquid flowed over his hand and Croatoan thrashed and spasmed.

The thing fell down to the floor of the pit and the fork, still stuck in the demon’s eye, slipped from Ed’s grasp for a moment; but he found the handle again and punched the tool in deeper.

Croatoan howled again, but the sound was cutoff midstream, becoming a pathetic gurgle.

And then, the thing stopped moving, and the red light in its remaining eye faded, snuffed like a candle flame.

From above, Ed heard the Rector’s piercing scream: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!”

He looked up to see a group of the corpse-like servants standing at the top of the pit-shaft, surrounding it, as if about to plunge in.

Their bodies began to spasm, their legs wobbling, and then they fell forward …

Ed shuffled backward in the darkness and covered his face as the servant-things tumbled down the shaft. One of them smashed into him, knocking the breath from his lungs and pushing him down.

Another fell on top of it, and then another …

Flat on his back in the dark, he found himself buried under the crushing weight of the stinking things.             

He braced himself, expecting to feel them biting and tearing at his flesh at any moment.

But it didn’t happen.

When he reached up and touched the rubbery cold hand of one of them, then patted it experimentally, there was no reaction.

Had they died along with their master, then?

Unable to push the things off his body, Ed instead slowly and achingly wriggled his way out from under the piled flesh. He burned with pain all over, and could taste his own blood in his mouth, mixed with the less savory substances that lingered there. His right arm throbbed where the demon had bitten down deep.

“Edwin!” came a girlish voice.

He looked up to see Julia standing at the top of the shaft, holding a candle. “You’re alive!” she shouted, jumping up and down in her excitement.

Thank God,
he thought.
She’s all right!

“Are you … okay?” he asked. “Where’s your father?”

“He’s not going to hurt anyone now,” she said, shaking her head. “But I couldn’t open the door … Edwin, please come up.”

He grabbed the silver cord fastened to the side of the shaft and used it to start pulling himself up. His muscles were so sore they felt as if they’d been scrubbed with stinging sand, and he was weak—but the last thing he wanted was to stay down in the dark with all of the dead things.

It seemed like an eternity before he finally made it to the top; the close air of the cavern tasted sweet after the reeking miasma of that death-filled pit.

Once he reached the top, he slid down on his side, breathing hard and trying to regain his strength.

Julia put down her candle and came over to him, stroking his hair, pushing a sweaty forelock away from his face, then moving her hand to touch his claw-wounded cheek. Her fingers came away bloody.

“You’re hurt, Edwin,” she whispered.

“I’m … all right,” he panted. “We have to get out.”

He heard the sound of a piteous sob and sat up to take a look.

Rector Powell was kneeling on the floor in front of the pedestal that supported the glass sphere, hugging his head to his knees and crying. Just a few feet from him, Mott’s charred body was sprawled face-down, like a monument to his failure.

Ed had a moment of pity for the man—and hated himself for it.

Slowly, with Julia’s help, he rose to his feet, then went over to the small table and picked up the music box and the marriage certificate. He handed the box to Julia, then rolled up the certificate and stuck it into his own jacket pocket.

“Julia,” he said, touching her shoulder, “we have to leave.”

She stood unmoving, staring at her father. “He has to open the door for us,” she said.

Ed limped his way over to the sobbing Rector. “Let us out,” he said. “Your Master’s dead and I want to …” He corrected himself: “My
wife
and I want to leave.”

Julia was behind him, and when he used the word “wife” he heard her let out a little gasp.

“So much death,” the Rector sobbed. “So much. And for what? Julia, child, you were right. I thought that the Master held the secret to immortality, that he could conquer death. After your mother died, I feared death so much … I wanted us to be able to go on forever, joined with Croatoan.”

“Father,” Julia said, kneeling beside him, “we can still have time together.”

“No,” he sobbed, shaking his head. “This unholy fire still burns within me, leading me to violence. The Master has twisted me… inside… into something terrible. And what shall I do now that—“

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE …

The sudden whistling noise filled the room, emanating from the glass sphere.

Ed looked that way and saw the little orb glowing with a white light. A pale flame dancing inside, spreading into a fiery brilliance, a shaft of white fire now rising over the pedestal as he watched.

The Rector rose and stepped forward, staring at the glowing orb.

“The process is still going to start,” he said. “But without the Master to control the energies, it can only result in… explosion…”

“I’ll smash that sphere, then!” Ed declared, looking for something heavy to use to bludgeon it…

“No.” The Rector turned to them, his red eyes brimming with tears. “If you break it, you’ll both be burned. It’s the only thing containing the energy now… GO!” he shouted. “Scarcely a moment remains!”

He reached out one hand towards the stone door at the far end of the chamber, clawing with his fingers at the air. As if yielding to his will, it slid open, revealing sunlight outside.

Julia was still staring at her father, frozen in place.

Ed grabbed her arm and yanked her towards the door. “Come on!”

He didn’t like being rough with her, but the glass sphere’s fit of sound and light was scaring him and he knew they needed to get out. “I’m your husband now so listen to me, right? We have to go, he made his choice!”

They headed for the exit as fast as they could, Ed favoring his good leg and tugging Julia behind him.

By the time they reached the door, the whistling sound was loud enough to drown out all other noises. The whistling part made Ed feel dizzy, and now it was accompanied by a roar: like fierce ocean waves, but many times as loud.

He pushed Julia outside, then looked back into the doorway. There was a brilliant halo of white light surrounding the sphere and its pedestal, and against it he could see the silhouette of the Rector, his arms spread as if in welcome.

Ed pulled Julia further away, out into the open.

They were about thirty paces away and when he looked back again. Now, the glow was so bright that it was as if the entire inside of the faerie mound was filled with white fire, and he could no longer see anything of the interior.

Ed led Julia around the mound and downhill, towards the gorge and little stream that ran there.

“We should get away from that mound,” Ed said. “Away from the house. We have to—“

The air around him was suddenly distorted, everything swimming and shimmering like a patch of oil on a pond.

“Rutting hell!” he yelled. “It’s coming now!” he pulled her ten paces to the left, then grabbed the music box from her hands and pushed her down into a little depression behind a stand of trees. He dropped the box there, then threw himself down beside her.

The noise was now so shrill and overpowering that Ed’s ears throbbed, and his teeth chattered from the vibrations. His moved so that his arm was over Julia’s back and looked up.

The silvery needle on the faerie mound was flaring with white energy. The simmering fire shot up to form a beam of blazing white, brighter than the sun, piercing the clouds.

Then, a similar beam shot forth horizontally from the mound, blasting away the earth in its path in the same way that a torch might melt butter. There was a deep rumbling in the ground, and then a wall of white brilliance exploded, running from the mound to the house, stretching up to the sky as it shot out.

Towards the house,
Ed thought dimly.
The white fire must be following the tunnel to the basement, flowing along that channel. And then …

He looked up at the Rector’s mansion. The barred windows of the place glowed from inside with the brilliance of that unearthly fire and then—

With a shrill shriek of whistling energy, the house exploded! Ed moved to cover Julia as best he could as he felt his back pummeled with tiny bits of wood and glass from the blasted structure.

The noise and light were so bright that he couldn’t focus on anything else.

Under him he felt Julia’s back shake as she sobbed in fear, her cries lost in the unholy din. Despite his own state of shock, he managed to slide his arms around to embrace her, hold her tight and comfort her as best he could.

What is this?,
he thought.
Did I kill the rutting demon only to bring on Armageddon itself?

In a moment, when he could see and
hear again, he pulled Julia up…

After taking a deep breath, he ran like all of hell itself was after him, pulling Julia behind him. Not looking back.

He threw himself forward with every step, heedless of his clumsy right foot. If he stayed in motion, perhaps there’d be less chance of stumbling …

He didn’t look back, but Julia’s soft hand was clasped in his own with a viselike grip.

His two goals were very simple: keep on moving, and don’t let go of her.

The storm of white fire had ended, but Ed wasn’t taking any chances. It was only by their rare good luck that they had avoided being blasted away, he knew. Had they stayed closer to the mound, or run directly for the house, they would both have been killed.

He wouldn’t feel the least bit safe until they reached the town…