Worlds of BBW Erotic Romance - Box Set (5 page)

“What about the lad?” Starks asked.

The Rector leaned close to Ed Bolt, studying the bound youth’s face. “He’s coming around. Damn, but he fought it off! That shouldn’t have been possible! Certainly, the Master didn’t think it so.”

“Should I knock him out again, maybe use the tool on his head?” Starks only hoped that he hadn’t ruined the experiment somehow …

“No. He’s weak. Take him to the cell for now. We need to find out more from him, just how he resisted the Master. It could show up a flaw in our plans.” The Rector rubbed his brow and sighed. “I have to attend to the Master. See to the boy.”

The shrieking continued, Mott’s lipless mouth gaping wide to spit out the echoing rage. The sound made Starks queasy.

As he moved forward to retrieve the youth from the device, Starks saw the burnt-out stump of a candle on a nearby table. Grabbing up the tallow, he rolled it into two balls and used them to plug his ears.

Blessed
, he thought,
but that’s a little better, at least.

Ed Bolt was dizzy, and his head felt like someone was pounding at it with an iron hammer from the inside of his skull. With a tremendous effort, he picked himself up from the cold stone floor and looked around.

The room was dark, the only light filtering in through the barred window set in the door. The place was damp and dirty and smelled of mildew, and he knew he was still somewhere in the cellar. Even worse, he thought could hear something scuttling and scraping inside the wall.

Rats?

Rutting hell.

Should he yell out? He didn’t think that would help. Likely all of the servants were part of this conspiracy …

Damn degenerate demon arse-kissing so-called
Rector!

Was Julia part of the plot too? Somehow that was too painful to contemplate …

He tried the door. It was locked from the outside, probably with some sort of padlock, as there was no locking hardware to be seen on the door itself. Squinting in the darkness, he searched for something to use to either pry the door open or to hack at the wood surface of it, but the room was bare save for several broken wooden chairs that had been abandoned in one corner. 

There were more scraping noises now, coming from high in the rear wall, opposite the door.

Ed turned. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the shape of a narrow fireplace there, covered by deep shadow. It looked as if there might have been an iron grate fastened there at one time, but there was only stone in the bottom now, blackened by long-ago fires, and a stone ledge was set in front of it.

As Ed watched, a bit of dust and debris fell down into the fireplace from above. There was a yellow glow, growing brighter …

“Hello?” Ed whispered up the chimney.

A glass oil lamp descended into view, a length of cord tied around the middle of its base, balanced to support it. Flame sputtering, it jerked its way down and then settled on the floor at the bottom of the fireplace.

In its light, Ed could see that the “cord” attached to it was made up of brightly colored silken ribbons tied together—hair ribbons, like a young lady would wear.

Looking up the chimney shaft, he saw a pair of stocking-clad ankles in slippers, and the frilly hem of a green dress. Someone was wiggling her way down the dark shaft …

“Julia?” he asked.

“It’s me,” she whispered. “Be quiet, so no one hears, okay?”

“Um … I’ll help you.” He reached up to grab her legs.

One of his hands slid too high, finding her bare thigh under her petticoats.

It was soft and warm and damp with her sweat, and he felt the soft and smooth flesh of one curvy buttock against his palm. He felt the muscle flex under the buttock… Was she squirming at his touch?

“Uhh … sorry,” he mumbled. Though he truly wished he had an excuse to extend this contact…

Be a gentlemen,
he urged himself.

He adjusted his grip so that he wouldn’t offend her.

She quickly eased herself the rest of the way down.

When Julia Powell emerged, crouching, from the fireplace, she was smiling, even though soot darkened her dress and streaked her hair. Her big eyes gleamed wetly in the lamp’s light.

Still, Ed thought that she was beautiful. She wore a green silk dress now, which clung tautly to the full and ample curves of her body… And her fiery red hair blazed in the lantern light.

“I came to help you,” she said, and her high-pitched, child-like voice didn’t contain a single note of fear.

Ed coughed in surprise.
She came to help me? Me, the cripple?

“The fireplace in my room has loose bricks,” she explained. “I pulled more of them loose with the poker. The chimney there backs up to this one.”

“And you just climbed down?”

She nodded. “Uh-huh. It was kind of tight… Well, especially for me,” she said, looking down, seemingly embarrassed of her weight.

“You know a way out of here?” he asked.

“Well … no.” she said, looking down at her feet.

“Did you bring the poker?” he asked hopefully.

“No,” she shook her head. “But I brought pins.”

“Pins?”

She nodded, then reached down and removed one of her slippers. Inside were several tiny iron pins arranged on a piece of cardstock.

“They’re for my hair,” she said. “You can use them for the lock.”

“I can?”

She shook her head emphatically. “In my romantic novels, the heroes and heroines always unlock doors with pins.”

Ed shook his head. “But the lock of this door is on the other side.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip, deep in thought. “Maybe you could break the door down or something?”

“With what?”

He wanted to shout at her:
Hey, I’m not a knight from one of your books! I’m a cripple who’s in deep over his head, understand?
But he knew that would only upset her.

“Look,” he said. “I really am glad you came. I mean …” Well, she might be in danger herself now that she’d tried to help him—should he really tell her that he was
glad
she’d come
?

Even if he truly meant it …

“I mean,” he continued, “I
appreciate
it. But I don’t think I can get out. Maybe you should go back up the chimney.”

“Back up?” Her big blue eyes quivered and her little pink mouth trembled. “I don’t think I can. I hoped that …”

She kept staring at him dumbly, bewildered, no doubt disappointed in him.

But Ed’s gut was twisted with conflicting emotions.

He
did
want her here with him, and yet … the thought of anything happening to her enraged him.

Croatoan,
Ed remembered. That thing in the pit had no great love for human men or women, and Rector Powell followed its whims.

What if it ordered him to kill Julia for her betrayal? What if her father proved to be more loyal to that demon than to to his own flesh and blood?

Ed felt …
responsible.

“Look, this isn’t a game,” he told her. “Your father is rutting insane and powerful and I’m nobody. I can’t break down doors, I can’t climb up the chimney, and I can’t get past the servants. With my lame foot I can barely run. So you’d better get out of here, go back up the chimney now. I’m sorry.”

“They said you fought it,” she replied, looking away from him, picking at the lacy collar of her dress. “Father was talking, when he didn’t know I was behind the cellar door. The Master went inside your head, but you beat him. He said you were strong.”

“He did?”

She stepped towards him, reaching out to him until her tiny hands were gripping his wrists. “Edwin, something bad is going to happen here soon.
Really
bad. Father is talking like we’re all going to join with God or something. But he listens to the Master …”

“Croatoan?” Ed asked. “That demon thing?”

She nodded, and a tear ran down to streak her sooty cheek. “I hate him! I wish my mother was still alive, Father would have never have— “

Suddenly, without warning, she threw herself at Ed, burying her face in his chest. “I don’t want to die! I want to have a life… I want to see all of the country, and read all of the books, and I want to get married to a good man. And
he
promised I could!”

“Your Father promised that?”

She nodded. “But he’s gone mad now, you said. I think so too! I’ve thought so for a while now. His eyes have changed! You saw them.”

She was crying now, her sobbing muffled against his shirt. Ed wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t want to touch her the wrong way, didn’t want to take advantage of her vulnerability …

He settled for slowly running his fingers through her silky-soft red hair.

As he did, she clutched him even more tightly, her nails digging into his back through his shirt.

After a few moments, she pulled back, her hands on his waist, looking up at him with an odd calm.

“I wanted a knight to rescue me,” she said. “I dreamt about it. And then you came. I know you’re not a real knight, but … I see it inside you.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“It’s deep behind your eyes, and dark and angry like a storm. A really powerful one. But when you looked at me at dinner, there was a flash of lightning. Like a brightness there.”

“Because you’re quite pretty,” he admitted. “And … you’ve been nice to me.”

“You are handsome,” she said. “And I am so glad that they didn’t hurt you. Can you kiss me?”

The question took him by surprise. “Can I … umm?”

But her eyes were closed and her pink lips were pursed and she was waiting.

He bent down and pressed his mouth to hers, moved his lips. He didn’t want to press too hard …

Was he supposed to do something with his tongue? He decided against it, just kept moving his mouth, feeling the friction of her soft lips against his. His hands were on her the contours of her plump waist and she was so soft, so fragile, so trusting of him …

A thrill ran over him, a warm tingle like he had never felt before—something more than just lust alone--and he forgot his aches and pains.

Feeling her breasts pressing against his chest, heavy and warm, the hot points of her nipples making themselves known even through the material of both of their clothing…

… His own maleness began to assert itself, throbbing with desire, and he was slightly embarrassed to realize that, when it lurched in his trousers like a hungry snake, she
had
to be feeling it against her.

He didn’t want to pull himself away. But, when he finally did ease back, she was smiling broadly, her pale, freckled face flushed crimson in the lamplight.

She thinks I can actually do something, fight the Rector and his goddman demon and all,
he thought.
She thinks I’m some kind of hero. Rutting insane.

But her father had told her that she would die soon? He had to try something, for her sake.

And, strangely, her belief in him was contagious… Looking into those big blue eyes of hers, he could
almost
believe he had the potential to be a hero.

“Okay,” he said, his mind made up. “We have to get you out of this house. And try to tell people, warn them that something dangerous is happening here.”

She nodded emphatically.

“But the first thing is to get out of this room, right?” He looked out through the tiny barred window in the door again, squinting to see if there was anything in the main cellar that might aid them.

On the far wall, he could see the glint of the silver-and-glass spheres in their iron racks, and the silver cords running in a tangled web across the floor. There were tables in the middle of the room, and papers were scattered upon them. On top of one stack of pages was a large iron key.

A key to their cell?

But what good would that do them, as both lock and key were on the other side of the door?

Ed jerked back when he saw a shadow spreading across the far wall. Someone was walking across the room out there, wearing a hooded robe, his gait almost mechanical.

“Mott,” Ed whispered, turning back to her. “Rutting hell! Julia, cover that light …” as he watched, she quickly sat down in front of the oil lamp, trying to block the glow.

“He’s down here a lot,” she said. “Father has Reverend Mott stay down here so that he doesn’t frighten the servants too much.”

Mott … he was a walking corpse, dumb and oblivious.

But could they use this to their advantage?

“I have an idea,” he told her. “But I’ll need your help.”

Ed stood out of sight beside the cell door, holding Julia’s glass oil lamp.

He watched as she screamed: “Help! Help!” in her little-girlish voice, and jumped up again and again to peek out of the tiny barred windowed set high in the door.

It was all part of Ed’s plan.

It wasn’t a very
good
plan, but it was something. Of course, if it actually worked and by some miracle they got out of the Rector’s house, then the real challenge would begin. They had no proof of the “bad things”
—
as Julia called them
—
which were happening at the estate.

And who would believe them without evidence? Just a crippled joke of a Constable, and the Rector’s run-away daughter …

Still, he’d promised Julia that he would get her out. She trusted him, dammit! If they made it past the servants and the Rector, he’d get her to Mother Henne, and then …

Well, he’d figure that out later.

Julia kept bouncing up and down and yelling in her childish voice: “Help me, please, help me!”

Would Mott hear, would he respond?

Suddenly, Julia grew quiet. There were shuffling footsteps.

And then, Ed heard that scratchy dead voice:

“The sinner makethhhhh himsssself a cage of eternal suff…fering,” it hissed.

“I need to get out!” Julia pleaded. “That bad man Edwin tricked me and got out and put me in here. Father’s not going to like it, you have to get me out fast!”

“He is ssshackled by his own sssin,” the voice rasped, “and a weight on his ssspirit is the sssin of his father and the lusst of his concep-ssshun.”

The lamp was heavy in Ed’s hand. He took a deep breath, trying to be patient—but it was very hard. Every muscle in his body was tensed up, even ones he’d never known he’d had before.

“There’s a key over there,” Julia said. “You could get it, Reverend Mott. You could let me out.

There was no response from Mott—at least, nothing that Ed could hear.

You bastard
, he thought.
Just open the door. Open the door and let me smash—

He had a sudden idea. He reached out and tugged on Julia’s sleeve, hoping that Mott wouldn’t see his hand.

“He’s always talking in scripture, right?”

She nodded.

“Do you know…Aren’t there a bunch of biblical stories with angels freeing people from prison and stuff like that?”

She nodded again.
             

“Let’s try that. Remind him …”

Standing on tiptoe, she addressed Mott: “Reverend, do you know if someone is faithful to God and never gives up… God might even send an angel to free her and unlock the door.
‘Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.’
You know that, right?”

“The knowledge of Godsss word residesss in mmmmine heart,” he hissed, “with the t-t-terror and love it bringssh.”

“You could get the key for me, Reverend Mott. You could be my angel and let me out. I’ve been good and just and God would want you to do that, right?”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Ed thought he could hear faint footsteps, moving away.

“He’s going for the key?” he asked.

She smiled nervously and nodded.

Ed looked to the lamp that he held. Its wick burned brightly above a glass reservoir filled with clear fluid. All-glass lamps like this were pretty, but could start fires when smashed; his mother had refused to have one in the house for that reason.

He hoped this one was as dangerous as his mother had feared. In fact, he was
counting
on it.

Scraping footsteps approached, and then there was the sound of a key in a lock, a padlock falling open with a soft clink.

“Thou art f-f-freed by thy own grayssh,” Mott rasped, “and on behalfff of thine own innosensshh.”

There was something else in that terrible voice now, almost a sadness. Regret?

Rutting hell,
Ed thought.
Now I’m feeling sorry for the meat-faced bastard?

He couldn’t think about that. He had to get ready to act …

The door slowly slid inward with a creak. 

“Back up!” he whispered to Julia. “You can’t be anywhere close.”

Ed saw the fluttering edge of Mott’s robe as he stepped into the room, quickly followed by the silhouette of his hooded head.

“YAHHH!” Ed screamed, and hurled the lamp.

To his horror, he watched as it bounced off Mott’s shoulder and fell to the ground with a crunch.

There was no explosion, and somehow the lamp was still burning. The glass reservoir which held the oil was cracked, but not smashed.

In its light, he could see Julia’s childish face contorted with fear as she screamed “NO NO NO!”

Then Mott turned to Ed, hissing through the skeletal snarl of his mouth.

The thing lunged with an unearthly shriek, and before Ed could move he felt cold fingers clamping around his neck.

Ed fought and flailed, beating at Mott’s arms.

But it was no use. Mott raised him up by his neck until his feet left the floor. Ed tried to suck in a breath, wheezing, the pressure on his windpipe growing as the room began to spin, going black.

“God givethhh the firsht breath to the lungsss of mmman,” Mott growled. “And God takethh it away at the end of his daysssh.”

Ed could still hear Julia shouting even as his vision failed him. She was getting closer now?

“Let him go!” she yelled. “You bad, bad evil … sinner! You’re a SINNER! And you shouldn’t still be alive, and God HATES you!”

Mott jerked, and suddenly the pressure on Ed’s throat was gone. He slid to the floor, banging his head on the wall behind him.

Ed blinked and rubbed his eyes as his vision returned, trying to see what was happening.

Julia was in the center of the room now, and Mott had turned to face her. She held a piece of a broken chair like a sword, pointing its jagged end at Mott. Some kind of viscous goo dripped from the splintered end of her crude weapon … blood, or whatever was inside Mott?

She
’d stabbed him!

She saved me,
Ed thought.
But now she’s helpless.

Have to do something!
!!

Ed twisted his body forward so that he was on his hands and knees, looking for the lamp. He saw that it was lying on the floor between Julia and the fireplace, its wick still sputtering. The glass base was badly cracked, and the fluid inside had leaked out in a large puddle around the lamp. But it was still half full.

He crawled forward to retrieve it, looking up to see if Julia was okay.

Mott stood in front of her, looming over her. “Wwwomen are the wwwoooombs of the wwworld,” he hissed, “and child-rennn are their fruit. When a wwwoman sinsh, she is twicesh as vile as a mmmman, for she makethh rancid the wwworld.”

Then, the corpse-like bastard stepped forward, he hands reaching for Julia’s pretty throat …

No!

Ed couldn’t let that happen.

“Look here, you rutting ghoul!” Ed shouted. “I’m the one who made her do it.”

Mott stopped advancing on Julia, turning his decayed head to look down at Ed on the floor.

“Yeah!” Ed continued. “You want me. I’m just a cripple, you can handle me—come on!”

Mott shrieked and shot towards him. He was almost there when he suddenly slipped in the puddle of lamp oil, losing his balance for a moment and teetering forward. Ed dove for Mott’s ankle, pushing it back—

—And Mott fell forward, flailing. His head hit the ledge in front of the fireplace with a loud, wet thud.

Ed grabbed the lamp and threw it towards the fireplace. It shattered on the stone there—and this time, the fire spread.

The blazing oil covered Mott’s head.

His hood burst into whooshing flames which quickly spread down to his torso as he thrashed and shrieked.

But the flames didn’t stop there. A line of fire shot down Mott’s kicking leg and ignited the puddle on the floor. The fire spread across the puddle, and suddenly Ed’s trousers were burning, flames engulfing his right leg below the knee.

“Dammit!” he swore, scrambling backwards on hand and knees, ignoring the searing pain, trying to get away from the puddle. Julia ran forward and beat at the flames, her hands wrapped in the cloth of her skirt. It seemed to help. Ed ripped off his own shirt and used it to help her.

In a few moments, the flames were gone.

When he looked down, the right leg of his woolen trousers was blackened above his boot, and still smoking. The leg hurt him, but he had no idea how bad the burns actually were.

“We have to get out of here!” he told Julia. He grabbed the edge of the cell door and used it to pull himself up. Damn his clumsy clubfoot, he had to get on his feet!

When he was standing again, he turned to see that Mott was still shrieking and flailing, his body a convulsing torch. But as Ed watched, the corpse-thing pushed himself up with his arms, then rose to a kneeling position in front of the fireplace, burning all the while.

“Rutting hell!” Ed screamed. “He’s getting up!”

Panicked, he pushed Julia through the cell door into the basement proper, then limped quickly through himself. He slammed it behind him and hammered the padlock closed with the palm of his hand.

“All right—now where?” he asked.

“The stairs!” Julia pointed to the main staircase—the same stairs which Ed had descended just before Starks and the Rector had ambushed him earlier.

He scanned the room. He needed a weapon if he was going to have to fight anyone who blocked their escape…

There were objects everywhere, all of the strange machines and glass balls and silver cords on the floor.

In one corner, he saw a wheel-like wood and silver device and his stomach churned as he had a vague recollection of being tormented there.

He looked to a nearby table, covered with books and papers. There was a letter opener there, and he snatched it up.  

Besides the letter opener, there was a large map spread across the table. It showed the whole of the American colonies. Red-inked lines radiated from their location towards the largest cities on the eastern seaboard: Philadelphia, Boston, New York and others.

By the name of each city was a written figure, numbers in the ten thousands … Was this how many people lived in each place? But what did the red lines mean, then?

In a moment, Julia was pulling on his arm, and Ed turned away from the map. Taking her hand, he forced his bad leg forward, then his good one, scrambling as quickly as he could towards the stairs.

They heard excited shouts as they reached the bottom of the staircase.

Ed looked up to see that the bearded Mister Starks was halfway down the stairs, the silver-headed torture tool in his hand. Behind him came two other servants wielding knives, and from the top of the steps the Rector himself glared down at them.

“Julia!” The Rector’s crimson eyes went wide as he recognized his daughter. “What are you doing?”

Ed yanked her away, trying to avoid the man’s gaze. He knew how strong the red-eyed Rector was, and with those other goons to help …

“We need another way!” he shouted to Julia.

“The tunnel!” she answered, pointing to a dark opening at the other end of the cellar. One of the silver cords led into the opening, but there was little light to see anything else.

“It goes to the cave where the monster Croatoan lives,” Julia explained, “where he has his pit. There’s a door leading outside from there, I think.”

“Will he be down inside the pit now?” Ed asked. “Or up in the cave itself?”

He didn’t relish the idea of facing the demon-thing again.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“All right. We have to try!”

They hurried towards the tunnel, dodging around the tables and the other clutter in the cellar. Behind him, Ed could hear Starks screaming as well as other voices, coming up fast. He worked his legs as hard as he could, swinging his bad leg far forward with each step to try to speed up his pace.

It was no good. He’d never outrun them, and he was holding Julia back …

He let go of her hand. “Run!” he told her. “You have to go on ahead.”

It meant more to him than his own safety… This soft, sweet, sincere girl, he couldn’t bear the idea of her being punished or suffering on his account.

She looked to him, her big eyes wide and her delicate mouth working soundlessly.

“Run, dammit!” he repeated. “I’m not fast enough.”

“No!” she stopped moving and stood there, trembling. “Don’t leave me.”

There wasn’t time to argue … he looked back to see one of the servant men jumping over a table not fifty paces away, ready to pounce on them.