Scene 12 – The Throne Room

A naked Daniel stumbles out onto the floor of the Snatch‘s seldom-used Imperial throne room. He is pristine, undamaged. There are no hickeys, no trails of crusted blood.

 

Like Lady Vain’s personal deck and the canyon hollow of the White Thighs, the throne room is vast. Rows of columns sprouting from an endless, mirrored obsidian plane create spokes that lead to a dais and a lonely, enormous throne. Runners of neon orange streak through the floor and columns, all leading to the throne; from above they might look like spiderwebs converging on a fat, orange spider. The throne rises like a volcano from the dais, and is inscribed with orange sigils recalling the mandalic tattoos on Bella’s skin. A young woman – perhaps just out of her teens – lounges in the throne. She is the picture of youth, but her all-yellow, iris-less eyes are anything but young as they snap to Daniel. Across her lap a naked femalien is splayed, but the Empress does not drink; she merely runs her finger through trickles of blood, tracing patterns on smooth, naked flesh.

 

Lady Vain follows Daniel between the columns into the room, whip in hand, and Jade follows close behind, the student to Vain’s master. Vain lashes the air behind Daniel to drive him forward and toward the throne. Daniel’s expressions alternate between anger, rebellion, and agony – the last as a welt rises from a too-close slash. The welt swells and oozes blood between his shoulders.
The Empress slides from her throne and somehow stands, as though gravity were her bitch. The body of the femalien to falls down the steps of her dais, discarded and already forgotten. “Armed? You come to my presence armed?” Her voice is too rich, too commanding for her youthful body.

 

Vain stops, bending into a grand, wide-armed bow, deep enough to press her knee to the ground. Jade follows suit behind her. “Only to bring you a gift, Empress.”

 

The Empress absorbs the whole scene, her yellow eyes flaring, then nods almost imperceptibly. She snaps her fingers and demands, “Leave us.” Throughout the room, cloaked amethyst shadows disappear into the pillars.

Vain rises to drive Daniel to the steps at the foot of the dais. The Empress waits perched, hands on hips, at the top of the stairs. Trapped between them, with the example of the drained femalien sprawled near his feet, Daniel spins warily.

“So this is the male?” There is as much curiosity as sneer in the Empress’ voice.

“Yes.” Lady Vain bends to a knee. “The one. The last.”

“So I see. And his female as well.” Her eyes sweep back to Jade, who remains in her bow, head lowered in submission.

Vain shrugs. “She might have called him her male.”

“You’ve turned her already, though.” Her lips curl, turning the sneer on Vain. “A pity you are so selfish, Vain – I might have enjoyed drinking them both as a pair. No matter – you are a faithful slave; she is yours.” She extends a clawed hand toward Daniel and draws in her fingers. For a moment her eyes glow red, and despite his intentions Daniel is compelled to climb the stairs to her feet. “You will no longer need that.” With a flick of her fingers, Vain is made to throw her whip away, where it auto-retracts.  “He is no danger to me.”

 

Vain retreats to her bow a step ahead of Jade.

 

The Empress’ claws play over Daniel’s face, gently yet still scoring his skin.  Her tongue flicks between her lips. “So, Boy – Daniel, they call you – you’ve come to overthrow me, have you? And with such a meager tool.” She laughs and snaps, and he falls to his knees before her. His face is full of rage before it disappears into her crotch, yanked into place by her hand and held there firmly. She rubs against him as she continues, sounding bored. “Somehow I expected something more. Some special weapon. A wave of attack ships. But you’re just a toy, aren’t you?” She shudders against him. “I like toys. I might let you overthrow me just a little.”

When she pulls Daniel’s head free so he can breathe, he answers, “I have a ship. Even now the pilot waits for my signal to attack and destroy us all.”

Again the Empress laughs – a refined but mocking tinkle. “Do you mean that scrapheap of a freighter you flew in on? I assure you, it was never any threat – nor were its pilots.” She lifts a finger, and two White Thighs appear from behind one of the pillars. They wear the full kit of People Eaters, but the fur and tail on one and the scale-spots on the thighs of the other identify them as Pussy and Lola. “Or perhaps you meant your bots? Melted for my jewelry, I’m told, though we recovered a delicious video archive from one of them.  Most diverting.” Daniel howls as she draws his head back between her legs. Her wicked laugh is as much disdain as pleasure.

While Vain and Jade wait, the Empress takes her entertainment. She is as demanding as he is giving, the vast space echoes with her moans and roars. When she pushes Daniel away at last, he falls back to the floor of her dais. She lifts her skirt to mount him, and arches a brow as his erection stands eager to meet her. “All too easy. If you only knew the power I shall derive from your blood and your seed mingled inside me… Both of them shall be mine for as long as you live, and I will see to it that will be a very, very long time. For all eternity, you shall be mine.” She impales herself on him, pushing her ass cheeks against his hips, spreading her legs to go deeper, and her eyes glow. She lifts him against her breasts as Vain had done earlier, cooing into his ear.

 

Something shiny rolls across the narrow stretch of the floor between Jade’s hand and Vain’s.

 

The Empress’ coos become frustration, and her hips grind harder. Her glowing eyes flicker. “How can he resist me?” She pushes his head back and lavishes his neck and ears with over-eager kisses, nibbles his earlobes, presses him between her breasts, but even when her grinding becomes more deliberate, more exaggerated, her expression is one of disbelief. “Nothing! Nothing! He will not cum! Ben-wa has broken him. I cannot receive his Gift!” She tenses, and his eyes go wide as he is forced to a jerking orgasm. His arms squeeze tight around her.

 

Vain lifts her eyes now, and a clever smile twists her lips. “You’re half right, Empress. You cannot take his Gift. I have it.” Vain rises off her toes, floating to the level of the dais.  Bella’s whip extends into a helix around Vain and glows blue.

 

The Empress screams and struggles, but she is a weakling in Daniel’s grip. His eyes have glazed and stare with stupid adoration at Vain. Wind rushes through the Empress’ chamber, and the blue helix around Vain unwinds. With a simple flick of her wrist, Vain’s whip curls around the Empress’ neck. “It has been Intuited,” she intones, then tugs, severing both the Empress’ head and her screams. Blood and lightning cascade from her still jerking body, wreathing Daniel.

 

Despite the lightshow, Vain floats to the dais and kicks the Empress’ body free of Daniel’s arms, down the steps to join the abandoned femalien and the two new White Thighs. At a signal from her, they fall on both to feed. Vain seats herself boldly on throne, and sits Daniel at her feet and leaning across her thighs. She lifts his chin to lick the Empress’ blood from his face. “Good Boy.”

Princess Jade mounts the stairs to proclaim: “The prophecy is fulfilled! As she has foretold, The Empress is dead! All hail the Empress!” She, too, sits at Vain’s feet, a balanced, mirror image of Daniel.

 

 

Jacquie leaned back onto her heels, sliding her pubis over Riel’s forehead as deliberately as he might have wiped his hand on a towel. Her lips wriggled through different shades of a smile, and she peered deep into his eyes; hers were all-white down to a pinprick pupil. Her red hair was gone – her scalp gleamed in light from his laptop. She had discarded Vain’s helmet at some point, and now she flung the script off to the side, shifting again so she could drape herself over his shoulder and chest and kiss him on the lips. The four White Thighs had slowed their feast, now lapping lazily at gentle trickles where before they had bitten greedily.  Their faces were stained red beneath their masks, but Jacquie’s teeth still gleamed white. She licked her lips, and nuzzled into his neck. “All hail me, baby.”

A light winked from the building across the chasm.

“Jacquie!” Riel yanked her head flat against his chest as a bullet ripped through the air above them and smashed into a girder. The entire floor shook.

Jacquie rolled away, and Riel’s eyes found the hole – a fist-sized puncture through an I-beam. It had to have been a 40mil round. That would have killed him if it had hit him, he was pretty sure.

The next seconds were a lifetime.

Of the four deadgirls drinking from him, three were drunk on his blood and sluggish, and were shifting their grip to try to pin him down. The fourth had jumped clear of him in that instant and had grabbed hold of Jacquie. Jacquie was too startled to react, so other vampire lifted her in the air above her shoulders and lurched toward the edge of the open floor.

A green dot whisked across his chest, so Riel moved. He wrenched the tent stakes tied to his wrists so fast that the zip-tie chain on his left wrist wrapped around the neck of one fanger, then clamped his thighs around the head of another. The latter screamed with such surprise that he realized she had no idea what was going on. With a twist of his legs he flung her away. The one caught in the chain had pulled herself into a fetal ball, so he snapped a plastic link and left her.

Two more thwips, and the plywood he’d been laying on exploded in splinters beneath the blanket.

He ran for Jacquie. She was still airborne and fighting with the People Eater who held her aloft, but she’d gotten herself turned around and her succubus wings were forming through the back of her costume and beating against the air. A green dot lit up the network of veins worming through the membrane of her wings. She and the other vampire were at the edge of the floor, nine stories above the street below. The People Eater was off-balance; she couldn’t get her feet under her to throw Jacquie, who was trying to gouge her eyes out.

He wouldn’t make it. He was too far, no matter how quickly his legs pumped. He cut right, and another shot sliced the air beside him and sent up a cloud of splinters a few meters back. Jacquie’s wings had formed completely, faster than he thought possible, and were thumping against the air, but she was a huge target now. His legs ached with how fast he tried to move them.

He was too far; he really, really wouldn’t make it. He heard another shot, and Jacquie and her People Eater were over the edge and tumbling nine stories…

He knew he’d been set up, but he still needed the bait from the trap; he needed the faces his camera had seen. The green dot weaved across his chest, and he turned – only to slam into a White Thigh coming up behind him. They hit the plywood deck together, and her hand plunged like a spear into his side. She was stuck for the moment he needed to twist her head off cleanly.

Her wrist was more difficult to dislocate and rip free, especially with the shots raining around him, but he didn’t want to unplug the hole, no matter how much it felt like a bonfire inside him. He grabbed the laptop and left the rest, cursing his mom and anyone else who could hear. He didn’t have a budget for new gear.

Once he’d dashed through the sheets and to the relative safety behind the girders, he jumped down the staircase a flight at a time, screaming Jacquie’s name.

* * *

She lay on the sidewalk, tangled with the People Eater. Their armor and her wings were shattered, and they were both splattered, thick blood like jelly oozing from them onto the cement. It wasn’t anything Jacquie couldn’t recover from given enough time and blood, but the two of them were still writhing together, trying to dig each other’s hearts out with broken claws. Riel flung the People Eater into the street, not caring if the occasional midnight traffic got to her before her sisters, and scooped Jacquie up as gingerly as he could with both hands already full and a third buried next to his kidney.

“Fuckin’ Carmine,” Jacquie slurred.

Through all the background noise, through the pounding of blood in his ears, Riel heard footsteps coming – many and quickly, so he ran. He was fast, faster than he should have been, given that at least a dozen people would probably see him, even this late. He knew they’d catch him anyway, if he stumbled even once. He had the head start, though, and the benefit of knowing where he was going, of picking a clever parking spot, hidden from casual sight.

They had the benefit of being more clever than him, apparently, of waiting for him at the jeep. There were four of them, but they weren’t working together. It happened so fast, like it always did – too fast for thought, too fast even to see more than a blur. He walked up the front of the nearest as she came at him and kicked back her head like a PEZ dispenser, changed momentum and left two others tangled together. He was in the back seat of the jeep, door pulled shut and locked behind him before the fourth could react.

He laid Jacquie out across the back seat, and she already seemed to have a bit of her shape back, though she was as pale as the moon. The hand in his side had begun to come loose, allowing blood to gush out around it, so he held it in place as he wormed his way over the stick shift into the driver’s seat and wrestled out of his shirt.  Sweat steamed off his skin and fogged the windows. His breaths were so deep now he would probably go through the air inside the Jeep in a couple of minutes.  The wadded up shirt pressed behind the hand in his side seemed to help, somehow.  But not much.

Once his heart had stopped pounding so hard that he couldn’t think, Riel turned the ignition and hit the defogger, then reached under the passenger seat for a bottle of Gatorade. He should be hurrying, probably, even as fast as he usually healed, but it wouldn’t help him if he totaled the jeep on the drive to… where?  Not the hospital.  He cracked his window just a bit, just a finger’s breadth, just enough to help the defogger. The deadgirls outside could have broken the glass anyway, if they were coming into the car.  He didn’t know if rolling the window down all the way would constitute an invitation or not; he’d have to ask Jacquie later.  If she made it.  If he made.

There were more deadgirls outside now, gathering in the empty parking lot around the jeep: a dozen already at least, and another every few seconds like a ship popping out of hyperspace, a streak that resolved as a deadgirl who barely wobbled to check her momentum. He knew their faces, but they weren’t the fangers who worked the brothel. They were the same street-level functionaries he’d seen entering – the Liannii, the Thervistii, the Dianians. The DC families. But not a greatmother among them, not even a mother, and functionaries never clustered in these numbers, not in their formal makeup, unless they were attending their mothers. Not unless it was a trap, apparently.

Once the windshield had cleared enough to see, he threw the jeep into gear and stepped on the gas, as happy to run them down or not. The beater only lurched. The wheels chirped, then spun. A glance in his rearview mirror revealed four or five of the fangers behind him, holding his bumper with one hand and the light post or fence behind him with the other.

Riel sighed, let the Jeep idle, and they came.  More took hold of the jeep – the front bumper, the mirrors, the wheelwell.  Their fingers bent the metal at the edge of the hood, as if they meant to rip it off.  They pressed against the side panels, smearing a season’s worth of road grime.

The shock from the wound in his side was beginning to recede.  That meant he was healing, but it left nothing to protect him from the pain.

“Let me in,” the deadgirls whispered. They all whispered, one over the other, and the reverberating hiss their chorus created was more disturbing than if they’d shouted and banged on the glass. They pressed in against his jeep now, wrestling with each other for the privilege of mashing themselves against the windows . “Let me in.” “There’s no escape.” “I’ll be gentle.” “So sweet.” “No pain.”

A Dianian with red-painted dots fanning away from her brows like spider eyes – Dianian-8 in Riel’s notebook – cat-crawled onto his hood and pressed herself against the windshield. “Invite me in,” her voice murmured among the rest, “and I’ll sing your death as your sweetest fantasy.” She kissed the glass, open-mouthed, and behind her lips her long fangs gnashed. Liannii-4 pushed in beside her, her eyes completely shadowed in black just like Jacquie’s the first time he’d seen her; with a deliberate finger and thumb she unzipped the front of her rubber body suit and let breasts too perfect for nature slip free. These she offered by flattening them against the glass while she whispered, “Let me in, and you will never feel my bite.” When his askew wiper blade interfered with her attempt to dry-hump the windshield, she snapped it off and tossed it away.

Snuffling nostrils and open mouths clustered at his open window. They licked the air, hungry even for the scant molecules of blood they could smell. Hastily he cranked the window all the way closed, but the deadgirls were everywhere, at every pane of glass, kissing, licking as though they could taste him through the patina of dust and bug splatters, offering him their bodies if only he would give them his.

“No!” he shouted again, and he stomped on the gas. His tires only squealed. “I’m not letting you in, any of you.”

“Just one.” Lips brushed against the passenger side window. “Any of us, and the rest will honor your choice.” Gloved fingers tipped in claws etched at the glass. “Pick your death.” Black-clad hips rubbed against the frame. “Pick me.” He heard a snap as his antenna was broken away; he was sure he’d heard a tail light crunch a moment earlier. “It will be sweet, so painless.” “No pain.” “We will take the pain.” The ceiling bent inward as another face joined the four already crowding at the moonroof. “We promise.” “We promise.” Promises echoed from every direction.

“I can wait as long as I need to in here,” he snarled at all of them, at none in particular.  The red-soaked shirt he held at his side betrayed his lie, but they weren’t listening anyway.

One of them caught his eyes with her stare.  Her eyes were deep, all black, like glass over a sinkhole.  His vision swam.

He couldn’t let himself focus on just one of them. Some of the Liannii were hypnotists. He knew what he could do, though. He reached across to the glove-compartment and fished out the old digital camera there. It still had one bar of battery – enough to get some close-up pictures.  He’d pass out, maybe, have to sleep this off.  But he’d have faces for Shibboleth.

“Your life will expire before our patience.” The curly-blonde Thervistii he’d named “Shirley” before he started assigning numbers had elbowed her way to his driver-side door, and the others lowered their voices to whispers when she murmured. She smiled at him through his window, like a mother waiting for her child to see the truth. Her eyes flickered down to his wound, and to the wet stain spreading from his shirt into his jeans. “It is only a matter of time, and how much vitality remains to you when you surrender yourself to me. Choose me now, while your blood still rushes, and I will remove your pain. It twists your face now, no matter how you try to hide it.  It is too much for you to bear.  Allow me to take it from you.  You will forget pain entirely when I show you pleasure your rogue’s imagination could not fathom.” Her eyes slipped to the back seat, flashed with disdain, then returned to him with a smile. “You can make us wait, but you cannot make us leave.  If we must, we will move your vehicle someplace safe, someplace only we know, until your death is so close that you are too weak to resist.” Her brows lifted, a picture of regret. “Others will come then, who you will not be able to refuse. They will not make lovely promises as I do.”

“Andrew Jackson Riel… Imagine finding you here.”

The deadgirls clinging to his car like limpets turned their heads as one, and through their parting bodies, a feminine silhouette strolled across the lot. He didn’t need to see the face to know who had spoken. The camera dropped to his lap.

The street lights painted her pony-tail auburn. The long barrel of a sniper rifle angled over her shoulder, but she held a pistol in her left hand. She stopped at the front bumper of the jeep where he could see her smirk. Katherine held her pistol trained on him, through the windshield, through Dianian-8.

“How does betrayal feel, pumpkin? Does it hurt?” She shivered with sadistic satiation of the moment.

“Like a bitch, Kate.” The pain in his side was beginning to flood his mind now; it was a struggle not to wince.  Maybe it wasn’t going to heal in time.

“I kind of like ‘Kate’, actually. You’ll have to try again.”

“That was you on the roof, wasn’t it?”He had to clear his throat, and realized it was going dry. That was a bad sign, wasn’t it? “I should have known it was you – you never could hit a damn thing.”

Katherine smirked again. “I could have hit you if I tried, but I was really trying to keep you away from your egg-headed whore. I really wanted a cleaner shot at her.  Oh well.”

Riel glanced back at Jacquie, even if twisting in his seat made him gasp. Through the spatter of her thick blood, he couldn’t tell if any of it had come from golf-ball-sized holes or just the shattering impact with the sidewalk.

“You’re all a bunch of stupid gits, you know?” Katherine had turned her attention on the other deadgirls, and waved her gun to lasso all of them into her insult. “Pawing on the outside of his car when you could just shoot him and be done with it.” She snapped her aim back and the windshield shattered around two holes on the passenger side as two loud blasts echoed through the parking lot. Liannii-4 screeched with anger and slumped into the curved windshield before Katherine hopped up onto the hood and kicked her away.

“No!” wailed the rest, but they cleared the space around her.  Shirley hissed at Katherine, speaking for the others. “You gave him to us! We cannot spill his life, it is commanded.”

Katherine shrugged. “Nobody gave me any commandments. Or whoever had her hands on him last.” Her eyes had found his wound, and she licked her lips.  ”He’s going to die in there.”  She winked at Riel.

The rest of the deadgirls moaned, as though every drop that flooded his sodden shirt was a tragedy.

“The command is from Liliana’s breath!” insisted Shirley.  “We cannot let him die.”

Katherine blanched, and hesitated.

Riel had never known her to do either. That was enough to burn the name into his mind through any amount of pain. Liliana.

“Far be it from me,” Katherine began slowly, “to defy her. I will have it known I do not defy her. But she would certainly not care whose belly he ends up in – as all of us to the last will fold into her – and we have a sister already inside the envelope of his invitation.” She knelt and her eyes flicked to the backseat, where Shirley had stared a moment before. “You are a whore. A rogue. You cast aside your family’s blessings. But you could redeem yourself right now, child.”

“Fuck off, Kathy.  Leaver her alone.” Riel hadn’t intended for his voice to sound desperate.

Katherine’s eyes wrinkled gleefully, but she refused to acknowledge him. “You need only do what you were made to do, child, and drink him. You will again be a daughter of Liliana – a blessed daughter, doubtless raised by her own hand. You’ve tasted him; you know what power you will have if you drink his soul.”

Riel opened his mouth again, but couldn’t speak when the pistol waggled a few feet from his face.

“You know you want to, child. You desire it above all things. Only the smallest taste of him will heal your hurts, and the rest will be your glory. His blood fills your nose. The scent rests heavy on your tongue – you salivate without even making yourself produce it. Every second you delay, a bit more of him slips away – a bit more you could have if you did not delay.  He will bleed out whether it is between your lips or not.” Her eyes flashed, and her lips spread in a wide, fang-baring smile. Riel watched her eyes, but he knew from the tickle of raised hairs on his neck that Jacquie had sat up and was right behind him in her seat. He could feel a ragged, cool breath blow once behind his ear. “Yessss, child. Bite. It is all you want, the entirety of your existence in one simple, beautiful motion. His blood is the sacrifice by which you are redeemed, by which we are all redeemed.”

“Jacquie…” he whispered.

“No.” Her voice was even weaker than her breath. “No, I want more than his blood now. I want to be wanted. I want to be Lucy. He’s my Ricky.”

“Well, I suppose that settles it.” Katherine shrugged. “We can’t let him die, can we?”

The other deadgirls muttered warily.

Katherine straightened her legs and gestured with her pistol. “And if I can’t shoot him myself, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you kids drag him back to your anthill where he’ll probably die anyway, depriving me of witnessing his last moments of despair.  If he’s going to die, at least let him die trying to live – it’s so much more delicious.  Besides, this way he’ll trust me again, just enough to give me another chance to turn the screw.” Her gun fired as if on full-auto, emptying the long clip in seconds. The parking lot flashed as she waved her gun, and deadgirls stumbled away from the car, holding wrists or faces or necks. Katherine hopped down to the pavement and blew him a kiss through the glass of the passenger-side window. “See you soon, bitch.”

Riel slammed on the gas. He didn’t think twice about how many bodies his tires thumped over, or whether he’d gone through the bushes instead of the driveway. His ears were ringing, and his vision had begun to go gray.