Over several hours, Darius taught her the meaning of rapture.

And the price…

His attention had been so wondrous that she’d almost forgotten how degrading it was to be used. Yet no matter how he kissed and touched, under her joy she knew all he did was for his own entertainment. He wanted to see her beg like a whore, knew what nerves to manipulate to earn a slattern’s response.

Twisted by the expertise of a practiced lecher, she’d cried out, unsure of the exact moment his body had pushed her past sanity. For only a mad woman would have thanked him for fucking her so raw she’d bled.

She’d even tangled her hands in his hair when he’d pulled her cunt to his mouth so he might feast on their shared fluids.

When his come and her blood were smeared over his chin, red eyes burned and his long teeth shone in the candlelight. “Turn over. Bow your head to the covers.”

She’d obeyed without question.

“Tell me you love me.” Glistening cockhead notched between her cleft, he’d raked his nails over her hips.

More of her blood spilled from the gashes, just as the foul words fell from a drunken tongue. “I love you.”

“Call me your God!” He spread her cheeks, sluicing forward through all the mess that dripped from her cunt.

It felt as if there was a knock on the door of her skull, a mental caution to refuse such blasphemy. There was only one God. The God. The creator of the world who’d promised to deliver her from evil.

Evil shunted in, straight into a hole that was unslick, unstretched, and unprepared. Bawling, flailing while tears fell, she screamed, “You are my God!”

The creature tearing her ass apart roared. It was not the sound of a man in pleasure, but a demon set free from the abyss. Unwilling to turn her head, she imagined great wings had spread behind her tormentor to beat the air as he pulled her down that blood-stained cock.

The damage was extensive, for the devil had been unshackled.

He claimed his due from her flesh.

A single, worthless soul.

One that God had rejected long ago. One that was treasured by a monster who relished perverting love into pain.

Empty of hope, full of cock.

That was how she died inside. Any proselyte knew there would be no forgiveness in the eyes of the Lord for this.

The flesh agreed, twisting up around the pulsating intrusion. Her cunt fluttered, opening up like a little mouth seeking a sweet kiss. The nub at the top of her sex throbbed as if an overripe berry near bursting.

Despite how he ravaged her hips, it was her touch that found that pulped flesh and dove in to fill the empty hole. He bellowed a sickening laugh to see little fingers play.

When she came, it was while riding a scream of pain.

He sprayed white globs of stinging grossness so far inside her, it would linger like a stain she could never push out.

What had she done?

On fire, pinned under the weight of a monster lazy with slaked lust, her tears fell hot and free.

At last that organ was shrinking, slowly worming its way out of her ass. But the mark he’d made on her, the blasphemy he’d drawn from foolish lips would never seep out, no matter how many holes she tore in her flesh.

“I am lost…”

Filth crusted nails raked her chin, forcing her to twist her neck at an impossible angle so that one large blue eye might find his devious smile. “I so ador—”

The floor dropped out from under them, and with an earsplitting crash, dust and debris snowed down upon her room. It was as if the earth itself shook, as if it worked its jaws, intent on devouring the vampire whore and the beast panting on her back.

“HE WOULDN’T DARE!” Darius pulled away, careless of the damage he caused, or the detritus that followed the path of his dick from her anus. Once on his feet, the ground wrenched again, almost upsetting the devil’s balance. “You.” Turning his fury on the bleeding woman soiling the coverlet. “Stay there! This insurrection will be crushed at once.”

Through tears, Pearl saw the air bend, distort, and Darius, the devil she’d named as her God, vanished.

It would be easy to say that the rocking of the earth which sent her candelabras toppling over was a sign of her salvation. It would be easy to claim divinity smiled upon her.

It didn’t.

In fact, no one came to smile, threaten, bleed her, or denounce.

Hours she lay under a ceiling that dusted her room in a fog of ancient dirt. In that time her body mended.

Darius did not return.

One by one the candles began to flicker and wane. All the soft golden light of her cell faded, snuffed out to scent the air with a wisp of smoke. It was not until the last three had almost met their end that Pearl found the will to rise from the bed. New tapers were lit, and had she been wiser, she would have rationed her meager supply.

Rocking herself in the shadowy room, surrounded by fine paintings, by jewels, by sumptuous furnishings and a tub grown cold, she saw the cell for what it was.

A tomb.

Her tomb.

Days passed, Pearl sleeping anywhere but the soiled bed.

Starving, down to her last candle, she read through the book she’d found on the desk and knew the gnawing in her gut was more than hunger.

This was a bad place.

A bad place where she had been tempted and spoken terrible words.

When she opened the filigreed box on the desk, when she found the notes, she didn’t weep. After all, didn’t the church teach that there was no such thing as victims of the devil? She had come to him of her own accord.

She had killed Chadwick Parker. She had served as the demon’s slut.

She had renounced her God under the ecstasies only the prince of darkness might offer.

And every word on those torn notes was true.

She was in Hell.

Damned, Pearl snuffed out the last candle before it might burn away. Pitch black filled her vision. Shuffling through the furniture, she found the stinking bed, and pulled the covers crusted in all things unholy over her body. There she lay, forgotten, abandoned, and without hope.

Just as she deserved.

Starvation drained her flesh over weeks. Shriveled, desiccated, she lay like an age worn corpse unable to blink. Yet, where the body failed the mind persevered.

She couldn’t scream into that endless night. Eventually, even her chest no longer rose to draw breath. But awareness and desolation never faded.

Hell was a dedicated custodian. It refused to release her stolen soul.

Years, decades, passed trapped on that bed staring up into unyielding dark.

Alone.

Forgotten.

Forsaken.

Another corpse in the catacombs.