The Theocracy - The Blackened Cross - 31. Chapter 31

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In the back of his mind Vanus knew the stairs he found himself climbing down were not the same stairs he'd used to descend into Inferno. It didn't stop his blood pressure from peaking or his chest from drawing tight. So he took them one step at a time, forcing himself to breathe, taking comfort in the fact he wasn't alone.

Bazzelthorpe and Vanus turned the corner into a large square room that had been set up like a lounge. The walls glowed with an ambient red light. A woman stood on a stage, her dark hair piled and pinned in place on top of her head. She swayed gently from side to side, her throat constricted, tendons standing out as she released a sonorous, drawn-out note. A man stood off to her right, playing the violin. Vanus stopped to watch, transfixed. The music, as simple as it was, dug into him, like fingernails pushing into his mind. The feeling was not entirely unpleasant.

“AHHH-CHOOO!”

The woman on the stage stopped singing. The man with the violin stopped playing. Every eye in the establishment (as far as Vanus could see) turned to stare at a blushing Bazzelthorpe. Vanus stepped closer to him so they could speak without anyone hearing them. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Bazz sniffed. “It’s those damned incense. What’s the plan?”

Vanus eyed the bar. “We’re at a bar so we might as well lounge about. Let’s sit down and have a drink, shall we?”

They didn’t make it to the bar. A woman stepped out of a pair of sliding doors. She was tall with dark ebony skin; her hair fell in braids down to her back. She lifted a hand to capture their attention. The golden bands on her wrists jangled, catching the light. Her expression was anything but welcoming.

Bazzelthorpe tensed, reaching for his jacket.

Vanus held out his hand. “Not yet,” he hissed.

“You were told to come alone, Kaufman!” The woman said with a thick Nigerian accent like Roan’s. She clearly was not happy with him, whoever in the Void she was.

“Well I didn’t,” the death magician said. “How do you know my name?”

The woman smiled but offered no answer. Something crafty and mocking glittered in her onyx eyes. She waited another beat - the woman and violin player had gone back to their number - and then said, “He needs to leave.” She meant Bazzelthorpe but she did not look at him.

“Anything that Roan has to say to me can be said to him.” The death magician could feel himself growing hot, his blood pressure rising. “If he has to leave then I’m leaving too. And then you can tell your boss or whatever he is he can stay the fuck out of my dreams.”

Nadia had not stopped smiling this entire time. “As you wish. This way.”

As they followed her the death magician noticed Bazzel smiling down at him. “What’s so amusing?”

The Astorathian’s tail swayed from side to side. “Tiny but fierce,” he said with a knowing wink.

“Shut up.” Vanus couldn’t hide his grin.

Vanus and Bazzelthorpe entered a square room lit by candlelight. The same rickety table from his dream sat in the center of the room. Every other available surface - the tops of dressers and tables - was covered with dancing, flickering candles. His eyes landed on the familiar dark clad figure sitting at the table. The man watched him with copper eyes beneath the brim of his pork pie hat. He took a long draw from a wooden pipe and blew out a cloud of smoke in a single long stream.

“My name is Roan,” the man said - if a man he truly was. His eyes glowed in the dimness of the room. They were almost the same color as Bazzelthorpe’s. But unlike Bazzelthorpe’s eyes, Roan’s made the death magician uneasy in a way he couldn’t put his finger on. “I have been looking forward to this meeting for a very long time, Vanus Kaufman. Nadia, please pull up a chair for our other guest.”

“I’ll stand,” the Astorathian rumbled with a mistrustful glare.

“As you wish. Vanus, if you would be so kind, please have a seat.”

The death took the offered chair. He watched Nadia click-clack out of the room, sliding the doors shut behind her. Once they were alone he gave Roan a hard look. “Why do you keep talking to me as if you know me?”

“We’ve met before. Several times in fact,” came the answer.

“That’s funny. I’ve never seen you before in my life. I’m pretty sure I would remember if I had.”

Roan smiled, revealing the whitest straightest teeth Vanus had seen on another human male. “Would you?”

“Quit fucking with me.”

“I’m not.”

“Then quit postulating and get to the point. How do you know me?”

“I will tell you one day very soon. I told you of an approaching battle. It isn’t here yet but it will be before long. You and I must speak of it. But for now there is a more immediate threat that needs to be dealt with. You’re here because you want to stop Anderson, yes?”

Vanus nodded.

“Do you recall when I told you Anderson’s master, the one pulling the strings, is not Chokmah?”

“Who is it?”

“I will show you.” Roan held up his pipe. “The substance inside this pipe will rip your psyche wide open. Breathe it in. Don’t fight it. Let it show you what you need to see.”

“Kaufman,” Bazzelthorpe said, a warning in his voice.

“Will it kill me?” Vanus asked. He wondered if he was still dreaming…if this whole night had been a long, surrealistic dream.

“The first time is always the most unpleasant. It won’t kill you.” Roan smiled enigmatically again. His eyes glowed like copper coins.

Bazzelthorpe’s fingers were on the death magician’s shoulder, massaging at the tension that had formed a knot beneath the skin. “Kaufman, I want to stop Anderson just as much as you do. But not like this.”

“Bazz, I’m doing this.” The death magician touched the back of the Astorathian’s hand in an attempt to reassure him.

“The last time you made yourself have visions you almost died,” Bazzel insisted. “Remember what the doctor woman from the hospital said.”

Vanus was losing ground, losing conviction, losing courage. He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t back away now. He nodded at Roan. “Do it.”

His partner made a chuffing sound of disapproval, but offered no further recriminations. He did however continue to massage Van’s shoulders…which felt nice. Very nice indeed. Don’t you dare stop, Vanus wanted to tell him. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said instead. “Stay with me.”

“You will never leave my sight again, magician.”

Roan blew out a second cloud of smoke that plumed out towards the sorcerer as if it had a mind, a life of its own. Vanus breathed it in, mentally preparing himself for what was to come. Whatever that would be. What horrible things would he see this time? His sinuses were filled with the taste and aroma of something both herbal and floral. Almost immediately he could feel his body grow heavy. Relaxed. Where’s the pain? he wondered. Didn’t he say it would hurt?

“Kaufman?” Though Bazzelthorpe stood directly behind him his voice sounded as if it was coming from very far away. Lethargically the magician turned his head to look up at the Astorathian who in turn had stooped to return his gaze with great concern.

“Whoa,” Vanus said.

“Kaufman, are you alright? Can you hear me?”

“You have the most beautiful eyes.” He slowly lifted a hand, reaching through air that had turned porous with black dots that winked in and out of existence; they reminded him of the cells one might see when looking through a microscope, swimming around to complete whatever task their programming dictated. Bazzelthorpe’s skin felt warm and solid and good beneath his palm. “They’re like stars. Golden stars.”

This earned him an amused chuckle. “Are you high, Kaufman?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Bazzel’s face rippled before him, like flower petals spreading out in bloom. He felt his own cheeks go flushed, felt his heart speed up, his blood pressure rise like an elevator shooting to the top floor of a skyscraper. His skin felt tight. Smothering. “Whoa,” he heard himself say. “Here we goooo.”

Roan was gone. Bazzel was gone. The room he’d be in, Roc City, the world, his body, all of it was gone as it had been when he’d gone into the Void and terror clawed at him like a rat fighting to break free of its cage. But there was no stopping it. There was no fighting it. Wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t that what Roan had told him, was to not fight it, that the first time was always the worst?

Okay, let’s do this.

He stopped fighting it. He let the fear overtake him.

He was falling. Falling through a cloud of violet swirling light that was honestly quite breathtaking to behold. Was he in Limbo? The cosmos? Another dimension in a multiverse made of infinite dimensions and realities?

Was he falling up or down? He couldn’t answer that either. As with the Void, gravity and reason and the rules of physics did not exist here. He was simply floating. Hovering. Flying. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling now that he could actually breathe.

Up ahead of him (maybe?) the mouth of a dark tunnel emerged from the violet mists. He wanted to backpedal away from it, to find his way back to his body, but he was now on a train without brakes. He’d made his decision and now there was no unmaking it.

It turned out the tunnel was not a tunnel at all. There was a rushing sensation and his feet touched solid ground. The stone floor of a massive chamber unlike anything anyone had built on Earth. Jaffe Curry would lose his shit if he saw this place, he thought. This thought was soon replaced by fear. True, creeping fear as he took in the details around him, for the walls of ancient stone were changing. Morphing. Colors bleeding through them until he found himself standing on an all too familiar stage.

The theater from his youth. His old life, when his name had been Lionel Perry not Vanus Kaufman.

Hollowed eyes and skeletal faces watched him from the shadows of the balcony and the seats down below. Their eyes bore into him so intently it made his skin crawl. There was something lascivious about their silence. Put on a show, they seemed to say silently. Give us what we want.

It was then that he realized he was naked and chained. The light of the spotlight was cold against his flesh. His ankles had been shackled with icy steel. He felt his mouth go dry. His fear saturated his tongue with an unpleasant, coppery taste that made his stomach lurch painfully. Slowly he lifted his head up to the side.

There Julia stood there as he remembered her. Pale and naked and blonde. And when he turned his head there was Stamper, the man who had raised him, loved him, hated him, and raped him for many years. And beyond him watching him from his throne was not a statue, but a face he had prayed to never see again.

Chagidiel grinned, rising to his feet. Larger than life. Larger than even the largest Astorathian. His eyes seared Van’s flesh. His grin stretched so wide it split his face in two. “Lionel,” he said in a voice that made Van’s balls shrivel up like raisins. “It has been a long time. Did you truly think I would not find you?”

“Not long enough,” Vanus said and though he was more frightened than ever he was also angry. “I knew it was you. I knew it was all along I think, but I figured it out just the other day.”

Chagidiel raised his hand with a dramatic flourish. “What gave it away?”

The sorcerer grinned, bearing his teeth at the death angel. “Your lust for children. Brad Anderson? The boy you turned into an animal killer. And Leonidas. They both murdered their parents, which is your M-fucking-O. Tell me, my Blood-Stained Patriarch. How long have you been operating under the guise of one of your betters?”

The Father of Perversion let out a snarl. “I will…”

“You’ll what!” Vanus screamed, so enraged he could no longer contain it. “Rape me? Flay me alive? Rip my mind apart? Go ahead, do your worst you sick sadistic fuck, because trust me there is nothing you can do to me that I haven’t already suffered a million times over!”

At this Chagidiel laughed. It was like having a bucket full of ice water splashed over his head. The anger he felt shriveled and died, debased back into fear. He wanted to shrink away. “Roan, Bazzelthorpe!” he screamed, straining to hear himself over Chagidiels rumbling, taunting mirth; and all the dead and damned souls in the audience laughed with him, pointing at Vanus. Mocking him. “Get me out of here!”

“I am going to enjoy ripping your soul out through your asshole,” Chagidiel said. He stepped down from his throne. “You think you are the protagonist of this story. The hero. Let me tell you, you are not Lionel Perry. You can change your name, move to a different city, and have your memories erased…”

“I never…”

“You don’t recall what happened on that night, do you? That night at the amphitheater? Just as you do not recall meeting Roan.”

Vanus felt his jaw snap shut. He was shaking too hard to be able to speak. His knees vibrated with terror.

“When you look back into the past, what do you see?” Chagidiel drifted closer, trailing his monstrous, long-fingered hands along Julia and Stamper’s flesh (are they really there, or is this just an illusion? a way to fuck with me? Vanus thought). They shuddered and smiled. Julia let out a moan. They looked up at Chagidiel with matching expressions of the purest adoration. The death angel continued to taunt him. “What do you remember beyond Julia’s kiss? After Stamper started fucking you?”

“I…I…” Vanus started to say. He couldn’t put his thoughts in order.

“I will show you.” Chagidiel stepped towards him, drowning Vanus in his cold, black shadow.

Before he could resist, the death angel’s hand fell on Van’s head. A thousand razor blades sliced into his brain. Into his mind. Into his memory.

Julia’s tongue was in his mouse. There were no flies or maggots this time, but the feel of it inside his mouth still repulsed him all the same. Stamper fucked him from behind, his breath out quick and wheezy.

Rage filled him, visceral, creeping up from a place deep down inside him. A place he didn’t know existed. Before he knew he was doing it, he shoved Julia away from him. Shoved her so hard she fell over with a startled squawk. He turned away from Stamper, yanking himself off his erection, and struck him as hard as he could. There was a startled gasp from the audience. The theater went silent.

“You tyrant,” he heard himself say, his voice vibrating. He could feel his eyes burning. “You will never defile me again.”

Stamper’s fell over the reddening spot where Vanus had struck him. “How dare you!” he seethed. “How dare you lay hands against your father!”

“You are a father to no one,” Vanus said.

There was a skip in time. Maybe only a seconds or a minute, it was impossible to say, but the next thing he knew everything was burning. On fire. The walls, the seats, the people. Stamper and Julia. They burned and he watched and he laughed and he rejoiced in the suffering of those who had stolen his childhood. His virginity. Somehow he did not burn, the same way Brad Anderson had not burned in the Wishwood fire. But this was different. He didn’t have a magic lighter to protect him.

This was something completely different.

Yanking himself from the memory, Vanus fell to his knees, sobbing.

“Do you see?” Chagidiel said. “You killed them? You killed them all with your rage, because inside of you. Something wrong. Something that is every bit evil as I am. You may not sense it now, for it sleeps, dormant in the prison you have made for it, and you used it as a weapon to take your vengeance.”

“No, no,” Vanus gasped. He shook his head in denial.

“You could have been something glorious,” the Father of Perversion said with what sounded like genuine disappointment. “I was going to turn you into a god. And then together you and I would usurp the thrones of power until there is nothing left, reshape the universe to our liking. And then you betrayed me. You murdered my people.”

“As if you haven’t?” Vanus said, gaining enough composure to glared up at the death angel. “How many people have you murdered and raped in your pathetic bid for power? Do your worst.”

“As you wish.”

Chagidiel’s hand closed around Van’s throat. The medium knew the death angel could crush him easily; instead he lifted the magician off his feet until they dangled in the air while the theater still burned around them. Chagidiel grinned with hunger in his eyes and Van knew that he was about to suffer a far more terrible fate than what he’d dealt to Stamper’s congregation. Sure enough Chagidiel’s mouth gaped open, revealing a black tunnel. He raised Vanus towards his mouth, his throat widening to engulf the death magician.

Van’s foot disappeared inside the death angel’s mouth.

Vanus screamed.

And then someone was shaking him, shaking him hard enough to make his head flop back and forth. He didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t know where he was or even who he was. He just knew he wanted everything to stop.

“Stop, stop, stop!” he screamed.

“Kaufman! I’m sorry.” Familiar warm arms hugged him, lifted him up. Arms that were warm not cold. “You were screaming. I kept trying to wake you up, but nothing I did was working. Are you okay?”

Van’s skin crawled. He didn’t want to be touched. Not by anyone, not even by Bazzelthorpe. He wiggled out of the Astorathian’s grip. He looked around. They were back in his apartment.

“Where…? Where are we? How did we get here? How long have I been out?”

“Almost an hour,” Bazzelthorpe said gravely. “I picked you up and got us out of here. Rowe can go fuck himself. Vanus…?”

Van backed into the corner of the room, unable to breathe. He buried his face in his hands, sobbing. When Bazzel’s fingers grazed his shoulders he screamed.

“Vanus, you’re safe, you’re with me!”

“Don’t fucking touch me!” he howled. “I’m not safe! I’m not fucking safe! Not from him, it doesn’t matter where I go or what I do.”

Bazzelthorpe stepped back reluctantly. “Who?”

“Chagidiel. That’s who’s doing this. He’s Anderson’s master. He’s turning him into an Incarnate. And he’s my master.” With this Vanus began to unbutton his sweaty shirt. He slid out of it, letting it drop onto the floor and turned to bear his back for Bazzelthorpe to see.

“You think you know me,” he said. “You don’t. You don’t know what I’ve done. I’ve murdered and lied. My name isn’t Vanus Kaufman. It’s Lionel Perry. It’s his mark of ownership over me…”

“I know what it means.” Bazzelthorpe reached for Vanus and then stopped when he realized what he was doing. “And I am so sorry.”

“What?” Vanus said. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Bazzelthorpe’s hand cupped his face. He was not as towering as Chagidiel but he was broader and he filled Van’s field of vision. “What I saw in the camera when I took your picture…it makes sense now. The nails. Your mouthed. Stitched shut because you don’t feel like you can talk about it. That’s the thing that’s common about victims of sexual abuse. They don’t feel like they can talk about it because society rejects the victim more than they do the victimizer. You don’t have to talk about it, but you can with me. Vanus I know you. I told you I would never distrust you again and I mean it. Carlos may not belong in your world…but I do. And you belong in mine.”

“A match made in hell,” Vanus heard himself say with a wet chuckle.

“Yes.” Bazzelthorpe leaned forward to kiss him.

The death magician turned his head away. “I’m all gross.”

“You are not gross. You are the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on. I love you.”

With those words a dam opened inside Vanus. Suddenly he was livid with need, so horny it hurt. “Take me,” he said. “Fuck me.” He kicked off his pants, frantically pulling at Bazzelthorpe’s jacket. Before he knew it they were both naked. His eyes roved madly over Bazzelthorpe’s body, instantly going for his cock. Bazzelthorpe’s sheath rippled, the head peeking out. His cock was very human looking but also very big. Long and thick. At least a foot long. Already the head was leaking precum.

He didn’t remember Bazzelthorpe scooping him up to carry him to bed. The next thing he knew Bazzelthorpe’s gargantuan form hovered over him, his lips engulfing Van’s own in a deep greedy kiss. The shaft of his cock felt hot against Van’s flesh, smearing precum across his thigh. When his tongue slid into Van’s hole to lubricate it, the death magician cried out. His hands hung onto the headboard.

Bazzelthorpe’s tongue slid easily inside him, warm and slick with saliva. The Astorathian worked him slowly, methodically. He raised his head with a look of pure pleasure on his face. “You taste wonderful. But you are also very tight.”

“Ugh, it’s been a while.”

“I will be very gentle.” With that the Astorathian went back to his task.

Bazzelthorpe was gentle. When he entered Vanus for the first time, he did so with the upmost patience. His grin was one of triumph as Van let out a moan. Had he ever felt so full? Had he ever felt so loved? The answer was no. Not even by Carlos.

He did his best to wrap his legs around Bazzelthorpe’s broad hips. The Astorathian bent over him for another deep kiss, rocking into him slowly. “You are exquisite,” he said when he came up for air. “You feel so good, Kaufman. I love you. I love you.”

Vanus couldn’t answer. Not when it felt like his prostate was being hit by a train. All he could do was hang on and pray that the pleasure would never end. I love you, he tried to tell him with his mind. I love you too. You belong in my world and I belong in yours. He would make sure to tell Bazzelthorpe this when he didn’t feel like he would explode.

Bazzelthorpe came with a roar, lifting Vanus to his chest, hugging the medium to him as if to protect him with his body. Each shot felt like hot bullets filling his belly until it dripped out of him onto the sheets. Sheets soaked with sex and another fluid. The Astorathian eased him back down onto the bed, pulling out of him gently. He watched Vanus. Exhausted, spent, very satisfied, and more than a little sore, Vanus could feel himself drifting to sleep. He didn’t want to. He knew who awaited him in his dreams.

But what choice did he have?