Authors: Angela Alsaleem
The woman in the red robe stepped in front of her, placed her hands over Camilla’s face. The man guiding her wrapped his arms around her waist.
“No,” she screamed. Her shout echoed through the cavern, the sound of running water eating her words. She hadn’t noticed the water before, but she heard it now, felt movement as the man carried her, the woman blocking her eyes. Then liquid ice cascaded down her body.
The shock of the water disconnected her from her immediate desire.
“Now put them together,” the woman said.
She felt the robed man carrying her again. When the woman in the red robe removed her hands, Camilla noticed first that her hands were now bloody, and second that she stood in front of her bridegroom. Water puddled around his feet, too. The rotten stench was unmistakable. His green lips peeled back in a smile, the skin around his eyes drooping, the right eye exposing the raw flesh beneath the outer skin. She looked down and saw the maggots squirming in the mangled flesh of his groin.
Someone cut off his dick and that’s how he died
, she thought.
The woman who’d covered her eyes chanted something while walking around them in a circle. Just as she felt herself being pushed back and away from the one man she wanted more than anything, she felt the invisible bindings around her tighten and pull her body against his.
Her body, bloody, bruised, scratched; his body rotten, mutilated, flesh sagging, eyes glazed with death. Her breasts covered in bite marks pressed against his chest, her belly taught against his nest of maggots. Their wriggling tickle felt far away. She reached her right hand to the back of his head, leaning up. He reached his right hand to the back of her head leaning down. Their lips parted. His sweet, rotten breath surrounded her face, his green lips waiting. He closed his eyes.
Their lips had almost touched when she felt pressure again, some force pushing their heads apart as if the spirit inside them knew of its demise. They strained against the force, muscles flexing, cords standing out in their necks. Camilla’s crooked spine popped as she straightened, tensing. She reached her left hand up to the back of his head. He reached his left hand to the back of her head. Their elbows bent. Their tongues protruded. She gripped his hair and felt the flesh pull away from the skull as she forced his lips toward hers, felt his hands gripping her hair, the pain surging through her scalp, the tiny tears in her flesh.
As much as they wanted to, they were not able to come together.
* * *
Libitina no longer struggled against the two figures.
Back at the altar, the High Priestess continued her ceremony, saying the necessary words to the congregation. Libitina didn’t listen. She watched the grotesque struggle between Camilla and the rotting man. They looked like they were trying to kiss, two lovers embracing, unable to bring themselves to the final moment of eroticism. Their slimy bodies slid back and forth across each other as they strained. Libitina knew what this meant, but didn’t know what effect that was going to have on Camilla. Would it allow her to die? Her spirit was in there with Rory’s. Would both spirits be destroyed, only Rory’s, or only Camilla’s?
She didn’t know why she felt so protective over Camilla. She’d found her in a morgue. It felt like years ago. She’d watched Camilla draw what she supposed was the life force out of two men, heard her do it to a third, and still felt inexplicably drawn to her, unable to leave until her spirit felt peace. She asked herself why she even cared. She just wanted to get home. It didn’t matter what happened to Camilla. What Camilla did, what she got herself wrapped up in was her own business.
But Libitina knew a lie when she heard it, even if it was from her own thoughts. She did care about Camilla, as stupid as it sounded. And she wanted Camilla’s spirit to be able to rest. She would make sure this happened.
Then something the High Priestess said caught her attention.
“First is the sacrificial child.” She pointed to the green-eyed blond standing on the other side of the High Priestess. The blond woman didn’t look surprised, but anxious, as if she didn’t want to die. She wasn’t being guarded as Libitina was, so she must’ve known she was to be sacrificed and she must be willing.
“The blood of the child will bring the gateway to new life.” And then the High Priestess shifted her body toward Libitina, still speaking to the congregation. “Then we sacrifice the spirit’s guardian,” and she pointed to Libitina.
“What?”
The High Priestess continued, but Libitina didn’t hear the rest, wouldn’t hear. She wasn’t going to die in this place for some ritual, even if that meant releasing Camilla’s spirit. But the High Priestess wasn’t talking about releasing her spirit. She was talking about gaining eternal life, of gaining the ultimate power.
Tricked.
Libitina kicked and screamed, but the hooded figures held her firm, neither of them showing any sign of guilt or remorse to her negations. She stomped their feet but they were like stone, either used to pain or simply not feeling it.
She had to stop the ritual, had to get herself and Camilla out of there. She feared what would happen to Camilla, what they might be turning her into. Her imagination showed her a demon of unequalled strength and terror. She wouldn’t die for their cause.
* * *
That’s right, keep talking,
Aludra thought. The more the High Priestess had to say, the more time she had to consider. But then she started talking about the sacrificial child. Her time was up. The High Priestess pulled Aludra forward, still addressing the group, the curved ritual blade resting on the altar next to her right hand.
She talked and gestured and looked everywhere except at Aludra. It was now or never. Now or never. Now or never.
Never never never never never.
She would never die at their hands.
Aludra lunged for the blade. Just as her fingers were about to close around the hilt, the High Priestess snatched it up and glared down at her, her eyes saying she knew everything Aludra knew, knew that Aludra knew these things, and had been anticipating her actions. Stupid. She’d been so stupid to doubt the Order. How could she even begin to think her thoughts were secret to them?
“And now the Sacrificial Child has stepped forth to claim her place,” the High Priestess announced to the mass of robed figures. Aludra pulled back, but the High Priestess’s crushing grip forced her in place. She wasn’t going anywhere. She straightened in order to give her arm a bit of slack so that she could jerk her body backwards with more effect, but without further ceremony, the High Priestess plunged the ritual dagger into her ribs.
Never had she felt such excruciating pain. She coughed and blood burbled from her lips, foamy, thick, choking her. She sank to her knees, her breath making a strange whistling sound. Heart beating in her ears, pulse slowing, she closed her eyes and felt herself drifting away from the pain. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. She was stronger than the old woman. How had this happened? It was her power, not the High Priestess’s. She should be standing now with the old woman’s blood covering her hands.
The High Priestess smiled as she stooped and placed the mouth of a golden chalice to her wound. Aludra’s blood gushed into the vessel, filling it faster than Aludra had imagined. She slumped then sprawled across the floor, thoughts about how to destroy the High Priestess still circling her mind. There had to be a way. The world turned black around her and she drifted.
* * *
Camilla fought alongside her bridegroom, the two of them still straining to taste each other’s breaths. Then he paused, widened his eyes, and with one hard yank in his direction, her lips were on his.
Thunder rolled through the room, through her, the boom loud enough to shake the foundations of the mountain. She saw everything, unable to avert her vision. His powerful essence shot through her like a bolt of lightning, surging, making her sway in its flow. Every part of her tingled. She could see his hair standing on end, could feel him groaning into her mouth as he sucked.
She couldn’t help herself. Camilla caressed the back of his head, running her fingers through his sticky hair. She pressed her body against his as if the closeness wasn’t enough. She wanted to be inside, closer than close. She laughed, her laughter boiling out of his mouth and back into her as she pulled his essence inside. At the same time, she felt herself being drained in his inhale. She wondered if she’d lose herself.
As she kissed the stranger who wasn’t so strange, she noticed a large orb glowing above them. It was the same substance as the gateway they’d passed through from the spirit world to the living. It rose above them, its watery surface a bright blue, rippling with voices. When the orb reached the stone slab next to Camilla and her rotting bridegroom, it stopped. Its glow shone brighter The voices from inside grew in pitch and volume, hissing, screaming, laughing.
Camilla felt high.
The world is going to hell and I’m in heaven in this kiss
, she thought. Unable to stop herself, she reached her tongue into the man’s mouth, tasting his putrescence. His tongue entwined with hers and she was encompassed in his essence. She couldn’t breathe, but kept inhaling, not worried about the exhale, the release. She didn’t want release.
This is it,
she thought.
I can die now
.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Aludra lunged for the knife and she and the High Priestess had their brief struggle, the stunned guards loosened their hold on Libitina. Without thinking, she broke free and rushed to Camilla, bent on getting the two of them out of this place.
But she stopped.
The entwined dead bodies pulsated with light and heat hot enough to make her sweat. She grimaced when she realized that their bodies were becoming translucent, their veins and muscles showing. She almost gagged when she noticed the mass of maggots squirming inside the male.
Again, without thinking, she reached up for Camilla, since the two bodies hovered a few feet off the ground. The intense burn of Camilla’s skin caused Libitina to cry out. She jerked her hand away, shaking it. Her flesh tightened, then cracked and bled.
Tears spilled down her cheeks as she looked up again. Camilla was lost to her now, gone forever, and may not even be able to rest as a spirit after this. She had no idea what the ritual they were performing was actually for.
A clatter from the podium drew her attention just in time for her to see the High Priestess swooping down over the dying, or maybe already dead, Aludra, filling a goblet with the blood gushing from a wound in Aludra’s chest. As the chalice filled, a glowing orb formed above Camilla and the male half of Rory. Its watery substance seemed calm and quiet, but Libitina, recognized it for what it was: a gateway for spirits to come into the living world.
Realization sank in and she knew as she watched the High Priestess stand with her chalice of blood what the ritual was for, what the sacrifices were about, knew her purpose, Camilla’s purpose, in this place.
“This cannot be,” she said in a voice that didn’t seem to come from her, but rather through her. “I must protect her.” This thought, these words, also seemed to come from someplace that was a part of her, but outside. She didn’t understand it, but didn’t take the time to think about it. She didn’t have the luxury of time.
She couldn’t touch Camilla. Too hot. Couldn’t stop the ritual. The High Priestess was too strong.
She looked up when she heard the whispering, laughing, and screaming coming from the orb which now floated above the stone slab in front of the altar. The High Priestess’s manic grin unnerved her, unhinged something which had been loosening throughout the last few days.
“I am a warrior,” she said, not knowing why she said it. But the words sounded right, felt right. She said them again, louder. “I am a warrior. This cannot be!” And with these words still in her throat, she bolted toward Camilla and her strange bridegroom. When she slammed into their hovering bodies, she felt her face, her arms, and her side burn, crack, and bleed. But the force was enough to knock the two away from each other.
Libitina sprawled across the stone slab, the blue orb mere inches from her face. She flinched away from its call, shielded her face with her bleeding arm, and turned toward Camilla.
Camilla licked her lips, and then, with outstretched arms, headed back to the rotting man. The mangled pile of male flesh was doing the same. Libitina couldn’t believe they wanted more. Just a few seconds disconnected, and the color and substance was coming back to their bodies. She couldn’t let them rejoin.
As they got close to one another again, something threw them away. They both stumbled backward but maintained their balance. Seeing they were about to try to join again, knowing that if left to it they would eventually find a way, Libitina ran and grabbed Camilla. Her skin was still warm, but no longer hot enough to burn.
The pain in Libitina’s body was far away, a distant thrum she noticed but was able to ignore for the moment.
Camilla tried to pull free, torn face locked in the man’s direction.
“This way, woman!” Libitina shouted. “Come, spirit! I, Libitina, guardian of the dead, command you to come with me.”
Camilla’s arms dropped to her side. She turned and faced Libitina as though transfixed. Libitina did not cringe from her mangled features but stared into her empty eye sockets, observed the gnawed ends of the oculus nerves dangling on her cheeks, noticed bits of white, her cheekbones, gleaming in the candlelight.
To her surprise, Camilla walked with her.
* * *
So, she did know what was coming to her. She knew and planned to stop it. Insolent child,
the High Priestess thought as she filled her chalice with Aludra’s cooling blood. She didn’t notice Libitina trying to pull apart her bride and groom, or escaping. She held the bloody chalice to her lips and took a tentative sip of Aludra’s life-liquid. She could feel power surging through her with just one sip, lighting her insides as the fluid rolled down her throat and spread into her stomach. She closed her eyes, sucked her lips and prepared for a second drink.