Page 66 of Fear No Hell

Calliope

My body aches. The burning sensation in my veins hasn’t gone away since that night two weeks ago when I drank Sam down. Since the moment I took his momentarily black blood and his cum into me.

I need blood. Sex. Vengeance. Violence. The order of the needs keeps shifting.

One minute I need to rip Arthur apart, the next I need to ride Sam into oblivion.

The way I want him—hard and dirty—isn’t how I want to take his virginity, though.

I want to give him something memorable for what this means to him.

To us. So I keep pushing it off, despite any fear I might have had about having sex for the first time since Arthur vanishing into the aether.

And because my sweet Sam is completely willing to go at whatever pace I set, he doesn’t question my decision to wait.

He went back to work in mid-July, and I’ve been back in the basement with Arthur every day since.

It seems the more I suppress the desire to take the final step and fuck Sam, the more the other urges rear their heads.

It feels the way a succubus described it to me a few centuries ago: all-consuming.

So every day after Sam kisses me goodbye and heads into work, I descend into the basement to work out this hunger.

A few months ago, I had torturing Arthur down to a science.

I knew how to injure him enough, psychologically, physically, and sometimes both, to cause immediate and overwhelming pain.

Now, though, we’re back to inhuman destruction.

More than once in the last few weeks, Sam has walked in the door to find buckets of blood staining the floor and shock setting in.

His steps turn quick as he races to his surgical setup and asks me quietly if I want him to save Arthur tonight.

I think he knows as well as I do that I’m almost done with Arthur.

I’m almost past my great revenge. So when he asks, I shrug and tell him to do what he can.

The soul-curdling anger at Arthur’s existence, of what he did to me for all those years, has eased from my soul, carried away by months of revenge and Sam’s love and support.

After all this time, I feel relieved. Like I can breathe.

The only thing that keeps me coming back now is the urge to control my overwhelming need for sex. That way, I can take care of Sam the way he deserves when I’m finally ready for that step.

I swipe at my hands with a cloth too grimy to remove any of the gore on my hands. With a scoff, I toss it onto Sam’s make-shift medical table and turn back to Arthur.

He wheezes out a gasp so hoarse I could mistake it for a branch scraping against the outside of the house if I weren’t paying attention.

It comes again, this time stronger, and I realize it’s not general pained sounds.

He’s whispering, taking advantage of not having duct tape over his mouth for once.

I raise an eyebrow at the shriveled man who was such a terrifyingly large monster in my life for so very long. “Did you say something?”

Arthur’s tongue darts over his broken, bleeding lips like a lizard would. I frown at him as one droplet slides down his chin and onto his puny chest. Funny that his blood isn’t enticing to me in the least. Only Sam’s is.

“You look fucking terrible.”

“Your first words to me in months are a comment on my looks?” I snicker mockingly.

“Don’t you understand yet? Your opinion of me—of any woman—doesn’t matter.

Because, at the end of the day, you’re a despicable.

” I step towards him. “Shriveled.” Another step.

“Waste.” I come to a stop in front of him.

“Of flesh that doesn’t deserve the life he was given and whose only contribution of any value to the world was stolen from a woman. ”

“Jealous bitch.”

“Jealous of what, Arthur?” I ask. “I’m free of your chains.

I have a life that isn’t dictated by what I am to others, who I inspire.

I get to live for me, the way I choose, and spend every day with the love of my life, who just so happens to be the son of the woman who left you because you’re a—say it with me—abusive, horrible piece of shit.

Tell me: what do you think you have for me to be jealous of? ”

“Ah, yes.” Arthur coughs, long and rattling, his body shaking uselessly in his chains. The metal beams holding him creak overhead. “The whore’s bastard.”

“Rich of you to call anyone a bastard.” I scrape a fleck of skin out from underneath one of my nails.

“He was lucky—” Another coughing fit cripples his body, and I wait patiently for his hacking to end.

“He was lucky I was willing to play father for him, given he wasn’t even mine.

” He spits a wad of phlegm onto the ground at my feet, missing me by inches.

When I don’t flinch at his disgusting exhibition, he continues. “Ungrateful little shit.”

I slap him hard, the tips of my fingers curled inward, so my claws gouge into his flesh and rip forward. Blood rains down around me as my nails come free, four marks scored deep into his cheek.

He shrieks, little more than a pitiful cry with the way his throat is scraped raw.

“Watch it,” I snap, the fiery burn of power flaring in my chest, demanding retribution for the insult to Sam. “Don’t you dare fucking talk about Sam like that.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty head. That little bastard is going to get what’s coming to him.”

I hiss, punching hard into his abdomen. The sharp crack of a rib giving under pressure is satisfying.

I tilt my head to the side. It would be more satisfying if I carved the bone out of his chest entirely.

My fingers curl, the flesh tingling at the idea of tearing his torso to shreds and ripping the cracked rib out of its bony structure with only my immortal strength.

The screams of pain, muted though they might be, would be incredible to hear.

Arthur’s gasps fill the room. His face is ghastly white, brows pinched, as he pants in pain. Suddenly, clarity rocks me.

He isn’t going to survive the night. I don’t know whether he’ll simply perish from all of the damage I’ve done to him or if the fiery need inside of me will demand a final, intentional pound of flesh. Either way… He isn’t making it to tomorrow.

I prod at the idea, surprised when I feel only peace. I’m ready to be free of him. To be done with this. I’ve gotten everything I need from this. And now? Now, I want my life with Sam.

“Both of you are going to get the fucked up end you deserve,” Arthur wheezes.

“Oh? Is that so?”

“I just wish I could be here to see it happen.” His eyes are lit with a manic hatred as he sucks in a deep breath. “Be there to see the whore’s son get what’s coming to him. No one’s gonna be able to save him when the cops find out what you two have been doing down here and come to take him away.”

“No one’s coming for you. Everyone already thinks you’re gone.

Suicide after your final novel flopped, and you were forced into retirement, or on the run.

Remember?” Reading him the articles from the newspaper, not to mention the Reddit theories on his untimely death or his criminal run from justice, depending on the source, had been cathartic.

He had wept, deep, wracking sobs that tore from his chest.

The sounds of his grief had been almost as good as those of his pain.

As if I didn’t speak, Arthur finishes his thought, too caught up in his delusion of what might happen to stop. “Maybe the boy will resist when the cops arrive, and they’ll shoot him,” he hoots in a thick bubble of blood.

A vision of Sam, lying dead on our basement floor, riddled by bullets, the life draining from his beautiful eyes as he’s lost to me forever when I only just found him, flashes through my mind. We’re meant to have the rest of his life together. Longer if I can figure out a way to make him immortal.

My hands clench into fists as I try to banish the thoughts of dead Sam.

Nothing is going to happen to Sam. He’s safe and, what’s more, no one suspects that he has done anything wrong.

We’ve been safe and careful in our torture.

Although I know all of that’s true, I can’t get the images flashing through my head, scored by Arthur’s wheezing laughter, to leave my mind.

“You know I’m right,” he crows. There’s no vocal power behind his words; I'm not sure he could summon up a booming sound even if he tried.

The problem is he doesn't need to sound powerful for the words to be powerful.

Their power is in the suggestion: the idea that Sam could be gone from my life as quickly and easily as he entered it.

Because of me. Because of the road I started us down when I asked if I could keep Arthur around.

Because of every action Sam has taken to support me on my vengeance-filled path.

I know how implausible Arthur’s taunts are. It doesn’t matter. They still manage to sneak their way in through the cracks caused by my panic, merging into a twister of mostly incoherent thoughts. One stands clear among the rest of the rambling in my head.

I won’t lose him. No one will ever take him from me.

Scarlet fury that Arthur would threaten Sam—my Sam—floods my vision, burning away the panic and doubt. Filling me with a deep sense of certainty, although clarity is far away at this point.

I know what I have to do.

I’m moving, tearing at his abdomen with my claws until I see the fresh white glare of bone.

And the world around me vanishes in a haze of rage.