Bitten: Dark Erotic Stories (7 page)

Lucy remembers praying for Marie’s soul, too. Was that what had saved her?

“Heirloom roses,” Marie sighs, flinging Lucy’s arm away. “That’s how you’ve spent your gift of immortality, growing overpriced flowers. A pastime for bored suburbanites. The only plant you have of any value is this one.” She caresses one of the saberlike thorns. “The life of this rose makes your other plants look as fleeting as mayflies.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

“Then you know where the flower came from?”

Lucy nods. She remembers the old rosarian’s story. Blood fell from the Savior’s wounds as he hung on the cross, and in the dust below his feet the roses grew. The women weeping below him picked the flowers out of the dust. When Christ returned, the dead roses came to life, took root, and flourished. The ‘Madame de Mortoise’ was a descendant of those blossoms.

“These roses, little fool, hold the wine of resurrection,” the rosarian had said. “With each drop of your blood, the sacrifice renews itself.”

Marie gets up and begins to explore the greenhouse, stopping when her eyes light upon a pair of heavy pruning shears. She holds out the shears to Lucy.

“Cut the branches, Lucille. Give me the roots, and I’ll go. Isn’t it time to give me what I deserve?”

Hands trembling, Lucy takes the shears. She shouldn’t be so afraid of death; she should be as brave as Marie was when she faced the guillotine. Marie might be wicked, but Lucy can’t deny the truth. She can’t deny the way her heart briefly opened to Marie, like a pair of wings, when the older woman confessed her love. If there had been evil in the young Lucille, couldn’t Marie have had a shard of purity buried in the well of her soul?

Lucy opens the shears. Marie’s eyes sparkle in the candlelight.

“Yes. That’s right. Chop away—you won’t harm the rose. But wait. First let me have a taste. I’m weak,
cherie
. Not plump and lovely like you.” Marie laughs. “Soon you’ll be withered enough. Show me how the rose feeds.”

“Give her your wrist,” Lucy says dully.

“My wrist?” Marie says. “But a prick on the wrist wouldn’t be enough. I need vitality.”

“Then let her have your heart.”

The word
heart
ignites a memory: Marie de Mortoise lying in naked splendor on a heap of satin pillows, her slender torso arching backward in a pale parabola, nipples peaking skyward as Lucille bent to suck her breast. Two hundred years later, Lucy hasn’t forgotten the fragrance of Marie’s perfumed skin … the smoothness of her fine ribs underneath the silk … and under all of it, the eager pounding of Marie’s heart.

And Lucy remembers the simple thought that sprang up, unasked for, when her lips felt the rhythm of that longing pulse:
I love you, Marie.

Now Marie lifts her sweater, revealing a cadaverous torso, a rib cage like the frame of a rotting boat. Her bare breasts are mere pockets of skin, with no succulent meat for the thorn to sink into. Yet when she leans forward, a thorn extends itself, rooting for a vein. Marie’s eyes flutter in ecstasy as the spear punctures her skin. In the flickering shadows cast by the candles, her shrunken death mask is transformed into the beseeching visage of a
pieta
.

“Yes, yes,” she breathes. “Quench me with life.”

Her eyes roll back. Her lips open, exposing the soft brown maw inside. She pants in harsh gusts. The rose, used to Lucy’s deep chest cavity and strong muscle, sends its thorn plunging inward with a single, greedy thrust. Marie gasps—a terrible, sucking sound. Her back arches, limbs dancing.
The little death.

How well Lucy knows it. This is what she will miss: not her comfortable, contented existence, but this ritual of renewal with the rose.

Marie, impaled on the thorn, seizes, dances, then collapses, limp as a doll.

“Marie?”

Lucy stands up. She touches Marie’s shoulder as she once did as a girl. The body shudders once more. Then nothing.

The thorn retracts from Marie’s bony chest. Marie falls backward, lifeless. The rose that bears her name quakes in response to her tainted juices. Was the death-poison in Marie’s veins stronger than the life-blood in Lucy’s? The branches tremble; the thorns clatter like swords. A hail of blossoms falls. The glass panes of the greenhouse shatter as the vines thrash and flail. Lucy screams and covers her head with her arms against the rain of glass shards. A giant rumbling comes from the rose’s roots.

Silence.

Lucy waits.

She kneels and presses her mouth to the thick clump of roots at the base of the rose. If the rose dies along with the woman it was named for, this will be their final kiss.

Neither of us will die alone.

No rustle of leaves, no shifting of blossoms. The woody roots are cold to Lucy’s touch. From the depths of the blood black soil comes the faint thrum of the rose’s heart.

SMOKE AND ASHES

Shanna Germain

W
E’VE BEEN IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
for six days. I’d tell you where I am, but I don’t know for sure. About three hours and six gas stations of dirt roads away from any kind of town, on the shore of a big-ass lake. A big-ass, cold-ass lake.

It’s almost our last night here—I’ll be coming to you soon—and I’m tired and I’m lonely and I wish you were here. But you’re not. You’re somewhere else, and I’m here, surrounded by these boys.

Earlier, they built a bonfire right here on the beach. They loaded the wood higher and higher, until it was taller than my head—and I know I’m not that tall, but still. It’s been burning for a good three hours, maybe more, flaring hot and high. If you were to take one of the paddleboats out to the dark opposite side of the lake, I bet you’d still be able to see it.

The fire’s not big enough to keep the wind from coming off the lake, though. If it weren’t for your jean jacket, I’d be frozen. I sit on a log with my face to the fire, trying to keep warm. I don’t take up much space under the big sky, my hips slim against this makeshift bench, my thighs pale below the hem of a summer dress that now feels way too thin.

I have the boys around me—the ones you like, the ones you know, that you think of as big brothers for me. Watchdogs. I appreciate it, that trust. And that knowing—you know me so well that you know I need watching after. Remember the time in Mexico when the wave knocked me down and I broke my ankle? Or the time I fell over a rock on the trail and had to have surgery on my knee? I’m not safe on water or land, and yet here I am, at the border of both, without you near to protect me.

I shiver inside my jacket. The boys take it to mean I’m cold. Connor stands up from the bench and unzips his red sweatshirt. Every movement is deliberate, controlled. Unlike Patrick’s body with its rings and tats, Connor’s is bare, unadorned with silver or ink. Only a simple black choker, tight around his neck. When he stands in front of me, his body is too lean to eclipse the fire, but it casts a shadow over me.

“Here,” he says. It might be the only word he’s ever said to me. And what did I tell you? These boys, they watch out for me.

“Thank you,” I say. Connor sits back down—his eyes are so blue I can see them even in the firelight. He presses his leg against mine on the bench. It might be an accident. It might be the bottle of stout they’re passing around, or the joint they passed around before that. It might just be Connor’s leg pressed against mine. He knows what he’s doing with his thigh—the tightness of it, the deliberate press.

On my left, Patrick holds out the jug of stout. His fingers are studded with rings—crossbones and skulls, dragons eating their own tails. His skin is pale, see-through as starlight, and dark tattoos cross his wrists. Is he the one you’ve chosen for me, I wonder? And I almost hope not, although I’d never contradict you—but he’s too easy, too eager.

I take the heavy jug from him. The stout fills my mouth with its warm black honey. I lick the flavor from my teeth and lips and take another swig, feeling the boys’ eyes on me. I am the only woman here, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a hundred, two hundred boys. Most of them are scattered around in the darkness—as hungry and ubiquitous as bats. I can hear them call across the open spaces to each other, their voices shrill with dark and drink. They don’t even know what they’re hunting for, away from the firelight. Except these few, the ones who flit to me like burnt-winged moths. The odds here make me both predator and prey. You know that’s the way I like it.

I hand the jug back to the boys lined on the other log—three of them, the hoods of their sweatshirts pulled up to protect their necks from the cold coming off the water. Jeremy is the first to reach out, gloved hands taking the jug without touching me. He’s sweet like that, careful and innocent.

Connor flicks his lighter, silver and shined, and brings the end of his smoke alive.

“Can I bum one of those?” I ask.

He pulls the lit one from his mouth, holds it out to me. Tobacco mingles with wood smoke. The others watch the cigarette; they watch my hands and lips. Like children testing boundaries, we’re all drawing lines around each other here—what is the end point?

I take the cig from Connor’s fingers, careless, as though it’s nothing, as though to show this isn’t the edge of a boundary, it’s not an arc, it’s not even a point. My fingers slide against Connor’s in the dark. I press the warm filter to my lips, inhale. The others drop their heads and light their own smokes, their palms protecting the fragile sparks from the wind.

Patrick’s knee is touching mine now, too. Jeremy and the others sit across from us, leaning in. I am hemmed in by knees and eyes. My dress ripples at the edge of my thighs with each exhale.

The boys, they’re circling, finding their territory on me.

I throw my smoke into the fire and the boys start on a new game— “fuck, marry, kill,” it’s called. The group picks three people for you, and you have to decide which one you would fuck, which one you would marry, and which one you would kill.

“C’mon, you have to play,” Patrick says to me. He doesn’t say, “Because you’re the only girl.” He doesn’t say, “We want to know who you would fuck.” He doesn’t say, “We don’t care who you’d kill.” Which is a good thing, considering.

I inhale off my smoke, tobacco, and Connor on my tongue. I’ve had a dozen swigs of stout, so I can say yes. You know me; you know that I would say yes without the beer, but sometimes appearances are the only difference between prey and predator.

“Sure, okay,” I say, as though I’m reluctant, as though I’m appeasing them.

“Right on!”

“Not real people, though,” I say. My choices would scatter them like deer. “No one here.”

Patrick looks to the others for approval. They shift in their seats— the game has lost some appeal—but nod. “Fine,” Patrick says.

We start to play. The boys go first, saving me for last. They pick female celebrities for each other. Famous names—you wouldn’t know them, but then you never paid attention to the culture of the moment. Big tits and bleach blonde hair and lips that promise some kind of redemption. They take their time, choose carefully, starting always with the fuck. You can see them choosing in their minds: “Who would I most want to fuck?” Then, “Who could I live with?” “Who, then, would I have to kill?”

They agree or disagree with each other. One would fuck the busty brunette, another would marry her.

“Jesus, you’d kill
her
?” one of the boys says, after Patrick’s chosen to assassinate some tall, long-legged model.

Patrick lifts the jug to his mouth, silver rings turning orange in the firelight. He passes the jug to Connor. “Well, I’d fuck her to death, likely … “

Only Connor sits quiet, lights me another smoke, and passes it to me. His fingers slide the length of mine, capture my fingers in the passing. In the dark, no one sees that time stops, just for a moment, to burn itself out.

Connor’s cigarette is still in my hand. I press the taste of his lips to my lips, let it sink into my tongue.

“Your turn,” Patrick says to me.

“I’m ready. Give it to me.”

The boys confer, lean together, and whisper. Connor’s whole body is now pressed against mine. I can feel every muscle, the press and release of his breath. I would lean back, maybe, but there is nowhere for me to go. He has closed the air between us, not a cell’s width of space.

“Here are your choices,” Patrick says, and I try to turn my attention back to him.

He gives me three women’s names. That’s what men do, I’ve noticed; they put the women together in the hopes of finding something they think they want. It’s as far as their fantasies will allow them to go. They expect this to be hard for me, that I’ll giggle and blush.

The boys hem in closer, their hands at the jug, waiting for my answer. They’d be wolves if they had any teeth, but they’ve been raised properly. They’ll only go so far without being asked, or without a bit more alcohol, a bit more of the dark.

Too bad, I think. It’s a lost art, taking someone against their will. That’s why I like you so much, isn’t it? And why you like me. Why we fuck so well.