Virgin Sacrifice: Bred to the Beast (3 page)

Rela cooed in her ear and stepped closer.  "Oh, you know.  So close to the Sending, but dancing on the edge."  Anja felt the fullness of Rela's bosom as large, hard nipples press against her back.  Rela's hands swept up beneath Anja's arms to cup her breasts, and she rubbed and teased the nipples until they stood out firm and pink.  "Your desire is strong to forsake Krall.  You feel that urge each time you're with him, don't you?"

Anja shook her head.  "I've not let him inside me," she whispered, then winced as Rela pinched her nipples, rolling them slowly between her fingertips.

Rela slid her right hand lower, over Anja's belly.  "Oh, you have, you dirty girl.  Just not here."  That hand moved over the sprig of hair between her legs and brushed the inside of one thigh.  She pulled Anja close, until her firm buttocks pressed against the other woman's groin.  "Oh, but you want to, don't you?  You play with the flame, hoping it will burn you.  How can a woman be blamed for what flame does?  It is in flame's nature to burn."

"No..." Anja said.  "I trust him.  Lucas wouldn't..."

"Oh, but he would, girl."  Rela's voice was a soft hiss in Anja's ear.  "All men are animals, if you push them far enough.  But women, women know what women need."  She worked her hand up against Anja's crotch, and the younger woman shuddered as those long-nailed fingertips slipped between her folds, drawing out her moisture and rubbing it against her sex until she grew swollen and slippery.

Shame flooded Anja.  Had all the girls done this?

"Oh no," Rela said as though reading her mind.  "Most fear to dance near the fire.  But not you, young Anja."

One finger curled gently inside her, and Anja felt pressure as it met resistance almost immediately.  Rela let out a satisfied sigh.  "But you're a good girl, aren't you?  You will draw a token today, and perhaps make the lonely climb to the Howling Ravine.  Does that frighten you?"

"Very much," Anja admitted.  Her vision blurred, but she steeled her resolve and pushed down her tears.

Rela's fingers made soft circles against Anja's sensitive flesh.  "There there now, child.  The Beast awaits, but so does pleasure, if you embrace him."  Those fingertips pressed down harder, circling faster and faster, and Anja writhed against the Wise Woman's body.

Anja moaned between labored breaths as Rela's words swept over her, but all she could think about was the other woman's hands.  The left squeezed her breast until it ached with each beat of her heart, and the other moved between her legs as though Rela knew Anja's every desire.  Waves of pleasure rippled up through her, and she put her own hands over Rela's to clutch them and urge them on, harder and faster.

Rela laughed and pulled away suddenly, leaving Anja hot and breathless.  She swayed across the tent, all serpentine hips and long, slender legs as she mounted a low platform covered in furs.  She turned her sultry eyes and beckoned Anja closer.  Anja's legs carried her forward as though in a trance.  "Lie down, child.  Let me show you what awaits when you embrace that which you fear."

Anja eased herself down onto the furs, and Rela knelt between her legs, pushing them apart.  She leaned forward, and for a moment, it seemed to Anja that the Wise Woman floated in the air above her.  Anja's ripe breasts stood firm and swollen with desire.  Rela stretched forward until her large bosom hung above Anja's face.

"Give suck," she said.  "Know what a man feels at your breast.  Know his need."

Anja raised her head, and her mouth closed around one of Rela's nipples, large and dark and hard.  Rela sighed as Anja sucked, gently at first, then harder as her tongue worked against it.  Rela's hands pulled Anja's head up and held her close.  Anja felt her own desire rise, flaring between her legs to match Rela's mounting pleasure.

Then Rela pulled back with a gasp.  Her golden mane brushed Anja's face and neck as her tongue left a wet, swirling trail down Anja's neck and over her collarbone.  That tongue moved down between Anja's breasts, lapping up the beads of sweat, moving lower still, over the faint, fine hair below her navel that grew dark and coarse between her legs.

Anja tensed, but Rela pushed her legs apart with a strength she wouldn't have believed.  "Embrace it, child.  Embrace what you fear," the Wise Woman said.  Her mouth dipped lower, and Anja felt hot breath against her exposed sex, then lips brushed her folds, lighter than a feather.  Even that gentle touch shot through her body like lightning, but a moment later her wet tongue flickered against Anja's quivering bump.  The urgent need, so tempting when she was with Lucas, suddenly exploded in a brilliant flash of ecstasy that wracked her body with convulsions.

Anja's head rose up, and she cried out as her hips bucked against the Wise Woman, but Rela simply held her down, pressing her face harder against Anja's cleft, suckling her sex as that tongue writhed like a mating serpent, shattering Anja's consciousness with bolts of pure bliss.  The pleasure ripped a ragged scream from her lungs as she rose up on her toes and shoulders, rubbing herself against Rela's mouth as tension rippled through every muscle in her body.  Anja let out a final wordless yell, then slumped down, spent and panting.

Rela rose to her feet and smiled down.  "Remember," she said.  "If you are chosen, you are powerless.  The Beast is like the flame.  Fight it, and know only pain.  Embrace it, and know warmth."  She took up the bearskin and draped it back over her shoulders.  "Rise, child.  The time draws near."

Anja stood on trembling knees and reached for her dress, but Rela put a hand out and stopped her.

"Your belongings stay here."  She draped a thick cloak over Anja's shoulders, so dark it was almost black, and presented her with a pair of soft slippers the same color.  "Go now, child.  And may fortune favor you."  She turned away from Anja, and a gust of wind raised the tent flap as though summoned.

Anja stepped outside, squinting in the bright daylight until her eyes adjusted.  The fresh, clean air filled her nostrils, and the smoke-filled, cloying air of the tent faded like a distant memory.  Dal waited, shuffling back and forth about twenty paces from the tent, unwilling to come nearer.  She gathered the dark cloak tight around her naked body and went to him.  Dal nodded with relief, then ushered her to the tree.

A small crowd of young women waited with the rest of the Village Elders, each wrapped in a dark cloak and slippers.  Anja counted, but there were only fifteen, including her.  Six had been cast out of the village, then.  Six girls who had been her friends growing up had lain with a man, and she would never see them again.  Anja felt no sorrow, only resentment.  By lying with a man, they had increased her chances of being chosen. 

The women smiled nervously when Anja joined their ranks, but none spoke.  All knew that one's misfortune would be the salvation of all the rest.  When Colan Prand, the Chief Elder, stepped forward, they formed up in a line, with the eldest girl at its head and the youngest at the tail.  Anja took her place near the middle.

Colan looked over the gathering, his rheumy blue eyes flickering from one girl to the next beneath his bushy white eyebrows.  Finally, he nodded and cleared his throat.  "Now that you're all here, we'll begin.  There is no ceremony for the Sending, for we do not wish to dwell on what must be done."  He walked up and down the line, gazing into each of their faces one by one.  "One of you will be chosen to go up the mountain.  We do not know what will happen to that girl, or whether she will return, but we know that her actions will protect Krall and bring good fortune to her people.

"There are sixteen tokens, but only one is red.  The girl who draws the red token will be chosen, and the rest will be free to go."  He raised a clay jar with a long, slender neck, painted a somber black.  When he shook it, Anja could hear the wooden chits rattling around inside.  Her fate lay in that jar, a simple piece of painted wood.

Colan returned to the front of the line and nodded to the first girl.  She swallowed and took a deep breath, then thrust her trembling hand into the jar.  The other girls leaned forward, crowding each other to see what she would draw, but Anja simply stared straight ahead.  If the red token was drawn, she would know soon enough by the reaction of those around her.

A relieved sigh escaped the first girl.  She had drawn white, then.  The jar moved quickly to the next.  Another sigh, and so on down the line, each moment drawn out so it seemed an hour had passed when Colan stepped in front of Anja and held up the jar.  The opening atop its long neck gaped like a black maw, but she thrust her hand in, letting her fingers flit across the remaining handful of tokens.  She closed her eyes and tried to sense the texture of each, hoping that her fingers could detect some variation in the paint.

Colan glared at her as though reading her mind, and gave the most miniscule shake of his head.  Anja closed her fingers around one at random and started to pull her hand out.  A terrible sense of foreboding swept over her, and she dropped the token as though it burned, then hurriedly picked up another and swept it out of the jar.

Anja didn't need to open her eyes to know which she had chosen.  The relieved sighs were a chorus this time, not from her, but from the seven girls who would have drawn after her.  Numb, she stared down at the round red disc in her hand, the crimson of fresh blood.

"The rest of you may go," Colan announced, his voice grim.  The other girls hurried away, their dark cloaks flapping to expose pale bare legs beneath as they whispered in hushed tones, none looking back at Anja even to offer sympathy.  Colan looked past Anja's shoulder and nodded, and she turned to see Rela there, swathed in a robe of shining red silk, the bearskin thrown over her shoulders like a mantle.

"Come with me, child," Rela commanded, her voice cold and imperious.  Anja fell in beside the tall blonde woman, and they strode away from the green, flanked by the Elders.  Two men on horseback followed at some distance, ambling along with casual indifference, but Anja knew they were there to make sure she didn't try to run.  As Rela led them uphill past Anja's home, Anja glanced at the house, hoping to see a glimpse of her father inside.  The blacksmith's apprentices held him captive so he wouldn't do anything rash, but the curtains were drawn, and one of the Elders behind her nudged her further up the hill.  She wondered if she would see her father again.

The streets were empty and quiet as they walked, but Anja saw faces peer from behind curtains, some relieved, others saddened, but all curious.  It was a relief when the houses grew more sparse, and the narrow street faded into a wide meadow, where goats grazed on green grass among a scattering of boulders.  Further up the slope, tall pines concealed the mountain and the high passes.  The wind was stronger here, and it threatened to rip the cloak from Anja's shoulders.  She shivered as the cold air slipped beneath the fabric to caress her naked body.

Rela led Anja and her escort to the edge of the trees, where the Elders, bent and frail with age, stopped.  Rela and the two horsemen continued, leading Anja along a much narrower path lined by small, rounded boulders that reminded Anja of skulls half-buried in the thick carpet of pine needles.  The sun crawled across the sky as the trail wound ever upward, until the trees faded behind them even as her breathing grew labored.

On the rocky slopes far above the village, Rela stopped at a fissure in the mountainside.  A mournful howl emanated from that crack, rising and falling with the wind.  The Howling Ravine, where few dared to tread.  "You must go alone from here, child.  Follow the trail to its end, and remember, what you do, you do for your people."  She bent slightly and kissed Anja on the forehead.  The warmth of Rela's lips reminded Anja of what they had done in the tent.  "We will remember you always."

The Wise Woman smiled, then turned abruptly and strode back down the trail, her red robe billowing and shimmering in the gloom.  Anja watched her go, then looked past to the vast plains of the lowlands spreading out below.  Krall was shrouded in shadow where it nestled against the mountain. 

The two horsemen waited, staring at Anja.  They would stand vigil all night, to make sure she didn't sneak away.  With a last look below, she turned and stepped into the narrow fissure.

The canyon funneled the wind into a narrow channel that howled mercilessly, chilling Anja to her bones.  No matter how she clutched her cloak, the wind ripped it back to expose her belly and legs.  Gooseflesh rippled across her skin, and her nipples puckered to hard bumps as she trudged upward.

Low clouds covered the sun, casting the ravine in a dim light as Anja trudged upward.  Soon snow began to fall, light flakes at first, but then flurries, until the mountain was covered in a light coat of virginal white.  Anja's slippers made the footing treacherous, and broken boulders and rocky crags took on menacing shapes in the corner of her eye as she focused planting her feet carefully on the trail ahead.  Anja's thoughts turned to the Beast that waited somewhere ahead?  What was it?  What would it do to her?  She remembered Rela's advice and tried to embrace her fear, but it held her in an iron grasp.

A dark place appeared on the slopes ahead, a deep shadow against the snow-covered rock.  The trail twisted and turned up the mountainside, leading her closer and closer.  Soon she saw that the dark place was a cave that yawned like a hungry mouth in the rock wall.

She stood at its entrance and paused, thinking of all she'd left behind.  Her clothes, her father, and even her betrothed.  An image came to her, Lucas with his wide grin and wider shoulders, that mocking bow.  Her heart ached for him, but she wondered if she would see him again, or if he would accept her after this.  Why hadn't he been there to see her off?