‘Part of the Ritual’
by Peter Walsh
Part Five
Christina Carnez prepared her captives for the start of the ritual. She started with Toni.
She conjured a strange knife with a curved black blade from inside her robes. She waved the knife in front of Toni’s eyes, which were wide with fear. In a flickering instant the blade hissed through the air and made very short work of the bonds, which held Toni, captive to the chair.
The Carnez woman wrenched Toni to her feet. With her limbs stiff from her confinement Toni would have fallen. She was held in an iron grip, her face now just inches away from that of her captors.
‘Look at me!’
Toni’s head lolled back slightly as she forced herself to gaze into the face of Christina Carnez. The dark depths of the woman’s eyes were now glowing with a red fire. The woman’s musk was almost intoxicating to Toni. She moaned through the tape and cloth, which gagged her mouth.
‘You are mine. Know it well!’
Toni suddenly found herself nodding in dazed agreement to her captor’s words. Feeling started to return to her arms and legs. Toni could try to fight or try to run but something told her that any defiance would be futile.
The blade of the curved black knife flashed again. Toni felt her clothes being shredded and falling away. In seconds she was naked before Christina Carnez.
‘Beautiful’. Toni heard the woman whisper and then felt her hands roam all over her body, touching her breasts and probing her intimate places.
The woman’s long fingers were then at her face. The tape was torn from her mouth in one cruel motion and the cloth wadded inside it was plucked out. Toni’s lips and cheeks were smarting. Suddenly her mouth was enveloped by that of Christina Carnez and ravaged further. Toni did not-could not fight and her eyes were locked onto the fiery orbs of her tormentor.
After a seeming eternity of thrusting tongues and biting teeth the embrace was broken. Christina Carnez laughed at the tears, which had involuntary formed in Toni’s eyes. Toni’s arm was gripped painfully and she was led away, naked, to a point on the glowing pentagram.
When she was in place, Toni was bound again.
Her arms were pulled behind her and she felt the cords tightly encircle her wrists as they were secured at the small of her back. Her ankles and knees were then bound together. Toni thought she was going to topple over and then she felt a jolt through the bare soles of her feet. The shock of whatever it was run through her whole body making her tremble. Toni then felt the sensation of an intense chill creep through her being and she found herself paralysed to the spot. She was frozen, unable to move a muscle in her body. She was trapped! She could only move her neck.
Toni cast terrified eyes downwards and saw that her pale and naked body had somehow become fused with the pentagram. Her nude form glowed with the same eerie green light that emanated from the pentagram. Toni cast her head back and screamed with all the power in her lungs.
A hand swiftly jammed something round and hard between Toni’s spread jaws. The ball expanded inside Toni’s mouth and stopped the screaming at source. A broad leather pad was then placed over her lips and made secure by tight straps behind her head painfully trapping a generous quantity of her long hair. The terrible gag enforced total silence on Toni. Her bright blue eyes were huge with terror.
Naked, bound, gagged and trapped by a diabolical force. In her fear crazed mind Toni wondered just how worse her ordeal could become.
It was then Shannon’s turn.
The busty little blonde was half-mad through her terror and confusion as the hellish vision of Christina Carnez loomed over her. She saw the knife being raised and that terrible fire burning in the woman’s eyes. Shannon jammed her eyes shut and screamed. Her scream was muffled by the cloth and tape that gagged her but it still sounded like a small animal caught in a trap.
She heard the swish of the blade as it cut through the air but it did not strike her flesh. Shannon felt the tight turns of rope that had held her to that chair for seemingly painful eternities fall away as they were severed. She felt fingers cruelly tear the tape from her mouth and roughly snatch out the wadded cloth. Strong arms hauled her from the chair.
Shannon felt like a weak and helpless child in the grip of Christina Carnez. She was forced to look into the wild visage of her captor, whose hair was being blown about by a mystery wind and who possessed eyes of red fire. The woman muttered an oath to her and Shannon felt the last of her own will flood out of her mind and body. Her clothes were cut away and naked, she was ravished by the woman’s mouth and fingers.
She was then dragged to a point of the pentagram where she was once more tightly bound. A great gag was then forced into her mouth and about her face; Shannon’s eyes were saucer-like above it. Then her body was engulfed by the green glow emanating from the strange symbols on the floor and Shannon was paralysed in place.
Shannon could move her neck-just. She looked and saw her friend Toni, standing bound and gagged, a blurred image trapped in that green glow.
Clare Connor furiously wondered just what lunatic planet the Carnez woman had escaped from. It was now all well beyond a joke. The candles, the crazy symbols, the bondage games and now the woman was playing with knives. What did she think she looked like in that bizarre red silk shift?
The Carnez woman sliced away the ropes that bound her. Despite the pain and stiffness in her body, Clare stood upright and with an effort reached up and pulled down the bands of material which had been tied about the lower part of her face. Teetering on her heels she spat out the cloth that that been stuffed into her mouth.
She glared at Christina Carnez as her saliva glands began working again.
‘What the hell do you think you are doing here? This is absolutely ludicrous! If are planning-aaaah!’
Clare was brutally slapped across the face by the Carnez woman. Her cheek burned and her ears rang. Clare staggered and fell. She was stopped from hitting the floor by long fingers gripping her hair. She shrieked and tried to hit out at her tormentor. Clare felt something cutting her clothes. It was that strange knife! Her expensive suit, jacket and skirt were torn off her body. The white silk blouse was shredded and the purple bra suddenly popped away and she felt her breasts drop. Her purple panties were cut away and she felt exposed and helpless. All Clare wore now were her high-heeled shoes and stockings.
Still gripped by the hair, Clare was forced to look into the face of Christina Carnez. What had she done to her eyes? The Carnez woman kissed her full on the mouth; she had done this to the other girls. Clare fought and tried to turn her face away. She also felt the woman’s finger interfere with her. Clare struggled but was all to no avail.
Naked, save for her shoes and stockings, Clare was dragged to a point of the pentagram. She was swiftly tied up again. A rubber ball was jammed into her mouth behind her teeth. A broad leather pad was then put over her mouth and Clare felt straps tighten as it was secured in place. The cloth gag that had silenced her only a short time before had been uncomfortable but it was nothing compared to this device. Then she could not move. Her body was suddenly shrouded in a green glow. Clare could not move anything save her head. Her eyes screamed the emotion that her mouth could not.
Sofia shut her eyes tight as Christina loomed over her. She had to do something. Her mind raced to find an incantation, anything that might halt the start of the ritual. Nothing came. Sofia and her companion captives were about to witness something terrible. Christina was going to bring Lilith into the mortal world, her body to host the ancient evil. Sofia had somehow survived the nightmare once she would not this time.
Sofia knew it was useless to resist Christina. She focused on the symbols on the flowing red shift Christina wore. Christina would not only recite the ritual, she was wearing it.
Sofia felt the black bladed knife slash through the ropes that bound her. Christina brought her up to face her. Sofia looked into the red fire in her eyes and despaired. Christina cut away her clothes, top, skirt and the skimpy black bra and panties. Sofia stood in just her black suede boots as Christina cut the gag from her mouth and then inflicted the brutal kiss on her. She felt Christina’s fingers probe her. She then blinked through blurred vision and saw the three other captives, naked, bound, gagged and trapped by the pentagram.
Sofia walked resignedly to her point of the pentagram and submissively crossed her wrists behind her back for them to be bound. Christina bound her with a swift mercilessness. Sofia didn’t fight as the rubber ball was pushed into her mouth and then fastened in place with the leather pad and straps. She felt the chill rise up through her naked frame as the power in the pentagram ensnared her in its ghostly green embrace. Sofia knew she could not move.
Christina Carnez stepped in front of her and smiled with an almost twisted affection, gently patting Sofia’s gagged face.
Christina Carnez looked over each of her captives. Toni and Shannon wept, Clare stared at her in mute fury, and Sofia cast her eyes down. It was time to start. Christina stepped to the remaining point of the pentagram. She raised here arms up to the darkness above the glowing pentagram. Her almost scarlet hued hair danced on supernatural breezes and her eyes blazed with a frenzied intensity.
Christina began to chant. Slowly and deliberately, repeating the ancient words, words that belonged to the age of darkness, that time of the old gods.
Trapped by the power of the pentagram the four bound and gagged captives looked on with a terrified fascination as the wind blowing through the chamber became stronger, making their hair whip their nude skin and the candle flames sputter.
Christina began to quicken her chants.
Sofia heard the terrible oaths assaulting her hearing, they were familiar and horrible but now impossible to ignore.
Toni found her gaze suddenly transfixed to the centre to the pentagram. Over the painful gag that trapped her mouth and face her eyes sensed something stirring.
Shannon’s shattered nerves could take no more and her head dropped forward in a dead faint but the pentagram still held her body in a rigid upright posture.
Clare was making frantic sounds past the rubber ball in her mouth and the broad leather pad over it; she refused to believe what she was seeing. It was her only defence.
In the centre of the pentagram something was coming to life, a shape without definition that glowed a spectrum of forbidden colours. It was growing.
Christina chanted ever more swiftly, her voice now a high-pitched rasp.
The shape grew upwards and outwards and was suddenly liberated from its invisible attachment to the centre of the pentagram. It then began to change.
Christina screamed in triumph.
Toni, Clare and Sofia saw an outline form, it was nearly human but a dozen times the size. The shadow cast by the form almost plunged the chamber into complete darkness. Dark wings sprouted from the spectre. Hair grew out of its head and rose up like thick cloud of snakes.
Then faster than the eye could see it started to fly about the seemingly boundless chamber. It moved swifter that lightening. It flew above, behind, between and in front of the captives.
Christina Carnez was still screaming and waving her black-scarred arms.
The frightening form then flew up and down and hovered in front Toni. Whatever courage the girl had left willed her to look up and into what she took to be the face of the fearsome entity.
Toni looked upon beauty. Beauty almost beyond mortal comprehension but then this was not mortal. Toni felt her fear evaporate in an instant. She felt warm. She felt safe. She could hear music. She felt the warm blessing of the sun on her face. She could see only light. The tears on her cheeks were those of intense joy. She felt like she could fly away and that nothing could hold her from flying ever higher.
Christina Carnez again screamed but Toni could not hear her and she was not aware of the sudden flash of white light and the great blast of heat that exploded through the chamber.
Epilogue
Toni felt hands gently raise her face up from the floor. Her eyes flickered open. She heard a voice.
‘I think we are safe’. The voice had a trace of an accent, Dutch?
Toni’s vision cleared and she saw the beautiful auburn haired woman crouched over her. The woman was nude save for the black, knee-high boots she wore. Toni thought she had a great body.
‘Let me take this gag off you’.
Toni felt the straps loosen and the pressure across her face vanished, she managed to retch out the rubber ball her mouth had been stuffed with.
‘Who are you?’ Toni croaked to her liberator.
‘I’m Sofia’. The woman smiled.
Another familiar stranger, the stylish blonde, joined the woman called Sofia.
‘This is Clare’. Sofia made the introduction.
‘Hi’. Clare smiled too. ‘I sincerely hope that the bitch didn’t tie you up as tightly as she did me’.
Sofia and Clare worked together and Toni was aware of the ropes melting away from her body.
‘I think we all have a few rope marks’. Clare commented. ‘Nothing that a little expensive skin therapy won’t eradicate though, I’ll treat all of us’.
‘I can’t wait’. Toni wheezed.
Sofia and Clare helped Toni to stand.
‘I suppose an article of clothing is too much to ask?’ Toni was somehow smiling.
‘Believe me, we’ve looked’. Clare sighed.
‘Shannon?’
Toni opened her arms to a weeping little blonde bundle. Toni stroked her friend’s hair and whispered comforting words. With her chin resting atop Shannon’s blonde crown Toni frowned.
‘Where is she?’
‘She-is a pile of ashes’. Clare told her.
‘Christina Carnez is destroyed’. Sofia added and gestured towards a patch on the floor. ‘Her body is no more but her soul ceased to be an eternity ago’.
Toni saw a pile of ashes. A couple of candles still burned but the pentagram no longer glowed.
‘Let’s get out of here’. Toni said.
Four naked young women emerged on shaky limbs into the warm daylight of a summer’s morning. Not one looked back at the ramshackle old house as they walked down the uneven surface of the driveway towards life and freedom. They all held hands and stuck close together.
‘I’m not sure what I saw in there?’ Toni said to Sofia.
‘None of us will ever know’. Sofia replied.
Mark Stevens was driving his white van along the Dyke Road towards the centre of Brighton. He didn’t mind the early starts this time of year. He functioned best in the summer months. He was listening to the news on the BBC when he saw something that made his jaw literally drop to the dashboard.
Four naked young women, two blondes, a brunette and a redhead were waving their arms about wildly, yelling at him to stop.
Mark stopped the van right then. With the engine still running he stepped down from the cab.
The nude girls rushed towards him and as one hugged him. They all clung to him and smothered his entire face with hot wet kisses.
None of his friends would believe a word of this.
The End