Chapter 244: Cloaked in Dark
[ Old world - somewhere very very close to the Blackmoon Settlement ]
( CAUTION: The following Chapter contains some graphic descriptions that many might find disturbing. I had to incorporate it because it was necessary to feed the essence of the story. If you find it disturbing please feel free to skip it. I will try to write the following Chapters in a way that you don’t miss out on the story)
"Wake up, my pretty little one... don’t keep me waiting."
Roanoke’s voice slithered through the midnight air like a blade across flesh... Well, technically he did yield a blade and there was flesh as well.
He crouched over the rotting body, laid flat on the earth...just beyond the borders of the Blackmoon Settlement.
His shadow writhed unnaturally long in the devilish glow surrounding him. The trees around him seemed to lean away from him, their bark splitting as if they too recoiled from what was about to happen.
Before him there was a crude circle that had been carved into the ground...not with chalk or salt, but smeared with congealed blood, thick enough to glisten black.
Some Shifter bones jutted out of the soil at jagged angles, arranged in a grotesque symmetry...like the devil trying his hand at modern art.
At the center,right beside the dead body,a mound of skinless, twitching meat quivered...it was stitched together with black thread.Flies buzzed violently around it.
Roanoke grinned, his teeth stained crimson.
"Closer... come closer now. You wouldn’t want me to waste all this effort, would you?" Roanoke was talking to someone, taunting even... but nothing was visible to the naked eye
From his satchel, he drew out a severed hand, still wearing a wedding band. He pressed it against the quivering mound, whispering words in a tongue that scraped against the night like sand paper.
The meat shuddered, sucking the hand in with a wet, sucking sound that made the ground tremble... then the dead body trembled a little too much.
"Ahh, there you are. Hungry little thing, aren’t you? Don’t worry, there’s more. There’s always more for you darling...He took your Blood, he keeps it locked up,thinks he has an upper hand...thinks he can boss me around...but I have you...your real body...so what if I can not have your soul..."
" You know, your daughters are fierce... but useless...I don’t care about that whore Autumn,but Lyla? She is my own blood, ain’t she?" He rubbed his temple clearly showing that he was tense. "That brat ought to be grateful... ought to worship me for bringing her back... yet she refuses to give me that bastard daughter of Autumn’s. Her mother’s gone. With her flesh I can finally bring you back as well... we can rule the earth just like I always wanted to... but no. That irritatingly annoying daughter of ours, refuses to help me. Refuses to give me, Freya! "
Then a wicked smile spreads over his face. "But, well... well... look where we are... She’s gone to a party along with her stupid husband. Now is the time... I can finally put that bastard blood in that pup’s vein to good use!"
His crimson teeth scraped against one another creating a screeching noise.
Then he slowly turned around,reaching behind him where two bound bodies...barely alive, their throats cut but not deep enough to kill...struggled weakly.
Their moans were muffled by cloth shoved into their mouths. Roanoke stroked one man’s hair with mock affection as he whispered. "Don’t fret. You are part of something beautiful tonight."
With a swift, cruel twist of his knife, he slit one man’s belly open.
The smell hit instantly...hot, putrid, metallic. He scooped a handful of steaming entrails and flung them into the circle. The mound let out a wet, guttural gurgle as it devoured the offering. The bones beneath it cracked as though it were chewing... the dead body trembled as if laid over a vibrating platform and then it went still.
Roanoke chuckled, cockily but with a hint of caution as his eyes darted to the shadows.
"Do you hear that? Even the ground sings when I feed it. Oh, the Blackmoon bastards would hate this, wouldn’t they? So close to their borders...if only they knew. They can not know...But what can they do? Hmm? Their Alpha’s not here to defend their precious princess tonight...neither is their stupid Luna. "
The second captive whimpered, eyes rolling in horror as Roanoke dragged him forward.
Roanoke snarled, pressing his bloody fingers to the man’s lips. "Shh. No prayers. Your gods don’t walk here. Only my kind does."
With deliberate slowness, he carved strange sigils into the man’s chest with his dagger...and each one echoed on the dead person. Those symbols strangely looked like the sigils that Autumn had clawed over the floor of that attic, when she had experienced her first outburst, after mating with Kieran.
The symbols weren’t exactly the same per say, but eerily similar.
Roanoke carried on with his work diligently...each stroke caused the circle to flare faintly...crimson, then orange...then dim again, like a heartbeat. The man screamed, and Roanoke smiled wider.
Grinning maliciously, he muttered as though confiding in the writhing mound. "Do you feel it, little wife? The fear. The despair. It seasons the flesh so nicely...doesn’t it? "
He shoved the man into the circle whole.
The blood bound soil opened beneath him like a mouth, dragging the body down as though the earth itself were swallowing him alive. The screaming cut off with a wet snap.
For a long moment there was just silence.
And then the sickening squelch of unseen chewing below the soil.
Roanoke wiped his knife on his sleeve,smeared in red and black.
The earth inside the circle trembled violently.
Then...hands burst through the circle, clawing at the night air. Bloodied. Rotten. Stinking.
More followed, then they bent. Half fleshed torsos of something that had no right to exist peeked their heads. Jaws hung loosely, twitching, stitched together with veins like ropes.
Roanoke clapped like a mad scientist marvelling at his own work...ecstatic, whispering reverently. "Yes... yes, that’s it. Breathe for me, my darling. Show me that I am still your husband...your only master."
The dead body screeched as if in response.
It was a sound so foul it made the trees shiver. Black ichor dribbled from its mouth, burning into the ground like acid.
Roanoke chuckled, licking the blood from his fingers.
He smirked, eyes flashing with pride as he heaved a deep sigh of pride and relief."Perfect. Now... rise.The feast tonight is just starting...I hope I got your appetite tickling,my love."