Free Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro Page A

her painfully, intimately. Her head swam, and her legs closed again involuntarily. The pain he gave her this time welled up, cutting through the earlier, duller pain of her fall.
    Saint Sebastien stood up. "Good, she is intact. How many of the Circle will take her?" If he saw the horror in Lucienne Cressie's face, he paid no attention to it.
    Beauvrai looked hungrily at the woman on the ground.
    "A nice piece of flesh. It is a shame to have wasted her on one such as Achille."
    Saint Sebastien corrected him. "She will not be wasted. For our purposes, we must be glad that Achille prefers men."
    "No," Lucienne said, "No. No. No. No. No. No."
    Other men had joined them now, among them Achille Cressie. Lucienne saw that there was a red welt on his forehead, and felt some satisfaction in knowing that the perfume jar had hurt him.
    "... in the library. Immediately. We have less than an hour in which to finish the ceremony. It will be three months before we will have the same powerful influences for an Amatory Mass." He was already striding off toward the wide French doors leading into the house.
    The men with Achille were delighted to obey. As Achille grabbed her legs, de Vandonne pulled at her arms, ignoring her moan as her shoulder was wrenched again. As they lifted her into the air, she fainted once more.
    When she opened her eyes this time, she thought for a moment that her terror had been ill-founded, and that she had been taken to a physician for help. She was lying flat on a table, and there was a crucifix suspended over her head. Cowled figures stood around her. She was about to speak, to offer thanks for her rescue to these good Brothers, when she realized that she was still naked, and that the crucifix was inverted. Even as she saw this blasphemy, she looked at the corpus more clearly, seeing the obscenity that had been made of the Body of Christ. The erect phallus was as long as the torso of the figure, and a pentacle was engraved on the forehead. She turned away, crying openly now, knowing that she had not escaped at all.
    "Excellent, excellent," Saint Sebastien said, very near at hand. "She is conscious. So much the better." He addressed the hooded men around him. "You may use her as you will until three of the clock, once I have done with her, I will take her maidenhead, and will use her again just as the hour strikes. Keep that in mind. First and last, she is mine. Employ your lusts on her and on each other, but her virginity is mine."
    De Vandonne spoke, his voice shaky with excitement. "Will she submit, no matter what we do?"
    "She will submit," Saint Sebastien said with such utter certainty that Lucienne despaired. "If she does not, complain to me, and I will remedy that." He nodded to the hooded men. "I think perhaps you had best tie her down. The ropes aie fixed in the altar. And put the Devil's Member near at hand. I will need it at three o'clock. Be sure it is hot enough."
    "When you are done, who will taste her first?" asked one of the men in a coarse voice Lucienne did not know.
    "You must ask our host. It is for her husband to dispose of her. If he does not want her himself." This last was said with an unpleasant laugh.
    Achille grinned hugely, and there was genuine amusement in his tone as he said, "Le Grâce is so eager, and we of the aristocracy so rarely have the chance to do something for our lesser citizens..."
    "Achille!" Lucienne cried out with all her soul.
    Her husband's words stopped her cry. "Silence her, Le Grâce."
    She felt the rough hand cross over her mouth, and the inexpressible horror as her legs were tied, and her arms. She heard the hated voice of Saint Sebastien above her. "Dark Lord, this is for Power."
    At the first touch of his intruding flesh, she screamed, writhing in her bonds. Where was her dream now, the gentle hands, the sharp delight of kisses that were as the breath of life? Fierce, hating eyes looked down on her face as Saint Sebastien violated her. She bit her lip to stop