Love's Secret Domain

Lying against the marble altar flat on her back, Adalia was in and out of consciousness. Her head was turned to the side and she could feel the warm slither of her drool laced with semen sliding out of the side of her smudged red lips, pooling in her hair by hear ear. Blearily, she opened her heavy eyes to see the crowd of lusty robed men and women in the room. It reeked of sex, probably her own along with others’ although generally the fornication on the altar marked the start of the orgiastic celebrations of the Order.



“She’s dry.”



“Hold on.”



She heard the squeeze of a bottle of lubricant and again her body started to jostle against the hard marble. Peering down she saw her arm again extended out, the notch made in it and the slow dribble of blood from her wrist flowing into the wide-mouthed pot below her; the communal cup from which each follower will be allowed a sip. It was hard to keep a coherent thought between the blood loss and the Demerol and she’d pretty well abandoned all hope of it a long time ago.



Still, her eyes sought out faces amongst the crowd. It didn’t make much sense since they all wore masks, but again, logic and coherency were lost at these times. At the moment she didn’t even know who she was looking for, simply that her eyes were searching. Her head rolled up a bit and she saw nervous children, naked, trying to cover themselves. More offerings to the… well, whatever it was they thought they were worshipping.



Adalia knew her blood meant something. It had healing properties although she was fuzzy on why. Her father had told her many times of how she came to be, but she’d always dismissed it as pish. That her father was telling her these things to make her feel special, so she’d do what he’d asked.



At first her love for her father was borne out of every young girl’s love of daddy. He praised her, held her, told her how beautiful she was. His courtesans were often rather jealous of the attention and love he lavished on her. She felt worshipped and completely adored, like a real angel that he told her she was.



The first time he told her of her mother, she was a precocious three-year-old. Her small, pudgy fingers toyed with the pearly buttons of her father’s shirt as she listened. “We performed a long ceremony, it took three months to complete in full. I had a big circle and we chiseled runes and other symbols into the floor in the basement. You’ve been down there, right Adalia?” he cooed to her.



She nodded and her strawberry blonde curls tickled his neck as she pictured the dark room with the thick plum curtains. The air radiated power and fear, betrayal and anger, it was a void, a place where you could almost taste the savagery and need for power. It was a place of her nightmares, and she didn’t dare venture down there more than the time he took her there. If there were such a thing as holy ground, places that were sacred, this was its polar opposite.



“We drew down what would become your mother, Adalia. An angel in corporeal form. I did much research in drawing one down; it had to be a woman when it took a body. There was so much energy, so much power. She was beautiful, you have no idea how pure and innocent…. I took her. She was trapped in the web of our incantations and she couldn’t get away. I had followers in there night after night, keeping up the energy. We sacrificed 13 babies, countless animals, and one member of the brotherhood lost his sanity, but she was forced to stay. I wanted to keep her forever to defile. Butwoulwould seem that in the process of giving you life, her light faded and died. Only in her physical death was she allowed to return. Though we did our best to keep her alive, she was not to be contained. You were the beautiful thing she left behind, Adalia. You are the one child, the only child I want. I love you, my precious little girl,” he whispered as his hand lowered to slide up her thigh under her frilly white dress.



She twisted her head back to face the other way to escape the dream-like memory of what had happened next and tried in vain to lift her arms. Her limbs felt leaden and her body cold. Flicking her eyes down, she saw the man must have finished with her as the main woman ten tended her was carey cly cleaning the seed from her pubis and looking up at her sympathetically.



“Unnahhh…” she groaned, trying to close her legs. The woman nodded and gave her a whispered apology and quickly changed rags to dab off her face. Hearing the hard meat packing sounds of the frenzied copulation around her, she closed her amber eyes again, hoping for merciful unconsciousness. But that was not to come. The drugs were passing out of her system, and she could feel Maria, her nursemaid pulling her arm up and patching it gently. Her body was already working hard to replenish the lost fluid.



The twin teenagers who were left to tend to Adalia’s appearance stepped in and again powdered down her porcelain flesh, smoothing over imperfections or blotchiness of skin. It returned her to the perfect angelic doll look. They quickly removed her smeared lipstick and painted on a fresh coat of it and re-rouged her nipples. It made her feel like a French whore, an obscene Playboy version of what an angel would look like. And what was worse was when the children were brought to her for blessing before they were defiled. The looked up at her like she was a goddess, a true angel in their midst as she looked down imperiously upon them. As if she condoned it all, as if she were telling them to be good for her. It was repellant.



However, there was little she could do as she was dragged up to the throne that sat high up above the rest of it. It was gild in gold as were the steps leading up to it. Attached to the chair were huge white feathery wings that spanned nearly the entire room. Drugged beyond the ability to speak, she would simply sit there and stare down at the proceedings. The children were brought up to look at her, and she would look at them with as much empathy as she could. It a dia disgrace, her leg up over the arm of the throne, exposing all of her to those she’d never have see any of it. Occasionally, when she could muster the strength, she would try to reach out for theheirheir tender hands would reach back to her before they were whisked away and the nurse was sent up to give her another dose.



After the parade of children, she was left to sit there alone. At times followers would come up to pay their respects. Adalia would have been left to sober some, and would, at times, hiss at them to leave her alone. Mostly she would stare at them boredly and blankly, roll her eyes at them or ask who they were. Daniel would try to head this off as much as he could, but there was so much else going on, it was often difficult.





What had happened, however, was beyond his ability to plan. He never thought that the boy would run to Adalia, or that if he did, that Adalia would take such a keen interest in him. Up until that night, she had worshiped her father as if he were a god. He had lavished love upon her and she had returned in tenfold, blessing him personally and financially as she did everything he asked to the letter.



That night changed everything. She had a sly and rather keen sudden knowledge of who her father was and how he’d been using her. It seemed to happen overnight, as if Phineas had told her. Although there was no way the boy could have known any of it. She bargained and bartered at every turn, finding ways of keeping Phineas alive, in the house, clothed and fed, as he should be. She bribed and cajoled her father, keeping him from bringing Phineas into the business, keeping him ignorant of what she did behind the scenes. Though Phineas ended up spending most of his time locked away in his room, at least he was safe.



Finally her father had come up with a plan that he could irrefutably argue was better for Phineas, but would pull the two apart, making it easier for him to get what he needed from his daughter. Send Phineas away to school. Perhaps then he would learn magics and things that would be useful to him and the Order. He could argue that he wasn’t involving Phineas, thus keeping his bargain with his daughter.



She remembered that heartbreaking moment when Phineas and burst into her room, seeing what she had to do to keep him alive. How shameful. How horrible. She’d wanted to fly to him, but she was bound to her bed and outnumbered. Servants had told her of how her brother had been beaten and she’d gone to scream at her father for it. She was locked in her room for the next couple of days as she fumed and refused to do anything he asked. Trying to force her, he’d had her tied to the bed so that she would be forced to submit to one of his wealthy followers. While she had no control over her body sexually, the next day the wealthy man that was forced upon her hung himself in his own study as a result of her whisperings to him while he took her.



Though her father was a brutal user, he was not quite so cruel as to drug her to force her to do his will. And he worried how it might taint her blood if he did. Unlike Daniel, he knew that her blood was special, that she was as he’d said. Daniel had no belief in mysticism. Though he saw that the followers lived longer lives, he assumed it was better medical care. He never believed in any of it, so he thought little of drugging the girl. Because of her father’s unwillingness to sink so low, he’d realized he was outmatched by the 10-year-old and finally allowed her out to heal her brother. The boy was his only hold over her now and he knew it. And he hated it, hated the boy now more than ever.



“Com’on Dolly,” Daniel said, breaking into her thoughts as her thumb worked over her index finger lightly as she was ruminating over the few happy times in her life, the times she spent with Phineas. He was like air. And she was suffocating without him.



She looked up, vaguely surprised that everyone was gone. She’d spent the hours daydreaming of Phineas, and she had a soft smile that in her own way, she’d spent time with him in the only way she knew how. Daniel reached under her languid body and lifted her up easily out of the throne. “You did well, Dolly. Really well. We won’t need to do that again for another month. We’ll get our own place. In the country.”



“I’d rather die.”



“That can be arranged, Dolly. That can be arranged,” he cooed to her as he dumped her into her bed. His nostrils flared angrily for a moment as he glared at her prone form, though she was too busy pulling the covers up over herself to even notice him or his anger.



“Send Maria in, I need some water,” she said dismissively as she turned her back to him and cuddled in against the covers.



“Fine.” He turned angrily and simply pointed his thumb at the nurse to get inside to tend to her. He hustled out and down the hall to take a shower before bed.



Maria came in with an IV of saline to replenish Adalia’s fluids. Adalia lay back on her bed, resting her hands over the straps the woman would have to put her into and simply winced when the needle went into her powdered arm. “Maria, would you do me a huge favor?” she asked the woman. The nurse seemed professional enough and Adalia rarely fought her. Maria refused to dose her with the Demerol as it was against her oath to treat people to wellness. She was sickened by what the Order did, but was dedicated to keeping this poor girl as well as she could be kept. A devout Catholic, the nurse often prayed for the girl, but was not suicidal enough to try to report the situation. Instead she did what good that she could for her, often letting the girl cry on her shoulder.



“If I can, dear,” she said as she patted the poor girl’s hand before strapping her in.



“Find out what you can about Marion Francis.”



“Who is she?” Maria asked.



“He. And… he’s a friend.”



Maria nodded a little. She’d never heard of Adalia having a friend and didn’t know when she would have made a friend, but if it were someone she thought could help her, the woman would look for him. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised as she strapped the other arm into her restraint. She softly kissed Adalia’s forehead and then moved down to strap her ankles in.



“Thank you.”



“Goodnight, Miss Kracken,” she said as she turned and left the room. Marion Francis. She had no idea where to start; perhaps her son could look him up on the internet. After leaving the room, she retrieved her purse with the small envelope of cash in it from the Order and headed for home. “Marion Francis,” she repeated as she walked out to her car.