Shadow Worlds and Chaos Lights

THE WORDS 'Lux vincit,' 'Light will prevail' were imprinted on a metal plate above the cell door where Doctor James Westlake was held captive. Tiny droplets of blood glittered on his eyelashes as he fought against the tears. He had long ago stopped hoping for someone to rescue him, and instead had started to hope for a quick death. He had been their prisoner for too long now, countless hours turning into days and nights of torture and rape, constant threats and false promises; too long a time to be in the hands of the Blackwell siblings.

"James..." Diana Blackwell, hunter of the second degree in the Order that called themselves 'Bellatores Luminis,' 'Warriors of Light,' looked at her victim with the same kind of look one gives a disgusting bug one's about to crush under one's feet, her voice filled with a supercilious contempt as she said his name.

Her uniform, white leather pants with a matching suit blouse and an armband with the order's emblem, two crossed swords and a golden sun against a blood red background, wrapped around her right upper arm, made James think of the Nazi Germans from when he had fought in the war. Diana's blond hair hung loose around her face, and her ice-blue eyes gleamed in the cold light from the fluorescent lamps in the ceiling.

Her brother, Phoebus, also a second-degree hunter, had removed his uniform shirt and jacket and had taken a seat on the floor behind James, holding him closely. Occasionally, he stroked over the other's naked chest with tender erotic movements, as if they were two lovers rather than enemies in a cross-examination. His gaze, however, never left his sister for a second as he watched her every move with an incestuous look in his eyes.

"James, James, James..." Diana said, her voice almost purring as she took off her blouse to avoid it getting stained. "...You know it's useless to fight back; your kin think you're already dead, but I will be merciful enough to let you choose whether you want me to end your existence quickly and relatively painlessly, or if you want me to give you a slow and painful death." She made a sound that James guessed was a giggle. "Tell me where your headquarters are and maybe, just maybe, I'll stake you right now instead of..." she didn't finish the sentence, but the eerie smile that touched her lips told James exactly what she wanted to do with him.

"Maybe our prisoner needs some more encouragement..." she raised a saw-toothed dagger, the edge of which was coloured by layer upon layer of dried blood; James knew that some of it was his own, and he shivered. "...Or, what do you say, brother dearest?"

"She is right, you know?" Phoebus laughed, a laugh tainted by repressed madness, and let his tongue lick one of James' pointed ears and his cheekbone before he went downwards and nibbled at his throat. His kisses were cool and inviting, filled with a false hunger, and James couldn't stop a moan from escaping. He felt Phoebus' lips smirk against his skin at the reaction.

"You like this, don't you? Did the one who made you hold you like this? Did he kiss you, caress you, and nibble your throat like this, making you moan from pleasure, and then when the moment was right...?" Phoebus bit into James' throat and started to laugh again. His teeth hadn't been sharp enough to pierce the skin, but the humiliation in the way Phoebus heckled him with what James' Blood-father had done out of love hurt more than any torture the sadistic siblings could come up with.

James bit the inside of his cheek hard and felt the thick wetness of his own blood fill his mouth. He didn't know what was worse, the sister's painful torture performed with psychopathic callousness, or the brother's perverted touches whose purpose was to create anguish and shame rather than pleasure.

How much longer could he stand existing like this? James wasn't sure. With every session with the siblings, his resistance had grown weaker and weaker, and his abusers knew it. But he had also noticed how his warders' patience had grown thinner and thinner. The examinations got shorter and shorter, the questions fewer and fewer, until it seemed like they only asked things in order to get a reason to torture him even more. The question was who would break first; him or them.

He looked up into Diana's eyes. The psychotic callousness was gone, and had been replaced with the expression of a sexual predator, and somehow he suddenly knew that this was the end. He cleared his throat and fought to keep his voice as steady as possible when he spoke. "I...Won't...Say...Anything...I'd rather die a thousand painful deaths than betray my own kind to the likes of you, you perverted, monstrous witch!"

Diana gasped, but it wasn't out of surprise over his defiant words; instead her eyes sparkled with orgasmic pleasure and her body trembled. She raised the dagger and with a moan, she drove it into James' chest. The knife burst the flesh, grazed the bones of his ribs and sank through his heart. Something hot and salty rose in his throat and ran from the corners of his mouth, splashing on his chest where the blade had entered.

Blood tears fell from his eyes as the world around him disappeared. It didn't hurt at all; it felt like falling asleep; it was over.

"Too bad..." Phoebus smiled and rose from the floor where he had been sitting. It was a pity; he'd wanted to torture him further with his advances. "...I wanted to play with him more."

"When will you learn not to mix business with pleasure, brother dearest?" Diana replied, despite the obvious hypocrisy of her words. Her hand twisted the dagger inside James' chest, causing thick globs of blood to pour from the ragged wound, her bottom eyelids tense with what looked like excitement. For a moment, she just stared at the thick streams of red that were beginning to pool in his lap, and then her eyes lost their glaze. She ripped the dagger out, half-heartedly wiping it on the now dead man's pants.

She went out into the hallway and called, with the same casual tone as a store manager when he tells the clerk to swab the floor. "We need a cleaner to Cell 114! Just dump him somewhere where he can be found, we need to set an example to show his kind what we will do to them"

"You know," Phoebus said, as the siblings left the cleaner to do his job, "...He never actually told us anything about the hiding place, did he?"

"That doesn't matter," Diana replied. "Soon, everything will be ready, and then there won't be anyplace in the whole world where those monsters can hide from the wrath of God."