Hey perverts! Justine G here. The MMP docents have allowed me this divine moment of bandwidth to present to you the Prologue to the next Blackstone Erotica outing, continuing my sordid tale of sex and sorcery. Book 3 will be titled YELLOW SIGN BOUND and it’s full of crazed artists, possessed investigators, cursed daggers and of course, more weird couplings (triplings? grouplings?) than you can reasonably process.

Anyway, I know it’s been a while since Summonings: Yvette’s Interview and even longer since GREEN FEVER DREAM wrapped up, so I hope this tides Blackstone readers over until Book 3 comes out, which should be by September at the latest. Promise.

It all starts below the break! Thanks for all the strange love and great reviews!

 

Justine xox

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Worst duty I’ve ever pulled, the patrolman thought. Guarding a door in some dank underground tunnel. Place stinks of the Thames.

The patrolman glanced to his left, where another patrolman stood. Between them, the two burly men quite filled the passage. Nobody was getting by them today, and a good thing, too, considering the scene that lay beyond that heavy door.

‘Ere, mate. You peep what’s back there, then? said Patrolman One. Patrolman Two nodded curtly, not even sparing Patrolman One a glance.

‘Course I did. I was first on the scene. I was the one what called it in. So yeah, I’ve seen it. Enough to know I don’t want to see it again, said Two. Now shut yer gob. His gaze remained straight ahead, his back to the door. One wasn’t fazed.

Christ, but if that’s not the worst room I’ve ever set foot in, I don’t know what is, whispered One. I mean, I’ve seen some monstrous doings, I ‘ave, but that? All that kinky stuff and then the blood and the bodies. It’s a multiple homicide, is what it is!

Two nodded again. Might be a tad more serious than that, if they’ve called the Dagger in.

One let out a low whistle. deMarigny’s on this? I thought he was done with the Yard? Liaison and like that with Interpol and that, um… well, that spooky outfit down Charing Cross. You know the one, mate. I mean, after that other business…

Two grunted. That other spooky business, you mean? Yeah, I reckon what’s behind this door might still be of interest to Declan deMarigny.

What do you mean?

Two finally turned his head and fixed One’s eyes with a none-too-steady stare.

Listen, mate. You want to stay healthy in the ol’ think-meats, do yourself a favour: when the Dagger gets here, and pulls that sheet away from the big pile just the other side of this door, you do like I do. You keep looking up this fuckin’ tunnel. You keep your back to that room, right?

Christ! What’s back there?

Two ground his teeth, then sighed. I honestly do not know and I daren’t speculate, mate, but if it’s not the weirdest shite I’ve seen in my nineteen years on the force, it will do until the weird shite gets here. Now shut it!

A clamour of voices reached them from further up the tunnel, and before long the lean figure of a man appeared, wearing a black trench coat and the kind of expensive grey suit not usually seen in filthy London tunnels. Behind the man floated a small white cloud of technicians, dressed in full hazmat suits, carrying silver instrument and sample cases. The man closed the distance to the door in seconds, sending up a spray of foul water as he came, thoroughly dirtying his Barker Blacks as he did so. The man pulled and flashed a badge from inside his trench coat.

Officers, he said. Declan deMarigny, in service to the Shadow Cabinet. I’ll be having a look in that room now, if you’d be so kind…

Patrolman One lifted a tentative finger. Err… you mean “in service to the Queen”, surely, sir?

Ha. Of course. Now, if you’ll step aside for a moment. Two angled his body to let the lean man pass. deMarigny paused before the door, then brought his right hand to rest lightly on the heavy iron bar that served as the handle. He felt the old tingle travel across his scalp in chilly waves. Then, the unguarded thoughts of the officers behind him filled his head…

Hope he knows what he’s getting into, thought Two. Prolly gets off on this unnatural business. Scary bastard, that.

The thoughts leaking from One’s head were simpler. I wonder why they call ‘im “the Dagger”, then? Hmm.

Declan deMarigny smiled and pulled at the iron bar, leveraging the door open. A foul stench escaped the room beyond and filled the tunnel, setting the officers to gagging. He turned to One.

It’s because of my legendary cock, old son. Such a weapon you’ll rarely see.

The bewildered officer paused in his retching to stare goggle-eyed at deMarigny.

And you’re right, Declan hissed at Two. I am a scary bastard. A scary bastard who needs you to stop thinking so he can do his job in peace. deMarigny threw a well-manicured thumb over his shoulder. Keep that lot out until I say so.

Y-… yes, sir!

His eyes to the floor, Declan deMarigny stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. Quite close to the entrance was a large mass, covered in a sheet, which he stepped around without touching. He took in a deep breath, held it and closed his eyes. Silence. The utter silence of the tomb. He opened his eyes, taking in the scene all at once.

Before him was a long hall with a low ceiling. The same white marble that adorned the outside of the building above, the Spa N’th-lei, had been used, only instead of precision cut and polished tiles, here were rough, uneven slabs of stone covering the floor, and strangely angled sheets of it made the walls and roof. Halfway along its length, the floor of the chamber began to slope away and down, until the white slabs disappeared below a line of black water that rippled, unbroken, to the back wall, where the shallow arch and bars of a submerged gate could just be seen peeking out above the surface. Beyond the gate, a tunnel, pitch dark. The distinctive odour of the Thames flowed beneath the stench of death.

To the left and right, up against the walls, black iron racks. Three to a side. And bodies. Bodies which until lately had occupied those racks. He counted four men, two women, or parts of them. All were naked. The level of violence that had been visited upon them was staggering. And beyond the racks on his left another woman, intact but quite dead, a wintery blonde in a distressed white leather corset. She was half in the water at the edge of the pool. deMarigny lifted a hand to his chest, felt the cool smoothness of the dagger beneath his tailored shirt.

Who’s it going to be then, who’s it going to be, he muttered as he deftly removed the blade from its harness. Who’s got a story for me?

It never left him, the dagger: awake or asleep, it rested vertically against his sternum, clasped tight to his chest in a snug leather harness. He pulled it out slowly; the blade began to hum quietly, the metal vibrating against the skin of his palm. deMarigny held the dagger lightly and began to move about among the bodies.

But of course, we know who it’s going to be, don’t we? he sighed, passing the blade over each of the bodies in turn. We knew the second we stepped in here. And it’s not you. Nor you. You? No, sorry luv. Definitely not you, old son, what with the absence of a noggin an’ all. Where’s that got to, I wonder. He came to the half-submerged blonde.

Ah, not even you, more’s the pity. You’re a fit one, too. Christ, that’s a shame. deMarigny turned then, and strode back to the entrance, to the covered mass.

No, it’s going to be you. Because it’s always the big monster, isn’t it? He grasped a corner of the sheet and began to pull. The thing that should not be but is, the god-forsaken beastie that almost got away and… oh. Oh, well, that’s different.

Laid out on the marble slabs was a monster indeed; a scaled and finned abomination that immediately brought to mind horrid couplings between apes and frogs and lion-fish. It was on its back, black with putrescence and already losing its outlines, melting away like a jelly washed up on shore. deMarigny had never thought he’d see one, alive or dead, but here one was: a gargouille de la mer. And there was more besides. This was a gargouille who had died in flagrante delicto. Between its legs, her bloodless lips stretched around the beast’s deflated member, a woman, also dead. Such a petite thing, too, with a look of outrage still defined on her pale features.

There’s a lesson here, I’m sure, but I must be missing it. deMarigny knelt beside the corpses and felt the old tingle again. He looked at the now fiercely humming blade in his hand. Let’s have a look at what you’ve seen then, shall we, you over-achieving minx…

He brought the flat of the blade to rest on the crown of the dead woman’s head. Declan deMarigny trembled as the blade trembled, felt his bones shake inside him. The outlines of the chamber around him shifted and jumped in a spastic dance of strange light and smoke. In the silence, he could hear ecstatic moans, the clank of chains, the cries of orgasm. Then, a kind of croaking roar, followed by screaming. He closed his eyes and against the black of the lids shuddering scenes piled one atop another in a mad rush of imagery: the petite woman, throwing fire from her body, her eyes and hands and sex burning with terrible magical power.

As he watched her, he could feel his cock grow warm and start to throb. Something about the energy she was wielding stirred his lust. What was it? Of course! Orgone, he whispered. This is an orgone chamber. He saw the beast, rising from the pool and leaving death in its wake, tearing apart the orgiasts and breaking the blonde before tossing her aside.

He watched, shaking, as the gargouille murdered the fire-wielding woman, impaling her on its cock, and he saw her last-ditch attempt at revenge. She succeeded. They died, monster and magician, in an eruption of fire and spectral orgone light.

Then he saw her… and nearly dropped the blade from shock. It was her. The redhead. He watched as she emerged, naked and dripping from the pool, with a giggling dark-haired girl over her shoulder; watched as the pair stepped over the still smoking bodies of the gargouille and the petite woman, watched as they exited the chamber and disappeared.

The priestess! The woman from the incident at Stregoicavar. The mysterious escapee from Prague. It was her. Her!

Fuck! She was here! deMarigny fumed aloud. I was so close!

Then the old tingle flared into something more: a sudden burning that enveloped his skull. His grey eyes flew open in alarm as his arm stiffened with the fire of an electric current. He watched with growing horror as his hand tilted the humming blade up so that the point of it rested in the middle of the dead woman’s forehead. He heard a voice, then, in his head…

You were close, yes. So close.

Declan deMarigny had been the dagger’s handler long enough to know who was speaking to him. Speaking through the blade, her voice like nails scratching the bare bone of his skull. But he could not have been prepared for what happened next…

And you’ll be close again, said the voice. You’ll look that stupid blaspheming whore in the face. And when you do, I WILL BE THERE WITH YOU!

With the slow-motion inevitability of a nightmare, deMarigny watched as his hand, no longer his own, gripped the dagger and forced it through the front of the woman’s skull. The bone parted like dry biscuit and he recoiled in horror as he felt the blade sink down, down, down into the corpse, the voice in his mind screaming like a hurricane of rage all the while.

I WILL BE THERE WITH YOU! I WILL BE THERE! I … WILL … BE YOU!

The chamber erupted with sickly green and pale carmine light. deMarigny felt a door in his mind tear open on ancient, unused hinges. He’d been trained for this kind of thing, knew what psychic defenses to throw up, but as he scrambled to do just that, to try to close the door, something small and dense and awful shot past him and into the blackness beyond. The door in his mind slammed shut, then melted away, leaving him mentally scrabbling at bare walls. The voice came again, but this time he felt it rise from somewhere deep within himself…

Oh, you poor deluded thing! That knife has made a mess of things in here, hasn’t it? So much pain! And so little pleasure in your life, Declan. Let’s see what we can do about that, shall we?

She’s right, deMarigny whispered out loud. Oh god, the ghost is right. But I’ve got to get her out of there! He tried desperately to remove the dagger from the corpse’s skull, but it was as if the metal had been welded in place. She’s not supposed to be… I’ve … I …

deMarigny felt his cock twitch once, twice, before a blinding flash of ecstasy ignited behind his eyes. He gasped and shook, only dimly aware of the pressure on his member as it stiffened and grew within his trousers. Panting, he clutched at his belt, releasing his cock into his free hand just in time to watch a thick stream of pearly jism arc away from the tip. He screamed, half with release and half with revulsion at his sudden possession, as the cum landed wetly on the dead woman’s face and lips.

Yesss, breathed the voice inside him. Yessss! Always wanted to give myself a facial. Look, Declan! See how beautiful!

It was too much for him. The chuckling spirit inside him, the horror of the dagger in his hand and the sperm-soaked face before him, the bliss of the supernaturally triggered orgasm: all combined to create a blank moment in his consciousness. He did not faint, but something snapped inside him, and for a moment, Declan deMarigny was gone.

It was a moment filled with the hateful laughter of the vengeful dead, spilling from his throat and echoing around the room.

But the moment passed. Declan blinked. The dagger was in his hand, humming only slightly, the vibrations within it already dissipating. The woman’s skull was intact, the skin of her face cold but clean. He blinked again.

Why wouldn’t it be? he thought, then thought no more about it.

Declan deMarigny stood up, crossed to the door and opened it. The patrolmen jumped but didn’t turn. Wise fellows after all, he thought as he pressed between them.

It’s all yours, he said to the nodding white-suited technicians. Lots of bits to catalogue and you’ll soil yourselves collectively when you see the big fucker. So go do what you do. And have those two yobbos debriefed and wiped when you’re done.

Sir? Aren’t you staying to supervi- ?

NO! By fuck! deMarigny barked. No…

I’ve got a witch to hunt.

 

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