The Sainted Confessor, part 6

[tinhuvielartanis]

Everything was a haze at first. He couldn’t really focus on anything, mainly because he was so dreadfully hungry. His face itched. When he moved to vigourously rub his face, as he was in a habit of doing upon waking, Faust realized that he was unable to move his right hand. He tried his left hand to find the same result. Faust felt not bonds, so this confused him.

He attempted to get up, to swing his legs over whatever surface he found himself, only to discover that his legs wouldn’t move either. Well, that wasn’t entirely correct. He could move his arms and legs, but the movement just...stopped…at the wrists and ankles.

Faust strained to clear his vision. The world was seen through a thin veil of wet cotton, it seemed. Even though his sight was impaired, Faust’s other senses began to swiftly awaken. Someone was there with him.

“Who –“

“Who indeed.”

“Cad-Cadmus?” Faust moved to free himself again to no avail. “What’s happened? Where are we? Are you okay?”

Cadmus licked his lips slowly as he processed what Faust had just said. Faust actually thought Cadmus shared his own predicament and was expressing concern for him. He never thought that he alone had run afoul of some poor choices and even poorer luck. His first inclination was to see if his new acquaintance and elder was all right. This one should never have been transformed. It was no wonder he hadn’t turned Beast. There was no conceivable way it could have happened without instantly destroying the Vampire Rebekah and Mephistopheles had just created.

“I am well, Faust,” Cadmus said, his smooth almost-British clip drenching the room with a feigned charm. Passing a hand over Faust’s eyes, Cadmus instantly cleared the youngling’s impaired vision. Faust cut his mosaic eyes to Cadmus, who sat at his bedside, the questions already beginning to form in their cerulean perfection. “You, on the other hand, are very far from being well. You will never be well again.”

“What are you talking about? Cadmus, please….let me go. I’m hungry.”

“Never you fear, little one. Here, here, look.” Cadmus took Faust’s chin and pulled it toward him and the side table next to Faust’s bed. Sitting on the table was the chalice. “Do you see this? Do you see this chalice? It’s very special, this vessel of life. It transforms human blood into Vampire Blood.”

“I don’t care,” Faust said, his voice level, barely containing a growing panic. “Just let me go.”

Cadmus picked up the chalice and, transferring it to his left hand, he supported Faust’s head and neck with his right. “Drink. This will be the most divine Blood ever to grace your tongue. It may well bring you…a religious experience. This is the blood of your Domina.”

He placed the edge of the chalice to Faust’s lips. Instead of moving to take in the liquid therein, Faust remained still, one of those strange moments of stillness only a Vampire can muster. And his eyes turned up Cadmus, shimmering and swirling in indigo recrimination. Cadmus mirrored his stillness, not bothering to cajole the youngster into drinking. He would. The temptation would be too great. They could remain here all night, never moving, until Faust’s resolve faltered and he tasted the ambrosial Blood. It didn’t matter to Cadmus how long they waited. For a Vampire as old as he, time was relative to say the least.

He could feel Faust’s muscles ripple beneath his fingers, fighting the urge to take in the Blood. It wouldn’t be long at all. The boy had been asleep for almost three days, his body going into a sanguine starvation as he slept. A Vampire’s primary instinct was to feed. There was no way he could resist the take the precious sustenance. Any moment now. Any time, Faust would succumb and drink from the chalice.

A low moan came from the boy’s throat, the moan of need and surrender. He parted his lips a little and lowered his head so the chalice could be tipped more toward him. The moan became one of satisfaction, an almost coital release, after the first swallow. With the second draught, the moan became a chortle of delight. Yes, Faust was experiencing for the first time the sublime Vampiric joy of Blood from Kelat’s cup. Faust’s eyes flared in sapphire joy as he drank. And, when Cadmus removed the chalice from his lips, the young vampire cast back his head and laughed a merry, throaty song. He closed his eyes and voiced his pleasure in the song of laughter, the sound that had always been most precious to him throughout his long Bohemian and Vaudevillian days.

“Thank you, Cadmus,” Faust said after a time, recovering from the Blood Rapture. “Thank you for feeding me. Now…. Please. Will you help me free from whatever it is holding me to this bed? I’m a little…embarrassed….lying here with no clothes on, not really certain of what happened. Absinthe has never had that effect on me before.”

Faust’s laugh was self-deprecating and more than a little self-conscious. He still did not suspect Cadmus of any ill will toward him. If he could have been, Cadmus would have been amazed.

“I will not be letting you go, Faust,” Cadmus said quietly, his sonorous voice simultaneously calming and threatening.

“Wha-? What? You did this? But why?” Faust looked up at Cadmus and his expression would have melted the hardest-hearted person on Earth. The liquid pools of his eyes mirrored his verbal question. They reverberated the question of “why” around the room. Cadmus remained untouched by Faust’s attempt at Compulsion. He was the strongest Cadmus had ever encountered in that particular gift, but Cadmus lacked a certain quality to which Faust’s Compulsion tried to manipulate: mercy.

“You have information, young Faust. I want it.”

“Let me go and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. There’s no need for this.”

“No. You will tell me what I want to know in the manner I want it told.”

Faust remained silent for a moment, his mosaic eyes holding Cadmus’ own black shark eyes. “And how would that be?”

Nodding as though this gave him a special kind of permission to proceed to the next level, Cadmus reached into one of the sleeves of his layered robes. He pulled out the knife he’d used to cut away Faust’s clothes three nights prior, and presented it to Faust with a muted flourish before placing it on the bed next to the young Vampire’s body. Faust said nothing, but he really didn’t need to; his eyes spoke for him.

Cadmus repeated his movements, pulling out another knife. Still Faust said nothing. After the seventh knife was withdrawn from Cadmus’ robes, Faust’s reaction got a little stronger. A single tear swelled from his left eye and trailed down his cheek. Cadmus continued. Each knife he pulled out of his clothing he made a production of showing to Faust, allowing the trapped Vampire to study it and ponder its particular effect upon the unprotected flesh. Once he was satisfied that Faust knew exactly what was going to happen with that particular blade, Cadmus would place it carefully on the bed alongside the rest of them, and move on to the next one.

The 23^rd and final knife wasn’t a knife at all. It was a claw, obviously already quite sharp, but pared down to impossible sharpness. It was black, shiny, and truly beautiful. Save for its size, it could have been a cat’s claw, but it was a thousand times larger than that. The hand was homemade, appearing to be cords of leather and gut wrapped and braided around the base of the claw knife. There was no doubt that this knife was Cadmus’ most favoured blade.

“Number twenty-three,” purred Cadmus. “For the 23^rd Psalm, if that captures your fancy. We can but hope the Lord will be your shepherd in the days to come.”

“Please, Cadmus, you don’t have to do this. I’ll give you whatever you want, tell you whatever you want. Just, please, don’t do this… You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t have to, but what makes you think I do not want to?”

The sad desperation that had painted Faust’s face for the duration of Cadmus’ knife ritual melted away into what Cadmus suspected was an expression of terror. As far as emotional expressions were concerned, Cadmus had to admire this one for the work of art it was. Here was a face so used to offerings of kindness and joy, despite it belonging to an accursed monster forsaken by God, this honest offering of fright seemed completely out of sorts and probably more hilarious than anything Faust had ever attempted for the sake of comedy in his entire life. Cadmus knew the entire situation was fraught with irony but, sadly, the irony was lost on him.

Cadmus kept hold of the claw knife, continuing to show it to Faust as he twirled it absently between his fingers. “Now….this last….knife, if that’s what you can call it, is special in that it is not a knife at all.”

“Please, Cadmus…. Don’t do this.”

“Be quiet. I want to tell you about this knife. As I was saying, this knife is actually a dragon claw. Yes, yes, dragons did exist. In fact, I was born of a dragon….the last dragon to be exact.”

“Cadmus, I’m begging you – “ but Faust was cut off by a skull-rattling blow across his face.

Cadmus examined the nick on his knuckle from back-handing Faust. Licking the wound clean with his softly-split tongue, Cadmus said, “Don’t ever interrupt your elders, youngling. It’s rude.

“Now….this last dragon, my surrogate mother, gave everything to me. Protection, nurturance, her milk, her blood and, eventually, her life. The last thing I took from her husk of a body, was this claw. Over the years, I sharpened it to perfection, and gave it a proper handle so I could use it in much the same way she used it. See, this claw wasn’t one of her toe claws, oh no. It was one of the two claws dragons had on the backs of their front legs, used for the gutting prey; thus the exaggerated hook you see…right…here…

“Of course, right about now, you’re probably thinking I’m telling you about this particular knife because it’s my favourite, given that it was taken from my mother. No. I’m not at all nostalgic. The reason I’m telling you about this one is because this is the one I’ll be using the most on you during our time together. Let’s pretend that I am a dragon and you, dear youngster, are my prey. Here.. Let me demonstrate.”

Cadmus took the claw in his right hand and, placing the hook to face his captive, he positioned it right at the end of Faust’s treasure trail. “No, Cadmus, no no, please, Cadmus,” whispered Faust. And then he began to scream. “HELP! HELP SOMEBODY!”

“Oh, about that, boy…” Cadmus said, his voice low and reptilian in its full assurance that he had full confidence in what he was about to impart. “This place, your beloved little apartment, is a magickal black hole now. As far as the world outside is concerned, this place does not exist and neither…do…you.”

And, with that, Cadmus slowly inserted the dragon claw knife into Faust’s groin, stopping only long enough to listen carefully to Faust’s initial shriek of agony. He knew how far to go in to break the subcutis but not damage any of the organs within and that’s exactly what he did. Moving up the treasure trail, Cadmus opened Faust up to just below the breast bone. Blood surged forth from the deep, long wound and the smell of it aroused Cadmus. He buried his face into Faust, whose screams reached a newfound level of suffering as Cadmus began to drink from him much more Blood than he had given the young Vampire from the Chalice.

Once he’d drunk his fill, Cadmus looked up at the already exhausted and tormented Faust. “Speak to me, Faust. Tell me what you know.”

Faust wept. He wept from pain and frustration. “What do you want to know, Cadmus? I’ll tell you anything? Just please….don’t do this anymore, I beg you.”

“You don’t yet understand, child.”

“What? What? Just tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you if I can.”

“I want to know everything you know. Everything. In no particular order. And I’ll continue this special….encouragement…for as long as it takes for you to tell me.”

Faust wept harder. “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this to me?”

And there it was. That sublime question Cadmus had wanted Faust to ask him. “All in good time, young Faust. All in good time. Until then….keep my knives company. Well….except for this one. This one stays with me. I shall be back in a day or so.” Cadmus pocketed his dragon claw knife and stood, wiping his bloody face with one long priestly cuff as he tucked the chalice into the folds of his robes.

“No! No, Cadmus! You can’t leave me like this! Oh God! Please God, don’t do this to me! What have I done to you?”

By the time Cadmus reached the street below, he could still hear Faust begging him to return and tell him what he could do to persuade the Pariah to release him from this torture. He expected Faust would scream and cry for the rest of the night and on into the next day before he fell unconscious from hunger. Thankfully, no neighbours would be bothered by his incessant begging and keening. Living around people like that can be such a nuisance, or so Cadmus had always heard…