Bryan Smith: Soultaker

Myra knelt to grab her fallen blouse. “Jesus, Trey, what’s the big deal?”

Trey didn’t have an immediate answer for that. His panic was fueled by instinct. Something about this new presence in the woods bothered him on a primal level. He was pulling Myra toward the opposite side of the clearing even as she struggled to get her blouse back on. As they stumbled over the uneven ground, the chant grew louder and more distinct. The words were Latin, so Trey had no idea what was being said. Not that the actual substance of the words was all that important. A bunch of people carrying torches and chanting Latin phrases at night in the woods couldn’t be up to anything good.

The teenagers slipped into the woods mere moments before the leading end of the strange procession entered the clearing. Trey pulled Myra behind a thicket and hunkered down with her on the ground. Through a small opening in the thicket, they watched the interlopers form a circle around the site of an extinguished campfire. Only a few members of the group were carrying torches, but there was enough light to distinguish a few new things. The torchbearers were all nude males with black hoods over their heads. The others wore monklike dark robes with hoods.

Myra wriggled closer to Trey and put her mouth to his ear to whisper, “Look at those dudes with their dicks out in the air. Fucking hilarious.”

Trey cringed. He didn’t want to risk drawing the attention of the-what the hell was it? A coven? Some sort of satanic cabal?-and even a whisper was too much noise. He turned his head to meet Myra’s gaze and put a finger to his lips.

Myra scowled. “What, you’re afraid?”

Trey winced.

She snorted. “You are, aren’t you? You’re a fucking pussy.”

The words stung. Trey figured he was as brave as the next guy under normal circumstances. He wasn’t the type to back away from a fight. He would never start anything without just cause-he just wasn’t that type-but he wasn’t shy about standing up to assholes. But these weren’t normal circumstances. This constituted what you could maybe call supremely-fucked-up-to-the-nth-degree circumstances. This was twilight zone type of shit. He had no frame of reference for dealing with…well, for dealing with whatever the hell was going on here. And Myra should know that. He couldn’t fathom why she wasn’t as freaked the fuck out over the tableau in the clearing as he was. Sometimes, hell, a lot of times, she had a sharp tongue, snapping off a string of caustic words that sliced through the vulnerable parts of his psyche like a razor. It didn’t bother him most of the time, because she always seemed to sense when she’d gone too far. This time, however, there was no evidence of regret on her part.

She put her mouth to his ear again. “Coward.”

Now Trey was mad enough to speak. “That’s not fair, Myra,” he said, his voice a low hiss. “I’m no coward, but I’m not fucking stupid, either.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Oh yeah? Bullshit.”

Trey flinched. She was getting upset, and the volume of her voice was near normal speaking level. He hoped like hell the people in the clearing were too immersed in their ritualistic weirdness to perceive anything occurring outside their little circle.

Trey said a silent prayer before saying, “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

But Myra wasn’t backing down. “No. Fuck that. You’re fucking chickenshit.”

Trey’s fingers clawed at the damp ground. Part of him wanted to dig a hole deep into the earth, just wriggle into the ground like a worm, where he’d be safe from the chanting weirdos and the piercing glare of the girl he loved-who, he was just realizing, was a little bit mean. And who, if her voice went up another notch or two, would be yelling.

“Please, Myra.” A pitiful, helpless whimper escaped his throat. “I’m begging you. Let this go for now. You can rip me a new one later, okay?”

She grunted. “Count on it.”

But Trey was content-her voice had dropped back to a whisper.

The group in the clearing had taken up a new chant. This also wasn’t in English, but it wasn’t immediately recognizable as Latin, either. It sounded like some alien language. He half expected to see a shimmering mother ship descend from the heavens. The words seemed more rhythmic than before, more musical and sensual. The robed figures began to move as their voices rose from a whisper to something approaching an ecstatic roar. Trey began to recognize repeating patterns in the chant, like the choruses of a song, and the end of one such passage seemed to act as a signal to discard clothing. Robes fell to the ground and Trey gaped at the sight of a dozen nude women dancing and whirling around the freshly lit campfire. Their faces were obscured by white masks that resembled the comedy and tragedy masks of theater. But they were all beautiful, the flickering torchlight licking at their tall, full-figured bodies like eager tongues. The breasts of each woman were high and large. They all had long legs, trim waists, and flat stomachs. Trey imagined some bizarre underground society of ex-models, Playmates for Satan, something like that. Absurd, yes, but everything about this was surreal. So maybe he was dreaming. Or maybe Myra had slipped some weird drug into his last beer.

What kind of drug could conjure visions like this, though? He noticed that the dongs of all but one of the male torchbearers stood erect. Maybe the lone limp-dick was gay. Or maybe not. He was standing well-removed from the rest of the group, and Trey could just make out his hooded head moving in a slow arc, his gaze taking in the periphery of the clearing.

Trey shuddered. He’s standing watch. Oh God, what if he sees us?

He nearly jumped out of his skin as he felt something cold on his back. But it was just Myra, sliding her hand up under his shirt. She wriggled close to him again and curled a leg around him. “Let’s do it.” Her voice was husky in his ear. “Right now.”

Trey’s eyes widened. “What?”

She sat up and, again, pulled her blouse off over her head. She flung it away into the darkness. Then she unsnapped her bra and her breasts popped loose. Trey opened his mouth to speak again, but no words came forth. Her breasts weren’t as large as those of the women in the clearing-who looked like fucking Amazons-but they were a nice size anyway, with stiff pink nipples that she pinched to erectness.

Trey experienced an epiphany in that moment. He loved Myra, yes. Enough to do practically anything she wanted. But she was, without question, stone-cold crazy. The spectacle in the clearing was making her horny! She ought to be shaking with fear, but instead was consumed with lust. Trey mulled over any number of ways to defuse that lust without making her angry, but none of them seemed workable. Then there was the matter of his own libido. His erect cock was straining painfully inside his jeans. So he was crazy, too. He breathed a loud sigh of relief as Myra unzipped him, releasing him into the cool night air. He moaned and fell onto his back as she knelt to take his hard length into her mouth. He closed his eyes and clawed at the ground as she expertly manipulated him with her tongue. Good Lord, how could any girl her age be so skilled at this?

He was so consumed with the incredible pleasure provided by Myra’s mouth that all thought of the cavorting cult vanished. There was no room for anything in his consciousness but this pure ecstasy.

Which was why he failed to perceive the approach of the hooded guard he’d noticed earlier. A pair of strong hands seized him about the wrists and yanked him to his feet. The initial sense of dismay he felt when his cock popped out of Myra’s mouth gave way to terror when he looked into the eyes of the hooded man, which were visible through ragged slits cut in the coarse fabric. The terror paralyzed him for a few moments; then he tried to tear out of the man’s grip but was hampered by the man’s incredible strength. That, and the fact that his jeans were tangled up around his ankles. The man had little difficulty pulling him out of the thicket and out into the clearing.