The Obsidian Pillar

Chapter Sixteen - The Beast

The manacles chaffed Rosa's skin while she desperately tried to yank her hands from their implacable grasp. He watched her wriggle helplessly where she knelt on the cold floor. He had fought sleep for most of the day while the sorceress's magic had worked, knitting and healing the wound while he breathed deeply, dreaming of the villagers prodding him with pitchforks like hot pokers from a fire. It was late afternoon and as the sorceress had said, come sundown he would be transforming once more, and Rosa would be in danger.

He was ashamed of himself. He had been unable to show courage or bravery. Instead he was bending over backwards and running to her heel whenever she wanted.

I'm trapped here, I have no choice, he told himself as he looked down at his body, which was starkly pale from avoiding the sun for decades. His wound was now a puckered pink scar which marred his side like a love bite. Definitely her style, he thought sardonically.

A weak whimper called him away from the haze of his thoughts. She had let loose the braid that she often kept her hair in during the day. The black curtain of soft hair cascaded down her back as she knelt in the chains, defeated.

He recalled the first day that she had arrived at the tower, meek, gentle and unable to look him in the eye. Sick witch thought I would enjoy a plaything, he thought bitterly. The sorceress had brought the girl with her under the pretence that she would cook and clean, despite everything already being enchanted by her magic. He knew that the girl would have heard the tales of the infamous beast in the tower; of course, she had no idea that they were true, until the night that she saw him change.

He had made sure that she understood never to enter his chamber after dark and that she must keep to her own rooms. Yet when she heard him howling in pain during her first sleepless night in the tower, she had crept up the spiral stairs to help, in nothing but her sheer nightgown.

At the sight of her wading through the darkness, his foul maw had twisted into some semblance of a smile; his meal had come to him willingly. The sound of her small, gentle voice offering him aid was too much. He beckoned her into the room so that he could reach her from his manacles. Rosa had walked tentatively forward, her breathing quickening in fear, and when he brazenly ordered her to undress, she obeyed without question. It saved him time for later.

She had bleated in fear before slowly slipping the nightgown from her shoulders. The smell of her slept-in skin filled his senses and riled him until, under the cloak of night, he crept forward and licked the milky skin from her lower back to the top of her neck and growled when she inadvertently gasped in pleasure. She had not known what foul creature stood behind her in the dark. She thought that she stood at the service of her young master.

Young, naive and curious, she had turned to find him in the dark, surprised at his desire for her. She had reached out and felt that warm, wet tongue lick her enthusiastically. She followed it. Her head had rolled back in pleasure as his warm breath blew across her bare chest. Then, the teeth sank into her breast.

The sound of her scream affected the beast in a way that he had never experienced before in his monstrous form. He released her, his perfect vision in the darkness allowed him to watch as the petite girl fell to the ground in agony, clutching her chest as blood trickled between her fingers like water breaking slowly through a dam.