Angel, Part 1

Tanith held the pitch-black paper card against the steering wheel. The glossy business card showed no indication that it contained any information, but Tanith could see the inscription as though it was glowing. The writing, which appeared as a gold glow to the woman, was phonetically English but written in Phoenician script. The message was simple — “Other Tastes, 3035 Industry Way, Suite 7.”

Tanith looked up from the card at the decrepit building. “The power to sunder the gates of hell, and they pick this shit-hole.” She muttered to herself. The building was a large warehouse divided into various unoccupied industrial workshops. Tanith got out of her car to look for the door to suite seven. She occasionally checked the business card as though she was expecting a map or some other instructions. She knew better than to think the card would change, but she checked anyways.

The seventh door was no different from any of the others – an unpainted metal door that looked as though it had rusted shut. There was no doorbell, no handle, and no apparent way to enter the building. She stood there and stared at the number for a long moment thinking of how to proceed. She raised her hand to press against the door, but where it should have made contact, it instead passed through the metal. She pulled her hand back quickly. “You’re immortal, you idiot.” She muttered to herself with dropped shoulders and a pair of perfectly rolled eyes. She took a step forward and walked through the door.

The scene inside the building was in stark contrast to the abandoned industrial site where she had just been; loud music and flashing lights overwhelmed even her stalwart senses. The smell of sex, drugs, and alcohol underlined the overall metallic odor of blood. Where the industrial park was desolate, this place was teaming with what some might call life. People who were undiscernible to Tanith crowded around three island stages in this large main room. The stages housed nude and near-nude dancing women, angels and demons Tanith figured, chained to brass poles.

As her eyes became more accustomed to the place, the people here became clearer to her; every single living thing here was celestial, herself included. Demons held the chains of angels. Angels hosted young demon women in their laps. None of the patrons, or those this place employed for that matter, showed their wings, except one angel; a young one had her wings exposed and stripped of most of its feathers. Spikes through the web of her wings attached to chains that held her aloft in the center of a circle of patrons. Demon and angel alike took turns with various instruments of torture on this girl.

Tanith started to feel sorry for the girl, but the feeling passed when she realized she kind of wanted to join in tormenting the little thing. A large male, and angel Tanith supposed, approached her. He stood in front of her, blocking her view of the floor, and prevented her from entering any further. When she looked into his eyes a flash of a conversation occurred between their minds; she knew the rules, now.

The two stated at each other for a moment. The man, a foreboding figure with dark skin, broke the silence. “She’s not on the market.”

Tanith noticed that everyone in the room was now looking at her. “She’s right there. I don’t see the mark.” She leaned to the side to nod at the hanging angel. “Is she fair game or not?” The man growled to himself, turned, and walked away from Tanith.

Tanith approached the girl and watched as the circle of the angel’s tormentors dispersed and found other things to entertain themselves. The angel fell into a heap as the chains lowered her to the floor. Someone on the staff of the club clamped a heavy metal collar around the girl’s neck and handed its attached chain to Tanith.

Tanith wrapped the chain around her fist and pulled the little angel by her collar through the crowded floor towards a hall. For the most part the patrons of this place had returned their attention to whomever they were with before Tanith came. The angel followed behind the woman; she fell several times, but instead of stopping, Tanith simply dragged her along the floor.

Tanith knew where she was going, not from any foreknowledge, but simply from the instantaneous silent conversation she had with the proprietor. She took the girl down several long corridors and up several flights of stairs – far higher than the building that hosted the entrance to this place.

Tanith flicked her wrist and whipped the chain around to fling the little angel into a room. She entered behind the girl and sealed the door. Crimson tears stained the girl’s face. The girl was clean save for the marks of that night’s activities. Her skin was paper white and her hair was gold except where blood had stained it. Her wings were bare of plumage and the flesh where feathers should attach was torn and bloodstained. It was exceptionally hard to put an age on an angel; she was either nine years old as she appeared or older than time itself.

Tanith shook a stray lock of her black hair out of her olive skinned face. As she was, she could easily pass for a Mediterranean woman in her late twenties. In reality, she was thousands of years old.

A stone forge cast beams of yellow beams into the room as the only source of light. Small glints reflected off of various soot and rust coated metal implements hanging on the walls. Tanith grabbed a long pole off the wall and examined it; it was a large metal dildo on a stick. Burn marks on the device indicated that it had spent a great deal of time in the forge. Tanith smirked and walked around the angle to shove the implement into the forge to heat up.

“What’s your name?” She asked the girl.

The angel looked up at the woman for a second before diverting her eyes back down. “Vesna.” She responded. Her accent was unidentifiable beyond being faintly eastern European. Fresh red tears started to drip down her cheeks.

“Do you know what I am going to do to you?” Tanith asked. She pushed the girl over onto her belly, and pressed the heel of her boot into the back of Vesna’s neck.

Vesna began to sob openly; before that point, she had only made small pathetic whimpers. “You’re going to hurt me.”

“I am going to take out ten thousand years of frustration on your miserable little body.” Tanith calmly said. “No one is going to come to your rescue. No one will stop me from doing anything I want to you. You are mine now.” With that, she lowered herself to her knees and straddled the small of Vesna’s back. She hooked her hand under the remnants of the little angel’s wing, and with her hand pressed firmly against Vesna’s spine, she pulled with great strength; the wing ripped from the girl’s back with a sickening crack.

Vesna let out a blood-curdling scream from the intense pain of her dismemberment. The detached wing fell to the floor in front of her little face. Tanith leaned down and whispered into the girl’s ear. “Grow it back. Do it. I loved tearing it off the first time. Grow it back so I can do it again.” Tanith’s voice was full of mocking cruelty.

Vesna spoke through her painful cries. “I have another.” She said. She moved her remaining deformed wing to invite Tanith to rip it from her body.

“No. No-no, little girl. I plan on keeping you for a very long time. You are not much fun to me as a mortal.” Tanith said. Her previous cruelty juxtaposed with the loving caress of her fingertips on the angel’s cheek.

“Please… ” Vesna started to beg. “Please have mercy.”

Tanith let out a little sigh. She dug her thumbnail into Vesna’s remaining wing. When the thumb did not prove painful enough, it extended into a talon and pierced through the flesh. “Eventually. Right now… No.”

Tanith pulled herself off of the little girl. She ripped through the bit of flesh she had pierced, but in the wash of pain Vesna was in, it proved no great source of additional agony. She returned to the forge and retrieved the iron dildo she had left there to heat. “Get that ass in the air.” She said.

Vesna turned her head to see what Tanith had. When she saw the burning white metal cock, she clawed at the floor in a vain attempt to escape the demon women. In a single motion, Tanith grabbed Vesna’s leg, pulled the girl back, and plunged the fiery spear into the girl’s virgin cunt.

Vesna’s scream echoed into the halls around the room. Smoke billowed from her ass as her cunt cooked on the metal cock. Her vocal cords bled into her mouth. Her nature cursed her not to pass out from the pain. Tanith thrust the implement deeper into the girl until it seared through her belly. Tanith ripped the cock out of Vesna, taking a good deal of burnt flesh with it.

“Heal yourself.” The demon woman commanded. She sighed with a little smile on her face. She shoved the dildo back into the forge so it could heat up again. “Please me, and I might wait to do that again.”

Vesna rolled to her side. The hole burned into her belly had already started to seal itself when Tanith took notice of it. “Please…“ She cried. “It only hurts more when I am healed.”

“That’s all there is for you now. Pain and servitude.” Tanith said. She looked into Vesna’s pain-filled eyes, and sighed. “I have had my fill of the former, for now.” She thought for a moment while Vesna’s body restored itself; her wing grew back with all of its feathers in place. “I could torture you for several eternities, which is what was likely going to happen to you anyways, or I can claim you forever, and take you out of this place.”

Vesna sniffed, and wiped her face. Her pain had gone already. “Are you giving me a choice?”

“Not really. But I do want to know if enslaving you forever will be a problem for me.” Tanith said. Vesna swallowed the knot in her throat. “So, messenger, what is it going to be? My slave ‘til the end of time, or torture for long beyond that?”

Vesna closed her eyes. She rolled from her side to her belly, and then lifted her body until she was kneeling with her legs spread. She turned her head to the side to expose her neck. Tanith grinned. She reached out for the heavy metal collar around the little girl’s neck, and in her grip, it began glowing. The collar shrunk against Vesna’s skin until it was nothing but a mark on her otherwise perfect flesh.

“You’re mine now.”