CHAPTER 1
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“Poison Flower”

Belladonna Deloris Rae almost didn’t survive her own birth, and it was all downhill from there. She was born three weeks premature because her mother was a drug addict and an alcoholic, and she spent her first few months in this world struggling just to breath. The doctors didn’t think she was going to make it, but she proved them wrong. She was a fighter from the very start, almost as if her spirit was simply too stubborn to die.
Her mother’s name was Bambi Rae,(For real. She had it legally changed from Susan when she was eighteen.) and she had no godly idea who her father was. Bambi was a prostitute, selling her body to afford her habits, and a baby was the last thing she needed or wanted. She had planned to give her up for adoption, but the moment she held her little girl and looked into those strange eyes, she experienced real love for the first time in her miserable life.
Bambi loved her daughter, she really did, but she certianly wasn’t the best mother in the world. Her love for booze and meth came first, and if it weren’t for her “aunts,” Kelly, and Star, Bella probably would have starved to death before she started grade school.
She was a thin, pale, awkward girl, with her mother’s thick, black, hair, but the thing people really seemed to notice was her eyes. Her right eye was the same bright, clear blue as her mother’s, but in stark contrast, her left eye was a deep, emerald green. Of course, she hadn’t really minded until the boys started calling her “Crazy Eyes,” and suddenly she was always staring at the floor so people didn’t have to see them.
Her childhood wasn’t great, but it could have been worse. She had Kelly and Star looking out for her at least, and Kelly made damn sure that she knew how to handle herself. They started her street education when she was ten, making sure that she was aware of the dangers around her, and how to protect herself.
That was why she made sure to stay in her room with her door locked when her mother had Johns in the house. When she started going through puberty, she saw the way some of them started looking at her, especially her mother’s pimp, Mario. She did her best to avoid him at all costs, but that wasn’t always possible because he was at their house every day.
When she turned fifteen, her figure started to fill out, and that was when he started pestering her. He kept trying to convince her to sell her virginity, and told her how much money she could make if she would just let him put her to work. He even said that sort of stuff in front of her mother, but she would only say that it was her own choice to make.
She started spending less and less time at home. It was usually pretty easy to stay gone through the week. She had school, she was on the track team, and she just spent a lot of time working out and training. She generally didn’t get home until she was ready to go to bed, but on the weekends it was harder.
She was the moody, drivin, weird girl, so she didn’t really have anyone she was really close to. There were a couple of people that she spoke to on a regular basis, but she made sure that they never became friends. She was terrified that they would find out what her mother did for a living, so she just kept her distance from everyone.
Unfortunately, that also meant that when the school was closed, she didn’t have a lot of places to go. She ended up spending most of her time jogging, or just hanging around the park.
Her plan of avoidance actually worked until she was sixteen. Her bedroom door had two dead bolts on it, so she felt relatively safe as long as the door was locked, but Mario was a big, muscular latino, and he didn’t like taking no for an answer.
She was awake the instant he rattled the door. She wasn’t sure who was out there at first, but a glance at the clock on her nightstand told her that it was after three in the morning. And since it was technically Sunday morning, it was a good bet that her mother was passed out drunk.
“Let me in little poison flower,” she heard Mario call from the hallway. “It’s time for you to become a woman.”
Mario sounded drunk, but he was probably too jacked up on meth to pass out. He rattled the door harder, and then she jumped as something hit the door so hard, she actually heard wood crack.
“It don’t have to be this way chicka,” he called. “I’ll do you nice if you just open the door.”
He slammed against the door again, and Bella realized that it wasn’t going to hold. It wasn’t solid wood, just a normal, hollow, interior door, and Mario was a really big guy. That door wasn’t going to stop him if he really wanted in.
Bella was in motion instantly.
Her window was on the second floor, but she’d rather risk the jump than deal with him when he was like this. Unfortunately, the only thing she was wearing was an oversized black t-shirt that bore a yellow smiley face with a bullet hole in it’s forehead, so she went for her closet to get dressed.
A moment later, she realized that it was too late. The next time he impacted the door, the force ripped the hinges right out of the doorframe. The door came completely off, and he grunted as he landed on top of it awkwardly
Mario scrambled back to his feet, swaying like he was on a rocking boat as he looked around, but he couldn’t seein the gloom of the darkened room. He knew that she was in here, and there weren’t exactly a lot of places to hide. She had to either be under the bed, or in the closet.
“I know you’re here,” he taunted as he serched for the lightswitch. “I can smell your fear you little bitch!”
Light flooded the room, but as he tuned back toward the closet, the smile fell from his face. Bella was already halfway across the room, drawing back a baseball bat. He stumbled back in suprise even as she swung, and the bat narrowly missed cracking him in the head as he went down.
Lucky for him, Bella put everything she had into the swing, and when she missed, she spun around, off-balance. She almost kept her feet, but the fallen door tripped her up and she went down hard. She started to get up, but Mario was on his feet first, and as soon as she rolled to her hands and knees, he hauled off and kicked her in the ribs.
All the air whooshed from her lungs, and she rolled onto her back as she tried to breath past the pain. She looked up, and watched him unbuckle his belt and yank his pants down to free his erection.
It was smaller than she thought it would be, and she really wanted to tell him that, but instead she put her energy to something more constructive. She went for his balls, but he was ready for that. He caught her wrist and yanked her to her feet, then sent her sprawling onto the bed with a sharp back hand that made her cheek feel like it had exploded.
She was dazed for the seconds that it took him him get rid of his pants, and the entire side of her face thobbed as she tried to shake it off. She rolled and tried to scramble away from him when he came after her, but he caught her by the ankles and yanked her back toward him.as he straddled her thighs.
Worse, the move yanked her shirt up around her armpits, so the only thing seperating his hungry gaze from her ass was a thin layer of white cotton.
She tried to squirm free, but he straddled her thighs, and then put his arm across her back, pinning her face down as he used his other hand to rip her panties off.
That really threw some feul in her fire. She fought for everything she was worth, and she heard him hiss in pain as her nails scored a good one across his forearm. Still, he probably outweighed her by a hundred pounds, and all she managed to do was piss him off.
She saw stars when he punched her in the back of the head, and then she heard him hock and spit as he lubed his cock. She tried to prepare herself for what she knew was coming, but what could she actually do? She couldn’t stop him, that much was obvious, and there was nothing within reach to use as a weapon.
She was fucked. Literally.
She felt him readjusting himself, and in the back of her mind, she heard Star telling her that tensing up would just make the pain worse. So she just closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and prayed that those yoga classes she had snuck into would help as she tried to will herself to relax.
She felt his greasy prick between her legs, but the first two times he thrust against her, it slid harmlessly between her legs. After the third try, she began to wonder just how trashed he really was, but then her eyes flew wide as his cock slipped right up her asshole.
Mario sighed like he was slipping into a hot bath, while she gritted her teeth and tried to let her body adjust to him. It hurt like hell, expecially when he grabbed her shoulders and started thusting against her like he was trying to drive himself deeper without pulling back.
She gasped, but it was more in her struggle for oxygen than anything. His weight felt like he was going to crush her beneath him, but in all honesty she had to admit that having his cock in her ass hurt less than she thought it would. Maybe it was because his cock was only about six inches, and had the thickness of a pork sausage, but it felt more weird than anything.
It made her feel like she needed to poop.
He rutted on top of her for about thirty seconds, grunting like a pig, and suddenly her ass became sloppy wet as he filled it with cum. Now that felt really weird, and she could hardly believe that it was already over, but he just rolled off her with a contented sigh.
“See, now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” He asked, chuckling as she rolled off the side of the bed and hit the floor with a thump.
Bella didn’t even really think about what she was doing as her hand searched for what was hidden in the box springs of her bed. She was trying not to think about the way his sperm felt oozing out of her asshole. A part of her just wanted to crumple into a ball and cry, but the moment her hand found the handle of the butcher knife, everything was washed away in a swell of rage.
Her very first sexual experience was being raped in the ass, and nothing on Earth could change that now. That isn’t what made her angry. It wasn’t the pain, or the humiliation of having some slobbering drunk force himself on her. Oh, that pissed her off, but as she stood up, she decided that what bothered her the most was that it had just been so goddamn disappointing!
The son-of-a-bitch had taken longer breaking in her door that he took breaking into her, and now he was just laying there with a smug, satisfied grin like he had actually acomplished something great. He had traumatized her for thirty seconds of pleasure, and at that moment she realized that he was just a disapointment in general.
He was probably a disappointment to his mother, and he was even a disappointing rapist.
Rapists would be ashamed to add him to their ranks.
She had experienced anger before, but nothing like the blinding rage that took her as she leapt back onto the bed. He actually had the audacity to give her a suprised laugh, and smiled up at her, but he didn’t even see the knife until she drove it up between his legs. He went rigid as he howled in pain, but when she pulled it out and rammed it home a second time, he seemed to lose his voice.
“How does that feel?” She asked him in a cold voice as she thrust into him again. “Is that fear I smell, bitch?”
Mario’s eyes looked like they were about to bulge right out of their sockets, and she just smiled as she pulled the knife out, and then drove it back in under his ribs. He grunted as his face contorted with pain, but his gaze was locked on her’s, and she could all but feel the searing hatred in his eyes. The last thing he ever saw was her smiling down at him, right before she drove the knife deep into his right eye and left it there.
His body convulsed a few times, and it looked like he was feebly trying to pull the knife out, but then he just went limp. She watched as the light faded in his remaining eye, until suddenly he was staring at nothing at all, and she realized that he was dead. Mario was dead, and she had killed him.
That was when she looked down and realized that there was blood everywhere. She was all but covered in it, and she slowly backed away and got off the bed. The whole room seemed to be filled with the thick, coppery smell, and she promptly turned and puked in the corner.
She emptied the contents of her stomach, then sat down in the nearby chair, and wiped the puke off her face with her bloody t-shirt.
She looked down, realizing that she had just smeared blood across her face, and she started to laugh. She just couldn”t seem to help it, and then she couldn’t stop.
That’s where her mother found her when she finally woke up the next morning. Sitting there, with dried blood all over her.
Laughing.

It took time and a lot of therapy for Bella to start to pull herself together. It felt like something had broken inside her that night, and it didn’t help when she found out that her mother overdosed about a week later. Suddenly she was alone in the world, and they wouldn’t even let Kelly and Star see her. They weren’t her real family, and well, they were cheap hookers, and they dressed like it.
She never did feel quite the same. She found inappropriate things funny, and her mental censor all but disappeared. Suddenly it was like a switch was thrown in her head. She just stopped caring what anyone thought of her, or who might be offended by whatever came out of her mouth next.
She was insolent, sarcastic, outright defiant, and in what she called a perpetually bad mood, but they finally moved her to a minimum security facility just after her seventeenth birthday. They told her if she played nice and stayed out of trouble, they were going to release her on her when she turned eighteen.
She was definately looking forward to that, but she didn’t exactly stay out of trouble. She was just careful not to get caught.
There was a young, handsome orderly named Rick that worked the night shift, and she flirted with him shamelessly. He was resistant at first, but she slowly wore him down.
She couldn’t seem to help herself.
He was just so damn cute. He had short, sandy-brown hair, warm hazel eyes, and he had a set of dimples that just about made her melt every time he smiled. She made a point of staying up late when she knew he was working, but there was something different that night when he opened her door and peered into her room.
“Tonight the night?” She raised a brow at him as she posed seductively. “Come on baby. You can use the straight jacket if you want.”
Only instead of smiling and blushing at her antics as he usually did, tonight he just sighed and turned to leave.
“What’s wrong?” She called quickly.
“I really wish you’d stop with that,” he told her seriously. “Believe me, I’m tempted, but you’re only seventeen, and I could lose my job.”
“That doesn’t usually bother you,” she pouted. “What changed?”
“Nothing,” Rick balked, but she just sat there looking at him expectantly. Her fair, perfect skin framed by her silky black hair, her figure evident even through the dumpy gray hospital clothes she was forced to wear.
There was nothing sexier than when she twisted her full, expressive lips into a pout, and those beguiling eyes were almost hypnotic. She didn’t even need to say anything to melt his reservations. She just had to sit there looking at him and he caved almost instantly.
“It was just another terrible date,” he told her with a sigh. “I haven’t been having much luck in that department, so I guess I’m just not finding your teasing as amusing as I used to.”
“I am not a tease,” Bella told him indignantly. “I’ve never made you an offer I wasn’t fully willing to follow through on.”
“Really?” He asked in suprise as he recalled some of the things she had said. “You once offered to fuck me with my night stick in your ass. And what about the electo-shock thing? What about that would even be fun?”
“To each their own,” Bella shrugged. “You never know what someone might be into, and how would you ever know if you’ve never tried it? The truth is, I don’t even care what your kink is. I just want to fuck you. And I know you want to fuck me, so why aren’t we gettin’ busy?
“I mean, what are the odds of us getting caught anyway? How many people are out there walking the halls at two in the morning? There are four orderlies on patrol, including you, and we both know that you all rotate between monitor duty, and patroling the three wings of the hospital. So who’s going to catch us?”
He still looked unconvinced.
“Do whatever you want to me, right here, right now, and we’ll both feel better in the morning,” she growled. “Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not a doctor,” he gave her a wry grin.
“I am almost qualified to be a sex therapist,” she grinned back. “But seriously, what the fuck is it gonna take to get laid around here? Should I stencil free pussy on my shirt?”
“You really make me crazy, you know that?” He chuckled as he figited nervously.
“You can even put it in my ass if you want,” she told him as she rose to her knees and cupped her 34 b-cups for him. “Final offer. Take it or leave it. If you’re chicken, go home and jack off. You can fantasize about what you could have had right here and now. Be a real man, grow a set of balls, get over here, and fuck the shit out of me.”
Tired of messing around, Bella got up, pulled her shirt off, and dropped her pants. She wasn’t wearing underwear, and she smiled at the way he gaped at her. She still spent a lot of time working out. Frankly, there wasn’t much else to do, but it was nice to know her efforts were appreciated.
Rick definately appreciated her. Her breasts weren’t overly large, but they fit her athletic frame perfectly, and she had dark brown nipples that were hard with excitement. It looked like she had shaved recently, and her long, toned legs looked perfectly smooth. He was a little suprised that she also shaved her pubic hair, considering that the inmates were only allowed to use razors under strict supervision.
“Bitch wants to watch me shave, I make her watch,” she smirked like she knew what he was thinking.
“I don’t know if I love you or hate you,” Rick told her bluntly.
“I don’t care dude,” Bella looked at him expectantly. “Make a move, or I’m going to rape you.”
“You can’t rape the willing,” he grinned at her.
“Wanna bet?”
Rick pretty much had to catch her as she all but pounced on him. Her arms locked around his neck as she claimed his mouth with a kiss that was almost desperate in it’s urgency, and his hands went to her waist to support her weight as she wrapped her legs around his waist. He pushed her back against the wall roughly and she gasped.
Bella was kind of disappointed when his lips left hers, but that didn’t last long. He kissed his way up her jaw to tease her ear before he kissed and licked his way down the side of her throat. His hot mouth gave her chills, and she let him set her back on her feet as he left a scorthing trail down between her breasts.
Bella’s stomach fluttered as he sucked her left nipple into his mouth and started sucking on it. He flicked his tongue back and forth across the sensitive bud as his hands roamed up her body to cup and squeeze her breasts. He went to the other breast next and repeated the process as his thumb and forefinger continued to play with her other nipple.
She sighed as his mouth trailed down across her tight abdomen, over her hip, and she shivered in anticipation as she looked down at him on his knees in front of her, and her mind was spinning as he nudged her legs farther apart. She knew what he was about to do, but she wasn’t quite sure what to
expect.
Noone had ever done that to her before, and the anticipation had her trembling before he even touched her.

CHAPTER 2
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“Nothing but Trouble”

To Bella’s suprise, Rick started low on the inside of her thigh, and his talented mouth followed the artery up the inside of her thigh to her already moist pussy. He pushed her legs up over his shoulders, and his hands found her breasts again as he plundered her sensitive snatch with his mouth like he wanted to devour her.
His heat of his hot, moist mouth felt incredible, and and his talented tongue had her squirming almost instantly. She was gasping and groaning as he attacked her clit with a series of rapid flicks before he gave her a deep kiss, and slipped his tongue up inside her.
She felt it start to swell inside her. Her heart was pounding, her stomach was fluttering like it was full of butterflies, and she was already panting from his efforts. She buried her hands in his hair and gasped as a shiver went through her from head to toe.
“Oh Jesus, Rick,” she whimpered. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna…”
She heard what she thought was a chuckle, but then her mind scattered as the most intense orgasm she’d ever had tore through her. Of course, she had masturbated plenty of times, but any climax she’d ever had before was like a firecracker compared to a stick of dynamite. Suddenly she couldn’t breath as her entire body tensed and she started shaking.
Good Lord! She had heard of mind blowing orgasms, but as she rode the searing waves of pleasure, she didn’t know if she was going to die or just pass out. She bit her lip to keep from screaming and tasted blood.
The wave of extacy began to subside, but Rick showed her no mercy at all. He shook his head like an angry dog, and redoubled his efforts. She clamped her thighs around his head, but there was no way to get away from him. She shot straight back up and tumbled off the edge again, and if anything, this time it was even more intense.
“Mercy,” she gasped as she came back down, but he still didn’t stop. “Please, Rick, I… I can’t…”
But she could, and she did.
Bella was in an orgasm induced haze as Rick slowly put her feet back on the floor, then she squealed as he picked her up and carried her to the bed as if she weighed nothing at all.
She looked up at him nervously as he stood there staring down at her, and then he started taking his own clothes off. An orderly’s clothes weren’t exactly hard to remove, and what he was hiding under there was even better than she expected.
“Oh my,” Bella whispered she ran her hands down over his pecs to his rock hard abdomen. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, and each muscle was so clearly defined it almost made her mouth water. He pushed his pants and underwear off with one stroke, and when he stood, his enormous erection sprang into view.
Holy shit! He was hung like a pornstar! At least nine inches of thick, throbbing meat bobbed right in front of her eyes, but before she could yeild to the impulse to taste him, he pushed her back onto the bed.
His weight settled on top of her as he claimed her mouth again, and she instinctively spread her legs as he settled between them. She could feel the weight of his manhood on her abdomen, and the thought of taking that monster inside her made her shudder.
“You like that?” He whispered as he pulled back, sliding his shaft down her dripping wet crevace and coating the underside with her juices. He reached down to position himself, and the anticipation was killing her. She felt the thick head of his cock pushing her folds aside, and then he drove himself inside her, breaking through her hymen and filling her completely in one smooth thrust.
She whimpered and her eyes went wide with the pain. She had known it was going to hurt, but he was so thick, so deep, her body was spasming as she struggled to accomidate him.
“God, you feel incredible,” Rick growled as he nibbled at her throat.
“Easy,” she gasped and bit her lip as he shifted and moved inside her. “Your cock is fucking huge!”
It hurt more than she thought it would, but it was more than just pain. In fact her lip was starting to get pretty sore from her chewing on it, so she bit into his shoulder instead. He really seemed to like that, and he fucked her with slow thrusts that pretty much forced her body to adjust to his commanding thickness.
“God you feel incredible,” he growled against her throat. “Your pussy is so fucking tight.”
She whimpered as he ducked his head to claim her right nipple again, and then she gasped as he nipped her lightly with his teeth and pushed himself so deep inside her she thought she would burst.
He moved with agonizing slowness as he kissed his way back up her neck, and then he growled in her ear. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“I’m…” Bella gasped.”I’m right there with you. Cum for me. Cum with me!”
She arched her back as the pleasure and the pain combined felt like it overloaded her nerve endings, and she started to quiver and shake. She had thought that his tongue had givin her an intense orgasm, but fuck firecrackers and dynamite, this was more like the orgasmic version of a nuclear bomb.
She heard someone howling, and she realized that it was her about the same time he pulled out of her pussy, and shot his load all over her abdomen. She felt him shudder as the last of it dribbled out and plopped right into her belly button.
“That was just what I needed,” she told him before she took a deep breath and sighed in content. So this was what bliss felt like.
Rick pushed himself back on his knees, and froze when he looked down and saw the blood.
“Jesus,” his face fell. “Were you a virgin?”
“In that hole,” she raised a brow at him. “Only one left now.” She licked her lips suggestively. “You can have that one too if you want, but not right now because… well, that looks gross. I’d probably puke on you.”
“You should have told me,” he accused her as he scrambled off the mattress and started yanking his clothes back on.
“Why?” She shrugged. “My first time was getting raped in the ass by my mother’s pimp. Believe me. This was wine and roses as far as I’m concerned. And you… hell… You were fan-fucking-tastic. On a scale of one to ten, your performance gets a fucking twelve, dude.”
He stopped to just gape at her because he didn’t know what to say. What was he going to do, tell her she was crazy?
Duh.
“If you tell anyone about this…” He held up his finger, but his mind refused to form an appropriate warning.
“Who am I gonna tell?” She looked at him dryly. “My shrink? I learned real fast not to give her any ammunition that she can use against me. I might be a little whack-a-doodle, but I’m not completely stupid. I’ll stay quiet, as long as you promise to slip me that cock from time to time.”
“I could lose my job,” he told her seriously.
“You barely make more than minimum wage to clean up other people’s shit, and deal with crazy fuckers who make me look normal,” she gave him a sultry look. “What do you want more? Are you really going to tell me that you’re not willing to risk losing this shit job to get a chance to slide that big, fat monster up my tight little ass?”
Rick sputtered before he just left her sitting there laughing.
She slept like a baby for the first time since she was committed.

Rick’s late night visits became something of a regular thing, and of course she got him fired. They were careful, and didn’t even really get caught. An anal retentive nurse noticed how much time it took him to patrol her wing on certian nights, and Rick was just too nice to be a good liar.
Bella felt bad that he lost his job, but she was just glad that he never copped to who he was fooling around with. She finally got out a few months after her eighteenth birthday, and she had to admit that she went a little wild, reveling in her newfound freedom. They gave her a paper that would get her a room at a local halfway house, but she tossed it the moment she was out the door.
She definately didn’t want to be a hooker like her mother was, but she sure as hell wasn’t above exploiting her body. She got a job at a local strip joint pretty easily, and she was lucky enough that one of the girls that worked there even offered her a place to stay until she could afford one of their own. She made pretty decent money, and she found that she actually had a lot of fun teasing and showing off for the men.
She thought about looking up Kelly and Star, but the thought of going back there was just too much, so she put it out of her mind. She got her own place, and for about a minute things were good.
She got laid when she wanted to, but none of them were really anything to write home about. She was actually kind of liking a girl that worked at the club with her. Her name was Joy, the girl who had let her stay at her place until she got one of her own.
For whatever reason, Joy just bypassed her barriers completely, and they were friends before Bella even realized what was happening. Joy was a stunning blonde beauty with a killer figure, and an upbeat, infectiously happy personality. She was smart, funny, and sexy as hell. It was pretty much impossible not to like her.
Joy had several tattoos and piercings, and it didn’t take much to talk her into her first tattoo, and her first piercing. She got her bellybutton pierced because she thought it was cute, and she got was a sylized version of the Comedy/Tragedy masks on her right shoulder. They just seemed fitting somehow. One face smiling broadly in joy, and the other twisted with sorrow.
After that she was hooked. She got one on her upper left arm that was a single pink rose in a bed of vines bearing her namesake, belladonna. She got her nipples pierced, and her right nostril. She had an ankle bracelet of tribal put around her left ankle, a larger one around her right thigh, and one drunken night she even got a tramp stamp. Thankfully, at first glance it looked like just another bit of tribal. The lettering was worked into it so artfully, you really had to stare at it up close to tell what it said.
“GET ‘ER DONE”
She did love Larry the Cable Guy, but she was sure that she was going to regret that one of these days. Of course, Joy absolutely loved it, and that went a long way toward making her feel better.
She realized that she was into Joy pretty quickly. She had never been with a woman, but she had never been opposed to the idea either. Joy was openly bi-sexual, but she had been in a commited relationship while Bella was living with her. She had only recently re-entered the dating pool, and Bella was thinking about trying her luck.
Bella turned nineteen, and she was doing her best to put her past behing her. Perhaps she was even on the verge of being happy, so of course something bad had to happen to screw it all up. It was almost like she could feel it coming, but there was no way she could have expected what happened next.
She didn’t even know what the hell was happening at first, and in truth, she thought that she had to be dreaming. She was coming back to bed from the bathroom, and for all the world it looked like the shadows under her bed came to life.
The first few seconds she lost to pure disbelief as a seething, inky black darkness seemed to flow out, almost like fog. It billowed up as it came toward her, and instinct finally kicked in. She didn’t scream, but turned to make a break for it like she expected death himself to manifest.
Too slow.
The darkness was around her ankles, and she shivered as everything below her calves went numb. She stumbled and went down to her hands and knees. Suddenly her legs all the way up to her thighs, and her arms to her bicepts just lost all feeling. It started to get deeper, and she strugled to keep her head up as it began to seep into her chest.
That was when she really started to feel it. It was all still there, and everything the shadow had touched was starting to burn from the freezing cold. She imagined that this felt a lot like it would to be frozen in liguid nitrogen, and then everything went dark as it flowed over her completely.
Pain was all she knew. Unimaginable pain. She felt like a wad of Silly Putty in the hands of a child as she was streched out, smashed flat, and compacted into something she wasn’t supposed to be. She wasn’t aware of anything else. Even her identity, her past, and the idea of a future disappeared in the all-consuming, never-ending agony.
And then she slammed back into herself so fast it made her head spin. Suddenly she felt perfectly fine, and it was so jarring, it took a few moments to gather her wits and try to think clearly about what she was looking at. She was in a large, dark room full of bones, candles, and some other seriously spooky shit that she couldn’t even identify.
This whole place was seriously bad mojo. She could feel it in her bones, but then she noticed the man that was standing there, staring at her while she was sprawled naked on the cold stone floor. He looked like he was probably latino, but it was kind of had to tell.
His entire face was tattooed to look like a skull.
He wore a loose fitting black robe, carried a gnarled wooden staff, and looked like he had about five pounds of metal in his face. He had both eyebrows pierced several times, and sported about ten rings in each ear. The bridge of his nose was pierced on either side with a trio of studs, along with another one in each nostril, and a thicker ring piercing his septum hung down onto his upper lip. His lower lip was pierced with a spiked stud in the center, and two more at the outsides.
“I’ve never seen anyone remain quiet for this long after I sent a shade to bring them to me,” he eyed her like she might be spoiled fruit. “Your mind broke once. Has it broken again?”
Bella did what she did best. She turned her emotions off, and looked at everything in a cold, detached manner as she slowly pushed herself to her knees. She really wasn’t sure how she was supposed to react, so she told him the first thing that came to mind.
“Just takin’ in these digs, homie,” she shrugged as she gestured around her. “You might think about getting a better decorator, and Holy-Jumpin’-Bejezus dude. Seriously… I hope you don’t have any grandkids, because that face would give a marine nightmares.”
He just stared at her curiously.
“Um, are you waiting for me to ask why I’m here? ‘Cause I expect it’s not good since you went through the trouble of having me sucked up by a shadow… or shade. Whatever. Just tell me; Is there any way I’m getting out of here alive?”
“You’re never getting out of here,” he told her evenly. “Though how long you live is really up to you.”
“Do I get a nicer room than this?”
“You are a curious creature,” he chuckled softly. “Make your jokes while you can. You are nothing but a slave here, to be used as I see fit. If you are obedient, you can live a long life, but I can’t promise that it will always be pleasant. Try to fight if you like. You’ll find out how bad things can get very quickly.”
“Joy,” her facade very nearly broke as the word came out of her mouth. “Sounds like fun. Should I bother asking; Why me?”
“That’s simple,” he cocked his head to the side slightly. “My little brother was a fool. He didn’t even believe in our family’s power, and all his potential was wasted with his life. A life you took.”
She just stared at him.
“I turned him into a golem of course,” he smiled. “You’ll get to see him a little later. He hasn’t quite been the same since you stuck a knife in his eye.”
“That’s not the only place I stuck it,” she smiled carelessly. “You’re Mario’s brother?”
“Yes,” he snarled. “He was the only family I had, and you’re going to regret taking him from me.”
Belladonna hesitated, but she just couldn’t seem to help herself. She knew that she was probably only making matters worse for herself, but she just couldn’t resist.
“Please, tell me your name is Luigi.”

“How can you be so sure that she’s the one?”
Kael heard his most trusted advisor behind him as he watched the human girl interact with the necromancer through his scrying pool.
“I just do, Rath,” he smiled. “I feel it. Look at her. Look at the defiance in her eyes. Her strength. Most humans would be wetting themselves by now, and still she mocks him. She can bear the weight of it. I’m as sure of it as I ever have been of anything.”
“I’ve heard these speeches before,” Rath growled. “Remember Vlad the Impailer? Elisabeth Bathory? Craven? You were sure of them too, and how well did any of them turn out?”
“You turned out pretty well,” Kael pointed out.
“I don’t know if I would go that far,” Rath frowned. “I wasn’t consumed like the others, but I still paid a heavy price.”
“We’ll see how she handles what lies before her,” Kael mused thoughtfully. “That will be the true telling of who she is, and we’ll see if she really has what it takes.”
He turned back to the pool. “She’s of no use to me alive at any rate.”