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  CATACOMBS

  Cradle of Darkness

  By

  Addison Cain

  ©2018 Addison Cain

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover art by simplydefinedart.com

  *This book is intended for adults only and contains scenes featuring total power exchange which may make some readers uncomfortable.

  This is a tale of Horror.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  BRANDED CAPTIVE

  FREE BOOK!

  Addison Cain

  Chapter One

  The whole city of New York stank.

  Boulevards, vacant due to poor weather, crusted with a slush of mud and garbage. But it was the living crammed inside tightly packed houses, drinking coffee by their radios, snoring in their beds, that stung Pearl’s nostrils.

  She could hear them, their scratching and breaths. Worse she could smell them.

  Every last one reeked under cheap perfume and lack of washing.

  Patchy fur collar hitched up to cover cold ears, cloche hat doing little to keep the snow off her face, she kept her arms tight around her middle and plodded onward through the night streets. Under the threadbare coat, a fringed dress too short for common decency did nothing to keep out the winter chill. Each draft up her hem set her teeth chattering, stronger gusts earning a hiss.

  Even with the smell, no matter the icy cold, she wasn’t complaining.

  So far, life in the big city was grand.

  She’d had a busy night in the smoke-filled supper club, Palace Delight. Her neck may have been sore from supporting the weight of her cigarette box’s strap, but she’d made two dollars. Added to the cash she’d earned the night before, and the night before that, Pearl was set to have a little extra for New Year’s.

  Maybe she’d get a new dress, or a nice lamp to spruce up her apartment. Better yet, some ruffled lace curtains for the room’s single window—something pretty that would frame the view of the street below but keep the sun bright on her body when she slept beneath it.

  She’d never had so fine a place to sleep. The walls were papered in fading floral ribbons, linoleum floors showed previous tenants’ wear, but the one room abode was all hers. If she was lucky and kept to the night hours, it would be many years before neighbors even noticed she lived there. She might continue to enjoy her view of the busy street, remain sheltered, while decades crept by.

  Small town life had been much more complicated. Everyone asked questions, everyone watched. Big cities, no matter how bad the inhabitants inside their borders reeked, were a boon.

  If she played her cards right, no one would know that... that there was something deeply wrong with her.

  All Pearl had to do was stay out of trouble.

  “Hey, girly.”

  She’d heard him, but she knew better than to so much as raise her chin to a stranger on the street, daylight or midnight.

  The Roaring Twenties offered much for a girl... but it had not changed the hardline manner of men. They were as much trouble as they’d ever been.

  This one, in his pricy coat and polished wingtips, had no place wandering her working class neighborhood at 3:00 a.m. This one, huddled under the corner drug store’s awning, didn’t smell of bootleg whiskey; he didn’t sway from too much drink. He had not come from one of the speakeasies and just gotten lost. Even from across the street, Pearl could smell that there was no lingering wash of women’s perfume telling the tale of a late night dalliance with a mistress to explain his midnight stroll in foul weather.

  Cocky by half, he was lurking with a purpose and by the growing beat of his heart, he’d found it: prey.

  Poor women made easy targets.

  Two more blocks and she’d have a locked door between herself and everyone else in Manhattan. Two more blocks and there would be nothing to worry about.

  The would-be Casanova pushed from the building, cutting across the slushy street in a beeline for her. “Isn’t it a little late for a stroll?”

  Pearl took a sharp left, hoping he’d be wiser than to follow.

  He was not.

  She’d stolen a sidelong glance at his face, but did not recognize the man. It wasn’t her habit to catalogue each patron she’d served. After all, they came and went night after night. Hell, she rarely spoke more than one word during her shifts unless she had to. “Cigarette?” A quick nod and an exchange of funds and Pearl would slip to the next table. “Cigarette?”

  Her job wasn’t to be memorable. It was to be pretty while making correct change. That’s what they paid her for.

  Pearl could afford her little room on the fifth floor of the Madison Building. She didn’t have to make small talk or flirt. Beyond the occasional pat on the rump, patrons left her alone. No one really wanted to gab with a cigarette girl. She was part of the scenery—an ornament that made underground supper clubs like Palace Delight swanky. It was the female patrons who earned all the attention. Pearl’s hair wasn’t sparkling bottle blonde like theirs, it wasn’t finger waved and bedecked with feathers. Hers was sleek and dark, heavy bangs across her brow, bob tight and simple.

  Men didn’t follow her home...

  But then again, it seemed this one had been waiting for her.

  “I’m talkin to you!” The stranger grabbed her elbow, yanking Pearl back so hard her heel broke on the ice. A dumpster hit her back... and everything went wrong.

  Everything always went wrong.

  Chapter Two

  Frantic, Pearl scrubbed her hands together under the tap. She couldn’t get the blood off fast enough. Icy water sloshed, her hands shaking so hard little drops of pink water splattered the cracked sink, leaving a macabre mess on the porcelain.

  “You’ve done it this time.” Harshly whispered self-chastisement stuttered past chattering teeth. “You should have just let him have his fun.”

  Acid hit the back of her throat. One gag and her stomach emptied.

  Tears running from her eyes, Pearl gripped the side of the sink. Red smeared the bowl but it was nothing to the horrid puddle of bloody vomit the drain could not draw down fast enough.

  A little whirlpool grew in the mess. Running water diluted the crimson from deep red to a light blush. All the while, hot tears ran down cold cheeks.

  The man had tasted terrible.

  Mottled bruises marked her cheek where the stranger had struck her. The back of her head was a pulped mush from the impact of the sidewalk. One look in the mirror told her there was more blood... in her hair, around her mouth, saturating the black wool of her only coat.

  Torn throats made a mess.

  Behind a split lip, a pair of delicate fangs remained distended. She’d been unable to retract them, too upset and far too scared.

  Bloodshot from weeping, violet eyes stared back at her. “You have to wash off the blood. You have to wash your coat. You have to clean this room before anyone wakes up. Stop crying.”

  A block and a half away, a corpse was being dusted by sno
w, the same snow that bore a pair of uneven tracks right to her door.

  At her back, the communal bathroom door was locked, but it was only a matter of time before one of the other tenants knocked so they might get ready for work. It took over an hour before water off her coat ran clear, for Pearl to wash her hair in the sink, to clean up the cuts and scrapes.

  The sun was rising by the time she huddled in her bed. Outside her only window, the storm raged on, and the world looked white and clean.

  Pearl knew what was hidden under that snow, and in a matter of hours, so would the rest of New York.

  ***

  Black and white photographs of the sprawled corpse filled front page news. He’d been found frozen solid, mild bruising on his arms and legs, throat torn open—bite marks identified on his neck. Beside the horror was the smiling image of a handsome man of quality reputation. Chadwick Parker: entrepreneur, man about town, and son of the powerful Judge Parker. He glowed with life in that photograph, handsome and chirpy—a real heartbreaker.

  One conniving lie of a man.

  Good Christian men didn’t attack seemingly defenseless women in dark alleys. They didn’t rape them.

  Pearl knew better than to assume she had been the first woman he’d followed home. Over the years, how many others had he hurt?

  She wasn’t sorry he was dead… but she could still taste his sour blood in her mouth, could feel him shoving his cock inside her, and felt completely unclean.

  Though the man who attacked her would never be able to hurt her again, she was the one left terrified.

  The police were looking for the killer. For her.

  The boroughs had grabbed onto the story, the press sensationalizing every known fact regarding the grotesque murder. Though the body had not been exsanguinated, it didn’t matter. The official coroner’s report stated that long, sharp teeth had been the weapon—that they had torn through the carotid artery while gnawing a path from left to right.

  It did not resemble the bite of any known animal. The bite pattern appeared human, save two fang-like incisors.

  The City Daily had been the first paper to use the word vampire.

  Illustrious Chadwick Parker’s death was treated as the most vicious murder New York had seen in ages. Keep your children inside after dark, your womenfolk safe. Nightmares lurked in the cold dark. No one mentioned that he’d been found with his fly open, cock out, or asked why he had been on a late night stroll through a shoddy neighborhood during a blizzard.

  “Cigarette?”

  Every table, every canoodling couple was whispering, boasting, making conjecture on the same thing. Her.

  “Cigarette?”

  Pearl had never felt physically well a time in her life, but since that man’s fetid blood had pooled in her mouth, she could hardly keep anything down.

  More bones than curves in her clothes, her paunchy boss was dissatisfied with what he saw. “You look like shit.”

  It wasn’t just her flagging looks. Pearl had been jumping at shadows; she’d knocked over drinks on guests. Her time at the supper club was up, her little room with its window was going to be lost, and once again, any type of life she had tried to imagine for herself had been ruined.

  She should have known better than to hope things might be different.

  Pearl, her voice low so the other girls wouldn’t hear, said, “Just give me one more night, sir.”

  “You ain’t been so bad, Pearl. You show up on time, do your job… but no one wants to look at a skeleton slinging cigs.”

  “I’ll put on more rouge, take the section farthest from the stage lights.” Lightheaded, she flat out begged. “One more night, Mr. Weller. Please?”

  He was unconvinced, eyeing the dark marks under her eyes, the bony knobs of her shoulders. “You got the consumption?”

  That wasn’t what was wrong with her. “No, sir. I am just hungry. Winters are hard.”

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, eat something, girl!”

  She took his admonishment as approval, and flung the strap of her cigarette box over her head. Once she had it flush to her neck, she offered a close mouthed smile. “Thank you.”

  Rushing from the dressing rooms, she heard Mr. Weller call at her back, “The first complaint I get, you’re gone, kid.”

  Smile glued on, everything was by the book: drop a curtsey at each table, stay moving, no lounging. Assure guests were happy. The sidelong glances, Pearl could handle, even the occasional look of disgust at her split lip. If they sneered, she smiled even bigger, fangs retracted, all her teeth on display, until they stopped sneering and looked through her.

  That was how people worked; that was the world Pearl had always known.

  One more night, two more dollars then she would leave her little apartment with its floral papered walls and single overhead light. In a pair of sturdy shoes, she could walk to Boston or maybe Philadelphia. It would take time, weeks, but there would be no more scary newspapers, no more feeling like the buildings were closing in around her.

  She could find a job just like this one, maybe even another apartment with a window.

  Or... what if she didn’t leave? What if she took some time and ate a great deal? If she could fatten her cheeks up by spring, maybe Palace Delight would want her back. Without funds her room would be lost, but living on the street wasn’t so bad. She’d done it before; she could do it again.

  Hope, it was a vicious deceiver, but still it came to prick at her heart. It had been two weeks and no soul had knocked on her door. Perhaps New York was big enough to shield her. After all, she’d come here for a reason. The Big Apple, the Golden City she’d dreamed of for decades. Art Deco, shimmering buildings, picture shows.

  Everything would be fine.

  A deep breath and her smile became genuine.

  True to his word, Mr. Weller fired her at the end of the shift, but not without payment. He even tucked an extra dollar in her hand out of charity. By the time she’d pulled on her coat and stepped out into the icy night, her bad turn had begun to feel manageable.

  He’d hire her back, Pearl was certain. She just needed to gain some weight first. The long walk home was a good place to start. There were always rats in New York City, and they were easy enough to catch.

  She snatched up two, draining each out of sight of the street. When her teeth sunk into the third, her heart stopped racing, her breath became even for the first time in days, and feeling began to come back to her frozen toes.

  Starving herself out of fear of the shadows had been unwise. It was a mistake she promised herself not to repeat.

  The dead, mangy creature was dropped on dirty snow. A full sigh puffed like smoke in the chilled air, Pearl leaning her head back against the brick wall of a dreary tenement. In the narrow alley, sandwiched between two tall buildings she had a small view of a pretty sky to enjoy.

  “I can smell the human’s blood on your coat, apostate.”

  Cutting off her startled shriek, a hand closed over her mouth... a hand attached to an arm that had grown from the wall at her back.

  Screaming behind the clamp of rough fingers, Pearl threw a terrified glance side to side in a desperate attempt to see who’d caught her.

  Nobody was there, only a wall and a garbage bin.

  Fear elongated fangs behind her lips, kohled lashes spiked with cake mascara went so wide, the whites of her eyes shone bright in the dark.

  The feeling of jagged mortar grinding against her spine melted away, morphing from ice cold brick to the firm body of a man.

  He hoisted her upward, despite her frantically kicking legs, while silent figures materialized to her left and her right.

  Brick met her face, cheek split, teeth cracked.

  Dazed from the blow, Pearl’s mouth gaped and her eyes settled on an angel.

  The being, the stranger, gripped her chin, his fingers distorting her cheeks as he smiled. That grin promised pain, the torments of hell, and was the most terrifying thing Pearl had seen in her long,
laborious life.

  Begging was not beneath her. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”

  From the monster’s mouth, a milky white pair of razor sharp teeth grew long and menacing.

  Two long fangs just like hers.

  It could not be…

  It couldn’t.

  Things like her did not exist. She was sick, that was all. She was sick and needed the absolution of God to save her from her deformity and perverse hungers.

  Instinct would disagree with her. One look at those fangs and Pearl hissed, began to fight in earnest, and was punished horribly.

  The smiling man jammed his fingers into her mouth. Gagging when he hooked her fang, she tried to bite. It took several hard jerks, but with a final twisting wrench, he ripped her tooth straight from her skull.

  Gums torn, the socket open and spurting blood, Pearl wailed.

  No pain she’d ever known compared to this.

  Her second fang was gouged out, her cheek ripped fully apart from corner to ear when the man laughing in her face caught his sharpened nail on the flesh.

  The angel had no interest in her words, the question in her eyes, or her gurgled prayers... only her agony.

  Chapter Three

  Feet dragging over pavement, a stream of blood poured from her mouth to mark the path. In the time it took to bring her to this place, she had counted them. Three men with angelic faces and evil hearts had hauled her the distance, and not a single soul had seen.

  Dangling between them, the best she could do was press a hand to her maimed face, swallow the constant flow of blood collecting in her mouth, and weep. Her attacker had taken more than her fangs, he had taken her misguided hope that there might be answers to her life—that there might be more for her than year upon year of isolation and loneliness.

  There were others like her.

  How could she have never known?

  Even as they’d beat her, Pearl had tried to ask them what they were. But these men, these glowing angels, were so much stronger and possessed no pity for what they’d deemed an apostate.