“I suppose that’s two debts I owe you now, Highwayman,” Calla said. Sitting on the floor of a small, domed chamber, they were well away from the thing, though they had fled blindly through the darkness to escape it. She was no longer sure where they were.

And she could figure that out later; she was much more interested in watching the lantern light glow upon the Highwayman’s strong forearms and stubbled jaw, and imagining ways – delicious, sinful ways – she could begin paying those debts off.

Calla was no innocent maiden, but her previous sexual experiences had been awkward, fumbling affairs that left her wondering why people gave a damn about the whole thing. This was different. There was a hungry, mewling void within her that wanted to be filled. Needed to be filled, and that her need was so great she would sate it here, now, in these grim halls of the dead, only further inflamed her desire.

“You saved me,” she murmured as she scooted next to him. “I couldn’t help myself.” Nor had she wanted to help herself. Just as she didn’t want to help herself now. Calla felt like she was in a daydream. She didn’t recognize this version of herself, unbridled and brimming with wanton abandon, but she didn’t want to think about that too much.

She let her hand slide down to the Highwayman’s thigh. This was what she wanted, now.

He turned to face her; his grim blue eyes bore into hers as he frowned. “Stop.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t want this, Highwayman,” she whispered into his ear. “You can lie to me…” she let her hand slip between his legs and felt the swelling firmness there; “but your body can’t.”

He groaned as his cock rose to meet her hand, desperate to be there, and when she grasped it and began to stroke… She was right. He did want it.

His thoughts felt like they were moving through molasses; his hands had unbuckled his belt before his head realized they had done so. His mind felt like it was being coated in sweet, gooey syrup. It was getting more and more difficult to think with every moment that passed, and thinking was becoming less and less interesting to the Highwayman as Calla helped him tug his pants down past his hips.

It was all so deliciously, terrifyingly familiar…

*

“This is wrong, Lucretia.”

“There is neither wrong nor right within the Indigo, Prevan,” she purred as her finger traced a line down his chest, over his stomach, and drew lazy circles around the head of his manhood. He could feel himself stiffening again.

They were lounging in the Vicar’s large, sumptuous bed, their bodies lazily entwined, and glistening with sweat. The bed was damp from the exception of their lovemaking, which had been nearly continuous for two days… or had it been three? There was no day, no night, within the priest’s bedchamber; velvet curtains had been drawn over the windows and only the dim, ethereal witchlight of the Indigo gate pulsing above them provided any illumination.  

It might have been four days. It might have been a week that he had spent there, in the arms of his betrothed, for that matter – time had lost all meaning to Prevan. Every time he tried to gather his thoughts, to try and make sense of what was happening, Lucretia was there, smiling, touching, licking… sucking…and that dreamy haze washed over his thoughts once more, as inexorable as the ocean tides.

Their bodies were smeared with a thick, aqueous substance that continuously trickled down from the gate above; it smelled of licorice and tasted like plum and honey wine. There was a fullness, a sensual weightiness to it, and when it undulated upon their flesh, teasing cunt and cock and ass, they whimpered and shuddered in unearthly delight.

And all the while, the Indigo sang to Prevan. Its haunting, inhuman melody also came through the gate, an alien lullaby that cradled his thoughts and soothed his cares away. He had not slept; his body no longer required it. He simply drifted in a euphoric lethargy, not quite awake, and yet not quite dreaming.

Still…

No priest’s word can make a wrong thing right, his mother had told him; and no King’s law can make a right thing wrong. You know the difference between the two. Let your heart guide your way.

“We can’t do this,” he murmured to Lucretia.

“We can do,” his betrothed told him, smiling wickedly, as she slid a finger inside his slick, yielding ass and gently massaged him from within, “whatever we want, now. You are sworn to me, my love, and I am sworn to you. Within the Indigo we will be forever joined. We will be eternal.”

Prevan lifted his head from the Vicar’s pillow and looked down at the foot of the bed, where the old priest knelt, his mouth wide open and drooling, eyes seeing nothing, as the squamous, glistening thing clinging to his back caressed his body with hundreds of long, tentacular cilia. The Vicar trembled as the Indigo thing mindlessly drew another orgasm from his body. Already his pale, flabby body was beginning to change. His flesh squirmed and rippled; worm-like things writhed beneath it. Indigo fluids seeped from his nipples, trailing like tears down his chest and over this stomach.

The Vicar moaned, deliriously, as the Indigo thing ravaged his body. His thoughts and memories had been devoured by ecstasy, and even if the old priest were capable of understanding what was happening to him – had he been, in that moment, given a choice between receiving salvation from the Indigo madness, or returning to that impossible, blasphemous bliss, he would have renounced the Gods without a second thought.

“You know they deserve this,” Lucretia whispered in Prevan’s ear. “For what they’ve done to me… to us… let this world and its lying Gods be consumed.”

*

The Highwayman slapped Calla’s hand away. “Stop. That’s not you, Calla. This isn’t what you want. That thing back there is still playing with your mind.” He forced himself to tug his trousers back up, over his throbbing cock, even as his body yearned for orgasm. “It’ll pass.”

“I don’t want it to pass, Highwayman,” she said, huskily, as she kissed his neck and tried to pull his hand up to her breast. “I want you inside of me, now.”

It was difficult for the Highwayman to pull away from Calla; not because she was strong, but because his flesh was weak. He reminded himself that this was a trap; they were both caught in it, and they were both also the bait. He had been caught in such a trap once, many years ago, and on those rare nights that he remembered his dreams, he remembered dreaming of how delicious it had been.

He forced himself to remember the way the Vicar’s body had opened like an overripe fruit splitting from its skin; he held in his mind the image of the watchwoman’s delirious joy as she had allowed herself to be taken by the Indigo thing. He would not let that happen to himself, or to Calla… or Lady Elena.

If it wasn’t already too late.

“If you do this,” he told Calla, grimly holding her at arm’s length, “it won’t end. You might be able to control it, for a while, but it’ll tug at you. Nothing you ever do again will ever feel as good, and you’ll chase that feeling, that pleasure, for the rest of your life, until it consumes you.”

His words seemed to make little impression on Calla’s lust-addled mind. Her warm eyes offered an unspoken invitation to him as she unbuttoned her blouse. Her breasts were full and heavy in her hands, and she offered them to the Highwayman, rolling her dark nipples between thumbs and forefingers. The Highwayman bit his lower lip as he imagined taking them into his mouth, gently rolling his tongue around them, sucking…

“I don’t care,” she mewled. “I want it...”

“You owe me a debt, Calla,” he growled, trying to stoke the flames of his anger so they might overwhelm his growing lust. “I’m calling it in.”

That gave her pause for a moment; the Highwayman pressed the issue. “Remember your brother. You won’t only lose yourself. You’ll lose him, and he’ll lose you.” He pushed himself back, away from Calla, and she did not come closer. “You’ll stop caring about anything but pleasure, and your need for it will drive you mad. Once it has you in its clutches, it never lets go.”

She sat there for a while, her eyes glassy, exposed breasts heaving as she breathed deeply, raggedly, but when she realized her hand was mindlessly sliding between her legs, seeking out that terrible euphoria once more, she froze.

“Gods,” she muttered. “That… thing… it was disgusting. But I wanted it. I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t stop looking at it.” Calla flushed with embarrassment as she remembered how the creature had made her feel. A dizzying sensation, like when she had been a child playing on rooftops, or climbing seaside cliffs, daring herself to look over the edge. Imagining the fall. Fearing it. Wanting it.

The thought of going back to it, even now, was lodged in her mind like a particularly stringy bit of meat stuck between her teeth.

“What in the Nine Hells was it?” she asked.

“What you saw back there was… they don’t have names,” the Highwayman told her. “At least, not names as we understand them. They come from a place called Indigo. You can’t walk there, and you can’t ride there, but if you know how to call out to it, sometimes… sometimes it’ll talk to you.”

“How did it get here, then?” Calla asked.

The Highwayman shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“And that woman back there… is she…”

“Dying? No… she’s not dying. She’s becoming part of it. Indigo gets into your mind; makes you feel sensations that don’t exist in this world. Pleasures your body isn’t meant to experience. They consume you until you’re just part of it. But then you’re not you anymore. You’re just Indigo too. No body, no mind; you’re Indigo, and Indigo doesn’t think. It just wants and feels and needs.”

“How do you know all of this?” Calla asked. “I thought you said you weren’t no sorcerer.”

“I’m not,” he frowned. “But I’ve known one.”