I drank the amber liquid in my goblet before answering him, and the whiskey burned my throat. Once, Herr Klemmen and I drank cognac together to celebrate my betrothal to Johanna, but this beverage was stronger. I handed my empty goblet to one of the guests for him to refill it.
“Throttling you would be sufficient,” I said.
My answer brought a vindictive glint to Frankenstein’s eyes, but before he could say anything else one of the women club members commented about how strong I looked. “Could we have a demonstration?”
“Of course, madam,” Frankenstein said with a polite bow, and he nodded toward two of the club members, both of whom with their round pear-shaped bodies and thick whiskers would have been in trouble if they ever ended up in the hands of the surviving members of the pig snout collectors. I grabbed them by the backs of their capes, holding them so that I also had a grasp of their jackets, and I raised my arms so that I lifted them straight up into the air. They sputtered their indignation over this, and were red faced by the time I dropped them back to the floor. Several of the other members were laughing at this demonstration, and these two men decided that it would be better to take it in good humor.
“Can you have him disrobe?” the same woman member asked. “I would like to see him naked!”
Several of the other members and guests murmured their desire for this also. I instantly regretted my throttling comment and gave Frankenstein a pleading look. His vindictiveness continued to glimmer in his eyes for a long moment, but it faded and he surprisingly shook his head.
“I am sorry, but Friedrich is here as a guest, as I am, and it will be his decision whether he disrobes.”
More whiskey was handed to me and my hand shook as I drank it. I was relieved, but still hated that I had to feel gratitude to Frankenstein for not forcing me to debase myself in front of this group. I handed my once again empty goblet to the same member to pour me more whiskey. As I looked around the room I saw a few small statues and other artifacts that confirmed to me that these people liked to think of themselves as devil worshippers, or at least they liked to play that role. Maybe it was the whiskey, or maybe it was that I desired to show them what frauds they were, but I mentioned how I had spent over two weeks with devil worshippers. That got their attention. Even Frankenstein raised an eyebrow.
“This was in the Austrian forest. They were holding a black mass at the base of a rock shaped like the Devil’s skull. When I stepped forward they mistook me for Satan, believing they had summoned me forth with their mass.”
“What happened next?” one of them asked.
I was handed more whiskey. This time I only took a sip instead of draining the pint that was held in the goblet. “They catered to my every whim,” I said. “After a while I grew tired of it, and them as well, and I sent them to their deaths.”
A few of them laughed nervously at that. “And how did you do that?” asked one of the pear-shaped men that I had lifted.
“I directed them to travel to where I knew a nest of vampyres would be waiting.”
That drew more nervous laughter from them.
“The stories that this creature tells,” one of them said. “Such an imagination!”
“Yes, such,” Frankenstein agreed. “Next he’ll be telling us that he’s the dark avenger that London has been whispering about over the last three days. The one who supposedly has recently taken to roaming the dark London streets so that he can injure the villains and other such bandits waiting to prey on the good citizens of this city.”
I was surprised that these types of stories were already circulating, and although Frankenstein said this with a thin smile, I knew from the hardness in his eyes that he suspected I was this person, as he probably also suspected that my story about the devil worshippers was more than simply my imagination.
I drank more of the whiskey, and was beginning to feel the effects of it. “The devil worshippers I met might have been despicable,” I said as a scowl twisted my lips, “but at least they were sincere in their practice.”
“And how so?” one of them asked with a chuckle.
“Human sacrifices, for example,” I said, my voice breaking into a soft mumble. I looked away from them to stare instead into the bottom of my now almost empty goblet. “They were devoted, I will give them that. Despicable, but devout. They did more than stand about in the safety of a private club and drink whiskey.”
The club member who had been filling my goblet with whiskey laughed at that. “While we may not perform human sacrifices here, we do more than just drink whiskey. This is only a meeting room. Let me show you more of our club.”
He led us to the other side of the room and to a set of heavy red curtains, all the while talking excitedly to Frankenstein. When he got to these curtains, he reached into his cape and handed us hickory sticks and then beamed at us.
“Welcome to Satan’s Paradise,” he announced with a grin. “Nothing quite like this on earth, I guarantee you.”
“What are these sticks for?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said.
Frankenstein pushed through the curtains first, and then I followed.
CHAPTER
25
We found ourselves in a large cavernous room teeming with club members, guests, and naked girls. Some of these girls wore masks to make them appear as if they were daemons, others had their faces exposed. I heard fluttering above me and saw that bats were flying free in this cavern, but none of the people there seemed bothered by this. Fires also burned by the walls. I lowered my gaze and found myself staring in disbelief at the scene in front of me. Most of the club members and guests sat in majestic armchairs, but if they needed to put their goblets down one of the naked girls would run over, bend to her hands and knees, and allow her back to be used as a table. Other of these naked girls walked around the room, flaunting their bodies to the club members and guests, occasionally bending over so that their bottoms could be flogged with a hickory stick.
My attention was distracted by club members and guests who came over to gawk at me and to ask Frankenstein questions about my construction. One of them noticed that my goblet was empty and went to refill it. When the goblet was returned I drank the whiskey quickly, hoping to dull my senses to this place. When my gaze wandered around the room, I found myself staring at a scene unfolding before me, not believing my eyes, but sickened nonetheless. One of the club members had lowered his trousers and dropped to his knees so that he could enter one of girls who was acting as a living drink table from behind. As he rocked back and forth to push himself into her, the girl showed no evidence of this happening, not in her expression and not in allowing herself to be moved even an inch.
The noxious spell holding me was broken by one of the club members elbowing me. “Pity her if she lets as much as a drop of the drink spill,” he said with a wicked grin. “She knows the punishment that will be waiting for her if she does. And, my enormous friend, feel free to make use of any of these girls in the same manner. That’s what they’re here for! Although, I daresay, they’ll have their work cut out to keep from spilling their drinks if you were to have a go at them!”
I looked away, disgusted that I had ever caught sight of it. It was then that I spotted him. He stood in the shadows, away from the rest of them. Tall, finely dressed, with his black cape and mask signifying him as a club member, and his black boots so expertly polished that they glinted. His body had an angular look to it, like a knife blade, and when I saw his dead pale eyes behind his mask, I recognized what he was. I pushed my way past the crowd that had grown around me so that I could stand next to this solitary figure.