WolfeBlade: de Wolfe Pack Generations by Kathryn Veque (reading an ebook txt) 📕

she could hear music. There were people milling about, all of them wearing masks, and as she watched, a man came up to Aurelia, grabbed her around the waist, and proceeded to kiss her deeply.

Aurelia responded lustily.

Gavriella watched in shock as Aurelia kissed a man she probably didn’t even know. There were no names, no acknowledgement, and as Aurelia had said, no one was supposed to know the true identity, so Gavriella could only assume she didn’t know who the man was. But she was sure kissing him like she knew who he was. He stuck his tongue in her mouth and she let him.

Then, as quickly as he had grabbed her, he let her go and moved on.

When Aurelia saw the shock on Gavriella’s face, she laughed.

“This is a place where you can live out your wildest fantasies, Gavy,” she said. “If you see a handsome man you wish to kiss, then do so. He can kiss you, too. Everyone is free to do as they wish.”

Gavriella was coming to suspect that she was going to sorely regret coming to this place. “This establishment is called Gomorrah?” she asked, repeating the word she’d heard Aurelia give to gain them admittance. “As in Sodom and Gomorrah?”

Aurelia giggled, which told Gavriella everything she needed to know. “You’ll enjoy yourself,” she said. “You must learn to relax and enjoy life. You’re so serious. You must learn to smile more and be less obedient to convention.”

Camilla was next to her, chiming in. “Gavy knows how to smile,” she said. “I have seen her. But she will love this place, I know she will!”

Aurelia gave her an appraising look, as if she didn’t quite believe that. “If she cannot be happy here, then she cannot be happy anywhere,” she said flatly. “Since no one is supposed to know your real name, you must have a pretend name. A name you only use when you are here.”

Gavriella was dubious of the entire strange concept. “Why would I not give my real name?”

Aurelia sighed sharply. “Because no one must know you,” she said. “In a world of fantasy, nothing is real. Do you not understand? Here, you are anyone you want to be. You are not real. You are simply a woman in a cat mask, with no past and no future. You are a dream and a dream is you. Therefore, we shall call you… Kitten.”

Gavriella resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Kitten?”

“Perfect!” Camilla said. “I am always Angel and Aurelia is always Venus, the Goddess of Love. That is all anyone knows of us!”

Gavriella stared at them for a moment, her seemingly prim and proper cousins, who evidently had a naughty side. She had an inkling that this place was much darker than she had been led to believe.

God’s Bones, what have I gotten myself in to?

But it was too late to leave as Aurelia continued to lead them deeper underground. Because the church had built their structure over the old temple, the ceilings were very low. Everything seemed tight and close. There were fires burning in copper bowls to give off light and warmth against the dankness of the sublevels, but it wasn’t enough to stave off the true darkness of the place.

They went deeper.

Aurelia took them into a larger room that had one wall that was shaped like a half-moon. In this room, fatted torches burned upon the walls, creating a layer of smoke against the wooden ceiling that had been reinforced with great beams. This chamber contained food, and not just any food – any and all food imaginable. They were great tables spread with the stuff and, for the first time since entering the establishment, Gavriella showed some interest in her surroundings.

Aurelia gave her a moment to look over all the food, and most of it prepared in a Roman fashion. One entire table was fish; fish baked in pies, fish fried and fat, fish stuffed with breadcrumbs and other fish, fish swimming in wine and vinegar sauce, and fish roasted on small iron spits. It was an incredible amount of fish.

Another table was strictly beef – beef prepared twenty different ways, with different sauces and different spices. There was even a bull’s head on the table, cooked, with grapes for eyes and a crown on its head. Yet another table was chicken and other birds. Crowning that table was a giant peacock that was cooked, yet the feathers had been reattached so that it looked as it did in life.

People were simply walking up to the tables, using their hands and removing chicken legs or knuckles of beef. She saw one man stand there and use his hands to scoop out big chunks of a beef pie and shove it in his mouth. Against the wall was a table dedicated to sweets and there were probably more sweets than Gavriella had ever seen in her entire life, and still another table that was full of drinks. A nearby servant made sure that the table never ran dry.

It was more food than Gavriella had ever seen in her life.

Gavriella took a skewer of candied grapes, but Aurelia didn’t let her examine the food too closely before she was pulling her along to show her the rest of this mysterious establishment. As Gavriella quickly devoured her grapes, she had no real hint that the worst was yet to come.

In fact, it was in front of her.

Because the grounds had once been a Roman temple, there were small cells that were meant to house priests or even soldiers. They were sleeping rooms complete with stone beds that had been built there a thousand years before when the Romans ruled Londinium. What they were used for now, however, was not what the Romans had intended.

There was a strange smell down here, incense burning in bowls to cover up the stink of human bodies and sex. There were curtains in front of some of the cells and not in front of others. Gavriella turned away