"I am sorry that you had to be involved in this, Jennifer."

"That's okay, Elliot, I often find the easiest way to contact long-lost friends is to get myself hideously tortured."

I was kind of relieved at my new situation. Having served my purpose, it seemed that Father Donetti had lost interest in me, even as a perverted distraction. I had been released from all my bondage, although it had been replaced by shackles and chains on wrists and ankles, and a heavy steel collar around my neck. I had been confined to a fairly large cage, until the nuns to whom my ongoing ‘care’ was to be assigned could come and collect me in a couple of days’ time. While I was still aching all over from my earlier torments, and I was sure that my skin would be scarred for life from the whippings and the branding I had suffered, it seemed that I would have at least a few days’ respite before it all started again, and this time with no prospect of rescue or release. But I wasn't concerned about that just yet.

My concern for Elliot’s situation was much more urgent, however. I could just see him in the dark, lying on the stone slab across the dungeon, spreadeagled and naked, his wrists and ankles locked in the silver lined manacles which were connected to the four corners by heavy chains. Additional bands had been placed around his neck, waist and thighs and these were also presumably impregnated with silver to debilitate him. Also, a large, heavy silver cross had been put around his neck and then placed on his bare chest and, even in the dark, I could see his discomfort at this, and hear his laboured breathing. My heart went out to him, knowing how much he must be suffering.

"What are we going to do?" I asked, with a trace of desperation and defeatism in my voice.

"Do you trust me, Jennifer?" Elliot asked. I remembered all the occasions during our week-long relationship in Las Vegas when he could have killed me, but didn't, and replied immediately.

"Of course I do, Elliot, silly question!"

"Then believe me when I say that we will get out of this, I promise you."

I wanted to believe him, but how could he be so sure? It sounded like bravado in the worst kind of action movie imaginable. But then, I thought, they always did get out of it in the movies…

As a displacement activity, I pulled at the bars of my cage, examining the lock and all the joints in minute detail, as if I was magically going to work out how to get through a set of steel bars three inches apart. Presumably after I'd performed that miracle, I would rip the chains from my vampire lover and fly away into the moonlight! Yeah, dream on, Jenny!

After a while, I gave up and tried to get some sleep, not an easy task when the only thing to lie down on are cold, damp flagstones, and every inch of your body feels like it's had half its skin flayed off, but somehow I managed it.

I was awoken by clanking as the door was pushed open, and I looked up to see the priest and the torturer leaning over Elliot’s prone body.

"Thank you so much for making an appearance," Father Donetti was saying, "I wondered if you were going to bother to turn up at all. Did you not wish to minimise the suffering of your harlot?"

"Hey! Watch who you’re calling a harlot!" I called out indignantly, having recovered some of my strength and, surprisingly, lost some of my fear. As I thought about it later, I realised this was probably Elliot's influence on me, calming me down.

"I apologise for keeping you waiting," Elliot replied sardonically to the priest’s question, "I had a long way to travel, and only at night, as I am sure you can appreciate."

“Well, no matter, let us proceed without further delay. Signor Campagno, if you please.”

The giant Italian hauled on a chain, and I looked up to see what he was doing. I hadn’t noticed before, but the skylight had been obscured, which explained the gloom but, as the chain operated a pulley, one cover plate moved over another and suddenly a myriad pinpricks of daylight appeared like a starry, starry night. It looked very artistic, but the horrendous howl of pain which rebounded off the walls made me realise it’s terrible purpose.

As I looked down, I saw Elliot writhing in agony. The stone slab to which he was chained lay directly under the grille, and the motes of light shone down like laser beams onto his naked torso, causing tiny spirals of smoke to rise from his chest. I suddenly caught that awful whiff of roasting human flesh, now horribly familiar from the branding to which I had been subjected.

“Stop!” I screamed, distraught at the suffering being inflicted on Elliot. “How can you be so inhumane?!” Father Donetti laughed mirthlessly.

“You stupid whore! This… thing… isn’t human! To be human, you must have a soul, and this lost its soul to the devil long ago!” He stood over Elliot, looking down at him as he struggled against the chains, wincing at the burning of the light.

“So, are you ready to give up your fellow demons of the underworld? Or do you wish to prolong this entirely unnecessary suffering, in some kind of twisted version of loyalty? I would rather enjoy having my colleague here torture you for a good while longer. But if you give me what I want, I can end this immediately. The choice is yours."

"And if I talk, then what?" Elliot’s voice was as strong and calm as always, but I could hear the tension in it caused by the extreme pain he was feeling. "You will very kindly cut off my head? It hardly seems a compelling choice." The priest seemed annoyed by this response.

"You will die, Demon, either way! The degree to which you suffer beforehand is up to you. Campagno! Continue the torture! I shall return at sunset and, if this fiend has not yet submitted, we will move on to the next phase. And shut that awful woman up!"

I had been crying and wailing throughout this conversation, pleading with them to release Elliot, even though I knew it was pointless, I suppose that maybe it made me feel like I was doing something. However, when the brute of a torturer strode towards me, I shut up and backed away.

"Please," he hissed, "give me a reason to come in there and shut you up! " I was shaking with fear, and decided not to take him up on his challenge. With a threatening growl, he went back towards Elliot to resume his torture.

The day passed slowly. The torturer Campagno amused himself by trying different techniques on Elliot to see whether they were as effective on the undead as they were on the soon-to-be-dead. Thumbscrews, hot needles under the toenails, redhot pokers burning the flesh more conventionally than the daylight - all these seemed to cause the vampire little undue concern. But, as the sun tracked across the sky above, somewhere out there in the real world, the little beams of light burned their lines of tortuous pain across his torso. I could see him squirming on the slab, and could only imagine what he was going through.

"How’re you doing, Elliot?" I whispered, hoping that the Inquisitor was out of earshot, having gone over to his brazier to check on his irons. I knew it was a crass, insensitive question, but I had to hear him speak, to have him reassure me in some way.

"Did you ever try to burn yourself with a magnifying glass when you were a child, Jennifer?" he asked in a remarkably calm and controlled voice.

"No," I replied, "but my brother did. It hurt like hell."

"Well, imagine that, multiplied by, I would guess, 34, and continuing for eight hours. That's how I'm doing." As I looked over, I realised that the beams had moved from his upper chest to his shins, which meant that they had passed directly over his groin. I cringed in sympathy. How the hell were we ever going to get out of this? I felt silent tears fall from my eyes.

Meanwhile, our torturer seemed to be setting up some new infernal contraption. He lowered what looked like a large glass cylinder, which was hanging by a rope from a pulley in the ceiling, until it was only inches above Elliot's chest. He reached over and pulled it to one side of the slab and lowered it until it rested on the floor. I had no idea what this might be used for, but I certainly had a bad feeling about it. At that moment, Father Donetti returned, carrying some religious paraphernalia that I didn't recognise, and went over to the prone vampire.

"I trust you have pondered long and hard on my earlier offer?" he asked with an arched eyebrow.

"Hardly gave it a moment’s thought, we have been having so much fun, haven’t we, Jennifer?”

“Absolutely, Elliot, wouldn't have missed it for the world!" Well, if he wanted to wind up the crazy priest, then I was happy to join in. However, the Father didn't seem to see the funny side.

"I'm so glad you find this amusing!" he spat, clearly furious. "Campagno!"

The two Italians spent several minutes filling the glass cylinder with water, which the priest mumbled various incantations over. The torturer then hauled the device up until it was hanging a couple of feet above Elliot's prone figure.

"As the sun has now gone down," the priest explained, indulging his love of his own voice once again, "we obviously cannot use that torture on you during the night hours. So I have devised this little entertainment for you, Demon. The cylinder contains water which I have just blessed - holy water. When my colleague opens the tiny apertures in the base, it will drip down onto you which, given that you are one of Lucifer's Warriors, should provide an entertaining torment for the coming hours."

He nodded to the chief Inquisitor, who pulled a lever on the side of the cylinder. In the fading light, I could see the droplets forming across the underside before they began to fall. As each one struck his chest, Elliot sucked in his breath, occasionally giving a little moan and, given his incredible strength and stoic resilience, I could only imagine the level of pain he was experiencing. Once again I found myself weeping in sympathy and despair.

As the hours dragged by, the priest and the torturer rigged up a rope around the cylinder so that they could move it over different parts of Elliot's body, ensuring that his torment was maximised. For a while, they held it over his crotch, and I couldn't watch, I just had to listen to his grunts and stifled cries as the liquid burned into his most sensitive flesh. A little later, they held it over his face, and I could see that he has screwed his eyes shut to prevent being blinded. And then, in an expression of macabre humour, they set it swinging, so that it would spray its poisonous droplets to every part of his tortured body.

Night had long fallen when they took the cylinder down to the floor again. But, to my dismay, I saw them refill it and once more bless it, before raising it back into place.

"I grow tired of this, Demon," Father Donetti opined, "we will leave this to punish you overnight and, if you continue to stubbornly refuse to cooperate in the morning, we will take stronger measures. You seem to be very attached to these-" he poked his finger into Elliot's scrotum "-so perhaps when Signor Campagno removes them, it will focus your mind a little better."

As the two men turned to leave, I screamed at the top of my voice, raining expletives down on them, cursing them in the foulest way I could think of.

"I thought I told you to shut that whore up?!" Father Donetti shouted at Campagno as he left. "Do it now!" He stepped out of the dungeon, closing the door behind him.

The huge, bare-chested man strode towards my cage, and I knew I was in trouble. As he unlocked and opened the door, I shuffled back and then turned away from him, as if there might be some escape route behind me. I knew he had to duck to get into the cage and, as soon as I sensed that he was in there with me, I put my desperate plan into action.

Clasping my hands together and extending my arms, I spun around as fast as I could, rotating and bringing my arms forward as if I was about to hit a baseball out of the ground. I was lucky, and the heavy metal shackles around my wrists hit the jaw of the still-crouching giant fairly and squarely, and at great pace.

The first thing I noticed was the way his lower jaw seemed to go sideways and a spout of saliva shooting from his lips, as if I was watching a film in slow motion. Then it speeded up, and he was falling away from me, crashing to the floor. But then I was overwhelmed by a searing pain from my left wrist, which felt like it had been broken in the impact. I screamed, but I knew I didn't have time to deal with that, I only had a few seconds to act.

There was a bunch of keys at Campagno’s waist, which I had seen him use on everything from doors to manacles to handcuffs, and they were my only hope of freeing Elliot. I grabbed at the ring and pulled desperately, but it resisted and I became frantic as the huge man shook his head as if trying to clear it. I glanced at his face and saw blood leaking from a deep cut across his cheek, but he was quickly recovering from the shock and surprise of my attack.

Suddenly, the keyring came loose and I made a dash for the cage door. I had almost made it when I suddenly felt the manacles around my ankles pulled tight. I looked back and saw his enormous fist close around the chain between them and, even as my momentum drove me into a headlong fall, I knew I was never going to make it.

"Elliot!" I screamed and, with a last desperate effort, through the keys towards him. But I didn't see where they went as I hit the floor and felt myself being dragged back into the cage. I was on my back now, and I saw the torturer getting to his knees as he pulled me towards him.

Suddenly, his giant hand closed around my throat, cutting off my scream as his fat fingers crushed my windpipe. Now he loomed above me, and I saw the twisted look of pure hatred on his face. He raised his other hand, balled into a fist, pulled back his arm, and brought it down to smash my face.

I had closed my eyes and turned my cheek, ready to receive what could be a single, fatal blow. But it never came. When I opened my eyes again, I saw his fist inches from my face, enclosed in the long, seemingly delicate fingers of Elliot. The look of hatred had changed to one of abject terror as the torturer stared into the face of the tortured, and knew that he was in the deepest of deep shit!

"That is a nasty cut you have there, Signor," Elliot said calmly and, to my astonishment, with a smile, "would you like me to kiss it better?"

The Italian looked like he was going to faint but, from the sudden odour, I guessed he'd just pissed himself. Elliot brought his hand forward at great speed, and the jailor was suddenly on the floor, out cold, knocked out by a single blow from his own hand.

I found myself shaking in shock, while Elliot calmly unlocked the shackles from my limbs and the collar from round my neck. Then I grabbed him around the neck and held on tight for a long time, burying my face in his chest and letting my tears flow. Eventually, I pulled myself together, and tried to piece together what had just happened.

"So… you caught those keys, somehow found the right key, unlocked those manacles, using only the fingers of the hand which was manacled, and reached me… in what, five seconds? How the hell did you do that?!"

"Well, the vampire reactions are very good, but as for finding the right key, I was just lucky, I suppose," Elliot replied with a smile, "but anyway, how are you, Jennifer?"

I had to laugh at that - Elliot always was the gentleman! I looked at his body and saw the trails where the light beams had scorched across his skin, and the laughter died in my throat. I looked at my own body and saw the cuts, bruises, abrasions and dried blood from my own torture, as well as the cross burnt into my inner thigh, and realised we were both a bit of a mess.

"So, what do we do now, given that we’re both naked and locked in a dungeon somewhere under the Vatican, with who knows how many guards outside the door?" I asked, bringing the mood down a bit following our daring escape to this point.

"Trust me, Jennifer," Elliot replied with a smile, "they will never know what hit them. Just wait here for me and I will be right back."

In what was, by some margin, the most peculiar thing I had ever seen in my life, he transformed from a fairly normal, if unbelievably attractive, man into a bat, right in front of my eyes, just like in the movies, and flitted up into the dark recesses of the ceiling. I didn't see where he went, but I assumed he must have found some way out, because I no longer heard him up there. I suddenly became terribly frightened at being left alone, alone with the terrible torturer. I went over to check on him, and was grateful to see that he was still very much out for the count, as it were. But for how long?

I tried to get a grip on myself and quantify the risk that I would be discovered and recaptured. I trusted that Elliot had estimated how long he would be away and that the chief Inquisitor would not recover in that time. Father Donetti had, it would seem, left for the night. And none of the guards had entered the dungeon since Elliot had been captured, so it was reasonable to assume that this was off-limits to them whilst the interrogation continued. So, logically, there was not too much to worry about. But that didn't stop me. I found myself a nice, heavy branding iron to use as a weapon if anyone should open that door, or Signor Campagno show even the vaguest sign of life.

I don't know how long I waited, but my first clue that Elliot had returned was the sounds coming from the corridor outside the door, sounds of a scuffle which was quickly over. Still terrified for my life, I brandished the iron towards the door as it opened, ready to strike if it was anyone but my saviour.

"You can shoulder arms now, Jennifer, I don't know about the enemy but you certainly scare me," Elliot remarked sardonically. "I brought you some clothes. Not very fashionable, I'm afraid, but the best I could steal at this time of night."

‘Not very fashionable’ was a criminal understatement. I decided he must have raided the washing line of a 40-stone Italian matriarch with the fashion sense of Benito Mussolini. I clambered into a pair of knickers which came up well over my waist, and pulled the dress over my head, having to quickly adjust it so that it didn't immediately slip off my shoulders, the neckline was so wide! The waistband hung somewhere just below my crotch, and the ‘racy’ hemline was down around mid-calf. This might disguise me sufficiently to avoid arrest by the regular police, but I'd be in serious trouble if we ran into the fashion police!

Elliot, meanwhile, was rather elegantly dressed in suspiciously well-fitting skinny jeans, trainers and a black T-shirt, making me wonder if he hadn't spent most of the time whilst I'd been trembling in fear browsing in some late night boutique. But, given that he'd rescued me, I decided not to make a fuss.

We made our way cautiously through the catacombs, passing a surprisingly large number of guards lying unconscious on the floor, clearly having suffered Elliot's whirlwind progress on the way in and either not having recovered or deciding that playing dead was a better option than being dead. We met no resistance on our way out and I was incredibly relieved when we finally opened a door and I found myself on the street, looking up into the starry night.

"Free at last!" I exclaimed. "But where do we go, what do we do? The police will be after us, they're in cahoots with the priest, you know."

"Well," Elliot replied, turning to me, "I do not know about you, but I fancy I bite to eat."

Before I quite realised what was happening, he had swept me into his arms, bent down, and I felt the two tell-tale pricks in my neck. The last thing which passed through my mind as I slipped into unconsciousness was ‘What the F…?’

When I woke up, my immediate thought was ‘…Fuck?’. As I looked around and assessed my situation, I seemed to be lying on a hotel bed, naked, with my arms and legs stretched out, my wrists and ankles bound to the four corners. I noticed that the curtains were drawn, and I hoped that was because I was with…

"Ah, Jennifer, welcome back to the land of the living!" Elliot appeared from the bathroom wearing a broad smile, and nothing else.

"Am I in the land of the living, or the land of the undead?" I asked muzzily.

"I think you have asked me that before, Jennifer, and as before, I have no intention of reducing you to those ranks."

"So why did you bite my neck as soon as we were free?"

"I am able to pass some of my recuperative powers to you by injecting my own blood into your veins. This process usually works best when performed with alacrity. You should find that you are now pretty much recovered from your ordeal."

I looked down at my body and was amazed to find that the deep gashes which had been tormenting me before had now entirely disappeared, and my skin, which I had thought entirely ruined, was in perfect condition, possibly better than before I had been whipped. The hideous scar on my thigh, where the branding iron had been burned into my flesh, was now nearly entirely gone, just a faint outline of the cross remaining, almost as a reminder that the ordeal had actually happened. As I glanced up at Elliot, I saw that the burns across his chest and legs had disappeared. I also noticed that his manhood was in perfect working condition.

"So, why am I tied to the bed?" Elliot gave me a rather wicked smile.

"We need to keep a low profile for a few weeks, until the police and the religious fanatics stop looking for us. I thought that, with nothing better to do, and knowing your predilections, this might prove an entertaining way to pass the time…"

The End