A/N: You MUST listen to the song You Tore My Heart by Oona and Dave Tweedie before you read this chapter. It will impact how you experience it. PLEASE!

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Five Queens and a Joker

Chapter Thirty-Three
You Tore My Heart
or
Have Yourself a Very Joker Christmas, part 4

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The music began.

Somewhere in the dark, cymbals chimed, brass copper clashes in time with the beat. A slow, low bass beat rumbled with each pounding of leather against leather through the stage floor, through the curtains, through the chairs, through the air itself. Somewhere in the abyssal cavern of the orchestra pit, three cellos and a string bass thrummed to life. Their electric bass guitar player pulled out a well-powdered violin bow and began to make love to his nylon guitar strings with the classical piece, dragging out an eerie moan that ran shivers through the audience.

Sadie began to sing, her rich alto voice blending soprano notes but keeping them layered with velvet and heat, and as the music rose up like a wave and crashed down on her, Rose lost herself.

So did Crystal and Danni, but they were apart from the maelstrom spinning between the three others: betwixt the absinthe-eyed dancing girl, the acid-eyed singer, and the insane creature spinning them both in his grip like a mad, mad puppeteer. It filled the four women with chaotic rage, eldritch currents of madness and narcotic desire that burned under their skin. Longing shuddered up the blond psychopath's spine, shivered down the blue-eyed murderess's back. Need clawed and ripped at them, demanding and brutal and unforgiving as they watched: watched the macabre, killer waltz between Sadie, Rose, and the Joker.

Soon, though. Very soon, indeed, they too would be a part of the sadomasochistic tango flaring like hell fire between the three. It would be the five of them caught up in the whirlwind of need: four queens and a Joker.

"La, la-ah, la-ah, la-la la-la-lala-la-la," Sadie sang as the music beat itself in time with her words, a dark tango waiting to spring and ensnare the listeners.

The brim of Sadie's top hat dipped down over the acid burn of her fathomless eyes - cat's eyes, demon's eyes, eyes full of burning fury, of silent promises of pleasure and pain. Sable bangs covered the slender line of her jaw, the swan-like column of her pale throat. Blood gleamed crimson on the tips of her nails, on the plump swell of her lower lip, on the flush in her cheeks. Black vinyl poured itself over her body, a caressing grip that hugged her pale breasts, plunging to encircle her bony ribcage, gripping her razorblade hips, her muscled thighs and ass, stopping just over the top of her boots. Boots ran up to the thigh, the folded, shiny black leather tops brushing against the crotch of her black silk panties. Black vinyl gloves slipped easily up the long, white arms, hugging flesh like a serpent, intent on death.

The singer, whose innocent but bloody mouth seemed seconds away from devouring the microphone, reeked of sex and murder.

Behind her, the dancing girls swung their heads in exaggerated circles, a mad throng of demon worshiping idolaters. The girls' hair whipped around, blood red and ice white and midnight black lashes anxious to split flesh and draw blood. Shoulders rose and fell with the beat. Their faces were blurs of white and tan and brown as they moved, features a smear of identity washed away in the blood red stage lights and convenient shadows before the heads dropped and the women slumped as if drugged... or submissive. Breasts bound in leather corsets gleamed with oil, arms rippled with muscle, hands clenched the seats of the chairs on which they seemed to fornicate with the very sulfuric air around them, hips rolled as if accepting some sort of tenebrous, insubstantial penetration anxious to cut away all virtue with the rhythm so reminiscent of sex, spines arched in what might be pain or might possibly be pleasure... or some unholy mingling of the two opposing forces.

Behind them, these girls who offered their lush bodies to unseen demons who tainted the air with evanescent sulfur and eldritch mists, the men rolled their hips and gripped the girls' thin arms in bruising hands. Each dancer slid up the black aluminum chair and his partner's sweating, shaking body, the light gleaming off of their sweaty, oiled chests, with a predacious gleam in their eyes and ravenous smiles upon their thin lips. The black lines around each dagger gaze turned a man's face into a demon's. The blood red lips flared back in cruel grins. In the muscular arms of the men, the women turned into writhing, desperate slaves of diabolical entities. Those same sanguine mouths found their ways to exposed, vulnerable throats as wide, rough hands pressed against his partner's rolling hips, touching, tantalizing, tormenting.

Music beat at the women, at the men, at the star pair, and at the soloist, pounded into their skulls with staccato promises of dark pleasure, with velvet bondage in every note, the pain of silken brutality, the violence that hummed in the blood and thrummed under every beat of the rhythm. The spotlight was like a knife, slashing through the tenebrous blackness and crimson light of the stage to stab deep into the red-haired sacrifice and her murderous paramour.

Rose's red hair had been sprayed, sparkled, spritzed, so that now there was no doubt about the fiery ruby and garnet sheen to her locks. The curls remained, combed into loose loops now that hung past her shoulders and down her back. Her lips were Slutty Scarlet Succubus, a red so vibrant and sensual that just seeing the pout of those crimson lips at one time had caused one of the men pleasuring himself in the audience to come to orgasm with a muffled groan. Her eyes were bright with poison green powder, electric lime mascara, and the absinthe sparkles that whirled her eyes into vortexes of viridian madness. In her black taffeta dress, ripped and shredded to look Goth Lolita, with her black Mary-Jane character shoes and the fingerless black gloves, she stood in the wings, ready to swoop down and destroy the delicately veiled sensibilities of the monsters in the audience, the inhuman child seductress in ragged taffeta and silk.

Before her stood a demon, in a midnight dark tuxedo vest that left muscular arms bare, that showed off the thatch of chest hair the color of old gold. In dark slacks and black men's character shoes, with the hellish makeup painting his face, he was as frightening then as he was in the grease paint of the King of Clowns.

And in front of the entire Satanic orgy, her eyes like toxic sex raking the crowd with talons of want, of lust, of painful desire, Sadie sang, her sultry voice eagerly tasting each syllable, rolling it in the cavernous heat of her mouth, spitting it out with pouting red lips to let it drip down her chin, down her body, and flood the crowd.

"La-la, la-la la."

Rose, in time with her sister's seductive call, spun out of the midnight wings of off-stage and hurled herself on the delicate points of her blistered toes into the blinding hell of the spotlight. Her Dark Passenger screamed in agony, the anguish of her desperate shriek reverberating in the girl's skull, but the dancer ignored the cries of her other, sometimes darker half and let the white hot beam of the spotlight plunge into her sweat-slicked, heaving body. Already, the fire rippling through her was beginning to ravage her thoughts, her heart, her soul. Deep inside, she shook - with fear, with need, with anticipation.

From opposite the wooden stage, out of the pitch blackness of off-stage came a phantom, a pale demon out of the midnight depths, a hunter of innocence and death. Even though it was a sort of half-spin that threw him toward her, the fiery-haired dancer knew that he was stalking her. He was the predator, she the all too willing prey. She couldn't stop herself from yearning towards him even as he drew ever closer.

Electricity arced between them. Absinthe filled her gaze like poison and overflowed in her body. She watched the painted clown prince of crime come close, closer, closest. Her heart shrieked like the dying. Her bones became a prison, and all she could do was follow where they led in a dance that would probably be the death of her identity.

Sadie bit out each syllable like it was meat, bloody and red and wet, spitting each "la" out into the pitch darkness of the crowded theatre. Rose's psyche snatched up every gobbet of bleeding meat and turned it into a dance of hell and obsession, pouring everything in her heart into each and every movement: pain, pleasure, fury, hatred, hope, need, fear. It pounded in the tango rhythm, sizzled in every note, hummed behind every line of music. The green-eyed singer spun right into the Joker's arms, feeling them close around her like the steel jaws of a lethal trap that only blood could free her from.

Caught.

She knew it, and she reveled in it. Pleasure spiked in her blood and pounded through every chamber of her heart. On the final "la" he lifted her high. Would he hurl her to the ground like a doll, shattering her porcelain bones? Would he snap her spine across his knee? Would he kill her? It was a possibility. Part of her wanted him to. The burning hot hands, bare of gloves now, that cinched her waist and hoisted her into the air scalded her skin. His palms were burning into her flesh, melting into her bones. The dancer knew her ribs would bear his mark for eternity. Bruises bloomed like violets and deadly nightshade under her skin. In this moment, she was under his power.

Her taffeta and silk clad form slid down the harsh planes and angles of his until she was only a foot off of the ground, her eyes trapped in his viridian hell gaze. Inferno bloomed behind his eyes and she shuddered. Lips like arsenic pressed against hers, and she moaned against the kiss as his mind swamped hers, dragged her down, pulled her in. There was no fighting him. She knew it. The certainty of it flooded her with awareness - of the heat of him pulsing under her, of the bite of his fingers in her body, and of his mouth against hers in their savage kiss, never a moment of it gentle.

Vulnerable.

Rose Damundo knew that, knew that in this moment she was at her most vulnerable to the madman holding her in his grasp, searing her mouth with madness and fury. And as she looked into eyes like viridian hell, that scalded her mind, scorched her psyche, as he pulled back and the Chelsea grinned stretched wide like a monster's gaping maw, anxious to devour her, she knew she didn't care about it. It was what she had always wanted, what she had always needed.

It was perfect.

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He could see into her soul. It was so easy to rip away her shields, her flesh, her bones, to see the darkness coiled like a viper beneath her sheer veneer of civility. It wasn't just easy - it was child's play, a game he could sink his teeth into, a game that made him smile.

In front of him, the petite pixie with the eyes like acid began to sing the real words to the song, not the syllabic intro but the true meaning of You Tore My Heart, and the master of mountebanks chuckled inwardly at the look of expectation that flitted across Rose's dreamy face. What a monster, what a madwoman. It made the grin on his scarred face stretch wide. After this was over, he had so many plans. She'd love 'em. They all would.

Then the words came, and he focused on the sinfully seductive hell they were raising.

"If I," Sadie sang, practically spitting out the heated, accusing words.

The grief and hate in her voice spit him like a suckling pig, and the fire began to burn in his belly. It filled him with the need for a fix - dynamite, death, destruction. Pure anarchy. It gnawed at him until his eyes found Rose's face and he spun her out like a ballroom dancer. On the point of her shoe, she spun like a top. He could control her just as easily. But he didn't have to. He could see it in the drop-kick alcohol eyes sunk in the glass of her witch face. There was a mad devotion that he loved. It made her so much fun.

At the word "I" the red haired cabaret chick thumped herself in the chest and sank to one knee, her emerald glass eyes riveted on his face. The rage and need in their depths made the demonic chuckles always hiding in his chest want to come out and play before he sank a blade in her lily-white, silk soft skin.

"Had my way," the sable-haired psycho crooned, running one hand airily up and down her black-clad body.

In the crowd, some dirty old men unzipped their flies. So did some women. But that didn't concern either the ice-hearted killer with the violet eyes, the tenebrous little fairy with a homicidal side, the blue-eyed dancing sociopath, the redheaded vaudeville performer in the arms of a madman, or the scarred and sadistic mad creature himself.

"You," Sadie growled accusingly.

The heel of her thigh boot stabbed the stage floor with a brutal thunk and her eyes narrowed to knives of jagged, amber glass that slashed the groaning, masturbating audience. Even those whose hands remained clenched around the arms of their seats found themselves moaning at the sensual violence flooding out of Sadie's gaze. Her face twisted into a seductive grin, the pout of her lips drawing a shudder from the Chechen, who sat in the front row. Cruelty ripped through the crowd from her acid eyes. They longed for it, the brutality of it, the hate in it, and they didn't even understand what drew them to the woman.

Rose flung out her arms towards the painted clown prince and pointed accusingly before lunging to her feet and throwing herself toward him. Hatred twisted her beautiful expression, filled her veins with black ice, her eyes with serpentine poison. The scream trapped in her throat cut her voice to shreds of silk. The Joker wondered if it were true hate or something for the rapt audience and all the folks out there.

Somehow, he sensed it was both.

But she had given in, surrendered. He could see it even in the madness roiling and storming behind her smoldering, jade fire eyes like hell. A monster always, now she belonged to him. She was his monster. The knowledge made him chuckle aloud, and he saw her eyes glaze, saw her body shudder with the need to be near him.

He chuckled again.

"Would still be," Sadie crooned, as if pityingly.

Joker wrenched the fallen cabaret girl from her prostrate, pseudo-weeping position on the stage floor and shackled her thin wrists with his iron grip. She struggled to hit him, and he grabbed her slender throat and then spun her around. The audience knew it as part of the routine when the redhead lifted up on her toe and turned the spin into a pirouette. Rough hands lifted the girl up and she froze as if pinned, a broken and oozing butterfly stabbed through the heart with a needle, stuck by rigor mortis as a creature of silk and glass and death.

"Stuck on me!"

It was then he noticed the other two girls.

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Danni hugged herself as she shook. Pain rocketed through her body, turning her bones to molten glass, her blood to ash, her heart to fire. The music thrilled through her, dragging her down into midnight blackness inside her own mind. Fury raged inside her, but it could not get out. The walls of her deadly trap-like psyche were too strong - walls of steel, walls of diamond, walls of bone. They ensnared her and held her prisoner as the song warped it.

This was what almost always happened.

But this time, the brunette knew it was different. Time meant nothing when she was trapped by music in her own mind. And the presence of the Joker only served to snare her further. Blue eyes sprinkled with the white narcotic shimmer of angel dust snatched up every image and imprinted it on the underside of her skull as she watched the Joker dancing with her best friend. Rose's body contorted and writhed as if he were pulling her strings, pushing her buttons. The sociopath knew this was exactly what the creature dancing with the redhead was doing.

Now it was her turn to be pushed, pulled, prodded, pounced upon. The blue-eyed dancer hungered for it with more intensity than she'd ever felt for anything. Was her inner voice right? Was this the way it was meant to happen?

She was so like him. Despite the pain inside her whenever he drew near, the anguish lapping at her like a bloody ocean intent on dragging her down to sunless sea depths and drowning her, leaving her to rot - despite this agony, she felt more alive in the presence of the killer clown than she had ever felt in her life. Something inside her had always been broken, making her different. Making her a freak. Could it be that this psychopath was exactly what she needed to fix herself?

"But when I rock myself to sleep," Sadie sang, and the blue-eyed dancer recognized her cue from the word "but" and flung herself over the edge of her own mental cliff and let her mind hit the abyssal waters anxious to drown what sanity she had. In that moment, she flung her true self forward into the dance, mimicking Crystal on the other side of the main couple.

Like the other woman, Crystal hit her knees with bruising force, and doubled her body over as if in agony. Even as she did, her body rocked forward hard with each sharp note from the brass in the song. Her head banged up and down, her golden sausage curls bouncing. The pain etched across her face was like a beacon - kill me, I need you.

Obsession, hurt, longing, need.

And on the word "sleep," both Danni and Crystal hurled themselves to the floor, prostrate. Something midnight black and velvet slithered serpentine under her skin, but it didn't belong to her. Still she allowed it. Immediately, it filled every part of her body. It moved under skin like an earthquake, hot and molten, black as the plague, red as blood. Burning, searing, boiling, with her marrow to ash and her heart to ice, she rolled back and forth on the floor, longing mixing with rage. Desperation tinged every move of the routine with a sheen of obsidian frost, and the fire under her skin burned hot as hell.

So much emotion, so much need, so much fire. It drove her mad.

Insanity beckoned to her, the carnal call of it so inviting, so heavenly, and the pseudo-convulsing cabaret dancer didn't know if she was strong enough to resist true madness, or even if she truly wanted to. Haunted violet eyes turned to Danni, whose entire body shuddered with the throbbing, pulsing need in her body. The words came back to her, the same words she'd thought less than a minute before. They flooded her, drowning her silent screams of denial as she danced and sang.

Kill me, I need you.

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"I dream of you again."

Like a falling star, like a sunset, like death, the red haired cabaret girl slipped from the burning hot grasp of the ace of knaves and sank in slow motion to the ground. Her gloved hands slid from the blond hair, down the thin skin over the pulsing temples, over the scarred cheeks heavy with stage makeup. Her fingertips skimmed his carotid artery and jugular vein and she dropped away. Her body alighted on the stage and she, too, began to convulse with the other two dancers, writhing as if tortured by nightmares of ravishing imps, grasping hands and ravenous mouths and throbbing instruments of rape, violating demons intent on ripping away sanity.

Her diamond heart glittered against her throat like a tear.

While the moans of the brunette, the blonde, and the redhead were silent, mouthed only, the image filled every woman in the audience with a sharp need, and every man with a vicious hunger.

And then Sadie began to sing the word "la."

Suddenly Crystal was in the Joker's grasp again. Her blond hair hung around her shoulders and she wore something different. No top hat, no leggings, no tap shoes. A reddish violet ribbon roped the slender, white throat, and a glittering square-cut diamond hung diagonally against the pale skin. The tattered, shredded red mini dress that hugged her every razor sharp curve, with a floofy layered skirt of ripped lace and a ribbed, satin bodice had forbidden overtones of a little girl's party dress. Her T-strapped Mary-Jane character shoes were red as ruby slippers. But the hellion eyes stayed riveted on the picture of the pale, seemingly innocent face, the elegant neck and partially bare shoulders, and the soft swell of the dancer's slick, oiled breasts.

"La, la-ah, la-ah, la-la la-la-lala-la-la."

The syllables, so seemingly innocent, a child's song when the words remain meaningless to an adolescent mind, were rife with seduction, with rage, with black hate for all things that separated the tiny singer from the object of her obsession. Sadie was a nightmare, a demon out of the carnal fantasies hidden within the layers of the civilization of men. Seductive, desirable, an object of forbidden lusts and secret masturbatory imaginings, the siren calling them all filled every "la" from her bloody lips with the promise of sex and death.

Meanwhile, the Joker was no longer stalking a woman whose eyes gleamed like absinthe, whose tears would glimmer as crimson as blood if she allowed them to fall. No, not now. Now, the painted madman growled and grinned and stalked a blond huntress whose madness was a match for his.

On tip-toe, Crystal backed away as if from a wild animal. The feral hate in her eyes glinted like swords, but beneath it smoldered a need she hated to admit to. It burned her soul. It seared her lungs with every breath that tasted of the madman's vicious, violent scent. Everything in her tried to scream as that sweet, heady scent filled her nostrils, stabbed into her brain. It was too much, she had to run... but where? Her brain shrieked but all she could think about was the feel of a burning hot grip hauling her to her feet, refusing to be gentle, refusing to pretend that she would break from the roughness of his touch. Liquid heat turned her icy blood to molten fire.

The Joker followed her. For every back-up she made, he strode forward, his hips rolling, bucking, as if imagining penetrating her sweat-slicked, fear-cold body. Rape or love making? Death or heaven? Looking into his eyes, the blonde didn't know. The rabid intensity of those eyes filled her body with a heavy heat that scorched her mind.

Watching with hawk eyes, the painted man approached; a hunter after the object he hunted. Goosebumps ripped through the dancer's flesh at the anarchist's approach. Inside, the Good Child trembled and sighed, an ardent and amorous child with an inexplicable and innocent crush on the never-innocent devil. And still, wrapping the blond woman and the clown in her black velvet cocoon of desire, obsession, and heartbreak was Sadie, who continued to sing.

"La-la, la-la la."

Then the music changed, and though notes played, a song was not what came out of the pouting sanguine lips, but words, accusations that cut to the bone, flung with deadly accuracy at the hypocritical masses of amorous monsters waiting for her to keep singing and longing for more than they had a right to desire.

"You," Sadie bit out.

Crystal leapt back from the madman, her hands flung out as if to ward him away. The panic on her face was not an act. He could see it. His eyes burned to her bones, and he knew. Oh, but he knew exactly what she was feeling at that moment. She was finally beginning to understand just how powerless she was against him.

"Know," the black haired dancer spat, her eyes like rape in the eyes of every man in the audience. Her power, flowing out of her body like heat, like electricity - like the fires of hell, and all the nightmares it births with the unholy abortion of angels, with the transformations of dreams into terror - it ripped through the crowd and they felt every word, every nuance of every syllable of every thought that she poured into this song: the rage, the hate, the desire, the need, the fear, and even the burning, agonizing love that flooded her body as she sang not to them, but to the dancer who held her older sister in his murderous hands.

"You tore my heart," Sadie crooned, and knew, without looking at them, the motions behind her.

Her sister allowed those wicked sweet arms to wrap around her waist and pull her against that molten hot chest for just a moment. The blond dancer shuddered as her breasts crushed against the midnight violet tuxedo vest. Inside her dress she felt her entire body tighten. Fear and something sepulchral and dark lanced through her. Her hands, spread wide and tense, caressed the scarred cheeks, the thick neck, and even the wide, powerful shoulders. She could taste the chocolate and alcohol of his breath, the gunpowder and gasoline scent mingling with Old Spice cologne and aftershave on his body. Her skin ached.

Then, as if suddenly aware of her sins, of her transgressions, she threw herself away from the Joker. Hitting the floor feet away, she began to slowly crawl away from him. But she knew better. Crystal felt tears burn her eyes as she realized it. It was only a dance, but not just that. The black glass mirror of her madness showed her the truth. Even as she tried to crawl away, the magnetism of the monster called her back.

She turned to glance behind her and saw the Joker coming. She couldn't look away. The breath dragged in her lungs, the tears scalded her eyes, and those hellion eyes saw her as her breasts heaved and the sweat dampened her skin. Heat rushed into her face. He saw the blood painting her cheeks. It made his grin widen. The black lines of his eyes, made up to look demonic by none other than Rose, sucked her sight in, and he met her beseeching gaze with his possessive demon eyes. She licked her lips, and only she heard him groan.

Unable to stand it, the need pulsing against her wrists, throbbing at her throat and between her thighs, Crystal thrust her hand toward him, desperation rippling across her face. The spotlight flashed on the ice of her makeup, on the need in her eyes. She damned herself and strained to touch the Joker.

"Did," the youngest Damundo moaned into the microphone, her vinyl-clad body thrusting against the icy shaft of the mike stand, "just what I always thought."

And the painted clown prince of crime, the master of mountebanks, the madman in makeup, grabbed Crystal's outstretched, beseeching hand and hauled her against him, against the aggressive planes and knife sharp angles of his body. Her ice melted away. She tried to call it back, but it fled under the infernal abyss behind the emerald black eyes stabbing into her, thrusting cruelly, penetrating her - mind and soul.

His lips touched hers. She screamed silently against those lips and tried to melt into him as his hands hurt her, as his mouth raped hers and kissed the brutality away. Her power overflowed, projecting the heat and desire slamming into her, pounding in her breasts, her belly, between her thighs, heating her skin and burning in her blood.

And in the audience, the men groaned and women sobbed with need.

Danni's turn was next, but the brunette show girl was too late to save Crystal from the Joker... and from herself.

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Danni lunged to her feet, an explosion of ice blue and midnight sapphire, another little girl swayed to the darkness by the sinful invitation of the abyssal creature standing before her. Crystal shrank back from the painted monster that had so recently clasped her in his brutal grip and her best friend stepped forward, a willing sacrifice to the Devil. Both the not-so-innocent angel and the hungry, predacious demon danced in time to the siren call of the pixie at the microphone.

"La, la-ah, la-ah, la-la la-la-lala-la-la."

Bouncing, rolling her hips in time with the music, Danni approached the monster. Not so innocent, not so breakable, not so sane, she had nothing to lose. It had all already been stripped away, leaving her naked and vulnerable to the beast her heart yearned towards. Now she matched the stalking stride of the clown as he came near.

She matched him.

The Joker saw her, saw how she measured her stride, kept her legs tight and hard to support the tip-toeing creepage of the way they both inched toward each other, hips rolling and bucking. Sensual heat - white hot lightning flashing with rage and pain - flared between them. And when she looked into his eyes, she lost all sense of the world.

Under her tongue, Danni felt her heart thud and pump, blood flow, need charge forward and slash her ribs, her heart, her belly. It clawed her like a savage beast. Like his eyes. She didn't know if she'd be able to keep her composure but somehow it didn't matter. The performer found herself face to face with her insanity and stared into the blazing eyes like dementia. He grinned, and she did too, both twisted mockeries of smiles. The need in her eyes was clear and she knew it. Her acceptance was palpable. Because this was the last series of "la-la-la," they were going to do something different. They'd rehearsed it that way, but the brunette had to wonder if this was going to feel the way his eyes promised it would.

"La-la, la-la la."

He hoisted her up and her legs went around his trim waist. Immediately, Danni understood what had happened to both Sadie and Crystal in the opening dance as the hard zipper pressed against the crotch of her damp, midnight silk panties. His hip bones bit into her thighs, kissing her with bruises against the silky skin. His hands dug into her waist, leaving fingerprints on the glass of her bones. Another set of black blood kisses under her fragile flesh.

Danni cradled his head in both hands, her mouth inches from his. She buried her fingers in the thick hair the color of old gold. His eyes held her prisoner. If she were going to steal a kiss, now would be the time. Each dancer got to snatch a kiss from that ruined mouth before the end of her turn. It would be brutal and she yearned for it with an intensity that nearly scalded her internal organs.

Like a flash, on the last "la" she kissed him.

Pain exploded in her skull as his fist tightened in her hair, hauling on the thick, chestnut curls with a fury that left her wondering if he were trying to hurt her for his own pleasure or to punish her. But then his teeth were gnawing at her mouth, his tongue lapping up the blood of her lips, and she knew that if she didn't pull away now that he would have her beneath him, using her body, giving her pain enough to satisfy them both, in front of everyone in the crowd. Part of her wanted that, wanted him to match her, blow for blow and mind for mind, madness against madness, in front of this simple and simpering crowd of imbeciles who longed for anarchy but ran when it found them. What would they say if the clown prince of crime fucked her here, on this stage, driving into her until she screamed in pain and need? Would they begin to fornicate amongst themselves, driven to primal savagery by the frantic need pulsing from the dancers on the high stage? Or would they turn away in disgust?

The answer allowed her to pull back before the Ace of Knaves ruined her makeup with his fury and lust. Then they flung themselves apart as if nothing had ever happened. But inside, Danni knew it would never be the same after this. Two gargantuan steps had been traversed this night, and she was forever altered.

"Somewhere, you're fast asleep," Sadie sang as the Joker moved in on her best friend.

Danni matched him, stride for stride, but differently this time. Instead of rushing toward him, she submitted, backing away as he stalked her, as he pushed at her mind, as he kept himself nose to nose with the stocky, curvaceous brunette. The calm in those angel dust eyes made a thrill of irritation race across his skin, through his chest. Did she think that just because she was his meant there was no danger from him? He growled at her, and something hot flashed behind her eyes.

Fear? Lust? A heady combination of both with a shot of narcotic and obsessive emotion, he thought.

"I hope you're terrified. One long nightmare," the words slithered and caressed up his spine, against his throat, down his chest and belly, along his crotch. That girl had one helluva voice. He had an idea that there was more to what was happening than merely violent and violating vocals and maddening movements alluding to hell and sex. Rose and Crystal had already shown him there was more in their heads than freaky brains. Did Danni and Sadie have the same?

On the very last syllable of the word "nightmare," his open palm caught Danni's rouge-reddened cheek in a sharp slap that snapped her head around and left her face stinging. Heat flooded her skin.

"'Cause," Sadie sang.

The brunette performer scurried away from the painted man, taking small, tip-toe steps away from the man who had left her cheek burning from the impact of his palm. Shaking with pretend fear - with real need for another brutal kiss that rocked her with its sheer, hellish intensity - Danni hunched in on herself, her body a quivering ball of battered flesh and bruises, makeup and ragged lace, and she pointed one trembling hand at the Joker, accusing, reviling, implicating.

"You've," the word sounded like a demand, a sharp slap, a stab of hatred dipped in scorn, "torn my heart."

As Sadie sang, the Joker strode purposefully toward the brunette woman who huddled in mock fear of him. His scarred face was a harsh mask of sensual cruelty. His back was ramrod straight, his mouth a frightening scowl that made the dancing girl cringe away from him. On "heart," Danni glanced up at him as his hand reached out to her. And then she was back in his arms, being swung around in a savage waltz that filled her with black elation. He swung her, never really lifting her from the ground. His hands dug into her arms, biting deep into soft flesh.

And then he let her go, and she slid across the stage to where she had lain before, and she fell there, lost to the world.

.

The Joker did his own pirouette back into the center of the four women - Sadie in front, lavishing her seductive voice on the microphone; Crystal on stage left, lying on her back with her hands running over her body as she arched her spine; back on stage right, Danni curled in a loose fetal position, the memory of that savage kiss lingering on her lips; and behind the clown, his thorny briar Rose with her madness, her Dark Passenger moving behind her eyes, lay on her belly as if dead or asleep, dreaming of horrors.

Then Rose reached up the back of his slacks, her hands sliding up his lean calves, the backs of his knees, to his thick, muscular thighs. She lightly pressed her powdered face to the side of his leg and clutched at his hips, her hands shaking with the pressure against his skin. Her breasts touched his legs. He turned, darted down and snatched her up. Turning to show their profiles to the audience as the intense ray of the spotlight shut off and the crimson stage lights lightened with some amber, as the backup dancers fell to the floor in a heap resembling a loose orgy of sweaty, oil-slicked bodies, he yanked Rose's frame against his hard body.

"I still feel your skin," Sadie crooned.

Her voice spilled over like liquid sex as the madman ran his hands from Rose's flushed cheeks, down the column of her throat, over the smooth breasts cupped in the bodice of her dress. The pressure of his palms against the silk and lace covering her nipples almost made her scream. Her gasp of surprise - of wicked and sinful pleasure - made the Joker grin. His hands slid down over her belly. One arm went around her back as she sank onto his forearm. The other hand slid down further, over one mostly exposed thigh in the black stocking. He fingered the black lace top of her tights.

"Soft as velvet," the words breathed against Rose's ears, and the part of the routine she knew would undo her completely came as the clown slid his hand up her thigh, slipping beneath the lacy skirt of her tattered dress. His hand burned, the devil's touch against her skin. Scorching. She shuddered as the fingers moved higher, higher, until his fingertips touched the silky flesh of her inner thigh. Nerves winding tight, fire flaring under her skin, Rose felt two of those fingers lift up and skim between her thighs.

Her breathing hitched.

They locked eyes, and his fingers pressed against the crotch of her silky black panties. Orgasm ripped through her like a pounding wave, a tsunami of pleasure that left her delirious and shaking. Still, somehow, she managed to throw one leg over his bony hip and wrap her arms around his neck, one hand pressing against the scarred cheek as her little sister sang, "Thick as sin."

"Whisper tender shit over deep," Sadie half-sang, half growled to the enraptured audience.

The Joker touched Rose's ear with his lips as the two of them sank down to the ground. They moved, those burning cold lips, against the delicate shell of the green-eyed vaudeville girl's ear, and the redhead shivered at the words of fury, of anarchy, of chaos and lust and death that caressed her, that insinuated into her brain and wrapped around her thoughts, drawing her closer to his madness. The Passenger purred in the recesses of her subconscious, trying to push forward. She let it. It didn't matter anymore if the Dark Passenger surged forward. This was a consummation, a joining, that they both should enjoy.

Shivering and slithering like a snake, the scarred man with the Glasgow grin crouched over Rose's prostrate, convulsing form as her hands snaked up to cradle his face. With one last snarling glare into the crowd, he leaned in and kissed her as he covered her like a murderous spider intent on the kill.

Behind them, the back up dancers continued to convulse and roll as Sadie sang, "You drive me good, no good for me."

He rose up, some primordial demon king out of the depths of sepulchral darkness, his face alight with desire, with intensity, and he came forward as Sadie began to sing again. This time, he danced with no one, that madman intent on mayhem. Instead, he stalked the singer, his hellion gaze locked on the sable-haired pixie with eyes like toxicity.

"La, la-ah, la-ah, la-la la-la-lala-la-la," the words echoed on the stage, full of longing, full of promise. Sadie knew he came for her now. It was what she - what they all - wanted. The Whisperers hissed and muttered in her mind.

" La-la, la-la la."

A shiver ran up Sadie's spine as a blazing hot shadow rose up behind her, eldritch madness emanating from it like heat from the sun. Her heart slammed against her ribcage. Would he kiss her as he had the others? She knew that his mouth had ripped theirs apart during the dance. What would he do to her? The music would continue even after she stopped singing for maybe twenty seconds, maybe thirty. She had time. What would happen then?

"Somewhere you're fast asleep. I hope you're terrified," she snarled into the black ball of the microphone, pointing into the audience. The Chechen glared up at her, and the hate in her body forced her acid eyes to glare right back while her brain conjured up murderous fantasies involving his mutilated corpse.

"One long nightmare," she added as arms came around on either side of her, familiar arms rippling with muscle like iron. "'Cause you've," she groaned, leaning back against the flat planes of the silk-clad chest, feeling the hammer of his heartbeat against her shoulder blade. His palms flattened against her belly. Sadie growled out the words, "Torn my heart."

And then she whirled around, he hoisted her up so she straddled his narrow hips with her slender, short legs, and her mouth fell upon his like a black widow intent on the kill as the music slid around them both. As his fingers pinched and squeezed, as his hands hurt her and his mouth moved her into planes of existence, onto plateaus of desire she had never managed to traverse, as his body burned against her skin and sweat dampened her heated flesh, they sank into the darkness that began taking the stage until not one of the theatrical orgy remained in the sight of the audience.

The curtain fell.

.

.

.

Author's Note: this info below is for both the chapters posted today. I hope you enjoyed them. Anyway, so here's all the copyright information and such. Part 5 will be coming in about a week, maybe 2, because it's going to have a lot of stuff in it and it needs careful going over multiple times. Reviews are great! And for all my faithful readers, please check out other fanfics in other fandoms of mine. I have nothing so psychologically thrilling (this is my best work) but that doesn't mean I don't have anything you'll like. Loves to you all!

Music Information:

I don't know who wrote Jingle Bell Rock. You all know the song, though, or at least know of it, and you know it wasn't me who invented it.

Where the Wild Roses Grow - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds feat. Kylie Minogue

You Tore My Heart - Oona and Dave Tweedle (see Elena and Jacob from season 6 of So You Think You Can Dance on YouTube; it's an abridged version, but the routine is HOT)

Sources of Names for Under-Dancers:

Liaze & Celeste Woodman - they're inspired by Princesses Liaze & Celeste of the books by Dennis L. McKiernan, Once Upon an Autumn Eve & Once Upon a Spring Morn

Alys Nein - an unauthorized cameo of the wonderful fanfic writer, Alys98, author of the Torn Trilogy: Torn, Torn Together, and You Are Your Father's Daughter

Brianna Bellemont - this is someone I know who was in the show choir at my high school the year before I graduated

Kylie Cave - this girl was inspired by Kylie Minogue, who worked with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds to record the song Where the Wild Roses Grow

Katherine Vale - Kat Valentine gave me the idea for this character. She is one of the top Dark Knight fanfic authors on FF . net in my opinion. Go check her out.

Diane McMann - this is homage to one of my best friends. Shhh, don't tell her.