There had been banging on the door, thumping on the window frame, a harsh voice shouting, “For Christ’s sake, buddy, get it off already, will you!”
She knew that voice, like oily gravel. One of Leopold’s “associates”. She had expected to have to deal with him, or someone like him, but not in such a state of vulnerability. The raincoat felt wet and cold and gritty as she hugged it around herself and stepped through the window.
“Kinky bastard, eh?” He waved a heavy arm towards the window. “Isn’t coming in? Afraid to be seen? I don’t give a shit who he is. Just tell me where fucking Leopold is hiding out and I’ll be out of here.”
Jayne was shaky, but not as dazed as she sounded. “I . . . who . . . ?” She glanced vaguely around the room. “I’m sorry, Mr . . . Mr Robinson, isn’t it? I haven’t seen Leopold in three or four days, and that’s just fine with me.”
The hair was impeccably styled, the skin pampered, but the wide mouth grinned in a toad-like face. “You don’t say! Considering new management?” She saw the move coming but couldn’t retreat. He whipped her raincoat open and yanked at it, turning her until it fell off. “Rough stuff. Nice.” A thick finger jabbed at the bruises on her neck and shoulders where Leopold had gripped her, and the scrapes from tonight’s impact of stone and wall. Then he gripped her jaw and squeezed her mouth until drops of blood from her cut lip ran down her chin.
“What does it cost for a piece of that?” His voice had thickened.
“What’s it worth to you?” Her purr masked her fury. Keep him off guard, find a way to kill him, feed him piece by piece to the stone jaws . . .
“Get rid of the john out there and we’ll see.” He adjusted his trousers. “Christ, he’s going to freeze his ass off, if you’ve left him any!” He moved towards the window.
Without any clear plan she moved to intercept him. He stiffened. The toad slash curled into a snarl. “That’s fucking Leopold out there, isn’t it! Fucking Leopold, fucking! He should have stuck to that side of his business instead of pimping worthless mutual funds.” He gave a bark of mirthless laughter and shoved her aside.
Rage coiled through Jayne like a steel spring. He would not foul her balcony with his gross presence, leer at the red glow of her lover’s trapped spirit! She launched herself at his back, striking between his shoulder blades with all her weight and fury. His startled cry mingled with a roar from beyond as his upper body pitched forward, through the window . . . and beyond into a spray of blood.
Jayne watched in savage joy. Her demon was so strong now, he could reach out so far . . .
When it was over, though, she stumbled to her bed and sank, shaken and drained, into darkness.
Late at night the demon came to her, in vision deeper than dream. Jayne saw his true form, merely caricatured by the stone carving; a shape more man than beast, long-limbed, graceful, powerful, covered with a thick black fur whose silken touch made her shiver with delight. The curved horns rose naturally from his proud head, extending the line of the pointed ears. His slanting eyes curled into crescents when he smiled, a wicked grin that showed strong, gleaming fangs. She had to smile back.
He held out a hand, cruel talons retracted, and she grasped it with her own. She pressed against him, but after a moment he swung her gently around.
Only then did she become aware of the surroundings in her vision. Walls of smoothly fitted stones, candles smoking fitfully in sconces, hangings in deep colours with intricate designs not quite revealed by the dim light. An ambience profoundly other, yet vaguely familiar, a scene from a history book, or fairy tale.
He drew her to a small arched window, and she looked through iron bars down into a torch-lit courtyard. She watched, unseen, as a red-robed figure passed by, thick fingers stroking a heavy golden cross; but when she looked for holiness in his face she read only a cruel sensuality she knew all too well.
The demon gripped the bars, bent them with slight effort, then pushed with increasing tension against an invisible field of force just beyond. When she reached through the bars she felt no barrier; it seemed to be devised for him alone.
Ancient magic or future science? She was distracted by the play of muscles across black-velvet shoulders, back, buttocks . . . no wings? But the wings were there, sweeping in and out of visibility as he strained against the unseen wall. They faded as he slumped back and turned towards her, face twisted in anger and despair.
The proud head bent, the tall form folded, knelt, until he crouched at her feet like a great dark knot of wood shaped by a master carver.
A wave of compassion swept her, and, in its wake, a resolve. If he asked for her help, it must be in her power to give. In the world she inhabited (however tenuously) they had already cut a strange and bloody swathe together; she would willingly challenge whatever world held him captive.
She reached out to embrace him, pressing her breasts against his bowed head; the sheltering mantle of her moon-pale hair enveloped him. “Yes,” she murmured, “yes,” more certain of the answer than the question. A cool breeze stirred the curtain of hair. She saw brightening sky outside the window and, as she watched, a shaft of hazy sunlight came through the window and crept towards them, until, with a convulsive lurch, her lover was gone from her arms and she was left empty, hollow, kneeling on her own floor in her own room in a cold pool of daylight.
Even with Leopold gone there were some regular clients to deal with. Those few who persisted despite her refusal went the same way in due course, each adding to her demon’s strength. She began to think he might break free of his bonds while still in this world. It would be disappointing if she never got to follow him to that other place.
Jayne was disappointed as well that his continual gorging appeared to interfere with arousal. She savoured for days the lingering feel of him, like a taste too intense to absorb all at once, but by the end of a week the urge for further tasting consumed her.
It was time for a test. He had devoured the latest victim at the very door of her bedroom, sucking him into that unseen dimension that claimed them all. Could he come in visible and tangible form just a few steps further?
She watched her reflection in the dark window. A long white satin gown caressed her skin, clinging and rippling; she might have been a caryatid, or an angel from a Renaissance artist’s erotic dreams.
When she opened the window a stream of raindrops brightened with a reflected glow. He knew she was there.
Jayne stroked the creamy satin; then, deliberately, turned away. The lick of silky fabric over skin already sensitized drove her longing close to pain. If he didn’t come she would have to go to him, and soon.
But he was there before her, lounging on the bed, watching with hot eyes and laughing mouth. She avoided his outstretched hand, letting a satin thigh just brush his fingertips. He kept talons retracted, willing to play the game.
When she knelt by the bed and pushed gently at his chest he leaned back onto the mounded pillows. Her hand brushed his erection, making it leap; she felt an urgent pang but kept her movements languorous.
The inner sweep of his thighs, where the fur almost disappeared, shivered under her strokes. Avoiding the most outstanding feature, she burrowed her face into his silk-furred belly, then pulled back quickly. He was gripping the blankets now and breathing faster.
Jayne slipped a white hand between dark thighs and cupped his heavy fullness with gently increasing pressure. His buttocks tensed, his back arched. She slid her fingers upwards, moving along his pulsing cock, trembling slightly as she wondered how her cunt had been able to hold this immensity, and how long she could bear to wait before doing it again.
Too much protraction of this game and she might cheat herself, but to see him like this, to press him to the edge, to bend, taste . . . His head was thrown back, his eyes slits, a low growl rumbling along with each ragged breath.
Her tongue flicked in and out, again and again, tasting the very tip, tormenting him with the lightness of each touch. His talons pierced thro
ugh to the mattress as he gripped the bed. She pulled back to shrug the satin down over the peaks of her nipples, then leaned forward to brush them against his hardness.
She ached to be filled, but still . . . One more teasing lick, then her whole mouth plunged over him, filled with him, sucked at him, savoured his salt tang, while her hand slid up and down the length that was too much for mouth and throat to hold. The throbbing began, the taste intensified . . . she had gone too far . . .
Great hands gripped her shoulders, pushed her back. Through streaming hair she watched him wrestle for control, a harsh moan grating in his throat, drops of blood welling where fangs clenched in his lower lip.
Then his eyes burned into hers, urging, demanding, sending a message she didn’t understand. All she could do was what she did understand, sliding the satin gown up above her hips, moving over him, meeting his hardness with her own wild, wet need, sliding down over him slowly, slowly, until the fullness drove her to rise, and plunge, and rise.
He gripped her hips, stilled them, then grasped her shoulders. She was consumed by the need to move, but he pulled her until her damp hair brushed his face; then his tongue came out to lick at one of the drops of blood gleaming on his lip. She remembered that tongue on her own lip, her own blood . . .
Jayne lowered her head and ran her tongue along the line of drops, then closed her lips around his and sucked gently until her mouth was full of the metallic tang. She swallowed. A tingle spread through her body in a frothing tide, ebbing just as he began to move, at last, in the demanding rhythm she craved.
Then she knew only the driving ache of pleasure, the mounting of the great wave that must break at last into the maelstrom of release. But he held her there, riding the crest, farther and farther, until they spun at last completely out of the world she had known.
The blaze of sensation faded gradually into glowing embers. Jayne became aware of the beat of wings. Still they spun on, ever slower, until at last familiar stone walls enclosed them and all motion ceased. She buried her face in his velvet chest.
He stroked along her hair, and down her back. Her shoulder blades tingled. The sensation grew, swelled – and at last she understood, and felt her own power, and gloried in the unfurling of her own great white sheltering wings.
The red-robed priest might think to hold a demon captive, but he could never resist an angel of seduction, and ecstasy, and death.
River
Catherine Leary
The woman leaves everything behind: home, job, cats, clothes, friends. Armed with only a car and a plastic card she ventures forth into the rest of the world.
I was born in New England and it’s a cold place. Raised in the four iron walls of the long winter. Left to brood in the dark. Growing up there made me strange though I never understood how strange until I’d shaken the winter salt from my boots. I drove south and watched the summers lengthen and felt the heat make its home in my skin. The forgotten dream spurred me onwards and some days I thanked it and others I cursed it but I was happy to have the ice melted out of my toes.
The car gets a flat tyre in South Carolina. Riding along on a back road tangled with trees and spooky with Spanish moss when she feels the shudder and blow, the telltale pull of the wheel.
In Pennsylvania the woman picks up a hitchhiker. This hitchhiker is a young woman who calls herself River. River is younger. She is twenty if she is a day and she smells like she hasn’t bathed in a while but she’s young and has straight white teeth and perky breasts. She never wears a bra. She giggles at everything. She sits in the passenger seat and twiddles through the radio stations and threatens to pee in an empty waxed paper cup when the woman can’t find a bathroom. The two of them pick up another hitchhiker in Virginia, a bearded guy who’s been hiking the Appalachian Trail. He has pot and he asks politely if he’s allowed to smoke. The woman rolls down the windows and says she doesn’t care. The windows keep most of the smoke out of her head but not all of it. Before they are even out of Virginia, River fucks him. She does it in a gas station bathroom while the woman is paying for gas.
River is the kind of girl who has to fuck everybody. The woman muses on this while she is driving and eating a fruit pie. River fucked her way out of New York and cemented the allegiance of their wannabe nature bumhead with her cunt and will likely fuck her way to wherever she wants to go. The woman wonders if River will make a pass at her. The night after they leave the mountain man at a bus station in Georgia she gets her answer. They’re staying in a cheapo motel with one bed and the woman lies in bed and pretends to sleep and River kisses the back of her neck. River kisses her neck and puts her greedy arms around her waist and the woman cannot bear her need. So she turns her down. Unlocks her hands and pushes them away. She lies in bed and listens to River fall asleep and thinks that if River offers again she may take her up on it.
Fixing the tyre is expensive. Waiting for the tyre costs even more.
One night after showers River makes another try and the woman kisses her and thinks this feels like nothing and she puts River’s fat young nipples in her mouth and thinks still nothing. She touches River’s cunt and it’s full of water. There’s too much of it, too much slickness and the woman has no idea what to do with such desire when it’s not her own. River is disappointed that the woman is not even moist and gets down on her knees beside the bed but her tongue feels slimy and it’s not at all good. River gets petulant. She gets angry and throws a container of pork fried rice. The carton doesn’t even break open as it tumbles to the floor and something inside breaks her. River cries. She falls into the woman’s arms and the woman holds her. She strokes her hair. River breaks apart with astonishing ease. The woman comforts her and helps her put herself back together again and they go out under the buzzing blinking neon sign in the heat of the night and buy a bag of burgers. They eat fries together under the big neon sign and slap the moths away from their faces.
River takes her empty cup into the parking lot and drops her shorts. She hovers over it. She pees on the ice and the woman laughs until she is out of breath.
The Mississippi River awed me.
“When we cross this we will be in the west,” I said.
River had stolen the mountain man’s stash before we got rid of him. She had eaten some of it and was stoned. “Who cares?”
“That’s one fucking big river.”
“Yep.” River knocked a fist against her chest. She burped and giggled. “Can I get an amen?”
“Amen. Fucker.”
“Double fucker.”
Almost at the Texas line and a tent revival on the side of the road slows them down. There’s a little cash now because River sold what was left of the stash to a car full of college students back at a rest area and she carries the money folded up and hidden in her shoe. The woman just wants to get across the Louisiana state line. River is captivated by the idea of the tent revival.
“Come on, man. I wanna get laid.”
“You always want to get laid.”
“Come on. There’s some prime virgin ass just waiting to be tapped. I wanna get Jesused. I wanna get down with the Lord. Who knows, maybe we can knock over the collection basket or something.”
“Yeah, right before we get tarred and feathered and run out on a rail.”
“This is modern times. They don’t do that tarring and feathering thing anymore.”
“How would you know?”
“Come on, honey. Let’s do it. I’m bored.”
“You’re always bored.”
“So?”
“You can knock over the collection basket.”
“Does this mean we’re going?”
“It means I’m tired of driving.”
“Yay!”
The woman is nervous about leaving her car in a place where there are so many people milling around but River convinces her to put all the stuff that anyone might want to steal in the trunk. They get out of the car and clean up the floor and put the trash in the trunk along with the
rest of the stuff even though River laughs and declares that no one in their right mind would want to steal a bunch of broken sunglasses and burned CDs. The woman stands with her arms wrapped tight around herself. She looks up at the night sky. The night sky is beaten back by floodlights.
“I’m still nervous.”
“Oh come on, man, it’s a bunch of holy rollers. How wrong can it go?”
“Plenty wrong if you try to steal from them. Most people don’t appreciate it. Including Christians.”
“I won’t try and steal from them. I promise. Now are you still nervous?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, River, I can’t shake it. I’m just jittery. All these people and this place are making me jittery.”
“Maybe you’ve just been in the car too long.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it’s my druid blood speaking.”
“Druid blood my ass. You’re tired.”
“I am that, but I’m also nervous.”
“I’ll lead you in, OK? I’ll even hold your hand.”
“Oh Christ don’t do that. They’ll think we’re lesbians and that we are in need of extra saving.”
“Well I am in need of extra saving, but not the saving they’ve got in mind. There are some cute girls here too. Maybe I should run me down some pussy instead.”
“God, is that all you think about?”
“Is your druid blood all you think about? Or whatever it is?”
“All right. All right.”
“I’m talking you down.”
“You’re talking me down. You silver-tongued devil you.”
River giggled. “Come on, honey. Let’s go in.”
“I can’t help it, I feel like someone’s going to lob a rock through the window just for spite.”
“But this is a bunch of Christians feeling the love. There’s no love in rocks.”
“I’m not getting into that with you. Let’s go in there before I change my mind for good.”
“I’ll throw grass at you. Or mud if I can find it.”
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 11 Page 25
