He felt Veleur’s fingers wrapped in his hair, almost pulling back his head. He felt Veleur’s hard cock rubbing against the delicate skin between his balls and arsehole. He could even discern the skin over the glans sliding back from the smooth, large head as Veleur ground against him. In that moment he knew he wanted it, wanted it inside him as deep and hard as it would go. Peter closed his eyes and focused entirely on the sensations writhing across his skin. A tension was building within him, both foreign and entirely natural.
A delicious tension shivered up his spine. He curled his back slightly and tightened his grip on Veleur’s hips, pushing his fingertips into the firm flesh and reaching down over his smooth, small buttocks. Veleur need no more urging than that. He reared back slightly, moving one hand downwards while leaving the other entangled deep in Peter’s wavy hair.
Thirty-seven years old and somehow a virgin again. Peter felt Veleur lean to the side, reaching for something. A few moments later he knew what it was. Veleur’s cock pushed into him in one smooth, confident movement, slick with lubrication. Peter cried out; he felt slight pain, pleasure, confusion. He felt his lover pierce his body as no other had. It was a revelation of flesh and fire. Veleur pushed against him, sliding into the tight channel that only gradually accommodated the intrusion. Veleur hit a sweet spot within him, stroking with each touch a raw, pure source of pleasure, discovered for the first time.
Sweat built in the heat between them as Veleur leaned into him, pushing his cock in a hasty, merciless rhythm. The sugary power eddied, coiled, and began to grow. Peter felt his own cock swell hard with this tide. Veleur bent, and his delicate tongue lapped sweat from the slope of Peter’s clavicle. They kissed again, without restraint, wet and deep.
The gathering storm released its hoard, and lightning poured explosively through the connections between their bodies. Peter shouted out again as he came, crimson fire mixed with gold, shooting from his body with a sustained electric pulse that made his whole body jerk and shudder. Veleur speared into him deeper than ever before and spent himself wetly, biting down on Peter’s shoulder like a mating beast.
Veleur collapsed into him, and Peter clutched his lover in the darkness of the room. He listened to his breath panting harsh and loud, his heart beating staccato in his bruised chest. They clung to each other long minutes as Peter cooled and slowed. Finally Veleur pulled from him and slumped to his side. Even as the sweat lifted and Peter became cold and tired, he felt Veleur against his shoulder, as soft and warm as ripe fruit full with the sun.
Chapter Five
“But by the grace of God I am what I am.”
I Corinthians 15:10
Peter awoke sharply. He blinked and raised his arm to peer at the wide face of his old watch. It was 5:30 a.m. exactly, the time he had risen during seven long years at the seminary at Maynooth. Veleur, who normally rose before him, was a replete bundle in a pile of blankets, leaving Peter just a corner to cover himself. He sighed and lay still, considering. His earlier mission came quickly to mind.
Peter saw a glint upon the sheet near his head. It was the crucifix. He scooped it up. Stepping one foot off the bed, he slid off the mattress as quietly as he could. He dragged on the first clothes he could find, stiff new jeans and a grey T-shirt, and shoved his bare feet into his old loafers. He dropped the delicate necklace into his pocket and gave the huddled form on the bed a cautious glance. Knowing now the extent of his will when it came to passing Veleur by, it seemed best to avoid waking him at all.
He slipped out into the hall, fixed on his task. He padded down the stairs, pulling out the crucifix and fixing its small catch by touch. It was too much a part of him to leave behind, even now. Long and narrow, the dark hall behind the stairs led to the back door. He lifted the latch and stepped out into a crisp, grey morning. The expanse of the lawn lay dew-bedecked around the neglected fountain. He got his bearings quickly and headed for the old path that he had walked with Giffen such a short time ago.
In the morning light, everything looked different, and he picked his way tentatively up the winding path. He paused at several points and each time moved on until he was quite sure that he had the right place. Stepping off the path, he laboured up the hills, slipping in the deep leaf litter. He came out of the trees and into a small open dell with dead winter grasses slumped across its surface. Looking around, he almost expected to see the phantom nuns, but all was still.
He could see the remains of a wrought-iron fence, rusted and toppled in sections, crossing the clearing, buried in the rank grasses. Lacking tools, he waded over and began to clear around the pale by hand. The sections were largely whole, and the ground on the far side had a different quality. The trees here were not pines and birches, but overgrown shrubs, hardy hebes and rhododendrons still bearing a few late flowers. Peter worked his way along to a point where the fallen iron fence was replaced by a sturdy stone wall covered in lichen and deep moss. Walking along the other way, he saw a broken-down old gate and then another corner where iron gave way to stone.
He peered down into the enclosure, beginning to get a picture of it. The stone wall straggled downhill again, and the fallen iron fence made up the short end of the rectangular field. The first cluster of gravestones could just be seen, much less obvious than during his dream or vision, but recognisably the same grave markers. In order to make any real repairs, he would need cutters, strong wire, stakes, and some paint. The best he could do today was clear the site and survey the damage.
The impulse to do the work was growing stronger. There was something immensely satisfying about a simple, physical job. It could be understood, planned for, and undertaken. The fixing of the pale was a matter he could achieve even with his limited abilities and resources. He had seen a small shop at the strip-mall, more a retailer of birdseed and aprons than a proper hardware store, but it would do. There was only about twenty quid in his bank account, but that would suffice.
He made his way carefully to the gravestones. The lead lettering was old, and much of it had fallen away, but the names could still just be made out. Sister Mary Clare ... Sister Mary Rosalina ... Sister Mary Helena. Peter sat down on the ground next to the graves. Dampness seeped in through his jeans, but he ignored it. This was exactly the kind of proof he had come to find, yet his doubts still assailed him.
One way to see this would be as confirmation of what he had seen while out of his body. He had been saved by the dead spirits of nuns and set a task to preserve the sacred nature of the ground in which they were interred. The other possibility was that even now he was hallucinating, seeing things that were not really there. He was not entirely sure which of these seemed more convincing. He wondered if he should try and talk to the sisters, and how he would do that ...
His head came up as he heard the sound of dry grasses breaking beneath the intrusion of another walker. It could just be deer, he supposed, but his instincts told him that it was unlikely. Deer would be common enough in the leafy outer suburbs of Edinburgh, but the loud crunching steps sounded clumsy and bipedal.
Resisting the urge to skulk in the shadows, Peter stood and strained his eyes against the dense cover on the far side of the clearing. Sure enough, a man stepped out. He was a small man in generic black jeans and motorcycle jacket. His eyes fixed on Peter, and he began to approach. The nearer he got, the more uneasy Peter felt. The youth walked swiftly, with squared shoulders, hands punched into his front jeans pockets, and a hard expression on the pinched features of his face.
“Peter, eh?” he asked.
His voice was hard and confrontational, but Peter was used to damping down tricky situations.
“I am,” he said mildly as he wiped his palms against his pants legs. He put one hand out. “And you?”
The man stood back, looking Peter up and down. “Wolfy says that they don’t really know what to make of you. But I think that I do.”
Aggression simply radiated off the young man, his nostrils visibly flaring with each breath. There was
a soft Aussie burr to his speech that seemed somehow to clash with his hard words.
“And you are ...” Peter persisted.
“Archer, Roman’s Archer.”
“Well, then, what is it you think I’m up to?”
Peter figured he could look after himself, especially against a young man who wouldn’t top much more than five-foot-four. But Archer felt full of bottled anger and resentment, and that could make any man hard to handle. Peter took a careful step backwards. He could easily take himself off to the shops and leave Bear or one of the others to reel Archer in and work out just what he thought he knew.
“You’re no beginner, are you? Just holding back so others don’t find you out. Find out what you really are ...”
Archer stepped towards him, and Peter took another reluctant step in retreat. He didn’t like they way this was going at all. Veleur, where are you? he thought. I need you. But absolutely no one knew which way he had gone.
“Well, you’ve got that wrong,” Peter said, palms raised outwards in appeasement.
“I’ve got it entirely right, and I’ll make you show it.”
Archer raised one fist, and it instantaneously blossomed into a ball of flame. Peter did not doubt for a second that he was serious. He turned on his heel and lunged for the cover of the rhododendrons. He crashed through the branches and heard a roar of flame, felt it slapping against his back. In full flight he crashed through the branches, feeling them break across his arms and shins. He burst out into long grasses, not knowing if he was pursued, because of all the noise his own flight was making. He stumbled over a fallen statue and burst into deep grasses in the shadow of an old stone building. Momentarily frozen, he heard Archer coming after him. He darted to the left, the longer side, in the hope that Archer would go the other way.
Around the side, he found a surprisingly sound wooden door standing ajar. As much as it didn’t make good sense, Peter gave in to the urge to step into the small church. He closed the door silently behind him and turned the old iron lock to hold it securely. The inside of the chapel had fallen into ruin. Bleached pews tumbled over on the ground, strewn with dust and debris. What surprised him the most was the figure standing beside the font, a woman in a demure pantsuit who was watching calmly. Peter nodded a greeting, but kept his priorities in order. He walked past the old altar and down the centre of the hall, glancing at the small square windows almost opaque with grime. The main double door at the other end was not only locked, but securely barred. Peter laid his hand on the old wooden beam.
Archer thought he was ... what? A trained witch feigning ignorance? He turned towards the stranger, reaching up to the back of his head to feel the burnt edges of his hair. He could feel the cool air against his shoulders where the shirt seemed to have torn at the neck and gaped downwards.
A rattle of the door made him jump. He stepped against the walls, out of sight of the windows. He turned to the woman, wondering how on earth to explain his actions and keep her out of the firing line. To his surprise, she stepped silently to his side. With an eye on the slanting light falling from the windows, she edged a little further back into the cloakroom. That was when he saw the pin upon her lapel, the discreet but unmistakeable crest of the League of Maewyn. On closer inspection, he remembered her -- Marley, a minor official whose duties had never been made clear to him.
There was a flicker at the window as someone peered in through the dusty panes, a kick at the other door, and then the crunch of footsteps walking away.
“Well, you know what they say about wizards,” the woman said. “That they are subtle and quick to anger.”
Peter stared at her, speechless. He could think of no good explanation for her presence in this secluded and derelict spot. She stepped out into the church proper, surveying the disordered pews.
“We still take an interest in you,” she said. “The League understands that you acted out of compassion, that you are confused.” She turned towards him with a look of gentle concern. “We do not wish to interfere, and it may seem odd that I have been skulking here in this old chapel, but our hope was simply to say that the door is still open to you. Father Michael knew that you would come here if you were troubled, to be with God.”
Her presumption rankled. “I don’t feel distanced from God,” he said. “From the League, perhaps. I am far from sure that the League knows best about anything.”
“You would have been told. Your initiation would have come within days, if you had but stayed. The elves are not what you think. Some few of them might pass for almost human, but they are monsters to the core.”
What chink of sympathy Peter might have felt, closed. “The League should not feel any further responsibility,” he said. “I will tell the others that you are here, so I advise you to move on.”
He went back towards the smaller door, hoping fervently that Archer was well gone.
“Please,” the woman said. “Just consider this. When their abuse drives you too far, we will still welcome you.” She wended her way to him and drew from her pocket a small cell phone, folded closed. “Call us. The number is in the memory, and if you call us, we will come for you.”
Peter knew that he should spurn the offering, not admit to even the smallest doubt. But he reached out his hand and took it. He looked into the woman’s eyes. She seemed so calm and so sincere. “My number is listed, as well. If you just need somebody to talk to, call. Eventually you will see their true natures. That madman, that is the true face of the witch -- anything else is just a seeming.”
She smiled, turned, and walked away. Peter stood and watched her go to the front doors, unbar them, and slip outside. He waited alone in the small chapel, listening to the wind prying at the old tin roof. He sighed, one hand going to his crucifix in a habitual gesture.
Was he wrong, misled by something that only seemed like love? He took a long moment, eyes closed and head bowed. Was he wrong? A little light fell upon his shoulder, lying on the skin where his torn shirt bared it. It felt almost like the lightest of touches from a comforting hand. He could only trust what he felt, and he felt his love was true, his intentions good. He sought to love, to help and never to harm his fellow man. He could not know with perfect certainty if he was in error, but he did not feel in sin. He did honestly as his conscience bade and as such had never distanced himself from God.
Archer no longer seemed such a cause for fear. Peter straightened and stepped outside. He would do just as he’d intended. First the hardware store, then the house. Whatever Archer’s reasons for his violent display of pique, Peter knew he had done nothing to deserve it.
Chapter Six
Peter made his way back to the house, realising with a start that the sky was already darkening to dusk and he had never told Veleur where he was going. There was also no telling what stories Archer was telling. He knew that he should not have stayed away so long, and as much as doing the job had distracted him, he was also avoiding returning to the house.
As he walked down the path, he began to feel warm and flushed. Well, it was the first bit of proper labour he had done in a good long while. He tried the back door and found it locked, and so he walked around the building to the front, wondering which of the windows might conceal a pair of watching eyes. The front door was also locked, and Peter stood a moment, regarding it. What did it say that he was meant to be living here but that he had no key? He banged the knocker loudly several times.
He waited what seemed like a long time before the door swung open. Veleur stood there. His face was completely closed and hard, like a carved Madonna. The fact that the expression was not stern mattered little. Peter knew immediately that he had made a mistake, a coward’s mistake, in hiding himself away.
Veleur still stood so as to block the door.
“Am I invited in, or are you wishing that Archer’s aim was a little better?”
Veleur looked momentarily abashed, his gaze dropping to the floor. He stepped back to let Peter in.
For a mom
ent he felt the impulse to balk. The interior of the house was utterly dark, and there was a feeling he got looking into it ... like there had been a lot of talking going on inside. Peter stepped into the foyer.
“So, can I assume that young man isn’t going to leap out with more accusations and fireballs? What exactly was he on about?”
“You’re saying you don’t know?”
Peter’s own mood flattened as he replied. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what you and your friends have decided?”
Veleur just turned and walked away up the old stairs. Peter felt a strand of annoyance wind tight all the way down his spine, but every step away that the elf took made it feel more like panic. He followed up the stairs, trotting to catch up.
“Why don’t you tell me something, for a change? What was Archer going on about? What is going on in your head that he tried to roast me and you didn’t even come up to check whether I was okay? He told you where I was, didn’t he? And I was in no big hurry to come down and give him another go ...”
The more Peter talked, the angrier he became. He followed Veleur closely up the stairs and down the corridor. When they got to their bedroom, Veleur stepped through and spun around.
“He’s on to you, Peter. I cannot believe I was so blind.”
Veleur slammed the door shut in Peter’s face, and there was a loud metallic click as the lock turned. Peter stood there dumbly. He managed to resist the passing urge to kick the door down -- or at least to try to, given that he had never kicked a door down before. It always looked fairly easy in the movies, but that was hardly a reliable guide.
Indeed, the impulse to simply kick at the door a bit and shout held quite a lot of appeal, but the very fact that he was thinking about it rather than doing it put such excess out of reach. Sometimes Peter felt that the seminary had winnowed out that small, pale thread of reckless energy in him. Ah, well, he had waited long enough that he didn’t feel like he had the emotional impetus even to just ‘make a point’ of cutting loose now. He took a step backwards and leaned against the wide sill of the window that overlooked the garden.
Maewyn's Prophecy: Pilgrim Heart Page 5
