“Yes,” Max answered.
“Don’t feel no different. Funny to think I won’t remember anything about tonight. It was good seeing you again, Max.”
Max said nothing, staring at the curve of Mani’s inner thigh. He thought the skin over her belly writhed with the baby’s turning.
Lee gave up a low laugh. “You know, that asshole Omari is just another guy from Bed-Stuy. He’s not Muslim, or even African, the way he likes to play he is. But he goes through changes being a player in this business. Keeps looking for something to hang on to, I guess. Next time, I’m betting he’ll be dressed up like some corporate geek and believing in the military-industrial rap. Or he’ll be opposition, trying to put a bullet in us. Or me, at least. But it’s good to know some things stay what they are, you know what I mean?” He glanced at Max, hunched his shoulders against the dead boy’s weak twitching, and wiggled down the hole. “Don’t change,” he called out.
“Some things never do,” Max said.
“Some do, whether you want them to or not,” Mani added.
Max looked to her, surprised by the wistfulness in her voice, then turned to Lee. But he was already gone. And in the moment he realized he was Mani’s only protection against her enemy, he missed Lee, his last tie to the world he considered normal.
“Do you trust yourself with me?” Mani asked, giving voice to one of the questions on Max’s mind.
Max kept the obvious answer to himself. The downstairs door shut with a resounding slam. They were alone in an invisible house, except for the children, one dead, one not yet born, both Rithisak’s making.
“You shouldn’t,” Mani said, throwing away the water bottle in her hand. She stood over Max’s lap, settled over his cock, engulfed his head in her bosom.
Mani’s baby, Rithisak’s seed, floated in its amniotic fluid inches away from him.
The dead boy jerked and bucked as if he were being whipped.
Max opened his mouth. What about the kid? he nearly asked. The Beast howled its indifference. Instead, Max filled his mouth with one of Mani’s breasts. There was no more need for control.
He dug his fingers into her back and drew her closer. She arched her back, put her feet on his hips, pushed away. Max held on, surprised by her strength, and bit her nipple. She gasped, pulled his head closer, worked her fingers into his neck. Pain shot like a geyser into his head, and he released her. His own nipples tingled. The Beast snapped at the sudden shock of pain. Leaning back, she pressed her thighs against his ribs, still gently riding and squeezing him.
Max winced, though the pressure on his ribs was slight. He grabbed her thighs, fingers curled into claws and sinking into her flesh. She moaned, swayed, reached for him with outstretched arms and fingers.
Max felt the vibration of her voice in his throat; the pressure of his own viselike grip on his thighs; the warm, hard flesh-and-blood rod of his cock pushing between her hips, driving into her belly. The Beast’s howl confirmed Mani’s revival of their bond. Baptized by Mani’s shower of water, their connection required more than an outburst of rage to be severed. Max’s confidence in his ability to control the shadow cast by Mani in him began to waver.
Max released Mani. Slow, rhythmic grinding of bodies constructed a bridge of tension between them, allowing the syncopated traffic of pressure and release to flow back and forth in a free, open, and endless cycle. The pain vanished, allowing the sensual slick warmth between her legs to take his body over. Tickling, throbbing, pulsing sensations doubled, echoed, countered one another as they spread from the tip of his cock to its root. Contradictory impressions of penetrating and being penetrated filled his body to bursting. His mind stretched, encompassed the new, embraced the old. Heat suffused his belly and hips, as well as real and phantom organs. Electric tingling crept down his legs, up through his chest and arms, bursting at the base of his neck in small, flarelike explosions illuminating a range of sensory experiences he had never known.
The Beast chased the invading sensations, pounced on them, wallowed and submerged itself in their exotic variations. For both Max and the Beast, it was like discovering a new way to kill, a fresh means of experiencing blood and life leaking from a broken mortal shell. Max followed the Beast, but fought against abandoning himself to the orgy of perspectives and flavorings on familiar acts. The strangeness threw him off balance. His lack of control over the situation inhibited him. The image of self-penetration inspired a fear of self-insemination, and he wondered if, lost in the mystery of Mani’s joining, there actually was a way to give himself a child, or pass her child to him.
A moment’s rational thinking exposed the fear as ridiculous. But the murky depths of their lovemaking blurred the boundaries between the imagined and the real, the possible and fantastic. The logical conclusion slipped away and fear returned, as Max realized the superimposition of Mani’s sexuality, as dim as it might be, was itself impossible and should not be happening.
“You see?” she whispered in his ear, her moist tongue teasing the cartilage, playing with the fleshy lobe. “You can be more than your animal spirit. You can escape the bonds of your human spirit. Be something more … yes …”
Hands stroked his body, fondled and probed ears, mouth, balls, anus. Her mouth found clusters of nerves at the base of his neck and set them on fire; her tongue traced the routes of his nerves, laying down the boundary of her territory, encompassing him, overwhelming him with the riches she offered. The power of her dance across his body drew him into her reality, seduced him, and promised him all that he could ever wish. But when he wished for a victim’s anguished scream, he received pleasure’s moan and gasp. Mani’s pleasure. And when he fought against her appetite, when he stoked the rage and mindless appetite that lived within him, the Beast rose, foundered, collapsed, suddenly without direction or purpose, gorged on the banquet of her sensation, as rich as any feast it had ever consumed with Max.
Max lifted her up, freeing himself from the enticement of her motion, breaking the spell she wove over his body and instincts. He tried to throw her back, but her legs snaked over and around his shoulders, ankles locking. The shadowed petals of her pleasure’s source parted before him as if he were the life-giving embodiment of the sun, or a bug to be used to propagate her species. Hips rolled, inviting him to sample the musky depths of what lay between them. Max traveled the length of her legs, inhaling the subtle perfumes mingling in her sweat, savoring her skin’s texture, tasting skin seasoned by fear and death, rubbing his cheek against the strength of her dancer’s legs. She balanced herself in his hands, gazed at him from the floating perch of his hands. Mysteries swam in the depths of her eyes. The salty tequila taste of her sex intoxicated him, driving him to consume the hallucinatory worm of her clit. She cried out, mystery turning to raw truth for the moment. The Beast screeched in glee.
The moment leapt across their bond, locking them both in a lightning flash of brilliant ecstasy. The beat of her heart, the pulse of her life and pleasure, flowed through him along the well-worn channels of his own fulfillment. His crotch warmed in the flood tide of her excitement. The Beast chased ghost organs. His face flushed, and shivers shot up his spine in an empathic mimicry of her orgasms.
He saw and felt himself through her, and was both drawn to and repulsed by the brutish mass he perceived himself to be through her eyes. Senses merged and consciousness melded, drawing them together in an inescapable embrace. Pieces of their lives reflected one another, or stood out in stark contrast to each other: death to death, life to death, hunger to appetite. Commonalties as broad as death joined them, and even oppositions as stark as their sex brought them closer together. Whether in the city or the jungle, alone or in the midst of village life, the essence of their lives was not so different. They had both been touched in their youth by terrible powers, and both carried the weight of appetites not entirely their own. In another life, she might have been his sister.
The lightning vanished. Cast out of rapture’s clarity, Max tumbled back
to the world of flesh and blood. He rode the wild current of their wedded passion gushing from the meeting place of their hungers.
Awakened to a new level of self-awareness by their communion, the life she carried in her stirred, parting darkness, separating itself from her, from them. To Max’s horror, it rose like fish to bait, seeking out the primal sustenance of their mutual gratification. A toothless mouth opened onto an appetite as great as the Beast’s or Max’s. The residue of their joining vanished into the maw.
Rithisak’s child moved in Mani, in Max, eager to throw itself into their dance. Mani’s beisac spirit ran thick through the child, already poisoned with Rithisak’s blood. The taint of its corruption sent waves of nausea through Max, like a piece of spoiled meat curdling in his belly. He wanted to expel the warped shell stunting the spirit it housed, but the child was not in him to push out. He wanted to tear the baby from Mani, tell her the creature she carried demanded too high a price for granting her freedom from Rithisak. The beisac spirit rose, protesting Max’s urge. Its voice drowned out Mani’s child. The Beast heard the terrible call and answered, raising its own voice, demanding its fill of pain and suffering. Mani’s appetite responded, along with Max’s base desires, until a cacophony of cries deafened him. Heightened by nausea, the noise in his head stunned and dizzied Max. Confronted by a pool full of snapping jaws shoving each other out of the way in their desperation to catch what crumbs of agony and pleasure he found to throw to them, a sense of helplessness crushed Max. Appetites, all taking, demanding, grabbing, trapped him in a feedback loop of inescapable frustration. No matter how many he killed or tortured, no matter how much pleasure he took, there would never be enough to satisfy them all. Too many hungers crowded their two adult mortal shells.
Max threw her away, sending her crashing into a stack of cardboard boxes. Cans of pat`e spilled out with a clatter. The bond between them weakened with the distance, but like the ocean at low tide, did not vanish. Max still felt the cold, relentless beisac spirit reaching out for the living, as well as Mani’s own hunger. Even her appreciation of his harsh treatment reached him, though he was not surprised with her familiarity with the infliction of cruelty. Rithisak did not impress him as a gentle lover. Her child lay stunned within her, however, still alive but caught unprepared by the world’s harshness.
Max got up, stalked Mani as she crawled among the boxes, slapped the back of her head until she turned, then fell on her. The Beast settled into its own predatory hunger, reinforcing Max’s appetite, though Max heard the plaintive edge to its brutal cry. It reached for Mani’s shadow self, pawed over the bond linking their two bodies, desperate to reopen the floodgates of sensation. It wanted more than prey. The Beast enjoyed the new perspective of living inside its prey’s pain and terror, demanded more.
Max fought against the inexorable flow, as thick and hot as lava, opening between Mani and him. He threw himself into assaulting her body, raking and striking her, savagely thrusting into her, feeding off her cries. But she fought, as well, surprising him with her strength, her skill in avoiding the worst of his blows, as well as her own brutal strikes to the wounds she had just tended. They wrestled in their lovemaking, Max racing ahead of the charging wave of their overpowering bond, and though he dominated, Mani held her own. She showed him she could survive, even thrive, under his attention, with or without the distraction of their linked minds and spirits.
Even the child rode out his assault, Max noted, suspicious of the fetus’s durability. Mani’s subtle body shifting provided some protection from the worst of his abuse, but when Max used their bond to test and taste the child’s life, he discovered the separate current of life coursing in Rithisak’s blood child. Through the lens of Mani’s shamanistic powers of perception, he saw the threads of power connecting mother and child that, when called upon by Mani, had allowed Rithisak to track her. Pushing deeper into the womb, he saw power flaring to shield the baby from his weight, thrusts, and blows. A latent tangle of spells and incantations woven by Rithisak, founded on the power in the blood and spirit that was his share of the child, formed thick walls as tough as leather to cushion copulation’s random violence.
Max withdrew from the tangle of alien worldviews and understandings. Seeing himself through his own eyes, Max dismissed the fantasies of magic and supernatural interventions. He had no doubt he could physically force his way past Rithisak’s ephemeral safeguards and kill the unborn child. He did not believe in magic, despite Mani’s apparent abilities. He had never seen a spell to stop a bullet or a knife. Something lodged inside him protected the child.
Focusing on the unfamiliar in his usual arsenal of emotion, Max found, to his astonishment, that he did not want to hurt Mani’s baby. A nascent need to protect it from his own brutality had taken root in him. The Beast, captured by the wealth of Mani’s sensations, had not focused on the child as prey, allowing the protective instinct to grow. Mani’s acquiescence to his appetite curbed his naturally destructive impulses toward the child. But what shocked Max was the discovery of a maternal bond he now shared, along with so much else, with Mani. In the polluted corners of his mind, Max felt as much a mother to Rithisak’s offspring as Mani.
His realization opened the floodgates for more of Mani’s self to gush into his mind. Max roared along with the Beast as Mani’s interior world enveloped them once more. Max continued to lead their dance, biting, clawing, lapping up the blood she spilled, even as Mani channeled his emotions, and the beisac spirit cast its cold regard across his life, and the child stirred, hungry again. Instead of trying to hold off the chaos, Max concentrated his strength in keeping a tiny part of himself detached, riding the onrushing tide of their intimacy, watching the play of spirits and minds to catch weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
And as the savage play of their bodies wore on, with neither he nor Mani giving in or dying, Max realized that making love did not necessarily have to end in death. Both he and the Beast could be satisfied with something else, though the alternative was like nothing he had ever seen in the mortal world. He wondered what came after the lovemaking ended, and how long that period lasted, and what happened if he got tired of making love to Mani over and over again and really did want her to die. Would she just walk away? Could he? And if they parted, which was the only certainty to Max, even in the heat of their lust, who else might survive his appetite?
A violent spasm rocked Mani’s body and threw Max off. Blood smeared across her face, Mani looked over her body, stared at Max, and smiled. Her laughter reverberated inside Max, invited him to pounce on her again.
The Beast leapt, but Max remained still. The room’s balance was off. Something was missing. He surveyed Omari’s lair, taking in the minor damage caused by their passion. Stopped.
The dead boy was missing.
Eyes adjusting to the real world again, Max got up, checked the malfunctioning surveillance equipment, and inspected the top floor. Mani called out after him twice, but by the time he returned she was curled up in a nest of their clothes gathered in a tight space between shelving racks. Bruises darkened her face and body. Blood seeped from cuts. Her body trembled, as if anticipating more gestures of his affection. Their connection shriveled as Mani retreated into herself, leaving Max’s mind with a final impression of beisac spirits closing in on both of them. Terror descended like a fog to seal her off.
With her living presence gone from his mind, both Max and the Beast ached from her abandonment. Caught between lust for blood and the crash from an intoxicating rush of emotion and sensation, the Beast sought comfort in Mani’s shadow self. Max sank for a moment into the past, recalling a little boy lost on a city street full of noises he did not understand, packed with people and things far larger than he.
The dead boy. What happened to the dead boy?
An explosion rocked the building, shooting a deafening blast through the stairwell and ducts. Max bounced as the floor jumped, then sprang to his feet. Plaster rained down on them, along with loose insulation,
wooden planks, dust. One of the shelving units against the wall tipped over, spilling cartons and papers over a bank of computer towers. Broken glass tinkled. Altars on the lower floors crashed.
Max remembered his plan. Rithisak had arrived, guided to the Nowhere House by the dead boy. It was time to end their duel.
Max stopped by one of Omari’s weapons caches and picked up a shotgun, leaving a .45 he wanted for backup because he had no place to put it. Pausing only to load shells, Max descended to the second floor.
He dropped down ready to fire, but the floor was clear. He waited, listening, heard only his own breathing, his heart beating. A cleared swath cut through the dust and refuse covering the floor. Advancing through the altar rooms, Max followed the dead boy’s trail, checking corners and under tables for signs of the corpse or intruders. He picked up the stench of the decomposing body, as well as Rithisak’s animating compound, but the boy had gone ahead.
Someone else was watching him. He felt the gaze hot on the back of his neck.
Finger on the trigger, he waited for the ambush. He lowered the shotgun, pretending to relax, leaving himself open for an instantaneous reaction to the attack that refused to come.
Max moved on, drifting away from the dead boy’s trail, knowing it could only lead to the stairs. He was more interested in catching his observer. He wondered if Rithisak wanted to negotiate a truce and settle for a farewell meeting with Mani. Max could not decide if he’d let them meet before he killed Rithisak, or simply eliminate the shaman as they went back upstairs. The Beast, coiled to attack, wanted to spring at first sight of their enemy.
Smoke drew him to the altar piled with statues, toys, and candles they had passed on the way up. Spilled candles ignited cigarette packs, money, and plastic, starting a dozen small fires. Max took a step toward the altar, stopped, suddenly chilled, feeling his nakedness for the first time.
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