by James Axler
Grant’s face scrunched up as he tried to reply, tried but found he could not get the words out. Leave me alone, you witch, he wanted to tell her. But the words just wouldn’t form in his throat, would not burst free of his lips.
Still smiling, Ellie ran one of her pudgy hands softly down the side of Grant’s face, just barely stroking him, the sparkling rings like sunbursts in his eyes. “Come with me,” she instructed, and she turned to exit the room.
Despite all rational explanation, Grant found himself following.
PRETTY MOUTH and green my eyes.
Kane heard the words swirling through his mind as he reached the top of the staircase, where the two blonde women waited. They had stopped kissing and now just seemed to be waiting for him, their eyes playing over his body, feasting on his good looks.
He had been with beautiful women before, of course. Indeed, Kane’s life seemed to involve a steady flow of gorgeous women, the vast majority of whom turned out to be deadly, duplicitous or downright demonic. The fault was partly his, of course. There was something of the wolf about him, it was said; he was a natural loner, never fully letting his guard down to really make a connection with another human being, to find a lover he could trust. In fact, it seemed strange sometimes that Kane had stayed with Cerberus, that he had come to trust Brigid Baptiste, his anam-chara, his soul friend, with a bond that seemed to be something more than love.
Ahead of him, the two shapely women were leading the way down a hallway that, like the rest of House Lilandera, was painted in rich colors, warm reds and purples, dark, sensual hues that spoke of primal desire, of sweat-drenched dreams and of blood-letting. Kane stopped for a moment, his boot soles sinking into the thick red carpet, seeing the wood doors leading off the corridor. Something seemed strange about all this. Hadn’t there been something else he was supposed to do?
The blonde with the cornflower-blue eyes reached back, her pale hand grasping for Kane’s as she looked at him over the curve of one milky, slender shoulder, and a promising smile played on her perfect pink lips.
“You don’t need to choose,” the blonde called Kirsten said.
“And you won’t ever want to leave,” the other one, the one with green eyes, added.
But there was a choice, Kane realized, and it wasn’t the one they spoke of. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he knew there was something about this that was still a choice, and maybe a bad one. He was neglecting something, forgetting something, ignoring something that was so terribly obvious it was almost as if he was staring right at it and still not seeing it.
Kirsten pulled at Kane’s hand, her fingers wrapped around his. A few steps in front of her, the other woman, the one whose name Kane had never even asked, pushed open a door of rich walnut, turned and backed into it, bending low and curling her finger to entice Kane and Kirsten to follow.
“Come on, lover,” Green Eyes intoned encouragingly, her voice breathy.
Kirsten tugged at Kane’s fingers again, taking another step toward the room with a stride of her long, bare legs. Kane followed, his hand tingling at the beautiful woman’s touch.
The one with green eyes ducked past the door, disappearing into the room beyond. A moment later, still pulling at the very tips of his fingers, blue-eyed Kirsten led Kane into the room.
A magnificent bed stood in the middle of the room, a deep mattress sitting so low that it remained close to the floor. Candles were lit all around the room, and incense burned in one corner, a thin trail of smoke drifting from it in a languid swirl toward the ceiling. A wide sash window overlooked the bed to the left side, and the light that came past the red-velvet drapes seemed to be the light of sunset as it ebbed into night. The blonde with green eyes was already relaxing on the bed, lounging back, her long legs stretching out in front of her. She caught Kane’s eye and gave a long, slow blink, her dark lashes coming down to cover her eyes like the night sky that was hurrying over the window behind her.
Desire had never been a motivating factor in Kane’s makeup. Others had often wondered, occasionally to his face, why he and Brigid Baptiste had not officially become a couple. They had failed to understand the psychological makeup of the man, how his Magistrate training had taught him a discipline that was so ingrained that he would always put the mission first.
But now, faced with these two beautiful creatures in this house of carnal desire, Kane felt himself drawn into their web, felt himself unspooling, coming loose at the seams, losing a part of the very thing that made him.
Kirsten had joined her friend on the mattress and, with both women’s eyes still fixed on Kane’s, she worked the clasp of her friend’s stocking, slowly unravelling it and curling the wispy material down her partner’s shapely leg.
Kane was unravelling, too, he realized, somehow losing something of his essence in the face of everything he was being offered here. He could hear his pulse in his ears, feel himself being dragged toward the promise that lay in front of him.
With the mess of thoughts swimming drunkenly in his head, Kane found himself drawn to the bed, the two beautiful temptresses encouraging him to join them in their games of lust.
ELLIE WALKED DOWN the red-walled corridor beyond the foot of the stairs, and Grant followed like some obedient hound. The round woman eyed each painting that hung on the wall as she passed it, pushing back the velvet curtains here and there to examine several more closely before moving on. There must have been a hundred paintings in frames big and small, each frame gilded with a rich gold as yellow as butter.
When Ellie halted in front of yet another of the pictures, Grant struggled to break whatever trance he knew he was in. Kane had explained to him about the trancelike creatures he and Baptiste had met at Papa Hurbon’s, and Brigid had told him of the drugs used by the Bizango practitioners that could enslave a man’s mind, making him like a zombie of voodoo lore—not a reanimated corpse, but a walking dead man all the same. Grant had met with Papa Hurbon, too, at a later date, once his followers had finally departed, and he wondered now if they had had to break the spell that they were under, battle through the miasma induced by the drug cocktail that they had been dosed with. Was this woman a Bizango, a practitioner of the darkest form of voodoo arts? Whatever it was, Grant needed to break this fix that Ellie had on him—now, while her back was turned, before she could ensnare him further with another potent, impossible sip of the brandy.
Grant could not comprehend how it truly worked, this trick with the brandy glass. He had heard of deceptions that involved hypnosis, where a stage magician would somehow make his subject walk through fire or bark like a dog or strip naked in front of an audience of strangers, but this was no stage trick. The woman had needed to say no words to ensnare him, seemed to plant no trigger in his regimented mind to exercise her control of him.
Desperately, Grant bunched his fists, the movement feeling as if he had overstretched, as if a muscle had been pulled, a ligament torn. If he could do that much, he reasoned, he could break the spell; it was all just a matter of willpower.
Then Ellie turned to him, her broad face and uneven bonnet of hair filling his vision. “This one, I think,” she said, smiling wickedly as she tapped her index finger against the glass that covered the nearest painting, its velvet drapes pulled open to reveal its contents.
Automatically, Grant’s eyes followed where the woman tapped, observing the picture that was framed there. It was a small picture, six inches by eight, finished in dark hues, browns and blacks. Pale, tiny figures waited in the picture, naked bodies copulating in a dark forest as, in the distance behind them, a hilltop city burned, billowing black smoke into the indigo sky beneath the waning moon.
Ellie took a step back, leaving Grant standing alone in front of the strange painting. “Close your eyes,” she instructed. “The transition is easier that way.”
Thus told, Grant found his eyelids shutting in a long, slow blink as if overcome by sleep. Then he heard Ellie laugh, a hearty sound close to his ear. But as the l
aughter continued it seemed to get farther and farther away.
Grant felt the cool night air playing on his bare skin then, and when he reopened his eyes, he found he was no longer in the scarlet corridor. Instead, he was in a dark forest, the indigo night sky looming high overhead. From close by, the familiar moans and cries of sexual desire played like an orchestra tuning up, and as he stepped out of the trees Grant saw the pale figures of the painting clenching one another in their desperate trysts, caught up in the urgency of desire as their city burned in the distance. The ex-Magistrate turned, looking all around him and seeing more and more figures engaged in this moonlit orgy, sweat glistering off their skin.
“Oh, crap,” Grant muttered. He was inside the painting.
Chapter 12
“So I’m stuck inside a picture,” Grant snarled. “How the hell does that work?”
He turned around, watched the dark smoke as it billowed into the sky from the distant city, flames reflecting against the clouds. The smoke was moving, so whatever this painting had been when he had first looked at it it was now animated, a viable world with which he could interact. The moans of desire from the copulating couples between the trees confirmed that, too. High above, wisps of clouds rippled in front of the waning moon, drifting slowly across the night sky.
Grant turned 360 degrees, looking for an exit, the edge of the picture, the window of its frame. There was nothing; he appeared to be standing in a moonlit forest that stretched on as far as he could see. There were several pale figures just a dozen or so paces away, locked in embraces, their naked bodies moving rhythmically as fornicating partners pressed against each other.
Grant checked himself, saw that he was still dressed in his shadow suit and the long coat made of Kevlar weave. A moment later he was warily approaching the nearest of the couples. The couple was deeply involved with each other, kissing and tenderly stroking each other as Grant strode across the soil and halted in front of them.
Up close, the couple looked remarkably alike, and Grant saw that it was a young dark-haired man with a girl who appeared almost to be his twin. Their eyes were the pale blue of ice, and there could be no mistaking that they were related when one saw them together side by side—related or perhaps simply drawn by the same hand. The man looked somewhat girlish, with a soft face and long, dark hair trailing past his neck in a cascade of curls, a full mouth with the kind of bruised lips that suggested a pout no matter what he did. The young woman had identical coloring, but the soft lines and full lips of her face seemed more appropriate in a woman, and her hair trailed farther down her naked back and over her shoulders to her breasts. Grant wondered if they were related or if this was merely a deficiency of the painter who had created the picture he was now standing in.
“I need some help,” Grant stated as the couple turned to him. “How did I get here?”
The couple looked at him blankly, as if unable to comprehend the question. Grant wondered if they were more like automatons, unable to do anything other than move within the confines of their roles in the painted bacchanalian tryst. He decided to try a more direct question, one they would certainly know the answer to. “Okay, then how did you get here?”
The man’s thin eyebrows rose, and the trace of a smile crossed his full lips. “We walked,” he said, as if it were obvious.
“From where?” Grant asked.
“The city,” the woman replied, inclining her head as she admired Grant with her ghostly, ice-blue eyes.
“When?” Grant asked, but already he had the sinking feeling that he was not getting anywhere with these people.
“When the inferno began—” the man said.
“And the people started burning,” the woman concluded for him.
“When was that?” Grant asked, his sense of irritation growing.
“Oh, before the moon rose,” the man told him.
Grant turned away, shaking his head in despair. He wasn’t just trapped in a painting; he was trapped in a riddle. The occupants spoke in circles, most likely because they had no knowledge of the world beyond the contextual frame of the painting. The city was alight and they were out here, naked in the forest, as part of some mass orgy under the light of the waning moon. Everything they said was merely restating the details of the painting. There was no depth to their comprehension, nothing beneath the surface of the brushstrokes that had made them.
As he considered this, a woman stepped out from behind a tree. She was naked, shorter than Grant by more than a foot, and her skin glistened in the moonlight a golden color, like the skin of a peach. She smiled as she met Grant’s eye, then turned away as if with shyness.
It was hard to tell in the soft moonlight, but Grant wondered that he recognized her. Her trim, athletic form, her dark hair and golden skin—the woman looked like his lover Shizuka.
In annoyance, Grant turned away, scouring the surrounding forest and wondering how to escape. Should he go to the city? Or walk in one direction until perhaps he met with the edge of the picture? Could such a thing be done?
The woman strode closer, her body moving like liquid in the moonlight, and placed her hands around Grant’s waist from behind, pulling herself close to him and rubbing against him like a cat. “Don’t leave,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “We have so much we can do right here, while the city burns forever.”
Grant turned his head, looking at the ill-lit but familiar face of Shizuka over his shoulder. Even as a painting she was beautiful, and despite his suspicions, he felt the desire welling within him.
KANE LAY BACK ON THE BED as the two women stripped him, pulling away his torn jacket and peeling off the shadow suit that clung to his muscular body like a second skin. The smell of incense clouded his senses, and its scent was now joined by the proximity of the women, the clean smell of their flawless, beautiful skin. He reached for one of them, Kirsten of the blue eyes, pulled her to him like a man plucking a ripe fruit from a tree. As the other blonde laid kisses upon his body, Kane brought Kirsten’s face close to his own, planted kisses on her neck, gorging on her smell.
Then he moved, reaching up to kiss her lips, and Kirsten seemed to tremble in his arms, kissing Kane back with more and more desperation, her kisses fierce and urgent.
The other girl joined them both, running her hands up the ex-Mag’s body, and Kane watched as she placed soft, wet kisses along Kirsten’s spine, making the gorgeous blonde arch her back with delight.
Kane felt the need inside him, his lust increasing so that it crowded out every other thought. He pulled for the girl with the green eyes, dragging her from Kirsten by her hair, yanking her to him with no gentleness, just urgency.
“I want you,” he breathed.
“I’m yours,” she replied, but her words were stifled as Kane kissed her mouth, coiled his fingers in her silky hair.
INSIDE THE PAINTING, the woman looked like Shizuka.
And yet she didn’t, Grant realized as he moved to kiss her. The simple strokes of the paintbrush had rendered an impression that could be Shizuka, nothing more, and as Grant saw her up close he noted the way the illusion had been created, the swift strokes of the brush to make the illusion of a face, a body. We see what we want to see in paintings, he thought, bring what we have inside of us as viewers.
Grant shrugged out of her grip and, with a practiced flinch of the tendons in his wrist, brought the Sin Eater into his palm.
“Keep away,” he instructed, jabbing the muzzle of the pistol at the painted woman. “Whatever you are, keep the hell away from me.”
The Shizuka look-alike laughed, a musical trilling in the nighttime forest. “Oh, you surely don’t mean that, lover,” she chided. Then she took a pace closer to Grant once more, the moonlight playing off of her bare flesh.
“What’s my name?” Grant asked, the gun still poised in front of him.
Instead of answering immediately, the woman stepped against the gun, letting its cold metal rest against her breastbone, her nipples jutting out. Then
she dipped just slightly, rubbing the end of the gun with her naked chest. “Whatever you want me to call you, lover,” she told Grant, a catlike grin on her beautiful mouth.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Grant pulled the trigger of the Sin Eater, drilling a burst of 9 mm bullets into the Shizuka pretender who was reaching out for his embrace. There was an explosion, and a cloud of dust blocked Grant’s vision for a moment as the bullets struck home against the chest of his would-be lover. Then he stood back and watched, incredulous, as the temptress deteriorated the layers of paint that made her real falling away as if they had never been there. First the beautifully sculpted lines of her skin, the golden tan losing its depth and becoming a simpler shade of pink, thin yellow brushstrokes providing its highlights. Then the flesh itself disappeared and a white outline stood in its place, an outline in the shape of a beautiful woman, just two dark smears showing the hair atop her head, the triangle at the meeting of her legs. In place of her beautiful face there was just a cross now, lightly scrawled onto the canvas, showing roughly where eyes and nose would sit. And then the edges of the woman shape blurred and the whiteness that had once been Shizuka’s form became just a scribble in space. And then the forest behind her began to show through, appearing like an image seen through wet tissue.
Grant let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding as all evidence that the woman had ever existed finally disappeared. “Okay,” he muttered, “it’s like that, is it? New world, new rules.”
New world, new rules, no way out.
“No,” Grant stormed. There was always a way out. He just needed to trust in his friends. And then he realized what it was that he really needed to do.
“TAKE ME,” the woman with the green ocean in her eyes whispered when Kane broke away from their kiss, and it seemed as if her words were running through his skull.
