by Bob Nailor
Moema walked directly to him and bowed her head. “I am Moema, oh mighty Ejup, lord of the forest. I am a daughter of the Araras,” she said, quietly but confidently. “I ask that my sister, Ana, and I might become one with you and your people. If it pleases you, we wish to pass through this ritual together.”
Ana was speechless at the peril Moema had brought upon them. Zreia’s instructions had been crystal clear. She watched as Ejup’s face glowered in the firelight. She expected an attack at any moment. But, a tiny smile formed on his lips. “Very well,” he said. “You may try.” He seized her by the shoulders and sunk his fangs into the brown, wrinkled skin of her throat.
Without a sound, Moema sank to her knees and began her service. Ana joined her, satisfying every curious thought to run through her head ever since she had first seen him. Ejup moaned in pleasure as he responded to their touch. He was slow to respond after his night’s activities and it only intensified their attack. Ana saw something she had never imagined in Moema. She closed her eyes in total abandon, her own lust rising with his.
Finally, Ejup pushed them away with a grunt. “Enough!” he growled. “Go to your chosen men.”
Moema turned to walk quickly to where Neville waited. Ana turned to do the same, feeling the lust beginning to blossom within her belly. But, when she raised her eyes toward the slab, she froze in place at what she saw.
Edson opened his eyes but it remained almost as dark as with them closed. He blinked to make sure he could see but only his ears seemed to work. His vision finally began to return in a blur. He could see, but not with any clarity. His mouth reeked with a metallic taste and he licked at his tongue in an attempt to drive the taste away.
He noticed a glow and stumbled to it. A small portal of a window allowed him to see out. There was a lake and almost below him was an island where he could see people moving about. His vision cleared and he could see the students, Wayne, Nancy, Marshall, and Barbara. There was another person. Edson watched the ceremony, both mesmerized and disgusted by the act. He watched as Barbara and Wayne began the ceremony and cringed when he heard Nancy reach her blood lust. Edson watched Barbara fail repeatedly and turned away when he saw what the penalty for failure was. He felt the dart and passed out.
When he awoke, he found himself prostrate on his stomach, his arms straight out from his sides. Slowly, he made out a figure next to him. It was the scientist from Ana’s expedition and in the same position, naked as the day he was born. It was only then Edson realized he wore the same attire. He turned his head to the other side. Nothing but a stone wall. He could only move his head. When he turned to look straight ahead, he found a pair of feet.
“You are here only through the grace of Dr. Ana Pavlović Carvalho,” a low, sultry voice said in the darkness. “Perhaps she shall choose you. Perhaps not. It is for her to decide.”
The scene focused. A massive fire roared to one side. In front of the blaze lay a table as large as a banquet table, ornately carved in odd letters.
Aaron, the man left to Edson’s side, stood and pushed his shoulders back. He was a simple academic with a slight paunch. His face was freshly shaved, his hair wispy clean and he smelled of orchids and berries. He stood straight and erect, knowing his life depended on his stature. His manhood may not have swung like Neville’s, but it now stood rigid, full, and proud.
Edson felt a prick at the back of his neck, then a tingling in his limbs. He could move and he arose. He stood next to Aaron, a head taller. His chest and shoulders were muscled from hours in the gym and working the river. He was already so rigid that it hurt. Aaron glanced at his sudden competition and exhaled in a way that made him seem to deflate.
“She will decide shortly,” the sultry voice proclaimed. “To the winner, the spoils.”
Itotia walked in front of the two men. With the long nail on each index finger, she traced a line from their foreheads downward. She passed their chests to their stomachs to their navels where she paused to draw a circle. Edson and Aaron had never felt so aroused in their lives.
“Follow me.” She led them to the slab and stood one man on each side of the stone. A rusted, ancient shackle was locked around each man’s ankle.
Edson saw Ana and a native woman in the distance. They were kneeling in front of the most horrific creature he had ever seen. His eyes were closed while Ana and another woman attacked his manhood in a way Edson knew he never could have withstood. The pure eroticism of the scene carried his mind away from the place and the time. He thought only of the silky smoothness of Ana’s skin and how it would feel under his fingers.
Ana walked to the slab where Edson and Aaron stood, both eagerly waiting for her. She glanced at the Brazilian’s deeply tanned, naked body and then at her colleague’s. Her body seemed alive, sensitive to the slightest breeze or touch.
Ejup quietly approached from behind, placed his hands on her shoulders, and leaned down to nuzzle her nape. His touch sent an electric tingle from her head to her toes. “Things are never simple in the forest, my Florentine,” he whispered. “Which do you choose?”
Itotia silently walked up and stood beside her. An evil smile crossed her lips. “One lives, one dies,” she whispered.
Ana felt an emotional explosion deep within her being. It was so powerful, it seemed to fill her beyond what she thought she could bear. She remembered Itotia’s words, but they fled in an instant in the face of pure, white-hot passion. Aaron's insipid whining disgusted her. It was all she could do not to rush forward to tear at his body with her teeth and drive him from her presence. Every pore of her being ached with desire and longing to consume the life energy of another being.
“Bring the Brazilian to me,” Ana growled, her eyes glowing in the night. Ejup and Itotia smiled in unison, each unaware of the other’s reaction. Itotia grabbed Aaron, unlocked the shackle, and pulled him from the island.
Ana needed no instruction about what to do next. She mounted the slab and lay her body where countless others had gone before her. Her eyes bored into Ejup’s, the magnet of her desire pulling him to her. He mounted her and took her in one powerful thrust. Ana’s revulsion had long since fled and she barely noticed the pain which welcomed her into womanhood. It was the sudden rush of pleasure, unbeckoned, surging through her being. She reached for his body, desperate for him. She wrapped her fingers around his buttocks and pulled him closer. She remembered Tinga’s initiation and now she understood. Ana’s eyes closed and she felt the connubial rapture, the joining of her body with Ejup’s. She floated, for an eternity she lay weightless, the cold stone slab long gone and only the pleasure of being with him in total harmony.
She felt the incisors touch and penetrate the skin of her neck. Her lust swelled with the feeling he was one with her. She began to move with him, in his rhythm, in his lust. The external world no longer existed; only the world where she and Ejup could be together in tranquility; where Ejup shared himself with her.
Warmness penetrated her being through his touch. Ana no longer loathed or feared the man who was atop her; she wanted him, she wanted the feeling to continue, to exist for an eternity. The sensations were overwhelming. Her heart pounded in more pressure than it ever had produced. Ejup continued his movements beyond the ceremonial three thrusts. In one agonizing growl, Ejup exploded, his seed rushing within her, and Ana’s eyes widened in surprise. She could feel the energy of his loins flow and fill her womb. Ejup's eyes betrayed the same surprise. His hips pressed against hers like the hammer of a mighty forge. Without warning, he pulled away and leaped from the slab, leaving her feeling empty and cold. The joining bliss she’d felt with him was severed and she knew she would exist, waiting, wanting to fulfill the desire of another moment with him.
Edson needed no invitation or instruction. He slipped into the void left by Ejup and stopped, poised to enter the woman who at that moment had become the center of his existence.
“Give me your seed,” Ana whispered to him between shuddering breaths. “Fill me with life
so in blood’s lust I will be freed.”
For an eternal instant, their eyes fused. To Edson, it seemed the entire universe swirled within Ana’s gaze. Ana simply floated away into the silky depth of his presence. She reached for his body. He entered her to find a burning heat as he never had experienced.
For a moment, they remained still, lost in luxurious pleasure. In the stillness, Ana saw Moema and Neville soaring in passion close to one side. Their pleasure and oneness possessed her, like the sensory assault of her dreams. She could feel what they felt deep within her belly.
Ana and Edson held their breath, exhaled slowly, and became a single creature.
“Fill me with your seed, my chosen,” she repeated quietly in his ear as their rhythm built. Her entire body, inside and out, ached with the desire for oneness with him and everything else ceased to exist.
Time fled and was replaced by the flood of sensation Ana had felt in her dream visions. Their passion grew and grew with intense colors until Ana could feel the end approach. She wanted it to continue forever. In one violent twist, she pushed Edson onto his back and began again. This time, she controlled everything she felt and did. She grabbed his hair with her fingers, her hips grinding in slow, intense frenzy. The chanting built around them, but neither heard a sound, so lost were they in the love they made. They timed their movements exactly, approaching the end in perfect synchronization. Edson exploded as Ana’s back arched in climax. Her eyes glowed like ruby embers as wave after wave of pure ecstasy shook her body in quivering convulsions. She opened her mouth in a roar, incisors glistening in the torchlight and she felt his burning seed surge into her womb. She was seized in a profound desire to consume him.
Ana closed her eyes as she lurched toward Edson’s throat, her mouth wide open and her teeth gleaming in the moonlight. At the last instant before she struck, she opened her eyes. He was gone. She threw her head back and howled from the unsatisfied desire to feast on his blood.
“After him,” Ejup roared from the center of the island. “No one escapes from Vamazonia.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
EDSON'S ESCAPE
Edson ran, harder and faster than he had ever run in his life. The Island of Knowledge was small and surrounded by the clearest water he had ever seen in a river. He couldn’t ever remember seeing a bat swim so he plunged into the crystal-clear liquid, dove to the bottom, and let the current sweep him away.
He had seen what happened after that supreme moment of pleasure on the island slabs. He watched in horror as Barbara lashed out at Marshall, slaughtering him like a capybara in the teeth of a famished jaguar. With more strength than he’d ever known, he had slipped out from under Ana’s convulsing body, broken the rusted shackle, and dashed from the slab.
His first lungful of air gave out while torchlight still permeated the tiny river. As he stuck his head out of the calm surface, a set of iron-clad claws scratched at his scalp. They left long gouges from his shoulders to his bare ass before he got deep enough to send them soaring into the night air. While he knew mulher morcego could see better at night than he could during the day, he hoped the water could shroud him in safety.
Edson was a big man. He had never been able to equal his wiry little beach friends in backflip or breath-holding competitions for the tourists in Rio. But, he could swim in long, powerful strokes and had pulled many a drunken boater from the river’s murky depths.
As he stretched out his arms in strong strokes, Edson clicked through his geography. In the past five years, he had memorized almost every tiny creek flowing into the great Amazon River from Peru to Venezuela. The meandering rivers were a smuggler’s haven and he had spent many a morning puttering up streams just wider than his boat to bag a poacher. Even though he had no idea where he was or even in what direction he swam, the waters were his friends.
His eyes told him the stream was unlike any he knew. The water was clear, a rarity in the Amazon. And, he saw none of the usual fauna. No piranhas with their razor-sharp teeth. No six-foot pirarucus. And, if he was lucky, no jacarés. The banks were straight and clean. Somebody dug this with bare hands, he thought.
Edson’s lungs demanded attention just as the light from the wicked ceremony faded behind him. He headed upward the few feet to the surface and continued with the water just washing over his bleeding back. He heard them screeching above him, louder and deeper than any bat he knew. He slipped his head out of the water, sucked in as much air as he could, and headed back down to the safety of the deep water.
He gave his feet a good kick to propel himself deeper and felt the claws close around his ankle. They were almost long enough to ensnare his thick leg. Edson kicked with all his strength, but the grip only clenched tighter and tighter. Quickly, he felt himself being lifted, head down, out of the stream. The beast was trying to fly away with him in its grasp. An image of a drowned bat in a swimming pool flashed through his mind. Edson spread his arms and fingers under the water’s surface and pulled downward with all his might. His stomach muscles fought against the powerful flaps of the beast’s wings. As his feet slipped back under the water, so did the mulher morcego.
Edson turned and grabbed with his hands. They broke surface. He found himself staring into two coals lifted from the smoldering fires of Hell. A mouth like a giant piranha slashed at him, its razor-sharp teeth ripping into the flesh of his forearms. The creature was huge as bats go but not as weighty as Edson. He thrust the black, fur-covered body into the water and watched the two glowing points of light disappear under the surface.
The thing struggled, knowing it was out of its element. Water bubbled up from its lungs as its wings beat pitifully in the liquid. Edson knew he was winning and he plunged the mulher morcego even deeper into the stream.
Without warning, he felt the fur in his hands fade away. From one moment to the next, he found himself holding the shoulders of a red-eyed native like he’d seen with Paulo. She glared at him from under the water through eyes that seemed to steam with brilliance. She lashed out at him but her arms were too short to reach his torso. I can’t fly like a bat, he thought, but I’ve never seen an Indian I couldn’t out-swim.
Edson dove to the bottom of the stream. He could feel her hands clawing at his legs as he kicked for all he was worth. She could either swim or grab, but not do both. His arms reached ahead but she stayed close until his lungs screamed for fresh air. It seemed she didn’t need to breathe.
Moonlight filtered through the dense canopy above the river and splashed on the still surface. Edson caught a glimpse of four clawed feet that scared him more than the red-eyed native. An alligator had picked up on their struggle and decided to take advantage of a meal with free delivery. It wasn’t as large as some, perhaps only six or seven feet, and it glided motionless above where he swam.
His lungs were burning like napalm. The native was only a few feet behind. Blood poured from his back and arms and advertised his presence to the hungry lizard. Edson had no choice.
He swam underneath the soft belly of the jacaré and kicked it hard on his way. The beast swung around to clamp down on his legs just as the mulher morcego surfaced behind him. He bit down on her chest like a skewer of meat at a street fair. She remained calm and went about freeing herself from the powerful jaws. Edson filled his lungs with air and dove again, rapidly putting space between himself and his unlucky pursuer. He never saw her again and smiled as he imagined a dead alligator, sucked dry of its blood, washing up on the shore of the evil island.
Edson stuck to the water even though the stream became narrower and narrower with each stroke to freedom. When he finally caught sight of the Southern Cross, he saw the river flowed nearly straight south and he began to understand where he was. He’d seen the area on satellite shots, including those in Father Bora’s office, but could never reach it by boat. Several cutbacks of the meandering Acre River had silted up and become separated from the main flow to form crescent-shaped lakes. Someone clever had taken advantage of a tiny drop in elev
ation and diverted the flow between two of the lakes. As the first rays of dawn crept through the trees, Edson plunged into the pond closest to the dead Marines where he’d been taken captive.
He kept to the brush, dashing from between trees until long after the sun had broken the horizon. The sun was bright as he swam beneath the surface of the river, breathing only occasionally until he reached the hull of the Navy patrol boat. Edson made his final dash and found the corporal was on the deck, snoring under mosquito netting. He slipped over the gunwale and crept toward the hatch to the control room below decks. Time was short.
“Wake up, you idiot,” he shouted. “Get this thing moving.”
The sleepy-eyed Marine looked at him in shock, seeing Edson’s nakedness. “I – I don’t know how to. I’m not a pilot.”
“Shit, you are useless.” Edson scanned the controls and found the key to the engines. “Can you at least cast off?”
The air filled with the sound of beating wings and the high-pitched squeals of mulher morcego. The engines sprung to life. The corporal ran to free the line, unsure of why there was such a panic. As he approached the cleat in the leisurely pace of the recently awakened, two near woman-sized flying creatures descended to grab him by the shoulders. They flew away under the tree canopy with the boy kicking and screaming.
Edson shook his head in disgust at the loss then noticed the rope still wrapped around the cleat. He slammed and secured the hatch to the upper deck, securing him inside the well-armored boat.
The air filled with squeals as hundreds of the creatures surrounded the boat. Edson slammed the throttles into full-reverse. Fifteen hundred horsepower ripped the line from the dilapidating dock and the craft lurched backward toward the center of the Acre River.