The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12: Over 40 outstanding pieces of short erotic fiction (Mammoth Books)

by Jakubowski, Maxim

  “Here’s what we must do,” he said into her hair. “You must do exactly what I say.”

  Julie listened and held Paul tight. She would never let him go again.

  Never.

  Rutger smiled like a man who had found a golden coin.

  “You want to buy her?” he asked Paul, Rutger’s glance at Julie contemptuous.

  “Her contract or whatever arrangement she has with you,” Paul explained. “And what can I pay you to forget you ever knew her?”

  Rutger had not yet donned his clown face. Without the greasepaint pallor, his ruddiness gave him a mean glow, and now he grew redder by the moment. “More than you’ve got, mein herr,” he sneered. “It is time to stop pretending, yes? Time to show you my real face.”

  “I don’t understand,” Paul said, and Julie saw him glance at her, the question in his eyes, Are you ready?

  She thought about what he had told her, that there were moments when time might be changed, when all the things that seemed ordained might be undone. She didn’t know about that, didn’t know if she believed in ordained time, but she believed in Paul.

  “I know who you are,” Rutger said, drawing a little pistol and pointing it at him. “I know where you are from. The men from—what do you call it? The Chrono Bureau? I have worked with them for a long time. Many tourists come to the Mandrake Club and you are not the first who has tried to stay here. Let me see your hands.”

  “What will you do to me?” Paul asked, raising his hands. “And to her?”

  “To her? Nothing. It’s bad you’ve told her so much, but I am assured that her life will mean nothing. She will live as she is meant to. You, I will hold here until they come for you.’”

  “You should get away too,” Paul told him. “You know what will happen to this city in a few years? To Germany?”

  ‘“I know. I am told that I will prosper under the new government, that I will be an officer in the Party and an official in London after we have conquered it. It’s all history to you, isn’t it? They’ve told me everything that will happen to me. I will die in bed in America when I am an old man.”

  “Of course that’s what they told you. Did you think they’d tell you an unpleasant story?” Paul shook his head. “Let me and Julie go,” Paul said. “I will give you more gold than you can imagine. We will go away where no one will ever see us, where our lives will make no difference.”

  “It’s no good,” Rutger said with a cruel laugh. “All of this is already written. They told me you would come here. They told me what you would say. You will fail because you have already failed.”

  Paul nodded to Julie. She drew the little device that looked like a cigarette lighter from her dress pocket and pressed its side the way Paul had showed her. Rutger jumped as though he had been shocked. He collapsed, the gun falling with a clatter to the floor.

  Paul checked Rutger’s pulse, then turned to Julie, and nodded. “We need to go, now. I don’t know when the Chronos will come, but we’ve got to be far from here when they do.”

  He took the device from her, made an adjustment to it, and pressed it to Rutger’s pale forehead. Rutger jerked and lay still. Julie knew Paul had killed him.

  “Paul! What about . . . big actions?”

  Paul shrugged. “Any future where he does not live will be a better world.”

  Julie struggled to understand. “What he said . . . that he knew you would fail. How did you know what to do?”

  He smiled at her and she saw pride and cleverness in his eyes, a kind of certainty. “I knew, Julie, because I have done this before . . . and failed. I knew what to do this time. Now, we must hurry. There will be dangerous men here in less than ten minutes.”

  They ran together from the Mandrake Club, down Friedrichstrasse. Paul had more gold. He gave her coins they could change into marks later. She flagged down a taxi and paid the driver to take them to the edge of town, to the place Paul told her. Outside an imbiss, the two bicycles waited.

  As they maneuvered the bikes down a packed lane between two bright yellow fields, Paul reached over and squeezed her hand. “We just need to lay low for a while, then make our way to the port, then on to Costa Rica.”

  Julie smiled at him, fear and excitement turning her blood to liquid gold. Together they would do what he had told Rutger. They would go across the sea, live somewhere no one could find them, where they would leave no trace to be read in any book in the future.

  As they pedaled, a thought came to her.

  “Paul. What happens now? You have changed what Rutger said was written.”

  He stopped his bike and she hers, her feet light on the packed dirt path. He reached over and lifted her chin, kissing her with a fervor she’d not tasted before. His touch and his kiss filled her with hope and a sense of infinite possibilities.

  “Does it matter?” he asked her. “To you and me? Does it matter at all? I came to Berlin to experience my greatest fantasy – to be watched making love to a woman. I spent a fortune for the hope of that fantasy. I wanted to be seen, Julie. I didn’t expect anything more than my few minutes of spotlight and sexual fulfillment.” He brushed a hand over her hair and smiled, the deep lines around his mouth beautiful in the late afternoon sun. “Many of the people I knew, they paid fortunes to experience their fantasies over and over again. I thought I’d be one of them. I’d pay again and again to fuck for an audience, but I didn’t just fuck some chonte. I had the most intense experience of my life with the woman I love.” He kissed her forehead, his thumb brushing aside the tear that slid down her cheek.

  “That moment will be ours forever, Julie. Now there can be no more stages. We will live in shadows and cast none of our own, and it will be all right. Everything shines now, Julie. For us, maybe for the world, from this moment, everything is new.” He kissed her lightly and smiled before sitting back on the bicycle.

  “We will travel together into the new future.

  “One day at a time.”

  Here There be Dragons

  Ashley Lister

  “Dragonmeister?”

  Georgianna of Roxburghshire stopped moving. She snapped her head back toward the sound of the voice that had summoned her. Her heartbeat quickened. Above the stench of subterranean earth and dung, her nostrils caught the harsh stink of the burning tar.

  Mercifully, the burning-tar was unlit.

  The night down here was as lightless as the tomb of a forgotten pilgrim. But the smell was assuredly the burning tar and that was a substance that had no place in the eastern catacombs.

  “No,” she whispered.

  It was as much as she dared to say.

  She was patrolling the catacombs, a thrice daily chore for the dragonmeister of Gatekeeper Island, and inwardly cataloguing her stock. Here in the easternmost catacombs she kept a weyr of orientals that included three-toed Japanese dragons and five-clawed Chinese dragons.

  The orientals were the most ferocious and dangerous members of the island’s livestock. Maintaining their successful husbandry was an achievement that had won her shields of honor from Caleb the wolf slayer, laird of her fiefdom. But the husbandry of the orientals had never been a chore that George took lightly. It was a perilous job and she insisted there were rules that needed to be followed.

  “Dragonmeister? Are you their mistress Georgianna?”

  After the question came the sound of flint striking stone.

  George clenched her teeth and shook her head.

  Her eyes grew wide in the darkness.

  It was one of the apprentice hostlers. She recognized the adolescent squeak of his voice. He was one of a cadre that had arrived earlier that year at summer’s end. In any of the other catacombs his ignorant mistake would merit little more than a stern reprimand.

  But this was the easternmost catacombs.

  This environment was not forgiving.

  In the western catacombs, where she kept the European dragons, the apprentice hostlers were known to fly the beasts in tournaments and race t
hem for pleasure or for daring or for gambling. The western catacombs were larger than their eastern counterparts and hosted a range of dragons that made her laird’s fiefdom the envy of every baron beyond Gatekeeper Island. The western catacombs held Portuguese caco, Polish smok and Catalonian víbria.

  And every one of those creatures was controllable and trainable.

  The víbria were amongst her favorite beasts because they took pleasure and satisfaction from helping humans. The víbria lit fires for summer barbecues. The víbria gave gentle rides to small children. And a blazing torch of the burning-tar would not present a problem in the lair of the víbria.

  Snakes of unease writhed in George’s belly. She held her breath and silently prayed to the gods of the golden temples that they would not need the sacrifice of a death this night. Sensing the carnage that was about to take place, she strongly suspected that her prayers would pass unheeded.

  Above the catacombs, guarding the golden temples of Gatekeeper Island, there was a family of wyverns: two-legged, long-tailed dragons. The wyverns were responsible for protecting the doorways from the temple to the catacombs. They were also guardians to the fiefdom’s vault of treasure. George was slowly learning the language of the wyverns just as the creatures learnt hers in an exchange of wisdom and culture. It was a fascinating area of study and she had already begun to fall in love with the rhythmic cadence of wyvern poetry.

  And, as dragonmeister of Gatekeeper Island, George knew that the combined danger posed by every caco, smok, víbria and wyvern was not as menacing as the threat that came from a single oriental.

  “Dragonmeister?”

  There was another scratching crack as the flint struck stone. The stink of the burning tar struck her nostrils with renewed force. George heard something growl with barely suppressed hunger. And she breathed a sigh of relief when the flint refused to spark for a second time. If the apprentice hostler survived this night she would flay him until sunrise so he could act as a warning to the rest of her subordinates.

  “Are you there, Mistress Georgianna?”

  George insisted that there were three rules for working with the orientals. If she had maintained her needlework studies from when she was a strapling she would have stitched those rules onto a tapestry and hung the framed needlework in the golden temple on the doorway above the easternmost catacomb.

  The dragonmeister always patrols the eastern catacombs alone.

  The dragonmeister always patrols the eastern catacombs in silence.

  The dragonmeister always patrols the eastern catacombs in absolute darkness.

  She had thought those three rules were made known to everyone who lived on the island. But clearly this apprentice hostler wasn’t aware of them. Or, if he was aware of them, he was too dunderheaded to heed rules.

  Either way it was going to prove fatal.

  There was another growl from the darkness. This one was heavier. And George did not need the gift of presentiment that came from working with dragons to know that it was now too late for the hostler.

  “Dragonmeister?”

  There was another scratching crack as the flint struck stone.

  This time the spark erupted into flame. It caught the burning tar. The catacomb was immediately flooded with liquid yellow light. George could see she had been right: it was one of the apprentice hostlers. She recognized him from the ginger hair on his head and the hessian tunic he wore. His name had been Bob, or Rob or something like that.

  And he had entered the last minute of life.

  “Dragonmeister?”

  Bob or Rob peered toward her but he was clearly bright-blind from the flare of the torch he carried. If he had been able to see anything at all he would have noticed the dragons, three Japanese and two Chinese, circling around him.

  “Are you there, Mistress Georgianna? The island has visitors. We’re called on by the esteemed Thane Vortigern of Merioneth who comes he—”

  He didn’t get to complete the sentence.

  A Japanese exhaled. Its breath caught the flame from the torch and ignited. The fire seared the ginger hair from the hostler’s head. Before he could properly start to scream a second Japanese dragon had acted quickly and ripped his tunic away.

  The sound of aged and leathery wings flapped indolently in the shadows.

  The dragons looked lemony-white in the glow of their own burning breath. The scene was ghoulishly played out for George as a brightly lit testimony to hostler stupidity.

  Momentarily she stood riveted as the dragons snatched at him and nipped at him.

  The Chinese clawed.

  The Japanese snorted fire.

  The hostler was naked and bleeding and weeping and screaming. His hands flailed in a pathetic attempt to keep the beasts away. His sobs were mercifully inarticulate. If he had called for her by name George would have felt guilty for abandoning him. A Chinese slashed at him with five-clawed talons. Black-red lines opened across his abdomen.

  And then the hostler’s screaming ended.

  George turned away and fled.

  The hostler had been beyond help before the dragons attacked. Going in to save him would only have ended her own life. Even if her work did not necessitate the gift of second sight, she would have known that much from having worked with orientals through her adult life.

  As she burst through the temple doorway from the catacomb, she was adamant that someone would tell her how a mistake like this had happened. And she was adamant that the person responsible would pay.

  “Dragonmeister Georgianna of Roxburghshire?”

  The man was tall and handsome. A pair of wyvern glowered down at him with characteristic suspicion.

  George motioned for the dragons to stand at ease.

  Obedient, the beasts relented from their stiff posture. They continued to strike a menacing pose but neither looked likely to eviscerate the visitor.

  The stranger was dressed in the polished silver armor of a lowland warrior. His shield was decorated with the emblem of a blood red snake. Because he stood a head taller than her, George felt a little threatened and intimidated.

  Defiantly, she threw back her shoulders. She met the challenge of his leering stare. Whether she was dealing with a truculent caco or a visiting warrior, she knew the secret to remaining in control was with a display of confidence.

  Of course, it didn’t help that she was near-naked.

  Save for the leather thong she wore whilst working in the catacombs George was unclothed. Any other type of garment could have likely given away her presence to the vicious oriental dragons. They would have heard the rustle of hessian skirts or the scratch of denim trousers on her thighs. They would have smelled the feral memories of animal stink on full leathers or protective furs.

  Hostlers were used to seeing George’s bare-breasted presence on the island. When she was escaping the catacombs she looked no more undressed than the temple prostitutes. But she was aware that there were circumstances when her state of near-nudity could sometimes send out the wrong message to the island’s occasional visitors.

  And this was clearly one of those circumstances.

  “How enchanting,” the stranger breathed. He stepped closer and cupped her right breast with his left hand. His fingers were warm against her cool flesh. His thumb absently stroked the nipple.

  She was jolted by a sting of unwanted pleasure.

  As the treacherous bead of flesh grew stiff she slapped his hand away.

  He looked hurt. His eyes flared. There was a curl to his upper lip that turned his appearance from attractive to cruel. She noticed the narrowing of his brow.

  “Vortigern?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. It was the name the hostler had used in the easternmost catacomb. “Is that who you are?”

  He looked perplexed by the informality of her address.

  If he was Thane Vortigern of Merioneth then the rules of cordiality dictated that she should address him with the full honorifics of his status. He was titled gentry and she was only a
lowly dragonmeister. But George was still angry at having witnessed the unnecessary death of the apprentice hostler. And she strongly suspected that Vortigern was responsible for the tragedy.

  “Thane Vortigern of Merioneth,” he corrected.

  “Are you the shit-for-brains that sent a hostler down to summon me from my duties in the catacombs?”

  Vortigern’s lips thinned. He looked as though he had been slapped.

  “I am Thane Vortigern of Merioneth,” he told her. “I sent your hostler down to summon you from your duties, dragonmeister. But you’re being visited by a nobleman and his attendant retinue. I think that the civilities of ceremony and greeting are a little more important than counting livestock and sweeping dung.”

  She bit back the response she wanted to make. The apprentice hostler’s life had been far more important than any demonstration of ceremony. But a gnawing sense of danger tingled at the back of her neck. Having worked with dragons long enough to have developed the gift of second sight, she trusted such instincts.

  “What business do you have here, Vortigern?” she asked coldly.

  He extended a hand.

  It was the same hand that had stroked her breast.

  “I have been sent by your laird, Caleb the wolf slayer. He has granted permission for me to visit here and oversee an exchange of treasures.” Vortigern paused. His eyes sparkled. “Aboard my ship I hold Y Ddraig Goch, the red dragon.”

  George muttered a squeak of delight. She strained to look past Vortigern’s shoulder in the hope she would be able to see down to the harbor and catch a glimpse of his ship.

  “The red dragon?” she breathed. “The Welsh dragon?”

  Without thinking, she took hold of his hand.

  The moment’s prophecy flashed at the back of her eyes.

  Vortigern had killed Caleb the wolf slayer. She could see the lowland warrior decapitating her laird with a single stroke from a steel broadsword. Vortigern’s men had pillaged Roxburghshire. All that remained were smoldering huts and a handful of bewildered womenfolk and children. In her mind’s eye she could see the charred buildings with smoke spiraling up from their remnants. And now Vortigern was here to inveigle his way past the wyvern and plunder the treasures from Caleb’s fiefdom.