by Daniel Caet
Gaius was not willing to stop now that he had understood that there was no rejection on my part, and his kisses continued down my neck while his hand grabbed my cock, now hard, through the tunic. His breathing indicated to me that his excitement was increasing and mine still corresponded. Suddenly, he knelt before me anxiously looking for the way to open my robe with his hands to find my erect member, and when he found it, he put it in his mouth causing a wave of pleasure to flood me in a second. The boy remained fully dedicated to the task he had undertaken for a long time, and it was evident that he had experience. From my position, I could clearly see that his body was totally excited until I could no longer wait. I lifted him with my arms and tore off his robe leaving him completely naked to turn him and place him on all fours on the floor. He, realising what was going to happen, surrendered without hesitation and, leaning over him, I penetrated him with all my desire causing him to let out a great groan. There, on the floor of that room we fornicated as if there was no tomorrow until we had both satiated ourselves and without caring if our cries of pleasure were heard in the house or not.
I could not say how long that meeting lasted, but when we left the room to return to the room where the guests were supposed to be waiting for us, there was no one left but the slaves who collected the remains of the party.
“Your panther is gone.”
“Surely my slaves have taken her away thinking that I had left the house,” I lied.
“I'm sorry for entertaining you for so long, you've missed the party. My mother will not be happy.”
“Do not regret it. I don't!” I replied, causing a smile on the boy's face.
Gaius took me to the door and offered me one of his slaves to accompany me to my house since none of mine seemed to be left, but I declined his offer.
“I must insist, Kashir. Rome is not a safe city at night for a single man.”
“I know, but you have nothing to worry about, there is much more to me than it seems,” I replied.
“Yes, that is clear to me,” the boy said playfully, to which I responded with a smile before leaving him at the entrance until I disappeared behind the corner of the next house.
I hadn't taken just a dozen steps when I could feel it in the dark waiting for me. The demon transformed into a panther that I had taken to the party awaited my instructions obediently.
“You have done a good job tonight. Now go and satiate yourself!” And the creature turned to disappear on the night of the city in search of prey with which to satisfy its appetite.
I continued my way through the streets of Rome without knowing very well where I was heading but enjoying the fresh air that the dark night had brought. The streets were in complete silence that generated the dreams of its citizens and darkness filled everything, only broken by the moonlight that gave the city a timid spark of life in those hours. The heady smells of Agrippina's garden disappeared as soon as I left the house to be replaced by the smell of excrement and urine, of ashes and rot, the smell of humans crowded into the innumerable buildings of half-collapsed houses they called insulae. And yet, although the image that can be formed in your head with my description is horrific, I was happy to be there, to be again among humans, among the anguishes and joys of their daily lives, among their smells, the delicious and pestilent ones, between their miseries and their desire to live, because all that was life itself.
«Always an inveterate sentimental. You have no remedy, Helel!» her voice suddenly echoed in my head.
I looked around in the square where I stood and that was illuminated only by a couple of lamps in a corner that gave poor company in the moonlight, but I could not find her, although I could feel she was there.
“Unlike you, Liliath, I have not become a well of darkness unable to see the beauty of this life,” I said aloud, refusing to use my mind to speak with her. “Show yourself!”
Her laughter echoed in my head and the sound continued itself throughout the square when Liliath went on to use her voice. My eyes searched for its origin and found her hidden in the shadows of one of the corners of the square.
“We're really not that different, Helel. Look at you!” she said as she walked slowly inside the square where the moonlight illuminated its undeniable beauty. “It does not seem that you are suffering from having become lord of hell, even at the cost of the murder of your own son.”
“Since when was your mother love so great, Liliath?” I said spitting the words. “Was it when you abandoned your children to their fate to flee with the demon you were fucking or when you conspired to kill yourself the son who now you accuse me of eliminating?”
Her laughter echoed again through the square breaking the silence of the night, and I noticed a small shiver running down my back.
“Good try, but your words cannot hurt me in the least, Helel, I have long accepted who I am and that, unlike what happens to you, has made me free.”
“It is obvious that you and I are different, Liliath, but you will never be free, you will always be a slave to your own ambition. What has brought you to this city now?” I asked.
“That's what you think?” she replied ignoring my question. “You are full of rotten and pestilent cynicism, dear husband. You will never recognise it, but we both know that the possibility of becoming the lord of hell was something that you were not going to let escape even at the cost of your own blood because that is what you have always wanted, to be again in one way or another what you once were. That craving for power has lived in you since the very day you became a man, from the same day you were thrown out of the centre of absolute power, since the day you stopped being a god to simply be Helel. And that is what makes us equal.”
The words of that woman I had loved deeply stuck in my skin like knives, and my fists twitched to control the rage that caused me to know that everything she was saying was really true. But I was not willing to grant her the power that my recognition would give her.
“You see, Helel,” she continued, “it seems that life is determined to make us meet again and again. And as for what brings me to this city, believe it or not, this should have been a new beginning for me, a beginning far from all the monsters I've known in my life including myself. But I suppose I should know that nothing in my life can be simple. I don't know what it is that brings you to this city, but if I were you I would leave right now because you have no idea where you got. Neither you nor I have a place on this place, Helel.”
“What the hell do you mean? Speak!”
“It seems incredible to me that you have all the resources of the underworld within your reach, and yet you have presented yourself here without knowing what is happening in this city, in this world.”
“I am not interested in the weavings of men and their empires, Liliath, they are temporary, I am eternal,” I said, wanting to look more than ever like the lord of hell and not simply Helel.
“Oh, but they should, my poor and stupid husband!” she replied with some despair at my lack of understanding, “because this is not an empire of men but an empire of angels, and one that goes far beyond the borders of Rome.”
That phrase woke up all my alerts and made my body tense. What the hell did that mean? My lack of understanding was reflected on my face and Liliath could see it clearly.
“Let me illustrate you, dear. This empire governs most of the world, and its expansion continues without an apparent end. Do you realise what that means? Most of the human population on earth responds to a single absolute power, the emperor. Do you really think that was going to go unnoticed in the other worlds? It was only a matter of time before one of the other races emerged from creation turned its face towards this new order, and in this case, it was the angels who have taken the first step to take control. Do you not see it?” she asked. “There is no better way to subjugate and control men than to do so without them knowing they are dominated. And for that, they only needed one thing, to control the emperor. Didn't you find it surprising that the emperor, the absolute lord o
f this city and this empire, is being held on an island that nobody has access to?”
The idea Liliath suggested was meaningless. I knew it was unlikely that the archangels would remain still once they had gained absolute power over the heavens, but I had always assumed that their next move would be to try to control hell and had prepared myself for a new war between the two worlds. But, in my arrogance, I had believed myself the centre of their attention without realising that it was the kingdom of men that they truly longed for. The archangels had always despised men for having my father's love and considered men unworthy, little more than slugs born of mud, creatures that should serve as slaves to the summit of creation that were themselves. If they had found a way to control men without them realising they were mastered, their goal had been achieved, humans would be enslaved and submitted to their will in the simplest and most discreet way.
“Why should I believe you?” I snapped trying to make her feel the need to offer me more information.
“You do not have to. You can consider my words a welcome gift, a gift born from what once united us. What you decide to do with this information is your business, but I repeat, this place is not safe for beings like us.”
As if they had heard her words, suddenly a buzzing noise began to fill my head, a repetitive sound that I had heard before and that announced the arrival of the angelic hosts. In an instant we were surrounded by four members of those who I had once called brothers dressed in their combat armours.
“Well! But look what we have found! It must be our lucky day,” said one of them in a sweet and musical voice that made me think of a snake. “Not only are we going to get rid of the fire hair witch, but she brings us to the very traitor. Michael will promote us today when we carry your head.”
“Quick, get behind me!” I yelled at Liliath.
“Oh, please, don’t be ridiculous! Why do men always believe that women need their help?” she replied angrily as she made a strange gesture with her hands and rose them above her head. Immediately, a light of incredible intensity sprang from those hands and spread around her invading everything and forcing me to look away. When the light had gone out, and I could look back to where our enemies were, there was no sign of them, as if they had never been there.
“What happened? Where have they gone?” I asked without understanding anything.
“I sent them to your house.”
“What?” I shouted.
“I have sent them to the third ring of your kingdom, it is one of the few effective ways to get rid of any angel. It is that or return them to heaven.”
My mind immediately understood what she meant. The third hellish ring was the part of my kingdom that humans have called limbo. A place where there is nothing, magic, material things or life itself. A place from which no creature can escape because once they reach it they are condemned to live in a permanent state of not being. How that woman had been able to figure out how to send creatures as powerful as angels to that place was something that escaped me, but that suggested something that I might have guessed for myself, her power had grown incredibly in the time we had not met. And that made her very dangerous.
Suddenly I saw her turn and walk away from me.
“Wait!”
“Your brothers will soon detect that four of theirs have disappeared, and the city will be full of angels tonight trying to find out what has happened. Go home, Helel!”
“But what about you? It will not be very difficult to find the fire haired witch. How do you intend to go unnoticed?”
“Don't worry about me, I've learned a long time ago how to hide my presence. If I were you I would worry more about your new friend, Gaius. I don't know what you have with him, but I remind you that he is in the direct line of succession to the throne, and right now, that is anything but an advantage.”
Without even giving me the chance to reply, her image faded into the night air, and it was as if she had never been there. Once I was alone I decided to follow Liliath's advice and transported myself directly to my room in Baal’s brothel. It was impossible for me to sleep all night. The events of the last hours circled in my head again and again. The encounter with Liliath had broken my schemes. I had always thought that if one day I had her in front of me again, I would kill her with my own hands for what she had done to our family and me, but not only had I not been able to do it, but that woman had saved my life, not only with her actions, but with her warnings; and although I had no doubt that she had some hidden interests, a part of me wanted to think that it had been a small fragment of the Liliath that I had known and that refused to die completely.
Once again it seemed that my life was bent on getting entangled around itself in some kind of Gordian knot that no one could solve. The reappearance of Liliath at the time I needed to approach Gaius, the lust instants with the boy and the links suggested by Liliath between his family and the archangels made my task of recovering my sword and returning order to my father's kingdom much more complicated and dangerous.
The following weeks vanished like the water that escapes between the fingers without hardly noticing it. Gaius made sure we spend each day together since that first meeting, and although it was evident that he was developing a kind of obsession with me, it was something I was willing to feed, partly because it contributed to my goal of gaining his trust and partly because his energy and enthusiasm for living were comforting and reconciled me with my lost faith in humans. Our sexual encounters continued, once again at the desire of both of us, but Gaius did not let the routine of our lust make us lose our appetite for those carnal pleasures, and he tried hard to bring daily novelties to our bed. Sometimes it was his own slaves, whom he enjoyed watching as I sodomised before joining the party. Other times they were friends of the roman high society who were more than willing to try the exotic novelty that Gaius had to offer them in the form of an Egyptian visitor, and at times, they were visits to his favourite brothels in Rome that, to my surprise he knew really well, to the point of choosing for us the most vicious or better equipped young men or the most skilled women among those who could find themselves on offer in those places. I enjoyed all those encounters and let myself be carried away by the boy's wishes, but I was not blind to what was beginning to take shape inside him. Even in those meetings shared with other people Gaius imposed the limits without letting any of our sexual partners fall into the error of being carried away by any kind of sentimentality, reserving the caresses, kisses and affectionate gestures for the moments in which we were alone. Thus, those moments of overflowing lust became gymnastic exercises created exclusively for the delight of his mind and my body, while our moments alone went beyond the mere pleasure of sex without limits to become something much more intimate.
But Gaius not only showed me the lustful and perverted Rome, but it opened the doors of Roman high society, the one that was believed to be the biggest example of civilisation in the world, and that as I could soon see, was nothing more than a nest of vipers where great mastery was necessary to survive. And in that, that young boy was an expert.
Gaius maintained relations not only with those families that clearly supported his mother or had been friends with his father, but to my surprise, he was cordially received in the houses of families who were clear supporters of the emperor in his not so veiled war with Agrippina. His political and social ability was immense. His talent to tell each person what they really wanted to hear and get from them whatever he wanted was a natural gift that he had not inherited or learned from anyone, it was simply in him. On one occasion I asked him if his mother was aware of those multilateral relationships that he fed, and quite honestly he confessed that his mother was too obsessed with a tree to see the forest. That response, spontaneous as it was, made me see clearly how different Agrippina was from that boy and wonder if it would have been his father who had inherited that political talent from. Gaius openly avoided talking about him. On more than one occasion, lying in bed after our long nights of pleasure, I had
asked him about his relationship with him, and the immediate response was a dark shadow that was deposited on his face and a short and direct response.
“I never existed for my father.”
That answer clearly denoted that he was not willing to talk more about the subject and made me feel more sympathy and affection because I, better than anyone, knew what it was like to feel abandoned by a father. But that refusal to talk about Germanicus or anything related to him greatly complicated my options for him to show me the sword I was so eager to recover. On numerous occasions I had indicated that my love for weapons led me to collect swords in the hope that, in order to please me, he would like to show me the weapon, but all I got was that he replied that his father was also a great lover of weapons and that every year he gave him a different sword brought from his different military campaigns around the world. I had no doubt that my sword was part of that collection, but the figure of the father made the door completely closed.