“Took a while for the child to take root, didn’t it?” the mambo asked, startling Max out of his reverie. “What else can you expect from ghost seeding human, and neither one with the right tools or plumbing? The poor thing’s lucky to have taken at all.” The mambo hesitated, glancing at Max’s belly. “Or unlucky. The bridal bed must have been a place of power.”
Dex screamed again, thin and high-pitched at first, his wail tumbling into a guttural, gasping series of cries, as if something vital were being plucked out of his body. Kueur’s laughter bubbled out of the Box. “C’est bon?” she asked. Alioune’s voice wove through theirs, binding sounds of pain and pleasure with the grumbling of raw, inarticulate hunger.
Max shook his head. “I have to kill it,” he said, the urgency rising once again in him. “Get rid of this thing. Now.” He started to rise, throwing off the prayer rug.
The mambo pressed her hand against his naked belly, pushing him down. The palm of her hand was like a blazing iron on his skin, and he shifted away from her on the couch.
“That’s not what you have to worry about yet,” she said.
“Get out of my way, loa.”
“Your child is an empty vessel. It’s all the spirits of the dead could make.”
“You’re riding the mambo too long, too hard, Legba. You’re killing her. Leave her, leave me.”
“Your child is no danger until it gets a soul.”
“I’ll kill the mambo quick if you don’t get out of my way. And then I’ll kill this thing inside me.”
“Don’t you hear me, boy? It’s your baby’s soul you have to worry about.”
Max picked up one of the couch cushions and kept it between him and the mambo. He stood, pushed the cushion into the mambo’s hand. The smell of burning leather was carried up by wisps of smoke.
“Not if the vessel is dead, loa.”
The mambo struggled, pushing back against Max. The cushion crackled as her hand passed through the leather cover and into the filling. Seconds passed. He began to feel the heat from the mambo’s hand as she cut through the cushion, and he braced himself for a killing stroke to her throat. The Beast urged him: Now, go, kill. Then she collapsed, groaning, taking the cushion down with her to the floor. Sweat soaked her clothes as the loa rode its mortal mount to ground. “The vessel won’t kill you,” she whispered, hoarse, eyes fluttering, reaching for him as he walked around her.
“No?” he said, trudging to the kitchen, words and the loft and the cold winter world outside spinning around him. “What will, then? The ghosts of my victims? They had their chance in Painfreak.”
“No …”
“You?”
The mambo gagged, tried to get up, wilted under the effort. “The spirit …” she said, and was silent. Her eyes fluttered, and for a moment the mambo’s earthly personality looked out through reddened eyes and a pale face twisted by fever’s pain. Then she faded like a meteor burning itself out in the night sky, and Legba abandoned his human ride.
Max threw himself against the counter, knocking down a stool, and rested his head against the cool marble top. The knife. On the other side of the counter, in the kitchen itself, the block filled with knives, and the garbage disposal at the sink, and dish rags and running water, for the blood, and the gash …
“Tonton?” Kueur stood at the doorway to the Box, naked, droplets of blood spattered across her thighs. “Non, Tonton. Don’t kill the little one.”
Max turned, crouched, fingers curling into claws. The sounds of pain and pleasure had stopped from the Box. There was only Dex, whimpering, crying, saying, “Please …” and “More …” Max bared his teeth, the Beast a shadow eclipsing the light of his self. “Why not? It’s mine.”
Kueur stared down at him. “The child also belongs to Alioune and me. As do you.”
The Beast strained against Max’s tension-locked body, lost in a blood dream of tearing Kueur apart. Alioune pushed the door to the Box wide open and joined her sister, naked, hands and fingers dappled with blood. The Beast leapt at them, but Max stood his ground. The Beast whirled around in his mind like a starving wolf caught in a cage, teased by prey just beyond the bars. Max straightened, relaxed his fingers. The Beast, forgetting that its bond to Max had been severed by death, howled in rage over the betrayal of the flesh it had so often mastered. Max remembered the first time he had seen Kueur and Alioune, in Paris. The Bois. The young Brazilian. What they had done to him, what had been left. The Beast skittered to a halt, seduced as it had been that first time by the discovery of kindred spirits. Max remembered the more recent metamorphosis of his relationship with the twins, from his role of protective “Tonton” to lover, and the sacrifice of the Beast’s uncontrollable appetites on the altar of his passion for Kueur and Alioune. The Beast quieted.
“Would you kill me too?” Kueur asked.
“And me?” Alioune added.
Each twin snaked an arm around the other’s waist. They leaned into each other, hips pressed together, breasts like dark plums ripened to bursting with sweet juice and meat; twin sexes like crevices at the roots of mountains, veiled by brush, promising secret passage to the mysteries of life and death.
Lulled by the scents of blood and musk, the Beast settled into its place of submission in Max’s mind. For punishment, Max recalled his sojourn into Painfreak and the Beast’s retrieval from the House of Spirits.
At last, Max awoke as if from a dream, and the love he had for the twins blazed again, chasing away the Beast’s ghost to its place in the darkness of rage and pain. Max sagged against the counter.
“I hate this,” he mumbled, rubbing his neck and head with both hands. “I’m out of control. This thing,” he said with a dismissive gesture at his belly, “it’s killing me.”
The twins picked up paper napkins from a stand on the counter and wiped themselves, then turned back to him.
“I understand,” said Kueur, coming to one side and supporting Max.
“Not necessarily,” Alioune said, going to Max’s other side to help him stand. “You are suffering no more than any woman does.”
“How would you know?” he said, then bit his lip at the harshness of his voice and words.
“I know pain,” Alioune said softly.
“Your discomfort will pass with the child,” Kueur added. Together, the twins led Max back to the couch. “How do I get rid of this thing?” asked Max.
“Why, you deliver it, of course,” said Kueur. She tsked at the ruined cushion and left Max to Alioune. After moving the coffee table aside, she jogged past the alcove to a storage closet hidden in the wall. The men in the alcove stopped pretending to only occasionally glance up from their equipment and, with fingers poised over keyboards, followed her progress with lips parted, eyes narrowed. She rummaged through the linens and pillows at the front, leaving alone Max’s stockpile of professional equipment stored in neatly piled containers at the back. Finally, she pulled out larger throw cushions.
“Abortion?” asked Max.
Alioune shook her head fervently. “Ill-advised,” she admonished. “You are too far along.”
“Are you sure?”
Alioune turned her head, and her eye was a finger’s length away from his, filling his vision. Looking into its depths, Max felt a chill, which he savored. “Our shuwwafat taught us to know enough while we were with her in Africa. They say you are pregnant, they say you will deliver in days. The child is obviously not of mortal origin. It will have enmeshed itself in your system, merged with it like a parasitic demon.”
“Careful, sister,” Kueur said, looking back at them as she filled the space left by the burnt sofa cushion with smaller throw pillows. “Let’s not make it any worse for him.”
Alioune cleared her throat, helped Max to the sofa. “You cannot simply rip it out of you. The shock of separation would be fatal for both of you.”
Max fell on to the repaired couch and lay down. As Kueur secured the prayer rug over him, he said, “Maybe that would be best for me, and for you, as well
.”
“No,” Alioune said firmly. “The child must leave you when it is ready.”
“We go where our paths lead us,” Kueur said gently. She picked up the ruined cushion and strolled to the alcove. “Stray off the path, and you invite a deeper doom.”
“I can’t live like this,” Max said, rubbing his belly, fighting back another wave of nausea rising out of his gut. “It was the scarves, the spirits of the women I killed, that did this. This is the price of appetite—mine, and the Beast’s. But what will happen when. I deliver this thing? And what’s this business about souls and spirits? Was the loa saying the Beast might possess this thing to kill me?” A sliver of pain worked its way from temple to forehead, and he rubbed bone through skin. A thread of fear followed the pain. “Has the Beast betrayed me? Turned into an agent of the women I killed? Have they found me again through the child they planted in me? Is it the instrument of their vengeance, or just an accident? When will my past stop reaching out to me?”
“I do not know,” said Alioune, sitting and letting Max’s head rest in her lap.
Kueur handed the ruined cushion to one of the men in the alcove. “S’il vous plait? The trash is by the elevator.” The man lowered his head and withdrew. His companion kept watching Kueur as she went to the mambo, kneeled beside her, ran her fingers through the woman’s black hair. “Think about it too much, Tonton, and you’ll turn into one of these mad Americans, with their grassy knoll and their Roswell, seeing something sinister in the flicker of every shadow.”
“But there is,” Max said, turning his face into Alioune’s stomach, seeking solace from his headache and confusion in her hot, silky skin, in the strength of her body, her taste of salt and spices and blood and semen.
He closed his eyes, letting Afioune’s gentle massaging of his temple, upper neck, and shoulder seep into him, dispelling pain and sickness. Hearing movement, he turned to catch sight of Kueur lifting the mambo, her clothes a pile on the floor, in her arms and carrying her toward the bedrooms opposite the entrance alcove. Sunset painted their bodies crimson and lavender. Dust motes danced in their wake. He blinked.
When he opened his eyes again, Kueur was sitting on the floor beside him, her head on his belly, eyes half closed like a cat’s. Dusk had thrown its veil across the window, casting reality’s firm lines into illusion’s doubt. But even in the darkness, Max could see the bulge of his belly and wondered if it had grown while he was asleep; if the weight he felt pressing down on his intestines was entirely Kueur’s head. The faint whine of power running through electronics announced the nearby presence of his employers’ observers. They were still watching him.
Nothing had changed. He was still burdened by the life he carried.
Max stirred. Alioune rubbed her warm, dry palm across his chest while Kueur gently massaged his genitals.
“Do not worry, Tonton,” said Alioune. “We will take care of you.”
“Tonton, we’re sorry for the way we’ve been acting,” Kueur added, lifting her head and taking his hand in both of hers.
“You saved my life a little while ago,” he said.
“Before. When Mrs. Chan said … when we found out you were pregnant.”
Max looked from one to the other, waiting for laughter. They showed him curiosity, tinted by shame and other, less obvious emotions. “I’ve been difficult, myself, I suppose.”
“We understand, Tonton,” said Kueur, squeezing his hand. “What your body must be going through, for the baby…”
“The plumbing’s wrong, as Legba would say.”
Kueur gave him a blank look.
“You’re upset,” Max said gently. “The both of you. I’m your lover. A man. I was the one who was supposed to give you babies. Remember, after your father tried to rape you, you were thinking about what it would be like to have children? Give them what you never had?”
“Yes,” Kueur said. Alioune remained silent.
Max hesitated, uncertain about the territory he was exploring, how deeply he should probe this area of their mutual needs. For all their physical intimacy, for all the appetites they had shared and satisfied, there were worlds they had yet to map in the universe of their relationship. Max reminded himself that men and women who did not have their powers or pedigree had as much, if not more, difficulty in navigating through the fog of deceit, delusion, fear, insecurity, and all the other frailties that haunt the living.
But the living he knew were not sired by ancient spirits of power. The living had not been visited by a forgotten god seeking to reunite with a lost sister through the womb of his own children. The living he knew had very different lives.
Max took a deep breath. “You’re angry because you both wanted a child, and I’m the one carrying it. You’re angry because you knew the instant you heard I was pregnant that you had nothing to do with its conception. You feel betrayed. By me. By whatever passed the gift of life to me.” Max felt drained, as if he had just handed over a part of his heart to strangers. “You’re afraid the child will take me away from you,” he heard himself say, wanting to stop, unable to silence the thoughts.
Tears welled in the twins’ eyes. They looked as startled by the upwelling of emotion as by his words.
“I know,” he said, hoarse, shaking his head. “I understand your fear. Because that’s how I’d feel if you had children. Mine, or another’s. Afraid.”
“Tonton, making a life, it’s such a large thing,” Kueur said.
“Larger than any gods and demons and spirits we have ever met,” Alioune added.
“We’ve been thinking of children, of what it is to be a woman, a bearer of life. That part of a woman’s role in this world. Alioune and I have wondered if having children is what we must do to be women, truly women, as much as any mortal female you’ve been with.”
“You mean, you want to be like the women I’ve killed, the women who’ve cursed me with this,” he said, glancing at his belly.
“It is the act of creation we desire,” Alioune said.
“But you don’t need to have children to be women,” Max said.
“We’ve heard the act is necessary,” said Kueur.
“On TV,” Alioune added, “though there has been debate. And terrible danger. We have studied how women and children are treated. On TV, the streets, families. Studied statistics.”
“We weren’t encouraged,” said Kueur. “The cost is high.”
“They are prey,” Alioune said.
Max remembered. The Beast growled its agreement.
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t want it,” said Max.
“No, it isn’t,” Kueur answered. “But we want to be a part of the act, Tonton. Part of this new life you’re bringing into the world. We want to know the joy a new life brings, and the terror.”
“Even if it wants to kill me?”
Kueur patted Max’s chest. “We didn’t let you kill the child. Do you think we’d let it kill you?”
“We will protect you, as you have always protected us.”
A warm sensation passed over Max, touching the doubts and uncertainties he had felt about talking to the twins. Part of the tension inside him relaxed. But emotion still roiled in his heart as he discovered words had only skimmed the surface of the meaning he wished to convey, and he could think of nothing to say that would bring him closer to the twins. Nor could he summon the questions that would penetrate the mystery of their natures, pinpoint the exact hurt that needed attention, and raise answers to heal the wound they carried.
The temptation to point to the weave of threads that tied them together and label it with a word like love, or passion, or desire, was nearly irresistible. He craved the power of a spell, a curse, an anthem, anything that might summarize and contain the part of his feelings he wanted to communicate. But the clumsy phrases of mortal lovers not only failed to describe the content of his relationship with Alioune and Kueur, they could not even point to the path he walked in their company or to the boundaries of the world i
n which they traveled. Stumbling through the rituals of everyday love would cast a pall over what he valued more than his life. Belief in the stunted vocabulary of mortal love would sunder what had been created when he sacrificed the Beast for feelings he thought were love and passion but were in truth more primal and vast. Frustration provoked him, rousing the ghost of the Beast. He wanted to lash out with violence, sweep away the source of his irritation with an act of brutality. Kueur, Alioune. The baby. Himself.
Killing was easier. The equation of appetite and its satiation was much simpler to understand, and complete.
Max closed his eyes, concentrated on the twins. The warmth of their bodies. The fragrance of their sex. The musical lilt of their accents echoing in his mind.
The Beast, a cold spot that could not be warmed by the embrace of any bond, including the one to its host, subsided with a cantankerous growl.
Frustration dissipated. Rage dissolved. Relief gave Max a moment of respite from the chaos of his emotions. The brief taste of a strange new intimacy rooted beyond physical realms had left him and the twins unscathed, as far as he could tell. And thirsty to drink deeper, to reveal more of himself and try once again to sink into the depths of the mystery of others.
“Can you really protect me from the baby?” he asked, letting fear into his voice. “Nothing coming from being raped by the women I killed can be contained. It hungers. It feeds on me. The thing is wild, uncaring, demonic.”
“You make the child sound like us,” said Alioune. “Before we met you and started changing.”
“Maybe that’s what I fear most. The change. Even if we—I—survive, our lives will be different. The baby, whatever it is, what would it mean for us? What would we do with it?”
“Raise the child,” Kueur answered.
“We’ll have to take care of it, manage it somehow….”
“Tonton, we are as lost as you are. The road you once walked has ended. Another beckons. You did not know the choices you made in the past would bring you here. You can’t go back. The road forces you forward. And you are afraid. Alioune and I, we understand. We are with you on that same road. Helpless to ease the pain, relying on the help of others. It is as hard for us as it is for you.”
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