Masked Indulgence

by Michelle Love

  Not tonight. As Django descended the stone steps down to the bank, he was surprised to find Emile waiting for him.

  “Dear friend!” he exclaimed, shaking Emile’s hand and smiling widely. “I haven’t seen you for a few days. I trust you are well?”

  Emile nodded. “I am very well, Django, very well indeed. I felt I needed to come tonight, given all that has happened, to spend this night with you.”

  Django smiled happily. “Well, then, let us walk. I confess, I have been in a somber mood these last days, thinking of poor Iseult. That monster Gaston must be found and brought to justice.”

  “You are convinced of his guilt?”

  Django nodded. “Most assuredly. Why else would he disappear?”

  “Perhaps he is dead too.” Emile couldn’t resist a sly grin and Django looked surprised.

  “That would be troublesome … who would kill them both?”

  “People in love do crazy things.”

  “Yes.” But Django looked disconcerted. Emile glanced over at him as they walked.

  “Django, how long have we known each other?”

  “Since childhood, Emile, some twenty-five years. You are my brother.”

  Emile smiled. “As you are mine. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

  “My thoughts exactly, dear friend. If there’s anything I can do—”

  “There is.” Quickly, Emile withdrew his knife from his pocket and thrust it hard into Django’s throat. Django clutched at the knife, his eyes shocked and horrified, but Emile jerked the blade, opening a wide chasm through which Django’s life blood flowed unchecked.

  “I’m sorry, dear brother,” Emile said softly to his dying friend, “but she needs your heart, and I need her. She is my life, Django, and you are the purest person of my acquaintance. I’m so sorry, dearest …”

  Django was on his knees now, and then as Emile pushed him to the ground, he stared up at Emile in confusion as Emile opened his chest. “Dear God … you have become a monster,” Django gasped, barely coherent, his voice a gargled mess of blood and fear. He expired as Emile reached in and tore out his heart, lifting the still-beating organ into the freezing night air. Emile kicked Django’s body into the Seine and immediately set off for the club.

  Django’s heart was still beating as Emile presented it to Seraphine and together they feasted upon it as they made love. Emile felt changed, the hot sweet blood of his friend’s organ pulsing through him as he fucked his beloved Seraphine, the snow-white furs of their ice bed turned red with blood.

  They lay in each other’s arms afterward and Emile, confident, asked her if he had finally satisfied her. Seraphine’s kiss was soft, but her eyes were serious, almost cold.

  “My darling,” she purred the words, “until the heart you bestow on me is utterly free from anything but your love, you will still be separate from me.”

  Emile ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “My love, I have killed my closest friend, the one person in this world who was good and pure and whom I loved liked a brother.” He got up from the bed, pacing the room. He noticed, in the middle of his ruminations, that he no longer felt the cold of the ice under his bare feet, the chill of the air on his skin. He was changing, but into what?

  He looked back at Seraphine, her lithe body curled up on the furs. “My love,” he went to her and cupped her face in his palms, “up to now, I have done everything you have asked without question. Now, I must ask … who are you? What are you?”

  Seraphine was quiet for a moment. Then, “Emile, the moment that I tell you will set you along a path with only two resolutions.”

  Emile breathed in deeply. “Which are?”

  She smiled serenely. “That, my love, I cannot tell you.”

  “You speak in riddles!” He was up again, annoyed. “What is it you want?”

  “The real question is, my precious Emile, what do you want?”

  He dropped to his knees beside her. “You, my love, all I want is you.”

  She smiled. “Then I have told you what you need to do.” She uncoiled herself from the bed.

  “I wish to be alone now, my love. Remember, the Cabaret will leave Paris at the stroke of one minute past midnight, January 1st. We do not wait for anyone. Anyone. You know what to do.”

  Emile returned home, dejected. He pushed the door behind him, not noticing that it didn’t quite shut. He pulled off his clothes and went to stand on the balcony again. Snow was falling again over Paris, thick and heavy, and even the light from Eiffel Tower was cloaked. He stood, trying to feel the ice on his skin, trying to feel the cold, risking the hypothermia. But he felt nothing.

  He felt nothing.

  He looked at his hands and studied the long fingers. They were so pale as to be almost transparent. These hands have killed, he thought dispassionately. They had killed three people that at one time or another had been special to him, that he had loved.

  “What the devil are you doing?”

  Emile turned slowly. Hippolyte was standing in the middle of his apartment, staring at him. His friend was stooped, grief written all over his face. Emile didn’t answer him, just went to stand next to him, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. Hippolyte’s eyes were full of pain.

  “Django is missing,” he said, his voice breaking.

  Emile stayed silent but continued to meet his gaze. Hippolyte started to cry, sobbing into his hands. He mumbled something hysterically and Emile gripped his wrists, pulling his hands away from his face. “Calm yourself, man, and tell me again, slowly.”

  Hippolyte gathered himself, and in a voice that sounded as if it were coming from the grave, whispered, “What the hell is happening to us?”

  Emile tugged his sweater over his head and went to join Hippolyte in the kitchen. His friend was nursing a large glass of scotch, and Emile sat down and joined him. Hippolyte was calm now, and he studied Emile now, his gaze penetrating. “You look like hell.”

  Emile shrugged. “What of it?”

  Hippolyte shook his head, prodding a finger at him. “All this has happened since that first night of the Cabaret. We never should have gone.”

  Emile sighed. “Why on earth would us going to that club have any effect on anything? Iseult didn’t go the club, and so far, she is the only one we know for sure has died. Gaston is still missing, and now you tell me Django is nowhere to be found. Perhaps one or both of them is visiting family outside of the city.”

  “Why do you smile when you say that?”

  “I wasn’t aware I was.”

  Hippolyte sat back in his chair. “I swear to God, Emile, this has something to do with that woman.”

  A flash of anger went through Emile. “You mean Seraphine?”

  “I do. Ever since we were with that woman …”

  “Excuse me? What do you mean with?”

  Hippolyte laughed then. “Emile, really. Do you think it was a coincidence she chose you first that night? That by the time she was finished with you and it was my turn and then Django, you were passed out from pure physical pleasure? We knew it was your first time, Emile. We knew that Iseult had kept you waiting for your wedding night. We thought “what a riot!” None of us liked Iseult, Emile, none of us. We prayed that you would fall in love with someone else and leave her; instead, Gaston did the favor for you.”

  Hippolyte sighed and rubbed his face with his hands, not seeing the rage on Emile’s face. When Emile spoke, his voice was measured and careful, but seething with anger. “You both put your hands on my Seraphine?”

  Hippolyte sighed. “She’s a whore, Emile, a filthy whore. What did you expect?”

  Emile leaped across the table and threw his slight body at Hippolyte’s massive frame. The two men clattered to the floor, tumbling and wrestling until finally Hippolyte threw Emile across the room and Emile crashed into the large mirror he kept propped against the wall.

  Hippolyte stood, his mouth bleeding, wiping away spittle. “What the hell is wrong with you? You c
hoose a whore over your friends?”

  Emile was paying him no attention because, as he lay in the wreckage of his mirror, he caught sight of his reflection. The reflection he’d first seen in the mirrors at the hotel out of the corner of his eye, and now he understood, it had crept up on him.

  The sunken eyes, the translucent skin, the haunted, desperate look in his eyes.

  Hippolyte snorted in disgust as Emile picked up a sliver of the mirror and stared at himself. “Look at yourself, that’s right. Look at what you’ve become. You don’t deserve us, you never did, any of us, Emile, because the only person you’ve ever loved is yourself.” And he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

  His words hung in the frigid air even after he had been long gone and finally, Emile began to smile.

  The police came for Hippolyte late on New Year’s Eve. They’d found a body; would he be so kind as to come to the morgue to identify it? He knew, immediately, that it would be Django.

  He gazed down at the body of his friend, the gaping hole in his neck, the bloated, waterlogged appearance of his skin. “We pulled him from the Seine. We think he was killed on the banks and rolled in. There’s a significant amount of blood down by the Left Bank.”

  Hippolyte felt sick. He would never forget the look on Django’s face There was fear, of course, but more than that, there was hurt, betrayal. Emile.

  There was a commotion behind him and some technicians wheeled in another gurney, a body covered in a white sheet. “We got another one. Been dead at least a week, frozen solid under a pile of snow.”

  “Where?” The police sergeant who had brought Hippolyte to the morgue spoke up, his face alert and professional.

  The technician told him and the police officer nodded. “That’s two streets away from the girl’s murder.”

  Hippolyte closed his eyes. “Can I see the body?”

  The policeman gave a curt nod and the technician lifted the sheet. Hippolyte sighed, utterly exhausted. “It’s Gaston Fournier.”

  When the police let him leave, after extensive questioning, Hippolyte wandered through the darkening streets of the city. Despite the cold weather, Parisians were flocking onto the streets to celebrate the New Year, and Hippolyte had to push through crowds of partygoers, revelers, street vendors, and street entertainers. The stores along the boulevards were still sparkling with every color of decoration, festive cheer, and sale signs.

  But he saw none of it. His world had turned to black and white and red with blood, and now all he knew was he had to save his only friend—no matter what he had done.

  Emile dressed simply in a long white dress shirt and pants. He didn’t even bother putting a jacket on—he didn’t feel the cold anymore. His appearance drew stares from passersby as he walked regally to the Cabaret at eleven p.m. The nymphs at the bar nodded to him as he made his way back to Seraphine’s room. He knocked once and walked in.

  Seraphine was facing away from him, but she smiled at him in the mirror. “My love, you came.”

  Emile nodded. “Of course, I did, my daring Seraphine.”

  She turned and studied his eyes, and her smile widened. “You are ready?”

  “I am ready.”

  She rose from her seat and came to him, kissing him softly. “At last, my love, at last.”

  Hippolyte was surprised that they let him in, given his disheveled clothes and the smell of alcohol coming from him, but the nymphs greeted him like an old friend and gave him a table at the front of the stage. They seemed gleeful, almost celebratory—he supposed because it was the show’s last night. The lights went down almost immediately, and Hippolyte was shocked when Seraphine walked onto the stage, hand in hand with a totally naked Emile. The music began, and the couple was surrounded by dancers, moving and swelling like waves around them. They rose up to shield the couple and then Hippolyte saw Emile and Seraphine on the plinth, making love.

  To Hippolyte’s horror, a nymph approached the couple carrying a red velvet cushion. Hippolyte remembered it from an earlier show; it held the lethal knife of ice.

  He started to stand as Emile grasped it in his hand, but suddenly there were nymphs holding Hippolyte down. Desperate, he screamed at his friend. “Emile! Mon ami, non! Please, no!’

  But Emile did not listen, did not even acknowledge his friend’s pleas. He smiled down at Seraphine and raised the knife. “I love you,” he whispered and plunged the knife into his own chest, hacking at his skin, cutting his own torso open, reaching in and pulling out his own beating heart. “I give you my heart, Seraphine.”

  It was still beating as they both bit into it and Emile smiled as he passed from light into darkness. There, he finally saw Seraphine in her true form, and he exulted in her divine beauty and grace.

  “We will be together forever now, my precious Emile,” she said and, kissing him, led him into forever.

  Hippolyte also saw Seraphine in her true form. As his friend died, his blood gushing from him like a torrent, he saw her, the serpent, coiling and uncoiling around the husk that had been his dear friend Emile before her jaws opened wide and finally consumed him forever.

  The End.

  Vespa Velutina Book 2

  In the very last days of the 20th Century, a recent ex-pat in Hong Kong faces a lonely Christmas and New Year. Moving into a new luxurious but strangely cheap apartment, he becomes obsessed with a painting of a beautiful woman. After moving in, he goes to bed drunk only to be woken by a strange buzzing and the unexpected sight of snow falling on Hong Kong. What happens next though defies all logic and explanation when the woman in the picture appears in his bedroom to give him the best, most erotic night of his life …

  Hong Kong 1999 …

  Pal Magnussen walked through the arrivals hall at Hong Kong International Airport, aware that he was the lone single male in the passengers from his flight. Everyone else was shrieking greetings at their loved ones, their friends, in what he assumed was Mandarin but could have been Swahili for all he knew. Back in Oslo, he’d mastered English at school as well as his own language, but as soon as he was able to opt out of learning any other language, he had. It wasn’t his thing, language.

  Which had made his plans to work in every developed country in the world a little difficult. Luckily, here in Hong Kong, at the turn of the new century, there were enough English speaking ex-pats left that his transfer to the University of Hong Kong’s Biomedicine Faculty had been easier than his last job in Sao Paolo.

  Also, leaving Sao Paolo meant being half a world away from his ex-wife, Louelle. God, just being free of that bitch … she’d taken him for everything in the divorce but by the end, he didn’t care, he’d just wanted to get out. His old friend Ken Woo had called him, begging him to come fill a spot on the faculty. “No one wants to teach bio anymore, no one. They all want to teach media. Fuck this world.”

  Pal had laughed at his friend’s sulky tone, but he’d agreed straight away. Two days later and here he was. Ken had booked him into a motel for the first few nights. “I know you’re particular about your living space,” he’d told Pal on the phone the day before his flight, “but I’ve gotten you some details so you can check them out yourself.”

  It was only two p.m. when Pal checked into the motel. He dumped his bags and sat on the bed, undecided about what to do. He went to the little bathroom and brushed his teeth, glancing in the mirror. His blue eyes were red from traveling, his blond hair, thick and curly, pressed flat on one side. He’d taken an Ambien when he’d gotten on the plane and had slept nearly the whole flight, so now he felt antsy, eager to get on with things. The motel receptionist had handed him a brown envelope from Ken; details of available apartments. Pal looked through them now. Some were tiny—at least the ones he could afford. The last one he came to seemed way too good to be true; a penthouse in central HK for less than a week’s salary per month. A week’s salary. Pal glanced at the pictures— there was no way it was as good as it looked.

  Still, he shrugged, why not find out?
He called the number of the listing and was pleased that the realtor spoke impeccable English. He arranged to go the place the next morning.

  Feeling weirdly pleased, he took a cab into the center of the city and wandered the streets for a while. The city was alive with people enjoying the seasonal displays and Christmas lights. Even more than Christmas—which was technically more for tourists and European and American ex-pats than it was for the locals—the city was gearing itself up for the Millennium—the year 2000 was less than ten days away.

  Pal, stoic by nature, wasn’t buying into the panic of the New Year and Y2K; he was looking forward to the future. A future without that incubus Louelle. They had been married for five years—five childless years. Louelle had told him she was desperate for children—as he had been, but as soon as he said “I do,” she changed her mind. It had been hard for him to not grow resentful but he’d given the marriage a good shot until it became impossible.

  His family—what was left of them—were scattered across the globe and they rarely kept in touch.

  So Pal was alone, here, in a new country at the turn of the century. And for the moment, that was really very okay.

  He had to stop himself from whooping the next morning when the realtor showed him around the penthouse. He had been right—it wasn’t anything like the photographs … it was better. Pal laughed softly to himself. Better didn’t even cover it. Wall-to-ceiling windows, plush furnishings, the modern and clean state- of-the-art kitchen …

  “Are you sure that this rent amount is correct? It seems very little for such a place.”

  The realtor smiled. “The owner is very particular who she rents to. For the right person, she is very generous—if some of her aesthetic taste is singular.”