He paused, letting his words have their moment. We sat together in silence. Gregory appeared, as if on cue, carrying a tray with two cups of coffee, a small pitcher of cream, and a bowl of sugar. Louis motioned to a small table that sat between us, silently instructing Gregory in his duties.
Once Gregory had set down the tray and left, Louis spoke again. “There are only two of you.” He spoke with finality.
Reaching slowly forward, he took hold of a mug of coffee and sat back in his chair, focusing his gaze on me. He sipped his coffee, nodded with approval, and gestured for me to help myself.
It was like shackles fell from my wrists. I could move again, think again; suddenly, I could speak.
“Two of me?” I asked, my words sounding quiet and small.
Louis gestured towards the remaining coffee mug again, and this time I took it. I sipped, surprised at how good it was. I’d never tasted anything like it before.
Having wet my throat, I tried again. “You said there are two of me. What exactly did you mean?”
“Just what I said, there are two of you. Not two of you personally, but two of you, among the thousands, two who are gods. You are one, the other is Erik.” A look of confusion must have crossed my face. “Don’t worry at not knowing whom I speak of. Suffice it to say that he is also a member of the Community. That will have to do for now. We’ve more important matters to discuss.”
I nodded agreement and tried to put the thought of this Erik aside. I wasn’t able to. Instead, my mind ran back to him time and time again. What sort of man was he? What was he like? For no sane reason, I felt slighted by him, angry that he should share the same appraisal that Louis held of me. From the first second I heard his name, I hated him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Now, let’s discuss what the Community means for you,” Louis said. “Far from a hindrance, think of it as being more help than you could possibly need. Your house, the clothes and weapons inside, these things the Community provides, things you have already enjoyed. But what about the other benefits? Would you like to hunt humans like deer in the wilderness of Siberia? The Community can make it possible for you. Do you want a new identity? A new face? The Community can do any of this for you and far more besides. There are thirty-one thousand members, every one of which will gladly put his time, resources, and knowledge at your disposal. They do this regardless of whether you are willing to do the same, because I tell them to.”
“And what do I have to do for this…help?”
“Nothing,” Louis replied, nonchalant. “And everything—whatever is needed of you.”
I started to protest, but he held up his hand to stop me.
“Yes, yes, I know. You’ve no intention of serving anybody.” He smiled at me with an almost paternal affection in his eyes. “Many of the best in the Community feel the same way. My greatest servants have always been those who only do their own will. You, of course, take it to a higher level; you do your own will because your own will is all that there is—it is reality, and nothing exists outside of it. That is how you’ve always felt, isn’t it? Of course, in doing that, you do my will.”
“So, I can do whatever I want, and that fulfils my obligation to this Community?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Does it need to? It’s what you want. Do you not make it reality by deciding that it is so? Of course you do; such is the nature of a god.”
He took a long drink from his mug while I thought over what he’d said. Hearing him express, in words, thoughts that I had pondered a thousand times, truths that I had always known but which only now took on reality as I heard them spoken, was an epiphany. So much of what seemed new in his words was simply old thoughts and even older truths that I already knew.
I liked the thought of it—hadn’t I always? Wasn’t that why it was true? Yes, I admitted, I am a god. All that is, is because I wish it to be. How far did it go? As far as I wanted it to, of course.
“Will Gregory to enter the room,” Louis almost whispered.
I did.
Gregory entered, looking very afraid. The look seemed foreign to him. Peripherally, I caught sight of Louis’s face as a predatory grin sketched itself across it.
It happened just as I had wanted it to.
“Of course it did,” Louis chuckled. “You are a god. With acceptance came realization.”
Anxious, Gregory looked from my face to Louis’s.
Louis laughed.
“Well now, Mr. Parker, how do you want him to die?”
A thousand thoughts assailed me. How did I want him to die? Did I? Of course, but how? Any way I wished? Of course, but which way?
I looked at Gregory with dark intent.
He fell dead.
Without thinking about it, I looked to Louis. His right eyebrow arched, and he shrugged and looked non-committal.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose one way’s as good as the next. Still, I’d hoped for something with a bit more flair.”
“Where do you fit into this?” I asked, my tone abrupt.
“Where I have always fitted: nowhere, everywhere…I fit in a place consigned unto myself.”
“Do you exist because I wish it?”
He laughed. “Perhaps I do. You tell me.”
“No…no, I don’t believe you do.”
“Then that is reality, simply because it is what you believe.”
“Why is it that you had to tell me I could do this?”
“Because you wished it to be this way.”
“Am I God?”
He paused and looked ever so slightly angry. “No,” he said finally.
“I see.”
“Does it matter?”
“No,” I told him. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
He stood up then, a picture of grace and power. “Well, then, why don’t we go out for the evening? I’m anxious to show you some things.”
“But my leg….”
His eyebrow raised above a disapproving gaze. “Do you wish to be an invalid?”
“Well, no, but….”
“But nothing. Have faith in yourself. Rise up and walk.” Louis left the room.
I stood and found my body whole. Without another word, I turned and strode to my bedroom closet. I opened the doors and took out the clothes I’d known would be there. I dressed in my new, blue pinstriped double-breasted suit and patent leather blue-and-white Oxfords. Before I shrugged into my jacket, I reached under the bed and pulled out the box I knew would contain my shoulder holsters and my .45s. I strapped them back where they belonged.
I started to leave the room but stopped, an idea occurring to me. Strolling to the vanity, I opened a small jewelry box that sat atop it and took out the two rings I wanted to be there. One was a skull with spikes protruding from its head in every direction—I placed it on my right pinky. The other was a hand holding a skull between its thumb and middle finger in classic Buddhist style. I slid it snuggly onto the ring finger of my right hand.
I walked downstairs to join Louis.
It turned out that we were in San Francisco. I got a chuckle out of the thought of how much trouble Gregory must have gone through to bring me all the way from Virginia. Almost as quick as the thought came to me it got shot down. I remembered just how vast the Community actually was—realized it wouldn’t have been any trouble at all.
Louis and I sat in the back of a long black limousine destined for somewhere called Grantchester Meadows. We sat in silence for a long time before he spoke.
“How do you like it?”
“Hmm?” I came out of my musings. “What’s that, the limo?”
He chuckled. “No, the realization of what you are. Being a god. How do you like it?”
“Oh…well, it’s…it feels….” I paused and looked for the words. “It feels right, like this is how it’s supposed to be.”
“It is.”
“Yes, I know. I feel like a man who’s woken
up from dreaming he’s a paraplegic, only to discover he’s really an Olympic sprinter.” I laughed at the idea. “How did it feel when you first realized it?”
He looked at me wistfully. “When I realized it….” He drifted off into thought. I watched his face, and for the briefest of instants, I glimpsed his mind.
I saw war. War unlike anything man has ever known or imagined, powers undreamt of contesting for infinity, destruction and carnage beyond belief, and then…defeat.
All of this flashed through my mind in less then a second. I felt like I’d been punched.
“Ah, well, let’s just say it didn’t go over so well.”
We reached Grantchester Meadows a few minutes later, an extremely exclusive club of sorts, the kind where everyone’s mobbed around the outside, sequestered behind a velvet rope, and dying to be let in while the privileged few stroll by, unaware of the teeming masses of wannabes who’d give a damn sight more than their souls to be in their oh-so-fashionable shoes.
The doorman almost fell over himself, desperately toadying to Louis.
Inside, the place seethed and rolled with the rhythm of life and the pounding of drums. The most beautiful women likely to be found anywhere sauntered back and forth, at times pausing to drink or dance or seduce—all while discreetly presenting their invisible, but no less tangible, price tags. The men appeared little better. They prowled, mewled, begged, paid, doing all of the things that men do to convince themselves that they’re the dominants, all the time playing by the ladies’ rules.
We walked unhindered through the crowd, their mass of bodies seeming to part where we needed it. Women stared after us (and a few men as well), lust and greed playing through their features in equal proportions.
At a set of stairs—held secure against the unseemly majority by two large, well-dressed, and altogether unwelcoming brutes—we ascended unchecked to the next level of exclusivity. A table sat waiting, ready for us complete with drinks (Cabernet Sauvignon for Louis, Jack and Coke for me) and the company of two beautiful young women.
Louis swept down into his seat, scented his wine, and smiled with approval. He took his first sip. I sat down and nodded hello to our companions.
“Ahhh,” Louis sighed, “a fine vintage. Yours?”
I took a healthy swig and laughed. It was quite literally the best Jack Daniels I had ever tasted. “This shit’s amazing. Where’d they get it?”
“They receive it direct from Lynchburg. It’s our private stock, aged in the most select of barrels.” He waved his hand. “Never let it be said that the Southern Baptists can’t make a good whiskey.”
I gulped the rest of my drink down, a warm rush filling my body.
“So Louis,” I said, setting down my empty glass, “what is this place?”
“This?” He waved his hand again. “This is our town hall, our safe house, our private retreat for this area. We’ve one in every major city. Here our members can meet clandestinely to do dark dealings the likes of which mortal man would tremble to hear of. Here are plots and designs, debaucheries and perversions, sins and blasphemies by the hundreds.”
“There are other members of the Community here?”
“Yes, many.”
I looked around again, this time paying careful attention to each and every face, searching everyone for that spark of murder that I knew would identify them. I truly saw the place for the first time. Here and there, throughout the crowd, I saw them. Like wolves, they moved among the sheep, harbingers of destruction, murderers, assassins, workers of the foulest iniquities ever dreamt up by god or demon, all intermingled with the pitiful, unsuspecting rabble of the club. Everywhere around me, the prey brushed shoulders with their stalkers, never realizing how very close to death they stood. I turned my search to the two girls at our table and sized them up.
Louis’s was one of us. Exquisite, beautiful, lean muscled and full of grace, she sat patiently beside her lord. Her short scarlet hair and flawless skin, small breasts and supple legs…every inch of her spoke of desire. All except her eyes—they held only death. Silently, she watched everything, noting each detail, all the while planning her next kill.
My girl was different. Small and curved just where she should be, she possessed the most perfectly large breasts a surgeon could produce. Her small black dress managed to both encourage and leave nothing to the imagination. Blonde, luxuriant hair framed a face so painfully perfect that it spoke at once of both schoolboy dreams and manly desires. Youth and beauty radiated from her like light, but her eyes had remained innocent.
I looked to Louis, arching my eyebrow in silent question.
He smiled a rakish grin. “I know well your proclivity for post-coital mayhem. Is she not perfect?”
My date, who up until then had been looking at me with that mixture of shyness and beckoning that women invented, realized that Louis was talking about her and favored him with a luminous smile.
“Why, thank you,” she told him, speaking for the first time. “What a wonderful thing to say.”
She turned back to me and, with a sly sparkle in her eyes and a subtle presenting of her breasts, asked, “And what do you think?”
“I think I’d rather be telling you my opinions somewhere very private and far more comfortable. I find you….” I paused. “You leave me speechless.”
She bubbled at that and took my hand in hers. “Well, in that case, maybe we’d be better off finding that somewhere private and seeing just how speechless I can leave you.”
Louis laughed; his date smiled.
“Yes, Nicole,” he told her, “that’s a good idea. Go ahead, Robert. She’ll show you the way.”
I stood up and allowed her to lead me to a large, polished oak door at the back of the lounge. Through it we came to a set of downward stairs leading to a guarded door. Its massive sentry had opened it by the time we got there. Nicole continued to lead the way, favoring me with a shocking, exciting look from over her left shoulder.
We entered a long hallway, at least ten feet from side to side and lined by a series of golden-hued, wooden doors. Between each set of doors there hung breathtaking paintings of the erotic and vile. At the far end of the hall, a magnificent sculpture in marble depicted the classic form of the lovers entwined.
We stopped in front of a doorway, about halfway down the hall, and Nicole whirled round to face me. She pulled the straps of her dress down from her shoulders and let them slide over her arms to fall limp around her waist.
I had to tear my eyes away from the bounty she’d revealed. I looked into the depths of her beautiful, ice-blue eyes. She stared back at me with a look of hunger and ambition, reached behind her back to open a door, and led me forward.
Later on, I found out that the room had been quite richly furnished, complete with a fully stocked bar, entertainment center, and far too many other luxuries. For that moment, though, I only had eyes for Nicole.
She pulled me over to a massive bed and sat me on its edge, undoing my pants and slipping them down to my ankles as she knelt before me. I leaned back on my arms, feeling her breasts against my legs, and moaned as her tiny hand guided me into her mouth. I thought I would lose it immediately but I didn’t. I think my body was just too interested in what was to come to let anything ruin it.
She stood up, still bent over at the waist and kissing me, and the rest of her tiny black dress fell to the ground around her heels. It was more than any man could bear.
I grabbed her by either side of her waist, lifted her from the pile that was her dress, and, turning, laid her roughly on the bed. She laughed and squirmed in the most delightful way.
Lying back on the bed, she undid her heels and stretched out her leg to run her foot over my chest and cheek. She smiled up at me, and I climbed on top of her and took her until I could hold myself back no longer.
“That was wonderful.” She placed her big toe on my bottom lip. “Can we do it again?”
I seriously considered it. This woman was far beyond anything
I’d ever had before—the kind of woman who lives extravagantly off of the kindness of those who’ve been lucky enough to enjoy her attentions. Every inch of her screamed sex. I took a long, hard look at her, drinking in the splendor.
She smiled up at me with iceberg eyes that set my body on fire.
“Pleeease?” She pouted.
Detaching from her, I stood up at the foot of the bed. The familiar red haze rolled into my mind, obscuring lust and overwhelming its weakness with thoughts of purest murder.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Wh-what’s the matter, lover?”
I willed her to stand.
Jerking like a fleshy marionette, she came to her feet on the bed. Her eyes shot about wildly, looking with disbelief at her limbs, flashing in horror to search my face with questions she couldn’t quite bring herself to think.
“Oh, God…what…what’s happening?” she sputtered, her eyes growing wider and more frantic. “What the fuck is happening?”
I cocked my head to the left and looked at her. Her perfect little hands shot to her face and dug their hundred-dollar manicure through her million-dollar looks. She screamed, her body trembling in its stasis with terror and exertion. She couldn’t do anything to stop herself. Again, her nails dug deep, vicious grooves into her skin. Over and over I made her rip into her face, until nothing more than bloody strips remained, only a crisscrossing of exposed facial tissue, and so very, very much blood.
Then, of course, the tears came. She cried, she pleaded, she begged for it to stop, all while unable to grasp the reality of the situation. Pitifully, she wailed, those huge blue eyes of hers beaming at me through the scarlet mess her face had become. They begged me to make it stop. Anyhow, somehow, just make it stop—please!
Her hands came to rest before the remnants of her face. Curled into claws, they hovered there, blood stained and with flesh wedged under their fingernails. She stared at them in horror as if they were alien, things she’d never seen before. Yet, at the same time, a spark of recognition flamed in her eyes. She knew them.
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