by Rachel Green
He tore away the blanket, allowing it to fall on the wet ground. The sunlight through the shower sent rainbows of coruscating colours from every drop glistening on the bare branches. Pennies eyes sparkled, the moisture on her lashes making her eyes wide and bright. Chase rested his fingers against her temple and wiped the tears away with his thumb. She hesitated for a moment before twisting his hand so that she could brush his palm with her lips.
He dipped his head to hers, tasting vanilla and peppermint on her lips as his tongue snaked past her teeth. The warmth of her mouth surprised him when her cheeks were so cold but he folded her into his arms, his free hand snaking around and up the back of her sweater to unhook her bra. She laughed as she felt the support vanish and pushed him backwards onto the wet grass.
She put her weight on his chest, forcing him down and pinning one of his legs beneath him. Her hand snaked under the waistband of his trousers and he gasped. It was so cold it instantly cooled his ardour, though he soon warmed again under her ministrations. The advantage to her being on top was that he remained relatively dry.
While a hand job was always welcome, Chase was sure Pennie had more to offer. He wriggled enough to free his leg and pulled down her panties. More women should wear skirts, he thought, and the stockings were a nice touch. Pennie raised herself slightly to accommodate his manoeuvres, pulling her hand out of his trousers in order to pull them down to his knees.
Chase moved his legs in an action designed to pull his trousers past his knees but Pennie’s weight on his hips, and her legs tucked at the side of his, prevented him from completing it.
“You’ll last longer,” she said, her teeth grazing his ear as she whispered. “The less you can move the longer you can last.”
He nodded tersely as she lowered herself onto his erection, gasping as the full heat of her body enveloped him as the rain stung his face. He reached up to her breasts and she jumped with the shock of his cold hands under her sweater, her vaginal muscles contracting, almost making him come on the spot.
He rolled her nipples between his fingers as she established a rhythm, her interior muscles doing all the work while to outward appearances she hardly moved at all.
Her eyes closed against the falling rain as she lifted her head, feeling his muscles bunch under her pelvis and thighs. The closer he came to orgasm the harder he pinched her nipples and it became a tightrope, in her mind, to keep him on the brink and endure the pain he was putting her through.
She could feel her own orgasm approaching like a kite in a thunderstorm; elusive, desired, needed, but flying further away with each attempt to capture and fasten it to the earth. She groaned inwardly. Why was real life never like the books? Chase was about to come, she could feel his muscles tensing for the final push and for that moment he would be too strong for her to hold.
She squeezed twice as hard with her pelvic floor muscles and like a river that was suddenly dammed by a log and then released, so Chase’s orgasm burst forth, filling her until she felt she might break. Her hands darted downward, kneading and slapping and rubbing at her clitoris until the string of the kite was snared on one finger; one hand―then pulled to the earth as she screamed defiance of the elements into the rain. Her juices flowed over Chase’s softening cock and onto his pelvis, mixing with his cum and the rain as she deftly lifted herself off him and stood, satisfied and satiated as the rain poured over her.
Chase lifted his hips and pulled up his trousers. He too, was soaked from head to foot and his clothes were covered in grass and mud stains. He rolled onto his hands and knees and stood, opening his arms so she could shelter against his broad chest.
“There,” he said. “Aren’t you glad I took you for a picnic instead of to a restaurant?”
“I am rather.” Pennie grinned. “I can’t imagine us doing it in front of a load of lunchtime diners.”
“No.” Chase stepped back, looking up into the sky. “Not without getting arrested. The rain’s stopped, look.”
“Oh, good.” Pennie thought the exact opposite if it meant no more sheltering against him. She shivered. “We’re soaked through,” she said. “We should head back.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Chase surveyed the scene of their picnic. The grass was trampled for several yards in all directions. He didn’t look at the area that was still wet with their combined juices. Did it matter that he didn’t use a condom? She seemed clean enough and she’d recently been divorced. It wasn’t like she was the sort to sleep around.
“Penny for your thoughts?” she said, startling him out of his internal debate. He started guiltily, like a schoolboy caught staring out of the window at the girl’s PE lesson.
“Nothing much,” he said with his customary disarming smile. “I was fixing this moment into my memory forever.”
“That’s so sweet.” Pennie took his arm and squeezed it. “I would never have put you down as such a romantic.”
“Now that you know my secret I’ll have to kill you,” he said, laughing to cover the truth behind the words.
“Not before I leak it to The Times for a big fat fee,” she replied, smiling as she pulled on her knickers. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair. “I must look a state. Any chance we can swing by my place so I can clean up a bit?”
“Sure.” Chase nodded. It would be a good chance to look around her house. You never knew when that sort of information would come in handy. “Give me a moment, though. I need to go behind a tree.”
“Men have it too easy,” she replied. She began to gather up their things while she waited. Chase’s jacket was still on the ground where it had slipped from her shoulders. As she picked it up and smoothed out the creases, a sheet of paper slipped out onto the wet grass. She dived to pick it up, not intending to read it but the sight of her name made her pause, her brow creasing in puzzlement.
Insure Pennie for half a million in death benefit.
Why would Chase be thinking of insuring her?
Chapter Nineteen
Jim Hunt pressed a button under his desk and opened a secret panel in the wall of his office. The compartment contained a thumbprint scanner and a numerical keypad and Jim tapped in the ten digit figure with his left hand, while resting the thumb of his right on the mirrored plate. A larger panel slid open and he looked at the open pages of Roberts’ Treatise on Animated Figures under its halo of parchment-safe lighting.
A second ten digit code allowed him physical access and he donned a pair of white cotton gloves from his pocket. You could never be too careful with pages of this age; they were as likely to crumble under the slightest touch as reveal their centuries-old secrets.
It might have seemed a little odd for the director of a cutting-edge tech design company to be poring over a sixteenth century tome on the magical creatures often referred to as homunculi but Jim had found it invaluable in his private research. He’d purchased it from the antiquarian bookshop in the Shambles. Not personally, of course. He had met the owner before and would rather not have Harold Waterman be aware of his interest in such things. The tome had been purchased seven weeks ago by Steven Lowry, one of the department chiefs who lived alone since his divorce from a beautiful wife. Jim could attest to how pretty Pennie Lowry, now Pennie Black was. He’d seen her often enough through the concealed cameras in her flat.
Jim cleared his projects table and laid the tome down. He wanted to check the sigils to be inscribed on a homunculus one last time before committing them to the acid etching bath. Scanning the pages even with the very latest in billion pixel scanners, sometimes missed the nuances that a trained eye could spot. Using a jeweller’s lens, Jim checked the seven plates against their counterparts in the book.
All seven were perfect replicas of the illustrations, even down to the bloodletting pattern which he hoped wouldn’t be necessary, but had a contingency plan in case. He stacked the seven plates caref
ully at the back of the desk. There were only a few steps to go now. As soon as he had the activation sigil he’d be ready to produce the prototype and, if that went well, the Magelight Two would go into mass production. The ideal servant for the man who thought he had everything.
The flicker of movement distracted him. There were two men in Pennie Black’s apartment looking for something. Jim frowned. He didn’t recognize them, but was he supposed to recognize thugs? The man in the bar had been adamant her place would be turned over and the missing pages of the book returned to him within twenty four hours, so he shouldn’t be surprised by their appearance now. He couldn’t help the feeling there was something wrong. At the very least, he hadn’t expected them to ransack her place in broad daylight.
Jim watched the monitor, his finger still marking the place in the book. It wasn’t that he’d recognize the two thugs―even if he saw them in the street, he couldn’t acknowledge them without letting slip he’d got the apartment wired. But he thought he’d hired a professional businessman to do the job. He’d wanted to scare the woman, not terrorise her. These looked like common criminals; an observation confirmed, when he saw them casually smash a seventeenth century vase.
There was, he was dismayed to see, no detailed search of the premises to look for the missing page of the tome. It was a long shot that Steven entrusted his ex-wife to keeping it, but he’d had every inch of the department head’s house examined without its retrieval.
It was as well Lowry had lived alone, no-one had queried his absence over the last few days. It had taken Jim six weeks to discover the crucial pages were missing and when he confronted Lowry about it, the man had laughed in his face and held them for ransom.
He wasn’t laughing now, he was in laboratory five, helping Jim with his research. Jim smiled to himself and turned away from the monitor. Steven would be helping him very soon. According to Roberts’ Treatise, the construction of a homunculus required the use of a carefully prepared bone to tie the spirit of the victim into the artefact. In the book’s examples, the text referred to the finger bones of thieves, since these were, at the time, easy enough for the budding necromancer to obtain, but those were for homunculi no larger than a man’s fist. Anything larger would be difficult to conceal.
Jim had a different view. What could not be hidden in shadow was better concealed in light. The homunculi he was designing would be six to seven feet in height and hidden in plain view. Magelight Robotics would soon have a new and very visible product line.
All Jim needed were those missing pages.
He put the book away again, locking it into the hermetically sealed viewing box with more care than he took over a delicate piece of electronics. When it was safely under lock and key, he stripped off the gloves and dropped them in the incinerator rubbish. He reached for the phone and dialled an internal number.
“Security.”
“Winston? It’s Jim, mate. Listen. Could you do me a favor?”
“Sure. What do you want?”
“Has Steven Lowry come in today? I need his help on a project.”
“He’s in the building, sir.” Jim could hear Winston flicking through the signing-in book. “He’s hasn’t left the building in days.”
“Are you sure?” Jim smiled. Blaming it on Security always worked. “Would you instigate a building search? It’s vital that I speak to him.”
“Will do, sir. His pass has got a GPS embedded in it.”
“Excellent. I’ll authorise any expenditure. Just send me the dockets.”
“Yes sir.” Winston’s voice changed to one of familiarity. “You still up for Friday night?”
“Friday? What’s Friday?”
“Only your stag do, Jim. You can’t have forgotten you’re marrying my sister.”
Jim forced out a laugh. “Of course not. Yeah. Friday’s good.” He put down the receiver. All was going to plan. If his contact had done his job, Steven Lowry’s pass
would be hidden in Pennie Lowry’s flat, implicating her in his disappearance.
Laboratory Five was a short elevator ride directly beneath his office. The dismembered remains of Steven Lowry lay in a pentagram etched in the floor of the area. The lines joining the points and the protective circle, was filled with a pink gel, the product of Jim’s inventiveness. The mixture of blood, salt and holy water, was bound together with the plasticising agent used to preserve dead tissue.
What little flesh remaining on the bones was being eaten away by a mass of maggots, each one, when Jim dared to look, with his face. It was a cruel joke on the part of his servant, Keritel, who leered at him from the top of the skull, etching pen in hand.
“Isn’t it finished yet?” Jim scowled at the tiny demon from the safety of outside the circle.
“Craftsmanship, mate.” Keritel licked the sharpened steel point and scored another line, nudging one of the maggots out of the way first.
“What?” Jim frowned. “What about it?”
“Craftsmanship. I’m a craftsman. You can’t rush a binding spell, mate. Rush a binding spell and it won’t last at all. Do it right and it’ll last millennia. I made one of these for Enoch, you know.”
“Enoch? The comedian?”
“Don’t be facetious. Enoch was the grandson of Adam,” said Keritel. “I bound the spirit of Mahalaleel for him and it still exists to this day.”
“Really?” Jim sat on the floor at a safe distance from the circle. “How long ago was that?”
“In your time?” Keritel glanced up from his work. “Five-thousand, three-hundred and forty-seven years. I could give you the days too, if you like.”
“No, that’s okay.” Jim watched a maggot break away from the mass and inch its way toward him, like an upwardly-mobile Subutteo player. “Where is it now, this bound spirit?”
“Boston, in the New World.” Keritel smiled and rubbed at his etched lines with his finger. “There,” he said. “That’s Eringard, the seventeenth sigil in place.”
“How many more?” asked Jim. The maggot was still coming. It was over half way but still a good three feet from the circle.
“Fourteen.” Keritel picked up a cloth and rubbed at the skull, then used his scribing tool to tidy up the sigil where the vertical line met the loop of the flourish. “Thirty one, see, the number of the ostraca of the Horn of God.”
“I see.” Jim nodded, not wishing to appear ignorant. There were limits to the data implant he’d found when he took the position of Director of Magelight. However much it advanced his IQ, it didn’t supply him with esoteric knowledge. He relied on books and this little fellow for that. “And how much longer will it take?”
“A day, maybe two.” Keritel laughed. “You wouldn’t want a rush job that only bound a spirit for a month or two, would you?”
“Yes.” The maggot had reached the perimeter of the pentacle now and reared up, as if seeking out the owner of its face. “A month or two would be just fine for the prototype. I need to know what he did with the missing pages. Then I can get on with the project.”
“Fair enough.” The demon picked up the skull, dusted off the remaining maggots, and curled his legs around it. “In that case it’ll be finished in the morning.”
“Excellent.” Jim watched as the maggot fell into the magic circle and vaporized. “I’ll return tomorrow then.”
He left the tiny demon assembling a range of miniature power tools and muttering, ‘’there’s no respect for craftsmanship these days,’’ as he crossed to the other side of the workroom where a large furnace dominated the area. He fixed the etched plates in place and entered the adjustments into the master control unit. Once he had the skull prepared, all he needed was the activation sigil and his creation would be ready.
“This time tomorrow,” he said, peering through the glass inspection panel. “This time tomorrow could see the daw
n of a new era.”
“Hunt?” called the demon.
Jim hurried over but remembered to stop before he crossed the protective circle. “What is it?” he said. “Have you finished?”
“Not yet.” Keritel lifted up a pair of safety glasses. “I could hear you talking to yourself,” he said. “Did you know that was a sign of megalomania?”
“Is it?” Jim’s smile was as wide as those of the maggots. “Is it megalomania when you really are ruler of the world?”
“You’ll be giggling next,” warned Keritel. “You mark my words. I’d sign myself in at the loony bin if I were you, before it starts. Otherwise you’ll start rubbing your hands together and then where will we be?”
“What do you care?” Jim said. “You get my soul either way.”
“It’s quality, innit?” The demon laid his miniature drill down. “Look at it from my point of view. Sane, homicidal scientist, in eternal torment and servitude to an imp. Or insane homicidal scientist and I barely even get a credit for you.”
Jim scowled. “Just do your job, demon. Let me be the judge of my sanity.”
“You can’t though, can you? It’s not like you’re impartial, is it? You can keep declaring you’re sane while you wash your todger in sulphuric acid, and you’ll have what you think is a very good reason for doing it.”
Jim laughed. “Don’t worry about it, I’m perfectly lucid. Now if you’ll excuse me…” He turned and headed back to the elevator without completing the sentence.
Keritel watched him step in and the doors close. He pressed the trigger on the drill, relieved it started at once with a full battery charge. Trying to thread a power cable through a pentagram was a nightmare. He took his finger off the trigger again, allowing the drill to power down, as he looked thoughtfully at the lift.