by J. L. Doty
No, she’d find Paul on her own, and help him learn to protect himself. That was the only possible course of action.
Chapter 16: Obsession
Belinda held tightly to the young man’s hand. She’d learned quickly his arcane abilities were stronger than most, and he apparently had some natural resistance to many of her spells. But that resistance faded quickly when her flesh touched his.
In front of her apartment building she let go of him briefly to pay the cabbie. She was relieved to see her control faded more slowly this time, that holding his hand for the entire ride had apparently had some small cumulative effect. She was careful to get out of the cab first, so she was waiting for him as he stepped out. She took his hand immediately and led him up the steps at the front of her building.
She saw her control begin to slip slightly as she searched for the keys in her purse. But she found them, and quickly grasped his hand as she unlocked the front door. She didn’t let go of him as they made their way up to her second floor walkup.
Once inside her apartment, inside her wards, she relaxed a bit. She’d lived here for several years, lived here when not living in her master’s mansion, and the place was imprinted with her power. In here she didn’t need to maintain physical contact with him at all times.
“You’re safe here,” she told him as she got him seated at the small table in her kitchen. “I’ll make some tea, herbal tea. It’ll help calm you, help you sleep.”
“Am I really safe?” he asked.
She almost felt sorry for him. His face was drawn, his eyes haunted like prey in the den of a large predator. “Yes,” she said as she put a kettle of water on the stove. “I’ve built these wards up over a period of years. And I’ve specifically warded each mirror. Nothing can manifest within these walls unless I allow it.”
He raised his own hands and looked at them doubtfully. He was spattered with blood, and he had bruises on his face and a deep gash on his forehead that had been stitched up.
She sat down opposite him, took his hands in hers. “The blood?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Well, some bruises and cuts and scrapes, but the worst is more than a week old and starting to heal.”
“The blood,” she asked again. “Whose?”
He shrugged. “This Russian bastard, looks a lot like Joe Stalin.”
He launched into his story, and as he spoke she knew the spells she’d cast upon him added an element of confusion to his thoughts, more so because he was such a strong practitioner. A mundane mortal, or a weaker practitioner, might not question his own senses, would probably accept the illusions and glamour she wrapped about him without a second thought. But with the strength this young man possessed, had he created proper wards he would’ve been immune to her manipulations, would’ve detected them and known her for what she was. Instead he sat here wholly unwarded, and with such arcane strength at work there was a piece of him, buried quiet deeply, that knew something was wrong and it confused him. So until she had full control, she’d have to be on the lookout for any signs of resistance.
She leaned forward carefully, purposefully giving him a better view down her dress. She smiled warmly at him and said, “My name’s Belinda.”
He smiled back, and she could see he was warming to her. “Paul,” he said. “Paul Conklin.”
It was imperative she move quickly to make him hers. Physical contact was the key, and she was good at physical contact with handsome young men, oh so very good.
Paul told Belinda an edited version of recent events. He told her about the Russians and McGowan and Colleen shooting up his apartment, and how they and the demon had hunted him down at the hospital. She was most interested to know what, or who, had drawn him and Katherine into the Netherworld, but he couldn’t help her there. He didn’t tell her about the chimera-like appearance of the big hoodoo demon, nor that it kept calling him Dragon-stink. That fact had bothered Katherine’s father no end, and some instinct warned him to be cautious with that information. Nor did he tell her he’d looked into its eyes and somehow escaped. He pleaded ignorance, honestly so, about how he and Katherine had returned from the Netherworld. He told her of the abduction to Faerie, though he was vague about his escape, didn’t mention the little people, and she didn’t ask. He told her about the demon that trashed Katherine’s home, and how the Russians had captured them both. And he gave her a slightly fictitious version of how he’d escaped from good old Joe Stalin. He wasn’t about to admit to anyone he’d fed on a demon, then fed on that Russian bastard. He really didn’t feel guilty about either.
He edited the entire story quite carefully, not because he didn’t trust this beautiful, exotic witch. In fact he found he trusted her more and more as time went by. No, it wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, but more that he’d learned a considerable amount of caution in recent days.
“You’ve actually been to the Netherworld,” she said with a touch of awe in her voice. “What’s it like? Not that I ever want to go there.”
He described the chaotic and hellish world that seemed to be a counterpoint to their own existence. “It’s like the city, but not like it, like a destroyed or corrupted version of the city.”
A wave of exhaustion washed over him and a wide-open yawn forced its way up out of his throat. She stood, walked around the table and put a hand on his shoulder. He could smell her perfume as she said, “You’re tired. Can’t blame you after the week you’ve had. It’s time for bed.”
He almost hoped that was an invitation as she turned and walked away, and he watched the sway of her hips as she crossed the living room. With the trench coat hung in a closet, the dress, while it covered her completely from shoulders to just above her knees, clung to her so intimately it still left the impression she was almost completely naked.
She disappeared into her bedroom, returned a moment later with some blankets and a pillow, and dropped them on the couch in the living room. “You can take the couch,” she said. “You’ll be safe here tonight. Believe me. I know how to protect you.”
She turned toward her bedroom, called over her shoulder, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Again he watched the sway of her hips as she disappeared into the bedroom, watched her go longingly, regretfully.
Paul didn’t really sleep. He lay awake for quite some time and couldn’t get Belinda out of his mind. He tried to think of something else but it took a decidedly conscious effort to do so, and each time he started to drift toward sleep, as he relaxed and the conscious effort waned, thoughts of her returned to him and he found himself picturing her hips, her breasts, her eyes and her lips . . . then he’d snap back to full wakefulness, and try again to focus on something else.
When he did finally drift off to sleep she haunted his dreams. She wore a diaphanous gown of some sort that hid everything while tempting him with the ever-present hope he might see more. She drifted in and out of the shadows around him, and every time he reached for her she wasn’t there. He finally awoke with a demanding erection.
He didn’t understand what was happening to him. He’d never been so completely obsessive like this, not even in high school when he was trying to get laid for the first time.
He sat up, walked into the kitchen and looked at the clock on the stove. It had been less than an hour since he’d first lain down on the couch. As he returned to the couch he noticed Belinda hadn’t closed her bedroom door, and a faint glow emanated from her bedroom as if she still had a small lamp on. He sat down on the couch again, couldn’t stop thinking of the open bedroom door. She hadn’t invited him to her bed, but she hadn’t exactly pushed him away either. Several times that evening she’d caressed his cheek almost like a lover, and each time he’d felt a slight tingle as if there was some unusual attraction between them. He wondered now if she felt drawn to him as he felt drawn to her. He closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands, wanted to go to her, to touch her, to learn the taste
of her lips, the taste of her skin, the taste of her entire body.
He lowered his hands from his face and opened his eyes. Somehow, without realizing it, he’d crossed the room and now stood in the doorway to her bedroom. A small bedside lamp cast a wan light over the bed where Belinda lay propped up by a wall of pillows, dressed in the diaphanous thing from his dreams. She wore shadows like other people wore clothing, and though the lamp didn’t flicker the shadows appeared to dance about her.
He saw a faint glint in her eyes, realized they were open and looking at him. He crossed the room carefully, trying to think of what to say, ready to turn and leave at the slightest hint he wasn’t welcome. But instead she raised her arms and opened them to him, and she spoke in a throaty whisper. “I’ve been waiting for you, Paul. I think this was meant to be.”
He leaned down over her, lowered himself into her arms and their lips met. She tasted like a dark, exotic fruit, and he could feel her breasts pressed against his chest. He lowered his head, kissed her nipples and she cried out passionately.
They rolled over so she was now on top of him, both of them tangled in the sheets. The black cascade of her tightly curled hair enveloped him and they kissed again, their tongues darting back and forth. He hadn’t made love to a woman since Suzanna had died, and for a moment he felt a pang of guilt that he’d betray Suzanna with this gorgeous creature. But as Belinda pressed her body against his, any thoughts of Suzanna and any guilt he might feel drifted away in a dark cloud of passion and desire.
The obsession spell had worked magnificently. Paul had come to her and didn’t even realize he had no choice in the matter. Physical contact was what Belinda needed to truly enspell him, touch to touch, skin to skin, flesh to flesh. With their bodies entwined and driven by an uncontrollable desire spawned by her spells, this would be physical contact to an extreme, and with her body she’d eventually enslave him.
She rolled over on top of him, opened her legs and gave into him completely, and as he entered her a wave of passion flooded through her. She gasped, a purely spontaneous cry that escaped from her lips without any volition on her part. So she decided to forget her manipulations this night and enjoy the moment, to drown in the pleasures of this man’s body. There would be plenty of time later to peel open his soul, layer by layer. She’d unlock the chains to his spirit one piece at a time, then truss him up and present him to her master, a gift bound by the strings of her witchcraft.
After her rescue from the Russians, Katherine spent the night at her father’s place, auspiciously because the demon had trashed her home and it was temporarily unlivable. But she had an ulterior motive she didn’t reveal to her father or Colleen: she knew Paul had returned to the city and wasn’t far away.
The matched locator charms she’d spelled into her hair and his, the little trinkets concocted from their mixed saliva and hair, gave her a sense of direction and distance to Paul. But she needed privacy and time and concentration to activate them and bring them to full strength. And she certainly wasn’t going to reveal to her father and Colleen that she’d created a way to locate Paul, not if they were going to use it to hunt him down and kill him. So, not until she left her father’s study that night, could she properly trigger the charms.
From her father she knew Karpov’s warehouse was south of the city, so Paul had started out there. But by the time she was alone in her old bedroom in her father’s house, shortly after midnight, and could properly activate the charms, she learned Paul had returned to the city. She couldn’t take a map and point to his location—it wasn’t that accurate of a sense—but she knew he was back in the city and not far from her, something she dare not reveal to her father and Colleen. He’d escaped from the Russians, was safe for the time being, so she decided to bide her time, get a good night’s sleep and find him in the morning, though the charms were so strong at this point that even while sleeping she was conscious of him as if he was in her dreams. And then about two in the morning she slammed awake as he disappeared from her senses altogether.
The charms themselves were linked by arcane forces, so even if he was dead that shouldn’t happen. If someone removed the charm by shaving his head, that could account for the complete loss of contact. But with a charm that was melded into his hair the way she’d done, they’d have to completely shave his head,. And while there were plenty of Russian thugs out trying to kill him, they certainly wouldn’t know she’d spelled such a charm into his hair—not even he knew that—so she didn’t think any of them would stop to shave his head first. No, the only thing she could think of was that he must’ve entered the strongly warded home of a powerful practitioner. Such wards would easily block the oh-so-tenuous connection between the two charms.
At least she could take some comfort from the fact the link wouldn’t trigger such wards, wouldn’t warn their master of the charm’s existence. The charms were wholly passive, so they were completely undetectable unless one knew to look for them, and knew exactly what to look for.
So where was Paul?
She’d slept poorly that first night at her father’s place, awakened repeatedly and sat up in bed, tried to will the charms to relink, to give her some inkling of his whereabouts. But she’d come up with nothing. She’d even had moments where she’d begun to wonder if he’d been killed, had to think it through logically to convince herself he probably wasn’t dead. She could only hope that that conclusion wasn’t wishful thinking. If her father didn’t have doubts about Paul’s humanity, didn’t think Paul was possibly a demon, wasn’t ready to kill him because of that, she’d consult him. She’d describe the charms and how she’d made them, and let him reassure her that Paul wasn’t dead. That’s what fathers were for. They reassured you when you were terrified. And that was the first time Katherine realized she was terrified for this nice guy that had come into her life. She put that thought out of her mind.
So where was Paul?
She’d awakened that first morning after a fitful sleep. She knew he’d returned to the city, had been south of her when he’d dropped off her charm radar, and not too far south. She thought he might be somewhere South of Market, or SoMa as it was known by some, a district that surrounded the San Francisco side of the Oakland Bay Bridge.
She called her receptionist and cancelled her appointments for the rest of the week, then took a cab down to SoMa and wandered the streets for the entire day, hoping to catch some inkling of Paul no matter how tenuous. And after an entire day without success she returned to her father’s house.
She’d done that now for three straight days. And as dusk began to blanket the city she stood on a street corner, kicked the curb with an expensive pair of Gucci’s and swore a string of epithets that would’ve made a dockworker blush.
Why did she feel so protective of this fellow? He was just some guy; granted, a nice guy, and a nice looking guy. And she’d saved his life a couple of times, pulled his ass out of some serious shit. He’s the one who should be grateful to her, should be asking her out on a date or something.
Oh shit! she thought. I’m one step away from twirling my hair and passing notes in class.
She caught a cab and went back to her father’s house.
“Well now, I think me boy-oh’s been enjoying himself, Boo.”
“I do say, Jimmie me boy, I’d be enjoying meself too.”
Paul opened his eyes carefully. He was lying face down on someone’s bed, obviously not his own.
“Aye, but I think she’s more than you could handle, Boo.”
“Oh, Jimmie, you’ve got the right of that. And I wager she’s a bit more than our boy-oh here can handle too.”
Paul tried to roll over, but his legs were badly tangled in dark green sheets. He kicked the sheets off, sat on the edge of the bed and tried to collect his thoughts.
“But he’s sure having a good time trying to handle her, ain’t he, Boo?”
“Aye, Jimmie, to hear her say it, ‘Oooh Paul! Oooh Paul! Oooh Paul!’ The young fellow must be a r
ight big horse between the legs.”
Paul scanned the room, looking for the two leprechauns. He spotted Boo’Diddle seated atop a highboy dresser, while Jim’Jiminie stood casually on a windowsill picking at his fingernails with a small dagger. Paul growled, “Would you two kindly shut up and give me a chance to think?”
“Well now,” Jim’Jiminie said. “It depends on what you’ll be thinking with, the head on top of your shoulders, or the one on the end of your dick.”
Boo added, “I think the one on the end of his dick is all thought out.”
The sunlight slanting through the windows of the apartment told him it was mid-morning on a sunny day. Paul stood, realized he was as sore as an athlete who’d just competed in a strenuous event, though, in fact, Belinda was a rather strenuous event.
Belinda! She must’ve left the apartment for something. When would she return? He needed her, needed her beside him, needed to taste her, needed—
“Stop that.”
One of the leprechauns landed on his shoulders, the other hit him in the back of the knees and he folded up, hit the floor hard on his shoulder. “What the hell are you two doing?” he shouted. He rolled over and struggled back to his feet.
Both leprechauns stood in front of him, facing him with their hands on their hips, a couple of angry little men. Paul shooed them aside and headed for the bathroom. He turned on the shower, let the water heat up for a few brief moments, then climbed in. He soaped down quickly, rinsed off as quickly, then stopped and let the hot water cascade over the back of his shoulders as he closed his eyes and tried to think. He let the water relax him, let it drive away his concerns and fears, though he shouldn’t have any concerns or fears because Belinda would soon return. He closed his eyes and imagined her naked body beneath him in the sheets—