Fucking hell.
He wrenched his hands out of the Doge’s, then wailing and shaking – and, after seeing the predatory look in the woman’s eyes, scared shitless – Vanka staggered to his feet and began to sway and totter across the room in the direction of the exit, banging into chairs and knocking ornaments from shelves as he went. Bemused by the Doge’s reaction he might have been, but he still had the presence of mind to mutter, ‘Catya, Catya’. This was the most common diminutive of the name Catherine, and therefore the one the late Potemkin had probably used when addressing his Current.
His prayers were answered. ‘Oh Grisha, my darlink, it iz I, your little Catya.’
Just as Vanka was preparing to make a run for it, the woman struck. She launched herself from her chair, grabbed Vanka into her arms, and began to ravish his mouth with long, wet kisses.
‘Grisha,’ she moaned, ‘I have pined for you. Oh, my darlink, I have been so alone, I have been so frightened, but now you have returned to me.’
This is fucking ridiculous.
The bedchamber of the Lady IMmanual, the Doge’s Palace, Venice
Although her aura remained stubbornly unchanging, the Lady IMmanual was obviously much taken with Casanova, and by the way his aura flared, Casanova just as obviously reciprocated her feelings. While Sister Bella made the final touches to the Lady’s make-up, all the man could do was stare at her, smitten by her beauty.
Casanova’s reputation as a rake and a roué was confirmed by his aura: the orange mist that surrounded the man was of a shade associated with those who craved constant attention. It was a childish, immature aura but, fortunately for the role he was being asked to play, it also showed that his libido was immensely strong – fortissimo-class. Men like him would – according to the ImPure saying – fuck anything with a ticking body clock, and Sister Florence suspected Casanova viewed even this modest stipulation as more of a guideline than a requirement.
‘So tell me, Monsieur le Comte,’ the Lady asked, ‘just what am I to expect of the Fleshtival de Walpurgisnacht?’
‘That, my Lady, is entirely in your handies so elegant. Walpurgisnacht is the Night of Lilith, the night when the forces of Light and Dark are in the utmost delicacy of balance, when the duality of the Kosmos it teeters between the Good and the Evil. This is the night when the light will be dimmed in the Demi-Monde and just for a moment – a moment of the greatest shortness to be of the unmeasurability – the power of ABBA will be extinguished and the most confusion will reign. But although this lasts but for the fleetingest of moments, it is dangerous. If this rent in the fabric of the Kosmos is not repaired, then evil – namely the Darkness – will pour into this world. So all of us who are of the greatest virility, use our sexiness and our beauty to distract the Darkness, to stop it entering the Demi-Monde. And the Darkness is easily distracted, my Lady, especially by the presence of beauty.’ Casanova gave the Lady a salacious wink. ‘And in this regarded, you will be the bestest of all temptations.’
‘You are very gallant, sir.’
‘Not gallant, my Lady, I merely have the totally truthfulness.’ The Lady IMmanual picked up her glass of zelie with a trembling hand though not, Sister Florence suspected, trembling from cold or fear but with excitement: Casanova and the zelie had obviously fired her imagination. But not, unfortunately, her aura, which remained steadfastly uniform.
‘You are correct in what you say, Monsieur le Comte, but I would go further. I understand that the most effective way a woman might connect with ABBA is through the sexual nirvana offered by orgasm. This is, of course, the cornerstone of ImPuritanism, which teaches that the pursuit of JuiceSense, the ultimate orgasm, is key to achieving Oneness with ABBA. And if a woman, especially one versed in Seidr magic, should reach the blessed state of JuiceSense, then her magical powers will be enhanced manifold and she will be better able to turn back the Darkness.’
Sister Florence frowned. Seidr magic? Was the Lady saying she was a Seidrkona, a practitioner of the dark, shamanistic magic of the Pre-Folk? Florence had read about these strange women who to merge with their spirit guides would seethe, fusing themselves with the Darkness, this being a state most readily achieved during orgasm. But what Sister Florence also knew was that the last Seidrkona had been Marie Laveau and she was reputed to have been the reincarnation of Lilith.
Surely the Lady wasn’t suggesting …?
Even while the Sister mulled these troubling thoughts around in her head, the Lady IMmanual gave an idle wave of her hand, shooing Sister Bella from her room. Once she and Casanova were alone, the Lady turned to her guest and spread her arms wide. ‘So, Monsieur le Comte, will you help me to achieve JuiceSense?’
The Doge’s private chamber, the Doge’s Palace, Venice
Only with a real effort – the Doge was immensely strong – did an increasingly desperate Vanka manage to free his mouth from hers and plead that she stop her onslaught on his body. With the Doge now ripping away at his codpiece and delving around in search of his manhood, his entreaties came out as nothing more than yelps. She had very long and very sharp fingernails.
‘Grisha, Grisha, my darlink, I miss you. I yearn for your body,’ chanted the mad woman, and then, whilst clasping Vanka prisoner between her substantial thighs, she grabbed the two sides of her bodice and ripped it apart, sending the pretty pearl buttons skittering over the polished wooden floor. Barely contained by her stays, the Doge’s plump tits celebrated their liberation by performing a very jolly jig.
The Doge hooked an arm around Vanka’s neck and hauled his face into her cleavage. Ever the gentleman, Vanka stabbed kisses onto her breasts and from far away – each of his ears was blocked by a surfeit of breast – he heard guttural murmurs of ecstasy.
Bloody hell, the woman’s an animal.
The problem was that the animal had an armlock tight around his neck and as her passion grew, so did the constriction of his windpipe. Frantically trying to avoid death by asphyxiation, he wriggled in her arms, gasping for air. He wriggled so hard that he overbalanced, his leather-soled shoes slipping on the pearl buttons. In an instant, he was sent tumbling over, and as he fell his head cracked against the unyielding corner of an oak dining table. With a low moan, he slumped unconscious across the floor.
The bedchamber of the Lady IMmanual, the Doge’s Palace, Venice
The seductive scent of the tendrils of smoke from the incense burners, drifting and coiling around her, made the senses of the Lady IMmanual reel. It was an odd sensation, but a disturbingly enjoyable one: nothing had substance, nothing was real, suddenly all restraint had been removed from her. The walls and the ceiling and the floor flexed and moved, seeming as supple as rubber and as solid as vapour. Reality had became amorphous, bending and twisting. She suddenly felt that she wanted – needed – to be wanton … to be herself.
She spread her arms and offered herself to Casanova. ‘So, Monsieur le Comte, will you help me achieve JuiceSense?’
The sexual tension in the room was so powerful that all Casanova could do was nod, but it was all the encouragement the Lady needed. In a slow, considered manner she drew her hands down along the front of her thighs and caught the ephemeral fabric of the gown between finger and thumb. Then with studied deliberation she drew the dress up over her body, over her head and then tossed it disdainfully aside. Now she stood naked before Casanova.
‘Come, use me in any way you desire,’ she whispered. ‘Do anything you wish with me.’ And what she said was true: she wanted to be used, to be violated. The zelie and the incense had connived to remove all her restraint and all her self-control. Now she wanted to commit herself, body and soul, to sin.
And as Casanova advanced towards her, she caught a glimpse of herself in her looking glass – and it was a smiling Lilith who gazed back.
The bedchamber of the Lady IMmanual, the Doge’s Palace, Venice
At last! Watching from her hiding place, Sister Florence saw the Lady’s aura begin to mutate. Slowly, almost imperceptib
ly, the unblemished silver corona that surrounded her became suffused with pink – the colour of arousal. Admittedly, the change was so subtle and so gradual that for a moment Sister Florence doubted what she was seeing, but after a moment the pink mist became deeper and more profound.
Hardly daring to breathe and frightened by the thought of what she was about to discover, the Sister pressed her eye closer to the spyhole. Now she would know the truth.
The Lady removed her dress and Sister Florence trembled. The girl, it seemed, had cast a spell over her, now she felt everything the Lady felt. Florence gasped in stunned excitement as a flutter of erotic anticipation rippled over her body. Lost in some sensual, salacious dream, Sister Florence found herself enveloped by a miasma of dark passion, bathed in the hot, aromatic consequences of her lust.
The Doge’s private chamber, the Doge’s Palace, Venice
How long he remained unconscious, Vanka couldn’t judge, but he opened his eyes to find his head resting on the Doge’s lap, her sizeable breasts only centimetres from his mouth. Lying there, a glass of really quite superior Solution was pressed to his lips and as he drank, the sudden, awful realisation of the situation he was in began to dawn on him.
‘Your Excellency,’ he stammered in a weak, befuddled voice, ‘what … what happened?’
‘My darlink, Grisha, you have come back to me. You have been reincarnated, unt vonce again ve vill be united.’
Shit!
Vanka staggered to his feet, his head swimming. He had to get out of there, the woman was obviously stark raving mad, and crazy people, in Vanka’s experience, tended to do crazy things. And in the Doge’s case that might involve having his head chopped off.
Mouthing incoherent excuses, he plunged towards the door. Every step he took felt like he was wading through thick treacle, but one thought drove him on – to put as much distance between himself and this nutcase as was possible. That, and the need to find Ella.
The bedchamber of the Lady IMmanual, the Doge’s Palace, Venice
Taking the Lady’s disrobing as his cue, Casanova stripped off his own clothes and once naked he stood for a moment studying the girl’s beauty, his own arousal blatant and proud. Then like some prowling animal, he began to circle her, stretching out a hand, slowly drifting his fingertips over her breasts. And as his fingers moved, delicately touching her, a spasm of anguished excitement flickered through her body, making her writhe and shudder. Now his fingers roved around her nipple, and the Lady felt herself reacting to the man’s ministrations, felt her skin tautening, her body rippling with delight.
Casanova’s hand moved down, cruising over her flawless flesh, searching out her most sensitive places. Further and further it delved and then …
Suddenly her body was aflame, racked by the most profound, the most rapturous pleasure. She stood there, vibrating with lust.
Then Casanova took her by the hand and led her to the couch.
The bedchamber of the Lady IMmanual, the Doge’s Palace, Venice
Abandoning herself to her fantasies, Florence found herself imitating Casanova’s blandishments. She gently caressed her fingertips over her own body, tracing them delicately along her welcoming flesh. Now the Lady was inside her head, whispering to her. ‘You are very beautiful,’ she heard the Lady say, ‘but beauty is nothing if you don’t use it.’ Encouraged by the Lady’s entreaties, Florence tracked her fingers over the swell of her full round breast. ‘I have dreamt of the moment when I would touch you, Florence,’ the Lady purred, and Florence undid the buttons that held her habit together. ‘I want to feel your body.’ Florence slipped her hand under her habit, her fingertips brushing the hard tip of her breast. ‘I want so very much to arouse your soul, to unbind it’ – Florence began to toy with the nipple – ‘and to have you embrace the carnal.’ Florence squeezed her fingers down hard, relishing the pain she provoked. ‘You wish to be a wanton woman, don’t you, Florence?’
‘Yes,’ Florence sighed and with a dip of her shoulders allowed her habit to fall to the floor. Now she too stood naked in the shadows.
Somewhere at the back of her mind came a warning for her to run away, that this was fiduciary sex of an intensity she had never imagined, that she was no longer the hunter, but rather the prey. But the soft, seductive voice of the Lady urged her stay and taste forbidden delights. She couldn’t run away, she would do anything that was asked of her, anything and more.
The pressure exerted by the fingers on her skin increased, the tips digging hard as they followed the curves of her body. Despite her aversion, her revulsion, of what she was doing, a shudder of arousal echoed through her, the massaging of her body kindling erotic charges. She tilted herself, stretching her arm such that the heel of her hand rested on her mons, and her fingers trailed through her scrub of pubis.
She watched Casanova’s fingers tempt and tease the Lady’s body and Florence imitated him, butterflying her own fingers and goading an erotic spasm from her own body. Her soul felt like it was being racked by galvanicEnergy: unseen in the darkness, she twisted and bucked, writhed and groaned, at once affronted by her own eager submission and delighted by the reaction it had provoked in her.
The Doge’s private chamber, the Doge’s Palace, Venice
As soon as Vanka Maykov had exited the Doge’s chamber, de Sade saw his opportunity. The Doge lay sobbing on the couch, her face buried in her hands, emotionally exhausted by the effort involved in communing with her dead Current’s spirit. He would never have a better chance. The Doge had to die.
When she was gone and Venice was his, he would remake it in his image. He would make Venetian women suffer for the humiliation and opprobrium they had heaped on him. No longer would men be obliged to conceal their instinctive MALEvolence, no longer would men be obliged to deny their real appetites. He would teach men to understand that the erotic – the real erotic – was based on the principle of transgression, and any transgressive activity, any breaking of taboos must, by definition, involve the inflicting of pain. He would teach them that pain, not prudence, was the key to pleasure.
More, he would destroy the perverse creed of ImPuritanism. Oh, how he loathed ImPuritanism’s hedonistic imperative and its belief that pain, even erotic pain, was anathema to civilised behaviour. He would destroy ImPuritanism and in doing so would bring women to understand what pain truly was. He would make women scream.
Carefully he slipped a catch, pushed open the door hidden in the wooden panelling and oiled his way into the room, tiptoeing across the floor towards the Doge’s slumped form. Almost before he realised what he was doing, he had drawn the stiletto from the sheath sewn to the inside of his frock coat and was standing over the woman, blade in hand, poised to strike.
The Doge opened her eyes. ‘De Sade … at last. It took you long enough to raise zhe fucking courage. Now I can join my dearest Grisha.’
De Sade stabbed the stiletto into the woman’s unprotected throat, stilling her scream of protest. He was amazed how easy it was to snuff out a life.
Le Bar Papillon, Paris
Stepping into the crowded, smoke-drenched bar that Garibaldi had nominated for her rendezvous with Dazarev, Norma felt like turning on her heel and making a run for it. It was a decidedly low-rent sort of place, where the clientele saw every newcomer as a potential victim, and tonight being Walpurgisnacht, the male of the species was in an even more predatory turn of mind than usual.
Fortunately, even as she stood there being evaluated, she heard a friendly voice calling to her. ‘Mademoiselle Benoit? Over here!’
It took a moment for Norma to react to her nom de guerre. She peered into the gloom and saw Garibaldi beckoning to her, his red shirt unmistakable through the fug of the bar. Crossing the floor, she saw he was sitting with a tall, handsome man with a roguish look in his eye.
Not your typical Normalist …
When she was seated at the table, Garibaldi made the whispered introductions. ‘Mademoiselle Heydrich, may I introduce Monsieur Pavel Dazar
ev.’
They shook hands and then Dazarev took control of proceedings. ‘Forgive me, Mademoiselle, but I do not wish to take a chance on you having been followed. I would suggest we repair to a room I have taken just around the corner. If we leave by the back entrance, I think we might avoid any unwanted attention of the Checkya.’
Before Norma quite knew what was happening, that’s exactly what they did. It was when they found themselves in the nightshrouded back yard of the bar that things ran out of control. There was a grunt and Garibaldi pitched forward with a knife in his back.
Le Bar Papillon, Paris
‘I ain’t sure this is such a bonne idea, Odette,’ moaned Burlesque as they stood in the shadows of a doorway keeping watch on the bar. ‘Norma’s gonna be très pissed off when she finds out wot yous gorn an’ done.’
Odette ignored him. She had never had any intention of letting Norma go to the meeting with Dazarev unescorted. As soon as Norma had left the pension, Odette had organised Burlesque and Rivets, made sure that they were armed, that Rivets’s muffler was correctly tied around his neck – he’d started coughing, which Odette was a little worried about – and then bustled them off in pursuit of the girl.
She and Burlesque had been standing outside the bar for almost five minutes now, shivering in the cold and stamping their feet to keep warm, while Rivets lurked by one of the windows, keeping a surreptitious eye on what was going down inside and making sure that Norma was safe.
Suddenly the boy began to make frantic signals. ‘They’ve scarpered outta the back,’ he shouted, and immediately Odette and Burlesque raced forward, barged through the entrance of the bar, pushed their way through the crowd and exited out of the back door.
Rod Rees - [The Demi-Monde 02] Page 45