Turn Loose the Dragons

by George C. Chesbro

  God, John, how I need you now.

  Alexandra closed the door behind her and moved silently but quickly down the corridor to the elevator. It had taken all of her willpower to speak calmly to Rick Peters; she felt as if her center of gravity had dropped away and she were in danger of flying apart. As much as she loathed the fact, she realized that she had been tempted to join her former dragon partner in bed, to seek relief from the terrible pressure and anxiety in his arms and in the delicious pain, the exquisite torment, he would weave so expertly into the tapestry of their lovemaking.

  She felt herself being inexorably drawn to Rick Peters. As in the past.

  The dark, nightmare needs of her past had taken years to grow and fester, she thought. She had finally recognized their destructiveness and managed to vanquish them. She had never imagined that in a mere three days the pressures surrounding this task would brutally tear away the psychic scar tissue over those needs and leave her feeling panicked and empty, throbbing and in need.

  John’s love had been her lifebuoy once before, she thought as she got out of the elevator on the second floor. Now he would have to be again, in a way he could never be allowed to understand.

  She waited by the elevator almost five minutes, looking and listening, but there was no sound, no indication that anyone had followed or was watching her. She walked down the corridor and paused outside John’s room. She knew that her partner had been right. She was taking an unconscionable risk, but she felt she had no choice. She had less than a week left to remain in San Sierra, but the rest of her life to live. Her need was a gaping wound. She needed John to help her by stabilizing her emotions; she needed him to hold her and make love to her and hold her close again, if only for an hour or two; she needed to know that he loved her and had forgiven her past, as she had forgiven his. She needed him in her. Then she would be able to finish the assignment.

  Insane, she thought, closing her eyes and clenching her teeth. Her thinking was an indication of just how bad her nerves were, and she was filled with shame when she thought how close she had come to doing something that would be incredibly stupid.

  She started to walk away, then stopped when she was gripped by a new fear. She had excellent hearing, and even a sleeping man usually made some sound, however slight—a grunt, a snore, an arm flopping on the sheets. From John’s room she had heard, sensed, only complete and ominous silence.

  There were so many ways to kill a man, Alexandra thought. In his sleep. If someone had tried to kill John before, failed once, decided to try again …

  She removed a metal straight pin from her hair, slipped it into the lock and deftly manipulated it until she heard a soft click. Alexandra turned the knob, carefully pushed open the door, and slipped into the moonlit room. She glanced around and frowned at the sight of the rumpled, empty bed.

  Peters

  Peters slammed his fist into the lumpy bedding and swore violently as the door closed behind Alexandra.

  It was Alexandra who was breaking down, he thought, not her husband. Her deteriorating mental condition was placing the plan of a lifetime in jeopardy; if the Sierran authorities ever came to suspect that there was a secret relationship between Alexandra and Finway and that it had been kept from them, there would be questions that would be impossible to answer.

  But there was a bit of good news, Peters thought. As far as he had been able to determine before he’d approached her, Alexandra had always jealously guarded her privacy during the years of her marriage to an international celebrity. Still: there could have been news photos taken of them together; someone on the tour could have seen such a photo, remember …

  He rose and took a steaming-hot shower to relax his muscles. Then he toweled off, donned a loose terrycloth robe, and went back into the bedroom. He stood staring out the window at the shimmering chiaroscuro of moonlight on the black sea in the distance.

  He did not understand how John Finway could have survived the “accident” he had rigged, but it was an indisputable fact that he had. The man would continue to be an ever-present danger, Peters thought, and he did not know when he would get another chance at Finway, if ever.

  He could not control Finway, Peters thought with a thin, cold smile, but he could damn well control Alexandra. Alexandra had to be calmed down and brought back into the sharp, narrow focus that he needed, and he was sure he knew how to do that. He could feel her wavering, ready to slip into his orbit. It was time for the first big push.

  He ordered a container of ice from what passed for room service in the Hotel Carazúl—a sleepy-eyed worker who had obviously been ordered out of bed—and then waited in the darkness, sitting on the edge of the bed and growing increasingly excited at the thought of what was to come. Forty-five minutes later he heard the door open and close behind him. Alexandra came around the bed and stood in front of him.

  “What are you doing still awake? There’s no sense in both of us losing sleep.”

  Alexandra’s voice was tough, cold and distant, but Peters’ eyes were accustomed to the dim light and he could see that the woman’s eyes were red and swollen from crying. He looked up at her and smiled, opened his mouth as if to speak, then abruptly reached out with his right hand and locked his fingers around her left wrist. He sprang to his feet and in one fluid movement stepped around behind her, twisting her arm up behind her back. Then he shoved her hard between the shoulder blades, slamming her face down on the bed. Alexandra groped with her right hand for the barrette in her hair, but Peters was already astride her back, twisting her left arm even harder and slapping his free hand sharply against the soft flesh under Alexandra’s flailing right arm.

  “Rick!”

  “Shut up, you bitch,” Peters said through clenched teeth. He slapped her right hand away from her hair once again, then pushed hard on the back of her neck, forcing her face into the bedding. “You want it as much as I do! You want it so bad you just about glow in the dark.”

  Still controlling Alexandra with his grip on her wrist, Peters grabbed her blouse at the collar and split it down the back with one quick snap of his wrist. He did the same with her bra strap, breaking the metal clasp and exposing the bare flesh of her back. Then he reached across her body with his free hand to the nightstand where he had placed the plastic bag filled with ice. He grabbed a handful of the melting ice and slapped it hard into the small of Alexandra’s back.

  Alexandra groaned and writhed under him, but Peters was satisfied that her voice was sufficiently muffled by the bedding. He continued to rub the ice against her skin for a few more seconds, then quickly switched hands on her wrist and climbed off her back to the left side of the bed. He bent over and put his mouth to the freezing flesh. Groping under Alexandra’s body for her heavy breasts, he began to kiss, suck, and run his tongue over the reddish-white area along the lower part of her spine.

  “Rick! Goddamn you, you stupid prick, let me up! Stop it!”

  Even with Alexandra’s mouth pressed against the bedding, Peters was certain he heard ambiguity in her voice—a clear, thrumming counterpoint of pleasure and desire shimmering beneath the anger. Maintaining the pressure on Alexandra’s twisted arm, he slipped the fingers of his free hand beneath the waistbands of her skirt and panties and ripped the garments away. The muscles in her firm buttocks rippled with exertion, and the flesh glistened with sweat. Peters rubbed more ice over Alexandra’s buttocks, then put his mouth on the soft tissue, sucking and nibbling her skin with his teeth.

  “Relax, sweetheart,” he murmured, biting her once, hard. “Enjoy it.”

  “Yes … yes.”

  Peters forced Alexandra’s thighs apart with his knee. He slipped his right hand between her legs, closed his eyes, and moaned softly with pleasure when he felt the thick, wet mat of her pubic hair, her moist labia. He withdrew his hand, loosed the belt of his robe and started to maneuver into a position where he could mount her from behind without losing his grip on her arm.

  “Not that way, Rick,” Alexandra w
hispered hoarsely. “You know I don’t enjoy it that way.”

  Now Peters hesitated, trembling with excitement as he pressed his testicles and stiff penis into the cleft between Alexandra’s buttocks. He remembered well how abandoned Alexandra could be when aroused, and he wanted that response.

  He also remembered what some men who had tried to hurt her had looked like after she had finished working on them with the weapon she carried in her hair.

  “Please, Rick,” Alexandra moaned, thrashing even harder as she struggled to turn over. “Let me get on my back. I want to feel you in me! Put it in!”

  Peters moved back off the bed and stood up on the floor. He circled Alexandra’s right wrist with his right hand and gripped hard, ready to twist. Then he eased the pressure on her left arm, allowing Alexandra to twist around without his losing control of her. He immediately switched hands as she rolled over, grabbing both wrists when she was on her back and pulling her arms down to her sides. She positioned herself in front of him, spreading her legs and opening herself to him. Peters groaned in ecstasy and started to ease himself toward her warm, slick center. As soon as the tip of his penis touched her Alexandra began bucking wildly, kicking her legs into the air, heaving and panting.

  “Goddamn it, hold still!” Peters gasped.

  “Let me go, Rick. Oh, God … God! I have to move! You know I have to move! I’m coming … coming!”

  Peters felt the muscles in his stomach and groin begin to quiver and he knew that he was about to ejaculate. Beyond thought, aching for the sensation of Alexandra thrusting herself up and against him, he released her arms. He placed his hands on the bed on either side of her and leaned forward, closing his eyes and cocking his hips for the deep thrust that would inject the mystery of her womb with his semen. A second later he gagged and froze, every muscle in his body knotted in anticipation of death.

  Something needle-sharp was pressed delicately but firmly against his closed eyelid at a point between the eyeball and bone socket.

  “Get off me, you horse’s ass,” Alexandra said in a cracked voice thick with disgust and scorn.

  “Ah … ah.” Peters swallowed, and tasted vomit in the back of his throat. His eyelids fluttered, but he managed to keep them closed. The sharp, needle pressure on his right eyelid remained steady. “You were ready,” he whispered.

  “I was thinking about my husband, you stupid bastard,” Alexandra said in a voice that was at once quavering and cold. “Since you’re not him, I got bored and decided to pass.” She sucked in a deep breath, then made a guttural animal sound and hissed her next words at him. “Get away from me, Rick! If you’re not off this bed in one second, I drive this needle right through your eye into your pea brain. I really don’t think you want to die for a cheap fuck.”

  Peters jerked his head and hips back, hesitated, then abruptly pushed off the bed and stood up. His entire body trembled. With the pressure of the needle gone, he had a sudden, vivid fantasy vision of the steel needle popping through his eyeball and entering his brain at the exact moment of ejaculation. He shuddered uncontrollably, closed his eyes, and spurted semen onto the sheet. Then, spent and trembling, he leaned against the foot of the bed and watched as Alexandra swung her legs onto the floor and stood up. She glanced at the stained sheet, then at him. The contempt in her eyes burned him.

  “Better clean up here, Rick. You try sleeping in that bed, you’re liable to slide out and break your neck.”

  Peters wanted to kill Alexandra then, and for a moment he lost control. He darted toward her, then croaked and diverted his forward motion upward and stood on his toes as Alexandra’s hand flashed forward and he felt the tip of the barrette’s needle pierce the flesh of his stomach. He stretched even farther up on his toes, sucked in his belly and stretched his arms wide. Long seconds passed before he slowly glanced down.

  Alexandra, with the broad ivory medallion of the barrette clasped firmly in her palm, had stopped her thrust with the tip of the needle stuck a fraction of an inch into the skin of Peters’ belly, just short of the striated muscle in the stomach wall.

  “It would be kind of silly for you to kill me just because you can’t sleep with me, Rick,” Alexandra said. Her tone was dry and ironic, but her eyes shone with rage. “If you’re that horny, go find a whore. I’m sure the Communists must have left some old fleabag lying around somewhere for emergency cases like yours. Or masturbate. Just be absolutely certain of this: I will kill you if you ever touch me again, and to hell with God, Country, and Manuel Salva. Do you understand me? I want to hear you say yes.”

  The puncture wound in Peters’ belly was starting to burn as tiny rivulets of blood flowed in dual symmetrical streams, an inch apart, into his groin. He remained arched on his toes with his stomach sucked in, but he managed a thin smile. “I don’t see why you have to be so melodramatic,” he said wryly. “A little sex never hurt anybody.”

  “You hurt.”

  “You used to like it.”

  “No more. One of your problems, Rick, is that you don’t listen.” Alexandra pulled the tip of the needle out of Peters’ stomach. “Get down off your toes; you’re going to get a cramp. I’m going to bed.”

  Flushed with rage and humiliation, Peters went into the bathroom where he washed the tiny puncture wound, then daubed it with antiseptic. When he came back into the bedroom, he was astonished to find Alexandra under the covers of her bed, asleep as if nothing had happened.

  He was not sure of the meaning behind Alexandra’s ability to immediately fall asleep after his attack on her. Sheer neurasthenia, or easy and forgiving familiarity? Or was it contempt, the ultimate insult? In a way, the fact that Alexandra could now sleep disturbed him far more than anything else the woman might have said or done—which could be her point.

  But then this attitude—the implacable toughness of her, the words and the quickness and the emotional control—were characteristics of the Alexandra he had known, the Alexandra that could be drawn back to him. She had to be made lean; the fat of gentleness, reflection, and warmth that had blossomed in her had to be pared away, or compressed and rammed back deep into her where it wouldn’t interfere.

  He decided he had made the right move.

  “You complicated, hypocritical bitch,” Peters whispered, his anger and stopped-up lust not mitigated by the respect he always felt toward Alexandra. “Whatever the hell’s going on inside your head, at least I drain the tension out of you.”

  He slipped the semen-stained sheet off his own bed and climbed in under the rough woolen blanket. He closed his eyes and calmed himself with the thought that all insults would soon be repaid in full, with enormous interest.

  John

  He would have to sleep soon or risk collapse, John thought as he put his head back and closed his eyes. A few minutes later the bus started up, pulled onto the highway in front of the hotel and headed southeast toward the mountains and the Hotel Sierras Negras.

  He calculated that he’d had a total of perhaps six or seven hours of fitful, exhausted sleep out of the past seventy-two. His inability to accept his situation and compose himself was not only self-destructive, he thought, but useless. He was useless here, and he suspected that realization was bothering him only slightly less than the circumstances of Alexandra’s physical peril. He badly wanted to sleep, but each time he was about to slip under the surface of consciousness he would be shouted awake by the enormity of what Alexandra and Peters had told him. He wished there were something he could actively do to help Alexandra, but he knew there wasn’t; San Sierra was not a courtroom, and it was certainly not the United States. He was odd man out in a game he was in no way equipped to play. This was Alexandra’s game. The problem was that the penalty for a single miscalculation could be her death or imprisonment, and John knew he was only in the way.

  Like a child, he had kept vaguely hoping all through the first day that he was caught in a particularly vivid dream, but, of course, he’d known all along that the situation was all too real.
He had to sleep if he were to maintain a grip on himself. Now he was afraid that he was beginning to hallucinate; sometimes when he had walked during the night he had imagined he was being followed, but he had never seen anyone.

  He opened his eyes, turned his head, and stared out the side window. Only two or three miles inland, the landscape had already begun to change and ripen. Away from the turquoise sea and white sands of the coast, the dominant colors of San Sierra were shades of green accented by the vertical brown stripes of the trunks of palm trees. Houses appeared every few kilometers, set off a few dozen yards from the edge of the highway. The dwellings were really nothing more than thatched-roof shacks. John thought, but they invariably appeared well constructed, clean, and pertly tidy, with lines of gaily colored wash waving in the warm, dry breezes like medieval banners. In the distance the Sierras Negras range rumbled lazily across the horizon, its ancient, tired humps etched sharply against a cloudless, luminescent sky that was a perfect robin’s egg blue.

  San Sierra was an incredibly beautiful country, John thought. One day he would like to return and enjoy it, with an unfettered Alexandra and their children.

  He couldn’t think of Alexandra, sitting in the lead bus with Peters, without reflecting on the assassination plot she and Peters had been asked to prevent. The thought always brought him up short, like a nightstick poked in his mind’s belly, chilling him with the realization that one of his fellow passengers was a paid killer who, in three more days, could change this island country—and perhaps the world—forever.

  John sighed and straightened up in his seat; sleep still would not come. There was ample room in the last bus, and he was sitting in the rear, away from the others. He could see David Swarzwalder sitting ten rows ahead of him, long legs stretched out into the aisle, talking to a group of people that included Raul. Swarzwalder appeared to catch his movement out of the corner of his eye, for the big man suddenly looked back and waved cheerily, inviting him to join them. John smiled wryly and shook his head.