by R. J. Jagger
Teffinger kneeled downed until his face was close to hers. “Here’s the way this is going to work. I’m going to hand you a cell phone and you’re going to call your men and tell them to release her. Once she’s someplace safe, I’ll take you back and then we’ll all go our separate ways. If you don’t make the call, I’ll find her myself and you can rot here while I do.”
The woman ran her fingers through Teffinger’s hair.
“You like my back, don’t you? You want to touch it again—”
Teffinger stood up, looked down at her for a second, and then headed back to the Whaler for food and water and blankets, trying to harden his heart with each passing step by reminding himself that a lot of good people were dead because of her. Station, for starters; and probably Poppy. Plus, she’d somehow gotten her fangs into Kovi-Ke and turned her into a killer. Not to mention that her men tried to kill him; and even though they didn’t succeed, they made him throw a bottle into one of their faces, a fact that he’d have to live with in relative secret for the rest of his life.
Those were just the things he knew about.
They were probably less than one percent, given the way the island was so terrified of her.
She deserved to die.
No one would miss her.
The world would be a better place.
Still, could he personally do it?
Could he actually let her rot to death?
The answer surprised him.
If it came down to either Modeste or Janjak dying, it wouldn’t be Modeste.
When he returned, Janjak was dancing in the sand with her top off and her arms up, as if not having a care in the world.
Teffinger took a seat out of reach and watched.
Her movements resonated in the deep recesses of his brain. He was wired for them. His eyes were always on the hunt for them. His loins were always ready for them. His tongue was always ready to taste them.
“Do you like me?”
“No.”
She laughed.
“Liar.”
To prove herself right, she unwrapped her skirt and threw it at him. Under it, she wore nothing. Her body gyrated under the moonlight and her hands played in the air above her head.
“How about now? Do you like me now?”
“This won’t work,” he said.
A minute passed.
“Take me,” she said. “Take me and after you do, I’ll make that call you want. You can have your precious little Modeste back. I’ll leave her alone.”
He knew a trick when he saw one.
“No thanks.”
“Do it now, right now, otherwise I’m going to close my eyes and kill her.”
He grunted.
“That’s not possible.”
“Mark the time,” she said.
Then she laid down on her back on the sand, got her body perfectly still, and closed her eyes.
A second passed, then another and another and another. Teffinger’s brain exploded with uncertainty. Could the woman really do it? Was there any chance she actually had powers?
He went over and kneeled at her side.
“Stop,” he said.
She opened her eyes.
“Take me. Do it slowly,” she said. “Take your time.”
“If I do you’ll set her free?”
“Yes. There are no tricks.”
“I want you to stay away from Rail, too,” he said.
“He’s not part of the deal. Take me or don’t, your choice.”
She raised her arms above her head.
Against his will, almost as if being pulled by a force, Teffinger put a hand on the woman’s stomach. It was warm. It trembled under his touch.
“You love me,” she said.
“I love you.”
“Show me how much you love me.”
His hands went to her breasts, her tiny but oh so compelling breasts. He could feel his touch go straight through the woman’s body and into her brain.
“You love me,” she said.
“I love you.”
Those were words he hadn’t said in a long, long time. When they came out, he at first thought he was playing along, placating her, saying and doing whatever it took to free Modeste.
Then he realized that he meant them.
He meant them with every molecule in his body.
He loved her with everything he had and then ten times more.
She kissed him on the mouth.
“We’ll be together forever,” she said.
“Yes.”
“This is our beginning.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll never end.”
“No, never.”
His hands explored her body, her erotic little body, memorizing her curves and her reactions and her skin. He had never wanted a woman so badly in his life.
Kovi-Ke had been a mistake.
Evil Angel had been a mistake.
Every woman he’d ever met had been a mistake.
He realized that now, only too clearly.
He’d been born for her.
She’d been born for him.
“Unchain me,” she said.
He did.
Then he flipped her over and licked her back. Sand worked its way into his mouth and he didn’t care. He licked her, again and again, feeling the scars under the touch of his tongue, even the one he’d laid in. It tasted right. It tasted like there was nothing else left in the world, only this, only right here, only right now, only her and him, so perfect together, reinventing time and everything else in the universe.
47
Day Seven
June 10
Tuesday Morning
Teffinger woke Tuesday morning and immediately realized that the sun was high and that the break of dawn had long since passed. He didn’t remember a single dream or shifting even one time during the night. It was as if he’d been dead.
He was naked.
His cloths were to the side.
His body ached from the hardness of the sand.
His brain flashed with images; images of Janjak dancing in the moonlight, of him licking the woman’s back and then flipping her over and taking her with every fiber of his being.
Janjak wasn’t next to him.
He bolted to his feet.
“Janjak!”
No one answered.
She wasn’t there.
His eyes darted to the Whaler to find it gone. He ran to the water’s edge and looked in all directions. The woman was nowhere in sight, not up or down, not across on one of the other islands, not anywhere.
She was as gone as the night.
He dropped down right where he was, in a foot of water, and felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. The woman had tricked him. He didn’t care about that. What he did care about is that she’d abandoned him.
His lover had left without saying goodbye.
There was nothing worse in the world.
Nothing.
He put his clothes on.
The cell phone wasn’t in his pocket; the ten coins too, were missing.
The food and water were still left.
He could live for a week.
That was something.
Rail and Angel knew he was here.
They’d come for him sooner or later.
There was no need to panic.
Well, that wasn’t a hundred percent true. It was more accurate to say that there was no need to panic assuming that Rail and Angel were still alive.
Frankly, at this point, he wasn’t sure he cared.
Janjak had left him.
He’d finally met the woman he was destined to be with and she threw him away.
He was nothing more than an old rag.
He wandered up and down the beach, pacing for over an hour, kicking up the water and cursing himself for not controlling his own fate. He didn’t know if it was because of the sun or the motion or just the passage of time, but his head slowly began to clear. Step by st
ep he fell out of love with Janjak and increasingly recognized her for what she was.
How did she manipulate him so thoroughly last night?
Sure, she was seductive and the moonlight was just right, but that shouldn’t have been enough to make him so completely lose his senses.
Suddenly an image flashed, an image of Janjak and him digging in the sand in the middle of the night, intent on recovering something buried under the ground.
The coins?
Did he tell her about the coins?
No, he couldn’t have.
Why would he?
Yet, the image was intense.
He surveyed the third island, two hundred yards away, with an eye to whether he could swim that given his battered state.
It didn’t matter.
He had to know.
He stripped his clothes off, waded out until he was waist deep and then went into a slow, overhand stroke, not setting any records but eventually coming out the other side alive.
When he got to where the coins were buried, there was nothing but an empty hole.
He slumped down with his back against a palm.
Why did he tell Janjak about it?
Did he tell her about Evil Angel having the other half?
48
Day Seven
June 10
Tuesday Afternoon
An hour passed, then another and another. Noon came and went. No boats broke the horizon. No one came for Teffinger. The island sat alone and desolate in its own eerie silence, interrupted only by the gentle lapping of the water against the beach and the occasional squawk of a seagull or the rustle of a palm.
Teffinger was no longer part of the world.
He was irrelevant.
He was invisible.
There was a good chance Rail and Angel were dead. They would have called early this morning to check on him and not gotten an answer; or gotten an answer from Janjak. They would have had plenty of time to rent another boat and get out here to check on things.
Suddenly it happened.
The shape of a boat broke the horizon, hardly more than a dot at this distance but kicking up enough spray to frame it as an actual vessel approaching at some speed.
It came straight for the island.
The silhouette of one person slowly took shape.
Then it took the shape of Janjak.
Her dreadlocks bounced in sync with the boat.
She wore no top.
Down below was a wrap-around skirt.
She trimmed the outboards up as she came to the beach and then hopped over the edge into knee-deep water as the bow planted itself in the sand.
She had no gun or obvious weapon.
“You have a lot of guts coming back here,” Teffinger said.
She walked past him towards the palms and said over her shoulder, “Your prize is in the boat.”
He checked.
Modeste was on the floor near the stern, lying on her stomach, either dead or unconscious. He jumped in to find her breathing, alive. Her face and body were battered but not any worse than the last time he’d seen her.
“Bring her up here,” Janjak shouted.
Teffinger complied, carrying the woman across the beach up to the palms and laying her softly on the sand in the shade. She didn’t respond much, obviously drugged.
“What’d you give her?”
Janjak approached, ran her fingers through Teffinger’s hair and looked deep into his eyes. “You’re the first person I’d had in a long, long time.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
She kissed him on the lips.
He had time to pull back but didn’t, or couldn’t, or both.
She kissed him again and he responded.
She whispered in his ear, “I found the diamonds.”
“What diamonds?”
She rubbed her stomach against his.
“You know.”
“I told you about them?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You had no choice,” she said.
“Even if I did, there’s no way you could have found them,” he said. “All I would have been able to tell you is the general location.”
“I looked through your eyes.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I found them,” she said. “Modeste is in something you might call a nether land, between life and death. I can push her either way any time I want, or just leave her there until her body consumes itself.”
“Prove it. Bring her back right now.”
She stepped back and ran a finger down his chest.
“First we dig.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Sure you do, under that second pile of bones you told me about, on the other island. Don’t worry about Modeste. She’ll be fine.”
They hopped over on the Whaler, scattered the bones to the side and then dug, shallow at first, then deeper and then even deeper, past where Teffinger had to go before, and found nothing, not a single coin, not an old belt buckle, not a rusty dagger, nothing.
Janjak sank to the ground.
Her face twisted with disappointment.
“I was going to let this be your final act. I was just going to go away and not worry about what Evil Angel has. Now there’s a difference to make up.” She saw the doubt on Teffinger’s face and said, “You told me about Evil Angel’s half of the dig. I want those coins; I want them by tonight. Then I’ll bring Modeste back to life. She’ll live and so will you.”
Teffinger kicked the sand.
“You have the diamonds, they’re worth ten times more than the coins, maybe a hundred,” he said. “Let’s just end it where it is.”
The woman grabbed Teffinger’s hand and led him towards the boat, saying, “That reminds me, there’s one diamond missing—Marilyn. I want that one too, by tonight, with the coins.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Yeah, I know, you told me. Constance has it. Get it from her.”
Teffinger hated himself.
What else had he told the woman?
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Find her,” Janjak said. “Because if I have to find her myself, well, let’s just say that she’d wish you had instead.”
Teffinger stopped and put a serious expression on his face.
“I’m half tempted to just kill you right where you stand.”
The woman backed up two steps, hiked her skirt up and squared off.
“Come on,” she said. “Do it.”
Teffinger’s chest pounded.
He was tired of playing games.
He was through with all of it.
It needed to end.
It needed to end right now.
He took a deep breath and charged.
49
Day Seven
June 10
Tuesday Afternoon
Teffinger changed, committing every muscle in his body to the assault, only to have Janjak sidestep at the last second. All his might pounded into thin air, causing him to lose his balance and slam chest first into the wet sand at the water’s edge.
“Come on! Kill me!”
He charged again, intent on getting an iron grip on anything he could and then bringing her down.
The woman twisted and swung a lightning kick at his chest, smashing his lungs with an evil force and knocking his air into oblivion.
He gasped for breath.
Then he charged again.
The woman shifted to the right but he anticipated it and caught her by the arm as she swung a fist at his face. She fell backwards into the water.
He was on her with a viper’s speed, straddling her chest and pushing her shoulders down.
Her head went under water, not far, not more than six inches, but enough.
She twisted violently.
He didn’t let up, not for a scary long time, and then at the last second he jerked her head up as she gasped wildly for breat
h.
She landed a fist to the side of his face.
“Kill me! Do it!”
He pushed her back under, feeling every molecule of her body trying to free itself from his horrible grasp. Her face was crystal clear. The terror in her eyes arced through the water and straight into Teffinger’s brain.
Something deep in his being snapped.
Don’t!
Don’t!
Don’t!
He jerked her head up, stared at her in disbelief as she coughed up water, and then got off and stood up. The woman eased up on to her elbows and let the wisp of a victory smile come to her lips.
He walked over to the Whaler and pushed it off the sand.
It rocked gently in the water.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re done here.”
Silently, they motored over to where Modeste was. To Teffinger’s distress, she was the exact position and the exact state of unconsciousness as they’d left her.
Janjak approached him, carefully, and put her lips to his.
“You’ve earned this,” she said. “I’m going to wake her. Get her ready—put her on her back, face up. There’s a machete on the boat under the front seat. Get it for me, I’m going to need it. Oh, your cell phone is there too, by the way.”
With that, the woman disappeared into the palms.
Five minutes later, she returned dangling a large nasty green snake from her left hand. The reptile repeatedly jerked its body and swung its head at Janjak’s legs, trying to sink its fangs into her flesh but always falling short.
The woman dangled the snake over Modeste’s face, not more than six inches off, then swung it back and forth again and again and again.
Then she lopped of its head with the machete.
She let the blood and guts drip onto Modeste’s face.
Ten seconds later the woman abruptly woke with a start.
Janjak tossed the snake’s body to the side and said to Teffinger, “Take the Whaler and go. Make no mistake that what I just did doesn’t affect tonight. I still want the other diamond—Marilyn—by tonight. I also want Evil Angel’s coins, by tonight. If I don’t get them, I’ll put your little friend here right back where I got her from; and I’ll be giving her a lot of company, you included.”
Teffinger helped Modeste to her feet then squared off against Janjak.