“She is scared and lonely, mon ami. She is stuck just as I was, immobile, doomed to eternity. I don’t think you can appreciate the desperation of her position. I feel responsible for her state of affairs. I could have seen her married off to Monsieur Legrande, or Monsieur Delgado, either one of whom would have been an improvement over Leclerc. But no, I had to go and kill Leclerc, forcing Sabine to mourn forever, to remain childless, to die by her own hand.”
Rémy tossed his napkin into another receptacle and swallowed his last bite heartily. “I think you’re being overly dramatic. No, look at it this way! Sabine could have gone on to marry either one of those monsieurs. No one forced her to grieve for eternity.”
Heidi chastised her lover. “Rémy!”
“Hear me out. This would be the Eastern way of thinking, no? Everyone is responsible for his own actions and fate.”
Niko huffed. “We are Catholics and Santeras, sir! We do not shirk from responsibility and guilt!”
Rémy shrugged. “Whatever. Anyway, I feel for you. I really do. There must be some way we can get your sister out of Everlost. We got you out, after all.”
“There is a way,” declared Niko. “Sabine wants to reanimate and be with me again. Leclerc is close to her still, still giving her unwanted attentions. She says we need to find a gate, an entrance, an opening called Hellmouth. You mentioned it, Rémy.”
“Right.” Rémy took Heidi’s hand again as though they were an old familiar couple, and it irked Niko. He had felt some stirrings for Mademoiselle Heidi Purdue, stockbroker in a land that allowed women to do almost anything, it seemed. Niko had been known to court women before—before his soul had been completely eclipsed by the love of Michel Dugrasse—but if Heidi preferred Rémy… “Ask her for some clues as to where this Hellmouth is.”
“That’s the problem. She doesn’t know, other than that the Solomon book tells about it, and it has something to do with the ring we’re seeking.”
“Where is she buried?” asked Heidi. “Because I think we need to start with a body.”
“St. Louis Number One, over near Marie Laveau.”
“That sucks epic ass!” shouted a university student passing by Niko.
Niko could understand sucking ass, but how an ass could be “epic” was beyond him. The ass couldn’t have been heroic, so it must have been supreme.
“This has got to be it,” said Heidi, pausing before the flaking peach-hued French Colonial house. This Voodoo Temple was quite near Niko’s old house on Rue St. Ann, and he was hoping they could do whatever needed to be done here and get away quickly because it made him uncomfortable.
But the “temple” seemed more to be a touristic shop where people could purchase a mish-mash of items. There were African masks that were not of Niko’s Yoruba tribe, hastily painted and carelessly carved. Niko recognized eleke skeleton key necklaces like Rémy’s and gaudy bags of gris-gris, but the rest was an incomprehensible mixture of Oriental and Irish talismans, voodoo dolls, sugary candies, and shrunken heads from the Amazon.
Niko got the impression this wasn’t the correct “temple” they sought. What was more, Heidi’s friend Shayla wasn’t there and Heidi was off in a corner furiously pressing her thumb into that box that helped her communicate with others. “Oh, great,” Heidi muttered. “Now I’m getting a text from a number I don’t recognize saying it’s Dani, saying she left her phone at the hotel. And one from Faina who is too hung over to talk. Great, just great!”
If this wasn’t the correct temple, where was the temple where they might find the ring? Niko was idly glancing at a display rack of Vieux Carré maps when it dawned on him with such clarity it was like a lightning bolt.
Actually, looking back on it later, he distinctly heard Sabine’s voice. “The map, Niko. The pentalpha is a map.”
His hand reached up to snatch one of the maps. Over the protests of the priestess who ran the place, Niko shoved aside skulls and gourds and unfolded the map on top of a shrine of some sort. He attracted Rémy’s interest. The man stood behind him practically breathing down his neck.
“Here,” Niko whispered huskily, jabbing a forefinger at the cemetery where he’d been unearthed. “Here is where I died and was reborn. Look. Then we went to that park gift shop on Decatur.”
To better illustrate his meaning, Niko grabbed a stout stick of dark incense and circled the cemetery and the Decatur shop. “Look. Here is the other cemetery Heidi was trying to reach last night.” He made another circle around St. Louis Cemetery Number One. Then he circled their current location, the voodoo temple.
Rémy’s voice was tinged with excitement. “Yes, Heidi did say she thought the pentalpha was a map.”
“It is indeed,” breathed Niko, his human heart thudding with the joy of discovery. He pointed at the vicinity of Rémy’s Terpsichore Street house, but didn’t mark it. “I don’t think Leclerc’s…I mean, your house is part of the pentalpha, being way down there in what they are calling the Lower Garden District. If you were to make a big pentagram and overlay it onto this map…”
Now Heidi was standing behind Niko. Her sultry presence aroused Niko, both sexually and intellectually. Intelligence practically flooded his brain now, as though his own egun were instructing him, manipulating him to greater heights of awareness and understanding.
Niko drew several straight lines through the places he had circled. “We have ‘placed stones’ or visited three potential pentalpha points. If we could just figure out where the next ones intersect—”
“Lafitte’s blacksmith shop!” cried Rémy, jabbing his finger at Bourbon Street. “Lafitte or his egun were telling me to visit there next, that I will find some document there that will lead me to the next step.”
Niko looked at Rémy over his shoulder, amused. “So the egun are finally talking to you, too?”
Rémy drew himself up proudly. “Lafitte’s egun have always talked to me!”
“You just weren’t listening.” Heidi reassured him.
“Exactly,” said Rémy, grabbing the incense from Niko. He circled the blacksmith’s shop. “Now look, I’m sure we can make some kind of a pentalpha out of these points, and figure out what lies along the same angles.”
“Hmph.” The airy, sort of cross-eyed priestess who ran the temple stood next to them with hands on hips. “There is a second line at noon near Mahalia Jackson Theater.”
Niko had no idea what a second line or Mahalia Jackson were, but Rémy seemed to know. “A second line!” he cried happily, circling something in the center of Beauregard Square. “There! Perfect! That’s perfectly in line with the other points. We’re onto something here!”
In her excitement, Heidi had put an arm around Niko’s hunched shoulders, and her left breast was pressed to his bicep. He had forgotten the touch of a woman. It was almost comical to say “it had been so long” since he had felt the touch of one. But his all-too-human penis erected at her feel, and he instantly recalled Heidi and Rémy’s interpretation of Baal-Berith’s instructions. He grasped Heidi by her waist. She was soft, pillowy, and smelled of powder—all the things he missed in a woman. “We need to have sexual congress at each spot! Let us rush to this Madame Jackson’s theater and have congress on this line.”
He hurriedly refolded the map, placing the incense in his waistcoat pocket to use as chalk again.
The priestess drawled, “Are you going to buy that?”
Of course he had no money, so while Rémy shoved some dollars at the priestess, Niko took Heidi by the hand and led her toward the rear of the house. Clouds of incense engulfed them, choking Niko and his sensitive lungs that hadn’t breathed air in over a century. Supplicants were kneeling at altars where Niko recognized a few icons, spirits of the Haitian Voodoo.
“I don’t think you know what a second line is,” Heidi protested giddily as they burst through the back door and into the quiet greenery of an overgrown garden.
“But we must go there, if we want to ‘place a stone’ at that intersection of
the map.”
Heidi looked coy and seductive at the same time. “But we haven’t ‘placed a stone’ yet at this temple.”
Maybe Niko had been dead too long. But it seemed to take forever for Heidi’s meaning to dawn on him. When it did, Heidi was already down the back stairs, plunging into the verdant tropical foliage of the back garden.
Niko’s heart thudded as he followed. Would this work, being halfway in and halfway out of Everlost? When he had suckled Rémy’s beautiful cock, his own penis had definitely risen stiffly to rub against the wool of his trousers. When he’d taken the vertical bath last night at Rémy’s house, he had carefully examined everything. Mon Dieu. He wasn’t missing anything. Nothing had rotted off during his sleep in the grave. His prick was as full, lusty, long, and thick as he recalled. And when he stroked it, the shiny head tapped at his palm, eager for release.
His penis expanded inside his trousers now as he followed the energetic woman under the palms. He ducked, pushing aside wide leaves and fronds, when he saw Heidi leaning against a banana palm trunk. Salaciously she pulled aside the neckline of her blouse, revealing the upper swell of her soft breasts. She was not the most comely woman in the city, but she more than made up for it with her sultry confidence.
It was attractive, Niko realized, women having the same power as men. He knew that Heidi earned a large salary in San Francisco, and this wealth was attractive. It meant she was independent and didn’t need a man’s support. It meant that she was doing this—leaning against the tree, steaming with sexual energy—because she wanted to, not because she wished to ensnare a man for marital purposes. It made Niko question every other woman in Vieux Carré who had tried to woo him. Heidi was seducing him because she wanted to, for no other reason than sexual satisfaction.
It was inviting and alluring, the idea that they would engage in congress just for the sensual satisfaction of it.
“Heidi,” Niko murmured, taking her shoulders into his palms.
She looked coy. “I’ve never done it with an undead man before.”
He had to laugh. “I checked. Everything seems to be in working order. And I do not believe I smell like the inside of a crypt.”
Now she giggled. She ran the back of her hand over his cheek. He had used Rémy’s strange razor last night, only cutting himself twice, and knew she would feel no stubble. He’d left the moustache and a Van Dyke beard to be a dashing lady-killer. “No, you don’t. But I think to adhere to the instructions, I need to be sucking on your…thumb.” She kissed him then, her lips soft and pliant.
Niko was surprised at the strength of the lust that surged through him. Had it always been this arousing kissing a woman? It was worlds apart from the groping, urgent kiss of another man. Heidi sighed and practically melted into his arms, and within seconds he had his pelvis pressed against her lap, his cock lusting for the tight, snappy twat of a woman.
But he had no sooner slipped his tongue between her teeth, and he was violently torn from her. The arbor around him swam with lushness. What was the meaning of this?
“Knock it off, Monsieur Valdés!” shouted Rémy. His nostrils flared in that Michel-like way that denoted rage or lust. This time it was the former. “Macking on Heidi isn’t part of this fucking deal.”
“Says who?” protested Heidi. “What do we know, Rémy? Maybe macking on me is exactly part of the deal. Maybe I should suck the vitality from the thumb of a ghost. For all we know, that will help him become mortal. He needs mortal experiences to become mortal again.”
That hadn’t even occurred to Niko, and he eagerly took up Heidi’s side of the cause. “Yes! I feel that is the meaning behind all of this. The more average, everyday human experiences I have, the better chance at staying mortal. Yes. I’m sure that’s exactly the meaning behind this.” And he kissed Heidi again. This time she twined her arms behind his shoulders, holding him to her, voraciously sucking on his tongue. Yes. Having sexual congress with Heidi would help him entwine his essence with another human who was fully rooted in the here and now.
But again, Rémy tore Niko from the woman. “Enough! You’re just making that shit up, you half-dead asshole! Besides, you’re only attracted to other men. Remember? Or did that part of your brain grow mossy, too?”
Reluctantly, Niko broke the kiss again. He tried to be patient. “This is becoming highly irritating, Monsieur. There is nothing that says an androgyne, or a ‘poof’ as they say in your Britain, cannot love both men and women. That is the case with me. I happened to be in love with another man when I was so unceremoniously murdered. But why do you wish to stop me from enjoying the flowery, soft, delightful attributes of this she-devil?”
Heidi pouted. “Yes, Rémy. Let him enjoy my flowery delights.”
Rémy grabbed Niko by the shoulders. “I’ll give you flowery delights, my man.” He jammed Niko to his knees so fast Heidi became a blur. The next thing Niko knew, he was face-to-face with Heidi’s clothed mound. Her skirt was so short, though, there wasn’t much left to the imagination as Rémy urged his face against her vulva. Heidi helped by inching her skirt up her thighs and parting them, placing one little shoe against a small boulder.
Rémy got to his knees behind Niko, the better to assist him to “place his stones.” Rémy, too, helped lift the short flippy skirt. With his fingers at the back of Niko’s skull, he pressed Niko’s face against Heidi’s flimsy undergarments. “Here are her flowery delights, my man. And you are going to lap up every last delicious drop.”
Rémy fingered aside the thin strip of satin that ineffectively hid Heidi’s bulging labia. It had been years, even before death, since Niko had had mouth congress with a woman’s twat, and he hoped it all came rushing back to him, how to do it. He tried to see her extended clitoris as a small penis, and took it in his mouth. He held it delicately between his teeth as one would a grape, careful not to burst it, but lapping at it rapidly.
He must’ve been doing it right, because Heidi soon set to a series of panting little sighs. That Rémy was clutching Niko’s haunch between his thighs also encouraged Niko, and he gripped Heidi’s hips with determination. He dove right in like a wolf at the kill, and soon she was just panting and hiccoughing like an energetic little sparrow.
But it was Rémy’s erotic humping against his ass that had Niko aroused to the fullest extent ever. That captain of industry, for all of his protestations over Niko’s laving of his thick phallus, was obviously becoming highly stimulated ordering Niko about. Rémy’s rigid pole poked Niko’s ass, and he set up a nice arching rhythm, rubbing his pulsing glans against Niko. It drove Niko to greater heights, and he worried he was pleasing Heidi too fast.
“That’s right,” purred Rémy, approving of Niko’s skill. “Keep muff-diving. Looks like you didn’t forget at all how to do it. It may have been a hundred and fifty years, but you’re not rusty at all. Do you like her sweet muff?”
“Mm-hmm,” Niko tried to say, but he was too intent squiggling his tongue against the length of Heidi’s clitoris.
Rémy’s dry-humping deepened in intensity. His talk turned bawdier, full of double entendres. Niko could almost interpret his filthy talk as describing the way Rémy felt about him.
Of course, that was nonsense. Rémy was just carried away by the heat of the moment. His penis was rubbing stiffly against Niko’s gluteus because he was driven wild by Heidi’s pussy. That was it. It had nothing to do with Niko at all.
“She smells good, doesn’t she? All wet and hot for you. I can tell it’s turning you on, licking her juices like that.” Rémy mashed the back of Niko’s skull, encouraging Niko to worry Heidi’s twat like a dog with a bone. “Ah. That’s good, Niko. You’re good at this. You’re a natural born muff-diver. I can tell it turns you on.”
When Rémy grabbed a handful of Niko’s erect prick, Niko was nearly blasted from what little tenuous hold he had on his mortal body. It was such a shock to his system to have his penis fondled again, his spirit nearly flew from his body and rocketed straight into
heaven, bypassing Everlost entirely.
Gasping, Niko’s eyeballs rolled into his head. He must have failed to lick Heidi for a fraction of a second, for Rémy shoved his face back into the muff. But Rémy’s hand only massaged Niko’s penis more affectionately, lustily. Rémy’s voice quieted as he put his mouth closer to Niko’s ear.
“I can tell it turns you on. Eat her, Niko, eat her. It’s making your prick long and hard, eating her like that.”
Every time Rémy’s hand squeezed his throbbing glans, Niko would gasp, sucking in air. Rémy would punish him by shoving his face back against Heidi.
“Don’t stop. Just because your fat dick is stiff as a doornail doesn’t mean you can stop.”
Niko was becoming enraged with this game. Rémy humped him as though fucking him, long, pleasured strokes with his penis against Niko’s haunch. He squeezed the penis urgently, passionately, as though greedy for more, but he wouldn’t take it out of Niko’s trousers.
Niko helped with that. Unbuttoning his fly expertly with one hand, he fumbled to let his erection out into the warm air. Rémy’s hand lingered, cupping and fondling the ball sac. Niko grabbed Rémy’s hand, urging it to his cock. He nearly wailed out in desperation when Rémy yanked his hand away completely.
But it was only to spit into the palm, and soon he was gripping Niko’s erection with the talent only another man could have. Long, greedy pulls at Niko’s tool nearly had him ejaculating within seconds. Now Rémy no longer shoved Niko’s face at Heidi, but his other hand massaged Niko’s scrotum with such skill he nearly shot it against Heidi’s shin.
“Oh God!” cried Heidi, her fingernails digging into Niko’s shoulder. “Don’t stop, damn you! Oh, shitpickle! You’re going to make me come, you bastard!”
“That’s good,” Rémy purred into Niko’s ear. He now pumped Niko’s prick ruthlessly, out of breath, too, from his efforts dry-fucking Niko like a dog. “Your dick is fat and hard for her pussy juices. You’re going to come, too, aren’t you? Your dick is plump and bursting with your seed. You can’t wait to become mortal by spewing jizz all over my hand.”
Redemption Song [Midnight, New Orleans Style 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 6