“You never told me this before.”
“I didn’t want to burden you with my problems. And would telling you of them have changed your mind? I think not. We’d still be trekking through the jungle with a bunch of blood drinkers.”
“That’s very unkind of you to say, Fenix. You know I’ve always had your best interests in my heart.”
Fenix snorted. “As long as my interests coincided with yours.”
Bryn stopped and laid her hand on Fenix’s arm. “Maybe we can fix you as well. Maybe Lazarus’s dagger will restore your humanity.”
Fenix wanted to tell Bryn that Lazarus himself had already told her this wasn’t possible, but held back. Why should she tell Bryn what Lazarus told only to her? Bryn would think her crazy or worse, if she did believe her, want to use Lazarus to her own purpose. “Yes, of course, maybe you can fix me as well.”
Bryn kissed her cheek and Fenix had to force herself not to turn away. “That’s the Fenix I know. Of course the dagger will fix you. Its power is immeasurable.”
Tures stopped her trek into the farmland surrounding the village at a crudely-constructed barn. Three men sat there waiting. The barn was part of a strange complex; part farm, part machine shop. Tomlinson, Brighthouse and Fingle immediately trooped off to examine several machines being constructed beneath metal roofs in long open sheds. “What’s going on here?” Fenix asked Tures who stood next to a conflicted Sam.
“We are constructing a new kind of flying machine, one that uses two huge rotors to lift it. It can rise vertically and land almost anywhere. I want one I can land on my ship.”
“I wish I could stay and work on it,” Sam said.
“You may not,” Tures said with a warm smile. “You are my life. You will always stay close to me.”
“You’re lucky to get Tomlinson for your project,” Bryn said. “He’s already worked on several flying machines.”
“I’m leaving him, Brighthouse and Fingle here. The aircraft is close to completion. It has a couple of bugs to work out and I think it will be ready to go.”
“The hardest part was the fuel and you have that,” Sam said. “I bet Tomlinson gets it flying in a matter of days.”
The three bearers picked up bundles of supplies gathered in one of the barns and hoisted them onto their heads. Tomlinson walked over to say goodbye. “I say, old man,” he said to Quinn. “This flying machine of Tures’s will be amazing. The idea of lifting straight up is revolutionary.”
“Take care of yourself,” Quinn told him.
They shook hands. “You as well,” Tomlinson said. “This is a dangerous place.”
They said their goodbyes and began hiking toward misty mountains in the distance. It started to rain and a huge form suddenly swooped out of the clouds above them and shot into jungle. The enormous shadow expelled a blast of fire that briefly set the canopy ablaze. Bryn gasped and grabbed Fenix. “Priest!”
Tures broke into a run. They trotted across the open savannah until they reached the tall trees. When the last of their party was safely beneath the canopy, Tures stopped and walked back to stand beside Fenix. “He knows where we’re going. The only thing we can do is stay under the trees where he can’t see us.”
“He’s young now. What does he want with us?” Fenix asked.
Bryn shouldered her way closer. “He wants me. He’s become obsessed. Little does he know, having me would bring him the death he’s avoided for so long.”
The vampires could travel during the daylight hours beneath the heavy canopy of tree tops and through the perpetual mists. Tures drove them mercilessly. They hiked up the foothills and into the Mountains of the Moon traveling twelve hours, stopping for only a few, and then marching on. Fenix was exhausted and angry. This forced march was all Bryn’s idea. Two days into it, Fenix had reached the boiling point. She lay in her bedroll, far from the others, too tired to sleep as she formulated a speech to give Bryn. She planned to tell her sister she was done and was going back to Paris.
The jungle around her was deep and quiet. The perpetual mist hung only a foot above her head. She pulled her blanket over her face to keep dry. Just as she had the speech set in her mind, and was about to get up and deliver it, she heard a familiar voice and shoved the blanket away. Lazarus appeared out of the thin air and she gasped. He’d never shown himself to her while she was awake.
“How can you be here? Am I sleeping?”
He knelt beside her and she fought the urge to reach out and touch him.
“Are you truly here?”
“I am, my darling, but only for a short time. I came to tell you not to drop out of this trek. It will eventually lead you to a discovery that is very important for both you and your sister.”
Unable to stop herself, Fenix touched him. He was real! She ran her hand down his arm. The skin and muscles beneath her fingers were taught and vibrated with life, He was really here. “I can touch you. Why?”
“I can appear here with you from time to time. It takes a lot of energy, so I must limit my visits.” He moved close and pulled her into his arms. She felt his face. The hair of his beard was soft, the planes of his face hard. His piercing blue eyes stood out against his tan skin. When he dropped his face close to hers and kissed her, she opened her mouth and moaned. “Yes.”
He quickly slipped into her bedroll. “I want you,” he whispered. “I have watched you and yearned for you so long.”
She held him tightly and ran her hands over his back and his shoulders. “I still can’t believe you’re real.”
He unfastened her buckskins and pushed them down. “We have little time, my darling. I would make love to you.”
Fenix laughed and helped him remove her pants. “Oh yes, let us find solace in each other’s bodies. For you, I will continue to suffer the hardships of this interminable journey and even hold my tongue.”
He wore a robe which magically disappeared. She opened her legs and groaned with pleasure when he entered her. He paused while deep inside her and opened her blouse. “Your skin is like ivory. Your breasts like ripe fruit.”
When he took a pointed nipple into his mouth, she arched her back to help him caress her. Her loins were on fire. His organ swelled inside her and she yearned for him to move. She wiggled and squirmed, urging him to start stroking, but he held her hips still with one hand while he continued to suck first one breast and then the other. “Have patience my darling. It will be over soon enough. I wish to set you afire before I extinguish the flames.”
When she thought she could take no more, he slowly drew his organ out of her and used the head to stimulate her. She trembled violently, her entire body absorbed in her excitement. When he plunged his cock back into her, Fenix shoved the back of her hand against her mouth to stifle her screams. She was terrified Bryn or one of the vampires would hear and come to her rescue when being rescued was the last thing she wished.
Lazarus’s thrusts increased until he was pounding into her. She opened her legs as wide as possible. He lifted her butt to increase the friction and she felt the first spasms rising. It was like a tide of pleasure that rolled through her turning her legs and arms to jelly. Lazarus laughed as he continued to stroke in and out of her even though he had to hold her to keep her from collapsing. Another rush of pleasure shook her and Lazarus froze. He moaned, pressed his lips against her neck and shook with the power of his orgasm.
When Fenix opened her eyes, he was gone. She lay in her bedroll, thinking. He’d said she must continue the journey. A bug landed on her face and she slapped it. It would be hard, but if he said it was important, she’d do it.
Chapter 12
After eating the roasted monkeys, Draak Priest swooped into the village of Stanley Falls.
“Are you going to find us a woman?” Malenfant’s evil voice bounced around inside his head. Priest had grown used to it in some ways. It no longer completely terrified him to be possessed by the evil cardinal. But he’d never get used to the horrible things Malenfant continually
urged him to do. Dreadful images would suddenly appear in his mind. Images of the horrible acts committed by Malenfant when he was alive would travel through his conscious mind like a play with innumerable scenes. Only Priest knew these were memories and not imagined. Malenfant was depraved and disgusting, and the pressure of having him riding inside his head, constantly goading him, was beginning to take a toll.
“I will if you’ll stop showing me your depraved memories,” Priest snarled.
“Why can’t you just think your answer? There is no need to speak. I hear your thoughts.”
He could not get used to Malenfant’s ability to read all his conscious thoughts. If only he could hide what was running through his mind, he might be able to rid himself of the devil.
Priest landed behind a small hut, transformed into a man again, and headed for the Wagenia Falls Inn. It was the only place he knew of to find a woman. He remembered seeing the emaciated whore when he arrived and felt a wave of revulsion wash over him. He couldn’t. Not with her. Maybe there would be a younger, prettier woman he felt some attraction to.
But when he arrived at the inn, there were no women hanging around looking for a man. He glanced at the sky and saw a brilliant crescent moon peep out from behind thick clouds. It was late, maybe too late.
“Go inside,” the evil voice whispered. “Snatch one right out of her bed.”
Priest ground his teeth and resisted the ever-present urge to tear his hair out by the roots. “No! I will not do that for you. If there are no available whores, you will do without.”
Malenfant began shrieking inside his head. Shocked and horrified, Priest grabbed both of his ears and moaned. “Stop, stop, I’ll find you a woman.”
“And you’ll kill her in the way I specify?”
“Yes, yes, just don’t scream like that ever again.”
“Then go to the mission. One of the nuns you spoke to there was the tastiest piece I’ve seen in many a century.”
Priest stopped outside the inn. Inside the small structure, one lamp glowed. He looked at it with real longing. Sleep and a warm bed would be so lovely. “You want me to kill a nun?”
“You have my permission to engage in sex with her first, though I’d prefer you torture her for at least a couple of hours before you futter her.”
Priest climbed the stairs to the inn’s porch and opened the rickety door. “I will look for a woman in here. I won’t kill a nun. Just the thought offends me to my soul.”
Inside his head the evil chuckling rose to more shrieking and then Malenfant’s gravelly voice. “You have no soul.”
Priest entered the seedy inn. It smelled of fish, mildew, stale cigar smoke and body odor. A sagging settee and two ancient chairs sat in the small lobby; their color long worn away by the humidity and parade of butts. The lamp Priest had seen from outside shone from the check-in desk against one wall. Behind the desk, a door led into what Priest assumed was the office.
A small hall led out of the lobby to a flight of stairs. Priest stood at the bottom of the steps and contemplated those sleeping above. When he closed his eyes, he could feel them. Two people were engaged in sex on the second floor. Their frantic mating set his blood afire. He could do this now. He would obey Malenfant’s urging and torture both of them.
He bounded up the stairs. The rutting pair was in room two. The long hallway had six doors, three on each side. He stood outside room two for a moment listening. The nagging whine inside his head pushed him. “Do it. Hurry. I can’t wait any longer.”
Priest touched the knob of the door, whispered an unlocking spell and turned it. He crept into the room silently and stood at the end of the bed. A black man was taking a woman from behind. His eyes were closed as he pounded into the ripe buttocks before him.
“Kill him and take the woman,” Malenfant urged. “Now!”
When Priest put his hand on the man’s shoulder, the startled man jerked his cock out of the ass in front of him. Priest gasped and then began laughing and laughing until he had to lean on the bed to support himself. “What’s wrong with you?” Malenfant’s evil growl echoed inside his head. “Kill him. Torture the woman.”
The man he’d interrupted grabbed Priest around the neck and shook him. Priest was laughing so hard he had trouble fighting back. He finally managed to control his mirth. “There is no woman,” he said between snorts.
“What are you talking about?”
The man stopped shaking him and asked him to get out of the room in Swahili.
“What did he say?” Malenfant demanded.
“He wants me to leave.”
“Out of the question. Kill him and begin the woman’s torment.”
The man’s partner still knelt on the bed. When he rolled over, his stiff cock was plainly visible, and Priest went off in another gale of laughter. Inside his head, Malenfant gagged. “That’s a man.”
“I know.” Priest was practically crying with laughter.
“Kill them both,” Malenfant ordered.
“I haven’t enjoyed anything this much in centuries. I will do no such thing.”
The man on the bed had been listening to Priest have a conversation with himself. His eyes were wide as he backed away from Priest. “You’re possessed. Bad juju,” he said in Swahili.
Priest answered him in the same language. “You have no idea how bad.”
The two men on the bed leaped up and ran out of the room naked. Priest rolled onto the bed, put his head on the pillow and pulled the mosquito netting closed around him. “I’m exhausted,” he said to Malenfant. “You can torture me tomorrow. I’m sleeping right here for what’s left of this hideous night.”
* * * *
High in the cloud forest Bryn and her party emerged from the trees to stare into a deep valley. The valley sat on the shores of a large lake, probably Lake Albert. Behind the lake, the Mountains of the Moon rose like teeth into a sky heavily laden with dark clouds. Jino Mkubwa, the Tooth, stood out clearly behind the village just like in the scrying. This had to be the right village.
A steady rain fell. Bryn was miserably wet, the vampires were all grumpy and hungry, and Quinn had a fever. Bryn was terrified he’d contracted malaria from the hordes of mosquitoes infesting this land from hell. The only thing that made her discomfort bearable was the village below. It was a Bantu village and it looked like the one that had been on display in Paris at the Exposition. When she closed her eyes, she felt the power of the dagger. When she opened them again, she thought she saw waves of magic flowing from the largest hut.
Tures hovered over her shoulder. “Is that your village?”
“I feel power coming from the center hut. It looks like the village I saw in the scrying. It’s on the lake and the Tooth; it’s right there. The dagger must be here.”
“Well, it better be. My vampires are starving and there’s food a plenty for them down there.”
“You’re going to allow them to feed on people? I thought you frowned on that.”
“It’s the Bantu or the gorillas, and I kind of like the monkeys.”
“There’s a herd of forest elephants back there. Have your people feed on them.”
Tures’s eyes widened. “There are so few. It would be a crime. And these natives are everywhere. No one will miss a few.”
Bryn rolled onto her back and leaned against the rocky escarpment. “All I want is the dagger. Can they at least hunt for it while they feed?”
“Of course. We’re not animals.”
“No women and no children,” Bryn said and rolled her eyes. What had she just condoned? She must be more tired than she thought.
Fenix shoved close to Tures. “I heard what you just said. Do not allow your people to feed on these natives.”
Tures tilted her head and Bryn’s eyes widened. Tures was listening to Fenix’s desires while paying no attention to her wishes. Why would she value Fenix more than her? “I will do as you ask, Fenix, because I know the Great One loves you.”
When Tures was gone
, Bryn stared at her sister. “Who is the Great One and why does Tures think you’re special?”
Fenix shrugged. “I have no idea what she’s talking about.”
Bryn grabbed her sister’s arm. “Yes, you do. Tell me.”
Fenix snatched her arm out of Bryn’s grasp and smiled. It was a smile filled with self-confidence and intense satisfaction. Just looking at it made Bryn grind her teeth. What was going on? Why did she feel so angry with her sister? She’d always loved and protected Fenix and now it seemed as though Fenix had taken over the role of leader. The feeling of being passed over and second, made Bryn want to scream and fight for command, only there was no one to fight but her sister and just the thought of fighting with Fenix was ludicrous.
“If the vampires are staying their hand, we will have to decide how to approach the natives,” she finally said.
Fenix crawled to the edge of the escarpment and gazed into the valley below. “I sense Kivunjo. He’s down there.”
Bryn’s shoulders touched Fenix’s as she lay down beside her. “How can you sense him when I cannot?”
“Maybe because I was closer to the dagger than you. Or maybe because Lazarus drank my blood and I drank his.”
Bryn shuddered. “Please do not remind me. I thought you died.”
Fenix smiled. “Maybe I did. Look, there’s Kivunjo coming out of that hut.”
Bryn spotted the hideous witch doctor. “You’re right. That is him. I recognize the headdress.”
They withdrew from their vantage point and returned to the gathered bearers and vampires. Quinn and Sam stood off to one side with Sam supporting Quinn’s sagging form. “Quinn is seriously ill,” Fenix said. “I should heal him. I can, you know.”
Bryn shook her head. The thought of her sister touching Quinn was strangely disturbing. Was she jealous? Or did she feel Fenix was tainted by Lazarus’s blood and therefore no longer truly her sister? There was something about Fenix that was different. The vampires treated her with respect, which bothered Bryn more than she wanted to admit. Sometimes, she felt the vampires only allowed her to accompany them on this trek because of Fenix. Bryn had never taken a backseat to her sister and the bitter taste in her mouth was getting harder and harder to swallow.
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