by Robin Danner
The dark brother gasped. Though her back was to him, Salem could tell Kane’s face was screwed tight from pain. Every muscle in his body tensed and rigid. For a few seconds he held motionless against her. In her.
She felt fear ball up her gut. Salem wanted to help him make Ketiljon go away. Far away. Kane relaxed and resumed his ardent lovemaking.
They succumbed to the bizarre, sensual rhythm of their ménage. Salem manipulated her clitoris in time to Kane’s thrusts, who took his timing from the plummeting of Ketiljon into his ass.
“It is good, no?” Ketiljon asked, slapping his blood-brother’s butt cheek. “I am going to spill inside you.” He moaned loudly and made three long, hard thrusts into Kane. “I am coming,” he grunted.
“It is good to feel you orgasm inside me again. It has been a very long time since we swore off this behavior. Since this time will be the last, it is good that we can be together this way,” Kane replied.
Again, Salem envisioned Kane being nothing but a puppet on a string, mouthing words he didn’t want to say, but was forced to say. She wanted to cast a spell of Opening to force the truth to the surface.
Like wading through a vat of thick oatmeal, Salem tried desperately to mouth the simple spell to compel and pull truth to the surface. A very difficult act, when being buggered by a handsome black man being buggered by a handsome Nordic-type.
Open eyes. Open ears. Untangled tongues. Cast off the masks and remove the robes, for only the truth may enter this place.
A thousand images cascaded into her mind. It reminded her of a PowerPoint presentation on high speed. Her instincts were correct. The blond thrived on deceit and control. Control of his blood-brother. Control of her. Control of what he presumed was his destiny.
Ketiljon slid out of Kane’s rear, his erect member covered in semen. “Let me bring this act to a conclusion for you, Kane. I need to taste you. One last time.”
“What of the woman? She has not yet achieved climax,” Kane replied.
“What of it?” Ketiljon asked.
Kane shook his head. “I will not leave a woman unsatisfied.”
“Then put your mouth to her, and when you are finished, I will put my mouth to you.” Ketiljon paused. “Oh, the witch is scrying. As we make love with her, she is divining our true natures, brother. Look at her. She is lost in a trance. Well, we must remove her from that state so that she can enjoy our time with her.” Ketiljon raised his palms, directing his dark energies toward Salem. “Forget what you have seen and remember only the pleasure.”
Kane slid out of Salem and in one motion, rolled her onto her back.
She wanted to speak, but felt tongue-tied. She couldn’t remember something…something important.
Before she could take a deep breath or sigh in relief at having been freed of his anal love, much less clear her mind of the dim, suppressive numbness filling it, Kane’s dark, curly head disappeared between her legs.
It was almost comforting, the long, slow caresses of his tongue against her burning privates. Like a healing salve, his tongue made everything all better.
The protesting, swollen edges of her vagina and anus were soothed into warm oblivion as he gently and quite adeptly lolled his tongue across them. His beautiful full lips encircled her clitoris. He rolled her bud between them, inspiring it to new heights.
Salem slid her fingers into his thick, curly hair, and held his head against her mound as she exploded in orgasm.
As soon as her grip relaxed, Kane turned to face his blood-brother.
Ketiljon dropped to his knees and eagerly took Kane’s member into his mouth. It was obvious Ketiljon relished the act. His satisfied sighs told Salem that much.
Kane seemed stoic. Hands on hips, he stood motionless, watching Ketiljon perform fellatio. He climaxed quietly, seemingly holding back embarrassed cries of pleasure. Ketiljon, however, had busied his right hand between his own legs and had brought him self to a second orgasm with vigorous gusto.
Salem came down slowly from her orgasm. Her fantasy had drawn her into a very deep well. Seems her new acquisition had a bit of memory embedded in it. Memories of pleasurable moments between men and women and any combination of the two who liked their stories shared, not just told. That would make a good selling point. Because no matter how good it felt inside her…she still had to sell the Viking Member.
Reeling from the beer and the force of her orgasm, Salem meandered to her kitchen and cleaned the dildo with alcohol wipes.
* * * *
Downstairs, in her shop, an otherworldly interloper zipped his fly, his head still swimming from his own climax. “Salem…hear me…” he called softly.
“Not if I can help it,” a second voice replied.
The interloper’s body went rigid as he looked out the window. “I am the first born, Kane, and it is I who shall reap the benefits of this woman’s passion,” he called. “Go away, blood-brother. You are a painful reminder of my father’s poor decisions.”
“What our father left to you, he also left to me, though my mother was not born of Iceland, nor I of his loins.”
“Dark brother, be gone. Kane, there is no room for you here.”
“Ketiljon, remember the oath we took as boys and remember the bargain we made with the gods to escape death? We are bound together for eternity. If you are freed, then so must I be.”
Ketiljon spat on the floor. “Three hellish days with you at my side is too long. I was forced into the oath and I long ago forsook the gods. What pledges I made to them in times of imminent death, I now regret. And revoke.” He paused, his bright blue eyes flashing lightning bolts of hatred at his blood-brother. “You cannot enter here and the stone shall not leave. This woman shall set me free. She is already learning the power of the stone, though she doesn’t recognize it yet. I shall be set free.”
Kane laughed. “She will invite me into her life. I feel it. Though you controlled her mind and body in that fleeting moment of ecstasy born of loneliness and alcohol, I shall have her heart. You are trying to make her believe I am but a vessel for your pleasure, when in truth I have refused you all my life and taken beatings for defending myself from your advances. She will know the truth. I am not your lover, nor the lover of any man. I have loved only once, and her name was Grettir.”
Ketiljon scoffed at his brother’s goodness. “Before you bury your bone in the keeper of the stone, I will rip your heart out from between your shoulder blades and suck the living blood from it.”
“Spoken like a true Berserker. It was that talk that put us asunder in the first place, brother. Have you not learned anything in the last thousand years to calm your temper? Has not the wait been enough?” Kane asked.
Ketiljon moved to the window and placed a palm against the glass. “Do you remember the old days, Kane? When we lived and drank and fought side by side?”
Kane nodded. “I cherish those memories, Ketiljon. I remember the laughter of our father and the way he looked at my mother with such love and respect, until she died.”
“Your mother was not born to live in our homeland. She grew cold and could never find warmth,” Ketiljon replied.
Kane interjected, “Save in our father’s arms. She grew to love him deeply after the death of her first husband. She was a consort for our father and surrogate mother to you. Without him, she would have been stoned for bearing a half-breed child and I would have been emasculated.”
Ketiljon looked sharply through the glass. “I hated her. Though I am glad Father brought you to Iceland. I would hate to think of your balls being touched by the kiss of steel. They should be touched by something much softer. From the moment you came to live in our house, I thought there was no more handsome a youth in all the world. I have never wanted anything for you, save for your happiness.”
“Your obsession with me and hatred of my mother have poisoned you to the love of any woman, Ketiljon. It was your hatred that imprisoned us.”
“In a widow’s bed warmer.”
They’d had this
same conversation a thousand times over a thousand years. “My plea was heard and the deal was struck. I assumed the place our souls were to be sealed should be something other than rock or stone. I did not want to be overlooked. The carving was ideal.”
“I might as well have died in that hot pot, brother. A thousand years trapped in a whalebone penis is humiliating.”
Kane wished his fair blood-brother would someday understand the necessity of going into the carving, as opposed to being lost in the wilds of Iceland’s interior rocky permafrost. “Freyja said choose and I did so. I carved the bone for my love and, though you found our captivity painful, to me it was just an extension of my love for her. Though I, too, long for freedom now. I had no other object save my leather breeches, which would not have withstood the ravages of time. And you were nude! It is to the goddess Freyja, my savior, that I pledge my sword. It is to her I owe my chance for freedom,” Kane said.
Ketiljon pounded his fist on the glass. “And to her I owe a lifetime of misery being shackled to your heels. Through your selfishness I have lived a thousand years as an extension of an object meant to pleasure a woman in her husband’s absence!”
Kane sighed. “There is no shame in survival, brother.”
“The shame I feel is that I did not gut you like a pig and then bugger the goddess as she stood over your rotting corpse! You shall never enter this place and find freedom between the thighs of Salem Grier! It is I who shall put the bone to the stone!”
Kane shook his head. “Your rage will be your undoing, brother. She will never accept you as her lover.”
Ketiljon smiled a devilish, loathsome smile. “I have always taken what is mine, and this shall be no exception.” He looked to the ceiling and raised his spirit to the upper floor where Salem lay sleeping.
Kane vanished into the night, knowing that his blood-brother would never win this battle. Though light dispelled darkness, his light was but a thin disguise. Dusk would conquer dawn.
* * * *
Silent as a cat, Ketiljon stepped around the sofa to the table where the Odin Stone and the Viking’s Member lay joined. He nudged the whalebone deeper into the hole. Salem moved and sighed in her sleep.
Ketiljon smiled. “Tonight you pleasured yourself with my prison, dear one. And though you are a skilled witch full of magical spells to ward off the likes of me, you turned the latch on the first door exiting Hell. I’ll have you soon, and freedom shall be mine, alone.”
He ran his hand along the carved shaft of the dildo, and then brought his fingers to his lips to taste Salem’s essence. “Soon, I shall be set free. My pretend brother will never cross your boundaries. The weak-minded are easy to seduce and I found my accomplice readily. She was so easy to coerce. To control. To cut. It was a good victory over wealthy sensibilities and her blood was so rich and sweet. Tonight, I am sated.” Ketiljon melted into the carvings, vaporizing in a swirl of firefly lights.
Just around the corner from the deli, slumped over in the alley, lay the body of a rather attractive older woman; her receipt from Salem’s Fine Collection of Sins clutched in her cold, dead hand.
* * * *
A strong, urgent rapping at her door awakened Salem with a jolt, causing her to fall off the couch, thinking the place was on fire. “Who is it?” she called. Jesus. It wasn’t yet five in the morning.
“Misha! Open the door!”
Salem hadn’t locked her door. “It’s open, Misha. What the Hell is going on?”
“I came to work to start the bread and there is a body in the alley. A woman. I lost my keys. I cannot get into my place. Call the police, eh? I need to find my keys before the police take them as evidence,” Misha blurted.
“A body? In the alley? A dead body?” Salem asked.
“You phone now, yes? You should start locking your door.”
“Christ. Yes, I’ll phone. Right now,” Salem replied reaching for her telephone. She dialed 9-1-1.
She didn’t wait for the operator to finish her standard what is the nature of your emergency response. “Hi. There’s a woman, dead in the alley behind my store. Behind Misha’s Deli and Salem’s Fine Collection of Sins. Sixty-seven-hundred Crowley Way. Downtown. No, I don’t know who she is. I haven’t looked. Misha found her. He’s with the body now. No, he won’t touch anything. Yes, thank you. Please hurry.”
Please hurry? She’s dead. She ain’t going anywhere. Salem paused, realizing the absurdity of her comment. “Me? I’m Salem Grier. I live above my shop. And Misha Ivanov found her. He owns the deli. Thank you.”
She hung up the phone and slipped on her clogs. The metal handrails of the fire escape were covered in morning dew. A heavy chill still clung to the darkness of pre-dawn.
Misha had found his keys. She also heard the soft waling of the Mourner’s Kaddish emanating from her friend. Yeetgadal v' yeetkadash sh'mey rabbah…
“Did you know her, Misha?” Salem asked.
He nodded. “She bought a cup of coffee from me yesterday. And struck up a conversation with a man who ordered warm milk. He looked like warm milk. What man drinks warm milk?”
“Blond man?” Salem asked.
“Like a banana he was blond,” Misha replied.
Salem sucked in her breath. “She came into my shop today. She bought black salt. Said she had to get rid of a bad neighbor. A blond man showed up after closing. He kind of gave me the creeps.” But he turned my cookies, too. He was hot.
“You think he’s the one who did her in?” Misha asked. “Do you see how he did it? Look at her throat. Those marks—someone strangled her. And cut her. How could someone do such a thing?”
“Does she have something sticking out of her ear?” Salem asked, squinting to make out the object without having to get too close.
“It’s a quill. Drilled into her brain.”
Salem turned and vomited.
* * * *
She still had shakes and the dry heaves when a black and white pulled into the alley. A svelte female officer stepped out of the car, radio in hand. “Confirming need for wagon,” she said into the speaker. “Hi. I’m Officer LeBrey. Who found her?”
Misha held up his hand sheepishly. “I did, ma’am. I am Misha Ivanov. I had Salem phone you.”
“Touch anything, Miss?” Officer LeBrey asked.
Salem lifted her head slightly and whispered a hoarse, “Salem Grier. No, I touched nothing.”
“I got close to her to see if she was alive and touched her cheek. That’s all,” Misha replied.
An ambulance and two additional police cars rounded the corner.
Shocked and cold, numb and feeling like she’d taken a fist to the gut, Salem wasn’t sure if she could stand for much longer. “I know who she is,” she said softly to Officer LeBrey. “I mean, she bought something in my shop yesterday. Used plastic.”
LeBrey’s ears piqued. “Can I get the merchant copy of that transaction from you, Miss Grier?”
Salem nodded. “I’ll go get it.”
As the cops drilled Misha who, with great enthusiasm, recounted the same story five different ways, Salem somehow made her feet carry her body to the back entrance of her shop. She punched in the code to the alarm and opened the back door using the electronic keypad.
She rifled through her receipts for the previous day. “Marguerite Pamona. Five pounds of black salt and two quills,” she mumbled. “Rest in peace, Marguerite.”
She re-secured her shop and somehow managed to make her way back to the flashing blue and red lights. She handed Officer LeBrey the slip, took a step back and then felt everything go black around her. Literally.
* * * *
Salem was revived by a paramedic. “You’re all right, Miss. It’s called a visceral reaction. You fell right into LeBrey’s arms. Good thing, huh? Not a scratch on you. I’ve seen people go down and knock out their front teeth.”
Salem tried to focus. She wasn’t in the ambulance. She wasn’t on the pavement. “I’m in Misha’s shop.”
“You
are, yes. We couldn’t very well put you in the wagon now, could we? Thanks to you, we have a good idea as to whom we did load up, however,” the paramedic commented.
“Are you trying to be funny?” Salem asked. He’s cute.
“Never while on duty, ma’am,” the medic replied.
Salem sat up. “Oh, please don’t call me that. I had to call my mother ma’am and I never want to be that stuffy.”
“What—and when—shall I call you?”
Salem smiled. “Are you flirting with me, sir?”
He nodded his head yes, but he replied, “No.” He paused. “I need it for my report.”
“Salem Grier. That’s my shop next door.” Salem felt very, very comfortable in spite of her surroundings and the trauma of the morning. Why pass up the chance to flirt with a Warrick Brown look-a-like? “Why don’t you come by and see me sometime? I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.”
The paramedic smiled. Salem liked his cool green eyes and café-au-lait-colored skin. And those shoulders! And his voice! Like honey! I think I need mouth-to-mouth, Mr. Paramedic.
The medic smiled slyly at Salem, as if he were reading her mind. “I’m not sure I can cross your threshold. All those runic inscriptions. You seem to be very well protected against the wiles of bad boys.”
Salem’s smirked. “You’re a bad boy? With that baby face?”
The medic nodded. “I come from a long line of men who know how to revive a still heart.”
“Well, how nice for you. And me, as the case may be. I have actually been realizing of late that I could use a little less protection. Do you read runes?” Salem asked.
He nodded. “My adopted father taught me when I was a boy. He was an old-world Icelander.”
“And your mother?” Salem continued.
“North African. My father met her while he was traveling down that way in his youth. I am the biological son of one of his countrymen. My father was a good man and took me into his home as if he’d sired me.”
“Where were you born?” Salem asked.
“Tunis, Tunisia. But I spent most of my life in Iceland.”
“Forgive me for playing twenty questions…” Salem began.