Hell You Say

by Josh Lanyon

  “We try,” I said.

  “Of course you do,” Gabriel encouraged. He glanced at his handler. “Bobby, what is there to drink? I’m parched.”

  Friedlander cleared his throat uneasily. Along with that musky aftershave of Gabe’s wafted a mix of mouthwash and bourbon. Mostly bourbon.

  “There’s brand-X champagne making the rounds,” I said.

  You’d have thought I’d offered milk to a vampire. Gabe blanched. Swallowing hard, he said, “Oh, God, let’s get this over with.” He strode over to the antique desk I had set up. Enthusiastic applause from the waiting audience echoed off the dark beams.

  “This book tour has been grueling,” Friedlander told me by way of apology. “Twenty cities in thirty days…radio interviews at four in the morning, cable talk shows, book club luncheons; often we’re doing three bookstores a day. Gabe is exhausted.”

  “I bet you both are.”

  He laughed. Behind the glasses, his mild eyes were unexpectedly alert. “A little. I understand you write also.”

  “A little.” Not enough, thank God, that anyone wanted to send me out on the road.

  “You’re too modest. I’ve read Murder Will Out. Very witty.”

  Either this guy did his homework like nobody I’d ever met before, or he was gay. My books don’t attract many mainstream readers.

  “But you need a hook,” he said. “A platform.”

  “You don’t think a gay Shakespearean actor amateur sleuth is enough of a hook?”

  “No. No way. Look at Gabe. He wasted years producing beautifully written, critically acclaimed literary fiction that no one wanted to read, and then what happens? He comes up with Sam Haynes, the occult detective. The rest is history.”

  History, occult, and romance all spelled out in purple prose, I thought as Savant read aloud from his latest masterpiece. He kind of reminded me of a hunky Vincent Price, but the audience loved it. They stayed silent as the proverbial grave while he read. Not a whisper, not a snicker. When he finished reading, he took questions. Lots of questions. His fans wanted to know everything from Where He Got His Ideas (at which he turned up his elegant nose, beckoning for the next question) to Was He Seeing Anyone.

  “I’m seeing everyone,” Savant drawled and tapped his forehead, either to indicate the Third Eye or that his busy social life was giving him a headache.

  Maybe the bubbly helped, but the fans drank it right up.

  Friedlander listened and ate pizza rolls like they were going out of style. Every so often, as when Savant graciously referred to me as “Andrew,” he would smile nervously in my direction.

  And then a customer asked what Savant was working on now. Apparently this was the question he’d been waiting for. He rose to his feet, shaking back the cape.

  “As you know, I’ve made a fortune telling stories about the occult and its practitioners, but my current project is not a mere work of fiction. During my research, I’ve uncovered evidence of a real-life, secret cult, a sinister organization which has preyed upon the young and naïve for the past two decades. A cult right here in this very city. In my next book, I plan to expose that cult and its leaders to the world.”

  Bob Friedlander dropped his paper plate. Pizza rolls scattered across the hardwood floor. I stooped to help retrieve them and saw out of the corner of my eye that Bob was shaking. I glanced up. His round face was white, perspiring; he looked terrified.

  I turned. Gabriel Savant beamed at his audience, most of whom were smiling and chattering, delighted to learn that another of those pesky cults was soon to be history — and a best-selling book. At the back of the room, however, stood a small group of young women. They were dressed in black, lots of leather and lace, makeup and hair inspired by Halloween. Elvira: the Early Years. They appeared to be hissing at Savant.

  * * * * *

  “I love this house,” Lisa sighed. “I’ve been so happy here.”

  The first Saturday of each month I had brunch with my mother, at the ancestral ruins in Porter Ranch in the North San Fernando Valley.

  The brunch tradition began when I left Stanford and broke it to her that I would not be returning to the nest. It shouldn’t have come as a shock — or even as bad news — but as she had chosen not to remarry after my father’s death (despite a legion of eligible suitors), I was all Lisa had in the world. As she rarely failed to remind me.

  “It’s a beautiful house,” I agreed.

  The house smelled of pine trees and cinnamon and apples. It felt warm and Christmassy. In some ways it still felt like home. I’d taken my first steps in the marble foyer (an initial attempt to make a break for it). I’d learned to drive in the quiet surrounding streets. I’d experienced my first fumbling sexual encounter in the upstairs bedroom beneath the fake open beams and poster of a boyishly grinning Robert Redford in The Natural.

  “Although it really is too large for one,” she said, as though she had suddenly noticed those additional sixteen rooms.

  “Maybe you should think about moving,” I said heartlessly.

  I had underestimated her as usual. “If I were to…move…do you think the house would suit you and Jake?” she inquired innocently.

  I inhaled my white-chocolate pear tartlet and spent the next moments wondering if the last thing I saw would be the mental picture of me and Jake picking china at Neiman Marcus.

  “Darling,” Lisa gently protested when I could breathe again. “You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “You’re not serious about Jake and me moving in here,” I said.

  “Why not? You seem awfully fond of him, and he’s…he’s…” I could see her searching for something nice to say about Jake. “He’s a very efficient sort of person.”

  The “why nots” were so many that I was speechless. The worst part of it all was that for one split second I seriously considered it.

  Seeing my moment of weakness, she moved in for the kill.

  “It’s wonderful that you’re feeling so well these days, Adrien, but it doesn’t do to push yourself too hard.”

  “I’m not.”

  She shook her head as though it were all no use. “The economy is so dreadful right now, especially for small businesses.” As though Lisa had the foggiest idea about the challenges of running a small business. “And when you talk about needing to expand, I simply can’t help worrying about the stress and strain of an additional mortgage on you, darling. Whereas this house is paid for free and clear.”

  Like a fool, I said, “Even so, there’s no way I could begin to afford the upkeep.”

  Her violet eyes widened at my naïveté. “You’re going to be very wealthy one of these days, darling,” she chided. “I know I could prevail upon Mr. Gracen to arrange something with your trust fund.”

  “Don’t start that again.” Funny how that money was absolutely untouchable when it was for something I wanted that Lisa didn’t approve of, but right there at my fingertips if I’d give in to whatever she wanted for me.

  “If your poor father had realized that you would end up sacrificing your health struggling to make ends meet —”

  “Lisa, where is this going?” I broke in. “Are you thinking of selling the house? Is that what this is about?”

  I was amazed to see her turn pink.

  “Um, sort of,” she said. An un-Lisa-like comment.

  When she didn’t continue, I prodded, “And?”

  “Actually, I’m thinking of getting married.”

  Chapter Two

  In the silence that followed her words, I heard one of the Christmas ornaments fall through the branches of the ten-foot noble fir taking up a quarter of the dining room.

  “Come again?”

  “I’m thinking of remarrying.” Prettily blushing.

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Councilman Dauten.”

  My fork clanged against the brass charger plate.

  “Councilman? Is that what you call him? Doesn’t he have a first name?”

  “Y
ou sound rather waspish, Adrien,” my mother observed. “Do you not like the idea?”

  “Of Councilman Dauten? I’m not sure. Have I met this one?”

  Lisa’s eyes narrowed. She said carefully and clearly, “Do you have a problem with the idea of my remarrying?”

  Did I? I wasn’t sure. Whatever I felt — and it was sort of a brakes squealing, glass smashing, horns blaring reaction — it wasn’t logical. Whereas Lisa marrying was perfectly logical. She was still young, considering the fact that she was my mum, and beautiful, considering the fact that she was my mum.

  “No, of course not,” I said. We both listened to my tone of voice. I said with more energy, “No, I mean, if you’re happy. It’s…it’s kind of sudden, isn’t it?”

  “It is!” she chirped, like that made it all the more wonderful.

  * * * * *

  I woke to a giant shadow looming over me. I started up, half asleep.

  “Easy, easy. It’s me,” Jake said, sliding between the sheets. His hands and feet were like ice as he pulled me into his arms.

  I subsided, heart thudding hard. “I thought you couldn’t make it tonight?”

  “Yeah, well.” He was silent.

  The far wall was patterned in snowflake shadows thrown by the street lamps through the lace window coverings. I heard flecks against the glass panes.

  “Is it raining?” I half-lifted my head from the pillow of his chest.

  “Just started.” He stroked his cold hand down my back, and as I shivered, gave my ass an absent squeeze. “They found another one.”

  Not fully awake, it took a while for his words to register. “Another what one?”

  “Another DB.”

  Cop-speak for dead body. Since Jake worked homicide, I knew that it had to be more than just another body. I finally remembered our conversation of a few days earlier. “You mean, like a ritual killing?”

  He nodded. “Maybe. This one was older. Maybe a year old. Badly decayed. But there were markings on the tree he was buried beneath.”

  “Markings?”

  “Symbols. We’ve got people working on them.” He stroked my back again, fingers idly tracing the links of bone and cartilage. “It’s not like I haven’t seen weird shit. Decapitated goats, disemboweled cats. Once I saw a cow’s tongue nailed to a tree.”

  “Those wacky Baptists.”

  Jake snorted. “You’re a funny guy.”

  “Funny boy is the way I remember it.”

  I felt rather than saw him smile at the memory of our recent vacation in the land that time forgot, the northern Mother Lode country.

  “They estimate there’s like fifty thousand Santeria devotees in LA County. But this is…different.” He was quiet. I hated to imagine what he was remembering. “Adrien, do you honestly not know where Angus went?”

  I rolled on one elbow, tried to read his face in the gloom. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Angus?”

  “I’d just like to talk to him.”

  “Jake, no damn way was he involved in anything like this. I know him that well.”

  “I’m not saying he’s involved. But if he’s on the fringe of that scene, maybe he’s heard something.” He asked neutrally, “Did you send him up to the ranch?”

  “No!” In fact, it hadn’t occurred to me to send Angus to Pine Shadow, the ranch I had inherited from my grandmother many years before. I wondered why I’d missed such a simple solution.

  At last I said, “I don’t know where he is. I gave him the money and told him to leave town.”

  “Could you take a guess?”

  I shook my head. The rain drummed down harder now. We listened to it for a while. He tugged me back down. I rested my cheek against his chest, listening to the thump of his heart.

  I said, “If he calls, what do you want me to tell him?”

  “Whatever you think will get him back here to talk to me.”

  We lay like that for a time. I started to relax back into drowsiness, lulled by Jake’s lazy caresses.

  “How tired are you?” he asked, breaking the silence.

  I chuckled.

  The weight and warmth of our bodies moving in the tangled sheets. The pleasant friction of rough jaws, and hairy legs and arms, and lightly furred chests brushing against each other. The softness of mouths and eyelashes and silky hair…

  He guided me onto my belly, and I spread my legs, shivering as Jake spread the warm gel in the cleft between my buttocks. He worked the tip of his finger, pressing against that first instinctive resistance, always careful, always taking his time, although it wasn’t necessary these days which I seemed to spend primed and ready for his cock’s penetration.

  I sighed, pushing back, and his finger slipped inside the dark heat of my body. I murmured approval. “More, Jake.”

  He eased the second finger in, teased a little, and I caught my breath.

  “Good?”

  “You know it is.” I drew my knees under me, raising my ass in invitation. “Please, Jake…”

  Instead I got a slow, tantalizing third finger working me with maddening, delicious deliberation. I groaned. “Will you just do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Fuck me.”

  He murmured, breath against my bare back, “Not sure I caught that.”

  “Jake,” I pleaded, humping against his hand. “Fuck me. Please.”

  Ah, the magic word.

  We shifted around, bed springs squeaking, I got on my hands and knees, and he knelt behind me, his hand stroking the curve of my ass, lingering. The head of his cock whispered the password, and my well-massaged ring of sphincter muscle gave him entrance. Arms braced stiff, his cock buried deep in my body, I rocked back against Jake’s hips. He shoved back against me. We quickly slipped into our rhythm. The fingers of one hand bit into my hip, holding me in place as he thrust hard. His other hand wrapped around my cock, pumping up and down, occasionally losing the pace. I shifted weight onto one hand, moved my free hand to join Jake’s, working myself.

  We knew each other well by now, knew what we liked — and when we liked it. It was comfortable, and it was familiar, and it still shook me to the bones when I least expected it.

  Like now.

  Blood throbbed in my temples, pounded through my veins, so that I could barely hear the harsh, fast sound of our breaths, the hard slap of flesh on flesh, the music of the mattress. Jake’s hot breath gusted between my shoulder blades, sending little chills of sensation down my spine. And all the while that pleasurable scrape and slide, smooth exit and stiff entry, over and over and over.

  I dug my fingers into the bedding, relinquishing control, letting him take me further and faster.

  “Oh, baby…” he gritted between his teeth, and I felt a grin breaking across my tense face, even while I clenched, focused as that slow wash of liquid heat flooded my groin.

  My whole body seized, clenched like the fist wrapped around my cock, the electric intensity of orgasm holding me in place while relief bordering on bliss shuddered through nerves and muscles and bones. I creamed over our joined fingers, his hand slipping a little in the sticky wetness. Jake went rigid, groaned like he was mortally wounded, and I could feel that wet warmth pulsing into me, a man’s cum flooding my ass.

  I collapsed in a limp sprawl, Jake’s body covering my own. Wet beneath me, wet seeping out of my hole. Held hot and wet in Jake’s powerful arms and never wanting to move again while pleasure echoed through me.

  “I couldn’t stop thinking about this all day.” His voice was rough on the admission. “Feels so fucking good with you.”

  I nodded, managed, “It is good.” In fact, sometimes it surprised me how good it was with Jake, given his various hang-ups and extracurricular interests.

  He kissed the back of my neck, and I felt my heart turn over. The sex was great, but it was those moments of quiet tenderness…

  “Lisa is thinking of remarrying,” I said later, when we had both had time to catch our breath.

  He made a non
committal noise and turned his head on the pillow to face me.

  “It’s kind of weird, that’s all,” I said in answer to the question he hadn’t asked. “She’s had plenty of opportunity. Probably should have done it years ago, but she always made such a thing about never loving anyone but my father.”

  “Do you know the guy?”

  I shook my head. “Councilman Dauten. I’ve heard the name, but I’ve never met him.”

  “You want me to run a background check?” He sounded amused.

  “Forget it,” I said, smothering a yawn. “It’s Chinatown, Jake.”

  “Nah, it’s only Pasadena. You’ll be fine, baby.”

  * * * * *

  Angus wasn’t exactly a blabby guy. Maybe that’s why I remembered the infrequent bits of information he let drop. I recalled him saying that he was a teaching assistant for a Professor Snowden.

  I made a few phone calls, learned without too much trouble that on Monday morning Dr. G. Snowden was supposed to be at Bunche Hall giving a lecture on the occult in popular film and fiction.

  UCLA is like a small village, with its own police department, fire marshal, radio and TV station, restaurants, shops. It even has a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Campus Resource Center. I don’t know if they were offering this back in The Day. My father graduated from Stanford University, so Lisa’s expectation was that I would grace the halls of the old alma mater. That suited me fine, as I was attracted by the university’s proximity to San Francisco and the gay community.

  But because I’d had friends at UCLA, and because I’d attended various cultural events there, I was reasonably familiar with the campus. I knew that Bunche Hall was located close to the Sculpture Garden, which was about five acres of grass and trees and studded by the works of Matisse and Rodin, among others. It was especially beautiful in the spring when the jacaranda trees were in bloom.

  They were not in bloom that gray autumn day. Bare trees and stark sculptures provided a suitable backdrop for Bunche Hall, which had to be one of the ugliest buildings on campus. It looked like a concrete slab of Wasa bread.