Lyon (32 page)

Grape phylloxera is a tiny aphid-like insect that feeds on the roots of grapevines, stunting their growth or killing them. The pest was accidentally imported to England and France on American vines around 1862. It reproduced with devastating speed, and by the end of the nineteenth century, phylloxera had destroyed two-thirds of Europe's vineyards.

The destruction was eventually halted by the discovery that this nearly microscopic insect does not attack the roots of American grapevines. By grafting the rootstock of European vines onto American ones and replanting vineyards with the new grafted stocks, Europe's wine grape industry was saved.

For the purposes of this story, the date of the infestation is set at approximately thirty-nine years prior to the actual date. Additionally, the account of how the phylloxera problem was solved has been fictionalized in the series and all characters involved in that process herein are products of the author's imagination.

This book is a work of fiction. Dialogue and events are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, groups, or individual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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LORD OF THE DARK,
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The Stone Garden at the Pavilion
The Eastern Archipelago, Principalities of Arcus

G
ideon, Lord of the Dark, one of the four guardians of the Principalities of Arcus, stood upon the tallest phallic column in the stone garden at the edge of the amphitheater. He'd stood there for some time, observing the ritual mating of his friend and fellow prince appointed by the Arcan gods, Simeon, Lord of the Deep, and his human bride, Megaleen. He hadn't felt this lonely since the gods of Arcus flung him—the most revered archangel of the Arcan otherworld—out of paradise never to return.

The wind ruffled the silver-white feathers in his magnificent wings, and he was aroused, a cruel trick of the gods that made his wings sensitive to touch—even the caress of the wind that bore him aloft. But he couldn't fault the wind this time, not entirely. It had been some time since he'd satisfied those urges, and watching the ritual had made him hard.

Gideon glanced about. There wasn't a
watcher
in sight. The dubious-winged watchdogs of the gods that kept him celibate were conspicuous in their absence. Scarcely breathing, he opened the crotch of his skintight eelskin body garment that fitted him like it did the silver-black eels that had worn it before him and freed his thick, burgeoning cock for the air to soothe…or not. Then, springing from the phallic stone, he soared off over the satiny breast of the water into the dawn.

The sunrise that should have been golden shone over the water blood red—a sure sign there would be a storm before nightfall. Gideon could taste it in the salt-drenched air. Soon the innocent-looking ripples that lapped at the rocks would roil and churn, and great white-capped combers flinging spindrift would roll up the phallic columns, turning them black against a blacker sky. He would be home in his cave on the Dark Isle by then, safely out of the tormenting wind.

The stone garden was vast, encompassing the underwater Pavilion like a fence above the waves. In fair weather, the sirens would sun themselves upon the rocks and sing their haunting songs. In the center stood a little islet, a tiny spit of land, too small to build a shed upon, but large enough for a siren to lose herself among the greenery: Muriel's Isle. Gideon swooped low, his wing tips tinted pink in the fiery sun. Yes, she was there, Muriel, Queen of the Sirens, lying naked in a bed of lemongrass, pleasuring herself.

Gideon touched down at her feet arms akimbo, his naked cock hot and hard and red in the fiery dawn, the mushroom tip slick with pre-come. The wind of his motion in flight had neither cooled the fever in his shaft nor relieved him this time. The tall shadow of his enormous sex, throbbing in response to the sight of her writhing below, stretched across her naked belly. Her eyes riveted to his penis, she narrowed them to the fractured sunbeams dancing about him like a misshapen halo, for the rising sun was at his back.

Muriel smiled, still working her nipples between her thumbs and forefingers, as she undulated against the clump of lemongrass she had captured between her thighs. Grinding the grass spears into her hairless sex had crushed them and released their fragrant oils, spreading their lemony scent. She always smelled of lemongrass and ambergris, come to that. Gideon wondered if she pleasured herself thus often.

“You could not bear their mating ritual either I see,” she said, nodding toward his erection.

Gideon seized his cock and flaunted it. “Would this not better serve you than that clump of weeds you're straddling?” he said.

Muriel laughed. The sun shone red in her eyes, moist with the glaze of arousal. “At least these ‘weeds' will let me rise up afterward,” she said. She gestured toward his cock again. “The last time I let you put that weapon inside me I couldn't walk for a sennight.”

“That was a long time ago,” Gideon said.

“It's still as large,” she observed. “Such a cock is wasted upon the likes of you, Lord of the Dark. Will you not face reprisals? You did the last time, as I recall.”

Gideon dropped down to his knees and plucked the lemongrass from between her legs. He shrugged, and his massive wings made a rustling sound. Palpating like a pulse beat, their motion thrummed through his body to the core. “I am hoping that the watchers are all occupied at the amphitheater gazing upon Simeon and Megaleen as they perform their nuptial rite. You cannot have him, and I cannot have her. What harm to comfort each other, um?”

Gideon didn't wait for an answer. He was a man of few words, and he'd expended what he would allow for the moment. She was ready and willing, despite the repartee, and they both were bitten sore for wanting. He spread her nether lips and lowered his tongue to her clitoris. Muriel's hips jerked forward, and she uttered a strangled gasp as he laved the engorged bud to hardness.

“You are a master at that,” she crooned, moving against his mouth.

Gideon didn't answer. The citrus tang of the crushed lemongrass mingled with her salt sweetness, for she was of the sea, was like an aphrodisiac. He tasted her deeply, his tongue gliding on her salty wetness as she laced her fingers through his hair and arched herself against his mouth, begging him to take her deeper still.

When she reached to stroke his trembling wings, his head shot up, her juices glistening on his cleft chin. “
No,
not yet!” he panted, for, aroused as he was, if she touched his wings now he would come. Their sensitivity was his curse, his punishment for falling from grace with the Arcan gods who had cast him out, lest he ever forget. There wasn't much likelihood of that. His existence was a living hell, a constant torment of unclimaxed arousal, except for stolen moments like now, when the watchers looked away and he could cheat them and reach orgasm submerged in willing flesh. It had been thus for eons, and so it would be until the end of time. It was a moment to be savored, not to be rushed, for it happened so seldom. “I will tell you when…” he murmured.

There wasn't time to strip off his eel skin, though he did open the front, inviting her hands to reach inside and caress his broad chest; anything to keep them away from his wings. He groaned, as her arms encircled his naked torso beneath the silvery black eel skin, and groaned again as her hands slipped lower, gripping his taut buttocks. Gathering her close, he feasted upon her breasts, laving her tawny nipples erect, hardening them beneath his tongue until she writhed against him, begging for his cock to enter her.

Gideon's loins were on fire. Pulsating waves of riveting heat ripped through his sex, his belly, and thighs. Leaning against her skin to skin, he savored every recess, every orifice and crevice in her salt-drenched nakedness. She was as the sea itself, undulating, cresting and eddying, spilling over with pure passion. It was no wonder so many seafarers succumbed to her wiles. She was the ultimate seductress, a mistress of libidinous lust, but that is all she was. All else was shadows. There was no love in her, unless it be for Simeon, and even that was suspect. Muriel, Queen of the Sirens, was an enigma, just the one to bring him to climax with no fear of attachment. While her loins sizzled with drenching fire, her heart was as cold as the Frozen Sea that marked the northern boundaries of the Arcan archipelago. A sea not even Simeon, Lord of the Deep would venture near.

Denied his wings, her fingers gripped his cock; it leapt in her hand, the hard, thick mushroom tip ready to explode. He could bear no more. Raising her hips, he took back his shaft and thrust into her, filling her from the thick root of its anxious bulk to the hot, smooth head leaking pre-come. A deep, guttural growl spilled from his throat as the folds of her swollen labia gripped him.

Matching him thrust for shuddering thrust, she ground her body against him to take him deep inside the dark mystery of her sex, and he cried aloud, “Now! My wings…stroke them
now
…!”

Her fingers ruffling the silken feathers felt like a lightning strike. Gideon cried out. It
was
a lightning strike! Dry lightning snaking down through the red dawn sky from the outstretched hands of a watcher hovering overhead wrenched him out of her and pitched him over in the singed lemongrass unclimaxed.

Muriel scrambled out from underneath him, her shrill voice guttural and deep. She sprang to her feet, pounding her thighs with clenched fists, her fair, translucent skin normally tinged with green, the color of sea foam, now splotched with the crimson blush of unfulfilled passion.

“Damn you, Gideon!” she shrilled. She glanced aloft, where the creature, neither male nor female, hovered like a hummingbird, its fingers crackling with more charges showing blue-white against the red sky, as the lightning passed between them. “And you!” she spat out. “You have no dominion over
me
! How dare you hurl your missiles in my direction?” Her eyes snapped back to Gideon, attempting to right himself in the smoldering grass at her feet. “You have had your last in me, dark one!” she seethed. “Get your pleasures upon someone else. I like the flesh raw on my bones, not cooked! You see me no more!”

Still dazed in pain, though his shaft was frozen in stiff readiness, Gideon watched the smoke ghosting from Muriel's skin, where the lighting had seared her. Screaming like a banshee, the enraged siren plowed through the lemongrass, and Gideon winced at the hissing sound her body made as she dove into the water and disappeared beneath the swirling eddy her exit had created.

Surging to his feet, Gideon raised his arm and shook his fist at the asexual creature still hovering over him, fresh lightning threatening. Where had it come from? He was so sure he'd eluded the watchers this time. It did not speak. Watchers possessed no powers of speech, and Gideon spread his wings and soared off through the sky that in the space of half an hour had turned from blood red to a jaundiced yellow hue as the storm drew nearer.

Gideon didn't look behind. The watcher wasn't following. Though it wouldn't be far off, it never appeared unless, like now, he attempted to relieve himself inside a woman. His sex would not go flaccid, and he loosed a bestial howl that echoed back in his ears as he soared off over the water. The cave was his only refuge. There, he could relieve himself. The gods weren't completely without pity. But there was only emptiness in it, no warm, fragrant womanly flesh, no arms to hold him, no lips to receive the urgency of his kiss. It had been
so long
. Still, if he had it to do over again, he would do the same. If he were faced with the thing that had earned him his fate—cast him out and driven him into darkness—he would embrace it, just as he had that fateful night so long ago when he made the choice that had damned him only to lose the prize.

No, he couldn't think about that now. He wouldn't let his mind take him there again.
Damn the wind!
It was growing stronger, as was his need. Below, the black volcanic sand of the Dark Isle loomed before him. He passed it by. He was in no humor for a trek through the black marshes in his present state. He touched down before the entrance to his cave instead and glanced about. Nothing moved in the petrified forest that flanked the cave on three sides, except the gnarled and twisted trees, their naked branches clacking together in the wind, like ghostly applause mocking him. No foliage grew upon them, or upon anything on the Dark Isle. It reeked of death, as if the gods had cursed the isle as well as its keeper.

Gideon glanced skyward. There was no sign of a watcher, though that didn't comfort him. They were there, ready to swoop down at any moment if he should entertain any thoughts of finishing what he'd started with Muriel. There was no hope of that. Gideon was alone on the Dark Isle. He stormed into the cave and barred the towering double doors of ebony wood that shut the world out and everyone in it.

He was still aroused, still tasting the siren's salt-sweetness. Cursing under his breath, he stripped off his eel-skin suit and stomped along a narrow corridor that led to a pool of dark water. Above, a narrow waterfall spilled over the cave wall through a crevice in the rock. It tumbled like a ribbon to break the surface of the pool below, where a thin mist of steam was rising. The pool was heated by an underwater current from the nearby Fire Isle, one of many in the chain of islands flung like a crooked arm into the sea east of the mainland.

Gideon flexed his wings until they furled close to his body, and plunged into the water. Even folded thus, his wings were massive, their tips touching the ground. They used to disappear, all but two nubs on his shoulder blades, lightening his load, but no more, not since his fall from grace. Now, he was cursed with their weight, and the sexual crisis they brought to bear waking and sleeping, and he would be for all eternity.

Sinking down into the warm, rippling pool, Gideon groaned. How good it felt on his sore muscles. Keeping well away from the cascade, he floated on the surface, listening to the roar of the water and the ragged beat of his shuddering heart. The tightness in his groin called his hand to his hot, hard cock. If he didn't relax, it would never go flaccid. Maybe if he just shut his eyes and floated there, inhaling the soft mist rising all about him, it would be enough. It was a pleasant fiction. There was only one way to stop the achy, drenching fire that gripped his sex, and he began to stroke himself, long, spiraling tugs on his curved shaft, the heel of his hand grazing the rigid testicles beneath.

How he hated relieving himself this way. His mind reeled back to the little islet and the brief blink in time's eye that his burgeoning cock had felt the soft, silky heat of willing flesh. Another minute—maybe two—and he would have come inside the siren.