Murder Path (Fallen Angels Book 3) (18 page)

Chapter 22

‘J…’ I start to shout, trying to get my safe word out, but the woman with the exact same snake tattoo as Rebecca and Eve drops her glistening lady lips right over my mouth, the rest of the word muffled in her moist delight.  I try to shake in my bindings but they have been fastened tight, with no give at all.  I feel movement around my crotch.  Even in my currently frantic state, my penis is still hard, possibly even more so.  It feels like Rebecca is climbing off.  Did she hear me?  I don’t think so, I can still see her hands caressing the woman’s breasts and I can see the woman throwing her head back in pleasure as she rubs her clit up and down my nose.  I don’t want to lick her, I don’t want to let my tongue probe her glorious vagina sitting on my face, but I can’t help myself.  Her musk is intoxicating, her wetness beguiling.  My tongue starts to flick in and out of her.

I feel pressure being reapplied over my groin and the sensation of naked skin touching my cock sends shivers down my shaking spine.  Rebecca has undone her cat suit, she is straddling me again.  She is dropping herself onto me.  A hand circles the base of my shaft and angles the erection upward, away from my body.  In a second I feel the warmth of her wet heaven as it surrounds my tip and sucks me in, dropping all the way down my length, the muscles tight, constricting around my member.  I hear her moan as she starts to ride me, slow long strokes, with her hips bucking back and forth as her torso rises up.  The woman on top is leaning back now as I continue lapping her juices.  She is leaning back so that Rebecca can lean over and kiss her.  I can just see their lips meet and watch as the woman’s tongue flicks into Rebecca’s mouth, circling her teeth.  Rebecca’s hands are frantically fondling her breasts, the nipples being pulled furiously, the woman moaning in the pleasure of the obvious pain. 

I try to shake my head, to get Rebecca’s attention, but she is lost in her own ecstasy.  And in my eye line is the snake tattoo, writhing in its own sublime susurrations.  My mind is screaming for this to stop, but every single sinew in my body is filling with the tingle of oncoming orgasm.  Rebecca is riding me more frantically, her hips bunny fucking my length now, her vagina muscles squeezed tight around my swelling, hardening shaft.  I start to pant quickly through the one free nostril I have, still tongue tickling the woman’s cunt, her flowing juices meandering down my chin. 

Rebecca’s hands are squeezing the woman’s breasts faster, as she bucks me faster, my whole body shaking, the glow of orgasm throbbing in my groin as my cock expands, my hips thrust and I come deep inside Rebecca’s dripping vagina.  She screams, pinching the woman’s nipples hard at the same second I bite into her clitoris, making her moan in exquisite agony as well.  I thrust again, and again, spilling my whole load inside Rebecca, before my body slumps from tense, back onto the bench, spent.

The woman climbs off my face, freeing my mouth and I take a long deep breath, ready to shout on Rebecca, but the woman speaks first.

‘Beautiful John, just beautiful.  I don’t think I’ve ever been tongue fucked so intensely.  And Rebecca, my nipples are on fire, they are still sending aftershocks all the way down to my clit.’ 

Rebecca stiffens in concern, still sitting astride me.  ‘What makes you think that’s our names.’ she says, flustered and off guard. 

‘Tattoo.’ I say, not using names, as I look up at Rebecca. ‘She’s got the same tattoo as you.’

‘This isn’t a place to talk, this is a place to fuck.  Let’s go somewhere a little quieter and I’ll tell you how I know your names.  You don’t need to worry.  I am a friend.’ the woman says as she faces Rebecca, her snake tattoo fully visible.  She starts to undo the silk scarves binding me to the bench as Rebecca slowly raises herself off me.  Rebecca removes the scarves from my legs and I push my torso up with an effort, energy sapped from orgasm, and stand as well.

‘There’s some private snuggle rooms off the back of the main room, let’s go there and get to know each other.’ the woman says, her mesh covered eyes looking disconcertingly evil as she sways up alongside Rebecca and takes her hand, leading her on.  Rebecca follows obligingly, grabs my reins and pulls me behind.

My synapses are still firing, but not with the pheromones of sexual activity, those ones are abating.  They are firing with tastes and textures.  The taste of the woman’s juices, the texture of her skin.  Of the tincture in her voice.  I watch her shapely body as she leads us into the main room, through the iniquitous menagerie, and to a door with the words ‘Snuggle Room’ on it.  We go inside and I close it behind us, not believing what my mind is trying to tell me.

‘Who are you?’ Rebecca demands, her brief panic overcome, her Madame now back in full flow.

‘Someone who knows what is happening to you, because it is happening to me as well.’ the woman responds, hunkering down onto a deep pile of multi coloured cushions covering the floor.

‘And what do you think is happening to us?  What makes you think we aren’t just a couple out for a fun night of debauched sex?’  Rebecca counters, slinking down onto the cushions beside her.  I stay standing with my back firmly against the door.

‘That tattoo for a start.’ she starts, pointing to Rebecca’s still exposed stomach and privates. ‘It’s the same as mine.  Exactly the same.  The scars on your skin from your time in the Fielding Institute.  John, the just healed weals on your penis where Dr Ennis wanked you off wearing a Vampire glove, and the stigmata on your palms.  You may very well be out for debauched sex, but you are also John and Rebecca.  What is happening to you is the Fallen Angels.  Since last week, when Madame Evangeline appeared on TV, they have been happening to me as well.  And since then, I have been looking for you.’

‘How did you know we would be here tonight, if we are who you think we are?’ Rebecca asks, still not admitting anything.  Why would Madame Evangeline appearing on TV draw her into this and why would that cause her to look for us.  What’s challenging my mind at the moment is that her body language is so much like Eve’s.  She can’t be Eve though, because we watched her die.  Could she be a twin, like Adam and I. 

‘I didn’t know, I hoped.  On the balance of probability you would have been in some sex club tonight, looking for the person who killed McFetrich.  Given that the scene in Edinburgh is desolated due to the recent raid, this was the next obvious choice.  It’s where the Edinburgh crowd have bolted.  It’s where he might be, looking for his next victim.’

‘And why are you looking for us, if we are who you think we are?’

‘For answers.  A week ago my life was simple.  It was shit, but it was simple.  I live in a grotty bedsit in the Elephant and Castle in London and have been a prostitute since I had my first period.  That was the week after I ran away from the care home I had lived in for all my thirteen years up until that point.  I’ve had this tattoo all my life as far as I can recall.  I can’t remember ever having it done, it’s always been there.  Up until last week, I thought I was alone in the world.  Up until last week, I thought I would die on my own, either beaten to death by a psycho punter, or choking on my own drunken vomit.  Until I saw her on TV and got a visit the very next day from someone called Adam who had a remarkable tale to tell me.’

‘And what did this Adam look like?’ I ask, my voice broken and hoarse. 

‘Just like you John.  Just like you.’ she reaches up and grabs the back of her head mask and starts pulling it off.  ‘My name is Eve, and it’s not just our names that are the same.’ she says, dropping the mask into her lap as she shows her face to both of us.  ‘We look the same as well.  Exactly the same.’

The world turns again as I look in stunned amazement at the third incarnation of Eve.  Rebecca’s gaze reflects my incredulity as we both look upon Eve’s sparkling emerald eyes, her perfect high cheekbones and her porcelain complexion.  I slide down the door, my bum thumping on the floor.  I reach up and grab the back of my mask and pull it off my head, shaking my hair out as I do. 

‘I’m John Saul.  I think you are right, it’s time to talk.’ I say as Rebecca takes her mask off as well, still staring at Eve, and introduces herself.

‘Nice to be formally introduced, even if we have already fucked.  God, you and Adam are exactly the same as well.’  Eve says a little coyly, an air of vulnerability surrounding her with the mask off.

‘I don’t suppose he told you if he and I were twins did he?’ I ask, knowing what the answer is going to be.

‘No.  He told me that was a path you had to travel all on your own.’

‘So how long have you been trying to find us, and why?’ Rebecca queries, her tone suspicious.

‘I got the first train from Kings Cross after Adam talked to me and was in Edinburgh four hours later.  I was up there for three days looking for you.  I saw you once John.  I was in the Scott Monument.  It’s a great vantage point to view Princess Street and I was hoping I might see you from up there.  I did.  You rushed from Jenners when the Chinese Hag was exposing Chodak in the gardens.  I think you saw me too.’

No, that was Jess I saw.  I’m sure of…hold on.  Throw a fact into my mind and it will bounce off memories and stir them.  Jess was Annie Tait.  Ten seconds after I thought it was Jess I saw up on the monument Annie Tait came running into the Gardens with DCI Cruickshank and arrested me.  At the time I didn’t know Jess was Annie.  I do now.  So it was this Eve on the gantry of the monument.  But I recall her talking to someone.  Who was she talking to? Adam?

‘I did see you.  I thought you were Jess.  That is, Jess was Madame Evangeline and Eve, all three at the same time.  It’s gets difficult to keep track.  Now there are physically two of you as well with five different identities.’ I say, slightly flummoxed.

‘Not quite.  At least, that’s not what Adam told me.  Physically, there were three of us.  Jessica died in a car crash.  Madame Evangeline, Eve as you know committed suicide, and that leaves me.’

No, that can’t be right.  Jess and Eve were the same person.  They had to be.

‘So, you were triplets then, is that what Adam told you?’  Rebecca enquires. She must be thinking the same as me, she has to be doubting it.

Eve shakes her head slightly, the question amusing her.  ‘Not quite, not if you believe the incredible tale Adam told me.  If you were to believe him, we aren’t triplets, we are clones.’

Chapter 23

We all have different ways of coping with the things in our life we can’t come to terms with.  Mine is building mind rooms.  Neat little compartments with precise labels letting me know exactly what it is I am hiding away.  They have intricate mind map locks written on the door.  They are a certain sequence of memories to be triggered in a specific order if ever the contents of the room try to get out.  It boils down to a distraction technique.  The day Jacob was born was the very first time the rooms in my mind had ever started to wobble, since the time I built them as a teenager, to lock away the memories of my childhood.  That’s when the rooms started to become rickety.  As we started to understand the full extent of his condition, and it felt to me that his childhood, indeed his life, was as empty as the childhood I had, there were occasional breaches from some of the rooms.  I would have flashbacks to the pristine white, windowless space I lived as a child, spending days and weeks alone, on a bed with nothing but my imagination to keep me company.  A limited imagination that knew very little of the outside world, apart from needles, tubes, wimples, doctors and Nun’s.  It was the desolate emptiness I had to hide away, the utter despair of being alone in the world.  But when I was in that room, as a child, that’s not how I felt.  I didn’t know what emptiness was, I didn’t know what alone was.  I just knew that room.  It was only when I was moved into a care home and started to interact with people, started to have friends and the positive emotion that comes with those relationships that I started to understand the desolation and despair of being alone and needed to put those memories away. 

Every single rickety room burst open when I thought that I had lost Jacob, Jess and Sarah all in the same day.  I couldn’t sequence the mind maps fast enough.  Just as I started to lock one room back up, another would burst open.  The desolate emptiness overwhelmed me and my thoughts and my emotions wanted me to kill myself.  But my actions didn’t, not totally.  I gave myself a chance playing Russian Roulette.  That chance of possibly dying, possibly staying alive helped to focus the thoughts and the emotions.  It is not our thoughts or our emotions that define us.  What defines us is the actions we take in reaction to them.

Why did I give myself a chance when my mind was screaming out at me just to kill myself?  Is it genetic? Has that bias for action, to experience rather than to observe been bred into me? I wanted to stop myself having sex earlier, but I couldn’t, the action overwhelmed the thought.  Has it been bred into all of us?  Rebecca should be dead.  Yet she is sitting on a sofa opposite me, her eyes alive with shared experiences, chatting to Eve as though they have been family forever.  Her coping mechanisms are even better than mine.  Is that from the mental conditioning that took place at the Institute?  And Eve, from the same background as both of us, left alone to fend for herself in the world, without any kind of family.  A prostitute at thirteen.  In reality, an abused child at thirteen.  She seems to have taken on a totally new life in three days without even breaking stride. 

We are all from the same genetic family.  The same family as Adam and the other Eve’s, and I have no doubt the same family as Gabriel.  The Fallen Angels.  It’s a dark and twisted family, but it’s a family.  None of that explains why.  Perhaps this path we have been led down for years is to build the mechanisms for us to cope: to cope with whatever the why is.

‘It’s been a part of my life away from prostitution, which might sound bizarre.  After all, it’s sex.  But prostitution is how I earn a living, it is money and punters.  Going to BDSM munches is about me.  It’s where I feel in control.  I can do what I want, not what the punters want.’ Eve tells Rebecca as my ears attune to the conversation once again, returning from my reverie.  ‘The snake is always a talking point.  Do you think we’ve been branded?  Is this the mark of a female Fallen Angel, sin slithering its way out of sex?’ she prompts.

‘Did Adam mention anything about it?’  I query, interrupting their sex talk.  Eve is sitting on the sofa opposite, facing Rebecca, the two of them dressed in jeans, Eve in a red t-shirt, Rebecca in a white one.  Rebecca lent Eve the clothes.  They are both sitting the same way, but mirrored, their legs tucked up under their backside, bodies turned in to each other with one arm draped over the back of the sofa, coffee cup in that hand.  While their looks are slightly different, the body language and mannerisms are almost identical. 

‘No, we never got that intimate.  We only talked for an hour and that was mainly about the two of you.  He wanted me to find you and join your journey.  He said we were all heading for the same destination and it was time to join together, to ensure we get there in one piece.’

‘Did he say why now, when you had been blissfully unaware of us so far?’ I ask.  Rebecca throws me a reproaching look, annoyed at the detective in me coming to the fore.

‘Yes, he was very specific about that.  I look exactly the same as Madame Evangeline.  He knew that I would start to get attention, given that she was all over prime time TV news.  He didn’t want me to be arrested on suspicion of being her.  He didn’t want me exposed to religious fanatics that might think I was her.  He didn’t want me to have to face punters that might get off on the thought of banging a celebrity, even though that might be good for business.  What he couldn’t do was just say, ‘Be aware, you look like someone on the TV.’  What he had to do was give me the background I told you about.  Otherwise, I would have just thought he was a nut job.’ she answers candidly, her demeanour open and honest.

‘Did you still not think he was a nut job?  It is an incredible tale he told you.  What did he say that made you believe him?’ I pursue, deliberately ignoring Rebecca.  I need to understand.  I need to control.  Once again, I feel more than a little blind sided.

‘It’s not what he said, it’s what he showed me.  It was a picture of a baby girl, about 18 months old, sitting in a cot, looking up into the camera.  Now, it could have been any baby, not necessarily me, but it was the room that made me believe him.  It was pure white, sterile, no toys, no furniture save for the cot and a single painting on the wall.  A Cezanne.  ‘The Bathers’, a group of naked men and women enjoying the sun at the side of a lake.  I remember that room vividly from my childhood, and the blue robed Nuns that would come in and feed and change me.  That’s how I knew there was substance to his story.’

Rickety rooms rattle.  Is she pressing buttons to make them open, or is she being honest.  If she is pressing buttons, then she is very good at it because I feel an absolute affinity with her and an emotional empathy on a par with my feelings for Rebecca: and only after knowing her for an hour.  Is that family?  Or is that being skilfully played?  What possible benefit could she get from playing us?  If anything, it feels like she is being played as well.  She hasn’t asked us a single question, only answered every suspicious one I have thrown at her openly and honestly.

‘It sounds like you’ve been on the same journey as us, and know just about the same as we do.  You seriously need to ask yourself if you want to be involved with us though.  I am an escaped mental patient, we are both fugitives from the law and there is a potential psychopath trying to frame us for murder, if not kill us.’  Rebecca intervenes and continues the conversation as I go quiet again.

‘I have nowhere else to go and like it or not, I am involved.  I want to know the same thing as the two of you do.  I want to know why?  Why has my life been a lie?  Why have you been hidden from me for so long? 

Why are The Fallen Angels doing this?  There has to be some kind of reasoning behind this madness.  There has to be some greater purpose to warrant the death of the innocent, Michael, Sarah and Jacob.’ Eve finishes, her last words emotionally charged, wringing with frustration.

Rebecca looks over to me, a burning question in her eyes.  Thought and emotion are telling me not to let her know the one thing she seems oblivious about.  But only because trust has been pummelled out of them.  But is it only because of that?  Who was she talking to when I saw her at the Scott Monument?  Why was she with Darrie tonight, the one person in the place who has a connection to me?  Why hasn’t she asked us any questions at all?  Wouldn’t you be just the slightest bit curious?  So if she were playing me, how would I play her back?  Would I even dare go down that route?  My bias for action wants to tell her, it wants to take control.  It is the one thing she doesn’t seem to know.    I nod imperceptibly. 

‘Jacob is not dead Eve.  He is very much alive and sleeping in the next room.  That’s another reason why you have to think seriously about whether staying with us is a good idea.’  Rebecca imparts. 

It is done.  She knows.  For better or worse, now she knows.  I just hope I’m not playing Russian Roulette with Jacob’s life.