Orfeo (20 page)

“Take him,” croaked Earl at last. “Take this fucking cocksucker and... fucking cut his tongue out before you kill him.” His voice struggled with emotion, but Orfeo did not resist as hands were placed on his hand, turning him around and away from Ardyce for the last time.

“Earl!” She did not shout, but her voice was so clear, so pure, that it rang about the room as though it were a single note. Orfeo felt hands weakening on him and he heard Snake gasp, “The fucking bitch!” He turned around.

Ardyce stood before her chair, pulling at her dress with one hand so that her soft breast was exposed. In her other hand, she held a knife, the blade cruel and sharp, pressed into her flesh so that the skin reddened beneath its tip.

“Let him go, Earl,” she said at last.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Earl began to remonstrate, moving forward. As he took a step forward, however, she pressed the blade in deeper and a single drop of blood appeared on her pale skin.

“I’ll do it,” she told him. “I’ll do it without a moment’s hesitation if you take another step toward me. That goes for the rest of you!” Her eyes were glittering fiercely as she glared at them all around the room.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Orfeo heard Papa mutter behind him quietly.

“Let him go. Let
us
go. I’m not yours, Earl. I never was—not in the same way I belong to him. Let us go. You can’t have me. It doesn’t matter what you do to me. You can’t have me, and you know that.”

Orfeo’s attention shifted toward Earl, who stared at the object of his obsession with such misery that, for a few seconds, the singer felt pity in his breast. Earl began to open his mouth, wordlessly seeking for anything that he could say to express what he felt for Ardyce, to convince her otherwise. When she looked at him, however, her eyes were so cruel, so empty of love, that he seemed to crumble and wither before her gaze.

“Let them go,” he whispered at last.

“Boss?” it was Snake who spoke, bemused and disconcerted.

“You heard the man.” Papa spoke quietly from behind Orfeo, still invisible to his gaze. “Let them go.”

Ardyce nodded and,
realizing that it was irrelevant now, let the knife fall to the floor. Her words and her eyes had cut Earl more deeply than any mere blade could ever achieve. As she moved gracefully forward, her eyes shining without fear, Orfeo felt Snake and Horse move to the side. Taking Orfeo’s hand, he felt the warmth of her skin and basked in the heat of her smile.

As they turned to leave the room, both of them saw Papa, his head bowed so that they could barely see his face beneath his hat. They paused for a second, and Orfeo was suddenly afraid that this was some terrible trap, that Ardyce was to be killed as well as him. “Thank you, Papa Legba,” he said, his voice trembling slightly as he spoke.

The older man smiled, his lips just visible, and then he raised his head. His eyes seemed to be shining with an indescribable emotion. “You’re welcome,” he said very quietly. “Now, go!”

After they had left, no one spoke in the room nor moved for a very long time once Earl had crossed to the spot where Ardyce had been seated. He simply sat there, lost, holding the knife she had pressed to her own flesh. His face was a ruin of misery and despair, but slowly the lines of his mouth became harder and his eyes creased into tight, black pits.

Lifting his head at last, he stared directly at Papa. If the other man was scared, he betrayed no sign of it and finally Earl simply nodded his head before spitting on the floor. After this he appeared to recover a little.

“Find them,” he ordered his
loa
. “Find them, and bring her back to me.”

“But boss,” Snake began to protest. “The hurricane...”

“I don’t care about a fucking hurricane!” he shouted, his face blazing with anger now. “Find them! Bring Ardyce back to me—and kill Orfeo!”

They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.

(Hosea, 8:7)

They left Hades and entered into hell.

The hurricane had not yet reached its full force, but already the winds that preceded the heart of Katrina were screaming through the streets, ripping up small objects and smashing them into buildings as the heavens began to pour out their wrath.

Both Ardyce and Orfeo were drenched in seconds, great gouts of water falling like stones from the black sky above them and battering their bodies. As her lover half-helped, half-dragged her to some paltry shelter away from the entrance of the nightclub, Ardyce felt the haze that had clouded her mind for the past two weeks disappear almost instantly. The poison in her veins still circulated through her body, but as her clothes gave her no protection and she felt invisible hands clawing at her hair and body, raw animal fear burst through her and banished almost everything else.

Orfeo was equally terrified. To remain in this spot would be to die should Earl or any of his
loa
follow them, but it seemed equally likely that to venture out into the night was also to tempt destruction. Boards and debris shot past them, flapping and circling in the wind as though lost in a maniac dance, and his eyes were wide as he tried to see past the floods that were pouring into the empty streets.

“We have to find somewhere safe!” he screamed, attempting to make himself heard above the storm that raged about them. Though she did not hear him, Ardyce guessed his meaning and nodded, her own eyes bulging as she stared at the unholy fury all around them.

They fell and slipped as they struggled to cross the streets, buffeted by the winds and a river of water sluicing around their feet. Barely seeing a sign that had been torn from its pole as it came toward them, at the last moment Orfeo threw himself forward between it and Ardyce. As it crashed into his back, breaking against him and causing him untold agony, his groans were swallowed by the unrelenting wind and he stumbled to his knees. With an almost inhuman strength Ardyce gripped his arm and dragged him up, pulling him toward the relative safety of a nearby building.

“We have to get out of this!” she screamed, her mind alert now, conquering its animal terrors. Gasping, he nodded and looked around, water streaming from his brow and nose, his black skin glistening.

Glancing around, he saw a doorway not far behind. Ardyce, her clothes clinging to her now—a second, transparent skin as feeble against the vengeance of the hurricane as her own body—watched as he tried the door with his hands then threw himself against it, weakly at first but then with all the power he could muster. At last the wooden frame splintered and he tumbled inside, followed by Ardyce.

Staggering forward, he fought for his balance. The wind whipped around the open door behind her as Ardyce followed him and she fruitlessly attempted to shut it out. Coming alongside her, Orfeo also threw his weight into the panel but it was broken and worthless now, so that both of them looked in horror at the water seeping in and rising around their feet.

“Come on,” he said, able to make himself heard now at least. “We’ve got to find somewhere upstairs, out of this.”

The building seemed to be some kind of old, disused factory, with a large open space to one side filled with rusting machinery. No-one had entered in a long time and as the howling gale shrieked through the building it seemed as though invisible fingers were wreaking havoc with the detritus cast around them, lifting up lighter elements and smashing them against the ground in terrible anger.

Finding another door, Ardyce was grateful to see a stairway leading up away from the empty cavern and she ran forward, stumbling and slipping as she realized that she had lost one shoe after they had left Hades. Pausing only to remove the other, she held onto Orfeo as he stood beside her, his breath coming in panicking bursts. His arm was solid, however, as she gripped it with her fingers, despite the fact that his skin was cold and slick from the rain.

The found an office upstairs, a broken desk in one corner and a chair, battered and worn, beside the wall. The windows were old and many boarded up, but at least there was enough cover to keep out most of the wind though rain still managed to fall in fast, syncopated beats, running down from the rafters above. Orfeo pushed himself wearily to the chair and collapsed onto it.

The wind buffeted the building so hard that Ardyce felt it tremble as she walked across to her lover, a trembling that matched her own limbs. Was it fear, she wondered, or something else? Her wet clothing clung to her, ripples of semi-transparent white folded across her breasts and abdomen. For a few seconds as she watched Orfeo, his own shirt rucked across his broad chest, his sleek pectorals partly exposed, the monstrous storm beyond the boarded up windows and the timpani of falling rain seemed to recede. This was very different to the numbness that she had succumbed to in Hades. Instead, she was aware of the warmth in her abdomen, an inner wetness that was building to a violence as great as any outside.

“I think we’ll be safe,” Orfeo told her wearily. His smile was weak, his body exhausted as she came toward him, but his eyes were gleaming with a joy that was self-evident as she moved closer.

She folded herself beside him. The hurricane—its wind and its rain—had become a drumbeat crashing into this place, threatening them both. Now, though, she hardly heard it because the beat of her own blood inside her head was almost deafening. His expression became one of surprise as she slid one leg across his lap, her sodden dress sliding up her damp thighs, and she pushed him firmly backwards, bringing her mouth close to his. He winced slightly at her touch, an old pain flaring through his body, but he did not resist when she kissed him.

She drank him in then. She had been among the dead and thought that she would never see him again. The bare gleam of dim light that striped his face picked out his cheeks, his eyes closed as his mouth opened and moved in time with hers, the music of their bodies rising in overpowering harmony. Her tongue slid inside him, exploring and feeling him, sensing his primal warmth, his liquid heat, while rain began to stream down upon them from some broken space in the ceiling above.

Somewhere there was a loud crash, the howl of an inanimate object as it was torn from its proper place. For a second, Orfeo’s eyes flashed with fear and concern for her, but she did not care at all what happened now. Her mouth worked upon him, sucking the life from him, tasting every last drop of him and his own hands came up to her back, clutching her torn dress and exposing her flesh which was itself barred like some pale tiger.

When she ceased her kiss, she slid one hand down his chest, past the amulet around his neck and down his muscular abdomen, fingers feeling along the waistband of his trousers. Despite the horrors that threatened them, life was strong in him and she felt it hard and thick through the fabric of his clothes. Leaning forward, she whispered into his ear: “Fuck me!”

He stared at her as though she were mad. The wind screamed like a spirit possessed outside and the throb of the building became even more intense. He was scared, like a child lost in the world—but he was also alive, lust and adrenaline pumping through him, intensified by the terror his body experienced.

“Fuck me,” she repeated, caressing his face with her fingers, stroking the strong, delicate outlines of him with her fingers. “If I’m to die tonight, I want to know I’m alive one last time.”

She did not let him speak but, dropping one hand again to his waist, began to fumble and tug at buttons, letting her other hand join it as she tried desperately to pull him free. He simply stared at her for a moment as she leaned backwards, her face fixed in concentration, water falling on both of them. Her face was possessed by an irresistible mania, and he could just make out a reflected gleam in the shadows of her eyes as she looked down at him.

She gasped as she drew him out at last, his cock so long and black, the flesh firm and hot in her hand. She clasped him in her tight grip, squeezing him, feeling that warmth
through her damp fingers. As she chafed his shaft, her hand rising and falling, Orfeo’s own fears at last were replaced by an ancient lust and he lifted his own, larger palms to her breasts, pushing aside the fabric and exposing her nipples, darker spots of flesh rising out from the tender swell that felt so soft to his touch.

She slid forward, her thighs apart as he yanked her dress down over her shoulders, white tiger stripes appearing and disappearing as she moved. Her own amulet hung forward between her tender breasts, a partner to his stirring on his chest as he moved, while down below she could feel him against her sex, stiff and hard. She did not let him penetrate her yet. Instead she bucked her hips along his lap while he bent his head to her chest, taking one of her nipples into his mouth and suckling on her. He felt glorious against her and she was becoming so tender with desire that a strange half orgasm began to build inside her, mixing with the opiate venom in her veins.

As he sucked and bit her, biting her with his lips covering her teeth so that the pressure of his mouth added to her pleasures, she used her claws to scratch the shirt from his back. The water drenching them from some gap up above must have been rusty, the dark liquid looking like blood as it fell onto his powerful, bare shoulders in the strange half-light.