The Devil's Playthings (18 page)

The next mo
rning was Christmas Eve. The
solstice tree in the entryway
had been
remo
ved
the evening before, and the apartment looked bare without it
. She stood in the pool room early, watching the sunrise, when Luc joined her. He kissed her gently on the back of her neck, her sensitive spot. She tilted her head to the side, allowing his lips to slide gently down over her neck to her shoulder.

“Are you taller?” He practically scolded her.

“I don’t know, am I?” She
acted
like it was irrelevant.

“I want you to go to church at Lakewood this evening,”
Luc changed the subject. Quietly Rosa carried their breakfast on a large tray, and they ate in silence. Later that afternoon Rosa helped her dress in a pretty red sweater dress with long sleeves and a turtleneck collar. She braided her long blonde
and secured it with green ribbon, and wore a green and white belt around her waist. She wore a white wool coat, and a white knitted beret.

She
should have been nervous.
She’d never been to a Catholic mass, and now she was at her first and was alone.
Once inside the church that was the centerpiece of the Lakewood Academy campus she felt more than nervous. She felt paranoid. She felt like everyone was looking at her. She felt the eyes of the saints boring
into her. She balled her hands into fists and shoved them into the pockets of her jacket.

And then, when Father Peter walked down the aisle toward the front of the church she saw something else she should have expected, but never imagined. Following behind him, in the circle of the altar boys and readers, so close to Father Peter she had to be touching him, was an angel. She was pure white light, and yet a person.

She wore a white flowing gown, her hair was white and long, down to her waist, and her eyes were round and wide. She could see the outlines of the angel’s cheeks, lips, eyes, eyelids, everything was where it was supposed to be, but there was no color. There was only white and shadow. And as the angel moved past her, and saw Emma staring, she stopped. She hovered right in front of Emma, eye to eye, staring deep into her soul.

Emma almost laughed at the sight of the curious angel staring back at her. She reached out her hand to touch Emma, then quickly drew back as she touched Emma’s skin. Emma wondered if she burned the angel with Luc’s blood inside her. But the angel didn’t move away, even as the mass began and Emma turned her attention toward Father Peter, the angel hovered right at her side, staring at her like an animal who knew you were speaking to it but didn’t understand what you were saying.

Even though she’d never been to mass, she felt like she knew what to do. She stood when everyone else stood, she knelt when everyone else knelt. And when she made the sign of the cross, she felt he
r
skin crawling. And although she sat toward the back of the church her eyes locked with Father Peter’s when he walked past in the procession.
The angel hurriedly followed after Peter, and as everyone else walked out of the church Emma followed.

After the service, which became a form of torture to endure before it ended, she singled out Father Peter. She shook his hand, and held on to it. “Father Peter, can we have a practice the day after
tomorrow? I’m afraid if I don’t practice I’ll lose everything I’ve remembered before break.
”

His eyes lit up with apprehension, but she knew he secretly longed to be with her. She felt it like she felt his pulse and his breathing quicken as soon as she touched him.

“Of course, Emma,” he said, but warning sirens were blaring in his brain.
The angel reached out and touched his arm, and he quickly let go of Emma’s hand.
She gave him an innocent smile, and although the sirens blared his desire silenced them.

“
11
am in the theater?”
She confirmed and he could only nod. She released him and hurried to the waiting car.

“I saw an angel,” Emma whispered as she sat in the floor at Luc’s feet. He was watching the TV, a newscast
where
some vile lawyer talk
ed about how Christmas should no longer be a federal holiday. And then the anchor spoke: “We go now to political columnist and
lobbyist
Joshua Price. Joshua, can you tell us about why you think Christmas should no longer be a federal holiday?”

Luc sat intently watching one of his alter-egos proceed to blaspheme Christmas. But she didn’t turn away from him. She wanted to discuss it with him. And she wanted to ignore what she saw on the TV. “I’ve seen them,” he shrugged.

Of course he had, she thought. He’s seen everything; he knows everything. “She was so beautiful,” Emma sighed, as if she
was a teenager with a crush.

“You’re beautiful,” he countered.

“But she was white light and she was so pure and good,” she whispered, and then wished she hadn’t said it. She looked away from him, toward the TV.

“What is good, Emma?” He whispered. “The angels, they are not human. They can’t live, and breathe. They don’t know fear, or love, or sadness. They don’t know anything but good.” He pulled her into his lap, and gazed into her eyes.

“I would rather have you than anything else.” She blushed and looked away, but he grabbed her cheeks and held her gaze, penetrating as his eyes went from solid black to light amber to yellow, then blood red.

“You’ve been touched by so much evil, even before me, and your heart remained so sweet. They’ve never known the touch of a cruel hand who was supposed to care for them. They’ve never felt what it was like to be forced to give up something
they
wanted so dearly.”

And then she began to cry, but still he held her gaze. “Why do you think I had to leave?” His voice was tortured, jagged. “I wanted to be human so badly. I wanted to feel emotions, to feel heartbreak, and loss, and love, and the feeling of holding on to something that you can’t ever let go.”

His hand moved slightly to catch her tear on his fingertips, then brought it to his lips. He smelled it like he did her blood, and then reached out his tongue to taste it. “I wanted to be human, and for a long time I thought I would never experience that. But now I feel. I feel everything.”

Then his lips went to hers, and she tasted the salt water of her tears on his lips. He kissed her gently, giving her every ounce of love in his body. He touched her skin lightly, until his blood mixed with hers brought that tingling sensation to her skin again.

S
he shivered as he easily undressed her and laid her on the couch. And still he touched and kissed her, until she was shaking from longing. Her lips quivered, butterflies flew in her stomach, and still she wanted him to continue teasing her body. And he did, for an hour, until she
begged
him to make love to her. H
e
loved her
until her insides
ached, until her thighs shook
and her heart hurt and her lungs felt like they were going to burst.

“I love you,” she whispered, and only then did he orgasm. And when he did he collapsed on her.

The
rest of the day
was spent in and by the pool. Instead of being chased, this time she was the chaser. She
splashed, dunked, and hung on him for over an hour.
F
inally she wrapped her legs around his waist, pinned him against the side of the pool, and kissed him. He didn’t protest, he couldn’t.
He allowed her to have control for a little while, until he had her pinned against the pool, pulling at her bikini until he had it off and th
rew it onto the side
.

He tried his tricks, his mouth and his fingers, but it didn’t work. He tried harder, sucking her nipples and biting them, grabbing her a
ss and shoving his huge member against her.

“Put it in,” she begged.
They made love in the pool, and then again on the chairs by the table. She was insatiable, and he was
eager
to
try to satiate her
.
They found their orgasm
s
together, Luc screaming as Emma tore into his flesh with her nails.
Sh
e shouldn’t be able to hurt him, no human ever had.
But Emma
dug her nails in
to his flesh and drew blood
.

When he fell into her body she saw the blood seeping down his back and over her fingers. Her first thought was to taste it. But he grabbed her hand
and held it against his heart
.

“You’re not a vampire. You don’t go around dri
nkin
g blood,” he admonished her. But as she stared at his blood he could see
her eyes were no longer blue; they were bright red.

“You did it to me,” she sighed, and pulled her hand up until she could smell it. Where her blood smelled like copper and tasted like rust, his smelled like smoke on a cool fall day. She wanted to taste it so bad, but he grabbed her hand before she could put it to her lips.
He wiped the blood against his skin and it was absorbed into his body.

“What am I then?” She struck back. “Because I am not human anymore.”

“You’re mine,” he challenged, “and do not ever forget it.” He rolled over onto his back and pulled her up on his chest. “This is not how I imagined it would b
e when we had sex
.” He rubbed her still wet hair and kissed it. “I’m sorry
.
I don’t want to argue with you. I’ll take you out for a nice dinner tonight, would you like that?”

She shrugged, not really sure what she wanted anyway. “Can we just stay here this evening?”

Luc liked that idea. After dinner they watched a movie in the theater, had drinks in the salon, and danced. And when they went to bed, together, he made love to her as
softly and tenderly as she’d ever imagined it could be
. She fell asleep blissfully happy.

She awoke early the next morning to prepare for her appointment with Father Peter. She asked the driver to stop by a shop where she could get an expensive pen set, and had it wrapped. She was ten minutes early to the theater, where Father Peter already waited.

“I bought you something,” she said shyly when she saw him. “Merry Christmas.”
And then she saw the angel again, on the other side of the room. It hovered a distance from them, as if it didn’t want to get so close to her again.

Emma saw it in a different light now. Where she thought it was light and good and pure she now saw it as empty, and cold. Emma stared at it not in curiosity but in pity.

He unwrapped
the expensive pens and blushed. “You shouldn’t have,” he complained. “But thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she glanced down at the floor. “Thank you for meeting me, I guess I was a little afraid I’d forget it all before the end of the break.”

She removed her coat and threw it on one of the chairs. She wore a camisole and sweater in black, a bl
ack and red plaid wool skirt with
hose and a pair of her black patent school shoes. She thought she looked perfect. Father Peter’s gasped intake of breath told her he thought so too. And then his heart started thumping loudly.

She strode up the steps to the stage, and as he watched her legs and rear his heart stopped for nearly a second, then started again. She began Juliet’s balcony lines from Scene II, and before long Father Peter was on stage acting the part of Romeo. She reached her hands out to him, and he took them. When he did, it all came flooding at her.

In five years the headmaster retires. He suggests Father Peter fill his shoes as headmaster and priest of the congregation. In 10 years he has the whole parish. He’s voted Bishop at 45, and Cardinal at 50.

American priests lobby for Father Peter, due to his spotless record and
selfless
works for the church. At 55, he’s voted Pope Innocence XVII; the first American pope, and the youngest in centuries. He was well liked and well received. And he changes the face of religion in the US.

He’s young, vital, and people genuinely like him and listen to his message. He changes many lives, he saves many souls. He preaches of God’s forgiveness in a time of sin, when many lose hope.