Underworld Queen (2 page)

“Time’s up,” he said as he double-clicked the stopwatch. There was a groan and some shuffling of feet as his freshman class began, one by one, to sit up or untangle themselves from their favorite test-taking posture. One male student in the back row scratched the inside of his ear with a paperclip.

“Okay, now pass your papers to the front of the row, and Jeremy here will pick them up.”

A young auburn-haired girl with enormous breasts, wearing a low-cut sundress and too much eye makeup handed her paper in directly to Carl, ignoring Jeremy, who was fuming.

“There you go, Professor. I left my number on top in case you can’t read my writing.”

Carl’s face flushed and his groin bulged, in spite of the internal scolding he gave himself. It had been months since his weekend with the yoga instructor who took him to a couples Kundalini retreat and blew his mind. Who knew? It was the most intense sexual liaison of his life. He’d come prepared for some stretching and relaxation. What he got was a weekend so hot he couldn’t remember any of the exercises or techniques, and he had to drop out of his Pilates class because the sight of his instructor’s ass was so distracting he thought he might hurt himself. Today he was in desperate need of a lay, but balling one of his students was out of the question.

“Thank you, Darlene. I’m sure I’ll be just fine.”

“I’m sure you are, sir.” She winked and turned around slowly. He watched her ass swizzle out the door in spite of himself. He laced his fingers through his curly hair.

Get a grip, Carl!
He looked at Jeremy who obediently stood before him with the stack of collected papers.

Jeremy also wore a bow tie. In fact, he had even begun to wear sweater vests just like his Professor wore every day. Carl had five of them, one for each day of the week. This being Thursday, he wore the green one.

“Here you go, sir.”

“Thanks, Jeremy.” He took the test papers and smiled at the short youth who had become his shadow of late. All but a handful of students had shuffled out of the class. “Um, I’m not going to be in my office this afternoon. I have some research I have to attend to,” Carl said to Jeremy over the sheaf of papers.

The youth looked crestfallen. Carl would have felt worse, but he’d begun to figure out the boy had formed an attraction for him, of the sexual kind. The obvious signs were growing daily and made him extremely uncomfortable.

At first, he was flattered Jeremy had such a love of 17
^th
century England, which was Carl’s own interest. He willingly agreed to tutor him, become a mentor. But later, as the meetings between the two got longer and more regular, a different type of relationship was beginning to develop, at least on the boy’s part. He could see Jeremy found something else in him besides facts of history—something that was not returned, and never would be.

Time to nip this in the bud.

“Well, sir, I shall see you on Saturday then, at the library.” Jeremy’s pink cheeks were dimpled with a smile between them. He never showed his teeth.

“I’m thinking you are spending too much time on your studies and not enough time with your family and friends.”

The boy frowned.

“Jeremy, forgive me, but all these meetings…it’s making me a little uncomfortable.” The boy looked at his feet so Carl was forced to speak to the top of his light brown curly hair. Jeremy’s large ears protruded out at the sides, reminding Carl of a Hobbit. “Maybe I’m making too much out of this, but I’m feeling a little ill at ease, like maybe it isn’t appropriate to be alone with you so much.”

There, now you’ve said it. Hope to God his parents don’t have a direct line to the department chair.

At first, the boy’s hazel eyes shot up in pain. But soon Carl saw his gaze returned with the steely blue-green stare of a dangerous young soul fueled by something very dark. He shuddered as he watched a slow smile to creep onto Jeremy’s youthful face. The smile was Cheshire cat wide, but his eyes were cold and cruel.

Carl realized he never really knew this kid, and perhaps underestimated his motives. He was suddenly glad he had decided to distance himself from him.

Jeremy is a ticking time bomb.

Carl dashed up
the shallow steps to the library’s three-story domed lobby, immediately turning right. He was eager to start the research the strange dark lady had hired him to do.

Stopping at the glass-walled entrance, he straightened his hair and snapped his bow tie, smiling. His perfectly white teeth smiled back at him in the reflection, prompting a grateful inner nod to his mother for having insisted he wear braces as a child. He swiped his teacher’s card and was admitted with a couple of loud clicks. He had an uncharacteristic spring in his step, and sauntering to the reference desk like a young pup, leaned over. To the right, two abandoned tables bordered a two-story picture window. He was disappointed the reference desk was empty. Carl didn’t want to use the bell, but was left no choice. The metallic tinkling sound made his heart flutter.

Molly, the red-haired goddess of the reference section, magically appeared. Every time Carl saw her he thought about doing unspeakable things to her in the stacks room, with the smell of their passion and the old leather books filling his nostrils. She reminded him of Tess in the Highwayman poem:

Tess, the landlord’s daughter.

The landlord’s red-haired daughter

A long red ribbon

Tied to her chest.

“Professor Carrington, are you alright?” Her green eyes sent the taste of lime to his tongue, as his mouth watered.

How long have I been staring at her?

The girl was blushing, and he was suddenly glad for the counter between them.

“So sorry. I was thinking about one of my students, and I forgot where I was for a second.”

“Well, whoever she is, I think she’s one lucky girl.” Molly smiled easily. That was one of the reasons he liked coming here, when he could have gone to the large University library downtown.

Then her words drifted into his consciousness. He was fairly sure he was blushing.

“Not what you think, Molly.”

“Really?” She leaned forward and showed him the natural line of her ample cleavage. She pressed the light pink pillows of her breasts into the top of the counter and rubbed them back and forth with a slight turn of her body at the waist.

Carl swallowed. He adjusted the smooth brown belt on his tweed pants. Then he remembered his mission. The mysterious lady had paid him a month’s salary for his research.

In advance.

She’d descended on him while he was attending office hours the week before. When she entered the room she locked his door behind her. As she introduced herself and extended her small hand, sweat had collected on his upper lip and he found it difficult to even tell her his name. She asked him to help her with some historical information about one person in particular.

“Molly, I need some information about a Jonas Starling, an 17
^th
century British landowner who had interests in the Caribbean.

“Well, if that’s all, Professor.” She gave him a smile that almost bowled him over.

“Um, yes. Thank you.” The room’s temperature had climbed a good five degrees.

Molly punched a few keys on her computer and instructed him to wait while she went to the back. He thought about how she wrinkled her nose and how it accentuated the creamy pinkness of her skin and the light dusting of freckles across her bridge. She was kissable. Probably everywhere she was kissable.

She brought out a large volume, slapping it down on the countertop with a whack, sending a small cloud of dust up and out at the sides. Carl was surprised to read the title:

Pirates of the Americas.

T
he charred remains
of the executed dark angel smelled like the soil at a slaughterhouse Jonas had seen as a child. It was disgusting then, and it was even more disgusting now, as his black boots trudged through the crispy black flakes, kicking up a fine dark-grey dust that got lodged in his nostrils. He forced a sneeze to clear himself out, but was rewarded with a whirlwind of fine particles—the remains of the dark angel who had come to meet him. Jonas had not told Audray everything about his past and this now festered like a splinter under the nail of his moral code. He might have to reveal things he’d hoped he could bury forever, along with the story of his youthful love and her family who had died, partially because of who he’d become.

He had to see for himself what was left of the fellow. He found a melted silver medallion, like a large dollop of shiny wax, still attached to the grape wreath silver chain some of his ancestors wore when Jonas was a boy. He couldn’t make out any indentation or markings as he cleaned the smooth surface from the black grit of death. It reflected back his distorted face.

Although already dead, Jonas had begun to cherish his afterlife as an immortal dark angel. His relationship with the new Director made him feel strangely alive for the first time since becoming immortal some three hundred years ago. After his disastrous years at Court, where he’d been conscripted into doing despicable things, he’d slipped aboard a vessel bound for the Caribbean, and set up a new life on several of the islands there, until he’d been discovered and then took the only option available to him as a last resort: join the Underworld as a dark angel.

It had been a long three hundred years, and he’d considered ending himself in a true death. Until recently, he’d wondered if he could tolerate living forever. But finding Audray had changed everything and opened up a brand new bright future for Jonas. She was every bit his equal, in intelligence and strength of character. Her desires in the bedroom also matched his perfectly. If he could have a thousand nights with different women or one night with her, he would take her anytime. He’d thought of himself as completely dark and brooding. But these past few weeks he was beginning to feel the warm afterglow of—could it be—love?

Nah. Impossible. It’s lust. I’m thinking with my other brain.
He would have to think more on this.

He’d denied himself anything but an occasional quick and simple no-talking tryst, just to take care of his basic needs. But now he carefully explored her body, asked her questions, told her things about being the man he really was, being careful to edit out the parts he wasn’t ready to reveal. He thought about their conversation and her questions that very first day they were together.

“I made kings for a living.”

Audray had looked puzzled. “Explain,” she said as she walked around his body that afternoon and touched him…places…that came alive and ached for her. She was looking at him, picturing in her mind what they would look like together, what they would feel like together. His grandfather had the same gift of sight, but only with women he loved. Audray stimulated in him
something
like that. He’d never before been inside a woman’s head, and he was intrigued with her strength, as well as her sensuality. He’d never thought much about how women saw things. But he wound up wanting to know how she thought. And what she wanted him to do.

“I pleasured royal ladies whose husbands could not father an heir.”

“I see.”

“I was very good at it.”

“I’m counting on it,” she’d answered. They’d been inseparable ever since.

His smile abruptly left his face as his thoughts returned to the macabre scene at the cell as he fingered the melted medallion in his palm. “Anyone get a look at this before it melted?”

Two guards shook their heads, but the third said he had seen one before, on a new recruit who came to the Underworld a month ago.

“Strange fellow. Pink skin, almost womanly, if you know what I mean.”

The other two guards burst into laughter and Jonas had to wait to find out the guard checked under the man’s clothes, and yes indeed, he was a man, albeit a small one.

“So what about the medallion?”

“It had a design in the middle with lines radiating outward. Three little balls, lined up like a triangle, with an eye in each one. There was a serpent that bordered the outside, eating its tail.”

“Never-ending cycle of evil,” Jonas whispered, recalling the old fairy tale his grandmother had scared him to death with at night when he was young, as well as a few nights as a teen. “Everything for the kingdom,” he whispered, recalling the ancient prophecy of a ruling dynasty that would never be vanquished. It had been a long time since he’d thought of it. He’d supposed everyone from that cult were long dead.

“Never heard of it or seen it before.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. Wasn’t your story. It’s mine.”

The guards started to clean up the floor, getting out their mops and long-sleeved bright blue rubber gloves.

“Anybody come after, looking for this guy?”

“Nope. And the viewing room was empty, except for the regulars.”

Regulars were female dark angels, the reviewers, who liked to be on the receiving end of a man’s first night as a dark angel, when they discovered for the first time their prowess, able to make love indefinitely. They could finally be the men they bragged about being. These ladies would haunt the viewing area, watch the human’s last dying vision on the big screen and then vie for the privilege of treating the reconstituted dark angel like long-lost lovers. They’d pounce on him just after he walked through the padded blue door to the viewing reception area. Sort of a “welcome to hell and the rest of your dark life, sucker.” It was usually an emotional time for a man—or a woman.