CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
Joanna snaked her arms around Alex’s neck, kissed his face and languidly suckled his throat, chin and earlobes, all the while pushing her body closer to his.
Yet Vicente remained as still as the Lucifer under which they’d watched her dance.
Alex felt his cock stiffen, though nobody had touched it.
It cast an obscene shadow against the cave wall, bouncing around in the fire’s light as Joanna withdrew.
Looking down with embarrassment, he saw firelight lap the smooth, tanned curves of Jago’s body as his chest rose and fell.
He too was hard, and the sight only heightened Alex’s lust. Yet to cover or touch himself in any way seemed an act of sacrilege.
“Do you want to hold him?” Joanna asked. “I assure you, his hearts desire it.”
“Hearts?” Alex asked. “Plural?”
Joanna retreated to the shadows and lounged against the stone, naked as Eve and silent as a grave.
“Alex,” Vicente hissed. “We should leave.”
Alex looked up at him, stunned by the suggestion. “You want to leave? Now?”
“Hold Jago,” Joanna said again.
“Please?” Vis begged, shivering despite the fire. “Alex, this was a mistake. I’m so cold.”
“My love?” Joanna’s voice possessed no mockery, only the kindness and playfulness she had always shown Vicente during their time together. “Warm yourself by the fire. You must be tired as well.”
Alex leapt to catch Vicente as his knees appeared to give way. He lowered him perpendicular to Jago, putting about three feet between him and the fire. Before Alex could ask if he was comfortable, Vicente was sound asleep.
“Joanna?” The name was thick with caution as he said it. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but—”
“Why would you want to stop something you don’t understand?” She returned to the fireside, sitting cross-legged once more. “Come.”
Without a better option, Alex sat, trying not to look at the crowd or their penetrating stares. “Why are you here? Did Jago bring you?”
“We journeyed together. I think it’s rather taken it out of him, though.”
Jago and Vicente’s long, steady breaths filled the silence between them.
“You drugged him,” Alex said. “Was it the wine? Is that why I felt so—”
“You thought I needed rescue?” she asked. “How tediously chivalrous. Your imagination is better than that, Alex.”
He swallowed as a young woman whose neck bore the dark outline of a rope bruise drew his eye. “I still don’t understand. What are you doing here? The Zugarramurdi witches were just ordinary women who—”
“You needn’t reassure yourself.” She held up a delicate hand as she interrupted him.
“They won’t hurt you. But there is both truth and falsehood in what you say, and in the end, who’s to sort the blameless from those with powers such as Jago’s?
They all gather here now, to these caves, forged in fire, to sup from a power that is as real as it is ancient. ”
Alex checked on Jago again, hoping that coming here hadn’t doomed the four of them.
Joanna reached behind her, lifting a pot of ointment into the light.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Our ticket here? As I said, we journeyed together, but he needs replenishment. Help me.” She gave Alex a kind smile, procuring another pot and working the ointment into Jago’s feet.
“What is it, exactly?”
“A flying ointment. Our dear friend and muse will need to take flight one last time before we’re done here. Don’t ask me what it’s made of, just help me.”
With no small hesitation, Alex massaged the substance into Jago’s face, neck and shoulders, smearing more of it over his chest and arms, ensuring, just as Jago had when he’d done this to Alex, that every inch of his body was covered.
For a brief instant, Alex wished he’d held his nerve the night he’d opened his eyes to find them hovering in mid-air, naked in each other’s arms; that he’d embraced the experience and trusted what it could offer.
“Do you feel it drawing you closer?” asked a voice from somewhere deeper within the cave, neither male nor female, but a fusion of Joanna, Jago and… something else. “It’s not too late, if you wish to be alone with him. My gift to you.”
“Who’s there?” Alex demanded. “Who are you?” He couldn’t imagine letting Joanna out of his sight in that moment, much less making love to a man passed out.
The voice answered. “Of course… I understand.”
“Show yourself!” His own voice echoed back at him. “What’s going on, Joanna? Why are you here?”
“I simply had to know.” She nudged Jago’s genitals out of the way as she coated his thighs. “And tonight, I understood it with absolute clarity.”
“Understood what?” Alex didn’t know why he was hesitant to oil Jago’s sex. It wasn’t like he hadn’t handled it before.
“What they wanted from me. What I wanted from them. You felt it, just as I did, in the theatre. Their story. Darling, he must be completely covered. I’m sure he’d rather you do it than me.”
“Enough!” Alex pulled Jago’s body against his, wrapping his arm around him protectively. “No more riddles or games or blasted metaphors. Who are they?”
“Darling, you saw for yourself. Lorca, and his last lover, the man who would become Jago.”
Alex stared at her in disbelief.
“The man who killed him.”
“I saw the show, Joanna.” Somehow, he’d refrained from snarling. But real as it had seemed, their show was just a fine trick, blending magick, mischief, and strange poetry. “I don’t know who that man was, but it was not him.”
“But it was, in his last host. I don’t know the fellow’s name or how he came to join the Fascists. I’ve a notion he infiltrated them in secret, unwilling to let any other man kill his lover. What a terrible, romantic ending that would be. In any case, it’s his secret to share, not mine.”
“Joanna, this is…”
“A joke? A dream? No, Alex, it’s a transfer. Tonight, there will be another. You felt their minds, shared as one, just as Jago shared it with me.”
“Jago? He? They?”
“Both and neither. One and two, all at once. Now, oil his genitals, please.”
“No.”
“If you will not hear it from me, then spend these last moments with him.” Joanna stood up, and before Alex could challenge or stop her, stepped forward into the fire, vanishing before Alex had time to scream her name.
Last moments? He held Jago tighter. Wake up, damn it. Wake up.
“Alex?” came Jago’s voice from the darkness. The body he was holding slept peacefully.
“Jago? Where are you? Where’s Joanna?”
“Alex, what she’s telling you is true. I’m sorry. She caught me quite off-guard tonight.”
Alex’s body trembled as his frustration grew. “What do you mean?”
“I thought you were the one possessing magickal talent, but it was her. I suppose I should have known. She was… so different.”
“Jago?” he asked, gathering his composure and lowering his voice, as if he could keep the audience from overhearing their conversation… assuming they heard anything at all. “What exactly are you?”
“I told you, a witch, like some of the souls here. Beyond that, Alex, I don’t explain myself for fear of sending my companions mad.”
“Just tell me!” he barked, unable to stop a sob from entering his voice. “You owe me the truth, at least.”
“A muse? Perhaps it’s as good a word as any.
I was a simple weaver of magick when I found this creature and bound it to me.
Over time, I have used its powers to delight and enrich souls across Europe and the East. More recently, in the Americas.
I suppose Australia or Africa is the next logical step?
” Jago let out a laugh as soft as a housecat’s bell.
“It started with the royal courts, then the common public, though I must confess, mass media in this century still overwhelms me. There’s nothing quite like the intimacy of the theatre, don’t you agree? ”
“Jago, please talk sense.”
“In simplest terms, Alex, I am both the witch and the creature in its service. Once I bound one being to my soul, it was easy to continue, and with each new bonding, we combine our talents. I come, I watch and listen, taking care to choose the right mind and heart. Feasting on lovely chaos, I bring out the very best they have to offer, releasing the creator they were always meant to be. When they can grow no further, we bond and seek out the next.”
“Bond? You mean you… absorb them?”
“We merge, and from our composite parts, choose a desired form. Nothing sells talent like ideal beauty and charm, after all. But the illusion can’t last forever. I can prolong the body’s life, not immortalise it.”
Alex looked down at Jago and was astonished to find the body of the great poet, Lorca, his hairline receding, portly belly overhanging his hips, and an undeniable smile warming his face. “You bonded with... This is Lorca’s body?”
“The original, indeed, adjusted to suit our purposes. Alex, I am Lorca, just as I am the witch and the muse and every artist I have nourished over more years than I care to remember. Now, imagine if you’d done your Blood Wedding.
No offence, Alex, but that would have been excruciating for me.
Still, I wanted to be honest with you, so you saw the show you saw.
Lorca was my lover, once. If I had simply murdered him in our bed, it would have raised questions, led the Fascists right to us.
So I replaced a member of Franco’s death squad.
Once my bullet found Lorca’s heart, it was a simple matter to ‘disappear’ his body myself. ”
The poet in Alex’s arms smiled at him, opening his eyes at last, before returning to peaceful slumber.
“Were you also going to kill me?”
“I was going to offer you immortality. The chance to burn bright until your talent was extinguished, either by others or by your own doubts. Lorca found himself surrounded by enemies with no desire to flee. The only way to protect him was—”
“How convenient for you.” Alex caressed his soft cheek and squeezed his shoulders. Not dead, but sleeping, just as Jago—if there was such a man—had been moments earlier.