Orfeo (21 page)

This stirred her lusts even more. She was becoming animal and while he pushed one finger between her legs, hunting for that secret spot, she bit his ear, making him wince in pain and pleasure. He found the object of his desire, and as he came into contact with her clitoris, pressed the unfurling button and then encountered the sleek, velvet channel of her open sex, she gave a gasp and let her head fall backwards.

The beat of the wind and falling rain was a crash of gigantic drums up above, a constant thunder the like of which neither of them had ever heard before. Water continued to fall like blood on the pair of them as she ground her hips into his finger, his cock. The incessant rhythm was repeated in her heart, throbbing against her rib cage, and she could sense the shared pulse of Orfeo’s body.

Her hips began to buck faster now, her thighs slick with her own juices while her lover pushed another, and then another finger into her, making her gasp and thrash, her head thrown back and her soaking hair trailing like serpents down her back. She could still feel his cock, so huge and massive, and as her abdomen swayed around on him she summoned the mighty spirit to possess her, to take her and penetrate her, to ride her into the terrifying night.

Her mind seemed to expand, beyond the darkened boards across the window. She could hear every noise outside. The hurricane unleashed its screaming demons and threw diabolic spears of water down from heaven. She heard Agau, the violent god who makes the earth roar, howling for his children to destroy the very land about them. She heard the terrible Wendigo flying upon the relentless winds, seeking human flesh. Indra, raging for battle, unleashed his devas with rods of lightning, while Jupiter strove to punish the world for its crimes.

Orfeo now had become a beast to her daemon, his own desperation driving him on as he drank the wine-dark water that streamed from the ceiling above them down her chest. His hands were feverish in their excitement, and he snapped the frail remnants of fabric covering her lust into tatters, lifting her up roughly so that her sex was poised above his shaft.

For a second, the world seemed to halt and the room they were in became a vast cavern, limitless and empty in a howling, seething space. Then she thrust herself down upon him, screaming as the lightning burst behind her eyes, filling up her skull with violent desire. She
was
the tiger now, traveling in the depths of space, her white skin tortured with shadows and stripes. As she forced herself further down, taking him all the way inside her so that her womb was bound to the very tip of him, she howled without words.

Her head flung backwards, her breasts pushed up and out from her chest as she clung onto Orfeo with one arm, she lost herself as she rode him, buttocks quivering with each thrust, her nipples hard as the iron nails that danced on the amulet around her neck. He fucked her brutally and she, flooding him with her sex, absorbed him all, a pale Kali dancing the dance of life and death in the hurricane. Possession was complete and she lost herself to all the
loa
who took the sacrifice of her body in the thunder and the destruction of the city, while Orfeo screwed up his face, summoning all his energy for one final gift to the gods.

As his shaft throbbed and rippled and swelled, Ardyce opened her eyes in shock and fright, her lips then curving into an insane laugh as she rose and fell faster, harder, taking him deeper with each stroke. Her head bowed to his, almost touching him, the sweat of their bodies indiscriminate now from the water that covered them, just as they no longer seemed to be in some single room but instead were lost in a huge and terrible space.

When he thought he could take no more, she fucked him harder, slamming down with a fury that banished all thought. He felt as though he was splitting, as though his loins were expanding to a point beyond all infinity and his blood would burst through his veins. He yelled almost with pain and indescribable pleasure as he did indeed burst at last, and spasms shot through Ardyce’s body as she clung to him, whimpering as she almost fell into darkness herself, her eyes clamped shut in her ecstasy.

And still, as they held each other, gods and demons stormed overhead, howling for blind vengeance on the city.

As Orfeo lay on the makeshift cot that he had rigged up in one of the few offices left relatively intact after the hurricane had passed, he felt Ardyce stir beside him. Watching her sleeping, he let his hand gently touch her forehead. The fever appeared to have gone and, for the first time in two days, she had slept for a few hours peacefully. As such, he continued to let her rest, cradling her head against his chest.

Their lovemaking on the night that Katrina had broken above the city had been insane, literally outside and beyond reason. During those moments, their desperation had led them to ignore any danger. Afterwards, Ardyce had seemed to emerge from her despondency: whatever possession she had endured having driven all sense of malaise.

And yet, alert as she then became, even she could not ignore the full horrors of that dreadful storm as it rained down destruction on the city. Around them the building had seemed to shake and shiver, and Orfeo had feared that the entire abandoned factory would come crashing down on their heads. Yet to go outside was to face certain death, so he had led her, almost naked and as frightened as him, deeper into the building where they had sheltered and held each other as violent winds raged about them.

They had barely slept that night, and when Orfeo stirred the next morning and left their temporary haven he was astonished by what he saw.

The large factory floor that they had entered through the previous night was almost completely submerged, dirty red-brown water nearly filling the massive room, with just the tops of some equipment and machinery emerging from the slick lake that transformed the building into some vast, abandoned aquarium. Looking out of windows he could see that all the streets had become poisonous lagoons, filthy and squalid, without a soul visible anywhere.

Unsure what to do his fears had been raised further when he returned to Ardyce and found her shivering, her face covered with sweat and a fever raging that caused her pale skin to look flushed and sickened. Dropping beside her, his eyes full of worry, she had shaken her head and mustered a pitiful smile. “Cold turkey,” she grimaced. “Too much junk in my veins.”

He had held her then but after a while he realized that their problems were only just beginning. Ardyce was ill, her body craving the drug that Earl had filled her with endlessly for days, and cramps and pains didn’t make her depressed irritability any better. There was, however, no easy way for them to leave the factory. After searching its upper floors, he found an old, makeshift camp bed and some blankets, placing these around Ardyce to protect her.

Yet this solved only one problem. He was already parched, and he was certain that Ardyce’s own suffering was increasing with her thirst and hunger. Searching through the factory had proved fruitless. Though he had no desire to leave Ardyce, even for a short time, it was quite clear that whatever help lay in the outside world would take a long time to arrive and in the meantime they both would have to endure terrible privations.

Wrapping his lover in blankets and promising to return as quickly as possible, he had gone up to the roof of the factory. As far as he could see, the buildings all around rose up from the murky lake—including Hades, which was all too visible from this position. That fact made him more cautious, so that from then on he kept his body as low as possible as he crept along the roof.

With some effort, he was able to climb down to the adjacent building. This was as empty as the next, but in the one beyond he found offices that had been used recently. Part of the block had been semi-destroyed by the winds that had smashed through windows and doors, but among the detritus some of the rooms contained tins of food and bottles of water that were undamaged.

Taking these back to the factory, he had managed to get Ardyce to drink a little though she could not bear any food. Her skin was burning to the touch, sweat layering her once fresh face, and he realized how much thinner she had become. Yet as she groaned at him, cursing and doubled over, her eyes also flashed with grim humor. “I take it you didn’t find any heroin,” she said self-mockingly.

Mistaking her tone, he mopped her brow and sat beside her. “Perhaps I can find some medicines, if I search harder.”

She shook her head. “This isn’t as bad as last time. At least I’ve got something I want to live for at the end of it.” Her smile was weak.

And yet the full withdrawal grew even worse though, he realized afterwards, it was mercifully brief. For a day and a night she could not move and, at times, would cry out in pain as he held her, wanting to cry himself at her distress. She gripped onto him, her nails digging into his skin, and sometimes her body would convulse in shocks of agony, the same agony that prevented her from sleeping.

Orfeo himself snatched exhausted periods of half-sleep, his ribs aching with old physical pains while his heart burned with emotional fears. He would wake at any sound, imagining that the crashes he sometimes heard as damaged parts of the buildings fell into the floodwater were Earl or his men returning. At one point, while Ardyce dozed, he felt compelled to do another search, finding a radio that allowed him to gather some sense of what was happening.

Then, at the end of the second day, Ardyce appeared more peaceful and finally drifted off into a deep sleep. He had slept beside her, their bodies pressed together on the narrow bed, and when he woke the sky above them was calm and blue, light shining down on them as they lay there.

With her still in his arms, her skin pale against his dark muscles but also blooming with the returning colors of life, he began to sing to her very softly:

“Outside this room in peeks the world,

ashamed of its envy,

to stare at our two bodies curled,

embraced in sleep, our minds entwirled

in drowsy dreams of ecstasy.

Have you ever the air heard sigh

when we awake and kiss?

It is the world as it goes by,

disconsolate, and jealously

pretending it sees not our bliss.

In our two minds exists a throne

which freely love exalts,

to which she rises, rules as one

who has the power, she alone,

to serve forever without fault.”

As his voice gently filled the room, he became aware of her eyes opening, intense and green, her hair thicker and more luxuriant than it had been for days. She smiled at him and reached up to touch his dark cheek with her fingers.

“Thank you,” she said.

He laughed and shrugged before squeezing her into him. “For what?”

She regarded him intently. “Saving my life and making such beautiful music for me—that’s what for. You know. The simple stuff.”

He nodded and returned her kiss, savoring the warmth of her body as she held him close.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Starving,” was her immediate reply. “I’ll still feel a little sick for a couple of days, I imagine, but the worst of it’s over.” She frowned and stepped from the cot, moving across to the window before looking out. Orfeo watched her with a little sadness: Ardyce had always been small but now she looked so fragile as she leaned out of the window.

“I never thought I’d see anything like this,” she said very quietly. “It’s like the end of the world.”

“It is the end of the world—well, the world we knew at least.” Orfeo came up to her and placed an arm around her chest, letting her feel his support against her frail body.

“And Hades? I can’t see it from here.”

“That’s deliberate. I didn’t want anyone who might be left there knowing that we were so close. But it looks deserted, like everywhere else. We could be the last two people left alive in this part of New Orleans, for all I know.”

She frowned at this. “First by fire,” she said very softly. “Now by flood.” Then her memory was distracted. “I hope that Baptiste is okay.”

She must have felt Orfeo’s muscles tense. Turning to face him, she looked at him with concern in her eyes. “What is it?” she asked, her face serious. “Was he harmed in the hurricane?”

Orfeo shook his head, but pain flashed across his features.

“What is it? Tell me.”

He paused then watched her come closer, moving slowly to the crib and standing there as his head sank into his hands. Giving him time, she eventually knelt before him, her graceful limbs like those of a supplicant.

At last he raised his face and stared at her in misery. “He... they, they got him. It was before...”

Ardyce felt her heart leap inside her but she restrained her emotions, maintaining her calm as Orfeo’s own sorrow welled up.

“It was when I tried to find you. It’s... it’s my fault.” His eyes glittered with tears and she raised a hand to his cheek once more.

“Hush,” she said soothingly. “Whatever Earl and those thugs of his did, none of it’s your fault.”

He looked at her pleadingly but said nothing, swallowing back the tears. Ardyce was surprised at herself, at how calm she remained. She had loved Baptiste, and remembered the strange little man who had visited Xanadu first when she was a child and then as a young woman, but the anger that flared inside her heart toward Earl was extinguished all too quickly. There would be time for mourning later. There would be too many to mourn in New Orleans.