Scarlet Dream (12 page)

Kirsten tugged at Kane's fingers again, taking another step toward the room with a stride of her long, bare legs. Kane followed, his hand tingling at the beautiful woman's touch.

The one with green eyes ducked past the door, disappearing into the room beyond. A moment later, still pulling at the very tips of his fingers, blue-eyed Kirsten led Kane into the room.

A magnificent bed stood in the middle of the room, a deep mattress sitting so low that it remained close to the floor. Candles were lit all around the room, and incense burned in one corner, a thin trail of smoke drifting from it in a languid swirl toward the ceiling. A wide sash window overlooked the bed to the left side, and the light that came past the red-velvet drapes seemed to be the light of sunset as it ebbed into night. The blonde with green eyes was already relaxing on the bed, lounging back, her long legs stretching out in front of her. She caught Kane's eye and gave a long, slow blink, her dark lashes coming down to cover her eyes like the night sky that was hurrying over the window behind her.

Desire had never been a motivating factor in Kane's makeup. Others had often wondered, occasionally to his face, why he and Brigid Baptiste had not officially
become a couple. They had failed to understand the psychological makeup of the man, how his Magistrate training had taught him a discipline that was so ingrained that he would always put the mission first.

But now, faced with these two beautiful creatures in this house of carnal desire, Kane felt himself drawn into their web, felt himself unspooling, coming loose at the seams, losing a part of the very thing that made him.

Kirsten had joined her friend on the mattress and, with both women's eyes still fixed on Kane's, she worked the clasp of her friend's stocking, slowly unravelling it and curling the wispy material down her partner's shapely leg.

Kane was unravelling, too, he realized, somehow losing something of his essence in the face of everything he was being offered here. He could hear his pulse in his ears, feel himself being dragged toward the promise that lay in front of him.

With the mess of thoughts swimming drunkenly in his head, Kane found himself drawn to the bed, the two beautiful temptresses encouraging him to join them in their games of lust.

 

E
LLIE WALKED DOWN
the red-walled corridor beyond the foot of the stairs, and Grant followed like some obedient hound. The round woman eyed each painting that hung on the wall as she passed it, pushing back the velvet curtains here and there to examine several more closely before moving on. There must have been a hundred paintings in frames big and small, each frame gilded with a rich gold as yellow as butter.

When Ellie halted in front of yet another of the pictures, Grant struggled to break whatever trance he knew he was in. Kane had explained to him about the trancelike
creatures he and Baptiste had met at Papa Hurbon's, and Brigid had told him of the drugs used by the Bizango practitioners that could enslave a man's mind, making him like a zombie of voodoo lore—not a reanimated corpse, but a walking dead man all the same. Grant had met with Papa Hurbon, too, at a later date, once his followers had finally departed, and he wondered now if they had had to break the spell that they were under, battle through the miasma induced by the drug cocktail that they had been dosed with. Was this woman a Bizango, a practitioner of the darkest form of voodoo arts? Whatever it was, Grant needed to break this fix that Ellie had on him—now, while her back was turned, before she could ensnare him further with another potent, impossible sip of the brandy.

Grant could not comprehend how it truly worked, this trick with the brandy glass. He had heard of deceptions that involved hypnosis, where a stage magician would somehow make his subject walk through fire or bark like a dog or strip naked in front of an audience of strangers, but this was no stage trick. The woman had needed to say no words to ensnare him, seemed to plant no trigger in his regimented mind to exercise her control of him.

Desperately, Grant bunched his fists, the movement feeling as if he had overstretched, as if a muscle had been pulled, a ligament torn. If he could do that much, he reasoned, he could break the spell; it was all just a matter of willpower.

Then Ellie turned to him, her broad face and uneven bonnet of hair filling his vision. “This one, I think,” she said, smiling wickedly as she tapped her index finger against the glass that covered the nearest painting, its velvet drapes pulled open to reveal its contents.

Automatically, Grant's eyes followed where the woman tapped, observing the picture that was framed there. It
was a small picture, six inches by eight, finished in dark hues, browns and blacks. Pale, tiny figures waited in the picture, naked bodies copulating in a dark forest as, in the distance behind them, a hilltop city burned, billowing black smoke into the indigo sky beneath the waning moon.

Ellie took a step back, leaving Grant standing alone in front of the strange painting. “Close your eyes,” she instructed. “The transition is easier that way.”

Thus told, Grant found his eyelids shutting in a long, slow blink as if overcome by sleep. Then he heard Ellie laugh, a hearty sound close to his ear. But as the laughter continued it seemed to get farther and farther away.

Grant felt the cool night air playing on his bare skin then, and when he reopened his eyes, he found he was no longer in the scarlet corridor. Instead, he was in a dark forest, the indigo night sky looming high overhead. From close by, the familiar moans and cries of sexual desire played like an orchestra tuning up, and as he stepped out of the trees Grant saw the pale figures of the painting clenching one another in their desperate trysts, caught up in the urgency of desire as their city burned in the distance. The ex-Magistrate turned, looking all around him and seeing more and more figures engaged in this moonlit orgy, sweat glistering off their skin.

“Oh, crap,” Grant muttered. He was inside the painting.

“So I'm stuck inside a picture,” Grant snarled. “How the hell does that work?”

He turned around, watched the dark smoke as it billowed into the sky from the distant city, flames reflecting against the clouds. The smoke was moving, so whatever this painting had been when he had first looked at it it was now animated, a viable world with which he could interact. The moans of desire from the copulating couples between the trees confirmed that, too. High above, wisps of clouds rippled in front of the waning moon, drifting slowly across the night sky.

Grant turned 360 degrees, looking for an exit, the edge of the picture, the window of its frame. There was nothing; he appeared to be standing in a moonlit forest that stretched on as far as he could see. There were several pale figures just a dozen or so paces away, locked in embraces, their naked bodies moving rhythmically as fornicating partners pressed against each other.

Grant checked himself, saw that he was still dressed in his shadow suit and the long coat made of Kevlar weave. A moment later he was warily approaching the nearest of the couples. The couple was deeply involved with each other, kissing and tenderly stroking each other as Grant strode across the soil and halted in front of them.

Up close, the couple looked remarkably alike, and Grant saw that it was a young dark-haired man with a girl
who appeared almost to be his twin. Their eyes were the pale blue of ice, and there could be no mistaking that they were related when one saw them together side by side—related or perhaps simply drawn by the same hand. The man looked somewhat girlish, with a soft face and long, dark hair trailing past his neck in a cascade of curls, a full mouth with the kind of bruised lips that suggested a pout no matter what he did. The young woman had identical coloring, but the soft lines and full lips of her face seemed more appropriate in a woman, and her hair trailed farther down her naked back and over her shoulders to her breasts. Grant wondered if they were related or if this was merely a deficiency of the painter who had created the picture he was now standing in.

“I need some help,” Grant stated as the couple turned to him. “How did I get here?”

The couple looked at him blankly, as if unable to comprehend the question. Grant wondered if they were more like automatons, unable to do anything other than move within the confines of their roles in the painted bacchanalian tryst. He decided to try a more direct question, one they would certainly know the answer to. “Okay, then how did
you
get here?”

The man's thin eyebrows rose, and the trace of a smile crossed his full lips. “We walked,” he said, as if it were obvious.

“From where?” Grant asked.

“The city,” the woman replied, inclining her head as she admired Grant with her ghostly, ice-blue eyes.

“When?” Grant asked, but already he had the sinking feeling that he was not getting anywhere with these people.

“When the inferno began—” the man said.

“And the people started burning,” the woman concluded for him.

“When was that?” Grant asked, his sense of irritation growing.

“Oh, before the moon rose,” the man told him.

Grant turned away, shaking his head in despair. He wasn't just trapped in a painting; he was trapped in a riddle. The occupants spoke in circles, most likely because they had no knowledge of the world beyond the contextual frame of the painting. The city was alight and they were out here, naked in the forest, as part of some mass orgy under the light of the waning moon. Everything they said was merely restating the details of the painting. There was no depth to their comprehension, nothing beneath the surface of the brushstrokes that had made them.

As he considered this, a woman stepped out from behind a tree. She was naked, shorter than Grant by more than a foot, and her skin glistened in the moonlight a golden color, like the skin of a peach. She smiled as she met Grant's eye, then turned away as if with shyness.

It was hard to tell in the soft moonlight, but Grant wondered that he recognized her. Her trim, athletic form, her dark hair and golden skin—the woman looked like his lover Shizuka.

In annoyance, Grant turned away, scouring the surrounding forest and wondering how to escape. Should he go to the city? Or walk in one direction until perhaps he met with the edge of the picture? Could such a thing be done?

The woman strode closer, her body moving like liquid in the moonlight, and placed her hands around Grant's waist from behind, pulling herself close to him and rubbing against him like a cat. “Don't leave,” she said, as if
reading his thoughts. “We have so much we can do right here, while the city burns forever.”

Grant turned his head, looking at the ill-lit but familiar face of Shizuka over his shoulder. Even as a painting she was beautiful, and despite his suspicions, he felt the desire welling within him.

 

K
ANE LAY BACK ON THE BED
as the two women stripped him, pulling away his torn jacket and peeling off the shadow suit that clung to his muscular body like a second skin. The smell of incense clouded his senses, and its scent was now joined by the proximity of the women, the clean smell of their flawless, beautiful skin. He reached for one of them, Kirsten of the blue eyes, pulled her to him like a man plucking a ripe fruit from a tree. As the other blonde laid kisses upon his body, Kane brought Kirsten's face close to his own, planted kisses on her neck, gorging on her smell.

Then he moved, reaching up to kiss her lips, and Kirsten seemed to tremble in his arms, kissing Kane back with more and more desperation, her kisses fierce and urgent.

The other girl joined them both, running her hands up the ex-Mag's body, and Kane watched as she placed soft, wet kisses along Kirsten's spine, making the gorgeous blonde arch her back with delight.

Kane felt the need inside him, his lust increasing so that it crowded out every other thought. He pulled for the girl with the green eyes, dragging her from Kirsten by her hair, yanking her to him with no gentleness, just urgency.

“I want you,” he breathed.

“I'm yours,” she replied, but her words were stifled as Kane kissed her mouth, coiled his fingers in her silky hair.

 

I
NSIDE THE PAINTING
, the woman looked like Shizuka.

And yet she didn't, Grant realized as he moved to kiss her. The simple strokes of the paintbrush had rendered an impression that could be Shizuka, nothing more, and as Grant saw her up close he noted the way the illusion had been created, the swift strokes of the brush to make the illusion of a face, a body. We see what we want to see in paintings, he thought, bring what we have inside of us as viewers.

Grant shrugged out of her grip and, with a practiced flinch of the tendons in his wrist, brought the Sin Eater into his palm.

“Keep away,” he instructed, jabbing the muzzle of the pistol at the painted woman. “Whatever you are, keep the hell away from me.”

The Shizuka look-alike laughed, a musical trilling in the nighttime forest. “Oh, you surely don't mean that, lover,” she chided. Then she took a pace closer to Grant once more, the moonlight playing off of her bare flesh.

“What's my name?” Grant asked, the gun still poised in front of him.

Instead of answering immediately, the woman stepped against the gun, letting its cold metal rest against her breastbone, her nipples jutting out. Then she dipped just slightly, rubbing the end of the gun with her naked chest. “Whatever you want me to call you, lover,” she told Grant, a catlike grin on her beautiful mouth.

Without a moment's hesitation, Grant pulled the trigger of the Sin Eater, drilling a burst of 9 mm bullets into the Shizuka pretender who was reaching out for his embrace. There was an explosion, and a cloud of dust blocked Grant's vision for a moment as the bullets struck home against the chest of his would-be lover. Then he stood back and watched, incredulous, as the temptress
deteriorated the layers of paint that made her real falling away as if they had never been there. First the beautifully sculpted lines of her skin, the golden tan losing its depth and becoming a simpler shade of pink, thin yellow brushstrokes providing its highlights. Then the flesh itself disappeared and a white outline stood in its place, an outline in the shape of a beautiful woman, just two dark smears showing the hair atop her head, the triangle at the meeting of her legs. In place of her beautiful face there was just a cross now, lightly scrawled onto the canvas, showing roughly where eyes and nose would sit. And then the edges of the woman shape blurred and the whiteness that had once been Shizuka's form became just a scribble in space. And then the forest behind her began to show through, appearing like an image seen through wet tissue.

Grant let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding as all evidence that the woman had ever existed finally disappeared. “Okay,” he muttered, “it's like that, is it? New world, new rules.”

New world, new rules, no way out.

“No,” Grant stormed. There was always a way out. He just needed to trust in his friends. And then he realized what it was that he really needed to do.

 

“T
AKE ME
,” the woman with the green ocean in her eyes whispered when Kane broke away from their kiss, and it seemed as if her words were running through his skull.

And then another voice was running through Kane's skull, a man's voice, deep and familiar. “Kane? Kane, do you copy?”

Kane's eyes seemed to blur, and the room and the women within it lost focus for a moment as the voice drilled through his head.

“Repeat. Kane, do you copy?”

It was Grant, speaking to him. Not in his head, but through the Commtact link that ran along his jawbone and into his skull casing, a link that bypassed the normal aural channels.

“This is Kane,” Kane said, screwing his eyes tight to better concentrate on the communication that seemed so desperately out of place in the love nest. “What's happening, Grant?”

 

I
NSIDE THE PAINTING
, Grant smiled as he heard Kane's voice reverberating through the Commtact in his skull. At least that still worked right. The broad-shouldered ex-Mag held his free hand to his ear as he strode through the unlit forest away from the sounds of the orgy, his booted feet sinking into the soft earth beneath them.

“We're under some kind of hypnosis,” Grant explained. “I'm not sure how, but I think Ellie's managed to trick us into seeing things that aren't there. This ringing any bells with you?”

“A few,” Kane responded over their shared Commtact link.

Within the lush bedroom of the House Lilandera, Kane opened his eyes just a fraction, seeing the bright red walls and the flickering candles once more, the two beautiful women whose naked bodies were stretched taut in their desire for him.

“I'm stuck in some kind of freaky painting and I can't get out on my own,” Grant explained over the Commtact. “You and Brigid have to break this spell right now or we're all screwed.”

Kane closed his eyes, shutting out the vision of the room and the desirable women. “When this is over, remind me to tell you about your timing,” Kane returned in response.

“Count on it,” Grant said before letting the Commtact link go dead.

The smell of burning incense still in his nostrils, Kane ignored the cooing of the women on the bed, ignored the feel of their warm flesh against his skin. He had felt himself being broken apart earlier, unraveling as the women called to him, losing his integrity in some indefinable yet terrifying way. Grant's call over the Commtact had brought him back to reality; he just needed to hold on to his sanity long enough to stay there.

With that, Kane engaged the Commtact link once again, shutting out everything that was going on around him.

“Baptiste?” Kane began. “It's Kane. Can you hear me?”

 

I
N THE MOONLIT GARDEN
, the man stepped fully out of the shadows cast by the towering oaks and Brigid gasped, her heart racing as she saw him properly for the first time since the night of their first joining just three evenings before. He was broad of shoulder and long of leg, and he walked in a way that made her know, truly know, that here was a man who commanded all he surveyed. As he was the master of his territory, so, too, was he the master of her, heart and soul.

Her heart drummed against her breast, so hard it felt as if it would break through the flimsy garment that she wore. Brigid watched as the wolf who was a man came for her, answering her siren song. At the bottom of the trellis, he placed one powerful foot on its lowest bar and, like a deckhand, began to ascend it like a ladder, hurrying so swiftly and with such surety that Brigid wondered if his weight might pull the whole thing loose from her father's wall, bringing Daddy's precious roses with it. In silence, the man climbed, the dark, liquid shadow of his
body hurrying toward her like an arrow aimed squarely at her beating heart. This was how he had come to her before, she realized, when he had taken her maidenhood as she'd struggled beneath him, scared and confused, her pale body arched in both pleasure and pain.

“Oh Lord, forgive me,” she whispered, her hands coming together for a moment in front of her heaving breasts. She desired him so surely now that it pulled at her from within, threatened to disable her, to pull her apart at the seams.

Persephone descended into the underworld for love, Brigid recalled, a silly story from her childhood. But this man—this beast—ascended and thus brought the underworld to her, sowing the taint of that underworld deep inside her, planting the infernal flames deep inside her womanhood.

When he appeared on the balcony, Brigid recoiled, her whole body trembling with fear and anticipation. With the moon behind him, he seemed to be crafted of the inky shadows themselves, only the slightest glint playing where she knew his eyes must be. Brigid stepped back farther, until she met with the cool edge of the door that led into her bedchamber. Familiar with every step of this dance, the man stepped forward, his eyes fixed on her, watching the pulse that throbbed at her pale throat. She felt so small in front of him, her body tiny when placed so close to his.