Paint It Black (9 page)

'Want to tell me about it?'

Silence.

Palmer took another hit from the tequila and began to climb free of the hammock. 'I better go check on Lethe ...'

Sonja touched his arm. 'No, you stay here Let me do it.'

Palmer shrugged and settled back. 'Whatever. Bring me back a couple of beers, won't you?'

'Sure thing.' As Sonja entered the house she paused on the threshold, fixing Palmer with her unreadable eyes. 'Do you love me?'

Palmer looked up, slightly taken aback by the question.

She rarely spoke the word 'love' with her mouth - only her mind. 'Of course I love you!' He gave a short laugh to show how silly a question it was.

She paused, as if weighing his response. 'Why?'

Palmer blinked, his smile slowly dissolving into a frown. 'I just love you, that's all.'

'Oh.' Again the pause. 'I'll be back with your beer in a few minutes.'

Palmer sat in the hammock under the starlit sky, listening to the calls of the night birds, and wondered what the hell had gone down in New Orleans.

The door to Lethe's bedroom was slightly ajar, allowing light from the hall to filter in, so Lethe wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night and be scared to find herself alone in the dark. Sonja was uncertain whether Lethe was actually scared of the dark or not, but it seemed the proper thing to do.

She stuck her head inside the door, her eyes automatically adjusting to the dim light. Lethe lay on her side, her back to the door, surrounded by a multitude of dolls. She had kicked off her bedclothes. Sonja stepped inside the room, quiet as a shadow, and stooped to retrieve the discarded covers. As she straightened up, she noticed something moving out of the corner of her eye.

Fido had shifted from its sentinel position at the foot of the bed, its eyes glowing like molten ore. Although she knew the seraphim meant her no harm, Sonja felt the hair on her scalp prickle and a low, guttural growl begin deep inside her chest.

Lethe rolled over and opened her eyes, smiling beatifically.

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'Don't be afraid, Auntie Blue. Fido's just protectin' me, that's all.'

'Why should he have to protect you from me? I'd never hurt you, sweetie.'

'I know, Auntie. But the Other would. It wants to hurt me right now, doesn't it?'

Smart little fucker, isn 't she?

'I would never let the Other harm you, Lethe. You know that'

'I know, Auntie Blue. But Fido isn't so sure.'

Palmer started from a light doze as a Tecate, still dripping ice from the cooler, was pressed into his hand. He jerked awake like a science-lab frog zapped by a dry-cell battery.

'Uhn! Oh, thanks.' He tilted back the bottle for a quick slug.

Sonja straddled him as he lay in the hammock. Except for her sunglasses, she was naked.

She perched atop his crotch, the moonlight outlining her body in silver and shadow. Her breasts were still as full, her stomach and thighs just as taut as he remembered. Perhaps even more so. Palmer set aside his beer and reached up with one damp hand to tweak her nipples. They were cool and hard between his fingers, like smooth little stones.

She reached down with one hand and yanked open his denim shirt as if it was made of newspaper, sending buttons flying in every direction. Lowering herself atop him, she slid her legs down his, wrapping her arms around his neck. Palmer caressed her naked hips and she moved to fill his hand, like a cat eager to be stroked. A heady rush of arousal and fear surged through him, as it always did before their lovemaking.

On a deep, instinctual level, Palmer knew the beautiful creature that fondled him was death personified; yet he trusted her not to kill him. His physical excitement came from the knowledge that his lover could, at any given moment, tear him apart like fresh bread.

The moment his fly was open, Palmer's penis leapt free. He closed his eyes as Sonja took him into her mouth, exhaling a long sigh as the curvature of her fangs glided against the head of his penis. A sane man would go limp knowing razor-sharp teeth encircled his cock. But Palmer hadn't been sane in a long while. Trembling, he pulled her head away from his crotch, gasping between his teeth as he fought to regain control.

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) She moved quickly, lowering herself onto him before he could protest. Palmer reached up to cup her breasts and, with a firm upward thrust of his hips, penetrated both her body and her mind. To tell the truth, he missed the mental bonding more than he missed the physical aspects of sex.

He could always jerk off when she was gone, but there was no such thing as masturbatory telepathy. And without further effort, he surrendered all thought and self, all barriers dissolving with the bond.

Once again Palmer found himself in the other place he and Sonja shared during their trysts. As he moved through a gray space that was neither air nor water, he was uncertain whether he was flying or swimming. It was warm and comforting, like he imagined the womb must be. Sonja emerged from the gray, as swift and sure as a shark in its element, her features blurred by speed. She wrapped herself around Palmer, her arms and legs impossibly long and tapered. Her hair was a dark blur, trailing behind her like jet exhaust.

She looked more like a nude painted by an Impressionist than a flesh-and-blood woman.

He wrapped his own limbs about her, pulling her into himself.

Thoughts, feelings, perceptions jittered between them like static electricity, the inner voices growing louder and softer as they merged. This sharing of self and experience, more than anything else, was how they managed to 'catch up' with one another after so many months apart. Sonja's face floated inside his mind's eye, the features softened by release as she flowed into him and he into her.

Missed you.

Need you...

Love you ...

Worried...

Gone so long...

Love you...

Judd...

Judd?

Sonja's eyes went hard and cold and suddenly Palmer was no longer in the warm gray place, but falling, plummeting through space as if he had stepped from the lip of a cliff into the deepest, darkest pit in the Carlsbad Cavern. It felt as if he was spiraling down, down, down into the mouth of hell itself. The transition was so sudden, he didn't even have

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) the time or breath to scream for his life.

He hit hard, but because he was not a physical thing, there were no broken bones. He groaned and got to his feet, surveying his new surroundings. The first thing he felt was the wind, cutting into him like a flaying knife. He was in the middle of a vast arctic ice field, a dark, moon-haunted sky overhead. In the far distance he could make out the humps of vast glacier-bound mountains. As he turned around, shuddering in the frigid mind winds, he marveled at the frozen desolation surrounding him. There was nothing but an empty tract of ice, gleaming blackly in the moonlight. As far as he could tell, he was the only living thing to be seen for thousands of miles in any direction.

Sonja?

There was no answer to his mind call as it echoed across the frozen sea.

SONJA!

Nothing moved or waved or responded to his cry.

Exasperated, and starting to get a little scared, Palmer struck off in the direction of the full moon on the horizon.

He didn't know why - it simply seemed like the thing to do. He had never gotten lost inside anyone before - at least he assumed the ice-bound tundra was Sonja's mental construct, not his own. But he was certain he would have to rely on his instincts if he wanted to get out of this mess.

The ice was smooth beneath his feet, at least ten feet thick, but he didn't have any trouble moving across the glasslike surface. He had gone a mile, possibly more, before he realized he was being followed by something below the ice.

At first it looked to be a shadow, black and amorphous beneath the thick layer of ice. For a moment Palmer experienced a surge of blind fear, recalling a nature documentary he'd once seen on PBS where a killer whale stalked a seal sunning itself on a floe, smashing its way through several feet of ice to snatch the hapless beast and drag it to its death.

Struggling to remain calm, he reminded himself that he was nowhere near the Arctic Circle and that whatever might be lurking beneath the ice, it certainly wasn't a killer whale.

Marshaling his courage, he dropped to his knees, wiping at the fine layer of dry snow covering the ice with numbed hands, peering intently at the thing beneath the ice. It was probably Sonja, no doubt trying to find him.

Sonja?

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) Twin fires blinked on underneath the ice, glowing like embers lost from hell's furnace. Only then did Palmer realize what he'd stumbled across. He opened his mouth to scream for help, but it was too late. The Other knew he was there.

And unprotected.

Arms burst through the ice floe, the skin cold and hard and blue. The hands were those of a crone, with hooked, cracked nails. They flailed about blindly, seeking purchase on the slippery surface. The Other pulled itself out of its frozen grave, like a woman wriggling free of a girdle. The head emerged after the arms, the hair transformed into a dark sunburst by rapidly forming icicles. The eyes burned with an unending anger, and the lips seemed obscenely full, like freshly fed leeches. They pulled back into a predator's grin of anticipation, revealing shriveled black gums and the teeth of a killing thing. As demonic as the Other's features were, there was a horrible familiarity about them - like those of a loved one in a picture torn to shreds and pasted back together by inexpert hands.

Look who's come to pay me a visit!

The Other's mind voice sounded like a clogged kitchen sink trying to approximate human speech. It made Palmer ill to feel its cold, hateful venom leaking into his consciousness.

Give me a kiss, lover boy!

He smashed his fist into its face as hard as he could. Blood the color and consistency of transmission fluid flew from the Other's nostrils. It laughed - a sound that lay somewhere between a lion roaring and a toilet backing up. The Other's laugh made him hit it harder - and harder. But all it did was laugh and laugh and laugh.

Suddenly Palmer was back in his own body. He landed two more blows before he realized he was hitting Sonja.

Somehow he had gotten astride her and pinned her throat with his left hand while his right rose and fell, rose and fell. She lay underneath him, her face smeared with something sticky. Her sunglasses had fallen off, revealing eyes the color of a dying sun. In the dark, the pale ichor that passed for blood amongst her kind almost looked normal.

Palmer stared at his lover's bruised and swollen face - the damage already righting itself before his stunned eyes then at his right hand. It was still clenched in a fist. He slowly opened it, as if expecting a stinging insect to fly out.

'Oh, God. God. I'm sorry, Sonja. I don't know what happened.

I was ... I thought I was fighting ... I must have flipped

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) out. I didn't mean to hurt you.'

She smiled then - the slow, lazy smile of satiation - and placed a finger on his trembling lips, halting his babbled apology.

'Hush.'

'But--'

'I said hush.' She pulled him down to her, pressing his face between her breasts. He could not have escaped her embrace even if he tried.

They lay together for a long time until Palmer finally fell asleep. In his dreams he heard the groaning of approaching glaciers and the echo of inhuman laughter.

5.

They had sex nearly every night after that. Sometimes more than once. But the telepathic communion they had once shared

was now strained, bordering nonexistent. Sonja was always guarded during their trysts, her psionic defenses at the ready.

It was as though she did not dare allow herself to relax, even at the most intimate of moments. Palmer was uncertain whether she was afraid of the Other getting out or of his getting in.

She was a blank wall as far as he was concerned - unreadable and impenetrable, shrugging off his attempts at psychic rapport. While her mental frigidity bothered him, Palmer never pressed the issue. Whatever secrets Sonja kept locked inside herself were hers and hers alone.

As the telepathic aspect of their relationship dwindled, the sadistic side grew. The first time she came to him with the whip, he threw it down. He yelled his defiance. He did not want to play that game. He refused to hurt her. Then she took off her sunglasses and looked at him with those terrible eyes mutated beyond tears, and something within him broke.

He beat her until the blood flew, stippling the walls and spotting the bare light-bulb hanging over the bed. He beat her until his arm ached and the whip fell from numbed fingers. All to meet her need. She needed his blows. Needed them as much as his caresses. Maybe more. Palmer did not know what sins she hoped to expiate with stinging leather kisses and roses fashioned of swollen flesh and splattered blood, nor did he want to. Some things are sacred. Even to monsters.

About a week after her arrival home, Palmer awoke in the

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) middle of the night to find the bed empty. His first thought was of Lethe, and his heart leapt in fear. He hurried to the child's bedroom, but Lethe was sound asleep. He felt a surge of shame.

Sonja would no more harm Lethe than he would. He looked out the window at the nearby forest. No doubt she was out hunting. After all, she was nocturnal. He returned to his room as she crawled in through the window. She was completely nude, her mouth and belly smeared with fresh blood.