She Wakes (18 page)

    She felt herself flush, heat rising quickly and steadily. She pulled her panties off and was open to him. He moved down over her, his mouth tracing a tingling line of fire from her breastbone over her ribs and belly down inside her until his tongue found its target and she began to sweat in earnest, shuddering, until the small pitchfork jabs of fire became one long burning that seemed to go on and on so that when he rose over her grinning his cheeks and chin were slick with her and as he entered her she was half again her normal size…

    

    

    …and when it was over, inexplicably, she was crying.

    The look on his face questioned her-what? why? but she could scarcely tell him, she scarcely knew herself. It had just happened, out of control, automatic, timed to her release.
Let go,
she thought.
If you have to, babble.

    “You see this?” she said. “You see what a wreck you’ve made of me. You know what you’re doing to me? Because I don’t, dammit!” And she was laughing now as well.

    “I see it. And whatever it is, you’re doing it to me too, Billie.”

    “Am I?"

    “Yes.”

    “Really?”

    “Really. And you’ll keep on doing it too, I think.”

    “Dodgson, don’t leave me, okay? I didn’t want to say that. I promised myself I wouldn’t say that. But don’t”

    “I won’t.”

    “You didn’t count on this, did you?”

    “No.”

    “Neither did I. I thought it was years and years away.”

    “It was. We just grew up fast together. That’s all.”

    He hugged her tightly.

    “And what if you leave me?” he said.

    “Fat chance. Dodgson, you should live so long.”

    

    

    Later his voice was drowsy.

    “You’ve still got the bra on,” he said.

    “I know. You can take it…if you want, you can take it…”

    And smiling, she fell asleep.

    

    

    In her sleep she felt a sudden cold.

    It awakened her.

    Dodgson lay asleep beside her and his body was warm.

    But the cold surrounded her. Like a damp mist.

    She felt it everywhere-on her breasts, her thighs, her face. She touched her stomach. She wasn’t sweating. She wasn’t sick. It wasn’t a cold sweat. She looked at the window.

    It was open.

    
Perhaps that’s it,
she thought. Though she felt no breeze.

    She got up and went to the window and closed the shutters.

    The cold seemed to follow her.

    
Wake him up,
she thought.

    And then urgently thought,
No, don't.

    She climbed back into bed. Trembling, she pulled up the covers. She moved closer to him.

    A few minutes later the feeling passed.

    Is it fever after all?

    It took a while but again she fell asleep.

    

    

    He crested the hill where their camp lay and saw them in the glow of the fire, Dulac on one side and Ruth on the other. Ruth strummed the battered old guitar and they passed a bottle of wine. From the way Dulac thrust the wine at him Sadlier knew he was drunk.

    “Finish it,” he said. The voice was slurred. “We have another.”

    Sadlier accepted the bottle, tilted it back, drained it and tossed it away. He stood behind Dulac and watched him uncork the bottle of red.

    Ruth continued strumming. She was a horrible guitar player. Sadlier rolled up his sleeves.

    There was little point in waiting.

    “Adieu mes amis,” he said.

    His hands moved down to the sides of Dulac’s head. His knees bent forward to brace the body. His powerful arms and shoulders flexed and twisted, snapping the head around to the side with a sound like green wood breaking. He released the body and Dulac fell toward the fire.

    Ruth’s guitar chord hung in the air. She opened her mouth to scream. He reached through the fire and pulled her toward him facedown into it and held her there until her legs stopped twitching and he could no longer stand the billowing smoke. He pushed her aside.

    Her hair was almost gone. The eyes boiled in their sockets. A small twig poked through the blackened upper lip.

    His hands were badly burned. In his excitement he barely felt them.

    Dulac was bleeding from the eyes, nose and mouth. Sadlier hoisted him up on his shoulder. He dropped to one knee and threw Ruth’s body over the other shoulder. They weren’t particularly heavy. Like starved children. Unmindful that someone might see him from another campsite he walked down the hill.

    For Sadlier their bodies were sacks of gold, jewels, precious metals.

    His purchase into eternity.

    

    

    When she woke this time she was frightened.

    Something had touched her.

    Something had touched her there and it rocketed her out of her pit of dreams as though doused with ice-cold water-and perhaps it was a dream, it had to be a dream, she was sure of it, but the touch was so cold and so private and foul that she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think of sleeping. She sat with him in bed and waited for the sunrise. It felt safe to do that. It did not feel safe to dream.

    Because dream or not she’d felt it slip inside her, and its touch was cruel.

    

    

    Her gown was black and made of illusion. Sadlier knew that now. It didn’t matter.

    He dumped them down in front of her near the black and crawling thing on the floor and near the other two, the teenage boy and girl and did not wonder how they came to be there, knew only that she had gathered them and saw that the crabs had begun to find them too as they would now find Ruth and Dulac. He didn’t care. She was everything to him now.

    She motioned him outside ahead of her.

    She pushed him back and down. Behind her the night surf thundered.

    She stepped up to him and straddled his face and parted the gown still further. She pressed herself against him. He gripped her buttocks. Her flesh was cold to his hands but inside of her his tongue found a blazing scorching heat.

    Again he tasted blood. Old blood, dead blood. Raw and ripe.

    Suddenly it poured over him.

    He lapped it like a dog. She pushed him away.

    She tore away his shirt and smiling, leaned over him, pressed her body to his, her smile broadening as she felt him already wet inside his trousers.

    “Close your eyes if you want,” she said, her voice like a silk glove.

    He kept them open.

    So that it was like watching a snake or perhaps a wolf or bird of prey because she drew back slowly, he could feel the hard muscles coil and then when it came it was sudden, faster than he could possibly have imagined it would be.

    For a moment the wide blue eyes seemed to float before him, blotting out the sun.

    Then the mouth flew open and the head struck down as she tore at his neck and shoulder, blood pulsing out over both of them as she ripped at him and bolted his flesh, head darting forward and then jerking back as she swallowed and the last thing he saw as a living man was the look of ecstasy on her face and knew that it matched his own.

    

    

    

    “What is this, Malibu?”

    They stood on the hilltop over Paradise Beach. They’d had to walk there. In the harbor at Plati Yialos the waves were choppy and none of the ferries were running. Yet here it was more than choppy. This was surf. Where normally it was placid as a lake.

    The weather had gone strange again.

    “You ready?”

    Dodgson grinned. “Guess so.”

    “You tell anybody you went bodysurfing in Greece, they’ll never believe you.”

    Danny led the way down. It was the first time since Lelia’s death that he seemed himself again. Dodgson knew Michelle had been working on him. Breakfast this morning was nearly the same kind of boisterous affair they’d known in Crete. And now they had this weird magical beach day-high waves and a clear cloudless sky. You could hope it would complete the recovery.

    He touched Billie’s hand.

    “Want me to cany that now?” He pointed to the small portable easel and shoulder bag containing her sketch pad, books and materials.

    “I’m fine.”

    She’s quiet today, he thought-subdued, introspective. He wondered if anything was bothering her. He knew she was basically happy. With him, with the two of them together. He supposed that if and when she wanted to tell him about it, she would.

    They spread out their mats and anchored them against the wind with clothes and books and sandals, stripped down and ran to the water.

    There were half a dozen people out there already beyond the sandbar. The waves were six-foot curls, some of them. They were breaking far from shore and that was good because the sandbar was infested with sea urchins. But you wouldn’t get near that now.

    He’d never heard Michelle whoop before.

    But she was whooping now, running out ahead of them, leaping into the whitecaps. The undertow tugged at his ankles. It drifted to the left, but without the power the waves would suggest. It wouldn’t be bad.

    He grabbed Billie’s hand and ran. Ahead of them Danny tackled Michelle and they disappeared into the foam, came up laughing and sputtering.

    In a little while they were out far enough so that you could catch a wave and ride it but they were bunched too close together. Danny and Michelle would shoot right over his head.

    “We better spread out," he said.

    Danny nodded.

    Billie squeezed his hand.

    “Us too?”

    “A little. No farther than this.”

    She smiled. “Good. Because I’m really sort of awful at this sort of thing.”

    “It’s easy. All you do is float. When the wave comes along you flatten out and try to swim with it, just below the curl, until it catches you. Then you just go with it.”

    He looked over his shoulder. Waves back he saw a big one building.

    “Go over the next two and wait for the one after.”

    On Billie the water was just chest-high. He watched her push off the bottom and bob over the crest.

    “Hey Dodgson!”

    It was Danny. He'd seen the wave.

    “You ready?”

    “I’m ready.”

    He reached over and squeezed Billie’s hand. He stood at three-quarter profile to the wave and watched it build. It was going to be big and powerful.

    The second one passed them.

    “Okay. Get ready to hop right into it and start swimming. The same time I do. Swim hard so it doesn’t pass you by.”

    She looked doubtful. “You’re sure about this?”.

    “You’re going to love it.”

    He let go of her hand. He saw Michelle and Danny catch it behind them to the right, pushed off with his feet and swam like hell, then felt the velocity envelop him and shoot him forward so that there was no need to swim anymore, he’d caught it just right-and there was a moment when the ride was smooth and exhilarating and then another when it was rocky, jarring but just as good and then he was in white water and the wave was churning sand all over him. His knees hit bottom. He twisted over on his ass and let it carry him along the sand awhile and then stood up.

    Billie was ten feet behind him to the right. She was grinning.

    “Again, please?”

    “Can do.”

    Michelle and Danny were about three feet apart, five feet up the beach. She lay there like some kind of Playboy foldout, smiling, while Danny crawled over on his hands and knees and flung himself on her. She screamed with laughter. Then Danny stopped abruptly, kneeled, looked up at them and spit sand off his tongue.

    Dodgson turned to Billie.

    “He’ll be fine,” he said.

    Some waves were good and some were very good and they kept at it until Billie and Michelle were exhausted. Then there were just the two of them out there and the big waves kept breaking.

    There’s maybe three or four left in me, he thought, then it’s quits. He didn’t want to quit. He felt like a kid again.

    But Danny looked tired too.

    

    

    They went out farther so they could catch the waves earlier for a longer, smoother ride. If they stood on tiptoe now their chins just cleared the water. It gave them just enough height to push off strong for the big ones, the ones they wanted to ride and bob up easily over the others. The tow was pulling them down the beach some but not much. He could see Michelle on a beach mat and Billie sketching a few yards over to the right.

    Danny was just within shouting distance maybe twenty-five feet away.

    Dodgson saw a good one building.

    He watched it over his shoulder, prepared to make his move. His muscles tensed and he enjoyed the feeling-it had been a while since he’d had a good workout. He watched it rise.

    His timing was excellent now. Practice had sharpened him. He waited for the moment. He felt the sucking sensation at his legs and the push at his shoulders and went with it. The biggest one so far.

    Everything was right. His balance perfect, his position perfect- and he was flying along just under the curl, a weightless feeling, flying along in a line straight as a bullet yet it hadn’t even begun to break yet, wouldn’t for a while, he was riding this one high.