To the Bone (18 page)

Coffee Trenette. Used up.

Focused.

Monks moved onward, lurching a little. Gwen walked patiently beside him. They came around the grotto's rock cornice, and he found himself staring at another tableau. A man was leaning against the wall, relaxed, complacent-looking. Monks recognized the satyrlike older man who had accosted Gwen earlier. He was clothed, but his trousers were open and his chubby member protruding, gripped in the hand of a pretty young woman. She was nude, her skin glistening with water, apparently just out of the pool. One of her knees was slightly bent, as if she was about to kneel.

But when she saw Monks and Gwen, she let go of him and stepped away, head turning aside and gaze going downcast, arms moving automatically across her body. Monks had once read somewhere that a Western woman, if caught unclothed by a strange man, would cover her vulva and breasts, but in other parts of the world, she would cover her face. There was a certain logic to that.

The satyr grinned at Gwen. “I keep telling you, baby, I got the power,” he said.

“You got Viagra,” Monks suggested distantly.

The grin dissolved into a hostile stare.

“Why don't you go back where you came from?”

“Impossible,” Monks pointed out, frowning. “No space-time continuum can ever be repeated.”

“You're a fucking wacko, you know that?”

“Not my fault. Schroedinger's.”

“Get outta here!”

Monks backed away, shaking his head, trying to clear it. His brain seemed to bounce inside his skull.

Gwen came beside him again, catching his arm, steadying him. “Ivan likes to make sure everyone knows he's still virile.”

“Poor girl.”

“Don't worry, she's getting hers,” Gwen said. “He owns a modeling agency.”

Monks was starting to hyperventilate. Waves of pure sensation were washing through him. They were not unpleasant, but they were frightening.

Then he was aware that Julia D'Anton was standing in front of him. Her arms were folded imperiously.

“I see you found a date,” she said coolly to Gwen, but her gaze stayed on Monks.

“I see you're looking for one,” Gwen retorted.

Julia ignored her. “So you think someone murdered Eden, Dr. Monks? And that they might be here tonight?”

Things had gotten far more complicated than that, Monks thought, but the right words would not come.

“If thou hast blood on thy hands and shed more blood, wherewith shall ye cleanse it?” he asked, trying earnestly to explain. “For how shall ye wash off blood with blood?”

Both women looked startled.

Gwen murmured, “You'd better excuse us,” to Julia, and helped Monks to a chair. He sat heavily.

“Something—is happening to me,” he said.

“What kind of something?” Her fingers massaged his neck and shoulders.

“In my brain,” he tried to explain. “The universe is getting scrambled.”

She inhaled sharply. “Oh, my god. It sounds like ecstasy.”

“Like what?”

“Ecstasy,” Gwen said. “XTC.”

Monks raised his head and stared at her.

“I wonder if someone slipped some in your drink,” she said. “Sometimes they do that, to newcomers. It's supposed to be a joke, but this is awful.” Her fists went to her hips in outrage. “If I find out who did it, they'll never come here again.”

The import hit him with numbing impact. “I can't believe,” he said. “Can't believe—I need to get someplace.” He tried to heave himself to his feet. Her hand held him down with surprising strength.

“But darling, you
are
someplace,” she said. “Just sit still a minute. You'll calm down.” She crouched beside him, her face close. Her eyes were luminous with passion. “I'll predict the future. A beautiful woman wearing black will fulfill all your desires. Soon.”

“Black?” he said stupidly. Her blouse was white. The only thing black she was wearing, that he could see, at least, was the top underneath it.

“Come on. We'll go where we can be safe and alone.”

“My car,” he objected.

“Don't be silly, you can't drive. Let yourself
go,
Carroll. I'll take care of you.”

This time, she helped him get to his feet. He stumbled along, holding her hand like a child.

She led him away from the pool and party, around the base of the cliff that abutted the house, and up a stairway of flat stones that had been set into the earth. It was quiet here, and dark except for the gibbous moon, topping the coastal mountains to throw its cold fire across the land.

Monks became aware of the musical sound of trickling water, growing louder as they climbed. They came to a plateau, a hundred yards behind the house and a bit higher than its roof. The water was running down a rock face in a little fall, into a natural pool, about twenty feet across.

“This is the spring that feeds the swimming pool,” she said. “Julia and I used to play here. Sit.”

She eased him down onto a flat rock. Monks started to get his wind back. The dizzying surges were leveling off, leaving him bristling with unimagined perceptions. He turned his head slowly, seeing the swelling hillsides split into deep, secretive crevasses, watered by streams that emptied into the great sea. Trees burst from the earth with their fierce erect trunks, then gentled out into feminine branches that lifted long-tipped fingers in supplication to the sky. All of nature was fueled by this huge engine, the generator of life.

And everywhere within it, death was waiting—hidden, seething with menace, razor talons ready to strike.

“Are you ready for the lady in black?” she said.

He turned toward her voice. The blouse was gone and she was stepping out of her skirt, tossing it aside. Her fingers worked at a knot between her breasts. She unwound the garment sensuously, then tossed it around her neck. Monks realized that it was not a tube top. It was a black scarf.

Except for that, she was all flesh, shining ivory in the moonlight like a pagan goddess. Her splendor filled him with worshipful awe.

She walked to him boldly, high full breasts shimmying with her steps, nipples taut in the crisp air. She was shaved bare as marble. He stared, entranced by the miracle of skin, its color that no image could ever quite capture, its smooth sheen so warm to the touch.

“How old am I?” she demanded.

Monks was confused. How could she not know?

“Thirty…nine?” he hazarded.

“No! I'm eighteen. And very naughty.” Her hand moved to the back of his neck and urged him toward her. “Taste me.”

Monks parted the delicate slick flesh with his tongue, finding the tiny bud within. Jewel in the lotus, he thought. Man in the boat. He felt her shiver, her fingers tightening in his hair. She shivered again, and again, and then tensed, thrusting hard against him.

Far away above him, he heard three soft cries, oh, oh,
oh
.

For half a minute longer, they stayed still, with his cheek pressed against her warm belly while her fingers stroked his hair. Then she sank to her knees.

“Now you,” she said. Together, they tugged off his clothes. She pushed him back down onto the rock and fastened her mouth on him, liquid fire, quickly sucking him rigid. Then she slipped her arms around his neck and straddled his thighs. Monks slid slowly into delicious softness that went on and on, and oh, man, holy angels, this was
it,
this was what being born was all
about
—

“Can you feel my womb?” she whispered.

Whoa,
she was at it again, picking his brain, but could he
ever
feel it, a sweet soft rub right where it counted,
rubadubdub
—

“It
can feel
you.”

Well, that was just wonderful, that was how it was
supposed
to be, yep, the way it was all engineered, he understood that now like he never had. He was leaning back on his hands, sharp bits of gravel biting into his palms and buttocks like the teeth of unseen watchers, goading him on, gleefully whispering unintelligible words. She settled into a slow swaying of her hips, coaxing pleasure from him until there was no longer a point where he stopped and she started, with those wonderful breasts bouncing against his chest,
oh my god I am heartily sorry for anything bad I ever said about silicone.
The black scarf was looped around her throat, tumbling down her back, and abruptly, a razor-edged vision flashed into his mind of the night he had almost strangled Alison Chapley with a black scarf just like it. And he remembered that Gwen had picked
that
out of his head.

“The scarf,” he said thickly.

“Yes?” she panted.

“It's—how could you know—?”

“That it's special to you?”

“Not special,” he managed. “Scary.”

She quickened her movements, fingernails digging into his back. Her eyes were aglow, her mouth open, laughing, joining her voice to the invisible chortling chorus—

“Come in me!” she cried, and he did, in shuddering waves, roaring with the unendurable raw sensation.

Monks fell back onto the rock, pulse hammering, arms sprawled at his sides. He was drained, his soul as empty as his loins, nothing left of him but a sensory apparatus. She rose and stood over him, majestic, imperious, the insides of her thighs glistening with her conquest.

“Now I can heal you,” she said. “What you're afraid of—I'll make it go away.”

He wanted to point out that he did not really mind being afraid, that in some ways he much preferred it to being brave. But before he could find the words, she loosened the scarf from her neck and dangled it over him, as if teasing a cat.

“Take hold,” she said.

He reached up and gripped it. It was silk, sending little electric shocks through his fingertips. She tugged, stepping backward, urging him upright, then to his feet. When she got to the pool, she stepped in, disappearing with barely a splash. She was still holding her end of the scarf, and its tension jerked him to the pool's edge. A few seconds later, the white column of her body appeared again, her head breaking the surface. The scarf was stretched taut between them.

She tugged. Monks resisted, listening to the voices in the night's gentle wind. They seemed to be promising that this was what every instant of his life had been leading to.

She pulled again, harder. Whether she forced him or he yielded, he was not sure. The water was cool, a harsh shock to his skin, and it was deep. His feet did not touch bottom, and his motions to swim were awkward, his body not reacting with its usual coordination. It was alarming, a sudden forceful reminder of how out of control he was. He let the scarf go, struggled to the pool's rocky edge, and clung there. He spent a few seconds catching his breath, then started hauling his torso onto dry land.

Gwen breaststroked easily over to him. Her movements were graceful, and she shimmered with strength, her body all lissome toned muscle.

“Not
yet,”
she said. “You haven't given it a chance.” She gripped his ankle and tugged playfully, pulling him back in. He was not prepared for it, and he sank below the surface again, thrashing, gulping water. He came up hacking, groping for the rim.

“I can't”—he coughed—“do this.”

“Oh, yes. It's what you've always wanted.”

She disappeared in a smooth swift surface dive. He felt her hands at his right ankle again. This time, when she came back up, something was looped around it.

The something tugged, pulling him toward the pool's center.

She moved backward, treading water, holding the scarf's other end, towing him. She was smiling.

“Give in to the embryonic fluid that surrounds you,” she whispered. “You're being reborn.”

“I'm drowning,” Monks gasped.

He tried to eggbeater kick, but the scarf held his right leg useless, and the left just flailed. He paddled furiously with his arms, but they barely kept him afloat, and were tiring fast. The voices cawed in triumph now, like ravenous prisoners finally about to tear into a meal.

He understood, with terrible clarity, that the scarf linking him to Alison Chapley had returned now like a vengeful snake to strike back at him.

He thrashed toward Gwen, but she eluded him easily. She dove again, becoming a silvery shape flitting in the water's blackness. The scarf yanked at his ankle, hard this time, pulling him under. Monks fought his way back up, sucking air in shrieking gulps—understanding that this was the last time.

“Now ask yourself, was Eden really worth it?” he heard her say behind him.

Monks inhaled one more lungful of air, then plunged his face down into the water, doubling over to grip his ankle. The scarf was wet, tightened into a knot his fingers could not undo.

She yanked again, pulling his ankle from his hands. He found it once more, hooked his thumbs inside the loop, and pushed down with everything he had. The loop caught for a second on his heel, but then slipped free.

He broke the surface, clawing for the pool's rim, kicking back to keep her away. He felt her hands on his leg again, felt the tightening loop of the scarf. He lashed out savagely, a hard thrust with his heel. It connected, with a shocking impact, with her flesh. Then he was free.

He scrabbled out of the water on his belly, suddenly aware of a raging presence around him that wanted furiously to hold him back. The rocks' sharp teeth tore at his flesh as he rolled to his feet. He crashed into the woods and ran headlong, branches and twigs underfoot stabbing and slashing him, voices howling in his head. He missed a step on the steep hillside, stumbled, missed another, and fell rolling downward, the hard earth beating the breath from his lungs and clawing more skin from his flesh. He kept himself rolling, over and over, tumbling down until he crashed against a rotted fallen log. He dragged himself over it, into its lee, and huddled there, fighting to get his breath back.