Never: an erotic retelling of Peter Pan (31 page)

Belle had stood stiffly beside him, containing her fury, focusing it all onto one target.

Then Pietre had said, 'It has to be the Wendee who does it,' his voice vague, as though speaking to himself.  'It has to be the mother I brought them.' 

Belle had known then, and the rage that gripped her came back now to stiffen her lax muscles.

"
Bitch
."  She spat the word in an explosion of breath that puffed a spiral of hair out of her eyes to tangle amid the controls.  Her mind whirled with exotic tortures but she was deep within the drug and couldn't hold her thoughts for long.  The spasm of fury soon passed.  She floated again. 

Beneath her cheek she heard a rhythmic buzzing, and intermittently, a faint, rapid clicking.  Electronic noises.  The machinations of Pietre's control.

Slipping her hold on reality, she imagined her cheek resting against Pietre's smooth chest, her ear pressed against his cold skin as she listened to the click and buzz of his soul.  Belle knew there were no fragile organs inside Pietre to spill out, no unprotected windpipe to squeeze or throbbing artery that could drain his life's blood with the careless snick of a blade.  Pietre was impenetrable.  There was nothing human about that pale, autocratic body except its exterior visage.  Inside it was pure machine.  Devious, calculating, ... machine.

And yet...

Her fingers twitched, bumping controls, tangling in her dishevelled hair.

...there had been a time when he may have been human.   A vague memory came to her, a snatch of conversation.  Where had she been?

This time the memory surfaced with less effort.

Last year at the Middle-East Summit - world leaders posturing and smiling for photographs while in the background Pietre and the money-men arranged shipments for the impending 'Breakdown in the Peace talks'.

Belle remembered she'd been sent to seduce a minor sheik, hoping to gain military information.  Unfortunately, all she'd drawn from his slack lips was a proposal of marriage, followed moments later by a cry of fear that had gradually decreased in volume and metamorphosed into an involuntary groan of pleasure as his enthusiastic release stained the satin bodice of her ball gown.

She'd ripped it off, leaving the tulle under-skirt as her only covering and released her hair to fall in white-blonde strands around her naked upper body. 

From sophisticate to nymphet in two easy moves.  She smiled now, recalling the look on his face - the eagerness that had increased as she'd crawled over him, her breasts holding their apple-shape perfectly.  Then, with one poised above his gaping mouth, she'd reached across to the champagne bucket beside the bed and withdrawn a handful of icecubes. 

His lower body had jerked, tightening, but this time she raised them to his other orifice, inserting them one at a time until his cheeks bulged like a chipmunk.  Then she'd forced her nipple in and he'd gagged, trying to push his tongue through the ice to lick it.  That had made her laugh.

A little more pleasure, some low-level pain and he'd been babbling uncontrollably.  But the information hadn't been what Pietre had sent her for, and in frustration she'd beat him with her delicate high-heeled shoe... until a name was mentioned that stayed her hand. 

Vincente DeMartande.  Pietre's father. 

After eight years with Pietre, Belle had heard little more of him than his name.  The Arab, however, had known much more - had been an associate of Pietre's father, probably the last alive.  Through blind luck he'd avoided the pogrom Pietre and his brother had conducted after their father's death. 

Belle had presumed they'd wanted no-one alive who had known their father intimately, and from the slobbering lips of this reluctant witness she'd finally discovered why.

In desperation, he'd vowed obedience to the 'death-tongue', the ancient secrecy, and she believed him.  Belle was adept at reading truth, especially
in extremis
.  She believed he'd held his silence until then, but unfortunately for him, she was not a woman to tempt fate. 

They both knew her intentions, yet as she thanked him with her body for the weapon he'd given her, he appeared helpless to defend himself.  Fear haunted his eyes, but his will had become her plaything...

Belle was drifting again and struggled to pull herself back.  The Arab...? 

Blood.  She remembered the blood.  It had been warm, she remembered, almost hot, like the blood that had pounded behind her temples as she'd pictured the scene he had so fearfully painted for her. 

She'd felt dizzy with the power of it, much as she felt now.  Yet she hadn't used it.  Twelve months had passed and she was still hoarding the knowledge.

Why?  Was she trying to protect Pietre from it?  He who had the heart of a machine?  It didn't make sense.

"My love," she whispered. 

The warm sensations sucked her down again and she gratefully slid into their comforting depths.

"Belle?"

Pietre?  Struggling to focus, Belle raised her heavy head and aimed her eyes in the direction of the door, catching a movement side-of-sight.  Her nodding head tilted in that direction but the voice was behind her now.

"Drugged,
Ma Chere
?  This is unlike you."

She pushed feebly with one foot to swivel the chair but it propped half way round.  Her head wobbled and her eyes tracked erratically.

"Pietre?"  There was a dark shape in front of her.  "I'm just..."

"Incoherent." 

Crouched before her, his face swam in and out of her vision and she reached out to stop it moving.  One hand connected with the shoulder of his suit and she clutched it feebly, her muscles lax and unresponsive.

"Pietre, my baby," she crooned.  "So young, so lovely."

The dark eyes blinked and Belle saw pain in them.  Or painful memories.  Was this the time? 

She prodded him, "You were your Mamma's baby."

There was a pause.  Belle waited, her head bobbing.

"I was the youngest child," he agreed.

"And she loved you, didn't she?" Belle cooed.

His gaze remained steady but there was definite pain there.  "Yes.  I believe so."

"More'n that no-good brother of yours?"  The Bayou drawl was creeping in but Belle was too far gone to notice.

"She led me to believe so."

"More'n your Pa?"

There was another pause.  Pietre's eyes searched hers and she lost the next question.  What was she doing?  Had she intended to reveal her knowledge now?  She couldn't remember.

"Why are you so curious about my family," he asked in the indifferent tone she knew all too well.  A chill wind of fear intruded on her warm sea.

"I'm not.  I just...  Sometimes you look..." she lost her train of thought, scrabbled, "You look at me strangely."  Her heavy hand on his shoulder fell away.  She composed her face and declared
misterioso
, "I want to know everything about you." 

He stood, moved away, a blur of darkness and Belle gratefully surrendered to gravity. 

Collapsed in his chair, her eyelids closed, she smiled languidly as her fear slipped away from her like a sodden coat and sank peacefully into the silent depths below.  On the surface, she rocked, buoyant, one with the rhythm of her sea, staring upwards - not at the stars - but at the impenetrable blackness they clung to. 

She knew a thing about that blackness.  A thing no-one else knew. 

Her smile grew dreamy, intimate. 

Pietre was that blackness.  He was her night, the necromancer of her soul.   "Dark, dark, lover..." she whispered.

"When you are like this you remind me of someone," he said softly, and Belle thought she heard longing in his voice.  But was it real, or merely an echo of her own desires?  She looked at him from beneath heavy lashes, trying to focus on his expression but it was impossible.  Her eyelids drooped shut.

"I need you, Belle," he admitted, and this time there was no mistaking the harsh submission in his voice.  "I need... proof."

Something within Belle jerked her awake.  She fumbled with the vial at her throat.  "Just let me... wait..." she stumbled over the words, not bothering to finish.  The cap came off in her hand and she up-ended the contents into her mouth, swallowing convulsively. 

A long forgotten sensation, like liquid ice rolling through her veins, stiffened her body and gripped her entrails like a glacial fist.  She blinked, saw every detail in the room with unnatural clarity, her eyes glittering with fierce awareness.