The Beast That Was Max (18 page)

He dug into his pockets looking for car keys, wondering at the false identity he had picked requiring the cut and make of clothes he wore. He found a piece of paper on which he had apparently written two words: GO HOME.

Max crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it away. He took off along the street, checking doorways and rooftops and cars for signs of ambush, but finally trusting himself not to leave himself in obvious danger without more detailed instructions. He did avoid the patrol cars cruising through the neighborhood, in case he had something to do with the heightened police presence.

The elevated highway and street names oriented him. Knowing he was in the Bronx, he worked his way past police checkpoints and patrols, taking alleys, rooftops, sewers, and utility conduits. While searching for an unguarded subway station, he found a phone and called the twins to check on them, and see if he had left himself a message with them as to what had happened and what he was supposed to do. Alioune answered the phone.

"Where have you been?" she demanded, then passed the phone to her sister before he had a chance to answer.

"I don't know," he said to dead air.

"Are you all right, Tonton?" Kueur asked as she picked up the line, her tone gentler but, like Alioune's, stressed by worry.

Max vomited. His stomach's rebellion surprised him, as did the mix of undigested morsels of flesh and food he regurgitated. He hated wasting prey, even if it proved too corrupt to nourish him. Especially, among other things, an enemy's heart, as he judged by the meat on the sidewalk and his reaction to it.

Alioune continued when he came back on the phone. "We heard what happened in the Bronx. It's on the news.”

“What happened in the Bronx?"

"Well, it sounded like you. Did you take care of our package?"

"What package?"

Kueur sighed dramatically into the phone. "Tonton B`eb`ete, why don't you come by.... We have a fresh pot of palava and mint tea."

"I never called you tonight?"

"Non, Tonton, you did not."

"I think I'll go home. I'm very tired for some reason.”

“Will we see you soon?"

The music of her voice raised his mood. The Beast rose, happy to bask in her attention. A police siren blared nearby.

"Yes, Kueur. I'll see you soon."

"Good. Maybe we can get away. It's been so long since we went on a vacation, even if it's only for a weekend." Max hung up. The idea did not sound bad.

He wondered what they would hunt together.

"No," Alioune replied. She met Max's gaze without flinching, letting her sweetly seductive African-French accent take the edge from her denial. "We do not want her. Not now. Not like this. Not from you."

"But you said you were interested in her," Max protested. "I brought her just for you. I haven't touched her. Not a bit."

The four of them sat in silence for a few moments. Nicole, sandwiched between the twins Alioune and Kueur on the couch, stared out the ten-foot window behind Max. The crimson sunset warming his back and suffusing the vast loft with the red of a fresh wound also colored her pale face and tinted her blond hair. But her eyes were as dull as the waters of the Hudson River twenty stories below. As empty as the expressions on the twins.

Max held his hands out in a pleading gesture. "Is it because she's sedated? The drug will wear off in a few hours. Put her in the Box," he said, with a nod to the open door leading to the soundproofed room next to the twins' bedchamber. "When she comes to, she won't remember where she is or how she got here. She'll have no idea what's going on. We can play any game we want with her. I have other drugs, mixtures. From the rain forests. The sea. To heighten the experience for everyone. In the meantime, we can sit, have dinner, relax. We haven't talked about Paris in a long time. We can reminisce. You can tell me about Dakar again, and Morocco, and what you did to the crew of the freighter that brought you to—"

"Tonton B`eb`ete," Kueur said, putting her elbows on her knees as she leaned forward.

Max's heart jumped at the old name; at the play of muscles under Kueur's smooth, golden brown skin; at the flash of affection in her voice. He remembered long ago feeling their weight as he bounced them one on each thigh during his visits to Lyc`ee. Remembered the heat of their bodies as they snuggled up against him, and the heat of their lips when they kissed him. Sweetly, innocently. Not a hint of forbidden passion. Not a stirring of hunger for illicit pleasure. That had always been for others. Never for their Uncle Beast.

More than ever, Max, and the Beast that was his hunger, wanted them. Needed them. And the special thing they did between them that he saw only in the eyes of their lovers, before they disappeared.

There was nothing in the world left for him to taste, except for his beloved twins. He tottered on the edge of a precipice, emotions and appetites giving way under him, drawing him closer to falling over the edge into unknown territory.

"Tonton B`eb`ete," Kueur called again, waving her long finger to catch his attention. "It is very thoughtful of you to bring her. We are grateful for your kindness. But, Tonton, what you are doing is wrong. We're sorry, but we cannot accept your gift."

"You're afraid your friends will wonder about her disappearance. Think of our flirtation at the Carlisle party. Investigate. Discover my hand, my tracks, and trace her back here." Max shook his head. He paced back and forth in front of the sofa on which the three women sat. "I may be old, but I haven't lost my skills. Do you remember how I took you by surprise that first time, in the Bois? No one, not even the gypsies, ever caught you like that. I was the one who showed you the lure-and-trap trick. Who do you still call for your disposal needs, if not your old Tonton? Do you think I can no longer run with my little adopted nieces? Trust me, please."

"Why do you do this?" Alioune asked. She sat back, long legs crossed, hands in her lap. Her almond-shaped eyes bored into Max from someplace far away. Farther away than where the twins' Senegalese father and Vietnamese mother had been born.

Words caught in Max's throat. He became aware of standing with his mouth open and turned to look out the window, and close his mouth with dignity.

"If we wanted Nicole, we would seduce her ourselves," Alioune continued. "She is your payment, no? For what, our bodies? Is that all that drives you? Lust? Appetite?"

Max turned back to face them. "No. No, my babies. I do this out of love for you. To please you. To deepen the bond that's kept us together all these years."

Kueur stood. She came to Max, gripped his shoulder. Her musk scent, spiced with curry from the lamb she'd had for dinner, made his heart beat faster, his stomach churn. Warmth flushed through his groin. "Tonton, you will destroy what we already have if you insist on pushing this woman on us."

"Do you want me to send her away. Is that it?" Max brushed past Kueur, eager to escape her smell. He grabbed Nicole's arm and pulled her up. Alioune's scent, rich and exotic and exciting like her sister's, enveloped him and he hesitated, stared at the woman still sitting on the sofa. Like a wild animal caught between two hunters, he glanced back and forth between the twins. Wanting them. Aching to turn, snarling and raging, and take them. Use them. Throw them away.

But he was their Tonton B`eb`ete.

He could not bring himself to tear away the seductively cut silk robes draping their lean, wiry models' bodies. He dared not taste the salty dampness of their private darkness, or feel the strength of their bodies struggling against his. The warm, electric texture of their skin, the shock of their touch, were snapshot memories he shivered at the dream of exploring any further.

They were his only family. They did not share blood, or flesh, or appetites. But the spirit of the predator lived in them. Spoke to him. Ever since that first time in the Bois de Boulogne, when he'd seen what they did, what they were, he'd felt the bond of kinship. And in their way, the twins felt the bond, as well. They'd followed him after his visits to the Lyc`ee, where he'd put them to learn what he could not teach. They'd seen him satisfy the Beast that was his hunger for sensation, for stimulation of mind and body and soul. They knew exactly why they called him their Uncle Beast.

They loved him. As much as they had, and could, ever love anyone. And he loved them, as well. Alioune and Kueur. His solitary treasures. The shadows of his spirit. His reflections caught and shaped by some kind of magic mirror, better than him, closer to perfection. He could not, would not take them. He would sooner kill himself.

The depth of his passion surprised him. The Beast complained, unaccustomed to Max's drifting attention. The terrain of his inner life had suffered transformation since he recently found himself in the Bronx, surviving what his employers told him was a custodial assignment that had ended in a massacre. Frustrated by the new territory of himself, rage shot through him.

He slapped Nicole's face. The woman's body jerked. He let her go, and she took a few stumbling steps back.

"Go home," he commanded. "Sleep. Forget everything. You have been ill, feverish. This has been a nightmare. You will return to your life, and tell no one of your foolish dreams."

Nicole straightened, turned, walked unsteadily to the vestibule leading to the building's elevator. When the automatic doors had shut and the locks clicked back into place, Max turned to Alioune.

"There. Happy? I offer to give you something precious, and what do you do with it? Throw it away. Unless. . .." Rage dissipated, leaving a terrifying emptiness not even the Beast or a murderous riot of violence could fulfill. Stunned, he looked to Kueur, who had drifted to the window and was staring at the sun sinking into New Jersey.

A premonition chilled him, rattled the Beast. "Unless things have changed? And you didn't want to tell me? Something has happened, a disease, an accident, and you can no longer—"

"We have not changed," Kueur said. "But you have."

"Well, and what's wrong with that? What's wrong with giving instead of taking? It's all I've ever done. I could've easily taken that woman for myself. Consumed her. Feasted on the pleasures she had to give, on her blood, on her flesh. But no. I made her a gift to you. To show my love."

"We know you love us," said Alioune. "In your way. You don't need to drag home your kill like a cat to show your feeling for us. Unless something in you has changed. Unless you want something more than what we have always given each other."

Max stared down at Alioune. Into her eyes, razor-lined pits ending in black velvet cushions. His gaze slipped to her lips, moist, parted. He tried to see the pink of her tongue, but the darkness was too deep. Then he looked away. Cornered by her question, he searched for a way to escape over the bare marble island countertops in the darkened kitchen at the back of the loft; in the silent clock hanging in separate, colorful pieces of abstract swirling design on the long wall to his right; through the grain of the oak floorboards. He found nowhere to run. Instead, he plunged into the chasm at the heart of his new self. He floundered, falling without landing through space excavated by a lifetime of living with appetite and its satiation, the Beast, and mysteries that had carved their way through him, changing him, leaving no memories, only tracings of discontent.

Talk, he screamed at himself, inside. Tell them what you feel. You want them. You always have. Since they were girls. Now more than ever. Admit that things have changed. You've run through everything there is in the world. There's nothing left except for them. But you're afraid, you've always been afraid. Of them. Of their power. You want the thing you've seen in the eyes of their lovers, before they vanished forever. But you're afraid.

Of vanishing.

Of loving them.

The Beast that was Max howled. Cried for release.

Love.

lovelovelovelovelove

The Beast did not want to be caged. It did not want to be killed, or tamed, or exiled to some lonely place, or hunted until it dropped and died choking on emotion. The Beast wanted the ecstasy of sensation. The pleasure of pain, the pain of pleasure.

He was hard. His heart beat wildly.

The Beast screamed for release.

Max timed a leap. Checked the sofa for weapons, the twins for jewelry and accessories they might use to fight him. More than ever, he wanted to take from them what he wanted. Give them the only thing he really knew how to give.

But he had not survived the years by letting the Beast have its way with every impulse. Nor had he devoted his life to the twins, protecting them and nurturing their relationship with him, only to snuff them out without getting what he really wanted. Not their bodies, but the thing they did together.

He was not a madman. The Beast was not all of Max.

He wanted, needed, more than what the Beast desired.

Alioune's scent filled his lungs. Kueur's gaze bored into the back of his head. Max closed his eyes and remembered Emile, who had taken a liking to them and broken into their hotel room in Lisbon to take them one night when he knew Max was out of the city. Max missed Emile, and still felt the scar on his abdomen where Emile had cut him during a friendly barroom sparring session in Singapore. He missed him, though he would have killed Emile himself for attacking his charges if the twins had not managed the task by themselves. Unlike his old comrade Lee, age had dulled Emile's awareness of his limitations.