Nightwalkers Page 4

  As she had irrationally feared, the story was there, near the bottom of page one.

  HOOKER KILLED IN ALLEY, the headline stated, almost casually. And the story went on to detail how the body of one Lisa Dumont, known on the street as 'Ellie' had been discovered early this morning by a young man out for a jog. The police suspected rape, the reporter said, even speculating that it was a team effort. A man and his trained dog, the dog holding the girl down by the neck while the man raped her, and then tearing out the back of the girl's neck to kill her.

  Jackie, of course, knew otherwise. The man and the 'dog' were the same creature.

  She couldn't wait to talk to Conor that evening. The alley in question was just down the street from where they'd said goodnight last night. No more than a block or two from her building. Maybe he'd seen something as he'd walked by.

  * * *

  It was quite a while before the subject of the girl's murder came up, though.

  I mean, you just don't open up a conversation over a delicious seafood linguini with the topic of a vicious rape and murder.

  Besides, since she knew next to nothing about him, except that he was true to his word—he buzzed her apartment right at seven—she'd decided that she'd engage in some light banter, first, for the purpose of trying to weasel out some of his secrets.

  Conor proved to be virtually weasel-proof, however.

  After half an hour of questioning—and trying not to look him directly in those enigmatic pits that were his eyes—Jackie had discovered only that he had been born in Europe and emigrated to what he called the New World with his parents when he was six, that he was an only child, that he was single and unattached, and that his age was 'somewhere between thirty and three hundred'—that last with a smile that threatened to erase her memories of all his other answers.

  Then, to be fair—though she'd learned precious little—she felt she had to say,

  "Now what do you want to know about me?"

  "Well," Conor said, leaning back, putting the tips of his fingers together and gazing up at the ceiling, "let's first see what I already know about you."

  "Not that much, surely," Jackie laughed. "We hardly spoke a word last night."

  "But I can read volumes in your eyes," he answered. "Let's see…I know you work at Esoterikon Publishers."

  "I never told you that," Jackie gasped.

  "No, but your friend Brandie does and I gathered you worked together. I know you love seafood linguini because your lovely green eyes lit up when I mentioned it last night. That and the fact that you've demolished your whole plate. I know you have been troubled with disturbing dreams recently—those circles under your eyes. I know you've been worried about the way you've lost weight recently."

  "Nobody told you that," Jackie insisted.

  "I said I could read your eyes."

  Conor's gaze left the ceiling and his nightmare eyes bored into Jackie's.

  "And I know you're a Jacynthe," he said.

  Jackie felt that chill again, the one she'd felt last night when they'd first locked eyes and he had called her that. The one that ended up as a fire in her loins.

  "Why did you call me Jacynthe?" she asked. "It's not a name you'd expect to come to someone out of the blue."

  "It didn't. And I didn't call you Jacynthe. I called you a Jacynthe."

  "What's the difference?" Jackie asked.

  "Jacynthe is just a woman's name," Conor said.

  "A strange one."

  "True. But just a name, all the same. A Jacynthe is…something else entirely."

  "Which you just decided you're not going to tell me."

  "No, I'm going to tell you…when I decide you're ready to know. For the moment, why spoil a perfectly good dinner date?"

  "At the risk of doing just that," Jackie said at last, "did you read about the murder last night?"

  "The hooker? I can do better than that. The alley where she was found runs along the back of my building. I've already had a visit from the police, asking me things."

  "What kind of things?"

  "Oh, just about whether I'd heard anything. Don't worry, dear. They don't suspect me. To start with, I don't even have a dog. That's their theory, you know. That it was a man with a vicious dog, working as a team."

  "I know. But I think they're barking up the wrong tree, so to speak."

  "What makes you say that?"

  Jackie took a mouthful of her Chardonnay and swallowed it before she told him about her dream.

  After that, Conor was silent for quite a long time.

  "Finally, he said,

  "I see. I think we'd better have our after-dinner cognac at my place where we can talk more privately."

  "About what?" she asked.

  "About you and me…and the Jacynthe," he answered.

  Chapter Five

  Conor's apartment was late nineteenth or early twentieth century in décor and Jackie thought it rather suited the timeless nature of the man. Plush burgundy velvet curtains hid what must have been huge, high windows; a thick oriental carpet in deep reds and greens invited her to kick her shoes off and go barefoot through its pile. The room was dominated by a huge divan, also upholstered in burgundy velvet with a matching wing-backed easy chair. A dark mahogany bar on 'lion' legs covered one wall, stocked with more different kinds of bottles than Jackie had ever seen.

  Flanking the divan were two Tiffany lamps that cast dark shadows into the corners, high up by the ceiling, and Jackie gave an involuntary shudder.

  "What's the matter?" Conor asked, noticing her eyes looking up into the shadows.

  "Those shadows are spooky," Jackie answered. "You could almost swear you see something moving deep inside them."

  "I find that kind of reassuring," Conor smiled. "I like to think of it as the spirits of my ancestors watching over me."

  "I think more of bats," Jackie shuddered again.

  "Sometime one's ancestors are bats," Conor said and there was no smile this time. "So what's your poison?"

  "What?"

  "Your after-dinner liqueur. I have some thirty-year-old Courvoisier here. Never even been broached. This would seem to be just the occasion to deflower it."

  "Prior to deflowering me?" Jackie asked with a grin.

  "My dear lady, I'd be lying if I said that was the furthest thing from my mind," Conor said, as he found the corkscrew and eased the cork out of the bottle. "But it is not my first priority at the moment. Please sit on the sofa and relax. Put your feet up. This may take some time."

  He handed her a healthy shot of deep amber liquid in a snifter and sat down beside her as she raised the glass to her lips.

  "Good Lord, that's no way to drink it," he said. "One doesn't rush into a thirty-year-old cognac as if it were a Pepsi. Here, you take it in both hands and cup it in your palms to warm it. Like this, see?"

  Conor's hands covered hers and Jackie felt that terrible, delicious chill again.

  "That's it. And sniff it from time to time. Then, when you feel that the aroma could become almost intoxicating on its own, that's when it's time to take a tiny sip. A shot of good cognac is meant to give many hours of pleasure."

  "Am I going to be here that long?" Jackie chuckled.

  "As long as it takes," Conor answered.

  "So then," Jackie breathed, for her heart was beating hard. "About me being Jacynthe…"

  "A Jacynthe. Very well." He placed his snifter on the walnut coffee table and nodded for her to do the same." But first I want to show you something."

  He took her hands between his palms again and Jackie felt that chilling warmth begin once more, this time in her fingers, travelling up her arms until it became a hot chill in her belly. The jet-black and bottomless pools that were his eyes plumbed the very depths of her being, so that she was aware only of those eyes and the icy warmth of his hands on hers.

  * * *

  Then Conor bent forward and his lips brushed hers lightly.

  Instantly, her lips became the softest of su
mmer petals and his tongue was a butterfly that flitted and danced, oh…so lightly, over them.

  Vaguely she was aware of his warm hands moving around her back to lower the zipper on the sea-green cocktail dress she had worn that night. Then he was slipping it down her arms to bare her shoulders to the warmth of the room. His hands stroked the smooth skin of her shoulders lovingly for a long moment and then travelled over her shoulder blades to unhook and slip away the confinement of her bra as her dress fell to her waist.

  Then, hands still tenderly stroking her naked back, he lowered his head to her aching breasts and his butterfly tongue began to flit around her nipples.

  One hand now left her back to cup under her left breast and raise it to his lips, which parted so that his mouth could encircle the nipple and tease it to a hard and aching point.

  "Ahhhhnnnnn," Jackie sighed softly as Conor's teeth grazed that tender rosebud, butterfly tongue still flitting in faster and faster circles until it threatened to drive her mad.

  "The other one…" Jackie gasped. "Do the other one."

  And Conor, seemingly reluctant to break contact with her flesh, left a trail of soft kisses from one breast to the other…where he obediently began to stimulate her right nipple, sucking and tonguing it until Jackie felt a scream beginning to rise in her throat.

  Seeming to sense this, Conor cut it off by quickly transferring his attention to her mouth, his lips closing over it, his tongue parting her lips to do mock and loving battle with the tip of hers.

  Then, somehow, without their lips ever parting, they were both naked on the huge velvet couch, Conor's tongue still invading her mouth, still seeking the nectar of her passion that was to be mined in its recesses.

  "Nnnnnngggghhhh…" she moaned in a paroxysm of ecstasy as he pressed his chest hard against the aroused and tender tips of her breasts.

  But she did not retreat. Rather, she thrust her belly up at him in blatant invitation, and one hand left his to work its way between them and encircle his huge, hard penis.

  She did not wish to break the virtual fusion of their lips and tongues, but, suddenly, Jackie knew she had to. Twisting her head away from his insistent lips, she gasped,

  "I want to lick your cock…oh, please, I have to lick your cock!"

  "And I," Conor smiled a smile that threatened to make her climax at that very moment, "I just have to lick the sweetness of your labia."

  With a movement so fluid she could scarcely believe it possible of two creatures made of flesh and bone, Conor and Jackie changed positions so that her head was directly above his risen phallus and his was plunged between her legs.

  Tentatively, Jackie flicked her tongue out, grazing the pink tip with its little slit where a tiny drop of pre-cum had already formed.

  "Mmnnn…yess," she sighed. It tasted wonderful, that first love gift of his to her. Better than any cognac in the world.

  Slowly, she took the whole head of his shaft into her mouth and began to swirl her tongue around it.

  Conor groaned and, using his tongue as a key to part her labia slowly invaded the inner chambers of her castle as any defenses remaining to her love-demented being crumbled away.

  "Oh, God, oh God! Oh, Gawwwhhhdd!" Jackie shrieked pulling her head away. "Oh, God, you've got to fuck me, Conor! Fuck me right now!"

  And again, without quite knowing how they managed it, Conor's mouth was on hers again, her breasts thrusting up at his chest. And her legs were parted, hips raised off the bed to open her portals to his entrance.

  She was not left to wait for long. Conor's shaft seemed to throb with an unbearable heat as it slipped up her wet and ready channel, and Jackie locked her ankles behind his buttocks in an attempt to guide his thrusts.

  She might as well been trying to guide a wild beast, however, for Conor took his own time building the erotic pressures that suffused them both. His motions were slow and fluid at first, slipping in to the depths of her vagina—God, to the depths of her soul—and then sliding out until she was terrified that he would leave her teetering on the brink of lunacy forever. But gradually, ever so gradually, his thrusts built in tempo and ferocity until he was pounding into her like a mad animal and her breath was being exhaled in short bursts by their force.

  "Yuughhh…yugghhhh…yuughh…yeaaaaaahhh!" she howled as a horrendous climax thundered over her and her head spun wildly with explosions of fireworks shrieking through the sky…

  * * *

  "It's all right," Conor's dark-roast coffee voice said calmly, bringing her floating gently down to earth.

  They were sitting fully clothed on the divan, Conor holding her hands between his, looking deep into her eyes.

  "That was just a vision of things that could be," he said.

  "God!" Jackie gasped. "If that was a vision…I can't wait for the real thing!"

  "But now, you wanted to know about Jacynthe."

  He rose and crossed the room to a drawer in the bar. "Again, I have to show you something, before I tell you anything."

  He handed her what appeared to be an eight-by-ten glossy photo, though on closer inspection she saw it was a photo of a head-and shoulders painting. But it was the subject of the picture that caught her eye immediately.

  "Where did you get this?" she asked. "This is me…but I don't remember…"

  "You don't remember either the photo or the painting," Conor answered, "simply because this isn't you. This picture is of my paternal grandmother."

  "But…"

  "She was two hundred and eighty-seven when she sat for that portrait."

  "Impossible!"

  "No. Not impossible for a Jacynthe."

  "God, now you've got to explain!" Jackie entreated.

  Conor took a sip of his brandy.

  "Almost every culture has them under various names," he began. "In the Middle Ages and even later, both in Europe and North America, they called them Witches and their leaders were called names like Hecate, Lilith, and Desideria. The Huron Indians of early North America called them Wendigos, and they were led by Sakkrit or Malakaia. But all these creatures had two things in common: they were sexually predatory man-eating shape-shifters, and they were led by a Royal Couple. The Coven Witch had her Warlock, Sakkrit had her Tullaman. With some beliefs, these leaders were eternal. Thus Lilith and Samael, her daemon lover, were everlasting figures to their followers. Where I came from in Europe, their names were always Jacynthe and Konor, with a 'K', and their followers were called 'Nightwalkers'. But they were merely long-lived, not eternal. Thus every new generation that came along, demanded its own particular Jacynthe and Konor after their ancestors went to the great Unholy Hunting Ground. In fact, that new generation assured itself of that continuity, by giving birth to its royal couple as the need arose. The last Jacynthe, the woman you see here, died at the age of four hundred and seven on January fourteenth nineteen seventy-nine."

  "The day I was born," Jackie gasped.

  "I thought so," Conor nodded. "In fact, I even seemed to know that the moment our eyes met last night. That was why I had to call you a Jacynthe."

  "To see how I reacted?"

  "Partly, yes."

  "And did you get the reaction you expected?"

  "Not quite. The name seemed familiar to you, but not in the way I had expected."

  "It was familiar to me," Jackie assured him. "That was the name I chose as a child for a mythical me who 'actually' did all the bad things I was blamed for."

  "She was Bad Jackie. So you could continue being the good one."

  "Yes. But I hadn't thought of her for years."

  "Until I called you that?"

  "No, actually, the name came back to me earlier in the evening."

  "Because you knew you were going to meet me."

  "But I didn't know that then."

  "I think, subconsciously, you did. My will is very strong. And I had promised myself that I would meet a candidate for my Jacynthe last night. I am the Konor for this era, of course."

  Jackie shook h
er head in disbelief.

  "You're telling me you willed me to go to The Cave?"

  "I willed someone who could be Jacynthe to come. You came."

  "Then it's not decided yet. I mean, I'm not already crowned Queen of the May or whatever?" Jackie said facetiously.

  "No, there is much you have to survive before that decision is made."

  "Survive?" Jackie's light-hearted tone changed abruptly and she swallowed a large gulp of her cognac, almost choking on it. "Just what exactly do you mean by 'survive'?"

  "There will be pain."

  "Pain?"

  "Yes, but there will be much love, too. And, in the end, if you survive, you will be more powerful than you ever dreamed of being."

  "I wish you'd stop talking about pain and surviving," Jackie said. "And I never thought much about being powerful."

  "Of course you did. That's why you created Jacynthe in the first place. To be above all blame is to be at the core of power."

  "Still, I'm not sure…"

  "Your feelings are now quite irrelevant," Conor said flatly. "You will submit yourself to my will whether you want to or not."

  He looked deep into Jackie's eyes with his darkly inscrutable black ones.

  "Yes…" she said hollowly, mesmerized by the formless shadows she saw swimming deep in the seemingly bottomless ebony pools of those eyes. "I will submit myself to your will."

  "Body and soul."

  "Body and soul," Jackie echoed, tonelessly.

  "Because you love me."

  Again the hot chill that became a shuddering fire coursed though her…as well as the memory of that earth-shaking orgasm.

  "Because…I love you," she repeated, shakily, her voice sounding like a stranger's in her ears.

  "Then let us go meet Magdalena," Conor said rising.

  Chapter Six

  Before Jackie could ask who Magdalena was, Conor had risen and gone over to the window. Here, after first producing a pen knife from his trousers pocket, he cut a length of silken sash-cord from the drapes. Then he returned to the sofa and proceeded to cut a two-inch-wide strip from the hem of her green cocktail dress.