The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,30

hair. He turned round. ‘No, Cal. No.’

He could have pulled away at any time. He could have been cold and harsh, but it was beyond him. Cal was using his strongest magic.

An unspoken vow passed between them that night. Their liaisons would henceforth be kept secret. If Seel suspected, he did not say so. Cal wanted to revisit all the sites of significance for him. It was as if he was trying to imprint Flick over images of Pell. They took aruna together in the Forale House, where Pell had suffered alone the day before his inception. They writhed together on the inception slab of the Nayati, surrounded by feathery shadows. In this place Thiede had put his mark on Pell for ever, and by default on Cal as well. They lay side by side next to the shore of a soda lake with crystals forming in their hair, watching the stars wheel across the sky. And Cal spoke of Pell, he spoke of the journey they had shared, the hara they had met. With eyes closed, Flick lay at Cal’s side, walking in his mind through the shadowy canopies of the Kakkahaar, the cracked ruins of the Irraka town, the dark splendour of the Varr enclave. He heard the names, like those of mythical heroes: Lianvis, Spinel, Terzian, and he imagined the smoky mystery of the alluring seducers that had crossed Cal’s path: Ulaume of the Kakkahaar, Cobweb of the Varrs. Flick loved to hear these stories, but part of him wondered how much of what he was told was true. To Cal, it was perhaps an exorcism, as the touch of Flick’s body was an exorcism of Pell – or so Flick told himself.

One time, Flick said, ‘What do you want from this?’

And Cal replied, ‘Everything I’m getting.’

Flick wasn’t quite sure what that was, but despite his earlier resolution, he was playing Cal’s game, so much so he found himself saying, ‘Where else, Cal? Where else do you want to go around here?’

They were lying in the fodder loft above the stables, where once Cal had surprised Pell while he’d been working. He and Flick had rolled in the lingering atoms of earlier love. ‘I don’t know,’ Cal replied. ‘Where else is there?’

Flick pondered. Between them, they’d drunk a lot of wine and it was almost dawn. ‘There’s only one other place I can think of,’ he said. ‘Orien’s house.’

‘We were never together there.’

‘I know, but it was where Orien trained Pell in the arts of aruna magic.’

Cal laughed. ‘You know what that means?’

Flick didn’t like the tone of the laugh. ‘No. What?’

‘I have to have Orien there, not you.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Maybe I was waiting for a sign. Maybe you’re an oracle. Maybe it won’t be there.’

It was too late to take the words back. It was as if the whole time, from when Cal had first arrived, Flick had been manoeuvred into this moment, to say those words. They could never be taken back.

Five days later, Orien came to Seel’s house for dinner. The air was electric that night, and metal all over the house seemed to shine with a weird light. Flick felt jumpy and hot. Cal slunk round him in the kitchen as he prepared the meal, and Flick’s body ached for him. He could imagine a red mist descending before his eyes, so that he’d sweep all the vegetables and pans off the kitchen table and throw Cal onto it, ravish him there. And no doubt Orien and Seel would come in and – no, the image was just comical after that.

Cal picked up the cook’s knife and ran its point down Flick’s spine. ‘Like that?’ he said.

‘Too much,’ Flick replied. ‘Make yourself useful. Cut something up.’

‘OK. What?’

‘The meat.’

Cal threw himself down into a chair and began chopping up the steak, his hair hanging over his eyes. You are a monster, Flick thought, devastating and terrible. You are also a drug and extremely addictive.

Flick could tell from the beginning of the meal that Cal was planning something. He had come to recognise a certain calculating air about Cal and that it signalled trouble. Orien was like a trusting doe, tied to a stake as bait for the predator. Cal stalked him, circled him, then attacked. Flick had never witnessed such precise and surgical verbal assault before. It was the same as before: the accusations, the suspicions, but with a new and bitter malice. Cal sounded drunk, but Flick knew he wasn’t.