Jeffrey Thomas, Voices from Hades by Jeffrey Thomas Read Free Book Online

already plunging, pumping, making the bed dip like a boat on a storm-tossed sea, and her breasts jounced and she threw back her head and moaned deeply.
    His wings opened fully above them like a black canopy.
    Distantly, Xaphan heard the crack of a rifle shot echo across the desert flatness. Somewhere, a Damned had probably just died. But he or she would resurrect. Being already dead, a Damned or an Angel could not be killed a second time. In this way, the Demons were more like the mortals had once been than the mortals were themselves. Though their powers of regeneration were great, a Demon could be killed. And so the gunshot made Xaphan tense up a little. What if the husband should return and find them this way? Would he allow his wife this entertainment, see it as nothing more than a dip in the spring-fed pool? No more than his own entertainment hunting the Damned? Or…
    But his mind drifted from the gunshot, as Teresa took his head in her hands and pulled it down to her breasts. He lost himself in their white softness, as if they filled all creation…all life and afterlife. Xaphan had never seen the Creator—not even Angels had seen Him—so he could blasphemously imagine that He was a She. An embodiment of fertility, like this woman. He imagined all life pouring forth from the hole he was now stirring (like an alchemist’s pestle in a mortar), and all life feeding at the orbs he himself suckled at avidly.
    Yes, she was a goddess…and he worshipped…

    ««—»»

    The bathing pool below Castle Urian, fed by hot springs that made steam curl from its surface, was enclosed by a circular wall carved out of solid rock as red as muscle. Into this curving wall, small curtained nooks had been incised so that visitors could change in and out of their clothes. The pool itself was currently empty—no Demon would dare use it while Angel visitors were staying here—but one of these small changing niches was currently occupied by the Demon Xaphan and Teresa Colombo.
    She had bent over a stone bench carved into the wall, her palms spread on it, while Xaphan gripped her waist and took her from behind. When they were finished, she sank down onto her knees, her breasts and elbows resting against this rock ledge—Xaphan sinking with her, still embracing her, gently wilting inside her. On impulse, he pushed aside some of the thick black hair that was stuck to the expanse of her back with sweat, and he kissed her on her damp shoulder.
    "Sweet," she whispered, in almost a little laugh, reaching up to cup his cheek for a moment. She lay her head down on one arm and sighed heavily. "Well—that was rather nice, wasn’t it, my Demondingo?"
    "Demondingo?"
    "It’s a joke. Mandingo? Demondingo? Never mind. Mmm …keep doing that."
    Xaphan was running his hand across her back, spreading the spilled ink of her hair, feeling the bony plates of her shoulders like unsprouted wings beneath her taut skin. "I hated you when I first saw you," he muttered, more to himself than to her.
    She lifted her cheek off her forearm a little, seeming amused by his confession. "You did? Why?"
    "I’m sorry…"
    "No, tell me. Why?"
    "Because you are valued by the Creator. And we are nothing more to Him than inanimate things. And sometimes, we don’t see the difference between us. We can’t understand what it is He values in you."
    "Well, perhaps if you could understand that, then you would  be the same as us." After a moment, Teresa twisted around to look up at him, no longer smiling. "Sorry, X. No…I don’t suppose there is much difference, is there? I was going to point out the horrible things your kind do to the Damned. But right now, my hubby is out in the desert hunting some teenage boys that he saw and liked in your bloody kennels down here." She snorted, lowered her head again. "I don’t want to know why they aroused his interest, in particular. Aroused perhaps being the key word."
    Still rubbing her skin, as if contemplating it, as if expecting to