The Demi-Monde: Summer by Rod Rees Read Free Book Online Page B

really liked to put the hurt on people. He was one mean mother … but Ella was meaner.
    Real mean.
    Fuck, she hadn’t even twitched when he’d laid the line on her that unless she cut out all the jinky miracle crap then Bole would get hot and heavy on his ass. All she’d done was laugh and tell him that Bole wouldn’t dare touch him. And then she’d said that as far as miracles were concerned she was finished for now but she had a doozy up her sleeve scheduled for the end of Summer.
    So, as far as Billy saw it, he had no choice: he’d have to cap her. Her performing more miracles would seriously damage his chances of collecting his million bucks.
    The problem was
how
to kill her. He’d heard some pretty wild stories about how handy Ella was, how she had sliced and diced some real bad mothers while she’d been in the Demi-Monde. There was even a story going the rounds that some cat had tried to shoot her and she’d
caught
the bullet. Bullshit, of course, but it had decided Billy on a policy of slow and cautious. He’d make sure that he really knew what he was up against before he made his move. But the problem with slow and cautious was that it was fucking boring, especially as there was no prancing powder available to take the edge off life.
    He wandered aimlessly back into his room and took his frustration out on a vase of flowers by hurling it against a wall: Billy fucking hated flowers. He was just about to kickthe shit out of a marble statue of some dead dude when there was a quiet knock on his door. Billy frowned, wondering who the fuck would be coming to call at three o’clock in the morning. He crossed the room and took a look through the spyhole set in the middle of the door. It was the big guy who called himself Selim the Grim. Selim was OK. Selim was a brother. He might be a backdoor brother but Billy was cool with that: guys being gay just meant there was more pussy for straight cats like him.
    He opened the door. Selim wasn’t alone, he had two women with him, though as they were swathed from head to toe in black burkas Billy couldn’t dig whether they were young or old, fit or fugly.
    ‘Good evening, Duke William, and my apologies for calling on you at such a late hour.’
    It took a second for Billy to dig that the ‘Duke William’ Selim was talking about was him. Ella had laid the title on him on account of him being her brother. He shrugged the guy into his room and shut the door.
    ‘I bring greetings from His HimPerial Majesty Shaka Zulu, who wishes me to ensure that all your desires are being catered for.’
    ‘Why’s this Shaka cat worried ‘bout me?’
    ‘You are the twin brother of Doge IMmanual, Your Grace, the twin brother of the Messiah. The same blood that flows in her body flows in yours. Our holy men believe that your coming is divinely inspired, after all, according to HimPerialism’s most sacred book, the HIM Book, the Messiah cannot be a woeMan but
must
be a Man. They see you as the Man to fulfil that prophecy.’
    ‘No shit?’ mused Billy as he poured two healthy glasses of cognac. Cognac was the only thing that had kept him sane since he’d touched down in the Demi-Monde. ‘From what I hear, yo’guys in NoirVille are really big on male supremacy and all that shit, right?’
    Or more exactly, what PINC told him. It was neat having an encyclopedia stuck in his head.
    ‘That is correct, Your Grace. HimPerialism teaches us that the Fall of Man was brought about by Lilith, the first woeMan, when she tempted Adam to eat the fruit of Yggdrasil, the sacred tree. This ended the Time of Maximum Coolness, the state of Harmony that existed before Lilith’s betrayal. As punishment for Lilith’s connivance in the Fall, ABBA decreed that henceforward woeMen would be required to conduct themselves according to the precepts of subMISSiveness, that is, they must be at all times Mute, Invisible, Subservient and Sexually Modest.’
    ‘You wanna try telling that to Ella. I don’t