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prisoner shuddered at her touch, eyes rolling in animalistic panic. When his
entire torso from the neck down glistened with a thin film of blood, Erica
stepped away.
Beausoleil moved around the altar again, stepping with a lithe grace to the
man and laying her delicate hands on him, caressed him slowly and even
lovingly.
Her hands made slow sweeps over and around and down his body. She bent her
helmeted head and kissed his lips. The prisoner stopped shuddering, but his
limbs still shook, but it was due to building sexual arousal. By degrees, as
Beausoleil caressed him, the man's penis engorged, enlarged and finally jutted
out and up in full erection.
Beausoleil began stroking his member with her fist, bending her head over it,
licking and laving with her tongue. The prisoner's body twitched and his hips
began a thrusting motion.
Beausoleil climbed onto the altar, straddling the man's pelvis, and she slowly
began lowering herself onto his erection. There was a moment's tension as of
resistance, then she slid down onto him completely.
212 JAMES AXLER
She moved up and down and from side to side, twisting all of her body from her
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thighs up to her shoulders.
Erica reached out and lifted away the scorpion headpiece to reveal a woman's
face that appeared to be
no more than twenty years of age, but her big eyes, dark as if they had been
cut from onyx, bespoke an almost ancient wisdom. Cobalt knew that Baron
Beausoleil was probably his age.
She reached up behind her and unpinned her hair. It fell in a silky stream
down to the base of her spine, like a flow of frozen obsidian. The ends were
cut off as square and as straight as a ruled line. Equally straight-cut bangs
bisected her high forehead, falling almost to the delicate brow arches above
her eyes.
She had the long, pointed hybrid face that a poetically minded man might have
tried to describe as elfin with its high, angular cheekbones. Her lips were
fairly wide, curving naturally upward so that she always seemed to be on the
point of smiling or sneering even when her face was in repose. Still her
beauty had the fascination of being an unhuman beauty but close enough to
humanity's ideal to arouse the man trapped beneath and between her thighs.
She tossed her arms about in intricate, semaphore-like motions as she rode the
prisoner steadily. Cobalt noted with a quiver of nausea that Beausoleil seemed
to be turning from a baron into an animal, and then into something that wasn't
even flesh and blood, only divine lust disguised.
When she reached her shuddering peak, Beausoleil arched her back and lifted
both arms upward then
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213
she drove them down again, the taloned tips slashing across the prisoner's
throat, severing both the carotid artery and jugular vein at the same time.
Crimson sprayed out in thick jets, splattering her belly in artless speckled
patterns. The man shook violently, spasmodically beneath her.
As he expired and orgasmed simultaneously, Beau-soleil threw her head back and
shrieked, "Avatara
Shiva!''
Sam provided the translation in an uninflected tone: " 'Incarnation of
Shiva.'"
The announcement and the sacrifice triggered a mad, howling explosion among
the celebrants. The men and women clutched at one another wildly, ripping at
their robes and clawing at one another's flesh in a mad variety of sexual
joinings. They cried out, "Shakti! Shakti!"
From the braziers gushed thick columns of smoke. Peering through the billowing
clouds with slitted eyes, Cobalt glimpsed Erica van Sloan helping Beau-soleil
to climb off the twitching prisoner and they both rushed into the shadows at
the far end of the temple. The lust-drunk celebrants didn't see them go.
"Well," Sam said cheerfully, turning away from the observation panel, ' 'what
do you think of my little model?"
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Cobalt shrugged, absently noting that Mare, though she still stood motionless
and expressionless, was perspiring heavily. "I suppose it's all very colorful,
exploiting as it does coarse human nature and its attraction to theater. Bread
and circuses, I've heard it called. But what purpose does it serve?''
214 JAMES AXLER
"Purposes, plural," Sam smoothly corrected him. He brushed a strand of silver
hair back from his forehead. "First and foremost is the revival of the cult of
the mother goddess, personified by Shakti. It's a very powerful draw for
desperate and poverty-stricken peoples of all lands, since it taps into mythic
archetypes dating back to the Stone Age."
Cobalt shook his head as if in pity. "The old humanity, ruled by myth and
superstition."
Sam smiled thinly. "I don't think you fully understand. In this cult, there is
a mixture of sex and mystery and the promise of salvation by indulging the
baser aspects of human nature."
"I understand perfectly," Cobalt said coldly. "One of the easiest ways to
control humanity is to allow it full rein to wallow in its animal instincts.
But unfortunately, that usually leads to widespread devastation.
That's the reason the barons were created, to act as governors to human's more
atavistic behaviors."
Sam snorted through delicate nostrils. "Kindly don't expect me to be impressed
by baronial dogma and propaganda. Widespread devastation didn't occur in
Assam, where the Nirodha movement, the cult of
Shakti, originated. For the past few months I've been marshaling all the
distaff Tantric cultists into a formidable force that will establish my
permanent influence on the Indian subcontinent."
' 'I still fail to see how manufacturing a movement like that would advance
your objectives."
Sam sighed, as if he found Cobalt too dense to bear. "What makes you think you
know what my
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215
objectives are? The Nirodha movement is nothing but misdirection, an elaborate
piece of sleight of hand."
"So this is a fake religion?"
"Not so much fake as a revival, a consolidation of a number of old cults to
give the disaffected a focus around which to rally. Although it might take a
bit longer for the Shakti sect to establish a foothold here, I will give it an
inducement."
"Such as?"
"A war," Sam declared. "A war between the barons loyal to me and those who
seek to overthrow me."
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Cobalt seemed dumbfounded. "What I just witnessed was only a deception?''
"All war is based on deception, on misdirection and misinformation. As Sun Tzu
said, 'Use deception when you have not the power to win in open battle.'"
Cobalt had no quick rejoinder. Instead, he gnawed nervously on his lower lip.
Confusion wasn't an emotion any of the hybrids, particularly the barons, dealt
with easily. Sam recalled all of the barons'
bewildered reactions when they came to the realization the Ar-chon Directorate
didn't exist, and then when they first met him, when he was introduced to them
by Balam. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]