The Flight of the Zeppelin Page 3

He then knelt beside the dead man and gave him last rites, finishing by sliding a communion wafer into the gaping red mouth of the voodoo priest. As he stood he wondered what the man’s soul, which must be black and evil, thought of being consecrated to God.

  He laughed as he walked away. People always underestimated a man dressed as a member of the church. Such a convenient disguise was not to be despised. Immensely cheered by his success, Priest went to find the dancer. A midnight tryst would be a wonderful way to end the day.

  * * * *

  Bryn tucked Fenix into bed and pulled the down quilt over her shoulders. “Good night, my sweet.”

  Fenix grabbed her hand. “It’s happening, isn’t it? I’m going to die soon.”

  Tears sprang into Bryn’s eyes. “Not if I can help it, my love. Sleep and you will wake rested.”

  Fenix squeezed her hand. “I wish I could remember.”

  Bryn shook her head and brushed tears out of her eyes. “Truly, love, it’s better if you don’t. It’s a mercy.”

  Fenix closed her eyes and sighed when Bryn took her thin cold hand and placed it over her heart. “You don’t understand what it’s like to live knowing there is something dreadful hanging over you and you can’t remember.”

  “I do understand. I’ve been there with you every time.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to suffer.”

  “I would do anything to keep you from dying, my sister. It’s not I who suffers. It is you.”

  When Fenix turned her head away, red hair fanned out across her pillow. “I want to remember.”

  Her voice faded as she dropped into deep sleep. Bryn firmed her resolve to find the emerald and save her sister. Instead of crying, she should be doing something…anything.

  She closed the door and slipped into her own room. In the adjoining bathing chamber, Samantha was just stepping into a tub of steaming water. Bryn’s mood was dark. She felt no desire to participate in this act. The door to the adjoining bedroom opened and Quinn entered, wearing a loudly-colored dressing gown. The ridiculous colors running riot across velvet fabric lifted her spirits. He took her into his arms and pulled the pins from her hair. A cascade of black silk fell down her back. He lifted the lengths and kissed them. “Are you sure Sam is willing to participate in this ménage?”

  Bryn took his hand. “She has done so many times before. I am not quite an innocent, my darling.”

  He hung back, his face reflecting doubt. “How old are you two?”

  “Fenix and I are older than you can imagine. I saw the sun rise over the pyramids of Egypt when Pharaoh still ruled. I sailed to America with the Pilgrims and traveled West with the pioneers. We saved Samantha from being burned at the stake in Salem. We are old, dear Quinn. Does it disturb you?”

  “I must say it’s a very difficult thought to absorb. I’d rather see you as young and beautiful, and believe that’s what you are.”

  “We are forever young. That is part of the curse. Come, my darling, stop fretting about matters you can’t comprehend. Sam is already in the tub. All that remains is for you to join her. I plan to wash both of your backs.”

  When he still hung back, Bryn pushed the brightly-colored dressing gown off his shoulders and began unbuttoning the crisp white shirt he wore under it. He stood quietly while she worked, breathing deeply. When his shirt was off, she stepped back to watch the play of light from the oil lamp across his well-defined muscles. Unable to resist, she ran her hands over his arms feeling the strength in them. When she stroked his nipples, he drew in his breath sharply and she laughed.

  “Are these manly nubs off limits?”

  He shook his head. “No woman has ever touched them before.”

  “You will find I may touch many things no woman has ever touched before.” Her nimble fingers quickly unbuttoned his breeches. Beneath them he wore fine linen small clothes. “Your boots, sir.”

  She pushed him into a chair and began tugging at one highly-polished boot. He put his other foot on her butt and shoved. The boot came off and she went flying. “Think you to have fun at my expense? Payback will shortly be mine.”

  She tugged off the other boot and straddled him. He tried to unbutton her high-necked bodice and failed. “How did you get into this thing?”

  “Hooks and eyes, my darling, and a maid.” She took his face in her hands and pressed feathery kisses across his lips, cheeks and eyes.

  “Bryn,” he groaned.

  She jumped up and pulled him out of the chair. “Come. You have been very patient.”

  She led him by the hand into the small room set up as a bathing chamber. “Sam has designed a hot water system. The water is heated in the basement in a boiler and pumped to this floor.”

  Steam filled the room. When it cleared, Sam could be seen naked in the huge porcelain tub. Bryn pushed Quinn toward it, stopped him and jerked his britches to his feet. She gasped at the sight of his arousal. His equipment was some of the best she’d ever seen; large, but not too long, thick and ridged. A toy worthy of any woman’s warmest imagining.

  Sam eyed it with apprehension, but moved over in the hot water to make room for him. When he was sitting in the tub, Bryn began to slowly unbutton her bodice. Quinn’s eyes followed each movement of her fingers. When her dress was off and she stood clad only in her chemisette, stockings and garters, he stroked her silky leg and she slapped his hand. “You rush things, my darling. Waiting is half the fun.”

  “Not for me,” he growled.

  She slowly drew her chemise over her head and posed for him in her stockings before untying her garters and sliding each stocking down her leg. Sam rose from the water, stepped out of the tub and embraced her. Her wet body fit into Bryn’s arms. Her familiar kiss helped relieve Bryn of fear and building anxiety. As they kissed, Bryn saw Quinn squirming in the tub. Experience had taught her that men find watching women kiss extremely arousing.

  Over the centuries, Bryn had learned sex with any man was a dangerous experience. Each time, she either feared for the man’s life or desired it to end.

  Sam’s warm hands sought her private place and stroked the smooth skin. Bryn’s vulva was hairless. Some genetic abnormality precluded her growing any body hair. Fenix was not so blessed. When Sam’s finger parted the lips of her sex and penetrated her, she pushed her lover away. “Let me into the water.”

  They both climbed into the tub with Quinn whose eyes glowed with desire. Bryn sat on one side and Sam straddled his muscular thighs. Bryn first stroked his erection and then Sam’s sex. She kissed Quinn and he caressed her breasts, tugging at each pink nipple until it swelled and lengthened.

  Sam took soap and began washing Bryn and Quinn. Quinn returned the favor, reluctantly at first, then with more enthusiasm. Sam’s breasts were small, but her nipples were large and puffy. Quinn soaped them up and played with them while Bryn moved to sit on Quinn’s lap behind Sam, where she reached around to caress her. She urged Sam up and slipped Quinn’s erection into her. She held onto that organ and stroked it as she pushed it deep into Samantha. Then she lifted Sam in her arms, kissed her neck and shoulders and helped her mount Quinn. When Quinn wrapped his hands around Sam’s waist, their fingers touched and she felt his excitement.

  “Is this your first time with two women?” She asked in a breathless voice.

  His only answer was a long groan as Sam moved up and down on his organ. Bryn knew Sam would find no pleasure in the penetration, so she spread the lips of her sex and rubbed the nub of her desire rhythmically. Sam leaned back against Bryn and allowed Quinn to lift her up and down while Bryn pleasured her.

  Water slopped back and forth as Quinn lifted Samantha faster and faster. Sam moaned and thrust herself against Bryn’s clever fingers. Bryn slipped back into the water, keeping up the friction on Sam’s nub. She found Quinn’s lips and kissed him deeply. He groaned as she thrust her tongue into his mouth, raping the inside in a forceful entry, while she licked his tongue and lips.

  Bryn felt both of their excitement. Quin
n’s thoughts were red with desire. Sam’s thoughts were of her and the times they’d lain in bed, Sam between her legs. The combined emotion made her breathless. She felt Quinn nearing completion and Sam’s crushing orgasm. She pushed Sam off when she’d finished and took Quinn into her mouth. She sucked his thrusting cock and stroked it. He groaned once and held her head while he bucked and spewed into her mouth.

  Quinn slowly opened his eyes and Bryn smiled slyly up at him. “Not fair,” he gasped. “It’s all over way too soon.”

  “Who said it’s over,” Bryn whispered.

  She climbed out of the tub taking Sam with her. They dried each other with soft towels while Quinn watched, taking a long time doing it. When Sam was finished drying Bryn, she took her hand and led her to the bedroom. Quinn tripped over the edge of the tub in his haste to leave it. Sam pushed Bryn back on the bed and motioned to Quinn. “She has not yet received pleasure, good sir. We must now rectify that situation.”

  Quinn’s tongue felt like it had cleaved to the roof of his mouth. Bryn lay on her back, open on the bed beckoning to them. The coral inside of her sex was moist with her excitement and her flesh swollen. Sam crawled between her legs and Quinn dived onto the bed beside Bryn. She allowed him to caress her breasts and suck her nipples while Sam licked between her legs. In his entire life, Quinn had never been this aroused and he’d just reached fulfillment moments before.

  Sam’s tongue flicked Bryn’s excited flesh again and again while Quinn watched. His cock was as stiff as an oar thumping against Bryn’s thigh. Bryn ran her hands through his hair and pulled his head down. She licked his lips and thrust her tongue between them. He groaned in agony and returned her kiss which became rougher and more violent as his passion and hers rose. He mauled her breasts and she didn’t complain when he dropped his head to nurse each teat like a hungry child.

  Sam held Bryn’s bucking hips tight to her mouth tormenting Bryn until she screamed. All Quinn could think about was pushing Sam aside and mounting Bryn, but he knew not to do it. He might not have totally believed her story, but he knew she didn’t want him inside her and this was too good to end on a bad note.

  Bryn lifted her hips one final time and grabbed Sam’s head, then she collapsed. Quinn was half leaning over her unsure of what to do, throbbing with need. Sam pushed him down onto his back and took him in her mouth. Bryn kissed him once, using her tongue to torment him, then she joined Sam.

  Quinn was carried away. He felt like he was in some erotic dream where his every fantasy was fulfilled. Two women sucking his cock, stroking his balls and squeezing his ass, what could be any better?

  When he finally unloaded again, he yelled and collapsed. It was as though every drop of fluid in his body had just been sucked out through his cock. He lay moaning softly while Bryn curled up next to him and rested her head on his shoulder. “That was not too bad, darling Quinn, was it?”

  Chapter 4

  Pounding on the door woke Quinn from an exhausted sleep. He opened his eyes, confused for a moment about where he was. Bryn’s head still lay on his shoulder. A cascade of black hair flowed across one arm. She opened her eyes and stared into his. “It’s for you.”

  “Me?”

  “Fingle will get it, but indeed, it is for you. A policeman named . . .” she closed her eyes for a moment. “His name is Hennessy, Arthur Hennessy.”

  “Devil take me, that’s the Police Chief.” Quinn leaped out of bed and began searching for clothing dropped many hours ago in parts unknown.

  Bryn slipped out of bed and donned a purple silk wrapper. She found his trousers and handed them to him. The pounding on the door had stopped. Fingle must have answered it. Bryn handed him his shirt and he shrugged it on. His coat was in the adjoining room where Sam lay sound asleep, her short curly head on a white pillow. Bryn helped him into the coat and he tugged on his boots. “Something must be terribly wrong.”

  “He’s here about a murder,” she told him as she followed him to the bedroom door.

  “Priest!”

  “You don’t know that yet.”

  “It has to be. He was here last night and now we have a murder on our hands and it must be very bad if Hennessy is looking for me here. We’re not exactly friends.” They shared one long lingering kiss and he ran down the staircase. Hennessy was standing beside the door in the front hall waiting. “What is it?” Quinn asked.

  “Two dead darkies on the waterfront.”

  Quinn stopped. “Why is that important?”

  “One is a very famous voodoo priest. The darkies are in an uproar about it and the other one is the priest’s woman.”

  Hennessy spoke in a broad Southern drawl. Every word was a testament to his heritage. His family owned a plantation in Baton Rouge and farmed it with Negro help they now had to pay. Hennessy’s opinions about Negros were strong. This must indeed be a very famous one to have drawn the interest of the New Orleans Police Department.

  A police hack waited in the street. The two men climbed in and the driver took off for the waterfront. The closer they got to the river, the muggier became the air until Quinn felt like he was breathing through a wet towel. They stopped outside a darkie bar called the Salon de Grande-Borie. Quinn climbed out first, followed by Hennessy. A group of policemen stood staring at something on the riverbank. Quinn surmised it was the body and walked across the dirt road and over the embankment.

  A large black man wearing a white shirt, black pants and a colorful vest lay on his back. Quinn stepped through the gathered police and bent over him. His eyes were bursting from their sockets, heavily veined with red. His cheeks were also veined. “This man was strangled,” he said to Hennessy.

  “Garroted.” Hennessy pointed to a red line cut into the man’s thick neck.

  The dead man was beefy, tall and well-muscled. Quinn bent low to further examine his throat. He took a pocket knife out and used it to push the dead man’s shirt further down so he could get a better look. When he did, he noticed something in a bag hanging from a cord around the dead man’s neck. “What would that be?”

  “Gris-gris bag,” Hennessy said. “Voodoo.”

  “There is a strange mark here.” Quinn pointed and Hennessy leaned over his shoulder to get a closer look.

  “It appears to be a cross,” Hennessy said.

  “See these round indentations,” Quinn pointed. “This man was strangled with a rosary. The indentations were made by the beads and this mark is from the cross.”

  “Infamous,” Hennessy said. “Who would do such a thing?”

  Quinn did not answer because he knew exactly who killed using a rosary.

  One of the policemen approached Hennessy and held out a piece of brown paper. Something shriveled lay inside it. Quinn stood up and examined the object.

  “What do you think it is?” Hennessy asked.

  Quinn tilted his head. “That, my good man, is a penis.”

  Hennessy gasped. “Whose?”

  “My good sir, I cannot tell you. Have you discovered any corpses missing one?”

  Hennessy shook his head. “No.”

  “Then I think you should look for one. Where is the next dead body?”

  They climbed back into the carriage and drove further down the river bank to a deserted area on the outskirts of the city. The dirt track along the river was edged with tumble-down shacks. Garbage and filth of every kind littered the narrow, rutted track. A knot of police and several hacks were gathered on the far side of the shacks. Quinn climbed down and walked across the road to the river bank. This body was naked. The woman’s breasts were missing and a large knife had been inserted into her vagina. The handle was visible between her legs.

  “Quite brutal,” Quinn said as he bent to examine the woman. “They appear to have died within hours of each other.” Quinn was now sure Draak Priest had killed these women. The Soho killer was in New Orleans. He’d undoubtedly followed Bryn and her sister. But to what end?

  Hennessy pointed to her neck. Quinn bent closer kn
owing what he’d see. She bore the same ligature marks. She’d been garroted with a rosary.

  He stood up and stroked his neatly trimmed goatee. “I believe we are looking for a priest.”

  “And why would you think such a thing?” Hennessy demanded.

  “Observe,” Quinn said pointing to a mark in the mud next to the woman. Someone knelt here wearing a robe or a gown. I don’t believe a woman did this. Do you? You can see swipes made by fabric where the killer knelt in the mud. Then there’s the rosary. And then there is this.” Quinn pointed to a tiny speck on the dead woman’s lips. “That, my good man, is the remains of a communion wafer.”

  Hennessy gasped. “Was there one in the man’s mouth?”

  “I did not notice. Perhaps you can send one of your men around to check.”

  “This is quite grotesque. I believe you are right. The killer must be a priest. What an abominable thought.”

  Quinn stood up, brushed mud off his fawn-colored breeches and straightened his hat. “Or someone who pretends to be a priest.”

  “What are you saying?” Hennessy demanded.

  “Oh, nothing, mere conjecture, my good man, just conjecture.”

  “Why the wafer?”

  “I believe this woman was given last rites before she was most cruelly violated and murdered.”

  “That’s unthinkable,” Hennessy said with an audible groan.

  “Yes I agree, quite grotesque.” Quinn stared at Hennessy for a moment from beneath his brows. Should he share his information with the Police Chief? Quinn decided he was not ready for such a revelation.

  * * * *

  Priest started awake in his cold monk’s cell. The snakes watching Bryn Sahir and those in her apartment had noticed something odd. He concentrated on their cold minds, forced their slits of eyes to focus as he closed his own, and looked only through theirs.

  He saw Quinnten Blade, curse his rotten soul, rise from Bryn’s bed and begin to dress. As he focused on the snakes’ aural senses, he heard Bryn’s servant telling Quinn the New Orleans Police Chief was at the door. Priest nodded. They had discovered the bodies of his most recent victims. Priest urged the snakes forward. One slithered up the bedpost and under the sheets. Priest groaned. Bryn and her lover, Samantha, lay entwined. Both were quite naked. As the snake watched from its hiding place, Bryn rose from the bed and stretched. Priest put his hands through a slit in his priest’s vestments and began stroking himself. He was unable and unwilling to let this opportunity pass.