And that seemed to be the trigger because with a rush of energy the two of them were levitating, twirling about above the bungalow like in the center of a typhoon, then suddenly they were inside, lying on a white-sheeted bed. Quickly, as soon as the dizziness left her, she extricated herself from Zeb’s body (he’d landed with her one arm pinned under his shoulders) and adjusted his body better to the center of the mattress. Then she left the room and saw Beau standing before an open closet, studying a chart on the door and operating various switches. Patience and Grimelda were just coming in the front door, Patience sprightly, Grimelda huffing like a locomotive.
“Aren’t you done yet?” Patience sniped at Beau. “You could have helped us up the steps. I had to half carry Grimelda most of the way.”
“You did not,” Grimelda said, leaning against a wall to get her breath.
“Bite me, Patience,” Beau said.
“Sure. Just move your big fat head over here. One puncture and it will deflate. There’s nothing but air in there anyway.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” Beau said, then flicked a lever which caused a loud sound outside. He made a fist pump into the air before declaring, “Cajuns rule!”
Patience rolled her eyes.
“I need a basin of warm water,” Regina interjected before they continued with their squabbling. “Wash cloths and towels. And some tools. Pliers and a wire cutter, if possible.”
“Ah’ll find the tools,” Beau offered. “But first, Ah gotta turn on the generator so ya’ll kin have electricity fer hot water and lights and such. A small solar generator kept the fridge workin’, but the big, gas-powered one is turned off.”
Regina wouldn’t have even thought of such a thing. Nor known how to fix them. Showed how ill-prepared she was for this mission. She couldn’t think about that now. “I’ll check out the bathroom cabinets for any antiseptics and pain meds. I doubt if there will be any antibiotics, but you never know.”
“I have herbs in my bag,” Grimelda said. “I’ll set them to brewing right away, soon as we get a fire going.”
For just a moment, Regina was glad to have company. Others to help her. She glanced around for the first time at the large living room with glass doors leading out to a deck which overlooked the beautiful Caribbean waters. In the distance, she saw a couple of dolphins romping in the waves. Truly, a paradise.
The living room was sparsely furnished with a buttery yellow leather couch and two matching recliners. On the walls were fine paintings and a flat-screen television. Through a wide, curved archway she could see a kitchen with high-end appliances and red granite countertops. All very bright and cheerful.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of a motor turning over and then the hum of the overhead fan turning. The generator. Good!
She found antiseptic ointments in the bathroom, along with rolls of gauze, Band-Aids, and over-the-counter type pain pills. There was a wine cabinet off the living room, which was interesting but of no use to her at the moment. A bottle of whiskey above the fridge would come in handy, though.
She was about to return to the bedroom where Beau was exiting. He handed her a pair of needle-nosed pliers and clippers more suited to pruning branches than delicate barbed wire penises. “He’s becoming delirious, I think.”
“Oh?” she said, walking into the room to see Zeb rolling from side to side, perspiration streaming down his face and beading his chest, despite the air conditioner that was starting to blow cool air and the ceiling fan. There was blood around the barbed wire.
“Red hot,” Zeb pleaded. “Need red hot.”
Jeesh! Even in a fever, he’s smelling my cinnamon, or thinking he smells it.
“Is he talking about you? Does he call you Red Hot?” Beau asked.
“No! He’s referring to those red hot candies. You know, cinnamon hearts? The kind that are sweet at first, but when you bite into them, they burn your tongue.” She glanced over at Beau and bald-faced lied, with a straight face, even, “Some people in the midst of a fever crave cinnamon.”
Beau looked dubious. “Ah never heard that before. And mah MawMaw was a traiteur. That’s a folk healer.”
“You learn something new every day,” Regina said, laying out her tools and setting them beside the towels Patience had already brought in.
“Want red hot. Need red hot,” Zeb continued to moan.
Tears welled in Regina’s eyes for some reason. Maybe belated shock at everything that had happened today.
“Ah tol’ ya he was delirious,” Beau said behind her. “Goin’ off the deep end.”
Definitely off the deep end. And a weeping Regina, who could only smell the scent of cool, clean rain, appeared to be going with him.
Whoever said “Pain makes you stronger” never had a wired penis . . .
Zeb alternated between agony and ecstasy.
First, soothing hands cleansed his body, all of it, head to toe, front and back, with warm water and pine-scented soap. It felt as if the washing went on for days. He wanted it to last forever.
Floating, floating. Warm water. Soft hands.
Like a mikvah, the ritual purification of his Hebrew religion, he mused. Not just a bodily cleansing, but a spiritual one, as well. Was there significance in that? A higher level of abrading away sin? A return to innocence?
Hah! Zeb had never been truly innocent. Not even when his father had taken him to the temple mikvah when he was a child and spoke softly to him of the laws set down for his people by Moses. As an eight-year-old, he’d been more concerned about a return to the running games with his cousins, or the honey oatcakes his mother had been baking that morning, or whether he should bash in the neighbor boy’s head for teasing his sister Leah for bed-wetting.
“Zebulan, you must walk a straight path in your life dedicated to God.”
No, no! Zig-zag is the best way, especially when being chased by Samuel. He runs like a gazelle.
“You must fast before the Shabbat, to show your discipline.”
But Mother’s oatcakes are so good!
“Love of Yahweh, that is the most important thing.”
How about other kinds of love? He might be a mere eight years old, but he was a precocious boy, and he had heard things, and he knew about strange dreams that brought damp linens.
“Anger is never the answer. You must learn to turn the other cheek.”
Hard to turn my cheek and throw a rock at the same time.
Would his life have turned out differently if his father had not died when he was ten? Perhaps a few more lessons in the mikvah would have molded him differently.
Water splashed on his chest, calling him back to the present, and he heard a female voice swear. This was no mikvah, he realized when he opened his eyes . . . both of them now since the crust had been softened on his one bruised eye . . . because women were not permitted in a male bath, and this was definitely a woman who was ministering to him. A red-haired woman. And a witch, besides!
“I am unclean,” he said, not at all what he’d meant to say. The ritual cleansing should be male only, just as the female mikvah was for females only, menstruating ones. And he should not be touched by female hands in his sinful/dirty state. Plus, he was married. Well, not anymore, but still . . .
He could not say all that. Too many words! “I am unclean,” would have to suffice.
But she seemed to understand and responded, “Aren’t we all?”
“Not you. Vangels are the next thing to angels,” he said.
“Hardly. And especially when it is discovered what I have done.”
Uh-oh! “You will be in trouble for helping me?”
“Not so much what I did, helping you, but that I did it without precise permission.”
In other words, you did what you knew would be forbidden. Just like a woman!
“I was once more guilty of pride, thinking I could do things on my own.”
Just like a woman! Actually, I am guilty of the same sin. It’s called conceit. “But you had help. Where is your
help now, by the by? Gone back to Horror?” I hope.
“Don’t you wish!” She continued washing and rinsing and drying off his legs as she talked. Very efficiently. Causing hardly any pain. You’d think she had been a nurse all her life, not a witch. “Beau is rechecking that shield thing you have around the island. Then he’s planning to catch a ‘bigass fish fer dinnah.’ His words. Patience is making a bikini out of your kitchen curtains so she can go swimming. Being a Puritan, she never had an opportunity to wear such immodest garments, and even though she’s been a Lucipire for a few hundred years now, she never had the occasion to need a bathing suit. You’d think this was Club Med or something. And Grimelda has a cauldron going on your patio barbecue, brewing up a potion that’s going to cure all your injuries. I’m not sure what’s in it, along with some herbs from that overgrown garden of yours, but I do know that she asked Beau not to throw away any fish guts.” She gave the wash cloth a final wringing out and laid it on the side of the metal basin of water. “Which brings me to my biggest problem with Vikar and St. Michael. It’s going to be that I brought not one, but four demons out of Horror.”
“I’d like to be a fly on the wall when you explain that one to Michael.”
“You’ll probably be there with me. Be careful what you wish for.”
He tried to smile, but then he noticed that she was examining his penis, trying to figure how to remove the wires which had become embedded with the jolts of their journey here. There was a time when a woman looking at his male part would have caused it to blow up like a . . . well, a balloon. Not now.
She pressed a glass tumbler against his lips and said, “Drink.”
He sniffed. Tasted. Then exclaimed, “That’s my fifty-year-old Genlivet. It cost me five hundred dollars at an online auction. You can’t waste it on—”
She pinched his nose with the fingers of one hand and tipped the shot glass so he was forced to drink. “Don’t argue. And drink it all. You’re going to need it.”
He was halfway drunk by the time he finished his second glass, so potent was the brew. But then his eyes went wide when she picked up several tools which she’d laid on the sheet beside him. A pair of long-bladed, pointy pliers, the kind used by electricians for fine wiring. I always said I’m hot-wired different than other guys. Cuticle scissors. A manicure now? Or pedicure? Doesn’t she realize that I don’t have any finger or toenails left? Tweezers. My eyebrows do need a bit of shaping. Some first-aid butterfly clips. Uh-oh. I know what those are for. A needle and thread. Alarm ripped through Zeb. Seeing as I’m naked, there’s nothing here to sew except . . . me.
He tried to jackknife into a sitting position and barely managed to raise his shoulders. Beau stepped up to his one side, and Patience to the other, both pressing his shoulders to the bed. Wasn’t Beau supposed to be off fishing and Patience off swimming?
“This is going to hurt,” Regina said, taking the pliers in hand, like a sadistic dentist. At the first tug of the barbed wire, it felt as if his cock was being roasted over a red-hot flame, and someone was prodding it with a pointy poker. Here, there, everywhere, even his balls.
“No, no, no! Wait! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” he screamed and passed out again.
It was his wedding night, Zeb realized as he drifted in and out of a deep, torturous sleep. Well, not really his wedding night. He had been betrothed to Sarah for more than a year, which was as good as marriage (without the living together), and the consummation had taken place (embarrassingly short for him and painful for his bride), when they’d been wed seven days ago at the beginning of their marriage feast. But now, he led Sarah to the home he’d prepared for her over these many months. This humble house in the midst of a small vineyard would be a place of love and contentment for the two of them, and God willing, their many children to come over the years. But first, there was tonight. Just him and Sarah. And, oh, the plans he had!
Sweet dreams followed. Ones in which he and Sarah enjoyed the benefits of the marriage bed and their budding life together. Full of hope and goodness. Yes, there was goodness in those days. His love for Sarah grew and grew. Years flew by like butterflies. They had two children, twins, whom they adored. The small vineyard flourished, if not in the large quantities Zeb would have liked, but the wines were of such a quality as to be prized throughout Judea.
And then the drought came. Two years and no end in sight.
“I have to go. I have no choice,” he told Sarah.
“You have a choice. Stay here with our people. Pray. Yahweh will bring us rain,” Sarah argued with him.
“When?”
“When it suits His plan for us.”
He threw his hands in the air with frustration. “It is a wife’s duty to defer to her husband,” he reminded her.
“Not when he is about to go off and fight for their enemy. How can you, Zebulan? How can you betray your own people?”
“That is your brother Benjamin speaking. He is a rebel whose head will soon end on the pike outside the Roman garrison.” ’Twas true. Benjamin and his loud-mouthed comrades had staged one too many protests. At the bloodless expression on her face, he softened. “It is only for one year, Sarah, and I will not be fighting against any Hebrews. I have been promised.”
“Roman promises!” She spat on the ground.
“I will be stationed in Briton where I am to build a fortress. Any fighting to be done will be against the Celts. I have General Julian’s word on that.”
“Words! All words!” She gazed at him sadly. “This is not about the drought, but about greed. You want the gold coins to buy more hectares of land for your vineyard.”
“Our vineyard, Sarah,” he corrected her. “I do not deny my ambition, but my agreement to military service is about the drought, as well. The adjoining lands have a stream which has not gone dry, despite the drought. It is for my family, I do this. And that is the final word.”
They made up, somewhat. Leastways, there were no more angry words, but there were tears. From his wife, as well as his two precious children. “Take care, my love. The workers will help you with the grapes.” They had only two men, Caleb and John, but the vineyard was small. “Be safe, little ones. I will bring you presents. A surprise.”
In the end, he was gone not one year, but two, and when he returned, it was to an abandoned vineyard and a burned-down house. What had happened? Where were Sarah and Rachel and Mikah?
He could not think of that now. It was too painful. Or was it the actual physical pain in his body. He was wracked with fiery torment in the region of his groin. No, his entire body was afire, like the time as a youth when he’d gotten a sunburn so bad his skin had broken out in blisters. Was it the drought with its merciless sun? Had the drought continued through those missing years? No, this was a different kind of heat. It came from within.
Confusion reigned.
And then there were the voices.
He tried to swim up from the hot fog that was enveloping him, but he kept sinking back. He had a hazy recollection of being rescued by the vangel witch Regina, with the aid of the three witch Lucipires known at Horror as the Crazy Coven. Beau Doucet, Patience Allister, and Grimelda, whose surname he didn’t know. He also recollected something involving a hot air balloon, then a wild five-way tandem teletransport to his island. That must be where he was now. He tried to open his eyes, but the lids were so heavy. Instead, he concentrated on the voices, trying to differentiate one from the other. Beau’s was obvious, being the only male. Regina’s was assertive and rather bossy, truth to tell. Patience seemed gentle and mostly quiet. Grimelda cackled so much that it was hard not to associate her with old age and witchliness.
His mental assessment of his present situation was interrupted.
“I can’t get the fever down. We’ve got to do something. Now!” Regina said.
“I could brew another potion,” Grimelda offered with a cackle.
“Please don’t. The smell is enough ta make a possum puke,” Beau said in a deep southern d
rawl. He was Cajun, from Louisiana, Zeb seemed to recollect.
“The only thing I can smell is summer rain. Sweet and pure and—”
“You’re losin’ it, Regina, bless yer heart. Patience, bring some more cool water fer Regina to bathe Zeb’s body. Maybe that’ll bring his temperature down. His skin is hotter ’n a Bourbon Street hooker on a Saturday night.” Beau again. “He’s already naked, and Ah doubt he’s gonna rise ta the occasion if ya touch him intimate like. Not with them stitches. Ha, ha, ha.”
“Why’d you use red thread?” Patience asked.
“It was all I could find,” Regina replied.
“It looks cute,” Patience said.
“Cute ain’t what a man wants a woman to say when she looks at his favorite part,” Beau pointed out.
“I once knew a man whose cock was red as a beet,” Grimelda revealed.
“You people are nuts,” Regina muttered.
Zeb agreed, but didn’t have the energy to say so.
Much later, at least he thought it was much later, Zeb heard Regina say, “He needs blood.”
“Grimey already put a bucket-load of fish blood in that brew of hers,” Patience said.
“I did not,” Grimelda protested with a cackle.
“Not fish blood, you fools,” Regina snapped.
Zeb sniffed the air in her direction and realized that she smelled like cinnamon. Had he noticed that before? He couldn’t remember.
“Ah could use a swig or ten of human blood,” Beau remarked. “Ah swear, if a plane wrecked nearby and survivors came aseekin’ some kinda Treasure Island, Ah’d have the whole lot of ’em drained before they could say, ‘Where’s Tom Hanks?’”
“You’d have ta beat me away first, with me own broom,” Grimelda cackled again. “I have such a thirst, my fangs keep cutting my bottom lip. Good fer cutting off fish heads, though.”
“Y’all think that’s bad,” Beau said. “Check these out.” A hissing noise followed that Zeb recognized as the sound of fangs coming quickly out of gums. He’d done it a time or two (thousand) himself.