Chapter 3

It’s true what Consuela said about having little to do except listen to Nick’s Tales. Most women had days before giving birth, and it took a lot out of them. Unlike those times months before when work had been relentless with rehearsals, writing, and receiving and editing Tales, the last of those things only remained.

Along with our enthusiastic reuniting in bed, Lindy enthusiastically returned to working on the Tales. Both Helena and Tash had lessened their involvement in it as their bodies, and specifically the bodies within their bodies, caused a weakening of energy and attention to the task. I suppose I should have rejoiced in becoming central to the writing, no longer debating lines and often losing, but I found collaboration to be a powerful and ameliorating thing, making not just the writing of the texts better, but my ability to write in general as well. So I rejoiced having Lindy at the table with me.

Speaking of lessening strength, I noticed both Xo and Nick seemed weaker when they returned from their battle with Simon and his latest insane attempt to take over the world. The three angel assassins did as well, but Gia and Han less so.

It worried me when Nick whispered into my ear after the editing session the afternoon following the recommencement of his Tales. He requested a meeting with just Xo and him. The last time such a meeting occurred it had been the prelude for their long departure into danger. That time, with the assassins accompanying them, and with the imminent birth of what could be their replacements in the bellies of Zhenzhen and Helena, with Eva containing Simon’s, I feared for the lives of the eternal wanderers. It didn’t come to that, but the worry returned.

Justifiably as it turned out.

“Not with a bang, but with a whimper,” said Nick with a smirk, “as old Bill Shakespeare might say.”

“You’re ... dying?” I murmured.

“And our angels might be too,” Xo responded. “Except there’s a difference. We saw the assassins begin to fade, but Han and Gia less so.”

“Have you entered their minds?” Nick asked.

“When we play with Seraphine. Even when they’re not there, I often have them share the orgasms. Seraphine’s request.”

The wanderers nod. “You give them strength,” Xo said.

“I...”

“Helen remains strong, and so does Salomé,” Nick interrupted my stutter. “Even Helena despite the toll of her pregnancy.”

“And amongst my angels, only Yoshie seems to retain her full strength. And Zhenzhen of course.”

“But ... I entered Rosa’s mind.”

“How long ago?” Nick asked.

“Months. Not since Cass Lake.”

All three of us nodded, my eyes tearing.

“You want me to enter your angels’ minds,” I said the obvious.

“As much as possible,” said Xo. “As much as you can handle.”

“I don’t think it has to be about sex, or climaxes in particular,” Nick smirked. “But it couldn’t hurt.”

“I imagine it might be more powerful,” Xo agreed, though without Nick’s amusement.

“How ... Do you think it would be stronger if it happens directly?” I asked.

They shrugged. “I imagine you won’t mind finding out,” Nick added with expected salaciousness.

We had met in Xo’s loft, which he shared, rather ascetically, with his three oldest angels. And his companion, who, much like Nick’s, appeared too old to conceive anymore. Pretty but nondescript, and quiet to the point of shyness, she tended to go unnoticed. Any musing his angels did with mortals, and his younger angels also shared a loft, must have happened at the subject’s place to gain any privacy. We returned to my loft where we tended to have communal dinners, either prepared by any one of us or brought in. Chinese take-out awaited us.

Mei, Xo’s oldest angel, deceptively petite, matching capabilities of a warrior to the much taller Salomé, immediately caught my eye. Obviously she would be first in this attempt to save the angels. I noticed her weakness for the first time, having been in her presence over several months and missing the subtle decline. Somehow the strange scar on her neck, the only one any angel had, reminding us of her near fatal decapitation, made her seem even weaker. I sat beside her.

“Should we... ?” I began.

She chuckled softly. “You should eat first. You need strength to fuck me well. You’re still mortal after all.”

Yoshie took a chair beside me. “Mind if I join you?”

“To eat.” Mei declared. When Yoshie pouted, Mei scolded, “Don’t be greedy.”

“I can help get him up again,” Yoshie offered.

“You don’t think I can manage such skills, little one?” asked the much shorter angel. “I may not be a slut like you, but I think I have a bit more experience.”

For a moment I thought about defending my lover, who matched Helen in mutual affection. And who tended to have far greater interest in intellectual things rather than physical pleasure, to the point that our first encounter, when she had been last in a weird night of me fucking every one of Xo’s angels not my wife, her gentle loving, and the connection we made because of it, had been purely experimental, even if the results of the experiment had begun our close relationship.

The moment ended when the two angels laughed.

“I’ll bring you into it,” I reminded Yoshie.

“I’d still rather be there in the flesh.” She straddled my lap and kissed me.

“Let the boy eat,” Mei chuckled.

“Don’t you think I should get him ready for you, old lady?”

“Fuck you,” Mei growled.

After another intense kiss, and grinding into my hardening cock, Yoshie hopped off and returned to her seat with a giggle. Her hand grasped the lump she had created, saying, “It’s a nice cock.”

“I know,” Mei smiled, her smaller hand also grasping the elongating roll, fingers caressing the edges and finding the glans.

“Mmm,” I moaned.

“Eat,” Mei ordered. Somehow I did.

Both ladies shared the task of keeping my hard-on sustained. When I followed them out of my loft, my condition became conspicuous. And yes, Yoshie had convinced Mei to join us.

In Mei’s bed, Mei straddled my head to get her ready to be fucked while Yoshie showed Mei how I liked to be handled, not that my cock needed it. In fact, she coaxed me to cum in her mouth. By then, I had sucked Mei to the edge of her own climax. When my orgasm became imminent, I closed my eyes and brought every angel I knew into the moment. Mei’s orgasm followed mine immediately, and the other climaxes ours caused reverberated in feedback through all of us, sustaining ours and intensifying them several fold.

Even as powerful as that became, when I recovered, and Yoshie and Mei joined forces in sucking me back to hardness, and Mei straddled my cock and Yoshie straddled my face facing away from her much older sister/angel, and I fondled Yoshie’s soft, pale, familiar breasts, and Mei angled herself for most pleasure, and her hands fondled herself where my mouth and hands fondled Yoshie, and she brought herself close with her fucking and rubbing, and I brought Yoshie close as well, and I let myself become sensitive to Mei’s hot tight pussy and we lifted into a second orgasm, I brought only Xo’s angels into the sharing of it, and even though less added their orgasms to ours, somehow it became more intense, more direct and less messy or something, and all three of us passed out, and I heard later Xo’s other angels did too.

I awoke to the sound of my name expressing concern, and my eyes saw concern in the beautiful Japanese angel. After my mind clicked into reality, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

“You,” Yoshie smiled, cheering up. “You slept for an hour. How do you feel?”

I sat up slowly. My brain felt woozy. My body felt weak. I told her.

“Try standing,” she said. I did. I felt capable of it. And walking when she guided us to the bathroom. “Snake’s Tale?” I asked her along the way.

“Do you think he’d start it without you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has he ever without you?”

“No.”

“There you go.”

The shower seemed to help. Like a morning shower often did, it cleared away the murk in my brain.

After, as we dressed, I wondered out loud, “I never reacted like that before.”

“Have you done it twice in a row before?” Yoshie asked.

“No. And it often ends an evening of sex. I’m usually sleeping afterwards.”

“But not always.”

“No.”

“Master thinks it may have to do with his angels. You’re getting some of their weakening while helping to strengthen them.”

“Not just weakening,” I murmured. “Dying.”

I felt somewhat improved by the time I sat with my very pregnant wives to await the next Tale. “Are you okay?” Nick asked me from the stage.

“A little better,” I shrugged. “You?”

“I finally know what an old man feels like. Muscles and joints no longer work the way they should, the way I have always expected.”

“And your mind?”

“Completely lucid. Nothing like dementia has set in. Xo thinks it’s another kind of transference than telepathy. We’re giving our heirs the peculiar sparks of life, like voluntary and involuntary muscle control from mind to body specific to us wanderers which brings forth the chemistry of immortality. Or they’re sucking it in from us to make them like us.”

“A sort of life force?”

“I suppose it is.”

“And what about your angels? You’re not giving it to them.”

“You are,” said Xo from the audience. “We were the ones who gave them their immortality. Unlike what we are giving our heirs, it never weakened us. That ability is being transferred. Doesn’t that flow you use to connect minds pass through your unborn children?”

“Yes. And in fact, the second time today, when I chose your angels specifically and channeled only through the child in Zhenzhen’s womb, it seemed to be stronger. Less diffuse I guess.” Nods told of future plans.

Snake looked around the auditorium, seeing the audience settle into place, and smiled. “Let’s begin.” The auditorium darkened, readying for the images projected behind him to be seen.

“As I said before, I spent generations headquartered in Valencia, often traveling by sea away from there, becoming a well trusted seaman, so to speak. My skin color kept me from command or even first or second mate, but that and my great strength had me doing the heavy work, sails and anchors and the harpoon that gave the killing blow to a whale and the work that followed such killings, and the hardcore sailors that did similar work were my command. It sent me all over the Mediterranean and along African and European coasts and eventually to the New World. But before there, I need to tell of the change in Spain, the Spanish taking it back from the Moors earlier had only just begun their turning it into a much less tolerant place.”

“Simon,” Lindy muttered.

“Exactly,” Nick frowned.

“Things are changing,” Hestia murmurs, lying beside Nick, their second child heavy in her womb. Despite the pregnancy, or maybe because of it, she enjoys a long fuck, and a hard one by its end, and she basks in the warmth following their latest intense romp. A beautiful mix of Semitic and Spanish blood, her mother, the daughter of a longtime wealthy and aristocratic family from Barcelona, falling in love with the son of a trader from Palestine, a controversial choice because the Moors had lost Spain, but less so because of the wealth of the Palestinian family, her beauty has become accentuated by both the glow of pregnancy and the post orgasm glow. The thought intrudes on the last remnants of bliss.

“When they executed my husband,” she continues, “instead of giving him to a reasonable court to mete out a much lesser punishment for his transgression against me, it gave power to the locals. It became about a worse transgression to them, of a Muslim fucking an innocent Spanish Christian girl. To allow such a thing to happen showed weakness in power.”

“But he was strung up by a mob,” Nick reminds her.

“And did any legislature do anything about it? Disperse the mob before it could happen, or punish them for harming a respected businessman? No, they appeased the mob, fearing escalation. They knew an insurgency had been building and tried not to incite a riot. But wouldn’t it have been a lesson? That a man is a man whatever he believes? It showed weakness.”

Nick laughs. Despite her maternal heritage, his companion might has well been fully Moor. “I can see you leading the charge to free your cheating husband against your brethren.”

“First, I should have been the one to cut off his betraying balls. And second, even if my faith in the Koran has lessened, no thanks to you and your unassailable seductiveness, I still feel that the blessed Mohamad’s god to be a much more forgiving one than the Christian one, despite Christ’s words.”

“Even though Muslims have much stricter moral laws than Christians?”

“Yes. Even so. How are your Jewish minions fairing?”

“Not well in the east and the villages surrounding Madrid,” Nick admits. “Those that have not changed faith to protect their family and their well-being have been stripped of possessions.”

“Because they can’t be accepted as in allegiance with the Christian insurgency.”

“Yes.”

“While the Moors had always left the infidels to their faith.”

“Yes.”

“Even the Christians who now murder them.”

“To ensure the country has one main faith.”

“At what expense?”

“I believe at a terrible expense,” Nick sighs. “I do not know those who lead the fanatics, nor the bishops who bless them. But I do know of their cruelty and xenophobia and exclusivity. These are Simon’s minions.”

“Simon?”

“My opposite. Like me but completely different. He believes only in himself, and expects all others to only believe in him.”

“He thinks he’s a god?”

“He wishes he were. We cannot move mountains, only people’s minds. And even then not as completely as he wishes. We make suggestions. Compulsions really. But they can be fought or even ignored if otherwise convinced. They would not be in this situation, taking back land from the unbelievers. It would be a religious cause, and the righteousness would destroy any who didn’t worship Jesus. You are right, my love. Things will become terrible for not just the Moors and the Jews, but anyone who challenge the sanctimonious assholes who take power.”

“I understand why you have not told me of this Simon. You have protected me from fear. How long before I must flee?”

“Not long enough. We live in the last accepting place for the Moors, but it will topple, from within and then from without eventually.”

“Then help me forget in the best way possible,” she says, kissing him.

His kisses on her mouth and the ones that follow, on other flesh responsive to them, from ears to neck to nipples and eventually to another set of lips, swollen and wet with desire, while her mouth grips his manhood, making it even more turgid, dissolve all worries. And when he removes his cock from her oral attention and pushes the long thick flesh into her needy cunt, her legs pulled up and open, his torso remaining almost upright so as not to put pressure on her abdomen, his legs curled beneath her supporting both of them, and his hands gripping her heavy breasts, their eyes remain connected, seeing the love there and the faces around the eyes expressing pleasure each gives to the other.

Only a year after giving birth to her daughter, it becomes necessary for her to flee her home. A man meets them on the boat that gives her her escape. Shades lighter than Nick, he still shows some trace of Black Africa. The two pretend to be married. Luckily they like each other, though not equally.

The man, the same age as Nick’s companion, has been a devout bachelor and a womanizer. Though impelled by Nick to meet them on the boat with the specific purpose of becoming the woman’s mate, he finds himself overwhelmed by her beauty, grace and charm, her feistiness and her intelligence, and can’t help falling in love with her to the point his ever wandering eye becomes fixated only on her.

To her, he becomes a lesser substitute for the only man she has truly loved. Even her first husband had become a hot flame of desire almost extinguished over the years, especially when she realized what a cad he was, not to mention how cool his attention to her had become. It may be ironic that the man she loved most, or even exclusively, could be considered the essential cad, fucking women as a purpose in life. But his devotion to her, and hers to him, had never flickered. His every homecoming after fucking several women never ceased to be joyous and exquisitely pleasurable.

And this difference of affection, fully revealed when Nick says goodbye to his companion, leaving her in the safe home of her pretend husband in Mecca, her father’s homeland now hers, and she sobs and collapses in Nick’s arms, never wanting to leave them, and her faux husband witnesses this display, becomes the husband’s burden. He must accept being always second in his wife’s heart. It becomes his duty to comfort her after the heartbreaking departure. His pleasure, holding this beautiful, amazing woman in his arms. His pleasure, later, when she needs him to make love to her, her lips, soft and heated by emotion creating the greatest kiss he has experienced, further enflaming his already demanding libido. Her body, at last revealed, only improves in its motherhood with heavier breasts and wider hips, otherwise firm yet soft and giving, and having the smoothest skin he has ever felt. And she’s the most responsive woman he has ever enjoyed. Even the boldness she displays, telling him what works for her and what doesn’t, something few women in his past have done, and those that did, unlike her, have almost been cruel in their advice, as if he should read their minds, until his pleasuring distracted them, he finds in her to be even more enticing, expressing her intelligence, to enable greater pleasure for her and for him to give her that pleasure. He only hopes that this first fuck, being specific in its intent to help her recover from her loss, will not be unique in its intensity. Or its length for that matter, and the incredible cocksucking she gives him to continue it, including her insistence that he guide her as she has guided him. And though her lips never have the heat of emotion to them as they have the first time he enjoys them except, to a lesser extent, after she receives her first orgasm, he soon finds out whenever they join together, which occurs more often than he can have hoped, that the first time has not been an anomaly. And in fact, as they get to know each other’s bodies over the years, it actually gets better. Her love for him grows as well, while his remains at a high peak. Even still, hers remains less than her love for Nick. He knows this because he can see her remember those times with her immortal lover, and he draws them out of her, and he becomes Nick’s substitute, lesser yet accepted. More than that. Appreciated. Enjoyed. Thoroughly. Remembered ecstasy becomes actual.

Occasionally he wonders if his departure from this world will affect her as much as Nick’s had. Would she feel bereft without him as she did without Nick, needing his comfort to help her survive it? He knows she misses him and worries about him when he leaves on business, and welcomes him back home lovingly as only she and her passionate nature can. At some point during the homecoming, she inevitably asks him if he fucked around during his travels. Her disappointment at his lack of conquest at first surprises him, but they do bring memories of his past womanizing as part of their sex play. She appreciates his explanation that he has no interest in any woman except her, but reminds him every time he leaves that he can indulge his lust as long as he tells her all the details. When he crosses paths in his travels with a particularly sexy lady, and remembering his permission pursues the mutual interest, after a bit of kissing and groping, he finds neither his mind nor his cock in the least bit responsive. Escaping her embrace, her curses and abuses heard as he rushes out of her house make him happier about his decision. After that, his wife accepts his exclusive devotion to her, and they begin inventing indiscretions. Both of them. Her vividness makes him worry about being cuckolded, but he decides not only to trust her about their manufacture, but not worry if they might be true except to worry for any other to catch her and punish her, because, in the end, when home, he has her every night.

It ends up being him left bereft. Still loving after many years, fawning over grandchildren from both Nick’s children and his, and even witnessing the birth of the first child of the first child, her wondrous heart gives out. As if his attaches to hers and hers give his sustenance, he soon follows her into the afterlife, her name the last thing on his lips as if greeting her there.

With Spain once more under complete Catholoc control, retribution rears its ugly head. All those not Catholic suffer greatly. Savonarola and the auto-de fe become a cruel exclusionary force. A blackamoor finds no welcome, to say the least, on Spanish land.

On sea is a different matter. Strength and experience outweigh prejudice. And a Spanish captain even knows to consult Nick, if secretly, on everything from the welfare of his crew to negotiating treacherous channels. The tough sailors under Nick’s command learn to trust him and respect him or suffer grave consequences, their grave being the sea. The captain’s mates treat him with disgust, and the captain hides his admiration. The conquistadors on board on Nick’s last Spanish ship which heads to the New World have an even more complicated relationship with the large, mysterious and dangerous black man.

The proud leader of the conquistadors stands beside the captain watching the weird events on the deck below. A display of combat, two soldiers against one man, swords against a small knife. The captain laughs, asking the officer, “How did your men get into this mess?” even though he knows the answer. Nick has asked him if he could respond to some of the soldiers’ taunting.

“What do you mean?” asks the leader.

Nick knocks out the two challengers without harming them otherwise. “That,” says the captain.

“Who is he?”

“A valuable person on this ship. I prefer him not to be harmed, but I’m not worried.”

“You trust that blackamoor?”

“Enough for him to be in charge of the harder working seamen on this ship. He has proved his worth many times. It seems your soldiers might learn something from him.”

They watch three soldiers challenge Nick, one even scoring a wound on his leg which doesn’t seem to affect him, before they too get knocked down and knocked out.

“Enough!” their leader shouts over the noise below. “Who are you, Blackamoor?”

“Nick,” Nick shouts.

“You will address me as sir.”

“Why? I am not under your command, nor would you let me be.”

The leader sighs and takes several breathes to calm his anger. “Will you show my men how you defend yourself?”

“I will if your men will listen.”

“You will learn from this blackamoor,” their leader orders.

“Yes commander,” they return as one. Discipline in not their weakness.

“You should take care of your wound,” says the captain.

“Yes, Captain.” Somehow Nick has kept the wound open, letting it bleed, though not profusely. A bandage will hide the lack of wound soon, and Nick will project a scar there joining others appropriate to the rough life of a sailor and a former warrior.

Arriving in Panama, where the Spanish have established an enclave much to the detriment of the natives, the commander and his men rest just long enough to get their land legs back before heading south to look for gold and to encounter the newly discovered Incas in far off Peru. Seeing the condescension towards the natives, Nick worries about any encounter with a people with a proud and well established civilization which the Incas sound like they have created.

Nick, having proved his worth training the soldiers, even more on open land, leaves his old career and his old friend, the captain, behind to travel with the conquistadors. But, as his wont, and the soldiers actually prefer it, he keeps himself at the edge of their camps. This makes it easier to slip away and meet with natives unobserved.

He has made contact with these people via a minion. As a young man of prodigious intelligence and apparent religious zeal, Francisco has come to the Americas to proselytize and convert the savages to save their souls, except they convert him. They fascinate him, like an early anthropologist becoming immersed in his subject. He learns their languages, and he in turn teaches Spanish to the cleverest of them so they can serve as translators. He also brings them knowledge of his people. What can be trusted with them, which is little. And to gain their trust, he gives them certain technological advances the Spanish have over them, as well as insight into the way his people think and act and strategize.

It isn’t until the conquistadors arrive on the South American continent that Nick meets with Francisco and his family. By then Francisco has five wives from five different tribes, gifts for his gifts, and many children from these wives, and children from these children. He has become the patriarch of his own tribe; a tribe of diplomats; a nomadic tribe. This tribe, well-schooled in hiding, secretly follows the path of the conquistadors. They aide the native who serves the conquistadors as guide and scout and negotiator for trade in foodstuffs along the way, helping avoid confrontations which could threaten an entire tribe. Negotiators in these encounters are given the proper obsequiousness expected from the proud and prejudiced Spanish warriors. The Europeans rarely see youth and beauty amongst the natives they meet, and never female youth and beauty. A large group of warriors of any race can do terrible things to such creatures, especially the strange and of a far lower caste.

Of course Nick has no such limitation. Through Francisco, his family and his connections, Nick can do his breeding. He also gains five companions, young daughters of Francisco’s five wives, each of a different tribe. The daughters, of the temperament and intelligence Nick prefers, not only give him their wombs to fill, but also serve to bring him their different languages, often more patois of a similar language.

Francisco meets with Nick in a small fern grotto, a temporary home of particular beauty for Nick’s companions. “The Spanish grow restless,” Nick tells his friend. “Even the old crones they meet for trade have taken on some allure. And I think their blades have become just as restless, starving for the taste of blood.”

“They understand raping and pillaging a village will make it difficult to continue getting food along the way, don’t they?” Francisco asks.

“A better question than stirring the natives to attack,” Nick chuckles sadly. “That they would scoff at. I think most would have preferred taking things all along. In the way they think, in their extreme nationalist, racist and religious pride, they have been designed for such terrible endeavors. And your efforts keeping it from them only makes them more eager for release.”

Francisco sighs. “Have their native guide move them in an eastern direction. A detour which can be explained leads to a better path to their destination. Have him warn them of a tribe far more interested in taking than trading, and with a great amount of success at it.”

“A conquering tribe?”

“Yes, with too much success. They threaten the tentative peace of tribes north and west of them. No, not threaten but embrace the tentativeness. From what I have heard, they use antipathy between tribes in a sort of blood sport, as if battle were ever a game.”

“It was in Rome,” I remind him.

“Of course. And they use it not to find a champion, which only meant survival and perhaps renown in those times for those slaves, but to add to their stock of warriors. And the warriors get rewarded by choices of female slaves. In fact, enslaving young women seems to be their chief enterprise. It is said they trade them to the Incas. Young men too, for that matter. Those not chosen for elevation into warriors.”

“Worthy adversaries for these proud conquistadors.”

“Ever stronger parasites threatening the host,” Francisco shakes his head.

“And the raping after the defeat?”

“More raping of the raped, but perhaps freedom afterwards? If the conquistadors can be persuaded to leave them alive?”

“This village, is it central to this malevolent little empire?”

“A front edge to it, but being built up to create a surge into the most difficult territory: the jungle.”

“Your knowledge?”

“Spies. Observers only. No interest in infiltrating. A few refugees. Too few.”

“Would tribes give up warriors to create a band to defeat this threat? Is it that threatening?”

“You would change focus from your conquistador friends to my friends?”

“Those haughty white men have never been my friends. Because of you, I have only native friends, and companions.”