Chapter 38

The following morning I got out of bed early, long before Peggy woke up, put on my sweats and running shoes, went outside and began running laps around the outer perimeter of the property.

I've always enjoyed the silence of early morning; the stillness that envelopes the world just before sunrise. It reminds me, just a little, of the days before I could link.

With only the sound of my feet hitting the ground to distract me I was able to focus on nothing at all, slipping into that no-mind state that runners live for, thinking only of controlled breathing, steady rhythm and not tripping.

As I completed my third lap I caught a brief flash of motion, from the corner of my eye; a lone figure hurried up the drive and fell in a few yards behind me. The new runner struggled along, working industriously to catch up, and at times just to keep pace, fiercely determined in spite of not being able to make up any of the distance between us.

I smiled to myself as I sampled the emotions of the individual behind me. Strong willed, unrelenting, uncompromising and completely disinclined to surrender or admit defeat.

Stubborn and pig-headed. Definitely a chip off the old block.

By the end of the sixth lap she'd fallen nearly forty yards behind, and as I approached the completion of the seventh lap I could see her lumbering along up ahead of me and recognized the light blue running suit her mother had picked out not more than two months before. I stretched my legs and increased my pace, quickly closing the distance between us.

As we grew closer I shortened my stride and matched our rhythms, which wasn't easy. Her legs were considerably shorter than mine.

I pulled up next to her and together we ran side by side for half a lap before she looked over and up at me.

"Don't you ... ever ... get ... tired ... Daddy?" Belle gasped.

I smiled fondly down at my little girl.

"Sure I do. I just don't let it stop me."

We ran on together for another two laps as Belle struggled to find her stride.

Like most young children, she was accustomed to running in short frantic bursts, and like most young children, she had enormous stores of energy. Unlike most of her peers, by which I mean girls near her age, Belle enjoyed exertion. She liked running and jumping, getting sweaty and dirty, climbing trees, wrestling and even fighting. She was much larger and stronger than girls or boys her age.

My beautiful little princess was a natural born tomboy.

She struggled with the unfamiliar and uncomfortable effort involved in distance running. Muscles she wasn't used to using screamed at her, urging her to stop. Pains in her shins, hips and sides tormented her, begging her to give up ... or at least slow down.

The temptation to ease her suffering was tremendous. But as she pushed on against the pain, searching within herself for the means to go on, I remembered what it had been like when I first started. And I saw in her a reflection of myself.

I'd refused to give in to the pain, and she wouldn't either. I couldn't find it in me to belittle her effort by taking away the pain.

So instead I linked and tried to help her find what she was looking for.

I hadn't known what it was when I was her age. I hadn't known what it was when I was twice her age. I'd had to figure it out on my own. The very least I could do for my daughter was teach her a little of what I'd learned the hard way.

So I linked with Belle and went looking. I knew where it was in me and I figured if my baby girl had one as well it would probably be in the same general location.

And it was. Down in the depths, a tiny, insignificant little ember of flame, sheathed in absolute darkness and flickering with rebellious determination.

I cleared a path thru the dark that surrounded that little flame, exposing it for a brief instant. Belle's subconscious mind latched onto it like a trap-door spider pouncing on a passing insect.

Once she found it, her breathing became less gasping and ragged and I could feel her body begin to relax. The strain in her legs faded and rather than chugging along like a steam train on an uphill slope, she began to lope, lengthening her stride and gradually, she pulled away.

I grinned and let her go. Her heart pumped steadily, her lungs expanded and contracted evenly and with little effort and I reveled in the wondrous exhilaration my daughter felt as she began to comprehend a fragment of her physical potential.

Pride filled my heart as she picked up the pace, charging along like one of Peggy's horses, faster and faster, her heart pounding away like a kettle-drum as she vanished from sight.

I chuckled to myself, cleared my mind and reacquired my own stride.

By the tenth lap, the sun had just begun to come up over the trees, and Belle had lapped me twice, giggling with delight each time she flew by.

When I completed the tenth lap I circled around, jogged up the gravel drive and came to a stop at the front steps. I was stretching my hips and hamstrings when Belle came sprinting up and slid to a stop, huffing and puffing, her pretty face flushed, blue eyes wide and bright.

"That was fun!" she exclaimed.

"You're pretty fast." I noted, doing a few knee-bend/squat thrusts.

Belle nodded and began to imitate my stretching routine. "Sifu Nigel says that speed is important, but stamina wins fights." Her face scrunched up a little. "What's that mean, stamina?"

"Depends how you use it. To most folks it means staying power or endurance. How long you can do something. Distance running is very good for stamina. So is low weight-high repetition weight lifting, but you're still a little young for that. Better stick to distance running for now."

Belle nodded and continued to follow my actions as I pulled one ankle up behind me, working the large muscles of my upper thigh.

"Sifu says you have a lot of stamina." she told me.

"He does, huh?"

Belle's smile grew into a huge grin. "Uh-huh. He says you're a great fighter."

I smiled at my little girl. "Far be it from me to dispute an expert like your Sifu, but this time he's wrong. I'm not a very good fighter. Nigel is much better at that sort of thing than I'll ever be. That's why I asked him to teach you. If I were any good, I'd have taught you myself."

"But you do have lots of stamina, right?"

I grinned. "Yeah, I suppose I do."

Belle grinned right back at me. "I heard Mommy and Aunt Lilly say you could go from morning till night. That sure is a long time to be running. How many miles would that be Daddy?"

I raised an eyebrow in her direction. My daughter's blush brightened her dark complexion in a very appealing fashion.

I shook my head. "You girls really should stop eavesdropping on your moms' conversations."

Belle's smile returned in full force. "But that's how we learn the best stuff."

I snorted and shook my head.

"Can I run with you again sometime Daddy?" she asked shyly.

I stood up, stepped up in front of her, dropped to one knee and kissed my little girl on the forehead. "You can run with me anytime, darlin'."

Her arms went around my neck and she pressed her lips against mine; a repeat of Tink's bird-like peck. Belle's body shivered as we both felt a light electric buzz, and her eyes opened wide.

She stepped back and eyed me curiously. I smiled and touched my lips with two fingers.

"You buzzed me." I said with a wink.

Belle giggled and pursed her lips. "You buzzed me first!"

I laughed and poked my fingers at her belly. "You'd better go get washed up for breakfast."

Belle blinked a couple of times, gave me a big grin, turned and ran up the steps, flung open the door and disappeared into the house.

I got to my feet and followed her in.

The lower level of the house was alive with sounds of early rising, high pitched, vainly trying to be quiet voices. I waved at Rosie and AJ as they chased one another around the living room, and barely avoided being run over as Tink rushed in to join them.

The upper level was, by comparison, absolutely still.

My bedroom door was still shut, so I eased it open and moved in as quietly as I could, which is pretty damn quiet. I closed the door and turned around to find Peggy sitting up in bed, arms crossed beneath her breasts and a miffed expression on her face.

"And where have you been, young man?"

I smirked at her motherly tone and pulled the damp sweatshirt up over my head and tugged it off.

"I went for a little run." I told her, shook my head and sent hair whipping around my face and shoulders.

"Little run ... you were out there for over an hour. It was cold here, all by my self in this big bed."

I chucked the sweatshirt towards the pile of wet clothing that lay near the hot tub, ran my eyes up and down Peggy's exposed upper body before locking my gaze on her breasts. Resting on her crossed forearms, they appeared rounder, fuller and even higher up on her chest than usual, and her light pink nipples were most definitely larger and harder than normal.

"So I see." I cleverly replied and wiggled my eyebrows.

"Don't change the subject." she insisted.

I walked over to the bed, sat on the edge of the mattress, leaned down and gave Peggy a 'good morning' kiss.

Her nipples stiffened even more, almost painfully so. "Didn't know I was." I said once I pulled away.

Peggy smacked her lips for a moment, realized what she was doing and stopped abruptly.

"Well you were. Now, as I was saying before you crassly changed the subject; you left me all alone. That wasn't very nice. What if something had happened and I needed you? You didn't leave a note or anything."

I smiled, put my hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her back down against the pillows. Then I laid down, head and shoulders across her torso, my long hair splayed over her belly and right shoulder.

I rolled my head to one side, planted a kiss between her breasts then another and another, moving gradually to her left nipple which I captured between my lips and began sucking on.

"You knew where I was." I said around the hard little nubbin, once I had it securely between my teeth.

Peggy sighed softly and ran one hand thru the hair at my temple.

"No I didn't. I can't feel you, remember?"

I started to laugh, and bit down a little bit harder than I'd intended to. Peggy squealed; half in pain, half with pleasure. The hand in my hair tightened into a fist and pulled my head closer to her chest.

I let her nipple slide from between my teeth, flicked it once with my tongue and exhaled softly.

"You think I didn't notice you flashing your tits at me from the window every time I ran around the back? I have very good eyesight you know."

"Well most men would have stopped what they were doing and drooled, or whistled ... or something. You just kept right on running. Don't you love me anymore?"

I lifted my head and looked up. Peggy stared back at me with a sad, pouty expression.

I smiled tolerantly, shook my head and chuckled. "You're persistent, I'll give you that. Annoying as all get-out, but persistent." I put my head back down between her breasts. "Still ... don't push your luck. My being in love with you and lusting after your body might not be enough to save you."

"Save me from what?" she asked eagerly.

"Ask Izzy. She knows."

Peggy giggled, caressing my head and hair. "Oh, that." She was silent for a time, except for a faint murmuring as her fingers combed thru the tangled mop my hair had become. "How come you don't treat me and Lilly like you do her?"

My brow furrowed. "Because neither one of you is her. You like what you like, Lilly what she likes and Izzy what she likes. None of you like all the same things, and you sure as hell don't react the same way. Even when the three of you are working together, when your intentions and objectives are similar, you're still different. You may not be able to see it, but I can feel it. I think it would be insulting if I tried to treat you guys alike."

"Maybe we'd like you to. Ever think of that?"

I placed the tip of my index finger on top of her left nipple, just barely making contact with the crinkled surface, moving it around back and forth just enough to stiffen the softening flesh, which had begun to relax and withdraw. Peggy shuddered slightly and squirmed beneath me.

"Of course I have."

"Then why haven't you ever done it?"

"Why haven't I what?" I teased.

Peggy lightly smacked the back of my head with her fingers. I retaliated by closing my thumb and index finger over her swelling nipple and pinching.

Hard.

Peggy squeaked and kicked her legs. "Hey! That hurts!" she protested with a whimper.

I twisted her flesh and kept up the pressure. "Izzy and Lilly like it." I informed her.

"That's not what I was talking about."

I lifted my head and grinned at her. "I know." I released her nipple, ducked my head down, put my lips on her breast and kissed the abused area.

"Remember those things I told you yesterday?" I asked.

Peggy shivered again. "Kinda hard to forget."

I smiled to myself and kissed the rock hard little nubbin that capped her breast once again.

"Not like the usual kinds of things I say to work you up, were they?"

"No." she admitted.

"You guys talk to each other about our sex lives, I mean the times when we're not all in the same room, right?"

"Well ... yeah."

"Comparing notes, as it were?"

"It's not like that..." she began. I put my right hand on the mattress next to her and pushed upright.

"Hey, I don't mind. Really. I'm just saying, there probably isn't much you guys don't know about each other. On the other hand, there's a lot I don't know about the three of you, because I don't get to sit in on those sessions. I know what you like when I do it, because I can feel it, and conversely I know what you don't like for the same reason, but only at that moment. And I remember those things, so I either will or won't do them again based on what I felt at that single moment in time. What I don't know are things you might like to try."

I sat all the way up and gazed admiringly at my little sweetie. "I know I tend to go overboard with this protective thing, but it's not something I can just let go of. I don't want you to get hurt and I sure don't want to be the one who hurts you. So ... I suppose that means I'm not ever going to be as sexually adventurous or aggressive as you girls would like. And I'm sorry about that, I really am."

Peggy's expression softened and the look she gave me was a mix of compassion and sorrow.

"Just come out and say it, would you?"

I raised one eyebrow then let it drop and shrugged slightly. "Alright. If you want something in particular, something kinky, you're just gonna have to tell me."

Peggy grinned widely, reached up with one hand and put her fingers against my heart.

"Most of that stuff from yesterday sounded pretty good to me."

"Most?"

Peggy blushed. "I don't want my butt to glow in the dark, thank you very much."

I shrugged again. "Okay. I only threw that bit in 'cause I like it. It's such a sweet, spankable little butt."

"Pervert." Peggy laughed and tugged at my chest hair.

I bent down and licked the tip of her nose. "I'm not a pervert; I'm a connoisseur of fine female flesh. I know a good thing when I taste it, and I've always been partial to fresh Peggy."

She sighed softly, pulled me down using her handful of chest hair and locked her arms around my neck. I shifted around, pulled my legs up and laid out full length on the bed, resting my full upper body on the tiny woman below me.

In the mean time I felt Izzy and Lilly enter the room behind us. There was a slight, but audible, 'click' as they shut the door.

"Hey you two, get a room." Lilly said, her voice full of warmth and amusement.

"Go away, Ike's seducing me." Peggy suggested with an insufferably pretty and self-satisfied smile on her face. Her lips where right next to my ear, and no sooner had the words left her mouth than her tongue started delving deeply.

I moaned quietly and shifted the majority of my body on top of hers, burying her beneath me.

"Looks more like you're seducing him." Izzy said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

Peggy's tongue slithered out of my ear, leaving a trail of saliva in its wake.

"He said I taste good." she gasped breathlessly.

I chuckled and nibbled at the edges of her delicately elongated neck. "Soft and warm, sweet and sexy, tasty and ticklish."

Peggy sighed loudly and squirmed beneath my bulk.

"Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but your office just called Ike. The helicopter is on the way, so if you two plan on getting busy, you'd best get busy." my sister informed us, punctuating her words with a quick smack of her hand across my backside.

Peggy pouted. "But it was just starting to get good!" she complained. "I could feel a poem coming on."

Lilly chuckled. "You need an anatomy review." Izzy laughed when Peggy stuck her tongue out at them.

I made my move, covering her mouth with mine, trapping her tongue between my teeth, pressing my chest down hard against her breast, driving those hard little nipples deeper into my chest.

Peggy moaned loudly and began bucking and rocking her hips, clutching with one hand at my hair, with the other at my shoulder, trying to pull me even closer.

"Damn boy, what did you do to her?" Lilly asked with a grin.

I released the tongue from between my lips, lifted my head and stared deeply into Peggy's half open eyes.

"Trust me, this is nothing. When I get back, then you'll really see something."

I pushed up off of Peggy's twitching body, pried her fingers out of my hair, got off the bed, stripped off my sweats and headed into the bathroom for a shower. Peggy was still clutching at the empty air above her when I closed the door behind me.

I wiped the steamy condensation off a portion of the mirror above the sink, picked up a disposable razor, bent slightly at the waist, and for the first time in almost a year, broke down and actually took a long overdue look at the reflection before me.

Long wet hair, a couple of shades darker than when dry, pulled back behind my ears; smooth pale skin stretched tight over high cheekbones; beard and stubble covered long sharp-ish jaw and chin; snowy eyebrows arching protectively over characterless gray eyes; a sharp eagle's beak of a nose...

I dropped the razor, put my hands down on the outer rim of the sink, and simply stared at the man in the mirror, who returned the favor with a nauseatingly intense expression. He didn't appear to be any more pleased with what he saw in the mirror than I was.

The gnarled, heavy vein on the side of my head, long, thick, darkly blue/purple and visible from the edge of my hairline all the way down my neck where it vanished beneath my clavicle, throbbed in time with my heart ... slow, steady and relentless.

There was more muscle on my shoulders, my neck was a little thicker and my chest might have been slightly wider than I remembered, but apart from that, and the collection of misshapen scars I sported, it was the same young man who'd spent endless hours staring at me following Carlie's death.

There seemed to be a touch more warmth, of humor, and perhaps even a lingering trace of humanity, lurking behind his features; emotions I knew for a fact hadn't existed back then. But other than that, he was the same.

I was still the same. All those years gone by, all the things I'd seen and done ... and I was still the same.

I narrowed my eyes and looked closer; examining him the way I would potential prey, looking for things that weren't exactly right, that were out of place—things that were just plane wrong.

No ... not the same. Not quite.

It's the little things that give people away. Twitches, flinches, hesitations and hitches.

The fella in the mirror, he didn't have any of those sorts of indicators. He didn't give the slightest suggestion that there was so much as one damn thing going on behind those mind-numbing, chilly, heartless, reptilian eyes of his.

Too much of one thing, not enough of another, or a total absence of anything at all ... that's another thing to look for—to feel for.

It's not always about asking the right questions. There are times when questions, or even words, are totally wasted and unnecessary. Sometimes words only serve to get in the way, obscuring the facts, the reality ... the Truth.

That fella in the mirror, he didn't give away anything at all. And that made me suspicious. What was he hiding? What didn't he want me to know? Or was it that he wanted me to think there was something he didn't want me to know?

That way madness lies.

I tried to blink and found that I couldn't. I couldn't force myself to stop looking at the man in the mirror, not even for a second.

I reached out with my empty right hand, index and middle fingers leading the way, to trace the outline of his face—to see if he was as unreal as he looked.

"How long are you gonna stare at yourself?" a soft, curious voice asked from behind me. I hadn't even felt her approach, so intent had I been on the face in front of me. I jerked my hand back from the surface of the mirror, like a child caught reaching out for something they knew they weren't supposed to touch.

"As long as it takes." I replied. My voice sounded distant to my ears, as if I were speaking from a very long way away.

"To do what?" my sister inquired.

"To figure out what he's keeping from me."

"Ike?"

"Hmmm?"

"Ike!" she snapped, raising her voice sharply.

"I don't like his eyes." I commented absently, ignoring her outburst. "There's something not quite right; something going on in there that he doesn't want me to know about."

I don't know why I did it. In retrospect it was mind-bendingly stupid. There was no reason to do it, no reason to think I could do it. By all rights I shouldn't have been able to. Still, should haves hadn't applied to me for so damn long I'd pretty much stopped thinking in those terms.

I linked with the image in the mirror.

I felt him link with me.

It shouldn't have been possible. All the rules I'd devised over the years to explain my abilities to myself and others said it wasn't possible.

We linked. And the emotions immediately began to flow. The dam hadn't cracked, it hadn't broken ... it was gone. Nothing stood between me and my reflection; no shields, no barriers, no defenses, no nothing.

Just me and him, each one's eyes locked on the other; eyes that blazed fire from one orb, blood chilling rationality from the other.

Images, impressions, vague whispers of things we'd seen and heard long-long ago, flashed across the screen of our minds. Things we barely remembered remembering. People long since dead spoke, moved, laughed, cried and lived again. People that looked suspiciously like us, people who weren't even remotely similar. People I'd never met, places I'd never been, never seen, never heard of, came to life. Memories of other people's memories were reborn in the fertile ground of our memory.

They were real, they were true, they really had happened; I could feel that. Just not to me. And I remembered them.

More and more emotions made the trip across the bridge of our link. More and more images gave birth to thousands, millions, of memories, of lives lived, journeys taken, paths followed ... some abandoned in frustration, some out of necessity, some cut off before their time, a rare few even to completion.

I remembered. I couldn't stop remembering.

The pains of birth, the joys and sufferings, the sorrows born of losses uncountable, the grit and grime, glory and grandeur of so many individual and related lives and deaths.

I watched them being born, growing, giving birth to others, living out their lives and dying ... too many to count.

And the feelings...

Oceans, mountains, generations of raw and unfettered feelings.

Back and forth they came and went, traversing the bridge we'd built between us with wild abandon, exalting in the opportunity to live again; to pass on to someone, to anyone, the fact of their existence. To not be forgotten.

Tears flowed from my eyes, turning to hissing steam as they exited the flaming eye, to droplets of ice as they fell from the other. A single tear for dozens of lives relived and remembered.

My body shuddered as the flow increased. I took a deep breath and with a monumental effort crushed the links between myself and the face in the mirror.

He grinned at me, the wise-ass, winked and then the mirror shattered. Fragments of broken glass came flying at my face; some long and sharp, most tiny and even sharper. They sliced into my head, face and upper body like a crashing wave of razor blades.

I never blinked, just stood there, rooted to the spot and accepted the pain. Welcomed the pain.

It was mine and I knew it. Not someone else's, not a memory of pain, but mine, fresh, immediate and real. It was good to know I was still capable of feeling my own pain.

Izzy stepped up behind me, shoved one hand between the towel around my waist and the skin of my back, ran it down between the cheeks of my ass and clamped down hard around my free swinging testicles.

"Ike! You'd better quit whatever the hell it is you think you're doing or I'll..."

I stood full upright, turned my head and unblinking emotionless eyes on my sister.

"Or what?" I asked.

Izzy exhaled loudly and squeezed. "Is this going to be a regular thing with you now?" she asked. "It was bad enough having to listen to him when there were two of you. This new version isn't much of an improvement."

"This is who I am. You might as well get used to it."

"What if I can't? What if I don't want to?" She squeezed even harder. The pain below my cock and in the pit of my stomach grew in magnitude. Nausea rose up into my chest and throat, threatening to expel the previous evening's meal. Real pain. My pain.

I ignored it. "Do what you feel you have to, but right now, if you're smart, you'll let go of my balls."

"Only if you stop acting like a madman."

"I'm as sane as I ever was."

Reluctantly my sister let go of my balls and backed a step away. But she didn't retreat, and the look on her face told me she wasn't afraid.

That was good. I didn't want her to be afraid of me. Didn't want any of my girls to be afraid of me.

I turned my eyes back and saw myself in the mirror, the unbroken mirror above the sink, and saw my uncut, unbloodied face looking back at me.

As sane as I ever was.

Fuckin' symbolism!

"There's a meeting in Jerusalem of the world's top religious leaders. Everyone is there; the Pope, Dali Lama, Chief Rabbi, Greek Orthodox Patriarch, Grand Mullah of Mecca, Archbishop of Canterbury, the heads of the various Protestant branches ... everyone who's anyone in the religious world is there.

"They're all standing around in little groups talking, not unlike a cocktail party, when a solitary figure walks up. They all stop what they're doing and turn en mass to stare at the interloper.

"'Hi. How ya'all doin'?' he says. 'We've never actually met, but uhmm ... I'm God. Thanks for watching the store while I was away. I appreciate everything you tried to do—but you can all go home now. I'll take it from here.'

"What do you suppose happens next?" Dr. Wills asked me.

We were sitting together in the den of his house, he in an old rocking chair, me facing him on the edge of an antique Victorian wing-back chair.

Wills had retired to an estate he'd purchased in upscale North Roland Park Maryland. It was a good sized place, somewhat smaller in acreage than our ranch, but it had the advantage of neighbors. Wills liked people. He liked having them around, spending time and talking with them.

North Roland Park was a three hour drive, on a good day, from Rio. I'd taken the helicopter to Baltimore and then drove the rest of the way.

He hadn't been at all surprised at my arrival. He knew I was coming.

"How've you been, son? Had a lot of folks come calling recently, wanting to talk about you." he said upon greeting me at the front door.

"So I hear." I replied. "That's why I've come."

He nodded and ushered me in, guiding me into his den. Along the way he introduced his housekeeper and personal assistant before sending them away, leaving the two of us alone in the cluttered room. He sat in the rocker and gestured at the chair across the way. He felt ... oddly different. There was a kind of fuzziness to him, to his entire emotional state. Almost as if a part of him weren't there.