Power Mage 3 Read online

  Remi grinned up at him, all cat-who-ate-the-canary, as her magic slit locked him in place and milked him, trying to steal his seed, his power, and his dominance.

  Brawley grinned down at her. This was going to be fun.

  “I might be a new Carnal, darlin,” he said, “but I’m way more than just a flesh mage.”

  Remi’s eyes flickered with doubt, and she redoubled her efforts, milking him furiously in a frantic attempt to break his will and bust his nut.

  Brawley released Seeker juice, not a trickle but a rush, leaned forward, and whispered into her ear, “Let go of my dick.”

  Instantly, the cinched ring at the base of his shaft dilated, releasing him, and he pulled free of her voodoo slot.

  He nipped her ear with his teeth and whispered, “Now go down on Nina. Make her crazy. Make her cum like she’s never cum before. And speaking of cumming, I’m going to pound you from behind, and you’re going to cum with every single stroke.”

  He leaned back, cupped her chin in his hand, and stared into her eyes. Remi trembled.

  “Do you understand?” he said. “Every. Single. Stroke.”

  Remi nodded, her eyes submissive and eager and nervous all at the same time.

  Moving with the smooth speed of a sex-crazed Carnal, Remi swiveled into position, burying her face between Nina’s legs and lifted her ass, spreading herself for Brawley, who got on his knees behind her and angled his pulsing hardness toward the glistening paradise between her firm legs.

  A few heartbeats later, Nina was already crying out in orgasm. The hogtied beauty’s exclamations were muffled by Sage’s grinding mound, which was rapidly swelling toward another explosion of its own.

  Remi was merciless. As the purple-haired beauty warbled with climax, Remi upshifted her ministrations, eating the poor girl alive.

  Brawley slammed his shaft home, burying himself to the hilt.

  As directed, Remi came. Hard. And loudly.

  Brawley drew a heavy charge of Carnal force. Suddenly, he was thrumming with strength and virility and hunger. He felt like he could jump a bus or outrun a cheetah or shot put a piano across a football field.

  Instead, he expanded his already massive manhood, filling Remi and making her cry out, “Too much, handsome! Too much!”

  Seizing the sexy Carnal’s hips, he yanked back and slammed into her again, burying himself deep, deep inside her.

  Again, she screamed with climax. He felt her juices spraying against his thighs, felt her whole body convulse with total release, and knew that this surrender both enraptured and humiliated the proud Carnal.

  This was it. His moment to break her and make her his, to stamp his dominance indelibly into her sex and her soul, exactly as Remi needed him to do.

  He pounded her mercilessly, pumping away like a savage, stretching her to the limit with every thrust.

  And with every thrust, Remi cried out, rocked by yet another explosion of ecstasy.

  Slap—“Oh!”

  Slap—“Fuck!”

  Slap—“Brawley!”

  On and on and on, pounding and grinding and humping, owning this fierce beauty, ruining her, breaking her in front of the other wives, who soon joined Remi in a three-way explosion that proved too much even for Brawley.

  “I am experiencing orgasm!” Sage announced in an urgent yodel, and her pale, slender body jerked spastically as she soaked Nina’s glistening face with her juices.

  This was too much for Nina, who popped off again, shuddering within her restraints and lifting her hips to thrust her exploding sex into Remi’s greedily probing mouth.

  Remi climaxed again, screaming for the 200th or 300th time in as many seconds, and then cried out again a second later as Brawley bellowed with release, flooding her glorious womb with gallons of hot seed.

  Then they were done. Someone untied Nina. Everyone was happily spent in the afterglow and they lay in a sweaty tangle for some time before pulling themselves up and heading into the kitchen.

  Brawley popped a beer.

  “That was some next-level bullshit,” Nina said, tearing open the lemon meringue pie.

  Brawley pulled her into an embrace, and the little punker squeezed him with all her might.

  “I love you, Brawley Hayes,” she said. “I really do.”

  “I love you, too, darlin,” he said, “just like I told you that morning out at breakfast.”

  He reached over, grabbed Sage, and pulled her to him. “I love you, too, Sage.”

  “And I you, husband,” Sage said, laying her face against his bare chest.

  Remi leaned back against the counter, eyeing the three lovers almost warily.

  Brawley crooked a finger. “Come here, Dupree.”

  Remi hesitated, narrowing her eyes. “You really fucked me up on the couch. I won’t walk straight for a week.”

  “Shut up and come here,” he said with a smile.

  She rolled her eyes but straightened and came to him, and he pulled her into the group hug. “And I love you, Remi,” he said, planting a kiss on her forehead.

  “I love you, too, handsome,” Remi said, stretching her arms around the girls. “I love all three of you.”

  6

  Brawley drove the Caddy north, twisting along narrow country roads washboard rough with disrepair and flanked by swamps and pine forests and long tracts of junk trees and numerous grassy, briar-snarled patches surrounding defunct businesses and boarded-up homes moldering toward oblivion.

  Then the world opened up, and the Caddy was sailing across a sea of tobacco fields. Here and there, a clump of dilapidated shacks interrupted the sprawling green. Passing a roadside flea market and produce stand, Brawley glimpsed folks puttering among the chattel, moving with a sullen slowness that seemed to him the kinetic manifestation of the Southern drawl.

  He wasn’t sure if this was Florida, Alabama, or Georgia. They were all so close here, he remembered from the map. Not that it really mattered, because maps deceive. In some corners of the world, ten miles of asphalt can deliver you unto a land wholly unrecognizable from your point of departure, state lines be damned.

  And no matter what the map said, this was the Deep South.

  The hard road buckled, crumbling into a half-finished jigsaw of cracked macadam pocked with potholes. A short time later, Brawley arrived at Braidusville, which amounted to a gas station, a bar, an IGA, and an unpaved ladder of rutted side streets lined in run-down shacks with overgrown lawns and sagging porches, the region’s deep and longstanding poverty suffusing everything, hanging palpably over these homes like a heavy smog.

  Skinny children stopped their bicycles as the Caddy bumped slowly past. Their mouths hung open, and their bright eyes stared after Brawley like they were seeing a ghost.

  Which made sense, considering his destination. At the far end of the final cross street, he hung a right.

  Here the houses ended, replaced by shadowy oaks draped in Spanish moss. The road narrowed to a single lane. The first tombstones appeared. One here, three there, looking pale and lost among the trees and tangled foliage.

  A little farther on, the graveyard began in earnest. The trees retreated from tracts of mossy ground studded with stubby headstones crumbling with age and exposure to the elements. The markers’ pale faces stared blankly out devoid of etchings, the names, dates, and epitaphs having faded long ago into obscurity.

  That kindly bothered Brawley. For if we are not beholden to the dead, then we are no better than flies and doomed, each and every one of us, to vanish into a past without so much as an echoing whimper.

  At the far end of the clearing squatted a little shotgun shack with a sagging roof and a screened-in porch canting badly atop makeshift cinderblock supports.

  Brawley parked and got out. The air was stale and sour.

  The screen door whined open, and a rawboned man in a filthy bathrobe came down the steps. His eyes shone brightly in his dark, gaunt face. He was bald save for a few scraggly wisps of gray hair that clung to the side
s of his tall, sweaty head like clouds gathered around a lofty peak of rain-lashed stone.

  He was tall with scrawny legs, a flat chest, and a little pot belly. His enormous bathrobe hung from his bony frame like the weather-beaten clothing of a scarecrow that had lost all its stuffing. Besides the bathrobe, he wore only blue boxer shorts, white tube socks, slippers, and a thin leather lanyard around his neck. Hanging from this necklace was a twisted and scaly pendant that Brawley believed to be a chicken’s foot.

  The man stood there with his hands on his hips, spreading his bathrobe so that his naked potbelly jutted out almost defiantly. A long, pale line of thick scar tissue ran across the man’s belly.

  Brawley raised a hand. “Howdy. You Maypole?”

  “Mayhaps I am and mayhaps I ain’t,” the man said. “One way or the other, whatever you’re selling, I ain’t buying. And if it’s religion you’re pushing, keep your damned pamphlets. I already got more gods than I know what to do with.”

  “Frankie sent me,” Brawley said.

  “What Frankie? Frankie who?”

  “Pretty girl, green eyes, works for a man named Cotter,” Brawley said. “Says she fixed your AC.”

  “Oooooh,” the man said, and nodded, a smile creeping onto his face. “That Frankie. Real looker, that one. And good with her hands. A lifesaver. It’s on account of her I wear this robe all the time.”

  His scrawny shoulders hopped up and down. “Summer days, I sit inside sipping hot chocolate and picturing my miserable-ass neighbors dying of heat stroke in their little sweat boxes.” His rasping laugh chortled into a coughing fit. He thumped his chest and hacked a wad of phlegm on the mossy ground beside a weather-worn tombstone as pale and blank as a dead man’s toenail.

  Recovered from his fit, the man stuck out a hand and said, “Yeah, I’m Maypole. What can I do for you?”

  Brawley shook the man’s hand, mindful of Maypole’s arthritis-swollen knuckles. “My name’s Brawley,” he said. “Frankie tells me you’re a Cosmic.”

  Maypole nodded, but his expression went cagey. “Hold that thought, son. Come on inside and we’ll talk.” He panned a glance across the sea of stones surrounding them. “The dead got nothing better to do than eavesdrop and gossip.”

  Maypole went up the steps and shuffled inside. Brawley followed.

  The old porch creaked beneath their feet. Its shadowy confines smelled of mildew and wet newspaper. Brawley cast a glance back through the rusted screen at the old Caddy sitting among the blank tombstones.

  And in that strange second, Brawley was struck by a bolt of fearsome homesickness. He couldn’t wait to get back to Texas. He missed the open skies and big country. He missed his folks and family and friends. He missed brisket and Whataburger, even if the sons of bitches had sold out. He missed Blue Bell ice cream, breakfast burritos and chicken fried steak, pecan coffee and sweet tea and Shiner. Texas was a proper state, a proper republic, and he had never, in all his years on the road, missed the Lone Star State so much as he did in that moment, glancing out another man’s window at another man’s world.

  The lightning bolt of homesickness struck and vanished, a curious yet powerful experience recognizable to any man who’s left home for long stretches to soldier, drill, or drive.

  Of course, that goes triple for a Texan.

  But before heading home, Brawley needed to wait for his RV, and he was going to learn whatever he could about the strange book in his back pocket.

  They entered a small kitchenette. The smothering heat and damp porch smells disappeared, the air here refreshingly cool and redolent with odors of cooking grease and cigarette smoke.

  It was a small place with only two doors opening off the kitchen. One stood ajar.

  Through the half-open door, Brawley spied a bare mattress lying atop maroon carpet. Over the mattress, half a dozen fly tapes pebbled in buzzing black spots corkscrewed down from the sagging ceiling like the world’s most gruesome mobile.

  Behind the closed door, someone coughed.

  Brawley glanced in that direction, remembering Frankie’s warning about Maypole’s wife.

  Maypole whisked his fingers in a dismissive wave “That’d be Loretta. Don’t mind her none. Take a seat now, take a seat.”

  “I’m all right,” Brawley said. “Truth be told, I’m kindly sick of sitting.”

  Maypole laughed, pulling a pack of Pall Malls from his bathrobe pocket. “All right, son. Have it your way.”

  Moving slowly and deliberately, Maypole pulled a cigarette from the pack and snapped off the filter. The tips of his slender fingers were blunted and yellow. He tucked the cigarette into his mouth and twisted a stove knob. A burner clicked rapidly and huffed to life. Maypole bent and touched the tip of the cigarette to the blue flame and straightened and turned off the stove and exhaled a pale cloud, blowing a stream up at the ceiling.

  “Now,” the man said, “how come you’re looking for a Cosmic?”

  “Hoping you’ll look at something for me,” Brawley said. “A book.”

  Maypole didn’t say anything for a few seconds, seeming to think about it as he took another drag. Then he expelled another runnel of smoke, and one corner of his mouth lifted in a grin. “It ain’t your personal memoir, is it? Cause I’d sooner draw a warm bath and fetch a razor.”

  Brawley laughed. “No, sir.”

  “Is it sexual in nature?”

  “Not to my knowledge, sir.”

  “Oh well. I might take a look at it anyway.”

  “It’s not a normal book. In fact, I’d say it’s downright unusual.”

  “Now you’re talking my language, son.”

  “Somebody left it to me. That’s all I know, mostly.”

  “Or all you’re telling, anyway,” Maypole said. “Left it to you, huh? I hope that’s not your way of saying you took it off somebody you killed.”

  “No, sir. My parents left it to me. But even that was a tad peculiar.”

  Maypole nodded. “Let’s see it.”

  Brawley stood and pulled the small book from his back pocket and handed it over.

  Beyond the closed door, a toilet flushed. Brawley heard running water.

  The old man turned the book in his hands, smoking as he studied the dark, gem-studded cover and its seven-pointed star. Maypole opened the book, arched a brow, turned a page, and muttered something under his breath.

  The bathroom door popped open. A large, blond-haired woman came out. Loretta was much younger than Maypole, maybe thirty. With her plump body, round eyes, and tall pile of feathery blond hair, she looked like a gigantic chicken.

  Brawley nodded. “Ma’am.”

  Loretta stared at Brawley for several seconds without speaking, then disappeared into the bedroom.

  Maypole closed the book and gave a low whistle. He looked up at Brawley with a new expression. Keen interest and perhaps wariness. “This thing’s peculiar, you got that right. Just who were your parents, son?”

  “I don’t know,” Brawley said.

  “The plot thickens,” Maypole said, eyeing Brawley for a moment.

  Loretta thumped around in the back room. Brawley heard crinkling sounds.

  “Do yourself a favor, son,” Maypole said. “Throw this thing in a lake and forget about it.”

  “I’m in too deep to do that,” Brawley said.

  “I’ll bet you are,” Maypole said. “I’ll just bet you are.”

  Loretta came back into the room carrying a brown paper bag. She settled her bulk into one of the kitchen chairs, staring at Brawley with a sullen expression and clutching the bag on her lap.

  “Look, son,” Maypole said, “I got a nose for trouble. And you smell of trouble like a kicked skunk smells of stink. But you smell just as sweet as roses next to that book of yours. Get rid of it.”

  Brawley shook his head. “I need it to get where I’m going.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Brawley shrugged. “On down the road.”

  “On down the road,” Maypole ec
hoed, handing the book back to Brawley. “You go fooling around with that tome, you’re going to open doors that can’t be closed again.”

  “What is it?” Brawley said.

  Maypole squinted at him over his cigarette and shrugged. “Sometimes, there’s no peephole, and a man can’t see through a door to know what’s banging and growling on the other side. But he can know it’d be a damned dumb idea to open the door for a peek.”

  There was a rattling of paper as Loretta opened the bag on her lap. One hand hovered, ready to plunge inside the sack. “You ask too many questions.”

  Brawley turned in her direction, ready to flip her chair if she went for the piece. He had business with Maypole. Besides, he really didn’t feel like getting shot.

  “Did you not hear me?” Loretta said. The words of the question came out choppily as a string of gunshots, each syllable louder than the last. “You ask too many questions.”

  “Put the gun away, ma’am,” Brawley said. “It would make one hell of a racket in this little room.”

  “Loretta, listen to the man,” Maypole said. “Put it back in the bag and roll her shut, honey.”

  Loretta ignored Maypole, staring at Brawley like the world’s largest fighting rooster all gaffed up and ready to go.

  “A man more worried about the racket than the gunshot wound,” Maypole said thoughtfully. “You a Carnal?”

  Brawley nodded.

  “That settles it, then. Ditch the book. It’s only for Cosmics.”

  “Let’s just pretend I’m a Cosmic, too. Or that I’m going to become one.”

  Maypole’s eyes widened slightly. They were shrewd eyes, intelligent and calculating, tempered by experiences well beyond the weird, little, grease-stinking confines of this claustrophobic shack.

  Maypole stared a few seconds longer, taking one final drag off the dwindling Pall Mall. He grabbed an ashtray from beside the sink and stubbed out the smoldering butt. “Shit. Only one of you sons of bitches left in the whole damn world. One. And you gotta come here? I mean, what are the odds?”

  “I reckon the odds don’t matter much now,” Brawley said. “I’m here. You gonna help me or what?”