Chapter 20: Joyla girds for battle
Joyla somewhat repented the playtime with Rex, the martini, the other martini, the other other martini, the dance of pistil and stamen and perhaps most of all, the fists.
She and Rex had consummated their complex flirtation, moved past sashimi and hanbo, moved past restaurants and dojos, moved past quasi-immortal and violent, short-lived human. She had screamed, writhed, bucked, yelped, whined and collapsed. So had he. It was an opus of sweat, intensity and pleasure that they had contemporaneously written upon each others’ bodies and, perhaps, minds. Not to mention the vanilla bean ice cream. And the drunken sparring, where she had accidentally bested him again before remembering herself and allowing him to pin her, possess her, annihilate her.
She was pleased. Languid. Anticipating. On edge. Wanting more. This was, perpetually, the problem with working parties devoted to delivering satisfaction, that when satisfaction was provided, more was desired. It was as if the death of passion through surfeit was testate, had a will which included a codicil demanding more passion. There was no escape from the despot of desire. It was an ogre, turned to rock finally at dawn, but awaking with the setting of the sun. But she was familiar with this ordeal, had chosen it, had mishit no notes in the path to it, had danced its edge with care and lust, followed to its end.
However. However. Kaa. The bastard.
He had walked back into her extended life, an extension he had granted her, had reminded her of exposure, of lying under the Indonesian moon beside a private pool, of rash actions in risky public places, of introductions to puissance and of playfully intellectual pursuits. He had only hinted at choices she still had, but had made her lust for Rex seem an impostor.
And he was almost a Garbo — “I just want to be left alone” — with her, almost off the record with their past, practically a parson. It was infuriating. It was intriguing. It was seductive.
Their premiere encounter had been a tour de force of his seductive magic, mobile tattoos wandering across every inch of her flesh, her unable to avert her eyes from the mirror as his words, his wit, his intent sprawled across her naked body. And the reality was even more intense, the long build up not surpassing the reality of his physical attentions, the wanton situations they had created together, the intertwining of flesh and mind that they had enjoyed, the spraying of their still human sweat in all directions.
But Rex was girding for war, Kaa was somewhere else and she, too, had to prepare her battle armour. She had done this long ago when first she and Kaa had met in person, lacquering her nails with secret shellacs, sharpening them with a devil ray’s tail, coating them with insidious poisons, slipping a stiletto into her boot and marshalling ranks of spells against the back of her skull. Then, she had been disarmed, fed tasty morsels, not pressed, offered discrete pleasures and complicated fortunes, never attacked, but always seduced.
This time, she expected no apparent and wide-eyed lust showing truth above the words, no gravitas above giddiness exposing sincerity. This time, she expected nothing, prepared for everything, expected lightning and light, chaos and calm.
Her battle garb was different than it had been decades earlier. No war horse accompanied her, hooves shod in steel, mane tipped with razor barbs, tail a lash. Her garb was subtler, but stronger, able to withstand arrows and minor spells, shifting naturally in the wind, but unnaturally with attack. Her weapons included darts that sped in manners that defied gravity and intervening barriers to their targets, incantations encapsulated in icons, ready at a touch.
And she was not alone. Rex would be a kilometer away, his corporate commitment to deliver including delivering high-velocity shards of lead and steel with sniper’s precision, ballistics apparently a homonym of logistics in his world. No magic, merely technology and skill, and so perhaps invisible to the pantheon they would face.
And they were not alone. Zau’s coterie pulsed with power and fury and skill, a multi-continent contingent of frightful beings, each with their own talents and deceits. They, too, would be there. They too would be prepared for any eventuality.
Joyla. Rex. Coterie. And, of course, Zau, never to be underestimated.
Her largest concern, oddly, was what Rex might see. Would his scope illuminate impossible shapes, expand a phantasmagorical scene into sharp relief, allow him to see her in dervish mode, unnatural colours staining her taloned fingers as spells grew out of them toward enemies, watch spasming attacks splash harmlessly against her defenses? Would he see her not as a woman but as a fantastic and deadly creature? Would their first night and day together, entwined, rapturous, be their last? Would she be his Kaa, the seductress exposed as a force of nature and distance?
If so, so be it. Time and fate had led her to stand behind Zau’s back, in this moment, facing this potential antagonist, with the allies they had behind her. The stones and sticks and cards and bones would fall where they would.
Joyla was girded for battle. Woe be unto those who faced her.