Chapter Twelve

Help at Hand

‘IS SOMETHING WRONG?’ Jonathan asked Belinda, as they walked towards the priory.

‘No, not really,’ she replied, telling a little lie. The leather book-cover felt strangely warm beneath her fingertips, but she was quite at a loss to explain how she had suddenly found herself in one of its pictures, then lived in it like an encapsulated world with no memory whatsoever of her ‘real’ existence.

‘We need to talk,’ said Jonathan, obviously not fooled. He eyed her shrewdly. ‘Let’s sit down for a while.’ He nodded to a stone garden seat at the edge of the overgrown formal garden, then guided Belinda towards it.

‘OK, Lindi. What is it?’ he said, taking her hand once they were settled on the sun-warmed stone.

Belinda decided to pitch straight in at the deep end. ‘Do you believe in the supernatural?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jonathan thoughtfully. ‘I’d like to … I think … But nothing’s happened to me yet that would make me believe.’

Belinda felt relieved then slightly annoyed with herself. Why had she doubted him? Jonathan had always been an open-minded type, and of all the boyfriends she had ever had, the one most prepared to explore new ideas.

‘What would you say if I told you that we’ve stumbled into a supernatural situation right now?’ She paused and looked towards the house, which was beginning to look mysterious and secretive again, now that afternoon was slowly blending into evening. ‘That nothing here’s really what it seems.’

Jonathan followed her look. ‘You mean André?’ He turned and smiled. ‘Yes, I have noticed that he’s not exactly Mr Average. I mean, the hours he keeps, for one thing –’ He faltered, his smile looking a bit nervous at the edges. ‘You’re not trying to tell me he’s really Count Dracula, are you?’

Belinda laughed, trying to diffuse her own nerves. Framed in words, it all sounded so preposterous. ‘I did ask him if he was a vampire, but he said he isn’t –’ Oh Lord, how could she phrase this? ‘But he is two hundred years old!’

‘You’re kidding!’ Jonathan’s hand was shaking slightly where it curled around hers.

‘I’m not. You know all the portraits of men with the blue eyes? They’re not of his ancestors; they’re all him!’

‘Jesus wept!’

‘It’s true. He –’

Belinda was just about to explain as much as she knew about their peculiar host when she heard an insistent, roaring, thrumming noise. It sounded quite distant at first, but quickly grew louder as the source of it drew closer. Looking in the direction that it seemed to be coming from – the winding drive they stumbled along in the rain two nights ago – she saw the dark shape of a motorcycle burst violently from the tree line then charge towards the house, spewing stones and gravel from beneath the blur of its wheels. As it passed behind the building, the powerful engine note was throttled back-then abruptly killed to silence.

‘Well, that certainly wasn’t Paula,’ observed Jonathan mildly. ‘Unless there’s something she’s forgotten to tell us.’

‘It must be a friend of André’s,’ said Belinda.

‘What, another two-hundred-year-old raver?’

‘He’s not a raver!’ cried Belinda, not sure why she was springing to the defence of a man she hardly knew, especially as he was sexually exploiting her.

‘Really?’ Jonathan lifted an eyebrow in a way that said he either knew or suspected what had passed between Belinda and their enigmatic host.

Belinda was about to go on the defensive when she recalled Jonathan’s own confessions. She quirked her own eyebrow back at him, and he had the grace to grin.

‘OK, so neither of us is blameless, but –’ He hesitated, as if he couldn’t find words to describe his feelings, or didn’t, perhaps, quite know what those feelings were. ‘I don’t feel jealous and I don’t really feel guilty.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘How do you feel? About everything, I mean?’

Well, how did she feel?

‘About the same,’ said Belinda, after a long pause. ‘When I’m with André, it’s as if I’m enchanted and he’s the most important thing that ever happened to me. But when I’m away from him, I’m more sorry for him than anything – although I have to admit I still find him attractive.’

‘Why do you feel sorry for him?’

Slowly, and very carefully, trying to piece together the big picture as she spoke, Belinda outlined what she knew of André’s history.

‘He’s lonely,’ she said finally. ‘He adored this girl, his fiancée, and he lost her. And he’s lived all these years missing her, and wanting to be with her. I mean … it’d be bad enough in a normal lifetime, but with him living so long, it must be a total nightmare.’

‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ said Jonathan, his voice full of feeling. Belinda looked at him sharply, but he was studying their entwined hands, deep in thought.

Silence hung over them for a few minutes, until finally she said, ‘I think he wants something from me.’

‘Of course he does,’ countered Jonathan with a wry little grin. ‘He wants you to keep on having sex so he can feed on the energy.’ He gave her hand another little squeeze.

‘Yes. But I’m convinced there’s more to it.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I think the fact that I resemble his fiancée is significant.’ She stared at the house, as if its darkening grey facade held an answer. But there was none. ‘But I get the impression that he’s frightened to tell me why.’

‘Do you think it’s something that might be dangerous?’

‘I don’t know … but I’ve a sneaking feeling it could be.’

Jonathan shook his head, frowning. ‘Then we better had get out of here. As fast as we can.’

‘We can’t … Paula’s on her way here now. We’ve got to wait for her,’ Belinda pointed out, knowing that it was only a superficial argument.

‘We could try and intercept her,’ countered Jonathan. He looked up and gave her a long, appraising, sideways look. ‘You want to stay, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I want to find out what it is André wants from me. And if it’s not too awful, I’d like to help him. I’m sorry for him,’ she finished, knowing that that too was a superficiality.

‘Look,’ said Jonathan, seriously. ‘We’ve covered this … I don’t mind if you want to help him because you like him … because you’re attracted to him.’ He hesitated, then blushed furiously in a wild red way Belinda had never seen before. ‘I … um … I can understand that, you know. I …’ He faltered again, as if what he were about to say was so strange to him that he physically could not get the words out of his mouth. ‘Look, don’t think I’m going queer on you, but, well … I think he’s attractive in a way too.’ This last sentence came tumbling out so fast it made Jonathan sound breathless. ‘I only saw him for a few minutes but it was really strange … Something I’ve never felt before. I wanted him to stay. To … Oh God, I don’t know what!’

Belinda put her arms around her confused boyfriend. ‘Don’t worry, I get the general idea … I was with Feltris and Elisa, remember. That’s just the same … And you don’t think any worse of me for that, do you?’

Jonathan shook his head, his smile returning.

‘OK then, there you are!’ Tugging on his hand, she urged him to get up. ‘Now come on, let’s get back to the house and see who was on that bike!’

‘My lord! How good it is to see you!’

Michiko strode into the darkened tower room, an imposing figure in her skin-tight black leathers. André knew it was Michiko, even though her head was encased in a gleaming helmet adorned with the design of a ferocious fire-breathing dragon. Her electrifying aura was so strong he could almost taste it.

Yet he got a shock when she removed her shiny headgear and set it aside.

‘Michiko! Your hair!’ he cried – in English, the language in which she had addressed him – as he rose from his disordered bed, still naked. He knew he was awake but for a moment he seemed to be dreaming.

The last time he had seen his friend the sorceress, thirty years ago, her lustrous black hair had fallen in a water-straight curtain to her waist, but now there was no sign of that coiffure. Instead her hair was short – cut with a thick, wedge-like fringe and short back and sides – and all tinted a brilliant orange-toned yellow.

‘My countryfolk are in an experimental phase,’ she said blithely, flipping her lurid locks with her fingers. ‘This is the latest thing, especially for girls who dress up as boys.’ She rubbed her fingers across the cropped back of her head.

‘Ah, the Takarazuka,’ said André, beginning to understand the metamorphosis. For her own amusement and to bring an element of variety to her long, long life, Michiko had abandoned the life of a geisha, and instead joined the Japanese all-girl theatre, the Takarazuka. She had already become something of an idol, even when André had last encountered her, and with her commanding, imperious manner, she made a perfect male impersonator. But back in the 1960s, she had always worn a wig.

‘Do you like it?’ she enquired pertly, sidling closer, the ultimate predator in her shiny black carapace.

‘Yes. I do,’ said André, after a moment, quite beguiled by the eye-catching new style. ‘It is most becoming … even if something of a shock.’ He smiled as she sat down beside him on the rumpled sheets, her gloved hands as ever straying towards his groin. ‘It was a shock to find you so near to me, too,’ he continued, his voice catching as she delicately touched his penis.

‘We are on tour,’ she told him, her slanted eyes downcast, studying the reaction of his body, ‘and currently in London. Most opportune, my lord gaijin, is it not?’ she murmured, playing her leather-clad fingers along the growing length of flesh.

‘Indeed,’ said André, leaning forward and inclining his mouth towards hers. At the last minute, he saw her upswept eyes dart sideways, seeking Arabelle’s blue-glowing casket. ‘She sleeps, my dear friend,’ he said softly, placing his hand against Michiko’s exquisitely-sculpted jaw, ‘and even if she were awake, she would not deny us. You know full well that she is fond of you.’

‘Yes, I do know it, my lord,’ whispered Michiko, her brilliant mouth moving against his, ‘and in a little while, when she is awakened and I have greeted you sufficiently on my own behalf, I will bring her to you.’ She paused a moment, her lips perhaps a hundredth of an inch from his. ‘Only briefly, I regret to say. My powers cannot sustain her all that long.’

André shuddered, relishing the hope and the expectation of that peculiar fusion, even while his spirit soared in anticipation of a greater one.

Almost against his, Michiko’s eyes flew open. ‘I can sense your “discovery”, my lord,’ she said, her normally calm voice full of excitement. ‘And you are right, she is the one.’ She cocked her head, as if listening. ‘Tell me more about her, with your mind, while I pleasure you.’

And do you really think I will be able to concentrate sufficiently, while you are caressing me? observed André, obeying her even as her gloved hand moved faster on his penis. In contact like this, they could easily exchange thoughts, but it would not be long before his became disordered. Let me pleasure you first, my dear Michiko. That way, I will still have enough of my wits to make sense of it.

Gently removing her hand from his member, he reached for the long zip of her voluptuous leather suit, and began to describe – by means of thought transference – the arrival of the woman he hoped would help free his soul.

Michiko wore no underwear beneath the form-fitting hide that enclosed her, and the combination of the jet black suit and her honey-coloured skin made it seem as if he were unpeeling a ripe and luscious fruit. She moaned softly as he reached into the slit he had created and massaged her small, firm breasts, amazing him with the way she simultaneously assimilated what he ‘told’ her, even down to asking questions as she writhed with easy pleasure.

Stretching out her arms above her head, across the tangled sheets, Michiko offered both breasts to André’s feverish hands. How much does she know? her mind asked coolly. Is she aware that she resembles Arabelle?

Yes, she knows that she looks like Belle, replied André, leaning down across his friend to kiss her nipples. And she knows that I lost Belle many years ago. He nipped first one crest, then the other, then settled down to a long, concerted suck that made Michiko lift her hips and beat the air.

But does she know the significance of that likeness? questioned Michiko, her inner voice as placid as the surface of a lake, while outwardly she was gasping and groaning and pulling André’s fingers to her unattended breast. Does she know exactly what you are?

I have told her of my longevity, replied André, complying with Michiko’s wishes and squeezing her nipple between his fingers. And I think she does believe me. He closed his teeth on the nipple in his mouth, carefully gauging the exact degree of pressure. But she knows nothing of how both I, and Belle, can be released. He glanced towards the casket, thinking of the pure spirit that slept within the vial. She does not even know of Belle’s continued existence.

Despite the fact that he was the one doing the pleasuring, André suddenly found himself distracted. Lying over Michiko, he felt her body’s leather covering against his own skin, the touch slick and clingingly sensuous. He rocked his hips slightly, making his penis slid back and forth over the smooth, almost living hide, his rough breathing matching Michiko’s wild gasps.

Then you must tell her, instructed Michiko, her head tossing as he held her nipple between his teeth. And tell her soon, in case there isn’t much time.

André well understood the need for urgency, but it made him angry. He twisted Michiko’s teat cruelly between his fingers, re-directing his rage in a useful direction. He would not think of Isidora now; he would not accept the fact that she too could possibly be close by, and may already have detected his ‘awakening’. It was something to discuss with Michiko later. Later, when she wasn’t bouncing her hips around on the bed beneath him and trying to push her mons pubis against his midriff for stimulation.

Lifting himself and sliding himself along Michiko’s body, André pressed his penis against her leather-clad thigh and at the same time crushed her parted mouth with his. Kissing her profoundly, he eased down the zip of her suit a little further, then discovered that – most conveniently – went all the way down between her legs, up her bottom crease, and to her waist. When she obligingly lifted her rump from the bed, he whipped the zip open to bare her whole genital area, revealing her sex-lips and her silky pubic bush; a tuft of hair that was far blacker than the leather.

Will you help me? he asked Michiko while he tugged apart the unzipped aperture so he could get to the sleek rounds of her buttocks. I have everything we need. It only remains to distil the elixir.

Of course, she concurred, wriggling furiously, almost searching for him with her hindquarters. I am at your service, my lord, she said, her mental voice serene as she located his fingers then jammed herself down on them, forcing him to fondle the puckered portal of her anus.

And I am always in your debt, my faithful friend, André replied, beginning to give Michiko the caress she clearly wanted. Rubbing hard at the little hole, he got a satisfyingly violent reaction. Michiko’s legs flailed and her torso shook; she threw her thighs wide apart, physically knocking André off her as she bucked and heaved on the bed. Reaching down behind her back, she took hold of her own bottom cheeks and opened herself, blatantly coaxing him to breach her darkest orifice.

‘Ah!’ she cried, her physical and mental voices merging when finally he pushed a digit right inside her. ‘Amida,’ she murmured, her arms stiffening above her head as he used his rigid middle finger to fuck her bottom. André sensed in her an almost overwhelming longing to touch herself. She wanted to squeeze her breasts or finger her clitoris, but she was tormenting her own body by denying it. He would have done either of those things for her, or he would have curled himself up and licked her between her legs, but he knew that too would defeat her prime objective – her desire to orgasm by only anal stimulation.

‘My lord, my lord,’ she grunted as he moved himself around, his finger still firmly lodged inside her. Kneeling, he positioned her in front of him, and brought her knees up to squash against her breasts. Then he grabbed a pillow and jammed it against the small of her back, making her lift her skewered bottom even higher.

What a sight she was, his contorted lotus flower. Her body was almost doubled, and her bottom was protruding like a split and honeyed peach from between the edges of her night-black leather suit. He twisted his finger inside her and she made an uncouth gobbling noise, the superb muscles of her buttocks bunching madly. The snug ring around his finger gripped and tensed.

‘Do you remember the jade phallus, Michiko?’ he whispered, leaning over her, studying the invasion of her forbidden amber rose. ‘The one we played with in Paris. The one you made me suckle on before you put it in me?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ she said, her voice small as she trembled around him.

‘Well, I wish I had it now. So I could insert it into you … right here, where my finger is.’ He wiggled the digit he spoke of and Michiko almost choked. ‘It was very big, Michiko … even for me.’ He paused, easing out his finger a little way, playing it delicately around the inside of her sphincter. ‘It was uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. It hurt me, and yet still you pushed it into me. Right into me.’ He began to push in again. ‘My belly and my bowels were in turmoil. Surging. Protesting. But you were stern. You would not be denied.’ His finger slid in, one joint, two, as far as it would go. ‘You forced almost all of that horrid thing inside me.’

He began to pump her. Slowly, metronomically, using his finger as a miniature penis to sodomise her. Michiko’s booted heels flailed dangerously near to his face, but the hazard only added to his enjoyment. She was chuntering now, yelping in Japanese as she squirmed, her Oriental reserve entirely dissipated. To squeal and struggle was an enormous loss of ‘face’.

‘You fucked me with it,’ he told her, savouring the Anglo-Saxon word that somehow had more impact than its equivalent in the other tongues he spoke. ‘Like this!’ he exclaimed, driving his finger in and out of her like a piston and enjoying both the view and the way her bottom gripped and grabbed him. For a moment, he considered whipping out the finger and inserting his penis instead, but he knew something quite different – and almost sacred – lay ahead of him, so he concentrated his energies on pleasing Michiko.

It didn’t take long for them both to reach that goal. With a cry that was softer and strangely peaceful, Michiko went rigid in every sinew of her magnificent body, while between her legs her entire vulva moved and rippled. André was torn between watching those exotic pulsations – the ones he could feel transmitted through her vitals – and observing the suddenly placid expression on her face. Within the violence of orgasm, Michiko seemed transfigured, as if she had passed over into some realm beyond his imagining, a place of rest and quiet and tranquillity which he longed to reside in himself. A haven he could share with Arabelle.

Presently, he and Michiko untangled themselves, and studying him with her clear, dark eyes, she rolled away and peeled off her disordered clothing. Nude and beautiful, she brought a scented cloth and cleansed them both, then she knelt on the bed in a pose of meditation. Observing her as she murmured some unknown sutra under her breath, André was struck again by her unexpected new hair colour. He supposed that he too should have been meditating and preparing himself, but he couldn’t ignore the vivid difference in Michiko. He liked it. The brilliance of her short, sharply-cut hair matched the vivacity of her spirit and personality and negated the only thing about her that had ever troubled him – the fact that long black hair had unhappy connotations, reminding him of Isidora and the evil she had done.

‘Don’t think of her, my lord,’ said Michiko, looking up, her aura more powerful for her impromptu devotions. ‘The lady you love is awakening.’ She touched one slim hand to her bosom. ‘I feel her here. She speaks to me, André.’ She smiled her small inscrutable smile. ‘And in a few moments, she will speak to you through me.’ They both looked across to the rosewood casket and the slight increase in its weird blue nimbus.

André trembled. It had been a long time since this phenomenon had occurred, and though he yearned for it, its pleasures were bitter-sweet. The precious moments were always over almost before he had begun to relish them, leaving him lonelier and missing Belle more than ever.

And yet there was no way on earth he could refuse the chance.

Quitting the bed again, Michiko advanced on Arabelle’s casket and lifted it with reverence from its resting place. Her face still, but her near-black eyes alight, she held the carved box to her naked breasts, cradling it gently and rocking it against her. André got the impression that she was already communing with his beloved somehow; that they were engaged in some intimate girlish interchange that he could never be privy to, even if Arabelle were corporeal. He smiled as he recognised a pang of jealousy.

Michiko turned after a moment, and brought the box towards the bed. Smoothing the coverlet, she placed it carefully, then fetched a length of pure silk ribbon from a drawer in the secretaire. With a swift glance towards André, she lifted the lid of the casket and waited for his sign that she could take out the vial within.

André nodded, his heart pounding far faster than it had ever done in his natural life. He swallowed, full of nerves as Michiko lifted the crystal flask and the weird blue radiance that was all that remained of the woman he loved more than life cast slowly dancing shadows across their bodies.

André? queried Arabelle, her clear discarnate voice full of happiness. Do not be afraid … Michiko has told me of the hopes you share. Perhaps next time you and I will be together always … And if not, let us take heart from what we are about to share now …

She was always so calm, so accepting. It made him feel weak sometimes; inadequate because he could not endure his lesser torments with the same grace. But by the same token her equanimity was a solace. He remembered the early days, and her fits of manic uncomprehending terror and raging confusion, and gave thanks that she had matured and found wisdom. In truth, the way she had accepted her fate was a miracle, because never having physically aged, she was effectively still little more than a girl. The same exquisite, innocent, sensual girl he had fallen in love with over two centuries before.

Michiko put the flickering flask on the bed, then wound the silk ribbon around her wrist and arm in a complicated pattern, leaving one long end of it trailing free. She nodded to the vial, and with fumbling, shivering fingers, André unscrewed the glass lid then very carefully slid the tail of the ribbon into the opening.

‘Great Amida,’ intoned Michiko softly, ‘guide the kami of the lady Arabelle into the shell of thy humble servant.’ Crossing her free arm across her torso, she arranged her fingers into a magic symbol and pressed them against her skin, murmuring a low incantation in Japanese. Tilting her head back, she closed her eyes tightly, then her lips parted in a tiny yielding gasp.

André watched for a moment, tense with anticipation, as Michiko’s breathing quickened and a droplet of sweat appeared on her suddenly furrowed brow, then he switched his attention to the vial and the ribbon.

Slowly, oh so slowly, the blue radiance that was Arabelle began to flow along the pristine white ribbon. Through sheer power of her will, Michiko had banished her own spirit, her kami, to some unknown nirvana, and Arabelle was passing into the vacated body by osmosis.

When the blue glow was right out of the jar and just about to slide across Michiko via the ribbon, André could observe its progress no longer. This temporary fusion was unpredictable and sometimes didn’t work at all. Lying back and struggling to hope, he closed his eyes. If the process was successful, he wouldn’t open them till it was over.

‘André … my love,’ murmured a dear familiar voice in his ear, while a slender, female form lay down beside him.

‘Belle! Oh, Belle!’ he gasped, drawing her into his arms and rolling over to kiss her with more power. His eyelids still firmly shut, he seemed to see the woman he was embracing with his inner vision, and every detail of her lovely face was sweetly sacred.

Arabelle returned his kiss with a quiet, nascent passion that delighted him, pressing her body against his without shame. Even though Michiko, the vessel, was completely naked, as he held Arabelle he seemed to feel the brush of clothing. She had come to him, as she had before on these infrequent occasions, dressed in the gown she had been wearing when he had last seen her – a soft, elegant dress of the palest blue sprigged muslin, bound at the neckline and at the waist with fine blue ribbons. The bodice was low cut, as the fashion had been at that time, and he had a keen, almost painful memory of her allowing him to dip his hand inside her linen and touch her breast. He groaned, recalling the puckered texture of her nipple.

Just as he received a tactile recollection of Arabelle’s pretty clothing, he also seemed to feel her silky hair; the heavy fall of her cascading auburn ringlets. As a fresh young girl, not yet tainted by the excessive pursuit of fashion, she had mostly worn her hair loose and flowing and only very lightly curled, its glossy thickness a delight to eye and hand. One day, he had made her blush profusely by describing how, when they were man and wife, he would ask her to caress him with her hair – to rub her lustrous satin tresses against his penis. She had laughed and told him he was a wicked man to corrupt her with such an outré suggestion, but later, when he was touching her, and she was sobbing with pleasure, she had promised him he would eventually have his wish.

Too late now, he thought, feeling a little wistful as her firm, sweet lips parted under his. There were limits to how far illusion would stretch.

‘Do not be sad, André,’ she whispered, as if she, or Michiko, had sensed the thought. ‘Let me make love to you.’ Her quiet, vibrant voice was filled with humour. ‘You will be surprised how much dear Michiko has taught me.’

Gentle fingers slid down over his chest, spreading deftly to create a flat caress, then closing to catch his nipple and carefully tweak it.

The sensation was so intense that André murmured, his head tossing against the pillow, his body arching. Because he loved her, even so slight a thing could thrill him.

Arabelle laughed, the husky impish chuckle that had always meant ‘beware’ because she had some further naughty trick laid in store for him. Pressing her slim thigh between his legs, she massaged his erect penis with the textured muslin of her skirt, pinching his teat in the same relentless rhythm.

‘My lady, have a care,’ he gasped, clasping her closer and locking his legs around the one that rubbed against him, ‘or I will soil your handsome gown.’

‘Who cares about gowns,’ she answered, continuing to roll and jerk, her lips opening like rose petals against his throat.

‘Minx,’ he whispered, making her stop her gyrations by gripping the lobes of her bottom. How firm and trim and rounded they felt in his hands – sheer perfection! Tightening his hold on her, he quickly turned the tables and rocked her thinly-covered sex against his hip.

After a moment or two of this, Belle went deliciously limp against him, her slender shape as pliant as a reed. Her arms slid around him and he felt her panting, her breath cool and sweet, her mouth just an inch from his ear. ‘Oh André,’ she breathed, her pleasure evident not only in the beautiful malleability of her body but in the unguarded message he received directly from her soul. Her whole ethereal being was ablaze with love and wonder, an emotional wavefront that stunned him to silent awe. He would do anything to make her happy, he realised, and in any way. He would risk any risk and take any chance, regardless of any perils that path incurred.

An instant later, he forgot danger, he forgot the odds against success and he forgot all the moral considerations that plagued him. Uncoiling her right arm from around him, Arabelle walked her fingers down his belly, the steps as light and tiny as those of some mythic fairy, until her fingerpads were resting on his penis, just touching the root of it through his flossy pubic hair.

Moaning, he surged against her, pressing his hard length into the billows of her skirt. Her lips were at his throat again, kissing softly, whispering and encouraging, while below, her fingers curved around his shaft, gripping firmly with the exact pressure that he craved.

‘My darling, my darling,’ he chanted, as that snug grip began to move smoothly on him. Up and down, up and down, sliding the mobile skin over the iron-hard inner core. Stretching; pumping; tantalisingly gloving, twisting and teasing, his virgin beloved used a whore’s skill upon his flesh.

‘Oh God help me!’ he cried out hoarsely, as his penis leapt and juddered and his spinal column seemed to melt and turn to fire. Collapsing backwards among the sheets and covers, he held his lover close, knowing that even as he climaxed, she was receding from him.

‘Oh, Belle,’ he whispered, as her essence fluttered and shook like a guttering candle flame, and he felt the woman he was embracing twist and struggle. She was Michiko again now, reaching out for the crystal vial that lay beside her, guiding her discarnate friend towards the safety of containment.

‘I am so sorry, my lord,’ she said after a moment, and André realised he was sobbing like an infant.

They had been so close, he and Arabelle, but under these conditions their joy could never be more than fleeting. Michiko was an accomplished sorceress, full of sympathy and power, and using her mental skills she could temporarily be a vessel. Fundamentally however, she was incompatible with Arabelle, and even her greatest efforts couldn’t furnish what they needed.

As he snuggled into Michiko’s jasmine-scented embrace, he thought again of another woman who was within his orbit.

Belinda Seward – who was compatible, and who could, if she were willing and brave enough, sustain Belle’s essence through the erotic ritual of release.

But would she help them? he pondered, his hand moving automatically over Michiko’s satiny back. Would Belinda risk her very life for two people she hardly knew?

You can only ask her, said his Japanese lover, her voice clear and assertive inside his mind. ‘And you must ask her,’ she reiterated – as if for emphasis – by forming the words with her perfect rose-hued lips. ‘You must ask her soon before it suddenly becomes too late. We both know there is only a limited period in which to act.’

He knew it only too well. It was only a matter of time before his revived state was detected – and the pursuit that never ended resumed again. ‘You are right, my friend. As always,’ whispered André, touching Michiko’s brilliant coiffure and remembering certain long, black tresses that he had once had the misfortune to handle – a fall of hair that was not that of his faithful Japanese ally.

Neither one of them named the danger they feared was coming.