Variations Three Read Online Free Page B

good number, though I should
perhaps look about me for another sculptor; Jon seems a bit fagged
of late.
    Contrary to Sula, to whom I go this
evening.
    I find it best to take myself to their
studios, rather than Calling them to me. I find that the peculiar
aura of the artist’s own place, adds a depth and piquancy to the
nourishment that is entirely absent from a feeding taken in another
part of the house.
    Sula’s studio smells of wood shavings, of
beeswax, sweat and yesterday’s coffee. Sula also smells of these
things, and a salty, overripe femaleness. I believe she has many
lovers.
    Her back is to me as I enter the room. She
is lighting the candelabra atop the battered chest of drawers that
serves as her supply cabinet. I see her downturned face in the
mirror behind the candles, dark skin waxy in the hot light. Behind
her, in the mirror, the studio shows twilit and empty.
    I wait until she has lit her last candle;
until she has shaken out the match and pushed it, headfirst, into
the sand-filled pottery cup that sits beside the candelabra. It is
one of Michael’s pots, glazed with stripes of sunset orange.
    She turns at last from the bureau, heavy
breasts swinging under her loose shirt. I breathe across her eyes
and she pauses, the momentary confusion of trance misting her face
before she smiles, beatific, her nipples hardening into spears of
ecstasy. She moves to her worktable, and I with her. She stands
there, staring down--at nothing, save the scarred, stained
surface--and in her mind, Sula dreams.
    She dreams the most poignant piece of wood
she has ever held. In her mind, she shapes it, with the strength of
her will, into subtlety beyond mere beauty. Sula dreams with
intensity, with pure savage power, and I stand over her, one hand
above her heart, one hand cradling her forehead, drinking,
drinking, drinking, as much a captive of her passion as she, of my
trance.
    Feeding of Sula can span objective hours,
such is her vitality. Often, it is I who pull away, sated, and she
who clings to trance and the dream-thing she is making. Tonight, I
barely touched my peak, her lust coursing and lighting my veins,
when I felt her-- falter.
    Shiver.
    Against me, as never before, she ... moaned,
vitality spent, heart pounding, but with something other than
passion.
    Full, but not yet satisfied, I stepped
aside. She slumped against her work table, braced against her
flattened palms, breathing in great gulps, as if she had been
running, hard and long.
    Alarmed that she might be sickening--that
she might, indeed, have already passed her sickness to one or more
of the others--I let the glamour go, extended a gentle hand and
touched her shoulder.
    "Sula?"
    She started, the remains of trance
shattering, shook herself and with an effort straightened.
    "Hey, Jimmy." Her usual greeting, but
without her usual verve.
    "Are you well, Sula?" I asked and she smiled
a dazed smile and shook her head, pulling at the loose collar of
her shirt.
    "Tired," she said. "Hope I ain’t caught that
flu’s going round."
    I smiled and said I hoped so, too. She
nodded and turned away, toward the candlelight, and it was then
that I saw the cause of Sula’s illness.
    Just above her collar, dark against the dark
skin, just over the luscious vein that runs from heart to throat,
nestled two tiny, neat scars of a kind I had reason to know
well.
    I placed the Sleep upon her, which was a
risk. Should the interloper return, Sula would be helpless to ward
off the Kiss. But human defenses against us are paltry in any case,
and she might actually take benefit from the trance, if the thief
did not return.
    Having done what I might for this one of my
own, I went to check on the others.
    Michael was locking his door as I came by;
he waved cheerily and jangled his keys. "Hot date tonight, man!
Don’t wait up." He slapped me on the shoulder and would have gone
on by, had I not Spoken.
    "Michael." Humans are particularly
vulnerable to the Speaking of their names. He paused,