Kill the Dead by Tanith Lee (beach read book txt) 📕

the act of sex, they might literally be turned into aquivering, gasping, ever-orgasmic tree.

Butthen she broke away, teasing him. She laughed, and ran off along the aisle ofliving columns. He ran after her, naturally. The shadows of trunks striped overher paleness, so she seemed to flare on and off like a windblown lamp. Thensuddenly she disappeared.

Hehad forgotten the supernormal aspect of her former visitations, and dashedtoward the spot where she had been, calling her name, partly in anger, andpartly because he knew she had meant him to. She would make him desperate,flaunt, tease, elude. When he had reached a stage of sufficient confusion andactual physical discomfort, she would give in.

Ina moment, he found her. She had elaborated upon the process of teasing andeluding and flaunting to a unique degree.

Apool lay amid the trees, black and shiny as a slice of highly polished nightsky fallen down there. Glancing up, sure enough there was half a white hole inheaven where the piece of sky had come away.

Themoon burned on Ciddey at the pool’s centre, standing in the water, which coiledpassively about her knees. She seemed to have grown from the pool, a slenderstem, with a flower of face. Her hair was wet, darkened by water at its ends,but she peeled it from her and draped it behind her shoulders. Her dress wasall wet and had grown thin and transparent as paper, so he saw her nakednessthrough it, smokily, unmistakably. Her lips were parted, and smiling, and hereyes heavy. She beckoned to him, urgent as the urgency that now was stabbingthrough him. Even so, he hesitated, eager to get to her, but not liking thesheen of the water, so cold, so oddly still though she rose from it, smoothingher hair, stirring her limbs a little, beckoning.

“In there?” he asked, hoarse andstupid.

“Yes, oh, yes,” she moaned.

Ather voice a pang went through him so great that he could no longer bear to keepaway. He splashed into the water, clenching his teeth and fists at the cold ofit He thought, in an ecstasy of frustration, she might start to move away fromhim again as he got closer, but instead she strained her arms to him, thoughnot moving her feet, as if she could not, as if they had grown into the suckingmud on the pool’s floor.

Hereached her abruptly, and grabbed her. The instrument thumped him on the back.Congratulations. As her snake-like arms curled around him, he knew a moment’shorror of the inevitable aftermath, the entanglement, the trap, thecomplications, but the horror could not keep pace with the anguish of pleasure.The second horror—the possibility of disappointing, failing—had yet to come. Itmight ruin the supreme moments, or everything might be well, but as yet he didnot care. Even the dreary nervous consideration as to how they would manage,nowhere to lie or lean, only the mud and the water underfoot, had not yet takenhold.

Groaning,he submerged, arms, eyes, flesh, mind, full of the girl. All his sight waspaleness and darkness, and he could only smell fragrant skin and hair. Herpressure against him was unendurable and he would die without it, and his handsmade magic, passing over her, and hers magic in his hair, along his sides,locking him with a fierce strength into the single position he wished toobtain, retain, remain in, cry out in, perish in—

The water exploded.

Thundercaught him by the hair, the shoulder. He was dragged backward. Where he hadadhered to her, his body seemed to tear like rent cloth. He yelled insanely,hearing himself. He flailed with his empty arms, sprawled, went down. Watersprang over his head; he gulped it, trying to drink his way back to the air. Somethingpulled him from the water, turned him. A savage clout across the head rockedhim. He half fell again into another hard resilient mass, which in turn draggedhim once more.

Crowingfor breath, blinded, crazy, he landed on his knees on iron-like earth. He hunghis head and coughed water. And the instrument also coughed water from itssound box. As his eyes cleared, he beheld four slender horse legs, shod inmetal, pecking at the soil in front of him. And behind those, another four, andanother four.

Delighthad turned to a dull physical ache. He felt sick. He was afraid. Gradually, heheard the silence of the girl in the pool, and half turning, he glimpsed her.Her face was raw with rage and terror.

Outof his own terror, Myal made himself look up, beyond the legs of the horses.

Theywore mail, the three men, and great cloaks, furled like wings. A murky jewelflashed on a hand or wrist. Another smouldered muddy red. Unfriendly faces madeof marble and framed by unfriendly courtly wavelets of hair glared at Myal,then at the pool, the girl.

“You,”one of the men said, not looking at Myal.

“Me?”asked Myal.

“Youare a fool, to go with that. Don’t you know live flesh fromnecrophilia?”

Myalchoked. He crawled into a bush and attempted to throw up. None of theminterfered with him. He heard a dim ominous exchange over his dry spasms. Thethree riders, some duke’s bodyguard or earl’s men from the look of them, wereharanguing the girl in the pool. They called her filthy names, the word“deadalive” was mingled contemptuously among them. They did not fear her, somuch was obvious. They spat on the ground, saying she was a thief. Theypromised her weird punishments that had to do with graves, worms, flames,wheels. And she, she shrieked back at them, her voice high as a bat’s.

Myalslumped on his side, the instrument wedged under his shoulder blade, his kneesunder his chin. He had some vague incentive to crawl away, to get out of the woodand up the slope, to Parl Dro. Before he could realise the ambition, one of theriders came over, leaned from the saddle, and yanked Myal back again onto openturf. The rider glared at Ciddey.

“Thereare punishments for those who consort with stray ghosts. The forest hereaboutsis rife with bloody undead. Didn’t you know? Those who harbour them orencourage the deadalive, deserve to join them. Not gently, either. Like to knowsome penalties?”

“No,thank you,” said Myal politely.

“I’lltell you anyway. There’s one school of