The Modern Barbarian 2

“Who are you?” she demanded, looking him up and down, seeing he wore even more blood than she did.

He looked about the red strewn chaos. “You just saw who I am. Come. I won't have you waste my labor so quickly, not without gratitude.”

“Gratitude?” she repeated shrilly.

“You're welcome.” He grasped a gesturing hand of hers and drew her to her feet. “Know you how to defend yourself?”

“I have people to attend to that.”

Conan had seen one, but she still wasn't wrong, given the slaying he'd done on her behalf. He led her by trapped hand to the exit, stopping only a moment to take the pistol from a fallen body. It was a flat, plain, functional weapon… nothing in it to show any honor to the foe it vanquished. But it was effective, for all that.

He pulled the girl along, and as they approached the exit, Ricardo stepped in the way. “Senora Renata, you're alive! I heard…”

“Betrayer,” Conan said. Held the gun on him and jabbed the trigger until it clacked its emptiness. Bullets slammed him back again and again, sending blood slashing through the air.

Conan could get used to these.

“You killed him!” Renata shrieked.

Conan glanced at the body quaking on the floor. “Not for another two minutes, I'd say. Hurry along or you'll join him.”

She sobbed, but when he pulled on her, she went along. 

Conan had not been in San Constantino long, but he'd gotten a feel for the place. A town, unchecked by decency or discipline, quickly developed into a rats nest of alleys, shortcuts, dead ends, closed roads. Conan navigated them as only someone attuned to the environment and sensitive to the massing of the people could. Soon he satisfied himself that there could be no pursuit. Renata breathed hard, but made no sound of complaint, and before she could, they'd arrived at Conan's accommodations: an abandoned garage he'd bought for a fistful of gold. He turned on the tap and hoisted the hose that was connected to it, washing himself off.

“You can talk now,” he told Renata. “Why are you wanted dead?”

She didn't seem to hear him in any but the broadest terms. “Ricardo was my bodyguard for years. There'd always been a certain attraction between us, even when my husband was alive. When he asked for us to go to lunch at his favorite restaurant, I thought he might want… he might try to… I don't know if I wanted him to, but he was so handsome, such kind eyes…”

Conan grunted. She was no good for answering questions yet. He tossed her the spraying hose. “Clean yourself off. I'll find some clean clothes.”

Renata canted her head. “You have women's clothes?”

“Women have little use for them when they're with me.”

Putting on new clothes seemed to distance Renata from all that had happened. She spoke like her thoughts needed to be out in the open air for her to order them.

It was a familiar story she told. There was a man of power and influence, a man whose climb to the top had covered him in blood, but also taught him a ruthless appreciation of words and diplomacy. He’d wooed Renata in the same way he would play on the intrigues of a potential ally—taking her by whispered poetry rather than rapine, though the effect was all but the same. Eventually, she was his, and so began the slow realization that he was not the man who’d courted her. Rather, he was a warlord, and the man she’d fallen in love with was only one paltry mask of the many he’d made to face the world. For some conquerors, the first army they cultivated was themselves. But all things to all people was a requirement for an emperor: either he offered all men fear or all men bribes.

Still, she’d been well cared for. Enjoying the wealth and luxury that were now hers to command, if not where they came from. But she was a poor village girl, descended from poorer farmers, peons—the beauty that was her only gift must’ve come from the gods. And if she was able to ignore the iniquity of life in the gutters, how much easier it was to ignore distant sins when all around her were furs and perfume and parties and diamonds?

Where man couldn’t repay the vile for their crimes, the gods so often were able to. Her husband had been struck by a wasting sickness. All his ill-gotten fortune was ceded to her—on his deathbed, he wished for the one good thing in his life to take all his sins and redeem them. Use the money to improve the world as his life so plainly had not.

The idea didn’t go over well with Renata’s in-laws.

“They all want me dead,” Renata sniffled conclusively. “All of them, all of them. But I don’t know which of them paid to have me killed. Maybe they all pooled their money—ha! As if they’d need to! Life is cheap in Mexico…”

“So it is in most places; more places than people think. But stop your crying, woman. A beautiful creature such as yourself isn’t meant for sorrow and worry. You’re for dancing and loving. Here! This talk of riches and grudges won’t make of you a woman again. Let’s have some song to return female grace to a body meant for nothing else!”

Conan crossed the room and picked up a small device. He greatly enjoyed the pocket radio: having the ability to summon up a bard’s spirit whenever he wished, flicking between one and another like he had an army of them to command, and then, at the twist of a dial, the bard grew the lungs of an elephant and his song filled the room.

Turning the dial a little, Conan found the frantic, insistent beat of a mambo. It echoed off the walls to surround Renata on all sides. She grinned haplessly. Conan went to the refrigerator next.

“And here! Some wine to loosen your body, until your dance escapes to meet this cavorting song…”

Conan pulled the cork out of the bottle with his bare hands and offered it to Renata. She obligingly drank straight from the bottle, then returned the bottle to Conan, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“You really want me to dance?”

Conan laughed again—a rich, satisfied sound—and sat on a folding chair. “If I had my way, you’d never do anything else. Those legs aren’t meant to mince around. They’re to carry you wherever your passion leads.”

The combination of the bongos and congas was intoxicating, a rhythm that swiftly set upon Renata and made her feel like she was missing out every moment she was still. She began to sway and Conan’s unreserved appreciation of her, sitting forward in his seat, prompted her to laugh.

“Si. I’ll dance for you, Conan. Because you saved me, though. Not because—not as the start of anything else.”

“Just do as your body tells you, girl. I demand no payment except that you do as you wish.”

With languid, almost challenging slowness: Renata reached up and undid the clip which held her dark hair where it was. Freed, it rushed down to her shoulders, shining with luster.

Conan remained patient, savoring every moment of her presentation, every little effect the music had on her unspooling body.

Renata moved her legs apart next. Her skirt pulled drum-taut across the roundness of her upper thighs. Still slowly, daring Conan to rush her, she rolled her hips from side to side.

Then she began to undo her bra, staring into the dark corner that held Conan, where his eyes glinted with relish. She wondered if it was wise to arouse such an unknown personage this way, but her own excitement was quickening, replacing the numbness she’d been drowning in with feelings that were hot and livid. The wine made her as defiant of her own mores as she would be of any attempt by Conan to claim her. She was heated, burning up, and feeling wanted was a damn sight better than any further thought that her bodyguard would rather have a sum of money than her. So much for the romantic Latin spirit!

The last button came open. She shrugged out of her blouse, letting it hang from her while she unzipped her skirt, and then she allowed both to drift from her skin. Eying Conan as if questioning why he didn’t rip them from her, if he wanted to see underneath them so bad.

But all Conan did was turn up the radio, making the drumbeats a physical attack far more powerful than his hands could ever be. They were inside her, throbbing at her core, making her vibrate at a primeval frequency her modern body had never known before.

Her hips moved faster, writhing from side to side like scarcely tamed animals.