The Cross of Sins (14 page)

Eric raised one eyebrow. "You need a hand, cowboy?" he asked. Then, he turned away and walked to the edge of the pool. There he glanced back, winked and added teasingly, "A hand to clean these postcards out of the pool, I mean."

With that he dived into the sparkling aqua water.

Shane quickly drained the last of his beer, and then got up, unashamed of his owning throbbing bulge. He stood at the edge of the water as Eric skimmed along the bottom of the pool from one end to the other, the refracting light dancing across his body, a trail of tiny air bubbles fluttering behind him.

Eric broke the surface at the other end and smoothed back his short hair. Without the slightest inhibition, he slipped his Speedo off and tossed it onto the edge of the pool, and then climbed up the pool's ladder and strode completely naked past Shane.

His cock stood up hard and thick.

He touched his fingers to his grinning lips as he walked by. "Don't know about you, but I'm thirstier than ever."

Eric strutted his way to the bar and jumped over it again, this time his stiff cock swinging and his perfectly round balls bouncing in motion. He fetched another two beers, opened them, and again hurdled the bar.

Shane drank.

Eric watched him, and then guzzled his own beer and dived back into the pool. When he surfaced, he looked at Shane and shouted, "So cowboy, you getting naked with me or what?"

Shane drained his beer completely. He peeled off his Speedo and, like a tightly wound coil being released, his large hard cowboy's cock sprang free, swinging straight up and slapping him against the stomach.

He dived into the pool and surfaced in front of Eric, whose fingers plunged straight into Shane's short wet honey-blond hair and pulled him into a hard, deep kiss.

Shane wrapped one hand around the back of Eric's head while his other hand seized a nipple and twisted it firmly between his forefinger and thumb. He enjoyed the force of Eric's tongue pushing its way around the inside of his mouth. He felt Eric's cock, its head large and bulbous, jabbing him in the stomach in the water below. The beer and the sun and the thrill of the moment began to make him light-headed. He pulled away from Eric for a moment.

Eric simply grinned, and then took a deep breath and slid beneath the water.

Down below, Shane felt Eric's lips wrap themselves around his throbbing cock.

Shane groaned and let his head roll back, face up to the sun. He closed his eyes, feeling more and more giddy with every passing second, but he was too caught up with pleasure to care.

Beneath the water, Eric took the entire length of Shane's cock in his mouth. Shane could feel the tip of Eric's tongue dance along the base of his shaft. He felt Eric's hands take hold of each ass cheek, and then slowly, Eric began to slide his mouth up and down the length of Shane's cock. Small choppy waves formed on the surface of the pool as Eric created currents underneath, moving faster and faster every time he took Shane's cock inside his throat, increasing suction and pressure until Shane groaned again, louder this time.

Suddenly, from behind him, he heard a rather startled, "Disgusting!"

Quickly, he half-turned, his cock still in Eric's mouth.

Through his now swirling vision, he saw standing on the edge of the pool two plump middle-aged women in one-piece swimsuits, sarongs, and large-brimmed hats. Both stood watching with their mouths agape in horror and contempt, though it didn't stop them from slowly lowering their sunglasses for a better look.

Shane quickly reached down and pulled Eric off his cock.

Eric surfaced, saw the women and started to laugh. "Don't mind us, ladies. I was just demonstrating to Shane how to use a snorkel. The trick is to blow into the mouthpiece nice and hard." He looked at Shane. "It's a shame, really. It would have been fun to go out with a bang." Eric leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, and then smiled and said, "How's that beer going down?"

Shane tried to blink away his double vision. His brow suddenly creased, suspicion taking hold. "What did you say?"

Eric didn't answer. He simply grinned, swam to the side of the pool and climbed out. Stark naked, his cock still hard, Eric strolled confidently past the two women, who couldn't take their eyes off him. "Ladies," he winked. Then, he scooped up his backpack, wrapped his towel around his waist and swiftly left through the terrace doors.

Shane suddenly held his spinning head. "This ain't good," he mumbled to himself, trying desperately to get himself to the edge of the pool. The water felt like quicksand, his legs struggling to push him through it, his feet slipping on the bottom. One hand finally gripped the edge of the pool. With great effort, he somehow managed to pull himself out of the water, every muscle straining. He rolled naked onto the edge of the pool and clambered to his unsteady feet.

"Look how drunk he is!" one of the women uttered with contempt. "I'm calling the hotel manager!"

"Poison," Shane slurred to himself. "He poisoned the beers." He glanced at the empty beer bottles by the pool, his head rolling wildly on his neck. His weight shifted suddenly to the left, he teetered dangerously close to the side of the pool, and then hurriedly he stumbled to the edge of the terrace.

He hit the railing too fast and had to stop himself from toppling over the edge of the building. The city of Ankara in all its chaos and commotion bustled below. It was a mad blur. Shane stopped a second, steadied himself, and tried to focus.

Suddenly, on the footpath below, he saw Eric emerge from the hotel, now wearing jeans and a white t-shirt and stuffing his towel into his backpack. He stepped up to the curb just as a black BMW pulled up. Eric opened the passenger door, got inside and the car sped off into the busy traffic.

"Shit," Shane mumbled.

He spun around and reeling manically from left to right, he weaved his way quickly across the terrace. The two ladies gasped and he nearly ran straight into them. "Sorry ladies," he mumbled, ever the Texan gentleman, even as the poison turned his head into a washing machine. "My apologies."

But the women squawked and fumbled frantically to get away from him. One of them side-stepped in a panic, lost her footing on the edge of the pool, and screamed as she plunged into the water. "Esther!" the other woman wailed. Then, pointing to Shane, she shouted at the top of her lungs, "Help! Somebody stop him. He tried to attack us! Somebody do something!"

But Shane was already gone.

He found the stairwell and stumbled his way down the stairs as fast as he could.

He tried to read the floor numbers at each turn.

He tried to remember which floor his and Eden's room was on.

He found the right door.

He ricocheted off the walls of the corridor.

He found the room.

He reached for a key in his pocket and realized he was still naked. He had nothing. The key was still up by the pool.

His chest tightened. He was having trouble breathing. He gasped for air, stepped away from the door and with all his might he kicked the door in. It burst open. Shane practically fell inside the room.

He dragged himself into the bathroom, looking desperately for something that wasn't there. He staggered out into the bedroom. He dropped to his knees and looked under the bed. He snapped open the closet door and found it empty. "God dammit Eden, where is it?"

Shane winced as the poison squeezed his lungs and knotted his heart. He could barely see at all now, his vision was so blurred. He felt his consciousness slipping away. Desperately he crawled to Eden's suitcase and threw open the lid. He tossed clothes aside, he rummaged through blindly, and then he found it.

The medi-kit.

He unfastened the clasp.

He emptied the contents on the floor.

Bandages and vials spilled everywhere.

Shane's hands snatched up the largest syringe he could find. He ripped open the cellophane packaging, bit the cap off with his teeth and spat it up. He snatched up vial after vial, squinting as hard as he could to read the labels.

Morphine, cortisone, procraine, benzathine, lignocaine, xylocaine.

Adrenaline.

He stabbed the needle into the vial and drew the clear fluid down into the syringe.

Suddenly, his throat tightened and sealed off all oxygen to his lungs. He tried to gasp but was unable to breathe at all. His face turned red, bright red. His throat thickened. His chest felt as though it were about to explode. Tremors shook his entire body. He collapsed onto his back, tiny glass vials breaking beneath his weight, their contents and Shane's blood seeping into the carpet together.

He didn't notice.

He couldn't feel anything anymore.

His eyes began to roll back into his head.

He had one, maybe two seconds of life left to cling to.

He held the syringe high above him, pointed it down toward his chest, and with all the strength he had left in him, he plunged it directly into his own heart and forced every last drop of the adrenaline into his body as fast as he could.

It were as though a million volts of electricity suddenly ran through him, blasting the poison out of his bloodstream, opening up his air passage, freeing his lungs, pulling him back from the brink of death at the last possible moment. His heart pounded in his chest, beating frantically, grabbing at life. With one enormous intake of breath, he sucked in as much oxygen as his lungs could hold.

Then suddenly, he sat bolt upright, coughing and gasping and blinking crazily.

He could see again, and the first thing he saw was the syringe still protruding from his chest.

He plucked it out, threw it to the floor. Grabbing a pair of jeans randomly from Eden's bag, he pulled them on, snatched the gun from under his pillow, and then raced out the door.

Out on the street, car horns blasted and angry Turkish motorists swore and abused each other.

Shane looked down the road in the direction the black BMW had gone. There was no sign of it. He shoved the gun into the back of his jeans, and then charged around the corner and down a lane at the end of which was a small market. Women were selling scarves, a small boy was selling nuts and figs, and a man had three lazy-looking camels he was trying to get rid of.

Shane burst out of the lane and quickly looked left and right. At the end of the next block, he saw a traffic jam. Horns were blaring, drivers were screaming at each other, and there in the middle of the gridlock was the black BMW.

Shane glanced around, his mind racing.

He saw the camels.

He grabbed the reins on one and the man selling them immediately began to abuse him in Turkish.

"I'll bring him back, I promise. I just need to borrow him for ten minutes, that's all."

Before the man could stop him, Shane had jumped onto the camel's back, hanging onto its hump with one hand and the reins with the other. "It's gotta be just like ridin' a horse, right?" he muttered to himself.

He snapped the reins.

The camel broke into a wild sprint, almost throwing Shane off.

He held on as tight as he could and tried to steer the beast in the direction of the traffic ahead. At that moment, the cars began moving. The gridlock unlocked itself. The black BMW pulled away, sliding across several lanes of traffic as it picked up speed.

Shane dug his bare heels into the camel. "Yiddy-up!" he ordered the animal in a commanding voice. It was his childhood interpretation of his father's always stern giddy-up! Despite the many times he'd tried to impress his father, to prove he could be the man his father always wanted him to be, yiddy-up was the one thing he'd never managed to outgrow.

Somehow though, it always worked.

The camel picked up speed, a lot of speed.

Shane grabbed the hump with both hands, almost losing his grip on the reins. Somehow he managed to juggle the ropes precariously in his fingers and keep from sliding straight off the back of the hump at the same time. Below him the lanky legs of the camel threw themselves far and wide, churning up the dusty road beneath its hooves.

From his rocky point of view, Shane glanced ahead and saw the black Beemer pull off into a side street on the right, just as Shane and his camel careened into the bustling traffic. They were greeted with not surprise, but anger and a crazed cacophony of car horns. None of it seemed to perturb the camel; he maintained stride and speed, while Shane maintained his efforts to hang on for dear life.

He pulled the reins right.

He aimed the camel at the side street where the BMW had disappeared.

Just then, a woman in a beat-up old car to his left screamed abuse and spat at him and his camel as they galloped alongside her.

"Do you mind?" Shane shouted, but the camel had already managed a reply of its own by regurgitated up a wad of God-knows-what and projecting it straight through the woman's open window. Yellow sludge slapped against the woman's face, tangling through her hair and sliding down her cheek. She squealed in horror, veered sharply to her left and smashed into the car traveling alongside her.

Not even the sound of metal crumpling and glass smashing distracted the camel. Nor the sound of more horns and more smashing glass and grinding metal as they left a mounting pile-up in their wake.

Shane glanced back. Drivers and passengers were already leaping out of their broken cars to abuse and scream at one another, including the woman with camel sick on her face. Shane couldn't help but grin. He decided he kind of liked camels.

With that, he got into the swing of the animal's long-legged stride, and rider and beast picked up a rhythm.

Shane got a firm grip on the hump and a firm grip on the reins, and together they turned confidently into the side street, saw the black Beemer ahead, and picked up the pace.

The BMW reached the end of the block and turned left.

Shane kicked his heels into the camel, and it responded, taking the speed of its gallop up yet another notch. They hit the end of the block, and Shane turned the animal left, and then pulled it up to a halt.

"Whoa there buddy." Up ahead he saw the BMW was about to turn right onto a busy expressway. There was no way he could catch them now, not a camel.