Sneak Peek of Chapter 13 from "War Angel III: Catalina" by Keith Kareem Williams

Hey guys. I woke up in a really good mood this morning so I figured I'd share another sneak peek at what I KNOW you all are waiting for, "War Angel III: Catalina." All week I've been really inspired so I'm even more confident that the final book of the trilogy will be something exciting, imaginative, frightening and epic! (Those of you who are intimately familiar with my work know for a fact that I always deliver what I promise.) 

CHAPTER 12

Little Birdies

T

hree warm, naked bodies lay together with their limbs sensuously entwined on the cozy queen-sized bed. In the middle was a gorgeous curvy woman, pale of skin with dark hair and eerie, blue eyes. A few, barely noticeable crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and a deep, gruesome scar marked the cheek on what was otherwise an almost flawless face. Her head lay on the muscular, tan chest of a young man who lay snugly on her right side. His name was Tristan and he was almost as pretty as she was. She affectionately ran her fingers across his flesh, absolutely in love with how smooth his body was, from his bald head to his clean-shaven private parts. On the left side of the scarred woman lay Tristan’s twin sister, Isolde, with black tears flowing from her eyes. That was what happened whenever the white-haired, bronze-skinned beauty dreamed of dark tidings.

“Why is she crying? What did she see?” Anika asked Tristan.

He acted as a mouthpiece for his mute twin. He hadn’t been gifted with her sight but, since the day they were born, he could feel her emotions and read her thoughts as if they were his own.

“Isolde says that something is coming, something very dangerous and very, very powerful,” Tristan told Anika.

His voice was deep and rumbling, like a boulder rolling down a mountainside, but also somewhat hollow, like a distant echo, whenever he spoke for his sister. Anika turned from him to look into the troubled face of her female lover. She wrapped her arms around the slim shapely girl when she felt Isolde’s body shiver.

“What’s wrong? What has you so frightened my pretty little bird?” Anika asked before she kissed Isolde sweetly and wiped away a streak of tears that flowed down her face like spilled ink on paper.

“She says that she has seen the Reaper sitting atop an asylum roof, sharpening his scythe and licking his parched lips,” Tristan answered.

“What else did she say?” Anika asked.

“Nothing. I can feel that there’s more but she’s afraid to tell me,” he replied.

“And does that frighten you too, handsome?” Anika asked with her back still turned to him. “I can feel you trembling like she is.”

“You know that’s how our bond works. If she’s afraid, then I’m afraid. We feel the same things,” he answered.

Anika intimately understood exactly how the twins’ “gift” worked which was why she found them to be such interesting, satisfying and exciting lovers. When they said that they shared feelings, they literally meant everything. She enjoyed sexually pleasing them simultaneously and when they satisfied her together as one, it was unlike anything she had ever felt. Many years before, her own twin sister had been gunned down and murdered by a man that she hated. She still remembered what it felt like to be connected to another human being the way that Tristan and Isolde were linked. She ached for the days when she and her beloved Anya would speak with one voice. That destroyed connection had left a deeper scar than the ghastly gash on her cheek. The wound that was left after her twin was torn from this world was a festering sore on her soul that she knew would never heal. Now, the twins that she spent her nights with brought her closest to what she once had.

“Don’t worry my little birds, I promise to keep you safe. I’ll protect you,” Anika attempted to reassure them. “What’s the matter my beautiful boy? You don’t believe me?” she asked when she rolled over and clearly read the fear in his eyes.

“We know that you would never hurt us, or want to see us hurt but,” he started to explain but then paused.

“What’s wrong my loves?” Anika asked, curious to hear what her little birdies seemed afraid to say.

“Isolde says that if you stay with us, love us and find that to be enough, all three of us can be happy and safe. But, she says that if you chase blood, we will all get bloody. You won’t be able to protect us from the things you set in motion,” Tristan told her with doom and depression heavy in his voice because the twins already knew what choices Anika was going to make.

“There are things that I must do. My sister’s soul demands it and she won’t rest until I take her killer’s life. But, I swear, I won’t let anything happen to you two, my pretty little birdies. You trust me don’t you?”

“Of course we do,” Tristan answered.

“Good. I’ve already lost half of my soul. You both have made me almost feel whole again and I won’t let anything take you away from me,” she said with supreme confidence.

Anika climbed out of bed and sauntered over to the closet with a hypnotically graceful gait. They both became aroused as they watched her slip into her robe. Her stiff nipples poked through the thin, satin which also clung to every one of her curves making it almost seem as if she was still naked.

“Don’t leave us. Stay a little longer,” Tristan pleaded with honey in his voice while Isolde begged the same thing with longing in her eyes.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m just going down the hall to parlay with my brother. Keep each other warm until I get back,” she told them on her way out of the bedroom.

Once she was gone, the twins cuddled cozily with their naked bodies pressed together incestuously. Although most normal people would surely deem their twisted intimacy repulsive, they cared very little for the opinions of the world outside of their tiny circle. Life had never been particularly kind to them so they viewed themselves as outcasts anyway and refused to allow themselves to be governed by conventional morality. Anika’s brother, Paulo had found them barely surviving on the streets after they had escaped from a dark and abusive home. There were times when they could still feel the grimy hands of their mother’s numerous, random boyfriends, pawing at them and touching them in places where they didn’t want to be touched. When Paulo brought them home, Anika had immediately taken a liking to them. Eventually, that “liking” had grown into a lustful love. Over time, she had become their surrogate mother, their lover, their teacher and their pale goddess to worship. For the first time in their entire lives, they felt favored and protected from the ugliness of the world, until now. Something was coming for them all and the daydream was almost over.

“Why won’t you show me everything that you saw in your dream? Was it that scary?” Tristan whispered to his sister as he ran his fingers through her short-cropped, pixie-cut locks of white hair.

Isolde nodded her head to let him know that her vision had been so terrible that she refused to share the details with him. If she had, he would have become consumed by the same dread and their combined fear would have been amplified tenfold. So, instead of fully opening up her mind to him, she opened up her legs instead. She chose to grant him the gift of blissful ignorance as she distracted him with a kiss.

Paulo lay flat on his back, wide-awake in bed and staring blankly at the cracks in the ceiling above his head. The sound of the squeaky doorknob turning caught his attention and made him turn his eyes toward his door in the dark. Then when the door opened, he suddenly found himself temporarily blinded by the light that poured in from the hallway just outside.

“What brings you to my bedroom at this hour? Tired of playing dirty love games with your incestuous little toys?” Paulo asked his sister disdainfully as she rudely invaded his privacy without knocking.

“Isolde had a dream,” Anika answered coldly, annoyed by his tone and the judgment in his ghostly grey eyes.

“Poor little broken thing. She’s always dreaming of some sort of doom or dread. So what? Personally, I think she needs therapy,” he answered dismissively, eager to get back to his own dark, private thoughts.

“This dream was different. I think you’ll want to hear about this one.”

“To be honest with you, I don’t really want to hear about anything that goes on with you three in that bedroom but, go on if you must,” he grumbled.

“She dreamed of the Reaper looking down from atop an asylum rooftop,” Anika informed him smugly.

She believed that he had never truly recognized or appreciated the value of her young lovers but she always had, from the moment he brought them through the front doors, hungry and filthy but gifted as well. Anika was extremely pleased to see that that tidbit of news make her brother quickly sit up and keenly pay attention.

“What?” he asked, suddenly extremely interested in what she had to say.

“They are finally coming for her. We need to be prepared,” Anika smiled.

“Wait a minute. How can we be sure that that’s what the little mute’s dream means?” he asked.

Anika’s grin grew even wider as Paulo’s cell-phone suddenly began to ring and vibrate on the antique nightstand next to his bed. She wasn’t able to see who was calling from where she was standing but, she was certain that she could easily make a pretty good guess.

“I’m willing to bet you anything that that’s your fiery nurse from the asylum, eager to warn you that someone we’ve been waiting for has finally come calling. See? My little birds saw this coming first which means that my little birdies are much better than YOURS,” she said before she walked out of his bedroom and closed the door behind her.

“Hello. Is everything alright my love?” Paulo asked as he answered his phone.

“Two people came here today asking about your friend in room three-sixteen,” the woman on the other line told him.

“Really?” he asked while slowly stroking his course goatee, now heavily streaked with silver-grey hairs. “And what were theses visitors like?”

“Well, they were both very young. Neither one of them could have been much older than eighteen.”

“Interesting. Why don’t you put on something see-thru and sexy and come over to tell me all about them,” he suggested.

“I’ll be right over,” nurse Melody Adler answered with eager excitement.

As soon as she hung up, she hurried to her dresser drawer to pick out something to wear under her clothes that she knew he would love. She liked to impress her favorite lover. It had been almost two months since she’d last seen him and she needed desperately to feel him.

Copyright © 2014 Keith Kareem Williams

All rights reserved.

I hope that you enjoyed this tease. As always, feel free to leave comments. 

COMING SOON (I promise)

WRITER WEDNESDAY - ARTISTIC WORDS PUBLISHING PRESENTS: "SHUG'AH" by Imani Writes

Good afternoon ladies and gents. Today for WRITER WEDNESDAY I'll be featuring Artistic Words Publishing's latest release, "Shug'ah" written by Author Imani Writes.

Shug’ah has an ideal teenaged life and a boyfriend who loves her. However, her life changes at fifteen when she becomes the victim of rape. After a year of being violated, Shug’ah puts an end to the assault the only way she knows how…by murdering her rapist.

After serving time in a juvenile facility for murder, at twenty-one, Shug’ah finds herself outcast and alone. She joins an all-male crew, making them her new “family”. She’s got something to prove, becoming a paid killer for one of LAPD’s dirtiest cops. When the crew’s leader is gunned down, Shug’ah steps up to help lead the group. Everything is good until her past shows up, offering her a chance at a life she believed was out of her reach.

Shug’ah’s worlds begin to collide. Can she stop it? Can she really have the happiness she desires? Or is it too late?

Now Available on Amazon

Author Imani Writes

Imani Writes is an Oakland, California-born, Virgin Islands-raised author and published poet. She discovered her passion for writing as a teenager. She loved to create heartfelt storylines while bringing unforgettable characters to life. While working between jobs, she discovered that writing was her true calling and had a desire to do it fulltime. She self-published her first book in 2012.

She sees her writing as works of art and believes her overactive imagination is what keeps her pen creating more stories that readers will enjoy. Imani Writes currently lives in North Georgia where she is working on her next book.

ABOUT ARTISTIC WORDS PUBLISHING

Our readers can look forward to unpredictable, yet compelling works of written art from authors who are passionate about writing and touching people with their stories. It is one of our goals to create and produce stories that haven’t been told the way that we tell them. Expect amazing. Expect surprising. Expect the unexpected.

http://www.artisticwordspublishing.com

The Hottest Cup Preview

THE HOTTEST CUP

By Keith Kareem Williams

It was summertime in the big city and there was an unusual buzz in the scorching streets around a sport that we, the pessimistic, gritty citizens of New York, usually didn’t particularly care for. We only sacrificed precious time from our hectic lives for physical contests that were hard-hitting, brutal, fast-paced and most importantly, high-scoring. Even baseball, one our beloved national pastime, was dying a slow death. (Any sport where the television commentators had the time to casually drone on about weekend fishing trips in-between exciting plays was doomed.) In a crowded sports bar in lower Manhattan, on a Tuesday afternoon, we beer-drinkers and lovers of liquor were all there to watch the World Cup, of all things. Thanks to the constant barrage of relentless coverage and promotions on all of the top sports networks, soccer, better known as Futbol in most parts of the world outside the U.S., had become the new novelty that had temporarily grabbed a hold of our collective short attention spans.

The United States had already been eliminated from contention by Germany despite a valiant effort, mostly from out thirty-five year-old goalkeeper, Tim Howard, who at times mad superhuman save after save with the full weight of America’s pride on his back. The way he defended against Germany’s skilled strikers’ onslaught made him appear as if he was thirty feet tall. Our interest could have waned after that defeat but, we were all there on that day to watch soccer anyway, hopeful that the host country’s home team heroes of Brazil would stomp the mighty Germans, the villains that had just bounced our guys from World Cup contention just a few days before.

Once the match started and it immediately became obvious that it was going to be a painfully lop-sided, old-fashioned ass-whooping, (The Germans scored THREE goals in the first seventy-six seconds of the match which is UNHEARD of), most of us turned away from the big-screen televisions, got back to discussing the off-season news stories about our favorite sports and concentrated on getting drunk. After all, we were in an establishment that’s main function was to serve alcohol…and lots of it. While we speculated about which of the big named, free agent basketball stars might end up switching teams and signing huge contracts with different franchises, I spotted her sitting at a table all alone.

In the entire bar, she was the only one whose teary eyes were still glued to the television as she watched the painful massacre masquerading as a futbol match. Even though she must have been absolutely filled with shame, she seemed unable to look away as Brazil put up zero resistance and Germany continued to score goal after goal. I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed her before because, out of all the patrons in the place, only her darker skin tone was even close to my own. I made my way towards her, past guys in European-cut business suits who were busy boasting about how much money they were going to make this quarter, all of whom were all too narcissistic to notice a beautiful woman, literally crying her eyes out right in their midst. Most of them probably spent too much time in front of mirrors admiring their own awesomeness to notice beauty in anything else. When I was only a few feet away from her, I saw how truly gorgeous she was.

***

The forlorn female in the yellow T-shirt didn’t notice me as I tried to make eye-contact to gauge how she felt about my attention being on her. (If a woman frowns, looks puzzled or rolls her eyes when she catches you looking at her, it is best not to even approach her to save yourself a heap of grief and embarrassment.) The Brazilian flag printed boldly on the front of her top was warped and stretched because of the size of her breasts but I tried my best not to stare. Most women hated that. Her nose was broad but perfectly fit the shape of her face and she pouted with thick, full, luscious lips that shined with whatever gloss she had covered them with. Her kinky, curly, jet black hair was styled in a wild ponytail and she stared at the TV screen with eyes that were ocean blue which was unusual for someone with her complexion. I found it extremely sad that she should sit and mourn her nation’s humiliation alone so I bought two drinks at the bar and then pulled up a chair right beside her at the round wooden table.

“Hello, my name is Andressa,” she told me in a thick, Portuguese accent after I introduced myself and offered her one of the two rum and cokes I sat down next to her with.

If she had refused I would have just guzzled both of them myself. Andressa smiled, and accepted the tall shot glass of liquor. She eyed it suspiciously at first before she eventually shrugged her shoulders and gulped it down all at once. She grimaced as it burned her throat, then turned her attention back to the match. I decided to watch it as well without hounding her with conversation that she was probably not in the mood for. It made no sense to hound her when her focus was somewhere else. As the cameras panned through the stands in the stadium, the Brazilian fans, draped in flags and varied patriotic regalia looked more like mourners at a funeral than sports fans. They might as well have been wearing black instead of their national colors as they wept from disappointment and shame. I handed Andressa a napkin as the first of many tears rolled down her chocolate cheek.

“I know how you feel,” I leaned close to her and whispered in her ear.

“How could you?” she asked. “America lost but, at least they put up a fight. This is disgraceful so how could you possibly know how I feel?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. I’m a New York Knicks fan and THEY haven’t won a championship since three years before I was born,” I joked in an attempt to brighten her mood.

She finally turned from the television to look at the exaggerated, sad, disgusted, frustrated expression on my face and smiled. She had a grin that was mischievous and mysterious enough to inspire a burning desire to know what she was thinking. Her eyes reminded me of a tropical ocean deep and clear enough that you could see right down the depths to the sandy bottom.

“Are you from here?” she asked.

“Yes, I was born right here in New York, more specifically Brooklyn. Lived there all of my life,” I answered.

“I was born in Brazil, obviously,” she said, stretching out the front of her shirt to show me the flag. “But, I love it here in this city.”

“Have you ever been to Brooklyn?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t had a chance to. I’ve only been living here for a few months. My apartment is just a few blocks from here. I’ve been to Times Square though. It’s so nice,” she told me.

“Times Square is pretty but, it’s not really New York,” I said.

“Why isn’t it?” she asked, somewhat puzzled. “It’s one of the most famous places here. I used to daydream of seeing it one day for myself when I was back home.”

“Times Square is pretty but, it’s like a glammed up model with way too much make-up on. That part of Manhattan is what big corporations think tourists want to see…the wonder, the fabricated fantasy and all of the hype but it’s not real. It’s not authentic New York,” I explained so passionately that I seemed to spark a burning curiosity that I could see burning behind her big, bright, inquisitive eyes.

“So, what is real Mr. Brooklyn?” Andressa asked and leaned closer to me as she waited for my answer.

That’s when I looked directly into her beautiful chocolate face, swam in the deep blue of her unusual eyes and boldly said, “Let me show you.”

Five minutes and two drinks later we were out the door, on our way to my part of the town that never closed its eyes.

***

By the time either one of us realized how fast the time had flown by, the sun was long gone. When we finally did look up, only the pale moon swam in the black-as-ink skies above my beloved Brooklyn. We had stood in the shadow of the beautiful basketball arena where I made her close her eyes while I described all that used to be there before the Nets brought the team over from New Jersey. We went window shopping in a few of the unique boutiques and when she got hungry, I took her to dinner at one of my favorite spots to eat authentic, West Indian food, just like my Granny used to cook. Everywhere we went, I had a story to share, either from my city’s history or from my own rich memories. I shared with her the soul of my home, past and present. The twinkle in her eye let me know that she was falling in love with it all, just as I had always loved it from the day I was born. At the end of our adventures and tour, we found ourselves sitting outside at the promenade at the end of Brooklyn Heights, (Or the beginning, depending on how you looked at it.) We sat on the benches and stuffed our faces with cheesecake as we looked across the water at the towering, brightly-lit skyscrapers of Manhattan.

“It looks so different from here,” she said to me.

“It IS different from here,” I answered, putting one arm around her and pulling her close. “All of THAT is the glitzy, tourist attraction,” I said as I pointed. “It’s just a mask, a front, a dolled-up pretty face but, make no mistake, places like Harlem, Southside Queens, and Brooklyn are the soul of this metropolis.”

“You love your home,” she said.

“I really do. I get homesick every time I’m gone for too long.”

“It’s a beautiful thing, to love something so much, with such passion,” she sighed.

“Well, I’m a passionate man,” I said with a smile.

After that, there was silence between us for a few minutes. I wasn’t quite sure why she had suddenly gone quiet but, things still felt right, even without us exchanging a single word for that time and I wasn’t about to ruin the moment or alter the vibe. I didn’t interrupt her thoughts with clumsy questions and I let her feel what she was feeling until she was ready to share.

“Take me to where you live,” she told me and although I had not anticipated that request, I didn’t hesitate to oblige her.

***

We didn’t make it inside my place before we started kissing and peeling off each other’s clothes right in front of my door. I fumbled clumsily with the keys, desperate to get inside before my neighbors heard the commotion, stuck their heads out into the hallway and caught us both in heat and  half-naked. With a smooth click, the lock finally opened and we stumbled inside after I turned the knob. Andressa had already undid my belt and opened my jeans by the time I closed the door behind us. At the pace we were going, we would never make it to the bedroom.

© 2014 Keith Kareem Williams

All Rights Reserved

TO BE CONTINUED in Naughty Ink Press' "Steam Room" anthology....COMING SOON!