Four Friends

Antonio looked down into Edward's face with a cruel smile of domination and control—Edward had given him so little resistance when Antonio marched over to the bed and lowered himself on Edward's body that he confirmed what both had known from that first moment in the foyer that Antonio would fuck Edward—but, though Edward was participating in the coupling, moaning and moving his pelvis in consort with Antonio's thrusts to take him deep and clutching the larger man's body to him, he was looking away. He was watching the waning rays of sunlight dance on the figures in the mural, seemingly bringing them to life.

Antonio took Edward swiftly and completely. Still weary from his cross-continent flight, Edward drifted off into sleep after he'd come, shooting up Antonio's flat belly, and while Antonio's thrusts were slowing down, his cock holding at depth for longer intervals, his breathing getting heavier. When and if Antonio ejaculated, Edward didn't know it.

When Edward woke, he wasn't even sure the encounter had happened. For the longest moment, he was afraid that he had hallucinated it. But somehow the wall lights had been turned on, and an open bottle of wine, three-quarters full, and two wine glasses, one on its side, rested on a small table by the door.

The mural now was in shadows, the figures hard to pick out—as if they didn't want to acknowledge what they had seen.

At dinner, Antonio was chatty and full of history about the winery over the previous hundred years—and he made no mention to having fucked and possessed Edward earlier in the afternoon.

The waiters for the evening service were young, handsome, Italian men—like Edward all slim, on the short side, and willowy. Antonio was familiar enough with them with his hands as they passed by or serviced the table that Edward had little doubt about the relationship between Antonio and his house staff.

* * * *

Edward's eyes popped open at his usual waking time. But what was 7:30 in New York was only 4:30 a.m. where he now was. It was pitch black outside the windows of his room, one of which had the two lower sashes shoved up into the upper one, creating an open door to the stone terrace and vineyard just beyond. A lamp was on a low setting on a table beside the mural on the wall across from the foot of the bed, casting a soft glow on the painting. He propped himself up on his elbows and tried to clear the sleepiness out of his eyes as he gazed upon the mural.

The figures in the mural seemed to be moving. One of the kneeling figures—his own great-grandfather, Eduardo, had risen to his feet—and he was stepping out the mural and into the room.

Only half conscious, Edward watched his ancestor, the spitting image of himself, cross to the bed, crawl up on it and lay down on his back—inside Edward himself. Edward felt little different, just a tingling sensation, but when he looked down the line of his naked body there seemed to be a hazy glow above the surfaces—and his mind, in contrast to his difficulty getting his eyes into focus—was jumping around frenetically on thoughts and topics that seem entirely out of his control and understanding. Over them all, though, was an urgency and insistence—and an atmosphere of sadness and evil.

One by one, the other two kneeling figures drifted off the wall and onto the bed, Horace leaning over Edward and kissing him on the mouth—although not kissing Edward as much as he was kissing Eduardo, who, possessing Edward's body in a way Edward could not describe but could sense, was moaning—not just from Horace's kiss but also because Bruno was now below him—below Eduardo-Edward. Bruno was crouched between his legs, his dick thrusting inside Eduardo-Edward's passage in a way that Eduardo, panting and bucking against the fuck obviously could feel, but that Edward only could sense in arousal. Hands were grasping Edward's legs and spreading and raising them. They weren't Bruno's hands, though—those were spread on Eduardo's pecs, working his nipples as Eduardo thrust his chest up, outside Edward's body and into the hands.

The hands lifting and spreading Edward's legs were those of the Alonzo figure in the mural, as the figure had come off the wall and was saddled up behind Bruno, fucking him while Bruno fucked Eduardo-Edward.

And then the hands no longer were Alonzo's. They were Antonio's, and the four apparitions were melting away. Grasping Edward's ankles and pulling his body to the foot of the bed, Antonio hooked Edward's ankles on his shoulders, cruelly thrust his dick inside Edward's channel and was pumping him hard. Antonio's hands went to Edward's throat, and he was choking him.

He was muttering in a guttural tone. Edward heard him growl, ". . .won't stay dead. Empty, but not for long. Writing an article for a wine magazine. Balls to that. You've returned to claim your share. Not in this lifetime."

Edward thrashed about, which only took Antonio's thick rod in deeper and accelerated the pumping, rubbing the throbbing cock maddeningly and meltingly on all surfaces of Edward's channel walls as Edward clawed at the choking hands on this throat without effect. He was gasping, unsuccessfully for breath in death throes at his head, while his pelvis was going wild, grinding at Antonio's crotch, pulling the dick deeper, his channel walls making love to the throbbing rod at the height of ecstasy.

He was close to blacking out when he remembered Dr. Peterson's advice on countering hallucination—as surely that was what this was, just an hallucination. It had long been remarked as being a family trait of Cordona men that they could convincingly play dead. He let his body relax and go limp, his eyes to roll up into his head, his throat to emit a low death rattle, and his breathing decrease to imperceptible.

Antonio continued pumping his channel, but slower and in a more gentle rhythm to his ejaculation, while he stroked under Edward's chin with his thumbs and purred his pleasure. When he was finished, he lifted the limp body of the smaller man, threw it over his shoulder, and went into the bathroom. He dropped the body into the shower enclosure, with Edward's head thumping against the tiled wall and dazing him. It was all Edward could do not to cry out in pain. Antonio turned the shower on, the water scalding, with Edward once again exercising maximum control at playing dead.

Antonio padded out of the bathroom, humming to himself.

When Edward gathered enough strength and his wits to pull himself out of the shower and go to the bathroom door, he saw Antonio, back turned to him, humming and changing the sheets on the bed. Without fully realizing what he was doing, Edward's hand went to the closest weapon he could reach. His shaking hand closed around the neck of the wine bottle that had been left on the small table next to the door to the hallway. Stealthily he approached Antonio from behind, raised his arm, and slashed down, hitting Antonio with a loud thunking sound. Blood flowing from the back of the man's head, Antonio straightened up, turned, and gave Edward a surprised, quizzical look. His head snapped to the side as Edward swung again and struck him on the temple. Antonio went down, hitting his head against on the corner of a nightstand and landing on his back on the floor. He was looking up at Edward, now standing over him, still gripping the wine bottle. Antonio's eyes were full open, but he wasn't seeing anything.

Still not understanding what had been hallucination and what reality, Edward turned his head and looked at the mural on the wall. No human figures in the mural now. It was just a scene of a fence line draped with grape vines and the California mountains in the background. The absence of figures wasn't the only thing now different about the mural, though. Where the three kneeling figures had been before, the ground was slightly mounded—three separate mounds.

What was it Antonio had been muttering to him as he was choking him? Something about staying dead and something not being empty for long?

Realization suddenly setting in, Edward stumbled toward the open window, now door, out onto the terrace and vineyard. Just outside the window, his hand brushed up against a shovel that had been propped up on the wall. Taking it up, he moved—gingerly because he was barefoot and naked—around the side of the building to where he stood just on the other side of the wall from his bedroom where the mural was painted. The sun was starting to come up and the vineyard was in shadows, but he had no trouble seeing the area in front of the fence line where the slight mounds now showed in the mural. But they weren't mounds now. Two of the rectangular areas were slightly concave. The third, the size of a grave, had recently been dug out.

Edward didn't have to approach this hole to know that Antonio had found that it was empty—that whoever had been buried there hadn't really been dead, and had somehow clawed his way out and escaped—clear across the continent and into oblivion as far as Alonzo Morrisette—or any of his descendants—knew. Edward also realized that Antonio had meant to use the grave again—for him.

Looking at the other two rectangular depressions, Edward also had no doubt what he'd find there when he dug down, as he would do as soon as he had collected his breath and his wits. He'd find the hundred-year-old bones of the other two of the Quattro Amici, the four friends—Horace Doniletti and Bruno Abruzzi.