I reverse myself and it’s good to have friends who know what to do.

Ok, I’m wanky. I admit it.  I deleted almost all of “Devil’s Revenge” because I was advised it would be best.  I jumped the gun actually.  This novel isn’t up for any review, or to be published soon…tremendous rewrite necessary…after all, it was written almost 3 years ago and sat on the computer almost forgotten.

I consulted friends,  and I got the same advice:  take it down.  Then I discussed this with a man who has become a friend, Dr RK Singh.  He writes this to me this morning.

Dear Jane,
I don’t think it affects much to publish your work that is already on your blog. Yes, an item already printed in a journal may not be re-printed in another journal. But whatever we place on our blog can always be submitted to use in a print journal.

Finally, another editor came in with this advice:  “Let her post, but take it down, if she finally submits to us.”

Ok….that works for me.  And, the novel will be significantly different when finished.  It better be.

I received a number of emails when I wrote  I was taking down the novel.  I suspected  it wasn’t my charming commentary drawing them to read, it was the novel.  And they confirmed that they liked the novel, in some cases, were PASSIONATE about the wanky story….!  LOL!

Who can resist this? Not most writers and certainly not me!

So, because they entertain, but more so, because readers here have been very, very helpful in their pointed queries and questions about where this story is going, characters, etc….I will ‘judiciously’ post some of “Devil’s Revenge” here.

And because it also pleases me to do so.  Hell, this trip has to be a two way street, or why bother?

Lady Nyo

DEVIL’S REVENGE

Chapter 35,  Part 1

“So, M. Demon”.

Madame Gomosy raised her head from her cards and addressed Garrett across the table.

“Tell us a bit of who declared for your side.  Mon Dieu!  This house was so full of those Devils that day!  They have left soot marks on the walls and some dents in the floors.”

Madame Gomosy was having her fun.  I am assured by the Demon nothing of the sort has happened downstairs.  However, it is a couple of days before I was allowed outside of this room, and perhaps there was a kernel of truth in Madame’s comments.

Garrett looked up from his hand.  He was losing, but that was because Madame had subtle tricks with the cards.  She cheats.   Faro was her game and she was hard to beat at cards.  Garrett has not caught on yet, but he will.  His pile of coin was lessening and Madame’s was growing.  My old trick of launching my shoe to the side of Madame and peering at her cards was not working today, for she was not indulging my trickery.  That was tolerated only when we are alone.  I am not winning a coin here.

Garrett looked up at her and thought a minute.  “Almost enough for my side of the board.”  He referred to the impending warfare as the Chess Game From Hell.

“Ah! And who are these Demons coming to your side?”  Madame coyly kept her eyes on her cards.

Garrett uttered a low curse, and threw his hand on the table.  He was a poor loser at cards, and not gracious  about it.

“Madame”, he said sharply.  “Will you indulge me and allow me some time with this woman?”

He cast his eyes at me and Madame smiled slyly.

“Of course, Monsieur le Demon.  I have other work to attend.”

Madame got up and left the room gracefully, my Demon bowing her out the door.

I put my cards down, suspicious of his behavior.

“Were you losing that much money this morning?”  I know he hates faro, and isn’t the card sharp Madame is to best her.

He turned from the door, his expression hard to read.  “We have things to discuss Betsy this morning. You can play with Madame later.”

He moved to his chair across from our tea table.

“I have talked to Abigor.  He agrees with my plans.”  He sat there, not looking at me, and I could see he was struggling with something he had  to say.

“And if they include me, would you at least tell me my part?”  I saw him hesitate.

“These dreams you have, Bess.  Abigor thinks they are important.”

Ah!  So Abigor, an Arch Duke of Hell thought them important, never mind my sleep was wracked with images that frighten me.

“Aamon has bound me to him.  I have promised to follow his counsel and visit the otherworld.  You’re going with me.”

He looked at me, and I could see from his eyes that he would not brook an argument. I remembered his handling of the whip a few days ago.

“Then tell me what this ‘otherworld’ is, Garrett.  At least allow me the favor of this.”

“You know the dreams of the Morrigen and Cernunnos?  They are not idle events.  They speak to a kinship that I have known for a while and have avoided for various reasons.”

At least this is a start!  It gave some shape and comfort to what happened here and some answers to his origin.

“But this otherworld you speak of.  What is it exactly?  Is it like Hell?”

“No, it actually would be something you would have studied perhaps.  Let’s call it the Mystic Isles for the moment.”  He looks at the floor, deep in thought.

“Somewhere in Scotland?”  I think of a previous dream, that first one of Culloden.

“Close.  But more distant, too.”

Ah! He’s into games this morning.  But I’m not following.

“Avalon?”  He smiles, he is humoring me.

“Avalon is only a small part of it all.  The two worlds, the present and the otherworld have portals.  Your visits from Morrigen and Aine had meaning to me but until I discussed them with Abigor and Aamon, I didn’t know how important they were.”

He sucked on a thumb and spit out a piece of a nail.  “I am to seek support and forces from among my own kin.  Obadiah has his forces from Hell, as do I have, but I also have the magic of  this particular otherworld to plunder.”

He finally turned to me and looked at me closely.  “Abigor thinks you essential to this.  The Morrigen is going through you to reach me.”  He pauses and scowls.  “As is Cernunnos.”

It seemed to me both Cernunnos and the Morrigen had no qualms in how they reached him.  If I was a vessel, the price I paid here was a costly one.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

“Devil’s Revenge”…used to be “Another Story”

Two years ago this month I started a novel. I was a new writer and didn’t know squat about writing….still struggle with it, but I have learned much in those two years.

I also ‘fell’ into an interest that I had no idea existed. Well, a couple of them actually. What I was told later was BDSM, and also the mythology of Demons and Devils.

This book wrote itself…not an especially ‘good’ thing, but I realized that after a long time, I was suddenly getting in touch with some latent sexual issues, and even the issue of sex itself. There was a long dead period for me.

I have decided to rewrite this book, as it has caught my interest again, and I can do better now. In this book , I explored the issues of ass-rape, time warps, bondage, all these sexual things I didn’t know had names or were part of someone’s life. Apparently, many people.

Betsy is a 21st. century writer, who is trapped in a time warp, with a Devil who insists on living (for now) in the early 19th century. Garrett Cortelyou is actually a very old devil, and has his hooves in early Celtic times, in Wales. He is a produce of a powerful union between a mortal woman and a seriously potent Demon, but who his parentage was, is not known. However, he has the ‘respect’ and patronage of Abigor, close to the throne in Hell. Betsy has been raped by Obadiah (another devil) in previous chapters and she is in the middle of a tug of war between Garrett and Obadiah. Each devil strikes at the other through Betsy.

Lady Nyo

ANOTHER STORY, Part 14

Oh! I am writing at a furious pace! I am trying to finish this book. Actually, I am trying to kill off a character, Obadiah, but today, I could kill them all, especially Garrett Cortelyou.. Now I’m told what has just happened has nothing to do with me. But! Had I not delayed, procrastinated, and plain farted around, perhaps things would be different.

It is a pretty morning and I am sitting at the little table before a bright fire. It is winter, an endless winter, and I have been told to stay in this house. Perhaps I am a prisoner of this room. Fearful enough, I stay indoors. I can see the distant fields from my window and I see a hawk fly high up in the sky. I have watched this bird for a while now. It’s questionable that this hawk is only a bird of prey. Garrett, the resident Demon, thinks it might be another, the Demon Arachula, an evil spirit of the air. It watches the lay of the land, and hunts its prey in the woods by the house.

I am writing fast, with frequent pauses to read what I scribble. I hear a very faint sound of bells, a tinkling of brass somewhere in the distance. It could be outside, like the clinking together of milk cans, or the sound of sleigh bells, but there is no snow on the ground. It grows closer, and suddenly, the Demon appears in the room. He is grinning like a Cheshire cat, and has something behind his back.

“Goedemorgen to you”, he says grinning broadly. He speaks excellent Dutch. He sits down in his usual chair and I hear the sound of something clinking together. He pulls up his hand, and there are my zils.

“How did you get my zils? My Turkish zils?” He’s wearing my finger cymbals on four fingers of one hand. Suddenly I know where he’s been!

“You Bastard! Still up to your old tricks! What else have you stolen from my bedside?” I can’t believe the nerve of this demon!

“You know demons are thieves. It’s a failing among us. We are like magpies and crows. Can’t resist the shine.” He sounds my zils with a clap of his hand, and holds them out of my reach.

He tells me he visits in the night and apparently last night he was there. He claims he is bored and appears at my bedside, where he watches me snore. I think he is lonely. I have already told him my husband keeps a shotgun in the corner, but he doesn’t care.

“I have found something else”, he says, pulling out my coin scarf from his sleeve.

“Insufferable monster!” I can’t believe this, but then, what should I expect? .

“I like your underclothes, too, but only the silk ones. I will bring some for you here, though I think you will freeze. I like the sweet smell of woman in them.” He grins at me, detestable devil!.

So he goes through my drawers and clothes…

“Oh, I do much more, sweetheart. Helps me know who I’m consorting with.”

“Devil! Is their any decency left in your nature?”

He laughs, his voice sounding like a bass fiddle tuned low. “Ah, darling! The short answer is — “no”. And before you go at me for my nature, how come this is the first time I find you dance in a harem. Makes a devil wonder what he has bought.”

I sit there and think. Since he reads my mind when he wants, I have learned to parse my thoughts when near him. At times it works but he has a way of getting what he wants for he’s tricky…

“Oh you ignorant devil! What would you know about such things? They are two worlds apart. Nothing alike.”

“Well, dance for me, and let me judge.”

Hah! That is one thing that I would not do. I’m not married to him, it’s part of a code, but I won’t tell him ‘the rules’.

“Tell me what? Think of me as a Pasha, and let me tie this scarf around your pretty hips.”

I sit there wondering how I am going to avoid dancing for him. He gets what he pleases, but I am learning ways around his whims. Perhaps I can interest him the in the history of this dance and he—

“No, you can come here now and dance. I know more than you think.”

He usually achieves what he wants. Through persuasion or magic, he gets what he’s after.

In a twinkling of an eye, I was parked between his legs, the coin scarf around my hips. He pulled my skirt low and patiently placed my zils on my fingers like I was a child.

“How can I dance? I need music for that.” He snapped his fingers, and faintly I heard the sound of a slow piece of music. I recognized the song, it was Turkish. Hynotic with its Karsilama scales, I hear it and my body couldn’t stay still. I sigh, he has played me again.

“Then put your hands around me and you can feel the movements of my hips.” Most men would like that…

Dancing in such a constricted space was very much like the Eygptian style. Such dancers made very little rotations with hips and torso. In fact, the torso remains above the pelvis, barely moving. The arms are more pronounced, but the shimmies were generally the same. Just more restricted. The Turkish style, the one that I studied and loved the most, was danced with broader and more joyous movements. The torso leans back and tilts the pelvis forward. Turkish dancing is based on the Romany, or gypsy styles, and since I am half Hungarian, this style suits my blood. The music is developed from the Ottoman rakkas, similar to the raggis of India. The drumming feels like the beat of blood coursing through my veins.

The music swells with a beat that follows a rhythm of 9/8, and other pieces of the body come into motion. Where he is holding me, I can only move slightly, with hips in figure eights and a kick of the hip on the upbeat. I can do the ‘snake arms’ movement, which is lovely viewed from the back, as it is led by the elbows upward and a flip of the hand at the apex of the movement above the head.

Ah! The music swells, and I have to step out of his arms. I have just learned to use the zils, and it gives such structure to the arms. It was hard at first to isolate the different parts of the torso, all in movement at different parts of the beats, and then to gracefully, with beautiful, lyrical movements, try to move the arms as a frame for the body. The zils helped because they extended the flow of the beat.

I am dancing to myself, not a dance of seduction for he who watches me silently, carried as I am by the music. I am seducing myself, making love only to me. I make the birth movements of the downward hip fling, with the pelvis flung to the sky, and I make the ‘habibi’ movement, which is a rotation of the torso forward and around, with the pelvis straight. It is a movement to be made on the head of a cock by a woman deeply aroused. I am fully possessed, my eyes closed, my blood beats a counterbeat to the rakka. He has somehow picked the music used by the Turkish badladi, the form I love best. I can drop to my feet, not on my toes now, and can use my heels in another counter rhythm. Ah, primal, sensual movements that bring forth the evening wind in the desert, the sounds of hunting hawks above, hooded hawks on dark arms below, the trickle of precious water, and the smell of woodsmoke!

Somehow I make my way back to him, drawn by the pulse of the dance, the piercing, haunting sound of the desert flute. Finding myself between his legs I place my hands on his chest, palms gently on his warm skin like a blessing of love.

The music stops and I am glossy with sweat. My hair is in tangles over my breasts, my breath drawn in pants. He is silent, more silent than I have ever known him to be, and stone-still. Dazed, he pulls me to him, breaking he spell of the music. He breathes my scent deeply and picks me up in his arms. He moves to the window with me as his prize.

I am exhausted and limp in his arms and we look out over the landscape. He is smiling at something and there is an expression I have not seen before. He is looking at the hawk, the hawk who hovers over the field and his face is defiant!. Ah! He is challenging the shade of Obadiah out there in the trees. He is showing what he now possesses. Obadiah will have to kill him to take me.

Nothing can match the intensity of his expression. Here in its fierceness is the stare of the lion. He will fight for what is now his and he will kill with an appetite honed through the ages. All the gloss of the 21th century drops from my mind as I see his rapture in his challenge. Men or Demons, like wolves, have a heart beat that stretches back to the hunt. They glory in its primitive urges. They glory in the gore they will spill.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2006, 2008