by D. R. Rosier
She blushed, but she didn’t answer.
He sighed, “It’s complicated, a little selfish, and practical. I killed every asshole I came across, and I enjoyed it. I felt the need to free those women from a hell, and men like that disgust me. There were women too, less, but just as bad. The first asshole I took down in fact, was a female serial killer that stabbed me with a knife just for the thrill of it and in the hopes of a few scraps of food. But, what do they say, out of sight out of mind? I’d cleared everything west of the Rockies and the desert. That sounds a little heartless I know, but I can’t save the world.
“Selfish? At first I did it for Cassie, to give us a safe place to lay our heads down at night, and not wonder when the next pack of jackals would come along and try to take what was ours. I did it for more than that too of course, especially toward the end. Practical? I can’t save everyone. I can’t rule the world, no one should have that much power. People would’ve fought back if I tried, and rightfully so. When would I have stopped, when I ruled America? What about the poor women being raped and used in Canada, or Mexico? How about Africa, the Middle East, or Europe and Asia? I had to draw the line somewhere, and hold that line, let others build up and protect the rest. I wish I could save them all, wave my hand and make it all go away, but that’s both impractical and wrong. It has to be enough, to keep my coastal kingdom safe.
“So… I stopped there for a few reasons. The first of which is we’re relatively safe because of natural boundaries. The mountains and deserts are an inhospitable place. Not a lot of people would bother crossing them. Another reason I stopped was the elves. I butted heads with them a while back. I was afraid if I kept going it would make them nervous, the dragons too. I also worried about running into a bigger fish. I can’t save anyone, keep anyone safe, if I get myself killed because I spooked a race of dragons.
“I have over a hundred communities I care for, and another hundred I defend from outside territories but otherwise leave alone. At an average of three thousand people a community, that’s one point two million humans under my care. What happens to all of them if I push things too far, try to do too much.
“Lastly, I think I’m a good guy, but I’m not a saint. Where does good intentions leave off and ambition take over? No one should rule the world, least of all me. I protect them, appoint their leaders, and then get the hell out of the way. I’ll leave it up to Mara, Emily, and yourself to decide the finer points of morality and the gray areas. My world is black and white, kill all the murderers and rapists, save the rest.”
She said, “But you did come to the east coast.”
He nodded, “To protect Mara, my mate. It was only her that had to go, and I had no designs on the area or in confronting governments. I’m glad I went though, I got to watch a dragon roast a hundred and fifty rapists all at once.”
She snickered, “You’re not that simple.”
He shook his head, “No one is. But my style of ruling is that simple. People prosper when they take care of themselves, earn what they have, and get to keep it. I just keep the assholes away so the people can get on with it, and let the local government work out the small stuff in each community.”
She nodded thoughtfully, “I know there’s no simple answers, but I think I understand you a little better now. Thanks for… making it so easy to avoid you the last month.”
He chuckled, “You’re welcome. I don’t take it personally.”
She smiled again, it didn’t reach her eyes the second time either, but she was obviously trying.
He asked, “Anything else you want to know?”
He tilted his head and then grimaced.
“I need to go.”
She asked, “What is it?”
He replied, “A seer I know, Dawn. She just requested my presence, and that can’t be good news.”
He sent to Cassie, Mara, Lin, and Kim, “Dawn needs to see us. Now.”
Dawn was one of the four ladies him and Cassie had tried to add to their bed. She was a cute golden blonde bombshell, with an average hourglass body, neither lithe, athletic, or voluptuous, but perfectly average between all those extremes. Unlike Mara they’d all been failures and couldn’t handle the lifestyle, despite the strength of their love and attraction, though Dawn had come the closest. She’d just… found the mate meant for her in a dream vision, and that’s why she’d left.
Like Evelyn, their meetings were usually a little awkward. He wished them all the best, but he still had feelings for both, all four of them really, probably always would, so it made it awkward.
She stood up when he did, “I’ll come along. If you don’t mind?”
“More the merrier,” he said casually, as he suppressed the surprise he felt at the offer.
She smirked, “You don’t have to be so careful around me, you know.”
He shook his head, “I don’t know, those shadows are pretty terrifying. I was just keeping my head down.”
She snorted a laugh, “You don’t take compliments or thanks well, do you.”
“Now that you mention it…” he trailed off as Kim and Lin walked into the room. The bikinis were already gone and they were decked out in skintight black leather pants, and a matching tight leather black vest. They both wore the twin enchanted long-daggers as well. The only difference in their clothes was the shirts under the vests, Kim’s was skin tight and white, while Lin’s was a light rose pink.
Lin waved at the ceiling, “They’re still changing.”
He finished his thought, “Just one of my many failings.”
Lori smiled widely at that, and it did reach her eyes. She looked about as surprised at her reaction as he did. Clearly, it’d been a spontaneous and unexpected reaction to his self-aggrandizing joke and tone of voice. That genuine smile also made her skyrocket from a nine or ten to right off the beauty scale altogether.
“She’s a seer?”
Lin said, “And ex-lover.”
He frowned.
Kim said, “She usually sees big things coming, and is rather vague about it. We haven’t seen her in quite a while.”
Cassie and Mara walked in, the former in a nice but casual red sundress, while Mara was in jeans and a nice black blouse with a flowery design on it of pinks, reds, and yellows.
“Lori’s coming with,” he mentioned, as Cassie hefted the staff. She’d need to know so she brought her with them. She would only teleport what she focused on.
Cassie didn’t comment, but he saw she looked pleased at the idea. Probably because the woman was clearly recovering, even if she had a long way to go that way.
Hell, her strength amazed him, despite all the support it was a miracle after what she’d been through. The young woman had literally spent over a quarter of her life as a drudge and sex slave, that she was even remotely sane spoke that to strength.
When Cassie got done reciting the spell, they disappeared from the house in a flash of magic.
Chapter Three
Dawn was the only one of his four previous lovers that didn’t run a community. They appeared in a field in front of a farmhouse. It was a simple three-bedroom ranch with a wraparound porch. There were also three other buildings, the barn, stables, and barracks for the farm workers. Farming had come a long way in the last five years, that first year it’d been all by hand without being able to use large machinery such as combines.
Despite the advances or resurgence of blacksmithing, and the farm implements pulled by horses, it still took a good amount of people to take care of a farm. The days of a single family running a whole farm the size of a plantation or bigger was long past.
Dawn looked fantastic in a pair of jeans and a muddy light blue shirt. She was also pregnant, about six months, with her second child. He was happy for her, but that didn’t stop the wistful feeling he felt. She’d obviously been waiting for their arrival, and knew their teleport point well.
Cassie smiled, “Hi Dawn,” she waved as she introduced the two people Dawn didn’t know, “This is Mara, a priestess and our
third. This is Lori, another priestess and friend of the family.”
Dawn nodded at both in a friendly way, “Welcome to my home,” then she looked between Cassie and Sean, “You two haven’t changed a bit, cheaters.”
Cassie grinned, “And you’re more beautiful than ever. Pregnancy agrees with you.”
Dawn smiled, “Coffee’s on. If you want a cup?”
He nodded, and they all headed inside and settled around the large table for eight as Dawn gathered coffee for six.
Dawn shook her head as she sat down, “It’s not good, so I’ll get right to the point. There’s an invasion coming, and I’ve seen several villages burn, though I couldn’t tell you what ones they are. It was a warning vision, you might be able to prepare for it somehow, change it?”
He took a sip of coffee and sighed softly.
He frowned, “I already have birds at all the access points over the mountains and across the desert. I should know long before an invasion arrives.”
Dawn shook her head, “Wrong direction. They’re coming by ship. One big enough to carry tens of thousands. Although not all are warriors many of them are, and they’ll hit the coast… soon.”
He sighed, “Of course they will. I’ll have to get more birds to monitor the coast. I guess the general in Arizona wasn’t as paranoid as I’d thought. Do you know where they’re coming from?”
It was always what he didn’t prepare for that bit him in the ass. He didn’t even consider putting birds to watching the Pacific coastal waters. If Dawn hadn’t called him, several villages would’ve burned before he even knew about it, if they had that many people in the invading army.
Dawn shrugged, “Death from the west.”
He rolled his eyes, “Damned seers.”
She grinned.
He said, “I’ll also need to remake my army, so they’ll be ready to go as soon as we have a landing. Do you have any clues?”
Dawn nodded, “North, based on the trees I saw. Soon, a week at the most, given the lack of fall colors. My advice would be to send them to Oregon, they could be landing as far north as Seattle, or as south as Northern California. Half the west coast is wilderness, so…”
He said, “That’s better than nothing, and a place to start. Cassie, we need to go to the vault.”
When he’d cut down on the army. He’d kept an emergency like this in mind. He didn’t exactly get rid of the corpses, or their weapons. He just stashed them where no one else could go and survive.
He took a deep gulp of coffee. It was too rare a pleasure to be left half drunk.
Dawn said, “A moment first, I want to talk privately with Cassie.”
He raised an eyebrow, but then nodded. By all means, he could finish the coffee. Coffee was a rare pleasure in the new world, and one he shamelessly enjoyed. It wasn’t like they were still getting shipments from Columbia. The cities were full of coffee of course, and only he could safely get to it, but while there was a lot it wasn’t an entirely inexhaustible resource.
The two of them left the room toward the back of the house.
Mara said, “She seems nice.”
He grunted, “She’s great. She just… had a different life to get to.”
Lori smirked, “It really doesn’t bother you? She had a vision and just left?”
He nodded, “Pretty much. Drink your coffee.”
Lori said playfully, “Yes, sir,” and took a long sip, then made a face. Damn, the precious coffee was totally wasted on her.
Mara had to poke the bear, “That easy?”
He frowned, “Nothing easy about it, but it wasn’t her fault. It was… amicable.”
Cassie walked out with a purpose, and a scowl on her face.
“Umm.”
She waved a hand dismissively, “Let’s go.”
“She’s not coming back out?”
Cassie shook her head almost violently.
Right, he chose the better part of valor, being discretion, and swigged down the rest of his coffee, even if it burned his tongue a little it was so worth it. They all got up as he did, and then headed outside.
Cassie cast the teleport spell again, and the six of them appeared on the edge of Los Angeles. The vault was a warehouse around fifty yards inside the still contaminated area. It was a death sentence for anyone to walk in there for very long. Besides, no one would be interested in stacks of corpses, and anyone wielding one of his blades was asking to die.
Each of his thousand or so zombies, ten in each community, had about eighty years of life force left, so it didn’t cost all that much to take two months of it from each one. At the same time, since he couldn’t hold nearly that much himself at once, his power reached out to the dead bodies in the warehouse.
His old army, or at least, the portion of it that he’d saved.
He gave each of them a month’s life force each, it only took about twenty minutes for him to get all two thousand of them up and moving around. They retrieved the enchanted weapons from the boxes they were in, and then he sent them all running north toward Oregon. They’d never tire, never need to sleep, and could run about thirty miles an hour. It’d only take them thirty-three hours to make the thousand-mile run.
The reason he only gave them a month’s life was life force conservation. He suspected many of them would die in the coming confrontation, and the more life he gave them the more that would be wasted when one of them fell. It was better to just give them what they needed in the short-term. If the conflict lasted longer than the next month, he could feed them a little more. That way he wasn’t sacrificing many years’ worth of life force for the ones that inevitably died.
Once it was over, he’d have them return to the warehouse, and then drain whatever was left out and give it back to his permanent guard and community protectors. Life force management was important, even if he expected to get back a whole lot more than he spent. Those swords would be taking the life forces of his enemies after all, whoever or wherever they were from.
He also searched for birds that were dead in there. Birds wouldn’t know about the radiation, and they would fly into the cities every once in a while. There were more than enough bird corpses for him to revive another fifty or so to patrol the west coast. Each bird would have about twenty miles to cover, maybe a little more, and they flew off to take up their permanent posts. Even after the war, it’d be worth maintaining his borders. He just hadn’t given the Pacific any thought that way.
Two relatively simple steps of war preparation, that would hopefully change the future that Dawn had seen. The reason he had them running was because the more Cassie teleported the more magic it took. It just wasn’t realistic to teleport two thousand undead warriors. When the time came, Cassie could take them there, and he’d have his zombie army run to wherever it was. Depending on where they landed along the northern half of the coast, that could take up to another twelve hours.
It wasn’t perfect, but not much in life was. If he couldn’t get the army there in time, then he’d at least have enough warning time to evacuate whatever Village or community the invaders go for first.
“I think we’re done here. I don’t like this.”
Mara asked, “What did Dawn say to you?”
Cassie frowned, “Later. Let’s go home.”
Mara nodded in agreement, but the concern on her face was obvious.
Cassie teleported them home, right where they left.
Lori said, “I’ll help when the time comes. Were still going tomorrow?”
He nodded, “Yes, we follow the scheduled visits until the war starts.”
She replied, “Alright, I’ll see you at dinner. Thanks…” she trailed off as she left.
He grabbed Cassie’s hand, and dragged her toward the stairs.
Cassie’s face was inscrutable, but she didn’t fight him at all and went willingly as he lightly led her up the stairs and down the hall to the master bedroom. That wasn’t surprising, she was an extremely submissive woman, in all aspects of her life
as far as it related to her lovers, to him.
Cassie said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He smirked, as he led her over to the bed, and spun her into his arms. He kissed her softly. At first she was a bit stiff, but eventually she melted against him with a soft sigh of surrender into his mouth. That’s when he pushed her over and onto the bed with a grin on his face.
She looked up at him in confusion, and he said, “I’m stressed, but you’re even more stressed. It’s my pleasure to take care of that.”
She giggled, as he stole her usual line. She went down on her knees spontaneously all the time for him, claiming he needed stress relief, and while it was a little tongue in cheek, he’d decided returning the favor would destress them both. Plus, he long suspected the stress relief was mostly a cover for the truth, and not quite honest on her part either. He was convinced that sometimes Cassie just needed his cock in her mouth. Well, sometimes he just needed his tongue in her heaven.
He had no idea what Dawn had said to Cassie, but them finding out that there was an invasion coming and preparing for war, was pretty damned stressful for him. Good contingency planning or not he was so over all the fucking violence. Now they were importing it?
She gasped when he grabbed her ankles, and then pulled her body back down to the edge of the bed, which caused the skirt of the red sundress to ride up around her hips. His mouth watered, as he saw she had on a black pair of lacy lingerie panties as he went to his knees at the end of the bed. His intense and hungry gaze was locked on her eyes, as she breathlessly looked down her curvaceous body and back into his.
He always found looking down into Cassie’s eyes as she devotedly sucked him off with a wanton need to be the hottest thing ever, except it was just as amazing to look up into her eyes, as he pleasured her with his tongue. It was the same for all his lovers. The intensity of knowing how much his partners got off on giving him pleasure, so he knew how powerful it was for them when he returned the favor.
He teasingly kissed her inner thighs as he put her legs over his shoulders and caressed her legs softly with his fingertips. He was in no hurry, and he took his time. Guys were easier that way, got hard at the drop of a hat, and no man had ever uttered the phrase, oh no, not another blow job. Women were different, and needed a little seductive foreplay, even his wild and sex crazed kinky blonde. He also didn’t mind, as his fingers slowly stroked her, and he teased her flesh with his lips and tongue for a while, not breaking eye contact at all.