by Simone Sinna
They were not going to give in without a fight. Mac and Mitch had figured that they had about a square mile. The wind was blowing from the west, but they were pretty sure the ghosts were keeping up the east wall of fire with extra fuel. They had some hoses and one fire truck, but the fire was jumping through the treetops and falling embers were taking off faster than anyone could get to them.
All the women and children had been taken to the football field. There were less trees, and in addition, the river flowing south was right next to it.
“The smoke will kill them even if the flames don’t,” said Mac in a low voice. The air was increasingly thick and black, and a number of the children and older were-devils were coughing.
Kael looked around him in despair. To his amazement he sensed his brother and, squinting, could make him out emerging from the river. Were-devils might not be able to fly, but they could surely swim.
He greeted Linc then asked, “Can we get everyone out that way?”
“It is pretty treacherous,” said Linc. “A lot of rocks and low hanging trees. But I made it upstream. Going downstream would be easier.”
Mac and Mitch joined them.
“It is deep at least,” Mitch said thoughtfully.
“What if,” said Kael, “we pair people up? The strong swimmers would have to help the weaker, older clan members stay underwater for as long as possible to avoid detection.” Their best hope would be that the water-phobic ghosts wouldn’t have even considered the river a possible escape route and wouldn’t be on the lookout.
There was an animated discussion, but in the end it was clearly the only choice.
Lincoln, Kael, Mac, and Mitch were going to stay with Gabriella and Kate and try and take them through, if they could, after all the other were-devils were out. Because the two human women wouldn’t be able to hold their breaths as long there was a much higher risk of being spotted.
The smoke was getting thicker, and Kael knew they didn’t have much time. Already his parents were moving to the water. He hugged them and watched them with other families transform and slip into the depths. Gabriella was looking shaken but remarkably calm. His heart went out to her men. It was only that Lena wasn’t there that made it bearable.
Then Kael thought he was hallucinating, because suddenly Lena, pale and solemn, was there, hugging and kissing him and Linc.
“You have to get out,” she said. “Go with the others.”
Kael shook his head to try and clear his mind. She really was there. It dawned on him. She’d flown in.
“Get out, you shouldn’t be here,” Linc said urgently.
“I will,” promised Lena. “But I have to get Gabriella out.”
“How?”
Lena smiled. “I’m very talented, remember?”
Kael looked at her doubtfully. Zac he could imagine lifting another person out. But Lena?
Gabriella saw her as Lena was walking over and jumped up, hugging her. “You got my message!”
“Did you doubt I would?” said Lena. “I need to get you out.”
Gabriella looked as doubtful as Kael. “Okay I’m game.” Turning to Mac and Mitch “You can get out via the river right?”
“When we see you’re safe.”
“Kate has to go first,” said Gabriella.
“I’m old, but this is not my time,” said Kate. “I will trust in fate.”
They argued, but in the end the men supported getting Gabriella out, so Lena transformed, and, grabbing her cousin tightly, she began to rise. But it was obvious from the start that, despite the best intentions, Lena did not have the strength. A combination of her illness and the scar Jesse had inflicted on her meant, at best, she could save herself. Collapsing, Lena again became herself, and no amount of Kael and Linc hugging her could offer any solace.
* * * *
When Zac made it to Tarrabah the fires were already well under way. Wilson was like a man possessed, he and the other ghosts finally letting out all the anger and resentment that had been bred into them. They flew overhead, watching in delight at the were-devils below trying futilely to save their houses and themselves.
“I wish Adam were here to see this,” said Wilson. “Wouldn’t he love it!”
Zac had no doubt of that. He shared Wilson’s pleasure, amazed at the fire itself. From above he could make out just how fast sections travelled, the randomness and the speed creating a sense of wild delight in them all, as though they were as free and as powerful as the fire itself.
“Burn, Tarrabah, burn!” they screeched, and burn it did.
But then Zac heard something else. Something quite different to the offensive sounds of the were-devils. Something heartbroken and plaintive that spoke straight to him. Lena.
Without thinking he dove through the smoke to see where the cry was coming from and saw her crying and broken on the ground, with Gabriella, the seer woman, and four were-devils. He put aside any concern for his own well-being and went right through the group, collecting Lena in his arms as he did.
“No!” Lena wriggled, and Zac, unprepared for her to be uncooperative, dropped her to the ground with a thud, the were-devils rushing to her side. Zac wavered, then landed at a distance and transformed back to man.
“Lena, come with me,” he called. “Or you’ll die.”
Lena coughed and pulled herself to her feet. “I’d rather die, Zac Karlssen, than know I didn’t do everything in my power to stop this curse,” she said. “You might be prepared to kill your own as well as the were-devils, but I am not.”
“Save yourself while you can,” Zac yelled. “You can’t save them.”
“I won’t leave without Gabriella and Kate.”
Zac eyed the were-devils. “And them?”
“We can look after ourselves,” said Linc, arms crossed.
“Save her,” said Kael. “Don’t let her die.”
Zac looked at these men that had taken his woman and felt rage. But when he saw how they both looked at Lena and the look she returned, the rage turned to pain and he knew that even if he could never have her, he would never let Lena die.
“Follow me!” he ordered her, transforming, and as he did, he soared over Kate and Gabriella, grabbing one in each claw, and rose directly up, high above the flames. Below he could see Lena hug and kiss the were-devils before she, too, transformed and followed him. Little would be left of Tarrabah or anyone who remained.
* * * *
The antidote hadn’t been easy to derive, and part of the problem was that it was volatile and easily changed its character to render it useless. Torq’s formulas were helpful, but there was a general belief he hadn’t managed to write everything down or even fully understood his discovery. Rose’s blood, with a unique format of attachments on the SMB, had been critical. In the end, Angel’s promise made on Larissa’s grave with Rose in her arms had come true. Rose’s blood had literally helped stop the curse reverberating onto the ghosts. Unfortunately after a trial at Lincoln’s university it became apparent that it would only work in ghosts and were-devils and neither the horses nor the humans who came in contact with Hendra would benefit. Luckily another group of human scientists had just identified what they called the G protein on the virus, the one that the SMB reacted with, and were developing their own vaccine.
Lena’s recovery had been slow. She had thanked and farewelled Zac and, with all her heart, hoped he would find the right woman who would love him. She had visited Larissa’s grave with her mother, and Angel had stood with them, all three making peace with the past and each other, though Rose was unable to bring herself to spend time with the Tremains and left for the north.
Lena was finally starting to feel herself again and realized she could no longer use her illness as an excuse for staying. The devastation at Tarrabah had been extensive. The fire had taken the firemen and volunteers two days to completely extinguish, the wind taking it off down the mountain to the south, stopping only when it hit the river and the weather changed to bring rain.
Two of the older were-devils who had refused to leave hadn’t survived the fire, and another, a child, had been seriously injured on a rock in the river and was in the hospital. They had been placed in a coma, but the brain swelling was decreasing, and the doctors were hopeful of a full recovery.
Tarrabah itself was now a blackened landscape that bore little resemblance to the pictures Lena had seen at Mac and Mitch’s of where they had all grown up. One home had been spared damage, but all the others were either little more than embers or charred walls. But the were-devils were insistent that this was their home, and sleeping in makeshift huts and tents and using donated caravans, they came back. Kael and Lincoln had returned to Tarrabah to help their family rebuild their home, and they had visited her often at Mac and Mitch’s where she had been assigned the annex but had been strangely distant. She was acutely aware that since the ghosts had returned and nearly, again, annihilated the were-devils, there had been no talk about the future and no talk about them. Kael had taken to blocking his thoughts, and she had done likewise. She didn’t want him to see that her heart was breaking and what a fool she was making of herself. How could she expect them to love her? Her family had nearly killed them all. She was, whether she liked it or not, three-quarter ghost. The extended clan was not unkind to her, but there was an aloofness, though in part this was that they were all still in shock to some degree.
“At least all our family survived,” Kael and Lincoln’s grandmother kept repeating.
On this particular day she had been to see Auntie Kate. She had come to love the shop, with its quirky collection of magic, stones, and crystals, and sometimes Mac and Mitch’s sister, Melody, would meet her there and they’d have coffee together. Melody, recovered from the were-devil curse thanks to Becc and Tilman, had recently been married and just returned from her honeymoon. Her human husband, she said, was still coming to terms with her unusual family, but they were both clearly very much in love. The other sister, Misty, had come from the UK for the wedding but had returned.
On this day there was no Melody, but Kate wanted her to sit with her while she read her stones.
“There were seven,” she said. “Seven for the were-devil’s curse and seven for the ghosts.” She had shaken her head. “I can account for the first seven but not the second.”
Lena watched her dive her hands into the heavy, green bowl that was cracked down one side and draw out seven stones, four ghost, three were-devil. “Lena,” she said, and one opaque stone glowed and she pushed it aside. “Lincoln and Kael,” she continued, and two amber flashes in the dark stones responded. She pushed these over with Lena’s, and Lena had to wipe a tear. They had in the end saved her with science, and they had loved her. It was true.
Kate was left with three ghost stones and one were-devil. She frowned.
“The curse is solved with love, yes?” Lena asked tentatively.
Kate nodded, her earrings tinkling as she did.
“Then how about Zac?”
Kate looked at Lena thoughtfully and repeated the name. One of the ghost stones, the one that previously had caused her fear, shimmered, and Kate smiled.
“So what about the other three?” Lena asked tentatively.
Kate fingered them carefully. “It is not yet quite over. One more connection, made I think already, but until…” She ran her hand down the crack in the bowl and then patted Lena’s hand. “For you though, be sure you have played your part.” She picked up Lena and her men’s stones and held them in her hand.
“They are strong and will help their community divert their anger into more constructive avenues.”
Lena hoped Kate was right. It would be an understandable reaction to seek revenge against her kind. But then any hope of the curse being resolved, all the work already toward its being finally put to rest, would have been for nothing.
When Lena came back to her home, she wondered how, after all the romance books she had read, she had managed to end up in a story without a happy ending. She wasn’t sure she could bear to leave, but nor could she bear to see her men find someone else. So absorbed, she didn’t see Kael and Lincoln’s car. They were sitting on her sofa waiting for her.
“Are you free tonight?”
“Nope,” said Lena. She watched their eyes widen, and Kael even looked a little crestfallen she thought. “Got a date,” she added. Lincoln tensed at this. “But I guess you two trump one, so I could cancel it.”
“Um, well, you don’t have to,” mumbled Kael.
“Why don’t you talk to your sister and see if she minds then?”
Lena watched their smiles become genuine. “I think she’ll be fine about it,” said Lincoln.
They wouldn’t tell her where they were taking her. As she recognized the freeway she figured it was to Tarrabah, and she steeled herself to be reminded of the black, scarred landscape that the ghosts had caused. When they got closer Kael insisted on blindfolding her, and though she sensed their excitement and couldn’t believe they would deliberately hurt her, she needed to protect herself and steeled herself to expect nothing.
So when they took the blindfold off after guiding her out of the car and making her stand in a very particular spot, she had a lot of difficulty making sense of what she was looking at. It was a stone home, small but beautifully constructed, in one of the clearings not reached by the fire. On its porch were twenty or more pots with flowers in bloom. It looked, Lena thought, exactly like the home she had always dreamed of.
“Do you like it?” Linc finally asked anxiously.
“Like it?” said Lena. “Um, well, yes, it’s lovely.”
The brothers exchanged looks.
“I was sure,” said Kael, faltering. “Isn’t this, well, didn’t you have a house like this in your head?”
Lena stared at him. “What…?” The instant she let her guard down Kael was in her head. He stared back. “Oh my God.”
“What?” said Lincoln, looking at them both.
Kael started to laugh. “She thought we didn’t love her.”
Lincoln grabbed Lena and nearly crushed her. “Didn’t love you? Bloody hell, woman, I can’t think of anything but you. We’ve been building this like maniacs.” He picked her up as though she was weightless, and Kael kicked open the door as his brother carried her over the threshold. He marched her straight to the bedroom, a huge room with a king-sized bed which he dumped her on. Lena was still too stunned to be able to form a sentence.
“Don’t speak,” suggested Kael, standing in the doorway. “You might need to save your energy.”
The night was the longest Lena had ever experienced, and she never wanted it to stop.
They stood still, and she looked at them in turn as their attention was totally focused on her. Without saying a word she took off her clothes and sat before them naked. They came to her after removing their own clothes, eyes never leaving her.
Her mind and thoughts merged with Kael’s, but at times there was a strong sense of emotion from Lincoln that told her more than mind reading did. In Lincoln’s arms she rested back, feeling safe but in equal measures respected and revered. She closed her eyes and savored the smell of him, of rich and deep aromas mixed with the warmth of his breath in her ears and his tongue and teeth on her ear lobes. With each exhaled breath she felt herself sink against the firmness of his chest, and it was as if they were fused as one.
In front of her Kael kneeled before her, pushing apart her legs gently, laying on his side as he sucked her toes and took in the view of her pussy, enjoying, she knew, every aspect of finally knowing she would be with him forever. His fingers caressed the sole of her foot then tickled upward, making circles on her thighs as she felt herself become wetter and wetter with the juices that cried for her men to take her.
They were patient, her men, and she loved them for that. While they were still perhaps not sure of each other and how this relationship would work, they were clear in the intention to make it work for them all. Lena, who had never b
een sure she was worthy of any single man, let alone two as gorgeous as these, allowed herself finally to believe that this was the destiny that allowed her to have both the joy that her grandmother had been denied as well as that which she deserved.
When Kael’s fingers brushed over the lips of her pussy she showed both of them how much she appreciated them.
“You’re so wet,” moaned Kael.
Lena wriggled and turned her head to meet Lincoln’s lips as Kael’s fingers opened her slit. She gasped, Lincoln’s hands over her breasts pinching her nipples as Kael’s moved firmly over her clit.
“More,” she whispered. Of everything.
Time had no meaning as they both moved their hands over her, until every part of her body was claimed and she felt that no relationship could be as complete as this was. She felt her responses move as on a roller coaster, and as she dipped to a mellower spot, one of her men would change direction to ensure that her excitement moved upward once more.
Finally Lincoln whispered in her ear, “Do you want us to take you?”
She could barely speak, feeling as if she was in a trance and that words might break the spell, so she nodded. She felt Kael move closer and kiss her, his tongue linking with hers, hot and needy, as he then pulled her to him, away from Lincoln.
“Sit on me,” he asked softly.
Lena opened her eyes and saw his cock, hard and waiting for her, and she easily moved over him, her juices ensuring that the movement was swift and simple. Kael pulled her down to him as Lincoln kneeled behind her and massaged her butt, running his hand down her spine and then circling her puckered hole. Lena was reveling in Kael’s cock filling her, muscles clamping over his cock and drawing him even deeper, but with Lincoln’s touch she shuddered with expectation.
“Okay?” Lincoln asked softly, but she didn’t have to reply because her body did for her. As he entered, as she had both her men’s cocks filling her, she felt waves exploding through her, her muscles tensing and clamping as both men thrust and groaned with the imminent release of months of tension, anxiety, and frustration. She wouldn’t have been able to hold back the sensations even if she had tried. As the orgasm rippled through her it set off Kael, whose thrusts sent a second wave through her, Lincoln gripping her hips and holding her tight in such a way that it allowed her to lengthen the feeling as Kael moaned and released. In a final burst of energy Lena gave herself to Lincoln, and in her third orgasm, a longer, mellower response to his tempered thrusts and careful steady hold, she knew that whatever life held in the future, these men would be there to help her through, as she would be there for them.