by Amira Rain
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The shape wraith moved quickly in its hulking werewolf shape, carrying Megan as if she weighed no more than the clothes on her back. Up the dark, forested incline of the mountain under the gleaming crescent moon it took her, with long strides and bounds, to a place on the mountainside where it would have her alone, all to itself.
The hunger had churned in it for so long, and the interference of the lycanthrope twins had made it all the worse. The need to sustain itself, to render itself into flesh that would hold itself solid for a time, had crackled away in the arcs and matrices of energy of which it was composed. It longed to be human again, even if it were only temporary; to feel again the things that humans feel, to do again the things that humans did.
It had captured this human as it had done so many others for hundreds of years, by reaching into her mind and seeking out her memories of the one thing that it knew humans loved to do best—and their shape-changing cousins loved even better.
How easy it had been, how easy it always was, to find those emotions, those memories, and tap into them. Her memories had told it what shape to take and what feelings to revive in her, the better to find its way into her dreams, and the better to summon her into its grasp. Even now, the memories flashed and sparked inside it; Megan Brosnan’s memories of countless times lying with, and being so ardently entered and climaxed by, Tate Dunster.
And accompanying those memories now were others: reflections of what humans called a “marriage,” and a human passion with one called a “husband”; and newer, fresher impressions of partaking of the bodies of not one, but two lusting lycanthropes, the ones who had tried to keep Megan from fulfilling the shape wraith’s needs.
But the wraith had gotten the better of them. He had used the emotions of the twin werewolves against them, made them attack each other while the entity claimed its prize. It did not matter if the Maguire brothers slaughtered each other or not. It mattered only that Megan Brosnan was now in its grasp, and it would have all that it needed.
On a ledge in the mountainside, with trees all around, the entity came to a rest and set Megan down on a grassy mound. She lay there, mesmerized into a stupor between sleeping and waking, in which she could not move. On the edge of consciousness, she might cry out, but she could not flee. There was no escape. The creature imagined that this was the way Megan looked when she dreamed her own natural dreams and not the ones that it gave her.
Perhaps this was the way it looked when she dreamed of sex with her Tate, or with her Pearce and her Nash, of her own volition or at its bidding. How greedy the humans and the lycanthropes were for the feeling of joining and mingling their bodies and for the shimmering and tingling release of orgasm when locked together with a partner.
Especially the lycanthrope males who so thrilled and delighted this Megan; they were the greediest of all. Sex was never far from their minds, and their bodies were so beautiful and so perfect that she loved them for it.
Loved? Yes—that was the word. The wraith could feel it in her emotions, taste it in her thoughts. The sex of the Maguire brothers had quickly made her love them as she once loved Tate. Perhaps when it fed on her now, she would let it dream of them: one last dream of newfound love with two beautiful, perfect, and lusting males. One last dream to carry her into oblivion.
The wraith let its werewolf body boil away, back into a billowing black cloud of energy that circled around over Megan. The fires of its eyes lit up from the core of its vaporous mass. It reached down with its cloudy tendrils and again began to touch the stuporous Megan, running the extensions of itself over her body, insinuating itself through her skin, into her nervous system, into her brain.
It attached itself to her, to draw forth the precious energy from her and feed it into itself. The cloud form sparkled as if it had tiny stars inside, the sign that it was starting to nourish itself—and that Megan’s very mind would soon slip away, rendered into raw impulses that would become a part of the shape wraith forever, and leave only a husk empty of all thought where a human woman had been.
In her stuporous dreams, Megan saw and felt for the last time the last moments of her life in which she was most fully alive: the hours of night, morning, and day that she had spent with Nash and Pearce Maguire. In her dreams she was naked with them again. They held her again, kissed and caressed her again. For the last time she tasted the shaft at the loins of one, then the other, and they took turns exploring her inside with lips and fingers and tongues.
One final time each one mounted her. Megan’s dream shifted between them—now Nash on top of her, then Pearce; now Nash entering her from behind while Pearce played with her breasts and her love button; now Megan riding Pearce while Nash crouched behind her, fondling her breasts and kissing her bottom. Her mind melted into dreaming memory.
And above her, the black thing of living energy spun and churned, connected to her with umbilicals of energized clouds through which Megan’s essence rose. She had such passion, this one. The creature would feed well from her indeed. More…more…more…
Into the moonlight came the sounds of growling, furious and vicious, growing louder by the second. Lunging and leaping through the thicket and onto the ledge, Pearce and Nash appeared, axes in their paws, fangs bared and gleaming. They bounded with blinding speed to Megan’s side.
They swung their axe blades through the misty tendrils attaching Megan to the creature. The columns of vapor parted with sparks and flashes, shedding the energy that they drew from the unconscious woman. The living cloud mass of the wraith lit up with a fury of its own, as if sheet lightning were going off inside it.
The thing billowed and boiled, insulted by the attacks of the twin wolf men bellowing beneath it. Rage poured from the creature, raking the fur of the werewolves. Pearce and Nash showed it their fangs and began to swing up at the cloud form, their blades passing through it and drawing more angry sparks. A rumbling sound issued from the entity, and it reacted.
The entity became a mass of black clouds extending back to the ground, and from this shape it shifted back to the towering hulk of a werewolf giant. It faced the brothers with a look of death. This would be the last time they would defy it.
Now their enemy had done exactly what the Maguire brothers wanted it to do: for in becoming physical it had made itself vulnerable. In a heartbeat they went on the attack. Nash grazed the blade of his axe against the creature’s upper arm, producing a shower of sparks.
Howling, the entity grabbed the handle of the axe with irresistible force. As he did at the house with Pearce, Nash struggled with the creature for control of the axe, the huge wolf form and the smaller one lurching from side to side, until with its greater strength the entity wrested the weapon from the smaller werewolf and hurled it away. Then it advanced ferociously on the weaponless Nash.
Howling madly, Pearce charged with his axe raised high, ready to plunge it into the monster’s back. At the last second, the entity became black mist again and Pearce went hurtling through it, colliding with Nash and spilling them both and Pearce’s axe to the ground. They were dazed for only a second, but when that second passed, their foe stood looming over them.
The shape wraith grabbed each of them by the throat and lifted them savagely from the ground. While keeping Nash at arm’s length in a choking grip, it descended with mouth open wide onto Pearce’s throat, sinking its fangs through his fur and into his flesh.
Pearce gave out a choked howl of agony, feeling the monster start to tear his throat out. Nash struggled in the monster’s grip, pawing and clawing at its arm and flailing his legs, desperate to save his brother, knowing he himself was next and feeling the dreadful burn of his breath cutting off. For both Maguire brothers, the world turned black…
And suddenly there came an awful sound of a sharp metal edge slicing hard and deep into flesh. Stricken, shocked, rearing back in pain, the shape wraith dropped the brothers. They hit the ground with twin thuds and lay unmoving. The monster staggered and tos
sed about on the ground of the hillside—while Megan, having plunged one of the fallen axes into the back of its neck, held on for dear life against the beast trying to throw her off.
The monster shook violently, and Megan whined like a frightened wolf herself: for while she had summoned all the last of her strength to get back to her feet and help Pearce and Nash, she awakened still feeling the stupor and delirium of what her captor did to her.
The creature had depleted the strength of her body as well as plundering the energy of her mind, leaving her nothing but a strength summoned out of pure desperation to struggle with it now. She feared her weakness would soon get the better of her, and what strength she had would not be enough. But Megan held on. For leverage, she swung her legs forward and grabbed the beast between them, holding on as tightly as she could. Every second she clung to axe and monster counted, and she breathlessly held on.
The place where the axe connected in the beast’s neck erupted with hissing sparks. Megan hurled her terrified voice into the air: “NASH!”
Something in the sound of her voice tearing at the moonlit night made Nash stir where he lay. He reared up on his elbows and saw, to his slack-snouted horror, Megan struggling with the monster. With a sharp shake of his head, he recovered and dove forward and down, searching by scent, and found the other axe. He picked it up and leaped to his feet. He charged forth at the thrashing monstrosity. He lunged, swung hard, and connected with the shape wraith’s stomach, producing another explosion of sparks from the middle of its body.
With all his might, Nash held his blade in the monster’s belly even as it thrashed wildly against both him and Megan. At the same time, Megan felt her own grip finally grow too weak. A last violent lurch from the entity sent her flying away—with the axe still in its neck and its neck still belching sparks. Its arms flailed to reach the spot where the blade penetrated it.
Howling, the wraith managed to pry it out, but the wound continued to bleed energy. The forces inside it were still dangerously disrupted with Nash’s axe still in its stomach and Nash’s paws still on its handle, making the thing’s belly gush a fiery cascade.
The monster reared its massive head back and made the most horrid sound in all the world at the crescent moon, a sound more like the wail of a banshee than the howl of a wolf. Its midsection exploded, hurling out not intestines, but a massive, blinding spray of sparks. The force of it sent Nash flying. He spun onto the grass, the axe spinning away in another direction, and skidded to a stunned halt.
The shape wraith had bled out too much of its energy now to recover. It could neither hold nor change its form. It could only stagger about, its banshee wail carrying on and on in the night. Megan lay in the grass watching its final throes, her ears assailed by the terrible sound that it made. She found no pity for it. The creature that had preyed on her had earned its fate. She flinched and frowned at it, sensing its oncoming doom.
A last spasm wracked the entity’s body. In the next instant it was no longer a colossal werewolf, nor was it a cloud of hungry energy. It turned to a geyser of brilliant power and light that rose, blazing and flickering, into the starry night, where it spread, shimmering, into a thinning disk.
All the while a screaming noise filled the scene, a sound neither human nor animal nor spirit nor monster, only the sound of death and destruction. Nash recovered just in time to see the disk of light dissipate and part, and with a final, violent flashing, disappear completely, leaving nothing overhead but darkness, stars, and the moon.
Nash checked his wrist for the anti-static bracelet, still intact on him. The bracelets and the wooden handles of the axes had protected him and Megan from being shocked by the bleeding of the shape wraith. It was gone and they were safe.
But an unspeakable realization now came over him. He and Megan were safe—but what about Pearce?
Nash searched their surroundings for his brother and found him lying nearby, completely still. Terribly, deathly still. Terrified, he whined out his twin’s name: “Pearce!”
He scrambled over to where Pearce lay, still bleeding out from his neck. His empathy told him all that he needed to know of his brother’s condition. Pearce was in shock, his breathing shallow, his pulse thready, his vital signs ebbing dangerously, dangerously low. He became aware of Megan coming to his side and dropping to her knees next to him. “Nash,” Megan asked, afraid to know the answer, “is he…?”
“My brother is dying,” Nash simply, flatly said, his heart sinking.
“No!” Megan cried. “Oh no…!”
“Only his shifting can save him now,” Nash told her. “If he can morph back to human, the wound will knit and stop the bleeding. Then he’ll have a chance.”
“How can we get him to shift, then? Nash, he can’t die; he can’t. Not after all this. Tell me we can make him shift, please!”
“If he can feel me, it might be enough to make him do it,” Nash said. He took his brother’s paw in his own and fixed his eyes on Pearce more strongly, more deeply than he had ever looked at anything else in his life, including Megan. He urged, “Come on, Pearce, you’re as stubborn as I am. We’re twins. Two of a kind. One completes the other. You have to relax and let yourself go. You can do this. Just go human. Come on…”
Instinctively he reached for Megan, who took his other paw. From there, empathy took over: the shared empathy of werewolf and werewolf—and woman.
Megan silently poured out her feelings into Nash. Please bring him back. I need him. I need them. I haven’t come through everything I’ve been through just to lose one of them. I need them both. I want them both. I want them to hold me and make love to me. I want them to tell me I belong to them, and make me theirs. And I want them to be mine. I never want to say goodbye to them, ever. I need them to love me. Let him wake up. Let him be all right. Let him—let them—love me.
There was a stirring in Pearce’s body—not a stirring of limbs, but a stirring of forms; and a slow rising and falling of his chest. Just as slowly, the grey fur of Pearce’s body receded, thinned, and disappeared. The contours of his limbs shifted, paws turning back to hands and feet.
The wounds on his neck appeared first as deep, ugly, reddened gashes, but they closed themselves up and the torn flesh morphed back to normal, leaving only the stains of shed blood on his skin. Pearce drew another breath, deeper this time, lying still. His skin was pale and cold at first, but Nash felt it turning warmer.
“Will he be all right?” asked Megan.
“He’ll be too weak to walk back down the mountainside to the house,” replied Nash, “but he’ll live. I feel pretty weak too.” He glanced at her for the first time since fixing his eyes on his brother. “And you—you must feel even weaker than the two of us.”
Hearing Nash’s words made Megan drop back from her knees onto her bottom, suddenly keenly aware of how right he was. “Oh my God, I’m so tired. My arms and my legs feel like rubber. I feel like I couldn’t walk a step right now. I feel like I could go to sleep right here for the rest of the week.”
“Not right here, that’s for sure,” said Nash. “We can stay here and rest for a little while, but we’ll have to get Pearce back to the house where it’s warm. Having him exposed in just his pants out here isn’t helping him. We’ll rest just a little while. Then we’ll take him back. I’ll have to carry him.”
Pearce stayed asleep while Nash and Megan rested, and remained that way when Nash, keeping his half-wolf form, picked him up and started back down the slope of the mountain with him in his arms and Megan at their side.
As they went, Megan said to Nash, “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything,” replied Nash.
“When were holding…er…hands over Pearce… I did that, I reached out to you, to…I don’t know…give you my support. But I…felt something. It was like something going from me to you. And, I think, to Pearce. It was like something…connecting us. I mean, I’ve felt connected to both of you since that first night. But this was a different kind of
connection. Even different from sex. Nash, was that…empathy? Your kind of empathy? Did I really tap into that for those few minutes?”
“What do you think?” Nash asked.
“But…can a human do that?”
Nash answered, “I’ve never heard of a human doing that. But I wouldn’t be surprised if some humans could. At the right time, under the right conditions. With the right werewolves.”
Megan said nothing more. As she remembered the exact nature of the feelings that she had poured out to help Nash Maguire save his brother, nothing more needed to be said.
THE FINAL CHAPTER
It was Wednesday night when Nash, Pearce, and Megan killed the shape wraith. By Thursday afternoon Pearce, his injuries fully healed, was starting to recover his strength. Megan stayed the rest of the week with the Maguire brothers, but their plans for the week necessarily changed in the wake of their shared ordeal. Pearce spent Thursday mostly resting—in his own bedroom.
The brothers, in fact, both left the master suite for Megan’s use, calling off any further intimate relations with Megan until all three of them were truly ready again. Megan, though she wanted Pearce and Nash more than ever, felt the need to slow things down. Having to prepare for and then face the continued attack of the shape wraith had left her very little time to deal emotionally with what the creature did to her. Once the creature was gone, she had time.