by Alana Melos
“If you do that, I’m going to fucking take you,” he said, his voice deepening. The naked threat implied thrilled me, making my red hot desire turn white. I dug my nails into the fur, piercing his second skin, and his mouth skewed to the side, his playful manner vanished into smoke. “You asked for it.”
I started to laugh, but he cut it off with a hard kiss, brutal and domineering. At the same time, he thrust into me, hard, fulfilling his vow of taking me. I groaned into his mouth. My tongue matched his as we tasted each other, and I felt his teeth sharpen, elongating just slightly as more and more of the wolf came out to play. He swelled inside of me as he fucked me with abandon, ramming his cock into me. The rougher it was, the more I liked it, though the back of my mind told me to be wary, lest he complete the change.
That warning was ignored. My fingers widened the hole in his skin even as his body tried to heal it. I ripped him open as he ripped into me. One of his hands found a breast and he squeezed me to the point of pain. He’d stop, only to renew once more. His strokes grew harder, went faster, until his mouth caught my breath and held it, paralyzing me with dark passion. Flirting with danger came with the job, but it was so much better when I could combine danger with desire, making a drink which dazed me. His nails grew as well, piercing my skin with a delicate touch, just enough to make thin rivulets of blood run free. Even as his savage nature grew, he tempered himself, if barely. The restraint made his muscles tense as he trembled and quivered, caught on the threshold between letting go and reining back.
Rory broke our kiss by straightening and thrusting all the way in me at the same time. I took a deep breath and let it out in a soft, sultry moan, licking my lips and gesturing for him to come on. He’d moved away from my prying hand, but his actions remained feral even though I couldn’t tease him any longer. His strong hands moved me to a better position while he kept me impaled on his impossibly thick cock which throbbed inside of me. When he had me spread wide and in a place where he could fuck easily, then he began anew, thrusting hard, over and over again as he loomed over me. Passion built, but my darker side was not to be denied. With a thought, I cut his skin on his abdomen with my teke, letting blood flow and fur come free. Sliding my hands in, I grabbed onto the wolf below and wrapped my legs around him as he winced in savage joy.
His hips moved faster and faster, each thrust harder than the last. When my pussy clenched around him, his grin reappeared, dark and deadly. Cries of lust ripped out of my throat as he forced himself in to my throbbing cunt, over and over again, drawing it out as he strove to come deep inside of me. Even without my telepathy, my ecstasy infected him. When he climaxed, his hands gripped me tight, and he thrust hard one final time. The moan which escaped him sounded like a howl, as if he were on the verge of changing and crying his passion to the moon.
Once his body relaxed, I shoved him back with my thighs as I sat up. Rory gave me a quick kiss, then moved out of my way, knowing I wasn’t the cuddling type. I patted his shoulder and gave him a smile. “To bed,” I said. “After a drink.”
“If you like,” he said, his voice rough and ragged. “After a shower, I’ll join you.”
Naked, he padded away from me and into the bathroom while I closed my robe and went into the bedroom. The adrenalin from the fucking subsided, leaving me with the headache from earlier. My other wounds throbbed in time with my heart, pounding out a different rhythm than my head. I found some more of my high quality painkillers in a drawer and dry swallowed them. Tonight had gone well, but tomorrow was another day. Work loomed, now my first real steps into getting exactly what I wanted. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited, but I wished somehow, somewhere there was some fanfare… some, I don’t know, chronicler of my deeds so that the world would know when everything began.
I climbed into bed and lay there, thinking about what riches tomorrow would bring until Mauler crawled into bed behind me, spooned me, and we both fell asleep.
Chapter Three
I woke with Rory’s hot body half over mine, and I shoved him off. He was a deep sleeper, and merely rolled over to the other side while I got up. I was too excited to sleep for long, and so I went about my daily rituals, starting with checking my shoulder wound. The other scratches and bruises were well on their way to healing, but the groove on my shoulder was ugly, and looked infected. I grimaced and set about to cleaning it out once more. If it got worse by tomorrow, I’d spend the money to go to a flesh hack or healer to get it fixed. More than one person had been brought down by a simple infection; I was not going to be one of them.
After that, I worked out, practicing unarmed combat first, then with my sword, then with knives. The knife work was still new to me, but the shorter blades were becoming more comfortable in my hands. Breakfast then, and a shower. As I finished dressing for the day--black jeans and a plain blue tank top as I expected to be doing physical labor--Huraiva walked in, a smile upon her beautiful face.
“Good date?” I asked as I pulled my boots on and laced them tight.
“The best,” she said, her mildly accented voice dreamy. “I have not had…” She cut off her words, and smiled at me, a faint blush upon her cheeks. “Never mind. It is time for work.”
I nodded, and watched as her skin changed color, becoming a few shades paler. Her shoulders squared off and straightened as Adira took over the body. Everything about her movements changed, going from slow and languorous, sometimes even nervous, to brisk and confident with an efficacy of movement I sometimes envied. Adira could be seductive too, but more and more, she was all business, save for when we went to bed.
“Allow me to wash and change, then I shall be ready,” she said.
“Huraiva will have to go down there, but once we’re at the location, you’ll be able to be in control no problem,” I said. “It’s light tight where we’re going.”
The vampire nodded briskly to me, then disappeared into her room. I gathered my gear, when a knock sounded at the door. A quick check to the security cameras should me it was Rebekah, dressed in a bright red parka and what looked like a matching set of snow pants. While still cold outside, I didn’t think the weather entailed to be bundled up quite so much, but she had a fascination for shopping and bright colors, coupled with an insistence on wearing everything she bought even when inappropriate.
I buzzed her in. She breezed through the door and grinned at me, her cheeks flushed, likely from being too warm. “Good afternoon!” she said as she pulled off her gloves and stuffed them in a pocket. “Are you ready?”
“Waiting for Adira to clean up,” I replied.
“Ah,” she said, bobbing her head which sent her blond spikes bobbing in crazy directions. “Father says hi.”
I cut her a glance and shrugged. “He knows where I am if he wants to visit,” I said.
“Whatever is between you two, you should bury the axe,” she said as she plopped down on a stool at the kitchen counter.
“Bury the hatchet,” I corrected. “And I’m not angry at him.” Much. “It’s none of your business anyway.” I still wasn’t quite sure what was up with Ger. He’d gotten irrationally angry when I’d fixed Rory’s head and walked out, only to come back when I needed him. Though not terribly complex, he still had some intricacies I had yet to figure out. Right now, I didn’t have time for his bullshit.
“I am rea… ah, Rebekah, it is good to see you,” Adira said, stepping out. She’d chosen practical clothes like me: jeans, a work shirt tucked in, and a scarf covering her hair. When she shrugged on a dark grey long coat, she looked like any regular woman ready to go to work at some sort of job outside.
“Let’s head out,” I said as I swept on my red leather trench. I never left the house without my sword, but I added a couple of knives to the ensemble as well. It never hurt to have multiple weapons and tools at the ready, just in case.
After Huraiva took over the vampire’s body again turning her human--the metaphysics of how that worked was beyond me--we three took off, heading to the nearest subway. There
, we jumped a couple of trains to get to the right area in the heart of Manhattan. Leaving the last train, I waited for a good opportunity to slip away and head down the trail by the tracks, used by the personnel. Though one person said we weren’t supposed to go there, the majority of the citizens of good old Imperial City ignored us. Some things never changed.
“You should probably switch to your work clothes, Rebekah,” I said as I brought out a flashlight.
“Oh, alright,” she said, disappointment in her voice. A few moments later and she was dressed in her Reich uniform. I reminded myself again to look into the quick-change trick so many metahumans used. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” I said. “If I can find it… I don’t exactly have specific directions.”
“So we’re going to wander around in the dark aimlessly?” Adira asked, her voice cool.
“No,” I replied, biting off the word before I modified my tone to neutrality. “I know about where it is, just not exactly. It’s in this area. I’ll know it when I see it.”
“What is ‘it’, exactly?” Adira asked, pushing the issue. She was loyal, but questioning, as least lately. I didn’t mind so much. If you couldn’t trust your lieutenants to point out the flaws in your plans, then you couldn’t trust anyone. Not that people in our line of work were big on trust, but it had to start somewhere.
I explained as I walked on the narrow walkway next to the tracks with the other two trailing behind me. “Back in the old days, twenty some odd years ago,” I started, flashing the light around, “one of the very first groups of metahuman criminals had the entrance to their main base around here. It was part of an old subway line which fell into disrepair and the city just abandoned it, building over it.”
“Oh, a secret tunnel!” Rebekah said. “Sounds exciting!”
“There’s a lot of them in Imperial City,” I replied. “My dad told me about them. An old coworker of his knew the entire layout. Some of them were subway tunnels like the one we’re going to. Others were bootleg tunnels in the sewers from the Prohibition days.”
“This group… they aren’t around any longer?” Adira asked.
I had to stop and remind myself these two weren’t from Earth Prime, but from Axis Earth. They didn’t know our history. “No,” I said. “Most of them are dead. A few still live, but there’s no team or anything now. Ger was one of them, after he defected from Axis. My mom and dad were two more.”
“A family tradition,” Rebekah said, and I heard the smile in her voice. “It’s good to live up to your legacy.”
“Not really a ‘legacy’,” I snorted. “They retired. If it was a legacy, they’d still be here, you know, doing their thing. They retired to a tropical island instead.” The tunnel stretched on, and I fretted that maybe I had the wrong one, or that they’d renamed or relabeled them in the time from my dad’s stories to now. “Anyway… the entrance is in the tunnel, somewhere. Once I find the tunnel, I know I can find the entrance.”
“What if it was destroyed?” Adira asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t think it can be,” I replied. “The way to get there might be, but the base itself can’t.”
“Why is that?” she asked, but I ignored her words as I found what I was looking for: a jagged line of bricks piled by a light and graffiti marking ‘42-J’. The lettering was faded, but not as much as you’d think since it was tucked away from sunlight.
“Here,” I said as I pointed, flying around to the other side of the tumble of debris. I let my flashlight go to hover in mid air as I studied the wall. “I think it was a connecting tunnel at some point, or a switch, but it looks like it’s caved in.” There was an opening here. I saw over the pile of dirt and bricks to dusty darkness on the other side. “Entrance won’t be far from here. Help me clear this out.”
Adira knelt to do so while Rebekah lowered her goggles and raised her gas mask, then shadowstepped to the other side to clear it out from that direction. Between the three of us, in the span of a few minutes we had a workable tunnel. I made sure they stacked the bricks neatly against the side of the tunnel instead of throwing it haphazard over the tracks. We didn’t need workers down here to close up the hole. I seemed to recall from my dad’s stories there were other ways in, but this was the one which stood out. Once inside and with time to explore, we could find the other ways in and out.
“This way,” I said as I grabbed my flashlight. Confidence filled me as I led them down the abandoned tunnel, which was in unrelenting darkness. Both of them could see in the dark, but I had to slow my steps and follow the beam of the flashlight. However, I’d heard about this so many times, I already knew the way. It felt like I was coming home.
By a dead, exposed power line, I stopped, looking at the rough hewn wall. This tunnel had been made well over a century ago, and that it still stood today was a testament to the skill which had gone into making the bones of my beloved city. Though the mortar was crumbling and the bricks rounded with age, it stood firm and strong.
“Here,” I whispered. I touched the cable, then looked at my fingers. Ages of dust stood upon it. It hadn’t been disturbed in all of these years, probably not since it had been sealed by… who was it again? Phoebe? Had that been her name?
“Where?” Rebekah asked, looking around. “I don’t see a tunnel!”
“I don’t either,” Adira said. “But something is… vibrating.”
I nodded in agreement, having felt the sensation too. The air hummed, as if there were a transformer or power line nearby, but I knew it wasn’t that. “Let me just find the right spot,” I said, biting the tip of my tongue while I traced my fingers over the wall. There’d be one which wouldn’t be right. I’d have to find it by trial and error.
Instead of questioning me, both of my friends stood back and let me search. I sensed Adira’s disapproving frown and Rebekah’s eager enthusiasm. I wanted to prove the first wrong and the second right. I slid my fingers over the rough stones one by one, until one vibrated under my hand. Under the light from the beam it looked like any other, but when I placed my hand on it, it shivered like a person dying of cold. I pressed my fingers to the stone firmly and waited. My tongue bit down a bit harder as time passed and nothing happened.
As is the cliché, just when I was ready to give up, the stone shifted all on its own. I grinned in triumph as a silver slash opened in the wall next to where I stood. Adira took a step back, and Rebekah swore under her breath as I reached for it. Light played over my fingers, brilliant in its iridescence, like a white rainbow dancing before us.
“Come on,” I said, my voice shaking from giddiness. Why hadn’t I thought of this earlier? I stepped to the side, then forward, moving into the slash of light. An instant of nausea swept over me, and everything squeezed together. It was like going into the portal when Ger and I had traveled to Axis Earth. I moved yet stood still at the same time. Unlike then, the sensation was there and gone in an instant, and then I walked into my parent’s old place of operations: the base of the Blackguard.
At first, it was dark. A few seconds later, dim lights clicked on triggered by a motion sensor. I heard other machinery clicking on and whirring somewhere in the distance. From what my father had told me, the space here was large, but split up into different areas: operations, living quarters, armory, and so on. The immediate area was decorated like a lobby with dusty furniture scattered about, and a hallway directly opposite the front door.
I turned around expecting Adira and Rebekah to be right behind me, but they weren’t. My eyes fell upon a monitor set to the side of the silvery opening I’d walked through. It was wider here, more like a doorway than in the tunnel, and the curtain of shimmery light was exactly like the portal from Interdimensional Inc.. This place was a pocket dimension, created by one of the Blackguard’s members to be a secure base. On the monitor I saw my companions approach the wall, feel the wall with their hands, but nothing happened. Text rolled across the bottom of the screen, and I blew on the keyboard bel
ow it to clear the dust.
“Why can’t they get through?” I asked, my words barely loud enough to be considered ‘aloud’. It had recognized me, but obviously it wouldn’t recognize just anyone. I took my time studying the screen, wondering if my mother had thought about this in advance and prepared for me to follow in her footsteps. My father wouldn’t have bothered; he planned to never come back to the mainland.
In a DOS window, a command prompt awaited. I chewed my lip, then stretched my knowledge of computers as far as it would go and typed up the command to get the list of commands available. The one for ‘authorization’ caught my eye, and I called up the help on it. Reading the instructions quickly, I nodded to myself. This would work. It would have to, else this would be a solo trip.
When I keyed in the command, I looked up at the monitor. Both of them jumped back as the slash of light reappeared. Rebekah edged forward, then touched it. She turned back to Adira and said something, but there was no audio. Either there never had been, or the equipment outside needed repair. They talked for a few seconds, then Rebekah turned around and walked through the light. A half a second later, she stood in front of the portal, blinking in surprise.
“What a wonder!” she squeaked as she orientated herself. “I feel strange, but different. Like when I first came to Prime.”
“It’s a pocket dimension,” I explained. The dimensional energies knew we didn’t belong here, and exerted soft, continual force upon our bodies trying to make us fit. The end result was a sort of tingling or squeezing that was easy to ignore after a few minutes. “Hold on for a minute, I need to finish inputting your information.” As she had gone through the portal, the computer scanned her, filing away her genetic code under the authorized personnel. I filled in the rest of the information including her code name, then keyed in the authorization command again. When the silver slash appeared, we both watched Adira on the monitor. We stared at the vampire as she stared at the silvery slash, shaking her head. Unlike the adventurous Rebekah, cautious Adira took her time to touch it, looking at it from all angles trying to get a handle on the situation. Seconds moved into minutes, and I growled at the monitor for her to just fucking do it. When I got fed up and moved towards the portal to go through and tell her it was OK, she stepped into the light and vanished.