by Simone Sinna
“I think she’s enjoying this,” Damon murmured, moving in between her legs. “Let’s see if she likes this, too.”
Misty felt her hips being lifted until she was on her knees. Damon’s tongue licked over her ass as a finger, Kadar’s, she thought, ran down her slit to her clit. She shivered. Now Damon’s face was in her cunt, licking and sucking as their pleasure again merged and she was for a moment uncertain where her excitement finished and his began.
“Oh yes,” she moaned, writhing.
“Do you want a cock?” asked Kadar.
“Yes, please.”
“Could you manage two?”
“Yes,” Misty said, though she had no idea how, just that she wanted them both, badly. She felt Kadar moving over her, and gently he ran his cock over her mouth. The exquisite feelings that Damon was teasing her with left her feeling so helpless that the thought of sucking Kadar’s cock while still tied up seemed wildly desirable. She opened her mouth and licked the pre-cum, feeling Kadar’s response escalate to join her and Damon’s. She took the end in her mouth, tongue tracing all around until she sucked him into her as hard as she could.
She was aware of Damon’s fingers opening her cunt and moving his own cock up and down it. With one thrust he entered deep inside her, pulling her hips to him just as she lifted her head to take more of Kadar’s cock. The feeling of being filled by them both, simultaneously, sent shock waves through her. Electricity left her feeling so wired she was shaking until her muscles, clamping hard over Damon’s cock, escalated the sensation to a rippling orgasmic spasm. Both men eased their thrusts as she came, Damon leaning back while remaining hard in her. “Again,” he instructed after a moment, when her panting had calmed.
This time Damon put a finger in her asshole as his thrusts became more urgent. Misty felt at once she’d break and then that if it felt this good, she didn’t care. Her arousal escalated again and this time as she came, Damon released, and Kadar, half pulling out, shot warm cum over her. She felt totally anointed and that she would belong to them forever.
Chapter Six
When Damon and Kadar arrived at their apartment in Geneva, Damon felt miserable. Kadar was experiencing the same range of emotions but was in an anger phase. He threw his bag on the floor, banged the door and disappeared to the computer room. Damon squashed his thoughts about Misty. He needed to focus if they had any hope of outwitting the Baekkens.
They had a little under a week. The Baekkens, as promised, had sent them information. The virus they were proposing to give them, that would target the were-devils, was even more distasteful than the last. This one didn’t cause significant symptoms in adults. No one would even know they had it. It was transmitted via the air, by far the best way of optimizing spread, and like Legionnaires—one of the viruses that as yet they hadn’t linked the Baekkens to—could be cultivated in air-conditioning systems. There might be a slight runny nose, except in one critical group, which would have more problems—pregnant were-devils.
Were-devils usually reproduced once only and produced four offspring. Pregnant women would lose all four, regardless of gestation. The virus wasn’t teratogenic as many were. It wouldn’t cause deformities. Instead, it caused the placental blood vessels to constrict. Slowly. A rapid constriction would mean the women would go into labor and the child might be brain damaged but could survive, particularly if she had an emergency caesarian, which any physician recognizing the fetal distress would order immediately. But if the constriction was gradual, the babies would die slowly. Even if they were finally delivered, they would be severely impaired and unlikely to live. Until the were-devils found a way of detecting the virus, they would be at its mercy, and even then would be largely powerless.
Kadar and Damon had to use this virus to show what they were capable of, which meant consideration of the complicated clinical possibilities Damon had already started on. But every time he worked on it, he felt sick, thinking of Misty and her sister. Thinking of the children he would like to have with her, should they survive.
The other task that he had not been able to stop thinking about was where the genetics might come into play. Tilman’s brother, Torq, before he died, had apparently discovered the secrets to the antidote and vaccine, for the Hendra at least. Tilman’s understanding was that it had to do with a thing he called SMB, which needed to be triggered. The trigger, though, had been slightly different in ghosts, were-devils and humans, and here Tilman felt his brother may have known more than he ever would. But the similarities between the ghosts and were-devils and how they differed from humans appeared to be critical.
“This doesn’t seem to work in humans,” Tilman had said, perplexed. “My daughter-in-law, Becc, only had it because she’d been inoculated in utero. I can’t get human cells to respond at all. And using were-devil and ghost blood combined is like working with nitroglycerin. I’m getting weird and vastly differing results, depending on the proportions.”
Damon had put this to Misty before they left. After all, she was the genetics expert.
“Were-devils and humans share most of the same genes,” she had said slowly. “I imagine ghosts do, too.”
“Given humans have 97% the same genes as apes, I imagine so,” agreed Damon.
“So it’s those that are different that I have been looking at,” Misty had continued. “Remember, I was looking for an answer to the were-devils’ curse, so there are two things I’ve been examining. One, the immune response, and then two, why we don’t recognize the cancer cells induced by the virus as being foreign.”
“And?” Kadar asked.
“We have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, one of each of the pair comes from each of our parents. Each chromosome has many genes. It’s, needless to say, very complicated. A simple example is eye color. We have one allele from the father one from the mother. For were-devils, this is simple. Brown-amber is all we have in our pool. But we know from inter marriages that, like in humans, brown dominates. So Melody will have brown-amber-eyed children.”
Damon nodded, this was no surprise. Curt had blue eyes.
“What about green eyes?” Kadar asked mischievously. He hadn’t blocked his thoughts and Misty blushed.
“In humans, brown trumps green,” said Misty. “But ghosts’ green? Not enough mixed relationships to know.”
“Lena’s are green,” said Damon. “But her mother, Rose? I think her also, despite her father being a were-devil.”
“Which suggests either green is dominant or variable,” Misty said. “So even with something this simple there is already a divergence.” She paused. “I have been looking at one particular gene that we know in humans is involved in the immune response. Ours is different. Or at least mine is. It is missing a chain. But I have no idea why and what the significance is.”
Damon had thought long and hard how to use this sliver of information. As yet, he hadn’t come up with anything that was likely to save their lives.
* * * *
When the door to the international terminal closed shut on her men, Misty immediately turned around and went straight to the Qantas desk. “A ticket to London, tomorrow,” she told the woman and handed over her card. Thank God for credit. She’d have to worry about how she was going to pay it off later.
The woman typed away at her screen. “I have a business class tomorrow morning.”
Ouch. “Anything else?”
“An economy late afternoon, through Hong Kong.”
That would do. It gave her the rest of the day and most of tomorrow to do all she had to.
Her first stop was Tilman to get the vaccine. She grilled him some further while there. “Tell me more about this SMB and how it differs between the ghosts and the were-devils,” she said. “The nitroglycerine thing.”
Tilman shrugged. “At this stage, I can really only tell you what I’m observing in the test tube. We need to run a lot more tests and then trial what I come up with. I have the most faith in what I’m giving you because it worked in me,
and we have little experience with ghost blood.”
“So, tell me.”
“We want the body to recognize the virus. This should increase the SMB, which in turn heralds the initiation of the white cells developing their own immunity. Our SMB hasn’t been recognizing the virus because as far as I can tell, it is missing the attachment I’ve identified in the ghost blood.”
Misty stared at him. Missing something. Just like the gene she’d been studying didn’t have the chain humans had. Did ghosts? She thanked Tilman, cursing herself for not getting some blood off the Karlssens before they had left. Neither Gabriella nor Lena were pureblood and judging from what Tilman was telling her, looking at mixed genetics would be too confusing to make sense of what she was seeing, as she wouldn’t know which line came from what. Then she remembered her wonderful wild night with the Karlssens and looked at her watch. When do the cleaners come? she wondered as she raced back to her hotel room. Please let them be having a busy day.
She was too late. The sheets were fresh and crisp on the bed and she fell onto the pillow, pummeling it in despair. That was until she caught sight of the carefully folded black silk tie, overlooked by the Karlssens and placed there by the cleaners. The stain was slight, but Misty’s powerful sense of smell left no doubt. She had her sample of ghost genetic material.
* * * *
Damon spent two days getting together all the variations and then handed them over to Kadar to computerize. He had barely slept and had not left the apartment in that time, so now he went jogging in the rain, oblivious to the cold. He went through the plan he had forming in his head. Having had the antidote to the drug the Baekkens had used on him meant he knew exactly where they’d been taken. Straight afterwards he had done his best to draw a map. But the tunnels had been tortuous and curled and it was hard at times to judge all the intersections through half-closed lids. He was confident that with time he could get in and out. But time was probably just what he wouldn’t have.
This time they would both carry an EpiPen full of the antidote, narcan. Kadar, having had the symptoms for real, was confident he could fake them, and they’d had several trial runs of auto-injecting, though with saline.
But it would be the bluff and how well he could pull it off that would determine whether they survived. More importantly for the future, a world he envisaged without the mark of the Baekkens’ evil viruses cursing through time and leaving a path of destruction, it would be the plan that could only be devised at the last minute that would decide whether the ghosts could finally be released from the hold the Baekkens had on them. He had to find the secret and destroy it.
* * * *
Misty went to see Auntie Kate on the spur of the moment. She had a free couple of hours in the morning before her family took her to lunch and then to the airport. It was a beautiful spring morning, cold but with brilliant blue skies. The port was full of tourists lining up to go by boat to the new museum or the Cadbury chocolate factory, and smokers were taking breaks in the park, which looked green and lush after a wet winter. Auntie Kate now had a shop somewhere close to where she was and Misty wandered around the sandstone buildings full of stuffed toys—amusingly, mostly Tasmanian devils—sheepskin jackets and hand knits until she found it.
The door made musical sounds as she opened it, and Misty breathed in the musty smell, thinking it reminded her of the incense from the previous night.
“Misty,” Auntie Kate greeted her, tinkling almost as much as the door had, light flashing as it caught the tiny crystals of her earrings. They hugged. She was like a mini version of Kadar, warm and soft, but rounder and several inches shorter than Misty.
“I’m coming to say good-bye,” said Misty. “And hoping for a spell or two to keep me safe.” In her mind she also thought of her two men as well. Kate looked at her sharply. Had she picked that up?
“Sit and I’ll bring tea,” said Kate.
Sitting was easier said than done. Every available surface was covered with something. An entire family of fairies had taken over the table and chairs in the corner so Misty opted for a bench that only needed the removal of a few soft toys and some books on witchcraft to find enough space. Auntie Kate came in carrying a tray with a teapot and cups and a plate of shortbread full of pistachio nuts. Misty hastily cleared another table and in doing so, accidentally knocked a bowl to the ground. The bowl, made of heavy green marble, made a sickening sound as it hit the floor, brightly colored stones scattering under chairs and tables.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” said Misty in horror, dropping to her knees to examine the bowl. There was a crack through one side, almost to the base. She turned to Kate who was standing, watching in silence.
“Hush, child,” she said finally. “See if you can put the stones back in while I pour the tea.”
Misty scooped the stones into the bowl, white, brown, and amber ones and cold, black smooth stones that inexplicably sent fear through her. When she finally put the bowl and its contents back on the table she realized that Auntie Kate was still watching her.
“Tell me,” she said, now pouring tea into small china cups. “What did you feel when you touched the white stones?”
“Nothing,” said Misty.
“And the brown and yellow ones?”
“Nothing.” Kate nodded, happy, it seemed, with this answer. “And the black stones?”
“Cold,” Misty said at once. She knew better than to question Auntie Kate. What Kate knew and sensed was, Misty felt, every bit as valid as the science she trained in. They just couldn’t explain it yet. “And fear.”
“Anything else?”
Misty closed her eyes. Suddenly she was in the same space she had been the night before. Later, she wondered if it was the similarity in the musky smell, but whatever it was the connection this time reminded her of the big drop at the Gold Coast theme park where, having been taken high above the park in seats to which she had been strapped tight, she had been left to sit there a moment, anxiously looking at how far there was to fall. The connection she made to the present was like the fall. The sudden sense of dropping fast and so out of control that she was fearful she wouldn’t stop. But she did, and then she was there. A space where there was no one or no thing, but an opening of awareness, an acuity that went beyond any experience she had ever had. Last night it had connected her to Damon in an unfathomable, cerebral way. Now she felt the connection was far broader and she was fearful of moving in it, in case she never came back.
“What else did you feel?”
She heard Kate’s words, this time echoing in the space as if she was in a huge cavern and they were bouncing off some far distant, unseen wall.
She started to speak but it was as if it was not her speaking, or at least she had no idea just what the words meant. “Arrogance, domination, the need to rule the world. Death, destruction, famine, pestilence. Armies and war, murder and intrigue.” The words were pouring out of her, but with each one came pain, as if she was being spoken to by a representative of each of those who had suffered.
Kate pressed stones into each of her hands and said with a sense of urgency. “Now, child, now what?”
The picture began to clear, though in truth it had never been a picture but rather a mix of all her senses presenting as one. The smell of smoke and death began to recede. Her skin, which had felt the welts of disease, felt soothed, the cold of the stones in one hand seeming to balance the warmth from the other. Her breathing slowed and began to return to normal. “Love,” she said simply and could say no more.
Much later, after Kate had soothed her with tea, Misty took a deep breath.
“What happened?”
“You have a connection more than I have ever seen before,” said Katie. “Through your grandmother, I assume.”
“My grandmother?”
“Yes. Do you know you spoke in our local indigenous language?”
Misty stared at Katie. “I didn’t even know Grandma Lyn knew that. She taught me some Chinese once when I g
ot teased at school. I think it meant fuck off.”
Kate smiled. “That sounds just like your grandma, all right,” she said.
“What was I seeing?”
Kate shrugged. “Only you can work that out,” she said. “The past. But the black stones are for the original destroyers.”
Misty stared at her, remembering the cold she had felt pursuing her at Robin Hood’s Bay. “The vampires.”
Auntie Kate watched her carefully. “Yes, but the stone still in your left hand is your stone, I think.”
Misty unpeeled her fingers, still tight around a brown and amber stone. She stared at two white ones in the other hand. “And these?”
Kate smiled and hugged her. “Be brave,” she said. “You have cracked the bowl and I am not sure what that means. But until the bowl breaks in half, our future lies with you and”—she picked out the two white stones from Misty’s hand—“them.”
Chapter Seven
When Damon and Kadar arrived in Whitby on October 29, they were so preoccupied they didn’t at first notice anything strange. Both were on alert for any sense of the vampires, but this hadn’t helped them. The activity that was unusual was entirely human.
“That’s the third Victorian hearse I’ve seen,” said Damon, perturbed, as he watched the vehicle move slowly past them.
“Probably the same one driving around, looking for a park at the cemetery, or the cold is killing off the oldies,” Kadar replied, pulling his coat around him.
As usual, it had been Damon’s idea to go for a walk. Who in their right mind voluntarily walked around the streets of Whitby in late October? As this thought registered, Kadar realized that the answer was—a surprising number. Then he looked closer. He suddenly started to feel he was on a film set. Or else he’d time traveled without knowing.
“Damon, why the fuck are all these people in fancy dress?”