by Simone Sinna
Kadar got lost. He missed one of the turns and by the time he realized Misty’s scent had faded, he’d lost it altogether. The passages turned and twisted so much that he ended up right back where he’d started. He heard the commotion in the room where the Oracle was speaking and paused, pushing the door a little to see what was happening.
Lights were still flashing, but there was also the sound of glass cracking. Mordecai was shaking his father.
“What did you do?” he was screaming.
“I tried,” said Silas. “I tried to save you, and us.”
“What did you do?” Mordecai repeated, turning to the center of the circle and trying with a knife to see if he could lever the medallion out. But the medallion was twirling wildly, and the knife flew out of his hand and barely missed one of the scientists watching in horror.
“It’s destructing,” the scientist said suddenly. “We need to save ourselves.”
In an instant there was a panic, some pouring out past Kadar, ignoring him. Others went back into the library to grab computers and any paperwork they could lay their hands on.
Mordecai was still on the floor with his father. “What’s happening?”
“I was only meant to put ghost and were-devil blood on the medallion,” whispered Silas.
Mordecai was clearly struggling to make any sense out of what his father was saying. “And you didn’t?”
“No,” said Silas. “I put yours, too.”
“So, what is it telling you?” screamed Mordecai over the increasing rumble.
“That I have brought destruction upon us,” said Silas, head in his hands. “Because I would not let Damon take over as leader of the Order, there will be no power left to control.” He looked up. “And that we will both die here, you and I, as my father did.”
Kadar had heard enough. He sent the message to Damon and this time as he left the room, he turned left.
* * * *
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” Damon felt as if he had aged fifty years in the last two hours. Now he stood in the ruins of Whitby abbey watching the chaos around him. The storm had just hit. Winds were whipping up under the tarpaulins and tugging at ropes, pegs flying and canvas not far behind. Party-goers were heading for shelter, shrieking as the wind blew dresses, hats, and any loose papers and cups swirling around them.
The real vampires were swarming out from the pulpit area, some transformed. One party-goer, having just surfaced into consciousness from the narcotic-laced liquid, looked on in amazement. Another hurrying away turned back and shook his head, muttering about having disturbed a bat colony.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” shouted Kadar angrily.
“She said she knew the way out,” said Damon. “That she could hold her breath underwater for ten minutes.”
“I’m going back for her,” said Kadar, pushing against the tide of vampires terrified by the rising seawater below.
“Not that way,” said Damon. “Follow me.”
They soared off the edge of the cliff, straight into the driving rain, diving down low to just above the waves that crashed onto the rocks below. Taking this line, they followed the coastline south and watched for her, every sense on alert.
It was hard work, flying against the wind and rain. Hard not to be dashed across the rocks to one side, hard to hear anything over the scream of the wind and that of the vampires behind the cliff face. The vampires hastened from the rising water that would take any who chose to linger. Those who stayed it seemed preferred death to the loss of the power that their kind had had over all men and alternative forms since the Middle Ages.
When they reached Robin Hood’s Bay and still hadn’t found her, the brothers circled, calling, then headed back to where they’d come from. It was Kadar that heard the sound, the faintest of cries at a completely different pitch to those of the vampires. Thunder rumbled ominously and then lightening cracked the sky open, a bolt hitting a tree on the cliff, sending it and rubble flying through the air, lights flashing out of the cliffside like a spectacular firework display. But one bit of rubble seemed to be making noise and moving more than a rock would. As it disappeared into the water, the two Karlssens watched on in horror.
* * * *
With Edmund’s dog tags around her neck, Misty had crawled out of the room, shutting the door behind her so that the pain could ease out of the pores and recesses of her brain. She bounded along the corridor, aiming for the cellar where her Yorkshire cook had originally told her the cliff’s secret. But as she went past the room with the Oracle, Mordecai swooped from above, grabbing her by the scruff of her neck in his teeth and dragging her back into the room. He tossed her across it. She hit the wall with a thud, opening her eyes to look at him. He was immense, dark eyes red at the edges as they gleamed angrily at her.
Misty groaned.
“It was you, all along.”
Misty started, seeing Silas looking at her. She thought there was no point fighting. She would die with dignity. As herself.
“Yes,” she said, sitting up in her human form. “You thought it was Damon who should lead the Order but you were wrong, though he would have done a good job, more likely than not.”
Mordecai turned to his father then looked back to her, incredulous. “But why you?” he said.
“You mean why a were-devil or why a woman?” asked Misty.
Silas was so stunned as he finally understood what the Oracle had told him, he was incapable of speech. Nor did he appear to notice the seawater now coming through the door.
“Perhaps because you made such a mess of it,” said Misty. “Five centuries of paternalistic vampires was quite enough to try anyone’s patience.”
“So now it’s going to be a female were-devil?” asked Mordecai in disbelief, the tone conveying his last intentions. Over my dead body.
It was at that exact moment that lightning struck, just above them. The cliff opened up as the sound reverberated through the room. The two vampires distracted, Misty dove across the floor and hurled herself off the cliff face, transforming as she did.
* * * *
“It was her, I’m sure.”
The two Karlssens circled frantically. In this spot, the sea was at its wildest, waves crashing angrily against the rocks, sending spray shooting into the air. When Kadar finally saw something surface, he dove down, grabbed it and soared back into the air, just in time to stop the tide sending the bundle toward the sharp rocks. Silas and Mordecai were less fortunate. As the cliff opened, it created a vacuum and water poured in over them, drowning them and the vast library of information that had been the base of their power.
Damon flew to his brother’s side, helping carry Misty’s sodden, limp were-devil form against the wind and rain to rest amongst the overturned fishing boats in Robin Hood’s Bay.
“Don’t you dare be drowned,” said Damon, tears and rain on his now human face as he buried his face in Misty’s fur.
“Come back to us,” Kadar said, hugging her so tight that the water she had swallowed was forced upwards and poured out of her. She coughed, choking on water and vomit as her form turned. Doubled over, she remembered all that had happened and what her grandmother had told her in the last minutes in the cave, and slipping what she had in her hand into her pocket, she hugged and kissed each of her men in turn.
* * * *
They took two days to recover, one in Whitby and the other in London. The first night they just slept, Misty curled up between them. They had travelled to London mostly in silence, all taking in the ramifications of what had happened. Neither of the Karlssens were entirely sorry they would never bump into Mordecai or Silas again, but they felt uncomfortably tarnished with the brush of murderer.
“No,” said Misty, simply and with conviction. “They had the choice. Everyone else got out and they chose to stay. Silas believed because the Oracle had told him he would die, there was nothing he could do about it. He drowned as his father did, of his own making.”<
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“His father?”
“Died on the Titanic, according to Grandma Lyn,” said Misty. “Silas’s father believed that the breakaway vampires were to blame and like all paranoids, refused to believe there was another explanation.”
Damon frowned. “Which was?”
“It was his own weakness that led him below deck,” Misty said. “He was sleeping with one of the women there.” A distant relative of Grandma Lyn’s, who’d lured him there but managed to escape.
The other thing that weighed heavily on Damon was the loss to medical science of all the records, washed to sea and ruined.
Misty squeezed his hand. They had each other, at least, and she now knew the secret of the twenty-second chromosome that she would fully outline in her PhD. That would save lives into the future, at least. There was more she knew, but now was not the time.
Bonnie nearly passed out when they all came through the door.
“Oh my God, you’re alive!” she shrieked. The next two hours were spent at the police station, trying to come up with a plausible reason as to why her window locks had been smashed and she’d disappeared for a few days.
In the end, the police threatened to charge them with public nuisance if they stuck around and threw them out of the police station. Bonnie was thrilled they were all staying, less so when she found they were both going to be in Misty’s room. Misty shrugged. These two she had no intention of sharing. Bonnie stormed off, announcing she was going to stay with her sister, who was, well, normal.
There was nothing normal about that night.
All three of them had nearly died. All three had faced, in their own way, in one moment of time, the reality that they might have not been able to save the people they most loved. Misty had faced her biggest fears and discovered things about herself she could never have even imagined in her wildest dreams. From nerdy geek, she felt transformed into someone wise beyond her years, and though the knowledge brought responsibility, it also brought calm. The knowledge that they had finished off not just the were-devils’ curse and that which had rebounded onto the ghosts, but had also brought an end to centuries of tyranny, was ultimately liberating.
Of course, it was not just the science that had transformed Misty but these men and the love the three of them felt for each other and would continue to for the rest of their lives.
As Bonnie left, they looked at each other, not certain who should make the first move.
In the end, she did. Silently, she unbuttoned their shirts, insisting they didn’t help, slapping their wrists when they tried. Then she took off their trousers, allowing them only to help with their shoes and socks. She admired them, both standing bemused in their briefs, as she walked between them, running a fingernail over their arms and shoulders, marking out the lines of their muscles as if she was marking her territory. She leant back into Kadar, allowing his arms to engulf her, pushing up her dress so his hands could go over her braless breasts.
Kadar pulled the dress over her head and as his hands pulled her hips into his already hard cock, Misty leant forward and pulled Damon in so she was sandwiched between them. Damon kissed her, a long kiss that wanted to take her to their own room in her mind, but she resisted.
Pulling herself away from the soft heat of Damon’s mouth and the urgent pull of Kadar wanting to take her immediately, she led them into the bedroom and had them both lie down, top to tail with her in between.
“Now,” she said. “I’m going to tie you two up and have some fun.”
Damon and Kadar looked at each other. What the hell?
Misty grinned. Live dangerously.
Perhaps that, in the end, was the real reason all that happened next occurred. They had been close to death, an adrenaline buzz like never before, and for Misty’s part, she hoped never again. Maybe it was because she took the initiative that risks for each of them now had a different meaning and they could let go in a way they never had before. But whatever it was, they all hoped they would find the same place again.
It started as she tied the final ties and the men realized that she had cuffed them in such a way that to pull was to tighten each other’s knots rather than free themselves. While it may have been possible for them to get out of the bonds, it wasn’t going to be easy. And then she had left them for what had seemed an age, but in reality had been just enough to heighten their expectations, to have the adrenaline levels at the optimal level.
When she returned, Misty was wearing killer heel boots borrowed from Bonnie, a black mask with feathers from a party, and nothing else…except the whip she was carrying—courtesy of the same party, though Bonnie had taken it then.
The adrenaline level went up a notch, even more when she cracked the whip and the noise cut through the air. They winced as though it had ripped across their flesh.
“So, will you do exactly what I say?”
Kadar grinned, at first tentative and then the wide happy grin that said any game was fine by him as long as she was in it. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And you?” she asked of Damon, running a fingernail down his abdomen and stopping just short of the tip of his cock that was poking out of his briefs.
“What if I don’t?” Damon said, staring at her, daring her to resist him.
“Then I would have to punish you,” Misty said. Moving over to Kadar, she sat across his thighs and rubbed his cock. “Maybe just make you watch.”
Damon grinned. Misty frowned. “Okay, maybe blindfold you so you wouldn’t know exactly what you were missing.”
This got a slightly more panicked response, for all of Damon’s attempts to hide it.
“But I think you’ll do what I want,” said Misty. “Because I really do need two men to pleasure me.”
She leant across to Damon and teased his cock out of his briefs, licking its end and taking him in her mouth until he moaned.
“So, are you going to behave?”
“Whatever you say, Mistress Misty,” said Damon, the smile in his eyes rather than on his lips.
She took it in turns, sucking them both, making them wait, savoring the power. Just looking at them, she was dying to let them sink their cocks into her, but instead she bided her time. There was plenty of it before their flight left the next day.
She sucked Kadar almost to orgasm, making Damon lick her as she sat on him. His tongue licked all around her lips, pushing into her pussy and circling her clit as she sucked Kadar’s cock into her mouth. He moaned, hips wriggling, then moaned all the more when she withdrew before he climaxed.
“You need to save yourselves,” she whispered into their ears. But when Kadar started to lick her as she took Damon into her mouth, she thought she had no need to wait herself, and she let the bubble of need expand, clamping her muscles as he nibbled urgently over her clit, and she let herself go.
“Just getting myself a drink, boys. Either of you want anything?” She didn’t wait for an answer but she brought back champagne, tipping it over them and licking it out of their navels and then pouring some into their mouths for champagne-flavored kisses.
Finally, she could wait no longer and sank herself onto Kadar’s cock. She saw Damon’s eyes on her as the shaft went right inside. She stared into his eyes and in that moment, allowed him to take her to their room.
Misty closed her eyes and disappeared, across centuries and continents, no longer knowing who or where she was and not caring. She felt completely safe, grounded to the earth by Kadar, her rock, while Damon fucked with her mind.
Now, as the holder of the Oracle medallion, Misty’s mind let her link to her previous identities. In each century, along with Damon’s other identities, they had tried unsuccessfully to fight the vampires and prevent their using viruses against their enemies.
“Come with me,” said Damon, but it wasn’t Damon, rather someone like him, but wearing an outfit more suitable for an Italian nobleman.
“Let’s go to bed and never leave,” said Damon as the French count.
“I shall
love you forever,” from the Swedish Damon.
“Together,” said the Chinese man, “we will rule the world.”
“Together,” said the wise man of Australia’s indigenous people, “we will save the world.”
Misty opened her eyes and stared into the eyes of the Queensland Damon with the slightly French accent. She let the orgasm explode through her, feeling and craving Kadar but desperate and fearful of her need for Damon, whose hands she could feel on her, though he remained tied up and apart.
She lay back, staring at the ceiling for a long time and hoped she was right. She kissed both of her men and undid their ties.
“I want you both in me, at once,” she said carefully.
It was Kadar that kissed her. “Be careful,” he said.
She looked at him, wondering how much he knew, how much he sensed and whether it mattered to him. He kissed her again, her eyelids and the tip of her nose. “I know you two are on a different plane to me,” he said. “But I also know, probably better than you, that you need me.”
Misty pushed him gently back onto the bed and sat over him once more, leaning into him and kissing him, for a moment all else, including Damon, in another distant place. Then she sat up, eyes once again on Damon, inviting him with her eyes to take her from behind, fill her completely, daring him to take her to places beyond any she had ever been before.
Damon moved behind her, whispering in her ears, hands gently over her ears, tickling and teasing, then moving over her nipples, pulling at them. Then his hands moved over her butt, opening her cheeks and brushing his cock over her opening.
“Ready?”
She had been waiting for five centuries, so yes, she was ready.
He took her, filling her so that he and Kadar had opened her mind and body to its maximum. The initial pressure gave way to electricity that went up and down her, and as she arched back, Damon’s hands on her breasts and Kadar’s on her clit, it was almost as if she was convulsing. Her arousal accelerated so fast she thought she wouldn’t be able to breathe, and then she was back in the room, this time with her Damon alone, him watching her silently. She knew then exactly what she had to do and that Damon, perhaps for the first time in all the centuries they had been coming up against each other, was going to let her do it. She invited Kadar into the room with them, and though there was a moment of confusion on his part and hesitancy when he entered, as soon as he was through the door, their orgasms went off, a wild mutual ride that took Misty’s mind racing through time until, finally satiated, she returned to the twenty-first century and slept.