The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening

by H. D. Strozier

  “Fuck,” she said again, dropping the pendant and starting to back away before turning all the way around and heading for the door.

  Marcel managed to get in front of it first and MaLeila was sure magic was involved because she hadn’t felt him brush by her. With him standing between her and the exit, MaLeila had no choice but fight him as he tried to approach her.

  “Move out the way,” she loudly, not particularly caring if someone heard her. Good. Let them.

  “Would you just listen for a moment?” Marcel asked grabbing her by her biceps.

  “No,” MaLeila said as muscle memory kicked. A few years ago one of their many foes managed to temporarily bind all their magic and would have killed MaLeila with her bare hands had not Devdan stepped in with his gun and blown the woman’s brains out. After her and Devdan’s initial argument over the incident, after which the two spent days not talking, he personally spent months teaching her efficient fighting techniques, some that many people would consider dirty. His response when she said that was that it became dirty the moment someone started a fight. She went back and forth between sometimes liking him and begrudgingly hating him back then, but now she was glad he forced her into it.

  She brought up her knee, going for Marcel’s groin. He grabbed her knee to stay it but let go of one of her arms. She used her free arm to jab Marcel in the face. Obviously he was used to taking a hit or two because although he let go he acted like he didn’t feel her punch and proceeded to block her arm when it came again. He twisted her arm to force her to turn her back to him and then grab her in a bear hug around her elbows and waist, lifting her off the ground.

  “MaLeila,” he began as he walked them over towards the bed, but she didn’t let him get any further. He had her off the ground which meant she couldn’t use her legs and her arms were locked, but since their heads were level, she tried a backwards headbutt.

  Marcel saw it coming and let her slip down in his grasp so her head butted his chest instead. Now that her feet were on the ground though, MaLeila shifted the center of her weight and used his tight grp around her as leverage to flip him over her shoulder onto the bed. It didn’t work like she anticipated. Instead of him also losing his grip on her, which would have given her a chance to bolt for the door while he reoriented himself, Marcel managed to keep some of his grip on her and bring her tumbling with him. His grip was lose enough to break free of him though and she thought she had gotten away temporarily before he grabbed her again. Then he flipped them over on the bed so that he was sitting on her hips. He grabbed her by both her wrists and pinned them to the bed.

  MaLeila struggled against him in vain, and Devdan hadn’t taught her a technique to get out of this kind of pin. And though he had taught her that when she was attacked or grabbed that she shouldn’t resist the attack but instead go with the flow of it to reduce injury and come back with an attack of her own, she wasn’t sure how to do that in this case. She was effectively trapped, but she didn’t want to resort to magic yet.

  “Let me go,” she said.

  “Listen.”

  “No.”

  “Well you’ve got no choice.”

  “How do you know Tsubame?”

  “My entire life… well not really but it may as well have been at this point,” Marcel said, not at all letting his guard down and loosening his grip on her.

  “That doesn’t even matter. You’re obviously part of her plan. She killed Fathi. You knew she wanted me and you brought me to her,” MaLeila said still struggling against him. “You used me.”

  “She didn’t kill Fathi. And I didn’t even know you were part of her plan. I don’t even know what her plan is,” Marcel said that same dry and knowing tone he always used when he talked about Tsubame.

  “Then how are you so sure about what she has and hasn’t done.”

  “Because even though most of the time I don’t know her plan unless she tells me in some way form or another, which she couldn’t have this time around because I haven’t seen her in over a year, didn’t even know where she was until we saw her on the news that day, I know her style. And something like poison is way too simple for her. She likes taking the credit for the things she’s done. She likes everyone to know what she’s done and what she’s getting up to and then doing it in a way that she can’t get in trouble for it. Poisoning Fathi and trying to pin it on the council doesn’t have enough flare. Trust me. She didn’t do it.”

  MaLeila huffed and turned her head to look away from him.

  “You expect me to trust you on this when all you’ve done is lie to me and use me for Tsubame’s sake for the past few months. Sure. I’ll certainly trust you,” MaLeila drawled sarcastically.

  “I didn’t use you,” Marcel snapped.

  Unfazed, MaLeila rolled her eyes.

  “Look at me,” Marcel demanded.

  He was the last person she was going to be taking any orders from, but MaLeila had never seen Marcel so beside himself because of something. Obviously she’d struck a nerve, so she turned her head back to look at him. His jaw was set and his eyes were hard and lacked the warmth that was usually there when she was in his presence.

  “I didn’t use you,” he said again.

  “Then I think we have different definitions of the word,” MaLeila growled.

  “If I had wanted to use you, if I just wanted to add you to a list of names and faces I don’t remember, you would have known. And if Tsubame had wanted you from the beginning, trust me when I say that she would have had you a long time,” Marcel said.

  Though MaLeila wanted to look away from him, she held his gaze unfalteringly. Then, after a few moments Marcel’s hard expression changed to one of exasperated weariness. He sighed and let her arms go and got off her hips. Still, he sat on the edge of the bed in a way that if MaLeila tried to dart way, he’d be able to trap her again. So she simply sat up, waiting for Marcel to come off his guard so she could dart away.

  “What does Tsubame want with you anyway?” Marcel asked.

  “You’re the one who knows so much about Tsubame. You tell me what the evil queen hell bent on world domination wants with me.”

  Marcel laughed and replied, “You think that’s all there is to it. That this is all as black and white as Tsubame is just like all the other delusional quacks that’s you’ve had to take down and stop from ripping tears in other dimensions and accidently destroying earth? That’s terribly naïve.”

  “Then what is Tsubame?”

  “What is the Magic Council?”

  MaLeila started to answer him, but then closed her mouth. As far as she had always been concerned, the Magic Council was a minor annoyance, always pestering her about her magic; the misguided elders stuck in their old ways and trying to make her conform to their silly traditions by any means possible even if it put her in danger, all for the greater good of the magical world and herself. But more and more lately she had seen that the Magic Council was much more than that. Manipulating nations if their negotiations with Fathi were anything to go by; constantly at a back and forth tug of war with the most powerful magic families for power and using who they needed to in order to get it under the great noble cause of keeping the magical world in order because no one else could or would do it. Very similar to Tsubame if she were honest. Seeing his point, MaLeila closed her mouth.

  “At least Tsubame’s honest about her intentions. Manipulative, but honest. And it’s about time someone knocked the Magic Council and the other families off their supposedly eternally shared throne.”

  “Not like this,” MaLeila said.

  “Then how?”

  “I… I don’t know. But this is wrong.”

  “Says who?” Marcel asked. “Says Bastet? Says the same people who groomed her to think that way, to act like sheep, who said it was being the bigger person, that it made more of a statement to not fight back? Who do you think put that idea out there? Who do you think spreads this supposed idea that you can destroy hate and wickedness with peace
and love? Why do you think they let people know about Ghandi and Martin Luther King’s idea of non-violence and why people haven’t forgotten it? Why they villainize anyone willing to fight them and go against the grain… kind of like they villainize you?”

  MaLeila pressed her lips together in contemplation, though her gaze was still hard. Then Marcel said, “Everything you’ve ever been taught about good and evil, right and wrong, dark and light is just a ploy to herd you along in the direction that the powers that be choose for everyone else to go in while at the same time making you think that you have your own mind. All to keep you from fighting against the real powers that be, to keep people from getting the revenge they rightfully deserve. Even when enough people do want to fight and manage to affect a change, the faces changes, so do the names, but the people in charge in the shadows, the systems that turns people into sheep to be herded? That hasn’t changed in millennia.”

  When MaLeila didn’t say anything, Marcel continued, “I didn’t know Tsubame’s plan, let alone that you became part of it, but I think I do know why she’s interested in you.”

  Marcel let the words hang in the air, and after a beat or two MaLeila figured out that he was waiting for her to ask him the reason herself. She shouldn’t do this. She shouldn’t play into this game, but her curiosity won out.

  “Why?” she asked, ignoring the nagging feeling that giving into her curiosity was just the beginning of her opening Pandora ’s Box.

  “Because you’re looking for a way get your revenge. The Magic Council and the families who have done nothing but given you nothing but hell? You want to knock them out for the count and you want everyone to know that you did it. You just don’t know how. But Tsubame knows exactly how and you know it. You want her help as much as she wants yours.”

  MaLeila huffed. “As if I want Tsubame’s help.”

  “You may not realize it yet, but you do. Deep down, in the recesses of your mind and heart, at the most instinctive level, under all that you think you know and believe about it, you want revenge. You want to know what it’s like to have the power, to do what you want, consequences be damned.”

  MaLeila breathed in and out lips pressed together as she tried and failed to come up with an argument, to deny what Marcel was saying to her only to be unable to. While she wanted nothing to do with Tsubame, she couldn’t deny that many times in the past and even more times lately as she watched the magic council and the head magic families bully and force Fathi into a compromise that suited them that she hadn’t wanted to knock them down a peg or two and see them fall victim to their own schemes by her hand.

  Instead of replying she got off the bed and started to the door while saying, “Bullshit.”

  Marcel didn’t get up to stop her, but he did laugh and say, “I doubt it. You wouldn’t be reacting like this, trying to run away from me if there weren’t at least some truth in it. That’s why you’re so uncomfortable around her. You’ve been raised your whole life whether you knew it consciously or not to think that what you’re feeling is wrong, greedy, immoral, arrogant, you name it but you don’t want to disappoint anyone if you were to act on those feelings.”

  “So what are you saying?” MaLeila asked turning to face him. “To take up Tsubame’s offer and be her prodigy.”

  “Not at all,” Marcel said as he stood up and went to stand in front of her. “I’m saying fuck what everyone else thinks, what everyone else says you should and shouldn’t want and follow your instincts, that base primal instinct that tells you everything you want and need and urges you to get it by any means necessary. And if you can do that and still tell me that I’m wrong, you can run out that door to Bastet and Devdan and let them tell you what to do.”

  MaLeila silently held Marcel’s gaze as the logical part of her told her to turn around and go find Bastet and Devdan. But she didn’t want to. Part of it was pride because both Bastet and Devdan had warned her that situations like this could happen. The other part of it was that MaLeila wasn’t sure if she wanted to leave, if she wanted to tell Bastet and Devdan at least part of what Tsubame had planned and that Marcel, however unknowing he was about it, was involved. A part of her wanted to keep it to herself all the while dreading what exactly that meant—if it meant that on some level she wasn’t conscious of, Marcel was more right than MaLeila was willing to admit he was.

  “What if I don’t want to go to Bastet and Devdan?”

  “Do whatever that instinct tells you whether it’s going to Tsubame herself, the council, the Longs, go get a drink,” Marcel said with a shrug and then added, “Or don’t go anywhere. Stay right here. Whatever it is don’t put too much thought in it. Go with your base feelings.”

  MaLeila wasn’t sure that he dropped his tone an octave or two into a husky base on purpose or not, but either way his last statement sounded more like a flirty invitation that it probably was. Or maybe he had meant it that way. It didn’t help that he was in such close proximity to her with his shirt off, gazes locked. Even at a distance, MaLeila felt the heat radiating from Marcel, which caused a heat that she was becoming more and more familiar with to pool in her stomach. She shouldn’t give in to it, she shouldn’t let it dictate her, but fuck. Instinct it was.

  She closed the distance between them, put her hands on his shoulders and pulled herself up to press her lips hard against his. He responded immediately, pressing his lips as hard against hers as he could as though trying to meld them together. The kiss was hungry, more than hungry, it was primal, stemming from an inner desire to be wild, to be rebellious, to do something that others would have said was wrong. It was selfish and she might regret it later or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d regret it more if she left. MaLeila decided not to think about it too much, for once deciding to let her primal instincts take over and right now it along with the heat building in her core and burning uncomfortably in her body was telling her she wanted to be fucked.

  Marcel seemed to agree, he pushed her against the wall and begin to hike up the long dress she hadn’t bothered taking off. When it was gathered around her waist, he pulled down her panties and while he did that, MaLeila got off his belt and undid his pants before she tucked her fingers in the waist of his pants and briefs and tugged them down. MaLeila then grabbed his erection with her whole hand, moving it up and down his length, arousal pooling between her legs as he kissed her face, her lips, the hollow of her neck, and lifted her right leg around his waist. She guided his length to her entrance and once they were aligned, he thrust inside her. It wasn’t gentle, nor would MaLeila have appreciated it in this frame of mind if Marcel had been. It was hard, rough, fast, and fuck it felt so good it was painful as he thrusted inside her, the tight coil of heat inside her getting tighter in some kind of resistance to the assault inside her, building the anticipation at the inevitability of one hell of a release to follow; her restrictive dress agitating her sensitive skin and making the tight coil all the more worse.

  “Fuck, Marcel. Faster. Make me come,” she said.

  He thrust into her harder, to the point where each thrust lifted her slightly off the ground. She gasped as the tightness reached its peak and released. She let out a longer moan with it, continuing to moan and whimper loudly as Marcel continued to thrust inside her even as he released inside her. They didn’t even waste time trying to urge each other to be quiet or muffle each other’s moans with kisses. Fuck if anyone heard.

  He dropped her leg once he was out of her and MaLeila grabbed onto his arms to steady herself so she wouldn’t fall, only to cause them both to stumble and have to brace themselves against the wall. Marcel stepped out his pants and briefs which had pooled around his ankles and kicked them to the side before slowly guiding them both to slide down the wall and lie on the carpet. They exchanged kisses all the while trying to catch their breath, the need to breathe seeming trivial compared to the ache to be fucked that had only increased rather than been sated. Eventually she reached down to grab his soft member and began to gently massage it
in her hands until it was hard again, while he reached down to pull up the hem of her dress, a feat made hard since it was stuck to her sweaty skin and her weight against the carpet gave it little slippage.

  “Damn dress,” Marcel muttered as he stood up and then reached down to stand her up on still shaky legs. He kissed her, tongue thrusting between her lips and reaching to the back of her mouth as he started to pull up the hem of the dress. He tried to press her against him, but then pushed her back and groaned as the rough beading of the dress scratched on and irritated his skin.

  Marcel reached behind her to try to undo the dress, but couldn’t figure out the elaborate buttons. In frustration he turned her around so he could see and began to undo the expanse of snaps and buttons.

  “I hate this fucking dress,” Marcel muttered.

  “You liked it a couple of hours ago,” MaLeila pointed out.

  “Right now I’d prefer you naked,” Marcel said as he finally finished undoing the buttons.

  MaLeila shrugged out the sleeves and Marcel pulled the dress down over her hips where it pooled to the floor. While she stepped out of it and kicked it to the side, Marcel undid her bra and let it slide down MaLeila’s arms onto the floor. He grabbed her onto her hips and entered her from behind. MaLeila fell onto her elbows on the bed as he thrust in her just as hard and fast as before.

  MaLeila couldn’t think if she wanted to as she moaned and yelped with every thrust. He couldn’t keep up the relentless pace though, not standing, and he pulled out of her.

  “Why’d you’d stop?” MaLeila asked breathlessly.

  Marcel didn’t answer her, only climbing on the bed in response and helping MaLeila to join him. She lied forward on her stomach and he entered her from behind again before lying on top of her. He rolled his hips with his next thrust, and then leaned his head over her shoulder to lock his lips with her and catch her moans.

  “Marcel,” she said, trying to pull her lips away from him. He wouldn’t let her, but in between their kissing she managed, “Make me come. Please.”