The Bottom Rung

by Sam Hall

  His commands rankled but the long, slippery caress of Bennett’s tongue against my slit had me complying. He wasted no time, lunging for my groin and burying his head in it. “Ah!” I cried and Gavin pulled me back to swallow it down. His tongue forced itself into my mouth, getting caught on my fangs, the burst of blood sending pulses through my cunt just as Bennett suckled on my clit. Lyra’s hum grew louder as I twisted in their grip, the violent wracking of pleasure something I was unable to sit still for.

  “I want to fuck you, like the first time,” Gavin said as I moaned, hoisting me up in his arms when I didn’t complain. My arms were forced to wind back around his neck as his hands gripped my thighs, almost presenting me bare to Bennett. His cock nudged at my folds and I wriggled in his grip, but he whispered soothing encouragement.

  “Oh fuck!” I said as he pushed himself inside me, a slow inexorable process, one I could no longer fight. I was dimly aware that I didn’t like being in such a vulnerable position, but the sensation… My cunt twitched and spasmed around him as he moved, my clit aching for attention in the cool air. As if noted, Bennett’s moved in and flicked it with his tongue.

  I was lost, a small body tossed around on a rough sea, wave after wave of pleasure threatening to drown me but I couldn’t bring myself to fight back. Something swelled inside me as if each drag of Gavin’s cock stroked a place I could never touch. It felt like it was growing huge, a great tsunami hanging over me, ready to obliterate me and take me under.

  “Uh!” I cried. My cunt snapped tight around Gavin as he pounded, spasming and flexing, grasping at his cock like a million fingers. He wasn’t far behind me, bursting in a hot pulse. I was transferred gently, placed on top of Bennett’s prone body. “You got another in you?” he asked, then scraped the hair back from his neck. I smiled my jagged vicious smile and moved like a cat over him. He was easier to slide in; my cunt was dripping but I almost winced at the burn as his cock stretched me to my limit.

  “Mmm,” I hummed along with Lyra. In some ways this was different, my initial hunger satisfied. As I moved, slowly, languorously up and down Bennett’s cock, I watched the strain on his face, the way his body, his hands, sought to take over, to push me, then surrendered back to the experience. Fucking him was like taking just one more mouthful of something delicious, beyond the point of satiation. The pleasure bursting in my body not needed, but somehow more decadent now that I didn’t. I dropped down low, breathing his scent in, licking his skin. He placed his hands on either side of my face, forcing me to gaze into his almost grey eyes, making me watch the way his pupils flared in time with my thrusts, the desperation building there.

  “Give me more,” he said, pleading. “Bite me, fuck me hard, Lethe!” I just shook my head, maintaining my lazy place. Despite his protest, I could feel the swell of his cock inside me, pushing me to my limits, making it harder for me to move over him.

  “You come when I say so,” I growled, and pushed his head to one side, using it as a steadying point as my hips began to snap faster. “You’re mine, mine to fuck, mine to feed from.”

  “Oh, fuck yes,” he groaned. I reared back, watching him struggle beneath me and then I struck. His blood burst into my mouth just as I was dimly aware of my body falling over into orgasm. Which was better, the rhythmic pulses of my clit as his hips bucked or the long pulls of blood I was swallowing down?

  There was no difference. He was emptying himself into me just as I was drawing his blood into my mouth. I was taking, draining him. The ripples up my spine didn’t seem to want to stop like my cunt was trying to force more cum out of him, I was cumming and cumming and cumming. Finally, I pulled away, flopping down on the wet floor. “Lyra,” I gasped, “take us to the boys’ place.”

  Once dry, we snuggled down into the warm depths of the bed, not bothering with the lights, the darkness feeling like black fur and silk on my skin. I took my place between the boys, their limbs twining around mine and then gave myself up to unconsciousness.

  14

  Hesse

  Hesse Corp building

  Meridian City

  Hesse scanned through the email again, his heart rate beginning to pick up a little as he read and reread the report. Was this it? Was something finally going to happen? He picked up his phone and punched in the number for the observation centre responsible for the report. “Hesse,” he said when it was answered, his name enough to put his employees on notice to attend to him. “I need to speak to either Anderson or Juniper about the Ladder obs they sent me.” He grabbed a pen, twirling it between his fingers as they scurried to do his bidding.

  “Hello, sir, this is Anderson.”

  “Excellent, I need to discuss the results collected yesterday from the Ladder. There was some serious movement detected at the sight. Has this been cross-referenced with seismological data for the day and anything else that might create a false positive?”

  “Yes, sir. As soon as we saw the spike, we were on the phone to all the different agencies. As far as we can tell, the disturbance is not meteorological or geological in origin. When that was verified it was sent to you. I can send you those other reports as well if you like.”

  “No, no, I am happy to take your word for it. Right. Anderson, I need you to listen closely as this is of the utmost importance. I’ll be down in,” he looked at the gold watch on his wrist, “half an hour to speak to your unit leader. In the meantime, I want you to take a copy of all of the raw data for the day from all of our observation centres, and transfer it to my private encrypted server. Ask the tech,” he paused to look over at the org chart, “it looks like Wilson is yours. Speak to Wilson if you have need, he’s familiar with this. Tell him to initiate an Deos protocol, and give him the data to transfer. Am I clear?”

  “Of-of course, sir. I’ll get on it immediately.”

  “See that you do. I’ll inform your team, but I need to stress, any leak of this information will result in the immediate suspension of any and all staff involved. If you all want to go home to your family tonight, your business unit will remain tight as a virgin’s cunt, am I clear?”

  “Crystal, sir.”

  “Good man, good man. There’ll be a bonus for you and Juniper. Excellent pick-up, you followed the validation process to a T.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I look forward to meeting you.” He dropped the phone in its cradle, smiling to himself, turning around to face the wall of windows that made up the rear of his office. His eye instinctively sought the thin black line of the Ladder, following it up to where it disappeared into the sullen clouds. Maybe this time…

  His head jerked up at a knock on his door. “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” one of his security heads appeared unbidden in the doorway, waiting to be admitted. Hesse frowned, then gestured to the seat on the other side of his desk. “I’ve brought the unfulfilled kill orders for you to look over. There’s one on here that should’ve been automatic, the subject was fitted with a compliance tracer.”

  Hesse skimmed the list, noting the highlights and annotations added by his employee. “A compliance tracer fail is highly unusual. Get in contact with the Acquiescence Tech team and see what’s going on. Test a few on some of the subjects we have in the vault to make sure they’re still functioning and report back. Looks like she was one of the 256 series,” he said, tapping the paper. “They were a strange bunch, not many of them left alive. Some promising mutations, some of the test results I thought ... but they didn’t develop into anything useful. If the tracers appear to be functional, activate the girl’s GPS implant and find her. You’ll no doubt find her corpse decaying somewhere in the Quarter, then report back.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  15

  Lethe

  Gavin and Bennett’s House

  Vampire Sector

  The Quarter

  So, what will it do to them? I asked Lyra as I looked down at the sleeping boys.

  Why would you want to do this? You felt exactly what a vampire f
eels. Why would you take that away from them?

  This was never what they were meant to be. If their bloody mother hadn’t dumped them here, they would’ve grown up OK on the other side of the Wall.

  And unless you want to go back in time, that makes no difference. They did grow up here, they chose the change. You’re going to reverse the choice they made.

  “Hey,” Bennett said, looking up at me with a sleepy smile. “You should’ve woken me.” He reached for me and I allowed myself to be pulled down beside him, his brother shifting in his sleep, slinging an arm around my waist and pulling me close to him. Bennett smiled, moving closer until I was sandwiched between their hard bodies. “You sore?” he asked, trailing a hand up my hip.

  “No.”

  His smile grew brighter and he slid a hand under my cheek, drawing me in for a kiss. His lips were gentle, ghosting across the corner of mine, pulling away when I moved to deepen it. He grinned, then shifted half above me, his hard cock pushing against my thigh, the kiss growing hard, open-mouthed and demanding. He drew away just as my legs began to fall open. “I still can’t believe you’re here. It’s like life’s given us another chance.”

  I moved under him, pushing myself up on my elbows, forcing him back. “What if you had a second chance?”

  “What?” his eyes dropped lower down my body, “I thought that’s what we were doing here?”

  “I’m serious, Ben. What if you had a second chance at life? Would you have gone to Rohan and gone through the change?”

  He looked away, then rolled over, reaching for a packet of smokes and lighting one up, sitting cross-legged on the bed. “Of course. I know you don’t like Rohan. You shouldn’t, the man’s a cunt, but Lethe, you gotta see, we had no choice.”

  “But what if you did have a choice? What if you could take it back, be human again, go home to the other side of the Wall?”

  “How am I going to get past the Wall?

  “I can, and therefore, you can.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I came back different. I’ve got powers now.”

  “I saw that. Look, Lethe, all we can remember is the Crèche. The Quarter’s our home. We got Rohan to turn us because we wanted a good place within it. Even if I could revert to being human, I wouldn’t. Every friend, every person I’ve ever been close to apart from you and Marley, is at the Palace. I’ve fought shoulder to shoulder with brothers and sisters there I know will always have my back. Why would I turn on them so I could go and be some low life on the other side?”

  “Don’t you have family back there?”

  “Can’t have. Why else would we have landed in the Crèche? No place for us in Meridian, even if I could get beyond the Wall.”

  “Morning,” Gavin said with a rasp. “What are you two going on about? Ben, we gotta be at the Palace in an hour. We’re due on the border at 10.” His eyes flicked to me, his hand reaching up to stroke my cheek. “I’d half convinced myself you were a dream.” He smiled slowly, "We don’t have long, but there’s a way we can all get off, time-efficient wise if you’re up for it.”

  “You’re going to fight, to die for that dickhead?” I said, frowning. “For what? A position in his ridiculous fucking court?”

  Gavin looked away, struggling out from under the covers to emerge naked, forcing me to watch his long lean form disappear into the en suite. “Lethe, this is our choice,” Bennett said. “You made yours, to stay independent of the vamps or the witchbreed and we respected it.”

  “I gotta go,” I said, clambering over the bed to get to my clothes.

  “Lethe,” he grabbed my ankle and hauled me back, pinning me under him.

  “Let me go.”

  “Lethe.”

  I let my body go limp on the bed, letting the sudden wash of anger whistle through my teeth as I took deep breaths. “Bennett, I need to go. I have things to do as well. If you think I’m lying around in bed, waiting to see if you come back alive…”

  “Of course not. I just wanted you here for half an hour more, an hour tops.” He smiled down at me, boxing me with a cocoon of his golden-brown flesh, shifting his hips against mine.

  “Later,” I said, putting a hand on his chest and pushing. He rolled off me with a sigh. “Don’t get killed, I’ll be back tonight.”

  Why on earth would you want to leave all that? Lyra said as he left to get dressed. There are some quite delicious positions I assume it’s unlikely you’ve tried due to the juvenile origins of your relationship. I was provided with a rapid flicker of increasingly pornographic images of me between the two boys, some positions ones I’d never have come up with on my own. Where do you need to be, except in their arms? Unless you had someone else, preferably several someone else’s in mind?

  Later, I said, I need to go to the Palace in your form.

  Oh? Going to make a little power play? Well, that’s even better. Of course, you can. As my avatar, you can take my form whenever you want.

  16

  Lethe

  Palace of the Vampires

  Vampire Sector

  The Quarter

  Apparently, this meant appearing on the steps of the Palace in a ball of flame. I landed in a cat-like position, legs crouched, arms outstretched. The reactions were instantaneous, plenty of vamps milled around the steps of the Palace, obviously gathering for the stupid mission Rohan had planned. Eyes widened, hands strayed to guns, but others, they dropped to their knees, almost involuntarily. Make the guns too hot to hold if they look like they’re going to shoot, I said to Lyra. I stalked up the steps, neatly stepping around the grasping hands as I went, ignoring the whispered questions. I stepped into the darkened main hall of the Palace and walked towards the throne room. “You can’t…” one guard said and I flicked a hand, sending him slamming into the walls. Vamps came pouring into the hallways, clad in armour or skin and blood, narrowing the pathway, then closing in to block my path.

  I stopped, looking them all over, “I am your goddess,” I said, my voice seeming to fill all the space around us and echo down the hall. “You will bow down before me.”

  You have quite the flair for dramatics, Lyra said as the host of vamps went down, some slower than others, but when the silence settled, they all stared up at me from the floor. You realise you have announced your position very clearly. Thankfully you’ve taken my form, it’s only your boys who know your true one. There’s no way to contain the knowledge that an avatar walks the earth to this faction of the Quarter. True believers tend to be terribly vocal about these things.

  What choice do I have? I said. I could fuck around, taking the circuitous route, sticking to the shadows or I could just get things done. I don’t want the boys fighting in a turf war.

  And you achieve this by subduing the entire vampire Horde? That seems a little excessive, even by my standards and I used to hold a hundred-day festival where I drained vampires to the point of death on every one of them.

  You told me to change them to make me feel safe.

  I think I underestimated the depth of your fear. At any rate, they’re no longer a threat. Shall we see what that fetching little king is up to?

  “Move,” I said and the vamps shuffled back as one to clear the way. “I come to see the king.”

  Don’t call him king in future, people will assume you validate his position. Call him Rohan.

  Got it, I said, and walked on down the hall.

  Rohan’s lieutenants hadn’t gotten the message by the time I arrived at the grand entrance, but their protests fell unspoken from their lips when they saw me up close. Lyra had the doors slam open of their own accord and I walked down the steps to the king. While he was just about to send a bunch of his people to fight a petty dispute, he stood on the dais, cock thrusting into the white bent double before him. Another was twined between his legs, lapping at his ball sack as he jerked back and forth. Two more raked their hands down his well-muscled chest, leaving trails in the faint sweat there, pulling at his nipples. The last had his face buri
ed in Rohan’s arse.

  “So sorry to interrupt,” I said. The many-limbed organism fell apart at this, pale eyes blinking up at whoever it was that was dumb enough to provoke the king. Rohan didn’t, his fingers digging into the now distracted white, forcing her back onto his dick for several more strokes before groaning, holding her fast as he emptied his load. His golden spiky hair was a messy halo as he pulled himself from the girl, letting her fall to the floor, his dick dripping.

  Oh my, that’s quite the specimen, Lyra said. The vampire kings of old had this delightful ritual where they nibbled their way from my feet to my…

  Not Rohan, he’s a dick.

  And what a dick it is. Whether due to Lyra’s intervention or because I just couldn’t look away, my eyes flicked over to the organ in question, still mostly hard and flopping onto his belly as he reclined naked on his throne. He was big, like really, really big. The boys, Nathaniel, all pushed me to the limits and a little further, but the king? Looked like he had to be bigger than everyone else in all things.

  That would pull my cervix out on the downstroke, I said.

  Mmm, perhaps, you’d be surprised at how accommodating this body can be.

  If monster cock takes your fancy, we’ll go trawl the werewolf camp, now stop distracting me, I need to make the king of the vampires submit to me.

  Rohan noted my gaze and smiled slightly, nodding as if it was his due. “Now,” he said, “who the fuck are you to interrupt my morning revels?”

  I didn’t answer until I’d climbed the dais, not even looking down as I stepped over his discarded lovers. My eyes burned into his weird amber ones, his smile never faltering for a moment. I stopped just short of his grasp. Can I take the lead here? Lyra said. Vampire kings are cocky bastards and I’m well used to bringing them into line. I mentally shrugged, Sure, but don’t fuck him. It was a strange sensation, my body moving without its own volition. I bent down, my hand wrapping around the king’s jaw, leaning in close as if I would kiss him. Tiny micro-expressions flickered across his face, a momentary frown, a twitch of his eye and then, his pupils blew out huge and filled his eyes. His breath came hard and his eyes dropped to my lips as if he hadn’t just had a team of albinos catering to his every sexual whim. He shifted slightly, wanting to come closer, to fill the gap. “Get down on your knees,” Lyra said.