by Wyatt Kane
Ty hadn’t seen her come in and had no idea how long she had been there. All he knew was that she was looking at him with deep concern in her eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Even though he wasn’t sure that he was, Ty nodded. “I just…” But he didn’t know what to say.
Tempest nodded anyway. “It’s okay,” she said.
Ty took a deep, steadying breath, and nodded again. “I’m okay,” he said, speaking with more confidence this time.
“Good to hear. You did well.” Tempest said.
Ty did what he could to push the horrors of the fight away and looked at her. “Lilith?” he asked.
“She’s gone. And so are all the others. The prisoners.”
“She said she found him,” Ty said. “Her stepfather. I told her to take him – all of them – to safety.”
“Good,” Tempest said, sounding relieved.
They lapsed into silence for a time, neither of them saying anything. Tempest just continued to hold Ty’s hand, seemingly content to sit with him for as long as he needed.
It worked. After a while, Ty felt better. He knew he would do the same thing again if the situation called for it. It was just that he hadn’t been prepared for the sight and smell of so much carnage.
No game could duplicate it. Nor would he want to play one that did.
Ty looked at Tempest’s beautiful face and started to smile. “Home?” he said.
Tempest returned his grin. “Home,” she agreed.
43: A Comfortable Chat
Ty, Tempest, and Dinah were relaxing in the cozy den at the end of a long day, all three of them enjoying the long, leather couch, with Gremlin curled up on the deerkin’s lap. The remnants of a cheese platter complete with grapes and sliced melons lay on the coffee table, and there was soothing music playing in the background.
Ty was feeling very comfortable wedged between the two amazing women. He’d made a point to shower when he and Tempest arrived, and while it hadn’t negated the things he had seen and done, he at least felt refreshed.
He was at once satisfied and disappointed with the outcome of Lilith’s rescue. They were no closer to stopping Bain and the Master’s plans than they had been before. Yet they had freed Lilith, and she in turn had done as Ty said and teleported the other prisoners to safety.
As usual, Tempest and Ty had brought Dinah up to date with everything that had happened. There weren’t any cameras near the decommissioned prison that the deerkin could access, so she hadn’t been able to see the action as it transpired.
But she had seen evidence of Lilith dropping the prisoners off at a local hospital.
There were more than a dozen in all. Men and women both, and the most surprising thing to Ty was that Dinah knew some of them.
“I looked into their records as they were admitted to the hospital,” the deerkin said. “You remember how I thought I recognized Lilith? Well, she wasn’t the only one.” Dinah glanced at Tempest. “We both know some of them.”
The deerkin activated a holographic screen on the den wall. It was smaller than the one in her screen room, but it was more than enough for her purpose. She brought up the list of names, complete with images of the people they belonged to, and Tempest responded with confusion.
“But … how?” the blonde superhero said.
Ty had no clue what they were talking about. “I don’t understand,” he said.
It was Dinah who explained. “During the Architect’s experiments, he had a list of people he was looking at as potential wearers of his device. As you know, not many people have an actual skill locked away in their DNA. Of those that do, only a few of them showed the personality characteristics he was looking for. In particular, he was looking for people who are neutral-good. Those who would act to help others in need, but who weren’t necessarily bound by the rule of law.” She shrugged. “Like us,” she said.
At that point, Tempest took over the narrative. “My father rejected those who didn’t fit the profile. True neutral, anything to do with evil, those who are drawn to chaos. Lawful good as well. These people – I remember them. They were on his list.”
As the blonde superhero spoke, she sounded decidedly glum.
“But how?” Ty asked, unconsciously repeating Tempest’s question.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she said. “That’s why I asked if the Master’s voice matched that of my father. It doesn’t, so whoever he is, it isn’t him. But my father is involved. Somehow. There’s no other way the Master could have identified these people.”
Ty nodded, understanding. To his mind, the Architect had to be complicit in the Master’s plans, or, like Lilith, he was being coerced. Either way, the Architect was part of it.
But there was another implication as well. “This Master. Why would he need these people unless he was planning to give them devices as well?”
It was a sobering thought, but one to which there was no response.
The conversation drifted, with Ty and Tempest taking turns to fill Dinah in, but Ty avoiding some of the more horrific details. When they spoke of Lilith, the deerkin asked a question.
“Do you think she’ll cause trouble?” she asked.
Ty shook his head. “I don’t think so. She asked Tempest to hurt her rather than let the people on the pendulum ride suffer, and that was with her stepfather’s life under threat. And she took all those people to safety. She didn’t need to do that. She could have just taken her father and disappeared.”
Tempest went further. “I don’t think we’ve the last of her though. She knows where we are, and can find us through our devices. And from what I could see, she seems to have a thing for our Ty,” she said.
Her words caught Ty by surprise, but she said it in a way he couldn’t clearly interpret. He didn’t know if it was an accusation or just a statement of fact. He heard hints of jealousy and anger, but pride as well, as if she was happy that someone like Lilith would find her man attractive.
Ty didn’t know what to say, so said nothing at all. But Dinah grinned broadly. “She can’t have him,” she said. “He’s mine!” Then her grin grew even broader. “Or ours, if you insist.”
“Oh, I do, I absolutely do insist!” Tempest replied, and there was such an overtone of ownership that Dinah pulled a face of mock dismay.
“You’ll have to fight me for him,” the deerkin declared, and before Ty knew it, both women had picked up cushions, Gremlin was running for her life, and he was in the midst of a battle.
Tempest and Dinah were grinning and laughing as they attacked each other with cushions around Ty. For the first few moments, he tried to protect himself against an inadvertent battering. But he knew that wasn’t a winning strategy, so instead, he turned toward Tempest, grinned broadly and tackled her.
“Hey, no fair!” the blonde superhero cried, still grinning. “Two against one!”
Ty shot a glance and Dinah. “Sounds fair to me,” he said. “Don’t you think?”
It was all the invitation the deerkin needed. She discarded her cushion and leaped onto them both with an expression of maniacal glee, and Ty learned something important about Tempest.
She was ticklish. The most super of superheroes that existed turned into a giggling, writhing, helpless mess when the deerkin dug her fingers into her sides, and there seemed to be nothing she could do about it.
Ty thought it looked like fun, so he joined in as well, then abruptly switched his attention to Dinah.
The deerkin gave a whoop of surprise and collapsed into just as helpless a mess as Tempest, and all of a sudden Ty had the upper hand over two giggling, writhing women.
But it didn’t last long. Tempest was still Tempest, and Ty had made a tactical error. He wasn’t wearing his projector discs. He couldn’t activate his shield.
The blonde superhero bore his attentions for only so long, then all of a sudden, Ty somehow found himself on his back with Tempest on top of him. Dinah joined in, and Ty then learned that sometimes there was
only one thing to do.
“I surrender!” he cried as he laughed.
It did him no good at all. He found himself completely smothered in wonderfully firm and yet surprisingly soft female flesh, and their hands were everywhere. Yet at some point, their intent changed from tickling into something else entirely, and Ty stopped trying to fight them off even in jest.
The three of them made love right there in the den, enjoying each other’s bodies with abandon. Ty found that even after the events at the prison, he could give himself to these woman completely and be deliriously happy. For him, even though he’d been with each of them separately during the day, it felt like it had been ages since he’d enjoyed them both together.
All of them reveled in their shared passion and affection, and just like when teleporting with Lilith, time lost all meaning. At some point, Gremlin came back into the den and meowed at them, but none of them paid her the slightest attention. She stared at them for a few seconds, then wandered over to one of the chairs and settled herself down to sleep.
Eventually, once they were sated, Ty found himself lying among the small pile of naked, exhausted bodies of the women he’d so quickly come to love. None of them had suggested heading off to bed. It seemed that the couch was large and comfortable enough for them to share.
Idly, Ty wondered what Lilith might be up to at that moment, and hoped that she was happy and safe.
Then, as he drifted toward sleep, he started to think about what he needed to do when he woke. He still had some work to do on his suit, and Bain and his Master were still out there. But from a more practical perspective, he still needed to sort out his job situation, and the hole in his apartment wall had become a major issue.
Other than that, there was little that he needed to worry about.
Or so he thought.
<<<>>>
It was several hours after midnight when an alert jerked all three of them – and Gremlin – awake.
Tempest grumbled wordlessly in a semi-asleep state and Ty blinked in the dark. This time, it wasn’t his alarm.
“Sorry,” Dinah muttered. “That’s my tablet. It isn’t supposed to do that unless it’s important. I’ll see what it’s all about.”
She climbed over Ty to the pile of clothes on the floor, and Ty found himself drifting off once again.
But it wasn’t to last. “Hey you two, wake up,” Dinah said.
Ty was instantly alert, as was Tempest. Despite the urgency in Dinah’s voice, Ty couldn’t help but stare at both her and Tempest. Fully clothed, each of them was stunning. Naked, either of them would be enough to stop an old man’s heart dead in his chest.
Together, and Ty thought he knew what Heaven was like. Or should be, at least.
It was a gift he would never grow tired of.
Yet despite her lack of attire, Dinah was once again all business. She’d activated the den’s screen and synched it with her tablet.
“It’s a message from Rubio,” she said.
“Rubio?” Tempest muttered, her voice grumpy with sleep. “What does he want at this time of night?”
“Let’s see, shall we?” Dinah replied.
44: A New Threat
The deerkin opened the message. It was a video file, and within moments the face of the crime lord filled the screen.
It was Rubio Vecoli, almost as large as life, as blocky and urbane as he had been in the bistro.
“Is this on?” he asked someone off camera. “Good. Good.” He sat back a little, relaxing. “Technology,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I don’t care for it, mostly. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly useful, and I wouldn’t want to do without it. But I prefer if other people actually work with it, you know?”
He smiled at the camera. “Anyway. Enough of that. Tempest, Ty, and Dinah, I do hope I’ve remembered that right. I just wanted to let you know that we took your suggestion and investigated those rumors in more depth. And you’ll never guess what we found.”
The man paused for a moment, as if intentionally building the suspense. “We found the lab. It was making something that I’m sure you’ll find interesting. In part of it, they were growing a peculiar crystal that my guys tell me is exceptionally rare, and quite valuable in its own right.”
As soon as the gangster said those words, Ty felt his heart sink. He didn’t want to hear the rest, fearing what the man might say and hoping he wouldn’t. Yet he had no choice. He had to be sure.
“In another part, they were putting together a piece of technology I’d seen only a few times before,” the crime lord continued. “It’s a device just like the ones you wear on your wrists.”
Just like that, Ty’s fears were confirmed. But Rubio hadn’t finished.
“They must have been working on the devices for some time. My men interrupted a shipment of about twenty of them.”
Both Tempest and Dinah made small noises of shock and deep concern. Ty didn’t move or say anything. What the crime lord was saying was too awful to contemplate.
Rubio Vecoli leaned forward, into the camera, and this time his grin was demonic. “When last we met, we talked about a deal,” he said. “The way I see it, things have changed. I don’t think I’ll need a favor from you any more. With these devices, I can make my own favors.”
Still grinning, the man leaned back again. “We’re going ahead with our expansion, and you can rest assured that I now have other things in mind as well. I’m sure you’ll want to continue disrupting our enterprises. Consider this a courtesy warning. We may not be the easy targets we have been the past.”
With that Rubio chuckled deep in his chest. “Turn that thing off,” he said to someone, and the screen went blank.
For a moment, none of them said anything. They were all in shock.
Tempest was the first to recover. “Well. That could make life interesting,” she said, in what Ty thought of as a potentially massive understatement.
Author’s Note
First, THANK YOU! for reading the my Enhancer stories. I hope you have enjoyed reading them as much as I’m enjoying writing them.
Book three is already in process, and I hope to have it out within a couple of months. In the meantime, if you enjoyed my book (and I really hope you did), it really, really helps if you write a review on Amazon. Go on, I know you want to. Head back to where you got this book and let others know what you thought. And remember, please don’t include any spoilers. :-)
I understand that Amazon is making it harder for people to leave a review, so if you can’t, I understand, but if you can, a short sentence or two is as useful as a full-on, in-depth analysis.
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Until next time,
Wyatt.