Jumlin's Spawn (13 page)

Severin set down the argon laser before him. “Hoka
hey!” he shouted into the cave’s depths. “Micaje Severin. Mato Tuwe
Ehate. waun ki yunke-lo!”

Like the scream of a tornado ripping down a city, the
roar of the black angel’s wings unfolding deafened Elfie. Its eyes
expanded to reveal ice-white burning orbs.

“Hecheto welo, mi hohe,” the black angel roared its
reply. “Ohunko kola.”

“Ai,” Severin replied.

Elfie understood only bits. Severin had identified
himself as Laughing Bear’s death. Laughing Bear had basically said
“bring it on”.

The black angel thundered, as if to make its voice
echo throughout the Angel Caves, “Haho! Ya au lila wiya waste! Aku
la!”

With a whispery sound of labored breathing, another
figure emerged from the dark. Oliver stood there, ashen from a
dearth of light and lack of pigment, his hands hanging down oddly
from his shoulders. Oliver always folded his arms when he stood
still.

You must try to lure him toward you,
Severin
had said
.

Okay, she knew how to do this. She’d done this often
enough with other men. She shook her hair free of her collar. She
stripped off her over-shirt and tossed it down.

“Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than
curse the darkness,” Elfie said. “Who said that, Oliver? You
remember?”

The eyes stared deadly. He said nothing.

“Terry Pratchett, remember?” Elfie said, as if
half-pleading. “You remember him; he’s one of your favorite
writers.”

Something in Oliver’s eyes brightened. Half-naked,
except for the remnants of his slacks, he stepped fully out of the
darkness. His arms seemed more tightly muscled as they gleamed in
the ambient glow. His hair shone more brightly. Even his eyes
burned bluer than before. Elfie struggled to ignore it all.

"Anything you think can be held against you,” she
gasped out, quoting again, while taking a full step back. “Who said
that? You remember, Oliver.”

“Phil Dick,” he said, in something closely resembling
his old voice, although the words didn’t sound spoken. They sounded
as if they had fallen out of his mouth like broken teeth.

“That’s right!” she said, her voice sparked by hope.
“And who said, it has yet to be proven that intelligence has any
survival value?”

Something surfaced in his eyes again. “Arthur C.
Clarke,” he said, like more teeth tumbling out.

Elfie nodded. “Yes! Exactly!” she said, desperation
gathering in her voice. “You remember me? You remember Yancey? You
remember us, don’t you?”

“I remember,” Oliver murmured, reaching out to yank
her toward him. He thrust his body around hers and clapped his palm
to her forehead. “I want you to remember now.”

Her mind blasted full of broken bits of memory, like
a shattered mirror capturing frozen moments in time. The full
effect shimmered with silver.

From somewhere behind her, she heard the growl of
brakes, the assault of tires against rock and rock over road. She
heard the jeep waging a hard-fought battle with the hill.

But, the silver memory consumed her mind. She felt
her own reactions, but she somehow intuited his, too. She sensed
his body warm and hard against her, she sensed his own perception
of her body against him. Every outline of his body fit against hers
wherever she hungered for it. Oliver’s slacks bulged at his crotch,
hard and hot against the thin fabric she still wore. Every doubt
she had ever had about Oliver’s feelings vanished in that
onslaught.

The slickness from between her thighs dribbled
between her knees. She could sense his cock’s throbbing, pulsing
fury to fuck her. Her pussy absorbed that need and added its own.
The sensation in each of them mirrored the other’s and grew and
exploded until Elfie wanted to drag off his slacks, then slam him
against the ground.

She knew how huge this pleasure would be, reflected
from one to the other, larger and larger, until she understood in
every nerve in all of her flesh that she would climb up his body
into nothing short of paradise.

Her clit pulsed inside her as Oliver used one hand to
rip away his slacks then jabbed the head of his cock against the
crotch of her shorts, until the impact triggered mini-pleasure
spasms through her pussy.

His mouth swallowed her mouth, sucking in her breath.
He drove his tongue into the depths of her, promising with a
thrusting flourish from it what lay ahead.

From outside their union, she heard the upward rush
of fire-wings unfolding across the cave. She knew, somehow, if she
looked upon it, Laughing Bear’s enormity would terrify her. But she
hungered more than anything to spread her legs for the promise
burning in her crotch.

Resist
, she heard Severin’s voice storm across
her mind.

Even farther beyond them, she heard brakes hit hard,
smelled the fumes of a gas-burning engine, and heard the grappling
of metal against metal. A jeep door opened, and flat feet hit the
ground running. Another thud, probably the now-connected generator,
shook the nearby ground.

“Elfie!” Yancey screamed.

Somewhere inside her, she found the reason and the
words. She glanced up to see Severin lifting up an armful of
blinding light toward the outstretched wings of Laughing Bear.

“One move to checkmate,” Elfie whispered into
Oliver’s ear and then dragged him toward the real world.

As they ran, the fire-wings rushed after them, as if
to take them up inside them. A blinding flash exploded behind them,
burning their collective shadow into the earth until Yancey grabbed
Elfie and Oliver, and the three of them rushed toward the jeep.

A massive cracking sound, like the fracturing spine
of a planet, screamed in their ears. The walls of the world tumbled
all around them. Yancey pushed Oliver and Elfie into the jeep, then
jumped behind the wheel to swing the land rover toward the only
road away from the falling sky.

The flying debris rained down on the jeep with
resounding thuds, as if the mountain had exploded, which partly it
had. A crumbling world remained where the seven apertures to the
Angel Caves had been an hour before.

Elfie held onto Oliver tightly, as if to shield him
from the lingering Angel Caves effects as Yancey down-shifted the
jeep to maneuver it along the slanted road, around hairpin corners,
crumbling sides, and finally, until the road flattened out onto
land.

Elfie exhaled as the horizon became level with their
road. It was the road that led to the Willow Wash, and up that bend
was the cottage they had spent the last day inside.

“Thank God we’re down off the mountain,” Elfie
whispered.

Yancey appeared to cough out dust before gasping out,
“That was too damned close. How is he?”

Elfie combed fingers into Oliver’s hair to turn him
toward her, so she could see into his eyes. The stare that shined
back at her was Oliver’s own blinking, self-conscious quandary. He
looked down at his near-nakedness as Elfie reached for one of their
blankets to cover him up. She hauled out another one to wrap around
her own nearly-naked body.

“He’s all right now,” she said, smiling.

He nodded, hugging the blanket around him. She
inhaled and exhaled as if a novel exercise of his lungs. “Yeah, I
think so.”

“Do you remember anything?” Yancey asked.

“No,” Oliver said simply. “…I remember us fighting
those…things.” A glint of what might have been memory surfaced in
his eyes. He looked around. “Where is Severin?”

“He told us not to worry about him,” Elfie explained.
“He told us to get you safely back to the springs, and he’d meet us
there later. He’s been right up until now. I’m inclined to respect
his wishes.”

Oliver nodded weakly. “Me, too.”

Elfie reached back to their cooler, pulling out a
water bottle. She handed the water to Oliver. “This should help a
little.”

He opened it, swigged back some water, and then
recapped it. “Thanks. It did.”

Willow Wash road turned upward toward the path that
they followed to the peak. The Willow Peak pond gates stood open
but, otherwise, the landscape hadn’t changed. Elfie and Yancey each
claimed one side of Oliver to help him through the cottage’s front
door.

“Please, for godssakes, get me to the shower,” he
said, his voice a little stronger now.

They aided him into the spa-like shower, helping him
step down into the range of the nozzle’s spray. Elfie pulled away
the blanket that had been wrapped around him.

Yancey yanked at the shower control and focused the
flow on Oliver. The spray spilled over his hair and down his
shoulders, washing away the gray chalky dust that had accumulated
on his skin.

Oliver turned his face up toward the spray and
smiled, as if the water melted away whatever had lingered in his
mind.

Oliver and Elfie’s eyes met. She smiled back. Slowly,
Oliver leaned across to touch his mouth to hers, but then the touch
grew into a kiss. Her lips parted for his tongue.

“How did I know this was going to happen?” Yancey
said with a smirk.

Oliver drew back enough to whisper, “I believe we
have unfinished business.”

“Oh, yeah,” Elfie murmured hungrily, quickly shedding
what remained of her clothes.

Oliver boosted Elfie onto his shoulder, carrying her
to the king sized bed. He reached back and pulled Yancey in to join
them. Yancey, seeing the point of it all, rolled to the side to
watch events transpire, but Oliver reached out to grasp his
hand.

Oliver probed his tongue once more through Elfie’s
lips, and she opened wider to receive it. Touching his other hand
to her face, she felt as if a door in her mind had burst open and
sun radiated across a reservoir of memory – all their friendship,
all their fights, all their near-misses, all their missed kisses,
all the way to that moment.

She realized she saw these memories from his
perspective, just as she tasted the inside of her own mouth by
sensing what his tongue experienced. She had stared into a mirror
that stared back into her. She felt Yancey’s sensing their
feelings, too, even as he felt distracted by some other
activity.

“What is this?” Elfie gasped out, knowing the other
men knew what she was asking without the question being spoken.

“Residual effect from the cave,” Oliver said
breathlessly. “Sorry.”

“Who the fuck is complaining?” Elfie asked, pulling
him all the way on top of her.

When his cock rubbed against her slit, probing firmly
against her pulsing clit, she felt the probe and the pulsation
inside her. She experienced the pleasure Oliver felt and Yancey
felt just as they experienced hers, and the rush of sensation
whirled around again, building beyond them.

Oliver thrust into her deeply. She clasped her pussy
around his cock, gripping it to give back everything he was giving.
Oliver’s moans, her moans, and Yancey’s moans all mixed together
until one couldn’t be heard above another.

“I’ve wanted this for so long,” Oliver murmured,
before he rolled over to bare Elfie’s ass toward Yancey.

Yancey covered her from behind, running an oily
finger, the evidence of his earlier distraction, lightly over her
lower lip before kissing it. “You okay for this?”

“You have to ask?” she gasped an answer.

“No,” he laughed a little in reply, and slowly but
steadily pushed his lubed cock into her ass.

She threw her hair back at the entry, bucking back
against him slowly to hasten it along.

“Oh, God, I can feel that, too,” Oliver screamed out
in pleasure.

“This mind bridge thing is a real time saver,” Yancey
said in a smoky voice, the growing sensation strangling each word
as he spoke it. “I can butt-fuck you both at the same time.”

The explosive pleasure flooded through every nerve of
her body, spilling down into Oliver and Yancey, then around again.
Elfie felt her heart tremble in its wake. Her arms consumed both
men, pulling them toward her. She kissed each face and then pressed
her forehead firmly against Oliver’s. She had already started to
weep.

Yancey planted a kiss in Oliver’s hair. “Thank
heavens you’re safe…thank God you’re with us,” he said, a tear
escaping his eye and splashing against Yancey’s and Elfie’s
faces.

They stayed that way, woven together, until the three
of them settled into some semblance of dreamless, restless
sleep.

It had to have been hours because, as she awoke, the
sky seeping through the window shade was purple-colored.

Consciously hearing the sound that awakened Elfie
from her own napping place in the huddle, she thought to herself,
“Indians don’t knock.”

And yet, someone was knocking. Somebody knocked
hard.

She tried to extract herself without waking her
lovers, but she knew it was a futile attempt. Yancey awoke and sat
up before she even pulled her arm free. Oliver sat up behind
them.

Elfie ran for her bag to pull out a sweater and
pants, but a still-dressed Yancey hit the door before she could
dress. Oliver had quickly donned his other pair of slacks.

“Billy,” Yancey said, after he pulled the door open,
“what in hell are you doing here?”

Elfie moved up behind Yancey to see Wolfram Ten
Bears, the man Yancey had aptly nicknamed Billy Jack, staring at
them through brown-stained teeth. He still wore his black
motorcycle jacket.

“Severin sent me,” Ten Bears said. “I’m to pick up
the artifacts to return to the caves. He would like Oliver to come
with me for the ceremony.”

“Is Severin okay?” Elfie asked quickly. “I mean, he
got out of the caves safely?”

“Yes, he got out of the caves,” Ten Bears said, “but
he is injured. So he had me come in his place.”

Yancey shook his head. “Sorry, Billy, Oliver isn’t
going anywhere alone. The Angel Caves are gone. We’re returning the
artifacts to the elders.”