House of Dolls 5

by Harmon Cooper

  She rolled to her back, telling Roman to get on top again as she fingered herself.

  He let her conduct him, a thought sparking at the back of his mind that this wasn’t dissimilar to how it had been with Miranda, Roman not at all caring, happy to give pleasure.

  And seeing her play with herself triggered Roman as well, his orgasm making his entire body tremble, his forearms like pillars as he held himself up and finished inside her.

  The two were breathless for a moment, and then they were back in each other’s arms, neither of them caring that they were covered in each other’s juices, that Roman was sweaty, that his semen was still inside Nadine, some of it dripping out of her pussy.

  They were primal, they were ready to take one final risk.

  They fell asleep like that, Coma waking them both a couple hours later.

  Roman watched Nadine put on enough clothes to make herself presentable, the former spy waddling to the door and slipping outside to use the restroom.

  Roman was cold now, the bed cool from their sweat, still a bit damp.

  He ran his hand through his black hair and stood, shaking his arms out.

  Coma, who still stood before the twin bed, looked from his chest down to his groin area. “It’s been a while…”

  “It really has,” he told her. “When all this is over…”

  “If she doesn’t mind…”

  “I have a feeling if we make it through this, nothing is really going to matter anymore. This is it. This is the last step toward our destiny.”

  “Our destiny, huh?”

  “Yes,” he said as he lifted his hand, Coma coming toward him and placing her hand in his. He squeezed it. “Let’s make it to the other side.”

  “Let’s.”

  Roman animated Celia, who immediately started moving around the tent gathering his clothing and handing it to him. He thought about animating his tiniest doll but saved everyone from listening to her nonsense for the time being.

  Nadine returned, and once she was fully dressed, the four of them made their way down an embankment to a wide-open area where rebel troops were already gathered.

  Roman couldn’t help but feel that they were like sitting ducks. But he didn’t say anything, already making his peace with the situation through the conversation he’d had with Marcus.

  Right now, all that absolutely mattered to him was making it across.

  He wasn’t here to fight their battle or help them change their own government.

  All that was beyond his scope, Roman close to the end of this chapter of his life.

  And he couldn’t help but get the sense he’d had when he was about to quit his job, knowing that it was almost over, that he was so close to taking his freedom, to being who he wanted to be.

  To doing what he wanted.

  He’d been exploited by his own government, asked to do things that went against his sense of morality. His power, if he chose to stay with his government, would be utilized without his consent for the rest of his life.

  And perhaps, if he really had taken a moment to think about this, to not simply start moving forward alongside Nadine, perhaps Roman would have understood where Margo had been coming from, and maybe why it had all gone wrong.

  But he likely would have concluded that this was all a subjective opinion, that there was more wrong with the deadly woman who had animated his wife’s corpse than the notion that she’d been exploited by her own country.

  About a quarter kilometer ahead of the front line now, Roman relaxed a little, Nadine by his side, his combat doll and Celia with him as well.

  They were still in a forested area, but he could tell the tree cover was starting to wane and soon they would be out in the open.

  And while he wasn’t quite an outdoorsman, Roman turned out to be correct in this assumption, the tree line ending and Nadine stopping him before he could take another step forward.

  “The border is there,” she said, nodding toward a series of blinking lights in the distance that were just faint enough that Roman at first thought they were stars. Coma and Celia fanned out, Coma’s arms already sharp and held at the ready.

  “So this is going to be the staging area then?”

  “They have a pre-staging area, which was where we just were, so yes, this would be the final staging area.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Remember…” She exhaled audibly, steeling herself. “Move forward, and don’t look back.”

  “We’re going to do this,” he told her, placing her hand on her shoulder.

  Nadine hugged him. “If not, at least we ended the night on a high note.”

  The rebels were in the staging area all of fifteen minutes when a cloak masking a line of Centralian exemplars lifted.

  A surprise attack.

  Roman grabbed Nadine’s hand and pulled her to the left as a searing blast cut into the middle of their ranks, some of the rebels responding by firing their wrist guards as they ran forward, the braver bunch activating their necklaces.

  Other rebels were scared shitless, some turning back, a few leaping out of the way, panic spreading through their ranks.

  Roman felt the creep of a telepath at the back of his head screaming for the rebels to fight. He almost joined the battle until he realized the call to arms was emanating from Marcus, Roman suddenly impressed with just how proficient the man’s power had turned out to be.

  Perhaps he was the elusive Type I…

  As discussed, Roman and Nadine kept to the left, trying to move to the outskirts of the battle.

  It was dark out, the moon a pale sliver hanging from a cloud, the only light coming from discharged weapons and exemplars with elemental abilities.

  As Roman ran, he started to lift a wall up to his right, protecting his small group. His stone structure grew in size, and just when he thought he had shielded them enough, it came tumbling down as a team of strongmen burst through, one of them lunging for him.

  Roman used his assailant’s own skull cavity to crush the man’s brain.

  A blast over his shoulder caused him to step aside, Nadine hitting her mark, a square-shaped woman without a neck coughing up blood as she fell to her knees.

  Roman crushed this woman’s head as well, Coma and Celia taking down the final exemplar, their bladed arms moving fluidly through the man’s muscles.

  And just before Roman could strengthen his wall, more Centralian exemplars tore through the structure, beast morphers, elementalists, a speedster who was stopped dead in his tracks by Nadine, who was an absolute crack shot.

  Even with the fight spilling toward them, Roman had to look at her in amazement. “You hit him?”

  But rather than respond, Nadine activated her own necklace and pressed a pillar from the soil that stopped a horned woman charging at them.

  “We have to move forward!” Nadine reminded Roman, both of them fighting their way through the exemplars, Celia and Coma now a bit ahead, engaging a man with skin hard as stone.

  Roman shattered the man’s legs, bits of rock springing into the air and forming a cloud of fine dust.

  A teleporter appeared behind Roman, sinking a fist into his back.

  Nadine was on the teleporter in a matter of seconds. She tackled him to the ground and fired her wrist guard at point-blank range, just under the man’s chin, leaving a bloodied splatter against the cool night grass.

  A woman swooped down from the sky, and Roman lifted a spiked pillar from the soil that cut through her body. He flung her body forward, taking out a man with blue skin and razor-sharp teeth.

  Roman summoned another spike from the ground, cutting through the blue-skinned man. He turned his attention to a woman who was just about to blast him with a concentrated burst of energy, her arms twisting behind her back and snapping, the explosion throwing her a meter into the air.

  Focusing, Roman lifted the land beneath him, forming a tidal wave of stone and hardened dirt that smashed onto a pair of exemplars. Roman jumped off at the las
t moment to roll off to the side, back to his feet where he animated the bones of another strongman charging at them.

  The man’s bones tore out of his flesh, white on red, the muscled Centralian a mass of organs and viscera once Nadine’s blast finished the job.

  Roman felt the screeching inside his head and looked around frantically, trying to locate the telepath.

  Suddenly he was standing in front of Celia’s dead body, Margo crouched in the rafters above, ready to pounce.

  Roman began to backpedal, fear shooting through him until he remembered that none of this was real, that it was the attack of a goddamn telepath.

  But Roman couldn’t do what he normally would have done, clear the playing field with a swipe of his hand. No, that would bring Nadine into his sphere of influence, and the last thing he wanted was to see her wind up as collateral damage…

  The image stopped immediately, Roman blinking his eyes open to see Nadine standing before him, the woman keeping her wrist guard at the ready, a body falling about five meters away.

  Nadine was swept off her feet by a wave of force, the ground between them separating as an elementalist ripped through the soil.

  The man burst out of a hole in the ground wearing a mask with little goggles, a wicked look on his face as he started to grow stones out of his flesh.

  “Impressive,” Roman said, the man’s body twisting in unnatural ways as Roman took control of his bones and crushed his vital organs.

  A great plume of fire formed a circle around Roman and Nadine, the flames lifting higher and higher as they solidified.

  Roman was just about to take charge of the fire when he noticed…

  “Ava?” he asked, pausing when he saw the redheaded exemplar floating in front of him, flames licking from her hands.

  “Fuck,” Roman mouthed as he caught the fireball she’d heaved at him, returning it to her.

  He was drenched in sweat now, his skin burning from the heat.

  His breaths almost painful, Roman began manipulating the inferno raging around him, quelling it as he glanced at Nadine to see she was struggling to press herself up.

  “I’ll take care of this,” he told her, but try as he might, Roman couldn’t bring himself to animate Ava’s organs.

  Had he done so, he could have ended it right there, the famed fire user spiraling down and dying before impact.

  But he couldn’t.

  She was his teacher.

  They had been lovers.

  And even though he had a feeling that only one of them would make it out of this alive, Roman couldn’t help but empathize with her at that moment, knowing what she must be going through.

  Because he was going through the same thing, and it was why, trained as she was, Ava was hesitating.

  Roman didn’t normally wish he was a telepath, but at that moment he wished he could communicate with her, say something to her, tell her to go and never return.

  But he didn’t.

  He simply took control of her uniform and started to tighten it, part of him hoping he could make her pass out from either the pain or…

  He wasn’t sure enough of his powers to actively manage her lung capacity.

  He could certainly do something to her internal organs, but he hadn’t yet experimented with controlling an organ with the hopes of either enhancing or deflating its natural function.

  Would he be able to heal doing this?

  Roman cast away the thought as Ava’s hair flared up, wings of fire lifting behind her.

  She collided with Roman and brought him to the ground, baring her teeth as her skull burned red hot.

  “Ava…” Roman managed to say, placing his hand on her chest, squeezing her left breast to let her know that he had, or could, take complete control of her heart and kill her in an instant. “Leave.”

  “I’m sorry, Roman…”

  And even though there was fire raging all around him, the smell of burning fabric and grass meeting his nostrils, he could smell the wine on her breath.

  Roman braced himself to be burned alive, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to attack her, that he wasn’t going to kill someone he cared about, at least not Ava.

  And he could tell by the look on her face that this wasn’t what she wanted to do either, that it was something she had been ordered to do the same way Roman had been ordered to kill Kevin and Nadine.

  But Ava would never get the chance to overcome her current obstacle.

  She would never have another glass of wine, nor would she ever lie in her bed contemplating the choices she’d made in her life, her sister’s death, the relationship she wanted to have with one of her students even though she knew it was wrong, the fact that she should have just disappeared before heading to the East.

  Roman heard a crack as Ava’s neck snapped, the exemplar falling to her side.

  He caught glimpse of a woman with dark hair in a Centralian exemplar uniform standing just beyond the flames. Her female companion quickly ran to the right, meeting Coma and Celia.

  Roman recognized the second woman immediately as the doll he’d had custom-made, the one that was supposed to be a life-sized version of Casper.

  But the woman with black hair…

  “We can’t help but be brother and sister, can we?” she asked as she quelled the fire completely. “Just look at our hair.” Margo approached Roman, the terrible woman instantly taking control of his body.

  He couldn’t move from his prone position, his bones pressing against his muscles, his face straining, his eyes starting to bulge as he was forced to stare his half-sister down.

  “I’ll…” Roman felt a rage in his heart that he’d rarely experienced.

  “One move and everything goes black,” she told him. “If you don’t think I can draw quicker than you…”

  “Why?” Roman asked suddenly, his life flashing before his eyes.

  There were no other options.

  He was going to die here today; he wasn’t going to make it across the border.

  Even if he tried to do something to Margo, she would win in the end, Roman dead before he could see the results of his action.

  “Why?” he asked, louder this time.

  “There’s no reason any longer,” she said, a darkness spreading across her face.

  “Why!?” Roman bellowed, the ground beneath him quaking.

  “Baby brother,” Margo said, crouching before him now. “We never got a chance to know each other.”

  “Fuck you…” Roman whispered through gritted teeth, reaching out to her heart as well.

  She placed her hand on her chest. “Isn’t that cute… Just like your big sister, you’re learning to use your power for the good of humankind. Did anyone tell you? I knew our father. He trained me. He…” Margo’s eye twitched. “He…”

  “I don’t fucking care,” Roman told her, his nostrils flaring, oblivious now to the fight that was still happening all around him.

  Margo’s doll continued to engage Celia and Coma off to the side while a bigger fight raged on, the exemplars versus the rebels, everything from explosions to bloodcurdling screams to shifts in the land to the whistling sound of teleporters and speedsters moving amongst the ranks, all of it a muddy cantankerous blur on Roman’s smeared periphery.

  “Have you always been so apathetic, baby brother?” Margo asked, her voice shaky.

  “You… My wife…”

  “Relax, she was already dead,” Margo said in a playful tone. “Once you delve deeper into this power, you’ll understand that living and dead don’t really mean anything. Wait, no you won’t. You will never understand the true nature of this power, nor its limits. I only wish we could have grown stronger together. But I don’t think that’s how our little story ends.”

  “Fuck… you…”

  She reached forward and placed her hand on Roman’s cheek, massaging her fingers against his beard stubble. “I don’t fuck men, unfortunately. It’s a real tragedy, all of this. I really wish we could have had a cup
of tea, or perhaps a bottle of wine. Just to get to know each other better. But now…” Margo looked around, the battle raging all around her. “But now we’ve come too far. I didn’t know if you would attempt to make the crossing, but it appears I got lucky. And you didn’t get so lucky. But that’s okay. You know, we’re the last ones.”

  Roman tried to find the words, whatever they were, but his heart was beating too fast now, and he could feel that Margo had a grip on his entire body, as if he were lying on a bed of razor-sharp nails and slowly succumbing to their sharp tips, his nerves firing, his thoughts cascading away from them as he noticed that she was…

  Roman struggled to breathe.

  “The lungs are particularly hard to control,” Margo said, her hand still on his cheek. “It takes quite the finesse. Goodbye…”

  Suddenly, the hold on Roman’s body washed away.

  His ability to use his power also vanished, Roman immediately responding by trying to push Margo off him.

  He stopped mid-action as Margo’s eyes rolled into the back of her head, her mouth opening, blood trickling down her lips and off the line of her chin.

  She fell to the right, and as she did her doll collapsed as well.

  Roman gasped, turning to Nadine, seeing that she’d not only activated her Zero Ring, she’d also activated her necklace—that Nadine had done the impossible.

  She had killed Margo.

  But Roman had to be sure, and rather than help up Nadine, who was still sitting off to his left, he brought his hand back and exploded Margo’s skull, blood splattering into Roman’s face.

  He then ripped her limbs from her body and threw his hand out wide, a line of soil rippling toward her doll and retrieving it, looping it back over to bury the doll on top of Margo.

  He did this again and again, Roman straining as he pressed all of his power into the ground and buried Margo deep beneath the battlefield.

  He fell backward.

  Nadine crawled over to him. “We have to… We have to go,” she said, her hair a mess, smudges across her face, a hardened look in her eyes.

  Roman sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah… Let’s go.”

  Roman ran, Nadine and his dolls keeping up with him, their goal so close he could practically reach out and touch it.