by Jamie Hawke
I landed, wondering what the fuck had just happened then turned, more ready than ever to take on the next opponent. This dark form doubled in size and made a horrible screeching sound as it tried to come at me, but I was confident now. Somehow I’d beaten the first one, and this one was going down too. When I attacked, that green light came out, stronger now, and a guiding force took my fist, connecting with a substance that felt cold and liquid. The darkness exploded, more green light sucking into my body, and then I saw the hand again, reaching for me through the fog. I grabbed it.
My surroundings instantly faded, all purple fog and any sign of that purple-horned lady gone. Instead there I was at Pucky’s side, her hand in mine, that black car skidding to a stop ahead of us as other cars drove around it, trying to avoid a collision. No such luck for them, but great for us—three cars all hit at once. We ran, ducking into a side street. We found the back door of a restaurant and ran through.
“I thought you said safehouse?”
“That’s right. A safehouse doesn’t have to be an actual house. How obvious would that be?”
“Oh.” I felt kinda stupid. She turned and led me down a hall, past a kitchen entrance where a man on a wooden crutch who looked like a pirate walked by and nodded at us. Another Myth, I imagined, though I was thinking that he had to be Long John Silver, the cook from Treasure Island, so was confused.
“Pirates… aren’t all bad?” I asked.
She shook her head, stopping to scan her hand on a section of wall that looked like all the rest. A green light flashed then faded, and a door appeared.
Apparently, that’s all the answer I was getting on the matter. She led me into a darkened room with a dim orange glow. The walls had images on display, even Excalibur, but when I approached to see and maybe even touch them, they turned out to be projections—not really there. There was a bench on one side of the room, a nicely-made foldout bed, and a bookshelf with several books, mostly fairy tales.
“So… back there.” I turned to her, waiting for an answer. She had a screen open next to the door, inputting information. Probably who we were and when we’d arrived, I assumed.
“Purple mist?”
“You know, then? It was real?”
She nodded, finishing up and looking my way now. “They basically pulled you into another world, or more like a place between the two worlds, that’s more heavily influenced by the other side.” She went to the opposite wall, sliding her finger along sections that made screens appear with images of the streets and walls nearby. “No sign of them, but… damn, that was close.”
“And Agent Torrind—” I started, but she spun at that name, eyes wild.
“You met him? Was he alone?”
“No, actually. I mean, yes I met him, but he was with a woman. She had horns, kind of like yours, but longer, curved.”
Pucky processed this, then nodded. “Now, here’s the question.” She put her hands on her hips for extra emphasis. “Are you in, or out?”
“Ah, you mean, this Protector thing?” I frowned. “Do I still have a choice?”
She simply tilted her head, waiting for an answer.
“I…” Talk about pressure. This wasn’t an easy one to answer. On one hand, Chris was out there probably wondering what the hell had happened to me. But if he found out what this was and what sort of adventures I could’ve had, but that I’d turned it down—essentially telling Morpheus to fuck off, to put it in Matrix terms—he’d slap me. Hell, I’d slap myself when I looked back on this moment later, if I declined. And there was this cute, petite chick, yeah with horns but whatever, and she was playful and fun and I was loving this. So fuck it.
With a deep breath and quick mind check to be sure I wouldn’t regret it, I said, “I’m in. I’ll be the Protector.”
“Good,” she replied. “Because while you were thinking right now, I realized that you cumming all over that car wouldn’t be the best of things for you if you’d said no.”
“Wait, what?”
“You know, you cumming in their car—DNA. Imagine trying to go back to your old life after they’d run that and found out you’d stolen their car and came all over the back seat. Oh, man, you would’ve been so fucked.”
The blood was quickly draining from my face, and no, not to my crotch this time. “Pucky, I am so fucked.”
She waved the thought off. “Nah, not really. They’ll come after you but you’ll be wiped from the system in no time, now that you’ve accepted. Sure, you won’t be able to go back to your old life, college is done, all that—”
“Hold the phone.” I put up my hands, as if that would help all of this to slow down. “You didn’t tell me all of that.”
“Jack.” She shrugged. “What did you think would happen when you took on this role? You’ve just committed to helping save us all, but at the expense of becoming a fugitive, a sort of shadow in the night if you will.”
I tasted bile, heard my stomach rumbling and put out a hand to catch myself, then watched with blurry vision as she approached. She caught me as I collapsed, lowered me to a bench along the back wall, and then straddled me.
“Stop trying to faint on me,” she said, kissing my forehead. “You’re my knight in shining armor now. My Protector. You’ve got to be strong.”
“I’ll do my best,” I muttered, still recovering but starting to process everything. “Maybe…” I glanced down to see that, again, her revealing shirt showed me more than she meant for me to see. Or… maybe not. “I think another distraction is in order.”
She laughed and reached down to massage my crotch. “Are you able to go again, so soon?”
“Actually, this time I was thinking about you.”
Her eyes went wide as I picked her up and switched places with her so that she was on the bench. Then I knelt between her legs so that they were spread. Her cute little blue panties were in full sight, a spot of wetness visible. I ran my hand along that spot, cupping her pussy and then continuing to caress the insides of her thighs, leaning in to kiss the tops of her voluptuous breasts.
She was staring at me as if unable to believe this was happening. I licked my lips before pulling down the front of her shirt and exposing her perky breasts. A good handful, but no more. Cute little dark nipples. I took one in my mouth, playing with it while sliding her panties aside and running my finger along her moist flesh, then inserting a finger, feeling her insides and the way she rocked her hips into it. I wanted that pussy.
But not with my cock, not yet. This girl was hot as hell, and apparently into experimenting, but I doubted she’d go all the way so soon. Call it a hunch, or maybe the fact that I wasn’t sure I was ready either.
Instead, I continued to caress her breasts, kissing them, and then moved my hands down to remove her panties, kissing the insides of her thighs, moving closer with my tongue. Then she held my head, turning me to look at her.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Sure?” I chuckled. “I can’t think of anything I’m more certain of right now.”
She licked her lips, blinked, and then closed her eyes, releasing me. My face went straight in between her legs, kissing and caressing and licking, loving the taste of her pussy. My last girlfriend had never let me do this, and honestly the first one had been more of a one-night stand who was cheating on someone else with me, so just a quick fuck and it was over. So when I got to get in there like that, I didn’t exactly know what I was doing, but I was doing it. I was loving it. And so was she.
“Tell me what to do,” I said, coming up for air.
She had a hand on her breast, caressing herself, and said, “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
So I did, until she finally grabbed me by the hair, pushing my head against her and wrapping her legs around me so that I started to worry I might suffocate. Then she was telling me, “My clit, my clit, there, yes, there, yes,” and I my tongue was cramping but I didn’t care, and then she was arching her back, her little ass in the air, and yelping as
loud as she fucking wanted because—I hoped—this safe house had to be soundproof or magically hidden or something.
And then, finally, when I thought I was going to drop dead but no way in hell was I giving up, she relaxed with one final, high-pitched sound that turned me on to no end, and she was done.
“Well played, sir,” she said, taking my hand and kissing the back of it. “Well played.”
I grinned. “It was…. I mean, I’m not sure—it seemed like you liked it.”
She laughed, and then laughed some more. Taking my hand in both of hers, she held it and stared at it for a moment, then turned to me and said, in all seriousness, “I’ve never felt so much bliss in my life. That was perfection.”
What a great moment. Except for the fact that then her eyes went wide and she said, “Fuck me!”
“Um…” I wasn’t sure if this was her way of asking, but turned to see a red light blinking next to one of the screens. She pulled up her panties, ran over to it, and hit the little light.
The screen turned on and there was an older man staring at us, long black hair tied behind his head and very tanned, maybe ethnic, skin.
“Mowgli,” she said, voice cracking. “I have the Protector here, but haven’t heard from R—”
“They got her,” he cut in. “They have Red.”
It took a moment for Pucky to digest this, but then she looked at me briefly, waited for my nod, and said, “We’re going after her. We’re going to get her back. We were hoping to get you trained, at least a bit. But we can’t let them have Red. She’s too important to us… to me.”
“I agree,” I said.
“Then we have to do the ritual. Now. Right here.”
“Why do I not like the sound of that?”
“Maybe because you know it’s not as simple as a handjob,” she said, an awkward smile taking over as if she were trying to laugh but was too worried to do so.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told her, going to put an arm around her. She stepped out of my reach though, and held up a hand.
“Just… give me a second,” she said. “Sorry. It’s… it’s not you, but I’m blaming myself for this. Fuck, I should’ve never let her run off. I…”
“You’re blaming yourself,” I said, “because you had to save me.” She didn’t confirm it, but the look in her eyes was enough. Last week, my biggest concern was turning in an essay on ‘The Lottery’ for English class, and finding a nude model for an artwork assignment. Everything had changed. “You did the right thing. Because we’re going to save her, and we’re going to ensure the Myths never have to worry again.”
She smiled, took a dagger from a large jade box, and turned to me. “Thank you,” she said, then plunged the dagger into my heart.
7
Pain coursed through my body as I took a breath from the floor, mind torn between who I knew I was, and some ancient sense of being that was now inside of me. There was a cold wind, it seemed, and I was still in the safe house but also not.
Rolling green hills flew by beneath me, knights on horseback riding to meet an army, and when I looked down I was on a dragon. Two sides met and a clash of purple fog hit, then all of that was replaced with a man on a tall tower who was looking out over other armies fighting—Turkish, perhaps—and men and women being pinned up on long spears. Again with the purple fog, and now I was in the eighteen hundreds, slicing into monsters and dark forms like I’d seen before, an army of fairy tales at my back.
Then it was all gone. I was on the safe house floor, clutching at my chest and screaming. With a jolt, the pain stopped and I lay there, focused on my heavy breathing and the sound of someone else’s breathing in there with me.
It all came back—Pucky, the knife. Had she tried to kill me and failed?
“What’s happening to me?” I asked, forcing myself to a seated position, grabbing the stool behind me for support. A glance down showed my shirt in one piece, though unbuttoned. There were lines at the edge of my chest. Pulling my shirt aside, I looked down to find a series of what looked like Celtic tattoos starting at my heart and spiraling out.
Pucky took a step away, the clean blade in her hands hanging at her side. “The old you is dead. You are reborn Aek Nan Patrum, or Protector.”
“Kinda failed to mention that one, didn’t you?” I shot back. “As in, are you saying I actually died? Or… metaphorically?”
“Obviously you’re still alive,” she said, rolling her eyes and putting the dagger—totally clean—back into its jade box. “But… not in the same way. You sort of exist between here and the spirit realm. Avalontaire, or Avalon some call it, though that’s not really accurate as that’s an actual place you can go and this is… different. The spirits of past protectors are with you, helping you.”
“Like I’m possessed by their ghosts?”
“No, no.” She frowned, glancing at the screen this Mowgli guy had just been on. “We really don’t have time right now.”
“Help me along here so we can get to it, then. Tell me what the fuck is happening.”
“Simple version, it’s more like their energy, not their spirits. You still have to train, but those lower level Shades you fought—”
“Shades?”
“Yeah, like dark versions of Fae. Shades. You fought them, and because you were already chosen even though you weren’t fully the Protector yet, because the enemy chose to take you to the Fae realm, you had the energy—or some of it, and help.”
“I…” There wasn’t anything to say, really. She was either full of shit or not, and I had to believe the latter here.
“Here, let me show you,” she said, looking around. At one of the walls, she opened another screen and then took a blue orb from its base, scanned me, and watched as the monitor showed me, along with two green orbs next to my head. “Upgrades are small,” she explained, “at first. Later, when you are able to take down a lot of Shades at once, it’s a different story. When you eventually go up against a Legend, winning means Legendary Status, a whole new type of leveling up.”
“Leveling up?” I scoffed.
She turned, very serious. “It’s been around since before Arthur, and—”
“As in King Arthur?”
“A Protector.” She turned back to the screen, hiding something dark in her expression, but then continued. “Where do you think the video games you know so well got these concepts? A Protector sold out, abandoning her calling, and helped a man in Japan, her lover and a Myth who also went rogue. From there it all developed in ways that no longer relate to what we do, but it should feel familiar to you.”
“Yeah… right.” I approached the screen, looking over relatively unimpressive stats and seeing that there were other screens. Just then, something she said hit me. “But King Arthur—you said all Protectors have been women?”
“No,” she corrected me, “just in my time. Are you ready?”
She clearly didn’t want to discuss the legend of Arthur and how it all tied in, so as curious as I was, I let it go for now. It was damn sure going to come up again though.
“We have to go,” she said. “Quickly, assign your prana.”
My blank stare told her she’d lost me again.
“It means life force, simplistically speaking,” she explained, talking quickly now as we needed to go. “What you get here as the Protector when you defeat Shades. Ichor is more powerful, essentially the same idea though when defeating a Legend… or a Myth, if it ever came to that. Okay?” When I still shrugged, she went to the screen, selected my strength and applied one, then my speed.
A green glow formed over my body, moving to my arms and legs, and then sunk into me, gone.
“Done,” she muttered, glancing at the screen again and then the door. “Like I said, not enough to make a noticeable difference yet, but you’ll get there.”
“Thanks…?” I clenched my hands into fists, wondering if I would feel any different, but I didn’t.
She paused, then tossed the blue sphere m
y way. “Hold onto that. It’ll help you track this stuff and assign the power where needed, though you don’t exactly need it to do so. We’ll get into all that later.”
I put my hands to my face, trying to understand all of this.
“You don’t have to get it,” she said as if reading my thoughts. “You just have to commit. And right now? Now you have to help me save Red, before it’s too late.”
“Of course,” I said, shaking my head to clear it. “You can understand if it’s all a bit much to swallow.”
“I do.” She held out her hand, in the same way the guy in the car had, which I frowned at, but then accepted as she added, “We can discuss on the road.”
“Great,” I replied, and then went for the door.
She pulled me back. “Not that way.”
“Oh?”
A grin actually spread across her face. “You’re going to like this. Just because we’re riding off to possible defeat, with friends’ lives on the line, doesn’t mean we can’t do it in style.”
Moving to the back wall, she scanned her hand on another section, which caused the bench to move out and reveal a small, narrow staircase. It looked dark and cramped down there—not my idea of ‘in style’ at all. But since she went first and didn’t flinch at the idea, I had no choice but to follow.
It led to a narrow box big enough for basically the two of us and something under a tarp. Pucky gave me a mischievous grin then stepped forward like a lady about to perform a magic trick, and swept the tarp away to reveal the most badass-looking motorcycle I’d ever seen.
The thing about me, though, was I was into painting, going to cons, stuff like that. Riding a motorcycle had never even really crossed my mind, except for maybe when playing with Ninja Turtles when I was young and imagining riding with them to go take down Shredder. And once when I wanted to be Ghost Rider for Halloween, but I quickly got over that idea when the prospect of lighting my head on fire scared me off (it was only later that I learned Chris had been bullshitting me about that requirement as part of the costume, and that I could’ve just bought a mask).
