by D. R. Rosier
Some might suspect he was a pervert. Exotic and beautiful eighteen-year-old twins was a pretty common fantasy among young men after all, and not the first thing that came to mind in bodyguards, but he’d never touched them in that way despite their allure. The real reason they were his guardians is they asked to be, once their original purpose and mission had been mostly completed.
In a way it was true though, because he had picked them for that very reason. Just, not for himself. They made the perfect bait and trap to discover if the communities they came across were run by a decent man, or men who took what they wanted or desired against a woman’s will. It’d worked flawlessly, and it also cut down on the misunderstandings in a big way. They were beautiful, sexy, and appeared helpless. A perfect concoction to either inspire protection in others, or to draw in evil men with less savory intentions. They were also quite able to protect themselves, were stronger than any ten men and much faster as well. Their blades were deadly, and also enchanted so normal humans without magic couldn’t really notice them unless they were pointed out.
Of course, despite those original intentions, he had come to love them as family, and they certainly wanted him to claim them. It was their choice, and they often flirted with him, though in a light teasing manner not wanting to pressure him. The fact they were hot young twins was almost beside the point. He was more ready than he’d ever been to take that step. He certainly cared for them enough, perhaps even loved them already, but his old fears were still holding him back.
He knew that wasn’t rational, since he could lose Cassie and Mara to violence as well. But they were zombies, and that connected them and made them like Cynthia in his mind. It was stupid when he thought about it logically, but visceral emotions never yielded to logic.
Emily, also a priestess of Vadea and officially under her high priestess Mara, had also come a long way. She was Lori’s lover, and was a pure lesbian, which was interesting for him. Mostly because there just wasn’t any sexual tension between them at all, and she was a remarkably beautiful woman. Perhaps it was the goddess of healing and protection thing, or maybe the sweet and empathetic woman was just that strong willed, but she seemed almost entirely over the abuse she’d faced. She held no fear of him at all because he was a man. Of all their guests, he knew her the best as she had more than once sought him out in curiosity for conversation.
Emily was one of the most cheerful optimists he knew, and only his Mara who was also a priestess of the same goddess came close.
A month ago, she’d been five feet tall, and a stick with very faint womanly curves. He’d helped her body grow into its full potential, which had been stunted by her starving herself during captivity. After a month she looked more like his curvy Cassie than his petite Mara. She’d grown to five foot five in height, and her curves had grown a lot sharper with D cups, lovely hips, and a generous but supple heart shaped ass. It really was an incredible and stark transformation. Her face was heart shaped and still made her look cute, innocent, and younger than her true age of eighteen.
He hardly ever saw Lori, or her two other lovers, Betty and Nancy. They all avoided him, probably because he had a dick, and he didn’t exactly blame them after the hell they’d been through. Regardless, those four were like a second family living under his roof, and all shared the same bed at night.
Betty was a cute redhead and rather voluptuous once she’d put on some weight from eating regularly, and Nancy was a statuesque golden blonde and an inch taller than he was. He’d offered through Mara to check them out with his magic, but both of them had refused, as had Lori.
Lori herself was five foot seven and Lithe. She had long luxurious dark brown hair, just a few shades lighter than his Mara. She also had dark brown eyes and lovely dusky tanned skin. She was lithe and willowy with B cups and a tight pear-shaped ass. Her face had well defined high cheekbones and was a little thin. She had the face and body of a runway model, and her power as a priestess of the goddess of shadows gave her a powerful presence.
The angry cold look he’d noted in her had softened a bit this last month, especially if he saw her before she saw him. That cold mask usually descended whenever she knew he was around however, but he didn’t take it personally. She was gorgeous but also remote and untouchable. He’d never cheat on his ladies anyway, and the two groups of lovers in his house never mixed, but he wasn’t immune to enjoying the view of any of them.
Point was, their circle of three wasn’t exactly closed, but no affairs or brief trysts were allowed. If they added anyone else, like Lin or Kim, it would be with long term intentions and permanency in mind, and only if everyone agreed. The love in all directions wouldn’t work very well if any of them objected to someone, for whatever reason.
Honestly, he was content with leaving that kind of thing up to Cassie, she tended to be the one that drove new additions to the family. He had no need to seduce anyone else, and he was more than happy with just them. Of course, Kim and Lin more than had a green light from Cassie and Mara already, it was just him that wasn’t ready yet.
He got out of the pool and wrapped a towel around himself. There’d be no need to shower, since the pool water was kept perfect and clean without it. The pool water was purified daily by Mara’s magic, so there was no chlorine or chemicals to worry about.
Mara said, “We want to start visiting the towns again tomorrow. Lori thinks she’ll be able to deal with sharing her goddess with both the women and men in the community we visit, but of course she can’t be sure until she’s faced with it.”
“A trial run?”
Mara smiled up at him, “Something like that, yes.”
He shook his head, “What exactly does she offer? Her goddess doesn’t sound all that warm and fuzzy to me.”
Mara giggled, “Well, Vadea offers protection and healing, for innocents under threat of violence or sickness. I imagine the priestess of Myzasis will offer justice to the wronged and punishment for the guilty, and tough love for the victims. She’d be a good goddess for a cop or military man to follow. Also, someone for evil men and women to fear. I think our society very much needs that. Something to help control the darkness that lurks in some hearts.”
He frowned, “I get that, when the cops and emergency services fell apart, and there was no more government, a lot of sick people let that darkness out once the fear of punishment was taken off the table. Still, I’d rather kill those assholes, they were all born wrong.”
Mara smirked playfully, “Which is ironic, because that makes you a prime candidate to become a follower of her goddess. Cruel, cold, and instant justice.”
He barked a startled laugh, then sighed as her point was driven home in his mind, “I should know better than to debate you about religion, love.”
She giggled.
“On the other hand, Sean. Your compassion to lower the death rate, and succor your people, the reason you recruited me to your side as a partner, all makes you a prime candidate to worship my goddess.”
He shrugged, “I never claimed to be consistent. I can want to do both, protect the good ones, destroy the bad ones. Maybe I can honor both goddesses.”
Cassie snickered, “Sounds reasonable to me.”
Mara grinned, “I’m not much different. Why do you think I get on so well with a sister priestess of a dark goddess. We all have our mantel, I just don’t want to have to do that second part, even though I can see the need for it.”
“So, I’m more flexible then.”
Mara raised an eyebrow, “I don’t know about that, love. I’m pretty damned flexible.”
Just in case he didn’t catch the innuendo in her voice, she gripped her leg and bent it up and over her head. Damn, that gave him some ideas.
He snorted, “Yes you are, but I wasn’t talking about our bodies.”
Despite his words, his hungry eyes were flirting back with his younger mate.
Mara pouted, then smiled, “I suppose you are. As a priestess however, our singular nature and purpo
se is far more effective and focused. As a leader you need to see all of it as a whole. Point is, we both have our place, and we’re lucky to have her.”
I grunted in agreement.
Cassie said, “So, vacation’s over?”
He snorted. She’d been working on projects a lot the last month, and hardly idle. Though he supposed her sorcery was a vacation and hobby for her. He supposed he couldn’t talk either, since he’d been working on mastering the more subtle aspects of his power. The ones which he hadn’t even realized existed until Katie had told him about them.
“We’ll see. It’s not like once every three days is going to be overwhelming. We only skipped about six weeks, so we’re still in line to hit every community within a year.”
She tilted her head, and looked at nothing that he could see, “Hi, Katie. What’s up?”
He listened to half the conversation, but Cassie clarified it when she finished.
“Katie’s going to meet us at Riverside tomorrow. She’s bringing an elven ambassador. Dropping her off, really.”
He felt immediately suspicious, “They hate me, and they tried to kill Kim and Lin last time.”
Cassie shrugged, “They’re sending one elf, a priestess of Charites. Her name is Sy’lia. We’ll find out what they want tomorrow. Katie wasn’t entirely sure what it was about, Sy’lia just asked her for an introduction. I didn’t like the idea of Katie bringing her here so put her off for a day. At least not until we’ve gotten to talk to her. We can deal with her while Mara, Emily, and Lori do their thing.”
He scowled.
Mara said, “You need to give them a chance, as the leader of the largest area in the country you can’t afford to just ignore our elven and dragon neighbors. I know you think of yourself as a trash collector, and not a king, but you rule here and it’s important.”
He frowned, “Fine. They’re all pretty damned arrogant, but I’ll meet her.”
Cassie grinned, “Someone feeling grumpy?”
He said, “The idea just puts me on edge. If she starts off with arrogant demands like the first group, we’ll send her right back.”
Cassie nodded, “I can do that.”
Lin said, “I call dibs on master.”
Kim sighed, “Fine, I’ll keep an eye on our priestesses tomorrow. It was your turn anyway, I watched master last time.”
“Just make sure you’re both protected before we go. I really don’t trust the elves.”
They both nodded.
He said, “Going to change, and get a drink.”
He was mostly dry after their conversation from his swim, and it was getting a little hot. Despite the view he figured he’d change and enjoy the magical air conditioning in the house, while he got a little practice in.
Chapter Two
He sat in the living room with a glass of iced tea. His powers weren’t that complicated. They were simple actually. He’d long ago mastered reading the life memories stored in a person’s life force, draining that life force, and imbuing and raising the dead back to true life. Life without a soul maybe, but complicated and independent life if he allowed it.
It’d taken him about two seconds to figure out how to kill by disconnecting that life force from the body instead of absorbing it and draining it. The keeping the same age part was pretty easy as well, since he’d been doing it for years to himself and Cassie subconsciously. He’d figured out how to cause pain long ago, but he’d also figured out recently how to remove pain. The communications part was pretty basic as well.
It’d taken him a little time to figure out how to create life connections with other people. That it required trust and a desire to connect to him from his target as well, otherwise it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t link to an enemy for example. Most of his powers as a life sorcerer were pretty simple.
The complications came up in other ways. The subtleties of both scanning a life force for other types of information, and then affecting and changing what he could feel.
The second part was much easier, because if he could sense it or read it, he could modify it, at least within the parameters of a person’s DNA. What that meant is anything he did had to be to the full potential of the DNA, or in lessening it. He couldn’t make someone grow wings for instance, nor could he make them smarter than the peak of intelligence their DNA called for.
The whole trick was learning what he could read, and that was the task he spent most of his time on. He had to figure it out on his own, which is why most of his practice was rooted in reading and scanning life force.
Once he figured out something new that he could read, changing it was inevitably easy, if he had a reason to change it. He already had a lot of that down, checking if a person had reached their full potential, and even bringing out that potential. Or if they were wounded, he could heal them with certain limitations.
He could feel the type of person they were as well, as a rule. Of course, people were complicated, and situations had a lot to do with their current attitude and what people would and wouldn’t do. But, he could kind of feel a person’s base inclinations, the parts of their personality that were wired into their DNA. That inclination could be fought by the beliefs and morals of the higher brain, or even be very different from the reality, as nurture had just as much an impact as nature. But it was a point.
The point was, he was pretty sure he could use that to influence people a bit, but he’d never tried it and wasn’t sure about the morality of it. Still, it could help him in negotiations as well. A person with a strong sense of empathy, as opposed to someone that was deeply practical, would require vastly different arguments to sway them. In short, it was useful to him to get that sense of someone, changing them or not.
He was far more comfortable with the idea of physical changes.
He was also still discovering new angles and ideas to explore. What he felt and learned about someone from scanning their life force depended on his intentions in doing so. Which meant that’s what he experimented on most. The only way to discover something new about his power, was to conceive of a possibility and try it.
Memories, a person’s health, their DNA programmed attitudes and emotions, and their potential of mind and body were the major ones. By major, everything else he discovered or could do fell within one of those four categories, at least as far as scanning and changing a being. Obviously, the communications, killing, raising of the dead, and all that was about controlling the life force itself, not about the body it was inhabiting, so were exceptions and not part of those categories.
For instance, under the major memories’ category, with a little practice he could search and find all the memories in someone that were tinged with hunger, or tinged with anger, guilt, hatred, and so forth. The more he practiced, the more he could focus down on deeper subtleties and the more he could do from a remove without touching the person.
There were a lot of life forms within range that weren’t human, and he picked a squirrel about fifty yards out. He was uncomfortable with the manipulation idea, but it seemed like a good idea to know what his full potential was, even if he forsook some possibilities when it came to humans. He knew he could take or give pain, what about other things?
He could feel the squirrel was hungry, and as an experiment he tried to take that away. The squirrel couldn’t tell him of course, but it did shift its thoughts almost immediately to how the warm sun felt, and thoughts of its mate back in its tree home. Which was interesting.
Could he defuse a fight with his power? Take away rage or anger? Temporarily at least.
The door opened and he turned his head. Lori walked into the room. She looked really good in a pair of yoga pants and a halter top on her willowy body, with long thin and toned legs that went on forever. He looked away almost immediately, not wanting to bother her. They ran into each other on occasion. He was sure she was just passing through the living room.
Except she didn’t. Pass through that is. She’d stopped right in front of him for a sec
ond, then sat on the couch next to him. That was… a first. He pulled his mind back away from the squirrel.
“Lori?”
She had the cold face on, but he could also see a little nervousness in her eyes.
“Can I ask you something… personal?”
Her voice was dulcet, naturally seductive, but like her face it was a little cold. He imagined if she put her mind to it, and spoke with warmth, she could seduce a man easily with that alone. He wasn’t a shallow man though, and outside of noticing her beauty and seductive voice he held no interest in her direction save as an ally and guest. She was attractive, but more than off limits in his mind given what she’d gone through and the fact he was happily committed to the two most amazing women on the planet.
“Sure, I might even answer.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She had a beautiful smile, straight white teeth, but it was as cold as the rest of her. That wasn’t a disparagement. That was all due to him, or the fact he had a dick. He’d also seen her warm with a vivacious smile, but only because she hadn’t seen him coming into the room while she was chatting with her lovers animatedly. This cold woman was purely an emotional defense around men as far as he could figure.
He had to wonder though, if she was truly ready to start spreading the word of her goddess to men, if just one in the house put her on the defensive.
“Why did you stop?”
“Huh?” he asked.
She bit her lip, “Why did you stop. You went up the west coast like an avenging angel, destroying evil and safeguarding the good ones. You didn’t even take over the communities you found, you just created more of them with disparate victims. Why did you stop there?”
He asked, “Why didn’t I keep going, since there are plenty of assholes left from Nevada and Colorado out east?”
She nodded, “You did so much good, saved so many like me. Did more than anyone else I know or have heard of, but you stopped.”
“And let you and many others stay in suffering?”
