by Jamie Hawke
When I exited the kitchen for the dining room, I found Red there with a half-finished plate. She was reading a book that looked like it was about pirates and time travel—Lost Pirates, I saw when tilting my head to get a look—probably one worth reading when she finished. She glanced up, set the book aside, and gave me a raised eyebrow.
“What?” I asked, sitting next to her.
“You all… you did it again last night?” she said, taking a sausage and holding it up, considering it before taking a bite. “You’d think we’re not challenging you enough during the day, huh?”
I let out an exhausted laugh, but shook my head. “You are… but with ladies like you three, I’ll always find energy somewhere.”
“Like me?” she frowned. “You include me in that?”
“Of course. You’re… How do I say this without being corny?”
“Try.”
“Stunning. Beautiful. Gorgeous.”
She leaned forward, then ran her tongue along the sausage. “You think so?”
I laughed, feeling awkward that her licking a piece of meat could turn me on like it was. “Of course. When you came in there the other night, your hand on me, I wanted you so bad. I’m still… well, you know. It’s not like I’m used to this—in the past, having even one girl was rare. It would be selfish for me to expect you to be interested, too.”
“Maybe it would be,” she said, but then put the sausage down and leaned in close. “Even so… I am.”
I gulped, took a sip of my coffee, and then tried to figure out what to say.
She scooted over, hand on mine. It was warm, comforting. “If you can handle me. All three of us, that is. It’s not going to be so easy for you.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “Hey, it’ll be good for stamina. Plus, I can always upgrade—”
She held up her free hand, shaking her head. “Never upgrade based on sex, please. Your dick is worthless if attached to a dead body.”
“I… hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Better start, because priority number one is keeping you, and all of us, alive. After that, we can fuck till the sun comes up if our bodies let us. But always with our primary mission in mind.”
I nodded, and she took my hand, put a finger in her mouth, and sucked on it before leaning back and grinning.
“Wow,” I said, imagining those baby blues staring up at me as she did that down below.
“I want you in me, when the timing’s right. Until then, I’m happy to join in. Oh, but that other stuff? The girl on girl—let’s leave that to them. Nothing wrong with it, just not my thing.”
“Sure, of course. Yeah.”
My mind was spinning with the thought that all three of these beautiful women were into me. Not just into me, but wanting to share me with each other. Red looked like she was about to kiss me, was even leaning in, when Pucky came storming in.
“They got HQ!”
“What?” Red asked, turning to her in sudden panic.
“HQ,” Pucky repeated. “Elisa just got a call from Mowgli. There’s a team that found them. Somehow…” She paused, tilting her head to look at us. “Was I interrupting something?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Red said, standing up and heading off to get ready. “Somehow what? What were you saying?”
Pucky smiled, hands on her hips, but then Elisa entered.
“The fight’s still going on—let’s roll,” Elisa said. “Hopefully we can get there before the agents, or backup in the form of more Legends turn up.”
We set breakfast aside, though Red grabbed a sausage for the road and winked as she bit into it. I chugged my coffee. Too damn hot, but I’d regret it later if I didn’t finish it. That was one negative side effect of college—I’d learned to drink way too much coffee.
Soon we were on our way in the car, and Pucky was begging to stop for some sausage egg and cheese biscuits. I would’ve agreed with her if it weren’t for the immediacy of the situation. Instead, Elisa opened a compartment between seats that held several energy bars, and tossed her one. She held one up for me and all I could think about was her mouth on my cock, so I quickly shook my head and turned to look out the window. I hoped she didn’t take it the wrong way. I just didn’t want to have to adjust my pants to hide a boner again in front of these ladies, not in a situation like this, riding off to battle. They had to know I was serious about this Protector business, that I wasn’t only here to get laid (though the bedroom stuff was turning out to be a nice perk).
We were back on the highway, our surroundings looking vaguely familiar, when a crippling anger took hold of me. My hands curled into fists and I wanted to lash out at anyone nearby. My cheeks felt hot and my breathing constricted.
“Shit, his eyes,” Red said, leaning in toward me.
“Get the fuck back!” I shouted, partly in anger, but also scared I might hurt her.
A hand reached for her, out of my control, and then there was hair sprouting from it, claws too. Everything in me was fighting it, focusing on the night before, on Red this morning with her sausage, but it wasn’t working. Fuck! I wanted to scream. The ladies had me pinned back, holding me in place as my body rocked, trying to break free.
I closed my eyes, pushing away the sexual thoughts. They were great, amazing even, but it wasn’t enough. It was the moments after that mattered—the way we’d held hands, the painting too, and even just sitting and talking with these ladies. The affection in their eyes. All of that built up into something I wasn’t sure I’d fully processed before. This wasn’t just some crazy fantasy: this was my real world now, and it was like I’d somehow found myself in a relationship with all three of these ladies. Not each individually, but like they were all equally part of the relationship. That sense of companionship was something I’d been looking for, something I hadn’t been able to fully grasp in previous relationships or friendships.
Pucky’s cute giggle came to mind, along with the way Red had danced, and the image of Elisa smiling up at me as she dangled her feet in her pool. Those images were pleasant, but it was the sensation of joy and relief—relaxation like a vice coming undone from my heart—that freed me, pushing away the shadows, returning my body and mind to near normal.
“I thought you had this beat,” Elisa said, taking my hand as they saw I was relaxing. “Keep going, fight it until you’re sure it’s gone.”
“Soon,” I said, hands gripping my head and lying back to stare at the ceiling. I wished the amulet would work on it, but since it was low level, I didn’t expect anything more. “When I become a paladin, when I can expel this with—” Again the pain hit, shadows taking hold, and I turned to Red, seeing her as a demon with a fiery cloak, someone I had to defeat. But also, I saw her as the woman who’d been about to kiss me, and something else registered in my mind. “Peter… he’s close.”
“If he’s doing this, you might be right,” Red said. “Meaning he expected us to come… and it’s a trap.”
They were instantly at the windows, looking for any sign of the enemy.
“There,” Pucky said, then hit the button next to the window and said, “Change of plans, we’re not going to HQ.”
“Where to?” the driver’s voice replied.
“Hold for an answer.” She slid over to the door and opened it. “This is going to get crazy,” she added, then jumped.
“Holy shit,” I said, going to the door to see her landing on the hood of a van, jamming her horns in through the windshield and tearing it away.
“Make way,” Red said, and nudged past me as Pucky moved into the van, taking over from the driver and kicking him out. He went rolling along the freeway, other cars swerving. Red was at the door now, and said, “When that van door opens, be ready.”
Then she was gone, too, with a flurry of red cloak. Elisa wrapped an arm around me, kneeling at the door to watch too, and I gripped her hard. This was insanity. Both thrilling and terrifying.
Red was at the door of the van as Pucky pulled it up n
ext to us. The automatic doors opened and Red vanished within, someone unseen trying to block her way but unable to succeed.
“With me,” Elisa said, getting to the door and preparing to leap.
“Are you crazy?”
She glanced back, said, “No,” and then jumped.
“Holy shit,” I said, psyching myself up and then going for it. I saw her land in the doorway of the van, now at our side, and saw lights flashing, maybe a shot or magic, I couldn’t be sure. Then I was out, leaping between moving vehicles on a freeway, and landed in the van with Red and Elisa, the two already doing a damn fine job of dealing with Captain Hook and several Shades.
“Where is he?” Red demanded, and I saw our car pulling away, one of the Shades coming for me. There were no seats in here, only the standing area with Captain Hook, the Shades, and several pirates I didn’t recognize but assumed came from the captain’s crew.
With my recent training, I was ready for the Shade, and took it out like it was nothing. Three cars pulled up alongside us, and in the back of one of them I saw him—those crazy eyes under his disheveled hair, the shadow reaching out for me, but I cast it aside, throwing it back at him.
Seeing this, he frowned, motioned to his driver, and they sped on ahead.
“It’s him,” I said, pointing to the car. “He’s getting away!”
“Not if I can help it,” Pucky said, shouting from the front.
We lurched forward and I nearly lost my footing, Elisa collapsing into me. Together we stood as a pirate pulled out a blade and lunged, another leveling a pistol my way, but Red was on the first, and Elisa the second, disarming him and turning the pistol on Hook next.
She pinned him to the wall, Red turning to disarm him while I took out two more Shades.
“It’s a trap,” Elisa said, staring into Hook’s eyes. Sure enough, he was smiling, looking very content.
“So what if it is, it’s too late for you,” he countered, and tried to come up with his hook for an attack. She pulled the trigger, sending a magic round into his arm and causing him to collapse, darkness floating out of him.
“What do you mean?” Elisa demanded, and he was lying there, eyes darting around, confused.
“The shadow… save me.” He looked at her, eyes wide. “There’s still time.”
Red took her turn now, kneeling and grabbing him. “You’d try to take us out, but what then? How are you going to take out our headquarters?”
He started to answer, but one of the black cars pulled up again. This one had agents in it. They leaned out with guns in hand, prepared to fire.
“Pucky!” Red shouted, and the van swerved, knocking into the car so that Elisa could summon her swans, the burst of light appearing in the car with the men in their dark suits, then transforming into three men in white, so that the contrast of the groups fighting was quite striking.
Hook was up, the darkness back in his eyes although he was trying to fight it, and then he threw himself at me as shots rang out, two taking him in the side as he blocked them from hitting me.
“This was never what I wanted,” he said. “You… you can make a difference. Get to Excalibur…”
Again the cars swerved, and then Peter’s shadow was there, grabbing Hook and yanking him out of the door, throwing him under the car next to us so that he was finished. The car then swerved and went off the freeway, falling as three white swans took to the sky.
I was confused, shaken, and sick of this shit. Taking one of the pistols from a fallen pirate, I ran to the open door, hung on, and opened fire on the car where I could still see Peter. Their windshield shattered, but before I could fire another round Red was there, leaping across and entering the car, immediately grappling with Peter. It made the most sense—her without any darkness, at least according to what Pucky had said earlier.
“We’ve got what we need,” Pucky said, then shouted, “Red, get out of there! Elisa, tell the driver to meet us at the bottom of the next off-ramp.”
“On it,” Elisa said, moving to the back corner and bracing herself as she hit her swan necklace, apparently using it as a comm device.
Red had Peter at the door, slamming his face with her fist, and then pulling out her dagger. But he was fast, leaping out and using his shadow to latch onto the car so that he was pulled around and came back at it from the rear, holding on as the shadow attempted to attack Red. She wasn’t having it though. She lunged back in, caught the driver with her blade, and then in a flash of red was back out and coming at us, her cloak guiding her into the door of the van as the enemy car turned, flipped, and went slamming into the vehicle in front of it.
We were swerving to get off the freeway, carnage in our wake as more cars crashed, then all of us holding on as we were off the freeway, turning down the ramp, and finally coming to a stop at the bottom of an underpass.
“Everyone alive?” Pucky asked, hopping out to help us down. “Shit, I feel like an anal dildo. Used and dirty.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Red said. “But… that analogy is disgusting. Come up with new material.”
Pucky rolled her eyes. “I was the one who ran in shouting about us needing to get out here. The attack was clearly an attempt to get the Protector out in the open, so they could launch an ambush. Dammit!”
“Pucky, stop,” Elisa said.
“No, it’s—”
“No, stop!” Elisa took her by the shoulders, staring at her intently. “You really think that’s all they would’ve sent if it was an ambush? No. Did they hope to get him and us? Of course, but even the attack on HQ wasn’t their objective. All of this was a distraction.”
“Wh—what?”
“I think she’s right,” Red said. “Hook, he said something about Excalibur, right?”
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Well then, we know where they’re going,” Elisa said, and tapped her necklace. “Mowgli.”
“Here,” he replied.
“Change of plans. The attack—”
“A distraction,” he said. “We figured it out when nobody else arrived from their side. The question is where they’ll really attack.”
“We have the answer,” she replied. “The convention center where we found Jack.”
“How can you be sure?”
“The sacrifice, if they’re really going to do this—today’s the last day of the convention. It makes sense for the numbers they’d need of both Normies and Myths, and with our focus on the attack here, they’d be able to make a move without us noticing. Or would have. Plus, Hook… he had a shadow on him, but when he finally broke free at the end he mentioned Excalibur.”
“Which will be at the con,” Red said at her side, finally catching on.
“It is?” I asked. “I mean, the Excalibur?”
“The essence of it we’d used to find you,” Pucky said, her eyes going wide as she too started putting all the pieces together. “They won’t be able to harness the real sword without it. But we can be certain, track it once it’s whole, with… this.” She reached into my pocket, pulling out the stone I’d been using for upgrades. “It was part of the original sword, taken from the stone that King Arthur pulled Excalibur from, imbued with magic by Merlin himself.”
“Well… fuck,” Elisa said, very uncharacteristically, while Pucky accessed a screen from the stone and then confirmed, “Nothing yet, meaning we still have a chance to beat them to it.”
“I’ll send teams,” Mowgli said. “And notify anyone near the booth to protect the essence.”
“We’ll go first,” Elisa replied, turning to see our car already pulling around toward us. “You’ll need to relocate HQ so send who you can, but we’ll take care of this.”
He paused, then said, “Agreed.”
Elisa closed her necklace, and gestured to the car door, which had just opened. We had our mission to get to, and it was taking us back to where it all started.
22
Driving past Disneyland, I was reminded of how innocent I’d onc
e been. How some stories painted a much rosier version of the reality, and of the bastards we were going up against.
“Why there?” I asked, seeing the convention center rise before us. “So many people… what, just to hurt them?”
“Sacrifice,” Red said, scowling at the sight. “As Elisa told Mowgli… if they’re really trying to raise a Lost Soul, there’s a high price.”
Elisa nodded. “With so many of them in one place, of the exact type that will see this as a show and whoever they bring back as another part of the con… yes. But there’s more—where else could people look upon magic items and embrace the sight of them? Where else would people volunteer for the sacrifice, thinking it’s part of a show?”
We were let out of the car and then I was with the three ladies, walking back into LegendFest much like I had on the first day, only now everything had changed for me. When scantily-clad women walked past, my eyes didn’t even dart over for a second. Why look at apples when I was already full from apple pie? Apple pie with cinnamon, and maybe some vanilla ice cream on top.
“What’re we looking for?” I asked.
“First we go to the booth,” Red said, leading the way. “We found you, but the team stayed to see if they could find any soon-to-be Myths, others with power who might someday prove themselves worthy of the titles. The essence draws them.”
“So whoever wields Arthur’s sword, once connected to the essence, can also attract them?”
“Correct.”
We kept walking, turning past a large statue of Thor that caused Pucky to scoff.
“They have it all wrong,” she said.
But when I looked back, it wasn’t the statue I was paying attention to, but my buddy Chris. He was staring at me in confusion, one arm around a woman dressed as She-Ra, and when we made eye contact he let her go, coming for me with a smile spreading across his face.
Pucky noticed and leaned in, speaking quickly. “If they see he’s connected to you, his life will be at risk.”
“Shit,” I said, glancing around and then said, “Find me on the other side,” before ducking into a Minecraft maze. It was complete with people dressed as creepers and coming for me, saying “Boom” whenever they got too close. I supposed it was like a weird version of a haunted house.
