Grapeshot Pantheon

by Dragon Cobolt

  That juice could have come from anywhere, Senator O'Donnell. Meg often fingers herself. Liam imagined himself saying to a microphone as a panel of congresscritters frowned at him.

  “Gods, she tastes good,” Meg purred.

  And Meg sometimes refers to herself in third person.

  Amanda was in the middle of wiping some smeared lipstick off her mouth with the back of her hand when Meg leaned forward and caught her mouth. The older woman looked completely shocked. Her eyes widened and she sat there in dumb confusion for a few seconds before slowly starting to kiss Meg back, pressing against her. Meg drew back, whispering. “God he tastes amazing on you...” She purred, kissing Amanda’s cheek – pushing her head with her nose to get Amanda’s lips back against Liam’s achingly aroused cock.

  Liam mentally resigned himself to perjury.

  It took thinking of every old dude in the Senate and the House of Representatives to not cum as Amanda slurped his entire cock back into her throat. Now that she had ‘broken’ herself in, it seemed she could take him with ease. Her head started to bob with smooth, fluid motions. Her free hand cupped and squeezed his balls as Meg kissed and nuzzled at her neck, her hands cupping both of the older woman’s breasts. Amanda’s eyes were closed and she started to suck faster and faster. Liam gritted his teeth. He had been blown by goddesses. He could-

  Amanda started to hum.

  “Fuck!”

  His balls clenched and Amanda squeezed him with just enough pressure, as if she was trying to milk him for every droplet. Liam felt as if he was giving her everything he could – his knees almost buckled as his cock spurted with a wave of thick, hot cum. Thick, hot cum that Amanda drank with such clear pleasure that it only redoubled his pleasure. Then her mouth slurped back halfway between one spurt and Liam gaped as he saw his cum splash against the face of the President of the United States.

  It was just as surreally erotic as he could have imagined.

  Cum dripped from her chin onto one of her slightly sagging breasts, while the laugh-lines around her eyes crinkled as her face screwed up in pleasure. She licked at her lips and her chin, straining her tongue and using her fingers to start guiding Liam’s cum to her tongue. Meg leaned in, starting to lick at her face with eager movements.

  “Remember,” Amanda purred, her fingers sliding out of her mouth. She had regained enough control to use her accentless voice now. “Any word goes to the press and you two go into a very deep, very dark hole.”

  Liam and Meg both nodded.

  Then Meg grinned. “So, want him in your pussy now?”

  “We don’t have a condom so, absolutely not.”

  “Ass?” Meg suggested, ever hopeful.

  “Are you insane?” Amanda asked, actually laughing. “Vanderbilt would split me in half.”

  Liam, meanwhile, had dropped onto the sand with a whump. He sprawled there, feeling his balls nestling into a tiny divot in the sand. He closed his eyes and breathed as evenly as he could, trying to think a thought that wasn’t inane. But it was just an endless series of ‘wows’ and ‘holy shits’ echoing in his head. His eyes remained closed as Meg and Amanda continued to speak.

  “Give it back...”

  “Come on, your titties are still cute enough hanging free!”

  “It’s not about being cute. Not all of us have your superhuman back muscles, Mrs. Vanderbilt.”

  “Gods, I love how you say my name when you’re angry...”

  “Argh!”

  And then Liam heard the unmistakable and very audible sound of an iPhone’s camera function going off.

  “Annnnnnnd saved!” A cheerful male voice said from overhead. Liam opened his eyes and saw that the whole beach was illuminated by a pale golden light, shimmering in the air and setting dust motes that danced in the night breeze alight. The illumination came from a puffy cloud that looked as if it had flown right out of a work of Chinese calligraphy, and standing upon it was the gangly, muscular form of Sun Wukong. His staff was tucked behind one ear – the size and shape of a tiny metal toothpick – and he was holding a nice, sleek new iPhone in one hand, angled down at the threesome on the beach.

  Liv, who floated next to him, snatched the phone from his hand and crushed it between her fingertips so fast that Sun’s expression was still smug and cocky as the glass and metal crinkled to the beach floor. The dawning horror came as he slowly turned his head to face Liv, his hands still held up, like he was holding a phantom cellphone.

  “I was kidding, Liv!” he said.

  “Oh,” Liv said, looking at the mangled mass of glass, metal and silicone in her hand. She slowly handed it back to Sun.

  Sun Wukong sighed audibly.

  ***

  “On a scale of one to ten!” Liam shouted over the roar of the winds. “How fucked are we?”

  “Turbo!” Sun shouted back.

  Liam groaned. He preferred flying first class in Air Force One to this, no matter how spectacular it was. Sun Wukong had stretched his Stormwind Rider (“I came up with the name myself!”) to be roughly the length and width of a RV. This had made the cloud as thin as a carpet, and left everyone who was seated on it clustered as far from the edges as possible. The F-16 pilot, who could just barely start to feel her legs again, was in the center, with Tethis next to her. Fizit, Amanda, Meg and Liam were near the front, where Sun stood and focused on the horizon. It seemed all he had to do to get his Stormwind Rider to rocket forward at a significant multiple of the speed of sound was stand there and clench his fists.

  Liam wondered how much effort it actually took.

  The magic of the Rider did cut down on the wind chill and the noise. The operative phrase being ‘cut down.’ Not eliminate. Liam was sure that his head would be ringing by the time they hit the French coast.

  “What happened to the United Nations conference?” Amanda shouted.

  Liv, who was rocketing along next to the Rider, skimmed closer. She rolled onto her back, still flying through the air at an incredible speed. Wind blew he blue hair past her cheeks, forcing her to shout through strands of sky-blue like she was speaking through a curtain. “That’s just the problem, Ma’am. It’s still on. You’re there!”

  “I’m what?” Amanda blinked. Then, as if she had been a Purgatorian politician her whole life, she got it. “Ares took my place?”

  “Either that or he cast a spell on someone,” Sun Wukong shouted. “The conference is closed to the press for the preliminaries. I’m betting Ares is waiting until today to bring out the big guns.”

  “Why today?” Fizit asked. “What’s special about today?”

  “Well!” Sun said. “Today is when the speeches before the Press are being held. What better time to dramatically fuck everything than when the whole world is watching?”

  Meg nodded. “So, what’s the plan?”

  Amanda frowned. Her shirt was still missing a few buttons, despite the best efforts of Tethis. She wasn’t exactly a garment mage, and she had burned through every single crystal source she had fixing the pilot’s spine and Meg’s wings and Liam’s leg. Liam gulped. He had at least one trump card. He still had the magic that would keep his brain alive and in stasis, even if the rest of his body was obliterated. But the chances were that if he was ever blasted that hard, Ares would just stomp on his skull like it was an annoying vase.

  But it was something.

  “Here’s the plan,” Amanda said. “We get there as fast as we can and we reveal Ares. Then we hope against hope that you can beat him, Liv.”

  Liv nodded, curtly.

  And on the horizon, Liam saw, for the first time in his life, the beaches of France.

  It was time for endgame.

  Chapter Eight

  Officially, the Geneva Airport was simply that. The Geneva Airport. But everyone, including the air traffic control officers, still tended to call it by the old name: Cointrin. Though the whole place was in Switzerland, the northern edge was pressed right up to the very limit of France’s territory.

>   For Noah Altherr, working there was just another slow step to his true dream – a dream born in the long, lazy days in the service. It was known around the world that Switzerland required compulsory service in their young men. It was less widely known just how mind numbingly boring it was. It had been in a weed fueled afternoon of waiting for something, anything, to happen that Noah had realized his true dream.

  He desperately wanted to make a living drawing. He already had a Twitter account, and he had posted up a few sketches of local birds, but there had been limited traction. Noah didn’t mind. He was just warming himself up to go from sketching birds to landscapes. Then maybe he’d tackle humans. He was willing to take time. Partially because working in air traffic control was an extremely time consuming and mentally taxing job, but also partially because every year he worked at Cointrin’s tower, he’d have just that much more squirreled away into his bank account.

  Noah smiled at the thought.

  Then his smile vanished.

  Because the radar that helped to guide the immense amount of air traffic that flew through the Cointrin terminal had just detected what it claimed was some kind of cruise missile coming right at them.

  Noah’s mouth went dry.

  “M-Ma'am!” he shouted to his boss. She turned away from the console she had hunched over.

  “What is it, Altherr?”

  “We’re under attack!” Noah stammered. “The radar!”

  His boss hurried over, her brow furrowed in confusion. But it was too late. Noah looked up, his eyes wide as saucers. But rather than seeing the flare and smoke trail of what the radar claimed was a cruise missile, all Noah saw was a tiny white spec in the noon-day sky. Then, so fast that if he had blinked he would have missed it, a cloud flew past the tower, close enough for him to see the man astride it. The man had looked right at him, waving as he flew past.

  His boss had seen it too.

  “What the absolute hell?” she whispered.

  “I think we should call the police,” Noah whispered.

  ***

  “I’m so bored...”

  “That is good, isn’t it?”

  The woman who sprawled in the armchair in the hotel room that the Republic of India’s delegation had been given by the United Nations, lifted her head and glared at the man sitting, lotus style, in the center of the floor. His eyes were closed and his hands rested, palm up, on his knees.

  “Of course you’d say that,” the woman said, her face scrunching up slightly.

  “I’m not sure what you are implying,” the man said, his voice still utterly serene.

  “Oh, you know what I’m implying,” the woman said, sitting up. She clenched her hand, then punched her own palm. “I can’t believe we were pulled all the way out here. We should still be in Kashmir!”

  “I argued against our being posted to Kashmir entirely,” the man said. His attempts to sound serene and focused on his inward meditation was growing ever so slightly strained.

  The woman sprang to her feet and started to pace. She scowled as she did so, punching her fist into her palm with every other step. The rhythmic sound began to take on the tone and temper of a war-drum, matching the mood of her. She prowled around, the stateroom like a tiger. Her muscular shoulders strained against the dark blue-black of her dress uniform, while her steps set the medals that glittered on her chest to bouncing. “Yeah. That’s cause you’re a weakling. You also said we should let the western states go.”

  “And I was right,” the man said, his voice growing tight.

  “Oh, that’s how you’re going to swing it?” She asked. “They only listen to you because they’re afraid of me.”

  “An interesting interpretation of the events in question...”

  Because she was prowling away from him and towards the window, the uniformed Indian Army lieutenant colonel saw the cloud shoot past the glass of the hotel. She saw the man on the cloud. She even saw him take a fraction of a second to shoot her a finger gun and grin.

  And loudly, she swore. “Oh that sister fucking son of a bitch!” She stepped forward, her palms mashing against the window.

  “Did the man in the room across the way get his telescope out again?” the meditating man asked, his voice ever so slightly amused.

  “No,” the woman snarled. “Sun Wukong just decided to crash the party.”

  “Ah.” The meditating man opened his eyes. “Well then.”

  ***

  “I have to admit,” Liam said as the wind finally died down and he felt like, for the first time in years, he could speak normally. “The Swedish police work fast.”

  “Swiss, actually,” Amanda said, shaking her head slightly.

  The Swiss police had pulled up their cars out in-front of the meeting hall. It was a large, rectangular building that oozed a kind of old world charm. It looked like a building that had quietly seen out the tumult of the 20th Century without so much as a bit of paint being chipped off. The only thing that ruined the rustic charm was the team of snipers on the roof, aiming at them from behind sandbags and other makeshift protections.

  The Swiss police themselves looked like they were mostly street cops, but they were rapidly being joined by men that could have stepped right from an American SWAT van, save for differences in uniform that Liam, honestly, didn’t give a fuck about.

  “Hands up!” one of the men shouted through a megaphone. His English was quite good and that caused Liam to feel a prickling worry slide along his spine. Now, why, exactly, would they know to use English? “Surrender peacefully, or we will open fire.”

  Amanda stood, shakily. “I am the President of the United States!” She said, projecting her voice as Sun Wukong kept them floating above the street.

  “We find that hard to believe, as your staff tipped us off about you!” the man with the megaphone shouted. “We’ve been informed about the exotic methods that American criminals have access to. Now. Surrender and we shall take you into custody.”

  Amanda frowned.

  Liv shook her head. “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Liv, wait-” Liam started.

  Liv flew down.

  The police paused, bringing their weapons to bear on Liv. The man with the megaphone shouted: “Stop or we will open fire!”

  “Sun, get us to the roof!” Liam shouted. “Meg, help-”

  Meg was already flaring her wings.

  Sun focused and they shot upwards as the police opened fire. But Liv wasn’t where they were aiming. Liam had no time to focus on her or Meg – he was tensing and readying to jump. He leaped just before they flew over the building and landed on the back of a sniper trying to bring his weapon up and around. His shoes smashed into the man’s shoulder blades and he heard a loud clack as the man’s helmet smashed into the ground. The sniper groaned and tried to roll, but Liam was already skipping off. “Sorry!” he said, kicking the man in the face, turning the blow to try and keep the man down without doing too much damage.

  Sun Wukong flew his cloud past another sniper, knocking his rifle away with his staff as Tethis and Fizit sprang down. Fizit’s tail snaked around one of the sniper’s spotter’s throats and tugged him away from where he was kneeling. The pistol in the spotter’s hand went flying as Fizit twitched her hips and pitched him against a lumpy air conditioner. Tethis sprinted for the doorway that led into the building proper, taking advantage of her size and speed to evade notice.

  Meanwhile, Liam was charging another spotter. That man’s pistol was free and he was clicking off the safety. Liam grabbed the pistol’s barrel and used every bit of strength he had to shove the other man’s arm up. And here, Liam realized that there was a serious difference between physical training to stay fit and the physical training it took to use a sword. He nearly effortlessly jammed the police officer’s arm above his head and was able to bring his knee up into the man’s flack vest. The vest absorbed the impact, but the blow was still enough to lift the cop off his feet for a moment, then drop him. Liam grabbed
his head and bounced it, hoping to stun him despite his helmet.

  “Stay down!” Liam snarled, holding the pistol by the barrel. He tossed it to Meg, who had just flown by. Meg caught it and landed next to him.

  “Liv’s really freaking scary now. Just so you know,” she said.

  Liam hurried to the wall. The pop pop pop of gunfire was still going and as he looked over the roof, ready to jerk back in case he had to, Liam saw that Liv was shoving the doors open.

  She hadn’t even tried to beat the cops up.

  She had just walked past them – ignoring them as they fanned out and poured lead onto her. Bullets bounced off her skin. No. Liam shook his head. They weren’t even hitting her skin, her clothing was unharmed.

  “What is she, Liam?” Meg whispered, quietly. “I mean, she’s still Liv, but...”

  “She’s Liv,” Liam said, nodding. “Never forget that.” He grinned at her. “Fuck. Old Liv would have slit those guys' throats without me shouting her down. So, there’s that.” He slapped Meg’s shoulder. “Also, try to not kill anyone!”

  “Got it!” Meg said, nodding as she ran with him towards the entrance, leading into the building proper.

  Around them, they could hear the wailing sounds of alarms.

  Getting to the door, Liam paused beside the entrance to glare at Sun Wukong.

  “Where’s Amanda?” he asked.

  “I sent the Rider off with her on it,” he said, nodding. “Told her how to fly it. She said she’d come back once the airspace got a bit less leady.”

  Liam grunted, then turned to the door. Tethis was muttering under her breath as she fidgeted with the lock. “I can’t get it open,” she said, scowling. “I can hack an Ancient lock open, but...” She shook her head. “No magic here, no Ancient command codes, no-”

  Meg grinned. “Tethis, Tethis, Tethis, honey. Here’s the Ancient command code.”