Ricky gasped and a shudder passed through his body.
“Lucky boy,” Magdeline repeated.
And then she let thousands of years of sexual frustration out. She bucked on him, rode the body beneath her hard and fast. The truck rocked and she could hear the tires squealing. Magdeline felt Ricky’s large hands clamping hard around her waist, felt his breath come out in gasps by her ear. Each thrust against him sounded like someone being punched as Magdeline slammed herself down on him, begging for more – wanting length and girth that was simply not there to be had.
Ricky was done in less than thirty seconds. He screamed as he came, completely overwhelmed. Madeline knew that he was done, yet she kept pumping against him until she could feel him softening. He was shuddering all over, his eyes wide with lust.
“Sorry,” he said. “Quick, I know. But…that was amazing.”
“I know. But I didn’t get mine, Ricky. That upsets me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Take me to your house and try again.”
Magdeline climbed off of Ricky and reached down to squeeze his manhood. It was slick and used, but she could feel the blood pumping and knew that he’d be ready again within a few minutes.
Ricky smiled at her and he started the truck again, soon pulling back out into the road. He did not even bother buttoning up his pants.
Beside him, Magdeline smiled. She wondered if Ricky would still be so eager to fuck her again if he knew he would likely be dead within an hour. She felt a bit sorry for him. When she saw him beginning to get hard again, she lay down in the seat and placed her head in his lap, putting her expert mouth to work.
She figured she may as well send him off feeling as if he was in Heaven.
3
The remaining Rogues were much more lethargic than Saul had expected. It didn’t take long to find them, as they were making their way through Red Creek haphazardly. Some were stumbling through the woods, making enough noise for Saul to be able to hear them from nearly half a mile away. Others tried fruitlessly to break into the homes of those that had not yet been turned, but did so without the skill or motivation they’d had the previous nights.
Getting rid of them was just as easy. From what Saul could tell, the Rogues simple didn’t want to fight. Saul almost pitied them. Even Kara was having no problem at all besting them. They were creatures that simply had absolutely no reason to be alive and, likely, didn’t understand why they were still breathing.
Still, when it came to strangeness, the lethargic Rogues did not even cut it close in comparison to the sight of Polyxia in action. Her age didn’t show at all when she bore down and fought. She was able to hold her own without Saul’s help, seeming to dispatch the Rogues unlucky enough to cross her path with something that was very close to glee. The woman’s strength made Saul’s decision to join her on tonight’s hunt appear foolish; he would have been better placed with Nikki, Jill, or Kara. Still, he had no doubt the three women were doing just fine on their own.
They had split up and gone out hunting shortly after nine o’clock, and ended up meeting one another along a back corner of Main Street shortly after two o’ clock. Five short hours had elapsed, yet Saul found himself deeply relieved at the sight of Nikki making her way towards him. She seemed tired, but victorious – like a warrior returning from battle, triumphant. Her confidence in herself and her powers made her even more attractive to Saul – if that was even possible.
“I see why you fancy her,” Polyxia said. “Human or not, she is strong. That one’s a fighter.”
“She is.”
“Do you love her?” Polyxia asked.
Saul looked at her, surprised at the blatant approach. Polyxia rolled her eyes. “Men. Even the mightiest warrior becomes a mewling sap when they are assaulted with the threat of being in love.”
The five of them stood on the sidewalk along the edge of Main Street. The town seemed quiet again – peaceful. But it was a shell of its former self and, they knew, would likely never again be much of a town at all. There had been too much death in Red Creek, too much blood in the last forty-eight hours. Saul was pretty sure that the place would be a ghost town within a few weeks. He tried to imagine what it would be like when the FBI got involved and tried to figure out where everyone had gone. The Rogue bodies would all turn to nothing more than rot and ash within a few hours, leaving no trace of what had truly happened in Red Creek.
Saul had never felt such a sense of emptiness in any place he had ever visited—and that was saying a lot, coming from a being who had been in some pretty desolate places at the Guard’s request. Red Creek was, for all intents and purposes, dead. The city resembled a battlefield, silent and grave in the days following the final slaughter.
“What now?” Kara asked.
“All we can really do is wait,” Polyxia shrugged. “Even if you decided to leave town, the Guard will find you.”
“It almost seems preferable to stay here then,” Nikki said. “There really isn’t anyone left in Red Creek to be hurt by the Guard.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Kara said, “with the exception of speaking with a scantily clad goddess in my living room, I don’t know anything about the Guard. Anyone want to fill me in?”
“It’s actually pretty simple,” Polyxia said. “The Guard’s members are able to become mortal, if they so decide.”
“Why would they want to do that if they are immortal?”
“Because there are universal laws set in place to keep them for abusing their power,” Polyxia explained. “In their immortal forms, they can’t physically harm any creatures, whether it be of the supernatural realm or your world. Those restrictions disappear if the Guard is of mortal flesh and blood. The twist to that is, of course, that they can be killed as mortal beings. They still have the vast majority of their powers, mind you. But they can be stopped.”
“They’ve only ever gone mortal once, as far as anyone knows,” Saul said.
“That’s right,” Polyxia said. “It was in the 1500s, when a band of werewolves decided to try overtaking parts of Romania. They took on mortal form and destroyed the entire pack of twenty wolves in one single night.”
“And we’re supposed to fight them?” Nikki asked.
“If we don’t do it now,” Saul said, “they’ll just find us somewhere else. If they have made up their minds that they want us dead, they won’t stop until it’s done.”
“And the only way to stop them,” Jill said, “is to kill them first.”
“Is that even possible?” Kara asked. “Do we stand any kind of a chance?”
“Oh, there’s always a chance,” Polyxia said. “There are things happening that have only ever been spoken of in darkened rooms. The Marked being together with a unified purpose, for instance.”
“But Magdeline brought us together! And she only did that as an attempt to get us killed,” Kara reminded.
“That doesn’t matter,” Polyxia scoffed. “What matters is you all survived, and are working incredibly well together, considering you’re only human.”
“So when do we start?” Nikki asked. She was looking down the street with a sad sort of thoughtfulness on her face. “When will they get here?”
Polyxia grinned, but there was no real humor or joy in her expression. It made her look as if she had already been defeated.
“My dear, I imagine they are already here…waiting for the right time to strike. They’ll want to get used to their mortal state before coming for you.”
“So maybe we should be hunting them down right now,” Kara said. “We should go for them when they are weak and unsuspecting.”
“Indeed,” Saul agreed. “But we all must get some rest. Even if only a few hours. The fight ahead is sure to be brutal.”
“That’s why I like you,” Nikki said, slipping an arm around Saul waist. “You aren’t much for sugarcoating things.”
4
Filth Camp felt like an unfamiliar place to him. Now that it
was not his spawning ground for more Rogues, the land felt empty and meaningless to Gestalt. Even with Paula by his side, gripping his arm in the same nervous sort of way a little girl might hold her father’s hand, the field that all of Red Creek knew as Filth Camp felt absolutely barren.
“Something is different here,” Gestalt said. “Not just here, but in the entire town. Do you feel it?”
Paula shrugged her shoulders and looked to the sky. Gestalt knew that in her current state, she’d agree with anything he said. She was, by all intents and purposes, his slave. At the time he had attacked her, that had been exactly what he had wanted. But the few days that had passed since his retreat from Saul Benton and his surprisingly effective little clan had made him re-evaluate what it was he wanted.
“It feels…quiet,” she murmured.
Gestalt nodded. He has been expecting as much. He had left enough Rogues behind in Red Creek to eradicate the place thoroughly. The question remained, of course, as to whether or not Saul Benton and his clan were still alive.
“Are you ready?” Gestalt asked Paula.
She looked to him, confused. He had created her to be obedient, to be a servant to his every need. To have him asking if she was ready for something or to show any signs that he actually cared at all were beyond confusing to her.
“I suppose,” she said. “Do you think you can defeat him? The Benton man?”
“I don’t know,” Gestalt said. “It may not even come to that.”
He easily recalled the confrontation with not only Saul but the entire tribe the man had assembled. He could still feel the wound along his chest where a splintered tree branch had missed his heart by less than an inch.
Maybe it was that brush with death that had him thinking queerly. Maybe almost being wiped from the face of the planet after seven hundred years of dominance had reset his mind somehow. Whatever the cause, Gestalt had returned to Red Creek with a completely different set of goals than before.
Gestalt had been raised to question the Guard—to automatically assume the worst of them. When he had decided to work with the Guard in an effort to rid the world of the Benton clan, he had seen a side of them that he had always suspected was there: Psychopathic selfishness. The Guard cared only for themselves. Even if their plan to eliminate the Benton family had ultimately succeeded, Gestalt had no illusions that he’d be in their favor. They’d simply manipulate him in the same way they had tried to do with Saul Benton.
And Gestalt wasn’t having that. Truth be told, he wasn’t completely sure why he had returned. He could sense that many of his Rogues—if not nearly every single one of them—had been killed. He could feel that loss deep in his mind and it hurt. But that didn’t concern him nearly as much as the fact that he felt like he was having some sort of supernatural midlife crisis.
“Are you okay?” Paula asked from beside him.
“Yes,” Gestalt answered as they started walking out of Filth Camp and back towards town. “I’m just trying to get my priorities straight.”
“Oh.”
They left the field behind. The railroad tracks caught the reflecting moonlight, glittering queerly amid soft darkness. Gestalt could still smell the blood that had been spilled here less than forty-eight hours ago and it tugged at something deep within his mind. There was something more to it, something that he had never felt before.
By the time he and Paula could no longer see the field behind them and the woods of Red Creek pressed in around their bodies, Gestalt thought he knew what that feeling was.
Sadness.
And he had no idea why it was there or where it was coming from.
He walked further into the darkness, closer to the hub of Red Creek, and felt that sadness pressing even harder down upon him.
“You seem lost,” a voice said from the darkness.
Gestalt stopped and wheeled around, scared for the first time in a very long while. He saw a shape taking form in the darkness, the contours shimmering like pools of grey liquid.
“Benali,” he said, genuinely surprised. “When were you freed?”
“Oh, many things have been set into motion in the days since you made your retreat,” Benali said.
“I had to retreat,” Gestalt spat. “I had left my Rogues behind. It made no sense for me to sacrifice myself when I had what I—and the Guard, I might add—thought was a faultless plan in place.”
Benali sneered at this and took a fluid movement forward. “Your Rogues were not strong enough.”
“They weren’t strong enough because you demanded fast results. You forced my hand and you got mediocre results because of it.”
Benali seemed to ease down a bit. He looked to Paula and then back to Gestalt. “It doesn’t matter,” Benali said. “We have our own plans this time. I am not alone in Red Creek. The others will be here soon. I don’t know, nor care, what business you have in town, but I suggest you wrap it up quickly.”
“Is that a threat?” Gestalt said.
“Of course. If you get in the way of our plan or even happen to be strolling down the wrong street at the wrong time, you will die. The town of Red Creek will be in ruins shortly. Why are you here?” Benali asked.
Good question, Gestalt thought. He threw the lie out quickly and with enough spite that it felt real when he spoke it. “If there are any of my Rogues remaining, I owe them the chance at a life outside of this hellish little town.”
“Fine,” Benali said. “Gather them up and leave. The end is night for the Benton clan and this entire wretched town.”
Benali didn’t give Gestalt any time to retort. He sunk back into the shadows between the trees and simply winked out of being. To say he was a ghost was an understatement; whatever Benali was made ghosts seem solid and substantial.
“Who was that?” Paula asked.
“A member of the Guard.”
“Those are the people you were working for?” she asked.
“Not people. No…something else. Sort of like demigods.”
Paula nodded and nuzzled up beside him. Gestalt put his arm around her and continued walking. He noticed that even as they left Filth Camp behind, he could still smell blood. It was rich and thick, coating the very air he breathed.
To him, it seemed like Red Creek was soaked in it.
5
Magdeline rolled out of the bed and used the bed sheets to wipe the blood from her hands. Next to her, the body of Ricky lay limp and broken. Magdeline, on the other hand, was feeling amazing. Ricky had been weak, but he had been able to get her off twice before she’d broken him. When she had felt her second orgasm building, she’d simply lost control.
She’d heard it when Ricky’s hip dislocated. She’d silenced his scream by offering a breast to his mouth. Even in his pain, he had taken it gladly. Several moments later, she’d broken three of his ribs and dislocated his shoulder.
The blood had come when she had run her hands down his face, across his throat and chest. And somewhere in there, his heart had simply stopped beating. His eyes and nerves were in adoration of her as she literally broke his bed in half, but his actual inner-workings couldn’t keep up.
Ricky had died while she was straddled on top of him. She’d felt him die beneath her, although he had still been erect. She’d slid off of him and now found herself standing in his bedroom.
Magdeline located the bathroom and took a shower, letting the steam sink into her muscles. Something as simple as hot water was easily taken for granted when living the life of an immortal. She really didn’t think there was anything better than a relaxing shower—in either the supernatural or natural world.
She got out, admired herself in the mirror for a moment and laughed whimsically at a slight bruise on her thigh where Ricky had grabbed onto her tightly as his pelvis had shattered.
Magdeline dressed, found they keys to Ricky’s truck and then went outside. Dawn was beginning to crack the night, shedding waxy light onto the horizon. She looked out toward the rising sun and, once again, remi
nded herself of the simple pleasures of being a mortal. She remembered very little of her mortal life, and with good reason. Aside from the easy access to sex, there was little that she’d choose from the life of those confined to flesh over the power and stature that the Guard had to offer.
Magdeline got into Ricky’s truck and pulled out of his driveway. She took the road west, again using one of her enchantments to drive the vehicle, as she had no idea how it operated. She guided the truck with ease and patience. She only showed the slightest sign of emotion when, twenty minutes later, she passed a sign along the side of the road that read: WELCOME TO RED CREEK!
CHAPTER FOUR
1
Sleep came, but it was restless. Nikki fell asleep right away, not even taking the time to enjoy Saul’s body next to hers. When she stirred awake, the clock –and the rays of sunlight pressing against the curtains –informed her that it was morning. She had slept only five and a half hours, but felt incredibly rested. Nikki suspected that this was yet another facet of her supernatural powers.
Nikki walked out of the bedroom, leaving Saul to rest behind her. If anyone deserved a little extra sleep, it was certainly Saul. She walked out into the living area, still door-less and drafty, and found Polyxia and Jill sitting at the table, drinking coffee.
“Sleep well?” Jill asked.
“Great, actually.”
“Same here,” Jill said.
“Sleep,” Polyxia said with a rough laugh. “A waste of time.”
“Do you not sleep at all?” Nikki asked, heading to the coffee pot to pour her own cup.
“Not really. About once a week I will meditate. It’s a mediation that detaches my actual spirit from my body. The spirit then goes into a period of stasis for six hours. When it returns, it is more refreshed and revived than what a human could hope for after eight hours of sleep.”
“Could you teach me?” Nikki asked.
“I could, but it would not work. It’s a dark magic of a kind that isn’t even practiced anymore. And it only works on those that are purely human. I will say though, that if there was any place on this Earth to properly teach magic to humans, it would be Red Creek.”
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