by Amber Jayne
It occurred to Urna that he was now quite overdressed. Kath helped him as he tugged and unfastened. A few seconds later his outer clothes were in a heap next to the improvised bed, and Urna’s tight black briefs were being peeled down his legs. The crown of his swelling cock skimmed up his thigh, and when Kath lay back down on top of him a squirming pleasure hurried all through him.
Their mouths fell together and the kiss this time wasn’t modest, not at all. With lips smeared apart, their tongues worked diligently against each other. Kath’s head ground back and forth, her hair spilling over him again and again. Her body too took up the rhythm, rocking from side to side on top of his, exciting new pleasures with her every movement.
He cupped a firm buttock, squeezing the resilient flesh, pressing her even harder onto his rigid cock. He felt the sharp points of her breasts grazing across his chest. He could feel her dampness against him, her readiness.
A thought struck him from seemingly nowhere. It was unbidden and he couldn’t guess what instinct had prompted it. But he said, fumbling, “How do I, uh—how do I keep from…” All those women, brought to his quarters. A seeding-and-breeding program, he’d long suspected. He was meant to impregnate them. But surely this woman wasn’t interested in having a child of his. He knew something about contraception, though not from experience.
She touched two fingers to his lips. “Shhhhh,” she breathed. “I’ve already cast the proper spell. No merging of sperm and ovum will result, I promise.” He’d heard no chanting. She’d produced no fanciful object to help with the spell’s casting.
Under other circumstances, Urna might’ve protested. It was one thing to halfheartedly accept Bongo’s ritualized distractions when withdrawal symptoms appeared. It was an altogether different category of trust to believe that this female could simply will herself not to become pregnant. This so-called Order’s obsession with magic might, in truth, be a form of shared madness. Or at least a misdirected faith.
But the urgency of the moment had hold of him. He smelled her carnal scent now, mingling with the flowery air. He felt the heat of her body, felt his own responses—implacable, demanding, insisting he go forward with this.
When Kath reached down between them and joined him to herself, he made no move to stop her. She was confident they required no contraceptive measures. Okay. So be it.
As she lowered herself onto him he felt only pleasure, was touched only by the familiar sexual exhilaration. Any worries vanished by the time she’d slipped herself all the way down to the base of his shaft. Her moisture seeped out over his hairless balls.
She planted palms on his chest, on the stark bone and muscle there, and set off rocking atop him. Her breasts jounced, conical shapes that he reached up to fondle, fingers plucking at one engorged nipple, then the other. Her hair flew about her head and face, escalating the suggestion of dancing flames.
Urna responded with rhythmic upthrusts. His ass bunched beneath him. His belly tightened. He speared her again and again. She impaled herself over and over.
The great sensuality of it suffused him. This was the deceptively simple, innate talent of human bodies, this built-in elation. This was the connectivity which, maybe, made anything bearable. Horrors could befall a person. Life might cheat, betray and abuse you. But a halfway decent fuck could assuage the worst of it, could give you a reason to go on breathing.
Urna felt the grin stretching across his face. It was answered by Kath, above, baring her teeth, riding him all the harder. The sounds of their fleshy impacts filled the little room, a speedy carnal tempo. She slammed down energetically upon him, her lithe form pounding against his. He liked it. He gripped her hips, not to slow but to speed her.
A cry was rising in her throat, hoarse and fragile, the sound contradicting itself. She was a dichotomy, this woman. Sensitive, calm, and yet she had the ruthless ambitions of one prepared to overthrow a government. She was sensible, practical, yet she relied on the vagaries of magical spells.
Her ascending wail reached its pinnacle, a tearing orgasmic call that might’ve reached all the way back through the connecting corridors to the crowded platform for all Urna knew. She shuddered atop him, and he was able to watch the climactic pleasure roll up through her body. At the end she flung her arms out to either side and her head rocked back on the stalk of her neck. He actually seemed to see the waves vibrate through her, and when she crumpled bonelessly, he caught her sweat-slick body with his arms again. Kissed her damp cheek. Rolled her over onto her back. Mounted her.
He continued to hold her, sliding his cock in and out of her oiled groove. She mewled noises under him. Softly at first, then new excitement giving force to her voice. No words came, just growlings and gruntings. Urna liked that too. He gave her harder and faster thrusts now, hammering into her. Her legs rose around him, wrapped his narrow waist. He felt he was touching her deepest heat, his cock connecting him to some ultimate internal core.
As his orgasm loomed inevitably over him, he felt something more—much more—than the mere pleasures of the immediate moment. Something stirred within him, within his mind. Some dormant shadow edged toward the dawning light…
None of this detracted from the intensity of his climax, which swept through him with a jolting power. His smooth balls tightened against him and he gushed his juice into her. Each spurt brought its own shock of pleasure. Kath’s legs locked rigidly about his middle as a second shuddering bliss struck her. Her pussy gripped his spending cock.
After a time, the bolts of rapture eased, became tendrils of afterglowing warmth. They lay side by side.
Urna’s blue eyes were wide, unseeing. He was still dealing with whatever it was that had come loose inside his head, whatever strange divulgence seemed to be looming into mental view. It was weird. How could his own brain have been withholding information from him? But the answer was plain. It was his fractured memory, which had either been damaged naturally or through some deliberate agency.
And why hadn’t he ever seriously considered that latter possibility before?
Beside him, Kath murmured, “Is it clear yet?”
Her voice startled him. “What?”
“Do you see?” she asked in that soothing tone.
Was she actually asking him something, or was this more unsubstantiated mysticism, just ritual words? “I…” He hesitated. “I don’t know what I’m seeing.”
“I’ve done what I can for your block,” Kath said. “For now. More might be dangerous. Let your mind adjust. Let it take whatever time it needs. You’ll be remembering things over the next few days, unless I’m much in error.”
Urna turned. He pushed up on an elbow. “What the hell are you saying? You have something to do with—” He gestured vaguely at his own head, feeling silly to be doing so. He had seen no positive proof of magic, after all.
Kath smiled up at him. “Some spells work better with intimate contact. I saw what you needed the instant I set eyes on you.”
He grunted. “You saw I needed to get laid. That’s a pretty constant condition with me, by the way.”
She surprised him by laughing, then leaning toward him to plant a neat, firm kiss on his chest. She sat up on the bed of pillows, and when she looked down on him, it was with a sober cast.
“You asked earlier about helping us. I assume you were being coy. But we of the Order of Maji could indeed use aid, Urna. You are much more than simply a symbol. The Weapon who turned his back on the Lux. Yes. That’s powerful. But you are a physical being. And there your true talents lie. How would you like to escort a scavenger crew into the Unsafe? Not an official one, of course. Not one that would only benefit the Lux. Rather, an illegal gang that is preparing to make a raid. One of our number is among that crew. They could most definitely use your help.”
Chapter Twelve
Peeking cautiously around the window’s edge, Virge Temple saw the thread of grim smoke still tailing away into the anemic early morning sky and it caused her heart to wind another degree ti
ghter in her chest. Her lab—her former lab—was some ten blocks distant, but there was no doubting it was the source of last night’s fire. No point in denying the intractable fact. She wasn’t one to live in fantasy. She was grounded in science.
And what had all that come to? A laboratory burned by the Guard, and herself a wanted woman…
“Get away from that window!”
Vika’s heavy footsteps crossed the floorboards. As Virge backed away from the window, the bigger, older woman drew the dusty curtain closed with an angry yank.
“You want to get seen?” she asked Virge, in that manner of an adult exasperated by a misbehaving child. “The Guard know your face by now, fool, and there’s Guard all over this town!”
“Maybe, then, you ought to keep your voice down,” Virge muttered. Despite that this associate of Bongo had gotten her to this place of seeming—though, most likely, temporary—safety, Virge hadn’t warmed to the woman. Since they’d arrived here an hour or so ago Virge had tried to engage Vika a few times in conversation, but she had little to say about anything, preferring the issuing of curt orders and monosyllabic grunts in lieu of responses to questions. Virge remembered Bongo’s other companions as being a lot more lighthearted, even capricious to a fault. Not Vika.
They had slipped through the streets last night. How strange the town had looked to her, familiar and alien at the same time, made desolate by the nightly curfew. But she’d felt the presence of the Guard, almost like a dark mist that had descended over everything.
Somehow they’d made their way. Well, not somehow. Vika had seemed to know what she was doing, ducking from doorway to doorway, halting them when an armor-plated Guard transport went rumbling past on a cross street. Those black-garbed fuckers had brought some real force to this little hamlet, like they were expecting a war.
Just another excessive show of strength, Virge thought now. Overkill. That was the way of the Guard or, really, the philosophy of the Lux. Crush any resistance to the established way of things. No matter what, the Lux had to remain the absolute power over the Safe.
And yet Virge Temple, a boozy chemist who’d eked out a living with her lab, had struck a blow against the Lux by aiding and abetting Urna, the fugitive Weapon. She hadn’t meant to join any rebellion, but it seemed she had nonetheless.
It wasn’t a whole lot of solace, she noted with a sigh, returning to the chair she’d occupied a moment ago. Vika paced. It wasn’t a big room and it looked neglected. Paint peeled from the walls in cheerless strips. The ceiling was marked with water stains. Virge had asked more than once what they were doing here, besides keeping off the streets. Vika had only grunted. At one point she’d slipped outside for several minutes, without explanation. Returning, she had only said, “I put word out. We’ll have help.”
Virge had her bag of possessions at her feet. This, then, truly was all she owned. The Guard had torched her laboratory and had surely by now ransacked her house. They obviously knew that Urna had been here in the town and had escaped. Urna was a Weapon and Weapons needed their drugs, and since hers was the only lab in town, Urna must have visited it. And since she, Virge, had reported no break-in, she must be helping him.
Simple logic. Damning logic.
She sighed again. The only thing that might’ve taken some of the sting out of all this was if she’d gotten the chance to romp around in bed with the elf-faced, silver-haired Weapon. He sure looked like he’d be fun to fuck…
This room was around the backside of a dilapidated building. Coming here, Virge hadn’t even been sure if the structure was inhabited at all. Now she heard the soft crunch of footsteps just outside. A quick knock sounded on the door. A pause. The deliberate rap-tap-rap sequence repeated.
Vika crossed to the door, her leathery face set into a somber cast. Virge tensed on her chair, not knowing what to expect.
When Vika opened the door a slender shape slipped through. A woman. A girl, really. She wore a dark cloak, which twirled as Vika caught her arm and spun her around. “Anyone see you?” the big female asked with characteristic gruffness.
The new arrival had a narrow, pixie-ish face, one that reminded Virge fleetingly of Urna’s. Her hair, however, was far from silver, rather, a rich-looking mahogany that tumbled in thick waves about her shoulders.
Without appearing to make any effort, she twisted out of Vika’s grasp and undid the cloak’s catch at her throat. “I was a shadow. If anybody spotted me, that’s all they saw.”
Vika didn’t look like she cared for that answer, but the girl was already turning away, laying the cloak on an old rocking table. Virge, figuring Vika wouldn’t bother with formal introductions, rose to her feet and said, “I’m Virge Temple.”
The young woman flashed her a smile. It dimpled her cheeks in a becoming fashion. “Hello, Virge Temple. I’m Yola Skott. Now we don’t have a whole lot of time, but I’ve already got a good idea about what we can do with your face. So don’t worry.” Her hands were moving inside the cloak, removing items from its pockets and setting them in quick, neat rows on the table.
Don’t worry? Virge, bewildered, stood and watched a moment. That remark about her face had sounded a little ominous. Maybe more than a little. Finally, she said, “Is somebody going to tell me what the hell is—”
“Pull that chair over here,” Yola Skott said, finished laying out her array. “Sit. Relax. You’re in the best hands. I do faces for the theater all the time. Believe me, I could make Vika here look like a blushing fourteen-year-old.”
The stubbly-gray woman glowered at Yola, which made Virge like the young female more. She set the chair by the table and sat.
Vika had moved to the window. Despite her earlier admonishment to Virge, she peeked outside. “Curfew clear bell should’ve rung by now. It hasn’t. That means the Guard will be doing a building by building search. Hurry up with that!”
Yola, who’d just finished quickly combing back Virge’s hair, said in an acridly sweet tone, “If anything’s going to slow me down, it’s going to be your interruptions. You want this done, get lost.” She tied off Virge’s abundance of hair into a severe knot.
Vika, as Virge figured, just grunted. But the woman crossed to the front door, muttering, “I’ll be outside, on watch.”
Virge felt more at ease when she was gone. Having her lab razed and being hunted by the Guard was one set of troubles. Being shut up in this room with the doggedly unpleasant Vika was something else.
Virge smelled the slightly medicinal odors as Yola opened various jars and started to swiftly apply creams to Virge’s face. She slouched on the chair, laying her head across the back. Allowing this pixie-faced girl to do whatever she thought necessary. Trusting her.
The touch of her fingers as she smeared on the creamy substances was firm and knowing. Virge closed her eyes. She heard Yola’s soft breaths, her occasional happy purr. Presumably, whatever she was doing, she liked the results. Jars shuffled about on the table. Lids were snapped open. Virge slit her eyes to see the girl working with fine-tipped brushes. Despite everything so far applied to her face, Virge could barely feel anything. Certainly she didn’t have the sense she was wearing a great deal of makeup.
“Okay, darling,” Yola said a few minutes later. “It’s prosthetics time.”
“Whatever you say,” was Virge’s answering murmur. She’d shut her eyes again.
The young woman went to swift work once more, this time with glue and what felt like bits of clay. Or maybe rubber. Virge didn’t question, just moved her head this way and that whenever Yola asked. The girl’s fingers moved nimbly, and when one of the rubbery pieces was fitted onto Virge’s chin or the bridge of her nose, it stuck there.
Finally Virge heard Yola stepping back. She opened her eyes, raised her head.
Yola was gazing with great intensity at her face. It flushed Virge for an instant, before she realized the girl was only examining her work.
Get a grip, Virge. And she almost chuckled at the thought.
&nbs
p; “Wrinkle your nose for me, please,” Yola said.
Virge did so, feeling the prosthetic. It didn’t, however, seem to affect her facial movements. All felt natural.
Yola was nodding. “Fuck me but I do good work,” she at last pronounced.
Before Virge, who felt a sweet little surge of heat at the girl’s words, could reply, the town’s bells started their ringing. Curfew clear. A little late, but there it was. Did that mean everything was back to normal? Had the extra Guard units withdrawn?
Virge didn’t even let herself hope.
The bells kept on ringing, well past when they should’ve ceased. Yola busied herself packing her supplies back into her cloak. Virge stood up, wishing she had a mirror to check out whatever Yola had done to her.
The front door opened. There was Vika, a dire cast in her eyes. “Can you hear it?” she asked.
Virge frowned. “The bell? Sure.”
“No,” Vika said sharply. “The announcement. They must be riding around with a loudspeaker.”
Virge snatched up her bag and stepped toward the open door. Yola was beside her. In the distance, Virge could hear an amplified voice but she could only make out every third word. Something about “mandatory assembly”? She wasn’t sure.
Abruptly the curfew clear bells stopped their ringing. Into the new morning hush came the voice through its amplifier.
“All residents, with no exceptions, will assemble at once at the square. This town is sealed. Anyone found indoors will be terminated on sight. This is a mandatory assembly. It is by order of the Toplux.”
* * * * *
Drastic, frightening to the town’s populace, disruptive—but, in the end, the great search yielded nothing. Or at least the Guard didn’t find Virge Temple, suspected of aiding Urna, hiding in any of the buildings. Of course not. Virge Temple was there in the public square, in full view, along with everybody else. Hours and hours of standing around, milling, muttering, while babies cried and people tried to figure out what was really going on.
