by Montana Ash
Halle-fucking-lujah.
*****
She lay sprawled on her back like a dead thing, arms flung wide. She had just survived a massive shark attack! And as soon as her heartbeat returned to its normal rhythm she was going to congratulate herself on handling the situation with grace, courage and aplomb.
Slurp! Cali screamed, a real honest-to-goodness scream as a wet tongue began enthusiastically licking her face. “Zombie!” She yelled, pushing the bouncy baby off herself. She didn’t have the nerves for this shit.
“Cali. Don’t be mean. You scared him.” Max’s voice came from directly above her.
“I scared him? I just survived Jaws out there! My nerves are raw.” She cried dramatically.
She didn’t need to see Max’s eyes to know she was rolling them. “Sheesh. And they say I’m dramatic. Bruce didn’t even graze you.”
Cali popped up, scowling fiercely. Only Diana and Max were left on the beach, the others apparently not finding her near brush with death noteworthy. Miscreants! “Bruce? Bruce? You did not just call that killing machine Bruce.”
“Sure she did. You know, like the shark from ‘Finding Nemo’.” Diana added, helpfully.
Max nodded eagerly, “How do you think I got him to play nice? I told him; ‘Cali is a friend; not food.’”
“Like the shark from ‘Finding Nemo’.” Diana felt the need to add … again.
Cali gritted her teeth, “Great.”
Diana finally laughed and sat down next to her, pulling her upright. “I’m sorry sweetie. I know that must have been terrifying. Why you insist on swimming so far out there alone though …”
Cali sighed, “Yeah, yeah. I was just trying to clear my head. Oh, come here Zombie. You look pathetic.” She told him, and he did. He was sitting morosely at Max’s feet, head down, avoiding all eye contact, successfully making her feel like a monster; his master was teaching him well. He perked up immediately, tongue coming out in a doggy grin as he flopped his way over to her. She smiled as she rubbed him all over, making his back leg twitch.
“Considering we’re alone and this is our last free pass until we need to start socialising with the IDC again, how about our belated girl talk?” She suggested. They were due to head over to Caspian’s tomorrow for Max’s little demonstration of her powers. She was going to prove that she held domain over all seven elements in front of the entire IDC, all their paladins and any other wardens who wanted to attend. Max was absolutely mortified about the whole thing.
“Oh, yes please. Anything to take my mind off that ridiculousness.” Max sat herself down on the damp sand too.
“Okay … that weekend I had off and I went up north? Well, I got me some action.” She revealed, immediately receiving looks of wonder and censure. The wonder was easily interpreted as the desire for gossip, and the censure was no doubt due to the fact that she hadn’t volunteered the gossip before now.
“Action as in dance-floor-dry-humping action? Or action as in D-in-the-V action?” Max asked immediately.
Cali grinned. Oh yeah, this is exactly what she needed. Why had she waited so long to share this? “Scenario number two.”
“What?” Max squealed as Diana offered her a comradery punch to the arm. “I told you there was something different about you. It was post-orgasm haze. How come you haven’t said anything before now?”
“Because I felt like shit, that’s why. I was getting my rocks off and you were getting sucked dry.” She explained to Max.
Diana shrugged at that, “I was getting my rocks off too ... and technically Darius was getting sucked dry.” She winked salaciously.
Cali choked, trying to breathe through her laughter. Oh, they were all so bad!
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense.” Max prompted once she stopped snorting in hilarity, “Did you pick him up at the club?”
“No actually. I was calling it a night when I kind of just stumbled upon him near the hotel.” She admitted, hoping they didn’t think she was a wanton slut.
“Really? He must have had some great pick-up lines to hook you then.” Diana was stroking Zombie’s belly making the pup’s bi-coloured eyes slide to half-mast.
“Ah, he didn’t actually say anything at all. It was just …” She made a noise like an explosion and blew her hands apart, “Instant chemical reaction. It was crazy.” And it had been.
“Lust in its most purist form.” Max nodded wisely.
“Exactly.”
“That level of lust had to have been pretty intense.” Diana commented.
Cali smirked at that. “About as intense as abstaining from the man of your dreams for eight hundred years had to have been.” Both girls sighed in appreciation as she continued, “I can honestly say it was the best sex of my life; passionate and fierce, filled with orgasms and longevity …” Too bad she’d never be getting the likes of it again.
“Oh, wow. How great. There’s nothing worse than going through all the fuss of foreplay only to get a dud at the end.” Max spoke with confidence making Cali think she’d had her fair share of duds in the past.
“What did he look like?” Diana asked avidly.
This was tricky as she didn’t want to describe a certain ex-warden and a certain brother in law. “He was tall and rugged; unshaven, dark hair, hard muscles. He was gorgeous, trust me, but I didn’t spend too long looking at his face. After a brief sprint against the hotel wall, we mainly did it doggy style.”
“Doggy style? Really Cali.” Diana scrunched up her nose.
“And what is wrong with doggy style, princess?” Max demanded. “I love that position and it was certainly a favourite of mine whenever I picked up in a club. That way you don’t have to look at their face.”
“Exactly!” Cali was in complete agreement.
“Why would you want to have sex with someone if you didn’t like the look of their face?” Diana asked and Cali rolled her eyes at her.
“Really, Di? You’ve never done it with a prawn before?” She asked.
“A prawn? What the hell is a prawn?” Diana asked curiously.
“You know; throw away the head, keep the body. A prawn.” Cali explained as Max nodded sagely next to her.
Diana seemed to think about that for a moment before bursting into laughter, “Oh, yeah. I’ve been with a prawn or two.” She continued to giggle, Cali and Max joining in.
“Thanks guys. I really needed this.” She twirled Zombie’s tail around her finger, the pup now fast asleep despite all the feminine laughter.
“You can come to me with anything, anytime. You know that right?” Max’s voice was earnest and seemed to hint at a hidden agenda. Could Max know more than Cali had just revealed? She hoped not – at least not yet.
“I know. Thank you. And how’s Darius doing? I’m sorry, I should have asked before now.” She said to Diana.
Diana smiled. “He’s doing okay. Very confused. I’m not sure he knows what to think, or feel for that matter. He and Charlie were so close and then Darius turned all that hurt and all that abandonment into such a deep hatred. Now Charlie might still be out there and might even be redeemable? He’s overwhelmed.” She revealed. “But not going off the deep end, no worries there.” She assured Max.
Max just shook her head. “I’m not worried about that. He’s as healed as anyone can get. But it’s nuts huh? What are the chances that my Dex is actually Darius’s brother? I mean, I actually met Dex first and now I’m bonded to Darius. Not only Darius but one paladin from each domain. And you all just happened to be in the one household. I don’t know whether it’s cool or creepy.” Max said.
Cali looked at Diana. They both knew what the chances of all that was and they were practically zero unless you factored in a fateful guiding hand. Cool or creepy? Now that was going to depend on the outcome, Cali thought.
FOURTEEN
Feeling his humanity slipping through his fingers like water, Dex had decided to finally grow a pair and go find Max once more, only to find what appeared to be the
entire household piling into two vehicles and driving away. Damn it! Now what was he supposed to do? He could wait here but who knew how long they would be? And he was secretly afraid his newfound courage would leave him. Eyes narrowed, he gauged the speed of the vehicles and decided he could easily keep up with them in his chade state. Spinning quickly, he watched as the trees and the ground blurred as he began his fast movement, skimming the ground like a pebble skimming the surface of a lake. He kept some distance between him and the road, not wanting anyone in the vehicles to be alerted by his presence.
About twenty minutes later he found himself hiding amongst the trees on a piece of property close to where the ocean met the river. He was a little floored by what he saw. Instead of a picturesque beachfront property, he saw a small house that appeared to be undergoing some renovations and he saw land that had been completely obliterated by fire. The ground was scorched so that only a few strong blades of grass could be seen pushing their way through the earth. There were no trees or plants to speak of near the house, and there was a suspicious lack of wildlife. It was far too quiet.
As the two vehicles came to a complete stop, he noticed three men exiting the cottage-like home. His hunger notched up a level when he sensed the shorter man in the middle was a warden – a rather powerful one too. The two muscled men flanking him must be his paladins then, Dex thought. Car doors slammed and he saw even more paladins exiting the cars he had followed. The large black vehicles hid a lot from view but he could make out Max’s shiny red hair and laughing voice and he felt himself relax minutely; he hadn’t irreparably damaged her. His hunger spiked again as her energy radiated from her in waves. It was more subdued and far more controlled than he had ever seen but still unmistakable. It was also like torture to be this near to a source of sustenance and yet be unable to take from it.
He felt his eyebrows raise when he recognised not one but two familiar faces; Ryker and Axel if he wasn’t mistaken. Ryker had been the Captain in the Order of Ember and had served his liege with honour for over a hundred years, he knew. Dex had been fond of Flint, the Fire Warden, and knew the man had regarded Ryker as a brother instead of a servant. Axel was another story. Dex had run into the fire paladin one evening up north in Queensland outside of a local pub. It wasn’t common for wardens to frequent such establishments but Dex had been far from common. It seems Axel’s warden had been uncommon too for she appeared to be in a serious relationship with her sworn paladin. Dex had been more than happy to keep the couple’s secret and had run into them a time or two over the following years. Seeing no sign of Celeste, he assumed the relationship hadn’t continued. It was a shame, for the two were good together but not really a surprise. Intimate relationships between wardens and paladins were extremely frowned upon.
Two more males stepped into view, one huge dark-skinned man and a smaller, leaner man with auburn hair. Dex had never seen them before but there was no mistaking them for anything other than knights. Not only could he make out their scythes in their leather harnesses but their eyes constantly scanned their surroundings, seeking out hidden dangers. Could this be Max’s Order then? Thinking back to that night when a raging bull of a paladin had come at him from the darkness of the house, he realised that note of familiarity was because that bull had been Ryker. What an interesting turn of events – Max was fortunate in her Order indeed and he couldn’t have felt more relief.
Movement by the cars caught his eye and he knew more people were yet to reveal themselves to his pursuing eye. Surely they couldn’t all be Max’s paladins? Although he had an excessively large number of knights in his Order, it was very rare to have more than four. Only the most powerful wardens would need more and although he knew Max was very strange in her energy production, he doubted the council would allow a female warden to be surrounded by so many male paladins. But it was another male paladin who stepped into his field of view. And what he saw made him stagger in shock.
He didn’t register that he could no longer feel the rough bark of the tree beneath his palm or that he had potentially exposed his hiding spot by his abrupt movement. His whole being was focused on the broad, dark-haired man now talking and smiling with the male warden and Max. Darius. That was Darius. If his tear ducts were still functioning, he was certain he would have been bawling. His baby brother, the brother he had raised and cared for and fought alongside for centuries was standing just metres in front of him. He was standing tall and strong and proud too, just as Dex always remembered. Darius had been a joy to raise despite the fact that they had turned out to be complete opposites in the personality department.
After their parents had been killed, Dex had been devastated. He had been fortunate enough to have parents that truly loved him and had wanted children not for the continuation of their species, but because they had wanted to see a piece of each other in the form of a baby. They had raised him on the morals of equality, justice, courage and duty to his domain. They had taught him to fight but also how to read and how to play. When Darius had come along some one hundred years later they hadn’t even blinked when he had been born a paladin instead of a warden like Dex. They had loved him unconditionally. And it was exactly what Dex had attempted to do on their behalf after the tragedy of their passing. He felt he had done a pretty good job of it considering the noble knight Darius had become. Darius had stayed loyally by his side as his second in command, never questioning his choices to fight in the human wars. The International Domain Council had even honoured him with the title of Sir Darius – an honour bestowed on paladins only a handful of times throughout history.
When he had felt himself changing, his greatest grief had been what it would do to his brother. Darius was a rule follower and held his responsibilities above even his own happiness despite Dex always encouraging him to loosen up. The decline into the scourge of their society would not be something Darius could ignore nor forgive. Months before the point of no return, Darius had come to him as his brother, not as his liege, and expressed his concerns. Dex had done the only thing he could think of to preserve Darius; he had dismissed him, acting as regal and as pompous as the rest of the insufferable jackass wardens. Darius had fought for him at first but his continued cold treatment had eventually succeeded in pushing him away so that all which had remained was a warden-paladin relationship rather than that of brothers.
And yet in the end, Dex still found himself seeking his brother’s aid. Looking into the mirror and seeing nothing but black soulless pits for eyes had terrified him. He had still been thinking and functioning; he didn’t know something like that had been possible. His mad dash through the house and outside to find his brother had ended with Darius’s scythe in his chest. But it hadn’t been the curved blade in his body that had crushed him; it had been the look of pure malice and contempt on his brother’s face. It was one of the things he had never been able to forget throughout the long, pain-filled years.
His baby brother hated him.
Dex felt his eyes take in everything about the man in front of him … including the very large and very obvious tattoo snaking its way up his left forearm and disappearing under the edge of his tee shirt. What was that all about? Paladins weren’t allowed to get tattoos like that and Darius certainly hadn’t been the type to want to get inked up. Squinting, he tried to make out what the tattoo was but all he could see from this distance were a bunch of black and grey lines. Looking to Ryker, Axel and the other paladins milling closely around Max, he determined that they all had similar tatts as well. If Dex didn’t know any better, he would say these people were her Order and those dark lines was her coat of arms. But he did know better. Heraldries were never that big – ever.
He continued to watch in a kind of fascinated horror as car after car arrived bringing with them warden after warden. And not just any wardens either; it looked to be the whole fucking IDC! As a chade this was his personal nightmare come to life. Just what the hell was going on here? First was seeing so many familiar paladin faces, then his br
other of all people was here, and now the council? Perhaps he had crossed over into some kind of alternate universe or maybe he had fallen down the rabbit hole because none of this was making sense to him.
And then she stepped out from behind the big black car. Tall and lithe, blonde and beautiful, it was the woman who had given him the best night of his life when he had discovered the perk of Max’s energy.
Fuckin’ A, Dex thought, looks like it was the rabbit hole after all because this shit is insane.
*****
Cali greeted the council politely and smiled hello to numerous fellow knights as they arrived. She winced as she looked around, seeing dozens of wardens and paladins filling the sadly destroyed front yard of Caspian’s home. Seeking him out, she caught his eye and gave him a smile that was part sympathy and part reassurance. He smiled thinly back as Leo and Lawson gave her a small nod of thanks. No doubt this spectacle was the last thing Cas would have wanted. Just as Ryker’s house had become a place of refuge for her Order, this little slice of land positioned perfectly between the sea and the river was Caspian’s sanctuary. It was home and the one place he could be free to be with his lover without the scrutiny and hate-filled looks of others. Cali knew he had been completely devastated by the loss of his home and the horrific damage to the wilderness here. He was a guardian of nature after all, and the hurt to the earth and the water was an affront.
She was pleased to see the progress to the house though. Luckily, it hadn’t been written off by the flames Ignatius had propelled at it. There had been a lot of damage to the front of the building but they had all rallied around the likeable Water Warden and his two paladins and had seen to it that it was repaired. Turns out, the men were pretty handy with a hammer and nail. Unfortunately, the land here was another story. Being affiliated with water, Caspian had cleaned up the river and the beach in no time, ensuring the water was fresh and safe once more. But he hadn’t been able to do much about the earth, the trees, or the animals. He wasn’t well thought of by the community as a whole given he was outwardly gay and, shamefully on their part, there had been no influx of wardens offering their assistance. Max had made a start weeks ago before she had been stripped of all of her vitality but had been unable to help since. Although Cali was upset and disappointed on nature’s behalf, it turned out to be the perfect excuse for Max to demonstrate her abilities and prove to all those nay-sayers that she did indeed hold power over all seven domains.
