by TylerRose.
“We’re not. We cannot stand each other. Doesn’t mean we can’t work together now and then. We have three sax players. She was the first who showed today and the one who played the best during rehearsal so she got to come play the gig and get paid for it,” she said, opening his pants and reaching in. “Shut up and fuck me.”
He chuckled under his breath, rolling her onto her back and pulling the short dress up. “What a horny woman you are.”
They made love and slept repeatedly through the night. He initiated and she rendered up to him everything he wanted. He took her second virginity.
“I’m glad you’ve got stamina,” she teased as he lubed himself up for it.
“We’ll see how much stamina you have, little girl,” he teased back. “If singing turns you on like this, I’m going to have to go to all your gigs and make you sing just for me the nights you don’t perform.
On her back with her knees drawn up and he finally possessed the last part of her he’d ever wanted. Her little yelps and whimpers ignited him as much as the tightness of her hands around his upper arms.
“Don’t stop,” she breathed. “Even if I say no, don’t stop. I have to get through the initial discomfort and that might take ten minutes or more. Just don’t stop.”
He took her at her word and clamped his mouth over hers to muffle the sounds of her rising screams. Tongues slipping and sliding around each other, and another scream, alternating with each pull back and drive forward. Her energies danced over his in a sizzling sensation every time he sent her into that overload. Damned addictive sensation it was. Pain but not. Electric but not.
A good ten minutes it was before her energies shattered around them and she lay relaxed on the bed and her cries turned to low moans of pleasure.
“Fuck my ass like you fuck my cunt,” she said, eyes closed and face as languid as could be after expelling so much energy through screaming.
“That hard and fast?” he questioned.
“God yes! I need it, Jerome. I need you too. As long as you can.”
He did, and found out the exact limit of his endurance as he kept her going and she kept him going for another forty five minutes at least. She reached a finger down to tap her clit a few times to start the clitoral orgasm that locked her up head to foot. If there had been a rock inside of her, they’d have pulverized it to sand with their combined force.
The spell broken with his climax, they rested together and fell into a deeper slumber. She woke when he came out from the bathroom at his normal jogging hour.
“I have something for you,” he said, reaching for his pants. “I was going to give them to you at the restaurant, but you had more important plans.”
Into a front pocket for a flat square box three inches across and he opened it to show her a string of tapioca sized, natural round pearls.
“They’re lovely. Thank you.”
She turned her back to him and he reached around to put them on her.
“They were my mother’s. No promises except I won’t fuck anyone but you and I’ll always do what I think is best for you. You don’t have to make any promises to me.”
She turned to face him for a long, gentle kiss, and gave him a serious expression.
“Buy bricks of platinum.”
“What?” he asked, caught off guard.
“Greenbacks make for poor toilet paper in Gamma Quadrant. If you’re going to have the means to buy and trade for goods and services, you need universal currency. Platinum is easily tradable for Ruds or Kartara. Ruds being the currency of the Congress and Kartara being the currency of K’Tran. They’ve not converted yet to Ruds. Bricks without serial numbers are preferred so I can make copies. No buyer is going to take them if they have identical serial numbers. Now I have the pyro, I can melt out the numbers myself easily enough.”
“You’re serious,” he said. “But what about the money from Voran?”
“There’s no guarantee that I will get it. It’s not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. Without an income, it’ll burn up fast in a house that big. I have to come up with some way to generate a sustainable household income.”
“I love you when you’re brilliant.”
“Do you love me when I’m hungry? Because I’m starving.”
He got her one of his t-shirts and a pair of old boxer shorts, and pulled on a pair of boxer briefs and shorts himself. Gable was yawning over mixing a fresh pitcher of juice. Roc sat at the table with peanut butter toast. Tyler had shown her how to make it with butter on the bread first. Star, already finished and heading down to the Torino, paused on seeing them come in.
“Oh good. Landra Ahr wants to know if you intend to bring the Torino with you when we leave planet.”
Jerome looked to Tyler. “Can I do that?”
“Sure. He’ll just have to check with K’Tran laws for their emissions rules ’n’ stuff.”
“Yeah, he’s already done that,” Star said. “I’m going down now to start the first step of modifications necessary.”
“I think he’s as eager to get off this rock as I am,” Tyler said, going for the coffee first.
She ended up baking bacon and making scrambled eggs and hash browns, and ate as full a breakfast as anyone present had ever seen her consume.
Soon as she was finished, with Roc taking care of the dishes, Tyler went first to dress and then to the Command Center to have a serious conversation with Landra Ahr about the Shen Ren Fa temple. She had to decide where best to appear, what time of day.
“Where within the temple matters. How you present yourself matters,” he concluded.
“What time is it there?” she asked.
“Late enough in the morning that most everyone is awake.”
“I’m going now then.”
Concentrating on her spot, she teleported across Alpha quadrant and to nearly the farthest reaches of Gamma, arriving at the entrance end of the long, black tunnel.
“Greetings,” she said in Taveragian, and waited.
Men slipped into places along its length, prepared to issue the series of tests required for initiates. Here was her choice: To go on and take their trials and see if she would be accepted or not to take them and see how they handled it. Women were not permitted within the Brotherhood. Even if she made it to the end, they might not hear her out. They might try to kill her for trying, and that would be very bad for Shen Ren Fa.
She took two steps forward, knowing the first would try to attack with one more step. She really did not want to fight any of them. Knew they saw her perfectly well in this blackness they were so accustomed to.
She sat on her bottom in the middle of the corridor’s path and conjured up a tiny ball of flame. She turned and twisted her hand, causing it to roll and slide all around her fingers. Front and back, the shape of her fingers. All the while assessing their confusion. She felt the one at the farthest end slip away to run go get Master.
The Master came along rather slowly, ancient legs a bit stiff and not wanting to walk as fast as his brain wanted to get there. An energy more ancient than the body, the soul of a man far older than his physical form. She could relate.
A tiny flame approached, so far back it was nearly swallowed by the dense blackness of the corridor. The tapping of a cane tip, giving sound to steps that otherwise had none. A small, deceptively frail looking old man stopped five feet back, head tilting as he assessed her and the flame she played with. She kept her mind clear, waited for him to initiate a greeting as she gently blew the flame up the length of one finger and down the other side.
“You are not of the Sisterhood,” he said.
“I am not,” she agreed. “I bring a message from L’Roc-ai.”
His energy jolted with the meaning of her words. “A name not spoken in many decades. She still lives?”
“She does. She is safe and well looked after. Landra Ahr and Starbird have not failed in that duty. The conqueror Adamantine is dead. His ship and army are destroyed. All that remains are t
hose living on planets such as this. They are all separated from each other and cannot communicate except within their own microcosm.”
“That means Dominion is also dead,” he said.
“It does. I had the pleasure of killing him myself.”
“What of the son?”
“I destroyed him as well.”
“What message do you bring from our lost Mother?” he asked.
“She will return soon. The rebels are to prepare themselves. We bring an army with us but will need information in order to expedite termination of the Rhutvak holding your people prisoner. Can you get the information we need?”
“What do you need to know?” he asked.
“Where and how many machines. Is there a central brain that replaces Dominion? Any set pattern to patrols. What makes them kill or spare someone.”
“When do you need to know?”
“I will return in five of your days; but I will not be at this end of the entry. I will meet you at the other end.”
“It is forbidden for a female to walk the path of the Initiate,” he informed her without threat.
She hopped to her feet, standing equal height with him. “I did not say I would walk it.”
She put her flaming right fist against her upright and not flaming left palm and bowed slightly, but did not lower her eyes. Respect but not submission. Respect, but not completely an ally.
She vanished. Two seconds in the dark and he turned about, cane tapping furiously on the stones as he made his legs hurry back the way he’d come.
Arriving in the Command Centerand releasing a tremendous breath for the exertions, she nodded to Landra Ahr.
“First contact was successful. I’m going back in five Taveragian days to see what information they’ve gathered for us.”
“Very good. I will set a reminder and let you know when those days have passed.”
She went to Jerome’s room, finding him on the computer doing his own research on whatever was interesting him today. He listened intently as she told him everything she could about that portion of the temple. Where the posts were, how far apart, what they were and were not allowed to do.
“I’m going to have lunch with Mickey,” she concluded. “We have a lot to talk about.”
“Okay.” He saw her hand jerk a hard twitch and grasped it, capturing her attention. “Have I told you yet that you are the most remarkable woman I’ve ever known?”
She smiled a genuine expression and he kissed her.
“You go do whatever you have to do. I have something to do myself. Just know whatever you ever have to do, I’m either right beside you or right behind you.”
“I appreciate that. Have a fat one ready. I’m gonna need it.”
She teleported to a space between shops and went inside to buy sandwiches and chips. She teleported from between buildings into his entry and called his name. He came out from his den and they sat together in the living room, comfortable in each other’s presence despite the heavy topic they both knew was also sitting there.
“Where you wanna start?” she asked.
“With a truth you already know. You are not the offspring of David Brooks. You are my child. My name is Mik’Hial. I am full blood Sistarian but was born here on Earth in the first century AD. I am the child of a carpenter named Jesus and one of his followers, Mary Magdalene.”
He paused to see her reaction, but she gave none. Eyes intently on him, she wanted only to hear the story.
“Knowing it was too dangerous for us to be known, Mother headed to France after Father’s death and gave me to a family in exchange for their young daughter. When I was twenty, I Widened for the first time. Earnol tried to take me away to Sistair but Hades intervened and told him off. Hades was Zeus’ brother, which makes him Earnol’s uncle. Earnol has always feared him. That’s probably why he’s never come for you directly. Hades would know and half the planet would be in ruins after he was done with Earnol.
“Hades explained to me why we were here. Awaiting the arrival of the Eminent, possibly the Immaculate. No one knew who it was going to be or when. Together we realized that I was going to father the Eminent or Immaculate when the time was right. Several times over the next centuries, Earnol tried to get me to leave Earth. The last was about two hundred years ago. He told me Earth was going to be abandoned to its fate. It was obvious there would be no Eminent. He told me if I tried to interfere when Adamantine came, I would be judged and executed.”
“That sounds familiar,” Tyler put in wryly. “He issued the same threat to me on occasion.”
“Well, the more fuss he put up, the more I knew I had to stay and await the moment of appropriate action,” Mickey continued. “Finally I saw Adamantine for myself in a vision. I saw that Earnol had been leaving little bits of influence all over the place to drive him here.”
“I knew it! He was never supposed to come here at all, was he?”
“No, he wasn’t. He would have kept to the farther reaches of Gamma quadrant and eventually crossed into Delta. Seeing that Earth did not have the means to defend itself, I found the most likely human candidate to fight him off. The bloodline had to be absolutely indigenous to Earth, with no contamination from Sistarian blood. I found an Indian warrior of the Blackfeet tribe and nudged him to a staff of crystal similar to the first one Adamantine ever absorbed. It was not the only one on Earth but it was and still is the only accessible shard. It had come from Taverages.”
“The staff the Sisters of Roc’s temple guarded, and Jerome’s sixth great grandfather,” Tyler said. “Or seventh.”
“Yes. Farseer guarded it, passed it to his family. It went through the family until it reached the descendant who would hold it when Adamantine arrived. That person would also be your closest protector. Hades was supposed to be, but he’d made a very bad mistake and had been removed from that post. Jerome is his replacement, though they are very much alike in many ways.”
“When did you start having children? Did you know I was supposed to be there to fight too?”
“I did not know you were supposed to fight until you came back this past June. I could see in your eyes that you were on a mission. I impregnated one woman each year starting in 1970 but only four developed any abilities.”
“Jerry, Amy, Nancy, and then me,” she deduced.
“Yes. I followed the staff as it travelled from Blackfeet territory to Ohio, staying closest to you as Earnol convinced Jerry and Amy to leave Earth. I shielded your presence as much as possible. He didn’t know about you until you ran to California, out of my protection. I couldn’t go along.”
“No, but you could have tried harder to convince me to stay.”
“You didn’t give anyone the opportunity, hon. You were so tight-lipped and closed-minded about getting out of here that none of us knew what you were going to do until you did it. You started Questing. Once that happens, there’s no stopping it. We couldn’t get close enough to take you in hand and guide you. Not that you’d have even let us,” he ended with a little chortle. “At some point you had to recognize that we are here to help you, not to hinder you. Not to tell you what to be or how to be. We’re here to help you be what you must end up as.”
“It’s such a burden already and it’s still thousands of years away. The enormity of it makes my mind go blank,” she admitted.
“It is a lot to deal with. I won’t deny that. Who is your Adjutant?”
“Julian, Earnol’s son. He came over into this timeline with me.”
“Good. That doesn’t surprise me.”
“I’m leaving Earth in a little while. A couple weeks at most,” she told him.
“Leaving? You just got here. We’re ready to move forward now and start you learning all the things you should already have known by now,” he protested.
“Well, I’m not ready for that. I have things to do yet. I have eighty planets to free and a whole lot of peace of mind to obtain before I can even think about what might happen three or four thousand y
ears from now. You all have been waiting? You’re just going to have to continue to wait. I’ll come back now and then and perform gigs. I’ll just have to know about them plenty enough in advance.”
“Okay,” he conceded, knowing he would never win if he pressed the matter. She was Questing still. “Our next gig is Thursday at Droghers and then Sunday we have an Iron Knaves all day.”
“I’ll be at both, likely with Jerome in tow,” she said, having a sudden and urgent need to return to the warehouse. “I need to go. We’re not done talking. I just need some time to digest all this.”
“You know you can come here literally any time of the day or night,” he said, rising with her to give her a kiss on the cheek. “You’re a beautiful daughter any man would be happy to call his. I’m glad I finally can do so openly.”
She smiled and teleported to the warehouse.
The lady vanishes, Jerome thought when she did just that. What a feeling it was to be in a passionate, deeply emotional and meaningful relationship and not feel possessive or jealous.
Computer turned off, he went down to the Torino. Starbird was finishing up her first set of modifications, things that would make the coming modifications easier in the long run. She vacated the car quick as she could so he could take it. He loved his Challenger, his first car, but it didn’t have the technology he’d come to love and depend on.
He drove to the intersection of Alexis and I-23, stopping at a roadside stand to buy the biggest bouquet of flowers on the cart. Another half mile out Alexis Road, almost to the suburb of Sylvania, he turned into Woodlawn Cemetery.
He could find the graves blind, so many times had he driven the winding roads through the silence. He crouched over the grave in the shade of a twenty year old weeping willow.
“Love and Soul Mate” the headstone said.
“Well, I thought you were my soul mate at the time, sweetness,” he said aloud. “Now I know you weren’t. Not even close. I really don’t know what else to say other than I’m sorry you had to die. I understand why you had to go. Tyler and I have a lot to do and you were always too jealous of other women. The two of you in the same house would have been a daily war. You’d have lost.”
