by Kirk Zurosky
I was relieved that everyone had survived the trials of the day unscathed. I felt in my pocket for the fake Moon of Madrid. “I guess we can give this back to Angus in the morrow,” I said to Oliver. “Interesting, we did not see Kunchen or the Thief this time around.”
“Rest assured, they will be back,” Oliver said. “We have to surmise that they sent others to do their dirty work for them this time.”
“We don’t know if the Thief is involved in this.”
Oliver nodded. “True,” he said. “But we don’t know that she isn’t either. Have you forgotten that she stole the Dagger of Dorje?”
“Which she returned.”
“And the attack on the Font.”
“Not sure that taking it out of Orcinus’s domain would be a bad thing,” I replied, folding my arms across my chest.
Oliver rolled his eyes. “I get it, Sirius, I do. She is beautiful—no stunning, no whatever—but she also tried to take the real Moon of Madrid at the last coronation.”
“You have me there,” I said. “But she never did get a chance to explain why she was trying to steal it. Maybe centralizing all the Relics would be a good thing?”
“You know, maybe there is a good reason why the powers that be decided not to do that in the very first place, eons ago?” Oliver said, growing more annoyed with me by the second. “Because it is an exceedingly bad idea. You are hopeless.”
During this spat with Oliver, my eyes were on Connor and Will exchanging gold coins with the innkeeper and no doubt negotiating rooms near the girls, and hot baths to rid themselves of the deer blood that still caked their skin and made them resemble some sort of feral animals. But the innkeeper did not want them trooping through his inn in their rather sanguine attire, fearing they would spark a mass exodus and cost him needed gold. Men after my own heart, the Wood brothers had a solution to this problem. Stripping naked to the hoots of my girls, and performing a brief barn dance, the Wood brothers bowed to the innkeeper, and sprinted, with great applause, up to their rooms and their waiting baths.
“Indeed,” Beatrice said. “Now that I think of it, Will’s bare bottom does look a bit familiar . . .” The girls collapsed into each other in great fits of laughter.
I shook my head, and went inside for a much-needed drink. Oliver followed behind and put a hand on my shoulder. “Poor Sirius,” he said, looking like he actually meant it. “This ale is on me.”
“So tell me about the merfolk netting,” I said. “You looked none too happy when you saw it. Would you care to explain?”
Oliver shook his head. “Don’t ask,” he said.
“I just did.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I am not going to tell you,” he said.
“Why not?” I said. “It might be important to our mission.”
Oliver stopped and turned to me, putting both hands on my shoulders and threatening to drive me into the earth like a vampire fence post. “I don’t care if it is important or not,” he said calmly. “Am I clear?”
I nodded. “Yes, you are indeed. So how about that ale . . .” I held out an arm, and gestured for Oliver to lead the way. He went to sit down, and I looked to Garlic who was sitting calmly waiting to find a choice bone. “Remind me to ask Hedley when we return to the college,” I said to her. “And if he doesn’t know the story of Oliver and the merfolk nets, you can ask Norville.” She snorted and walked around in a circle, clearly annoyed with me. “I don’t care if you don’t speak rat,” I added. “Figure it out. As we know, Hedley is not always the best with giving us the full story.”
By the time I had emptied a few tankards of ale, courtesy of Oliver, it was time to retire to my own chambers, where a hopeful maid had poured my bath. She was a tall willowy creature with long brown hair and fluttering eyelashes. I knew my girls were just down the hall, and hoped to hell that the Wood brothers were not with them. Damn. The maid stood there, doing her best to look winsome, but I was not interested, so she just succeeded in looking silly. I declined her offer of any further services and sent her on her way, ignoring the look Garlic gave me. “What?” I said. “I just feel like being alone. It is not a crime, you know.” Garlic paced up and down for a moment, then curled up by the hearth with an exasperated sigh.
I undressed and eased into the steaming hot water, feeling the delicious warmth melt the aches of the day away. I closed my eyes and thought of Scorn and Orcinus, again wondering if there was any truth to a conspiracy between them. Perhaps Oliver was right, and there was nothing but an odd series of coincidences, and some rebellious demons, that acted to bring Adams into league with both Scorn and Orcinus. It was my turn for an exasperated sigh because I was not one who believed in coincidences. I drifted off to sleep, and I do not know for how long, but I woke to hear the slow, barely audible snick of my door’s lock being picked. Garlic roused from her nap, and a low soft growl issued from her throat. I motioned to her for silence. The footfalls in the hallway were soft, probably the maid coming back to check on me or give it another chance. I looked over to my bed and thought for a moment. I changed my mind—as making it with the maid was now in play—and feigned sleep with my eyes barely open in the dim light. Garlic crept a little closer to the tub and settled down once again, her head resting on one paw, alertly watching the door.
The door eased open, and in walked not the overeager maid, but the Thief. “Well, this is awkward,” I said, sitting up in the tub.
“Is it?” she asked, standing with her hands on her curvy hips.
“Actually, no,” I said calmly. “We do have a history, you know.”
“Do we?” she said, walking over to where the fake Moon of Madrid lay on the bed, and picking it up.
I made no move to stop her and merely swished the water around idly. She was wearing tight brown leather breeches and a long black travel cloak about her shoulders. She ran her fingers through that silky starlight hair and held up the Moon of Madrid. She walked causally over to the tub and gazed down into the water.
“You are indeed still beautiful,” she said. “And naked, you are even more so!”
“Oh well, thank you,” I said, looking her in those captivating eyes. “I appreciate that. Very kind of you.”
“I say that because you never know how attractive someone is until you see them naked.”
“Indeed,” I said. “I agree. But somehow I don’t think you are going to show me that same courtesy tonight.”
She nodded. “True,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the tub and running her hand through the water in little circles. “You are indeed wise, Sirius Sinister.” She flipped the Moon of Madrid at me, which I reached out and caught. “It’s a good fake,” she added. “Good, not great, but Angus was never one for fine details, especially in matters of subterfuge.”
“I have to agree with you there,” I said. “But why are you here? You knew the Moon was a fake, and somehow I don’t think you came all the way to London for a chance to see me naked in a tub.”
She glanced down approvingly into the tub again. “I might have to disagree with you about that.”
I smiled. “Well, I do suppose it is a possibility, but we both know that is not why you are here. So do me the favor of telling me before this water loses its heat.”
“I don’t think that cold water is going to have any effect on you.”
I smiled again, and she gave me a dazzling smile in return. The Thief was impossibly gorgeous, yet possibly in league with my immortal enemies. I faced a bit of a quandary. “So tell me, my sweet Thief,” I said. “Why are you here?”
“I am not the one you have to fear regarding the Relics,” she said. “I am working to protect them from Scorn, as you are, but we are just going about it in different ways. My people and I think the Relics are better off sealed away in some remote location, out of the hands and minds of any immortal. Problem solved, yes?”
I put my hand on hers and felt the softness of skin that was warm and pliable and not remotely diamond-like at the moment. “If that is true, then join us in working toward the same goal, and we can figure out the details of what happens with the Relics later,” I said. “Join us in the fight to save this world of ours from the evil that is Gulth Scorn and Kunchen.”
She looked down for a moment, and utter sadness seemed to emanate from her very soul. “We both know that it is not that easy,” she said. “The leader of my faction has just as big and insufferable an ego as the leader of yours. That is the problem with people with big egos—they always think they know best even when they don’t.”
While I was happy to know that she wasn’t fighting on Scorn’s side, I could not help but wonder which faction seeking to protect the Relics was going about it the right way. “You know what I think?” I said.
The Thief looked at me intently. “What?” she said. “Do you have an idea about how we can get the two sides to work together?”
“I wish I did,” I said. “But let’s you and I agree on something—they might not have any better idea than you and me about what to do, or not do. No one is infallible.”
“So what are you saying?” she said, leaning a bit more into the tub.
“Trust your instincts,” I said. “I know I always do.”
“What are your instincts telling you to do right now?” she queried, batting her eyes.
“Oh, I don’t have to tell you that,” I said. “I think you can pretty much read my mind right now. But with age comes experience, and sometimes, just sometimes, that trumps instinct. Which reminds me, what did you learn trying to steal the Font of the Oracle?”
“That Orcinus has plankton for brains,” she said. “But your future son-in-law, well, he is something else entirely.”
“Orcinus is a lot of things, but having plankton for brains is not one of them,” I replied. “He is involved in this fight over the Relics.”
She wrinkled her nose, which I found quite fetching. “The Royal Consort?” She sneered. “What role does that pompous fool have in the quest for the Relics?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But he is a formidable adversary. Why don’t you and I work together, because what if Scorn and Orcinus already are?”
“I think that is even more unlikely than me undressing and hopping in your tub, Sirius,” she said. “I have to stay on my own right now. But until something changes, know that I mean you no harm, and if I take a Relic, it will be safe with me. I do not serve Scorn, Orcinus, Hedley Edrick, or any man for that matter.”
I shook my head and smiled. “I would not ask for your service or, for that matter, ask you to do anything at all.”
She smiled back. “What you do or don’t do, has no bearing on my actions, believe that!”
I looked her in the eyes, and held her gaze long and purposefully. “I believe you,” I said. “Now, then, I suppose I can’t talk you into a relaxing bath, can I?”
“You cannot,” she said, leaning down toward me. She put her hand ever so gently on my cheek and pressed her lips softly to mine. Her lips were full and soft and ever so enticing. She pulled back and looked at me longingly. Suddenly, she reached around behind my neck and drew me deeper into the kiss, her tongue eager and wild, and from her throat came the slightest sigh of contentment. She broke the kiss again and stood up, catching a glance of my swollen member peering out from the bath water. She looked from my phallus to my face and back to my phallus and shook her head in disbelief. “I have to go, Sinister,” she said. And with a quick peck on my lips, she was out the door, leaving me hot and bothered in an increasingly cold tub.
“Can you believe that, Garlic?” I said to the sleeping vampire Maltese. “Did that really just happen?” Garlic merely rolled over and began to snore or perhaps pretend to. I rose from the tub as clean as I was frustrated, stepped out, and reached for a towel. “Damn it to Hell.”
With a familiar pop, a wormhole appeared in my room, and walking through it, as naked as I was, sauntered the elf twins straight out of Hell and right into my bed. “No good deed goes unpunished, Sirius,” one of the twins said, holding up some nipple clamps. I never could tell which twin was which, and frankly it had never really mattered. Each one had large, full breasts, though one had hers adorned with nipple clamps, long lean muscular legs, perfect for wrapping around my neck, and long straight blonde hair that I recalled they preferred me to give a good yanking to when they were using their able tongues on my cock.
“No one gets a thank-you from Hades,” the other twin said, licking my neck eagerly as her hand squeezed my buttocks like she was trying to test a melon at the market. “But this is the next best thing—punishment.”
“Punishment,” I repeated. “What did you have in mind?”
She held up a small metal object that was the shape of my thumb. “What is that thing?” I asked.
“It’s a butt plugge.”
“So it’s Dutch,” I said. “Do you have anything else perhaps? No Dutch courage for me tonight, my dear.”
“But of course,” she said, rubbing her sister’s nipple. “How about the Chains of Desire?”
“Now that sounds perfect,” I said. Later, I vowed to clarify things a little bit before agreeing to something proposed by gorgeous twin elves from Hell, because clearly we had different meanings of what really hot sex meant.
Chains of pure hellfire appeared in her hands. “First we bind you with these, then do what we want,” she said. “And then you get to repay the favor. Not to worry, they only burn a little bit, but that is the nature of desire.”
They pushed me back onto the bed, or more accurately, I leaped and found myself happily bound for pleasure, and perhaps a little pain too. With these girls, the lines of pain and pleasure were often blurred. True enough, I did not mind the fire licking at my wrists and ankles so much, as desire had gotten the best of me. The butt plugge fell off the bed and clanked heavily on the floor. Indeed, a wiser choice I have never made.
The twin with the nipple clamps moved my hands to them, and I made them tighter at her wish as she settled in on me. Her sister watched for a moment, rubbing each and every part of us that she chose, her fingers anything but shy. She settled in on my face, her womanhood happily accepting my tongue, and leaned into her sister who rode down on me with demonic vigor.
The sisters began to kiss, and I brought the pleasure in them simultaneously with great ease, again and again. I was bound in the Chains of Desire, but they really needed to rename them the Lashes of Lust. Then the twins switched places, and again they reached their climaxes time after time until they could no longer breathe. Without a word, the two elves were soon tied in the fiery chains, and they exhorted me to give it to them harder and harder as I pulled the burning chains tight, hearing the hellfire crackle evilly. But the twins were even more on fire than the chains, demanding I be satisfied. I thrust deeper into one then the other as they lay on top of each other, writhing in absolute ecstasy. I could feel my pleasure mounting, and they too sensed my impending peak, each wanting to have me inside them as I came, and I gave each of them that wish, exploding first into one then the other as my pleasure lasted longer than ever before. I collapsed on the bed, and each twin settled in next to me with a loving hand on my manhood. As I drifted off into sleep, I heard a voice in my head, in the room, seemingly coming from all around me. I would have used the plugge on you. Sweet dreams, Sinister.
Hundreds of miles away in far-off Lancashire, a shadowy figure snuck through the moonless night, padding softly down a trail along the Mersey River. The guard at the outer gate of Castle Blackheart blinked for a moment, thinking he had seen something on the road up ahead, but a second glance revealed nothing but darkness staring back at him. He sniffed at the air and only scented a great mustiness like old books, and what he could swear was the unmistakable odor of three-day-old oatmeal, but shr
ugged his shoulders in disbelief, seeing nothing. He bent to pick up a stone and whisked it down the road, satisfied when he heard some waterfowl fly up, disturbed. He had found the object of his quarry, and the shadow slipping by him and getting inside the castle was about to find hers.
Once inside she reversed her black-hooded cloak that seemed to absorb the very light of the candles she perched in front of, and tied back her long black hair as neatly as she could manage, but still it revolted in every direction, giving her a rather frazzled appearance. Soon she was garbed in the manner of a servant of the house, and from her rucksack took out a chamber pot, wrinkling her nose at the noxious mixture inside. She smiled in the dim light. She knew she looked the part. In this manner and at this hour, she was barely given a second glance by soldiers, or anyone, all ignoring the chambermaid on her way to dispose of some unpleasant lordly, or unladylike, business.
In no time at all, she was deep in the bowels of the castle, which amused her greatly, as she was supposed to be carrying the product of bowels. It was all she could do to keep from laughing out loud and ruining her cover. But soon she came to the vault and, opening the chamber pot, she exhaled nervously. She said a little prayer to a random god she did not believe in and stuck her hand in the chamber pot, trusting her own research more than some benevolent deity whose existence had not been proven to her. She smeared the substance over the lock on the door and waited.
With a bit of a hiss and the tiniest hint of smoke, the lock began to melt down the doorway, and she simply pushed the vault door open on its well-oiled hinges and walked in. She walked by the jeweled swords, crowns, medals, and the like, nodding as she recognized one or the other’s particular historical significance. But walk by she did, ignoring the plentiful Blackheart riches that could have made her unimaginably wealthy for the next several centuries. Resting on a small bed of most perfect purple crushed velvet, she saw the Moon of Madrid and, performing a mock ceremony of some kind in her head, placed it around her neck, then tucked it deep between her surprisingly generous bosoms.
