Serve

by Laura Wylde

  Todd grumbled, “I’m not fat, just stocky,” as Adrien flitted by, grinning and patting his flat stomach. Adrien was a bit of a brat. He goaded and teased all the members of the team, even Adonis, the fearless leader. It was part of why I liked him though. He was equally flippant with everyone and meant no disrespect toward anyone. I really wanted to change out of my wet clothes, but they all just stood there as though they expected me to drop my drawers right in front of the team. They didn’t troop out of the bathroom until Adrien returned and gave me something to wear that was fresh and dry.

  The pants he gave me were pajama bottoms covered with tiny basketballs. They were very long and flopped around my feet, but they had a draw string that snugged them nicely at the waist. The top was a soft cotton pullover with a big phoenix emblazoned on the front. The top was a little loose, but not nearly as baggy as Todd’s shirts. I could visualize Adrien ten years younger and just how earnest and appealing he must have looked. I checked in the mirror. Other than the pants puddling around my feet, I looked half-way decent.

  They were all gathered in Todd’s bedroom so he could relax in his bed. This time, they had brought in extra chairs so they could all sit comfortably. Adonis had straddled his, hands clasped in front of him. “It’s unfortunate we had to pull the wolves. They are formidable against trolls, but with a werewolf out there, we can’t risk one of our shape-shifters getting shot with a silver bullet.”

  “Did you talk to my uncle?” Asked Todd. “He knows a couple feline mercenaries for hire.”

  Adonis dropped his head and shook it. “The felines can’t track like wolves and they won’t go in the water. The badgers said there’s an entire maze behind the entrance they found. They said some of the caves are in shallow water but the only way to reach the main complex is to go through them. Anyone going through either entrance must be prepared to fight in water. We need to find one entrance where the bears can break through without having to shift to their human form. We could flush the trolls out then and take the fight to high ground.”

  Instead of sitting, Adrien was standing by the window, scrolling through his cell phone. “We should allow one to return to the underworld and give them the message they failed to terrorize New York City. They are under allegiance to the royal family of Set IV.”

  They were bouncing their thoughts around so much, I felt like a fly on the wall. Actually, it was worse than that, because flies hover in familiar territory. I was a fly on the wall of an alien spaceship. I cleared my throat. “May I remind all of you this is a rescue mission, not just a strategic battle between two supernatural forces. We have a little boy and there are probably others. Can we talk a little bit about this instead of how none of you like fighting in water?”

  Adonis complied as much as his one-track mind would allow him. “We’ll come in two waves. One to drive them to the surface where the combat teams will be waiting, and the second to rescue the prisoners.”

  It would thin out the shapeshifting teams quite a bit, and he knew it. He was talking about sending two teams through the drainage grate, spaced one hundred feet apart, and two more teams to search through the maze, with a couple of badgers leading the way. Still two more teams would be patrolling the entrances. They were staggered, with no more than four people to a group that would have to battle their way through a confrontation until the others arrived. It was a good plan, but it didn’t have enough muscle. “Let me send my agents behind yours as the rescue mission. It will free up your people for conflict.”

  Adonis flashed me an angry look and I flashed it back without flinching. “No!” He snapped. “You aren’t entering the tunnel for any reason.”

  I had enough of his patronizing. Adrien was right. Adonis was a fuddy duddy. “Look, if you don’t allow me to join your mission, I will call my superior and tell him I need a full squadron of combat ready troops, and we will storm that tunnel together, with me at the lead. We will capture or kill as many trolls as we need to, but we will rescue that little boy!”

  He got out of his chair and threw it against the wall, then stood with his arms folded, scowling. “You don’t know anything at all about what you’re getting into. You will be slaughtered. Do you have a suicide wish?”

  “Adonis!” Pleaded Thaddeus. “Maybe you should reconsider letting her come with us. If humans go in there alone without us, we’ve neglected them. We’ve failed them. Let her come along with her two most trust-worthy agents. They will be bringing up the tail end. We can protect them.”

  “It’s a better chance, Adonis,” agreed Todd.

  His brow thundered. I waited for it to shoot out lightening bolts. “Adonis,” I told him. “I don’t care about your turf wars with the Underground. I don’t care about who is taking sides against who. It’s not my business. What is my business is that humans are involved. Humans are the victims. Humans are waiting to be rescued. Juggle your alliances with felines, shape-shifting prostitutes, sirens or whatever. I don’t care. I’m on the side of humans.”

  His lips came together in a straight line and he drew himself up stiffly. “You are insufferable,” he said. “You are the most insufferable woman I’ve ever met!”

  He marched out of the room, his back as straight as a ramrod, while Thaddeus ran after him, crying, “Adonis! Where are you going? Do you want me to go with you?”

  I heard Adonis reply, “no. I just want to go for a walk – alone. I need to sort things out.”

  I stood in the middle of the room, wondering what to do next. So far, my presence hadn’t benefitted them greatly. I had almost gotten Todd killed. I had put the entire precinct on alert. I had successfully caused a major quarrel between Adonis and his team. If I stood in one spot, maybe the world would revolve around me and I wouldn’t have to make any choices. As though to prove my strategy would work, Thaddeus walked over to where I was at and kissed me.

  I blinked. That was an extremely experienced kiss. It rocked me all the way down to my bare feet. “I never saw an insufferable woman look so much like an alpine pixie,” he murmured. He picked me up in both his arms, then poked at the phoenix emblem on the shirt. “And what is this? Are you one of us now?”

  “Should we be doing this?” I asked, feeling like even if the answer was no, I couldn’t stop.

  “Oh yes, we should,” he assured me. “We all need to be doing this.”

  He deposited me on the bed between Todd’s covered legs, my back pillowed against his chest, and his back pillowed against the deep cushions. Todd moaned with pleasure and put his arms around my waist underneath the baggy shirt. Thaddeus knelt beside the bed, kissed me on the forehead, then drew up my arms, pulling the shirt up at the same time. He stared at the freed breasts, then kissed each one tenderly.

  At the end of the bed, Adrien pulled at the draw string for the pajama bottoms, loosening it until he could fit his hands inside. He rolled the waist back slowly, exclaiming in pleasure over each inch of bare skin. “She has freckles on her back,” he sang in a crooning voice. “She has freckles on her legs.” He kissed me at the ankle and cradled my foot. “She has freckles everywhere.”

  There were six pairs of hands touching me all over my body. Three pairs of lips licked and kissed me on the arms, the neck, between the breasts, then lower and lower until I squirmed for them to take me. Thaddeus took me first, while I was still leaning back against Todd, feeling his large hands cup around my breasts, his kisses pressing warmly against my neck. Thaddeus climbed over the edge of the bed and straddled me cautiously, careful not to press too much weight against me and my wounded companion.

  I was doing all taking, no giving, this first time around. I was giddy with pleasure. While Todd fondled my breasts and kissed me, Thaddeus pushed against me again and again, until with a loud groan, he came. I sighed and turned over, facing Todd as he held me and called me “kitten”, snuggling me so close, I felt I was being enveloped in a protective sphere. I took him inside me and rocked back and forth, addicted to the little bursts of sunlight tha
t came with each stroke until he cried out, “ai! Tis good! Tis good! But right now, I’m a wounded man, and you will be the death of me with much more!”

  With a laugh, Adrien pulled me off him and set me on his lap. “My turn. My turn. One’s a cripple. One’s an old man. Let me show you what I’ve got, baby.”

  Adrien was insolent. One day it would get him into trouble, but not today. He wasn’t beefed out, but he had a compact, well-built body with fine muscle tone. Muscles that glistened with the healthy sheen of youth. The tattoo on the side of his neck gave him almost a gangsta look, but not the bad guy, the misunderstood vigilante. Almost, but not quite. His eyes were too mild, too dreamy for a gangsta, and his mannerisms shouted out he was a nerd. Instead of a gun, he carried a cellphone and when he was feeling serious, a laptop. Except, he was a damned good kick boxer, and that, as much as anything, was a turn on.

  I laughed as he held me up like I was the grand prize, then sat on his knees and set me in front of him, my legs straddling his thighs. “Move in closer,” he suggested. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “No,” I answered, and squirmed closer until we were belly to belly, locking my ankles behind his back as I wrapped my arms around his neck.

  “That’s nice,” he said, positioning his Johnson and thrusting upward. I gasped as I felt the instantaneous pleasure and that charged electric current of connection. He thrust again and another explosive lightning bolt shot straight from my pleasure center to the dizzying, psychedelic avenues of the mind. I grasped his head and held it like I would fall apart without something to hold, and heard him whisper in my ear, “we walk together.” He thrust again and I gritted my teeth to keep from crying out, all the while with an image burning in my mind of a phoenix with its wings outstretched, its voice shrilling in triumph. I collapsed and he held me by the waist as he drained himself into me.

  They should add sexual activity to the list of ways to handle stress while working a case. Truthfully, meditation, elevator music and calisthenics seemed like vanilla ice cream after what I just went through. Every muscle in my body was relaxed and my nerves felt like they had been hit with an elephant tranquilizer.

  Even Todd seemed to have reaped some benefits. He was sitting straight up in bed, examining the closed gash, which was now turning a pretty shade of pink around the edges. “I wonder if it will leave a scar. It would be cool if it left a scar,” he said. With his elbow raised, he twisted around to show Adrien the swathe from his shoulder to his ribs in all its glory.

  Adrien barely glanced at him. “You’re a phoenix. Phoenixes don’t scar.”

  Todd rearranged his robe around him and wrapped it tight. “It would still be cool.”

  Thaddeus had gone to the kitchen and returned with four glasses of orange juice. I had noticed early in the investigation that all four of them had the same dietary habits, which included a lot of fruits, nuts, grains and seafood. They also liked sugar and spices. I had thought then they were all on some kind of health food trip but realized now it was a phoenix-related preference. When he handed a glass to Todd, he sat down beside him. “We’re going to work more on your troll training when you recover. You have the speed of a leprechaun. You could be one of their most formidable adversaries, but you don’t know how to direct the blows. You came in swinging, and it left you open for their blades.”

  Todd scowled a little. “They surprised us, and we couldn’t shapeshift out in the open. Next time we’ll be fighting them as phoenixes.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You don’t know. We have to be ready for them in both human and phoenix form. They take their fights underground, Todd. That’s their territory. We’ll try to force them to the surface, but the only real way to do it is to go down, and they know it.”

  Thaddeus’ voice changed a lot when he wasn’t paranoid. If he didn’t have an authoritative voice, he had an experienced one. I had to question him. “Thaddeus, this isn’t your first battle with this type of troll, is it?”

  That startled gaze, like a wild animal trapped by headlights, flashed across his eyes and he drew in a shaky breath before answering. “In Romania. It was in Romania.”

  Finally, he talked about the terrible event that had happened four hundred years ago but that had haunted him since. “Once the trolls broke through,” he explained. “They were followed by every ghastly creature from the depths, some of which continue to prowl in bands across the earth, such as vampires, werewolves, harpies, gargoyles, goblins…”

  “I thought you said vampires and werewolves came under diseases.”

  “They do. They are humans who transformed into servants of the dark lords, but the disease was created by the royal family. The disease gave them humans on this side of the veil the power to open the Selvestovia portal. It gave the heirs to the underworld an army willing to fight ahead of their arrival. It was the bloodiest war you could imagine. Wave upon wave of black, nightmare creatures screeching in front of a wall of fire. They bowled through the towns like they were nothing at all. They left nobody alive.”

  His voice dwindled more with each sentence until the final words were no more than a whisper. Todd patted Thaddeus on the back, then took both my hands in his. “It was the last great massacre. There have been uprisings since then, but none with such a terrible loss of lives. It took the combined alliance of shape-shifters, elves, griffons and centaurs to send them back to the underworld.”

  “Was Adonis there?” I asked.

  “No, but he has battled against this type of troll before. Thaddeus trained him after he lost…well, he lost somebody, kitten. It’s got to be him that tells it.”

  Now that I understood Thaddeus’ PTSD, I was beginning to understand something about Adonis. He wasn’t affected the same way as Thaddeus, but he was still traumatized. He had lost someone, and it made him feel afraid of losing somebody again. It gave me a tender, aching feeling.

  When Adonis returned, we were still relaxing, semi-clothed, sharing the highlights of some of our cases. I didn’t have anything as exciting to tell as they did. I had never chopped the head off an ogre or tracked down a flesh-eating demon, but I did lead a team once into the Montana wilderness to capture a serial killer living in an abandoned mine.

  I heard him open the living room door and felt an irresistible urge to greet him. He suffered! Beneath that smooth, golden mask, he suffered. I met him in the hall just before it divided into bedrooms. He was surprised to see me there, but his eyes lit up for a few seconds before he hung his head. “I have been thinking about it,” he said. “I took a long walk and I thought about it. The society I used to know isn’t the same. Women don’t want to be rescued. They want to be equals.”

  I started to speak, and he held up his hand, insisting he be allowed to finish. “I ran into my friend, sergeant Richards. His team’s woman companion helps them with their cases. She does research, interviews. She’s even learning martial arts. She wouldn’t be as good as you. You have the natural body build. But Richards says she does a good job with staffs and swords. Maybe I am being a little over-protective.”

  He said everything hurriedly, in a jumble, staring at the floor. I locked my hands around his neck and got up on my toes to kiss him. “Come with me, Adonis.”

  Adonis

  Sometimes, the worst part about being a phoenix is you have the memories of your ancestors. Technically, they aren’t your ancestors. They are all you, reincarnated from the ashes of destruction. Most of the time, they remain in the background, reliving the past or gazing silently at the present, but when I am disturbed, they come forward and offer their advice. It was advantageous when I drew on them for battle techniques or magical knowledge, but not for what to do about Tara. What did they know about modern women?

  “I may not know your modern women, but I know a lot about Spartan women,” reminded an ancestor. “The way I see it, they aren’t so different. The more you try to protect them, the weaker it makes them feel. The weaker they are made to feel, the unhappier they get about it.
It’s better to empower them.”

  It was just then that I bumped into my friend, Daniel. We made a little small talk, then I told him about how an FBI agent under my protection had discovered a troll clan, and how afraid I was that something would happen to her. He told me he had the same kind of problems when he first met Tanya. She wanted to do everything on her own. Now, she was a strong team member and learning more about handling mythological creatures every day. “You’ve got to let her in, make her a partner. Show her a few of your moves. She’ll respect you more for it.”

  I had been defeated by my best friend and my own memories! There wasn’t much else I could do beside return our apartment with peace offerings. I stopped at a confectionary and picked up a box of candied dates, a tray of baklava and some mixed chocolates. I thought about some flowers but decided that may be overdoing it.

  I deposited the sweets in the kitchen, then headed for my room. I was surprised to meet Tara in the hallway. It was as good a place as any for telling her I was sorry, so I started my spiel. She tried to interrupt me, but I made it through most of the important stuff before she could. I must have said all the right things because she put her arms around my neck. All she was wearing was the oversized shirt. When she pressed herself against me, I caught a view of a nice, round bottom.

  I was going to tell her about the candy, but she said, “come with me”, and I followed her like a lamb to Todd’s bedroom. The tension that had filled the room earlier was gone. Adrien was sitting sideways in a chair, his crossed legs dangling over one arm, wearing nothing except a towel around his waist. He was amusing himself by playing a video game on his laptop.