Lance shook his head and obediently trotted after his friend. What he saw stopped him dead in his tracks.
“What the hell is that?”
John stood in front of a mound, at least eight feet high on the far side, with a gentle slope facing them and a strange curved cave in the middle. Orange-red honeysuckle, the exact color of Theresa Madden’s pussy (a fact Lance had only discovered last weekend), covered the edges of the cavern. A trickle of water reflected back from the deepest depths of the fissure. Lighter pink flowers ringed the entrance, spreading out to wreath the entire mound in hot, arousing color. His mouth watered at the sight. Just as his cock responded to the earth’s invitation, a shiver of foreboding ran down his neck.
His forebrain reemerged from the sensual haze. “Man, we should go. This gives me the creeps.” A pussy belonged on a whole woman, not made of soil and unattached to a living, feeling body.
“You lack curiosity, mon ami,” John retorted. “You have the merit badge in botany. You tell me—have you ever seen anything like this before?” John circled the mound, gently brushing the sweet blooms. He sniffed his fingertips, obviously relishing the lingering scent on his skin.
“John, seriously. I mean it. Let’s go. We should tell the Rangers. Not only is the damn thing not in season, honeysuckle’s invasive. It needs to be controlled. Ripped out.” The urge to run made his feet itch.
“Oh, no.” A feminine voice sighed from beneath the flowers. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”
The boys froze.
Despite the lack of wind, the top of the mound shivered. Like a waterfall, the quivering ran down the incline, then even more improbably, ran back up to the top. Eerily, slowly, the vines twined together. The trumpet-shaped flowers clustered together, melding and melting to form flesh. Curved, narrow lips puckered and opened. A soft sigh curled a body as flowers braided together to create eyelashes and eyelids. They knotted into a woman’s nude body.
The woman reclining on the peak turned her head to look at them as her reddish gold hair slithered around her shoulders. Green eyes took them in. The boys stared at her big pink nipples on top of her full, round breasts. John smoothed his shirtfront. Lance stared at the flawless white skin with a healthy blush of rose on her cheeks and belly.
She was truly angelic, beautiful enough to make the boys forget they had just seen flowers make a woman.
She stood. Curved hips and slender legs propelled her down the slope toward them. The curly pubic hair matching the hair on her head didn’t conceal the enticing slit of her pussy. The warm scent of aroused woman and flowers filled Lance’s veins.
Ferocious desire beat back any good sense he’d ever had.
Theresa Madden’s trembling legs and vulnerable eyes disappeared from his memory. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, Lance rationalized. Besides, who could ask an eighteen-year-old boy to turn down a willing woman? Somewhere inside, a voice of innocence wailed its death in betrayal.
Lust drowned it out.
“Well, hello, ma chérie.” John’s voice got that low French burr that all the women loved. “We wouldn’t dream of harming you, not at all. Won’t you forgive my easily worried friend?”
Her dreamy, heavy-lidded gaze flicked over Lance, lingering on his crotch. A dimpled hand touched her throat, drawing attention to her perfect skin and tempting breasts. A shudder of something that wasn’t lust made him want to run.
“John, I don’t know …”
“I’m sure you can make it up to me.” She breathed each word, like a woman climbing to orgasm. The husky syllables fed the fire in Lance’s blood until his penis thumped against his fly.
One petal-soft hand wrapped around each boy’s neck. The touch of her fingers made Lance’s nipples stand up and rub against his Metallica T-shirt. Her body radiated sun-hot, burning through his clothes. It was too much. Lance had to reach down and adjust his trapped erection.
As one, the boys flanked her, their own hands landing around her waist. She pulled them to her body.
“Show me your goodwill?” Her lips moved in toward John’s face.
Porn had never looked like this. Watching those wet tongues meet and slide against each other fired him into orbit. As she sucked John’s tongue into her own mouth, Lance moaned. The shivers of concern barely registered anymore.
The woman epitomized temptation. As he watched her lick down John’s neck, the thought of those soft, puckering lips around his hard penis sent a bolt of hunger down his gut. His fingers traveled up and down her spine and cupped one silky, resilient butt cheek. Hot, smooth skin greeted him. His hands caressed the baby-fine flesh of her ass as he slid closer and closer to her cleft. She tipped her head back and sighed in pleasure as both males clasped her breasts and plucked those bubblegum-pink nipples.
John tucked her against him, wrapping his arm around her narrow waist. Lance curled against them, ignoring John’s compact hot body pressed against his side. Instead, he nipped at the woman’s gleaming throat as John slid a denim-clad thigh between her naked ones. They watched her writhe and grind against it. Her sexual fluids gleamed on the blue jeans as she rode John’s leg. Her mouth screwed up into a tight oval as she moved faster and faster until she tossed her head back and howled. The scent of flowers and sex doubled at the sound. Lance’s shoulders stiffened with the struggle to stay put.
Her eyes fluttered open, her irises even darker and dreamier. Lance wanted to throw her on the ground and rut into her like a wild beast. He wanted John to watch him with admiration. He wanted to watch John fill her mouth, fill her hands with hardness. He wanted to see if they could both fit in her, make her fall apart over and over again.
“Oh, you sweet boys,” she sighed. A tiny growl underscored the sound.
As he watched her move that supple, moist, pink mouth again toward John’s throat, a voice screamed in his head, “Run!”
Grabbing John’s T-shirt, Lance yanked them away from the woman’s grasp. Claws gouged into his jeans, tore fabric and skin from hip to waist. The pain cleared his head. Horror and shock froze his stomach.
The nose-curdling smell of blood chased away the last of the desire. He staggered under the hurt, still clutching John’s clothing.
The move kept her teeth away from John’s jugular vein. Instead, John’s shoulder shredded under multiple rows of scalpel-sharp teeth. Bone showed through the slashes as his blood splattered over Lance’s torso. His scream rang through the forest as he fell to his knees, clutching his mutilated arm.
Their erotic partner melted into her true, putrefied form. The petal-fresh skin decayed into rotten leaves hanging off dark bones. Her skeletal legs landed on the ground, clawlike toes digging into the fresh green grass. Her skull’s mouth opened wider than a football in a satisfied grin and a worm-riddled tongue licked John’s blood off her lips. Green tendrils sprouted from her body where the drops landed.
“Delicious. I won’t go hungry for a long time after you two.” Her voice sounded like the grating of a stone sarcophagus lid against the base.
Lance gathered John up against his uninjured side. “Come on, man. Come on. We gotta run.” They stood, supporting each other.
John pointed to the left. “The river,” he gasped. “That way.”
That horrible mouth grinned wider. “Yes, run! Give me the chase!”
John staggered, trying to stanch his wounds with his bare hands, but the blood still poured. The pain radiating from Lance’s back told him that they could never outrun the creature.
Lance despaired. They would die and be devoured by the carnivorous plant. No one would find their bodies until it spit up their bones. Their parents would wither and be miserable. Their friends would hike in here and get caught just like they did. No one would be safe.
He would die a virgin.
The monster stalked closer and closer. This wasn’t fair, he fumed as she crouched to spring.
That clarity of anger saved Lance’s life.
As she leapt at
John, Lance kicked. Years of hiking and soccer gave Lance damn strong legs. His hiking boot caught her in the ribs. With miraculous aim, he found the weak spot below the arched breastbone. Crying out, she landed heavily on the ground, winded.
John pulled away, found a stout branch on the ground.
When she took to her feet, John swung with all his strength. The wood phased right through her body.
“Fuck!” John screamed as he caught himself from overbalancing. Lance could see John’s strength fading.
A dreadful rumbling giggle escaped the plant-woman. “We could have done this the easy way, but your friend had to listen to his God-given sense.”
Lance’s fingers snagged a rock and he hurled it at the beast’s head. It landed three feet behind her. Something snagged on the panic in his brain and he knew the answer.
“Man-made material,” he yelled at John as he risked getting closer to those terrible pointed snapping teeth. The composite soles of his boot landed on her hip hinge. The impact jarred his knee, but her spine snapped back and forced her body to the ground.
When she regained her feet, the leg hung strangely from her pelvis.
John kicked out too. His blow dislocated her other hip. She dropped, whimpering like a plant in hot water.
The still-human leaf-green eyes begged them for mercy.
Lance nearly stepped forward to ease her, but then he saw John collapse to his knees. Blood soaked his entire side, plastering the other boy’s shirt and jeans to his body. John could die from that wound. All that was good and pure in Lance’s world would die with him.
Lance needed John. Who would he be without his friend?
Sure knowledge from somewhere filled Lance’s brain, driving out the panic. Without hesitation, he landed his heel in the middle of the plant’s spine. Bones cracked and shattered, splitting her body in two halves.
Her legs stilled and crumbled, leaving behind the cloying scent of dying honeysuckle.
As Lance raised his foot for another strike, she flattened to the ground, trying to melt into the soil. Lance stumbled and missed, dropping to his knees. She laughed.
John crawled forward and grabbed her wrist.
Her greedy face brightened and her tongue reached for John’s blood. Lance rolled, trying to right himself enough to stop her.
“I don’t think so,” John gasped. Turning white with the effort, he planted his own boot on the wiggling tongue. She was trapped.
Heart pounding, Lance spun on his rear. His foot flailed in the air and landed perfectly, cracking the bones and grinding the heart underneath.
“Please, don’t!” she screamed as the flowers on the mound wilted and died. Weak, skeletal fingers clutched at his pants leg until she completely disintegrated. As the flowers and bones decomposed, he lit the spores on fire with the matches in his back pocket.
When he stood, the mound collapsed, just like the skeleton of the creature, leaving a den full of human bones and rotten clothes.
Triumphant, he turned to John.
Five days later, Lance stood by John’s parents as they committed John to the home. The brightest brain in Central Illinois couldn’t handle the shock of the blood loss. The damage reverted the best of them back to the intellectual equivalent of a potty-trained one-year-old.
He lied to his best friend’s mother and told her they’d stumbled onto a were-bear’s den. As he placed a picture of Paris on the wall of John’s new room, the by-now familiar shame, guilt, and anger filled him as he admitted in the privacy of his own head that danger was beautiful to him. He yearned for corruption.
Those yearnings destroyed his best friend.
His destiny had revealed itself. Every teenaged boy ached to discover that he had powers to change the world. Lance had that power.
He was stronger, faster, and smarter than any mortal alive. His brain could access unwritten knowledge, his body told him of imminent danger. He lied over and over, telling people that the encounter with the fictional were-bear had given him these gifts. With every lie, his shamed soul withered even more.
Desperate to forget John, Lance joined the army. With his enhanced speed and strength, the Rangers snapped him up. He learned to recognize and refine the warning sense he’d felt that day. He specialized in interspecies combat, subspecializing in post-traumatic stress disorder treatment. He then served in the Middle East, putting everything he had learned to use.
At the end of his tours, he was sick of death. He wanted to protect instead of kill. The Tualatin Mountain Homeless Shelter had given him a reason to put one foot in front of the other.
He never went back to Danville. And he never, ever spoke of John again.
Chapter 20
Valerie parked the Shelby in a quiet alley behind the shelter. The clock on the tower read 3:00 A.M. No wonder Lance slept, his head tucked against the door of her car. Damn, he was adorable.
She pursed her lips and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Nocturnal PNCs, both homeless and not, surrounded the faded building in a protective cordon. No one and nothing could pass that circle without a thorough inspection.
“Wake up.” His shoulder felt warm and solid as she tapped. Her hand lingered and caressed. “We go in through the side door. It’s safer.”
He yawned. “No. The front. I won’t hide. Not here.”
Double damn, he sounded good even half-asleep and being too heroic for his own good. If she were the assassin, this would be the perfect ambush. Hide amongst the other PNCs, safely camouflaged amongst his own kind, then strike.
Of course, that tiger hadn’t proven to be the sharpest fang in the mouth. Odds were that Lance was completely safe.
“Through the front it is, then.” She let him out of the car. A pair of three-headed dogs emerged from the silent ring of her people and escorted them past the news crews.
The blisteringly hot lights blinded her. She hissed and tossed her arm in front of her face, blocking both Lance and herself.
“Father Soleil, where have you been?”
“Why are you covered in blood?”
“Did someone attack you?”
“No comment,” Lance stated flatly.
The dogs snapped powerful jaws near the reporters, keeping the microphones at a respectful distance.
The lines opened for them, as neatly as paper splitting skin. No one spoke, no one asked for his autograph; instead, everyone scrutinized him with eyes both worshipful and afraid. The hounds led them to the entrance in complete silence.
Valerie opened the door and looked inside, searching for threats. A blue-eyed, red-haired pixie mix looked up from a rickety card table masquerading as a receptionist’s desk. A folded piece of paper taped to the table announced the girl’s name was Jane.
“Can I help you?” Her elf-cute smile had white lines of strain around the corners.
Pixies were the harbingers of great joy. They should not have this kind of depressing knowledge in their big, round eyes.
“No.” Disgust at the world shortened her response.
Valerie glanced around the main room. No wonder Jane was stressed. Every inch of the shelter teemed with desperate mortals and even more desperate PNCs. A family of giant rats huddled in under the water fountain. A human mother and her infant were crammed directly behind Jane’s chair. Multicolored serpents coiled around the tall exposed rafters. A whiff of horse told Valerie that a centaur roamed the halls. Those with belongings clung to their bags as though embracing their Beloved. Nervous glances told the story of strained nerves. Volunteers carrying blankets and food picked their way through the throng.
Tense, but stable. She ushered Lance in.
“Father! I am so glad to see you.” Jane’s face opened in relief. The adorable girl nearly overset her table as she shot to her feet.
“Good to be back. What have you got for me?”
Business as usual for now. Valerie turned away from their greeting to study her charge for the night.
The shelter had once been a
luxury hotel, complete with huge ballroom and meeting spaces. A window, decorated with plaster flowers and molding, opened into a large kitchen and dining room. Two long hallways straddled the kitchen. Signs in several languages announced the locations of the bathrooms, the first-aid room, and pointed to offices and beds upstairs.
The baby fussed at the same time that Valerie smelled dirty diaper. The mother picked her way through all the bodies toward the right back hallway. A sign reading WOMEN’S BATHROOMS told Valerie her destination.
On the other side of the large room, the centaur pushed himself off the wall and stretched far too casually. Bastard, she thought.
The horse-men sexually preyed upon human females, considering them easy targets. There would be none of that on her territory. She shifted her weight to intercept him.
Before she got two steps, a viper uncoiled itself from the roof support. It dangled in front of the centaur and stretched its jaws. Needle-sharp teeth, as long as Valerie’s forearm, blocked the horse’s path. Casually, it tapped the centaur’s bare chest with its forked black tongue.
That settled that. One of the other snakes, an enormous constrictor, flicked its tongue at Valerie in a wink. Nothing would get past them. Now was a good time for a little recon.
“I’m going to look around,” she murmured in Lance’s ear. He nodded once and went back to work.
The open, high-ceilinged room with its tall windows was not defensible, Valerie thought as she picked her way through the piles of people and PNCs. The ratio was about 60 percent PNCs to 40 percent human. Interesting.
Lance said they were out of money. She could tell. Cracks marred the once-glossy marble floors. Too-old windows rattled in their frames. The blankets looked thin. The sofas and cots had seen better days.
This place offered refuge to her kind when no others would. The hungry faces around the room challenged her to remember who she really was. A good ruler protected and sheltered the helpless. Dracula had once tried to be a good ruler. Sure, a bit extreme, but …
The skin around her piercings burned like fresh wounds. She touched her earlobes, half expecting to feel blood. Instead, the diamonds scorched her finger. She yanked her hand away. What in the name of Lucifer’s gilded horns was this?
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