With a flick of my wrist, I flung the door open. Carmilla and Dahlia walked in, dressed the same as I had seen them earlier, but their makeup had clearly been freshened up. Carmilla held a bottle of red wine in her hand.
“Can you even drink alcohol?” I asked.
“Hello to you too, Liam,” Carmilla said, crossing her arms and casting an annoyed look in my direction.
“The wine is for us,” Dahlia said, stroking my chest with one dainty finger.
“If you drink enough, I can just get drunk off your blood.” Her fangs were already out. I nodded solemnly, looking down. So this is how it will be, I thought.
Dahlia cleared her throat as she sat down on the bed. Seeing her sitting atop my bed almost made me want to faint. But to my surprise, Carmilla sat on the floor across from her.
“Why don’t you get on the bed, too?” I asked curiously.
Carmilla rolled her eyes, “Holy shit, dude, slow down.”
I shook with embarrassment and struggled to explain myself. “What?! No, I meant, what are you doing on the floor?”
“We need to sit in a triangle,” she said. “We’re playing spin the bottle.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I could handle that. I just had to be careful not to let it escalate too much.
“Sounds good,” I said. “Who goes first?”
Dahlia and Carmilla exchanged wicked looks. My survival instincts started kicking in. Something was wrong.
“There’s a twist,” Carmilla said. “There’s only three of us, so every time you get the same person, things escalate.”
I was already sweating.
“I’ll go first,” Dahlia offered. I watched her as my life flashed before my eyes. I had had a good run, all things considered.
Dahlia spun the bottle, and to my utter relief, it landed on Carmilla. I expected a quick, chaste kiss on the lips, but what happened was not at all associable with chastity. Dahlia crawled off the bed on all fours and she seductively maneuvered over to Carmilla. The vampiress leaned backward on her palms, her mouth already slightly open in anticipation, her tongue gliding over her lips, readying them for the celestial woman’s kiss.
Dahlia pushed her to the ground, and their lips met. Describing it as a kiss does a disservice to it, though. Their hands slid all over each other’s bodies, exploring one another as though they hadn’t done this countless times before. And yet, at the same time, I could tell this wasn’t new to either of them.
I watched Dahlia’s tongue categorically conquer Carmilla. The raven-haired beauty’s eyes remained closed, drinking in every pleasurable sensation of the kiss, but Dahlia stole glances at me every once in a while, with mischievous, lustful grins. I was having a hard time knowing what to do with my hands. Well, I knew what I wanted to do with them, anyway, but felt that might be taking things too far.
And then it was over. It lasted a minute, but seemed like a delightful eternity, and when it ended, I sighed in both relief and arousal, trying to shift my sitting position to conceal my erection.
Dahlia and Carmilla snapped out of it, wiping their lips, and returned to their seating positions with a bit of a naughty giggle.
“We don’t do that often enough,” Carmilla noted, slapping Dahlia on the ass as she crawled back on the bed.
Dahlia only beamed at her in reply.
“Okay then, my turn,” Carmilla said, and she spun the bottle on the floor. It spun and spun for what seemed like a solid thirty seconds.
“You got some good torque on that spin,” I teased.
And then it landed on me.
“Lucky boy,” said Carmilla, as she crawled across the bed to me and climbed into my lap, wrapping her legs around my back.
I felt some confidence here. Carmilla on her own I could handle. I’d had some practice with her and I figured this would be a cakewalk, but I was in for a jolt. When our lips pressed against one another, both of us withdrew slightly as a startling rush of pleasure erupted from the point of our collision.
“What the frick was that?!” Carmilla said, bewildered.
I looked straight to Dahlia, whose eyes betrayed no understanding of it, but then I watched as she stared down our auras. After a few seconds, she gasped.
“It’s not possible,” she protested.
“What?” I asked. Carmilla mirrored my question with a quizzical look to her friend.
“Her aura…” she looked at her own hands. “It’s changing.”
“To what?”
“To match yours. Ours.”
I looked at Carmilla. I felt the familiar electricity in my fingers again as I rested my hands on her hips. That same electricity I felt with Dahlia, though perhaps not as intense.
“So she’s our soulmate?” I asked. “What does this mean?”
Dahlia shook her head. “I don’t know. This doesn’t make sense unless—”
Whatever she was about to say was cut off by the sound and the reverberation of something scratching at the door to my balcony, as well as the door to the hallway.
I lifted Carmilla off of me, and we stood together. “What the hell was that?”
“A Void Incursion,” Dahlia said. Her crystal ball appeared in her hand, and Oscar the gecko suddenly crawled out of nowhere onto her shoulder. Sheridan and Uther wasted no time in arriving, either, and pretty soon, the six of us were standing back-to-back-to-back, hands on wand, ball, and cane, bracing for whatever was about to happen.
“How could there be a Void Incursion here?” Carmilla asked. “This building should be safe! Those only ever happen in the library!”
“He’s a harem-magus, Carmilla,” Dahlia said. “Think about it.”
If Carmilla was going to think about it, her opportunity was cut short when a jet-black horned gargoyle-like figure with no eyes and no mouth came tearing through the window, causing it to shatter explosively in her face. I pivoted to help her but froze when I saw the thing.
Then the door behind me splintered inward, scattering to planks and sawdust as another came at them from Dahlia’s side.
“Liam, bodies!” she cried. Behind the door, a couple of feet back from the second monster, were the bodies of two students who had apparently encountered the creature first.
For a split second, I was confused why Dahlia announced the presence of dead classmates so excitedly, but then I remembered. “Oh, right! I’m a necromancer!”
I did my thing. The two corpses melted away as bone punctured through raggedy molten skin. Then emerged two bloody, jagged-looking skeletons with deformed skulls bearing eye sockets twisted into a malicious visage.
Dahlia started blasting a solid, stable beam of holy-looking energy. Its white radiance seemed to give the creature pause, but it managed to stagger toward us nonetheless. Meanwhile, my minions charged with impressive strength and agility, leaping onto the back of the creature and tearing into it with elongated claw-like hands and horrifically sharp teeth. A fount of black blood emerged from the creature's neck, but it didn’t give up the fight.
And suddenly, the room was bats. Carmilla had gone ‘swarm mode’ again, attacking the two monsters with extreme prejudice, puncturing them and ripping at them with dozens of bites per second. I attempted to drain the life out of one of them, but the spell fizzled, and its effects were shrugged off almost instantaneously.
“These are Nightgaunts, wizard hunters, stolen from the elder god Nodens and bound in service to the Void,” Dahlia shouted. “They’re more powerful than whatever you faced in the library!” She was hard to hear over the screeching of hundreds of vampire bats.
I commanded Uther to take control of one of the skeletons.
Of course, what do you have in mind? he asked.
“Just protect Dahlia, and leave the other to me.” I commanded my skeleton to hurl itself at the Nightgaunt that was growing ever closer to me. “Carmilla, back off for a sec!”
When the bats had given me clearance, and my minion had clung to the front of the creature like a baby-bjorn, I c
ast the most potent spell I could think of. Right before their eyes, my minion began melting away into molten blood, searing into the flesh of the Nightgaunt and stopping it cold as it collapsed to the ground with a thud, breaking into charred chunks.
One down, one to go. “Same plan, Uther, let’s do it to—” I turned around, and before I could finish my command, I found an icy claw piercing my chest. The featureless visage of the Nightgaunt was a breath away from my face, and Dahlia had been discarded onto the floor. She screamed at the sight of my impalement and her eyes went black—as black as the creature that was killing me.
A dozen dusky tentacles of enormous size erupted from the ground, filling the room. They ripped the Nightgaunt from my chest, and I coughed up blood as its claws abruptly scraped out of the wound. Black ooze and smoke poured from it, and I crumbled to the floor, dropping my cane, with a loud clatter.
Carmilla recorporealized into her normal vampiric form, rushing to my aid even as she watched in terror at Dahlia’s impressive display. Dahlia’s tentacles ripped the creature limb from limb, holding it in five or six pieces. Its wings, too, were torn to shreds, and soon it was only a puddle of black ooze. Nearly as quickly as her rage came on, it left, and her eyes went back to starlight, and the tentacles shrunk back into the angles of the walls where they slithered into cracks that gave way to normalcy.
“Liam!” she shouted. It was so sweet to hear her calling my name with such concern. That was what I was thinking as my consciousness started to fade. The two women held me, and Dahlia immediately began casting a healing spell, but it seemed to have little effect. I was dying. Fast.
“Oh no, you don’t, Mr. Elloway,” came a deep and familiar feminine voice. Suddenly, the Headmistress appeared in a puff of smoke just as my eyelids were drooping shut. “I’m afraid this will not do.” She tapped me on the chest and the wound closed, the black ooze turned to misty vapor and dissipated, and my eyes fluttered back open.
Dahlia and Carmilla gasped happily at the sight of my sudden revival. Dahlia’s face was damp with sparkling tears, and Carmilla, too, was crying, but her tears were bloody and streamed all the way down her face. Vampire stuff.
The Headmistress looked at the two of them, and then back to me. She looked perplexed. “Now this is a conundrum that even I didn’t see coming,” she confessed.
The girls exchanged looks. Finally, it was me who spoke. My voice came out hoarse and labored as my throat was still damp with my own blood. “What? What happened?”
“It’s just that I haven’t heard of an active harem-magus in three hundred years.”
Chapter 15
Traumatic Exposition
The Headmistress sat on the edge of my bed. It was a strange juxtaposition, seeing the older woman on the same bed where I ravaged Rebecca and Carmilla. She flicked her wand, and the windows and doors reassembled. The blood cleaned itself off the walls and floors, and traces of the Nightgaunts vanished, except for stony cores that seemed to be left behind once their chests had entirely disappeared.
”Tell me, Mr. Elloway,” she began. “Have you noticed that since your powers began manifesting, you have seemed more attractive to women around you?”
There was no denying it. “Yes,” I said. “Definitely.” From day one, most of the women at this school have found me attractive, except for Evelyn, really. But even she seemed curious when I first arrived.
“And have you felt any special bond to these women in particular? Or any others?” She said, gesturing at Dahlia and Carmilla.
I could only nod. Dahlia and Carmilla both looked on in fascination, but Dahlia seemed to actually understand what was going on.
“Whenever you assemble with two or more women who share your attraction to them, you are at risk of inviting an attack from the void, no matter where you are. Your power and potential are so strong that it is like a beacon,” she explained. “That’s the bad news.”
Carmilla finally spoke up, clearing her throat. “Then back at the library, with Rebecca,” she said. “That was because we both like Liam? And he likes us?” Dahlia’s eyes flickered black, and a look of irritation came to her face at the mention of a mutual attraction between Rebecca and me. I pegged it, but chose to ignore it for now. Bigger things at stake than a bit of oddly placed jealousy.
“Very likely. Minor Void Incursions can happen randomly at the library, but I don’t believe in coincidences. It happened specifically to you for a reason,” the Headmistress sighed deeply, appearing to be deep in thought. “This is a severe complication. And yet, it is an opportunity, as well.”
I didn’t say anything. I just wanted to see how this whole thing played out if I disengaged. I had the feeling this was the kind of conversation where answers were either going to come or they weren’t, and no line of questioning would change that. Especially when it came to the Headmistress and whatever agenda she hid from me. Information was precious, but it couldn’t be pried from her unless she wanted to give it freely. I was savvy enough to realize that.
Dahlia, took a deep breath, cooled herself down, and managed to speak. “Essentially, Liam has the unique power to assemble a group of sorceresses, and he draws power from his bond with them,” she explained. “Carmilla, you felt that energy when you kissed him, right?”
She blushed. It was an embarrassing line of questioning in front of the Headmistress, and she was hanging on every word. “Yeah,” she admitted. “I did feel it.”
“He’s established a bond with you. He and I were linked the moment we saw each other,” she said. “Our bond was instant. But yours blossomed because of his growing powers and his compatibility with you.”
The Headmistress sneered at Dahlia. “Your bond was preordained, not instant,” she corrected. “You think your little skull-faced gecko wasn’t foreshadowing Liam’s role in your life? Maybe if Liam’s familiar didn’t resemble you so strongly, I’d let that one go, but given that, I’d say it’s clear you were destined to meet. I’d expect a better reading from a student of Divination, Ms. White.”
Dahlia smiled at me and held my arm tighter at the reveal that we were apparently star-crossed lovers. I felt a current of euphoria flow through me at her touch but I managed to stay focused on the matter at hand.
“So what do we do?” I asked.
The Headmistress stood up. “Proceed as usual. Although I suggest limiting your alone time with two or more women as much as possible, Mr. Elloway. At least on school grounds, and at least until I find a way to safeguard against future incursions.
“Is that possible?” I asked.
“Yes. But it may take some time. Do some assignments to keep yourselves busy. Within a few days, I’ll have something that can help. And then I encourage you to explore these powers as much as you can.”
Carmilla hesitated for a moment. Her eyes flicked around the room as she did the math on what the Headmistress was suggesting. “Are you actively encouraging us to have sex with Liam?”
“Consider it an order,” she said with her trademark sneer. She turned her head to me as odorless smoke billowed upward from her feet. “These two are a great start, Liam. But you will need more like them to reach your full potential. However, in the meantime, try to keep your activities to first base if you must… mingle.” She cocked an eyebrow and upturned one side of her lips in an amused expression. “And ideally one at a time.”
My mouth hung open at the guidelines I’d just been handed. “This feels highly inappropriate for a member of the faculty to be suggesting to a student.” To my surprise, Headmistress Waite only rolled her eyes as the smoke consumed her face, and by the time it cleared, she was gone.
Dahlia stood up first and stared at me as though examining me. The view of her from this angle was exquisite, but I tried not to think about that, lest my arousal get us into another extradimensional kerfuffle.
“Rebecca is already on the way to becoming a member of your little harem, isn’t she?” Carmilla said, stroking her chin in thought. “So you’re
already basically up to three.”
Dahlia’s eyes went wide, and then they narrowed to slits. “Why is she ‘on the way?’”
I smelled trouble at this line of questioning, though I didn’t understand why Rebecca was such a sore spot for Dahlia. “Liam nailed her a couple of nights ago. And she was definitely in the library with us when the void monster came, too. That means it read her as being in his harem, right?”
Dahlia couldn’t hide her rage. She struggled to speak.
“Whoa, Dolly, you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she lied.
“Let’s drop this topic for now,” I said. I didn’t need this tension. Not tonight. “I think we have to call it a night, don’t you?”
Dahlia nodded. She’d seemingly managed to get her discomfort under control, but I sensed that she was quietly seething beneath her surface demeanor as her eyes still flickered back and forth between starry dark blue and abyssal black. “Actually, I’m helping Rebecca with a mission tomorrow, come to think of it.”
I was surprised when I’d initially heard about that, knowing how Dahlia felt about the busty brunette, but I was nonetheless pleased in a way. Maybe it was a bonding opportunity for the two of them, and a chance for Dahlia to bury whatever bad blood she had with Rebecca.
“Maybe you should fill her in, yeah?” Carmilla suggested.
“Yeah, I’ll let her know what happened,” Dahlia agreed. “That’s just fine. I’m fine with it.” She was clearly not fine with it, but Carmilla wasn’t paying attention to her anymore.
“I’m meeting up with Randolph and Brian for a mission tomorrow, too,” I said, changing the subject. After everything that had happened that somehow sounded like a vacation to me. I breathed a sigh of relief just thinking about getting a break from this insanity.
“I’ll head to the library with Evelyn,” Carmilla said. “I’ll see what I can find out about this harem-magus stuff.”
“Nice,” I said. “Thank you, Carri.”
“Anything for you,” she answered, smiling. But then her face twisted into confusion, even a hint of revulsion at her sugary sweet words.
Esoterica 1: Liam's Awakening: A Lovecraftian Fantasy Harem Adventure (Esoterica Chronicles) Page 13
