by Laura Wylde
Giggling and slopping our drinks all over the floor, we staggered over to the pool. You would think my coastal experience would have been enough to keep me away from swimming for a while, but what I had seen – that incredible sight of fins and tails in brilliant colors, the oddly beautiful underwater creatures – was more inspiring than anything I had seen in a long time. I was ready for air tanks and scuba diving; or sizzling little semi-goddesses in a swimming pool.
I stripped away my clothing as fast as I could, but I wasn’t as fast as the others. They had all dived in and were already herding her to the center of the pool. I joined the game, reaching out to touch her on a leg, or to pass over her buttocks, my Johnson sniffing along agreeably. I touched her on the breasts and between her thighs, never quite making full contact.
We were all doing it, touching her lightly, nuzzling against her, tasting her warm, salty flesh with our tongues. At first, she spun and resisted us playfully, kicking her feet and swimming away. She was getting excited, however. She was turning on. Her nipples throbbed, hard and erect and her stomach sucked in as her honey mound thrust outwards, begging for contact. I ran my fingers upside that thrashing mound. The tiny button inside the cleft was pulsing and slippery. I slipped inside while my mates continued to touch and kiss, slithering around her, playing with all her erotic zones. Barnaby nibbled her ears, under the arms, circling closer. I felt myself come in one final push and moved to one side so he could replace me.
We kept slipping around her and sliding over her body, touching her delicately while her body twisted for more. Finally, she gasped. “Enough! No! I can’t take anymore! You’ve made your point.” She was laughing and breathing hard. She swam to the side of the pool, tingling with the orgasms that still convulsed between her thighs. Her breath was loud and shallow. She held herself. “Fuck! Fuck! I think I just blew up my twat.” She gave a long shudder, then a sigh of enormous relief. “Wow! That’s never happened to me before. I couldn’t stop coming.”
I grinned and splashed a little water at her. “Is it more fun than Marco Polo?”
“Oh yeah!”
There was only one thing left to do. Bright and early the next morning, we put on our hiking boots and took a trip to the cave.
Barnaby had regained his sense of authority, established under the guidelines of AMP. “We want it sealed in two places, at the cavern tunnel and here, at the entrance. We don’t want anyone discovering it again.”
Sealing the lower tunnel was my job. I didn’t relish going down into that hellhole again but there wasn’t anyone else who could do it the way I could. I crept through the cavern, a hundred memories of the first few days with Irene spinning through my mind. I didn’t know what would happen now. It was over. The gods were battling it out somewhere far from earth. We’d go back to protecting banks and family treasures and Irene would go back to digging up old bones.
She liked my room. That had been nice. Not many women did, but my room was full of old bones, too. We had so much in common. I didn’t want to let her go.
The plastic tape cordoning the area was still in place, although all the evidence had been carried away. I shifted through the cavern, a painful lump in my heart. It had all started so innocently, so excitedly.
I found the tunnel and slipped inside, determined to fill it so tightly, it would be part of the cavern wall. As I worked, I heard a voice whisper, enticing me. “Dragon, have you come for me? Dragon let me out.”
I moved the rocks, sand and loose clay around in the tunnel, making an effective mortar. The voice was difficult to ignore. It had a seductive quality that made me want to listen. “Dragon, this is Iapetus. Your friend. I fathered so many of Earth’s children long before Zeus stuck his finger in the pie. I would say, I fathered the originals.”
“You fathered the ones who were petty and mean,” I muttered, even though I knew I shouldn’t engage him in a conversation. “All of humankind’s worst qualities were fathered by you.”
“We’ve all got to blame somebody, don’t we? I must not have done too badly. To this day, humans are the most fascinating playthings of all. Dragon look at you. Squirming around in the hole like a human. Show yourself. Show what you can do.”
“You’re not getting out…” I held my tongue. I almost said his name, which would have given him power over me. I needed to stop talking at all. I could feel my willpower draining. I grunted, putting some last stones in place and slipped out.
“Dragon think of what I can give you. Anything you want.”
I ran through the cave system until I reached the giant jaws of the cavern. I couldn’t hear his voice anymore, yet there still seemed to be a ghostly echo. I squinted, burst into dragon form and flew out of the cave.
I didn’t say a word, just crawled up out of the hole and pawed down plenty of ground litter to make sure the entrance was closed. “Seal her up,” I told Damian.
He breathed out a stream of molten metal that cemented the small rocks into place and blended into the side of the cliff. “May it be ten thousand years before they find this place again,” I murmured. “Are we ready to go back?”
“In a minute,” said Irene.
She brought out the leather bag with the four stones. She set the artifacts gently on the ground and turned on her tape recorder. I recognized the piano music. It was from Peer Gynt – “The Morning Mood”. I watched in amazement as the stones began to wobble, then whirl. Once they began whirling, they grew longer and more transparent. They changed shape and color, taking on translucent human flesh tones. They danced to the music, bending and spinning like ballerinas, their only cover, a garland of flowers. I remain transfixed as the garlands grew and blossomed. They removed the garlands where they took root deep in the soil and twined around the newly sealed cave entrance.
They stopped dancing at the end of the song and looked at Irene expectantly. “I release you,” she told them. “Go. Find happiness.”
The ethereal dancers looked at each one of us with a smile and a barely tangible caress. “We have found it,” they chorused together.
They twirled around us once more and floated away like butterflies.
“Why did you let them go?” I asked.
A look passed over her startling eyes that I had seen only once before - when she held Apollo’s bow in her hand. The god look. “Because we will need them.”
She had seen something in the future, but she wasn’t telling us what it was.
Irene
We were all thinking the same thing. What do we do now? I was an archeologist. The dragons were security guards for high-end clients. Our ability to assist each other had come to an end. My boots clattered against the rocky slope as we climbed down the mountain. After all the wonders I had seen, how would I readjust to normal life? I gave a silent, wry chuckle. How could I even begin to think of “normal” relationships again after an affair with four shape-shifting dragons?
It didn’t feel like an affair anymore. An affair was just above a fling, the easy-come, easy-go arrangement. An affair was something you had while waiting for something better. There wasn’t any better. Each one of them satisfied a part of me that craved a connection. I like order. I like planned actions. So does Barnaby. I understood his frustrations with a team that did whatever they pleased without waiting for an organized plan or instructions.
I liked classical music, performance and the arts. So does Orson. His sense of fashion, his interior decorating, his art collection, were exquisite. I could spend all day listening to Orson talk about Chopin or recite Chaucer in the original Old English.
Damian, dark and secret, both bad boy and a man of deep perspectives, turns my rebellious nature up two and a half notches and brings out the fighter and the hunter. He has a soft side and tries to cover it, which is even more attractive. I never cared to show much sentimentality, which made some people think I was cold. That wasn’t it. It’s just a bad idea to show it. Sentimentality can become a weakness if you let it cloud your judgment or p
lay with your emotions.
And there was Heath. In some ways, I feel closer to Heath than anyone. It’s not just that we share the same passion for caving. There’s a refreshing simplicity to Heath. He was the strongest in both human and physical form, even if he couldn’t produce fire, water or liquid metal. He could bring a building down with one stomp of his foot. Yet, he was the only one who didn’t squabble over being told what to do. He has a clearly defined role and doesn’t allow anything to complicate it. He is direct. I am direct. It works for us.
How do you break up with the four most spectacular guys you’ve ever met in your life? “I received an invitation to go caving off the coast of Turkey,” I said conversationally. “The team that requested me sounded very excited.”
“Turkey? No. You probably shouldn’t go to Turkey,” mumbled Barnaby. “AMP wants to meet with us in Athens.”
I shifted my pack to keep up with his stride. He was a long-legged cuss. “What does AMP have to do with me?”
“Well…” He looked a little uncomfortable. “You have four percent god blood. That’s a lot in this day and age. They want you to enlist.”
“What is AMP exactly?”
“Just a means of trying to maintain order among beasts and monsters.”
“And now, gods?”
Orson took my arm. It would have seemed school-boyish, the way he hung onto me loosely as we skipped down a meadow path, except he peered at me earnestly. “We don’t intervene with the gods, understand? If they start overthrowing each other, killing each other off, just stay out of it. Our only job is to send them back where they came from if they bring their quarrels here.”
“Very nice,” I said. “What will you do about the underwater chaos?”
“Nothing.” He gazed out at the peaceful, new day. “They’ll squabble a while. A few will get eaten by sea serpents and sharks before they realize why they had agreed to work together in the first place. The dolphins will probably help the squids form parliament. They always were the smartest ones.”
“But the water dragons?”
He smiled. “We’re a vain lot. It’s something we need to get over.”
“What happens if I join AMP?”
Barnaby answered. “You would be on our team.” Before I could ask how he knew, he added, “we asked for you. Since you’re our find…. We got you.”
“Your find?”
“God blood, you know.”
“And if I refuse?”
He looked heartbroken. “You would do that?”
I hugged him so tight I nearly squeezed him to death. “No, of course I wouldn’t, you big lug-head.”
The dim clouds that had lurked in my head all day suddenly lifted, and I felt alive and happy again. When we returned to the ranch, I filled out some online paperwork and topped off the formal registration with a toast of their dragon juice. I don’t know what they put in that stuff. It had a fermented taste, was hotter than a firecracker going down and was as euphoric as a chocolate binge after two weeks of deprivation.
The centaurs came over for one last shower before leaving. They didn’t like the swimming pool – they said it dried their hair – and they didn’t like swimming in the ocean, although they did like to run along the beach. However, they loved the big, walk-in showers. They were half-men. They like shampooing their hair, lathering and trimming their beards and soaping down their giant chests. They also used a lot of Stetson cologne. Who would have guessed?
We shared some dragon’s blood with them, and I listened while they shared a few stories of their past adventures. Most of the adventures centered around racetracks and Damian and the different cons they used for playing the odds, but some of their deeds were noble, such as when they rescued a group of young female students on vacation from the hands of some very poorly behaved satyrs.
The afternoon was growing late when the centaurs packed their things to leave. They did some kind of gang shake with Damian, which was sort of like a handshake, but used some elbow and fist bumps. “So,” asked Damian. “Where are you going?”
Astir lifted his pack and buckled it around his waist. “The Himalaya’s. There’s a minotaur holed up there that has been terrorizing the villagers. We’re going to ask him politely to move on.”
“Lucky you. I haven’t been to the Himalayas since we broke up a ring making sacrifices to Ares.”
Astir sighed. “Sometimes it makes you wonder why we bother.”
“Sometimes,” said Damian, then glanced over at me. “Sometimes it’s worth it.”
The next morning, we flew into Athens. I could really get used to their travel arrangements. No flight bookings, no customs, no waiting two hours to board your plane. Just sprout wings and fly.
I’m not sure what I expected the main headquarters to look like, but it wasn’t at all like anything I had imagined. It looked like one of those run-down stores you see along the highway, with a lot of rusty, metal things out front and a sign that advertises antiques, but when you go inside, you see mostly junk.
The Director didn’t look like anything I would expect, either. He was very short, with a bald head and double chin. As much as I tried to think otherwise, he resembled a frog and hopped about like one. He hopped up on a high stool and scrolled through a leather-bound book. He examined me through a magnifying glass and blew a pinch of green powder at me. “Hah. Just as I thought. Three parts Apollo’s line, one- part Aphrodite. Your father has a strong libido?”
“I’m sure he functions,” I said, feeling that was a rather personal question.
“Of course, he does. No reason why not. It’s remarkable when two strains come together, but they have diluted so much, I suppose it was inevitable. Now, where were we? Oh, yes. There has been some minor trouble at the Temple of Athena. Nothing you couldn’t take care of. It involves some sprites that have been biting people on the ear, pulling their hair and goosing them.”
I couldn’t help but giggle. “They are being goosed?”
“Not that kind of goosing,” Damian explained. “They are being turned into geese.”
“Oh.” I looked at him blankly. “How do we change them back?”
“We have a powder for that,” said the Director, waving his hand around as though it was of no concern. “The trick is discovering which ones are humans. The geese will all try to trick you. They are malcontents. Everyone of them.”
Having absolutely no idea how to accomplish this mission that involved rounding up some ill-mannered sprites and identifying real humans among a gaggle of geese, I asked, “how do I fit into this?”
He looked at me over the top of a pair of spectacles as though my question had completely amazed him, then said, “I’m sorry. I get a bit absent-minded.” He chuckled. “The absent-minded professor, you know.”
He busied himself at an aging rollaway desk, muttering, “where is it? Ah. Let’s go to the lab.” He flicked a button on what appeared to be a remote control and the wall opened. To clarify; it didn’t roll away, fold up or swing open. A shiny, purple-encrusted hole appeared in the wall. He walked through and I followed hesitantly.
It looked like a lab, but not a very modern one. It had all those bottles and vials and strange contraptions you see on a Frankenstein movie. He picked up one of the bottles and examined the liquid swirling around thoughtfully. “God strands are very weak until you’re in contact with one of the gods. They are memory strands that get activated by artifacts and relics. This potion will activate those strands and keep them active.”
I looked at his bottles dubiously. I wasn’t sure I would like to try any of his potions. They didn’t lie flat and motionless. They swirled, they hissed, they bubbled and some of them made popping noises. “What happens once the god strands are active?”
He sighed. “You’ll have heightened hunting and fighting abilities as you did when you were carrying Apollo’s bow. But you’ll also have vision.” He offered me the bottle. “When you first met your four mates, you didn’t know they were drag
ons, did you? When the centaurs changed into horses, you saw them as horses and would not have known they were anything else if you had not seen them change. Once you take the potion, you will be able to see everyone for who they really are and you will be able to see the creatures that are invisible to humans, like sprites.”
What did I have to lose? Certainly, my dear companions would not bring me here to do harm. I gulped it down. It was bubbly like a seltzer with a strawberry taste. There didn’t seem to be any difference until I noticed – I could tell my lovers were dragons. They still had their humans shape, but they were surrounded by an aura in the shape of a dragon. I stared at the little frog-faced director. “You’re a wizard!”
“Modestly so,” he said, rubbing his hands with pleasure. “That’s all settled. Now you can be on your way.”
“The powder for the geese,” reminded Barnaby.
“Oh yes, the powder.” He clucked his tongue. He picked up an apothecary jar and shook a small volume of bright yellow, glittering powder into a plastic, snap-tight container and handed it to him. “You don’t need much. Two pinches per goose. One if it’s a child.”
So, it began – my life in a crime fighting unit. I wasn’t battling against humans. I was battling monsters, sending evil little creatures back where they come from, and preparing for a showdown with the gods. I still go caving. I still go to archeological digs, but it’s all in my line of work. The pay isn’t great, but the benefits kick ass and I’ve never laid my eyes on another man after finding my four wonderful lovers.
Afterword
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