Jumlin's Spawn Read online

  The something, at first, appeared to be sparkles in the cave walls, but then the illumination grew brighter, until she could see the heptad of cave arcades merge into a singular space.

  At the center, something robed in a blend of black fire and feathers dangled as if weightless above a pit. A huge black angel, at least eight feet tall, its wings folded in. In shock but also at the sight of Severin, Elfie stopped dead in her tracks.

  Severin set down the argon laser before him. “Hoka hey!” he shouted into the cave’s depths. “Micaje Severin. Mato Tuwe Ehate. waun ki yunke-lo!”

  Like the scream of a tornado ripping down a city, the roar of the black angel’s wings unfolding deafened Elfie. Its eyes expanded to reveal ice-white burning orbs.

  “Hecheto welo, mi hohe,” the black angel roared its reply. “Ohunko kola.”

  “Ai,” Severin replied.

  Elfie understood only bits. Severin had identified himself as Laughing Bear’s death. Laughing Bear had basically said “bring it on”.

  The black angel thundered, as if to make its voice echo throughout the Angel Caves, “Haho! Ya au lila wiya waste! Aku la!”

  With a whispery sound of labored breathing, another figure emerged from the dark. Oliver stood there, ashen from a dearth of light and lack of pigment, his hands hanging down oddly from his shoulders. Oliver always folded his arms when he stood still.

  You must try to lure him toward you, Severin had said.

  Okay, she knew how to do this. She’d done this often enough with other men. She shook her hair free of her collar. She stripped off her over-shirt and tossed it down.

  “Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness,” Elfie said. “Who said that, Oliver? You remember?”

  The eyes stared deadly. He said nothing.

  “Terry Pratchett, remember?” Elfie said, as if half-pleading. “You remember him; he’s one of your favorite writers.”

  Something in Oliver’s eyes brightened. Half-naked, except for the remnants of his slacks, he stepped fully out of the darkness. His arms seemed more tightly muscled as they gleamed in the ambient glow. His hair shone more brightly. Even his eyes burned bluer than before. Elfie struggled to ignore it all.

  "Anything you think can be held against you,” she gasped out, quoting again, while taking a full step back. “Who said that? You remember, Oliver.”

  “Phil Dick,” he said, in something closely resembling his old voice, although the words didn’t sound spoken. They sounded as if they had fallen out of his mouth like broken teeth.

  “That’s right!” she said, her voice sparked by hope. “And who said, it has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value?”

  Something surfaced in his eyes again. “Arthur C. Clarke,” he said, like more teeth tumbling out.

  Elfie nodded. “Yes! Exactly!” she said, desperation gathering in her voice. “You remember me? You remember Yancey? You remember us, don’t you?”

  “I remember,” Oliver murmured, reaching out to yank her toward him. He thrust his body around hers and clapped his palm to her forehead. “I want you to remember now.”

  Her mind blasted full of broken bits of memory, like a shattered mirror capturing frozen moments in time. The full effect shimmered with silver.

  From somewhere behind her, she heard the growl of brakes, the assault of tires against rock and rock over road. She heard the jeep waging a hard-fought battle with the hill.

  But, the silver memory consumed her mind. She felt her own reactions, but she somehow intuited his, too. She sensed his body warm and hard against her, she sensed his own perception of her body against him. Every outline of his body fit against hers wherever she hungered for it. Oliver’s slacks bulged at his crotch, hard and hot against the thin fabric she still wore. Every doubt she had ever had about Oliver’s feelings vanished in that onslaught.

  The slickness from between her thighs dribbled between her knees. She could sense his cock’s throbbing, pulsing fury to fuck her. Her pussy absorbed that need and added its own. The sensation in each of them mirrored the other’s and grew and exploded until Elfie wanted to drag off his slacks, then slam him against the ground.

  She knew how huge this pleasure would be, reflected from one to the other, larger and larger, until she understood in every nerve in all of her flesh that she would climb up his body into nothing short of paradise.

  Her clit pulsed inside her as Oliver used one hand to rip away his slacks then jabbed the head of his cock against the crotch of her shorts, until the impact triggered mini-pleasure spasms through her pussy.

  His mouth swallowed her mouth, sucking in her breath. He drove his tongue into the depths of her, promising with a thrusting flourish from it what lay ahead.

  From outside their union, she heard the upward rush of fire-wings unfolding across the cave. She knew, somehow, if she looked upon it, Laughing Bear’s enormity would terrify her. But she hungered more than anything to spread her legs for the promise burning in her crotch.

  Resist, she heard Severin’s voice storm across her mind.

  Even farther beyond them, she heard brakes hit hard, smelled the fumes of a gas-burning engine, and heard the grappling of metal against metal. A jeep door opened, and flat feet hit the ground running. Another thud, probably the now-connected generator, shook the nearby ground.

  “Elfie!” Yancey screamed.

  Somewhere inside her, she found the reason and the words. She glanced up to see Severin lifting up an armful of blinding light toward the outstretched wings of Laughing Bear.

  “One move to checkmate,” Elfie whispered into Oliver’s ear and then dragged him toward the real world.

  As they ran, the fire-wings rushed after them, as if to take them up inside them. A blinding flash exploded behind them, burning their collective shadow into the earth until Yancey grabbed Elfie and Oliver, and the three of them rushed toward the jeep.

  A massive cracking sound, like the fracturing spine of a planet, screamed in their ears. The walls of the world tumbled all around them. Yancey pushed Oliver and Elfie into the jeep, then jumped behind the wheel to swing the land rover toward the only road away from the falling sky.

  The flying debris rained down on the jeep with resounding thuds, as if the mountain had exploded, which partly it had. A crumbling world remained where the seven apertures to the Angel Caves had been an hour before.

  Elfie held onto Oliver tightly, as if to shield him from the lingering Angel Caves effects as Yancey down-shifted the jeep to maneuver it along the slanted road, around hairpin corners, crumbling sides, and finally, until the road flattened out onto land.

  Elfie exhaled as the horizon became level with their road. It was the road that led to the Willow Wash, and up that bend was the cottage they had spent the last day inside.

  “Thank God we’re down off the mountain,” Elfie whispered.

  Yancey appeared to cough out dust before gasping out, “That was too damned close. How is he?”

  Elfie combed fingers into Oliver’s hair to turn him toward her, so she could see into his eyes. The stare that shined back at her was Oliver’s own blinking, self-conscious quandary. He looked down at his near-nakedness as Elfie reached for one of their blankets to cover him up. She hauled out another one to wrap around her own nearly-naked body.

  “He’s all right now,” she said, smiling.

  He nodded, hugging the blanket around him. She inhaled and exhaled as if a novel exercise of his lungs. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Do you remember anything?” Yancey asked.

  “No,” Oliver said simply. “…I remember us fighting those…things.” A glint of what might have been memory surfaced in his eyes. He looked around. “Where is Severin?”

  “He told us not to worry about him,” Elfie explained. “He told us to get you safely back to the springs, and he’d meet us there later. He’s been right up until now. I’m inclined to respect his wishes.”

  Oliver nodded weakly. “Me
, too.”

  Elfie reached back to their cooler, pulling out a water bottle. She handed the water to Oliver. “This should help a little.”

  He opened it, swigged back some water, and then recapped it. “Thanks. It did.”

  Willow Wash road turned upward toward the path that they followed to the peak. The Willow Peak pond gates stood open but, otherwise, the landscape hadn’t changed. Elfie and Yancey each claimed one side of Oliver to help him through the cottage’s front door.

  “Please, for godssakes, get me to the shower,” he said, his voice a little stronger now.

  They aided him into the spa-like shower, helping him step down into the range of the nozzle’s spray. Elfie pulled away the blanket that had been wrapped around him.

  Yancey yanked at the shower control and focused the flow on Oliver. The spray spilled over his hair and down his shoulders, washing away the gray chalky dust that had accumulated on his skin.

  Oliver turned his face up toward the spray and smiled, as if the water melted away whatever had lingered in his mind.

  Oliver and Elfie’s eyes met. She smiled back. Slowly, Oliver leaned across to touch his mouth to hers, but then the touch grew into a kiss. Her lips parted for his tongue.

  “How did I know this was going to happen?” Yancey said with a smirk.

  Oliver drew back enough to whisper, “I believe we have unfinished business.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Elfie murmured hungrily, quickly shedding what remained of her clothes.

  Oliver boosted Elfie onto his shoulder, carrying her to the king sized bed. He reached back and pulled Yancey in to join them. Yancey, seeing the point of it all, rolled to the side to watch events transpire, but Oliver reached out to grasp his hand.

  Oliver probed his tongue once more through Elfie’s lips, and she opened wider to receive it. Touching his other hand to her face, she felt as if a door in her mind had burst open and sun radiated across a reservoir of memory – all their friendship, all their fights, all their near-misses, all their missed kisses, all the way to that moment.

  She realized she saw these memories from his perspective, just as she tasted the inside of her own mouth by sensing what his tongue experienced. She had stared into a mirror that stared back into her. She felt Yancey’s sensing their feelings, too, even as he felt distracted by some other activity.

  “What is this?” Elfie gasped out, knowing the other men knew what she was asking without the question being spoken.

  “Residual effect from the cave,” Oliver said breathlessly. “Sorry.”

  “Who the fuck is complaining?” Elfie asked, pulling him all the way on top of her.

  When his cock rubbed against her slit, probing firmly against her pulsing clit, she felt the probe and the pulsation inside her. She experienced the pleasure Oliver felt and Yancey felt just as they experienced hers, and the rush of sensation whirled around again, building beyond them.

  Oliver thrust into her deeply. She clasped her pussy around his cock, gripping it to give back everything he was giving. Oliver’s moans, her moans, and Yancey’s moans all mixed together until one couldn’t be heard above another.

  “I’ve wanted this for so long,” Oliver murmured, before he rolled over to bare Elfie’s ass toward Yancey.

  Yancey covered her from behind, running an oily finger, the evidence of his earlier distraction, lightly over her lower lip before kissing it. “You okay for this?”

  “You have to ask?” she gasped an answer.

  “No,” he laughed a little in reply, and slowly but steadily pushed his lubed cock into her ass.

  She threw her hair back at the entry, bucking back against him slowly to hasten it along.

  “Oh, God, I can feel that, too,” Oliver screamed out in pleasure.

  “This mind bridge thing is a real time saver,” Yancey said in a smoky voice, the growing sensation strangling each word as he spoke it. “I can butt-fuck you both at the same time.”

  The explosive pleasure flooded through every nerve of her body, spilling down into Oliver and Yancey, then around again. Elfie felt her heart tremble in its wake. Her arms consumed both men, pulling them toward her. She kissed each face and then pressed her forehead firmly against Oliver’s. She had already started to weep.

  Yancey planted a kiss in Oliver’s hair. “Thank heavens you’re safe…thank God you’re with us,” he said, a tear escaping his eye and splashing against Yancey’s and Elfie’s faces.

  They stayed that way, woven together, until the three of them settled into some semblance of dreamless, restless sleep.

  It had to have been hours because, as she awoke, the sky seeping through the window shade was purple-colored.

  Consciously hearing the sound that awakened Elfie from her own napping place in the huddle, she thought to herself, “Indians don’t knock.”

  And yet, someone was knocking. Somebody knocked hard.

  She tried to extract herself without waking her lovers, but she knew it was a futile attempt. Yancey awoke and sat up before she even pulled her arm free. Oliver sat up behind them.

  Elfie ran for her bag to pull out a sweater and pants, but a still-dressed Yancey hit the door before she could dress. Oliver had quickly donned his other pair of slacks.

  “Billy,” Yancey said, after he pulled the door open, “what in hell are you doing here?”

  Elfie moved up behind Yancey to see Wolfram Ten Bears, the man Yancey had aptly nicknamed Billy Jack, staring at them through brown-stained teeth. He still wore his black motorcycle jacket.

  “Severin sent me,” Ten Bears said. “I’m to pick up the artifacts to return to the caves. He would like Oliver to come with me for the ceremony.”

  “Is Severin okay?” Elfie asked quickly. “I mean, he got out of the caves safely?”

  “Yes, he got out of the caves,” Ten Bears said, “but he is injured. So he had me come in his place.”

  Yancey shook his head. “Sorry, Billy, Oliver isn’t going anywhere alone. The Angel Caves are gone. We’re returning the artifacts to the elders.”

  “But I’m an elder,” Ten Bears said.

  “You’re not the elders,” Yancey replied. “I learned a long time ago to take it to the whole consortium.”

  “I can go,” Oliver said, dragging on a sweater, “I feel fine. And I owe it to Severin.”

  “We can go with, Oliver,” Elfie suggested.

  Ten Bears grunted his disapproval. “It’s a ceremony. We need the artifacts. And we need Oliver to be there alone.”

  “Why do you say that?” Yancey asked, squinting in suspicion.

  “He says that because he lies,” Molly Coddle’s voice arose behind Ten Bears. She stepped out of Ten Bears’ shadow to face the other three. “He is so old that he told the first lie. He is the great deceiver.”

  “That’s a lie,” Ten Bears replied, three harsh words spoken in a roar.

  Molly switched on her flashlight and pointed it at Ten Bears. “Sometimes, Yancey, old Indian myths are so nonsensical, they are true,” she said, as Wolfram Ten Bears, standing before them, dissolved into a pile of blue ash.

  Elfie felt Yancey grasp at her shoulder, a gesture of shock he had never displayed before. A gesture that stunned her more than Ten Bears turning into ash.

  “Billy was Jumlin?” Yancey asked, with his eyes wider than his words.

  Molly smiled sympathetically. “It seems he knew you three were the Wakinyan even before I did. He’d been waiting for the three of you to realize it for a long time.”

  Oliver stepped around Yancey to stare down at the ash and then over at Molly. “He was trying to drag me back to the Caves?”

  “The Angel Caves no longer exist. Jumlin was trying to collect the spawn and the artifacts, though I can’t say where he was headed. Laughing Bear may be gone, but I’m sure the spawn remain. Maybe somewhere deep in the earth.”

  “And Severin?” Elfie asked.

  Molly’s smile grew gentle. “Severin took the journey.”

  Yanc
ey sighed softly, loudly. He translated to his friends, “She means he’s dead.”

  “Oh, my God,” Elfie whispered softly.

  “My adopted grandson always knew he would never make it out of the cave alive, my dear,” Molly said. “He also knew your good hearts would make you die trying to save him. He couldn’t let you do that. Your existence is more important than his. It’s more important than mine.”

  “That is a subject I’m not about to debate right now,” Yancey said, looking behind him at the cottage behind them with all their gear. “All I want to do is pack up and get us and Oliver the hell out of here.”

  Elfie reached into Yancey’s jeans, pulling out Severin’s pouch. “We have a favor to do first, though. We owe him at least that much.”

  Yancey nodded. “That’s for damned sure. We go to see Severin’s son, and then we return to the land of double cheeseburgers and the Internet and 3-D TV. In other words, Yancey’s Personal Paradise.” He walked toward their gear to begin gathering it, but paused for a moment and swung around to add, “Oh, and everything that happened here, didn’t happen here. And I never want to hear the word vampire again.”

  Elfie laughed, pondering how good it felt to do so. “That’s okay, Yancey, we knew we could count on you to close your eyes to reality.”

  ****

  In a little trailer home southwest of Angel Peak, not far from Yancey’s home, the three of them stood, watching the residents from afar.

  A little Sioux boy sat atop his mother’s knee, as the woman shucked husks from corn then cracked the cobs in two.

  “See the caves fall in this morning, Dad?” the Sioux woman asked the old man seated behind her on his porch swing.

  “Yuh,” he called back. “White man’s strip-mining the mountains again, I expect.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” the young woman replied.

  Elfie opened the gate to the trailer house yard with a great deal of trepidation, not wanting to interrupt the tableau they had been observing. But, Yancey stepped forward, and she and Oliver followed.