ElyriasEcstasy (23 page)

Kath answered with a laugh, light and sweet, like chimes.
“You’re the first of those, Urna. Though I hope not the last.”

He set down the cup. His gaze wandered the walls. Intricate
tapestries were hung there. Some depicted symbols and characters like those
painted on the walls surrounding the platform where their transport had halted.

“Well, good luck to you,” he said. Then added wryly, “Let me
know if there’s anything I can do.”

A hand alit upon his knee. Her touch was soft but he could
feel the individual pressures of each fingertip. “We’ll let you know how you
can help—later,” she said, with a first hint of huskiness in her tranquil
voice.

She was leaning slightly toward him. Urna made up the
distance, stooping forward a bit. The tips of their noses grazed and he drew in
her scent, an aroma more animated than the floral fragrance emanated by the
candle. When she blinked he felt her lashes brush his own. A soft tingling
crossed his scalp, starting at the widow’s peak of his long silver hair. Their
foreheads butted gently. She shifted, skimming one high cheekbone against him.

When their kiss finally came it held promise and mystery, pulled
by a delicious undercurrent of uncertainty. Maybe this was all it was to be,
Urna thought as his lips made contact with hers for the first time. It was a
still, tender touching, without ravenous movement, without the sudden needy
urgency to which he was more accustomed. Such had been his way with women.
Women had been brought to his room for him to fuck. None of them had ever
offered him a dainty kiss then retreated without opening her body wholly to
him.

But it might this time. Which was why he was careful to note
the kiss, to absorb its every detail, to commit to memory the feel of these
particular lips—moist, but still chastely shut—pressing lightly on his own. It
was an almost electrical contact. Intense. Exquisite.

When that connection ended, Urna felt himself still adrift,
still savoring. His eyes had closed. The sensuality of the moment remained
acute, almost excruciating.

“Come…” she said, and a hand pulled upon his hand. Rising
and scuttling a few steps, they settled together onto a mound of soft pillows
which must be her bed. She came into his arms and he held her, pressing her
tightly atop him, feeling the sweet, taut curves of her body even through the
coarse work clothes she wore.

With a quick series of wriggles and flexings, she shed the
clothing. Her flesh was drum-tight, the musculature beneath somehow delicate
and durable at the same time. She had a paleness that rivaled his own, offset
in startling manner by the vibrancy of her flame-colored hair. Urna’s hands
roved her body and again he appreciated its every swell and line as though he
must commit it to his mind. High on her left buttock, he saw a tattoo very like
Bongo’s, the curlicue that represented magic, he’d said.

It occurred to Urna that he was now quite overdressed. Kath
helped him as he tugged and unfastened. A few seconds later his outer clothes
were in a heap next to the improvised bed, and Urna’s tight black briefs were
being peeled down his legs. The crown of his swelling cock skimmed up his
thigh, and when Kath lay back down on top of him a squirming pleasure hurried
all through him.

Their mouths fell together and the kiss this time wasn’t
modest, not at all. With lips smeared apart, their tongues worked diligently
against each other. Kath’s head ground back and forth, her hair spilling over
him again and again. Her body too took up the rhythm, rocking from side to side
on top of his, exciting new pleasures with her every movement.

He cupped a firm buttock, squeezing the resilient flesh,
pressing her even harder onto his rigid cock. He felt the sharp points of her
breasts grazing across his chest. He could feel her dampness against him, her
readiness.

A thought struck him from seemingly nowhere. It was unbidden
and he couldn’t guess what instinct had prompted it. But he said, fumbling,
“How do I, uh—how do I keep from…” All those women, brought to his quarters. A
seeding-and-breeding program, he’d long suspected. He was meant to impregnate
them. But surely
this
woman wasn’t interested in having a child of his.
He knew something about contraception, though not from experience.

She touched two fingers to his lips. “Shhhhh,” she breathed.
“I’ve already cast the proper spell. No merging of sperm and ovum will result,
I promise.” He’d heard no chanting. She’d produced no fanciful object to help
with the spell’s casting.

Under other circumstances, Urna might’ve protested. It was
one thing to halfheartedly accept Bongo’s ritualized distractions when
withdrawal symptoms appeared. It was an altogether different category of trust
to believe that this female could simply will herself not to become pregnant.
This so-called Order’s obsession with magic might, in truth, be a form of
shared madness. Or at least a misdirected faith.

But the urgency of the moment had hold of him. He smelled
her carnal scent now, mingling with the flowery air. He felt the heat of her
body, felt his own responses—implacable, demanding, insisting he go forward
with this.

When Kath reached down between them and joined him to
herself, he made no move to stop her. She was confident they required no
contraceptive measures. Okay. So be it.

As she lowered herself onto him he felt only pleasure, was
touched only by the familiar sexual exhilaration. Any worries vanished by the
time she’d slipped herself all the way down to the base of his shaft. Her
moisture seeped out over his hairless balls.

She planted palms on his chest, on the stark bone and muscle
there, and set off rocking atop him. Her breasts jounced, conical shapes that
he reached up to fondle, fingers plucking at one engorged nipple, then the
other. Her hair flew about her head and face, escalating the suggestion of
dancing flames.

Urna responded with rhythmic upthrusts. His ass bunched
beneath him. His belly tightened. He speared her again and again. She impaled
herself over and over.

The great sensuality of it suffused him. This was the
deceptively simple, innate talent of human bodies, this built-in elation. This
was the connectivity which, maybe, made anything bearable. Horrors could befall
a person. Life might cheat, betray and abuse you. But a halfway decent fuck
could assuage the worst of it, could give you a reason to go on breathing.

Urna felt the grin stretching across his face. It was
answered by Kath, above, baring her teeth, riding him all the harder. The sounds
of their fleshy impacts filled the little room, a speedy carnal tempo. She
slammed down energetically upon him, her lithe form pounding against his. He
liked it. He gripped her hips, not to slow but to speed her.

A cry was rising in her throat, hoarse and fragile, the
sound contradicting itself. She was a dichotomy, this woman. Sensitive, calm,
and yet she had the ruthless ambitions of one prepared to overthrow a
government. She was sensible, practical, yet she relied on the vagaries of
magical spells.

Her ascending wail reached its pinnacle, a tearing orgasmic
call that might’ve reached all the way back through the connecting corridors to
the crowded platform for all Urna knew. She shuddered atop him, and he was able
to watch the climactic pleasure roll up through her body. At the end she flung
her arms out to either side and her head rocked back on the stalk of her neck.
He actually seemed to see the waves vibrate through her, and when she crumpled
bonelessly, he caught her sweat-slick body with his arms again. Kissed her damp
cheek. Rolled her over onto her back. Mounted her.

He continued to hold her, sliding his cock in and out of her
oiled groove. She mewled noises under him. Softly at first, then new excitement
giving force to her voice. No words came, just growlings and gruntings. Urna
liked that too. He gave her harder and faster thrusts now, hammering into her.
Her legs rose around him, wrapped his narrow waist. He felt he was touching her
deepest heat, his cock connecting him to some ultimate internal core.

As his orgasm loomed inevitably over him, he felt something
more—much more—than the mere pleasures of the immediate moment. Something
stirred within him, within his
mind
. Some dormant shadow edged toward
the dawning light…

None of this detracted from the intensity of his climax,
which swept through him with a jolting power. His smooth balls tightened
against him and he gushed his juice into her. Each spurt brought its own shock
of pleasure. Kath’s legs locked rigidly about his middle as a second shuddering
bliss struck her. Her pussy gripped his spending cock.

After a time, the bolts of rapture eased, became tendrils of
afterglowing warmth. They lay side by side.

Urna’s blue eyes were wide, unseeing. He was still dealing
with whatever it was that had come loose inside his head, whatever strange
divulgence seemed to be looming into mental view. It was weird. How could his
own brain have been withholding information from him? But the answer was plain.
It was his fractured memory, which had either been damaged naturally or through
some deliberate agency.

And why hadn’t he ever seriously considered that latter
possibility before?

Beside him, Kath murmured, “Is it clear yet?”

Her voice startled him. “What?”

“Do you see?” she asked in that soothing tone.

Was she actually asking him something, or was this more
unsubstantiated mysticism, just ritual words? “I…” He hesitated. “I don’t know
what I’m seeing.”

“I’ve done what I can for your block,” Kath said. “For now.
More might be dangerous. Let your mind adjust. Let it take whatever time it
needs. You’ll be remembering things over the next few days, unless I’m much in
error.”

Urna turned. He pushed up on an elbow. “What the hell are
you saying?
You
have something to do with—” He gestured vaguely at his
own head, feeling silly to be doing so. He had seen no positive proof of magic,
after all.

Kath smiled up at him. “Some spells work better with
intimate contact. I saw what you needed the instant I set eyes on you.”

He grunted. “You saw I needed to get laid. That’s a pretty
constant condition with me, by the way.”

She surprised him by laughing, then leaning toward him to
plant a neat, firm kiss on his chest. She sat up on the bed of pillows, and
when she looked down on him, it was with a sober cast.

“You asked earlier about helping us. I assume you were being
coy. But we of the Order of Maji could indeed use aid, Urna. You are much more
than simply a symbol. The Weapon who turned his back on the Lux. Yes. That’s
powerful. But you are a physical being. And there your true talents lie. How
would you like to escort a scavenger crew into the Unsafe? Not an official one,
of course. Not one that would only benefit the Lux. Rather, an illegal gang
that is preparing to make a raid. One of our number is among that crew. They
could most definitely use your help.”

Chapter Twelve

Peeking cautiously around the window’s edge, Virge Temple
saw the thread of grim smoke still tailing away into the anemic early morning
sky and it caused her heart to wind another degree tighter in her chest. Her
lab—her
former
lab—was some ten blocks distant, but there was no
doubting it was the source of last night’s fire. No point in denying the
intractable fact. She wasn’t one to live in fantasy. She was grounded in
science.

And what had all that come to? A laboratory burned by the
Guard, and herself a wanted woman…

“Get away from that window!”

Vika’s heavy footsteps crossed the floorboards. As Virge
backed away from the window, the bigger, older woman drew the dusty curtain
closed with an angry yank.

“You
want
to get seen?” she asked Virge, in that
manner of an adult exasperated by a misbehaving child. “The Guard know your
face by now, fool, and there’s Guard all over this town!”

“Maybe, then, you ought to keep your voice down,” Virge
muttered. Despite that this associate of Bongo had gotten her to this place of
seeming—though, most likely, temporary—safety, Virge hadn’t warmed to the
woman. Since they’d arrived here an hour or so ago Virge had tried to engage
Vika a few times in conversation, but she had little to say about anything,
preferring the issuing of curt orders and monosyllabic grunts in lieu of
responses to questions. Virge remembered Bongo’s other companions as being a
lot more lighthearted, even capricious to a fault. Not Vika.

They had slipped through the streets last night. How strange
the town had looked to her, familiar and alien at the same time, made desolate
by the nightly curfew. But she’d felt the presence of the Guard, almost like a
dark mist that had descended over everything.

Somehow they’d made their way. Well, not
some
how.
Vika had seemed to know what she was doing, ducking from doorway to doorway,
halting them when an armor-plated Guard transport went rumbling past on a cross
street. Those black-garbed fuckers had brought some real force to this little
hamlet, like they were expecting a war.

Just another excessive show of strength, Virge thought now.
Overkill. That was the way of the Guard or, really, the philosophy of the Lux.
Crush any resistance to the established way of things. No matter what, the Lux
had to remain the absolute power over the Safe.

And yet Virge Temple, a boozy chemist who’d eked out a
living with her lab, had struck a blow against the Lux by aiding and abetting
Urna, the fugitive Weapon. She hadn’t meant to join any rebellion, but it
seemed she had nonetheless.

It wasn’t a whole lot of solace, she noted with a sigh,
returning to the chair she’d occupied a moment ago. Vika paced. It wasn’t a big
room and it looked neglected. Paint peeled from the walls in cheerless strips.
The ceiling was marked with water stains. Virge had asked more than once what
they were doing here, besides keeping off the streets. Vika had only grunted.
At one point she’d slipped outside for several minutes, without explanation.
Returning, she had only said, “I put word out. We’ll have help.”

Virge had her bag of possessions at her feet. This, then,
truly was all she owned. The Guard had torched her laboratory and had surely by
now ransacked her house. They obviously knew that Urna had been here in the
town and had escaped. Urna was a Weapon and Weapons needed their drugs, and
since hers was the only lab in town, Urna must have visited it. And since she,
Virge, had reported no break-in, she
must
be helping him.

Simple logic. Damning logic.

She sighed again. The only thing that might’ve taken some of
the sting out of all this was if she’d gotten the chance to romp around in bed
with the elf-faced, silver-haired Weapon. He sure looked like he’d be fun to
fuck…

This room was around the backside of a dilapidated building.
Coming here, Virge hadn’t even been sure if the structure was inhabited at all.
Now she heard the soft crunch of footsteps just outside. A quick knock sounded
on the door. A pause. The deliberate rap-tap-rap sequence repeated.

Vika crossed to the door, her leathery face set into a
somber cast. Virge tensed on her chair, not knowing what to expect.

When Vika opened the door a slender shape slipped through. A
woman. A girl, really. She wore a dark cloak, which twirled as Vika caught her
arm and spun her around. “Anyone see you?” the big female asked with
characteristic gruffness.

The new arrival had a narrow, pixie-ish face, one that
reminded Virge fleetingly of Urna’s. Her hair, however, was far from silver,
rather, a rich-looking mahogany that tumbled in thick waves about her
shoulders.

Without appearing to make any effort, she twisted out of
Vika’s grasp and undid the cloak’s catch at her throat. “I was a shadow. If
anybody spotted me, that’s all they saw.”

Vika didn’t look like she cared for that answer, but the
girl was already turning away, laying the cloak on an old rocking table. Virge,
figuring Vika wouldn’t bother with formal introductions, rose to her feet and
said, “I’m Virge Temple.”

The young woman flashed her a smile. It dimpled her cheeks
in a becoming fashion. “Hello, Virge Temple. I’m Yola Skott. Now we don’t have
a whole lot of time, but I’ve already got a good idea about what we can do with
your face. So don’t worry.” Her hands were moving inside the cloak, removing
items from its pockets and setting them in quick, neat rows on the table.

Don’t worry?
Virge, bewildered, stood and watched a
moment. That remark about her face had sounded a little ominous. Maybe more
than a little. Finally, she said, “Is somebody going to tell me what the hell
is—”

“Pull that chair over here,” Yola Skott said, finished
laying out her array. “Sit. Relax. You’re in the best hands. I do faces for the
theater all the time. Believe me, I could make Vika here look like a blushing
fourteen-year-old.”

The stubbly-gray woman glowered at Yola, which made Virge
like the young female more. She set the chair by the table and sat.

Vika had moved to the window. Despite her earlier
admonishment to Virge, she peeked outside. “Curfew clear bell should’ve rung by
now. It hasn’t. That means the Guard will be doing a building by building
search. Hurry up with that!”

Yola, who’d just finished quickly combing back Virge’s hair,
said in an acridly sweet tone, “If anything’s going to slow me down, it’s going
to be your interruptions. You want this done, get lost.” She tied off Virge’s
abundance of hair into a severe knot.

Vika, as Virge figured, just grunted. But the woman crossed
to the front door, muttering, “I’ll be outside, on watch.”

Virge felt more at ease when she was gone. Having her lab
razed and being hunted by the Guard was one set of troubles. Being shut up in
this room with the doggedly unpleasant Vika was something else.

Virge smelled the slightly medicinal odors as Yola opened
various jars and started to swiftly apply creams to Virge’s face. She slouched
on the chair, laying her head across the back. Allowing this pixie-faced girl
to do whatever she thought necessary. Trusting her.

The touch of her fingers as she smeared on the creamy
substances was firm and knowing. Virge closed her eyes. She heard Yola’s soft
breaths, her occasional happy purr. Presumably, whatever she was doing, she
liked the results. Jars shuffled about on the table. Lids were snapped open.
Virge slit her eyes to see the girl working with fine-tipped brushes. Despite
everything so far applied to her face, Virge could barely feel anything.
Certainly she didn’t have the sense she was wearing a great deal of makeup.

“Okay, darling,” Yola said a few minutes later. “It’s
prosthetics time.”

“Whatever you say,” was Virge’s answering murmur. She’d shut
her eyes again.

The young woman went to swift work once more, this time with
glue and what felt like bits of clay. Or maybe rubber. Virge didn’t question,
just moved her head this way and that whenever Yola asked. The girl’s fingers
moved nimbly, and when one of the rubbery pieces was fitted onto Virge’s chin
or the bridge of her nose, it stuck there.

Finally Virge heard Yola stepping back. She opened her eyes,
raised her head.

Yola was gazing with great intensity at her face. It flushed
Virge for an instant, before she realized the girl was only examining her work.

Get a grip, Virge.
And she almost chuckled at the
thought.

“Wrinkle your nose for me, please,” Yola said.

Virge did so, feeling the prosthetic. It didn’t, however,
seem to affect her facial movements. All felt natural.

Yola was nodding. “Fuck me but I do good work,” she at last
pronounced.

Before Virge, who felt a sweet little surge of heat at the
girl’s words, could reply, the town’s bells started their ringing. Curfew
clear. A little late, but there it was. Did that mean everything was back to
normal? Had the extra Guard units withdrawn?

Virge didn’t even let herself hope.

The bells kept on ringing, well past when they should’ve ceased.
Yola busied herself packing her supplies back into her cloak. Virge stood up,
wishing she had a mirror to check out whatever Yola had done to her.

The front door opened. There was Vika, a dire cast in her
eyes. “Can you hear it?” she asked.

Virge frowned. “The bell? Sure.”

“No,” Vika said sharply. “The announcement. They must be
riding around with a loudspeaker.”

Virge snatched up her bag and stepped toward the open door.
Yola was beside her. In the distance, Virge could hear an amplified voice but
she could only make out every third word. Something about “mandatory assembly”?
She wasn’t sure.

Abruptly the curfew clear bells stopped their ringing. Into
the new morning hush came the voice through its amplifier.

“All residents, with no exceptions, will assemble at once at
the square. This town is sealed. Anyone found indoors will be terminated on
sight. This is a mandatory assembly. It is by order of the Toplux.”

* * * * *

Drastic, frightening to the town’s populace, disruptive—but,
in the end, the great search yielded nothing. Or at least the Guard didn’t find
Virge Temple, suspected of aiding Urna, hiding in any of the buildings. Of
course not. Virge Temple was there in the public square, in full view, along
with everybody else. Hours and hours of standing around, milling, muttering,
while babies cried and people tried to figure out what was
really
going
on.

Virge, in her effective guise, heard wild theories being
bandied about among the other citizens of the town. The Guard were after stolen
firearms, a whole truckload of them. They were here to stop an illicit drug
racket, which was why they’d burned the laboratory. They had uncovered an
illegal salvaging ring.

This last was particularly stupid, considering how many
miles away this town was from the Safe’s border. Nobody, though, knew anything
about Urna, the wayward Weapon. Word of his escape hadn’t gotten out. Yet.

Virge hid her surprise at how convincing Yola’s work must
be. Though Virge called no attention to herself, several times people she knew
well from around the town wandered past her without a glance. The local
population was large enough that an unfamiliar face didn’t draw any interest.

Most amazing, though, was when the Guard had ordered
everybody into rows, and stern-faced uniformed personnel had gone down the
lines checking each civilian against photographs of the woman they were looking
for. Those pictures had no doubt come from Virge’s past interrogations. They
were useless now, it seemed. A black-clad man strode by her, eyes flashing from
her photo to her face, without pausing. Apparently she wasn’t worth even a
second glance.

Yola Skott stayed with her, though the two women said little
as the day dragged on.

Finally it was over. The Guard issued a few fines and even
made a few arrests, surely for contraband discovered inside the houses they had
searched, but it didn’t seem to be anything serious. More likely, the uniformed
bullies were just frustrated. They’d expended a lot of effort here, brought in
a great deal of manpower and vehicles. It had gotten them basically nothing.
Virge snickered silently.

She looked for Vika or one of Bongo’s other comrades in the
crowd as everyone was brusquely dismissed from the square. She saw nobody. It
brought up another question she’d been loath to confront too directly—what now
for her? She couldn’t go back to her house, obviously. Her lab was gone, a fact
which still hurt, badly. Where was she supposed to go right now?

Yola touched her elbow at that instant and provided the
answer. “You can come with me.”

The two women started on their way, out of the town’s public
square, jostling among the many grumbling citizens. The Guard had done nothing
for their popularity today. Not that the Guard gave a shit about
that
,
Virge noted.

“Hold it,” Yola was suddenly whispering into her ear.
“This’ll be quick.”

A lone female Guard member was standing at the edge of the
square, leaning against a lamppost, apparently bored. Her eyes ticked
automatically over the departing crowd, then focused sharply as Yola approached
her. Virge lingered behind. She couldn’t guess what the young makeup expert was
up to, but she feared for her.
Don’t do anything stupid, Yola,
she
thought urgently, eyeing the Guard’s rifle slung over her shoulder.

Yola was saying something to the Guard or asking a question.
Either way, when the Guard responded, Yola burst into laughter, a sprightly,
infectious sound. The Guard even cracked a smile on her hard-looking, darkly
complected face. Yola leaned closer, said something else, laughed again.
Finally she retreated, and Virge fell in once more beside her, burning with
curiosity but refraining from asking anything until they were well away from
the square.