Contest is over, post your porn. Here's one of my two obligations.
Disclaimer:
The following story contains sexual content, you have been forewarned. The story contains erotic content. Tsukihime, and its related concepts and ideas are the intellectual properties of Kinoko Nasu, Type-MOON, Notes Ltd., and other respective rights holders. This story is written solely for the purpose of entertainment, and not for any sort of monetary profit. If anything, consider this free advertising.
CROSS-PATH DOMINATION-------------------------------------
| Part I -- HUNTER V HUNTER |
-------------------------------------
From atop the decaying rooftop, Enhance took potshots at the falcon that flew too fast to be just a falcon.
Consecrated buckshot that lit up the sky with rounds that smouldered with appropriated dragon’s fire was led into the hyperbird’s flight path, always missing by a hairsbreadth as the avian flew at supersonic speeds. Their battle had started with the thing baiting him, forcing him from reverie in a hiding spot and pushing him through this ghost town.
It was fast. And durable. Supernaturally so. It shouldn’t have been able to tear through concrete walls like a missile and come back to him for more the way it did.
The hunt went on and he adapted.
This ambush from out of the dark blue made him seethe, moreso than his usual state of being. Enhance being Enhance, he transmuted that anger into potential and that potential overclocked his body. Under typical conditions, the seventeenth Dead Apostle Ancestor was a half-baked existence that barely ranked higher than a human being. His hatred fortified his fragile existence. Tempered him from brittle cast-iron into steel that dared to take the heads of all of the other Ancestors. He pushed his quick reflexes to counter the quick reflexes of his feathery tormenter.
The falcon was too fast. It led Enhance on. It fell like a Morningstar cast from heaven, dipped below the horizon, into the labyrinth of foliage-encrusted empty streets. His undead arm stung from being in contact with a sanctified weapon of the church, the Holy Crematal Artillery. His human arm, one of the vestigial traces of his pre-Ancestor life, ached from being shook up by such a powerful gun. Still, he kept vigilant, and the blessed boomstick remained trained on the sky as his darkness-piercing night vision scanned for the re-emergence of the avian assailant.
Seconds of silence pass.
For a pest as dogged as that falcon was that was enough to be ominous.
‘It’s obviously a trap,’ Enhance said aloud to himself as he lowered the shotgun, but did not holster it. ‘No point chasing something that’s not even a vamp—’
There was a supersonic roar from where the bird had surely alighted – and Enhance’s footing was blown away. Shattered as if ravaged by a localized disaster, or targeted by a military’s top-secret prototype weapon. The destruction was swift, and instantly tore the ruin to rubble. He fell, and the crumbling structure fell with him.
It was a feat of athleticism that any seasoned vampire could pull off. Midair, he righted himself and bounced from falling debris to debris, like an astronaut crawling through a space station at zero-g, in a breath-taking display of agility and reflexes, and leapt away from the imminent cave-in. He cleared the street in a single bound, crashed through an upper-level window of the opposite building and tucked into a dive roll that took him sliding across the floor to coolly prop against a brut concrete pillar, naked were it not for the half-rotted posters of aged Soviet propaganda that remained stuck upon it.
Looks like they really wanna get me face-to-face, he mused, this time a thought for himself and himself alone, and the Artillery was pointed skywards, ready to aim anywhere Enhance had to even as it burned his hand. He wordlessly drew his blade, Avenger, silently from the scabbard across his back, and its obsidian edge gave off a keen edge of darkness that radiated an infernal black mass that stood out even in the unlit room. His arm throbbed as the sinister sword sought to drain that vulnerability of all of his life force.
All in all, a typical moment for the Seventeenth during a hunt.
Suddenly, the room was gouged, debris smashed as if a titanic cannonball had shredded it in a trajectory from wall to wall. Another supersonic roar trailed the destruction. For anyone else it was too late to dodge. For a Dead Apostle it was the perfect time. Enhance instead explosively dashed away from the deadly vector. His enhanced hearing picked up on the pinpoint direction of the sound. With his momentum he kicked off the wall and bounded towards the source.
Timing in between those two shots: two and seventy-five hundredths seconds.
…far too slow and not nearly aggressive enough to seriously try to gun him down.
That is, unless the sniper was pulling punches before and planned to send a mach 4 missile straight through his stilled heart in the next fraction of second as he charged towards the point of discharge, appearing as a pitch blur.
He wasn’t forced to block or dodge as one instant passed to the next. In that case, it was time to say hello to this aggressor.
On the other side of the square stood Lorelei Barthomeloi. Her riding crop drawn, she tossed a piece of shrapnel up and down in a gloved hand. A small pile was on the ground next to her, collected by her for her own use. The falcon, having served its task, roosted as still as a statue atop a long burnt-out streetlight.
‘I see this really isn’t a chance meeting.’
‘It is not.’
Their first encounter was in that castle on the lake, hidden within the pseudo-fairyland that no humans had intruded upon for five centuries until the Battalion had come knocking on the Dead Apostle’s door.
The second encounter was here, where the folly of man culminated into a city that had instead been polluted by radiation instead for mere decades – a monument to humanity’s capacity to ruin itself and the very land. Yet, the deserted urban wastes, overgrown and long-vacated homesteads, also stood as testament to nature’s capability to wipe humanity’s accomplishments from the face of the Earth. This time, it was only between her and him.
‘A human like you is gonna get sick if you stay here too long.’
‘I shan’t, so therefore I won’t.’
A thin membrane swirled over Lorelei’s skin and clothes.
‘Ah. I see.
…Still dangerous here.’
‘Enough.’
During the first time, they had a shared target. That prey was novel, a vampire that existed as three individuals. Together, a single candidate for the seat of Ancestor, and a vacancy that still held to this evening. For they were hunters. They preyed upon those who preyed upon humanity.
‘You want something?’
‘Indeed – I want you gone.’
‘I can simply go awa-’
‘That won’t do.’
Theirs had been a temporary stay of action. To war with the other would have been, at that time, foolish, a waste of effort. Now, there was no other game to distract her from him. The night they had encountered each other had seen the gathering of a trio of hunters, bound by that magnetism that draws the bizarre together, and he was one of the two skilled killers who had caught her eye during the course of that happening.
Even so, The Queen, the Magus Supreme of the Current Era, and vice-director of the Magus’ Association, couldn’t abide the Knight of Vengeance’s existence.
Enhance hunted vampires. Lorelei hunted vampires. But, he too was vampire, so, as if her very existence was compelled by a curse – the curse of the Barthomelois – she was driven to eradicate him.
‘To ash with you, leech!’ Lorelei declared, and in her mind’s eye she envisioned an ancient glacier that stretched from horizon to horizon. A deep cracking boom resounded for kilometers, and an iceberg splashed down into the eldritch sea below, left a sheer face in its wake. Her circuits sparked with magic. With a twist and swing of her arm, followed by a twinkle of power from the roiling, glowing Barthomeloi crest that lit up the right side of her body from her fingertips to her hips, she sent a blast of trench-carving concussive destruction straight at Enhance. Those mere concrete pebbles she had launched at him before like a railgun were scattered and forgotten like meagere dust, trash returned to a ruined city.
Now was the time and place for the magus to show the true strength of her family’s techniques that had been cultivated since the days of the Holy Roman Empire.
‘Lady, I’m human as you are!’
Harsh words retorted from one fellow monster to another as Enhance threw himself into the overgrown ruins and narrowly dodged the hurtled energy.
‘No. You’re just my prey.’ Lorelei strengthened her legs and turned her eyes on, and Enhance’s aura was there for her to see.
‘No matter what, Knight of Vengeance, you’re my mark.’
She took off after him, like a lioness running down a jackal.
A storefront blasted back into trace elements by a cone of decomposition. Suddenly exposed to her line of sight, he vaulted to the next street over. His shotgun roared, thrice, hungry to burn her for her heretical lifestyle, and incendiary rounds of covering fire were sent in Lorelei’s direction as she continued her charge down the lanes reclaimed by nature. With a twirl and an artful step, like she was the conductor for her own dance, she flicked Lævateinn – one of her two mystic codes – like a baton and a localized tempest erupted around her, scattering the flames.
Enhance disappeared onto the roof, and Lorelei kicked off of a rusted Mercedes to follow after the black blur. Her chestnut ponytail flapped in the wind as she pursued. She caught sight of his aura again, a hundred meters running catlike down the row of buildings, parallel to the avenue. The speed and distance of her target was pushing her effective range.
Lorelei recalled childhood hunting outings with her father, obligations alongside the families of other Clock Tower lords. She recalled a specific highlight – the last time she had enjoyed bagging fowl before she awoke to the Barthomeloi’s proverbial curse. She recalled a venture to Scotland, of gunning down the pink-footed goose at the head of the v-formation. She had wanted the leader, the leader alone, and had knocked it down to Earth with the aid of that Mauser M12. The rest of the flock had become disoriented, but quickly closed the gap to form a new v, like a fatal wound being closed up, erased by the very passage of time.
Such an action was like the work of the curse of restoration that every Dead Apostle had.
Yet that bird had had a place in the world’s ecosystem.
A vampire was just a parasite that made chattel out of mankind.
That made all the difference.
Her target was fast, and far, and moving further away from her. But, his trajectory? Stable. Lorelei would have had a harder time shooting a pink-footed goose from the sky. She drew her arm back, rolled her wrist in a circle, and threw her gloved hand forward, her fingers pointing at Enhance through the gauntlet of Járnglófar like the clawed barrel of a tank.
Gandr.
The humble, widely-used Finnish magecraft essential spilled forth from the fingertips. Lorelei fired five unbroken streams of dense curse, sharing more in common with a water drill than fired machine gun. It was a simple testament to her thaumaturgical superiority, like how the skill of a chef can be measured merely via the way that they prepare a fried egg. It cut through the night air and closed the distance between him and her.
He yowled in pain as the streams sliced holes in his body, and dipped to the side like cheese wire slicing apart his body as Lorelei’s aim naturally deteriorated as and after she took the shot. ‘Kuh, step off!!’ Enhance stumbled and snarled. He nearly tripped as his leg threatened to messily separate from his hip. He clenched his guts in tight and pointed the gun backwards, towards Lorelei, and that same song and dance number from before made an encore. Fire, flames, those steps, the wind, shield. The process was repeated.
The moon was full. Gibbous wouldn’t do. Waxing wouldn’t do. It always had to be full. She always had to hunt the Dead Apostles at their height. He had to be at his height. Her target would soon restore himself. But he was incapacitated, his movements hobbled ever slightly. Thus, she spoke, and moved her arms and the fingers of her armored hand in tune with the words:
‘Why do we strive for Excellence? To Eradicate the Foes in our sight–’
‘Why do we Eradicate the Foes? Because they Rape of Mankind and Ruin Us–’
‘With Age Comes Wisdom, with Wisdom Comes Power, with Power We Hunt the Foes–”
‘The Silver Spoon Serves Milk and Honey – and with Age becomes Nectar and Ambrosia–”
‘By Barthomeloi, we Craft that into the“IVORY TOWER BUCKSHOT”Lightning of Olympus—!!!’
Ball lightning, an incredibly rare natural phenomenon, sparked into existence near Lorelei by the dozen, a miracle orchestrated by her hands. More accurate than those half-hearted pebbles, more numerous than her gandr outpourings, and faster than her falcon, Lorelei conducted with Lævateinn and sent the screeching orbs to smash into Enhance.
Over the course of the hunt, from rooftop to rooftop, over and across streets, Lorelei had chased Enhance onto a building with a large skylight; octagonal in overall shape, and an ornate design composed of thousands of pieces of shaped glass interlaid in an intricate frame of thin metal. The skylight creaked beneath his footsteps. Countless of those mosaic-like panes had shattered over the course of years of neglect, yet still many other remained held in place, stubbornly, like a phantom clinging to a shade of the life it was part of, before nuclear meltdown forced all to evacuate the forsaken land.
His limp made him lose his footing, but briefly.
He slammed Avenger into the grate, for support, to regain his sure-footedness. The skylight creaked more loudly than before, but held for the moment.
At Lorelei’s behest the zig-zagging ball lightning slammed into the momentarily lingering vampire. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve. The results of a five-line aria peppered Enhance’s body with an inescapable barrage. He screamed. He didn’t sound as unearthly as a Dead Apostle. He sounded like a human as he was lit up like a Yule tree, as he shook like a ragdoll, sans his death grip on his sword, burnt alive by centuries-old magecraft in an instant.
‘IVORY TOWER BUCKSHOT!!’
Her eyes narrowed as she bit into her lip, Lorelei slashed with her crop and sent the finisher at Enhance. A baker’s dozen of killshots. Lucky number thirteen struck Enhance through his crown and sent lightning down his spine. That clinched it – and the skylight shattered from the force of everything it ever had to endure.
The straw named Enhance, the Seventeenth Dead Apostle Ancestor, broke that camel’s back, and his incinerated body fell amidst the broken iron and glass into the depths.
Lorelei jumped down to an open upper level, just shy of the broken skylight, and then made her way to the ground floor. She zeroed in on where Enhance had fallen. There was only one way to know it to be true. Too faint to tell for sure whether it still existed or was an afterimage burnt into her cornea from staring too long at it; his aura was like an ember.
Still yet to wind down from the battle, Lorelei became again that thirteen-year-old girl, wading into the watery fen to claim her downed pink-footed goose, confirm her kill. Just like she did on every successful hunt. The abstract intersection of Lorelei pre and post-curse. The youth and the young woman’s desires and hungers overlapping momentarily in this aspect.
‘What a shame.’ He still clung to his sword. Stubbornness? No, rigor mortis. This human arm was the only part of his vampire body that would retain its shape after death. The only part to retain the privilege of decay and return to the earth. His tight, but charred and peeling black outfit contained nothing but dry ash. All she’d have to do was stamp on it gently, and his remains would spill out like carbon sand, lifeless.
–And Enhance was gone.
Sharp pain. Multiple places. Hamstrings cut. Achilles’ tendons cut. She yelped in surprise and pain. Her legs were unable to support her. Lorelei would fall and hit the ground, but she was instead slammed up against a wall. Ribs crack. Lungs bruise. Arms, both dislocated. The pain was sharp – she dropped Lævateinn. It clattered on the ground as it was kicked away. A strong hand pawed at her chest to keep her in place. Now the pain had a hint of provocative sensuality, all forced onto her body is short order. Her right arm snapped – Járnglófar was ripped right from her fingers and likewise chucked away to join the rest of the Chernobyl refuse. Lorelei gave a pained snarl as she slid against the rough wall and turned what she could of her body to face her attacker.
‘You…!’ she said.
That ember of his had been stoked into a furnace.
Lorelei had seen the truth and not recognized it.
He had incapacitated her, and then he fell onto his butt. For a vampire, under the full moon, no less, he looked worse for the wear. ‘You bitch!’ he grouched. ‘This – is – your fault.’
‘I’ve no need – for the pity of leech.’
‘LADY.’ She felt the steel of a demonic sword on her neck. ‘Don’t make this worse. Don’t make me pop your bounded field. We’re deep into Chernobyl’s illegal zone. The rads are making my skin tingle. Cancer isn’t something the vice-director of the Magus’ Association wants. Especially if she needs an heir in the future.’
‘Rot in Hell, you leech.’
‘Not yet… Not until I’ve torched every one of those bastards.
‘So, don’t get up. Not unless you want me to knock you down again.’
A beat in the conversation. Silence in the room. Just the breathing of two beaten down vampire haters who crossed paths, vying for domination. Lorelei asked after what seems like an eon of wordless exchange.
‘H-How?’
‘How what?’
‘How did you survive it?’
‘I grounded myself.’ He explained.
‘Was such, that your plan to escape?’
‘My plan was to NOT get hit by deadly magic, but there was a change of plans.’ He confessed. ‘Even with that, you really did a number on me, Barthomeloi. If I try hard enough to remember I can tell you what color Saint Peter’s eyes are.
‘Yeah. You cooked my brains like a fried egg, but it was still nice and runny inside. So I barely made it.’
‘Then, how you hid – from me?’
‘You misjudged? I’m good at playing dead?’ Enhance stood up, stretched, grunted with some pain, and shrugged at the magus. ‘If you want to kill me, next time burn me up for good from afar. ’
‘Where are you going?’
‘You’re chatty now that you can’t destroy this vampire, huh? I’m gonna leave you there to bleed for a bit. I’ve got this bastard I need to pay a house call to. Thanks but no thanks for your help, ice queen.’
‘You intend to leave me here?’
‘Bad girls need a timeout. Stay there and think about what you’ve done, attacking a vampire who has nothing against you and wishes for the same thing you do.
‘…Hey. Ever since the humans stopped living here the wildlife has returned. Did you know that Chernobyl has one of the largest wolf populations in eastern Europe? Focus on getting better while I’m gone, unless you wanna be White Fang’s dinner.’
‘…I didn’t want to kill you. That is, not all of me wanted to. I don’t want this.’
‘That’s what happens when you play rough, Barthomeloi.’
‘Ignatius!’ she snapped. He gave her a curious look, with his too-human eyes. ‘That is, my – I am Barthomeloi, Lorelei Barthomeloi, but, Ignatius…
‘I pushed you to your limits to see. Even though I, as a Barthomeloi, wanted to, and do still, want to destroy you because you’re a leech like them, I want to see if you can become my Ignatius.’
Being as high up in the Clock Tower as she was, she had never taught a lecture. She was no mentor, but a born leader. Why Lorelei had gone out of the way to stalk Enhance all the way here, to the fringes of civilization and beyond. Even as he tracked prey of his own, following his black heart that writhed with the curse of hate. This was intended, indeed, to be a trial of sorts, even with her failings at the very last moment.
If he could become like her childhood retriever, swimming through the deepest of icy highland waters that she could not forge to aid in the hunt of her prey.
‘…If you could become my hunting dog. Quite – you have passed.’
‘Denied.’
‘WHAT?!’
‘Too much regulation. Assuming I even manage to destroy all of the vampires they might turn me into a specimen at the very end. “Enhance, the living undead relic! A trophy to prove that humanity won!” An existence where I’m the last of a blight, not even free to off myself, sounds like hot garbage. Nah. Forget about that. Enjoy being wolf chow, Lorelei.’
‘Th-Then don’t be my Ignatius! Just form an alliance with me, instead! Off the table, signed in the contracts that only matter; an oath!’
He didn’t need to ask why she sought one with him. Their lifestyles, they overlapped. A sorceress who hated vampires because they were diametrically opposed to humanity. A vampire who hated vampires because of what they did to him. He had no qualms with her. She personally did with him, but she was willing to put those feelings aside for the benefits of a working relationship.
After all, the rumors of the Dead Apostle Ancestors getting to work on some insidious ritual continued to spread through the supernatural world.
‘Fine.’
He leaned against the wall she was slumped against, a meter from her. ‘Get to it and fix yourself up. It won’t fly if my “ally” gets eaten by wolves as soon as we agree to join forces,’ though he sounded exceptionally devil-may-care and a drop impatient.
‘Enough about the wolves, leech.’
The word made him scowl back and he shrugged.
Time passed. Lorelei remained slumped. Enhance glanced at her. She turned her head.
‘Problem?’
‘Nothing of the sort.’
‘The Hell there isn’t. Doesn’t the oh-so great Barthomeloi family have any healing spells in stock?’
‘We certainly do! We do.’
‘So? Fire it up. Damn creepy how you’re lying there like a broken china doll.’
Enhance was annoyed. Lorelei was being uncharacteristically difficult.
‘…I’m low on prana.’
He ran his hand through his pale scruffy mop and gave a sigh. ‘I know how to deal with this—”
--------------------------------------
| Part II – HUNTER X HUNTER |
--------------------------------------
—and Enhance had Lorelei on her back, underneath him.
‘What are you-?!’
‘You know exactly what I’m doing.’
‘No! Wait! Will that even work?! You leech–’
Enhance shut her up with fingers on her mouth. ‘I may be a “leech”,’ he growled that word, frustrated and impatient with the magus, ‘but part of me is yet human. It’ll work.’ His finger—his human fingers—circled over her lips, and Lorelei whined beneath his touch.
The membrane-barrier around her did nothing to keep his grasp at bay. Enhance ran his fingers from her lips, over her chin, straight down her neck, right above her throat. The sensation made her gasp.
Down her chest. In-between her breasts. She remembered how and where he had grabbed her before during that grapple, and the raw memories made her heart beat in nervous excitement.
He wasted no more time and went right to it. Though the magical film held, Enhance split Lorelei’s riding pants at the central seam with a loud rip, tearing through her pants and silken, white lace panties all at once. Lorelei was affronted at the exposal. ‘M-My word!!’ She tried to close her thighs, hide her naked womanhood from the vampire’s licentious eyes.
‘Pipe down, princess.’ Enhance’s grip was too strong, and she squirmed impotently beneath him. ‘You can do better things with that mouth of yours.’
‘What the devil do you mean by thHAAAHt?!?’ Lorelei lost her words in an undignified squeal; Enhance had spread her lips, fingered her with a pair of fingers that her personal barrier clung gently, insistently to. …A pair slightly cooler than the fingers that he ran from her lips, down her torso.
‘What do you say to that, huh, Lorelei? Getting finger-banged by a vampire’s digits?’
Lorelei let out a cry of shock at that. As he moved his fingers around in her at an already hungrily fast pace, Enhance held up his free hand—his human hand—for her to see. Which meant–
‘–If the other Barthomeloi could see you now, what would they say?’
‘Nnohh, damn it, damn you!’ Her hips bucked and she whined girlishly, petulance and fire coming into her eyes as she remembered his vampiric existence. As her emotions came on hard and was as bedfellows with her remembrance of that proverbial curse of the Barthomeloi. Even so, her body had a mind of its own, and was just as much at odds with that curse. ‘It, it doesn’t – doesn’t feel that good, at all! At allll!!’
‘That so?’ Swift as ever, certainly invigorated by Lorelei, Enhance dropped shorts, and his flesh fang stood proud and sharp and ready. He lifted her hips back and up and pierced her with it in one go. ‘Here’s your magic infusion, Barthomeloi!’
‘That! That won’t! That won’t! That won’t work, like, like thaaahht!!” That personal bounded field, meant to reject foul humors, kept her safe from the dense radiation of this sector of Chernobyl. As it had done with his fingers, it clung to him, to her insides, and he wildly pushed his cock around in the vice director of the Clock Tower’s innermost private sanctum. ‘N-Nothing will! Ahh! Nothing will, will get,’ she gasped, ‘will get in! With the! The! The field is uhhhhp!! There’s no, no poiiiiiint!!! You beast!’
‘Already here! Gonna go all the way!’
‘D-D-Damn you, you leech!!’
‘You want it harder? Choice!’ Her moan of an insult backfired – Enhance leaned over Lorelei and went faster, deeper, into the vampire-hating magus. So mad was Lorelei that she spat on his face.
Enhance didn’t care. He grinned. And used his strength to flip her over as easily as one would a playing card and took Lorelei from behind like an animal. Her derriere lived up to her title – defined, fit, full of muscle, and tight against those riding pants; it was royal, fit for a queen.
He gave an appreciative grunt. ‘Nice! You work out?’
She told him to go die.
‘Later, Barthomeloi! Just move, those hips and, enjoy, it already!’
‘God-d-damned leech!! LEEEECH!!!’
By now, Enhance had internalized that choice slur as code for “Oh God, oh God, fuck me, fuck me harder, right fucking now Jesus fucking Christ,” and he jumped at the opportunity to oblige.
Though the destruction of the other Dead Apostles was his self-appointed mission equally as much as it was the outlet for his self-sustaining hatred, this kind of outlet, was one he hadn’t experienced in a very, very long time. His body thirsted for release, and it was release that her body received. Enhance eagerly emptied himself in Lorelei Barthomeloi, and when the deed was done pulled away from her, his piece sweaty and smeared with seed.
The bounded field had held through it all, and remained pliable even after. As soon as he pulled away from Lorelei every single drop of his desire fruitlessly spilled out from her quivering body onto the dirty floor.
‘This thing,’ noted Enhance, ‘is kinda like a weird condom.’
‘That’s…not it’s intended – purpose!!’ Lorelei replied, indignant, spent, and still nowhere near closer to restoring her magical energy enough to a level that she could repair her body. ‘You, wasted, your time, you fool…’
‘No,’ went Enhance’s only, self-satisfied reply.
He drew up his trousers and shorts, dusted himself off, and went to retrieve Lorelei’s mystic codes for her. ‘Here. I think you’ll want these back, my ally.’
‘Many thanks.’ Lorelei’s tone was sour. Once she again wielded Lævateinn and again donned on her right hand Járnglófar, Enhance picked her up like the “princess” he had called her as they were about to do it.
Lorelei was caught off guard. ‘Huh? HUH? What the Hell is it, maggot!?’
‘My quarry can wait. At least until you can fight again.’ With slight admiration for her decision to go with a different insulting buzzword, Enhance replied to her, pragmatically. ‘Have some class and be grateful.’ Now, she was again annoyed with him, but somehow found it within to keep her temper in check. ‘I’ll take you as far as your safe house. Where is it?’
‘It is beyond the contaminated zone. Follow Katua. She’ll guide you to it’s exact location.’
‘Katua?’
‘My falcon.’
‘Weird name.’
‘She’s been in the family longer than you’ve been on this earth, you skeevy greenhorn leech!’ she walloped him on his head with her gauntleted hand, over and over, as she angrily clamped down on the neck just like a vampire would.
‘Ow. Ow. Ow!’
As long as she didn’t do that while he flew after her familiar they should have been fine.
Using the incredibly old money that she came from, Lorelei Barthomeloi had acquired a luxury recreational vehicle to drive around the eastern European countryside in to tail Enhance.
‘I see you’ve been stalking me in style.’
‘Silence.’
The interior would have come across as more typically luxurious, were it not for the magus-like amenities that made to transform it from an expensive-yet-mundane comfort cruiser into a mobile atelier that basic field magecraft could have been performed in or from. Special beakers on the shelves, drawers with artifacts and pages of notes and intel on Enhance and other entities of interest in the moonlit world.
‘Place me in that chair, Enhance,’ Lorelei ordered him, and he did so.
‘Now toss those rags. Wash off in the shower, too.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You may as well be glowing, you filthy thing. Though I set up this vehicle with precautions against the radioactivity I don’t want any half-lives decaying inside. Clean up, now.’
‘You got it,’ Enhance callously shrugged, and he left to do just that. Lorelei nodded to herself, and feebly fumbled around for a particular bottle. She found it, pulled the cork with her teeth, and drank the vessel’s bitter contents. Once it had slid down her gullet and sat warmly in her belly she again thought of breaking glaciers – and the Barthomeloi family crest glowed with life. She sat there in silence, still as standing water as her body burned like a sauna and the growth of her cells was kicked into overdrive with restorative spellcraft that had been refined for hundreds of years.
Many minutes of healing commenced. ‘Ahh…’ and with that sigh of relief, Lorelei was able to move again. More importantly, she could now perform basic thaumaturgy at will, and such a thing was more important to her, as a magus.
The young woman, a prodigy even amongst an exceptional family of magi, stood up and stretched her newly-mobile body and cast a glance to the bathroom door, then to Katua. The bird of prey stared back, as if to ask “What is left to do now, my mistress?” Now, Lorelei Barthomeloi waited for Enhance to finish washing himself.
She did not have to wait long. The rogue Dead Apostle Ancestor stepped out of the steaming bathroom, droplets of water on his fair, toned skin, and his wet hair a tousled silver mess from being hand-dried by what was surely the Egyptian cotton bath towel wrapped around his slender waist.
He held Lorelei’s eye for a moment.
That would do, she decided, and then the magus properly regarded the vampire before her.
‘Enhance. Before you see yourself off, there is an important matter I must discuss with you in my study.’
‘Formalizing the details of our alliance?’
‘They concern matters of that sort.’
‘That’s vague. Very well. Which direction is it?’
Lorelei pointed over Enhance’s shoulder, to the bedroom at the back of the camper van. He raised an eyebrow. She gestured with her chin, impatiently. Enhance gave yet another shrug, like he had done so many times that night, and walked into the room, towel and all. Lorelei followed closely behind and shut the door without even looking.
‘So–’
Lorelei swung her arm, swiftly and deliberately, and sliced the air with Lævateinn. That very air bent to her will, and a millisecond later Enhance was blown off his feet. Before he could even land, Lorelei motioned again with her arms, as if conducting and a set of chains and clasps lashed out from below like a quartet of serpents to fasten him to the bed.
Enhance immediately thrashed about like a trapped animal, but his trappings were uncanny. ‘The Hell is this, Barthomeloi?!’
‘It transferred into my ownership when I salvaged it from that leech, Louvre’s, collection of artifacts. The Manacles of the Château; a conceptual weapon used in a certain prison that, with age, developed the ability to bind those whose hearts burn with vengeful will.’
‘Vengeful will, huh? Bet you had to be careful not to land your pretty-little-princess-ass in these things, too.’ Enhance tried to move even a little in gesture, but the chains were so taut that the links did not even rattle or give. ‘Talk about premeditated. Did you plan this, too?’
‘THIS, all, was not my plan,’ with words that echoed his from not so long before, Lorelei referred to the events of the night as a whole. ‘The Manacles were meant as just a precaution, but YOU forced MY hand to improvise – and thus the backup plan became my designated trump card.
‘No, MY Knight of Vengeance, this isn’t premeditated at all–’ Lorelei took her riding crop, touched it to Enhance’s towel, and with a single flip tossed it aside, to the thick, carpeted floor. The trapped vampire was held in place, and naked before her. ‘–THIS is a crime of passion.’
Almost lazily, Lorelei wound up. Then, she swung in a flash, and the leather tip of the crop brushed his nude head and shaft. ‘You damn witch!’ Enhance snarled in pain, yet so too, did he swell from the impact.
She took note of this. ‘Ah, is that so? This requires further experimentation. Until I may yet confirm my hypothesis…’ and ran her crop from below and over his balls, up straight the length, and flicked him with it from behind, making it jump from where it lay – a Lorelei slapped it back down with her tool.
Enhance grunted. And shook. And remained in place. The chains held fast. He quivered with steadily boiling-over, seething, impotent rage, even as a crucial part of his body gave an overwhelmingly virile display.
Again, she struck. Again, he was like a defiant, wild beast, wanting to lash out at her.
‘I see. I had a feeling that you became stimulated by your own misery.’
As before, she brought down Lævateinn. The blow made him roar out a curse. The mystic code slashed across his stomach, left a dark weltmark that disappeared as quickly as she made it on him.
‘–then, you catalyse those feelings, all of them, into anger–!’
Again.
‘–anger!!’
Again.
‘–anger–!!’
AGAIN.
‘–and lust.’
By now, Lorelei was beginning to breathe hard. Nearly as hard as Enhance. As for his tall, shameless erection, Lorelei still had not changed from the pants and underclothes that he had torn in order to take her in the ruined city—her true feelings were exposed.
She was now as wet as he was.
Feeling tantalized, Lorelei stripped off her jacket, carefully replaced Járnglófar on top of a nearby dresser, and unfastened the bright vermillion ribbon below her neck… ‘Then, that lust,’ …Unbuttoned a blouse that fetched a price as much as the very RV she had had imported… ‘you make it act in a feedback loop,’ …Slid it down her shoulders to reveal a pair of perfectly palm-sized perky breasts nestled flawlessly within the embrace of a strapless bra of white silk lace worth a nobleman’s dowry… ‘thus, fuels you to act,’ …One boot off… ‘and act,’ …Both boots off… ‘and act–’
Pants off. Garter belt and stockings of that same pure color to match her bra, and the panties that had been ripped from before.
She donned her armored gauntlet of a mystic code again, a striking asymmetry to her womanly value. Lorelei’s smile was one of utter, wanton control.
‘–until your desire is sated.’
‘This was premeditated as fuck, you lying cunt.’
For that attitude, she mounted him faster than he could blink.
Lorelei was used to him, him and his size. She retaliated in kind, adeptly, bounced with him in her, feeling every inch of Enhance that she cared to feel, in full control of this encounter. ‘Do you hate me right now, you leech?’ Lorelei’s expression was tough.
Enhance nodded furiously as she pounded atop him. ‘You’re! As bad! As her!!’ His words came from the very bottom of his dark heart as he recalled that girl who had wronged him the most.
Lorelei was heedless. Eager for a sort of payback. She leaned over him, made her hips work him faster, slapping and smacking and getting noisier. ‘I was unsure, but now I must hate you, too. You are no human. You are no vampire. You’re – a – freak.’ Her face was close to his. He spat on it, his crimson eyes ablaze with spiteful spitfire. She closed one eye, reflexively, but remained unperturbed as she continued to ride the wave of the moment (and Enhance).
‘But, even unsightly as it is, a mutant may be fit. For what, who knows? I’ve no time to use clairvoyance to try to pry an answer from the unanswering fates. But for now, you’re fit – for a contract; an intimate oath.
‘With out bodies as one, we will destroy the vampires, one and all.’
Magical energy cycled between them enough to make their hairs both stand on end, sway in an indoors wind, and dress their skin with goosepimples.
‘Didn’t! Need to! Make me! Agree! To that!’ He thrust with his hips alone, up and into and up and into Lorelei. ‘If nothing! Else! A freak! Should! KILL! FREAKS!!!’
The geass was agreed upon. Enhance came. Lorelei came. It was matter-of-fact, a mere outcome that acted, in the spirit of things, like their signatures on a written contract. This time, their juices mingled together, nothing to separate them.
Time passed, again. Silently, for no more words needed to be exchanged for the two vampire-haters to understand the other’s motive.
‘Now I know why you’re called “the Queen”.’
‘That is not it at all!’
Strange bedfellows for a strange alliance.
THE END…?
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This is the third time. Maybe next contest I won't write Enhance. But, one never knows.
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Originally Posted by SpoonyViking
