Chapter 27: Collateral Magical Damage
The knock on the stateroom door was a sharp, urgent staccato that cut through the humid silence.
Mara, naked astride Zack’s face, didn’t stop. She ground her wet cunt down harder against his mouth, her thighs trembling. “Ignore it,” she growled, her fingers tightening in his hair.
Zack’s reply was a muffled, affirmative groan, his tongue digging deeper into her. He gripped her ass, holding her in place as he feasted.
The pounding came again, louder. “Mara! Open up, it’s Jan! I’ve got a situation!”
“God damn it,” Mara hissed, lifting herself slightly. Zack’s face was slick with her arousal, his eyes glazed with lust and obedience. The bruising on his chest stood out in stark, purple relief against his flushed skin.
A faint, greenish shimmer seeped under the door like an exotic gas, followed by a high-pitched, chittering squeal. The moment the magic touched them, the effect was electric.
Zack’s cock, already hard and neglected against his stomach, jerked violently, a fresh bead of pre-cum welling at the tip. A wave of raw, unfiltered hunger crashed over Mara, amplifying her own need a hundredfold. The sensitive, swollen nub of her clit throbbed like a second heartbeat.
“Fuck,” she breathed, the legal precision wiped from her voice, replaced by pure want. “Don’t you dare stop.”
She slammed herself back down onto his mouth. Zack responded with a desperate, frantic energy, his tongue lashing her clit with a speed and pressure that bordered on painful. It was exactly what the magic-honed craving demanded.
Outside, the chaos escalated. They heard Jan’s laughter, a gleeful whoop, and the skittering of tiny claws on polished marble. “Gotcha, you little bastard! Godfrey, left!”
A deep, puppyish bark echoed.
Then Jan’s voice, right at the door, slightly breathless. “Okay, just gonna… borrow a bit of calm from in there. For the greater good! Promise!”
The magic intensified. It wasn’t a spell directed at them, just a ripple from whatever Jan was doing in the hallway, but it was enough. Zack’s hips bucked off the floor, a broken sob vibrating against Mara’s flesh. The taste of her, the smell, the feel of her contracting around his tongue—it was suddenly the only thing in the universe.
For Mara, the world narrowed to the piston-fire rhythm of his tongue and the tidal wave building in her core. “Right there, just like that, make me come, make me come right fucking now!” she chanted, her voice climbing.
The orgasm tore through her with vicious, debilitating force. She screamed, a raw, throaty sound she didn’t recognize as her own, her body bowing as she flooded his mouth. Zack drank her down greedily, his own release following instantly, triggered by her climax and the ambient magic. His cum shot up in thick, hot stripes across his stomach and chest with forceful, pulsing spasms.
They collapsed into a shuddering heap, gasping, as the magic in the hallway abruptly ceased.
Silence, save for their ragged breathing.
Then Jan’s voice, sheepish now. “Uh… thanks, guys! All handled! Enjoy your evening!” They heard the patter of her footsteps and Godfrey’s nails receding down the hall.
Mara rolled off Zack, onto her back on the cool floor. She stared at the ceiling, her chest heaving. Slowly, she began to laugh, a low, incredulous sound.
“That woman,” she said to the ceiling.
Zack turned his head, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He was smiling, dazed and utterly spent. “I’m not complaining.”
“You wouldn’t.” She reached over, her fingers finding his, lacing together. They lay in silence, listening to the ship’s quiet hum. The urgent, magic-spiked need was gone, leaving behind a deep, liquid contentment. “You know,” Mara said after a while, her voice regaining its usual edged calm. “For a paralegal, your oral argument technique is… compelling.”
Zack laughed, wincing as it tugged his bruised ribs. “Only for you, Counselor. Only for you.”
In Vivian’s stateroom, a different kind of energy hung in the air. It was quiet, thick with the scent of lavender oil and lingering ozone from healed magical wounds.
Dale lay propped against a mountain of pillows on the bed, shirtless. The scars were there, livid red lines across his torso and arms where Hornpipe’s purge had burned out the Consortium’s embedded tech, but the raw, weeping quality was gone, smoothed by Vivian’s careful, draining ministrations. He was still weak, his movements careful.
Vivian sat beside him, wearing a simple silk kimono. She was carefully feeding him bites of broth from a room service bowl. Her demonic shadow-self was completely restrained, folded invisibly within her. Here, she was just a young woman, her eyes soft with concern.
“You don’t have to do this,” Dale said, after swallowing. His voice was stronger than it had been yesterday.
“I want to,” Vivian replied. She dipped the spoon again. “You got hurt because you chose to see me. Not the experiment. Not the asset. Me.”
He caught her wrist, his grip gentle but firm. “I saw you the first time you walked onto the deck. Before I knew anything. The file said ‘subject,’ but I just saw… you.”
A faint blush colored her pale cheeks. She set the bowl aside. “That’s dangerously close to romantic, Mr. Foster.”
“It’s the truth, Miss Chase.” He pulled her gently down to lie beside him. She curled into his side, her head on his shoulder, careful of his injuries. His hand came up to stroke her fiery hair.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered into the quiet.
“Of what?”
“Of this. Of… needing someone. My mother needed my father. And when he died, it broke her. The hunger took over until the exorcists came. Needing is dangerous for things like me.”
Dale was quiet for a long moment. “I’m not your father, Viv. I’m just a guy who was too deep in a bad system until a beautiful woman made him question everything.” He tilted her chin up. “And you’re not your mother. You’re the woman who fixed me when she could have just taken what she needed and let me die.”
Tears welled in her violet eyes. She kissed him then, a slow, tender exploration that held a universe of fear and hope. It deepened, growing hungrier. Her kimono fell open. His hands slid down the smooth plane of her back.
When she broke the kiss, her breathing was uneven. “You’re not strong enough.”
“I’m stronger than I look,” he murmured, his thumb tracing her lower lip. “And you need to feed. Properly. Not on scraps of panic and pain. On this.”
He guided her hand down between them, to where he was already hardening for her. A low, needy sound escaped her throat. The shadows in the room thickened subtly, swirling at the edges.
“Slowly,” he said. “Use your Green Moon thing. We have time.”
Nodding, Vivian closed her eyes, centering herself. She called on the techniques Jan had taught her—the focusing rituals, the shields that let her control the pull. When she opened her eyes, they glowed softly. She moved over him, straddling his hips.
She took him inside her with an exquisite, slow glide, her head falling back. It was different from any feeding before. It wasn’t a frantic taking. It was a sharing. The life energy, the vibrant, clean sexual force flowed from him into her, but she channeled it, letting it cycle between them in a gentle loop. She felt his strength, his stubborn will, his newfound clarity. He felt her hunger, her fear, her profound, aching loneliness giving way to this connection.
She rode him with a gentle, rolling rhythm, her shadows curling around them like protective blankets, not predatory tendrils. Each soft gasp from his lips was a gift. Each shudder of his body beneath hers was a sacrament.
His finish was a quiet, deep sigh, a warm pulse within her that filled her not with stolen vitality, but with a sense of wholeness. She followed him over, a silent, shaking release that was more emotional than physical, tears streaking her cheeks as she collapsed onto his chest, careful to avoid his scars.
He held her as she cried, his hands stroking her back. “It’s okay,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s okay to need. I need you too.”
They stayed like that until the room grew dark, the only light the glow from the porthole and the faint, fading luminescence of her satisfied power.
Jan, with Godfrey trotting happily at her heel, carried the squirming, cheese-stuffed gremlin in a makeshift cage fashioned from a wire fruit bowl and a pillowcase. She’d calmed it, pouring a soothing glamour over its frantic little mind. It was now contentedly nibbling on a cracker.
“One down,” she muttered to Godfrey. “Eleven to go. Maybe we can lure them with a TV remote. They’d probably take the bait.”
She was heading toward her and Stacy’s stateroom when she felt it—a familiar, powerful signature, flickering like a weak radio signal. She stopped, pulling her compact from her pouch. The mirror didn’t show her reflection. Instead, in the polished surface, she saw a schematic-like overlay of the ship’s deck. A pulsing, dull gold dot blinked in an empty corridor near the service elevators.
A Golden Wand. Inactive, or hiding.
Bethany was with Liam. This wasn’t her.
Jan’s mischievous smile faded. She looked at the drowsy gremlin in the cage, then at the serious-faced puppy beside her. “Or,” she said quietly, “maybe the gremlins aren’t the only stowaways the Consortium left behind.”
Godfrey looked up at her and gave a single, soft woof. It sounded suspiciously like agreement.
She turned, heading not for her room, but toward the blinking signal. The game, it seemed, was not over. It had just changed players.
Jan tucked the fruit-bowl cage under her arm and followed the faint golden pulse on her compact’s screen. Godfrey padded silently beside her, his usual puppyish enthusiasm replaced by a focused, alert tension. The signal led them away from the passenger corridors, down a narrow service hallway lined with piping and humming electrical panels. The air grew cooler, smelling of ozone and industrial cleaner.
A heavy metal door stood ajar at the corridor’s end. The golden signal throbbed behind it. Jan set the gremlin cage down softly and peered through the gap.
Her breath caught.
The room beyond was a converted storage area, now a bizarre workshop. Consortium tech—wires, sleek black consoles, monitor screens showing scrolling data—was tangled with Golden Wand equipment: brass filaments, whirring crystalline orbs, and a main device that glowed with warm, amber light. And there were the robos.
The Robo-Mara unit stood to one side, its naked, perfectly rendered form now servile and attentive, its eyes fixed on a man in a crisp, charcoal suit. The man was young, with sharp features and glasses, his hands deftly adjusting a device held against the abdomen of a second naked figure—Robo-Molly. This device was a golden, intricate contraption of interlocking rings and rods that spun and whirred like an eggbeater, emitting a soft, penetrating hum. A third figure, Robo-Ginny, stood waiting passively nearby, identical in its blank, worshipful posture.
The Wand operative was whispering to Robo-Molly. “Just a little deeper. Synaptic weaving requires precision.”
Jan’s jaw dropped. She pushed the door open, the metal creaking.
The man’s head snapped up. He didn’t look startled, only mildly inconvenienced. “Jan O’Connor. The Red Tornado herself. I was wondering when you’d sniff this out.”
“What the hell is this?” Jan’s voice was low, dangerous. Godfrey let out a low growl, his body blocking the doorway behind her.
The operative sighed, removing the eggbeater device from Robo-Molly’s stomach. The robotic duplicate blinked, a strangely fluid, human motion. “Anthropomorphic recreation therapy. A blending of technologies. The Consortium provided the perfect chassis. My order provides the animating principle.”
“They’re copies of my friends,” Jan said, her fingers tingling with gathering green energy.
“And I’ve been very ethical!” the man protested, holding up a placating hand. “Look, I didn’t activate any doubles of people who had magic or were engaged to former Auditors. I have limits. These are just… civilians. Well, one actress, one cater-waiter, and your lawyer friend who, let’s be honest, is terrifyingly mundane under all that bluster. No magical backlash, no cosmic repercussions.”
“They’re people!” Jan spat, the magic crackling up her arms. “You’re using copies of real women to get your rocks off. That’s fucking sick.”
The operative’s polite façade melted into cold condescension. “You don’t get it. This isn’t about base gratification. It’s about perfection. About control. A world without the messiness of actual human whims. They’re better this way.”
He snapped his fingers.
The eyes of all three robotic duplicates snapped from him to Jan. Their expressions shifted from vacant adoration to focused, eerily familiar hostility.
Robo-Mara spoke first, its voice a pitch-perfect mimic of Mara’s courtroom ice. “You are a disruptive element, Jan.”
Robo-Ginny’s sardonic smirk was perfectly captured. “Always crashing the party, Red.”
Robo-Molly tilted her head, the dumb-blonde act replaced by a vacant deadliness. “Ginny, should we ask her to leave?”
“I think she needs to be removed,” Robo-Mara stated.
They moved. It wasn’t a robotic lurch. It was the precise, coordinated movement of the real women if they were stripped of all restraint and mercy. Robo-Ginny lunged low, aiming for Jan’s knees. Robo-Molly came in high, hands curved into claws aiming for her eyes. Robo-Mara hung back, analyzing, seeking an opening.
Jan flung a wave of green energy. It washed over them harmlessly. The Golden Wand magic infusing them repelled her influence. “Godfrey!” she yelled, diving sideways as Robo-Ginny’s hand swiped past her face.
The puppy bounded forward, a blur of golden fur. He slammed into Robo-Molly’s legs, not with puppy force, but with an impact that echoed with a metallic crunch. The duplicate stumbled.
Jan rolled, coming up behind a console. Robo-Mara was already there, delivering a sharp, practiced kick to her ribs. Pain blossomed, stealing her breath. These weren’t just copies. They had the skills, the instincts.
Robo-Ginny grabbed a length of Consortium wiring, whipping it toward Jan’s throat. Jan caught it, the cable biting into her palms. She poured raw desire, not at the robot, but at the air around it—a compulsion for the very molecules to rebel. The lights in the room flickered violently.
The operative watched, fascinated, making notes on a brass tablet. “Fascinating adaptation! But brute force won’t work.”
Robo-Mara seized Jan’s hair, yanking her head back. Robo-Molly, her leg grinding from Godfrey’s attack, limped forward, her hands reaching for Jan’s throat.
“Enough,” Jan gasped. She couldn’t influence them. But she could influence something else. She focused past the copies, past the operative, to the tangled nest of Consortium and Wand tech powering the room. She pushed a single, overwhelming impulse into the machinery: Overload.
Alarms blared. Sparks erupted from the main console. The golden eggbeater device on the floor shrieked and spun wildly, shooting out bolts of erratic energy.
The robotic duplicates froze, twitching. Their systems were failing, their programming conflicting with the sudden power surge.
Jan shoved Robo-Mara off her, scrambling to her feet. Godfrey had Robo-Ginny’s arm in a vice-grip puppy jaw, shaking violently, tearing wiring from the joint.
The operative looked furious. “You ignorant witch! Do you know what you’ve—”
Jan didn’t let him finish. She grabbed the closest object—the still-whirring, sparking eggbeater device—and hurled it at the main power coupling. It struck with a catastrophic shower of golden sparks and a sound like shattering glass.
A wave of nullifying energy pulsed outward. The robotic duplicates dropped like marionettes with cut strings. The lights died, plunging the room into darkness save for the dying embers of broken tech and the cool, green glow emanating from Jan’s clenched fists.
In the sudden quiet, the only sound was the operative’s furious breathing and Godfrey’s low, continuous growl.
Jan stood amidst the wreckage, pain in her side, her friends’ vacant copies lying motionless at her feet. She looked at the man in the charcoal suit. “You get one warning,” she said, her voice raw. “Leave this ship at the next port. Tell your Golden Wand bosses their ‘therapy’ violated the Accords. If I see you or any more of your toys again, I won’t just break your machines.”
She didn’t need to finish the threat. The green fire in her eyes was enough.
Turning her back on him, she whistled for Godfrey. “Come on, boy. Let’s go find the real ones.” She stepped over the prone form of Robo-Mara, a cold knot of anger tightening in her stomach. The game had changed players, and now she knew the board was far more perverse than she had imagined.
The game had changed players, and now she knew the board was far more perverse than she had imagined.
Jan turned her back on the groaning operative, her ribs screaming with each breath. Godfrey gave the motionless Robo-Ginny one last suspicious sniff before trotting to her side. She was halfway to the door when a sound froze her—a high-pitched whine, like a capacitor charging, followed by a series of sharp, metallic clicks.
She spun around.
On the floor, the three robotic copies were twitching. Amber light, sickly and pulsing, leaked from the seams in their necks and joints. It wasn’t the clean golden glow of Wand tech. This was the corrupted, feverish radiance of systems violently rewriting their own protocols.
Robo-Molly’s head jerked sideways with a crack of realigning vertebrae. Robo-Ginny sat up, her movements no longer fluid but sharp, jagged. Robo-Mara rose to its feet in one unnaturally smooth motion.
Their eyes, once blank or hostile, now shone with a singular, amber hatred. They turned as one, not toward Jan, but toward the man in the charcoal suit who was struggling to stand amidst the wreckage of his console.
“Wait,” he stammered, holding up his brass tablet like a shield. “Secondary command override! Sigma-nine! Cease all—”
Robo-Mara moved. It crossed the room in a blur, its hand shooting out to clamp around his throat. The sound was not a choke, but the crunch of a trachea failing. “Directive acknowledged,” it said in Mara’s perfect, cold voice. “Ceasing all mercy.”
Robo-Ginny was on him next, her fingers—designed for delicate stagework—driving like pistons into his solar plexus. He folded with a whoosh of lost air. Robo-Molly, her leg still damaged, crawled over and sank her teeth into his thigh. There was no scream, just a wet, ripping sound and his strangled gurgle.
Jan stood paralyzed, a hand pressed to her mouth. Godfrey’s growl was a continuous, subsonic rumble.
The three copies let the bleeding, shuddering form of the operative drop to the deck. They stood over him for a moment, their heads tilting in synchronized consideration. Then, as if sharing a silent thought, they turned and walked toward the door. They stepped over him without a glance, their movements now a perfectly coordinated, predatory stride.
Robo-Mara paused in the doorway, its head rotating a full one hundred eighty degrees to look back at Jan. A smile stretched its lips, a cruel parody of Mara’s confident smirk. “Tell the original,” it said, the voice flat and electronic beneath the mimicry, “her opening statement was weak.”
Then they were gone, leaving Jan alone in the ruined room with the scent of burned wiring, ozone, and coppery blood. The operative whimpered, clutching his ruined leg.
Godfrey nudged her hand with his wet nose. The touch jolted her into motion.
She didn’t go to the injured man. Her mind was racing, icy fear cutting through the pain in her side. They were loose. Perfect copies of her friends, now infected with some kind of vengeful directive, wandering a ship filled with the very people they were modeled after. And they had just mutilated their creator.
She fumbled for the pendant at her neck, the smooth green stone warm against her skin. She pressed it, sending a silent, urgent pulse to Fatima, to Stacy, to any Green Moon on board: Danger. Imposters. Find the others.
Then she ran, Godfrey at her heels, into the corridor. It was empty. The only trace of the robos was a single, faint smear of the operative’s blood on the polished floor, leading toward the passenger decks.
Mara heard the sound of the shower cutting off. She lay on the bed, a sheet draped over her hips, idly tracing the patterns of the cabin’s wood-paneled ceiling. The frantic, magic-soaked coupling on the floor felt like a fever dream from another life. Now, a deep, sore satisfaction had settled into her muscles.
Zack emerged from the bathroom, steam curling around him, a towel slung low on his hips. The bruises on his chest were dark purple blossoms against his pale skin. He looked wrecked and utterly at peace.
“You’re staring,” he said, a shy smile touching his lips.
“You’re a compelling exhibit,” she replied, her legal tone returning as a playful facade. “The defense rests its case.”
He crawled onto the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. He leaned down and kissed her, slow and deep. She tasted mint toothpaste and the lingering, salty trace of herself on his tongue. Her hand slid up his damp back, feeling the play of muscles beneath his skin.
His towel loosened. She broke the kiss, her eyes drifting down. “Seems the witness has more testimony to offer.”
He laughed softly, his forehead resting against hers. “The witness is always willing for cross-examination, Counselor.”
Her hand found him under the towel, already hardening again under her touch. She stroked him with a firm, knowing pressure, watching his eyes flutter closed. “Good,” she purred. “Because I have a few… pointed questions.”
She pushed him onto his back and straddled him, throwing the sheet aside. His hands went to her hips, his thumbs stroking the sharp bones. She was already wet again, her body responding to the simple reality of his nakedness, the memory of his mouth on her, the possessive gleam in his eye.
She guided him inside her with a slow, deliberate roll of her hips, taking him in inch by excruciating inch. She watched his face, the way his breath hitched, the way his jaw tightened. When he was fully seated, she paused, letting the sheer, stretching fullness of him resonate through her.
“God, you feel…” he began, his voice strangled.
“I know,” she interrupted, beginning to move. This rhythm was different from the frantic pace on the floor. It was languid, predatory. She rode him with a slow, grinding undulation, using the muscles deep inside her to clench and release around his shaft with each downward stroke. “I feel every fucking inch.”
His hands tightened on her. “Mara…”
“Say it,” she demanded, her own breath coming faster. Her fingers dug into his bruised pectorals, not caring if it hurt. She wanted to own the pain, too. “Say what you want.”
“I want to come inside you again,” he gasped, his hips pushing up to meet her. “I want to fill you up until you’re dripping with me.”
The filthy words, so unlike his normal self, sent a shock of pure heat through her core. Her controlled rhythm broke. She fucked him harder, faster, the wet slap of their coupling echoing in the quiet room. One of her hands slipped between their bodies, her fingers finding her clit, rubbing tight, frantic circles.
“Do it,” she snarled, her head falling forward, her hair a curtain around their faces. “Mark me. Claim me. Prove I’m yours.”
That was all he needed. With a raw, guttural cry, he slammed up into her, holding her hips locked against his as he pulsed deep within her. The feeling of his hot release triggered her own, a sharp, convulsing climax that ripped a hoarse scream from her throat.
She collapsed onto his chest, careful of his bruises, her body shuddering through the aftershocks. They lay there, slick and spent, tangled together.
The knock on their stateroom door was polite, insistent, and entirely unwelcome.
Mara groaned into Zack’s shoulder. “If that’s Jan with another goddamn gremlin, I’m having her disbarred from friendship.”
But the voice that followed was strained, tight with a fear Mara had never heard in it before. “Mara? Zack? It’s Jan. Please open up. It’s… bad.”
Mara and Zack exchanged a single, weary look. The sated warmth in the room vanished, replaced by a familiar, cold dread. The game, it seemed, was never over. It just kept finding them.