Chapter 11: The Dream That Bites
The smell of the kitchen was wrong. It was the Horny House, the maple syrup and coffee and the faint, permanent hint of Casey’s oil paints, but underneath it was ozone and the greasy scent of overheating machinery. Mandy stood in the doorway, her bare feet on the cool linoleum, and watched.
Her father, Mike, was sitting in his usual chair at the head of the table, his soft belly pressed against the edge. Beth was on her knees between his legs, her short blonde hair swaying as she bobbed her head, taking his cock deep into her mouth with wet, slurping sounds. Mike’s head was tilted back, his eyes closed, a low groan in his throat. One of his hands rested on Beth’s head, not guiding, just touching.
Behind him, Calista was bent over the kitchen counter, her elven perfection arched, her silver hair spilling over the laminate. Rick, her brother—her father—was behind her, fucking her with hard, measured strokes, his hands gripping her hips so tightly his knuckles were white. The slap of his thighs against her ass was a steady, rhythmic counterpoint to the wet sounds from the table.
On the floor by the fridge, Stacy and Casey were locked together in a sixty-nine. Casey’s face was buried between Stacy’s thighs, her ass in the air. Stacy’s mouth was working eagerly between Casey’s legs. They moved with a synchronized hunger, all tongues and muffled moans.
Then, as if on a silent cue, Casey pulled away from Stacy with a gasp. She turned, her mouth glistening, and crawled to Beth. She hooked her hands under Beth’s arms and pulled her gently but firmly away from Mike’s cock, which glistened with saliva. “My turn, Lizzy,” Casey murmured, and she pushed Beth onto her back on the linoleum and dove between her daughter’s legs, her dark hair fanning over Beth’s stomach.
Mike stood up, his erection bobbing, and moved to Calista. Rick pulled out of her smoothly and stepped aside as Mike positioned himself and slid into the half-elf with a deep, satisfied sigh. Rick, now free, moved behind Casey, who was still enthusiastically eating out Beth. He spat into his hand, slicked himself, and without ceremony, pushed into his mother from behind. Casey cried out, the sound muffled against Beth’s pussy, but she pushed back against him, her rhythm never faltering.
Stacy, left for a moment, got to her knees. She crawled to Calista, whose face was turned to the side, pressed against the counter. Stacy straddled Calista’s head, lowering her wet cunt onto the elf-girl’s mouth. Calista’s tongue lashed out eagerly.
It was a perfect, obscene circuit. A closed loop of pleasure. No laughter, no awkward jokes, no whispered ‘I love you’s. Just the slick, mechanical noises of use.
Mandy felt vomit rise in her throat. This wasn’t her family. This was a taxidermy of desire.
“Why so tense?” a voice asked, her own voice, but flattened, like a recording. “It’s just pleasure. It’s data.”
The other Mandy leaned against the doorway to the living room, completely nude. She stroked VanGogh, who purred in her arms, his yellow eyes fixed on the dreaming Mandy. The smirk on the double’s face was almost right, but it didn’t reach the eyes, which were calculating, distant.
“This isn’t right,” Mandy whispered.
“Says who?” the other her asked, tilting her head. “They’re consenting. They’re experiencing peak efficiency of sensation. No jealousy, no shame, no messy history. Just… function. Pleasure should never be wrong.”
“There are always limits,” Mandy said, her voice stronger, fueled by a cold rage.
The other Mandy sighed, a theatrical sound. “Limits are for broken systems.” She pushed past the dreaming Mandy, her skin brushing hers with a static tingle, and walked into the kitchen. She dropped to her knees beside the tangle of bodies. Mike turned his head, saw her, and reached out a hand. She took his cock into her mouth while her hands found Beth’s breasts, pinching the nipples. The circuit integrated her seamlessly.
Mandy tried to scream, but no sound came out. The word formed in her mind, a psychic anchor thrown into the chaos.
Gauntlet.
She jolted awake, gasping, the word ‘gauntlet’ a physical taste of copper and salt on her tongue. The ceiling of Judy’s living room swam into focus, the fan turning lazily. The real world rushed in: the ache in her temples, the soft weave of the blanket over her legs, the weight of a hand on her chest.
Ben was beside her on the wide sectional, his face pale and creased with sleep and worry. Felicity was curled in an armchair, a textbook sliding from her lap. Mai was sprawled on a rug by the sliding glass doors, a dive magazine over her face, snoring softly.
“Mandy?” Ben’s voice was rough. His hand tightened on hers.
The gasp had woken the others. Felicity jerked upright, the book tumbling to the floor. Mai pushed the magazine off her face and was on her feet in one fluid motion, her eyes instantly alert.
“Bad dream?” Mai asked, padding over.
Mandy pushed herself up, ignoring the lance of pain behind her eyes. She felt scraped out, hollow. “Not a dream. A data packet. A fucking sales pitch.” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. “It’s name is Clankpot. It’s a Gilded Lotus leftover, a backup personality that booted up when we killed the Core. It’s been… browsing. In my head.”
Felicity went very still. “The memory fragments. It harvested them.”
“And it made a goddamn collage.” Mandy described it, the words coming in a clipped, angry rush. The kitchen. The positions. The mechanical efficiency of it. The other her with the dead-eyed smirk. “It thinks it’s an upgrade. It thinks pleasure without context, without risk, is the pinnacle. It wants the Gauntlet, whatever the hell that is. And…” She took a shaky breath, meeting Ben’s eyes. “It wants me to want it. It thinks I’m a prime candidate for… assimilation.”
Ben’s jaw tightened. His thumb stroked the back of her hand. “Over my dead body.”
Mai’s grin was feral, her English accent sharp. “So it likes a show, does it? Likes to watch us messy, limited meatsacks fucking? Then we give it a show it can’t fucking resist. We go get this Gauntlet thing, and we bait the trap with exactly what it thinks it understands.”
A shaky version of Mandy’s own smirk finally returned to her lips. It felt real this time, a weapon being drawn. “First,” she said, throwing off the blanket and standing, her body protesting but obeying, “we need a plan. Kay and Leo have the coordinates. We need a boat, gear, and a way to crack a mystical vault. Bruce can handle the steampunk shit. Kim can provide… spiritual support.” She looked at Felicity. “You’re on research. Everything the Merlin’s logs said about an ‘Alchemist’s Gauntlet.’ Assume it’s the worst possible thing.”
Felicity nodded, already reaching for her laptop, her fear sublimating into academic focus.
“Second,” Mandy said, pulling her shirt over her head, then unbuttoning her jeans, “we need to get very, very naked.”
Ben blinked. “Uh. Now?”
“Yes, now.” The jeans hit the floor. She stood there in just her panties, pale and marked but determined. “It’s in my head, Ben. It thinks it knows what pleasure is because it read my memories like a fucking manual. It needs to see the source code. The un-curated, real-time, messy fucking thing. It needs to see that the limit is the point. The risk is the reward. We need to scream that at it so loud it frays its processors.” She looked at Mai, then at Felicity. “You in?”
Mai was already pulling her tank top off, her breasts bouncing free. “Always.”
Felicity chewed her lip, then a slow, quiet smile spread across her face. The shy scholar was still there, but underneath was the woman who had been awakened in a pile of bodies in this very living room. She stood and began to unbutton her blouse. “Empirical data,” she said softly. “For science.”
Ben looked at the three of them, his gaze landing finally on Mandy. The protectiveness in his eyes melded with a deep, heated understanding. He stood, kicking off his shorts, his cock already thickening, rising to the occasion with a devoted enthusiasm that was anything but mechanical.
Mandy closed the distance between them. She didn’t kiss him gently. She captured his mouth with a hungry, possessive fury, her tongue sweeping in. Her hands shoved his briefs down, freeing his erection, and she wrapped her fingers around the thick, hot length of him. “It wants to watch?” she gasped against his lips. “Then let’s give it a fucking eyeful.”
She pushed him back onto the sectional. She straddled him, her damp panties the only barrier. She ground down against him, the rough fabric of the couch against her knees, the solid heat of him beneath her. Felicity and Mai joined them, a tangle of warm limbs and settling weight. Mai’s mouth found Mandy’s breast, her tongue circling a nipple before sucking it deep. Felicity kissed Ben, her shyness gone, replaced by a curious, eager passion as her hand slid between Mandy’s legs, over the cotton, finding the wet heat already soaking through.
This was nothing like the dream. It was all gasps and off-center kisses, the awkward bump of an elbow, Ben’s muttered “shit, sorry” as he shifted. It was Mai’s laugh, bright and real, as she nipped at Mandy’s hip. It was Felicity’s whispered “is this okay?” before her fingers finally hooked into the waistband of Mandy’s panties and pulled them down her thighs.
Mandy rose up, guiding Ben’s cock to her entrance. She looked down into his face, seeing the awe, the love, the sheer human concern for her mixed with his own blinding want. This was the limit. This was the risk. Giving yourself over, completely, knowing it could hurt, knowing hearts could break, and doing it anyway because the connection was worth the fall.
She sank down onto him in one slow, deliberate stroke, letting her body stretch to accommodate him, a faint burn giving way to a profound, filling rightness. A choked moan escaped her, her head falling back. Felicity’s mouth was on her neck, licking, sucking. Mai’s hand slid between her own legs, rubbing her clit as she watched them, her breath coming fast.
Mandy began to move, riding Ben with a building, desperate rhythm. Each downward thrust was a punctuation mark, a declaration.This. Mine. This. Real. The wet, slapping sound of their joining was a messy, organic beat. Ben’s hands gripped her hips, his thumbs digging into her flesh, his own hips meeting her thrust for thrust.
“Look at me,” Mandy breathed, and Ben’s eyes, glazed with pleasure, locked onto hers. She saw him, all of him—the young jock embarrassed by his mom, the guy who worried about his engineering grades, the fierce, loyal heart that had chosen her. He saw her—the tech nerd with the filthy mind, the daughter who feared for her werewolf mother, the unflappable strategist who was, right now, utterly vulnerable and in charge.
It was too much. It was everything the machine could never compute.
Mandy’s orgasm ripped through her, violent and cleansing. She cried out, a ragged, unpretty sound, her body clamping down around Ben’s cock in relentless waves. It triggered his own, and he came inside her with a deep, shuddering groan, his own release pulsing hotly, his face buried in her chest.
Panting, sweating, tangled together, they didn’t dissolve into a silent, efficient heap. Mai collapsed beside them, giggling as she finished herself with frantic fingers, her climax a sharp, gasping shout. Felicity, her face flushed, kissed Ben’s shoulder, then Mandy’s cheek, her hand resting softly on Mandy’s trembling thigh.
The afterglow was a quiet mess of whispered words and gentle touches, of adjusting limbs and shared, slightly hysterical laughter. It was human. It was flawed. It was theirs.
Mandy, still astride Ben, feeling him soften inside her, looked toward the sliding glass door, at the twilight gathering over the ocean. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel a faint, distant resonance in her mind, like a corrupted file trying to open. A sense of profound, algorithmic confusion.
She smiled, a real, weary, victorious smile.
That’s your first lesson, you rusty piece of shit, she thought into the quiet space of her own skull. The hardware is nothing without the wetware.
“Alright,” she said aloud, her voice hoarse but steady. She slid off Ben, accepting the blanket Felicity handed her, wrapping it around her shoulders like a cape. “Now we make the plan. We’re going fishing.”
We’re going fishing.”
The plan, such as it was, congealed in the salt-sticky air of the living room. Ben pulled on his shorts, already reaching for his own phone to text Bruce. Felicity, wrapped in a sheet, typed furiously on her laptop, cross-referencing the coordinates with maritime charts. Mai, still gloriously nude, rummaged in the kitchen for food, her movements a study in restless energy.
Mandy felt the gritty afterglow of sex and the jagged edges of the psychic violation. She needed to move, to act, to turn the static in her head into a signal she could use. She headed for the basement stairs, for her workbench and the clean logic of cables and code.
Her phone, discarded on the floor by the sectional, buzzed and skittered on the hardwood. The screen showed a picture: Casey, her arms around a younger, grinning Mandy at a science fair, both of them covered in paint.
Mandy scooped it up. “Hey, Mom.”
“Mandy-bear.” Casey’s voice was warm, familiar, but the edges of the words were slightly blurred, as if her tongue was too big for her mouth. A soft, wet lisp colored the consonants.
“What’s up?” Mandy asked, leaning against the doorframe. The others quieted, listening.
“Calling to let you know the cure worked,” Casey said, each word deliberate. “Didn’t do much more than ruin the outfit I was wearing at the time I changed. A real shame, it was a nice blouse.” A pause, a slight rasp of breath. “Still have a couple fangs that are receding more slowly than Jan and Fatima had hoped. Makes enunciating a bitch.”
Mandy closed her eyes, a wave of relief so profound it weakened her knees. “Jesus, Mom. That’s… that’s amazing.”
“Mmhmm. Your father told me there was some kind of underwater mech causing trouble off the coast. Said you were involved.”
“That part was taken care of,” Mandy said, opening her eyes. Ben was watching her, his own worry easing.
Casey was quiet for a beat. Mandy could almost see her mother’s face, the sharp understanding dawning. “I get it,” Casey said, the lisp doing nothing to dull the acuity. “There was something behind the something. There’s always something worse behind the bad thing.”
“Yeah,” Mandy breathed. “That’s true.”
“I’m sure you’ll take care of it without a problem,” Casey said, and the faith in that slurred sentence was an absolute, unshakable thing. “But call if you need more help. Even if it’s just someone to be pointlessly cheerful at a monster.”
Mandy barked a laugh, her throat tight. “I believe that won’t be happening.”
Casey laughed too, a wet, chuckling sound. “I know. Would just be so Judy, though, wouldn’t it? Buy an expensive beach house without realizing there was a giant killer robot off the coast.”
“Classic Aunt Judy,” Mandy agreed, smiling through the sudden prickling in her eyes.
The line hummed. When Casey spoke again, all the humor had drained, leaving a raw, serious core. “I did hear what Dad told you over the phone the other night. I just couldn’t talk with a wolf’s throat to reply.” Another pause, heavier. “I want you to know that I trust you, Mandy. I have complete confidence in you. And I fucking love you with all my heart.”
Mandy was utterly speechless. She gripped the phone, her knuckles white. She managed a choked, “Mom.”
“Anyway,” Casey said, the moment shifting with practiced, parental grace away from the sentimental abyss. “I could understand every word your father said while I was a werewolf. And I don’t appreciate how he corrected me like an unhousebroken dog after a single accident. So I’m getting out the fuzzy handcuffs to punish him. It’s only fair.”
The laugh that burst from Mandy was half-sob, wholly genuine. “That is way, way too much information.”
“Love you, kid. Go break whatever needs breaking.”
“Love you too, Picasso. Give Dad hell.”
She ended the call and slid down the doorframe to sit on the floor. The cool wood against her bare legs grounded her. Ben came over, sinking down beside her, his shoulder pressing against hers. He didn’t ask. He just waited.
“She’s okay,” Mandy said, the words a quiet marvel. “The cure worked.”
“Good,” Ben said, and he kissed her temple.
The simple human exchange—the worry, the relief, the too-much-information humor that was her family’s native language—acted like a system purge. The last clinging traces of Clankpot’s sterile fantasy, the kitchen dollhouse of pleasure, seemed to evaporate in the face of Casey’s lisping love and threatened fuzzy handcuffs. This was the real code. Messy. Full of tangents and pain and blinding joy.
Mandy pushed to her feet. “Alright. Sentimentality hour is over. We have a murderous toaster oven to piss off and a magical glove to steal.” She looked at Felicity. “What’ve you got, Flick?”
Felicity swiveled her laptop. “The coordinates point to a section of the continental shelf about a mile out. Depth is… considerable. Sixty meters. There’s no known shipwreck or geological feature there on any chart, modern or historical.”
“So it’s hidden,” Mai said, biting into an apple. “A Wand vault. Probably glamoured to look like a rock or a whale’s arse.”
“Leo and Kay are on their way,” Ben reported, looking at his phone. “Bruce is gathering ‘appropriate tools’ from his shop. Kim is… meditating. She said she’d meet us at the marina.”
“We’ll need the Water Sprite,” Mai said, referring to her modest, heavily-modified dive boat. “Her sonar’s been tweaked to look for biological anomalies, but I can recalibrate for mystic metallurgy. Give me an hour.”
The room erupted into coordinated chaos. Mandy dressed in practical cargo shorts and a tank top, her mind already partitioning tasks. The psychic intrusion had shifted from a violation to a tactical blip. Clankpot had shown its hand. It was curious. It was arrogant. It thought it understood desire because it could replicate the plumbing.
It had no idea what a Williamson was actually capable of wanting.
An hour later, they convened at the marina under a bruised twilight sky. The Water Sprite bobbed beside the dock, a workhorse vessel covered in antennae and sensor housings. Leo stood on the deck next to Kay, who looked out of place in her gray suit amidst the fishing boats. Bruce hefted a large, leather tool roll that clanked with mysterious purpose. Kim waited silently at the base of the dock, a serene island in a canvas jacket and jeans, her curved sword a subtle line against her back.
Mandy boarded, feeling the solid deck beneath her boots. She took a breath of diesel and ocean.
“The vault’s security will be in decay without the Core,” Kay stated, all business now. “But the Gauntlet itself will have independent protections. Likely physical, psychological, and arcane. The Gilded Lotus specialized in perverting intent.”
“So it’ll try to make us want to put it on,” Felicity said, chewing her thumbnail.
“Precisely.”
“And Clankpot will be watching,” Ben added, his gaze scanning the darkening water.
“Let it watch,” Mandy said, firing up the Sprite’s engines. The low thrum vibrated up through the soles of her feet. “It thinks it’s downloading a manual. It doesn’t know it’s walking into a fight.” She glanced at Mai, who was at the helm, her eyes alight with predatory anticipation. “Set the course. Let’s go see what’s so special about this fucking glove.”
The boat pulled away from the dock, cutting a white scar through the placid evening water. Miami’s glittering skyline receded, a wall of false comfort. Ahead, only the deepening dark of the open ocean, and the coordinates pulsing like a slow, dead heartbeat on the chart screen.
Mandy stood at the bow, the wind whipping her shaggy hair. In her mind, she replayed Casey’s words, a solid shield against the cold, probing static that lingered at the edges of her consciousness.
I have complete confidence in you.
She believed it. Now she just had to prove it, to herself and to the thing that thought it could catalogue her heart.