Chapter 5: The Naked Welcome Committee
The Sylvan Retreat’s common room hummed, a living entity built of aged oak and breathing stone. The scent of burning cedar and damp earth clung to the vaulted ceiling lost in shadow. Embers spat from a hearth large enough to park a car in, casting dancing light over braided rugs woven with silver and green threads, their patterns subtly shifting if stared at too long.
In the center of the largest rug, the air was thick with sweat, sex, and the electric crackle of novice magic.
Britney, naked and gleaming, was arched over Russel’s lap, her full breasts swaying as she rode his cock with a slow, practiced grind. Her Southern drawl was syrup-thick with pleasure. “C’mon, baby, give me that Canadian bacon. Don’t you hold back on me now.”
Russel, his lanky frame stretched out beneath her, gripped her hips, his fingers leaving faint white marks on her sun-kissed skin. His cock was buried to the hilt in her dripping cunt, each upward thrust making her gasp. “You’re… you’re gonna make me come too fast,” he managed, his eyes glued to where their bodies joined.
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a fast ride if it’s a good one,” Britney purred, leaning back, putting her hands on his knees for leverage. She changed the angle, taking him deeper, and let out a sharp, satisfied cry. “There. Right there, you feel that? That’s the spot that makes my toes curl.”
To their left, Sydney watched, her face flushed, a throw pillow held absently over her lap. Her red curls were stuck to her damp temples. Akuma sat cross-legged beside her, calm and observant, a silent guardian of the orgy.
The door to the common room burst open, letting in a blast of cold, pine-scented night air.
Feng and Ilya entered, their ageless faces serene. Ilya, her silver hair flowing like mercury, smiled. “The energy in here is… vibrant. A good offering to the Retreat. But playtime is winding down. We have guests approaching. Many guests. And they are not in a festive mood.”
Before the novices could fully process the warning, the roar of engines and the crunch of gravel on the distant drive cut through the forest silence. Tires screeched. Doors slammed.
Britney didn’t stop. She increased her pace, slamming down on Russel’s cock, her wetness making obscene, slick sounds. “Almost… got it… just gimme a minute…”
“Britney,” Feng said, his voice a quiet chord that vibrated in the bones. “Now.”
With a frustrated groan, Britney pushed herself off Russel’s still-hard cock with a wet pop. She stood, hands on her hips, her body glistening in the firelight, not an ounce of shame in her posture. Russel sat up, covering himself with a groan of unfinished business.
“Fine, fine. Duty calls.” Britney strutted across the common room toward the archway that led to the courtyard, her breasts bouncing, the patch of blonde curls between her legs slick and visible. Russel scrambled after her, pulling on his jeans commando, his erection tenting the denim. Sydney dropped the pillow and hastily pulled a Green Moon robe over her head. Akuma simply stood, already dressed in loose linen pants.
They reached the courtyard as Jan’s battered Subaru skidded to a halt, spraying gravel. Fatima was out of the passenger seat before the engine died, her voluminous hair a dark cloud around her furious face. Her eyes swept over the naked novice, the half-dressed young man, the others.
“Status report, novices,” Fatima snapped, her voice like a cracked whip. “Who is still fully functional?”
Britney planted her hands on her hips, pushing her breasts forward. “We’re all fine, Teacher. Horny as hell, but fine. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Or a dick you didn’t like.” She grinned, a flash of white teeth. “Want me to work out some of that tension for you? I give excellent head.” Her gaze dropped pointedly to Fatima’s crotch. “Or Russel here’s got a grade-A maple syrup dispenser that’s still primed and ready. We could tag-team you. Loosen you right up.”
Fatima’s eyes narrowed, a storm brewing in their depths. “Your insipid vulgarity is a poor substitute for competence, Britney. Cover yourself and—”
Hank’s truck rumbled into the courtyard, its headlights illuminating the scene. The doors opened.
Hank emerged first, his kind face etched with worry. He moved to the back and helped Ginny out. She stepped down, willowy and blank, her strawberry blonde hair perfectly smooth, her clothes neat. She looked at the towering trees, the stone buildings, the naked woman, with the same vacant interest one might give to a wallpaper pattern.
Molly followed, her large breasts straining against her simple shirt, her glasses reflecting the headlights. She stood beside Ginny, a beautiful statue.
The sight of them—alive, moving, but utterly empty—stole the heat from Britney’s bravado. Her smirk faded. “Oh,” she said softly.
Then Jan’s car door opened. Stacy emerged, not like a person getting out of a car, but like a weapon being unsheathed. Her tactical pants were pristine, her tank top tight across her sculpted torso. Her 9mm was holstered at her hip. Her dark eyes scanned the courtyard, the tree line, the roof, assigning threat values. They landed on the novices, dismissed them as non-combatants, and returned to Jan, who was climbing out, her freckles stark against her pale skin.
Godfrey trotted to Jan’s side, sniffing the air, then sat, watching Stacy with canine concern.
“I need Feng and Ilya,” Jan said, her voice hoarse. “Now. And a secure room. A sterile one.”
Feng was already there, materializing from the shadows of the archway. Ilya flowed to his side. Their serene masks were gone, replaced by focused intensity.
“The hollow ones,” Ilya whispered, her shifting eyes fixed on Ginny and Molly. “The joy is gone. Only the shell remains.”
“Not just them,” Jan said, as a second set of headlights pierced the night.
Brigid’s rented SUV pulled in. Brigid jumped from the driver’s side, her red hair a furious banner. Will and Sarah helped Mike out. He was walking, but his movements were deliberate, like he was following a manual. He carried a diaper bag. Sarah carried Rick’s infant carrier, the baby mercifully asleep.
Casey stepped out last. The paint-stained blanket was still wrapped around her shoulders over her clothes. She looked up at the Retreat, her head tilting. “The timber frame is post-and-beam construction. The joinery is expert. The load distribution must be perfectly calculated.” Her voice was a flat, academic monotone.
Mike walked to her side. “It’s nice wood,” he said, the words hollow. He knew it was supposed to be a comforting joke. He felt nothing.
Brigid faced the masters, her small form thrumming with contained power. “Oliver Stansworth attacked them in their home. He utilized a metaphysical draining effect, targeting emotional and affectual centers. In subjects Ginny and Molly, the drainage appears total, resulting in compliant automatons. In subjects Michael and Casey, the drainage was partial and resisted, resulting in emotional dissociation with preserved cognitive memory and base personality scaffolding. In subject Stacy…” Brigid glanced at the lethal silhouette of her sister’s friend. “The removal of inhibitory emotional restraints has created a hyper-efficient, amoral protector paradigm. The curse interacts with pre-existing psychological frameworks.”
The courtyard was silent, save for the crackle of the distant hearth and Rick’s soft snuffling.
Britney finally, slowly, crossed her arms over her breasts. “Shit,” she breathed, all pretense gone.
Feng moved first. He went to Ginny, placing two fingers on her forehead, then her heart. He closed his eyes. “It is a surgical absence. Not a wound, but a… deletion. The space where joy lived is scoured clean.”
Ilya went to Casey, cupping her face. Casey allowed it, her eyes analyzing Ilya’s bone structure. “And here, it is like frostbite. The feeling is numbed, but the tissue of the soul is not yet necrotic. It remembers warmth.” She turned to Mike, her hand on his chest. He flinched but didn’t pull away. “You fought it. With mundane obsession. A fascinating defense.”
“I asked him about parking permits,” Mike said dully.
A ghost of a smile touched Ilya’s lips. “Indeed.”
Fatima stalked over to Jan. “We need to understand the vector. Was it touch? Proximity? Eye contact?”
“He reached out,” Jan said, her eyes on Stacy, who was now systematically checking the perimeter of the courtyard, testing the firmness of the ground with her heel. “His hand. I think it’s touch-based. But Mike was close to Casey and it slowed it down. Like… interference.”
“Mundane interference,” Brigid murmured, her mind racing. “Emotional resonance as a carrier wave, disrupted by banality. That implies the curse has a frequency. It can be jammed.”
“Can it be reversed?” Hank asked, his arm around a now-silent Fatima. He looked at Ginny and Molly, his friend’s heart breaking for people he barely knew but who were part of his fiancée’s world.
Feng and Ilya exchanged a long, solemn look.
“We do not know,” Feng admitted. “This is not Green Moon magic. This is not any Order’s magic. It is a perversion, using power stolen from beyond the stars. To reverse it… we would need to understand the shape of what is missing. We would need a template.”
“A template of joy?” Jan asked, desperation creeping in.
“Of their joy,” Ilya corrected gently. “The unique, idiosyncratic joy of each soul. We cannot simply pump generic happiness back into them. It would not fit. It would leak out, or worse, distort them.”
Stacy completed her circuit, returning to Jan’s side. “Perimeter is secure for now. The wards are ancient and powerful. Probability of immediate hostile incursion is low. I recommend moving the vulnerable assets indoors. The infant is a particular liability in an open area.”
She said it with the detached concern of a soldier noting a vulnerable fuel dump.
Jan looked at her oldest friend, at the empty fortress of her eyes. A template of Stacy’s joy. What did that even look like? The fierce grin after a hard-won race. The unspoken understanding over a shared drink. The secret, aching love for a boy from the future she was destined to protect in the past.
An idea, dangerous and fragile, flickered in Jan’s exhausted mind.
“The template…” Jan said slowly. “It’s a memory. A specific, powerful, joyful memory. The curse can’t destroy memories, just the feeling attached to them. Right?” She looked to Brigid for confirmation.
Brigid nodded, her intellect seizing the thread. “Logical. The cognitive recall is intact in Mike and Casey. The memory engrams are separate from the emotional valence. The curse severs the link.”
“So we find the memory,” Jan said, her voice gaining strength. “The strongest one. The most them. And we… we reconnect the wires. We make them feel it again.”
“How?” Fatima asked, skepticism warring with hope.
Jan looked at Ilya, then at Feng. “You teach people to channel feeling into magic. To make emotion into a tangible force. Can we do the opposite? Can we use magic… to force-feed a feeling back into a memory?”
The silence this time was thick with potential energy.
“It has never been attempted,” Feng said. “The risk is profound. To impose foreign emotion, even their own, back into a psyche that has been scarred… it could break them permanently.”
“They’re already broken!” Jan’s shout echoed in the courtyard. Godfrey whined. Jan lowered her voice, trembling. “They’re already broken. Look at them. I’d rather risk breaking them trying to fix it than leave them like this.”
She turned to Stacy. “Stacy. I need you to think of a memory. The happiest you’ve ever been. The most you.”
Stacy looked at her, unblinking. “My happiest moment was successfully extracting you from the situation at the docks in July 2021. No hostiles were terminated, and your magical reserves were uncompromised. It was a peak efficiency operation.”
Jan’s heart shattered. That was a happy memory for Stacy—a job well done protecting her. But the joy of it, the personal pride, the warmth… that was gone. Only the operational report remained.
“No,” Jan whispered. “Not that one. A personal one. A selfish one.”
Stacy processed. “The memory with the highest recorded neurochemical reward signature, unrelated to a protection detail, is sexual.” She stated it as a fact. “Intercourse with Richard Williamson, aged nineteen, in the future timeline. It is my most potent non-professional memory.”
Mike, standing dully nearby, blinked. “My… son?”
“The adult version, yes,” Stacy said, looking at him without a flicker of embarrassment. “The memory is detailed and retains high sensory clarity. It is the optimal template.”
Jan felt the world tilt. The key to unlocking Stacy’s joy was a memory of a lover who, in this timeline, was a six-month-old infant in a carrier. A memory from a future that may now never happen if they couldn’t save his parents.
“We need to work with what we have,” Ilya said, her voice practical. “The sexual memories are often the most viscerally encoded. The strongest anchors. For the performers,” she gestured to Ginny and Molly, “their joy is in each other, in their art. For the parents,” she looked at Mike and Casey, “it is in their child, in their shared creation. For the protector,” her gaze rested on Stacy, “it is in a fulfilled destiny, in a connection that transcends time. These are our templates.”
Feng nodded slowly. “Then we must create a ritual vessel powerful enough to hold these templates and rebind them to their souls. We must use the very energy Oliver seeks to destroy.”
“Joy,” Jan said.
“Yes,” Feng replied. “A focused, amplified, overwhelming surge of it. We must make this place a crucible of specific, targeted joy. It will be a beacon. It may draw him right to us.”
Jan looked at the hollow faces of her friends under the cold stars. She thought of Oliver out there in the dark, a vampire of emotion, feeling nothing.
“Let him come,” Jan said, her voice low and fierce. “We’ll be waiting. And we’ll be fucking happy to see him.”
And we’ll be fucking happy to see him.”
Ilya’s hand fell gently on Jan’s shoulder, a cooling balm against her feverish resolve. “Before you build a fortress of joy, remember the weapon he stole, Jan Siobhan.” Her voice was low, for the inner circle alone. “You called me, frantic, saying Oliver had taken Beacon’s Edge from the vault. The blade’s light will never ignite for him, but his contact with the artifact… it is a focus. It must be amplifying the power of your original curse, tuning it to a finer, more vicious point. It is not just his patrons’ power he uses. It is yours, refined into a scalpel.”
The revelation landed like a physical blow. Jan’s own magic, the curse meant to cage Oliver in numbness, was now the engine of this theft. Feng’s gaze grew distant, calculating. “If the artifact is the amplifier, then its retrieval is paramount. The stolen emotions may be contained within it, or at least tethered to it. Returning the dagger could give us the key to unlock them.”
Jan and Fatima exchanged a look, a silent conversation flowing between them in an instant. The plan fractured and re-formed. “We split up,” Jan said, the decision crisp. “You two need to work on the ritual, on stabilizing them. Hank, Brigid, Will, and Sarah stay here. They help you protect this place and care for the wounded.” She glanced at her sister. “Your math might find a pattern in the damage we can use.”
Brigid gave a sharp nod, already mentally reviewing arcane topological models. Will squeezed her hand, and Sarah leaned into them both, a triad braced for a siege.
Feng stroked his chin. “You cannot hunt him alone. He is infused with alien power and wields a Green Moon relic, even if darkly. The Twins are already en route. They felt the disturbance. They will meet you. They are our best trackers.”
“And Beacon’s Edge,” Ilya added, her shifting eyes moving to the novices who watched, rapt, from the archway. “The dagger will not work for the same wielder twice in one crisis. Jan has used it. Fatima has used it. We need a fresh channel. Britney. Sydney.” Both young women straightened. “You two will go with them. Your personalities are opposing currents—one brash, one reserved. The artifact’s light chooses based on need, on a purity of intent. One of you may be able to wake it against him.”
Britney’s earlier bravado was gone, replaced by a fierce, focused gleam. “You want me to stab that joy-suckin’ motherfucker with a magic knife? Just point the way, Teacher.”
Sydney, pale but determined, swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay. I can do that. I think.”
“Then it’s settled,” Fatima said, her voice cutting through the night. “Jan, the Twins, the novices, and I. We find that bastard and take back what’s ours. We leave in ten minutes. Hank…” She turned to her fiancé, her fierce expression softening for a fleeting second. “Keep the home fires burning. And for God’s sake, try to keep the orgy focused on healing.”
Hank pulled her into a rough, tender hug. “Just bring yourself back, Fati. In one piece. The rest is details.”
Three thousand miles away, salt air washed over a Miami bungalow perched on stilts above the turquoise water. The rhythmic crash of waves was the only sound Siobhan “Shiv” O’Connor desired as she sat on her deck, a cup of tea cooling beside her. The pendant around her neck, a simple river stone on a chain, felt warm against her skin.
“Ach, Marty, would you look at that sunset? It’s like God spilled a basket of oranges and peaches over the whole sky.” She didn’t speak to the empty air. She spoke to the stone.
A familiar, comfortable presence, a feeling more than a voice, answered in her mind—a sensation of shared awe, of peaceful contentment. It’s a beauty, Shiv. Doesn’t hold a candle to you, but it’s a beauty.
She smiled, a network of fine lines crinkling around eyes the same fiery green as her daughter’s. Then the smile vanished. The psychic atmosphere, the subtle hum of the world that a witch of her experience felt in her bones, suddenly twisted. It wasn’t a sound. It was the silence of a grave opening in her living room.
She stood, tea forgotten. “Larry,” she said, her voice calm but iron-hard.
The cockatiel on his perch ruffled his grey and yellow feathers. He didn’t transform. He didn’t need to yet. His beady eyes fixed on the sliding glass door.
Oliver materialized from the deepening shadows inside her home, stepping out onto the deck as if he owned it. The dead handle of Beacon’s Edge was gripped loosely in his right hand. His eyes, flat and brown, took her in. “Siobhan O’Connor. The source of the Red Tornado. I’m simplifying the equation.”
“You’re the little shite who’s been tormenting my Jan.” Shiv’s Irish lilt was frosty. She didn’t move from her spot, a small, red-haired woman in a floral dress facing down a cosmic predator. “She told me about her curse. Seems it didn’t take properly.”
“It took,” Oliver said, extending his left hand. The draining sensation, that awful suction, flowed toward her. It sought the deep well of her love for her children, her wry joy in the world, her enduring passion for the ghost at her throat. “It left me with perfect clarity. Now I’ll give you some.”
The power hit her. And it splashed against a will that had been bending reality to her whims since before this boy was a glimmer in a bastard’s eye. Shiv’s own magic, the same chaotic, desire-bending power as Jan’s but honed by decades, rose not as a wave, but as a fortress. She didn’t fight the pull. She defined its boundaries. She funneled it into a psychic box, sealed it with memories of changing nappies and teenage drama and a husband’s last, raspy breath, and then she mentally shoved it back at him.
Oliver’s hand jerked. His expression flickered, not with feeling, but with surprise. The vacuum ceased.
“You want my joy, you empty little clerk?” Shiv whispered, advancing a step. Larry gave a sharp, unnatural shriek, his form beginning to glow at the edges. “You’ll have to swim for it in a sea of everything else. The frustration of a teenager’s backtalk. The smell of hospital antiseptic. The sheer, unadulterated rage of a woman watching a maggot like you hurt her family. Come and take it. See what it does to your tidy little mind.”
Oliver retreated a step, his analytical gaze recalculating. She was an order of magnitude more powerful than he had anticipated. A direct assault was inefficient. But his goal was not just to drain her. It was to break Jan. He looked at the pendant around her neck. He felt the strange, stable, spiritual energy there—a soul anchored to the physical world, but not in it.A ghost.
He shifted his focus. The Beacon’s Edge handle rose. He didn’t point it at Shiv. He pointed it at the stone on her chest.
A new kind of suction activated, a hungry, spiraling vortex tuned not to amorphous emotion, but to a specific, disembodied spirit. It was a whistle only the dead could hear.
The warm presence at Shiv’s throat sharpened into a spike of alarm. Shiv—!
The sensation of Marty—his quiet humor, his steadfast presence, the weight of him—was yanked. It peeled away from the stone, from her, a silvery thread of soul-stuff visible only to the magical eye. It streamed across the deck, screaming silently, and was inhaled into the dark gem set in the dagger’s handle.
The stone on Shiv’s necklace went cold. Dead. Just a rock.
“No.” The word was raw, torn from a place deeper than magic. “NO!”
She unleashed her power then, a torrent of pure, coercive will that should have made him rip his own heart out with longing for her. It hit the wall of his nullifying aura and dissipated, useless against the void where a man’s feelings should be.
Oliver looked at the handle. It pulsed once, faintly, with a captured, sorrowful light. “A token,” he said. “Tell Jan I have her father. The next time we meet, she can give me back my capacity for joy, or I will unmake this shadow completely. Her choice.”
He vanished.
Shiv O’Connor collapsed to her knees on the deck. The crashing waves were the only sound. The pendant was ice against her skin. She clutched it, but the warmth was gone. The answering chuckle in her mind was gone. The vacancy was total, an amputation of the soul.
Larry, now fully transformed into a giant, golden Phoenix, landed beside her, nuzzling her with his beak, emitting waves of soothing heat. But the cold was inside her. It was the same cold from eight years ago, in a sterile room, holding a cooling hand.
She had just felt her husband die all over again. And this time, it was not fate’s cruelty. It was a message.
She threw her head back and screamed her rage and loss into the peach-streaked sky, a sound that promised a mother’s war.