Chapter 3: Highway Confessions
The van’s tires crunched over gravel, leaving the hypnotic glare of the interstate for the shadowed grid of an industrial park. Neon from a distant gas station painted oily puddles in chemical colors. Mandy guided the van down a narrow access road, past shuttered warehouses with chain-link fences, her eyes scanning for invisibility.
“There,” she said, her voice tight.
A self-storage facility, its automated gate busted, hanging open. Rows of identical orange roll-up doors stared back like blind eyes. She nosed the van into an alley between two long buildings, killed the engine, and flicked off the headlights. Darkness, thick and immediate, swallowed them. Only the soft, green pulse from the artifact on the bench seat provided any light, painting their faces in ghostly relief.
The silence was a physical weight after the roaring escape. Mai’s breathing, which had been quick and shallow in the back, hitched. In the neon-tinged dark, Mandy saw movement in the rearview. Mai had the pizza box on her lap. She wasn’t opening it. Her hands were at the button of her shorts.
“What are you doing?” Felicity whispered, twisting in her seat.
Mai’s fingers worked the button free, then the zip. The sound was obscenely loud. “My heart is trying to punch through my ribs,” Mai said, her English accent crisp against the panic. “Adrenaline’s crashing. I feel sick. And that fucking thing…” She nodded at the glowing vial. “It’s buzzing in my teeth. In my bones.” She slid her hand inside her open shorts, beneath her underwear. Her head fell back against the seat, a sharp gasp escaping her lips. “If I’m going to die tonight, or get captured by men in black, or turn into a fucking tree… I want to come first. I need to feel something that isn’t fear.”
Felicity stared, her scholarly mind clearly trying to process the non-sequitur of sex against the backdrop of flight. But her body was reacting differently. Mandy watched her friend’s face in the pulsating green light. Curiosity flickered, then a dark, understanding arousal. Felicity had been ‘broken’ by a night of abandoned pleasure in her own home. The lesson had stuck: when the world is chaos, the body offers a defiant, screaming anchor.
“It’s… a physiological response to extreme stress,” Felicity murmured, as if quoting a textbook. But she was unbuckling her seatbelt. The mechanism clicked. She swiveled fully, kneeling on the passenger seat to face Mai. “A way to reassert autonomic control.”
“Felicity, for Christ’s sake, don’t analyse it,” Mai groaned, her hips pushing up against her own hand. “Just… fuck.”
Felicity reached over the seatback, her fingers tentative, then sure. They found Mai’s wrist, gently moved it aside, and replaced it with her own. She cupped Mai through the damp cotton of her panties, then slid beneath the elastic. Mandy, from the driver’s seat, heard the wet, unmistakable sound of Felicity’s fingers sliding into Mai’s heat.
Mai cried out, a raw, unfiltered sound that echoed in the metal van. “Yes. Like that.”
Mandy’s own breath caught. The sight in the mirror—Felicity’s intent, focused expression, Mai’s head thrashing side to side—unlocked a feral urgency in her gut. The terror of the attack, the responsibility of the artifact, the sheer audacity of their escape, it all condensed into a sharp, aching need between her legs. She was soaked.
She shoved her door open. The cool, damp air hit her skin. “Not in the van. Too cramped.” Her voice was a hoarse command. She grabbed the artifact, its glass warm and vibrating in her hand, and stumbled out.
The storage unit door to their left was padlocked. The one directly opposite the van’s sliding side door had a cut lock, dangling loose. Mandy grabbed it, yanked, and heaved the orange door upward. It rattled alarmingly but rose, revealing a cold, dark concrete box about ten feet square. Empty, save for dust and the smell of mildew.
“In here. Now.”
Mai scrambled out of the van, her shorts and underwear around her thighs, hobbling the few steps into the unit. Felicity followed, her eyes wide and dark with desire. Mandy stepped in after them, pulled the door down most of the way, leaving only a foot of gap for the sickly green light from the artifact, which she placed carefully in a dust-free corner.
The dim, pulsing glow turned the storage unit into a cave. The air was cold, raising goosebumps on their skin.
Mai didn’t hesitate. She kicked her clothes free, standing naked and defiant, her skin shimmering with a fine sheen of sweat and the artifact’s light. “Mandy,” she panted. “Your turn. Get over here.”
Mandy’s smirk returned, a mask for her own trembling need. She shucked her jeans and panties in one rough movement, leaving them in a pile. Her shirt and bra followed. The cold air nipped at her nipples, hardening them instantly.
Felicity, more hesitant, was fumbling with her sweater. Mai turned, grabbed the hem, and pulled it over Felicity’s head. “No time for shy, bookworm. You started this.” She kissed Felicity, hard and hungry, her tongue plunging into the other girl’s mouth. Felicity moaned into the kiss, her hands coming up to clutch at Mai’s back.
Mandy watched them for a heartbeat, the scholarly blonde and the athletic adventurer tangled together, skin against skin. Then she moved. She came up behind Felicity, molding her body against her friend’s back. She bit gently at Felicity’s shoulder, her hands sliding around to cup her small breasts, pinching and rolling the tight nipples.
“You’re so fucking wet for her, aren’t you?” Mandy whispered into Felicity’s ear, her voice gritty. “Watching her get herself off in the van. Thinking about how she tastes.”
Felicity could only whimper, breaking the kiss with Mai to let her head fall back against Mandy’s shoulder.
Mai dropped to her knees. She pushed Felicity’s leggings and underwear down her hips, helping her step out of them. Then she pulled Felicity towards her mouth. She didn’t tease. She buried her face between Felicity’s thighs, her tongue licking a broad, flat stripe through the slick folds before zeroing in on her clit.
Felicity shrieked, the sound bouncing off the concrete walls. Her hands flew to Mai’s head, fingers twisting in the dark hair. “Oh, God! Mai!”
Mandy held her steady, one arm locked around Felicity’s waist, the other hand trailing down her stomach. She found the soaked, swollen flesh below, her fingers meeting Mai’s relentless tongue. She slid two fingers inside Felicity, alongside Mai’s mouth, crooking them up to find that spongy spot inside. Felicity’s body clenched around her, a silken, vise-like grip.
“She’s gonna make you come, Felicity,” Mandy growled, pumping her fingers in time with the thrust of her hips against Felicity’s ass. “She’s going to eat your cunt until you scream, and I’m going to feel you shake apart.”
Mai’s technique was efficient, brutal, and perfect. She sucked Felicity’s clit into her mouth, applying rhythmic pressure with her lips while her tongue flicked over the sensitized nub. Her own need was a secondary drive, a fuel for her actions. The sounds she made were greedy, hungry, the wet, sloppy noises of absolute consumption.
Felicity came with a strangled, broken cry, her body buckling. Mandy held her up as she convulsed, feeling the intense, fluttering contractions around her fingers. Mai rode it out, gentling her mouth but not stopping until Felicity’s pleading whimpers became oversensitive moans.
As Felicity sagged, breathing in ragged sobs, Mai rocked back on her heels. Her chin glistened. She looked up at Mandy, her eyes black in the low light. “Your turn. I’m so empty I ache.”
Mandy guided the boneless Felicity to kneel on the dusty concrete, then turned to Mai. She pushed her, not gently, against the cold corrugated metal wall. “Then let’s fill you up.”
She kissed Mai, tasting Felicity on her lips and tongue, a musky, electric flavor. Her hand slid down Mai’s taut stomach, through the coarse, wet hair, and found her entrance. Mai was drenched, hot, and clenching around nothing. Mandy pushed two fingers inside, deep, and Mai threw her head back against the metal with a clang.
“Fuck, yes. More.”
Mandy added a third finger, stretching her, her own cunt throbbing in sympathetic rhythm. She scissored her fingers, working them in and out, the wet sounds lewd in the barren space. “You like that? Like being fucked by a girl after you just fucked my best friend?”
“I like anything that isn’t running,” Mai gasped, her hips grinding against Mandy’s hand. “I like your fingers. I want your mouth. I want your tongue in my ass. I want everything, Mandy. Now.”
Mandy dropped to her knees. She replaced her fingers with her mouth, licking into Mai with a feral intensity. She lapped at her swollen lips, sucked her clit, plunged her tongue as deep as it would go. Mai’s thighs trembled on either side of her head, her hands clawing at Mandy’s hair.
“Don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop, I’m so close!”
From the floor, Felicity, recovered, crawled over. She watched for a moment, her blue eyes hazy, then she leaned in and pressed her mouth to Mandy’s exposed, dripping sex from behind. Mandy jolted, a shocked, grateful cry muffled against Mai’s flesh. The dual sensation was overwhelming: the taste and feel of Mai on her tongue, and the exquisite, tender pull of Felicity’s mouth on her own aching clit.
It was a circuit of pleasure, desperate and complete. Mai came first, a series of sharp, barking cries, her cunt spasming against Mandy’s mouth. The intensity of her orgasm tipped Mandy over the edge. With Felicity’s tongue circling and sucking, Mandy’s own climax ripped through her, a white-hot wave that made her back arch and her vision speckle with green and black stars. She groaned, the vibration against Mai’s sensitive flesh sending another shiver through the other girl.
They collapsed into a heap on the cold floor, a tangle of limbs, sweat, and the smell of sex and dust. The only sound was their ragged breathing. The artifact in the corner pulsed, its light seeming slower, deeper, almost satiated.
After a long moment, Felicity spoke, her voice soft and wondering. “My mom was right. Mike and Casey broke me.”
Mandy let out a weak, breathless laugh. “Shut up.” She fumbled for her clothes.
They dressed in silence, the frantic energy spent, replaced by a brittle, clear-headed calm. The fear was still there, a constant background hum, but it was manageable now. They had reclaimed their bodies from it.
Mai picked up the artifact. The green leaf within glowed steadily. The golden tattoo on her palm shimmered in sympathy. She looked at it, then out the gap in the door at the van. “It pulled us here,” she said, no longer a question.
“What?” Mandy zipped her jeans.
“The urge. The need. It wasn’t just us.” Mai held up the vial. “It’s been feeding on our energy. Our panic. And our… that.” She gestured vaguely at the space where they’d just been. “It needed a charge. And this place…” She walked to the back wall of the storage unit, running her hand over the concrete. “This place is a dead spot. No magical resonance. A perfect hiding place to recalibrate.”
Felicity, ever the scholar, nodded slowly, buttoning her sweater. “A biological battery, using intense bio-electric and emotional output to power a phase-shift. It hid itself by making us hide it.”
Mandy stared at the glowing vial with new wariness. “So it used us. To recharge.”
“And to hide from whatever those black-clad bastards were using to track it,” Mai concluded. She tucked the vial into the inner pocket of her jacket. It glowed faintly through the fabric. “It’s done now. It has what it wants. For the moment.”
“And what does it want next?” Mandy asked, sliding the storage door fully open. The clean, damp air of the night washed in, erasing the scent of sex.
Mai stepped out, looking up at the sliver of moon visible between the warehouse roofs. The golden leaf on her palm tingled, a gentle, insistent pull, like a compass needle settling. It pointed west.
“It wants to go home,” Mai said softly. “And it wants me to take it.”
She looked at the van, then at her two companions. The girl who could fix anything, and the girl who could understand anything. A slow, determined smile touched her lips. “So. Road trip?”
Mandy snorted, hitting the button to unlock the van. The doors chunked open. “We’ve got a full tank of gas, half a meat lover’s pizza, and a magical stalker leaf. What could possibly go wrong?”
Felicity climbed into the passenger seat, pulling out her phone. It had no signal in the dead zone, but the notes app was open. She began typing, documenting everything: the physiological effects, the hypothesized link between sexual energy and the artifact’s phase-state, the directional pull. “We’ll need supplies,” she murmured. “A proper Geiger counter for mystical radiation, for starters. And snacks.”
Mandy started the engine. The reliable rumble was a comfort. She put the van in gear, gravel popping under the tires as they eased back onto the access road.
Behind them, the storage unit stood empty and dark, holding only the fading, musky ghost of their defiance. Ahead, the highway beckoned, a river of light leading into the unknown, thrumming with the promise of answers, and the certainty of more men in black, in gray, or in stranger uniforms yet.
The artifact, nestled against Mai’s heartbeat, glowed its steady, patient green, a lantern in the dark. The hunt was on.
The hunt was on.
The van merged back onto the interstate, a steel cocoon holding their shared breath. Inside, the air still hung thick with the scent of their bodies, a private humidity of sweat and sex and cold fear. Mai cradled the artifact in her lap, its glow seeping through her jacket like a localized infection of light. Her palm itched, the golden tattoo a warm, persistent brand.
“It’s pulling harder now,” she said, her voice quiet against the road noise. “West-southwest. Like a thread tied to my sternum.”
Felicity, tapping on her now-functional phone, glanced over. “Elevation change? Or just direction?”
“Both. It wants to go up.” Mai flexed her fingers, watching the leaf-shaped light beneath her skin dim and brighten. “Into mountains, maybe.”
Mandy drove, her eyes flicking between the dark highway and the GPS screen she’d set to topographic mode. “Mountains mean Colorado, or maybe the Ozarks if we’re wildly off course. We need a real plan, not just a magical dowser. We need to know what we’re carrying.”
“We know it eats panic and orgasms,” Mai offered drily. “And it can make people do things to produce both.”
Felicity blushed, but her tone remained analytical. “It manipulated our neurochemistry, yes. Amplified existing stress responses and libidinous impulses to create a high-energy output event in a magically null location. It’s intelligent. Goal-oriented.”
“It’s a bastard,” Mandy corrected, gripping the wheel. “A useful bastard, maybe, but a bastard.” She took an exit, following signs for a twenty-four-hour truck stop that glowed like a cheap oasis in the emptiness. “We need gas, and we need food that isn’t cold pizza. And maybe a map that isn’t in my skin.”
Back at the Horny House, the living room looked like a cartoon bomb had detonated in a museum of weird. A shattered lamp, a scorched patch of carpet from Calista’s controlled flare, and six tightly bound figures on the floor. Five of them were unnervingly still, their black-clad faces smooth and blank like polished stone where features should be.
“Definitely not Wands,” Bethany said, crouching beside a construct. She ran a crystalline scanner over its neck. “The tech is similar, but it’s crude. Aggressive. Ours is more elegant.”
“These are thugs with fancy toys,” Jan concluded, nudging one with her toe. Godfrey III sniffed it and sneezed. “The real one’s over there.”
The lone human man sat propped against the wrecked entertainment center, his nose bleeding from where Hank had introduced it to his own fist. He was maybe forty, with the build of a soldier and the dead eyes of a fanatic.
“I want five minutes with him,” Jan said, cracking her knuckles.
“Your ‘five minutes’ involves emotional whiplash and possible glitter, Jan,” Fatima countered, arms crossed. “We need coherent data.”
“My scanners can extract synaptic impressions,” Bethany stated, adjusting a dial on her device.
While they argued, Kim moved. She walked silently to the captive and knelt before him. She didn’t touch him. She simply held her hands, palms inward, on either side of his temples. Her eyes softened, not with pity, but with a profound, focused empathy.
The man’s dead eyes flinched. A tremor ran through his bound body. A single tear welled and tracked through the blood on his cheek. His jaw unclenched.
“Eleanor,” he whispered, the name a broken thing. “The hospital… the green light… they said they could save her.”
Kim’s voice was a gentle, relentless tide. “They lied. And you work for them anyway. To make it mean something. Tell me who they are. Tell me where the girl with the artifact is going.”
His resolve, built on grief and twisted promises, crumbled under the weight of the regret she poured into him. “The Verdancy,” he choked out. “The Order of the Verdant Pasture. The… the schismatics. They call themselves the True Root. The artifact is a seed. The girl is the soil. They want it planted. They want it to grow.”
He slumped, sobbing quietly.
Fatima placed a hand on Kim’s shoulder, a silent nod of approval. Kim stood, her face pale from the effort, but her gaze steady.
Mike and Casey, who had been assessing a broken window, looked at each other. Mike mouthed ‘Verdant Pasture?’ Casey gave a minuscule shrug, then her gaze drifted across the street to the one house with every light still blazing.
“Not the HOA,” Casey said softly.
“But it fits her SOP to a T,” Mike finished. He pulled out his phone. “Rick, call Mara Henderson. Have her on standby. If Betty loves rules, we’ll give her the queen of rulebooks.”
Meanwhile, Bruce and Ben huddled by the door. Ben’s knuckles were raw from his tackle. “We can’t just sit here,” Ben muttered, peering out at the street. “Mandy’s out there with that thing.”
“Aye, and my Felicity,” Bruce added, hefting his wrench.
Yukio, icing her knee on the couch, barked a laugh. “You think Mai needs your protection? Please. That girl could seduce a dragon and ride it into a volcano for fun. It’s everyone else who needs protection from her.”
Ben’s ears reddened. “I just… I want to help.”
Yukio studied him, then Bruce, her sharp eyes missing nothing. She nodded. “Fine. Help me into Ben’s car. I know how Mai thinks. If anyone can pick up her trail, it’s me. You boys can be the muscle.”
As Bruce and Ben carefully helped Yukio up and out, Mike and Casey were already walking across the dew-slick lawn toward Mrs. Anderson’s pristine porch. They didn’t stomp. They didn’t yell. They moved with the calm, relentless pace of people who had decided to be a problem.
Through the bay window, Bruce saw Mrs. Anderson’s face, previously smug, drain of color as Mike began speaking, his hands in his pockets, his expression one of mild, neighborly concern. Casey stood beside him, her eyebrow arched just so. It was the ‘Midwestern Tourist’ routine, weaponized.
Ben gunned the engine of his sensible sedan, turning away from the surreal domestic siege. “Which way?”
Yukio closed her eyes, her hand over her own heart, mirroring her daughter’s connection. “She’s buzzing. Adrenaline gone, endorphins fading, just the steady thrum of purpose.” She pointed. “That way. Follow the main arteries west. She’ll stick to the big roads until she can’t.”
The truck stop was a cathedral of fluorescence and fried food. Mandy pumped gas while Felicity went inside for supplies. Mai stayed in the van, the artifact a heavy secret on the passenger seat. She watched the parade of night travelers—truckers, families, loners—all oblivious to the pulsing, hungry thing mere feet away.
A large man in a flannel shirt stumbled out of the diner, his gait off. He stopped, blinked slowly at the van, and took a step toward it. His eyes were glazed, fixed on the side door.
Mai’s hand went to the door handle. The tattoo on her palm flared, a sudden, painful spike of heat.
The man took another step. Then he veered abruptly, walked to a garbage bin, and vomited profusely. A drunk, not a threat. Mai let out a held breath. The artifact’s glow subsided.
It was testing its reach. Influencing. It was hungry again.
Felicity returned, arms laden with bags. “I got beef jerky, water, three kinds of chips, and a topographic map of the central United States.” She slid in, her voice dropping. “And a disposable phone with cash. In case they’re tracking ours.”
Mandy finished pumping and got in. “Smart.” She started the engine. “Anything else?”
Felicity hesitated, then pulled a small, plain box from a bag. “Lubricant. And extra-strength condoms. The… biological output theory. If the artifact feeds on that energy, we should be prepared to generate it on demand. Safely.”
Mai stared, then let out a sharp, genuine laugh. “You’re the best fucking bookworm on the planet.”
Mandy just shook her head, a smirk playing on her lips as she pulled back onto the highway. The map was open on Felicity’s lap, the route taking shape under her finger, converging with the inexplicable pull in Mai’s bones. West-southwest, into the dark heart of the continent, pursued by faceless constructs, a grieving man’s masters, their parents, their lovers, and the terrifying, reasonable calm of Mike and Casey.
The van sped into the night, a tiny vessel of chaotic life carrying a seed that wanted to grow. The road ahead was black and endless, and the thing in Mai’s pocket was quietly, insistently, beginning to hum.