Chapter 16: The Dream's Demand
The dream wasn’t a memory. It was a ghost.
Jan floated in the warm, perfumed haze of Stacy’s old penthouse, the Chicago skyline a glittering tapestry beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. The air thrummed with the sounds of that weekend: skin slapping, breathless laughter, low moans that vibrated in the chest.
She saw them all, preserved in the amber of her magic.
Mike, younger, leaner, his face buried between Casey’s thighs with a desperate, grateful hunger. Casey’s head thrown back, her dark hair splayed on a pillow, one hand fisted in Mike’s shaggy brown hair, the other pinching her own nipple. “Yes, fuck, just like that, don’t stop…”
Stacy, moving with athletic grace, a harness strapped around her hips, fucking into a blissed-out Mara from behind. Mara, her lawyerly composure shattered, begged into the cushions. “Harder, you fucking tease, harder!”
Rebecca, her long blonde hair a curtain, was between Amy’s legs, licking with a teacher’s focused precision. Jason knelt behind Rebecca, his cock sliding in and out of her as he watched his girlfriend unravel, his eyes wide with possessive awe.
But the colors were muted, the sounds tinny and distant, like a broadcast from a failing satellite.
Only Yukio was real.
She walked naked through the tangled forest of limbs and pleasure. Sweat gleamed on her tattooed skin. The rose on her shoulder was fresh, vibrant. Her dark eyes weren’t glazed with magic or lust. They were sharp. Terrified. Hands reached for her—Amy’s, Jason’s, Jan’s own from where she watched, disembodied—but their fingers passed through her like smoke.
“Find me, Jan!” Yukio’s voice cut through the haze, sharp as broken glass.
Jan tried to call out, to move, but she was a spectator trapped in her own past.
“Don’t let me disappear!” Yukio’s form began to fracture. Static, jagged and black, crackled up her legs, eating the tattoos, dissolving the muscle and skin into frantic, pixelated noise. It smelled of ozone and burnt hair.
“The energy is eating me alive! You have to—”
The dream dissolved into a scream of white noise.
Jan woke with a violent jerk, a gasp tearing from her throat. The plush leather of the jet seat was cold against her sweat-slicked skin. The cabin lights were dim, the rhythmic hum of the engines a stark contrast to the silent scream still echoing in her skull.
“Red. Breathe.” Cameron’s voice was a low anchor in the dark. His hand was already on her arm, his grip firm, real.
She turned, clutching at him. Her breath came in ragged hitches. “She’s running out of time. The dream… it wasn’t just a memory. It was a warning. A distress signal.”
Cameron didn’t question it. He’d learned. He shifted in his seat, turning to face her fully. In the low light, his blue eyes were pools of calm intensity. “We’re landing in forty minutes. Brigid’s coordinating with Aisling on the ground. We have a plan.”
“Plans shatter,” Jan muttered, pushing her loose braid over her shoulder. The ghost of the static still prickled on her skin. She needed to be grounded. Now.
Her hand went to Cameron’s thigh, squeezing the hard muscle through his tactical pants. “I need to be here. Not back there.”
He understood. He always did. With a silent nod, he unbuckled his seatbelt, then hers. The cabin was mostly quiet. Up front, in the cockpit, the pilots were sealed away. The other passengers were asleep.
Jan slid from her seat, pulling Cameron down onto the floor of the narrow aisle. The carpet was rough against her knees. She didn’t want comfort. She wanted consummation. A claiming. Proof of life.
Her fingers fumbled with his belt buckle, then the button of his pants. She yanked them down just enough, freeing his cock. It was already hardening in her grip, thick and warm. She leaned forward, not to kiss him, but to take him into her mouth all at once, swallowing him down to the root.
Cameron’s head thumped back against the seat base with a dull thud. A sharp, stifled groan escaped him. His hands went to her hair, not guiding, just holding on as she worked him.
Jan sucked with a frantic, needy rhythm. She used her tongue, pressing hard along the frenulum, hollowing her cheeks. She wanted to taste him, to drown the phantom taste of ozone in the salty, vital reality of his pre-come. She deep-throated him, again and again, her own arousal a sharp, soaking heat between her legs.
“Jan… fuck,” he rasped, his hips giving an involuntary jerk.
She pulled off with a wet pop, her breathing harsh. “I need you inside me. Now. Hard. Make me forget.”
She didn’t bother taking off her leggings. Just shoved them and her underwear down to her thighs. She turned, bracing her hands on the edge of the seat, presenting herself to him. The cool air of the cabin hit her wet cunt, making her clench.
Cameron didn’t hesitate. He moved behind her, one hand gripping her hip, the other guiding his cock to her entrance. He pushed in with a single, smooth, relentless thrust that buried him to the hilt.
Jan cried out, the sound swallowed by the engine hum. He filled her completely, stretching her, anchoring her in the pure, physical now. He began to move, setting a punishing, rhythmic pace. Each drive of his hips slammed her against the seat edge, a blunt, delicious punctuation.
“Is this what you need?” he growled, his voice taut. His hand left her hip and snaked around her front, finding her clit. His fingers were calloused, rough. Perfect. He rubbed tight, furious circles as he fucked her.
“Yes! God, yes, just like that, Ranger, don’t stop—” Her words fractured into gasps. The pleasure was a white-hot coil, burning away the lingering dread. Her cunt clutched at him, desperate and greedy. She pushed back against him, meeting every thrust, the slap of their skin a private, urgent percussion under the jet’s drone.
She came suddenly, a silent, seismic shock that locked her muscles and tore a choked sob from her throat. Her inner walls fluttered violently around his driving cock.
The feel of her climax tipping him over the edge. His rhythm broke, his thrusts turning erratic, brutal. With a grunt that was half her name, half a prayer, he shoved deep and held, his release pumping into her in hot, endless pulses.
They stayed like that for a long moment, panting, connected, dripping. The aftershocks of her orgasm slowly faded, leaving a blessed, heavy emptiness in her mind.
He gently pulled out, helping her upright. They cleaned up with tissues from a seat-back pocket, a silent, domestic ritual. As they redressed, the ghost of the dream retreated, held at bay by the scent of sex and Cameron’s sweat.
Jan leaned her head against his shoulder. “She was there. At the beginning. She walked into that party like she owned it.”
“Tell me,” Cameron said, his arm around her.
So Jan did. Not as a dream, but as a memory. The true one.
Twenty-Two Years Ago – Saturday Morning, Stacy’s Penthouse
The magic had been humming for over twelve hours, a low-grade, pleasurable current in the air. The floor was a landscape of sleeping bodies, empty pizza boxes, and wine bottles.
A knock at the door, firm and out of place.
Jan, naked and sticky, padded to the door. She peered through the peephole. A young woman in a delivery uniform held a large cardboard box of bagels and coffee. She had dark, curious eyes and an amused tilt to her mouth.
Jan opened the door, the full force of the Green Moon’s ambiance—the scent of sex, the sight of her naked, unabashed body—washing over the delivery girl.
The girl’s eyes widened, but not with shock. With interest. She looked past Jan, taking in the sprawled, nude forms of Mike, Casey, Stacy, Mara, Rebecca. Her smile grew. “Um. Delivery for Steinberg.”
“Bring it in,” Jan said, stepping aside. The magic did the rest. It latched onto the girl’s innate adventurousness, her hungry curiosity. It didn’t compel. It invited.
The girl, Yukio, stepped inside. She set the box down on a cluttered table. Her gaze landed on Mike, who was kneeling between Casey’s legs again, his face glistening. On Stacy, who was lazily tracing patterns on Mara’s back. On Rebecca, who was watching everything with a serene, scientific fascination.
“You can stay, you know,” Jan said, her voice a low murmur. “The uniform’s probably uncomfortable.”
Yukio looked at Jan, then back at the room. A wild, fearless grin spread across her face. “What the hell.”
She peeled off her jacket, then her t-shirt. Her breasts were small, high, her body taut with wiry strength. The rose tattoo on her shoulder was fresh. She shoved her shorts and underwear down in one motion, kicking them aside. She stood there, naked and unselfconscious, as if she’d been born in that room.
“I’m Yukio.”
“Jan.”
Yukio’s eyes scanned the room, assessing. They landed on Casey, who was watching her over Mike’s bobbing head. “You,” Yukio said, her voice holding a challenge. “You look like you could use a second set of hands.”
Casey’s smirk was instant. “You offering?”
Yukio dropped to her knees beside Mike. She didn’t touch him. Instead, she leaned in and kissed Casey, hard and deep. Casey’s hand came up, tangling in Yukio’s dark hair. Mike paused, looking up, confused and aroused.
Yukio broke the kiss, her lips wet. “Keep licking,” she ordered Mike, her voice husky. Then she lowered her head, her mouth finding Casey’s other set of lips, her tongue joining Mike’s in a wet, synchronized dance.
Casey’s back arched off the floor, a raw, guttural shout tearing from her throat. “Fuck! Oh, fuck me, yes!”
It was the catalyst. The new energy. Yukio moved through them like a spark through dry tinder. She fucked Jason while Amy rode his face after introducing them to the others. She let Stacy take her with the strap-on, braced against the windows with the city spread out below. She went down on Mara with a ruthless efficiency that had the lawyer sobbing. She was everywhere, fearless, hungry, a force of nature they had all been waiting for without knowing it.
Later, as the sun set on Sunday, Yukio lay tangled with Amy and Jason, her head on Amy’s stomach. She looked across the room at Jan. “This is the best delivery gig I’ve ever had.”
Jan laughed. “Stick around. Breakfast is coming.”
And she did. She stayed through the final, slow, sated hours. When Mike and Casey left together on Monday morning, holding hands, dazed and in love, Yukio was there, waving from the doorway, a member of the tribe.
Present – The Jet Cabin
Jan finished the recollection, the vivid images settling in the quiet dark. “She walked in and claimed a piece of us. Of our chaos. She’s always been a survivor.”
Cameron kissed her temple. “Then she’s surviving this. We’ll find her.”
A soft chime echoed through the cabin, followed by the pilot’s calm voice over the intercom. “We’re beginning our descent into Kerry. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts. Local time is 4:17 a.m. Weather is… unsettled.”
Jan buckled her belt, looking out the window. Below, the Atlantic was a sheet of hammered lead under a bruised sky. The coast of Ireland emerged from the gloom, rugged and ancient.
As the jet banked, a streak of ember-orange cut through the clouds far below, moving fast and eastward, perpendicular to their path. It was there for only a second, then vanished into the pre-dawn murk.
No one else seemed to see it.
But Jan did. She pressed her forehead to the cool glass, her breath fogging it.
“She’s not the only one coming,” Jan whispered, to herself, to Cameron, to the memory of a dragon’s growl. “Mai’s bringing the cavalry.”
The ember-orange streak vanished into the low clouds. Jan kept her forehead against the cool window, the phantom heat of that glimpse lingering behind her eyes. The jet shuddered slightly as it pierced the thickening Irish weather.
Beside her, Cameron remained silent, his hand finding hers on the armrest. His thumb traced a slow circle on her knuckles, a tactile reminder of the present. The plane dipped, beginning its descent through a gauze of grey rain.
Hours earlier and thousands of miles west, the noise of the private hangar was a hollow roar.
Stacy led her bedraggled, sex-rumpled team across the gleaming concrete. Her own duffle was slung with military precision, a stark contrast to the disordered, loose-limbed group trailing her. Mike carried a backpack, his face a study in amused exhaustion. Casey walked with a slight, satisfied wince, a secret smirk playing on her lips.
They filed up the stairs into the jet’s cabin, where the warm, quiet air smelled of coffee and leather.
Amy Bryant looked up from her tablet, her willowy frame curled in a plush seat. “Hey! What took you guys so—” The question died as her wide blue eyes swept over them. She took in Mara’s disheveled curls, the hickey on Rebecca’s neck, the satiated, heavy-lidded look on Mike and Casey’s faces. A slow, knowing grin spread across Amy’s face. “Oh.Right. Dumb question.”
Jason, sitting beside her, adjusted his glasses. “Stacy’s idea. She thought if we were going to find Yukio, we should have everyone who was there at the beginning.” He gestured vaguely, encompassing the cabin. “The original response team.”
Mike dropped into a seat with a grunt. “Makes a weird kind of sense.” He began buckling his belt. “Familiar anchors.”
Mara was already pulling her phone from her purse. “Just need to tell Zack I’m going dark for a bit.” She put the phone to her ear, waiting. When he answered, her voice shifted into a low, intimate register the others knew well. “Hey, babe. Ireland. Yes, again. The Yukio thing. I’ll be out of the country for… however long it takes.”
She paused, listening, and her smirk turned wicked. “What kept me? Oh, just an epic, multi-person, kitchen-table orgy at the Horny House. Mike, Casey, Rebecca, the kids… yeah, those kids. It was… comprehensive.” She listened again, her free hand tapping on her thigh. Her voice dropped to a husky purr. “I can hear how much that’s turning you on. Your breathing just changed. Keep thinking about it. I’ll give you every filthy detail when I get home, and then I’m going to ride you until you forget your own name.” She chuckled. “Love you too. Bye.”
She ended the call, slipping the phone away with a self-satisfied sigh.
Amy, meanwhile, had leaned across the aisle to Casey. “So. The ‘Horny House’ strikes again, I see.”
Casey shrugged, but her smile was genuine. “The nickname’s growing on me, I gotta admit.”
Amy’s eyes twinkled with maternal mischief. “And why, pray tell, are you corrupting my baby boy?”
“Mom!” Ben’s voice cracked from three rows back, where he was wedged between Mandy and a window.
Casey just shrugged again, unfazed. “You got any idea how well-equipped your son is, Amy? Seriously. We’re talking legendary-tier equipment.”
From the front, Stacy called back without turning. “Can confirm.”
Rebecca nodded, sipping a water bottle. “Quite impressive.”
Amy burst out laughing, a bright, musical sound. “Of course I know! I used to change his diapers. I’ve seen the blueprint since it was a bobblehead.”
Ben sunk lower in his seat, his face the color of a fire engine. Mandy elbowed him. “Oh, relax. You didn’t mind when my parents talked about sex in front of us.”
Beth, fastening her seatbelt across the aisle, chimed in. “He didn’t mind when our parents had sex in front of us. Like, this morning. During breakfast.”
Mandy nodded sagely. “Yeah. And Mom ate me out last night, too. Before Dad fucked her.”
From the back, where he was stowing bags, Rick choked on his own saliva. A spray of Diet Coke misted the seat in front of him. “Jesus, Mandy!”
Mara, now applying lip balm, called out cheerfully. “Zack could hear all that, by the way. He says the collective taboo of it is making him even harder. So keep up the good work, everyone. My welcome-home fuck is going to be phenomenal.”
Felicity, bouncing slightly in her seat despite the seatbelt sign, beamed. “It was so educational! The practical applications of intimacy as a tension-release mechanism are vastly underrated! And Mr. Williamson’s oral technique has a statistically significant correlation with—”
Rebecca reached over and gently placed a hand on her daughter’s arm, a smirk on her face. “I think Mike broke my daughter.”
Amy leaned her head on Jason’s shoulder, speaking loudly enough for the whole cabin to hear. “We really need to visit the Horny House again soon, honey. For research.”
“MOM!” Ben’s plea was a strangled whisper of utter mortification.
“What?” Amy said, all innocence. “Your father and I like to swap. It keeps things fresh.”
Ben put his hands over his face. Mandy giggled, kissing his burning cheek.
Before the teasing could escalate further, the pilot’s calm voice filled the cabin. “Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff. We are number two for departure.”
The jet began its smooth roll forward, engines building to a deafening pitch within the hangar before emerging onto the rain-slicked runway. The lights of Chicago blurred into streaks of gold and white.
As the plane turned onto the main runway, a synchronized chorus of pings and buzzes erupted. Mike, Casey, Rebecca, Mara, Stacy, Amy, and Jason all glanced at their phones, pulled from pockets and purses.
The screen lit up with a single line from Jan.
THE DRAGONRIDER’S DAUGHTER IS BRINGING THE FIREPOWER.
Mike showed his screen to Casey. She read it, her smirk fading into something sharper, more determined. She looked out the window as the jet accelerated, the force pushing them back into their seats.
“Hold on, Yukio,” Casey murmured, her voice lost under the roar of the engines. “The whole damn troop is coming.”
The descent into Kerry was a violent negotiation.
Jan’s jet dropped through air that felt like wet wool, turbulence jostling the cabin like dice in a cup. Outside her window, the world was a monochrome smear of grey sea and darker land. The ember streak did not reappear.
“Local authorities are… unhelpful,” Brigid’s voice crackled through the satellite phone Cameron held. The archaeologist’s tone was clipped, strained by bad connection and worse news. “Aisling has contained the localised reality tremors at the Féth Fiada, but the perimeter is unstable. The Consortium has people here. Not official. Remnants. Scavengers.”
“What do they want?” Cameron asked, his voice flat.
“The energy she’s carrying,” Brigid said. “They think they can harvest it. Weaponize the despair. They’re using crude dampeners, trying to trap the next emergence spike. They’ll kill her in the process.”
Jan felt the dream-static crackle along her nerves. Eating me alive. “We land in ten minutes. Where’s Aisling?”
“The old churchyard. She’s holding the line. Jan… the emotional residue here is… profound. It’s not just Yukio’s pain. It’s the land’s. It remembers the relay station. It’s bleeding.”
The line crackled and went dead. Cameron lowered the phone. The jet’s wheels shrieked as they touched tarmac, a jarring, sudden grip on the earth.
A black SUV was waiting on the fog-wreathed tarmac, its engine running. Aisling’s contact. Jan, Cameron, and two serious-faced Green Moon acolytes from Dublin piled in. The vehicle sped off before the door was fully shut, tearing away from the airport’s dim lights and into the deep, waiting dark of the Irish countryside.
The road narrowed to a lane, stone walls hemming them in. The driver, a grim-faced man with startlingly green eyes, spoke only once. “The veil between is thin as a sigh here tonight. Mind your thoughts. They can become things.”
Rain peppered the windshield. Not normal rain. It sizzled where it hit the glass, leaving tiny, phosphorescent trails that faded after a second. Magical runoff.
They arrived at the edge of Ballymore. The SUV stopped on a dirt track. The driver nodded toward a path leading up a hill, toward a crumbling stone church outlined against the restless sky. “She’s there. I go no further. The field disrupts machinery.”
They got out. The air was cold and thick, charged like the moment before a lightning strike. It was hard to breathe. Each inhalation carried a taste of metal and salt, of deep, wet earth, and underneath it, a sour, acrid note of perfected, technological despair.
Jan started up the path, Cameron a half-step behind, the two acolytes flanking. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. This wasn’t a rescue anymore. It was a race.
A figure emerged from the shadows of a yew tree. Aisling. The Guardian’s face was pale, etched with strain. The air around her shimmered, a barely-visible dome of energy that made Jan’s teeth ache.
“She’s coming back,” Aisling said, her voice taut. “The cycle is accelerating faster than predicted. The confluence point is in the church. The Consortium has the far side of the hill ringed with dampening pylons. They’re trying to create a cage for the energy surge.”
“Where’s Mai?” Jan asked.
Aisling looked upward, into the churning clouds. “The dragon is circling. Waiting for the breach. The girl is… formidable. She argues with the beast like it’s a stubborn uncle.”
A low hum began to build in the ground, vibrating up through the soles of Jan’s boots. The rain of light intensified. In the distance, from the other side of the hill, a harsh, blue-white arc of energy flashed—a Consortium pylon powering up.
“We need to get inside the church before she manifests,” Aisling said, turning. “Her consciousness will be fragile. She may not know you. The despair will have twisted everything.”
They ran the last hundred yards. The old church door was oak, blackened by age. It groaned open at Aisling’s touch. Inside, it was darker than the night, the only light a faint, sickly-green phosphorescence coming from the very stones of the altar. The air was a physical weight, saturated with a grief so thick it was hard to move.
In the center of the nave, the space was beginning to warp. The air folded in on itself, like a sheet of glass heated to the point of melting. A low, subsonic whine pierced Jan’s skull.
“She’s here,” Aisling whispered.
The folding air ripped.
A body tumbled out onto the cold stone floor, naked, curled in a fetal position. Yukio.
She was gaunt, her ribs visible under skin marred by crawling, violent static burns that pulsed with ugly black light. Her tattoos seemed to writhe. She shuddered, a raw, animal sound of pain scraping from her throat.
Jan took a step forward. “Yukio.”
The woman’s head snapped up. Her eyes were wide, blind with panic and pain. There was no recognition in them. Only a feral, trapped terror. The static crackled up her arms, snapping at the charged air.
“Stay back!” she screamed, the voice ragged and broken. “It lies! It wears their faces! It lies!”
The despair energy, made manifest, rose around her like a shuddering, black aurora. It wept. It whispered. It promised an end to all feeling.
From outside, the harsh, sterile hum of the Consortium dampeners rose to a deafening peak. The cage was closing.
And high above, through the broken roof of the church, a shadow darker than the sky blotted out the clouds. The beat of vast, leathern wings was a thunder that shook the stones. A roar answered the hum of technology—a sound of ancient fury, of fire in the belly, of a bond that spanned decades.
Mai had brought the firepower.
Yukio, huddled in her torment, flinched at the dragon’s cry. A flicker, a ghost of the old, fearless adventurer, crossed her ravaged face. Confusion. A memory.
“Flamewing…?” she breathed, the word a fractured thing.
The black aurora around her swelled, lashing out at the sound of the name, at the spark of memory. It was a battle for her soul, and the battlefield was this sacred, bleeding ground. Jan knew what she had to do. She had to reach through the despair and remind Yukio of joy. Of skin. Of connection. Of the taste of another person’s pleasure. She had to use the first magic, the oldest magic she knew.
The dragon roared again. The Consortium dampeners flared, blue-white against the black. The church trembled.
Jan took another step, hands open, her own Green Moon power rising in her chest, a warm, golden counterpoint to the chilling dark. “Yukio,” she said, putting every ounce of that long-ago weekend, of bagels and sweat and fearless laughter, into the name. “Look at me.”