Chapter 10: Rescue and Retribution
The sickly green light was not a tunnel but a liquid, pushing against Jan and Fatima’s skin as Aemelia dragged them forward. It felt thick, like wading through cold oil. The icy shackles bit deeper with every step.
“Where are you taking us?” Fatima demanded, her voice tight. She was straining against the bindings, a futile effort that only made the cold sear into her wrists.
“To a place of quiet,” Aemelia answered, her tone devoid of warmth. “Where your… exuberance will not attract scavengers. Your magic is a beacon, Green Moon. Crude. Loud. I require silence for what comes next.”
Jan stumbled, the ground beneath her feet shifting from hard-packed sand to smooth, worn stone. The green light began to diffuse, revealing they were in a circular chamber carved directly from the living rock. The walls were covered in petroglyphs, not just carved, but painted in substances that glimmered faintly in the residual glow. Some depicted stars and spirals. Others showed distorted, screaming figures being consumed by shapes with too many teeth.
In the center of the room was a raised dais, and on it, a stone slab. It looked less like an altar and more like a surgical table.
Aemelia released the tether of light, letting them stagger apart. The shackles remained. “My transportation will be here soon,” she said, gliding toward the far wall where a deep, natural alcove held a nest of silks and furs. “A being of the deep desert, loyal to coin and secrets. Until it arrives, you will remain silent. Your magic is bound. Attempt anything, and I will freeze the blood in your veins. It is a remarkably painful way to die.”
Jan shot a look at Fatima. Her friend’s eyes were wide, scanning the room. Looking for weaknesses, for angles. Jan took a breath, about to deploy her most reliable weapon—a torrent of annoying questions—when the ground trembled.
It wasn’t a violent shake. It was a deep, sonorous thrum, like a colossal heart beating once, miles below them. The green light in the chamber pulsed in time with it, brighter for a second. The painted figures on the wall seemed to writhe.
Aemelia froze, one hand going to her abdomen. A flicker of something—not fear, but profound irritation—crossed her perfect features. “A stray echo,” she murmured, more to herself than to them. “The desert mutters in its sleep.”
Another thrum, stronger this time. A fine trickle of sand streamed from a crack in the ceiling.
Outside, in the narrow canyon, the world exploded into action.
“Now!” Brigid’s voice was a sharp, clear command, devoid of its usual quiet uncertainty.
On the ridge above the cleft, she held her hands out, fingers spread. Glowing equations, intricate and burning with white light, spiraled from her palms and shot down towards the entrance Aemelia had taken. They weren’t attacks. They were complex, elegant unravelings. As they touched the mouth of the cleft, the solidified green light rippled like disturbed water, then dissolved with a sound like shattering crystal.
“Go!” Aisling yelled, already sliding down the sandy slope, a short, wicked-looking blackthorn club materializing in her hand from a sheath at her back.
Stacy was a blur of motion. She hit the ground running, and before the last shards of magical ward had faded, she was at the newly exposed entrance. She didn’t hesitate. A powerful kick, born of a thousand leg presses and squat thrusts, slammed into the rough-hewn stone door. It didn’t splinter; it blew inward, tearing from ancient hinges with a shriek of protesting rock.
She surged through, a borrowed Golden Wand pistol held in a professional two-handed grip. The light from the chamber painted her in eerie green. She saw Aemelia, turning from her alcove, an expression of icy rage forming. She saw Jan and Fatima, shackled and pale against the far wall.
And she saw the stone slab.
“Hands where I can see them, Elsa,” Stacy snarled, sighting down the barrel at Aemelia’s center mass.
Aemelia’s laugh was a dry, crackling sound. “A mortal weapon? How quaint.” She raised a hand, fingers poised to snap, frost already gathering at her fingertips.
She never finished the gesture.
From the shadows behind the stone slab, where the green light was weakest, a pool of darkness detached itself. It flowed up, solidifying into the shape of a woman with flowing red hair and eyes that glowed like dying coals. Vivian Chase, in her full succubus form, moved with a predator’s silence. Her fingers, tipped with sharp, shadowy claws, wrapped around Aemelia’s throat from behind.
Aemelia stiffened, a gasp escaping her lips. The frost on her fingers melted instantly.
“You talk too much,” Vivian whispered, her voice layered with a hundred hungry echoes. She wasn’t timid now. This was the predator beneath the skin, the thing that fed on life and lust. She yanked Aemelia back against her body, one hand snaking around to cup the elf’s breast through her diaphanous gown. Her other hand remained at her throat, not squeezing, but holding. A warning.
Aemelia tried to summon her ice magic. A faint rime started to form on Vivian’s shadowy arm, but Vivian simply pressed her lips to the side of Aemelia’s neck. Where her lips touched, the magic drained, siphoned away into the hungry void of the succubus. Aemelia shuddered, a shocked, vulnerable sound escaping her. It wasn’t pain. It was a deeper violation—the theft of her power, the sensation of being consumed.
“My turn,” Vivian growled, and she spun Aemelia around, slamming her onto the stone slab on her back. The elf’s breath left her in a rush. Vivian was on her in an instant, straddling her hips, pinning her wrists above her head with one shadow-clawed hand. With her free hand, she ripped the silken gown open from neck to navel, exposing Aemelia’s pale, perfect breasts.
“Don’t,” Aemelia choked out, her glacial composure shattered into splinters of panic.
Vivian ignored her. She lowered her head, her mouth closing over one peaked nipple. But it wasn’t a lover’s kiss. Her teeth scraped the sensitive flesh, not quite breaking the skin, and she sucked. Aemelia arched off the slab, a ragged cry torn from her throat. This wasn’t pleasure. It was a feeding. Vivian was drinking the very essence of her, the cold, potent magical energy that flowed in an elf’s veins like blood. A visible, shimmering stream of silver light flowed from Aemelia’s breast into Vivian’s mouth.
The ground thrummed again, violently. A large chunk of rock broke from the ceiling and crashed to the floor near the entrance. Bethany ducked inside, her pink hair dusted with sand and grit. She took in the scene—Vivian feeding on a prone Aemelia, Stacy covering them, Jan and Fatima staring—and didn’t miss a beat.
She pulled two bronze disks from inside her jacket. They were simple, unadorned, about the size of her palm. With practiced efficiency, she slapped one onto each of Aemelia’s exposed wrists. The disks glowed with a soft, amber light, and lines of restraining energy shot out, wrapping around Aemelia’s arms and anchoring them to the stone slab itself.
Vivian released Aemelia’s breast with a final, predatory lick. The elf lay gasping, her skin gone ashen, the luminous silver light in her veins visibly dimmed. Her swollen belly, however, continued to glow with that persistent, sickly green light, pulsing in time with the deep thrumming from below.
“Her magic’s suppressed,” Bethany said, her voice clinical. “The bindings should hold. For now.”
With Aemelia contained, Jan felt the icy shackles on her and Fatima’s wrists vanish. They crumbled into wisps of cold mist. Jan stumbled forward, rubbing her sore wrists, and straight into Fatima’s arms. Fatima caught her, holding her tight for a second, their foreheads touching. Then Fatima pulled Jan’s face to hers and kissed her, hard and desperate. It wasn’t a kiss of passion, but of shared terror, relief, and furious, united purpose. Jan kissed her back just as fiercely, their lips salty with sweat and the metallic taste of blood from where they’d bitten them in fear.
“We need to stabilize the chamber,” Brigid’s voice called from the entrance. She and Aisling stepped inside, Nora and Katie behind them. Brigid’s hands were still glowing with faint equations. “The entity below is reacting to the magical discharge. It’s agitated.”
“We need to calm it,” Aisling said, her eyes wide as she took in the petroglyphs. “These aren’t decorations. They’re warnings. And supplications. This thing… it was worshipped. Or feared. Or both.”
Annie pushed through, holding Sophie’s carrier in one hand. The calico kitten peered out, unimpressed. Annie’s other hand was clenched around a handful of seeds. “I can try,” she said, her voice firm despite the fear in her eyes. “But I need a power source. My connection to the Verdant Pasture is weak here. It’s all stone and dead air.”
Jan broke the kiss with Fatima, a wild idea sparking in her eyes. She looked at Fatima, then at Annie. “Use us.”
Fatima blinked. “What?”
“Green Moon magic,” Jan said, her words tumbling out fast. “It’s about… connection. Life. Joy. It’s the opposite of whatever cold, hungry shit is under the sand. Annie, you channel life. We’ll… we’ll feed you. We’ll be your battery.”
Understanding dawned on Fatima’s face, followed by a sharp nod. “A triangulation. We merge our energies, funnel them through Annie’s link to the Verdant Pasture, and try to send a pulse of… of peace downwards. To lull it back to sleep.”
“It’s deeply stupid and might get us all killed,” Jan said, a grin spreading across her face. “Let’s do it.”
They didn’t have time for ceremony. Annie knelt on the shuddering floor, pouring her handful of seeds into the sand. She placed her palms flat on the ground, closing her eyes. Jan and Fatima knelt facing each other on either side of her, their knees touching.
“How do we…?” Jan began.
Fatima answered by reaching out and grabbing Jan’s face, pulling her into another kiss. This one was different. It was purposeful. Jan felt it immediately—a surge of power, not the chaotic, horny energy she usually threw around, but a focused, brilliant stream of pure feeling. Love for her friends, her stupid, wonderful, infuriating family. Fear for Rebecca, for Mike and Casey’s baby, for the world. A fierce, defiant joy that they were still alive, still fighting. She poured it all into the kiss, into Fatima.
Fatima took it, her own magic—structured, studied, deeply intuitive—merging with Jan’s wild torrent. She was the conduit, the filter. She shaped the raw energy, honed it into a coherent signal, and then she broke the kiss, placing her hands on Annie’s shoulders.
Annie gasped. Her back arched. Vines, impossibly green and vibrant, burst from the scattered seeds at her knees, spiraling around her legs, her torso, digging into the stone floor with tiny, questing roots. The air in the chamber suddenly smelled of wet soil and blooming jasmine, overwhelming the scent of ozone and decay.
The green light emanating from Aemelia’s womb flickered, conflicting with the pure, verdant energy flowing from Annie. The deep thrumming from below hesitated, stuttered.
On the slab, Aemelia weakly tried to struggle against the bronze bindings. “Fools,” she croaked. “You are pouring water into a parched gulch. It will only want more.”
Vivian, still straddling her, leaned down, her shadowy form solidifying back into her human appearance, though her eyes still glowed. “Then we’ll have to give it something else to think about,” she murmured. Her hands went to the remaining tatters of Aemelia’s gown, tearing them away completely. The elf was fully exposed now, pale and perfect and utterly helpless. Vivian’s touch was no longer about feeding on magic. It was about domination. About drowning out the entity’s call with a more immediate, visceral sensation.
She slid down Aemelia’s body, her mouth leaving a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses down her sternum, over the quivering plane of her stomach. Aemelia tried to buck, to twist away, but the bindings held her fast, and Vivian’s weight was immovable.
“Don’t you dare,” Aemelia hissed, her voice trembling.
“Or what?” Vivian asked, her breath hot against the inside of Aemelia’s thigh. “You’ll freeze me? Your magic’s tied up, princess.” She didn’t wait for an answer. She buried her face between Aemelia’s legs, her tongue finding its target with unerring accuracy.
Aemelia’s back bowed off the slab, a sharp, fractured cry tearing from her throat. It was a sound of shock, of outrage, and against her will, of raw, unwilling pleasure. Vivian worked her with a relentless, expert rhythm, her tongue plunging deep, then circling the sensitive bundle of nerves with focused, brutal pressure. She used her lips, her teeth in gentle nips, her whole mouth in a devouring act of cunnilingus that was less about giving pleasure and more about forcing a reaction, overwhelming Aemelia’s nervous system with sensation.
Aemelia’s protests turned into choked gasps. Her hips, against her own fierce will, began to jerk, to push against Vivian’s mouth. Her head thrashed side to side, her long white hair fanning out like a halo. The glacial armor was gone, melted away by a heat that was entirely, mortally physical.
The thrumming in the ground softened, becoming less a heartbeat and more a confused murmur.
“It’s working,” Annie whispered, her voice strained. The vines around her pulsed with light, feeding off the combined Green Moon energy flowing through her. “Keep… keep it focused.”
Jan and Fatima locked eyes again. Their hands found each other, fingers lacing together tightly. They didn’t kiss this time. They just held the connection, letting their combined power flow through Annie and into the deep earth. It was a song of growth, of quiet, of peaceful slumber.
In the spa suite miles away, the therapeutic session was reaching its own crescendo.
Ginny came first, arching off the rug with a shattered cry as Jen’s mouth and fingers sent her over the edge. Dr. Nash, her hand soaked from Molly’s climax, turned her full attention to Mara. Nash pushed her back against the foot of the bed, spreading her legs wide.
“Let go, Counselor,” Nash commanded, her voice low and thick. “Let it all out.” She drove three fingers deep into Mara, her thumb working her clit in tight, frantic circles.
Mara, her professional armor utterly incinerated, dug her heels into the rug and fucked herself back onto Nash’s hand. “Fuck, Jules, yes, right there, god yes!” Her orgasm hit her like a tidal wave, violent and absolute, wracking her body with tremors.
Casey watched from the bed, her own hand a blur between her legs, her eyes locked on Mike’s face on the laptop screen. He was stroking himself slowly, his gaze intense on hers. They didn’t need magic.
They didn’t need magic.
Casey’s climax ripped through her, sharp and bright, her gaze locked on Mike’s pixelated eyes as she cried out his name. He followed a second later, his head falling back, a groan of pure release breaking from his lips. They stayed like that for a long moment, connected across the distance by screen and breath, the aftershocks quieting.
He loved her. She loved him. Rick was safe. The secret about Aemelia’s baby—Mike’s and her own future grandchild, a thought so bizarre it made her head spin—was a knot of anger she’d save for their next session with Jules. It would be a hell of a conversation. But the love was the foundation, solid and unshakeable beneath all the weirdness.
Her thoughts were shattered by a violent jolt.
The floor beneath the spa suite pitched. The infinity pool’s water sloshed over the edge in a sudden wave. Glassware on the minibar rattled and crashed.
“What the fuck was that?” Mara barked, scrambling to pull her slacks up, her post-orgasm haze vaporized by adrenaline.
Dr. Nash was already on her feet, snatching her silk robe. Her face, flushed and satisfied moments before, was now pale, her sultry eyes sharp with clinical alarm. “That was a deep tectonic shift,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “But it’s not geological. The magical frequency is all wrong. It’s a distress signal from something very, very old.” She tied the robe with a swift, decisive motion. “Everyone, get dressed. Now. We need to assess for a possible evacuation.”
Back in the cavern, the temporary lull snapped. The ground tremor that shook the spa was a dull echo here, a much more violent convulsion.
A rain of pebbles and dust dislodged from the ceiling. The verdant glow around Annie faltered. Jan and Fatima broke their connection, stumbling apart as the stone floor lurched.
“Keep it together, Annie!” Jan shouted, grabbing onto a protruding rock to stay upright.
Aemelia, beneath Vivian, let out a strained, desperate laugh. “Your pathetic gardening cannot pacify a god,” she spat, her body still trembling from the forced climax Vivian had wrung from her.
Stacy kept her pistol trained on the elf but shot a look at Vivian. “Easy, Vivi. Don’t hurt the… the kid.” She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘grandchild.’ It was too fucking weird.
Katie Manelli, who had been nervously twisting a black ribbon bracelet on her wrist, suddenly looked up, her goth-pale face going whiter. “Wait. Hold on. Back outside, when Bethany talked to her.” She pointed a trembling finger at Aemelia. “She said she was waiting for a colleague. A being of the deep desert, loyal to coin and secrets. She didn’t believe us about the thing under the sand. She was waiting for someone else.”
The words hung in the dust-choked air. The entity beneath them thrummed again, a deeper, hungrier frequency.
Before anyone could respond, Godfrey, who had been sitting patiently by the shattered entrance, let out a low growl. It built into a sharp, insistent bark. He was fixated on a blank section of the cavern wall where the petroglyphs depicted a giant, antlered figure.
The air there rippled. It tore open with a sound like rending velvet, revealing not the desert night, but a fog-wreathed, moonlit forest. The scent of pine, damp earth, and wild game flooded the chamber, clashing with the ozone and sage.
Figures poured through. Spectral hounds with eyes of glowing embers first, then horses with hides like polished night, mounted by riders clad in tattered finery and ancient armor. At their head, astride a massive stag, was a man. His form was both solid and mist, antlers rising from his wild hair, his eyes burning with a pale, cold light.
Herne the Hunter surveyed the scene, his gaze passing over the bound, naked elf on the slab, the succubus crouched over her, the women arrayed with weapons and glowing magic. A wide, terrifying smile split his bearded face.
“Lady Aemelia,” he boomed, his voice the crunch of winter branches and the call of a distant horn. “Your exile need not be perpetual. A ransom was promised. I have come to collect.” His burning eyes swept the room again. “I see you have been… gathering offerings. The unborn scion is a potent prize. And these mortal witches…” He inhaled deeply, as if tasting the air. “Their energies are vivid. Unrefined. Delicious. Together, they might suffice.”
Annie screamed, not in fear, but in warning. She was on her knees, her hands splayed on the convulsing floor, her vines withering to brown husks. “It’s not just waking up! It’s coming!”
Outside the cavern, Lady Eleanor phased through the rock wall, her Victorian gown shimmering. She found Rebecca, dazed and being supported by Ronan Byrne, who had crept closer despite the quaking ground.
“Time to go, dears!” Eleanor trilled, her jolly tone at odds with the panic in her ghostly eyes. “The local wildlife is getting frightfully active. We must put distance between us and this hole in the ground immediately.” She gestured urgently towards the distant lights of the spa. “Come along, young man, you too! This is no place for the living who aren’t exceptionally stupid or magical!”
Ronan, wide-eyed, didn’t argue. He tightened his arm around Rebecca’s waist and began half-carrying, half-dragging her back across the shuddering desert floor, the ghostly woman ushering them along like a frantic chaperone.
Inside the cave, Herne threw his head back and laughed. The sound shook more dust from the ceiling. He hadn’t even glanced at the thing beneath them. His focus was on the bounty before him. “You feel it too, then,” he said, almost kindly, to Aemelia. “A great stirring. Something worthy of the Hunt has awakened. I have not coursed such quarry in millennia.”
The floor in the center of the chamber cracked open. Not a wide chasm, but a jagged fissure that glowed with a deep, baleful orange light. A heat like a forge blast erupted from it, carrying a smell of molten rock and something ancient, something that had never known a name.
From the fissure, a tendril of something not-quite-solid emerged. It was made of shifting sand and glowing embers, forming into a crude, grasping hand the size of a person.
It reached for the nearest source of life. It reached for Annie.
Stacy fired. The pistol roared in the confined space. The bullet passed through the sand-and-ember hand as if it were smoke, exploding against the far wall.
“Fuck!” Stacy yelled, diving to tackle Annie out of the way.
The giant hand closed around empty air where Annie had been, the heat scorching Stacy’s back. It recoiled, then swiveled, sensing the denser, colder magic in the room. It oriented on Herne and his spectral host.
Herne’s delighted smile didn’t fade. It widened. He hefted a spear that hadn’t been in his hand a moment before. “The Hunt is called!” he roared, and the phantom riders behind him echoed the cry, a sound that was both shout and the baying of hounds.
The entity from below pulled more of itself from the fissure, a torso of compacted desert, eyes like pits of burning copper fixing on the new, powerful magic that had invaded its tomb.
In the spa, Casey was throwing clothes into a bag, Mike’s frantic voice tinny from the laptop speaker. “Baby, just get out of there, just go to the safe house, the one with the—“
Another quake, stronger. The glass wall of the suite cracked with a sound like a gunshot.
Dr. Nash stood in the center of the room, her hands raised, a sphere of calming, amber energy pushing out from her, trying to hold the structure together. “Hurry!” she commanded, strain etching her face.
In the desert cave, two apocalypses were about to collide. Jan looked from the formless sand-monster rising from the floor to the Wild Hunt solidifying before the wall-portal, to her friends scattered and vulnerable between them.
“Well,” she said, brushing dust from her shirt. “This is a fucking mess.”