Eighteen
It took me some time to return to the crash site, and when I did I found our vehicle completely totaled. Miraculously, everyone inside was still alive and well, and they were all looking at me with concern etched into their faces.
Tabitha was resting up against the van, her mismatched eyes locked onto me from the moment I appeared through the trees. She was supporting her belly with one hand and cradling her favorite assault rifle in the other.
Euna was standing on top of the van, scanning the area around us.
Selene had a busted lip and was being looked after by Derek.
My eyes trailed back towards the road and tracked the path our van had cleaved through the forest. There was a diagonal swath of tree stumps leading directly back up to the road, with smoldering trunks collapsed all around it. Either these Bureau vans were made of tougher stuff than I was aware of, or something else was at play here. Because from where I was standing I could not see a single reason why we were all still standing. That crash should’ve left our van wrapped around a tree trunk.
Derek cast a protection shell that shielded us, Tabitha explained, gathering my confusion from either my expression or the psychic froth that swam between us at all times.
Ah. I nodded my thanks to her for the explanation.
“You good?” Selene asked from her spot a short distance away from the van. She was still not quite used to the whole psychic speech thing, and still preferred good old fashioned verbal communication, which I could respect.
Derek glanced back at me and I noticed the way he backpedaled ever so slightly. Even after all this time, he was still not used to seeing me this tall and imposing. Back at Hilltop I’d been an average-heighted cripple. Nowadays I was well over six foot and looked like I could bench-press a pickup truck. Actually, I probably could bench-press a pickup, come to think of it. Still, his slightly fearful reaction probably had more to do with how I had treated him these past few months. His involvement in the coup that nearly got Euna killed had initially soured our friendship when he awoke from under Bianca’s spell, and I may have said some harsh things to him in my anger. But without him and his magic, Euna would never have healed, and now it seemed I also owed him a thanks for saving us all from this car crash,
“I am. Apparently thanks to Derek. Is that true?” I asked. My voice came out deeper than the last time I’d heard it. Absently I wondered if my strengthened connection with Hannah had already started altering my physiology again. Ah the joys of being a mutant.
Derek nodded his head in affirmation, though he still looked nervous.
“Thank you man. That’s the second time you’ve saved the lives of my girls, and the third time you’ve saved mine.”
Derek frowned. “Third? When were the first two?”
“The second time was when you saved Euna. I don’t know who I would’ve become if she didn’t make it after that fight with Boris, but I know I wouldn’t have liked it at all,” I stated. “The first was when you passed me that joint after our first really rough shift at Hilltop, and cracked a joke about our manager. You caught me in a dark place. I think I’d forgotten how to laugh, and you stopped me from spiraling any further down than I already was. So… thank you.”
Derek looked more than a little taken aback by my bluntness, but I had moved on.
“Alright. Onto business. What’s our status here? How far out are we from Camp Ferris? And what in the hell hit us?”
Blue team exchanged some awkward glances.
“Everybody’s up and mostly okay. We’re about four kilometers out,” Tabitha answered, slowly raising herself up to her feet using a hand on the van to stabilize herself. “As for what hit us uh, maybe you should take a look for yourself.” Now upright, she motioned upwards with her chin. As one, all of Blue team looked up towards the sky and I followed their gaze.
Perched over our heads was a lithe and athletic woman who appeared perfectly human except for four glaring inconsistencies. Namely, the dual pairs of radiant golden wings sprouting from her back. Aside from that, and the fact that she was crouching on a thin branch without it so much as bending, she appeared otherwise human. Not that I could make out any features other than a definitively feminine figure outlined by a blinding golden light that seemed to emanate from behind her head.
Man, I thought Alan the sun-lion was bright, but this chick was leaving sunspots in my eyes just from a quick glance.
The second I looked up at her she stopped what she was doing, which was staring off into the woods like a bird of prey seeking its next meal, and brought her gaze around toward me sharply. Her eyes were all black except for gleaming golden irises, which made them stand out all the more. She lifted all four of her wings, revealing a few hints of white in her plumage, and stepped off the branch she had perched herself on; plummeting to the dirt beside me in a golden blur and holding out her hand.
“Why are you all squinting at me?” She asked. Her voice sounded exactly like the stereotypical valley girl.
“Because you’re blinding us,” Selene snapped, her injuries injecting a bit of extra annoyance into her words.
“Oh, excuse me,” the angelic girl said sheepishly. All at once the light blaring out from her dimmed to a more manageable level, though we all still had to blink a couple times before our eyes could adjust to the sudden darkness. One of the perks of Tabitha’s werewolf healing factor was that our eyes adjusted much faster than everyone else’s. What we saw left us speechless.
Aside from the golden wings, this girl’s skin had a sun-kissed bronze hue to it like you would not believe. Her striking facial features had an exotic quality that defied placement anywhere on the mortal world, and her skull was a little more aerodynamic than a typical human’s. She was the same height as me, maybe an inch or two taller actually, with a body that would’ve made supermodels and athletes alike weep tears of inadequacy.
She was clad in a see-through white knee-length dress that hung off one shoulder and draped over her sensuously– hugging a delicious set of curves which (due to her sheer size) rivaled even Io’s massive tits and Euna’s juicy ass–without impeding the movement of her legs due to slits down both of her silky smooth thighs. This girl elevated slim-fit to a whole nother level. Her forelegs and feet were bound by a set of winged sandals and she bore a golden band around one of her biceps.
“Is that better?” She asked, her valley girl accent and extremely tanned skin giving off such strong beach babe vibes that I almost wondered where her surfboard was. The black eyes, golden irises, four wings, total lack of a bikini, and the scent of pine needles filling the air reminded me that we were nowhere near a beach.
“Much,” I said smoothly. (That is a lie, I stammered worse than a middle-schooler running into his favorite porn star at the grocery store and finally realizing where he recognized her from).
“Sorry about your motor-chariot, children of steel, I’m afraid I could not see where I was going. I hope all of your horses are okay?”
I blinked in confusion. “Our ‘horses?’”
Tabitha cleared her throat. “Our horses are fine, thank you. They’re just resting,” she answered aloud while filling me in on what I’d missed over PMs (psychic messaging). This airhead’s an angel from Paradise’s warrior caste. Last time she was here in the mortal world, chariots were our preferred method of travel.>
So she’s thousands of years old. Got it. I didn’t have anything against older women.
Oh yeah, and extremely powerful. Selene chimed in. She says she is here on a mission of such grave importance that she defied orders, which for the record, angels never do. Also, she refuses to speak with any of us, saying she will only speak to ‘our king.’ We’ve unanimously volunteered you for that role. We could really use her help fighting the phantoms, in all honesty, so we were hoping you could work your magic.
Of course you have. Alright. Thanks for the intel, I’ll take it from here.
Oh, and her eyes are about a foot north of where you’re looking, hotshot. Stay focused, Tabitha chastised.
Sorry, she’s just… perfect. I replied defensively as I stepped over towards the angel.
Yup. She’s an angel, Ryan. ‘Perfect’ comes with the territory. But unlike you or I, she did nothing to earn that perfection. She never trains or works out, she doesn’t have to watch what she eats or count calories or anything. Her perfection is utterly fake.
My eyes roamed up and down this woman’s exquisite frame. It looks real to me.
Well, it isn’t! She snapped
I blinked in surprise even as I extended my hand. Tabby, are you jealous?
Tabitha grimaced. So what if I am?
You’ve never minded me checking girls out before. What gives?
I’ve never been this pregnant before. The full moon is right around the corner. We’ve got ghosts and zombies loose in our city. Everything hurts after that crash. I’m cranky. I want to shoot something. Miss perfect over here seems like a likely victim. Gimme the word and I’ll drop her.
An amused smile crept across my face as I shook the angel’s hand. I’d never seen Tabitha jealous before. In fact, the whole sharing me with other women thing was originally her idea. I’ll make you a better deal. Whoever she is and whatever she wants, I’ll keep my eyes and hands firmly off her ‘fake’ body until you ask me not to.
What makes you think I’m going to want you to touch her?
I drew a handful of erotic memories of how turned on she got watching me with my other girls and sent them over to her, enjoying the way she blushed as they all played across her mind’s eye. Call it a hunch.
“Ah! You must be the king I’ve been waiting for,” the angel spouted as she gripped my hand firmly and attempted to crush it as we shook. A flare of surprise danced across her eyes like starlight over still water when I matched her grip pound for pound. I guess she wasn’t expecting a mortal to be able to meet her strength.
“In the flesh,” I confirmed, squeezing her hand back and feeling her back down.
“And such flesh it is,” she agreed, eyeing me up and down. “You’re like, totally the hottest mortal I’ve ever met. What’s your secret? Steroids?”
I kept my eyes resolutely fixed on her face and kept my voice level. “No steroids. I just fight monsters and zombies, slay the occasional demon. I’m basically the protector of these lands and all who live here. Also I have a lot of hot, sweaty sex marathons with a bunch of gorgeous women, and that seems to keep me in pretty great shape,” I admitted. Technically, since bonding with my girls enhanced my physical strength and granted me abilities, I wasn’t wrong. “So. How can we help each other?”