Jumlin's Spawn (9 page)

“Like we said, two are better than one,” Yancey
coughed out, as he kept thrusting faster and faster. Elfie nodded
helplessly, groaning with every thrust from Yancey’s cock and
Oliver’s hands.  Yancey thrust relentlessly.  “Rub her
clit faster, baby,” Yancey gasped out to Oliver. “She’s almost
there.”

“Not quite,” Elfie moaned, and then pulled away from
Oliver's weakened grasp. She swung a leg around to move Yancey's
back to the bed. She mounted him.

There was an explosion of passion in Yancey's eyes.
“Oh, yeah,” was all he managed to say.

She leaned down into his face. “Make me come like a
thirty year old virgin?” she asked, with a laugh. She shook back
her sweat-moistened hair. “I'll show you a captive bride.”

She shifted her weight to drive his cock farther into
her, and then seized the shaft from inside her with a muscular
clench. The effects of the internal grip on his cock surfaced
quickly on his face. He surrendered, helpless, against the bed.

“Shit…please, baby…do it,” he groaned.

While her pussy gripped his cock within, she humped
his body, harder and harder. She reached out for Oliver's erection
and pumped it with her hand just as hard as she grasped Yancey from
within.

She rode him until she felt the orgasm jerk violently
through him. Until his whole body arched up and his head leaned
back and there wasn't an inch of tension left in his body. She
jerked off Oliver until he cried out and then spurted hot streams
of cum across her hand.

Laughing with her victory, a sweaty Elfie collapsed
back against the bed beside Yancey.

The Sioux man rolled over to stare down into her
face. “You haven't come yet,” he said.

“You didn't really think you'd get away with not
coming.”

His lips encompassed her wetness again as he lapped
his tongue feverishly up and down over every spot that made her
shiver and cry out.

Elfie felt the burst of pleasure closing in on her.
She tried to keep herself from crying out, but it wasn't
possible.

Yancey grinned down at her as the last of her
pleasure ebbed away. He was drying his face again. “What in the
fuck did you just do?” he asked.

“Showed you that invasions can be overcome from
within,” she said.

“What? You didn't like the invasion?” he whispered,
his tongue darting out to lick at the end of her nose.

“Oh, yes, I did,” she said.

Oliver moved around to sit in their circle. He
pressed his lips tenderly to Yancey's and then leaned across to do
the same to Elfie.

“Next time is my turn,” Oliver said into her face. “I
think we all know this is permanent, right?”

“Do you see me going anywhere?” she asked.

Coming out of nowhere, a loud sound, like the world's
biggest windmill, swooped above them. It seemed to encompass the
sky. They all looked upward.

“That's one big damned helicopter,” Elfie said.

Oliver shook his head, tossing a look of challenge at
Yancey. “More like a UFO.”

“Please,” Yancey said, shaking his head as jumped
into his jeans and boots. “I'll go look. It has to be military
aircraft.”

“Or a UFO,” Oliver said, standing up quickly to dress
himself and follow Yancey out the door.

The men gazed upward as what looked like bat-shaped
kites soared in a larger circle far above.

“Could be cliffhanger sailplanes,” Yancey said, “or
birds.”

Oliver shook his head. “Gliders couldn’t fly in that
tight a formation. And those can't be buzzards or any other kind of
bird. Even from this long distance, they look six feet tall at
least.”

Elfie, clad in her gym clothes, stepped out into the
garden to join them. She shadowed her eyes with a hand and squinted
in the objects' direction. They looked huge and menacing. Big black
birds of prey on a mammoth scale.

“Advanced, weird military aircraft?” Elfie
suggested.

Yancey looked back at her. “We're a long way from
Area 51. No, they're birds that just look big,” Yancey said with
what sounded like forced certainty. “It has to be a moisture lens
effect from the storm or something.”

An explosive bang behind them came from the
cottage.

“It came from the roof,” Oliver said.

Yancey climbed up a side fence outcropping to the
cottage's eaves and then pulled himself on top. He stood up, like a
shadowman against a threatening sky, staring away across the land
beyond the walled garden.

His hand extended his weapon, like some kind of
shamanic totem to ward off an unknown evil.

“Holy shit,” he said, taking a step back, as if
something crawled up the roof's other slant toward him.

Yancey aimed and fired several rounds until Elfie
heard something slide over tiles and fall off the roof.

“What is it?” Oliver yelled, about to boost himself
up.

“Hit the flood lights on the garden!” Yancey called
down, as he shoe-surfed the roof tiles until he hit the eaves, then
jumped straight down to dirt.

Elfie scanned the garden quickly until she saw the
control box. She hit the biggest lever with the bottom of her hand.
The lights blared to full life.

Yancey appeared, jogging slowly, almost disjointedly.
He grasped onto her shoulder as if needing to cling to an edge of
reality. “My God,” he coughed out. “I don’t know what that was.
Baby, I'm sorry I doubted you.”

She combed her fingers back through her hair. “Like
Molly said, we don't have to know what they are, only what they do.
How many are out there?”

He shook his head and shrugged at the same time. “A
hundred, maybe two. Maybe more.”

“Molly said that light destroys them, right?” Oliver
asked as he joined them. “Shouldn't the light keep them out of the
walled garden? She said we'd be safe here.”

“Molly also said the mature ones were stronger and
much harder to kill,” Elfie said.

Yancey stared upward, at the still-circling wheel of
flying black arcs. “And she said that, close-up, they appear to be
black angels.”

“We have to make a run for it,” Elfie said.

Oliver shook his head in an attempt to hurry his
thought process. “Make a run to where? We're surrounded by those
little fuckers. And we've got God knows what flying over us.”

As if summoned by his words, the black shapes began
their glide down, like arc-shaped kites, from the clouds. They
stopped at a hovering pace, still keeping their distance.

“We'd better head to the cottage,” Yancey said,
pulling both of them with him.

Panic and sweaty palms made the doorknob hard to
turn, but Yancey opened it. They banged through the door to the
cottage, one person after the other. Oliver slammed the door and
locked it behind them.

The black-feathered angels descended slowly from the
sky.

“What in the hell do they want from us?” Yancey
said.

“Um, to kill us maybe?” Oliver asked.

“I get that, Madam Savant,” Yancey said. “But, why? I
mean, aside from Molly's theory about the Wakinyan. There must be
something we have that they're after.”

“Oh, my God,” Elfie said. “The artifacts.”

Oliver looked around. “Where are they?”

She covered her face with her hands for a long
moment. Finally, she said, “In the jeep. I left them there. I have
to go out and get them.”

“Like hell you do,” Oliver said.

“I brought the antiquities here,” she said, “and
they're my responsibility.”

“Oliver’s right. They can stay in the damned jeep,”
Yancey replied.

Elfie looked around at him with a sudden dose of
incredulity. “What? You're still unconvinced that something is
going on here?”

“No,” Yancey said, “but I only believe in the parts
of it I can see.”

“Oh, that's right, don't worry about the whale's
teeth, Captain Ahab. All we can see is its fluke.”

“I'm not about to jeopardize your life for
supposition,” Yancey shot back.

“I can do this!” Elfie said. “You guys would be in as
much danger out there as I'd be. I can run as fast as you guys can.
I know how to shoot a gun. I am responsible for the artifacts. I've
brought them this far. I want to see them returned to where they
came from. It’s the fastest, easiest way to do it. I'm the obvious
choice to go out there and you both know it.”

“Maybe,” Oliver said, “but you'll be faster on a dirt
bike.”

“We have a dirt bike?” Yancey asked.

“I saw it earlier. It’s in the garage,” Elfie said.
“I don't know how to ride one.”

“I do,” Oliver said. “You ride on the back, I'll
drive. Like our old bike trip days.”

Elfie thought for a long moment. “This isn't your
battle, Oliver. I'm the one who made the decision to go work with
this jerk.”

He shrugged. “It’s the fastest, easiest way to do it.
It’s the obvious choice to go out there, and you know it.”

“I hate it when you use my own logic against me.” She
laughed a little. “Okay. I agree, that would be faster.”

“I'll give cover,” Yancey said, checking his handgun.
“I shot one of the little bastards off the roof. Bullets might not
kill the big ones, but they probably faze them a little.”

“I can carry a flashlight for the little ones,” she
said, reaching for one of the short wand flashlights she brought in
with supplies and provisions. She clicked it on. “No time like the
present.”

A one-car metal shed that seemed to lately be used
for garden tools, the garage contained the dirt bike, propped up
against a wall. The bike bore no trace of dust or spider webs, both
of which told Elfie it had been used in recent days. Ergo, it would
run.

“The garage lets out on the side trail that comes up
over the property, remember?” Yancey asked. “Be careful, though,
because the next ramp up is Angel Peak. This way will let you come
around the side of the jeep. Once you grab the artifacts, you can
drive the bike around through the main gate. I'll be waiting to
open it.”

Oliver wheeled the dirt bike toward the garage door.
He straddled it, started it, and gunned the engine. Elfie hopped on
the back.

“Ready?” Oliver asked her, and Elfie nodded. Oliver
looked back at Yancey. “When I nod, open the garage door.”

Elfie switched on the flashlight. Yancey reached for
the lever. Oliver nodded. Yancey yanked up the door.

The dirt bike scooted hard through pebbly sand that
kicked up debris behind them, as Elfie sprayed the dark clouds with
light. Movements toward them became frantic and haggard. Behind
them, the sound of Yancey's gunshots rocketed off, aiming at
threats they couldn't see.

Elfie heard the angry hive sound form around them. In
the dark, she could barely see them, so she swung the flashlight in
every direction. A flash of blue dust occasionally laced through
the gray, followed by silence.

The dirt bike circled around to the back of the jeep,
to the hatch where supplies were kept. Oliver stabbed a key in the
lock, and yanked it open. Elfie handed him the flashlight while she
reached up to claim the case filled with artifacts. Oliver kicked
at one of the spawn, and then killed it with a flashlight.

“Ready,” Elfie said, clutching the artifact case
between them.

Oliver sped off around the front of the jeep,
skidding fast across the pavement and around the edges of the
garden wall. The dirt bike made another long pass to move around a
cluster of spawn, grasping out at them without success. The bike
slid through the gate, and Elfie thought for a moment their race
was won.

Yanked backward, Elfie flew off the bike like a rag
doll pitched into a garden corner. The artifacts’ case slid
sideways. The creature jumped toward her, its black wings extending
to cover her body. Its face peered out from its tattered feathers –
the face that had possibly once been human, a red spot at the
center of its forehead buttressed by needful eyes pulsing with
power.

She felt repulsed, but drawn...a paradoxical lust
bursting through her with the thoughtless ferocity of fire. It
seemed that the force had radiated from the black angel and shot
through her. She fought to push it away.

Yancey stepped between them. He aimed and blasted the
creature. It withdrew only to drag Elfie with it. Oliver grabbed
her arm to pull her free and the creature returned the attack.
Yancey emptied his gun into the creature. The creature flew upward.
As if caught in a whirlwind, it was forced upward and then
swallowed by the dark.

Yancey grabbed the artifacts’ case, and they dragged
themselves, the case and the dirt bike back into the cottage, and
then slammed the door.

Elfie reached for the artifacts’ case to push it to
safety. She slumped against the wall on the far side of the
bed.

Yancey rammed the dirt bike into the garage again. He
then surrendered to the floor beside Elfie.

Oliver dropped back against the bed to catch his
breath. Each breath was only fleeting, but it felt like hours
before any of them could exhale.

****

Elfie's watch revealed it had been one hour. She had
risen with effort and walked across to the window. With the sky
fully dark outside, the low-hanging moon appeared distant in the
wake of the garden lights. The gentle quiet felt palpable, as if it
transfused the hub of the house with something warm and
comforting.

“The light keeps out the spawn, I get that,” Elfie
said, the first of them to speak, “but why did the older ones
vanish so quickly?”

Yancey rubbed at his forehead and sat forward. “Maybe
they didn't expect us to fight? The gun surprised them?”

“Why didn't they follow us into the house?” Elfie
asked. “They're supposed to be mortally afraid of us. They just
retreated when we took refuge inside.”

Yancey shrugged. “Molly said the cottage was
safe.”

“What?” Oliver asked suddenly, his voice harsh and
unexpected. “Before, you didn't believe any of this and now, you're
quoting a medicine woman?”