Endangered Ch. 11

***

Radek didn't mind the cold, at least he'd told himself that before. But as he half-trudged, half-tumbled over the last frozen ridgeline and saw the end of the accursed snow far below him, a shudder of palpable relief swept out to every nigh-frozen extremity.

Ice bearded his eyelashes, gnawed at the exposed hand that could not risk releasing his precious cargo. He'd spent another three hard-earned souls just to make it over those damned mountains with some reasonable speed, putting distance between himself and his pursuers. He hadn't dared take any of the major passes, instead relying on slowly burning through his precious energy to bound up and across the apex of the continent-dividing range. It had been arduous, a constant battle against howling wind, savage cold, and sticky spring snows.

At one point, his bellow of frustration at tumbling down a particularly steep slope had triggered an avalanche in the peaks above. He'd been battered and bruised, buried under an unstoppable white tidal wave. But he didn't let go of the briefcase. It took more than an hour to dig himself out without the use of easily detected magic.

A terrible mood was upon him when he finally slunk down onto the rocky slopes exposed by the springtime melt. His primal rage burned hot, but did nothing about the bone-deep chill that had taken up residence in his miserable human body.

Eventually, he made it down the mountainside into a verdant forest. Two hapless hikers crossed his path and were quickly devoured, leaving behind blackened, crumbling husks. That went some way to appease, and he finally found a place to collapse in exhaustion after disposing of the corpses, carefully this time.

His sanctuary was a small, sunny clearing, carpeted with lush growth. He slumped with his back against a warm boulder, pulling the briefcase to his chest with shivering, frost-bitten hands. A plucked thatch of moss soon took the role of pillow, sacrificing its life for the comfort of his neck. This shaking, aching, construct of a body was a pitiful thing. It felt like hours before he warmed and relaxed enough to sleep, and even then it was restless, unsatisfying. His mind was full of snapping jaws, wolf's snarls, and that bitch-elf's smile as her arrow sank into him. Failure had never been so close.

He started awake at the sound of bestial grunting and snapping twigs. For the tiniest fraction of a moment, Radek sleepily wondered how, after all this time, one of his demonic brethren had found him. It must be a lowly creature indeed to slip through the Barrier, a newborn imp or perhaps an idiotic garzan. Nothing that could actually assist him now would ever fit through a sliver of a rift like that.

A family of wild pigs oinked their way into his clearing and began rooting amongst the tender shoots that were getting a head start on the growing season. Radek sat up, his mind clearing as he realised the true source of the confounding sounds. To his own surprise, he wasn't angry. It was a sign; he even smiled, how fortuitous that his dinner ran right into his lap.

As a young hog spun slowly in the air above his fire, sizzling and releasing the most alluring scents, Radek considered his options for what felt like the umteenth time. Far to the north, he could barely sense his small minions winging tirelessly to find one of his last potential allies.

So much might depend on the response, but Radek was shaken by how close he'd come to ruin. This plan was so long in the making, so vital, and he'd gambled everything on its success. With a shake of his head, Radek knew it was too much to rely heavily on one such as Azenoth.

It was make or break for Radek now. To succeed, to offer up such a prize as this bloated world, would elevate him to the ranks of her most favoured generals. No, he would claim the position of consort! A shiver of ecstacy crawled up his spine. Even the thought of such an ambitious elevation set his cock hardening. To fail, however. Well, if that was his destiny, better to let these filthy creatures finish him rather than face her wrath again.

Azenoth could not be his linchpin at this late stage, treacherous half-spawn that he was. No, he would have to execute his personal revenge against the fledgling dragon in careful synchronisation with whatever diversion Azenoth could provide. The window for passivity, for gathering strength was already slamming shut.

"Yes," he murmured to himself as he reached over the flames to rip off a chunk of fatty, succulent meat. "Time to lose this pathetic shell."

To the north, there must be a large city. Radek could hear the clamour of souls, they called to his hungry power. There lay the opportunity to cause enough havoc to complete his preparations. He was tired of running. Fleeing into the desolate fiords to the south would only leave him more exposed when his hunters next caught up to him. No more.

Contented, he closed his eyes as he popped another tasty morsel in his mouth, savouring the smoky, wild taste. He could feel the faint tug, the approaching conjunction that, combined with his... lengthy preparations, would bring him glory and favour beyond imagining.

Already the enemy's Barrier was subtly rippling in response, not unlike the ocean's tides in response to the tug of the Moon. It was still a minuscule thing though. He wondered if its creators had ever considered such an attack? Probably not, if he'd already made it so painfully close to success.

Fitting then, that the spell which had thwarted his kind by inserting magical instabilities into their rifts, would now be exploited with similar finesse.

It wasn't long now. Eons spent alone and starving, a prisoner of empty, sourceless darkness didn't matter now. They were all about to pay dividends, and a more glorious and fitting reward he couldn't begin to imagine.

***

Immi bowled into them immediately when Chris and Hailey merged back into the apartment. A hip height, blue-winged missile of happiness.

"It's snowing!" the sprite chirped excitedly, clambering up Chris' body to cling around his neck.

"So it is," he chuckled, walking them to a window to look out on the slushy white beginning to blanket the streets below. With wings quivering in childlike elation, Chris could tell she desperately wanted to run outside and frolic.

"It's pretty late this year," Hailey observed as the thick, clingy sludge began to settle on the sidewalks. As a Denver local, she was used to a snowbound life for much of the year. It didn't mean she liked it, but it was great for staying warm indoors, studying, reading. Or, she imagined, romancing a hunky dragon.

Petra ghosted up behind them, given away by the quiet clicking of her heels. She slid a hand around onto his abdomen, pulling herself close as she nibbled the back of his neck affectionately. That effectively completed the brood sandwich, crowding him gently against the window with palpable affection.

"It's a wonderful time of year for... indoor pursuits," the dragoness teased saucily, her full breasts pillowing just below his shoulder blades.

"That's just what I was thinking!" Hailey laughed, refusing to relinquish her position on his right side. Not to be outdone, she buried his elbow between her own bust.

"Can we go up on the roof?" Immi begged from his left. "Please, Master? Please, please, please. I'll be good, I promise."

He gave her full blue lips a kiss, keeping her quiet. "Alright, little one."

"Not for too long," Annabel spoke up from the living room. "Michelle's plane is landing soon, and it might be nice for Chris to meet them all at the airport seeing as he left them high and dry on their mission."

"That's probably a good idea. Thanks, Dee. Anyone else want to come along for some snow fun?"

"Not on your life," Petra snickered. "I think I'll have a nice warm bath while you two freeze."

"No thanks," Hailey demurred. "I want to make some notes while it's all still fresh in my mind."

"It went well then?" the silver-haired dragoness asked. "You averted a nuclear calamity?"

"It went okay," Chris frowned. "No calamity to avert actually, but we're alive and well, and Hailey has a new friend. I'm concerned though, the Ether around the White House was full of nasties I've never even heard of before. We got caught unprepared, ambushed by a huge flock of what Hailey thinks are shrikes. I got stabbed by some sort of dirty hedge-lurker, and the ground was lousy with leeches."

"Oh, my!" Immi squeezed his waist tighter with exquisitely toned legs. "That sounds terrible. I've had to run from shrikes several times, nasty, wicked, eyeless beasties! They should all be exterminated, right after the fairies."

"It was damn scary," Hailey admitted, watching Chris shake his head at the sprite's casual genocidal pronouncement.

"I'm glad you're safe, Sire," Petra nuzzled against his skin. "You'd better go if you plan on tiring Immi out before you head to the airport."

Much to Immi's protest, Chris made her put on a wing-customised t-shirt and tiny spandex shorts before they went up to the roof to see the snow. The building wasn't particularly high though, and he only took a few steps onto the roof before he bustled the pouting sprite back inside. It was way too exposed to other buildings, and the constant whine of various ventilation units was intolerable to his enjoyment anyway.

He jumped them to Jethry's front doorstep. They weren't disappointed. A solid half-foot had already settled on the ground and juicy, huge flakes were falling steadily from the heavens. You could barely see more than thirty feet in the near white-out conditions. Uncaring, Immi shrieked joyously, flung off her clothes, and ran flapping out into the yard without a care.

It must have been infectious because Chris followed her lead moments later. He chased the squealing sprite in his naked hybrid form. Around the house they went, and out into the pristine snow covering a large field. When he finally caught the mischievous little nymph, he dumped her unceremoniously into a forming drift. With no clothes to stuff snow inside, he rubbed great handfuls of it all through her beautiful, dark hair. She hollered her outrage, promising dire retribution as soon as he let her up.

The ensuing magical snow fight was epic.

With muttered incantations, Immi summoned herself a vast, ten-foot-high castle out of the falling flakes. The damn thing came complete with battlements, miniature snow-flinging catapults, and an even higher tower from which to command her wintery dominion.

Chris had to retreat wholesale from the ferocity which met his first assault on the wall. She cackled like an evil wizard, flinging huge volleys of snowballs to pelt down on him. These were followed by wild bolts of vivid lightning as her siege engines reloaded. He'd barely weathered that storm, only just making it to the shelter of the castle wall. It was as he attempted to get a grip on the icy surface to claw upward when she dropped a full-sized snowman on his head.

"And that's why you don't mess with my hair!" she laughed as he ran from her vengeance.

He caught his breath outside of the range of her snow-slingers, wondering how he was going to defeat her. To be honest, she'd sort of scared him with her ferocity. His entire right arm tingled maddeningly where she'd zapped him!

In the end, he came at her with his orbs. She screamed and wailed how much of a dirty cheater he was as he swiped huge chunks out of her fortifications. Another dark orb acted as a shield above his head, placidly absorbing everything she could think to throw at him. He couldn't see what she was using for ammunition, but he would have sworn he heard a plaintive bleat and some indignant clucking near the end.

When only her tower was left standing, and she was hopping mad atop one of its frozen crenellations, he struck. Phasing upward faster than one of her lightning bolts, he vanished. Immi only suffered a moment of confusion before he pounced on her from the snowy sky like a bird of prey.

They tumbled together as her snow-tower collapsed around them. Eyes wild with excitement and a healthy dose of terror, she fought him for all of two seconds before morphing into the persona of a coquettish, vanquished princess. It seemed she was quite eager to become the spoils of war, boldly offering her virtue to her conqueror. Apparently, such was the custom in these harsh, imaginary lands. Who was he to buck tradition?

Neither of them minded the cold because his cock quickly swelled as she squirmed her torso against it. The little minx pushed her arms together, smooshing her growing breasts on either side of his throbbing erection. Her small hands were warm and teasing, heated by the magic she'd just been channelling. That wicked, pink little tongue of hers was exquisite, darting out to lap up his dribbling pre-ejaculate or tease his massive knob and its pronounced coronal ridge.

She jerked him like a pro in the ruins of her castle, worshipping his manhood as she demanded her reward with lusty eyes. With plump blue lips, she kissed every inch of him, paying particular attention to his cold-shrunk, hefty testicles and their maddening, musky scent. Muffled, content noises, combined exquisitely with her pure eagerness and the lingering excitement of the recent battle. It didn't take long for his throbbing shaft to cough up what it owed. Immi was one happy, overwhelmed, greedy little cum monster as she fed to the point of bursting.

When Jethry arrived from one of the back fields to investigate the kerfuffle, he found them cuddling in a perfect little igloo, complete with crackling magical fireplace. The sprite's blue tummy was bulging, and she was in an almost drunken state of lazy bliss. Outside, two sheep and a small flock of hens he didn't recognise wandered confused through the disturbed snow.

"Get on home, ya horny cretins!" the old werecat laughed, eyeing Immi's perfect, fun-sized assets openly as she stumbled back toward the house to collect her clothes. "Damn, son. You're fitting to cause yourself trouble with that one when she's grown. Good thing you're hung like old Kellerman's stud donkey, huh?"

"Shut up, Jethry," Chris groaned, unable to contain his own humour and embarrassment at being caught naked in the act.

"Pishaw, you just bring that sweet vampire with you next time you want a tumble in the snow. Now them's some tits I gotta see before I die."

"Now there's one that's a handful in the bedroom." Chris shrank ever so slightly back into his human form and began helping the old werecat round up his new stock.

"No kidding," Jethry enthused. "More than a handful if I'm not mistaken."

"That's not... Okay, alright. Credit where credit is due. What I meant was that she can be quite demanding, and she's into some stuff I... Jethry, have you ever, you know... a woman's bottom?

His mentor grunted in surprise, stopping in the falling snow to look up at Chris as a huge grin split across his face.

"I fucking knew it, ha! Have I got a story or two to tell you..." he trailed off, darting in to punch the dragon's shoulder playfully. "You hold onto that one for dear life, son. A woman who genuinely loves it in the butt is worth her weight in gold. Especially if she wants to tackle someone like you. Just for God's sake be gentle with that damn cannon you're packing."

They trudged back toward the white-covered farm buildings. Jethry regaled him the whole way with tales containing questionable advice and vivid details. If they were to be believed, he had his eyes opened to those particular delights almost a half century back, when he stumbled across a beautiful, lonely water elemental in the Northern Rockies.

***

"I can't believe what I'm hearing," Robert Falconer glared around the dim, mostly screen-lit room. The blue tinted light made some of his advisors look positively ghoulish, exaggerating haggard expressions and dark-rimmed eyes. At least some of the men and women he'd handpicked for their jobs had the decency to avert their eyes in what he could hope was shame. "That young man is the most promising magical resource we've discovered to date, and thanks largely to Hamund, he's actually cooperating with us. Now you're telling me you want to jeopardise all of that because you're what? Scared? Co-fucking-operating. Look it up, it requires good faith between the..."

"Sir," Vanessa Harwell interrupted fearlessly, leaning forward to address the President, seated at the head of the table. "Michelle Hamund is likely compromised. No one is suggesting that we have him eliminated in the near future, simply that his claimed powers require a re-thinking of our strategy when it comes to Christopher Baryst. We need to be prepared if the relationship sours for whatever reason. With all due respect, he is too dangerous to assume he will always be on our side. From what I heard today, he could just about step out of thin air at any moment and kill us all from behind an impenetrable death-ball. There wouldn't be a thing any of us could do to stop him."

The President took stock of the reaction around the 'war-room', glancing from face to face. It was the fucking demon thing, he knew it. His fist clenched hard in frustration, hard enough to make the old shrapnel wound in his right hand groan in protest. There was a tendon or two in there that had never quite healed right, but he'd always counted himself lucky. He'd seen what happened to the poor bastards on the other side, cooked alive inside tanks-turned-oven by his incendiary penetrators. He sighed, more of a careful exhalation really, feeling the weight of leadership. It was an iron yoke on his shoulders, crushing him like it never had in his military days.

"That's exactly right, Vanessa, he probably could. In fact, he could be listening to this very conversation for all you know, any Being could. How do you think he would react, then? Would he be justified doing exactly what you just outlined? I know I certainly would laugh off a room full of supposed allies plotting how to stab me in the back, 'just in case'."

A nervous silence grew in the room, but the President had only paused to let the point sink in.

"While we're at it, get your collective heads out of your asses about the sex. So he sleeps with a few women, good for them. Direct your indignation more constructively toward the hundreds of cases of domestic abuse and sexual assault that slip through the cracks every day."

The silence returned, and this time, Robert Falconer desperately hoped it was a thoughtful one as he closed his eyes and prayed for strength.

"Damn it, Robert, we're the government," a gruff voice spoke from further down the table. Robert didn't have to use his tired eyes to recognise it. "You can't have someone that powerful running about without some sort of leash. It sounds like he's a walking, talking nuke."

"You'd take all this lying down, would you, George?" Robert smiled, flipping the tables on the tough old veteran. "In his position, I mean? You'd roll over and let a bunch of scared, old bastards with inflated opinions of themselves sucker punch you, and essentially hold your family hostage?"

"Well... No, I guess not, but..."

"There isn't any but. I talked to him one-on-one this afternoon, actually asked him to his face if he was a demon," Robert chuckled, remembering the young man's confused indignation. "He said all anyone ever actually has to judge someone by are their actions. The same applies to us, collectively as a nation, and individually as its leaders. You know, there isn't any anonymity, any real protection screening our actions here behind some 'magical governmental spell'. That's a delusion we create for ourselves, and it's a deranged one if you think it will hold water to an elf or a dragon. I've had enough for tonight, but think on that before we reconvene tomorrow. Re-calibrate your moral antenna while you're at it. This isn't a war, I don't plan on making it into one. Until it is, I won't stand for this brand of caveman problem-solving. We'd probably lose."