Chapter 10

The crude, gurgling sound accompanied by loud swallowing noises was followed by a pair of lips smacking together and a pleased hiss of air as Macario emptied the bottle.

Setting it down on the table with a loud clunk, he glared, bleary-eyed, over at Jake, sitting on the couch across from him. Haley was curled up on the couch next to Macario, her tousled hair covering her face and most of Macario’s thigh where she slept.

“You gotta learn to... brrraaappp! To let ‘er go, man,” Macario told Jake, his words slurred from his overabundant use of vodka. “You ain’t gonna ever get ... get ... Crap. I forgot.”

“Good,” Jake muttered, equally as drunk as Mac. “Advice from you I don’t need. I see how you’re gettin’ on...”

“Whaddia mean by that?” Mac growled, believing he was somehow being insulted.

“Juss ... you ‘n’...” Jake began.

“You say it you fuckin’ bastard ‘n’ I break this fuckin’ boddle over yer head,” Mac blearily snarled, and reached for the empty bottle he’d just set down. Haley stirred quietly and raised her head, her sleepy eyes settling on Jake. “Sorry, babe,” Mac said, his voice much softer as he spoke to Haley. “Go back t’ sleep, ‘k?”

Then to Jake; “Don’ you lecture me about Lisa! She’s gone and I have my consolation prize. Right here!” Mac groped Haley’s rump to indicate who he was talking about. “An ... an’ she’s ... prettier, an’ more lovin’ ... and ... and ... better! She’s better than Lisa ever was! An’ I love ‘er ... love ‘er ... love...”

“Lisa,” Jake finished Mac’s sentence for him as he noticed tears running down Macario’s face. “You love Lisa. You’ll always love Lisa. And I’ll always love Béla. And thas not becuz ... not becuz I ... I killed her.”

To keep from joining Mac in what was starting to become a drunken tear-fest, Jake upended his bottle and nearly gagged as he downed the remainder. A door closed softly upstairs and the nearly silent sound of bare feet padding down the staircase caused Jake and Mac to turn their heads.

Alana had just left Frank and Tanya. As she noticed the two men, and the mood of the room, she was glad she’d cleaned herself up and changed her gown. The two men watched her walk quietly over to the bar, her delicate footsteps silent on the solid wood floor. A tiny clink of glass indicated that she was getting herself something to drink. The room remained eerily quiet except for the slight gurgling sound as Alana poured herself a glass of sherry. Then she turned and leaned back against the bar, her unreadable emerald green eyes casually including Mac and Jake over the rim of her glass along with the rest of the room as she took a sip.

“Jus’ figgerin’ on ignoring us?” Jake asked, his ire at what she’d done to him by dying and becoming Alana seething in his drunken mind.

“I can ignore you if I want,” Alana mused, focusing her soft green gaze on Jake. “I’m the queen.”

“You are a...” Jake snarled, angered by his inability to match her gaze, “a bitch! A cold, heartless ... bitch!”

Alana waited a couple of seconds, then quietly blinked, letting Jake know that his drunken anger was wasted on her. She wasn’t about to have a serious heart-to-heart with a drunken ex-lover, especially one who had dumped her for one of her own sisters.

Haley was still watching, her eyes half-closed in sleep, but her mind was bright and alert. A few seconds later, Holly appeared, silently teleporting into the room behind Jake. Mac glanced at her as she appeared, but Jake didn’t notice at all.

“Are you finished?” Alana wanted to know. She took another sip of her sherry as she waited for Jake to either blow up or calm down. Because of how much he (and Mac) had been drinking, she didn’t think Jake would calm down. But she’d been around drunks long enough to know that Jake was about three minutes from passing out.

“No,” Jake murmured. “I wanna say this! You ... broke my heart. You left me behind and you died on me! And I wanna say ... I wanna say I ... love ... still love...” He never finished his sentence. Instead he slowly sagged down onto the couch.

Alana didn’t really care if Jake still loved her or not, but as she had stepped into the hallway, she’d caught the edge of his conversation, if that was what it could be called, with Mac and he was essentially correct: He had killed her. But his reasoning was completely wrong. She had allowed Annalisa to claim him as her own, hoping he could find satisfaction with someone who was more than willing to dedicate all her attention to him. After all, he deserved to be loved unconditionally, and she’d been unable to give him as much attention as he needed. She had been completely surprised that losing Jake would hurt so badly that she would simply give up and die.

“I’ll take him upstairs,” Haley volunteered and reached forward to grasp Jake by the shoulders.

A movement by the door drew the attention of everyone in the room. Annalisa stood in her wrinkled, ruined sarong with splotches of blue paint and blood smeared across her body. She had finally cried herself out and returned to the lodge. No one had to be telepathic to know that she’d heard what Jake had told Alana. The look on her face said it all.

As she noticed everyone staring at her, Annalisa sadly murmured to Haley, “Don’t put him in my room. I don’t want him anymore.” Then she fled upstairs, fiercely holding her breath so that she wouldn’t let out a sob in front of them all.

“Two down,” Mac murmured. “None to go.” Then his chin dropped to his chest as he passed out as well.

“Should we put them together?” Haley asked her twin as she undulated up off the couch to wrap herself around Mac.

“Don’t think that’s a good idea,” Holly replied, half-smiling at her sister. “They were together – and you see what happened.”

“Wanna swap?” Haley asked, looking mischievous now.

“Yeah!” Holly grinned. “I’ll trade Jake for...” she looked around the room. “How about you, mistress?” she asked Alana as she remembered they were in the presence of their queen. “Should I call for Miranda to...”

“No, thanks,” Alana politely declined. “I plan on getting soused, then going to bed. By myself, so I won’t be needing either you or the ‘M’ twins. Go have fun.”

“I guess that leaves you, sis,” Holly sighed, a mischievous grin slowly appearing on her face.

“Guess so,” Haley grinned back. “Too bad, huh. Guess I’ll have to trade Mac for you.” They embraced, then disappeared, teleporting themselves – presumably – somewhere else in the lodge, leaving Alana alone with the two quietly snoring drunks. As she gazed at them in the dim light of the lounge, a single tear crept down her cheek. ‘How can we all be so unhappy? This was supposed to be a paradise... ‘

Then she turned, set her glass on the bar, and disappeared. She was simply too depressed to get drunk. Besides, the amount of alcohol she had planned on consuming would have made her very, very sick.

‘Sy? Are you awake? I need you... ‘

A splash in the distance followed by a gaggle of girlish giggles dragged Jake up from his black dreams of fire and blood and dead vampire girls. He groaned in pure, overhung misery with the smallest movement of his head. Something warm and sticky jostled against his side and caused him to groan again, more in irritation than misery this time as an elbow poked into the softness beneath his ribs.

Annalisa sat up abruptly, confused and still half-asleep. She had no idea how she had come to be where she was. She remembered crawling into her bed – alone – and crying herself to sleep, and that was all ... except for the miserable dreams of spending eternity alone surrounded by darkness that had tormented her all night long.

“What’re you doin’ here with me? I thought you were mad...” Jake mumbled, his voice gravelly with alcohol-induced sleep.

Annalisa shook her head in the tiniest of movements and raised her eyebrows to let him know... ‘No idea ... but I’m not mad at you... ‘

“You didn’t sneak in here just to lay down next to me?” Jake asked, almost accusing Annalisa of some crime. “Tryin’ to make me say I’m sorry?”

“No,” Annalisa whispered, shaking her head again in denial.

“Somebody carry you down? Try to force us to be...” Jake couldn’t finish. It could mean he’d be alone again, and that would be ... he shook his head ... too much like the nightmares he’d just awakened from.

“No ... I don’t know,” Annalisa told him, waiting for Jake to make up his mind about their future. “Do you think someone cares if we’re together or apart? Someone besides us, I mean?”

Alana quietly turned away and disappeared from the railing next to the staircase where she’d been watching the pair from upstairs. ‘Well, they’re awake, they’re talking and Jake’s sober ... I can only hope their love for each other can see them through this.’

“Oh, you’re up,” Alana exclaimed as she stepped into her own suite.

“Yep,” Sibilius replied. “Sorry I didn’t stay awake until you joined me, but you seemed to be having fun with Frank and Tanya, and I didn’t want to, um...”

Alana laughed, shielding him from the fact that she’d spent the night lying next to him and feeling more alone than she had since her awakening into this new life.

“You don’t have to feel like a third wheel – or rather, a fourth one – simply because my sexual relationship with them is older than yours and mine. They would have welcomed you – and definitely Tanya would – if you decided to join us. I’ve done my best to make this a perfect hedonistic society where freedom to explore one’s sexuality should never be discouraged.”

Sy hugged her slight figure against his own in a warm embrace. “Don’t believe simply because I’ve lived with humans for a few years that I’ve picked up any of their silly ideas regarding sexual ownership. I’ve studied Homo Saps for millennia and I still don’t understand them. Jealousy, as near as I understand it, is simply an emotional effort by an immature, insecure mind to control another’s freedom through the use of guilt, blame and anger.”

“Well,” Alana said softly into his chest, “there’s always that feeling of being left out or left behind, and that can be...”

“That can be somebody else,” Sy told her, hugging her close. “Not me. With your appetites, I rather crave a breather every once in a while. I definitely do not feel left out when you take it into your mind to go gnawing on someone else’s dick.”

They both laughed at that. “I suppose you’re right,” Alana agreed. “Besides, I’d much rather be punctured and perforated myself than have to do that to someone else. And you do a perfectly decent job of that.”

“I suppose I do,” Sy murmured into her mouth as she stretched up to kiss him. As Alana wriggled her soft belly against his hardening cock, he added, “I definitely do, at that.”

A few seconds later, their loving embrace was interrupted as Sy’s symbiotic cock sought out Alana’s soft belly right through his shorts, causing her to gasp at the unexpected jab. Instead of backing out of harm’s way, however, she pushed against Sy, causing him to fall backward onto the bed. As she landed on top of him, they both bounced a couple of times, causing her to wound herself, again and more deeply, on Sy’s spiky cock as it sought her out.

Getting his shorts off around his cock spikes presented a whole new problem, as the spikes had speared right through the material in their eagerness to reach her soft, beaconing womb. Alana finally teleported the shredded material out of the way, and realized she now had another problem. ‘There’s no way I can get that spiky thing inside me!’

Holding her lust in check as best she could, Alana studied the problem, then closed her eyes, her brows furled in concentration. Putting all of her attention on both her and Sy’s pelvic regions, she ‘softened’ the center parts of both their bodies – teleporting partially out of the physical universe – and positioned herself where she wanted to be: mainly with his cock inside her pussy, spikes and all.

Then she let go of everything with her mind, and screamed as her belly was punctured by several cock spikes suddenly solidifying into reality – inside her suddenly perforated, orgiastic pussy. Sy held onto her hips to keep her from jerking up and down and wounding herself even more, all the while chuckling to himself at her wanton, self-maiming behavior. No matter what else she did, or whoever she did it with, Alana would always return, needing him to make her complete.

It was more than enough, he thought as he began to spurt up inside her. She was definitely worth another ‘go-round’ with life, and he was infinitely happy with the decision he’d made when Elaine had pleaded with him to stay.

Macario sat straight up in terror as a torrid screech from next door assaulted his eardrums. Then he grabbed his head with both hands and whimpered in agony. Immediately he silenced himself as his own vocal cords vibrated through the throbbing masses crushing his besotted head.

On the couch next to his bed, two sets of identical mouse-brown eyes stared at him in startled amazement. Then one pair looked at the other. “I think he’s awake.”

“Loud, isn’t he?”

“Even louder than you were when I bit your...”

“I was not loud! Not that loud, anyway...”

“You were, just a little...”

“I didn’t wake anyone up, did I?”

“Nobody could’ve woke Mac up.”

“So, I wasn’t loud. OW!”

“Hey! You two SHUT UP! Oh, sweet Hey Zeus...”

“You pray to Zeus?”

“That’s Jesus to you – and I thought I said shut up!”

“Yep, I heard him. He told you to shut up.”

“He told us to shut up.”

“Well, I wasn’t the one yelling...”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP! JESUS! Owww...”

Two demure, innocent pairs of mouse-brown eyes blinked in consternation at poor, tormented Macario. Two lovely pairs of bare, female shoulders shrugged, then the twins lay back down and began to kiss each other, striving to reach the point where they’d left off.

Quietly.

Very quietly.

Except for a giggle...

Then another...

Then both Murielle and Miranda burst out in hysterical laughter.

Disgusted with himself, the both of them, and the whole world, Mac staggered out into the hallway. ‘I need a drink... ‘

Frank and Tanya were actually dressed when they bumped into Mac coming out of his room.

“Oh, uh, sorry...” Mac mumbled. “Didn’t see ya.”

“S’alright,” Frank replied, not bothered by being nearly knocked down by a bumbling, hungover Mac.

“Wow, you look like you had quite a night,” Tanya observed, then took a sniff and added, “You smell like you had quite a night, too. Whew!” and waved her hand as if to clear the air around them.

“I suppose I’d better shower before breakfast,” Mac decided, and turned the other way, toward the hot springs ‘natural’ waterfall.

It wasn’t really natural; Lisa had carved the cliff face with her Phoenix fire and routed the water from the hot springs through the rock cliff that made up the back wall of the lodge – which cooled it considerably but left it hot enough to give someone a really soothing, relaxing hot shower – incidentally creating enough energy to power the entire lodge. The waterfall-powered generator at the base may have been Frank’s idea, but Lisa had provided the actual waterfall.

“Lunch, you mean,” Tanya corrected him.

“You missed breakfast,” Frank added, seeing the confusion in Mac’s eyes.

Leaving Mac to his morning cleanup, Frank and Tanya started down the stairs. They didn’t say anything, and they passed as quietly as possible, not wanting to interfere with what was obviously a tender moment. Jake and Annalisa were on the couch, naked, not speaking. Their faces were buried in each other’s shoulders with arms and legs wrapped around each other as though they wanted to get just as close to each other as they possibly could. As Tanya passed, she noticed that Annalisa was slowly, very slowly, moving her hips against Jake’s pelvis. It was obvious that they were making slow, passionate love.

In addition, soft kissing... (slurping? sucking?) sounds could be heard coming from them.

“What’s up with the lovebirds on the couch?” Tanya asked no one in particular when they finally arrived out of earshot in the kitchen. “That looked pretty intense, but I couldn’t pick up anything from them at all – no emotions, no feelings, nothing. They’re completely shielded.”

Holly looked up, but simply shrugged, not having any idea. Haley simply stated the obvious; “They’ve been like that all morning – fucking and sucking each other’s blood. Maybe it’s some sort of mutual suicide ritual ... or something.”

“Sounds like one of those Veragoan commitment rites,” Frank ventured, then explained as three sets of female eyes centered on him, “Alana was explaining some stuff to me a few years ago about ancient Veragoan ceremonies. There are all sorts of rituals and stuff that life partners can perform. One of them she mentioned involves the exchange of bodily fluids as a promise of commitment.”