Nyx

At length, she brought her master to completion. It took longer than she'd expected. By the end of it she was saturated with his essence, and her physical form was heavy with exertion. The perspiration beading her naked body, while entirely artificial, reflected her inner state quite accurately.

Nyx allowed the cables of braided flesh anchored to the walls to detach from their moorings and slide across the floor as she reeled them back in. She did not need to ask if her master had found as much pleasure in their coupling as she had—she could read it all over his weathered features, framed by that ridiculous shock of thin, gray hair, now well-mussed from their romping about.

"Well played, demon," Matthew wheezed, feebly kicking his feet loose of the bunched sheets. "You really took me for a ride there."

"Consider it a reward for good behavior," Nyx replied with the self-satisfied sigh of a job well done. "Now, let's get you to bed, dearest. It is important for a human to take plenty of rest after sleeping with one of my kind."

Nyx was lifting herself up off of him when he grasped her hips with surprising strength and pulled her back down. "Rest?" he said, a shrewd glint in his eyes. "Oh, I'm not planning to do much of that tonight."

"Wait, but…" He should be done by now. Isn't he exhausted?

Before she could really comprehend what was happening, he'd flipped them around so he was on top and she on the bottom. It should have been a trivial matter to throw him off, but for some reason, her limbs were… floppy. Uncooperative.

Matthew's grin widened as he came to the same realization she did. "Looks like you're needin' that rest more'n me. Sorry to say, darling, but I'm just getting started."

Nyx felt an irrational surge of fear; the sudden panic of a human who had swum out to deep waters without realizing. "Wait…!"

But Matthew didn't wait, and dove into her with renewed vigor. It quickly became clear that the first round had only served to whet his appetite.

* * *

Serene

With the fireworks show tapering off, Serene began to hold out some small hope of falling asleep before dawn. It was a bit too hot inside the tent, though, and a few bugs had managed to get inside and were bumping around against the tarpaulin. She would have tried to make some space to let her skin cool off a little, but every time she tried to disentangle herself from Wesley he started up with his twitching and mumbling again, so she eventually just gave up on that idea altogether and stayed latched to his back.

Being in this state; alone, silent, no one to talk to and nothing to do but lie there like a fucking sardine, was making the need to use stand out ever more strongly in her mind. Use something. Use anything. She'd smoke fucking road tar if someone gave it to her. Her id and superego were having one hell of a screaming match, and she was caught in the middle, eyes squeezed shut and breathing through clenched teeth, just trying to wait it out.

She was finally beginning to drift off when a whole new round of commotion started up outside. People shouting about something.

Oh, for fuck's…

Without warning, Wesley tore himself from her grip and rolled to his feet with unusual adroitness. He cut a dark silhouette inside the shadowed tent, eyes glittering faintly, standing perfectly still like a dog listening for some distant sound.

"What's the matter with you all of a sudden?" Serene asked, sitting up on the bedroll.

She never got an answer. Wesley whipped around a moment before the tent wall in that direction violently caved in on itself, accompanied by the sound of ripping fabric and a terrible, bestial snarl.

Faint firelight spilled in alongside a great dark furry shape, outstretched and leaping. Wesley slid wordlessly out of the creature's path with all the grace of a seasoned matador, flipping that ugly revolver around in his hand so he held it by the barrel, then brought it down like a hammer to crack the creature over its flat skull. The thing went tumbling past the naked young man, past Serene, and came to a stop against the far tent wall, making the whole structure lean with its weight.

A grinner, Serene realized. And based on the shouting and screaming and howling outside, it had come with friends.

The thing staggered up on four legs, its head flopping awkwardly at the end of a long, furry neck, and turned its eyes on Serene; maybe because she was closest, or maybe because she was unarmed—and therefore easier prey. It came at her, and she scooted back off the bedroll to get away, still too surprised to raise a finger in her own defense.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Wesley reached the monster in three long strides and kicked it hard in the ribs, once more knocking it off its feet. He pinned it down with the weight of his body, caught it by the neck, and pulled tight to strangle it with the length of his revolver. The thing struggled for a while, toothy jaws snapping, those terribly human eyes wheeling, but Wesley gave one sharp tug, and there was an awful crunch of a windpipe collapsing. The monster flailed desperately, no longer capable of breathing, and eventually weakened, then went mostly still. Wesley let the musky body fall away as he stood away, tossing his gun up to catch it the right way around again.

Serene could do nothing except blink stupidly up at him. It was like he'd gone and turned into a completely different man. For one, there was a sober confidence about him now, as though he carried the weight of some profound responsibility. For another, he was holding that gun of his like he actually knew how to use it.

His eyes met hers, and at first they were completely glassed over, looking right through her. Then there was a brief flash of recognition. "You all right?" he asked.

"Uh, yeah," Serene replied. She glanced toward the twitchy heap of monster and fur and gave it a stiff kick with her heel. No response. It was really dead. Dead enough, anyway.

"Good." Wesley turned and went for the large rent made by the grinner coming in. One leg through, he paused and said: "Stay put."

He ducked outside without waiting for her response.

Of course, she didn't listen. She went after him as soon as she found her feet, and saw that the farm had descended into chaos. Instructions were being hurled. Groggy militiamen were forming up into ragged defensive formations, many of them missing at least some of their clothes, with an unfortunate few even having misplaced their weapons. A few partygoers were up and fighting. Grinners were in the yard; darting between buildings, clambering on the roofs, diving in and out of tents. The treeline seethed with angry shadows. It was impossible to guess at a number, but more were still coming out of the woods. There seemed to be no end to them.

Wesley showed an uncharacteristic lack of concern as he kept an eye on the four grinners breaking off from the main pack to close in toward him. He flipped the cylinder of his revolver open and thumbed through the chambers, laughing softly to himself as he dug out five spent casings. "Hard way, huh?" he said, and flicked the gun shut with only one bullet left inside. "I can do those odds."

Serene lingered a few steps behind him, unsure whether to try and drag the poor idiot to safety or simply cut her losses and run. For some reason she couldn't explain even to herself, she did neither. There was something about his bearing that said he knew what he was doing. And even though she knew it was suicidally stupid, she found herself wanting to trust that impulse.

The monsters were closing in fast, arranged in a shallow crescent that shrank as they converged on Wesley. Watching them approach, he threw his arm wide, aiming nonsensically off to his right at nothing but dirt, and pulled the trigger. The cylinder cycled with a sharp click, but the gun didn't fire. There was only a soft whistling sound, as of air rushing through a flute.

What the fuck is he doing? Serene asked, taking a small step back as she seriously revisited the idea of running for her life after all.

Wesley pressed the length of the revolver barrel against his forehead and whispered, almost too quietly to be heard: "Goddess, guide my aim." Then he let his arm fall slack by his side and waited. Waiting for what? The monsters ate up the distance to him. Thirty feet, then twenty, then fifteen. How fucking long was he going to wait, exactly? Serene started to prepare an Illusion that would obfuscate them, but she knew creating one under these conditions would simply take too long, and she kept losing her train of thought, the image in her mind slipping.

With one smooth motion, Wesley raised the revolver up behind his back, aiming left, and fired. There was a bright flash and a thunderous gunshot bark. Serene unconsciously looked left to try and see what he could possibly be shooting at, but there was nothing that way. When she looked back, three grinners were tumbling to the ground—the first with a chunk missing from its neck, the second with a gaping hole in its side, and the third with a back leg blown clean off.

The last creature skidded to a halt, confusion evident on its twisted humanoid face as it swung its head around to look at its fallen compatriots. Serene felt the same. Unlike the monster, though, she figured out what she thought had happened after going over it in her head for a second.

Wesley had fired his one bullet way off to the left, and somehow had sent it curving back around to hit those three grinners at once. Guess that gun is some kinda special after all. I thought it didn't work, though… Evidently, he'd figured out the trick to it.

The remaining grinner had only just turned its baleful gaze back on Wesley when the butt of the revolver hit it clean on the nose, hurled spinning through the air, and the weapon bounced away to the side. Its owner followed just a beat after, launched into a Dash-assisted flying knee that gave the grinner's face a second hard knock and folded its neck in on itself. Wesley let his momentum carry him on as he tumbled over the grinner, tucking into a clean frontflip and landed with both feet planted firmly on the dazed creature's back, causing its legs to give as it was driven to the ground.

Wesley leaned aside to pick his fallen gun up out of the grass, keeping a foot on the grinner, then assumed a wide stance for good leverage and clubbed it one, two, three, four, five, six times in the head; left its skull with a good-sized crater before he was satisfied enough to step back from the still-twitching creature.

Looking around and seeing no other threats in the immediate vicinity, Wesley came back toward Serene while spinning his gun lazily around and around with his index finger hooked through the trigger guard. He wore his nakedness proudly, like some archetypal image of primordial man, and had her fixed with those eyes that carried a depth incongruous with one so young.

"It's all right now," he said. "You're safe… now…" He trailed off as the light abruptly winked out of his eyes. He dropped the gun and began to fall. Serene only barely made it to him in time to catch him and lower him to the ground. She rested his head in her bare lap, and looked down in puzzlement at his face, which had already gone peacefully slack. Asleep.

No more grinners came for them. Soon, the militiamen had broken the monsters' unfocused assault, and those that were not killed fled back into the woods.

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