All the King's Horses Pt. 03

Three centuries, even.

Tiff bit her lip slightly. She tried to dredge up some kind of...sadness that she wasn't going to see the boy she had been dating before her kidnapping. But after crying over her parents and her sister and her sister's ex-wife and her daughter and all the people that Tiffany had slept past as she had hurtled away Earth, locked in a cryogenic capsule. And she still had no idea why. No one on the Deedee had had any idea why either -- it had been a mystery shelved into the background.

Tiff felt a sudden tension, drawn along her spine. Like a knife being dragged across the bow of a violin. She snapped her head up, frowning, then started to walk around the tube of the computer core. On the left side of the bridge, she saw that there was another door, heading into more rooms in the ship. She started to walk forward, her wrist light held up and angled ahead of her. She paced forward slowly, carefully, her laser finger pointed and ready.

Her instincts said something was down here. But it felt...odd. Muted.

She frowned -- then stepped around the corner and came face to face with herself.

The other Tiffany Winters was dressed in the same armor, with the same wrist light, with the same laser glove. Her face was the same -- peach pink with a thin speckling of freckles. Her eyes were the same blue blue as hers. Her hair was the same beach blond. She even had the tiny divot in her lip from when Tiffany had run face first into a stopsign when she had been twelve. The other Tiff smiled at her, lifted her left hand, and pointed her finger right at Tiff's eye.

Fortunately, Tiff had two things that the other Tiff hadn't expected.

The reflexes of a Hunter.

And the memory of re-watching Terminator 2: Judgment Day several billion times on VHS.

Tiff flung herself aside a fraction of a second before her double's finger extended into a sleek, golden-white blade, and impaled her through the eye socket. As it was, it shot past her ear and clipped her helmet. Tiff stumbled and the other Tiff, looking faintly shocked, thrust out with her other hand -- and impaled her through the throat. The impact was harsh and made an audible clunk as the golden blade plunged through armor, through inner suit, through her throat, and emerged out of the back of her neck. Tiff clutched at the other her's wrist, blood bubbling out of her mouth. The pain was shockingly distant, even as Sebastian called out.

"You okay, Winters?"

"Just checking this place out," the other Tiff called out.

Tiff, glaring up at the other Tiff, straightened her finger and fired a beam of pulsed laser light into the sole of the other Tiff's foot. Golden steam gouted out of her and she jerked her arm back and began to hop on her foot, clutching at it, her face a mask of agony. The sound of her foot disconnecting, and then being dragged back down to the floor in the microgravity of the ship, was very faint, and she bit her lip hard enough to draw golden globs of not-quite blood from her lip. Tiff clapped her glove over her throat, her brain screaming at her for a chance to breathe. Her nose flared and she tried to draw in air, but she choked. Her regeneration was kicking on -- but it felt far, far too slow.

So, she pointed her laser finger at the wall.

The beam struck the wall, melted through, and exploded out a gout of molten metal all in one pulsed nano-second. The hissing, screaming sound, drew a confused shout from Sebastian, and the other Tiff glared at her, then kicked out with her leg. Her leg extended like a golden tentacle, but Tiff reacted on instinct -- kicking off the floor and jerking her feet free. She rebouned against the ceiling as the other Tiff's leg plunged into the wall behind where she had stood. Globby red bits of blood were dribbling past her fingers and she felt faint.

Sebastian came into the room just as the other Tiff had retracted her leg and started looking normal. His brow was furrowed and he looked more confused than anything else -- and the other Tiff said: "Sorry, my-"

What she had been about to say didn't matter -- it was just to confuse Sebastian long enough to do something horrible to him. So, Tiff forced herself to expel what breath was in her lungs. It came out as a horrible, death rattling croak and made her vision go red and blurry. But Sebastian looked up at her -- and then blurred into movement, dodging out of the way of the other Tiff's strike towards his chest. He didn't do what Tiff expected -- remain close and engage the other Tiff in melee combat.

Instead, he blurred backwards. Out of the way.

And Tiff remembered...she had a laser.

So, she flicked her finger wildly. Her glove warmed, then heated, then let out a chirruping alarm, then flashed red, the fingertip smoking faintly in the cool air.

But the other Tiff was...basically a slowly expanding cloud of golden mist.

Tiff slowly drifted down towards the ground as Sebastian blurred forward. "Winters! Winters, I need your consent!" He hissed to her. Tiff, looking through the slowly narrowing tunnel of her vision, realized her regeneration wasn't going to save her before the blood loss got her. She heard a roaring in her ear -- and distantly, heard Sebastian growl. "Damn it." And then there was a ripping sound -- and she felt something warm and salty pressing to her mouth. It bubbled past her and part of her rebelled. Recoiled. But a part of her, a dark, eager core of her, knew what it was. Wanted it. Craved it. She had wanted it for so long.

Her tongue darted out -- and the bubbling, frothing liquid smeared against her lips, splashed against her chin, her cheeks. She knew that only a fraction was going down her greedy throat -- mixing with her own blood. Her eyes closed and she actually bit down, working her jaw to fasten herself against the wrist pressing to her lips. There, she sucked, her eyes closing. Greedily. She drank and drank and felt the dark pleasure, the sickly burn, the lovely pain of vampire blood coursing into her. The Hunter instinct inside of her snarled and roared, while her human half mewed and squirmed...

Tiff gasped as the wrist was drawn away from her. Sebastian's voice was ragged and he snarled. "T-That's quite enough, Winters."

His voice gonged against a submissive chord inside of Tiffany and made her nod hurriedly, looking up at him. Her cheeks burned.

Great, she thought as she felt the hole in her throat closing up, and felt the dark heat throbbing in her belly, in her cunt, her nipples, in the back of her brain. You just got fucking Ensnared by a vampire. Good thinking, Tiffany, you mook. Okay. Okay. It's okay. You can resist it -- you have the Hunter inside you.

Sebastian coughed. He looked awkward. "I-It was the only way to save you," he stammered.

"It's okay master," Tiff murmured. Then she closed her eyes, clenching her jaw.

"...master?"

The two of them turned, slowly, in their awkward microgravity embrace.

Bryce and Villia were both standing on the bridge. Villia was holding a small glistening sphere that looked like it had been pulled from the guts of some alien beast between her gloves. "I found something," Villia said, shyly.

Sebastian slapped his palm over his face.

***

Dr. Galadrial smacked the back of Tiff's head.

"Ow!" She rubbed the back of her head.

"That's for being an idiot. Never. Ever. Ever. Ever wander off alone on an Away Mission," he said, his voice gruff. "She'll live."

"Please don't smack your patients, Gal," Tobias said as he looked down at his tablet. Tiffany frowned as she swung her legs over the edge of the examination table, her palms resting to either side of her.

"So...?" She asked.

"What?" Dr. Galdrial asked.

"Give me a shot or a pill or something to break the Ensnarement!" she said, angrily. "When a vampire feeds a mortal their blood -- and the mortal's alive at the time -- the mortal becomes their Ren. You know. Their Renfield? Loyal slave with supernatural strength and regeneration? It's how a bunch of the fucking Cam owned most of Silicon Valley."

"Ensnarement is an archaic term," Sebastian said, looking as mortified as Tiff had ever seen him. He looked as if he was barely able to keep himself from melting in the floor, his arms crossed tight across his arms. "B-But I thought that you, being the Hunter, would be...immune. You're immune to mind control."

"It's not mind control m...Seb...as...ti...on," Tiff said, choking the words out as she pressed her thighs together, her cheeks burning. She looked straight at his chest, not wanting to creep her eyes up to his face -- which had gone from exotic and fascinating and weirdly hot to just...she wanted to rub up against him now. Ugh. This sucked. She hated it. She also really like it. It felt like the heady days after she had first dared to kiss Victor -- before it had all gone horribly wrong. She shoved away those memories -- those ancient memories -- and then looked back at Sebastian. "Christian told me that it's just...mind nudging. Also, since I accepted it, my Hunter mojo let it in."

"Ah," Sebastian said.

Dr. Galadrial sighed. "I'll begin to look through the literature. There is some research in how to break vitae-dependence. But since most vitae is replicated these days, this kind of thing doesn't happen often." He rubbed at his chin.

Tobias nodded. "Can you two handle this?"

"Yes," Sebastian and Tiff said at the same time. Tiff forced herself to look right at Tobias, not at Sebastian, even though her eye wanted to drag itself back to him. The harder she looked at Tobias, the more she wanted to glance aside. She wondered if Sebastian was having the same problem. She doubted it. Ensnarement was a one way street. The mortal, human, at the knees of the vampire, his hand on her leash, wrapped around her throat, tugging her up to his- ooooookay! Tiff mentally slammed the brakes on that thought train as hard as she could.

Sebastian snapped his head to look at her, then looked back forward.

Tiff glanced, out of the corner of her eye at him, her mortification prickling at her scalp. He did not get that thought from me, did he? She thought.

Tobias sighed. "Good. Because I need you in the brig."

"Why?" Tiff asked.

"Not you, him," Tobias said, seriously. "And for the prisoner. It's not every day we have a god onboard."

A short ride down the internal elevator later and Tiff oohed as she pressed her face up against the one way mirror that looked in at the brig. The brig itself looked as comfortable and pleasant as her room -- there was a large cushy bed, a replicator, a desk, even a window with a view. But her attention was drawn, mostly, on the figure floating in the center of it. The other Tiff no longer looked anything like her -- instead, it was a sphere of glowing white light, shimmering and flickering with an inner, golden light. Tendrils of mist spread around it, reaching up to the ceiling, down to the floor, whisking against the walls.

"Kfap," Tobias said. "The shifter is still secure in there, right?"

"Yes, Tobias," Kfap said, cheerfully. "They're sending molecular feelers for any escapes, but my nanoswarms are gently herding them back inside."

"Shifter?" Tiff asked, looking at Tobias. "This thing's like a werewolf?"

"In the same way a space elf is like a human being," Tobias said, nodding. "You're looking at a God-Emperor of the Omni-Imperium, Tiffany. The immortal leaders of the fastest growing fascist state in the galaxy." He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the glass across from her. "They were conquered K'Za'Ngork in, roughly, the year 1920. They spent two centuries under the Ngork boot -- long enough for the shifters to infiltrate their entire society. The Ngork had no idea how far a shifter could shift, you see."

Tiff frowned. "So, they can do more than a wolf..."

"They can do nearly anything," Tobias said, his voice grim. "They shift matter in and out of subspace -- they don't even need a moon. They're not as strong as our lycanthropic brothers -- and they lack the paracausal abilities certain lycanthropes can exhibit -- you know, magic." He nodded to her as Sebastian started to pull small bags of blood out of the replicator in the waiting area. Without waiting, he started to daintily insert straws into the bags, then suck the blood into his mouth. Tiff felt an intense urge to walk over and bear her throat to him.

Instead, she focused on Tobias. "But they can become anything?"

"Within certain mass limitations. Also, they can't produce much energy. So, you know, they can't make themselves into a laser gun or something. But they can form knives, stabbing weapons."

Tiff rubbed at her throat. "Yeah. I noticed."

"The first time the rest of the galaxy knew the shifters were anything but a curiosity that the Ngork imperials kept around as fucktoys and pets was when a full quarter of the Ngork Empire broke away, formed the Omni-Imperium, and the Ngork fell into a twenty year civil war they're only just now crawling out of. In that time, the OP has been snapping up planets left and right. They have a dozen vassal species that they've indoctrinated into seeing them as gods."

"They sound...fun..." Tiff said.

Sebastian sighed as he set the last of the empty baggies back into the replicator, which closed up. "All right then," he said.

"Need any help, m...Sebastian?" Tiff asked, grinning as she punched her palm. "I can hold him. Her. It." She frowned. "They? The shifter. Whatevermatron."

Sebastian shook his head. "I'd honestly rather you weren't here, Winters," he said, his voice tight as he walked past her to the entrance of the brig, the door hissing open to reveal a small airlock between the brig and the exterior of the ship. Tiff blushed, feeling a weird, prickly warm feeling in her belly. He cared about her. Except he didn't, that was just his blood singing through her veins, like a drug. Except, he did? Kinda? He had looked so sad. She squirmed, then turned and faced the glass. Tobias was looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

"You sure you can handle this?" He asked. "It's nothing to be ashamed of -- you got a hit of vitae..."

"I'm. Fine." Tiff said as the door inside opened and the shifter shimmered, then collapsed into...

Her.

"That bitch!" Tiff said as Sebastian snapped his fingers and a table and a pair of chairs extruded out of the floor, while the other Tiff grinned at Sebastian. She was dressed in a silvery jumpsuit that looked more like the uniform of the Federation than anything that Tiff was wearing. It clung to every nubile curve on Tiff's body. She glared at...herself and leaned closer -- her eyes flicking to Sebastian. If Sebastian thought anything at all, he didn't show it as he drew a seat, settling down across from the shifter.

"Hello," Sebastian said. "I am sorry for the spartan accommodations, I'm sure it's nowhere near as pleasant as what you are used to...how would you prefer I refer to you?"

The other Tiff grinned, leaning forward on her elbows. "You can call me..." She narrowed her eyes. "Fuckslut."

Sebastian arched an eyebrow. "I do not believe that is your preferred means of conversation. From what I have read of the Omni-Imperium, you are usually referred to in considerably more baroque and deferential ways." He clasped his fingers together, leaning forward. "Currently, the Federation is willing to treat you gently. No one has died, neither your nor Miss Winter's injuries were lethal. Things don't need to escalate."

The other Tiff snorted. "Wow. They were right. You Feds are the most pathetic weaklings in the galaxy. Okay. Okay. Fair. Fine. I'll spell it out for you: You're going to get nothing from me. I'm not some...solid that you can order around. Where your species is confined to a paltry handful of..." The other Tiff blinked -- her brow furrowing as the real Tiff grinned.

"Ohhhh rookie mistake..." Tiff murmured. "Get her, Master."

Sebastian lifted his chin, looking down into the other Tiff's eyes. His eyes had gone from a light red to a deep, warm crimson. His voice was soft as he murmured. "Please, tell me your name..." he said, his voice husky. A tingle crawled along Tiff's spine as the other Tiff gulped, then murmured, quietly, her eyelids drooping.

"I am the Emperor..." she said.

"There are many Shifters...which one are you?" Sebastian asked, his fingers interlocked.

"We are all the Emperor," the shifter said, her voice still sleepy, her eyes unfocused. "When we are together, we...are one. It's hard to...describe." She bit her lip, slightly, her blink languid and slow. When her eyes had opened, her pupils had dilated even more. Tiff bit her lip, jealousy nipping at her ankles.

"And what were you doing here, on this Capellan ship?" Sebastian asked.

"We purchased it...from the Capellans..." the shifter said, her voice still dreamy. "We lack neutrino communication technology. We wanted to experiment with it. To see if we could draw the We into a location with pulsed neutrino signals...studies show it's the only thing that attracts them." She nodded. "If it worked, we were going to use them to attack...you."

"You were going to attack Earth?" Sebastian asked, seriously. "How?"

"We would signal the We Aggregate and draw them out of the plane of the ecli...pt..." She trembled, then closed her eyes, then snapped away from Sebastian -- her body collapsing and shifting into a swirling blur of golden fog. Sebastian was, quite suddenly, in the airlock, having blurred away from the shapeshifter before she could lash out at him. The door slammed shut and then hissed open and Sebastian emerged, his hands shaking, his eyes closed.

The shifter writhed, filling the room with smoke -- and faint thumping sounds came through the wall. "You fucking zonked that-" Tiff started, about to slap Sebastian's shoulder, but he shot a glare at her that shut her right up. Tobias gave him a quick nod, and Sebastian took that as an excuse to leave. He strode off through the door and Tiff stepped after him. She strained against the urge to run after him -- but she closed her eyes. He wasn't her master. He was...just...a...smug, priggish vampire. And not even an old one. Victor had been older than him when they'd...

She turned back to Tobias, flushing. "What was that all about?"

"Well, Sebastian doesn't like using Domination," Tobias said. "It's...a power fraught with ethical quandaries."

"Like wha..." Tiff blushed. "Right. Duh. Obvious. What's an ecliptic? You know what? Nevermind." She turned and headed off -- stepping through the door. She found Bryce outside the brig. He regarded her and she felt a welter of confusing emotions buzzing through her -- and Bryce smirked at her.

"You wanna find Sebastian?" he asked, quietly.

Tiff blushed and nodded, rubbing at her neck.

"He went that way, his quarters are on deck two," he said, grinning. "It may not work, you know, but, I wish you luck."

Tiff flushed even harder. "I'm...not going to boink him!" she hissed.

Bryce grinned. "And you humans say we Gal'sem only think about sex. Cheering up Sebastian is like trying to pet a porcupine that's also a landmine." He leaned in close, whispering. "And I know for a fact, he's a virgin."

Tiff's eyes bugged. "But he's a vampire!" She said, her knees trembling, her hands clenching before her chest, her fingers interlocking. "And..." She blinked. "Aren't you jelly?" She looked up into his exotic blue-gold eyes. Bryce grinned at her, his ears perking up a bit.

"I was raised on Earth," he said, cheerfully. "I didn't get a head full of that Narine indoctrination about sex being grotesque and having children as being a product for the state and continuation of the Union." He shook his head. "You go and get that vampire virgin dick, if you want it." He squeezed her shoulder. "Just be ready to tell me all the saucy details."