Drummer Boy - Back Into Hell Ch. 04

Jason squirmed. The tail around his neck tightened. The Tail on his back grabbed him by his hair, yanking his head back to expose more of his neck. For easier slicing, he supposed.

Jason had just enough time to think about those wonderfully dangerous deli-meat slicing machines, the ones with the spinning circular blade that you had to adjust just right, lest you miscalculate and get bits of your own hand in with the pastrami, which customers almost always complained to the manager about, and was musing, ruefully, about whether the Tail's dagger was capable of matching the slicing ability of those machines, when Tail eased her knife away from his neck.

"My, my," the Tail said. "That is interesting."

She was fondling his scalp.

Scratch that: she was fondling his horns.

She still kept her tail wrapped around Jason's neck, but returned the dagger back to its sheath. Then that hand joined the first in exploring the bumpy growths above his temples.

"Very interesting," the Tail said.

She worked her fingers along the little bumps, sometimes stroking them gingerly, sometimes pinching them as if to test their durability, and making occasional forays to their outskirts along the rest of his skull.

Jason also noticed, disturbingly, that she was starting to rock her hips against him, and that, where her skin touched his, he could feel her becoming increasingly warmer.

"Look," Jason said cautiously, "I haven't been keeping up on the rules of war, but this seems highly inappropriate."

The Tail laughed a rich, deep laugh, and Jason's blood curdled appropriately. In a mockingly sweet voice the Tail said, "Are you scared, little one?"

May as well cop to it. "Yup."

"Afraid for your very existence, perhaps?" the Tail said.

"Are you kidding me?" Jason said. "Freakin' terrified here!"

The Tail did that deep laugh again. "Yet another thing that makes you so intriguing. You're something different. New. I wonder ... what else shall I discover?"

Quick as a flash, the tail uncoiled from around his neck, and just as quickly bound his ankles together. The next thing Jason knew, he was flung around, and ended up laying on his back with his wings splayed out on the ground behind him.

An instant later, the Tail had dropped to her knees on the membranous parts of his wings, and was straddling his waist. Her face punched his head down to the ground and held him there.

To clarify: There was no physical contact. She didn't head-butt him or anything crass like that. It was as if her face was a beam of beautiful light, shining directly onto his. He was dumbstruck by how jaw-droppingly gorgeous that face was. Perfectly symmetrical, perfectly proportioned, smooth, healthy skin. Even so, something was undefinably off, in a way that he couldn't put his finger on, and that somehow made her even more beguiling. In short, all the scientific, psychological, and spiritual mumbo-jumbo that's ever been spouted to explain why one person is more attractive than another, all of that and more was present in that face.

This is what the Tail mercilessly turned on him now, pinning him in place more effectively than a stack of cinderblocks.

She was just ... so pretty.

"I know," the Tail said, a confident smile on her lips.

"This is so wrong." That's what Jason said, but, honestly, "wrong" wasn't what he was feeling at the moment.

"There is nothing wrong about your arousal," the Tail said. "I feel no shame in mine."

She began to grind her hips again. She reached forward to caress his scalp, which brought her face closer to his. At this shortened distance, the force of her beauty was overwhelming, and Jason's will melted. She kissed him lightly on the lips, and his whole body went limp.

"Let us see how aroused you really are," the Tail said.

Jason felt her tail trailing along his thigh, tracing languidly up past his crotch, pausing for a second to tickle his belly with its brushy tip. Then, like a snake into a foxhole, it dove beneath his waistband.

That was when both of them simultaneously discovered that Jason hadn't gone entirely limp.

The Tail gasped. "By the Three!" she said.

Jason tried to downplay the very obvious. "Well, you seen one, you seen 'em all..."

"I intend to do more than see," the Tail said.

She undid the fastenings on his jeans with her tail, as efficiently as Jason had ever done by using both hands. Then, with obvious relish, she cradled his erection with her dexterous tail.

"By the Bright Lady herself!" she said. "Would it be too forward of me to ... sample this remarkable instrument?"

"I dunno," Jason said, "there's been way too much 'sampling' already..."

"Please?" the Tail said.

She hit him with her face again, beaming her beauty down at him, and Jason's higher cognitive functions, like, for example, the ability to process consequences, packed their bags and hopped on the next redeye to Cuba.

"...well," Jason said, "since you asked nicely..."

The Tail smiled, and Jason's thoughts turned into oatmeal. I mean, here was a very pretty lady politely asking to do something very agreeable to him. He couldn't imagine why he'd been so scared before.

"I am very nice, am I not?" the Tail said.

She lifted her hips, and scooched back to position Jason's cock against her mons.

"Let me show you," she said, "how nice I am."

Placing her hands on Jason's breasts, she swayed his throbbing cock between her thighs a few times, and Jason could feel the soft curly hairs, moist with her juices, and the eager heat from her snatch.

"I think..." Jason said. "I think ... I'm having trouble thinking ... what are you-OOOOHHHH-"

The Tail bit her lip, and sank herself onto Jason's prick. It was a devastatingly calculated move, slow and controlled. She took several seconds to cover just the head of his cock, and Jason felt every millimeter sliding languidly into her.

"-OOOOHHHH-" Jason continued.

The Tail closed her eyes and sighed expansively, while continuing to lower herself onto Jason's cock. This took significantly longer of course, and from Jason's perspective it seemed to last hours. Every second of those hours was a delectable sensual experience, as the Tail's cunt, moist with arousal, quivered excitedly, sucking him in like the most experienced of mouths. She took him in so very slowly that Jason's thoughts were overcome with amazement that such a simple act could feel so good, satisfaction at having his dick handled so expertly, and the anticipation of more to come.

"-OOOOHHHH-"

The Tail shook his breasts, and gave each nipple a violent squeeze between her thumb and index fingers. At the same time, her tail cupped his nutsack and gave his balls a firm, sensual squeeze that was as satisfying as it was weird. At the same same time she had also finally completely engulfed his cock. Her hips and his ground together, as he was now fully inside her, and she let out a wail, as if to match his own drawn-out exclamation.

"haaAAAHHHNnnn...!" she said.

Jason came hard, spurting his seed into the Tail's cunt, which spasmed in vigorous counterpoint to each pumping pulse of Jason's cock.

"-OOOOH!" Jason said.

And then it was over.

"Mmmmm..." the Tail said, with only the slightest quiver in her voice to indicate the fact that she'd just had an orgasm, "very satisfying."

Jason just nodded like a dummy. She still had him pinned with her face-beam.

"But I am filled with, among other things," the Tail said, betraying a wicked smirk, "curiosity. I came here to facilitate a battle, only to find something much more interesting. I can't tell you how exhilarated I feel!"

"...hmmm, yeah..." Jason said. He was feeling all afterglowy, enjoying the sensation of the Tail's hands on his breasts, and the luxurious comfort of his own dagger sheathed in her pussy.

"You will make an excellent gift," the Tail said, running her hands through his hair again, fingering the horn-bumps there. "What would you say to a clandestine dalliance with Aurica?"

"Mmmm...?" Jason said, "...a clan of harmonicas?"

"HOLD, TRICKSTER!"

Jason and the Tail both looked upward in the direction of the voice, and found that they were surrounded by several Wings. They hovered in a circle some twenty feet above them. They looked mighty impressive in their leather vests, skirts, and helmets, not to mention the iron-tipped spears leveled directly at the amorous pair below.

One of them spoke up again. "Remove yourself from our sister, sinister one! And be steady!" she warned. "Deceive us at your peril!"

"Deceive you?" the Tail said calmly. "Why, I would do no such thing."

She looked briefly down at Jason, and in that glance Jason saw that her face betrayed a mix of longing, shock, and disgust, which was abruptly covered over with one of impish glee.

Then a bunch of things happened very quickly.

The first thing was that the Tail's hands left his head, grabbed the daggers sheathed in her chaps (yeah, definitely chaps, Jason thought), and flung them expertly at two of the Wings behind her.

Before those daggers had even had time to hit their marks, though, the Tail leaped off of Jason's dick so quickly it was like she'd bounced, and was both airborne and upside-down.

Jason had only just registered that this had even happened, when her tail whipped out, launching a third, previously unseen, dagger, right at the face of the loud-talking Wing.

By this time, the other Wings had sprung into action, but only just barely. Two of them were struck directly in the chest, and they "oof"ed backward. The Wing leader, though, managed to bring her spear up, deflecting the dagger aimed at her before it struck home.

The rest of the Wings dived, spear-point first, at the Tail. But they were diving at the place the Tail had been, not where she was. And where she was, once she'd completed her aerial backflip, was standing on the shoulders of one of the Wings with a dagger sticking out of her chest.

She wasn't there long, though. The Tail had yet another dagger in one hand. She plunged that dagger down through the skull of the Wing, simultaneously using her tail to retrieve her first dagger from that Wing's chest.

The Tail then leapt from that Wing's shoulders, and over to the other similarly struck Wing. She didn't land on this one, though, instead passing in front of her. As she did, she grabbed the dagger from that Wing's chest, simultaneously slashing the Wing's throat open with the dagger she already had in her hand.

And then she landed in a crouch on the ground. It was done so casually that it seemed to Jason that it was done more as an artistic fillip, rather than due to the unyielding dictates of physics.

The whole exchange had taken less than five seconds.

The Wings were momentarily discombobulated. Jason could almost feel their minds trying to synch back up. But the sudden loss of two of their group looked to have thrown them off.

And, with those two Wings out of commission, there was a hole in the circle they'd built around them. It was in that hole that the Tail now stood. She looked at Jason, and raised an eyebrow at him, as if to saucily respond with, "See, I told you," to some dare he'd never made in the first place.

Then she turned and, in what looked like a gymnastic floor exercise routine that would only garner high marks if the IOC was feeling particularly avant-garde that year, tumbled and shuffled away, disappearing behind a low-rising hill.

By that time, the Wings had started to get their shit together. The bulk of them swooped after the departed Tail. A trio, including the Wing leader, landed next to Jason, who was still, humiliatingly, laying prone on the ground. Hoping they hadn't already noticed, Jason shoved his penis back into his jeans, thinking it would probably be best if he kept that particular secret tucked away.

The leader looked in the direction the Tail had shuffled off to, and then spoke. "Damn! We almost had her!"

From Jason's point of view, that didn't seem the case at all, but figured he wasn't gonna earn any points by bringing that up.

"She can't have gotten far," he said. "I'm sure you can run her down."

The Wing leader looked at him then, first with a scowl, and then with a look of pity.

"Apologies, sister," the leader said. "Your Wing Mother did inform us that you were an imbecile. I had not expected your speech to be affected as well."

"I'm a what?!" Jason said.

"Nevertheless," the Wing continued, "you have provided invaluable assistance this day. Discovering their facilitator ... this a boon."

The Wing held up the dagger that the Tail had intended for her head. "And with this in our possession," she said, "I daresay she will not risk re-engagement."

Jason had a bunch of questions, and was about to ask them, when he remembered that he was still lying down. If he was going to even attempt at fitting in, he was gonna have to make an effort. Which is to say, Jason got to his feet, and did up his fly.

"Yes, quite. And ... forsooth," Jason said. "How did you know where I was?"

"Your Wing Mother, Garanetta," the Wing leader said. "She informed us that her traveling companion was in danger, and that it was of utmost importance that she not be harmed."

"Uh, yep," Jason said. "Utmost. And verily."

"I am to escort you to Pinnacle's Peak," the Wing leader said. "Can you fly?"

"Just barely," Jason said. This was a lucky break. Any clumsiness that Jason showed could be passed off as having being roughed up, rather than him being a noob.

"Give it your best, sister," the Wing said. "And take heart! Certain victory lies before us!"

The Wing leader and her two minions leapt into the air, and Jason, quite a bit clumsier, did the same. They attained a significant altitude, and headed for the multi-tiered structure that was Pinnacle's Peak.

As promised, the Spines appeared to be in retreat. The further they flew toward the Peak, the less he saw of the horned demons, and when he did, they were going the opposite direction. They were still putting up a fight, smashing at their attackers and tossing lightning everywhere, but it was obvious, even to Jason's non-military mind, that they were doing a cut-and-run.

In a short amount of time, they were at Pinnacle's Peak, alighting on a platform somewhere near the middle. Jason was relieved to see that Granny was already there, chatting amongst some other Wings.

As soon as they landed, Granny said. "Ho, Commander Sugil! I see you have found my imbecile."

The Wing leader, apparently named Sugil, responded immediately. "Whole and hale, my Lady!"

Granny glanced briefly at Jason and nodded to Sugil. "And the Spine's facilitator?"

"Escaped, my Lady," Sugil said. "But of her, we have this." She presented the dagger.

Granny took the dagger from Sugil. She glared at it, and yellow flames sparked briefly around her eyes. She laughed.

"Fortuitous," Granny said. "You must have put her in a difficult spot indeed, for her to leave this behind."

"Aye," Sugil said, "but the credit must go to your imbecile. In addition to discovering the Tail, she was able to delay her, allowing us to approach undetected."

"Did she?" Granny said. She arched an eyebrow at Jason. He just shrugged sheepishly.

"Honor to you then, imbecile," Granny said, and then turned back to Sugil. "And losses?"

"One killed, one other to be mended," Sugil said.

"Good. A better outcome than expected," Granny said. "You are also to be commended." She handed the dagger back to Sugil.

"I'm sure your magisters shall make excellent use of this," Granny said. "And now, you will excuse us. I must put my imbecile away, lest she become overstimulated."

"Aye, Grand Wing Mother!" Sugil did some hand gesture that had her draw a lines in the air in front of her with her index fingers, from her temples and meeting somewhere around her navel. Granny responded by making a fist and grabbing the bicep of that that arm with the other hand, which to Jason's mind either meant "We Can Do It!" or "Shove It Up Your Ass".

"Come," Granny said to Jason. She took off and Jason followed.

Jason followed Granny up a few levels, and then through a window carved into the stone. They entered a room that was about the same size as his whole apartment, minus the walls. Upon entering, four torches, of the same kind that he'd seen in Bright Lady's Brow, came alive in each of the corners, brightening the room.

Granny and he set down. There wasn't much in the way of furnishings here. Just four rectangular stone slabs in the center of the room, and the empty square between them contained an unlit fire pit. Suspenders hung from the three walls not occupied by the entry window, and that was about it.

"Thanks for having my back, Granny-"

Granny backhanded him across the face. Jason spun a full three-sixty, and was only barely able to remain standing.

"Ow! Goddammit!" Jason said.

"You were instructed," Granny said, her voice shaking with rage, "to remain unseen!"

"I fucking tried, okay!" Jason said, rubbing his smarting cheek. "It wasn't the Spines who saw me. It was that goddamn Tail! I didn't know there were gonna be Tails here."

"It wouldn't have mattered if you had," Granny said. "Your disobedience necessitated that I send a squad of warriors to rescue you."

"Yeah, I know," Jason said, "but look, I found the chick who was bringing the Spines in! That's gotta count for something, right?"

Granny "hmmph"ed dismissively. She fumed, seeming ready to pimp-slap Jason again, then sighed.

"Your accidental discovery did hasten the end of this battle, and lessen our losses," she admitted.

"So how bout you give me my props," Jason said, "'stead of smacking me around like I stole something!"

Granny "hmmph"ed at him again.

"And maybe I get to pop you one," Jason said, "just so's we're even?"

"I would consider that," Granny said, glaring at him, "unwise."

Jason shook his head. "Forget it," he said. "How'd you know I was in trouble, anyway?"

"Part of the contingency suite of spells I placed upon you," Granny said.

"And fuck you very much for giving me the heads-up on that," Jason said. "You did all that while you were flying away?"

"Nay," Granny said. "That would have been inefficient and time-consuming, to say nothing of incredibly painful on your part. I wove the spells while you slept, and merely completed the last vocalizations in order to activate them."

"Oh," Jason said. "Wait, you mean it could have hurt more?!"

"Aside from the obvious physical changes," Granny continued, "I also included a few fear-based spells."

"Like what?" Jason said.

"When your fear response is invoked, I can see through your eyes," Granny said.

"So you saw me fighting that rock-monster in the desert," Jason said, "and didn't try and help?"

"That hardly required intervention," Granny said with a smirk. The smirk faded, though, as she said, "The Tail, on the other hand, required immediate action. Which is why I included the other charm."

"And what's that?" Jason said warily.

"Pheromones," Granny said. "The more terrified you become, the more strongly they are emitted. As frightened as you were, I am hardly surprised that the Tail could avoid putting her filthy hands on you."

"And here I thought it was my animal magnetism," Jason said, feeling a little crestfallen.

"Somehow I doubt that," Granny said. "Nonetheless, it allowed time enough for my sisters to come to your aid."

"And I'm super glad they did," Jason said. "So it's win-win, right?"

"Not entirely," Granny said, grimacing. "I had intended to minimize your presence here. Instead, you are to be honored for your service to the Aerie."