Endangered Ch. 11

She found an unused sharps collector which undoubtedly had the required volume, but the plastic lid was designed specifically to stay on. That was a deal breaker because the one-way orifice possessed a pit-trap of inch-long plastic teeth no self-possessed male would dream of pointing his equipment at.

Finally giving up on the ruined supply closet, she bustled into the staff break room in search of a bowl, or heaven forbid, someone's half-cleaned Tupperware. She really wanted that sample.

Salvation came in the form of a box of jumbo-sized ziplock sandwich-bags they kept under the sink. Handy things, or so she thought as she scuttled back to the MRI suite in triumph.

Emelia still couldn't believe Reyla had purchased Dr Chang his own MRI. He claimed it was second hand from a hospital and picked up for a bargain, but she knew the expense of even preparing the room to safely operate such a huge magnet could be monstrously expensive. There might be magic involved though.

"A baggie?" Petra hissed quietly as they made their hushed liaison just outside the monitoring room. "We'll be lucky if he doesn't blow straight through it. I guess it will have to do. Okay, stay out of sight, he can still be a bit shy sometimes."

Heart thumping with elicit excitement, Emelia listened at the door. The two women worked like a well-oiled team. With cooed words and gentle kisses, they quickly co-ordinated against and then overwhelmed his startled but weak protestations. It was over soon. Ending in an extended series of deep, satisfied grunts, accompanied by delighted giggling and lewd, mock-astonished encouragement.

Later, after they were gone and she was left with an alarmingly occupied bag of warm, thick semen, Emelia brought up the room's camera feed. They had worked together alright, one beauty whispering and nibbling in each of his ears as he sat, throbbing and enormous between them. They shared him, each dragoness taking part of his length in hand, a fat testicle gently cradled and tugged in the other. Once started, they didn't let up. Eyes tight shut, he erupted into the tenuous vessel in a mighty series of bucking, white volleys that set even her neglected old nethers a-quiver.

***

Reyla should have known she was in for a terrible day. What else could she expect after abandoning her territory? Barely two days of neglect left a line of petitioners stretching all the way out the great doors, clamouring for her attention. It was a nightmare morning in court.

Nevermind that she had just exhausted herself bending her energies toward their protection, to maintaining the tattered remnants of the Secret they all clung to. She was still magically drained, and tired, and cranky. Not everyone could have a dragon of their own to replenish their magic as if by... well, magic.

It was as if her subjects took her return as licence to brazenly voice their most ridiculous complaints: Her modest tax on magical transactions was too high. The conditions leading up to the Revelation were too strict. Someone's uncle had cheated them out of a magical family heirloom. Rufus Valdeer's successful nightclub was too loud and too full of vampires. More to the point, they had the audacity to kick out drunken magelings from powerful families for stressing the limits of the protective charms with 'harmless' shows of co-ed impressing magic. There wasn't enough regulation on the sale of new dragon crystals. There was too much regulation on the sale of new dragon crystals. Dragon crystals, dragon crystals, dragon crystals. Reyla wanted to scream.

Worse, it emboldened some of them to new heights of entitlement and pettiness. There was one young elf noble in particular who was there just to push her buttons. She knew he was basically a spy, that someone was putting him up to it, but he really needed a lesson in the realities of appropriate behaviour in her court.

He pranced, back and forth in front of her throne. Pranced! With an audience of her rowdy subjects behind him, his tongue softly lashed her with saccharin-veiled advice on how to better rule her 'meagre kingdom.'

As her ears twitched with barely suppressed rage, Reyla fantasized his gruesome, painful end.

Perhaps an agonisingly slow submersion in a strong caustic solution. She knew where to find a particularly nasty strain of flesh-beetles that would surely appreciate dining on his softest, most precious masculine parts. But she felt her favourite magic calling to her, the chill of her beautiful dark ice.

She would have him chained in some filthy dungeon, dropping by every few days as the fancy took her to drive another bolt of shadowfrost through a limb. The wounds would advance slowly toward his core, and if she was patient, she might draw out his eventual demise over an entire week. It would be fascinating to see which claimed him first, hypothermia or sepsis.

The dragon would no doubt be sickened by her cruel thoughts, but they were only idle fantasy really. One of her more orthodox sisters might flay the 'pale mutt' for his insolence. Her mother certainly would, but then the foolish young elf would never dare show his face in her subterranean halls.

Reyla considered herself a relatively tame, subdued Drow. Her moderate nature had won her her territory after all. Despite her position though, leniency had made her rule the butt of many a barbed joke from her family over the centuries.

The House Galentyr noble was safe from her reprisals for now. The trade his family company brought to her territory was too valuable to even risk offending the young upstart by telling him where he could shove his unsolicited advice. She knew they were allied with Lefayd. Since the great house had disgraced itself, Galentyr had slipped two agents her way under the guise of evaluating her territory's newly flourishing magical trade. She couldn't exactly call their bluff because everyone else was doing it too. There truly were opportunities to be had with Chris handing out his magic like penny candy.

As if to drive that point home, she saw that the dwarves had finally overcome their cautious nature. An Alliance-certified journeyman smith and his busty female cousin were there to petition for her patronage. They hailed from Kaellamac Hold in the bleak Yukon Ranges far to the north. A journeyman wasn't a particularly lavish gesture from the Alliance, but it was not to be scoffed at. Reyla accepted, of course, adding another shiny speck to the brilliance of her rising star.

That had been the fleeting highlight of her morning. It was quickly dashed by speculative whispering as Timothy slipped into her court and glided to her side to whisper the foul news of Susan's assault in her ear. Reyla was genuinely stunned, and it must have shown on her face because the disquieted mutterings from the pews grew fretful.

The theft was so brazen, so clearly calculated, and so like the Syndicate. It was her fault, too. She'd offered them insult by blowing off their second meeting with the emergency trip to Argentina, so they'd flexed their muscles. What got to her though was that they'd brought those type of hitters with them to begin with. They were serious about getting their hands on dragon crystals, the fools.

It was going to backfire, of course. Hadn't they caught wind of what he'd done to Lefayd? Perhaps they had, and were now counting on Chris' need to walk on eggshells around the Synod to protect them from reprisal. Clever, it might work, at least in the short term. The dragon would need to be restrained from seeking vengeance.

Susan had done the right thing by keeping Chris in the dark temporarily, but Reyla wished she hadn't gone and called all her clients to apologize and explain what had happened. Several of them arrived within the hour to swell her schedule with demands for action and sanctions. They were led by the enchantress Tamara, who Reyla genuinely respected. But she couldn't agree to their calls for action, it would have been a declaration of war on one of the most powerful trade entities in the Being world.

A crotchety grandmother witch and her missing goat later, the young vampire Amanda interrupted proceedings by barging into the vast room. Reyla knew something was very wrong before the woman had taken her third sprinting pace up the lush red carpet to deliver a phone to her hand.

Just how wrong should have been obvious from her head of security's stressed tone. More, by his admission that he didn't know what he was dealing with and needed her immediate help. But now, as Reyla stepped through the boundary of the hastily erected deference-charm around the old apothecary's shop, even she was brought up short.

Susan lay naked, suspended more than ten feet up in the freezing winter's air. Her limbs posed as if crucified, eyes closed in lifeless serenity as her long black hair whipped about in the stiff breeze. The scenario might not have been so bad if not for the mass of dark vines punching into her shoulders, lower back, and calves. The branches spiralled and twisted around each other to form some sort of thick, knotty trunk, erupting from the cracked the snowy pavement below. The evil thing must have burst up out of the cold earth to impale the poor woman.

"Gods, she's skewered," Reyla whispered to herself when her mouth stopped hanging open uselessly. Hot tears began welling unbidden in her eyes, her heart turning icy with calculating rage. Synod be damned, this crime would not go unanswered. "The Syndicate will pay for this, dearly!"

Along the witch's outstretched arms and across the pale skin of her exposed front budded thinner, flexible stems. Unfurling outward in mimic of a fern, they displayed small arrays of black leaves along their length. It formed a broad, frilly halo around the witch's body, waving sympathetically with her hair in the gusts blowing down from the north.

"My Lady, it wasn't the Syndicate," a gruff voice rasped beside her, causing the elf to round on the proprietor of the establishment as he and Timothy approached. "At least, I don't think so. I saw Susan walk out here, called out to her. There was something wrong. When she ignored me, I followed. It grew out of... it grew out of her."

"What?!"

"I swear it, Lady Reyla," the old fellow begged, impotent tears beginning to well in his earnest eyes as he wrang his hands. "She just stood there looking up at the sun for a moment. I was shouting, but it was like she couldn't hear. It just... it burst out of her skin like a nest of terrible black snakes, all writhing and waving about. It was so fast! Smashed right into the ground and started growing. Her clothes started shredding off when the little ones came out, the whole thing took less than a few minutes."

"Look closely, Reyla," the tall elemental urged beside her. "Where is the blood? She's naked but her one injured foot is bound."

"Don't forget, she's breathing," Rowan added hopefully. "I've never heard of any spell like this, have you?"

"You're right, she yet lives," Reyla murmured, fascinated as she began examining the suspended witch with magical senses. There was a powerful magical aura there, but it was off. Impressions from the previous evening's dinner at the dragon household didn't match what she saw before her. This thing was dark, and slow, and very old. "It... We must find Chris immediately, the dragon should be here."

"Lillian has already gone to collect him. She already tried to get close but whatever it is just about harpooned her to the pavement with something from the trunk. It saw her coming, and it's damn quick." The flame-spirit's tone indicating he had a growing respect for the thing, at least from a professional standpoint. "Reyla, what is it?"

"I do not know, which concerns me greatly," the elf admitted, tall and dark in her human form. "Something about it tickles maddeningly at an ancient memory, but it is yet to surface. Wizard, you say she was acting peculiarly? Take me to her witch's kitchen."

"Of course, Lady," Rowan nodded gravely.

"Timothy, we must contain this area. We need more of your men walking the streets. If this is the Syndicate's work they may still be lurking. Reinforce the charm and start laying some weaker spell rings of repellency and forgetfulness further afield for the humans. Use a vomitous hex if you think it necessary but no one must lay eyes on this... this malignant tree. For all we know it may become a long-term feature if we cannot uproot it. Talk to Michelle about our options if that is the case."

Reyla followed the venerable wizard around the southern edge of his carpark, skirting the thing with as much distance as possible. He led her through the front door into his shop, were she paused with her senses wide.

It had been years since she had visited her craftsfolk personally. Sitting resentfully in her court was perhaps providing an unfairly dirty window into her subject's affairs.

"I confess I am impressed by your assemblage, Rowan Eddard," she said once she had seen her fill. Walking over to a shelf in the corner of the room and reaching high to extract a dusty jar from amongst its gruesome counterparts, she turned to smile at the old man. "I don't imagine many customers ask for the pickled dark-weed galls of my homeland's great lakes, or your other more obscure stock. It is nice to know that someone in my realm appreciates a broad range of... tastes. Why, even the sight of these reminds me of my childhood."

"They are yours, Lady Reyla. Take them, take them if they please you. I can't attest to their quality any more, they've sat there unbothered for years. Since I made my last batch of black-antivenin if memory serves, but at my age, that's no sure thing."

"I couldn't," Reyla returned the jar to its resting place. "It is good you use them for such qualities, some of my sisters were not so scrupulous. Besides, I always preferred them fresh."

"As you wish. This way please," Rowan announced, very satisfied with himself after the praise from his icy ruler. "I'll show you where Susan worked. She was a promising talent you know, I've never seen her like in skill for tending magical plants."

In Susan's pavilion, they found the strange scene of her preparations. The shattered glass of the seed's containment vial was particularly interesting to Reyla, who used an incantation to restore an image of its intact form. So freshly broken, the memory in the glass was still strong. She read the runes it once bore, designed to hold stable and contain. But what had it contained?

Her instinct pinged off a frustrating, stubborn old memory and she scowled savagely. She didn't want to involve anyone else, least of all her mother, but what choice did she have? Taking axe and saw, or pitch and flame to the tree seemed like a terrible idea with the witch still somehow attached to it.

Reyla was saved the decision for a few moments more when she spotted the young ditríff in their new enclosure. A white eyebrow cocked in the squirming apothecary's direction. Magical plants were by no means an area in which she considered herself an expert, but she had encountered these before. Hungry white rootlets were already spreading eagerly down into the moistened bed of yellowish-green moss.

"They were mine until recently. Dormant of course." Rowan pulled nervously at the collar of his dirty robe, clearly uncomfortable under the piercing scrutiny of her grey eyes. "Susan asked me for them after she was attacked. I thought it might do her good to work on something that helped her feel more secure. She said that she'd been terrified by her attackers and offered little resistance during the robbery. I think... I think it shamed her deeply. I'm sorry, I'll destroy them right away."

"Hold, Rowan. You are not to blame. Indeed, such precautions may be necessary for the future if you wish to continue selling the dragon's bounty. Your insight into her state of mind is revelatory though. I believe now that her current predicament is self-inflicted, though for the life of me I do not know what creature has taken hold of her."

"I think so, too," the wizard croaked. He wiped hurriedly at his eyes to collect moisture onto the back of a wrinkled, work-worn hand. "I should have watched her more closely, but she looked at me so..."

"Hush, fault lies with the brigands who attacked peaceful folk like you and Susan," Reyla comforted, tentatively patting at his shoulder. Say what you would about how they vexed her to distraction, she was a fierce protectress of her subjects. "And with me, for failing to protect you from them. Let us go see Susan, I may have one final card to play before we resort to our own rash action. Though I'm loath to place it on the table."

Chris had arrived by the time they emerged back into the grim chill. The young dragon was nigh inconsolable. Magically enhanced vision let her see that Lillian and the two wide-eyed dragoness' had encircled him, restraining hands on his shaking body. Timothy was trying his best to explain that Susan was still alive but it didn't seem to be having the desired effect.

There were fresh signs of a scuffle in the dirty snow around the group. A red trickle spilled from a rapidly sealing split in the vampire's lip. Seeing that might have coaxed a smile to Reyla's lips at another time, but not today. Lillian's entire left side was dark with dirty water and splotched with snow. They'd a hard time of it apparently, but soft touches and loving words seemed to be holding the grief-stricken man back for the moment.

Reyla sighed, producing her Maginet phone from the pocket of her fur-lined cloak. She took a few careful steps toward the impaled witch for a better view. For the first time, she realised that Susan's body, indeed the whole dark construct, was aimed perfectly to face the dimming afternoon sun. The woman's face showed none of the pain she should rightfully feel, she looked almost... tranquil?

The elf assumed Susan wouldn't care about her modesty if she somehow survived this ordeal. So she felt no qualms snapping a photo which revealed her pale breasts and dark thatch of pubic hair in full detail. It was the dark tree-thing growing from that curvaceous, suspended form that was of concern. Backing warily away to stand by herself, Reyla began composing a suitable message to accompany the picture.

It wasn't an easy decision to seek her mother's guidance. Things had mellowed between them over the centuries since their major falling out. Still, words had been given screaming voice in that conflagration that could never be erased by time. They'd nearly killed each other. Distance worked wonders to patch their relationship now. These days they were civil and even shared a grudging respect for one another. They had common enemies and occasionally participated in joint schemes to ruin them. Ultimately, they were still mother and daughter. It was just best for all involved that they didn't see too much of each other, lest old habits and passions reignite.

"Mother, I hope this finds you well," Reyla mouthed to herself as she tapped the message into her screen. No, that was too obsequious. "Mother, I need the wisdom of your advanced years. What am I dealing with?"

Simple, a little barbed, good enough. She sent it, and began walking over to try her hand at reassuring Christopher. His mates had him gently corralled in a prison of warm, loving bodies. Annabel and the sprite had just arrived, the girl taking charge of the effort with a general's efficiency. Two pregnant dragoness' hugged his front, pressing themselves firmly against him. Invisible to the unaided eye, Lillian embraced him from behind, her strength ready to hold him back at the first twitch of his muscles. The blue pest was sitting on one of his shoulders running small, soothing hands through his short hair. Finally, Annabel clung to his other side, head resting against a bicep as she meshed her fingers with his again and again.