Flying Blind Ch. 05

"Still . . . gonna . . . kick your ass," Madison muttered as the blood flowed to her brain.

"Madison," Heda said, her blood starting to boil again, "you can't win every fight just by being stubborn." She let Madison go, and the blind girl turned around. She was exhausted, flustered, and more than a little humiliated.

Madison lowered her face, her sweat-soaked hair cutting off any view of those lovely features. She wanted to say something, but could not. They wouldn't get it. She turned and went back to the house, but stopped just short of the door. "You win," she said, her voice cracking. "I'll leave."

Heda was completely befuddled. She looked at Billy and then at Sasha, but neither of them seemed to have any answers.

"Hey guys, why don't we . . . uhm --" Sasha started, but then just trailed off.

Joanna put a hand on Heda's shoulder. "Maybe you should try talking to her again. Or better yet, maybe just listen."

Heda nodded, then followed Madison's footsteps, through the door to the basement, and then downstairs. On the bed was a tattered old suitcase, which was the only piece of luggage that Madison actually owned. It had been given to her by her last set of guardians in the changeling foster care system, right before being told to get out and not come back. That was when something hit Heda like a ton of bricks. She looked over at Madison who was standing in front of her closet, reaching randomly for clothes to pack away.

"Madison, we're not getting rid of you," Heda said softly. "Believe me, I wish we could just catch this guy and then you could stay right here."

Madison's hands fell, one of her several identical simple brown dresses clutched in a trembling hand. "You know, Billy was the only person I really felt safe around before you. Sasha's great, but she couldn't keep Alvin or his guys away. Then you show up and you're perfect and strong and I think . . . I really think that things are okay. And now you and Billy just keep telling me that the best thing for me is to not be around the only people who ever made me feel that I was worth a damn. You want me to go live with someone who I barely know and don't really trust. All because there is yet another whack-job out there that's decided to hate me. It wasn't enough that fate made me a laughing stock of the shifter world. Oh no, it had to make sure that I was loathed, harassed and . . . and now someone wants to kill me? Because I studied hard and complained to a department head about Reichert's grading?"

She sunk down and pushed herself back into her closet. Heda knelt in front of her, not wanting to intrude into her lover's space quite yet.

"This is the first time that my life has ever been in a place that I wanted it to be, ya know? Friends, community, girlfriend . . . Now everyone wants me to give it up for something else that isn't my fault. And you --"

"Me what?"

"You'd still be here, surrounded by all these college girls and . . . don't you dare laugh!"

Heda couldn't help it. "You . . . (gasp) . . . you really ARE afraid that I'd break up with you, aren't you? Just because I didn't see you for a few weeks. You neurotic, psychotic, off-kilter, bizarre little bat!"

Madison tried to push Heda away with her feet, but Heda grabbed them and pulled the girl out of the closet and into Heda's lap.

"I have never met anyone quite like you," Heda said, "and that's a good thing. You think I'm going to dump you after a little absence? You have tried twice now to kick me in the head, and I'm still here. Right?"

Madison sniffed. "I guess."

"And what is it with you wanting to fight me? Is the sex THAT disappointing?" Heda was smiling a little now.

"NO! I mean . . . okay, I do mean 'no.' The sex is great and you damn well know it."

"So?"

"So maybe if you don't see me as helpless, you won't keep trying to send me away for my own good and crap like that."

"Madison, every likely target is being treated the same. The authorities just want to make sure you're safe. You think any of the other potential victims are trying to kick their girlfriends in the heads over this?"

"I don't know. I've never met --"

"Madison," Heda interrupted sternly.

"No," she whispered.

"And what is with the biting and hair pulling? That was brilliant!"

Madison looked confused. "You're not mad about that?"

"Are you kidding? In a fight, you do whatever you have to in order to win."

"You didn't," Madison pointed out.

"If I had actually knocked you out, I wasn't really winning anything. You know, you're kind of like a carnival game."

"Excuse me?"

"Yeah, I really want to win you, but there's always a trick to it."

Madison smiled a little. "I'm not sure how to take that."

"It's a compliment." Heda stroked her girlfriend's face. "Madison, you know that there's a chance that 'you and me' isn't going to be forever, but I'm having fun trying. I'm not going to stray if I don't see you every day, just like I wouldn't expect you to."

Madison felt very silly. She knew that she herself would never cheat, so why have so little faith in Heda? "I'm sorry. I just react badly to being scared, and I haven't been able to get my feet under me that much recently."

"I know. But the next time you try to kick me in the head, you had better connect."

"I think I'll try and avoid that for a while." Madison's smile grew a little wider. "You know, just until you get some more training under your belt."

"Yeah, I'm a wuss," Heda said. "So --"

Madison sighed. "So I'll call Mr. Hannity and see if he can put me up for a bit."

"It might help if you call him 'Dad' too."

"I'm not ready to take our relationship to that level."

"You're not dating him, you're trying to build a family rapport with him." She ruffled Madison's hair. "Call him. You don't have to start packing right away."

She sighed. "Wait, Billy has my phone."

Heda handed hers over, kissed Madison, then headed upstairs. Billy was waiting near the door, trying vainly to look like he just happened to be there. "She's calling her dad," she said.

"Thank goodness. What was --"

"She'll tell you when she's ready. I'm not going to try to interpret the mind of Madison Sloan."

"You are wise beyond your years."

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Later that night . . .

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Heda was lying on her bed in her boy-shorts and a half-shirt, reading the latest book in her favorite vampire series when she heard a knock on the bedroom door. "Come in."

Madison came in, slightly more composed than she had been earlier. "Okay, I'll be taking off in a few days," she said reluctantly. "I need to get some stuff squared away with school and the radio station. God, I've got no idea who they're going to put on in my place." Madison's face grew worried again. "What if I can't get my job back?"

"Good grief, you will worry about anything, won't you?" Heda pulled her to the bed. "Reichert will make sure your job is safe. You may not even be gone that long. Besides, no one, and I mean no one, has a voice like you."

"You're just saying that," Madison said shyly.

"Oh, it's true. And I'm going to miss you. Keep in mind, there have been great advancements in the field of phone sex recently."

"Heda!" Madison let out with a laugh, blushing to her toes.

'She doesn't even know how cute she is,' Heda thought. She lowered her lips to Madison's neck, kissing her softly and letting the tip of her tongue touch that warm, amazing skin.

"Huh . . . hey," Madison gulped. "You're supposed to be mad . . . oh God . . . mad at me?"

"I got over it," Heda replied, working her mouth up to Madison's. "And since you're going to Dallas for a while, I think we need to do something to tide us both over for a while. Except for the phone sex of course."

"Of course."

Heda sat up, running her fingers over Madison's responsive body. Down the bat shifter's ribs to her hips, then down those long legs and back up again. "Let's get a better look at you," she whispered.

Madison bit her bottom lip again, getting herself to a standing position. Both girls began disrobing, sneaking glances at one another's body. Heda was the first to be fully nude, and she pulled back the covers and laid down. When Madison pulled her panties off, she was quickly dragged onto the bed and then the covers were pulled up. Heda pulled their bodies so close together that they might as well have been sharing skin. Her breasts rubbed Madison's, much to the delight of nipples everywhere.

But for Madison, it always came back to the kissing. Whether on the lips, the neck, the earlobe, or the . . . well, other places, Madison loved kissing. And Heda was giving her a banquet of kissing. Her legs spread enough so that Heda could settle between them while being on top, their bodies pressed tightly together. The eagle-shifter humped against her bat-shifter counterpart, getting the blood flowing even more vigorously. Madison grabbed Heda's ass and clung to it like a personal flotation device.

"Oh man," Heda said, her breath hot and ragged, "Is it warm in here or is it just me?"

Madison sucked her girlfriend's bottom lip into her mouth. "It's not just you."

Heda couldn't wait another minute, and her fingers found their way into Madison's sex, sliding neatly between the folds. She press her own mound against the back of her hand, using her fingers as a miniature cock and she began thrusting.

Breathing was a problem for Madison. She was forgetting to do it as often as she should, which, combined with a redirection of blood flow in her body, was causing her to be a little light headed. When she did breathe, it sounded strangely like panting. "No . . . no way that phone sex can live up to this."

"I dunno," Heda said, "you do have a sexy voice."

Madison knew that meant it was time to bring in her on-air persona. "Fuck me like you mean it," she said throatily, her normal speaking voice taken over by a distinct Cajun drawl.

Heda's mind started up its own little fireworks display. She wished that she had some kind of sex toy so that she could take this girl to heaven and back, but that was not going to happen tonight. As she plunged her fingers in, she curled them gently, making sure to stimulate every part of her lover's pussy.

"Say it again," she asked.

"Fuck me," Madison growled, hooking her legs around Heda's hips and bringing her hands up to Heda's neck.

So Heda did just that. She did slowly slide off to the side and just use her fingers, but it also allowed her to lower her mouth to tease and suck on Madison's breasts. Hot breath and excitement had the nipples at full attention, and suction and light biting kept them that way. She pressed her palm against Madison's clit, rubbed a few times and then --

"Squeak!" Madison tried to cover her mouth, but it was too late. The hiccup-like expression of pleasure was swallowed by the cavern formed by the covers, a secret shared only by the two lovers.

Heda was a bit surprised when Madison pulled away from the kissing, but she enjoyed watching the world's largest groundhog burrowing around under the covers until it was between Heda's legs. That talented oral cavity pressed against Heda's sexual one and began licking like ice-cream was going out of style. Her technique improved with each sexual adventure, because Madison wanted nothing more than to please.

Madison decided to push Heda a little, inserting three fingers between those tight inner labia and thrusting while she tantalized the rest of the smooth, wet, available skin with her tongue.

Heda decided to rethink her earlier desire. Not only did she need to get a sex toy to use ON Madison, she needed one FOR her. She did not mind at all when a partner got a little more aggressive, and this partner was showing signs of accommodating that wish. 'My little girl's growing up,' she thought.

"Is that okay?" Madison asked huskily as she pushed her own makeshift organ into her lover's body.

"I'll let you know when it's too hard," Heda replied. Damn, she wanted to grab Madison's wrist and push even harder.

"You're kinda freaky, aren't you?"

Heda laughed. "I've tried a lot of stuff, and . . . well, a lot of it was fun."

"How do I rank?" Madison asked, then wished she hadn't. She knew she was an inexperienced lover.

"The rest don't even compare," Heda said, and there was more than a little truth to that. While many of her prior lovers could still be considered friends or at least they had parted on good terms, but Madison was different. Being with someone special to you really did change things.

Since she still had a free hand, Madison stroked Heda's legs, demonstrating that she had in fact learned things about Heda's body than not many who had come before her knew about. That spot on the back of her knees, or even just the sensitivity on the insides of her thighs; these were things that Madison knew. She exploited everything, caressing the back of the knees and kissing the inner thighs. She did not rely on clitoral stimulation to make Heda cum, though it did make it more fun and more explosive.

So that's what Madison did, launching a tongue-offensive on Heda's clitoral hood, snaking her way underneath and teasing the hard little nub while penetrating deeper with her fingers, spreading them as much as she could until Heda made an uncomfortable noise. She pulled just a little bit back, and she had her girlfriend right where she wanted her. Namely, cumming like a river beneath Madison's attentions.

Heda was gasping happily as Madison kissed her way back up that chiseled abdomen, delaying for a moment at the breasts, then peeking her head back out from under the covers to engage in a tongue-swapping kiss.

"When you get back," Heda said, "I'm gonna have all sorts of surprises waiting for you."

While still excited and pleased, that grin and that promise made Madison more than a little bit nervous.

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The next day . . .

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Edgar and Kevin were sitting on the couch when Heda made her sleepy way downstairs to grab some orange juice the next morning.

"Hey," Heda said, scratching her ass through the shorts she had thrown on.

"Morning, oh delicate princess," Edgar replied, smiling at his sister. Heda was not at her best in the morning. "How's Madison?"

"She's okay," Heda replied from the kitchen. She came out and flopped down in a chair, juice in hand. "She was really freaked, but she's calmed down."

"I bet. You spent most of the night 'calming her down.'"

"Jealous?" Heda shot back with a grin. Her brothers all loved giving her shit about her sexual promiscuity.

He sighed. "Actually, sort of. You had more fun that I did last night. But at least Kevin has an idea about how our perp is capturing his victims."

"Really? How?"

The red-headed alchemist picked up one of the files. "Blood magic."

Heda's eyebrows shot up. "And you arrived at that conclusion how?" While blood magic was not exactly illegal in the magical world, it was highly scrutinized.

"Couple things," Kevin said. "First, none of the shifters could change. They didn't find any drugs in the system, and there was no magical signature on the skin or on the restraints. But I was looking at the blood results, and there were certain abnormalities that don't set right with me. Every cell in a shifter's body should be . . . well, softer than a humans. They need to be able to change and then change back. This last victim's cells had hardened. It's kind of like the difference between adult stem cells and embryonic cells. All the cells in her body had lost malleability."

"I thought that happened naturally," Billy said, sitting down in a bathrobe with a cup of coffee in hand.

"Yeah, but not that quickly. The girl had only been dead for a day or two, and normally changeling rigor doesn't set in for a week. Blood magic has a number of spells that basically make shifter blood sluggish and limit elasticity. It's like living rigor for changelings, and it doesn't show up on surface traces."

"That's horrible!" Heda said. "Who would do something like that?"

"To be fair, the blood witches first developed the spell to help during changeling trials and captivity. If I'm right, then whoever is doing this knows shifter physiology and is a pretty adept blood witch. And I'm willing to bet that they combined the spell with some kind of tranquilizer to make sure that it took effect quickly."

"This guy is getting scarier by the second," Heda said. "Any further word on a connection to Reichert?"

"Not yet." Edgar rubbed his eyes. "Whoever this is, this is beyond personal."

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Elsewhere . . .

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Fear was a heady elixir, as was pride. They knew now, and the Enemy was afraid. The changeling rats were abandoning the ship, but there was no escaping the Cold. Oh no, It would not let them go until He had been brought down low. He would suffer for what he did. The Cold would take revenge for the One that came before. The Enemy still had not guessed. In Its arrogance, It had forgotten the One that came before. The Enemy must remember it all. A final reminder must be sent.

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To be continued . . .