Homelands Pt. 02 Ch. 02

"So what did you mean?" I asked.

She sighed, her very generous breasts rising and falling. "You're overflowing with power. I can feel it. It's," she drew a deep breath. I felt her Libido swell. "Well, it's intimidating, to be perfectly honest. And you carry yourself differently. That strange mix of confidence, nervousness, innocence, ambition, and concern for others that you used to have seems to have been whittled down to a wary survival instinct. I couldn't believe the way you casually referred to members of your own family being Devoured. But then, I also couldn't believe the way you obviously teared up when you heard that I Devoured your brother. So I know that some of the old you is still in there. What I want to know is how much. And whether the ambition you used to exude has been forged into steel, or has faded away."

"That's a mouthful," I said. I reached out and laid a hand atop hers. "I'm not sure I can give you a short answer. I'm not sure I know the answer."

"So did they make you Devour someone? Or was that done voluntarily?"

"Nothing you haven't done."

"I had no choice," she said, pulling back from me.

I withdrew my hand. "How do you know that I did?" I asked.

"So tell me you didn't. Tell me what your plans are now that you're back. Tell me I shouldn't be worried about my nephew's fate."

"I didn't, I have none, and you should, but not because of me."

Iva raised an eyebrow. "That so? Then who?"

"Dunno. But you heard him today. He sound like he's willing to fight for his throne?"

She sighed and shook her head.

"But that doesn't carry any weight with you, does it? So, what, do you still hate me because I refused to let you make me your vassal? Is that it? You know Brianna was spying on us at the time, right? If I'd have agreed, she'd have Devoured me."

"And I suppose you knew that at...nevermind. I don't hate you, Frank. You know that. I was just," she paused, ran her hand through her hair, "disappointed. And scared. It's a good thing I've had so much practice running and hiding. Your cousin was a lot of things, but she was no Silas, thankfully."

I took her hand in mine, squeezed it firmly.

She offered a tenuous smile. "Okay, let's make this easy. Just swear to me that you have no desire to take the throne."

"No," I said flatly. "Can you swear the same to me?"

She chewed on her luscious lower lip. "That's not the point."

"Well, of course you trust yourself."

She tried to hide a shudder. "I felt the warmth drain from the air when you showed up."

"We were outdoors," I said.

"My point exactly."

"Look, Iva, I've always liked Jack. As far as I can figure, it will be a step in the wrong direction for our court when he's gone. But, no, I won't deny that when that day comes, my hat may be in the ring. That doesn't mean I'm looking forward to it though."

She nodded slowly, averting her brown eyes. "I guess that'll have to do for now."

"It doesn't have to."

Iva laughed, slapping my hand away. "You're not really up to that right now?"

"Guess not."

She reached out and squeezed my nose between her fingers, the way she'd used to, and said, "I intend to keep a close eye on you, Frank."

The tension I almost hadn't noticed was present faded with that little gesture. I pulled her in for a long kiss. A soft, tender one.

She came away smiling. "I'm glad you're back," she said as she slipped out of my bed and headed for the door. Just before leaving the room, she added, "Mostly."

#

An army of servants in black livery, faces hidden by masks, milled about the backyard, carrying trays of hors d'oeuvres and drinks. There were also masked women dancing on poles and in cages. A few belly dancers made their way around the yard. None were hard on the eyes, but they appeared to be mortal.

Jack's tuxedo looked like he might have borrowed it from James Bond. Cindy wore a red shawl and a sequined white evening gown that reached all the way to her ankles, but hugged her curves so tightly that it could hardly be called modest. Her hair was tied up, a bit of it left loose to cascade down the side of her face. Her red heels were taller than she usually wore. Iva wore a slinky red cocktail dress with white rhinestones over the bust. The dress only reached halfway down her thighs, displaying a good portion of her shapely, if slender, legs, which were adorned by sheer black stockings. Her pretty feet were squeezed into sleek black patent leather heels. Her hair was closer to gold than its usual dirty blonde, layered, and hung just past her chin in the front, but no farther than her ears in back.

They both looked amazing. But what I was really looking forward to was seeing the members of my family that I hadn't seen in nearly three years. Or, in the case of the youngest generation, ever.

With Mark undercover, Natalie retired, and Dom and Brianna Devoured, that really just meant Mom, Dad, Todd, and his wife and kids.

Or so I thought. To everyone's surprise, just a little after everyone else arrived, Natalie showed up with her husband and her son.

Todd looked basically the same. A bit older. Less like a ripe young stud, more like a mature and debonair ladies' man. Especially since he was wearing a three piece suit. If you'd asked me what Todd would look like in a suit, I'd have said like a fish out of water. But either he'd grown up a lot, or I underestimated him, because he looked natural in it.

Dad hadn't changed a bit. Maybe there was just a little more salt and a little less pepper in his hair, but otherwise, he looked exactly as I remembered. And while he too was dressed formally, I was more used to seeing him that way.

The same went for my mother. Well, maybe her face bore a few more signs of maturity, so that now she looked a little closer to thirty. But her skin remained radiant, unblemished, and reminiscent of porcelain. Her hair was as lustrous as ever, and still mostly an exquisite glossy black, with the loveliest red highlights that stood out whenever she had a light source behind her. Her black evening gown, mostly open between her hips and bust, accentuated the extreme hourglass figure that I'd missed so badly.

Natalie had changed the most, though not necessarily because she looked older. There was no sign of the fake tan she'd been so fond of in her youth and her hair was back to its natural dark brown, without any blonde streaks. The effect was striking. She finally looked like her mother's daughter, with that creamy white skin and dark hair.

Not for the first time, I cursed myself for not noticing how beautiful she was in the past due to an inability to look past her tan and dyed hair. Whatever color her complexion and her hair, she had always had one of the prettiest faces I'd ever seen. Not quite as pretty as Brianna, but at least as pretty as Iva. And she had a damned killer body too. Her breasts were oversized relative to her figure, which was tight and athletic. Her ass was not large, but was entirely too well rounded and heart-shaped not to command respect.

She wore a cream colored dress that fell only half-way down her thighs. Two triangles, the same exact shade of brown as her hair, covered her full breasts. Her shapely legs were bare, and her brown heels matched her dress and hair perfectly.

Holly and Melanie looked more or less as my aunts had described.

The former was a tiny little thing. A bit short of five feet tall, and thinner than any of the remaining members of my family. For me, that was entirely too thin. But I had to admit that, though her breasts were small, compared to her tiny frame, they were not inconsiderable. She also had a face that, in her youth, must have been as painfully beautiful as Brianna's had ever been, because even now that she was well into her forties, and showing it since she was a mortal, she was still stunning. She had an ultra fair complexion and jet-black hair that fell halfway down her back.

With that hair, that skin, those lips, lashes and brows, I thought that if you told people who didn't know us that she too was my mother's daughter, they just might believe you.

Her lack of a figure was a real disappointment though. At least in my mind. She wore a shimmering green cocktail dress that barely covered what passed for an ass. Some men would have loved the way it exposed her bare legs. But her legs were no curvier than a pair of Q-tips, and that wasn't doing it for me.

Her daughter was another story. Melanie had a body unlike any I'd seen, save in comic books. Still not quite my style, but I'd take her thick, muscular legs over her mother's any day. And, as Cindy had said, it made absolutely no sense that she could have such large breasts given her meaty figure. They weren't nearly as big as my mother's, but they were around the same size as Iva's. And Iva's were hardly modest. Yet her ass was no less solid than Nat's or Cindy's, and a good deal larger than either. Her hair was more red. Not red-brown, like Brianna's, but red, like Tara's.

Just in case anyone might mistake her for being shy or modest or something, she wore a white leopard-print dress that barely covered her big ass or generous breasts. She also carried a matching purse. Her body language and hungry stares alone were more than sufficient to demonstrate that she was no wallflower though.

My heart raced. Each of the six women was incredibly attractive in her own way. From the petite Holly to the athletic Melanie to Mom's soft and generous curves, they all had amazing bodies. Few men could look upon the women of my family and not find at least one of them to be damn near perfect. If you rounded up a dozen men and asked them which of the six women was hottest, odds were each one of the women would be chosen by at least one guy. I couldn't say the full spectrum of female beauty was on display there. Of course it wasn't. All six women were white, and besides Melanie, all six were exceptionally fair-skinned. None were particularly tall, even if Holly and Mom were the only ones that were truly short. And so on. But even so, there was a certain amount of variety on display, and it was intoxicating.

I wondered if the women felt the same was true of the men. Patrick was about as thin as Jack had once been and had the trademark fair skin and dark hair of the Orwins. He had a look about him that must just have killed the types of girls that like their men wounded and brooding. Sean was tall, tan, blonde, disgustingly handsome, and had a body that would be no more out of place in a comic book than that of his sister. Nat's poor husband, Rob, stood out like a sore thumb. His goofy smile and light step bespoke a good-natured personality, and he was far from ugly. In any other room, he might even have stood out. But he didn't compare to the supernatural studs surrounding him. And he hadn't listened to the advice I could only assume my sister had provided regarding apparel. He'd chosen to wear jeans and a wrinkled button-down while everyone else was in at least semi-formal attire.

After thinking about it some more, I decided that if you rounded up a dozen women and asked them which of the men in the family was hottest, there'd be a very clear winner. Sean was tallest, prettiest, and had the widest shoulders, biggest arms, and narrowest waist. Unless she had a thing for older men or really skinny guys, I just couldn't see how any woman could look at us and not pick Sean. There might at least be a little variety if you asked who their second favorite was though.

I went around and introduced myself to the new members of the family. What I really wanted to do was go catch up with Mom. But once I did, it wouldn't be long before we snuck off somewhere, started fucking each other silly, and didn't stop until the sun came up. It wouldn't do to let that happen without meeting everyone first.

Sean was confident without being arrogant. He was a bit loud, and had a tendency to dominate a conversation. Between that and his excessive good looks, I kind of didn't want to like him. But he was self-deprecating at times, and only a little slower to build other people up than he was himself. True, no matter the topic of conversation, it tended to come back to being about him. But he laughed at everyone else's jokes and paid everyone compliments, compliments that sounded sincere however much it felt like he was making a point of finding some way to flatter everyone around him.

If he'd been a mortal, he'd have been destined for either elective office or the upper echelons of corporate power. As one of us, Iva was probably right that he'd be a future Patriarch if he'd had the ambition.

What he lacked in ambition, though, his sister more than made up for. If left to her own devices, she'd have talked about herself as often as her brother did. But every time she tried to make the conversation about her, he'd gently steer the ship right back on course. Her attempts to make sure that I noticed her sexuality were anything but subtle. And she was pretty catty towards her mother, taking every opportunity that she could to remind us that her mother was a mere mortal, or point out how much smaller her mother's breasts were, or mock her mother's fashion sense. Not that I thought anyone who wore leopard print was in a position to criticize people on those grounds. Nor did I even see anything wrong with the way Holly was dressed to begin with.

That said, she was also plainly nervous as hell. Her voice shook a few times. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and back again, and gulped down drinks like the Prohibition was going to make a comeback at midnight. And when Holly and I started to discuss the social construction of gender norms and the politics of regulating sex, a topic that seemed to interest Todd and Sean not at all, causing them to quickly start up a side conversation about football, Melanie had come alive. She'd also, in the process of offering some intelligent thoughts, forgotten to try so hard to act sexy.

After that, I wanted to tell Melanie to take a step back and realize that between her athletic achievements and the intellectual firepower she seemed determined to hide for fear of intimidating guys, she had enough going on without trying to be the ultimate object of male desire. Hopefully Cindy was right that it was just part of being a teenager. It couldn't have helped that her brother was so fucking perfect in just about every way. That probably didn't include academically, but something told me that if and when Mel graduated college summa cum laude, that wouldn't really put her anxiety to rest.

I could definitely see why Iva was worried about this one.

Patrick, on the other hand, I didn't get much of a read on at all. He was very quiet. Most every question I asked of him elicited a one or two word answer. He liked industrial music. When he mentioned that he played guitar, I asked if he was any good at it. All he said was, "No." Besides music, he liked horror fiction and video games. But he thought just about everything else under the sun was lame. Including family functions.

Before long, I decided I'd earned the right to go talk to my parents. Mom embraced me in a tight hug while Dad slapped my back.

We were still discussing my captivity, though I kept trying and trying to change the subject, when the party ground to a complete halt.

Iva and Cindy screamed simultaneously.

I closed the distance between us in a fraction of a second. No one else was far behind.

Jack lay in his own blood. Some of it leaked into the swimming pool. Crimson tendrils slowly spread outward through the blue water.

Patrick backpedaled, bloody fist upraised. "Long live the king," he said.

"What did you do?" Natalie shrieked.

Dad restrained his two sisters, both of whom looked ready to attack Patrick.

The rage pouring off of Iva made my teeth chatter.

"I thought you'd be happy," Patrick said, looking at Natalie. He didn't seem to be aware of anyone else. "You left when the throne was stolen from our family. Now we have it back."

"Jack was family!" she screamed. "I left because I couldn't bear to watch people I love do such horrible things to one another!"

Rob grabbed Natalie, hugged her tight. He glowered at his son, but didn't seem to have any idea what he should say. I couldn't blame him.

I gathered up all my power, transported us to a bubble affixed to the mortal world, and dropped a heavy veil on everyone. Priority one was to get a succession ritual underway, lest Patrick's words be taken as establishing him as the new king.