How to Tame Your Tikbalang Ch. 13

Polishing the final chapter as I send this to the admins. :)

I know there isn't as much nookie in this chapter, but please bear with me. I promise that it is worth the orgasm denial.

Do let me know what you think and I hope you have enjoyed the story so far, because I am preparing the Tikbalang wedding now.

Also, the English usage and spelling errors you will find in this chapter (at the point where Kidlat and Ulap peek into the Makati Police headquarters) are deliberate and are part and parcel of the work. Yes, they are deliberate.

*****

The night gave way to a stunning dawn painted in bright fingers of pastel lightening to cerulean blue as Buhawi and his Baylan slumbered on, their bodies entwined and their breaths mingling in the salt air.

Meanwhile, in the Other Land, a shadow trampled sod and undergrowth, flame shooting from its muzzle and red embers lit his eyes. Frustration was his rice and viand today, it seemed.

The shadow stilled as another passed, a roan Tikbalang in warhorse form running full stretch, his hooves leaving a thundering wake. The shadow melted to smoke and slid silently through the trees, stalking the Tikbalang almost to the clearing where the molave throne sat and stilled under a rubber tree to wait, watch and listen.

Kidlat was sweaty from his race through the triple canopy forest's humid air, but he did not dare delay. When Haring Ulap summons you, son or not, you get there yesterday, Kidlat thought wryly. Slowing from gallop to canter to walk, the young Tikbalang approached his father with a bowed head though his eyes were intent and his ears pricked up attentively. Finally, he stood at the foot of the molave throne and transitioned to his Tikbalang form.

"Well, son, it is about time you answered my summons." Ulap addressed his second son with asperity dripping from his deep, haughty 'I am your king' voice. The liege-voice reserved, it seemed, just for Kidlat (for Buhawi surely never heard that, the perfect princely prat that he was, or so Kidlat reckoned). "You have explanations to make and they better be good."

Kidlat held his peace and kept his head down. That worked well in the past, since Ulap would simply scold him and, when he tired of the silence, dismiss him.

Not that Kidlat had any such luck as that today.

"Speak, my son," Ulap said, rising from the throne and stepping to the floor of the forest clearing. "When I said you have much to explain, I meant it."

Ulap waved his right hand in a circle, as one would rub condensation off the glass of a window, his gesture opening a dimesional window on what appeared to be a police station where a middle-aged woman clad in a tie-dyed housedress, every color of which clashed with the cheap neon-green rollers sitting askew in her graying brown hair. She was haranguing a police officer over the investigation into her daughter's murder.

***

"You telled me you will make the case of my daughter a friority!" The woman's screech and heavy Visayan accent complete with p and f interchange rang across the Makati Police headquarters homicide division office as she locked angry eyes on and pointed her right index finger accusingly at Senior Police Officer 3 Conrado Medado.

"It has been more than one month and still nobody is making to pay for da keeling of my Martha! My dafter is deserves so much better than is this! She was da pamily breadweaner. How will we live without her? You answer me! You answer me!"

Medado tried not to flinch at the wild virago screaming at him in mangled English (not that his English was all that good, but, well) and spraying him with the saliva flying off her ill-fitting dentures, her thin, silent husband doing his level best (and failing) to calm her down.

"Ma'am, we are doing what we can, but you need to understand, this case is at a dead end. We do not have any witnesses..."

"You don't need a wetness! You think I am bobo? I watch CSI: Las Beygas! Tonto! I know you need to get good forensicatory tracery ebidens prom de SOCO fifols. But you are so lazy! You just want money prom us poor pamily op da Pilipins! Only the rich get hustisya. But what is dis I cannot even! My precious baby gehl, I taught her da bestest Inggles, so she can spoke like a Kano and work abroad por dolyars. I made insisting a lot that she keep on imfrovement so she would better herself and us, then this bad happen. I telled her not to go der, then she go der. Now look at!"

The woman's tirade ended on a wail and uncontrollable sobbing as she collapsed on her husband, who collapsed under her weight. Medado struggled to get the couple off the floor, only to be kicked against his desk by the murdered Martha's mother, who, apparently, was still angry.

Having rolled out from under his wife, the thin man said in Visayan, "Isay, speak in Tagalog. Your English..."

"There is nothing wrong with my Inggles, Juan! My Inggles is ferpect! My deekshun is dibine!" Isay silenced her husband with a glare and a pout s she rose off the floor and turned to face Medado. "And you, you do everything humanly and inhumanely possible to pind out who keeled my baby or I will make kulam you!"

***

Ulap waved his hand to dismiss the dimensional window he'd opened before turning to Kidlat. "Now, my son, tell me honestly: Were you the one who killed that coffeeshop barista and caused that family of Taga-Lupa so much grief?"

Silence.

"The poor woman was raped, Kidlat," Ulap said, his voice low and castigating, walking in a maddeningly slow circle around his second son. "She was battered so hard her legs were broken in several places. She was bitten over and over again by a Tikbalang in a feral rage, if the medical examiner's report is accurate. She died in agony. Only you and Buhawi were in that realm, my son and, as much as I don't want to believe you did this, I have to ask you if you did it—because your brother would not and could not do this."

Kidlat's head snapped up and smoke began to stream out of his nostrils, his eyes bright with anger and pain as he looked at his father and held the Tikbalang king's steady, penetrating gaze.

"You've come to the conclusion that I did that, Itay?" Kidlat's voice shook as he spoke. "Then what further explanation is needed? You already believe I am capable of rape, like the Taga-Lupa keep saying Tikbalangs rape. Buhawi is the perfect son. Me, not so much. If you have decided to punish me, then punish me. I have nothing more to say."

"You aren't getting the point, son of mine," Ulap said as he resisted the urge to cuff the young Tikbalang, if only to get through that wall of stubborn pride Kidlat had put between them. "I said I HAVE to ask you whether you did this or not. I did not say I BELIEVE you did it. I don't want to even think you killed that woman. Your mother and I raised you to be honorable and to treat the Taga-Lupa with respect and gentleness. But this is something that needs to be resolved."

More silence.

"Haynaku!" The Tikbalang king uttered his expression of exasperation on a hard exhale. "Why are you acting like I am the enemy? I am duty-bound—I am the king of all Tikbalang and that comes with the job—to find out what happened with that woman and who of our kind murdered her so brutally, Kidlat. At the time she was attacked and killed, you and Buhawi were the only Tikbalang anywhere near her. This is not about that stupid sibling rivalry of yours."

"Of course I didn't kill that barista, Itay," Kidlat drew himself up ramrod straight and looked his father in the eye, finding that himself unable to keep the sarcasm and hurt out of his voice. "is that what you want to hear me say? Give me a script and I'll follow it. Just so this interrogation ends."

A slap to the back of the head from left field made Kidlat's head reel and he saw stars. It also sent him staggering forward.

"You will not take that tone of voice when speaking to your father, young man." Bulan's hand drew back as she moved to stand between her husband and son. "And you, Tikbalang," the goddess turned to Ulap, arms akimbo. "You will not shout at my Kidlat like that again. Now, settle this."

"You," Bulan said, cupping Kidlat's muzzle in a firm grip and making him face her "will tell us the truth and nothing but the truth or there will be no gods who can help you when I lose patience with you."

"Yes, Inay," Kidlat mumbled, chastised and shamed by his mother's ire.

"And you," Bulan said to Ulap as she narrowed her eyes at him "will listen without putting both your hind hooves into your big mouth. Now, talk, son." Bulan took a seat on the second step below the molave throne and nodded, her signal for Kidlat to begin.

Ulap ascended to his throne with a heavy sigh and cupped his head in a large hand, his eyebrows cocked and his eyes on his son.

Taking a deep breath, Kidlat blinked away tears and spoke in as steady a voice as he could muster.

"As I said, I did not kill the barista. I was...elsewhere, not in Makati, at the time. I saw the news about it later on, when I was watching TV at the bank, in my office."

"And where were you when she was killed, then, if not in Makati, Kidlat?" Bulan's query was sharp with hope.

"I was at a club, Pepe's Pole, in Malate."

"You were at a gay bar?!" Ulap's voice began to rise as he locked his shocked gaze on Kidlat. "Why were you there?"

"I think that would be obvious, Itay." Kidlat's voice had dropped to almost a whisper. "Only gay guys hang out there. We go there to find what acceptance we can."

Bulan and Ulap exchanged glances and looked worriedly at their son, whose head was downcast and whose posture was that of defeat.

"Yeah, I'm the son you shouldn't have had, huh? May I leave now? Please? I promise I won't bother you anymore. You can just forget about me, since you have kuya Buhawi anyway and he's perfect." Kidlat turned to go and found his mother had, as is her maddening way, teleported from the throne steps to his side.

Bulan enfolded her son in a tight hug. "Oh, my darling," she said as she stroked his roan mane and spoke gently. "You will always be loved for who you are. Just the way I love your elder brother just as he is. If you are telling us you are gay, that does not change the fact we love you... even if this—announcement—does surprise us."

Kidlat hugged his mother back, seeing as the goddess would not let him move away, even if he wanted to. Her magic kept him rooted where he stood.

Ulap walked to his wife and son and, after a moment's hesitation, enfolded them in an even bigger embrace. "Your mother is right. You will always be my son, flesh of my flesh and part of my heart. Your coming out of the closet like that, however, is something I have to, how do you kids say it? It is something I need to wrap my head around. I was expecting grandchildren from you someday, you know."

Kidlat felt lighter. He felt a cautious tendril of joy unfurl as he stood in his parents' embrace and closed his eyes before taking his human shape, the form he was most vulnerable in. All the better to appreciate the parental hugging he was getting.

"I believe you, son," Ulap added. "I am sorry for the heavy-handed manner I used to ask you about the murder. You know we need to solve that, find the Tikbalang who committed that crime and serve what justice we can to the bereaved."

Hearing those words gave Kidlat some relief and he breathed easier in his family's arms.

"Thank you, Itay, Inay," the young Tikbalang said in a voice laced with unshed tears. "If you will let me help, then I will. If a Tikbalang killed that woman, then you are right in wanting to find the perpetrator and visit our justice on him."

"That, and we must find a way to fix that problem between you and your brother, hmmmmm? Because I am so tired of you both acting like toddlers who refuse to share their toys." Bulan arched a maternal brow at Kidlat, who nodded slowly.

***

The shadow peeled himself from the balete tree a few moments after Ulap, Bulan and Kidlat left the clearing through a shimmering portal behind the molave throne, the lines of his face solidifying into a sneer aimed at the family's backs.

So this is how love makes fools of the mighty. The thought percolated through Bulalakaw's brain as he snorted smoke and little licks of flame. I would have been the better king. No sons of mine would come out gay. I'd kill them first. The second son is no threat to me, then. Just the firstborn. Good.

Unbidden, the image of clear hazel eyes—old gold flecked with green ice—disturbed Bulalakaw's malicious reverie. Beatriz's voice haunted him again, clear as the day she cringed away from him, her body trembling in its nakedness as she dropped the stingray-tail whip and leather manacles and chain that he'd handed her as he beseeched her to complete their ritual.

"I can't torture you, Bulalakaw. I can't draw blood," the anguish in Beatriz's voice cut him worse than any whipping would. Her drawing away from him cut the heart from him. "I don't have that strength. I can't risk driving you insane with the ritual if I fail. I won't."

"You love him still, don't you?" Bulalakaw's question flew out as an accusation. "You won't leave your bastard of a husband for me. That's why you can't complete the ritual. And since I won't become a king, because I lost the battle with Ulap, you have no reason to choose me over your human mate. You do not love me."

Beatriz cast her head down so he could not see her face, only the slow drip of tears onto the floor of the forest clearing on mystic Mt. Makiling where they'd chosen to make their rendezvous.

The nexus of power in this glade was strong and they knew they'd need it to boost Beatriz's spells. But Bulalakaw had no inkling of his Babaylan's misgivings. She'd kept them from him and now it was too late to explain to her that he would do anything for her, would trust her no matter what. The irony was that she did not trust herself.

He began to walk toward her, but she backed off, matching his pace, until she stood in the center of the glade. "Believe what you want," Beatriz said, her voice breaking. "We're ending this now."

With that, she turned away from him and cast her arms up to the sky, power surging to her fingers as she clenched them against the sudden flash of white sheet lightning illuminating the little patch where they stood. Then Beatriz turned back to her Tikbalang lover, regret in her eyes and her upraised hands full of bright power.

Lightning bolts began to rain from the sky like the fat droplets of rain one sees in a monsoon shower, each strike deadly in its accuracy, hitting Bulalakaw mercilessly, reaching into his chest to grip his heart with debilitating electricity, setting his pelt on fire, crackling through bone and sinew until his muscles clenched hard enough to splinter his skeleton to slivers and drop his writhing, agonized body to the ground.

The pain Bulalakaw felt was more than merely the physical suffering of death by repeated electrocution. It was more than just his body that Beatriz was breaking. This, to Bulalakaw, was worse even than not getting the last stage of the ritual right. This was betrayal. This was the withdrawal of the love he craved and could not contemplate living without.

Beatriz kept up the lightning strikes until Bulalakaw lay still, his shattered body contained in an intact sack of smoldering skin and hair but bereft of breath. As painfully long as the process of calling lightning on the Tikbalang seemed, only a handful of seconds had elapsed. His corpse lay on a bed of humus and fallen leaves, mercifully bloodless, as his spirit rose above Beatriz's head.

"I am so sorry, my love," Beatriz said, her voice coming out in a hoarse whisper. Her eyes were strangely dry as she looked upon Bulalakaw's body one last time. "I never loved him. This is the kindest thing I can do to you. Forgive me. But you are better dead than insane."

Bulalakaw could not bring himself to forgive his lover. He gathered what was left of himself as she walked out of the glade on faltering feet, her walk speeding to a heedless run. He watched her leave as he struggled to keep his form, struggled to gather the wispy smoke rising from his mortal remains and hold himself together with rage and pain and a growing appetite for revenge.

I would have made peace with the Tikbalang King for you, Bulalakaw thought as Beatriz's betrayal reopened unhealed old hurts. I would have been a better Tikbalang just for you. You didn't trust me. You never trusted me. I will make my own immortality, little witch, and I will have my revenge on you, on Ulap and his children. You'll see. You'll see.

Beatriz had eventually needed to be institutionalized. Her husband died in a "riding" accident, trampled by his favorite horse. Her children's lives were living miseries and, for good measure, Bulalakaw made sure that the family she'd placed above him was impoverished, their properties tied up in a court battle that was slow and painful.

Only when he was sure that the fortunes of this human family were well nigh destroyed did Bulalakaw turn his undead sights to Ulap and his progeny. Always, always save the best for last.

***

Tala awoke to find Buhawi looking down at her, his forefinger tracing her brow gently, his body wrapped snug against hers and his lips a whisper away from her temple.

"Ah, she awakens like a goddess." Buhawi said, forcing a light note into his voice that he was far from feeling. "You bring the sunshine back just by opening your eyes, my Tala."

Tala tried to wiggle out of the full-body lock Buhawi had on her, but no dice. "Boo, I need to, um, use the facilities. Let go. I promise I won't run, okay? Now can I go pee?"

Buhawi smiled as he slid his arms and legs sensuously against Tala's skin before releasing her. "Of course, my Baylan. I am yours and I do as you bid."

Tala made a run for the little alcove they'd seen when they entered the siokoys' cave and did her business. She heard the Tikbalang rummaging in his duffel bag and saw him approach the pool as she came out of the alcove.

Buhawi was laying soaps and bottles of what looked like shampoo and conditioner on the ledge of the bathing pool. He turned to her and stepped into the pool, naked as a jaybird.

"Come, you will want to soak those sore muscles, my love. The pool is big enough for us to share." Buhawi opened his arms wide and turned full circle before settling down on a submerged bench. "The water is just as hot as you like it."

Because she couldn't fault his logic, Tala complied silently, letting the heat of the pool envelop her body and its aches and twinges. Drawing a deep breath, Tala began wading toward the Tikbalang and sat beside him on the bench, all the better to immerse herself in the soothing waters of the hot spring.

"About you being mine, Buhawi," Tala began speaking, only to have her light rail transit of thought derailed by slick, large hands lathering her neck, shoulders and back with fragrant soap. "Um, stop that. We need to talk." Tala scooted away from Buhawi's hands.

"Then talk, Tala. I'm listening." The hands were back on her body, scrubbing her upper arms briskly. "But let me take care of you."

"That's just it. We're done with this ritual, right? We're immortal now. I'm a Babaylan in truth and you can't die anymore, so where do we go from here? We don't really need to be joined at the hip now, do we?" Tala braced herself mentally for the answer she wanted, the one she was, paradoxically, afraid to hear: That they were done and this was the time to part ways.

"About that," Buhawi said, pulling Tala into an embrace as he spoke. "We don't need to part ways, my love. Look at my parents. They chose to stay together, to have kids, to build a life. We can choose that."