Dakota here with chapter 8 of my smutty fantasy adventure series where a vampire, a witch, a selkie, and some dude face off against ancient gods. If you're a new reader, I recommend that you start with chapter 1, as this is an ongoing series with little in the way of synopsis.
Returning reader? Welcome back! This chapter is a bit light on the "smutty" side of the series and heavier on the "adventure" side. Basically, shit's about to get real.
Enjoy!
Gwendolyn, daughter of King Prasutagus and near-immortal druidess of the earthly realm, dropped the game controller in frustration.
"I don't understand when these quibbling amusements became so difficult," she said with a huff.
"Aww, don't be a sore loser," Ash said.
On the big screen of the living room, Ash's heavily muscled demon monster had just finished stomping Gwen's katana-wielding ninja into the ground. WINNER in giant, bold letters crawled across the screen while Ash's character did a physics-defying backflip in celebration.
The selkie lay upside down on the sofa, with her head hanging off and her human legs resting on the back. Her blonde hair, streaked unnaturally with blues and pinks, brushed the floor as she played.
"If you played more, you'd get better," Ash explained. "Besides you picked, like, the worst character."
"Humf," Gwen grunted. "Well, I think it's a silly thing to be good at."
"One more round," Ash insisted. "Please? Pick the guy in the space armor. He shoots lasers from his eyes!"
"Urg, fine."
They played another match, this time with Ash playing a lithe, acrobatic schoolgirl that jumped a lot and threw knives. Gwen won far too easily.
"Are you letting me win?"
"What? Of course not!" Ash was indigent but obviously lying.
In the second round, they were more evenly matched, until Ash's character threw a car at Gwen's, knocking him through a building and off-screen.
Ash was so obviously trying to lose the third round, that she dropped the controller halfway through, allowing Gwen to get a short combination of punches and kicks in before she recovered. Gwen won when she finally button-mashed enough to cause her space soldier to shoot a missile out of his chest and explode Ash's schoolgirl character as she jumped through the air.
"See! You're getting better!"
"You absolutely let me win."
"Did not!" Ash insisted.
"Did to."
"Oh, don't be grumpy. Hey, you want to play Cuphead together?" Ash asked, hopefully. "It's a co-op."
"Ugh." Gwen rolled her eyes. "That one is even worse. No. I better get some work done."
Gwen left Ash to her mind-numbing but admittedly fun entertainment.
Truth be told, video games were just another thing that had come about and changed so rapidly in the modern world. She wasn't opposed to change or of learning new skills but the
pace
of that change had become dizzying in recent years. Hell, she'd only just gotten used to airplanes as a reliable mode of travel. That hadn't even been a possibility for the first, oh, eighteen hundred years of her life.
By the time she reached her apothecary, the game was forgotten. She had more pressing concerns.
The room was half-kitchen, half-laboratory and, despite the preconceived notions of Hollywood, no cauldron was present. She did, however, have a mini-fridge and small freezer, both delightful inventions that made her work easier.
Bookshelves held centuries of distilled knowledge, painstakingly collected, while various cabinets, drawers, and cubbies kept her reagents neatly organized.
She selected a few items and laid them out on the table. Then she retrieved her newest vial: a sample of James Faraday's semen. She plucked it from the fridge, and placed the vial in her cleavage, warming it with her body heat.
Truth be told, much of what ignorant medieval peasants referred to as witchcraft was merely skilled cooking. The potion she gave the new mother for "vitality" after giving birth was merely a herb-rich bone broth that replaced vital nutrients for a peasant woman with an otherwise poor diet. A tonic she made desperate men as a "love potion" was a distilled mint and rosemary mouthwash. Stewing vitamin-rich organ meat was great as a cure for rickets in often underfed children, when their parents were brave enough to seek her out.
Most magic was nutrition, it turned out.
But she had other means.
Using a mortar and pestle, she first ground a small, raw emerald into a fine dust. She removed the dust and then added an acorn, grinding that as well. She added freshly harvested fish eggs that Ash had brought her that morning, along with dried fetal tissue from the afterbirth of a cat.
When those ingredients were combined to make a fairly foul-smelling paste, she added first a drop of James' semen, then a sprinkle of the crushed emerald.
It sizzled.
She wasn't expecting that.
Gwen regarded the bubbling paste for a moment, not quite believing what she was seeing.
After her palaver with James in the garden, where he'd so easily been able to tap into her magic, she suspected an innate ability in him.
Her experiment here was meant to gauge how strong that ability might be; she already found herself fantasizing about taking him on as an apprentice.
She tossed the still-bubbling concoction and cleaned her equipment. Then she repeated the experiment.
Three times.
Each time she got the same result: as soon as the gem dust touched the paste containing the reproductive essences of multiple creatures and James' semen, it sizzled like fat on a frying pan.
The thing was, it shouldn't have done much at all. Gwen had intended to put a drop of the resulting mixture on a slide and read it under a microscope like she used to with oracle bones.
But a reaction that potent . . . Well, in her experience, that could only mean one thing.
James was god-touched.
***
The Burke was situated on the northwest corner of the University of Washington's Seattle campus. It was a rectangular, industrial building that looked better designed for trendy loft apartments than as a natural history museum.
Even though it was overcast, Lenore was dressed in the previous evening's clothes: jeans, knee-high boots, and her black leather jacket. She'd borrowed a ball cap and sunglasses from James and kept her hands stuffed in her pockets during their brief time outside.
"Sure you don't want sunscreen?" James asked.
"I'll be fine," Lenore replied. "Thanks."
