Font of Fertility Ch. 20 (Beta) (Patreon)

The following is the Beta Draft of Font of Fertility Ch 20. As a Beta draft, this is not the final work and may see major changes prior to final posting out in the wide world.

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All Characters are 18 years or older.

This story is a continuation of the Font of Fertility series. I would suggest reading Chapter 1 if you have not already. This chapter includes lots of magic stuff, plus some MF, FF, MFF, and exhibitionism.

Jeremiah and Lauren round out their first meeting of the Council of Threes.

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“So they aren’t actual vampires or werewolves,” I said, clarifying what Ndia had just explained to me.

“Well, they are,” she said. “But not in the way that this age thinks of them. They are not the fanciful creatures of the night that your storytellers portray them as. Cain was the first Blood Mage, and he proved particularly powerful - his time ended shortly before mine began, but from what I understand it took three Seats working together to bring an end to him. Lord Dracula was the first Blood Mage to ascend not of Cain’s lineage, and while he is one of the most powerful and notorious Ascended alive, even he does not want to test his mettle against an arisen Cain.”

It was… odd, talking to an entirely naked and heavily pregnant woman as she was slowly getting fucked from behind by a huge black man with a giant cock. The Council had gone on break again, and I’d needed clarity on some of the absolutely wild things I’d been hearing so I decided to just go right to the source and approached Ndia as the Eldest of the council. Lauren was talking and networking with Ima, Uwe’s daughter, and the ghost-skull of Esmerelda’s father, but would obviously want to get filled in on what I learned.

Esmerelda was again sitting still on her throne, watching me with unblinking eyes from across the space. I’d decided to try and not let it get to me.

“Are there any other, ah, very powerful Ascended I should be aware of?” I asked.

“To the level of Lord Dracula?” Ndia pondered. The fact that she seemed to practically ignore her Prime’s fucking motions as he stood behind her was a little unnerving. Her tits bounced with each slow, powerful stroke and there was a bead of breast milk hanging off of one nipple that I had to try desperately not to stare at. “There are a few. Yaroslav swears that the last Baba Yaga, the sisters that spawned the Wytch bloodlines, was destroyed six centuries ago, but we thought that for several centuries before that point as well. Medea and Circe may still be alive - their combined magics seemed to allow them a form of symbiosis of immortality - but as far as I know, they haven’t been heard from for about a millennium. Soumaoro Kanté would be one, and he still lives, but I cut out his silver tongue myself after the debacle he created with the Atlantic slave trade. Beyond them… there are many who certainly aspire to greater power among the Ascended, and with enough time they may claw and scratch their way into positions that endanger the stability of the world. Entire pantheons of so-called deities to the mortals have been dreamed up when powerful Ascended band together and seek political influence in the modern and magical worlds. We, of course, don’t want another one to spring up. If you meet an Ascended with a god complex, it is prudent to nip that bud before it has time to mature and flower or else in a few thousand years you’ll be looking back at legends grown larger than the men that spawned them.”

“Noted,” I said, a little overwhelmed. I recognized some of the names that Ndia had listed off but had no idea about others. A wizard had been behind the slave trade? How did that work, and why?

Following the discussion about the war between Dracula and the Caininites, Uwe had presented an ongoing request from a group called the ‘Pagan Rite’ who were petitioning for a ‘scourge the likes of which shall cleanse the issue of humanities overpopulation and allow the healing of the earth as in times past.’ He said he’d already told them it was unlikely, but that he would bring it up. Marcel, the 2nd Death Seat, had been all for the idea of an apocalypse, but most of the others had visibly rolled their eyes. I would have thought Esmerelda and Uwe would have been all for a culling of the population of Earth considering how much death magic they would have gotten from it, but surprisingly neither seemed to care one way or the other. Well, Uwe didn’t. Esmerelda didn’t weigh in.

After the official request for an apocalypse, Xi Zuang gave a report on the destruction of the Seven Demon Blades of Gau. Apparently some previous Seat named Gau had created them and had unhelpfully made them and their bearers immune to divination, making them particularly hard to track down. The stern and quiet Chinese Seat had tracked down five of the seven blades so far.

Then Esmerelda had been forced to participate, as she had to give an answer to an earlier request by the Greater Druidic Society of Europe. They wanted to send representatives into the Amazon to explore the old holdings of lost Ascended who had filled Druidic roles prior to the multiple civilization collapses at the outset of the colonization of the Americas. ‘Participate’ may have been an overstatement though - Esmerelda’s answer of ‘No, and if I discover any of them poking around they can expect a slow death’ was blunt and to the point on her feelings. None of the others pushed the issue with her.

The last topic of conversation before the second break had been the longest - Yaroslav had an ongoing petition to the Council that he wanted to start repopulating the world with his favourite extinct animals. He had a laundry list of them, some of which I thought would have been cool but a bad idea (giant elk, sabre tooth cats, and mammoths), some of which would be terrifying (megalodon), and some that felt completely mundane (the dodo, the stellar’s sea cow, and the Tasmanian tiger). It turned out this had been a debate running almost a decade though, and Yaro had another list, and everyone on the Council knew if he was allowed to bring back some he wouldn’t stop - unicorns, dragons, gryphons and the Tyrannosaurus Rex were all on that other list.

But Yaroslav really, really wanted his mammoths and the conversation lasted almost an hour before the break.

“Tell me, Jeremiah Grant,” Ndia asked. “How is your harem coming along? Every new Shaman of the Mother goes about it in a slightly different way, but it’s an important facet of our lives. I do hope your prudish outlook on sex here in the Council space has not limited your growth in the real world.”

“I- wouldn’t say I’m prudish,” I said. “I’m just making sure I understand the implications of things before I jump in.”

“When I was as young as you, I could not find enough cock to satiate me,” Ndia smiled. “Even Beno had a hard time keeping up. Consequences be damned.”

“Well, on that front I’m doing fine,” I said. “My, uh, harem is actively growing. I actually have an appointment this afternoon to hopefully add another full member to it.”

“Hopefully?” Ndia asked. “Why hopefully?”

“Because she hasn’t said for certain if she wants to,” I said. “I mean, she’s implied heavily, but until she’s said it…”

“How utterly quaint,” Ndia shook her head with a little chagrinned smile. “You ask them?”

“You… don’t?” I asked back.

“Why would I?” Ndia asked. “I am the Sixth Seat in service to the Great Mother. Half of the legends and folktales about fertility across the world are based on my husband and I. If I want a man, I have him. Mortals think they know what they want, but rarely do they understand the implications or ramifications of getting it. It’s much easier to decide for them or else they get overwhelmed.”

I almost said something in revulsion - not two minutes ago Ndia had said she ripped some powerful wizard’s tongue out for starting the slave trade, but now she revealed she just… took people and put them in her harem. But the problem was, Ndia was also impossibly old. It was tropey, but whether it was vampires or elves or whatever other reason, I could only think that with the number of years she had lived her perspective had become almost alien to a regular person with regular person problems. Did she even remember a time she wasn’t a Seat? For me it had been like four weeks ago, but for her? How did that much time change a person?

“I prefer a more, um, intimate experience with my harem,” I said, trying to suppress my urge to bite something nasty at her. “No need to worry, though. I’m keeping up with my magical needs.”

She smiled in a way that said she didn’t really believe me. “Perhaps a demonstration, Jeremiah Grant. Please present to me your cock?”

I held up a hand. “As I said-”

“Fertility Seats do not gain anything from sexual contact with each other outside of actual insemination,” Ndia said. “There would be no worry for you that I would want some favour for it. But a moment of intimate contact will make it easier for the demonstration. I will show you why you may wish to change your mind - the Great Mother needs powerful servants, not flimsy ones.”

I glanced over at Lauren, who was still in her conversation but made eye contact with me and twitched an eyebrow slightly.

‘I’ll explain later,’ I thought at her, and because of the magical space she heard it without me needing to cast a spell. She nodded slightly in response.

“OK,” I said, reaching down and unzipping my jeans. “What are we doing?”

Ndia reached forward and took my half-hard cock in one hand. “I will take this in my mouth for a moment. Simply open yourself to the contact, and you will see what I am speaking of.”

I nodded, and Ndia bent lower at the waist as Beno held her hips to help the pregnant woman keep balance. He didn’t stop his thrusts.

Ndia closed her lips on my shaft and softly sucked. It was, without exaggeration, the most overwhelming blowjob I’d ever had and it was the first split second. I immediately recognized that she must have cast a spell, or dozens of them, to affect what it felt like to be blown by her. I went from half-cocked to rock hard in a moment and, while trying to keep my focus and not immediately come in her mouth, I reached my awareness out sort of like I did when I was connecting with the Amplifier.

I was a cup of water standing next to an immense lake.

My little pool of power that had grown and shrunk over the past few weeks could have fit into Ndia’s vast magic a thousand times over. And her pool of power was roiling - magic was coming in and flowing out at all times. She was the hub of some intricate infrastructure, like the water main of an entire city. It was overwhelming in a way that made me almost forget about the earth-shattering blowjob that was happening.

I stepped back, pulling my cock from Ndia’s lips, and took a long breath in and out.

“I have a lot to learn,” I said quietly, more than a little shaken.

“You do,” Ndia nodded, standing back up and absently cupping one of her breasts as Beno readjusted his stance behind her.

“It might have been easier if someone hadn’t relieved Ezekiel’s Sanctum of the tools and resources he left for me,” I said a little pointedly, hoping that maybe in her arrogance in the moment she would reveal if it had been her or not.

“Did he will you some things?” Ndia asked innocently. “That was very kind of him if he did.”

I couldn’t read her at all.

“Well, I suggest you find someone to take care of that for you,” Ndia then smiled, nodding down to my still rock-hard cock. “Never let an erection go to waste, young Shaman.” She pulled herself off of Beno’s cock and took it in her hand, leading the silent man to speak with Genghis Khan briefly as he was fucking his Prime on the floor of the council ring.

Lauren immediately left her conversation, coming over to me. “What was that about?” she asked as she stepped in front of me and reached out, wrapping a hand around my hard cock possessively and leaning in to kiss me.

“She wanted to enlighten me a little,” I said. “Lauren… I think I understand the whole power differential thing here. It’s going to be a big conversation with Lindsey when we get back because just a glimpse at Ndia’s pool of power was-” I swallowed and shook my head. “The learning curve here is steeper than I thought it was.”

“Well, I found out that Ima is technically not dead,” Lauren said. “Her body is, but her soul isn’t. Esemerelda’s father Hernando likes to make jokes that she got the better end of being a ghost since her body was still inhabitable. She’s basically possessing her own body.”

“Weird, but interesting,” I said. “Find anything else out?”

“Anna wants to meet with us at some point,” Lauren said. “Without Yaro. And Hernando was cagey about Esmerelda when I asked why she was staring at you so much, but I think she just doesn’t trust anyone she hasn’t gotten a read on yet.”

“I- Hold on, can we go back over to the thrones?” I asked. “I could use-”

“You want me to blow you here?” Lauren asked in surprise.

“No, I want you to ride me,” I admitted. “Ndia said I shouldn’t waste an erection, and I want you.”

Lauren flushed a little, glancing around but seeing the odd conversations continuing as most people paid little attention to the sex going on. “OK,” she agreed.

We went over to our seats and I unzipped my pants and lowered them to my thighs before sitting.

“Do you want me to strip down, or…?” Lauren asked, looking down at her jeans.

I shook my head. “I’m showing as little of you as possible to these people,” I said quietly and patted my lap. “Come here.” She did, sliding up to straddle my lap with her knees outside my legs. I reached down and willed my fingers to rip open the crotch of her jeans. She gasped as I did it, and then I did the same thing to her underwear underneath.

“Walking around like this will be awkward,” she smirked a little as she looked down at the hole in her pants with her pussy in view.

“I’ll fix them when we’re done,” I said, reaching up and pulling her to me in a kiss as she angled my cock and sat on it.

We fucked slowly, kissing half the time and murmuring our thoughts the other half. Lauren didn’t like Marcel or Xi Zuang, and the dichotomy of Uwe’s pleasant demeanour mixed with his obviously horrendous past and source of power put her on edge. She was also a little afraid of Ndia, who had encouraged her to get pregnant as soon as possible so that I could lose my fear of being what I was. To me, Marcel seemed like the worst sort of tropey villain warlord, though it was entirely possible he was the tropey villain warlord that all others based themselves on, and I didn’t really have a read of Xi Zuang yet since he was so soft-spoken and the ‘twin’s who act the exact same way’ thing creeped me out. I agreed with her assessments of Uwe and Ndia.

“Couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Esmerelda asked from very close to us, making me almost jump out of the throne.

Lauren stopped riding me, sitting down fully and turning back to look at her. “Sorry, we’re having a private moment. Do you mind?”

“Yes,” Esmerelda said. “I mind.”

Lauren blinked and glanced at me. What were we supposed to say to that?

“Do you… need something?” I asked.

“When I ask you for something in the next discussion, deny me,” Esmerelda said. “I will press, and you must deny me again. On my third request, I will offer a compromise. Take it.”

“What are you going to ask for?” I asked.

“It will be better if you don’t know,” Esmerelda said.

“And if I don’t go along with this?” I asked. “I assume you want this back and forth for some posturing in front of one of the others.”

“Then instead of a step towards a common geniality, this will be a step towards common enmity,” Esmerelda said, her skull makeup twisting her frown into a gristly display. Then she turned and stalked back to her throne.

“What the fuck?” Lauren muttered, turning back to me again and slowly starting to rock her hips. “Are you going to do what she wants?”

“Depends on what she wants, I guess,” I sighed.

Lauren took in the look on my face and sighed softly. “You’re not feeling this anymore, are you?”

“It’s a little awkward to have a random woman staring at us, and then interrupting us mid-sex to make demands,” I pointed out.

Lauren pressed her body to mine and kissed me, then stayed close and wrapped her arms around my neck and put her lips to my ear.

“Lindsey,” she whispered. “Naked and on her knees, tongue out as she begs for your cum.”

“What?” I asked, furrowing my brow but smiling a little at the visual.

“Stacey, face down and ass up, her toes digging into the carpet as you fuck her from behind,” Lauren whispered.

“Lauren, what-?”

“Annalise is so horny that she squirts all over you as her eyes light up the room in the dark,” Lauren said.

I couldn’t help picturing everything she said, and I felt my cock getting harder inside of her as she kept whispering and grinding her hips.

“Angie taking you in her ass as I sit on her face,” Lauren said. “Amara, your little Miami vacation-slut, begging her Papi to fill her cunt. Moira riding your cock to exhaustion and falling asleep on you again with a smile on her lips and not a worry in her head. Stacey’s teammates Ellie and Mac in a 69, asking for you to fuck them both.”

That last one made me snort softly. “I don’t think they’d fit together, Mac is tall and Ellie is short.”

“Fine,” Lauren hummed a laugh. “Then Ellie bending over our bed and spreading her cheeks, asking you to take her ass for the first time, as Mac scrambles to take the same position and begs you to take her ass first.”

“Makes more sense,” I said. “They are competitive.”

Lauren rolled her eyes and kissed me, then went back to her whispering. “Tala licking me as her first girl experience while you slide your cock into her cunt. Aidra begging to be your sex pet for the weekend. Ashley getting you to fuck her in her own bed, making Emily listen to her scream your name as you fuck her over and over.” She shifted, leaning to my other ear. “Jordan, letting you put a lead on her septum piercing and walk her around the house naked like your sex slave, panting because she wants your cock so fucking badly.”

I pushed Lauren away slightly, just enough so I could then pull her back into a deep kiss as I came inside of her. She chortled happily into the kiss, reaching between us and diddling her clit as she didn’t reach a peak but just enjoyed the feeling of me filling her up and knowing what she’d done to get me there. After the kiss I pulled back a little. “You have a dirty, dirty mind,” I said.

“Do I?” Lauren smirked. “Or am I just letting you know what all your sexual partners want?”

I had to take in a deep breath and then blow it out again as Lauren just smiled at me teasingly.

Eventually she dismounted from me and I tapped into the Unreal of the Council space and fixed the crotch of her underwear and jeans, and Lauren leaned in and gave me a sweet, short kiss and a brilliant smile. “Love you, baby,” she said.

“Love you too,” I said and took her hand after she sat on her own throne next to me. Right where she belonged.

Our finishing up seemed to be a signal that the break was coming to a close, and I had to wonder if it was happenstance or if it was folks having some sort of manners concerning the action. Ndia never seemed to stop fucking Beno, but Genghis Khan had finished with Khaltmaa and they were already sitting in their own thrones.

Once all of the Seats and Primes were sitting, Ndia once again stroking her husband absentmindedly, the Eldest sat forward and brought the group back to attention. “I believe that we have exhausted the previous topics of discussion,” she said. “I open the floor to new business.”

I got the sense, as different Seats began bringing up new items, that there was a bit of jockeying for position. No one wanted to bring up their own important things first, but they also didn’t want to let others build up momentum that could swing a later conversation in their favour. So the ‘new business’ part of the meeting started, once again, with the petty little shit that probably could have been handled privately instead of in front of the entire council. Marcel was the first to bring up something vaguely interesting, asking Esmerelda for permission for some of his organizations to make ‘mortal dealings’ with some of those in her territory. I quickly put together that he wanted some of the warlords in his part of Africa to make a deal with the Cartels of South America. Esmerelda shut him down, citing a necessary balance of power that the African warlords would disrupt.

Then Uwe asked Ndia if she would be willing to cede a small portion of land on the border of Egypt and Libya for an industrial park he wanted to build, which seemed utterly mundane but the two of them went into a very fast-paced negotiation that involved a dozen other factors like the treatment of African migrants in certain countries in Europe, a mine in Mali, shipping rights across the Mediterranean, Somali pirates, and I think ended up actually being about which of them would hold Jerusalem within their territory.

And that was when I realized that Ndia and Uwe were both more than old enough to have possibly been behind the Crusades and any number of other wars as part of their political games.

Hell, it was entirely likely that Uwe had caused both World Wars purely for his own benefit since they had both started in his own territory.

Ndia ended up keeping Jerusalem, which I thought was probably a good thing if it meant fewer catastrophic world events to go with a switch, but made several other concessions to Uwe. The whole thing came across as a game between the two of them.

That was when Esmerelda cleared her throat and the space went quiet.

“I will take Mexico,” she said, looking across the ring at me pointedly.

The quiet lingered as everyone looked to me for a response.

I frowned. Esmerelda had made it sound like she would ask me for something, but this wasn’t that. She was demanding. And also, she was demanding an entire country from me. A country I didn’t even realize I had in my ‘territory.’ I mean, I was the only Seat in the US, and Canada was right there and sort of isolated, and I read somewhere that like 80% of their population lived right along the border anyways.  But Mexico? All of Mexico was my responsibility?

“Why?” I asked.

That sort of made Esmerelda hesitate. “We don’t need to explain ourselves here,” she said. “I’ll take Mexico.”

“And before I say yes or no to anything, I still want to know why,” I shot back.

She grimaced. This definitely wasn’t what she’d asked of me. “I. Will take. Mexico,” she said sternly.

“If you don’t want to explain why, then no,” I said. That got some varied expressions across the group.

“Mexico rightfully fits within the cultural boundaries of my territory,” Esmerelda said. “And the only reason Ezekiel ever had it was because of an old mortal war with the place called Texas.”

I leaned over to Lauren. “Didn’t the US almost conquer Mexico in the 1800s?” I asked quietly.

Lauren smiled and leaned in to whisper back, but her tone betrayed her face. “Jerry, are you seriously asking me that? I don’t fucking know, I’ve never been a history person.”

That was true. She leaned more into the sciences like Lindsey.

“Sorry, the answer is still no,” I said.

Esmerelda narrowed her eyes at me and took in a deep breath. “I will take Mexico,” she said. “And in exchange, I offer you the Caribbean in its entirety, and will throw in the Rod of Ash and Hew.”

That got some surprised muttering from several of the others. The thing was, I obviously had no fucking clue what ‘the Rod of Ash and Hew’ was. I looked back and up at Adama, and she leaned forward. “It’s a magical artefact dating back to the first Seats,” she said, her eyes wide. “It was used as a focus to reshape the world. The last time it was used was the eruption of the volcano at Pompeii, though Ezekiel guessed that Esemerlda used it to hide many of the remains of the former civilizations across Central and South America.”

“Holy shit,” Lauren muttered under her breath.

So Esmerelda was offering me a big magical thingamajig. The thing was, why? What was I supposed to do with it? And would having it help me, or make me a target?

The way I saw it, I didn’t care so much about ‘land’ within my metaphorical territory as I did people. Mexico was a big country with a major population. If I traded them over to Esemerelda, what would happen to them?

Then again, what was happening to them now? I didn’t know all that much about the situation, but ‘Mexican drug cartels’ weren’t so off my radar that I didn’t understand that the country was pretty corrupt and messed up and I had no idea where to even start with it.

I sighed and looked across the space at Esmerelda - the makeup still made it difficult to read her at all, and I just couldn’t be sure if I trusted her or not. The warning words of the weird flying book that had hit my window a couple of weeks ago echoed through my head - that I shouldn’t trust anyone.

One of the Seats had attacked me. Had circumvented my Judgement and Proclamation. That had to be my main problem at the moment, so even a temporary alliance with Esmerelda made sense because she seemed to be somewhat of an enigma to the rest of the Seats. And more importantly, my attacker had said, ‘He, me.’

He.

Nine seats, with one empty and me, left seven. If I could rule out Esmerelda and Ndia based on that two-word sentence, then I had five people to be suspicious of instead of seven.

I leaned over to Lauren. “Go over there and tell her I have another condition, and then ask her to dinner.”

Lauren raised her eyebrows at me, and then dropped them and smiled. “Dinner to make the ask, or dinner is the ask?”

“Is the ask,” I said. “If we’re going to be neighbours, we should really sit down and talk without all the Seat pageantry.”

“OK,” Lauren nodded, squeezed my hand and then stood and walked across the space. All of the Seats and Primes watched her, and that weird perception thing of Esmerelda’s throne sitting at the top of an ancient, bloody stepped pyramid made the walk for Lauren seem like she was climbing the steps up to the summit. When she got there she leaned in and spoke quietly to Esmerelda, who listened and then raised one eyebrow behind her skull makeup and looked across the space at me. She said something to Lauren, who offered the Seat a hand to shake. They did, and Lauren turned and came back to me.

“Agreed,” Esmerelda said.

“Great,” I said. “Nice doing business with you.”

Esmerelda just sat back, still staring at me.

A couple more of the Seats brought up other issues. Uwe asked me if I was willing to hand over Greenland, which was also apparently part of my Territory, but didn’t seem too eager for it and didn’t offer me anything. I just chalked it up as another place I needed to go visit sooner than later and held onto it.

There was almost a blowup between Genghis Khan and several of the others when he brought up the idea of ‘going on campaign’ again and dealing with the strife and tension across the Middle East by starting a larger war. Uwe and Marcel were in, though Marcel backed out when Ndia reminded him he was now bound from any activity in East Africa making me wonder if Ndia had known this was coming and had pre-empted the argument. It had been Xi Zuang who ended up being the pivotal voice on the issue, promising that if Genghis Khan created a war in South and Central Asia, it would be Xi who finished it.

After the idea of a new war died down, the chamber was quiet for a long moment as we all waited for the next issue, but none seemed forthcoming.

“It seems-” Ndia started, but I interrupted her by standing and she cut off, looking at me.

“This isn’t so much a petition, or a direct request,” I said. “And it happened recently, so I am still deciding how to respond. I just thought it would be important to let the council know about this. You should all be aware of my first Judgement, and the Proclamation to go with it about the mage George Stoker. He broke with my Proclamation, and in the process of my tracking him down, I discovered that not only was he being aided by someone in this circle, but that Seat also attacked me. I don’t know which one of you it was yet, but I will.”

That long pause before I spoke was nothing like the long, pregnant silence after I finished speaking and sat.

Uwe was frowning deeply and muttering something to his daughter. Marcel was smirking at me openly, though I couldn’t tell if that was because it had been him, or he was just a thuggish prick who thought I was making myself look weak by admitting I didn’t know who attacked me. Ndia was also frowning and staring at Genghis Khan, their eyes locked as I had a feeling they were having a silent conversation. Yaro was just leaning back in his seat with one eyebrow raised high, while his Prime Anna was watching everyone like a hawk. Xi Zuang sat as formally and stiff as he had the rest of the council meeting, both he and his twin.

Esmerelda just kept staring at me.

“Jeremiah,” Ndia said slowly. “You are… new to our world and the capabilities of a Seat. It is likely that whoever attacked you-”

“See, I’ve been thinking about this,” I said, cutting off the Eldest. “My Patron said something similar - if I didn’t see a face, how do I know it was a Seat? Well, I don’t know how many of you are a fan of modern sports, but I’ve got this great concept of throwing it back to the replay camera.”

And with that, I focused and summoned up a flatscreen in front of me and dug into my memories to replay everything I had seen from the moment George Stoker attacked me in his lab. The thing was, I also made the metaphysical big-ass flatscreen TV translucent from Lauren and my side so we could watch the other’s reaction. Doing little magic shit like this took almost no power whatsoever in this space. It was awesome.

Marcel and Genghis Khan were both clearly unimpressed with my fighting, or the fact that I seemed to be in a panic - I wish I could have said everything I did in the lab was calculated and I was like some parkour god who could flip over tables and dodge a dozen ivy whips with ease, but that would have been a lie. Maybe, with enough instinctual spells and training to use them, I could be. But in that room, I’d been scrambling and knocking over shit and my shields had taken a beating.

Then I grabbed the heart out of the plant-person voodoo doll and the first round of the fight was over as I slammed the shield in place.

Several members of the council leaned forward at Stoker’s reaction to the shield, but it wasn’t a physical thing that you could see, so it wasn’t clear exactly what I was doing. It sounded like I was plucking his eyeballs out or something, the way he was screaming.

Then came the brief talk with George, and then the ambush, and the city bus, and getting blown out the wall, and finally breathing fire and destroying the entire warehouse. I let the memory keep playing until I revealed the runes on the ground where I was pretty sure the teleportation had happened, then stopped it.

“Again, please,” Ndia said.

I mentally reset the memory and the entire council watched it all again.

“I can’t believe you actually said hadouken,” Lauren murmured to me. “It’s a good story, but you need better one-liners.”

“Who am I, Spider-man?” I asked quietly back.

“Stop here,” Uwe called. Stoker’s screams had just started, and I stopped the playback. “What are you doing here?”

I glanced at Lauren to steel myself, then lifted the ‘screen’ up in the air so I could speak directly to the others. “I had a lot of questions for George, so I captured him instead of just trying to kill him,” I said.

“Yes, but what specifically are you doing here?” Xi Zuang asked.

“I’ve put a block on his magic,” I said.

Several of the Seats around the room muttered and most shifted uncomfortably. Esmerelda didn’t.

“Jeremiah Grant, that is-” Ndia began, but I held up a hand and stopped her. It was the third time I was interrupting her.

“I had to question him, and he had proven himself pretty much incapable of being anything other than insane while he had access to his magic. I don’t know if I would have left him like that because I never got the chance to ask my questions,” I said.

“Still, Jeremiah,” Uwe said. “This is… barbaric.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really? Barbaric?”

“Yes,” Xi Zuang said. “To deny an Ascended their connection to their magic, it is…”

“Humane,” I said firmly.

Ndia was frowning deeply. Yaro was chewing on the inside of his lip uncomfortably. Esmerelda stared.

“Between my choices of killing him right there and getting no answers, or letting him keep his magic and continue assaulting me, I decided the most expedient, and bloodless, route made sense.”

“Where is he now?” Xi Zuang asked. “Do you still have this block in place?”

“Did you stop watching or something?” I countered. “I don’t know, one of you took him.”

“This is a filthy business,” Marcel growled from his throne. “The worst kind of heresy. You are a degenerate dog for-”

“I’m sorry,” I interrupted him. “I was under the impression that I had free reign to handle my affairs as I see fit, especially within my own territory. How about we stay on topic here? If you have a problem with how I apprehend a Judgement Breaker, then bring it up in another conversation.”

Marcel sneered at me, but I glared right back at him. To be honest, it helped that I was so far around the circle from him otherwise I’d probably be shitting myself. The dude was fucking scary. There were mutters from some of the others, but no one else put up a fuss.

“Move the memory forward,” Ndia commanded me. I looked over at her and didn’t do anything until she met my eye, not liking that she’d gotten so imperious with me all of a sudden. Only once she met my gaze, I started the memory playing again and played it through to the runes.

“Old Arabic in origin, if my memory serves me,” Uwe said. “Third cycle?”

“Second,” Ndia said.

“It’s tied to shadows,” Genghis Khan said. “This could be any shadow walker.”

“And the bus?” I asked. “How does that line up? Or the experiments that Stoker was doing - he had control over plants, but some of what he was doing would have required more than that.”

“Show us the bus again,” Xi Zuang requested, and I reversed to the best shot I had of it as it came barreling towards me out of the ether. “Unmarked, no distinct make,” Xi said. “It could be a city bus from almost any continent.”

“It could still be made from shadows,” Genghis Khan said. “Shadow walkers are often moody, uppity bastards to match their powers. Think they should be more powerful than they are. I’ve had to put down more than a few, and they can be clever with their abilities.”

“Or maybe it was you, and you’re trying to throw everything else into confusion on the issue,” Uwe said, but then held up a hand. “Not that I’m actually accusing you, Temüjin. I simply seek to illuminate the discussion - this is likely to be a fruitless endeavour, as even with the events before us, young Jeremiah did not take in enough information for us to identify his attacker. So, unless someone would like to make an admission to the council?”

Everyone looked around briefly, but no one said anything. I almost wanted to say something more, call the person a coward or something, but I realized that I was making impressions. I’d lost my cool already, and what would that tell the other Seats? That I was emotional? That I could be manipulated?

Was even revealing that I’d been attacked actually a bad idea, and just asking for more?

Fuck, maybe there was another, deeper level of politics I should have been playing this at.

“Unless you have any other information, Jeremiah Grant, I agree with Uwe. We should move on,” Ndia said.

I lifted my hands and gestured that I was done, then dismissed the metaphysical flatscreen and sat back down.

“Are there any other matters?” Ndia asked the council and glanced over at Marcel. The golden-suited black man was glaring at me with narrowed eyes like he was trying to stab me with his sight, but he shook his head. “Then I call this meeting of the Council of Threes to a close. May you all return to your lives and live in peace, and all conflicts be brought to the next meeting on the coming Equinox.”

* * * * *

We woke up. It wasn’t like going into the Council space where we became. Really, I wasn’t even sure if ‘waking up’ was right because one moment Lauren and I were experiencing the Council chamber and the next we were simply in the car, in the parking lot of the strip mall.

I blinked. We were holding hands, and the sudden bright light of the sun felt like a weird glare.

“Whoa,” Lauren said, blinking and looking around.

“Yeah, that’s a weird feeling,” I said.

“How long were we gone?” Lauren asked.

I looked at my phone since the car was off. “Uh… zero minutes,” I said.

Lauren looked at me, then looked at the phone screen to double-check. “Are you fucking… what? We were there for hours.”

It really had been, as best as I could tell, no time in between us going and us coming back. “I think that place is outside of time, just like it’s outside of space,” I said. “So our consciousnesses just sort of touched it, everything happened, and we came back.

Lauren rubbed at her forehead. “Jerry, I love you, but I’m mentally exhausted after that and I think I’ve had enough magic shit for today.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “But, uh, we told everyone we had to be gone for a while so we can’t really go back without some sort of a story.”

Lauren took a breath, looking outside the car, and then blew it out slowly. “I feel bad not going back to help,” she said. “But I really do feel fucking exhausted. Do you want to just… go somewhere and decompress?”

“I’d love to,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”

“Maybe let’s just go for a drive?” Lauren suggested.

“Sure,” I said and lifted up her hand to kiss the back of it.

We hit the road and soon we were headed out of town on a backroad highway.

“I still can’t believe none of them had anything helpful to say,” Lauren finally said.

“I thought you had enough of magic shit?” I asked.

“Well, it’s on my mind!” Lauren said. “I mean, not a single one of them actually denied it was them or offered their concern or anything.”

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” I said. “It wasn’t that, but I sort of see why it happened. They don’t want to piss off whoever did it but also don’t want to rub me the wrong way. Well, except for Marcel I guess. They don’t know if it was someone they have important deals with.”

“Fucking politics,” Lauren grunted.

“No, fucking politics are a lot more fun,” I said with a little smirk. “Like last night.”

“That was fun,” Lauren smiled back. “It wasn’t weird seeing me get fucked with a strap-on, was it?”

“Sort of, but it was way hotter than weird,” I said. “And the way you looked at me that first time Angie got you to suck on it was reassuring.”

“Good,” Lauren said. “I wanted to make sure you would like it - sucking on a rubber dick isn’t exactly this big wow experience. I mean, a dildo is a dildo so getting fucked with it is one thing, but I feel like a blowjob is almost more intimate considering the eye contact so I wanted that with you.”

“I love you,” I said with a smile.

“I know,” Lauren smirked back.

We drove almost an hour out of town, and then an hour back, trying to just decompress by listening to the radio and talking about how the party went last night and eventually decided we had wasted enough time and could head back to my place to help with any of the last bit of cleaning. When we arrived there were fewer cars out front than when we left and I worried that people had bailed on Stacey.

Inside, instead of finding the place still a mess it was blessedly clean and the furniture had all been moved back to the right places. Lindsey was just putting all the pictures and other nicknacks back in place in the living room and turned, smiling over her shoulder at us. “Hey, you guys are back!” she said.

That was when the long, loud moan echoed through the house from upstairs.

“Um,” I said, looking at the ceiling of the foyer.

Lindsey grinned and bit the corner of her lower lip. “I sent everyone else home once we were down to just the little stuff and waiting on the washing machines to finish. We’re expecting your parents back for lunch.”

“So who is upstairs?” I asked.

“Jordan and Stacey,” Lindsey said. “Once it was just the three of us Jordan asked Stace point blank if she’d ever fucked you, and Stacey blushed hard enough I thought she might die right there. Then one thing led to another.”

“One thing led to another?” Lauren asked as another loud moan came from upstairs. “That sounds like more than one thing or another combined.”

Lindsey snorted. “I think Jordan might have a bit of a crush on you, Jerry. She already knew about me from Angie, and now she wants to make a good impression on Stacey.”

“I told you,” Lauren laughed, giving me a punch in the arm. “Concubine Six.”

“You should go up and join them,” Lindsey said. “I think they’d both like that.”

I sucked in a breath and blew it out with a chuckle. “This is-”

“Insane, we know,” Lauren laughed.

I kicked off my shoes and went to Lindsey, wrapping her up in my arms and kissing her thoroughly. “Hi,” I said once I’d finished, our noses still brushing as we smiled. “Lauren can tell you about it now, or do you want to wait until later?”

“Both,” Lindsey said. “Lauren can help get the last bits done and tell me, then you can tell me too. Preferably while I have your cock inside me.”

“I promise,” I grinned and gave her another little kiss. Then I let go of her and turned back to Lauren, giving her another kiss. “Thanks.”

“For what?” she asked.

“Everything, Lauren,” I said. “Everything.”

I left her smiling as I mounted the stairs. Up on the second floor, I could clearly hear the sounds were coming from Stacey’s room and the door was half open as I stepped up to it. Inside the overhead light was off but the window curtains were drawn aside, giving the whole room a wash of grey, diffused light from the cloudy winter sky outside. Stacey was on her knees on the bed, her thick brown hair falling forward over her face as she loosed another moan. She was leaning forward with her hands braced on the mattress and she was straddling Jordan’s head as she sat on her face.

Jordan was as naked as Stacey was, which was completely, and her skinny, pale body was laying straight out between Stacey’s braced arms, her legs spread and one hand fingering herself as the other worked on Stacey’s clit.

I stripped just inside the doorway, but Stacey was in her own world with the cunt licking she was getting and Jordan probably couldn’t see anything except Stacey’s ass from below. Naked and rock hard, I stepped towards the bed and Stacey finally realized I was there when she felt the mattress shift as I got on my knees.

Her eyes flicked open as she tossed her hair to the side, and after a moment of surprise at seeing me she grinned and reached down, taking Jordan’s hand from diddling herself and pinning it to the bed before leaning down and giving the redhead’s clit a thorough licking. I knee-walked closer and Stacey raised her head, opening her mouth wide so that I could slide my cock right between her lips. Then she loosed a moan on my cock.

“Linds, I hope that’s a strap-on because this sexy bitch needs a fucking soon,” Jordan said from underneath Stacey.

Stacey smiled up at me around my cock, her eyes alight with playful energy, and she pulled away and then put both her hands on Jordan’s thighs and pulled them back more.

“I meant Stacey,” Jordan laughed. “Though I appreciate that you think I’m a sexy bitch too.”

I placed my cock head at Jordan’s pussy and slowly slid in with just the head, stretching her hole until it closed around the ridge, and then pulled back out, and then did the same thing again.

“Ooooh, fuuuck,” Jordan moaned, her legs quivering under Stacey’s hands and her hips humping up. “That’s not a fucking strap-on.”

I smirked a little and pushed in and out a few more times, fucking her with just the tip as she mewled and squirmed underneath Stacey, and then I pushed all the way in until I was rooted deeply.

“Fuck yes, Jerry,” Jordan moaned.

“How do you know it’s him?” Stacey asked.

“Are you kidding me?” Jordan retorted. “You wouldn’t?”

Stacy snorted. “Fair. I definitely would.”

I long stroked Jordan a few times, then pulled out. Stacey surprised me by leaning down and licking her tongue around the head of my cock and then up and down the shaft, tasting Jordan on me. I really needed to talk to her about her deeper and deeper acceptance of the sapphic side of these encounters.

“Fuck my hole again,” Jordan begged.

“Like this?” I asked, thrusting in just the head of my cock again, and then pulling out.

“Ungh, fuck,” Jordan said and nodded, though I could only really see her chin. In between every actual sentence she was still actively working to eat out Stacey. “Yeah, fucking stretch my hole with that cock. Fuck every inch of my pussy until it fits that perfect cock like a glove.”

“God damn, you’re horny for him,” Stacey laughed.

“So are you, you’re leaking more than you were before,” Jordan chuckled.

“Is that true, Stace?” I asked as I did just what Jordan asked and started fucking her cunt hole with just the head of my cock, quickly and firmly in and out. “Is seeing my cock fucking Jordan making you extra horny?”

“Just realizing you were here made me extra horny, you little prick,” Stacey smirked with love in her eyes.

“Definitely not little,” Jordan gasped.

I pulled out and tapped my cock against her clit firmly. “Thanks,” I said.

“Any time,” Jordan said.

I fucked into her again, working her hole.

“Is it true you put a load in her pussy, ass and mouth last night?” Stacey asked me.

“Yep,” I said, leaning forward and kissing her for a moment. “Jordan is freaky and fun in the best way.”

“I’d prefer if we didn’t do anal today,” Jordan said. “I need at least a day to recover after last night.”

I reached down from Stacey and put my hands on Jordan’s ribs right under her tits, holding her firmly as I started fucking slightly deeper. “Totally understandable,” I said.

We fucked, and Jordan came with a long, shuddering orgasm and then renewed her eating of Stacey until my brunette girlfriend had her own whining, panting orgasm. When she rolled to the side, revealing Jordan’s sloppy face, I leaned down until I was pressing my chest to hers and I kissed the taste of Stacey off of her cheeks and chin and lips as I slow-stroked her deeply again.

Jordan moaned throatily into another orgasm as I did that, holding her head still with my fingers wrapped in her long coppery hair as I kissed her hard.

“Want to switch positions?” I asked her once she’d come down.

She shook her head. “So good,” she gasped. “Just… put a hand on my throat. Don’t choke me, just let me feel it.”

I did as she asked.

“Cover my mouth but leave my nose for breathing,” she asked after a minute.

I did that too, one hand on her throat and another over her mouth, muffling her. She rolled her eyes a bit, moaning into my hand. Stacey, laying next to us and watching, wedged a hand between us and started diddling Jordan’s clit as I continued to fuck her with steady, hard thrusts.

“Fill her up, Jerry,” Stacey said quietly. “Fill that pretty ginger pussy with your delicious cum, and I’ll go get Lauren so she can eat it out of her. She’ll fucking love that, and Jordan can suck you hard again while that happens.

“Muuuuggh,” Jordan moaned loudly, nodding her head at the idea.

I kissed the tip of Jordan’s nose sweetly, making her focus her eyes on me. “Is that what you want? You want me to come inside you again?”

Jordan nodded.

“And you want my girlfriend to suck it out of you?”

Again, Jordan nodded.

“And you want to suck-”

“Hey, guys,” Lindsey said from the doorway. “Gotta wrap it up, the parents are pulling in the driveway.”

“Shit,” Stacey said. “They’re early.”

“Fuck,” I grunted. I didn’t stop looking into Jordan’s eyes. “I’m still going to finish in you, but we’ll have to save the other stuff for another time.”

“Muh ie’,” Jordan mumbled through my hand, sounding mostly like ‘do it.’

I fucked into her hard and she threw her legs up and around my waist, crossing them at the ankles, and my orgasm rolled up through me from my toes, through my balls and up my spine as I unloaded into Jordan. She moaned happily, humping her hips up at me to get me as deep into her as I could get.

“Good girl,” Stacey crooned from beside us. “Good fucking girl, taking that big fucking load.”

When I was done, each blast of my orgasm painting the inside of Jordan again, I released my hold on her mouth and neck and kissed her hard.

“You’re pretty fucking amazing,” I told her as our lips parted.

“So are you. And your girlfriends,” Jordan whispered back, giving me that little smirk of hers and then pecking my lips again. “God, your cum feels so hot and gooey inside me. Too bad I can’t go for the trifecta again.”

“You’ll get another chance,” Stacey said, already scooting down the bed. “Now, I’m not one to deny post-fuck cuddles, but the Parents.”

With a sigh, I pulled out of Jordan and rolled to the side and we both got off the bed. Jordan grabbed her clothes and darted out of the room to the bathroom so she could clean herself up. That gave Stacey the chance to suck the gooey concoction off of my cock quickly as we heard the doors opening and closing downstairs and Lauren and Lindsey welcoming my parents home.

I met Jordan in the hallway as she was coming out of the bathroom fully clothed and pulled her into my arms, squeezing her tightly in a hug as I kissed her, feeling the difference in the way she kissed along with the little extra bits of her lip and tongue studs.

“Text me,” she said with a smile as it ended. “We really do need to talk writing.”

“I will,” I promised.

She winked and squeezed my butt with both hands before we separated. She and Stacey went downstairs together, and I could hear Stacey introducing Jordan as an old high school friend who had stayed over.

Meanwhile, I went to my room with a bit of trepidation. Inside I found that someone had cracked the window so it was a little chilly, but didn’t smell like anything. The sheets were also freshly washed, and looking around I didn’t think anything was particularly out of place. With a sigh I went to my desk and sat down, booting up my computer.

It was only eleven in the morning, but it felt like I’d been up for an entire day. How did that keep happening?

But I had important shit to do with my time. We were meeting with Angie sometime that evening, and I had to introduce her to Annalise along with figuring out how to explain magic to her. I probably also needed to put more time into considering what had all happened at the council meeting, and debriefing with all the girls on that.

But first, before anything else, I needed to do some medical research about the biology of the human eye, because with Stoker MIA and the council meeting behind me, the first thing on my list of stuff to do was fixing Maya.