Podcasts about Lothario

A space Lothario. A crew of space pirates. The tallest supervillain of all. An underwater hero (no, not that one). The X-Men's punk leader. The population of an entire planet. Which are Hot? Which are Not? Find out, as the Hot Squad continues its coverage of OHOTMU's 12th issue and reveals how datable its characters are. Featuring permanent panelists Elyse, Isabel, Nathalie, Josée, Shotgun, and Amelie. Listen to Episode 106 below (the usual mature language warnings apply), or subscribe to oHOTmu OR NOT? on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Relevant images and further credits at: oHOTmu or NOT ep.106 Supplemental This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK! Visit our WEBSITE: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com/ Like our FACEBOOK page: https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Subscribe via iTunes as part of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK. And thanks for leaving a comment.

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Bruce Wayne

Shakespeare ​famously ​wrote, ​what's ​in ​a ​name? ​ ​But ​let's ​say ​it ​out ​loud. ​ ​Jack ​ ​Lemmon. ​It ​says ​it ​all ​right ​there ​in ​the ​name. ​​Jack. Ordinary, ​​the ​guy ​across ​from ​you ​on ​the ​subway. Lemon. The ​one ​that ​got ​the ​broken ​car. ​ ​The ​bitter ​taste, ​yet ​the ​surprising ​brightly ​colored ​yellow ​sun ​inside ​of ​the ​bad ​luck. ​Jack ​Lemmon, ​arguably ​the ​greatest ​comic ​and ​dramatic ​actor ​to ​ever ​grace ​the ​screen, ​who ​is ​unrivaled ​​as ​the ​everyman ​who ​trips, ​stumbles, ​ ​triumphs ​and ​gets ​the ​girl. ​Or ​in ​the ​case ​of ​Some ​like ​it ​Hot, ​the ​guy. ​ ​Starting ​this ​week ​at ​one ​of ​my ​very ​favorite ​movie ​theaters, ​the ​Film ​Forum ​on ​Houston ​Street, ​Jack ​Lemmon ​turns ​100. ​ Can ​you ​believe ​it? ​And ​the ​Film ​Forum ​is ​opening ​its ​two ​week ​tribute ​on ​Friday, ​May ​16th ​with ​the ​iconic ​story ​of ​opposites, ​the ​Odd ​Couple. ​But ​I'm ​not ​here ​to ​talk ​about ​Mr. ​Lemon's ​legendary ​roles ​in ​Days ​of ​Wine ​and ​Roses, ​Glengarry ​Glen ​Ross ​ ​having ​a ​revival ​on ​Broadway ​now ​with ​Bob ​Odenkirk ​reprising ​Lemon's ​unforgettable ​Shelley ​Levine, ​The ​Front ​Page, ​Mr. ​Roberts, ​Bell, ​Book ​and ​A Candle. ​A ​personal ​favorite ​of ​mine, ​Some ​like ​it ​Hot, ​which ​I ​watched ​on ​VHS ​until ​the ​tape ​broke…I ​am ​here ​to ​talk ​about ​one ​of ​the ​greatest ​comedies, ​if ​you ​can ​call ​a ​film ​about ​a ​mid ​level ​office ​drone ​working ​at ​an ​insurance ​company ​ ​who ​lets ​his ​superiors ​bully ​him ​into ​letting ​them ​have ​his ​apartment ​for ​their ​affairs ​in ​hopes ​of ​him ​getting ​promoted ​and ​the ​suicidal ​elevator ​girl ​who ​whom ​he ​falls ​in ​love ​with. ​A comedy ​​The ​Apartment. ​ Legendary ​director ​Billy ​Wilder, ​coming ​off ​the ​wild ​success ​of ​Some ​like ​it ​Hot ​with ​Marilyn ​Monroe, ​wanted ​to ​keep ​his ​collaboration ​with ​Lemon ​going. ​So ​in ​1960, ​Wilder ​and ​I.A.L ​diamond ​(Come ​on, ​is ​that ​the ​coolest ​name?)​ who ​wrote ​Some ​Like ​It ​Hot ​with ​Wilder ​were ​inspired ​by ​an ​infamous ​Hollywood ​murder ​story ​about ​agent ​Jennings ​Lange ​who ​was ​having ​an ​affair ​with ​actress ​Joan ​Bennett ​in ​an ​underlings ​apartment. ​So ​her ​husband, ​producer ​Walter ​Wanger, ​shot ​and ​killed ​Lange. ​Check ​out ​Karina ​Longworth's ​excellent ​podcast ​Love ​Is A Crime from ​You ​Must ​Remember ​This ​for ​the ​full ​retelling ​to ​you ​and ​I. ​This ​might ​not ​seem ​like ​source ​material ​for ​one ​of ​our ​greatest ​comedies, ​but ​in ​Wilder, ​Lemon ​and ​the ​adorable ​Shirley ​MacLaine's ​Hands, ​it ​was ​a ​box ​office ​smash, ​winning ​five ​Oscars ​out ​of ​ten ​nominations. ​Now ​I ​could ​go ​on ​and ​on ​about ​Billy ​Wilder's ​meticulous ​directorial ​precision, ​Lemon's ​unreal ​​comic ​timing ​and ​turn ​on ​a ​dime ​pathos ​why ​Ving ​Rhames ​spontaneously ​gave ​him ​his ​very ​own ​Golden ​Globe ​in ​1998. ​But I'm actually here to talk about a hat, a haircut, and a mirror. Let's rewind to 1960 - President Kennedy just took office, Roy Orbison's ‘Only The Lonely' was on the radio, and the kids were doing Chubby Checker's ‘The Twist'. The very seriously subversive theme and subject of The Apartment can not be over stated in this climate. The film, shot in gorgeous black & white by Joseph LaShelle of Laura and Marty fame, puts us smack-dab in what I'd call ‘Mad Men' central - a heady swirl of cigarette smoke and ‘Tom & Jerry' cocktail mix, office Christmas parties, wives holding on line 2 while executive husbands scheduled accepted trysts before dinner and kissing the kids goodnight. Lemmon plays ‘C.C. Baxter', a hard-working, well-meaning drone who somehow gets himself turned into a sort of brothel landlord. His neighbors wonder how he can withstand being such a Lothario - the sounds coming through the walls everynight don't match C.C. Baxter's unassuming Brooks Brothers suit with a rumpled white shirt with rounded collars and tie-bar to boot.But Baxter is caught in a hilarious cycle of paying his dues to climb the corporate ladder. This is what you must do. You must get out of bed at midnight to allow your boss to wine and bed his mistress in your Upper Westside apartment even if it involves you sleeping on a park bench in Central Park and catching your death (which Lemmon really did on that particular night shoot on location in the chilly fall of NYC). Lemmon's aspiration is to be ‘the youngest junior executive at Consolidated Insurance' so he MUST climb that corporate ladder to get the accoutrements - the windowed office, the carte blanche phone calls to pass on favors, and the bowler hat!He proudly shows it off to Shirley MacLaine's elevator operator, Fran Kubelik, who regards it as the ultimate symbol of the last ‘nice guy' crossing over the river Styx to the underworld of betrayal. She is happy for Baxter, but her eyes register a cultural sadness - this white male corporate culture is a disease and its got it claws in Baxter, and Baxter is completely oblivious to what he is about to sign on the dotted line for. Fran isn't. Despite her absolutely adorable ‘pixie' hair-cut, she has been groped by the best of them, and seems unreachable by the hordes of executives. Fran is the Snow Leopard, the last big game that hasn't been conquered. You can grab her butt, and she firmly pushes you on your way. There is something modern, forward-leaning in her attitude and appearance, punctuated by that hair-cut representing women's liberation, strength, and independence. ‘I don't need long flowing hair to make you like me, pal.' The pixie cut was popularized by Audrey Hepburn in the late 1950's, followed by the model Twiggy, and reaching its apotheosis with Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby in the mid-1960s. But Shirley MacLaine, in my humble opinion, does it best as ‘Fran', the hard-working elevator operator girl who won't fall prey. Fran says in one of the film's most famous lines of dialogue, “When you're alone with a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara.” Shirley MacLaine's tender and deep performance as ‘Fran', lets us - and eventually Baxter - know that all is not well in the corporate system and the culture at large. One of the most ingenious uses of the Hollywood film adage ‘show don't tell' in filmmaking is the use of a simple compact make-up mirror to tell a major plot turn in The Apartment. Baxter's boss, Jeff D. Sheldrake played with brave impunity by silver screen star Fred MacMurray, who was so hated after this performance he would be aaccosted in the street by ladies chasting him for playing such a ‘dirty man'. Sheldrake calls Baxter into his office early in the film for what Baxter thinks is his promotion. Sheldrake says he's heard about Baxter's ‘key' - meaning his revolving brothel. Sheldrake wants in. Baxter obliges as Sheldrake is THE biggest fish. Later, in another summoning to the head honcho's office, Baxter gives him a floral compact he discovered in his couch, assuming it belongs to Sheldrake's mistress. The mirror inside the compact is cracked jagged down the middle splitting the image of whoever opens it in two. Baxter thinks nothing of it until he is modeling his bowler hat - the Junior Executive - for Fran. What do you think? he askes her. “After all, this is a conservative firm. I don't want people to think I'm an entertainer…”. In the midst of this, Fran helpful as ever, opens her compact to show Baxter how the bowler hat looks. To Baxter's deep inner shock, he puts ‘two and two together' and realizes Fran is in fact Sheldrake's mistress. The horror. The one that was ungettable gotten by the biggest fish with a wife and two kids. The shot of Lemmon reacting in the cracked compact is on the of most effective story and visual devices I can think of in cinema. Baxter sees himself split apart - two worlds: the happy go lucky Baxter, and the Baxter that is now privy to some vile stuff involving the one girl he actually likes.Fran sees his reaction and asks ‘what is it? Baxter takes a beat. “The mirror…it's broken.” Then Fran utters one of my favorite lines, “I know. I like it this way…makes me look the way I feel.” WOW. What a subversive revilation! What a profound utterance. Talk about Chekhov. ‘Makes me look the way I feel'. We begin to realize all is not right with Fran. Sheldrake is leading her on. She sets a boundary at the local Chinese restaurant where he apparently takes all his conquests - the back booth. But Sheldrake works her over, and convinces her he WILL leave his wife. After a tryst back at Baxter's apartment on Christmas Eve, Sheldrake must catch his evening train to make dinner with the family. Obviously having forgotten to get Fran anything of real signifigance for Christmas, he opens his wallet and hands her a hudred dollar bill. Even in today's anything goes era, it's a shockingly seedy gesture that is all too real. MacLaine's Fran takes it in stride - just like Baxter leaving his key under the rug for his bosses - and stands to take off her coat and gets ready to disrobe. Fran says something like, ‘well, you already paid for it.' Ugh. My heart broke! For Fran, for Baxter, for the sad inevitablity of it all. Trigger Warning. The last portion of this episode deals with suicide. Listen with care. Fran asks to be left alone. In the bathroom, she finds the hundred dollar bill in her purse, and realizing she will never be able to break this cycle, she sees Baxter's sleeping pills - Seconal - and takes them all. Meanwhile, Baxter is out drowning his sorrows with a hilarious companion, played by actress Hope Holiday. They get drunk and dance, looking for a place to get even closer, they head back to Baxter's apartment - “Might as well go to me. Everybody else does.” Once back at his place, he discovers Fran and races to his jocular doctor neighbor, played by Jack Kruschen (also Oscar nominated for his hilarious supporting role as Dr. Dreyfuss), and Fran narrowly misses checking out. While recovering at Baxter's playing gin rummy (which MacLaine was playing alot of as a peripheral member of the Rat Pack), Fran and him bond, more than bond. They fall into bliss and don't even know it. It's a beautiful chemistry, one that apparently as it evolved dictated the script. Sources say upon commencement of filming, the screenplay was a mere 40 pages, and Wilder liked to work that way and let things evolve. He was also famous for re-shooting after viewing dallies. MacLaine calls him 'sciencentific, brittle and caustic with women but made you better for it'. She tells a story about once such instance during a climactic scene with Fred MacMurray's ‘Sheldrake' where she couldn't get the emotion necessary for their break-up in the Chinese restaurant they frequent. MacLaine's native Canadian accent was coming out literally on the word ‘out.' After viewing the ‘rushes', he concluded they need to re-shoot, even calling MacLaine out in the screening room. MacLaine, much like Fran, didn't buckle under pressure, and they re-shot. On the day, Wilder called ‘Action' and excused himself to give her the privacy to do the scene. She hit it out of the park, uttering the lines from that take that made the final cut, “So you sit there and make yourself a cup of instant coffee while he rushes out to catch the train.”Well, long story short, Baxter and Fran end up together - thank Heavens. I could explain the plot twists to get them there, but I want to leave you with one final remberance of MacLaine's. When asked what it was like to work with Jack Lemmon, she said, “He would say, ‘Magic time!', every time the camera rolled. And then we knew we'd better make some magic.”Check out The Apartment on the big screen at The Film Forum in all its glory this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And all of Jack Lemmon's ‘Magic time' over the next two weeks. You won't be sorry.More about the series here:JACK LEMMON 100Watch The Apartment here:Look Behind The Look is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Look Behind The Look at lookbehindthelook.substack.com/subscribe

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week bring you a summary of the great Lotharios.

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Dai LLewllyn

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Ruspoli

JOIN THE SCREEN ROT PATREON NOW⁠. Oi, get on this - an extra episode every week. Early access to every episode. Access to the Rotter group chat. Priority access to tickets. Get involved:⁠patreon.com/thescreenrotpodThe Screen Rot Podcast is the show where we discuss the weirdest and worst content that's been rotting our screens and our minds. It's Monday Night football for internet rubbish. This week we discuss: Emotions in Life (with Ava Santina). The West Country lothario receiving roses on TikTok.IG Handles:⁠⁠⁠⁠@screenrotpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@jacobhawley⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@j_akefarrell⁠⁠⁠⁠Our theme music is the song ⁠⁠⁠⁠“Money” by Jose Junior.

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Marquis De Portago

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Giani Agneli

Poet Nathaniel Blackhelm joins Vince to discuss his latest collection, Lothario—a bold and reflective work that navigates the terrain of midlife, identity, and the surreal beauty of being human. In this conversation, we unpack the archetype of the Lothario, the friction between cultural identities, and the role of lust, humor, and self-worth in shaping how we live and love. Blackhelm speaks candidly about the absurdity of modern existence, the challenge of curating meaning through poetry, and the influence of Shakespeare in his work. This episode is a deep dive into artistic freedom, aging with vitality, and how metaphor helps us survive the chaos.Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0BK292M3C/abouthttps://www.instagram.com/nblackhelm/Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14182861.Nathaniel_BlackhelmTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nblackhelmFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/jay.helmstutler/Threads: https://www.threads.net/@nblackhelmBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/nathanielblackhelm.bsky.social

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Warren Beatty

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week George Hamilton

A Butterfly wants to kill the World?Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.Although Love is both fire and shadow, we often forget to take comfort from the coolness of the memories when the burning flames are absentThere were precisely two things, okay, four things, keeping me alive. The fourth thing would come to her later when her 'furious was replaced by her 'curious' ~ as in how I knew her inhuman lingo ~ which would lead to my legacy with Grandpa.The top three reasons -She had poked my chest. It was a challenge, calling for one of my guardians to come out and play. The avatar knew I was the chosen heir of the Goddess Ishara and my goddess had devoted a good deal of time and effort to my survival and continued service in her cause. If Ishara made an 'appearance', it would be enough reason to not eviscerate me for my foul treatment of her august personage.Nope. It seemed Ishara was busy at the moment.Still, she most likely knew SzelAnya had shown a keen interest in me in Romania, though I'd never told Selena, or any other member of the 9 Clans, the Dragon's Daughter had killed Ajax for me. Figuring out SzelAnya, a storm deity, had helped me and Aya escape from our kidnapping in the midst of a cyclone in the Pacific Ocean wasn't much of a reach.But no bolt of lightning coalesced from my chest to singe her finger. No clap of thunder. Not even a cloud with a hint of disfavor appeared above us.Her obsidian fingernail began penetrating my shirt, touched my skin, then drew my blood, and something 'twitched'.That would be Contestant Goddess #3. She wasn't actually hanging around me. She didn't have to. She'd left me a memento of our last shindig before we parted ways. That was the nightmare-inducing episode where she, the chthonic goddess Sarrat Irkalli, had compressed one man's body into a dagger and then proceeded to suck another's soul into it to use as a power source for an Airbus 350 (a commercial airliner, if you didn't know).I still had that snaggletooth-looking thing at my back. Well who the Hell was I going to leave it with? Honestly, the only people I felt could keep it safe I loved too much to curse with it. Anyway, the second her divine claw touched my blood, the long dormant weapon whispered to me in a somewhat bored, lofty feminine voice from beyond the grave,Do you want me to discorporate this pathetic has-been for you?Quick check. Only the avatar and I, and her priestess-savant heard that. Of course, in downtown, New York City, noon Sunday, how weird would such a declaration be? The avatar's eyebrow arched. Her big bat-ears (still looking human to the normal viewing public) flicked this way and that, figuring out precisely where the threat originated from. Slowly, her once poking hand began to slide across my chest, along my ribs and around my back.She touched the dagger. Nothing.Gingerly, she drew it forth. I'd had a makeshift sheath made. As the blade made its journey around me, she took a half-step back to better observe it."Please don't kill him!" Theddy squealed. "We haven't had sex yet!"Being 'who' and 'what' she was, the avatar did what came natural. Fortunately for Theddy, I'd become accustomed to working with psychopaths.She stabbed the dagger at Theddy. I clamped my hand down on her wrist. The claws of her left hand came down on my constraining wrist. My free hand came down on that hand, trying to pry it free. It was a hopeless struggle, except.Yes, my old friend 'except'. Except the avatar was holding the dagger. As powerful as Ītzpāpālōtl was, she wasn't pushing against me. She was pushing against Sarrat Irkalli.Ītzpāpālōtl was a living, breathing terror machine who killed and received sacrifices on a regular basis.Sarrat Irkalli hadn't been actively worshipped in 3,000 years.Uneven contest? Oh yeah.See, Ītzpāpālōtl had spent the past 500 years continuously fighting against the Weave to keep her fingers on this side of reality.Meanwhile, for the most part, Sarrat Irkalli had sat upon her throne in the Sumerian Underworld with hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of souls toiling under her watchful gaze for eternity. Sure, her version of Hell wasn't getting any fresh deposits, but she knew how to milk the system well.Even the bad karma for the dagger's creation wasn't hers. She'd stolen it from the foolish Gong Tau sorcerers who had meant to enslave my soul, aka one-third of the Baraqu-Alal-Cáel deal she'd worked out millennia ago. It was the Weave giving her a 'freebie' for playing by the rules, if you considered the Weave sentient.And now Ītzpāpālōtl was touching it. Whoops. It wasn't as if Ītzpāpālōtl was stupid. It isn't like there are tons of magic weapons running around, much less soul-munchers like the one I had. Rationally, who would give a novice like me, a weapon like this? I say again, 'whoops'.Once I'd figured this out, I couldn't stop being me."Theddy, do you like girls?""What?" she squeaked. Here was this psycho trying to drive a Smilodon incisor into her bosom and I was giving her a sex quiz.Ītzpāpālōtl was really starting to struggle now."I, ah, are you okay?" she continued."Oh, I'm dandy. I'm serious. You think this chick is hot? I mean, would you do her in a three-way?" I proposed casually."Timothy?" Sovann."Bro?" Timothy to me."It's all good. Sovann, you want to know what my life is like? This lady who came to discuss business with me today is an immortal mass murderer. You give the word, I'll let go and this knife is going to cut her up like a Ginsu blade on market day because just cutting her heart out isn't going to be enough. Worse. Eventually she'll get back up.""Timothy?" Sovann repeated, this time with more concern. He thought I was nuts. I released my left hand. The blade flipped up, twisting in the avatar's grasp. That was the point her minions figured out something was wrong."El Amado?" the priestess-savant called out softly. The three goons began reaching for 'things'."Call them off, or I open my other hand," I cautioned the avatar. She spared me a swift, hostile look. My fingers tingled."Esten quietos!" she snapped. They stopped."Cáel, bad day, or not. This isn't you. Stop it. The girl's in danger," Timothy spoke up. He didn't mean Theddy. He meant the avatar."I'm being a real asshole, aren't I?" I sighed."Pretty much. You never let the bitches get to you before. Girl pops an attitude, you smile and move on. Life is too short," he reminded me. Too true."I'm going to put my hand over the blade," I told Ītzpāpālōtl. "When I do, you can let go."She didn't say anything for several seconds, even after my left hand covered the semi-serrated edge."Why should I trust you?" she sizzled."Because 'me' letting anything bad happen to you would make me a total, judgmental jerk. I don't know you. Whatever you did before you showed up today shouldn't matter to me. I acted stupidly. I should have stopped you. I didn't. I didn't even warn you and I could have. I was angry, and not even at you. Just angry and I apologize. Now, let go.""Why?""Hi. I'm Cáel Nyilas. Can I have my knife back? Please?"Blink. She released it. For a millisecond, it wanted to do something else because bitches are bitches. It didn't, so my palm wasn't sliced open. My right hand took the hilt. I carefully put the blade away."Yes," Theddy gulped."Huh?" Sovann shook his head at the sudden evaporation of the life and death tension. Welcome to my life. Theddy meant 'yes' to the 'girl-girl-guy' thing I had proposed earlier. It pays to keep things prioritized."What is this movie you were talking about?" Ītzpāpālōtl asked. Had she forgiven me for anything which had transpired? Bwahahaha, no way. She was taking the initiative and going with Option 1 from my earlier insane diatribe."Wait!" Sovann nearly shouted. "You nearly, I don't know, threatened Cáel's life and tried to stab Theddy and now you think you can go with us to a movie?""I told you," Timothy put an arm around his shoulder, "life with Cáel is rarely dull.""I thought you meant he was fun to party with, or something like that," Sovann looked up at his lover. "I thought his uncle showing up, and trying to kill him and then being blown the fuck away by those women and federal agents, and that other girl who pointed a gun at us, is this the new normal?""I love you, Sovann," Timothy grew compassionate. "Cáel is my best friend. He'd never deliberately hurt either of us and normal friends are something he has in short supply. Today being a great case in point."Ten seconds passed."The title is 'As Above, So Below'," Sovann addressed the avatar, "and what do we call you?"Since 'if you are not a worshiper and addressing me, I normally am about to kill you' would sound really cool in Olmec-ic, but I might be asked to translate,"How about we go with 'Obsidian', please?" I pleaded with her.She knew I was currying favor now ~ and behaving like a weather vane caught in the wall of a tornado ~ she gave a gracious bow of her head."Obsidian will do for now. Is the Legend of the dagger 'business'?" Translation: it had better not be."No," I smiled. "It's pillow talk." Rancor, 'how presumptuous', followed by 'but that dagger ups the count to three Goddess interested in him', and next to recalling all the trivial babble about me being a sexual dynamo (I prayed my PR was that good) having some relevance. Her chimera emotions allowed me to get a few more crucial words out, because even women who aren't sleeping with me are jealous."Esta mujer fue la primera en ofrecer bienes funerarios tras la muerte dee mi padre," I reinserted Theddy back into my close company. For some reason, Obsidian considered me unreliable thus had to verify what I'd just said."Did you make funerary offering upon his father's passing?" she asked Theddy. Let's think about this. The wacko chick questioning Theddy had tried to stab a huge freaking blade into her not a minute ago. Fleeing in terror while screaming for the cops? Nope."Yes. I baked him some walnut and caramel chip cookies," she nodded. "It is a family recipe." Sovann looked over the three of us, then back to Timothy."I told you 'that's impressive cocking like I've never seen before'," he explained."She may remain," Obsidian 'permitted'. Theddy wrapped up my right arm with her left and gave it a squeeze. She wanted attention/explanation."Obsidian is a Master Vampire, Theddy," I leaned in and whispered. "Before she was turned, she was captured in a raid by the fey, mentally, spiritually and physically raped and made into their sex-slave. Part of her spirit never healed properly. While this imperfection allows her to walk around in daylight, her heart can never hold on to any emotion for long, so she is forced to forever seek passion, no matter how dangerous, from the world around her."Revealing secrets? Ha. I had noticed Theddy had every work done by Laurel K. Hamilton in her place, including the comic book series."You are not supposed to know, so act like I didn't tell you anything, okay?"'Okay,' she mouthed back at me. I could see it in her eyes. My chaotic life suddenly 'made sense' to her because a best-selling fiction author said so.Obsidian thought the movie was; hilarious. She couldn't stop snickering, giggling and poking at me as horrible shit happened to the various actors. She thought the plot was 'insightful' and wouldn't stop whispering to me throughout the entire thing. During the closing credits, I told her I'd get her the DVD for Christmas ~ she knew the concept behind digital technology, but didn't own any ~ she kissed me.The first kiss was fierce and joyous with the added benefit of her tongue doing things no normal tongue could do, it stretched. Not sure how I felt about that. The second kiss was more sultry, longer and came with some accompanying body action which, I'm no virgin. Not even close. She was on my left side, so when she twisted in her seat, her left leg insinuated itself between mine. Her left hand cupped my jaw and held my head in place as her lips played along mine.A dance of the scorpion perhaps? Tender at first, then suddenly stabbing, dominant and brutal. My lips and tongue battled back, using my superior Kiss-fu to nullify her natural strength and agility. She liked it. By her moaning, she liked it a lot. As the kiss progressed, more and more of her flowed from her seat into my seat, body facing me. Her body rose over mine, forcing my neck back to maintain contact."So, Dot Ishara is hovering around somewhere close, isn't she?" I murmured as our lips separated barely a centimeter apart. One chick kissing you to make another one jealous. It's happened to me plenty of times. Obsidian didn't give a damn about Theddy, or any other mortal woman in close proximity so,"Yes," she purred. "Do you mate with her?""A man does not brag of such things, but no, unless heavy petting counts?""What will she do to you when I steal your seed?"'When'? Why was I not surprised? Why was I not surprised another concussion was in my immediate future either? Was it possible I was, learning?"Chastise me for not fighting harder," I breathed across her lips, "and, in case you forgot, I'm on a date with the girl beside me.""Who I care nothing for," she sent a cruelly playful look Theddy's way. Wisely, the girl shivered."Who I am indebted to and how I honor my debts might matter to you," I hazarded. My words hurt Theddy's feelings. That was on purpose. Obsidian took pleasure in me hurting Theddy because she was basically a vicious monster."Yes?" I pressed her gently."Yes," Obsidian allowed, easing up slightly both romantically and physically."And Theddy, if you believe I'm with you solely because of some sense of obligation, you clearly haven't been listening to your recordings," I shot the human girl a wink."Oh.""Am I, or am I not, a sex-obsessed little monkey?" I teased her. Theddy giggled. I paid for my diversion with four obsidian claws to my ribs outside of Theddy's view. After all, it wasn't like Theddy could possibly compete with her for my attention. Considering Obsidian's legendary ability to rip open her opponent's ribcages and feast upon their hearts, I slipped my left hand, the one next to her between her legs and stroked her cotton-slacks covered cunt.Theddy hugged my right arm and put her head against my shoulder. Not to be outdone," Qu  un centenar dee hombres se quemaron vivos como el sonido?" Obsidian inquired with sexually sadistic hunger. Ah, memories of burning 7P Commandos.Whoops. Theddy knew Spanish."No lo s . Ten an respiradores en," I replied casually. "Si lo desea, puedo describir lo que se siente al tirar de una flecha de guerra lanzar mi propio muslo.""Eep," slipped out of Theddy's lips."Why did you do that?" Obsidian looked over us both."Well, I was showing a little girl I believed in her,""And she shot you?" Theddy gulped."No. She hit the target I was standing next to. A co-worker mistook me for a cardboard cutout of a Jehovah's Witness and let fly. Seems she had issues with organized religion as well as a reaction to the oscillation effect of florescent lighting and ceiling fans.""But why did you pull the arrow out?" Theddy asked. "Couldn't you wait until you got to the hospital?""Mosquito," Obsidian menaced, insinuating Theddy was a pest."I wasn't thinking rationally at the moment, I work in an asylum, I had a hot date in a few hours, any of those three will do," I smiled at Theddy."Copil such as Cáel don't bother with petty human conventions," Obsidian turned my gaze back her way with her hand on my jaw. 'Copil's were 'god-touched' in her lingo."More than one girl?" Theddy mused."Four.""Okay," she sighed happily."Theddy, three under-age girls and the police office he was dating acting as their chaperone," Timothy intervened. "He hurried home so he could keep a promise to the children, not for sex." Bastard. He really was my best friend. He didn't mention my post-injury, pre-festivity sex with Odette giving me a few extra, urgently needed Brownie Points to suggest I might be a decent human being."You are a wonderful guy," Theddy ran a fingernail over my free hand. Clearly I was 'wonderful' enough to risk Obsidian's anger over. The screen went blank as the last credits scrolled away and the room was plunged into darkness. Five seconds later, the lights snapped on.Pain!"Fuck," I hissed. It wasn't any extra physical trauma causing me discomfort. No, a metaphysical dam had burst within and my stream of conscious thought had been turned into a white-water rapids. The competing cyclones of thoughts in my mind had stopped cooperating and my hypothalamus was letting me know I was in danger."Cáel", "Cáel", "Bro", and "Ishara" all came in rapid succession. I needed some space both tangible and social."I need to step outside," I eased Obsidian off me and stood up. My sense of my personal danger was ratcheting up. While I had been studying Obsidian, so I could screw her, I had discovered more and more Alal-badness.The light display had ignited a series of pressing implanted memories which had been clamoring for my attention. Things like not all 'divinities' were stewards of the Weave. Some even wanted its destruction, preferring risking all on a chaotic restructuring of reality over what existed now ~ things like Obsidian. They weren't attempting to do so because they thought they had no chance.But there was. A real serious chance to unravel reality existed; and it was staring her in the face. It wasn't 'me' as in 'I was the Anti-Christ'. But with the torrent of memories pouring forth, I knew where the peril lay and I was completely responsible for it. Hell, I was a prime ally of Armageddon and hadn't even known it.'Holy Shit!'I blinked. Timothy was shaking me. We were out in the lobby."Oh my God, Timothy," I nearly wept. "What am I going to do?""I have no idea what you are talking about. Is there someone you can talk to about this?" he suggested. Normal folks were around us. Obsidian was at my side. Sovann was behind Timothy with an arm around Theddy's shoulder."Theddy," I looked at her. "Can I catch up with you later? I just realized I've screwed up something fierce." I put my best 'really don't want to go but I gotta' face on. Her worried look brightened, she slipped around Timothy and gave me a tingling French kiss."I'll hold you to that, Cáel," she murmured when we parted."Timothy, go home, I got shit to deal with," I hoped my grin didn't become as feeble as I felt it to be."I," he started to say something. "Time not to ask questions?""Yeah.""Okay.""Wait." I pulled us to the side and went on to my toes, leaned in and whispered in his ear, "Tell Pamela 'he' sent Ajax to kill the Professor, his family and the sisters. They were the targets all along. It wasn't me, or the other women. Just in case,""Okay," Timothy patted my arm. It was cryptic. It was the best I could do. See, I wanted to cry so badly.{2:09 pm Sunday, September 7th ~ Last day}Where to begin:Every mythology across the globe has some creature, or creatures, which threatens Existence. Usually a God, or a Hero-God, slays the creature and everything is right with the world, except such a being, being older than Existence itself, can't really die, so they are carved up, buried ~ what have you.Illuyankamunus was one such manifestation of this underlying cancerous desire to destroy reality. He'd had a far more real child, SzelAnya, and she's never quite given up on her dad. Of far greater critical importance, she was 'part' of Illuyankamunus, somewhat in the way I was part of Alal and Baraqu. And yes, that meant all the offspring of Bolu, the guy I'd praised a few hours earlier, held the seeds of that malignant deity as well.And Alal knew it. He hadn't been killing off the descendants. He'd left that task up to a group far more capable of the task, the Egyptian Rite, who knew a fucking threat to existence when they saw it. Lest I forget, No secret society are the 'good guys'. Also lest I forget, I alone decided to go after the Arinniti sons to fulfill Vranus' quest. I had no divine mandate I was aware of nor any real world orders.Inadvertently, I had rounded up the last five mortal remains of Illuyankamunus in one place for convenient disposal in a remote Transylvanian town. The only problem was: if someone didn't get to them quickly, I was also about to whisk them into the loving (and heavy-armed) protective embrace of the Amazon Host, where the completion of centuries of culling would have suddenly become a cast-iron bitch instead of a simple disposal.Enter Ajax. Yeah, I bet the Egyptians were trying to figure out how I stopped him as well as Alal. I thought I was being clever by not telling most of the world. In fact, they most likely suspected; and the reality of SzelAnya watching over me was much more terrifying. Ishara had put a serious curse on the Amazons, yet her curse only affected her followers, the Amazons, who were fair game.SzelAnya had killed someone for me, and I hadn't been one of her followers. Thus I had committed a blasphemous act only a magician of some significant ability could have managed. I wasn't a sorcerer, but I had a cornucopia of mystic knowledge rolling around in my noggin. Trying to figure all this out was one of my major headaches.The others?I even suspected I knew who betrayed me ~ kinda. They didn't do it on purpose. At least I hope they didn't, because my odds-on favorite was my Mother by way of Captain Delilah Faircloth. Realistically, there was only one secret society who might help her against Grandpa and that was the Egyptian Rite, and they did send three people to Dad's funeral including two 'somebodies'. I'm an idiot.I'd chatted away in fluent New Kingdom Egyptian and it never occurred to me how odd it was for two of them to also be so fluent in it. Know it, sure, but as fluent as Kimberly had taught me to be? That should have been a Red Flag.The Earth & Sky had sent Iskender, who should have been the benchmark I judged the other delegations by, damn it.Three Condos? They'd killed my Dad and their guys had been flunkies.The 7 Pillars had been nobodies, which they'd proven by their inaction.Now I had to question why I had 3 actual  9-Clans  assassins at my dad's funeral too. Holy Ishara, I wasn't nearly paranoid enough.Anyway, why would the Amazons be aiding and abetting the End of All Life on Earth? Normally, they wouldn't be, but 3000 years ago, the majority of Human life did a colossal dump on the Amazons. And when they needed help, they got it in the form of SzelAnya and her dual-sex followers. I seriously doubt they told the Amazons their purpose was to resurrect SzelAnya's daddy. I imagine the Amazons didn't pry too much either.It turned out almost to be okay. During the 2nd Betrayal, the Amazons betrayed SzelAnya and almost short-circuited her plans by exterminating her lineage.Except for the Arinniti elders and Bolu. Good old 'except'.I can imagine when the Egyptians heard about the 2nd Betrayal, they figured they were 'okay'. Those wacky Amazons had inadvertently done the world a favor. Except an act of maternal love kept a slender hope of Illuyankamunus' return alive. By the time the Egyptians realized they'd been prematurely hopeful, Bolu's descendants were all over the Balkans and hunting them down had proven difficult.But, it gets worse. Much worse.When those Gods shattered Illuyankamunus, they scattered him in the relative certainty no one would ever gather the parts back together.His flesh was scattered across the land, modern day Turkey, but encompassing everything from Pakistan to Italy and Egypt to Poland. The flesh became soil, then plants, the things that eat plants, then food for humans. Get the picture.Whoops. SzelAnya had been doing just that for centuries upon centuries every time she mated with a mortal of Illuyankamunus' line and had offspring, they accumulated his energy, which made hunting down the few remaining ones easier to find, since they were 'beacons of badness', except...There were two key pieces missing which SzelAnya could never get. After all, you would think burying them on the far side of the world would matter, right?The 'breath of Illuyankamunus' ~ his cosmic fire ~ they buried in a volcano in a distant land far across the Great Sea. His spirit 'body' they imprisoned in a great river, again, across the Great Sea.But wait, it gets worse.The being standing next to me knew precisely where the 'breath of Illuyankamunus' was. Seems Mesoamerica is laced with volcanos. They'd discovered 'the breath' long ago and used it as a weapon called Xiuhcoatl. Better yet, Alal suspected she and her buddies were more than happy to reunite it with the rest if they thought the Weave itself wouldn't annihilate them for daring to do so.In their current, weakened state they were vulnerable to such a karmic backlash. In theory, a reborn Illuyankamunus would have access to power beyond the bounds of the Weave, older and more terrifying. Still, without the mortal remains to anchor the energy, giving it to the spirit would be pointless.Alal knew where the spirit body was (in general), but that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was where it was,Of all the places the Arinniti sons could have fled to, they had to choose Brazil, the burial place of the restive spirit body of Illuyankamunus. Mother-fucker.And Ildiko 'Alkonyka' aka Dusk Lovasz had sworn she'd travel to Brazil to fulfill Bolu's side of the quest in the same way I was holding up Vranus' end. If I tried to stop her, SzelAnya would know something was up. Fuck.I was processing all of this when Obsidian violently yanked me out of the way. A cabby had swerved to avoid a flurry of trash and nearly run over us. It was the third near-concussive experience in the past five minutes she'd help me avoid while she had walked by my side. I'd been mumbling like a madman."That would be my Goddess wanting to talk with me," I looked her way."I know," she gave me a clever smile."She's really not going to like that," I shook my head."I know that too," she kept smiling. "Where is your mind?""Five lives away from making the world a safer place," I sighed."Safer for who?" she purred. Where were all the bimbos? Not only was it an insightful question, it cut straight to the heart of my dilemma.What decision could I make? If I elected to help my fellow Amazons, I risked screwing with the world. In truth, I was risking everything even if I did nothing. Well Dad was always clear that things didn't change by themselves. You needed to do something that would have an effect. So, 'What are you going to do?'More to the point, I wasn't Grandad. Killing the last five of the line of Illuyankamunus wasn't 'me', so it wasn't going to be something I'd worry about.SzelAnya wanted to bring back her Dad, I could understand that. I'd have to figure out a way for her to believe this world sticking around was more important. How? Well, I had a goddess-like creature right in front of me to probe for ideas."You are an immortal," Obsidian commented. She'd been weighing her opinion for some time. I could tell by the wonderment with which she gifted each word."What? No. I can die.""No. I don't think so. Your wounds. Normally the wounds I inflict flow freely for some time. Yours have already scabbed over," her eyes flickered to the various minor scars she'd imparted to me in the few hours we'd been together.Of course, her idea was insane, Oh God No! I was in Grandad's body. Well Duh! His body was supposed to be immortal."Are you sure?" I looked deep into her eyes."You are a young immortal, the youngest I've ever met, but you are an immortal," she seemed to be convincing herself as much as me.Stupid Assumption (on my part)! I wasn't in Alal's body. I was in Cáel's. Because the Cáel soul shard was young, Alal hadn't been able to find it because it had moved through Time, to me, sonofabitch! 'I' hadn't been around for him to find. No! I was making yet another damn assumption.What did I know? When Pamela found Baraqu, it had been in an object, not a person, though she had been short on details. When the Alal-shard went to the Land of the Endless Black Sands to bring Saku back, the Cáel-shard had been in reality, so it had been allowed to create a body, 'me'. Still, the curse Sarrat Irkalli placed on Baraqu was on Alal and myself as well, which meant I might just be immortal.My Alal-mind agreed with Obsidian's assessment. In his first years, his healing had been slow, still taking days for what took mortal people weeks. I'd stupidly attributed my swift recovery to Amazon medicines, ugh. Because I got wounded more than most Security Detail trainees while concurrently entertaining two and three sex partners."Can you talk with Dot Ishara?" I asked her."Yes, but why would I?""Sex?""We are going to have sex anyway," she smiled. I'd tricked her. Set her up with the right so I could now drop her with the left."I can bring the mbo  tat  back to life," I pledged. That was not what she was expecting at all. "If you bring the Xiuhcoatl, I can bring the flesh and we can unite the three." Mbo  tat  was the Tupi name for the legendary 'fiery serpent' of the Amazon Basin. In Portuguese, it had become Boi-tat , a will-o-wisp with a confused, Christianized mythology ~ a serpent dwelling in darkness, devouring the eyes of corpses, glowing in the forests at night."Where is the flesh?" she whispered."In his mortal children," I replied."Who?""You are a monster, Ītzpāpālōtl. I'm not going to tell you and you don't have the time to drag the information out of my mind before my allies drop on you like a nuclear detonation," I drew my body tightly to her."Why would the Amazons do this?""They are not. This is a deal between you and me," I kissed her lips. I pulled back. A few seconds later she kissed me back."Why?""My grandfather had my father murdered and I would avenge him. In the end, despite my father's Amazon heritage, my 'Sisters' will let his death go unavenged for the greater good of the Host. He was a man and they will never look beyond that ~ they will never value his life as they would that of a woman.""Your mother's father?""Yes. Cáel O'Shea of the Illuminati.""We are not at war with the Illuminati," she murmured. It was a casual observation, not a protest."You are at war with Cáel O'Shea.""He was slain.""He didn't stay dead.""You know much more than you are saying," she was finally catching on."Absolutely.""I need much more than a few names to convince my kin to help," she purred, a cocktail of sexual immersion and flesh-flaying pain."I don't work for you. You are agreeing to work for me," I was hard as iron in more than one way. Why? Boundaries. She lived in a world where only the fundamentals of reality constrained her. Having a human, no matter how polished my pedigree, or how much I might appear to be 'special', tell her 'you are not the boss' in a reasonable fashion was new and very unwelcome."What would make you think that?""My mentor taught me knowledge is a curse. It is our inability to forget, and I can see into your soul, Ītzpāpālōtl. You care not one wit for the life of an assassin. But the thought of the other 'Factors' of the 9 Clans treating you as an equal galls you almost as much as the crushing reality that you need them."You have lived 500 years in chains and I'm offering you a desperate grab at freedom," I added."Your brief glimpse of immortality gives you no insight into my existence," she bristled."Oh, how many have given up? How many have decided the fight was no longer worth it and faded from the Sunlight to make their final trip into the Underworld, never to return? Do you even visit them?" I spoke with a voice tinged with compassion and loss. I pulled upon the pitiless, blank memories of a childless Alal all those centuries and imprinted on them my own fears of fatherhood and failure."How do you know so much?" she let her fa ade crack, then blow away, in the hollowness of her own sorrow. How could I pity such a monster? I could because I was me and I wouldn't surrender that to the barbaric past and most likely horrific future. I pulled her close, resting my chin on the top of her head."You are not the first, wonderful, very bright woman who has stepped into my life, Obsidian," I whispered. "You are not even the first divinity. For all the millions of differences enforced by power and time, I think love, hate and the conflict between the two wear upon us all. If anything, you face an endless parade of hope and misery. Even if you chose to ignore it, you have seen it and perhaps it leaves its marks ~ water scarring the rocks of a riverbed."We paused. I was able to peripherally scan about and realize we'd made it to Central Park ~ the Ramble and off the beaten path."Your Goddess is a fool for not keeping you closer," she murmured."She does keep me close. You have been actively keeping me from her," I reminded my guest. "She also plays by the rules, so is of limited help in my plans for vengeance."Translation: I could enlist Ītzpāpālōtl's aid while still remaining loyal to my matron Goddess. Ishara could not provide what I needed and my Amazons wouldn't agree with my scheme, so I needed her. Three hours ago, she wouldn't have considered me a worthy supplicant, much less an allied equal, yet here she was conspiring with me to shake the foundations of Creation.Personally, I was thanking Mamitu, Destiny. Had I not been having my worst Sunday ever when we first crossed paths and then acted like a total cockhead, pissed her off and led her to holding Sarrat Irkalli's dagger, thus putting her life in my hands, and not had Timothy as a best friend, I wouldn't have taken her to the movie, and my mind wouldn't have wandered down those dark corridors of Alal's memories to piece things together.Whatever itinerary Obsidian had approached me with, my abrasive behavior had forced her to it cast aside. Dagger, movie, revelations, I was now so much more in her eyes than she had envisioned."Share my need and share with me an ounce of your sorrow," I murmured to her as I gently curled my fingers in her hair and directed her head up until she faced me."The dagger," she rumbled. While she was stroking my hard-on, I knew she was using it as a double meaning."I was pinned to an onyx sacrificial table," I began my tale. We worked off pants to mid-thigh then 'got busy'. Penetration was only going to be possible by turning her around. Ground-breaking was her ready acceptance of my instruction. I leaned against a tree, then pulled her onto my lap. She guided my phallus home.One locomotion and I sunk in deep. It was warm molasses until I hit and pressed against her cervix. For a second Obsidian trembled, then her muscles clamped down tightly, gripping my manhood firmly in a vise, keeping me still."Ah," I groaned. Obsidian had her neck twisted, so we were kissing with eye contact as I described my adventures with the Gong tau sorcerers. She shot me a quick twinkle of delight, a connection. She'd relayed physical pleasure in the way I was giving her cerebral gratification, aka hope.I rolled up her shirt, and gave both nipples a brutal tweak in response. She gasped. I was applying a little 'rough' with my tender intercourse. She rolled her tush against my groin, an invitation to double-down on my nipple-play. I kept my left hand working over each tit while working my fingernails down her abdomen. As I described the terror in old Tsu's face as he shouted out 'M iyǒu! (Mandarin for 'No!') as he recognized too late the curse he was invoking. She relished the visual of the Han necromancer's terror.'Me' smacking two fingers down on her clit earned me a squeal and a small gush of fluids on my nut-sack. Her look of astonishment was something I'd always cherish. Before me, sex was something she demanded from her followers/victims and definitely orchestrated. Her partners being fearful/worshipful must have limited their initiative."A-a-a-ah, we are being observed," she groaned, her lips less than an inch from mine. It took me a second."Which direction?" I kept pumping her, strumming her clit and treating her tit like taffy on a hot Coney Island summer afternoon. Her hooded eyes flickered to our right. I gave it ten seconds. I had to get Obsidian refocused on what I was going to do to her next, in case this was innocent voyeurism. Nope. It was Chaz.Why Chaz? See, I'm an idiot. My cryptic warning to Timothy for Pamela had been good for all of one minute. He'd called her and she'd gathered what she could and come looking for me.Why was she concerned? I was babbling to Timothy then wandering off with a 'beyond-freaky' chick I had just met named 'Obsidian' who came my way courtesy of another chick with the name of Estere.Let me see, Estere was Hashashin and for Timothy to describe someone in my life as 'beyond freaky' was bad news. Timothy was seriously worried about me and Timothy was an emotional rock ~ he didn't panic. Lest we forget, I was in a federal taskforce. A quick peek into New York traffic cameras revealed me and Obsidian wandering into Central Park from the south, so in the rescue party went, splitting up and Chaz 'lucked-out'.I still had two, no, three problems. I was really enjoying my sexual excursion with Obsidian and she was seeming to truly enjoy her experience with me. Oh, and Central Park is big, Pamela had been pressed for people, so she had pressed some unlikely participants into my rescue party."He's," smooch, "my brother, by adoption," I headed off the whole idea she'd been briefed on me already."Visual, Peacekeeper Six, OS2, L-11," Chaz muttered into his headset before taking up a casual stance on the path overlooking our trysting spot. Sex with an audience didn't bother her, so, we worked out as much action from twist, turns and two inches of in-and-out motions (she liked to keep our bodies tight) as we could. Obsidian was humming along in no time. Her vaginal walls were undulating, wearing away at my self-control.Panting, not from us,"Is he o, are they, who is she?" huffed and puffed a trio of voices from Chaz's locale. Oh. Pamela had recruited my 'Hounds'.I accidently (from a timing perspective) took that moment to grind my nails into her left nipple, pinched her clit and hammered her as hard as I could. Obsidian howled. Her vocalization exited the human realm in a cataclysmic manner.The noise scared avians a mile away into terrorized flight. Cats hissed, then raced for cover. Dogs tucked tail and ran. Streetlights a hundred yards away shattered in sprays of glass. Better yet, for the entertainment of my viewing public, she lashed out with her right hand at the closest Black Cherry sapling, exploding it into a mist of sap and pulverizing the bark and wood fiber into pulp.On the downside, her cervix gave my balls an ultimatum ~ release my seed at once, or she was going to twist off my head. My cock and balls have a long history of making decisions without me. I began lavishing her. Before I finally got the feeling I was out of the danger zone. She was back to rubbing against me and purring in blissful satisfaction."Onun g zleri," whispered Belgin, one of the Turks. 'Her eyes'?"Cáel, are you aware of the alternative nature of your liaison?" Chaz coolly cautioned me. Translation: 'mate, do you know you have your cock in a demon?'"Yeah," I coughed. I had a face full of her hair. I was working on some post-coital nuzzling along with slowly helping her get her pants back up."Ininzqueoccehpa," she hummed to me, ignoring our gathering. That was 'let's do this again'."Tehuatlcochitlehua," I replied with some fondness. She studied me for a second before deciding my term was one of endearment, thus 'you are what dreams are made of', not 'nightmares'.Obsidian had another issue to deal with. Timothy would call it a righteous cocking. Whatever it was, her hold on her human mein had slipped and her inhumanity was slipping through, mainly in her glass-like, black, multi-facetted eyes and her fingers which now ended in molten obsidian talons. On the subconscious level, her predatory nature was setting everyone close-by on edge. I could also make out the high pitched, ultrasonic pipping of her chiropteran cries ~ purpose unknown.Obsidian made her way off farther into the underbrush leaving me a few precious seconds to appreciate her retreating posterior while holstering my equipment. More people were arriving. I had one more thing to take care of before, oh look, Nikita had brought her Mom along, the NYPD Sergeant."Chaz, I need to have a quick chat with Dot before I can explain things. She's been waiting and that's unwise," I looked to the Brit. He nodded."Cáel? Mr. Nyilas? Prince?" all came my way. I relaxed as best I could. Chaz went to a body blow to stagger me, then an epic upper cut to send me to Lullaby Land.Dot & the DragonessDot and SzelAnya, in dragon form, were waiting as I tumbled forward. By the state of my haziness, I knew my unconsciousness wouldn't last long."You gave her your seed," came the accusation."Yes," I staggered, "and now you should be able to track her," I pointed out the bonus part of the arrangement. No comment."I've got to make this quick, SzelAnya, I've found your father, geographically speaking," I dropped the bomb."Don't," Dot Ishara commanded. After all, she and her divine cohorts had done the killing and corpse-dividing eons ago. Undoubtedly, they'd executed their own oaths to one another to 'never reveal what they had done' as well."Too late," I shook my head. SzelAnya's attention was magnetized. "I owe you and I'm paying my debts. I'm not blind to the dangers, believe me.""You have no idea what power you are invoking," Dot's undercurrent of displeasure was the worst I'd experienced."Wrong. I've got thousands of years of Alal boiling around in my head, Plus the rest of you betrayed her 2600 years ago. It doesn't mean I have to. And now, given the chance, I'm not. Even if you kill me, she's got enough toBack in the Ramble"Really expect me to believe," Nikita's mom was growling."Man down," I waved a weak arm skyward."Mr. Nyilas, what is going on here?" the Sergeant addressed me. I was reclining in a circle of my 'Hounds'; most were kneeling. Chaz was in a tiny bit of trouble for having clocked me."Umm, thanks for coming out and looking for me. I assure you, Mr. Tomorrow did what he did as a matter of his professional duties ~ intelligence gathering." As I struggled to stand, my ladies helped me. I saw Pamela with three Hounds coming up fast from one direction and Virginia with three more coming from the other. The gang was all here.The mutterings in non-English tongues suggested a bit of explaining was already going on."You've been bleeding," Nikita pointed out with an unspoken 'again'."This?" I pulled my shirt out and looked at the first bloodstain of my encounter. "This is the just the start of the bad news." I shed my windbreaker and then t-shirt.The professionals shouldered aside the others to take a closer look."All of these are from noon and less than an hour ago," I identified the damage. Sarge was skeptical. Chaz, Nikita and Virginia less so."They look older," the senior lawman noted."I've been curious about that," Chaz frowned."I've inherited my Grandfather's curse. My soul fragment was in the 'Here and Now' twenty-three years ago while his was, 'over there', so I was allowed to come into creation. According to my recently departed guest,""You are immortal," Virginia mumbled to finish the thought. Had the speaker not been a member of the FBI, who knows how the thought would have been received."From the memories I've been gifted with," I tapped the tiny divot on my forehead, "his healing abilities started out rather slowly too. I certainly don't want to test this theory, so no worries there," I scanned the group."How do you explain seeing your Grandfather in Hungary and again in Rome?" Virginia wondered."Again, that woman who just left," I got out."Was no woman," Nuray, another one of my Turkish Hounds interrupted. "Her eyes..." she tried to explain, "and look what she did to that tree," she pointed to the greatest piece of evidence of supernatural wrongdoing. The other two witnesses nodded."We all saw the same thing. Her eyes were, bottomless, definitely not human," Belgin affirmed. The veteran players looked to Chaz."She had a collapsed nose-bridge, lacked a blink response, her dental work was carnivorous and her tongue was extremely clipped and showed prehensile qualities," he reported calmly. Pause. Chaz was a freaking intelligence operative, after all."If her hands were a type of glove weaponry, I've never seen it s like before. While I know it is possible for a human to exert the force-pounds necessary to snap a two inch diameter tree trunk in one blow, it is a rare skill and requires intense discipline. This appeared to be done spontaneously, without preparation of any kind and as a reaction to other stimuli," he added."It was also your assessment he needed to be knocked unconscious?" Nikita's mom countered."Mr. Nyilas' psychological constructs are something the whole team has to work around. At times, he seeks 'insight' from his mind in a deliberately unconscious/non-sleep state," he replied."He claims to be talking with spirit powers. I know when he returns to consciousness, he delivers useful intelligence. I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or psychic. I don't know why his mind functions that way. I do know results. And I know I work with people who would achieve those results by other means if it were at all possible. Since we haven't found another method, we accept that from tim

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Baby

Wrapping up loose ends and moving forward.Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.Love is like a crossbow quiver. You only have so many bolts to shoot before it runs outThere was a long pause. Pamela took another long breath then an impish grin came to her lips."With your luck you'll get those, then end up in the Artic," she scoffed."Not the Antarctic? I've got a soft spot in my dreams for penguins.""Nope. You get to be chased by polar bears," she nudged me. I nudged her back playfully. She gave me a Charlie horse."Ow!" I yipped. The two SD chicks from the front of the plane looked back our way. I didn't care about their misconceptions. My muscles needed some self-massages."I was pretty scared," I whispered to Pamela."Good for you. You were also pretty lucky and I'm sure pretty pissed with your 'Albanian' attackers," she replied quietly. "I missed you too."I liked the way she read my mind about that. I would have liked it some more if I hadn't glanced to my other side, then fallen straight to sleep.{1 pm, Monday, August 25th ~ 14 Days to go}On Tuesday night, Aya got one of her wishes fulfilled ~ sorta. I slept in Caitlyn Ruger's bed and I wasn't alone. The Sandman had dropped a Scottish sand trap sized load of sand on me and there was more than enough spillover to flatten little Aya too. Because I lived among Amazons, Caitlyn woke me up at 5:45 in the A M and only so much lollygagging was allowed.Aya got to sleep for fifteen whole minutes more than I did. She hugged me and kissed my cheek (which amused her three Fatal Squirt compatriots to no end) while I stuffed away my breakfast. Desiree showed up to take me to work minutes later. While Aya showed off her battle scar to the pre-caste Amazons and her Aunt D. (they had not been awake when we showed up the previous evening), I was chided for being late for weapons practice.Yes. Life and death battle successes meant nothing to the Amazons. If you had a spare moment you had better be training, or working out your mind and/or body. We had no 'weekends', though we did get an quarter day off in celebration for the religious festivals based on the sacred days of the various matron Goddesses. A full day off didn't happen.7:00 AM saw me with the intern group, just as if nothing had happened to change our relationship over the past two months. Oh, we were different. They teased me about my sunburn and wanted to see my latest scars. I couldn't work with Buffy anymore, since I was her spiritual leader. Due to my 'high risk' status, Desiree was the only other Amazon Katrina trusted me with, so I got to get beaten at her hands for the last three days of the week.To be fair, I teased Desiree incessantly. I made her smile when she thought I was doubled over in pain on multiple occasions. Beyond that seven-to-five schedule, I exercised after work until six and then managed to bike home in a manner that avoided the paparazzi.I was easy to track outside of the building by the members of the press (who thought I was still somehow newsworthy) and despite my persistent desire to not talk to any of them. Felix had 'vanished', so I was the only man left. What had happened to him? Katrina allowed me to take a glance. He was at an Epona Wyoming freehold training for the Great Hunt and reveling in his 'lone man in a household of twenty-two single women' status.Unlike the three other members of our 'first class', Felix got to choose his re-location location and communicated with me daily because he wanted us to create a battle plan for the upcoming Hunt. It was official; it was going to be a two man vs. thirty Amazons affair and there was no rule that we couldn't work together though only two Amazons could win by capturing us and holding onto us until sunset on Sunday, September 14th.No one except Krasimira, the Keeper of Records, knew what terrain we would be hunted on so we could expect anything from swamps to mountain ranges. The Amazons were in the same boat. Already the House heads had volunteered one member for the Hunt. The ancestors would be consulted for the half who would actually participate. Krasimira had also added her own twists.House Ishara couldn't compete because technically, I was already their participant. With 52 houses halved, that equaled 26. The final four? Runners. If a runner won, the Keeper would consult the ancestors to see which house they would automatically be inducted into. Eight runners were nominated by the department heads and four of those would be chosen by the Augurs as well.In a normal organization it would have been thought that Krasimira was abusing her station since there was no High Priestess to oppose her decisions. Not in the Amazons. No. She consulted the Augurs and the Augurs worked the will of the Ancestors and that was that. No Augur would lie about the sacred communications imparted to them. That was inconceivable sacrilege.What that did mean was that at sunset on Thursday, September 11th, Felix and I would be inserted with a knife, map and clothing into the hunting zone. When the sun rose on Friday morning, the thirty Amazons would be put into the zone. No Amazon could attack another unless they, or their targets, 'possessed' a man. They could team up but only two could win. It was promising to be a great 'get to know your buddies at work' moment for all of us,What was Felix getting out of this besides his freedom? (His freedom was no longer in danger. House Epona would protect him.) No, for Felix, if he survived free until the sun set on Sunday, he would become a Runner. If he lost, he would have to spend another year as an intern. This convinced me that Felix was totally dedicated to avoiding capture. I was good with that.Meanwhile for me, it was Brooke Wednesday night, Oneida on Thursday and Timothy and Odette going clubbing with me on Friday night. Saturday was my first House Ishara group activity. We gathered in the early morning at Doebridge, me with a hangover and Buffy giving me crap at every opportunity. Fortunately the rest of my 'sisters' treated me with a great deal more reverence.Now they all knew about my Summer Camp role, Romania and my kidnapping. Even in their 'man-hating' ideology, I was the exception to the rule ~ I was reliable, dedicated, smart, lethal and worthy of their trust and respect. On the council front, Buffy hinted to me that there was a way around the deadlock for who would be foisted onto the Regency Triumvirate, but she refused to tell me what it was. That was a cause for concern.Sunday, I worked with JIKIT, did some Amazon diplomatic stuff and discovered Desiree was my new bodyguard. Katrina thought a full SD team would be cumbersome and my best bet was to remain unconventional and mobile. I agreed because it allowed me to play the field a little more. Speaking of playing the field,This bright Monday afternoon, I was standing in a hangar at Stewart International Airport waiting on my fiancée, Hana Sulkanen. She had flown from Tibet to London with the Dali Lama. That exalted individual had passed on the mantle of national leadership to the Tibetan Constitutional Committee and left the country with the stern decision that the country would move forward toward democracy and not backwards toward theocracy.Now he was playing the role of goodwill ambassador, encouraging the Tibetan Diaspora to spend a few months to a year back in their homeland to help rebuild and teach. He also was rallying support for Tibetan recognition and financial support. Already the UN had voted to send a small international group to establish border security against both the Khanate and the PRC.With the PRC treaty-obliged by the ceasefire to not oppose Tibetan freedom, the UN acted rapidly. The UN Tibet Force(UNTFOR) combat elements consisted of the UK (+ Gurkha), Chilean, French (+ French Foreign Legion), Germany, India, Italy, Romania, Spanish and Thailand each sending one battalion each. Algeria, Denmark, Chile, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Canada, Cameroon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Brazil agreed to make smaller contributions. The USAF would supply a serious level of logistics support for the mission.The UN also created the UN Tibetan Training Force (UNTTFOR) which provided a structure for giving access by Tibetan forces to German, Italian, Chilean and Romanian bases to train to E U standards over a five month period. The Khanate provided gobs of captured Chinese hardware to the creation of a tiny Tibetan Armed Forces, easing worries about adequately equipping the troops once they were trained.The Dali Lama was simultaneously arriving at JFK to public fanfare in order to thank the UN personally on behalf of the nation he loved. Hana was able to finally shed the limelight and was coming into a secure National Guard facility to finally take a step back to a 'normal' lifestyle. The last bit of oddity: the hangars used by the Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 452 of the Marine Corps Reserve was courtesy of JIKIT. No press was allowed, or expected.It was an odd grouping of us. Jormo Sulkanen (Hana's father), his chauffeur and Hana's daughter  Annela were in one car. Hana was traveling with Libra and Ms. Meacham, so they would need the limo he came in. My appearance was a simple moment for us to touch base in person, as opposed to over the internet, or mobile phone. The third group waiting was Sten Phillip M nnik (her ex-husband) and two unnamed associates.Sten was being a total jerk, which may have been due to me calling him Philip when we first met. Philip wasn't 'ethnic' enough for him, so he never used it. Because he hated it, Brennan (Hana's deceased step-brother) had used it constantly. I had overheard it and thus screwed up our first meeting. But Sten's current blistering hatred had two positive side effects: Jormo came over and stood by me, a suggestion of solidarity I hadn't expected, and since we were standing next to each other, we finally began the dialog that we needed if Hana was going to be family to both of us.We chatted about the thing that mattered most ~ Hana. He asked me if I had really hired a team of assassins to protect her, so I told him a little bit about the Ghost Tigers. He talked about how proud she was to be bringing peace to a suffering planet and I agreed that she looked spectacular doing so.Some things remained the same; I had set in motion the death of his youngest son who had paraded a raped lady in front of me. A bunch of other dilettantes had perished as well. Balancing that was the joy I brought to the child closest to his heart, his adopted daughter Hana. I also had proved to be my own brand of eccentric knight in tarnished armor. I meant well, and in Jormo's book that meant something.He also told me he would strangle me with my own intestines if I broke her heart. I looked him straight in the face and asked him how he felt about open marriages. He hit me. To be fair, I let him hit me. He didn't try to do me serious harm."Don't be an asshole," he grumbled."I'm not sure I know how?" I shrugged. I got another hard stare."She loves you," he said with surprising tenderness."I would rather face that typhoon again than break her heart. The thought of that scares me because I've never been all that good at romance," I confessed."That wasn't what I expected you to say," he harrumphed. "I recall those two ladies I first saw you with. Libra Chalmers and,""Brooke Lee," I said."Yes, her. Are you staying loyal?""She has never asked more than she thinks my current level of maturity can hope to achieve." He looked at me. "I'm discrete and mindful of her sensitivities.""You aren't trying to befriend me," he noted."I don't feel it is right to expect you to like me. I think we both know I'm supposed to be nice to you and you aren't going punch me again. I believe Hana would see thru any deception on our part."I paused. "I wouldn't mind us getting along. I'll try not to piss you off because that would be rude to you and cruel to her," I continued. "I'll never ask you to forgive me and I'll never feel like what I did was inherently unjustified. I am sorry that I caused you pain because I think you are a hard, courageous man, and she loves you.""That's her plane," he stated."Thank God," I muttered. And thank you Ishara. I was starting to blather. We remained thankfully silent until the plane had pulled into the hangar and the people started to deplane. The first out was a young woman with dark blonde hair and hunters glasses.No one else appeared until she had reached the bottom of the stairs and continued to look about for a moment. Hana came next, smiling at me, then her eyes were following Jormo as he moved to the car to retrieve little  Annela. Libra followed with Ms. Meacham on her heels. Libra still wasn't used to playing the second fiddle/personal assistant. A short Mongolian fireplug of a man was the last passenger down the stairs. He looked like, a wolverine with his feral, primordial energy and general hostility.I imagined the girl was his apprentice and he was the prime assassin. That was how the Ghost Tigers operated. They were doing me a deep personal favor by putting aside their normal role as hunters to take up body-guarding duties. According to Addison, they had also managed to get their fair share of killing people of various persuasions. Not only had the Seven Pillars tried to take her out more than once, Chinese Intelligence and some criminal cartels had taken an active interest in her too.The young woman scanned from me to Desiree, then to Sten. She had a good eye for threat assessment. Jormo was partially concealed, but would rather die than put Hana at risk. I was the ally of the 9 Clans, and she probably thought she could take me in a quick-draw contest. Desiree? She left Desiree for her mentor to worry about."Ms. Sulkanen?" Sten's closer minion walked her way. The bodyguards got in the way instinctively. The man reached into his coat and nearly died. The women did a palm strike to his windpipe then grabbed his tie, yanking him to the hard concrete floor of the hangar.(Russian) "He has a piece of paper," she stated in a detached manner"Sten, what is the meaning of this?" Hana worried. I moved toward the woman.(Russian) "I am Cáel Nyilas. Let me help."She did more than that. She retreated from the downed man and put her body between Hana and Sten.I was schooled enough now to realize that was the deception. I hadn't seen the older man draw a gun but I knew he now had one out. It was down by his side and he was using his body to shield it from view."Are these the kind of people you want around our daughter," Sten asked haughtily. I had an inkling suspicion. I wasn't alone.Desiree pushed past me and attended to the downed man. She had him standing, patted him on the back and frisked all inside ten seconds."He's a process server," she commented to the group."What he is here to do is serve you with papers, Hana," Sten grew angrier. "You are an unfit mother and have developed an unsafe environment for her to grow up in.""What?" Hana growled. "You don't like the fact that I've finally moved on and found someone new. You don't care a damn thing about our daughter.""We will let a judge decide that. Right now I have an order of detention for  Annela," he grinned wickedly."Ms. Sulkanen," the second of Sten's minions step forward more cautiously, "the Family Court in the State of New York has,"I laughed."Oh," Desiree looked my way then shared a sliver of a smile with me."There is nothing laughable, I assure you," the lawyer snapped."Really, what's your name?" I asked."Mr. Dornier, not that,""Where are we?""What does that matter?" then, "New York State.""Incorrect Dornier. You are on a Marine Corps base, dumbass. Look around you," I smirked."So? What does that mean?" Sten harangued us."This is federal property," I explained as I strode toward his car."Hey, what are you doing, I'm talking to you," Sten pursued me."Excuse me," I grinned. I flipped out my Amazon Honor Blade and slashed one of his tires."What?""Go for it," Hana simmered. "Touch Cáel and he will defend himself.""He has a knife," he countered. He didn't touch me. A second tire began to deflate. "That's assault with a deadly weapon.""It would be if he turned to face you, or anyone else," Desiree had her 'bored ~ don't press me' voice. "Right now he's being a vandal." She put her hand on the process server's shoulder and shoved him back toward Sten and Dornier. "You should know your jurisdictions, asshole," she told him."Hana, I will drive back with Cáel," Libra announced loudly. That was a cue for Hana to shoot me an apologetic look, which was odd, considering that even knowing me was putting her child custody at risk. It took me a second to realize what a bastard Sten could be. I also doubted he had three spare tires. I left one untouched as I headed for my car."Hana, I'll catch up with you after you talk with your lawyers," I called out. It was infuriating for me that this was her reception home. Sten had better be thanking his lucky stars we weren't alone or I would have pummeled his ass, and given him the nuclear wedgy of all times, jackalope."Let's go home," Libra tapped my arm. Desiree was watching Jormo's limo speed away. She didn't dawdle. The Marines would want their hangar back ASAP. We'd let them decide if they wanted to help Sten, or not. Desiree tossed me the keys. That was her way of telling me I need to blow of some steam, and not by getting frolic-ee with Libra on the hour long commute home.{11 pm, Monday, August 25th ~ 14 Days to go}{Late that night with Hana}"So, who was the guy who gave you this?" I looked over at Hana while running my hand over the silk scarf some lama in Lhasa had given her to give to me ~ a 'Thank You' gift for the liberation of his homeland and the aid package heading his peoples' way."I never got his name, but my translator said he had traveled for three days straight to be there for the celebration," she smiled warmly.I picked up my second gift and began to play with it. The object was a fascinating toy, all the more so because it was more than a child's plaything. It was a simple prayer wheel. I put the handle between my two palms and rubbed them back and forth, causing the two balls to beat against the drum heads."I think you find that thing more interesting than you do me," Hana pouted."Oh no you don't," I pounced on her. With one hand I tickled her while I placed my Tibetan gift aside. I didn't want us rolling over on it as we frolicked naked on her queen-sized bed. "You were a happy little camper ten minutes ago and you certainly drove your vigor home with this grand Lothario.""Eek!" she playfully tried to bat my hand aside. She began giggling hysterically.Even when I pulled away so that she could breathe, she kept snickering."What?" I worried. I had been ramping us up for a second round of sex. Round one had been 'comfort' sex, helping her compartmentalize her feelings for that bastard of an ex-husband and the threat he posed to her custodianship of her daughter,  Annela.Those were emotions she'd deal with later. Fretting about them tonight, her first night back in the States, was counter-productive. She knew that, which was why she'd accepted my dinner invitation. We had now been seen in public together for the first time since she became famous; afterwards we had traveled back to her place. How serious was I about cheering her up? I'd brought a spare suit, biking clothes and my bike. I was planning to spend the night and make my way to work my usual way come sunrise."I," she gasped, "asked Libra how you "compared" in her experience, which seems to be extensive, as a lover on the way over. And after several, very long, I must say, seconds of introspection, she told me you were indescribable and incomparable. I've been trying to put my thoughts together since Rome and, why are you scowling?""That was rude of you two," I now play-pouted. "I like to think I'm 'thunderous', though 'stunning' will do in a pinch."Hana helpfully pinched me. "Ow!" I squalled. And back to tickling I went. I quickly showed her my 'sheet-fu' was superior to hers, which meant I tangled her up in her sheets before she realized she was helpless before me. Or so I bragged. Hana played helpless well."Oh please, Mr. World-Conquering Wombat," she pleaded. Wombat?"Wombat?" I questioned her. "How have I become an irascible furry marsupial?""Well Honey, you need a shave," she teased me. "You are a little furry.""Romantically that is called a five o'clock shadow," I protested."It scratches my thighs," she murmured.I had a remedy for that. Sliding down to her hip, I turned my palms toward me, interlaced my fingers and positioned my thumbs pointing up. My chin rested on my fingers and the thumbs covered the sides, so when I stuck my tongue into the three-sided void created, my hands, but none of my scruffiness, touched her intimate flesh. Once I had this technique in place, I rolled over her thigh and got to work."I find," she gasped, "that you have the answer to that conundrum down pat. It makes me, ah, think I'm not your, ah, first girl." My dedication to my erotic task (and the carnal reward that waited) kept me from responding. Besides, my upper lip was busy rolling back and forth over her clitoris. There I let the bristles of my oncoming moustache teasingly tickle her. I was pleased when the pleasure I caused quieted her and she settled down to running her fingers across my crown as she ramped herself up toward a climax. 'Not my first girl' indeed.Forty-five minutes later, I was coming back to her room from the kitchen with a glass of tomato juice for her and rice wine for me (she was out of beer). I heard a noise from  Annela's room, so I deviated to make sure she was okay. I was in boxers, not totally naked.  Annela was out like a light, caught up in some sort of childish dream. By the cherubic grin on her face, she was having a good one.She was another delicate female issue in my life. I had made her existence harder by just being me. Hana let me know that nothing 'bad' had better happen to her ex-husband, Sten. I couldn't beat him up, threaten him, or sic any of my Amazons on him. Stupidly, I had asked if using the CIA was okay. She'd banned all of JIKIT intervening as well, negating the use of the best pest removal people on the planet, the 9 Clans."You are going to have to get used to children making sounds while they sleep," Hana surprised me. "You'll learn to tell the dreams from the nightmare.""In spades, I'm going to have to learn that in spades," I nodded.{4 pm, Tuesday, August 26th ~ 13 Days to go}My schedule had remained steady. I had firearms practice at 6 am every morning, was in Katrina's office by 7 and working my cue by 7:15. According to my regular morning briefings, I continued to be a menace to the foundations of freedom, civilization and the terrestrial biosphere. It was wonderful to stand there side by side with my fellow New Hires.At lunch, around 11 o'clock, I had a brief get together with the other members of the Amazon diplomatic corps since I was still Chief Diplomat of the Host ~ we were a small unit. Daphne, who now worked with JIKIT, would give me a brief briefing on what the 'office' was up to in my name. I gladly kept my distance from their regularly scheduled mayhem. The truce in China didn't stop the Secret War from raging on and on.My three o'clock knife training with Pamela was slowly evolving into a greater study of human fighting philosophy and anatomy. I still studied the techniques of a larger single bladed hunting knife as well as the hilt-less, double bladed Amazon Honor Blade. Pamela promised me she'd start teaching me how to do the 'long-distance' and 'short'/snap throw for the blades. She made it look so easy.Pamela also began educating me on the basics and basis of the Amazon personal hand-to-hand fighting style. The eight points of emphasis in Amazon combat were: the finger, fist, elbow, shoulder, foot, heel, knee and hip. It encouraged channeling both your energies and the energy of your opponents by using fluid blows and throws. It also worked well with the close-in knife fighting Pamela was teaching me. Working with her once more did her as much good as me. We had come to feed off one another's moods, which was a good thing.Tuesday, walking to the elevator at the end of the session, the door opened to reveal Rachel talking to an SD chick I barely knew, Meridian."Oh, it is great to see you, Rachel," I enthusiastically stated. Her hesitation as she replied worried me."It is great to see you too, Cael Wakko Ishara," she responded softly, compassionately."Ladies, can you spare Rachel and I some private time," I asked Meridian and Pamela."Come on," Pamela addressed the SD Amazon, "we have tons of nothing to talk about.""As you wish, Ishara," Meridian answered. She looked to Rachel. She stepped off the elevator as Pamela stepped on. Away they went."I heard you were back in New York," I told her."I heard you were off of JIKIT for the time being.""I was running on fumes psychologically and my body wasn't too much better. Javiera gave me a week off. I go back Thursday.""That was the right move, Cáel," she said. "You've been stuck sweating both the small stuff and being caught up in the big picture. That is a humongous burden to bear for someone with your training and background.""I know, I'm not ready for where my life has taken me.""No one is, Cáel. You have training that has let you get this far when most of us would be lost. You carry that weight, plus you've had to work the physical side of the equation. I get to focus on you. You've had to focus on all of us."Rachel was being both honest and kind. I felt a sudden renewed kinship with my primary guardian."Thanks for that, Rachel, can I tell you a secret? Something you can't tell another soul. Something I've never told another living person?" I could tell Rachel. I couldn't tell Katrina because she was so close to Hayden. Pamela, Pamela had already prepared herself for a miserable afterlife and wouldn't have connected with my pain for another.Since she was my 'sister' in Ishara, I couldn't really confide in Buffy, but only an Amazon would understand my thoughts on the matter. It had to be Rachel."I cannot betray the Host, but you know that. What is it you wish to share?""Hayden lived life as an Anahit, yet lives forever in the Halls of the Isharans." Since that was now well known, Rachel knew that couldn't be the secret."When I was trying to induct her, Dot Ishara refused her entry. I thought she was challenging me and I was right.""I recall that she wouldn't accept Hayden, even though her death was righteous in the name of the Host. Has no one ever asked you what changed Ishara's mind? Not Buffy, or Helena?""Neither one ever asked. I think it was because they sensed I didn't want to talk about it, nor insult them by not opening up. Ishara refused Hayden because of me. I was refusing to accept my place in the Host. I kept playing, pretending, I was not really one of you. I kept thinking I could divorce myself from the evil we did because I was special.""But you weren't special in the way I think you are using the word," she nodded. "You were chosen by the Ancestors to be one of us, man, or not.""Yeah. I stupidly put my life on the line because I wanted to be the 'good guy'. I've always wanted to be the 'good guy', even when I hurt people. I'd tell the girl it was my fault, yet I excused that behavior by thinking that I hadn't meant to hurt anyone, so I was okay. I have never blamed myself for any of the shit I caused.""That has always been a rather annoying quality of yours," she noted."When I was on the roof of Havenstone, daring Ishara with my life on the line, that's when I felt it. I owed and owned my Amazon heritage in that moment. I finally blamed myself for something, for not accepting sacrifices were being made for me and I was dishonoring every one of you by denying their purpose.""You are Ishara," Rachel stated firmly. That was her entire argument."I had to believe that. I had to believe I was nothing more than one Amazon in a long line of Amazons dating back to that first night of betrayal. I had to realize I was one of many, not someone special, with special rules. I wasn't getting to be the good guy, or even the bad guy. I was just, an Amazon. One more Ishara among the hundreds that stood in my place.""And it took that moment for you to realize what most Amazons know from the age of five," Rachel stroked my cheek. "It is easy for us to forget your bravery comes from a place that is uniquely you and you didn't grow up around the fires with tales of our mothers, grandmothers and all those who have come before. We see our honor is gold and sing the songs in the First Tongue. We live as Amazons.""I wanted you to know because," I faltered at the last memory."Charlotte. You want to make peace with me about Charlotte," she touched my cheek yet again. "Cáel, I told her mother and daughter about how she died. They want to meet Vincent when he is feeling better. They want to talk to you. They worry about you not understanding that Charlotte lives and will live on until the Sun dies and the stars burn out.""Charlotte was in the Warband that killed Ajax the Unconquered, Cáel. She fell on that ridge, looking down on Ishara's triumph over Ajax and her spirit took the news of that victory to the next life. She is a welcome exemplar to House Ska i. She will be remembered in the lists of the Security Detail, our Warrior Elite. Charlotte was my friend and I didn't wish her to die, but war is what we do. And she buried her enemies and saved our lives."Ska i was a j tunn and the Nordic goddess associated with bow-hunting, skiing, winter, and mountains. I had known her house. The SD didn't talk about their families much because of their devotion to the craft of war, so I had never known her mother was still alive, or that she had a daughter."She did much more than die, Cáel. She killed men so that when you finished with Ajax, none of them, left on that field, could avenge him," she added."I hadn't looked at it that way," I confessed. "I'd like to meet her family. You said she has a daughter. I didn't know.""You didn't need the distraction. We all knew you would have only done incredibly stupid things trying to keep us alive. If it helps, she is five and cried freely, deeply and long. Her mother is fifty-two and runs a freehold in Saskatchewan. She'll be around for a long time, trust me."Charlotte's mother had to be one tough D O B (daughter of a bitch) to see sixty. I did know she was the second of five daughters, with the middle one being in the Ska i House Guard."I am doing something for, well, for me, but for Charlotte too. Sakuniyas is leading seventeen House Isharans and two ladies from MI-6 in West Africa.""I'd heard about that," she smiled. "Charlotte's Fist." Four (the core of any war band) was a sacred number to the Amazons, as was five (the number of digits) so twenty was a classic warrior unit. It was also the number of the original houses. Normally these groups were referred to by their leader's name, but I wanted the Condotteiri to know they'd killed the wrong Amazon and Sakuniyas agreed to the naming convention.The Condos had sent Ajax to Hungary and Romania to kill me. Charlotte had died stopping them, but this was not a matter of revenge. This honored her and was a request for her to watch over those who sought inspiration from her when they went into battle. West-Central Africa was one of the three Amazon Homeland (Eastern Europe and Southern India being the other two) and was where the war was heating up.JIKIT (Joint International Khanate Interim Taskforce) became involved when the Condos and Coils of the Serpent (one of the 9 Assassin Clans) began killing local civilian and military leaders. The Condos did it to spread chaos for them to use as a smoke screen behind which they could hide the large numbers of mercenaries in the area hunting down the Amazons. The Coils attacked any official that was on the Condo's payroll.As the body count began to rise, the US and UK began having 'normal' covert agencies investigate the killings, yet they remained blind to the reasons behind the actions. It wasn't until a whole Condo 'training camp' ended up being extinguished that they realized there was a third player in the game (as opposed to the governments and the rogue mercenaries).The Coils of the Serpent were one step ahead of the intelligence agencies. And that allowed the Amazons to hunt down the Condos. We in JIKIT had estimated it was roughly 15,000 Condotteiri foot soldiers (consisting of mercs, local paramilitaries and the occasional regular army commander) versus the roughly 3000 Amazons and 1000 members of the 9 Clans. The Golden Mare was asking for Havenstone and the Freeholds in North and South America to raise up 'fists' to join the struggle in Africa. In Belize they would be trained for two months to ten weeks in jungle warfare before heading over."Are your people going to be ready?" Rachel inquired."We have done well in Japan," I replied. "The former 'Runners' actually do better moving through urbanized society than their Old School Amazon sisters.""I heard they are more prone to taking orders from the Ninja," she looked me in the eyes."I told them to. This is the Ninja's war and we serve them best by doing what we do best ~ taking the fight to the Seven Pillars when they expose themselves," I clarified. "And you got me off talking about Charlotte," I realized a second later."A long period of mourning is not our way, Cáel," she confided. "You were our friend, but you were our mission first and foremost. That hasn't changed.""Are you going to," I began to say 'remain my bodyguard'."Yes. I have a dozen House Guard members expressing a desire to join the Security Detail and be our new electronics expert. Eight of those I'm giving serious consideration to.""The other four?" I asked."Three are too young and are too interested in you for my taste. One is too old and a rather odd individual.""I like odd.""I will reconsider her then," she allowed."Are you saying that to make me happy?""No," Rachel grinned. "I admire your instincts. Do you know how soon you will be needing us?""I'm going to stay in town until the Great Hunt. After my stupendous victory, I'll see if I can get to Brazil, so mid-September.""It will take longer to integrate a member ~ the last week of November," she bargained. I really wasn't in the mood to argue. I was too much the boy who was glad to see his primary guardian standing before him. Pamela was by far the most loving and lethal one of the pack. Rachel was my rock. She kept me alive and I helped give her something to live for, even if it was a flawed 'me'."And Wakko, you don't need to give me a piece of your soul to replace Charlotte. What is hers is hers and what is ours is ours. I'll always miss her and I'm okay with that. She was a good friend and a proud compatriot and I loved her. I never had any sisters of the flesh. Mona, Tiger Lily and Charlotte have been the only real family I've had. I will find another sister and I can now accept that.""Is it alright if I still miss her?" I pondered."Of course, Ishara. Will you still be capable of taking my orders when required?""Yes. If I started ignoring your advice, I wouldn't have been worthy of leading someone like Charlotte into battle. I can honor her by letting you do your job.""Thank you. I still worry about you trying to save everyone, but now I'll worry a little less," she confessed."I still plan to do crazy stuff, hey, do you have a daughter?""No.""Want one?""I'm in the final drawing of lots for the Great Hunt," she smiled once more."You could just ask.""My way is more fun. This way I'll be sure you'll obey," she let her eyes sparkle with a mirthful fire."Don't think I'll go easy on you. I plan to win," I pledged."Of course not. Why would you change now?""I'd rather you bust my balls than mock me?" I pouted. "Instead of spending a moving moment, you are cheering me up.""It is my job to look after you, even now," she stroked my neck affectionately."Especially now," I added as I hit the elevator button."Let's catch up with the others. I need to tell Meridian that she's back in the running.""Oh, that is fortunate," I grinned. "Oh, we'll start our mission to Brazil on Thursday, February 12th.""Is there a significance of that date?"I laughed. I put an arm around her shoulder as the doors opened. There were two others Havenstone ladies onboard."Carnival in Rio de Janeiro!" I exulted. "Half a million tourists a day. Two million Brazilians. Everyone wears a mask. What's not to love?""You are so fortunate you waited until you had witnesses around," Rachel groused."Desiree says it's bad for my prestige to be beaten in public," I chortled. "I'm glad you agree.""Maybe we can spar on the mats today when you get off work?""Oh, I'd like to see that," one of the other Amazons remarked. "Weapons or hand-to-hand?""I'll let him use a weapon. I'll use my hands. I want him to think he has a chance," Rachel declared. My arm was still around her shoulder, so I knew she wasn't really pissed."Didn't you kill Ajax?" the other one noted."He tripped over his shoelaces and impaled himself on his own sword," I sighed dramatically.Since the two women looked at one another, then to Rachel, I knew I'd told the lie well."Cáel had an ally shoot a grenade overhead, Ajax died in the confusion, so whatever blow killed him is irrelevant. Cáel beat Ajax with his mind before a single blow was landed. He made his foe fight his battle and that was how Wakko Ishara won," Rachel responded."Like an Amazon," the first one nodded."With balls," I added."An Amazon with balls? I guess you are, but I don't think the testes mattered in that you beat our foe in a matter your ancestors can be proud of," the second one said."Well said," Rachel nodded."Thank you," I shook her hand. "I'm Cáel Wakko Ishara aka Nyilas.""Oh, I'm Wynona of Allatu," she answered. She shook my hand, I ran a finger over her pulse and got her to blush slightly. Allatu was the Goddess of the Underworld in Canaanite mythology and one of the First Houses."Behave," Rachel whispered."Not likely," I whispered back."Did I say something wrong?" Wynona worried."No. Rachel is my moral guardian. So, do you want to go fishing, I mean swimming tomorrow after work, say 5:15?" I inquired."Sure," her smile broadened. "I excel in the water.""Good, maybe you can teach me a thing or two," I answered. The door opened at the lobby and there stood Desiree."Here," Rachel shoved me out the door. "Take him before he fishes himself into more trouble.""I understand," Desiree grumbled. "Come on fisherman. Financial Investigations is working late tonight and we need to pick up Italian food for twenty-two.""Lead and I shall follow," I proclaimed."Why do you call him the 'Fisherman'," Wynona asked Rachel."Fish, barrel, I'll explain it to you on the way to the garage," Rachel sighed. The doors shut and off we all went.{7:10 pm, Wednesday, August 27th ~ 12 Days to go}"Will you still be having dinner with us once you return back to JIKIT?" Europa asked as Lorraine passed me some Cajun rice."Every Monday and Wednesday night and on Fridays early," I grinned."We are going to be spending some time in Doebridge over the Labor Day weekend," Europa griped. "Do you want to come with us and save Aya from retelling her ordeal to yet another band of pre-Amazons?""Aya, do you want me to run interference for you?" I asked."No," she smiled. "I want you to train for the Great Hunt. Aunt Katrina says Elsa is virtually a guarantee to be one of the thirty.""Ugh," I groaned. "That's the cherry on the top of a rather bizarre day.""Was today bad?" Loraine asked."Let me see, for starters I got to use a variety of weird weapons for firearms practice. I had a feeling I was part of a round-robin, the way they rotated their assistance to me. In the elevator, I was with Brielle and her buddy when we had a security drill. The elevator cut off, but the air handler went into overdrive, dropping the temperature. After a quick democratic vote, I lost my shirt to an impromptu fire to stay warm, alive," I chuckled. "Then we cuddled together for warmth. I was about to lose my undershirt and pants when the alert ended.""Security alerts last less than fifteen minutes," Caitlyn noted. "I doubt you were in any danger of freezing to death.""Brielle was under the impression security alerts could last hours, despite my questionable knowledge otherwise from the handbook I'd read. Since she had the seniority, I thought she knew better.""So now you are shirtless," Europe smirked."I had a spare shirt stashed in Katrina's office, but I was required to change during the meeting because we were running late. Oh, and yesterday I forgot to feed some genetically superior white rats at one of our labs. Apparently they gnawed through their cages, broke out and now are in the Manhattan underworld, plotting a rodent rebellion," I related."Oh, that was my idea," Loraine perked up."Do you sit around the table with Katrina thinking up this kind of crap!" I protested."Occasionally," Caitlyn admitted. "Most of those are pure Katrina though.""Glad to know my misery is a family bonding experience.""You should be glad to know we care about you," Europa beamed."Yeah, I'll remember that and once you are casted I'm going to absolutely abuse my authority in some serious payback," I faux-glared at her."I promise you we will make it fun," Aya pledged."You would betray your own sisters?" Caitlyn questioned."Sisters are sisters, Mother, but boon companions are for life," Aya countered."That's cool, Mom," Europa snorted. "We'll always be taller than Aya, and faster.""Only more proof she'll be smarter," Caitlyn shook her head. "So Cáel what happened next?""What makes you think the rest of my day wasn't mundane and boring?""According to Katrina, you are the best stress reliever at Havenstone since they put in the Jacuzzis. With it being open season on you today, I figured your day was one misadventure after another," Caitlyn smiled warmly."Fine, I had to go to Financial Investigations to discuss my expense account in Europe.""That doesn't sound all that exciting," Loraine said."We were in the pool swimming in the classic Amazon style, I swear, sometime I think I should go to work wearing nothing but a trench coat and a smile," I grouched."Did you make any babies?" Aya chirped."No, I can't have that kind of fun with any employees for another twelve more days. Anyway, they were quite cross with me not using their services and let me know for an hour and, thirty-six minutes. After that I had to get a reference physical.""You are as healthy as a horse," Europa neighed."Funny Epona," I sniffed indignantly. "You are a load of laughs, filly. After I had been turned into a prune they made me undress again. There was some nonsense about all the combat I had been in had made me shorter and given me muscle constriction.""That is a good one," Aya nodded. "I'm glad they were being as creative as you are, Atta.""Who is to say that I'm not being the creative one here?" I winked at her."Were your muscles 'constricted'?" Loraine snickered. Europa gave her a thumbs up for joining on the fun."Nope, all my reflexes are in working order and I can still salute on demand," I smiled. "Which was good because after that, I worked through lunch with Acquisitions discussing Khanate plans for Siberia." There was a pause."What was so horrid about that?" Loraine inquired, as if I had been tortured up until that point."We had to do the whole three hour routine on the practice mats. I was pinned grappled and I had something that was strangely reminiscent of a titty-snuggle. I mean, all that skin-tight clothing, close contact and sweaty bodies was murder on my concentration," I confessed."We aren't going to be investing in Siberia, are we?" Aya winked at me."I don't know. I spent three hours saying "I don't know" and "I haven't a clue.""You are good at that," Europa jibed. I flicked a pea at her, bouncing it off her chin. She was getting ready for a spaghetti & meatball counterattack when Caitlyn's cough brought her up short."He is the Head of House Ishara. He can act that way. You are Epona and we are better behaved."Europa stuck her tongue at me, I returned the gesture and this time Caitlyn's cough was aimed at me. She followed that up by rubbing her foot along my shin. I smiled at her, then caught Aya smiling at the both of us. Then I recalled Aya had set the table, damn it."I'll get us dessert," Aya beamed happiness my way. I was thinking about dessert alright, damn that girl.{Rhada Revisited}"I'm home gang," I exhaled. "Ready to go out?" and was promptly shot with a Nerf gun. "What did I do this time?"Timothy and Odette were getting off the sofa. Odette was taking aim while Timothy left his single-shot where he'd been sitting."We are going out. You are not," Timothy grinned. "You have company in the bedroom.""Man, I was looking forward to," then Odette shot me in the stomach with her six shot nerf repeater."You have company," Odette emphasized the 'company' part. To me this implied someone who I couldn't seduce with a few words, maybe get busy for half an hour then go out partying. That could only mean,I opened my door and there lay Rhada, completely naked, hogtied and bound. She had even been gagged. Her look of hate and loathing turned to, something else; part fear and part heartsick yearning. Could Timothy and Odette, really just Timothy, I loved Odette but she had the combat skills of a Tribble. Could Timothy defeat Rhada so thoroughly that she could be so bound?Not likely. I'd been neglecting her, What with being kidnapped, running off to Europe and generally doing my job, I'd neglected her well-defined physique, olive skin and athletic curves. I'd been a fool for letting her waste away while I'd been 'not' earning a paycheck. Hell, I was working too much. I'd played around in college and still managed to graduate with good grades, and it wasn't like I had been hired for my brains."Oh, I've been missing this," I relished her helplessness while rubbing my palms together."Mumph," Rhada protested. It was hard for her to move her body. Her legs were bound above the knee to her shins while her ankles were lashed together and then to the top of her thighs.Her elbows and wrists were tied behind her back, wrists to wrist. The ropes securing her arms crisscrossed above and below her breasts and looped around her neck. She looked tightly secured. A bit too secured. I couldn't see how to un-hog-tie her."Don't you dare go anywhere," I warned Rhada then backed out of the room hurriedly."I suggested the ass plug!" Odette smiled as I turned around. I'd missed that given the shapeliness of her buttock,"I color-coded the ends of the ropes for you. Pull the yellow, then green and then pink and she'll come undone just fine. I put some ointment by the bedside for after. It will help numb the burn and promotes healing without scarring," Timothy patted me on the shoulder. "Now that you've b

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Gunther Sachs

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Rubirosa

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week King Farouk

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Prince Aly Khan

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Commodus

A Time WarpBy FinalStand. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.What follows is a diversion from the central storyline, but it is crucial to understanding why certain members of the supporting cast are behaving the way they are.808 BCE near Halab in what is today's Northern Syria:For me, Cael Nyilas, it was a return to last night's horrifying scene that engulfed me. The screams of dying horses and moribund men crying the pantheon of life's final regrets. Blood, piss, voided bowels and the stench of comingled sweat and leather filled my nostrils. The true cacophony of battle was all about. The battle shock faded into an innocuous background distraction.In my heart of hearts, I felt at ease, even content. We were cut off and surrounded yet hardly hopeless. Men, my brothers-in-arms and the younger noble sons of Assur and Nineveh combined to put a press of shields, armor and flesh encircling us. Those 'pampered' aristocrats stank with fear and well they should. Death was still possible before their relief arrived.I hurt, Shara (my deity?), I was wounded, but it meant nothing. I laughed; a primitive version of 'atheists and foxholes' passing through my mind. This body had lived through much worse. The closest man, her deceased husband's cousin, and I lifted the shattered wooden chariot off the person our circle was centered on. My arm was extended to her.She was glorious, fierce and half-drunk with battle lust. I could feel her talon-like fingers through the leather and 'parzillu' scales guarding my bicep. She half jumped and was half pulled to her feet. Her kinsman presented her 'misplaced' sword, hilt first. In her eyes, I saw the burning intensity of the Shamash (Sun God, consort of Aya?) at the height of the Burning Season.Her martial mirth exceeded any other noise as it passed her lips."You took your time getting here," Shammuramat taunted me, not a true reproach. "I was so bored, I decide to take a nap in the shade of my conveniently overturned chariot." She defied all fortunes that conspired toward her demise; her own breed of madness."You looked so peaceful in your sleep, I didn't want to wake you," I bantered back. Her 'kinsman' scowled at my familiarity with his monarch. My champions, more like brothers to me than any kin born of my blood, had carved a gory swath to her stranded bodyguard. Mounted on Median steeds, we had pressed back the entourages of two Aramean kings bent on her violent passing.A barricade of overturned, or unattended chariots gave us space to dismount and perform our very visible rescue mission. All the pieces were right where she wanted them; everything unfolding according to her plan. Focus the enemy in the center with her person and the banner of Assur while the rest of her chariots and all of her cavalry swept through an unguarded wadi and fell upon them from behind.Brilliant. Somewhat less brilliant when faced with the desperate energy of our enemies, but her victory was already a certainty. The allied Western Kings were sure my command was attempting to snatch the Queen back to the safety of her infantry. Those hardy, foot-bound souls were still holding their own against the greater mass of the enemy footmen.The children of rebellious nobles bent every bit of their remaining energy, squandered their last reserves to ensure Shammuramat didn't escape. If the positons were reversed, they would have eagerly abandoned their troops and sought safety to the rear. The idea of Shammuramat being overwrought with terror was absurd.Our opponents' bellows for our blood turned into wails of despair. The charging, plumaged steeds of Assyria had appeared behind them. Our enemies had nothing left to slow the new arrivals down, much less stop them. For those who dared defy Shammuramat, Queen of all the Akkadians, the slaughter was just beginning."Come 'Alal' (that was me); I promised 'Atarshumki' I would kick his head over his own city walls before sunset and I always keep my promises," she shoved one of my horse-holders aside and took one of my steeds. 'Alal' was not the name my father gave me. It meant destroyer and it was blasphemy to lay claim to it."Killing kings will cost you extra," was my impious response.Assyrians nobility barely tolerated mercenaries most of the time. My men and I didn't care. I hadn't taken up the killing business to make friends and my troops felt the same way. What mattered to us was that their coin was good and delivered on time. That was a good thing because whores and merchants were loath to advance 'our kind' anything on credit."I'll meet you half way," she grinned manically at me while my fighters and I raced for our mounts. (Saving the junior nobility wasn't what she were paying us for.) "I'll let you take any prince you capture as a hostage." I nodded. My men cheered hungrily, despite the choking dust. As long as I didn't get too greedy, the Kings would pay for their sons. Now we had to capture the bastards."Tūbātu," I reminded them. 'Goodwill'. It was a polite way of saying 'stop your chariot, rest your arms and your mother won't have to come begging for your corpse'. It was best to let opposing nobility keep their dignity in our business. Today's enemy might be tomorrow's paymaster.I blinked and things changed.Planting followed harvest and harvest followed planting. It had long ago become a blur. Shammuramat had grown older. Her first son became king when he was of age. I had long exceeded my welcome and my desire to stay. I was fixed to this small patch of the greater world by a rare emotion, empathy.It had come out of nowhere. We were campaigning against the Scythians raiding over the Zagros Mountains and followed them into Urartu. Night had fallen and I walked the camp as was my habit; being killed a few times in your sleep will make you err on the side of caution. Shammuramat was gazing out over the river Arkas."I though all the scouts have returned," I asked as I stepped to her side. A cool, early autumn breeze blew down the valley, tossing a few loose locks of her greying hair. She always had one patch shorn short which made her left-side braids prone to unwind."They have. We head back for Nineveh with the dawn," she murmured, her mind elsewhere."Do you ever dream of home?" she asked me out of the blue."No. I don't dream anymore. I rarely sleep and if I did, I would hope to dream of something less boring," I snorted in amusement. She had never talked about her home, to anyone as far as I knew."You will be going to Lydia when winter comes," she stated tensely."King Gyges needs someone with experience beating Cimmerians," I answered. The true reason was that I was no longer welcome on the Assyrian payroll because I insisted on recruiting only non-Assyrians into the ranks of my ferociously effective little band of one hundred; never more and rarely less."Shemtsu is a fool," she grumbled."That is unfair," I countered. My willingness to argue with her was one of my charms in her eyes. "He is an excellent Treasurer and he makes sure your vassals pay their tribute on time and in its full amount."The silence was hurtful to me because Shammuramat was never one to obfuscate her thoughts, especially around me. It was one of her charms, to my way of thinking."Salmu Eretu, the northern night sky has no answers for what ails you. Get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to start out cold before it bakes us." I called her 'Black Cloud' in Akkadian.I had first used that name twenty years ago to insult her, highlighting her tempestuous nature. In the Assyrian court, having just received recognition for my quick thinking, Shammuramat had belittled my accomplishment, throwing my body between her, her unborn child (the man who was now not-so-gently ushering me to the border) and a Kassite noble and his retainer bent on killing them both.Had my deed not been witnessed by half a dozen reliable sources, I wouldn't even have received that tawdry token."He sought glory without risk," she spat out her insult in a Hittite tongue alien to this court. Unfortunately for us both, I had worked for a Babylonian family for a few generations and they had been kind enough to turn me from an illiterate commoner to a man of some education.Ironically, they even taught me my native cuneiform long after my birthplace was barely a memory."Well aren't you a black cloud on an otherwise waste of a day," I replied somewhat bitterly. Her eyes widened, then narrowed and then I heard her laugh for the first time."Should I tell them what you said?" she mocked me and my predicament."But of course," I grunted in Akkadian. I'd screwed up. My inner thoughts were 'please not decapitation, please not decapitation' because getting my head on straight after that was a real bitch."You've been nothing but a black cloud bent on turning the choking dust at my feet into a grasping, muddy morass. Why stop now?" I announced loudly. If you are going to die, die well. Having died too many times to count, remembering my last words were all I had left to look forward to.The guards, familiar with the Queen's temper and stunned into inaction by me clearly embracing a long, messy death, stood around uselessly. Had I been allowed a weapon in the royal presence, I might have thought which one to kill first."I gift you, a lowborn man of the South (Sumerian), with honors and you respond by insulting my wife?" King, Shamshi Adad V growled as he rose from his throne."Husband," she stood to join him. I thought it was a pity she rarely smiled. "You asked that I too give a gift to my savior and the savior of our son (all unborn babies were sons back then until roughly half had the audacity to gender switch while exiting the womb). I have chosen." I was expecting my life for the moment and a day's head start to the border."It is your choice to make," the King allowed."From this day, until my passing, this man may always speak his mind in our lands," she demanded. She had a habit of fatally correcting anyone who saw her as less than co-ruler. The hesitation was deafening."As you will," Shamshi Adad V acquiesced to yet another of his wife's odd 'requests'. From that day forth we had been fast friends. She never asked about my immortality, where I was from, or how I ended up with my elite band of professional killers. I returned the favor. It was an unspoken understanding that in a few years, or decades, she would die and I would leave, not necessarily in that order. We had shared more years than I had given to any one person in quite some time."There is nothing left for me but ash," she declared with morbid certainty."Should any of us expect any better?" I did my best to offer words of comfort she would accept."Oh no," her noise was too bitter to be a laugh. "I had my own 'Life beyond Death' and it was stolen from me, along with my birthright.""We are chasing the thieves?" I asked."Yes and no," her face grew grim once more. "These were not the ones I was looking for. They share some bonds with some of the Scythian tribes who live on the far side of the Sea of Death (the Black Sea). These raiders weren't from those tribes.""Why are you turning back?" I questioned. "You know your Assyrians are loyal. They will follow wherever you lead. Your son won't begrudge you these few hundred. I'll come too.""Why?" she turned and looked into my eyes. She still had that blazing fire in her eyes. She was teasing me. If she asked, I too would follow and my men would follow me."The Scythians have been raiding the Lands of the Two Rivers from, well, before I graduated from 'spear for hire' to a 'seeker of a mastery of war'. The rich plunder of their camps will provide plenty of incentive for my men plus we can sell the horses when we come back," I stated."I do not have the years left to spend on such a campaign," she sighed. I had never heard a hint of defeat in her speech before. It was unsettling and rather tragic."I have squandered my years in marriage, being Queen and raising my boys. I tried to make Assyria my new family and I am revealed to be a fool. You had it right. We will always be outlanders. No matter how brave, loyal, just and smart, we would never be allowed in their sanctimonious circle," she said. "You. I should have ridden off with you after my first born was acknowledged (the present King Adad-nirari the 3rd).""We could have gathered up some more fighters, ridden over shattered Phrygia, to the narrows (Bosporus) and into the lands of the Thracians. There is a legend of a great river that pours out from the western shore of the Death Sea. What I seek is up that river.""How many would we face?" I grew equally serious."One," she coughed. "Me." My confusion was obvious. "I am not asking you to fight me, Alal. I want you to come back for me.""I can't. That is not how it works," I stated."How does it work then?" she looked into my eyes. The fire was there, but banked and waning. I didn't say anything. "I have never seen, or heard of you entering a temple.""Your men go. You do not stop them, but you have given up any pretense of worship," she pressed. "Do you not believe that anything exists beyond your senses?""I believe," I sighed. "I believe people are fools for giving offering, pledging their fidelity, pleading for mercy, or extending thanks to any deity. Those Shar-an (gnats) do as they will, unless it is to punish us for treating them like the spoiled children they are."Shammuramat regained her long-stilled laughter."I have always felt a kinship with you through our mutual bitterness.""Bitterness comes with familiarity," I snorted in amusement. Lovers had passion. We shared a simmering anger that came from being irredeemably wronged."I was born Baraqu, the first son of a potter in some city that no longer matters. I was a failure as a potter and an embarrassment to my house and my clan," I began a story I hadn't told another soul in, I couldn't recall. "In those days, the Priest-Kings declared wars and demanded each clan of the city give forth a certain number of males to fight. My family volunteered me and two rowdy cousins.Outside the gates, my clan elder gave each of us a cowhide shield and a spear with a small spindle of copper at the tip so we wouldn't think it was a staff. We marched, I forget which city we were fighting that time. Three days later we found the enemy behind a deep irrigation ditch that had dried out for the season. Our orders were simple, 'There they are. Attack!'My elder was at the back of our mob, making sure none of us ran away. My older cousin made it across the ditch first, but was speared twice; once in the right kidney, I can still remember my first sight of blood, and once, piercing the shield and lodging in his ribcage. My second cousin and I were pushed from behind into the fighting. I stabbed at one shield, doing no harm.Then my surviving cousin's morale broke and he tried to claw his way back into our ranks. He was stabbed in the back, his dying body tangling with mine and bearing us both to the ground. I saw this howling mad face over me. He was a commoner, like me, driven to violence by the terror of battle. His shoddily crafted spear plunged first into my right lung. The second stab found my heart. I died.From there, my spirit fell down toward the wretched dank caverns where all pitiful lowborn dregs are doomed to end up without hope of parole. Instead of endless misery, the Goddess Sarrat Irkalli appeared before me, barring my descent. With icy claws, she trisected my soul. I cannot begin to describe that agony. She snatched up my tattered bits and dragged me back into the world.Sarrat Irkalli is Goddess of the Netherworld, whispered a word that penetrated my brain through the left ear of my cooling corpse. It was an utterance so catastrophic to the fabric of the Veil I dare not repeat it even now.Baraqu? she blew a dark wind upon the first bit of my essence and it flew away.Cael, she whispered to the second portion and off it went in another direction. You are Baraqu no more. The second name was meaningless to me at the time but my name. Do you know that if you have your true name, your spirit can not find its way to your reward, no matter how foul, or pleasing? To the third part of my soul. I name you Alal, he who stands witness to the end of all he desires; their destroyer. Powerful yet powerless.}With that, she left me. My body was stiff from being dead so long. The next few hours were extremely painful. The Sun had set and the Moon was not in evidence. Jackals barked and hyenas laughed as they fought and feasted on the dead. I pushed the body of my cousin off me then crawled down into the ditch to hide. Hardly the reaction of a hero.""Not the actions of the man I know," Shammuramat smirked. "So, your name is Baraqu.""Was and I never much liked the name," I countered. "The priests gave it to me because right before my naming ceremony, a bolt of lightning from a spring storm struck the temple of Shara. So they named me Baraqu, which means 'struck by lightning'.""That sound likes a good name," the Queen Dowager regarded me."That is the noble meaning. The common meaning is less eloquent, it means 'idiot'."Another deep laugh from my treasured compatriot. So few had ever mattered so much to me."Struck by lightning, stricken dumb," she guffawed. "Still not the 'you' I know.""What does the other name mean?""I have no idea. In all my travels I have never found a people familiar with it," I shrugged. She looked out over the low waves lapping against the stony shore."No explanation?" she grudgingly inquired. She had wanted me to continue."No. I have never again come face to face with Sarrat Irkalli, been visited by a messenger, divine, or demonic, received an omen, or any otherworldly presence of any kind," I shrugged. I was long past any resentment. "After the battle I made my way back home, we'd lost, and resumed my life for a few years. My father took the excuse of me 'letting' my kinsmen die to place my younger brother over me.I didn't care. I always hated being a potter, so I ended up being a piddling nuisance all the time and a drunken brawler whenever I had wrangled some beer. I was always the first choice of my clan to send into battle. Despite my lack of training, I began surviving more battles than I died in. At some point, the priests began getting suspicious that I was still hanging around my great-grandnephew's house, so my house Elder suggested I leave the city.I was given a nice copper-headed mace that I had taken in a recent skirmish. Tradition dictated I offer it to the Elder, so he could give it back to me as a sign of my value to the clan. He had taken it for his own. Now he was giving it back out of fear that it held some part of my taint. I had no idea how to live on my own. Two days out, I was robbed and murdered for the first, but not last, time. That inaugural event, I got really angry and hunted those two farmers down.I got my mace back. I also relieved them of an onager, three slaves and a few ingots of silver. I guessed they had been rather successful robbers until they met me."

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Casanova

weekly musings from Koop!

Join Kooper for this special series of podcasts where we take a look at the Bon Vivants, Playboys and those who lived a Jetsetter Lifestyle, those tango pirates and just what makes these men who they are. This week Errol Flynn

It's the final episode of a trilogy of "ASK BOB ANYTHING" Q&As to kick off the new year! This week Bob continues to answer your questions and hear stories about the promiscuous Jose Lothario, Matt Borne's issues in Georgia, what are the Road Warriors allergic to(?!), Tito Santana, Tim Horner, The Destroyer, Ole Anderson, Gordon Solie, Bob's biggest accomplishment and biggest mistake in his wrestling career, & more!Please Subscribe to our Patreon to help pay the bills, https://www.patreon.com/wrestlecopiaIncludes the $5 “All Access” Tier & $9 "VIP Superfan" Tier featuring our VIDEO CASTS, Patreon Watch-Along Series, our insanely detailed show notes (for the Grenade, Monday Warfare, Regional Rasslin, Puro Academy, & Retro Re-View), Early Show Releases! PLUS, monthly DIGITAL DOWNLOADS for your viewing and reading pleasure!WRESTLECOPIA MERCHANDISE - https://www.teepublic.com/user/wrestlecopiaVisit the WrestleCopia Podcast Network https://wrestlecopia.comFollow WrestleCopia on “X” (Formerly Twitter) @RasslinGrenadeFollow & LIKE our FACEBOOK PAGE – https://www.facebook.com/RasslinGrenadeSubscribe to the WrestleCopia Youtube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/RasslinGrenade ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Being known by the company you keep. In 25 parts, edited from the works of FinalStand. Listen and subscribe to the ► Podcast at Connected.. “Life exists in both seconds and years. Don't ignore one for the other.” I would like to thank the phone operator and Chief of the Burnham, Illinois Police Department for answering my questions, despite their bizarre nature. (Monday Night) I should have known to not have too good a time. My karma was wacky enough as it was. It was about to get worse in a way I should have foreseen. Ain't hindsight grand? Inside of five seconds I knew how much sharing Libra and Brooke did; a lot. On the plus side, it gave me some wiggle room with Libra where sex with Brooke was concerned. On the super-plus side, Brooke was looking forward to ratcheting up our sex play. I took her to Libra's experiences with all the extra bells and whistles. In this case it meant adding a blindfold and ball-gag to the hand restraints. Brooke handed me a high level of trust unexpected at this early moment in our sexcapade. With a quick empathic insight, I pulled her ball-gag down as her orgasm erupted. She rejoiced in the sound of her rapture echoing around my bedroom. I deceived her into her next climax by whispering a promise to release her then hammering her instead. The whole specter of powerlessness tore her up inside. Best of all, even as she spasmed beneath me, I released her cuffs then pulled up her mask. Her fingernails dug into my trapezius muscles. For over a minute, she clung to me with a deep hunger to feel my heat and sweat against her body. "My turn," she rasped. I pressed my shoulders and head up so I could look into her eyes. She was waiting for this opportunity since she'd talked with Libra. Without question, she'd never been tied down before, or tied a man down and had her way with him. She'd manipulated men most of her life; that was old hat. This was primal, physical and forbidden. She was taking complete control of my person. God, I thought she'd orgasmed when she finished cuffing me to the headboard. Taunting, teasing and hot body contact followed as she put the ball-gag in. Sizzling lips sealed my fate as the blindfold was slipped in place. Having invested so much time using all my senses soaking up the hungry beast that Brooke possessed right beneath her urbane surface, losing my eyesight wasn't a major drawback. For Brooke, this had all the benefits of anonymous sex in a blacked-out room with the bonus of her having the lights on for her use alone. My bet was she had studied stuff on-line. From being sure she wasn't going to have sex with me when she first met, she had graduated to running naked across my living room for what turned out to be lemon slices. The 'fumph' of the Nerf gun made me assume Timothy shot her in the ass as she raced into my room. By the yip from Brooke, I knew Timothy's aim remained frighteningly accurate. Lemon juice and cuts don't mix, or, Brooke enjoyed watching my body jolt as said juice interacted with said 'workplace' mistakes. Was I angry? Nah. Every hiss of pain was followed by lavished kisses, licks and hair lashings. I loved her long black hair draped over my body, flicked around whisk-like and tickling my nose. Brooke was learning my keystone technique; figure out what your partner wants and give them a quick sample. Don't use any one thing too much; make it a treat and they'll appreciate the taste they get even more. When Brooke finally sated us both, it was my turn again. We talked a while. She invited me to a friend's place in the Hamptons which suggested to me the destination was more than some made-up place on TV. I promised to think about it. Brooke took that to mean she needed to work harder to convince me. I honestly had little desire to be trotted around as Brooke's boy toy. Hoping that wouldn't be the case relied a lot on faith. I wasn't sure what I would have in common with any of that crowd, which guided me back to being a stuck up snob for treating a people as a social class and not as human beings. I took out my social anxiety on Brooke. Poor girl; three holes, ten positions and I'm not sure how many times I took her from frenzied peak to frenzied peak. All I knew was when she'd passed all points of previous primeval ecstasy, I finally released her. Brooke curled into a semi-fetal ball and began burrowing into me. "Happy?" I asked as I stroked her sweat-drenched hair. She nodded happily against my chest. "Are you glad you came over?" I continued. Brooke bit me because she knew I was teasing her. "Ow," I grumbled. "I think we have a misunderstanding who is whose sex toy here." "Do I need to bite you again?" Brooke mumbled into my chest. "Point taken," I conceded. Brooke snuggled in even tighter. We wrestled out of bed, stumbled into the shower and took some time off with Timothy. He looked at us and smirked. "Cáel is going to be my boyfriend," Brooke tossed out there. Huh? "What in God's green earth makes you want to do that?" Timothy chuckled. "He's been there when I needed him. Cáel is a real man and it has taken me having a really tough spill to realize that it doesn't matter which alumni your Daddy belongs to, but what you put on the line for your friends that really matters," Brooke enlightened us both. "Seriously Dude," Timothy looked at me with pity. "Cut down on the awesome dicking until somehow polygamy becomes legal," he added, but then, "Brooke, you know he's seeing about a dozen different ladies, right?" "Cáel is looking for a serious relationship," Brooke insisted. Timothy chortled because he knew the likelihood of me settling down was right up there with us sharing a White Christmas in the Bahamas. "Let's go back to bed, Babe," I redirected things to safer waters. "It is your turn to be on top." Brooke, wearing one of my fresh t-shirts and nothing else, hopped off the sofa and let me lead her back to the bedroom for another round of 'not thinking about any other part of my screwed up life except the beautiful woman with me right now' sex. Twenty minutes later, Brooke had encased me in her wanton elixirs, was gyrating her hips as she stroked me inside her snatch while keeping me bound, blind and muffled. My phone rang. "Should I get that?" Brooke teased me. She moved enough to seize my cellular device. "The number is unlisted," she mused. "Who could it be?" I gave a muffled response. She removed the ball-gag enough for me to speak. "Work," I repeated. "It might be work. I'm on-call 24/7." "Damn," Brooke undoubtedly pouted (still blindfolded). She answered the call then placed the phone to my ear. "Cáel, a Security Detail detachment is on their way to your quarters as we speak. You will recognized the code they will use," Katrina's icy calm voice informed me. "Katrina, what is wrong?" I inquired. Normally, I wouldn't get an answer. Katrina's tone made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. "There has been an incident at your Father's home in Chicago. We do not have clear intelligence at this time. I may have more when you get in," she related. "Understood," I replied. My passionate storm abated and I felt empty inside. Dad. "Cáel?" Brooke sounded worried. "We need to get dressed," I murmured. I had to let Timothy know something was truly wrong. I needed to get Brooke home safely. I; I needed to know more than I did right then. Brooke uncuffed me quickly. I barely had my boxers on when there was a light series of raps on the door. I sprang up, opened my bedroom door, surprising Odette. She must have come back to work a few minutes earlier and was unwinding with some low-volume TV and some sofa time. Timothy was asleep already. "Odette, go back to Timothy's room and warn him something bad may have happened. Go!" I warned. Odette scampered back. Brooke was at my back, trying to move into the main room. "Brooke, stay here. If something unusual happens, hide in the bedroom and don't come out until the police get here. Do you understand?" I met her confusion with an iron stare. She nodded. There was another, more insistent, rapping at my apartment door. I crept up to the portal and gave a counter-knock. "Crab Fisher-woman," a female voice said from the other side. "My Father's Sister," I responded. It was an imperfect code, but effective given the circumstances. I double checked through the spy hole, unlocked the door and let three SD Amazons inside. How bad was it? I doubted these ladies would know more than I did. In Hittite, she said; "Ishara," the leader said, "we have orders to escort you to Havenstone immediately." They weren't blindly expecting me to follow instructions. They had a directive they were following to the best of their ability. In Hittite, she said; “ Will a team be watching my domicile?" I asked. The leader nodded. "We need to take a female I have been with tonight to her dwelling before going on to Havenstone." The SD team leader nodded again. There was no condescension, or argument. They were following orders as if it was my right to issue them. That was how bad things were. Time to get back to English. "Brooke, finish getting dressed. I'm taking you home," I called out. Quite frankly, along with my desire to see Brooke back home safely was my instinct to not split up my guardians. Better a longer trip than two smaller, more vulnerable groups. I was in the process of getting dressed in the living room when Timothy and Odette came out. "Bro?" Timothy asked. "My Father's home was attacked. I have no other details right now," I explained with a sinking feeling in my heart. Timothy read my soul, came up and engulfed me in his mighty arms. Odette added herself to the heart-felt love-pile. "Do you want me to take Odette and head back to Queens for a while?" Timothy asked. He sensed we had limited time. "They," and by 'they' he knew I meant Havenstone, "will have a team watching this place. There are not enough resources to go back and forth to work. I wish I could tell what would keep you safe, but I don't know anymore." "We'll stay put," Timothy declared. Odette nodded. "We'll be here for you when you get back. If any of these psycho-broads want to stop by from time to time, I won't say no." I shot a look to the security team leader and she gave a curt 'okay'. "You'll need an overnight bag!" Odette squeaked. Off she went. Brooke finished getting dressed and came to my side. To your average Lothario, what she did might seem odd. To me, it was the normal refrain; Brooke shoved her panties into my jean's pocket. That was a not so subtle 'Call Me' for when I got back. "Three minutes, Ish; Cáel," the leader updated me. My amateur guess was this was the team from across the street. They had back-up vehicles and personnel streaking down from Havenstone to provide extra security for my move. "Velma," she gave me her name. A quick description was in order. The three Amazons all had Bluetooth devices, shooting glasses and steel-gray long coats that had to be uncomfortable in this upper seventies evening heat. Underneath, they had on light ballistic body armor on their torsos, arms, and legs. Even their dull grey, all-terrain boots looked armored. They had a hip holstered sidearm, most likely a back-up pistol at the small of their backs and a deadly blade, or three. Their main deterrence was their H and K UMP 40 caliber; my second favorite Amazon killing device. Timothy snuck off to get my toiletries, returning around the same time Odette trundled out with an overnight (or three) bag. There was a final round of hugs then Velma indicated it was time to leave. The fourth member of the team was stationed at the top of the third floor stairs. That gave her a good view of my hallway as well as the passage going up and down. Two SD's to the front, Velma and the fourth watching our backs and Brooke caught between giddy and freaking terrified. Things got even more exciting when we hit the bottom of the stairs. Two more ladies were waiting. They put a trench coat on Brooke and she nearly collapsed. The freed up Amazon took my bag while the second put a trench coat on me. I grunted as well. This bitch had to weigh 25 kg. That was some serious ballistic and blast protection. The closest newcomer began attaching my pistol with hip holster on my side while Brooke was 'buttoned up'. I was slipped a few spare clips then was buttoned up as well. "I'm not sure I can walk in this thing," Brooke gave me a weak smile. "Don't worry," I smiled, "I'll carry you." I slipped my arm around Brooke's waist and, on Velma's signal, we rushed out to the middle of three Mercedes Armored GL550s. The doors had barely shut before we were racing away from my favorite home. I walked Brooke up to her apartment, we hugged, kissed and she insisted I go to the Hamptons with her this weekend. I left with that promise unanswered. I didn't ask the Security Detail to do anything else outrageous and they didn't give me any crap about Brooke. Their vigilance didn't end at Havenstone either. No; they formed a tight knot of outward hostility until we marched into Katrina's office. Even then, they spread out over the Executive Services offices as an extended perimeter. Katrina's office was another step up on the unsettling meter. It was Katrina, Saint Marie, Buffy, Helena, and a woman I didn't know yet seemed to belong. "Excuse me?" Saint Marie shot a hostile look my way; actually right behind me. "Don't mind me," Pamela snorted. She was in the process of sneaking into the room. "I'm here for moral support," she concluded then took a seat. "Cáel?" Katrina queried, as if I could somehow exile Pamela from the room. "What's going on?" I began the meeting instead. "Your Father is dead," Katrina reported. If someone ever asked me what it felt like to have an arm cut off, I could truthfully answer them 'Yes'. Dad. "From what we have been able to gather from the video and audio gear the four Amazon Security Detail team assigned to watch over him transmitted, the team was setting up a perimeter when three vehicles with ten men stopped on the juncture of Janus and Kerr streets and approached the house. The team leader made formal recognition and was attacked," Katrina told me. "Are they okay?" I mumbled. I didn't want to know how my Dad died. Had he been in pain? Which side had killed him? Would knowing make a damn bit of difference? "Three of the four members were killed," Saint Marie interjected. "The team commander was killed instantly. The second died defending that corner of your Father's domicile. The third member was killed attempting to rescue your Father. The surviving member stopped the enemy from escaping with your Father's body, but was too badly injured to extricate herself and is now in police custody." "What are we going to do about this?" I inquired. Pamela was a lying bitch. She'd lied to Brianna because the truth would have gotten me and Dad killed. Dad had still died, but Pamela had kept me alive. "There is nothing we can do," the stranger spoke up. "Troika of House Šauška." "You are joking, right?" I stared at her. "He was a male, not of;” Troika began to state. "You do know your Amazon law, correct?" I countered. She gave a curt tilt of the head. "Recount the means of succession to the Head of a House then please explain to the room how my Father, the descendant of Vranus, fits into all that." Cha-ching! "Oh, by the Seven Goddesses!" Saint Marie jumped up. "They murdered the Head of House Ishara!" Katrina was already back on top; ahead of the game. "But what does that make him?" Troika pointed at me. "It confirms him as the Head of House Ishara. We can sugar-coat it and say Cáel, being the only 'active' member of Havenstone 'represented' the Head of House Ishara. By our traditions though, Ferko Nyilas was the lawful head of a 'First' House. Certainly four days were not enough time to settle the manner in an acceptable way," Katrina said. "At the very least, House Ishara would have been given 28 days to resolve any matters of succession internally," Katrina pointed out. "There was no deception. Cáel worked for Havenstone, so was our active member. The existence of his Father was known. It is in his basic file. It was highly unlikely that ANY House wanted to bring another male into the mix so the matter of his ascension was left unquestioned." "This is Casus Belli," Troika stood up and declared in a firm voice. "I will inform Hayden. We must know the perpetrators of this act, Katrina. I will prepare to relate this breach of the Protocols to the other Signatories." "To make sure I have this straight, I can defend any member of my family, no matter who they are, without violating the Protocols?" I questioned. "Can I kill them?" "That is correct," Troika appeared confused. "Other Signatories cannot harm, or detain your family in any way." I gave a bitter, hollow laugh. Dad; Dad wouldn't have understood, but Mom would have, no doubt. "Troika; hell, everyone but Pamela and Katrina, I am Cáel Nyilas, grandson of The Cáel O'Shea and those people who murdered my Dad very well may have been my family," I felt like crying. That was good because I was crying. I had talked to Dad early Monday morning. I had been so nervous about not leaving any trace of Mom behind that I couldn't recall if I said 'I love you' to him. I'd never get the chance to make up for that oversight. As I began to take in the faces around me, I realized Ishara had gifted me with a respite. No one else knew who Cáel O'Shea was; yet. "Troika," I started out. I could tell she was still having difficulty with the 'Man as someone worthy of stating an opinion' moment. "When the Council decides that the Illuminati have breached the Protocols, do I have a deciding vote on what we do; since Dad was my family?" "No," Troika clarified, "and what makes you think it was the Illuminati?" Pamela laughed at her. "Because I killed Cáel's Grandfather when that man was head of the Illuminati; slit his throat and rendered him incapable of resuscitation. The rest of that twisted clan have only now discovered that there is a successor, genetically, to the Old Man and you are looking at him," Pamela related in an amused tone. "Perhaps; just perhaps; they were interested in what happened to Cáel's Mother and the man she mated with to produce Cáel; who also happened to be the Head of House Ishara and now leaves this man (me) as the last of his kind; coming and going," Pamela finished, "for both the Amazons and the O'Shea family/the Illuminati." Troika was having problems fitting all the puzzle pieces. Saint Marie cut to the heart of the matter because she listens to me. "If you go to war against the O'Shea's you are being forced to fight your own family," the Golden Mare stared at me in shock. "Let me get this straight," Troika stood up, waving for silence. "When the O'Shea's killed Ferko Nyilas, they murdered the Head of a First House. They also murdered a member of their own family by way of marriage." She seemed totally flummoxed. Everyone agreed about how screwed up everything was. Breach? No Breach? "Welcome to life working with Cáel Nyilas," Katrina declared. There was a pause. "I'll let the professionals figure out the finer points of diplomacy. I have to go," I said. "Were do you think you are going?" Buffy popped up. Until this moment, she'd had no role in affairs. My safety though; "I am going home to bury my Father, Buffy," I announced. This was not a discussion. "Shouldn't we take his body to the cliffs?" Troika suggested. "My Father will face the Afterlife with my Mother at his side. It was his wish and I'm not going to start dictating to my Ancestors now," I sighed. I was trying to make light of my pain. By the looks on their faces, I was failing. I had barely exited the office, Buffy, Helena and Pamela in tow. The security team was closing in and my phone rang. "Cáel Nyilas," I answered sadly. "Mr. Nyilas, this is Investigator Brewster of the Burnham Police Department. I need a few moments of your time," a man's voice requested. I hesitated. I looked at my watch. "Yes; Dad?" I finally spoke. "Mr. Nyilas, your father seems to have been murdered late this evening in a bungled attempted burglary," he lied. It was a good lie. If he really believed a bungled robbery consisted of two heavily armed groups shooting a small residential home to pieces he was; nah, he was lying. "I'm on the next flight to Chicago," was the response I chose. I had so many 'loser' replies to choose from. "That would be helpful, Mr. Nyilas," he told me. "Do you know when I can expect you?" "Ah; I have no idea when the next plane from New York to Chicago is, but if I can buy a ticket on it, I'm there," I countered. Admittedly, me having a plane ticket for home would have been damn suspicious. "One last thing, Mr. Nyilas, do you have any idea why someone would want to murder your father? Anything you could tell us could be of great assistance," he pressed. "Yes, I have a clue who murdered my Father and I'll point you to the dead bodies when I'm done," I snapped; quite literally and mentally snapped. Pause. "Mr. Nyilas, I understand you are upset, but do not do anything rash. Now, could your father have been murdered for anything you might have done, or are doing?" Det. Brewster kept is game face on. "We'll have this chat when I get to Chicago. Until then, take care," I said before hanging up. "Smooth," Pamela gently chastised me. "I actually liked him going all 'Mafia Don' on that cop," Buffy countered. "I'll arrange for Havenstone to get us transportation to Chicago," Helena added. "No," I countermanded her. "You two stay here and finish up business. Join me late Tuesday night, or early Wednesday morning." By the looks Buffy and Helena gave me they were surprised; and proud. I was keeping to my 'Runner' induction time table. My family would not be diminished by this tragedy. It would grow. Come Wednesday morning, we would add twenty new voices to Ishara's war cry. "I'll take the first commercial flight available," I continued. "We cannot protect you on a civilian aircraft, Ishara," Velma warned me. "They; the authorities are expecting me to show up at O'Hare, so I'm showing up at O'Hare, like a normal person," I reminded her. "I'll also need to know at what hospital they are keeping our sister." Our sister; the sole surviving Amazon who nearly gave her life for Dad. The SD picked up on that immediately. Another leap had been made. I wasn't a masculine monster, raging against a female warrior who had failed. By the tone of my voice, they knew I was in grief yet not overcome by it. She was the last member of the Host to see my Father alive and she might hold the closure I needed. "It will be done," Velma decided. "We will have your team meet you at O'Hare." "My team?" I asked. "Rachel; her team," Velma clarified. That was enough good for me. "Oh, and get Pamela a ticket as well. I'd hate to have her mug another passenger and take theirs," I sighed. Pamela patted me on the back; an 'atta boy'. (Monday Noon) (The hospital) That was not the first time I wondered about how fatal Pamela had been in her prime. In fact, I wasn't sure that post-60 wasn't her best time yet. The only mistake the police officer guarding the Amazon's hospital room made was to sit in a chair. Pamela had long ago mastered the peon-craft that Rosetta had started to teach me. The policeman looked up, stared right through her then looked the other way. His gaze never swept back in my direction. She jabbed him quickly underneath both arms, paralyzing them for a few seconds. That was all she needed. Hers hand clamped over his eyes and on his throat, cutting off the blood flow to the brain before his hands could recover. He appeared to the outside world to have taken a nap. According to Pamela, we had roughly three minutes before he came around. Pamela kept walking down the hall as if nothing happened. I came ten steps behind, guarded by a gun-less Rachel as I entered the Intensive Care Unit. A few of the staff looked our way, but no one impeded our progress. According to the Duty Nurse, the Amazon had exited surgery barely an hour ago. Her eyes opened to slits as I approached her beside. "We stand before the Eye of the World," I whispered. That meant surveillance. "I cannot tell you what is in my heart. My name is Cáel Nyilas. Does that name mean anything to you?" Her hand flopped. I put two fingers into her feeble gasp. One squeeze; yes. "I am grateful for your prowess and I share in your sorrow for those who will no longer fight in this life. Please heal and grow strong for this is the start, not the finish," I completed. She squeezed my fingers once more. I stepped aside, letting Rachel take my place. They didn't exchange words but communicated volumes. We slipped out of the room while the guard was still groggy. Pamela was nowhere to be seen. That proved to be pre-sentient when a group of people with the propensity to flash IDs caught up to me at the ground floor. Had the backdrop of this fiasco not been the death of my Father, I might have enjoyed the twitching/counter-twitching going on between Rachel, who desperately wanted any one of her guns, and the cops who were picking up on that desire. "Mr. Nyilas, I am;” and the introductions came pouring in. I had Theodora Chumwell and Brock Miklos, Special Agents of the FBI, John Rios, Special Agent with the ATF, Investigator Horace Brewster from the Burnham PD and Homicide Detective Lisa Capella from the Chicago PD. "We would like to talk with you," Theodora took charge. "Can I ask a question first?" I raised my hand. That appeared to set them off their game plan. "Of course," Theodora allowed. "Okay; FBI, ATF, a homicide detective from Chicago and the only law enforcement official who has any business being here," I finished with Brewster. "I may not be a Rhodes Scholar, but this seems a bit extreme for the burglary/murder of a long-time employee of Illinois Power and Light. Does anyone care to fill me on what the hell is going on?" I looked over the group. "Oh, and thank you Investigator Brewster for your call. I know I didn't take the news well." "Was that the part where you said you would point to the dead bodies?" Theodora took charge. "Yes, I think that was the gaff I was referring to," I agreed. "Why are you here, Mr. Nyilas?" Lisa Capella jumped in. She had decided to not go along with the FBI playbook. "I came to see the woman found alive in my family home," I replied smoothly. "She is probably still in surgery," Lisa gave a twist of the lips; sex. "Oh, she got out an hour ago," I enlightened them. "Let's take this conversation to FBI Headquarters," Theodora 'suggested'; you know, in the way that really wasn't a suggestion. "Have you gone to see that woman?" Lisa wouldn't let up; good for her. It was upsetting Theodora and I'd already decided that Brewster was my go-to guy on this investigation. "Yes," I responded to Lisa. "Isn't she under police protection?" Lisa and Theodora blurted out together. "There was a policeman at her door," I shrugged. "We went in and I talked to her." "What did she say?" Theodora brushed Lisa aside. "Nothing. She had one of those tubes down her throat. Whatever I said; well, I was emotional," I evaded. "She was barely conscious." Lisa was urgently contacting her guy who was supposed to be watching the only person in custody they had. He claimed to have 'blacked out'. He couldn't remember anyone coming in to see the woman and swore he hadn't been unconscious for any length of time. He went in, checked up on the Amazon and she was fine; for someone who had been shot six times. "We should go to the FBI offices," Theodora repeated. "I'm going home," I sighed sadly. "I want to go home." "It is still an active crime scene," John told me. "There won't be any civilian access for some time." Translation: until they decided to give me the carrot instead of the stick. "Please, come with us," FBI Special Agent Brock added his weight. "No. I'm going with Burnham PD," I countered. "You can find me there." "That's not how it works," Theodora upped her authority meter. Lisa had fallen back, trying to take in the bigger picture. Brewster was clearly trying to recall if he had Any history with me, or my Dad, that would make me trust him over the others. "I may be a liberal arts major from northern New England, but I know how a larynx works," I regarded Theodora. "Unless I choose to make a sound, it does nothing. Nothing is about to be all we have left to do and say." "Don't you want to help solve your Father's murder?" Brock tried to sound both sympathetic and threatening at the same time. I was suddenly bombarded with the taste of Lime Sherbet and Jalapenos Ice Cream. "Really? Fine; I'm going to hang out with the only person in this room I know is working on my Father's murder, not on their career," I reposed. "We are all trying to;” Lisa got out. "You maybe," I gave Lisa that much. "My Father made around $70,000 a year after twenty-six years for Illinois P and L. He had almost paid off the colossal debt built up by my Mother's illness and my college expenses." "As far as I know, he took out one loan his entire life; from a bank; and he paid it off," I continued. "He was a lapsed Catholic, a member of the IBEW; Local 9, and he jogged. He barely used e-mail and had no close friends I am aware of. The only woman he loved was my Mother and he mourned her to the day he died." "What about your activity?" Theodora inquired. We weren't running off to her playground; yet. Handcuffing a grieving son would look bad and, by my attitude, wouldn't make me talkative in the least. "I have the unfortunate habit of sleeping with every woman I meet," I began. "So that's over 200 erotic encounters. I get annoyed with people throwing their weight around," I continued, "which is why you and I are getting off on the wrong foot, Special Agent Theodora Chumwell. I work for Havenstone Commercial Investments, getting paid an insane amount to fetch laundry and keep secrets. Good enough?" "No, it is not;” Theodora simmered. "How did you know about the existence of the woman upstairs and how did you know to come here?" Lisa interrupted. "I grew up in that house, know the neighbors and know this is the closest EMS center to home," I lied convincingly. "Who are you?" Brewster decided that I wasn't exiting the hospital gracefully so turned on Rachel. She didn't speak, choosing to be creepy and brandishing a wallet instead. I kept forgetting that most full-blooded Amazons had minimal socialization with outsiders. Having graduated elementary school, everyone else knew this was a bizarre reaction. "Rachel Louis," Brewster read off the license in the wallet. A normal person would have acknowledged that somehow; not Rachel. "You are Rachel Louis, aren't you?" "Yes, she is," I intervened. "Rachel is a co-worker at Havenstone and she is misanthropic misandrist." There was a pregnant pause. The confusion wasn't with 'misanthropic'. It was a grown-up word in usage with colorful police-types. It was 'misandrist' that had them stumped. "Rachel is an unsociable man-hater," I explained. "Standing at my side in this hospital is ten kinds of Hell for her." "What kind of piece do you normal carry?" Rios asked her. Unsocial didn't mean stupid. "I use a Glock-22 and Rachel carries a STI Perfect 10," I answered. "We have been experiencing quite a gopher problem around the office." I could have done better; I should have done better. I was just too tired inside to create an inventive lie. "Do have gun licenses for those weapons?" Mr. ATF kept prodding at our cover story. "It seems Ms. Louis; is it Ms. Ms. Louis?" Brewster continued. I flashed Rachel a look which she interpreted correctly. "Yes, my name is Ms. Rachel Louis," Rachel replied. To me, "I find this distraction to be annoying. We should go." "It would seem Ms. Louis has all kinds of;” Brewster got out before Rachel snatched the wallet from his grip with the speed of a Peregrine Falcon. Brewster had this stunned look familiar to crows, doves and starlings the world over as one of their kin passed into the next life in a flash. A combination of 'No you didn't!' with 'what the flock?' "Ah;” Brewster got out. "On that note, I think we will be going," I shrugged. To Rachel, "You do not get out enough." "Can I see your wallet again?" Brewster was still confused by Rachel's rudeness. He was a cop for the love of God. People not wanting to go to jail do not snatch things from a cop's hands. "I gave you my wallet. I am not to blame if you used its time in your possession unwisely," Rachel counterattacked. "Unless there is a legal technicality, we shall be leaving. If there is a legal issue, here," she produced a business card with a flourish, "is the contact information for our legal department." Theodora took the card gingerly then read it. "Havenstone again," she mused. "Are you sure this is the path you wish to take, Mr. Nyilas?" "Are you insane?" I trembled with emotion. "I want to be back in New York, working my queue and thinking about what my date and I will be doing tonight. I want my Dad to be alive. I don't want to be thinking that the last time we talked I forgot to tell him I loved him." "Path, you Idiot!" I screamed at Theodora. Screw it, I was crying again. "Not a damn thing any of you can do will bring my Dad back to me; so fuck off!" In a strange way, that was what they had been looking for. Not my wounded soul, but my rage and pain toward a World suddenly found to be cruel and pointless. Behind my crumbling façade was another worry. Outside in the parking lot were three Amazons with weapons ready to rush to my aid. It wasn't that the Host was rash, or reckless, by nature. I was one of the fifty-six most important people in their society. Three other SD members had died in the defense of House Ishara already and they were damn sure those women would not have died in vain. I wasn't leaving in federal custody willingly and if I walked out in restraints, I wasn't sure if they would decide offing some law enforcement agents and staging my kidnapping was the best course of action. Remember, I wanted to bury my Father. They wanted to keep me alive. If those two goals collided, they would apologize after the fact. "Mr. Nyilas, I really believe we should;” Theodora got out then I brushed past her. It was a delicate moment and the chemistry between Rachel and I wasn't lost on most of them. She was a bodyguard yet my servant too. It was professional tribalism; two words that don't normally get along. Rios picked up on the other undercurrent. He recoiled from Rachel, retreating to buy space when/if Rachel attacked. Unlike the rest, he sensed that aggression by law enforcement would be met with lethal force. The Amazon didn't care about the badge and the legions of fellow officers backing it up. She was fearless. Things weren't over yet. "Mr. Nyilas, where are you going next?" Detective Lisa came after us. "I; I don't know," I muttered. "Where is my Father's body? I know he wanted to be cremated and buried beside Mom; I guess." Brewster came hurrying along. "He is at the Medical Examiner's Office," Lisa informed me. "Come with me." "Why don't you give me the address?" I sighed. "Do you and your buddy know your way around Chicago, Hometown Boy?" Lisa kept it up. She was hitting on me and lining me up at the same time. "How about we cut to the chase?" I looked at her with tear-soaked eyes. "We'll take my cars; cars with an 's'," I offered. "I am a hometown boy. I've never had a reason to locate the Medical Examiner before. Since I have a boatload of angry women with guns who will not fit into your sedan and leaving them behind isn't an option, mine is the only means of travel that makes sense." Low and behold, the two cops looked at each other then followed Rachel and I to our little caravan. We were too close for the officers to have missed Rachel snapping off some quick, coded instructions to her team; most likely to hide the seriously illegal firearms. To say the Amazons were not pleased with my decisions spoke volumes to their concern for me and lack of police experience. Pamela, who had beaten us back to the cars, seemed privately entertained as always. Rachel was reluctantly sitting up front. Lisa, Brewster and I were in the second row and Pamela sat in back. Not only did the two not get a good look at Pamela, she was perfectly placed to do all kinds of mischief unseen. "So the woman upstairs works with you?" Lisa asked as we pulled out. "Where to?" Tiger Lily (I still wasn't used to that name) requested of our Police 'buddies'. Lisa popped off the address. It was 'I'll scratch your back, you'll scratch mine'. Tiger Lily entered the data into the onboard computer and off we went. "No. She does not work for me, or my boss, directly. She was at my Father's on my behalf though I was unaware of it," I related. "Are you going to tell us what the hell happened?" Brewster prodded. "That I don't know. I am not personally aware of anyone who would want to kill my Father, or me," I answered. "Anyone who would want to get at me would come at me, not Dad," I continued. "I don't live in a fortress. It is a hardly spacious apartment near the East River. I share the place with my roommate, Timothy Denver, and a; companion by the name of Odette Sievert." "Companion? Is she; a working girl?" Lisa went searching. "No, I use the term companion to indicate she's too nice a girl for me. She's sweet, conscientious and giving. My only wish for Odette is that she finds a guy who can appreciate her a hell of a lot more than I do," I explained. "Timothy is my gay, body-building tattoo artist best friend. I've gotten the feeling he's busted some heads in his time. Hardly anything noteworthy." "Mr. Nyilas, have you ever considered that you live a very messy life?" Brewster pondered. "One does not 'consider' what one knows to be true. One knows it to be true and moves on," I grumbled. "Yes, I know I live a screwed up life." "What about your friends here?" Lisa indicated the other three women in the vehicle. This elicited another groan from me. "Investigator Brewster; Horace and Detective Capella; Lisa, please call me Cáel. This is the point I accept that I am exhausted and not in any shape to make good decisions. I'll plead the Fifth," I confessed. "We already know you were in New York when your father was murdered, Mister; Cáel," Brewster stated. "Everyone we've talked to says you and your father were very close. Barring some expensive Life Insurance policy being taken out on him, we have no reason to suspect you had a direct hand in his death. Not being a suspect, that implies you have no Fifth Amendment, or Miranda Rights to hide behind; just so we are clear," Brewster schooled me. "I can make this game of footsy easy on all of you," Pamela whispered. The officers jolted in their seats. "Cáel cannot talk to you for the very reason the Fifth Amendment exists." "You are not like the rest of this menagerie," Lisa noted. "Nah, I kill people for a living. The rest of the group has some code of conduct that keeps you two alive," Pamela smiled. Those two didn't know what to make of Pamela's statement because it was so sincere yet incredible. "If Cáel tells you anything else he will be admitting to his involvement in a criminal conspiracy. Said conspiracy is why Ferko Nyilas is dead, but Cáel had nothing to do with it," Pamela enlightened them. Fact digestion time for the two law dogs. Brewster recovered faster. "But why was Ferko Nyilas murdered?" he asked. "The men didn't come to kill him," Pamela kept talking about the tea and crumpets. "They probably showed up to escort him to a place where some far more important scumbags could talk with him." "The all-girl squad was there and Ferko was caught in the crossfire," Lisa mumbled. "Why was there a firefight if his life was in danger and both sides wanted him alive?" "Stupidity," Pamela replied. "Give any group of people guns and then surprise them, stupid shit happens; I apologize Cáel." "I don't buy that," Brewster said. "They simply started shooting at each other; no." "Okay Horace, let me break it down for you. The ladies were told to go there and guard the guy without being told why. The men who showed up were most likely told to grab Ferko without knowing why either." "That makes no sense," Lisa protested. "Congratulations. That is why Cáel can't talk to you anymore," Pamela smirked. "This is the sort of crap he has inadvertently been caught up with; no fault of his own. If he did any of this on purpose, I'd kill him myself." "He is some poor schmuck who only wanted a 7 to 5 job, to make tons of money and bedding a different girl every night," Pamela teased me. "He's no criminal mastermind, or even a convincing criminal. If he has a failing it is that he tends to merely beat up people who deserve to have their spleens ripped out instead. I'm training him to be smarter than that." "Who are you?" Brewster gawked. Pamela gave a sinister smile. Lisa looked at me. "I've fought a woman with a twelve foot stick with a pointy bit of metal at the end with little thought to my personal safety. This lady (Pamela) scares me. She is with me because I have no means of stopping her and I put saving others a great deal of pain and suffering over my own unsettled nerves." "Do you really think you are that good?" Lisa half-turned around to face Pamela. "Do you want your gun back?" Pamela offered up a police issue Glock 22, grip first. My kind of gun. How sad. I was too depressed to seduce Officer Lisa. Brewster reached around to check is firearm. It was still there, much to his relief. "How did you do that?" Lisa wondered as she retrieved and inspected her weapon. Pamela tapped Brewster's shoulder with the man's magazine. Brewster was aghast. She'd stolen his gun, taken out the ammo and returned it without him noticing. "I found it on the floor. The truth is a bit more expensive than you are willing to pay at the moment, believe me," Pamela grinned. Why had Pamela showboated? She was buying me some mental respite. She was also exhibiting to the two police folks that there might be some truth to her outlandish tale of criminal conspiracies. Unlike the other Amazons, Pamela knew we had to maintain friendly relations with some part of law enforcement if I was going to bury my Father. (The Medical Examiner's Office) So much happens in life we rarely put the timespan of events in context. Talking with a person in line who turns out to make your day better/worse, become a friend and/or a date. In a matter of a few seconds your life has been altered. Two minutes later and you would have missed getting the concert tickets where you meet your future; whomever. Two minutes sooner and you get caught in the 'speed trap' instead of the other poor sap who you drive past as they sit on the side of the road keeping the patrol officer company. His/her insurance rate goes up while you have that extra money for later. Had we arrived two minutes earlier to the morgue; disaster aborted. Two minutes later would have equated to a frustrating mystery. Life was not so kind. It was the same group as before; Detective Lisa, Investigator Horace, Rachel and I. We had just added an Assistant Medical Examiner who was going over information garnered from the autopsy with the two cops. Pamela was 'checking things out', whatever that meant. The key to it all was Rachel being Rachel. Security Detail are more than simply elite fighting-women. They are also bodyguards, security specialist and normally stack a third specialty into the mix. When Rachel spotted five armed people in the hallway right outside the Medical Examiner's autopsy room, her alertness spiked. Only one was a uniformed police officer. Rachel was still gun-less. The two EMS personnel rolling an occupied body bag out on a gurney shouldn't have had on their heavy jackets on a late June afternoon. The other two men were chatting about something. That wasn't unusual. Where they were standing was; to Lisa's experienced eye. Rachel's heightened anxiety made Lisa double-check everything. Horace didn't know what was wrong yet when Lisa's hand came to rest on her piece, he put his hand on his Ruger SR45. "Excuse me," Lisa called out. No one stopped moving. "Excuse me," Lisa demanded in a louder voice. "I am Detective Lisa Capella, Chicago Police Department; Homicide Division. What is going on?" That was a reach. Bodies exit the morgue all the time. The two people with the body made sense. The two 'odd' fellows weren't breaking any law. In cop-talk, this was called 'gut instinct'. She produced her badge. There was a quick look by the two ambulance folk to the farther of the two 'talking' men. That group were rather competent, just not competent conmen. The two EMS guys turned and tried to give Lisa a causal look. "What can we do for you, officer?" the designated diplomat asked nonchalantly. "Whose body is that?" Lisa inquired. "I'm not sure; all we do is pick 'em up and take them to the appropriate funeral home," he shrugged. "Take ten seconds and show me the release order," Lisa gave a chilly command. The cop at the far end of the hall; the one with the door that lead to the loading/unloading area, was starting to clue in that something wasn't right. "Oh, by the Great Pumpkin, this is bad," Brewster muttered under his breath like a thousand other fathers who engaged in the daily struggle to not curse at work so they wouldn't curse around their children. "Of course, Detective Capella," the diplomat nodded. "Is there a problem?" He carefully pulled out his smart phone and handed it over. Lisa wasn't born yesterday. She handed the phone to me instead of looking at it herself. She was keeping her eyes on the guys with guns. They really did have an order to transfer my Father to a mortuary. Apparently I had requested this be done; without my knowledge. "Cáel Nyilas requested his father be taken to the Green Meadows mortuary in Cicero," I informed Lisa, Rachel and Horace. "I need to talk to Mr. Nyilas," Lisa informed them. "If I can't talk to him, I can't let the body leave this building. This is an ongoing investigation." The 'diplomat' was worried yet Lisa had given him an out. After I returned his phone, he called his off-site boss, who gave him a number which the diplomat gave to Lisa. Lisa called 'me' without my phone ringing. Even so, 'I' confirmed the authorization. The four gunmen relaxed as Lisa hung up. "One more question," Lisa pulled a 'Columbo', "was this a rush job, or are you all 'not ready for prime time players'?" The 'diplomat' made one last lunge at deception. "Detective Capella, our work order is legitimate," he shrugged helplessly. "I don't know what you mean?" "Funeral homes have their own uniforms; they do not dress as EMS," Lisa deconstructed their illusions. "The bodies of murder victim are not released by the Medical Examiner until a cause of death is known and that information is released to the homicide detective assigned to the case; that would be me, if there was any doubt. Your two buddies down the hall could have read and critiqued the Magna Carta in the time it has taken for you to do your 'song and dance'," Lisa pointed out. "Oh, and the real Cáel Nyilas is standing next to me. Whoever talked with me on the phone is going to jail too. Now I suggest the four of you face the wall, put your hands over your head, palms against the wall and no one will get hurt." Darwin check time; they drew their guns. Of course they drew their guns. Why would they not draw their guns considering the farthest enemy was all of 4 meters away and the only immediately cover was my Dad's horizontal corpse? Gurneys tend to be lightweight and mostly empty space. The quickest on the draw was one of the two 'talkers'. He whipped out a 357 Magnum revolver and popped two shots into the police officer next to him; right in the center mass at less than 2 meters; ouch. Rachel was next, making a diving front roll between the two cops, toward the two fake EMS guys. I was right behind her, except my plan was to vault Dad's body and get at the second talker. I was not acting sanely. The second talker went in the next split second. He had brought a sawed-off automatic shotgun to the fight. His first salvo blew a chunk out of the wall next to Lisa's hip. She was less than an eye-blink behind as she put two slugs into the 'diplomat's' armored chest. He was kind enough to drop his Mac 11 from his twitching fingers and into Rachel's hands. Less than a single heartbeat later, the 'diplomat's EMS buddy revealed his own Mac 11. His mistake was not shooting his first target; Brewster. He was tracking Rachel and me instead, hoping to catch us together in a spray of lead. The general feeling was that, for all his law enforcement experience, Investigator Brewster had never actually shot at anyone before. His cop instincts kicked into overdrive. The perpetrators appeared to be wearing body armor and possessed a small arsenal of illegal weapons. His aim tweaked up, he pulled the trigger and a 45 ACP round effectively decapitated his target; our first confirmed casualty. My encounter with the Latin Kings had been a lesson in poor tactical flexibility. This time, by unspoken agreement, the two talkers were exercising their tactical acumen as they began withdrawing toward the exit. With the short range, width of the hall and lack of cover, being shot at by a shotgun, or a 357 didn't make much difference. I was trying to jump onto the gurney and launch myself at the two when my toe caught on the bottom of Dad's body, turning my heroic rush into a face-plant on Father. The men's cover fire worked on Lisa and Horace. Lisa, being more exposed, had to dive flat. Horace crouch-ran to Rachel. Rachel, with her submachine gun, was firing a steady stream of bullets from between the gurney's top surface and bottom shelf. Her shots shattered shotgun guy's shins and blasted off his knee caps. As that bastard screamed and toppled forward, Rachel emptied the magazine into both his thighs and his right hip. By the copious nature of the blood spray, an artery had been clipped, if not severed. Horace grabbed the back of my jacket and yanked me off the gurney, down to his side. Lisa fired off a few shots at the vanishing leader, but he was already out the door. Rachel was rifling the closest EMS's headless body, looking for a fresh clip for the M 11. "Don't," Horace cautioned her. Lisa was running to the door. "Rachel, leave the gun and follow me," I commanded. "Wait," Horace called out. He was in an impossible situation. The bold Assistant ME began looking for any survivors, starting with the diplomat. Detective Capella was chasing after a possible cop-killer. I was already running after Lisa and Horace couldn't ride herd on Rachel, catch me and support Lisa all at once. Rachel muttered in Hittite 'dirty goat' at my fleeting form. I was sure its true meaning was far nastier. "Da-darn it," Horace grimaced as he started rushing after the three of us. I doubted it was any consolation to Horace that Lisa shot me an evil look when I caught up to her at the loading dock. There were no cars peeling away and had the bad guy fled out the huge doors 15 meters away, she would have seen him. Rachel arrived next. "Secure my Father's body," I instructed. She wasn't pleased but she wasn't talking back either. Horace showed up last of all. He was talking over his walky-talky, updating the Chicago PD on all the crazy, tragic crap that had gone down. Rachel slipped past Horace on her way back to Dad. The unspoken order was for her to re-arm and stay close, something she couldn't do under Horace's watchful gaze. Lisa and Horace were working out a plan to take their perpetrator down and it didn't include me. I was a civilian after all. My thinking was traipsing in a different direction. They were thinking criminal evasion. I was thinking stone cold, bad-ass killer. He may have already killed one police officer in cold blood. Why not make it three? There was also the mathematics of it all. Two guns are more likely to hit a target than one; I had learned that bit of tactical insight from my time with Aya. My disadvantage was my advantage. I didn't have a gun so I didn't have to position myself so I could shoot at anyone else. "Here I go," I alerted the two officers. My body was flying onto the loading deck before they could stop me. My cockamamie idea saved my life. Maybe he thought I stumbled and lost my piece. Maybe, at the last second, he saw through my deception. Maybe he was wondering what the last episode of 'Defiance' would be like. We'll never know. According to Lisa, he was tracking my fall with his 3 57 Magnum. He didn't shoot because he only had two bullets left, hadn't been able to reload yet and his Berretta 9 mm back-up pistol was on the other side of his body. Two bullets; two cops, he was probably sure he could beat me to death. Anyway, when he figured out the sacrificial lamb was the unarmed me, he returned his aim to the entryway, Lisa and Horace. The guy wasn't behind any sort of cover. He was pressed against the wall so he wouldn't be able to bring his other pistol into play inside that first split second. When Lisa shot him, it had to hurt, but didn't put him down. She shot again; missed. He shot, missed, shot again hitting Lisa and knocking her back and down. The leader pivoted off the wall, bringing his Berretta to bare on Investigator Brewster. A lifetime inside the blink of an eye; Horace's bullet hit the criminal; major brain splatter. Poor Horace. Horace was falling onto his side, taking a wild shot and hoping to keep the gunman from shooting Lisa and I when he accidentally ended the man's existence. The lead bad guy's final shot zipped passed Horace's left shoulder, over my legs and ricocheted off the loading dock wall and into space. Good old Lisa, she staggered to her feet then stumbled over to the gunman, seeking some signs of life. He was alive. Horace's 45 slug had 'only' removed the top half of his brain so the heart and lungs were still being told to beat and breath. As she was making her own call for Emergency Services, a piece of the man's skull that had been clinging to the wall plopped down. That broke Horace. He began vomiting. I rolled over to a sitting position. Rachel peeked in then utilized her blue tooth to stop the rest of the SD team from swarming me in a public building. Cops began showing up. As soon as Detective Capella had made her initial report and dealt with the traumatic injuries among the survivors, she turned on me. "Are you insane!" she screamed at yours truly. "Yes," I muttered. "I've been trying to tell you that for over an hour now." "This is not a joking matter," Lisa moved into my personal space. Was I really so far gone I didn't want sex? Nah; I could do her. "I could have killed people." "To be fair," I stood up, "you didn't kill anyone." The policeman was clinging to life, the 'diplomat' had been saved by his body armor and the second talker's prospects didn't look promising. "Horace buried two and I'm betting the guy Rachel shot isn't going to survive having both his femoral arteries cut. Two decades of Law  and  Order has taught me that some sort of Internal Affair's investigation is going to happen. I imagine there is a great deal of surveillance video so you should be vindicated quickly. We are still going to part ways for a while," I pointed out. "Take care." I made to leave. "Where do you think you are going?" Lisa grabbed my arm. "You were involved in a gunfight in a major municipal building. You can't walk away." "Yes I can," I grunted. "Horace, I've pointed you at the dead bodies," I told the Burnham investigator. "Good luck," I patted him on the shoulder. The look he came back with wasn't one of resigned defeat. Oh no, he was going to figure out what the fuck was going on, or else. The rest of the Chicago PD wasn't letting to let us leave either, so off Rachel and I were taken to the closest Precinct where we were non-communicative. (Back with the Feds) Theodora rescued me and Rachel into Federal custody where we were equally useless. It didn't take me long to figure out that, compared to Rachel, I was being downright verbose. If me being a jackass was a bonus for the Feds, they didn't exhibit an ounce of appreciation. I really loved Special Agent John Rios getting all 'super ass-kicker' on me. I was looking at 'serious' federal jail time. I was a 'domestic terrorist' and under the Patriot Act; then I fell out of my chair laughing. I was fatigued; my ability to separate desire from reality was fading plus I always fought back with my wits before my fists. "I've been awake for thirty-six hours," I chuckled as I regained my seat. "What is your excuse for being delusional?" I snorted. "I trip up cocky bastards like you all the time," John sat on the table, hovering above me. "You think you've got all the angles covered. You don't, Mr. Nyilas. People like you take things for granted, screw up and then you are all turning on each other like rats." "Ugh," I sighed. "Fine, Brainiac, what am I doing wrong? To clarify the question for you, what crime am I involved with that makes me a criminal, a terrorist, or a criminal terrorist?" "Guns, Cáel Nyilas," John sneered. "With all the people running around with all those firearms, it is pretty freaking obvious." "Wow; uh; John;” I started. <

Cáel's tombstone: For the love of women, women put him here.In 25 parts, edited from the works of FinalStand.Listen and subscribe to the ► Podcast at Connected..