“There’s our intruder,” Rowle said as he pointed a finger toward the distant tree line. I looked to where he pointed.
“Where? I don’t see anyone,” I said.
“Let me point him out to you,” Rowle said.
Rather than using a tat, he spoke a brief spell while weaving the fingers of his right hand in a complicated pattern. I felt the snap of energy as his spell completed and I noticed the trees were beginning to sway. A second later, I felt the ground vibrating as the trees began to fall toward a single spot. With enormous popping sounds like we were in a frying pan of popcorn, the tall pines fell, but were stopped by a shield.
Rowle raised an arm and it glowed black. The felled trees began to morph, changing, becoming something strange that flowed and writhed against the landscape. I was still trying to make out what Rowle had done when there was a bright blue flash and the blackness disappeared.
“Well,” Rowle said as he rubbed at a spot on his chest. “That was unexpected.”
“What happened?”
“They countered my night magic spell, but apparently had seen whatever they wanted to see and disappeared through a portal.”
“They ran away?” I asked.
Rowle shook his head. “No, it’s strange, but I didn’t get the feeling they were leaving in fear. They’d countered one of my deadliest spells and just left. Strange indeed.”
“Are we going after them?”
“A fair question, Apprentice, but not today. Let’s get back to your training.”
I sighed and resigned myself.
Chapter 34
raphael
Three hours later, after a lot of fajitas, we were cruising through the mountains southeast of Chattanooga. Cris had found us a mountain cabin on five acres outside Blue Ridge, Georgia. Apparently, the town was a hot tourist destination during the summer months, but in April we were between the holiday season and the vacation season so vacant cabins were easy to find.
We drove through the middle of the small town, past a working locomotive that was a big draw for the summer crowd. There was still an hour before we could meet the real estate agent at the cabin. We stopped for ice cream at a little shop across the street from the train and walked down the streets, window-shopping while eating our cones.
The girls and I chatted aimlessly, while I was as nervous as a teenage boy on his first date. Anticipation of the intense concentration and pain involved in burning as many tats as I had lost was weighing on me. At the same time, here I was, surrounded by two beautiful women who both enjoyed sharing my bed and tonight were ready to share it again, but together. It was a man’s fantasy and while I had shared my bed with two women at once a few times over the decades, it’d never been for anything more than the pleasure inherent in the act. This was going to be different.
We stopped in the shade of a canopy and watched the limited number of tourists visiting on this warm April day. Back in Colorado, we’d be lucky not to have it snowing, but here it was in the upper seventies and the hot sun caused our ice cream to melt faster than we could lick it off the cones.
Cris had ice cream sliding down the back of her fingers and I reached for her hand, intending to lick the cream off her fingers. Tess beat me to it. As Cris switched her cone to her other hand, Tess took the messy hand and raised it to her lips. While I watched, in growing arousal, Tess proceeded to insert each of Cris’s fingers fully into her mouth and suck the ice cream from them. By the time she’d done three fingers, Cris had a wanton smile on her face and my pants were a lot tighter behind the fly.
Tess finished the last finger and then leaned forward to kiss Cris hungrily.
Oh, hell, these women were going to kill me.
Their kiss broke and Tess turned to me. “Looks like someone else needs their fingers cleaned.”
“Allow me,” Cris said.
Before I could respond, Tess lifted the ice cream cone from my hand as Cris took the same hand and gently inserted each finger all the way into her mouth before sucking each digit clean.
I groaned through the cleaning.
Cris finished, licked her lips once, and gave me a wicked smile. “Yum, rocky road.”
“My God, you two will be the death of me,” I said.
“But what a way to go,” Cris answered.
She gave me a quick peck on the lips and then closed her right hand on my left bicep. I turned to see Tess shoving the last of my ice cream cone into her mouth. She glanced at her fingers and then frowned. “How come I’m the only one who was neat?”
I held out my right arm and she took it. As we started back toward where we’d parked our familiars, I said, “I’m sure we can fix that later.”
Tess smiled coyly and rested her head on my shoulder as we walked. We passed a couple of boutiques and the ladies started window-shopping. I stood with them, agreeing on things that looked much too feminine for a Wanderer, even a female Wanderer, but on the rare occasions that Tess and I did a “date night” at a restaurant, she did like to dress like a real lady. She’d even roped me into a tie and a dinner jacket a few times. It all went back to having someplace where we could store things like spare clothes. If we hadn’t had Joe’s cabin, we’d never would have had room to carry all the clothes Tess had insisted we buy.
“Do we have time for me to buy a few things?” Cris asked, snapping me
