Jenny Plague-Bringer

Chapter Thirty-Four



Tommy looked over the two rows of eight soldiers each, more of the kids just out of basic training, standing ramrod-straight in their fatigues, their faces blank. Their last order had been to stand at attention, and then the officers and scientists had all left the room, sealing them in with Tommy.

“So, what are you guys afraid of?” Tommy asked. None of them replied, and he smirked. “Going to war? Getting your arm or your head blown off, maybe? What about your families back home? Your parents? Do you worry about horrible things happening to them? Nobody’s talking.”

“They won’t reply unless ordered to,” Ward said over the speaker. He watched from the window above, not bothering to dim the lights to make the window look black and empty.

“That’s no fun,” Tommy said. “Let’s liven things up. Ready?”

“Go ahead, Tommy,” Ward instructed.

Tommy took a deep breath, remembering what he’d done in Charleston the night he’d caused the riot. His power had been charged up by contact with his opposite, Ashleigh, but she’d been dead for quite awhile now. He didn’t exactly miss her, though he’d learned a lot from her.

The fear wouldn’t be as strong today, without Ashleigh around, but he only had sixteen people to panic this time, not hundreds or thousands. He’d had an extra-large breakfast to prepare for this, and he knew he’d be starving again afterward.

Tommy summoned the fear, a chaotic blood-red energy that teemed with incoherent voices, whispers and screams that brought flickers of his childhood and his abuse at the hands of Mr. Tanner. He imagined himself charging up like a battery, until the fear was like a thrashing hurricane inside him.

He exhaled, and a storm of bloody droplets blew out of him, raining down on the soldiers and absorbing into their skin. They flinched but remained at attention. He smiled and crossed his arms, waiting.

It didn’t take long. First a couple of them began to shudder, and then one screamed, and then hell broke loose. The soldiers scattered, some of them hiding under tables and chairs, some tucking themselves into corners, three of them falling to the floor and curling up right in the center of the lab. They were crying, howling, shrieking, swatting and kicking at invisible attackers that existed only in their minds, babbling mindlessly at scenes of unknown horror visible only to them.

Tommy looked up at the window and grinned. In a few seconds, he’d turned the lab into the rec room at a state mental hospital, soldiers howling and hiding, a couple of them fighting each other. In the window, Ward beamed, while the officer who’d brought in the young soldiers was livid to see how quickly Tommy had scattered them.

“I’d say the enemy ranks are broken, sir,” Tommy said to him. “Who’s up for a couple of beers?”

The other officer stalked away, while Ward nodded and gave Tommy a thumbs-up.

After the test, a guard escorted Tommy back to his dorm area, standard procedure for all paranormals.

Tommy hadn’t told anyone, but each time he used his power in the lab, it kicked up the sick, disoriented feeling that this entire place evoked in him, sometimes making him see ghosts or hallucinations. He locked himself in his room and opened a can of Warsteiner. He guzzled the warm beer, hoping it might settle his stomach.

He heard the creaking sound of his door opening behind him. He turned to see Ashleigh there, dressed in a long black skirt and jacket, with a black tie and a crisp white shirt. His room had shifted to a drab olive color, too. It was his recurring dream, the bizarre one where he wore a swastika and answered to the name Niklaus. The hallucinations were back. Fortunately, he held a beer in the dream, too, though the can had a much plainer label and was the kind that had to be punctured with a bottle opener. He took a drink as Ashleigh’s gray eyes looked him over. Her name was Alise, but she had Ashleigh’s eyes, Ashleigh’s golden hair, Ashleigh’s large breasts...

Alise closed the door as she entered the room.

“What do you want me to do now?” Niklaus asked.

“Must I only come to talk about work and give you instructions?” She stood very close to him. She took the beer from his hand and drank, her eyes never leaving his. “Can I not simply visit my own beloved cousin?”

“Your visits usually involve giving many instructions.” He took the beer back from her. “It’s been that way since we were kids.”

Alise laughed. She draped her hands loosely on his shoulders, gazing up at him. “You’ve always been there for me.”

“Whether I wanted to be or not,” he said, and she laughed again. Niklaus, because of his own power, was somehow immune to Alise’s enchanting touch. She’d learned this early in life, and always worked to control him in other ways. He found her intimidating. He had other, even more shameful feelings about his older cousin, which he tried to keep secret, but which she occasionally seemed to encourage. Even now, she was caressing his cheek and looking up at him, with something almost like vulnerability in her eyes.

“I would be alone in the world without you,” Alise whispered. She rose up on her toes and kissed him, soft and slow, on the lips. She had pecked him there once or twice in his life, playfully, just enough to fuel his own guilty adolescent fantasies. This was different. Her mouth lingered on his and her hand pressed against his heart, hidden beneath his black uniform.

The kiss summoned every kind of feeling—desire, revulsion, self-loathing. He couldn’t imagine what his family would think if they knew. He also couldn’t resist from grabbing her and pulling her close.

“We must stop,” he whispered, breaking their kiss.

“Why?” She looked up at him innocently. “Have you never imagined this, Niklaus? When we swam at the pond on my father’s estate, did you never once look at me? Or the time you watched me in the bath...did you think I didn’t know?”

“That was long ago.”

“Not so long.” She kissed him again, then took off her black jacket. “We shouldn’t fight our feelings any longer, Niklaus. Life is far too short not to indulge ourselves.” She unbuttoned her long skirt and slid it to the ground. She wore scarlet panties underneath, more suitable to a prostitute than a young German noblewoman.

“We can’t.” His voice was hoarse.

“We can do anything we like. Don’t tell me you want me to stop.” She opened his pants and brought him out, massaging him as he grew long and stiff in her fingers. She giggled. “Oh, Niklaus, it’s so much bigger than last time I peeked at it.”

“Stop,” he whispered, torn by his desire for the forbidden.

“No.” She pushed him until he sat down on the bed, then sank to her knees on the floor. She brushed the head of his cock with her lips, then sucked him lightly, teasing him.

“Please.” He squirmed on the bed. “We can’t...”

“We must.” She stood up, wearing no underwear at all now, her triangle of dark golden curls only inches from his face. He licked his lips as she loosened her tie and tugged it to one side, then slowly unbuttoned her shirt, revealing her full breasts, held up by a matching scarlet brassiere. The idea that she had dressed this way before coming to see him, her mind already made up, only increased his appetite for her.

“You can touch it.” Alise took his hand and lay it between her legs. He touched her in awe, then tried to put a finger inside her, but she was far too dry. She moved his fingertip higher and stroked it back and forth. “Here. This way.”

He kept rubbing her, and he felt like he was watching from a distance, unable to believe his darkest fantasy was unfolding around him. She pushed his finger back and forth until she was trembling and damp, then she slapped his hand aside and slung a leg over him, straddling his lap.

“We should be careful,” he whispered.

“Careful is for the old.”

Niklaus thought he might die of pleasure when she took him in her hand again, then slipped him inside her. She grunted as she worked her way down his length, rocking her hips back and forth, which nearly drove him out of his mind.

“Our family...you don’t want to get...pregnant...” he gasped.

She shoved him back on the bed, pinning his hands above his head. “Why not? It would be pure noble blood, pure German blood, with both our powers...” She ground herself against his pelvic bone while her face flushed and her eyes closed. “...would be a super-Aryan...a god...a new Fuehrer for the future Reich...” She rode him faster, gritting her teeth, and she shouted at him to hurry up and finish.