Koharu grinned and looked at Amabie with satisfaction.

  “My point remains,” Amabie said. “Also, ever considered plucking down there?”

  I blinked, shook my head, and said, “Let’s try the passage, and never mention that idea again.”

  18

  With Amabie’s recent plucking comment in mind, I opted for not being the first through the secret passage in the walls. On the other hand, it was darker in there, so even as I crawled behind Milrae and could see her tail waving around in front of my face, the sight of her ass and pussy weren’t very clear. The smell was strong, however, with me that close, and that turned me on all over again. Damn hormones. Maybe if I’d been a jock and fucked it out of my system in my younger years, I wouldn’t have been like this? Nah, I probably still would’ve been.

  To be clear, she smelled great. Something about the smell of her pussy brought me back to our fun times, but then I’d remember how we all shared each other in bed, and felt anxiety taking over. What if we didn’t find Kinara or Jalee, or worse, we were too late?

  “Left,” I said when the group stopped.

  “You’ll want to see this,” Void responded and motioned me up with her glowing skull staff. I worked my way around the others, with plenty of body and armor rubbing, then came to a point where she was looking through a crack in the wall. To my surprise, Basty was there watching as well. He crawled up my arm and took his place on my shoulder.

  We were above a group of hunters in their robes, just like the ones we’d seen earlier in the room. At the front of the room on a raised platform was a seat with several others beyond it, control panels, and a curved window, or display screen. Holy shit, this was the flight deck Oddly, it wasn’t so different than what I imagined an Earth ship might look like. One of the hunters held something that glinted gold, but I couldn’t get a good look. Another motioned the others back, activating some sort of holographic display as she spoke.

  “Soon we’ll be strong enough, brothers and sisters. When we open the worlds, our families will praise us, for we have found the secret to eternal life.”

  Cheers rose and I sat back, not sure I wanted to hear the rest. I knew instantly what sort of fountain of youth bullshit they were spouting off. Kinara had told me enough times—all they had to do was feast on her and her kin.

  It was fucking sick.

  A glance over showed that the horizontal form was there, in the room that would be behind the bridge. We were so close, I started for it.

  “They’re doing something,” Void said, but I wasn’t listening. All I cared about was finding our other teammates.

  “Suiko,” Koharu said, and she gasped. “They’re somehow harnessing her power.”

  I turned back, then, feeling rage take over. Inexplicably, that mask was back on my face, Akame’s voice in my ear telling me to tear shit up. But there was enough of me left to fight it, somewhat. I was all about fucking shit up, but first reaching that other room. Like pushing against a wave, I forced myself through the darkness, pulling it along with me. Akame’s body became one with mine, and we were sprinting through that narrow corridor, ignoring the gasps, and a hiss for me to stop from the others. I burst through the wall into the room behind the flight deck, exploding as a cloud of darkness into a banquet hall, where lizard men and women servants fled to get out of my way. I took form at the head table, where Kinara lay unconscious. She was alive and breathing, but they had clearly drugged her.

  Amabie and Devasla were next to join me, then Koharu and Void, and the doors behind us opened as Lizzy was halfway down.

  I paid them no heed, only worried about Kinara first. Once she was saved, I’d go save Suiko. Shots rang out, shrieking sounds from the hunters, but they did no damage against me in that form. I stepped forward, Akame moving with me, growling as she absorbed the pain in my stead.

  “Is she worth all of this?” Akame asked as I picked up Kinara and turned to face her.

  “This and infinitely more.”

  Behind her, I could see Devasla and Void were hitting the enemy with projectiles, while Koharu and Amabie went at them with hand to hand. Lizzy had gone partial shadow the moment I activated Akame, and she had one hunter in the air, feasting on him almost as a Dementor from Harry Potter would. That freaked me out slightly, but not enough to abandon my mission. I needed Kinara to be safe and knew of only one way in that moment. Maneuvering Kinara so I could reach, I took the sun disk halves from my satchel.

  “Kill them all,” I said, then activated the sun disk portal and stepped through.

  I emerged from the portal into the living room of the mansion, where Arturo sat laughing with Greg over plates of pancakes, mimosas nearby. They turned my way, eyes wide, and Greg shouted, “Yuki!”

  She came out from the hall nearby, saw me holding Kinara with darkness streaming out around me, and ran over.

  “Get her awake, then use her healing ability,” I commanded.

  “Is everyone…?”

  “I’m taking care of it,” I replied, then stepped back into the portal.

  As soon as I was back, I saw why it wasn’t such a great idea to travel back and forth too often. My position had shifted in the short amount of time I’d been gone, so that when I came through, I was half stuck in a rock wall, looking through windows of the ship to see the fighting within.

  Devasla was a force to be reckoned with, plowing through the enemy with punches that left steaming holes in their bodies. The others had formed a semi-circle around the point where I’d vanished, clearly expecting me to come back to that spot. In the next room over, I saw a hunter running off with the robotic ball that had trapped Suiko. My team wasn’t going to reach her in time, so it was up to me.

  Since our arrival was no longer hidden, I shouted, “I’m going after Suiko,” in hopes of them hearing me, then embraced the power of the mask to break free from my stone prison. Akame was there again, stumbling forward, and I flew out to merge with her. We were so much one that, as I ran, I felt my chest bouncing—like her tits were mine! A strange sensation, but one that came with an even crazier realization. If I kept letting her out like this, she might take over me completely.

  “Let it be,” Akame said, reading my mind. “You need me!”

  “Not as much as I need me,” I countered, but used her power again, not sure how I’d be able to possibly reach Suiko without her.

  A flash of darkness sent me back inside, overtaking the fleeing hunter and knocking Suiko’s prison free so the white ball hit the floor and exploded. Suiko emerged, a ghost enraged.

  More hunters and servants stood behind us, and she tore through them, claws emerging and a scream sounding that caused ears to explode. I finished absorbing the hunter beneath me and felt Akame taking more control. Going to my knees as I tried to fight it, I watched Suiko exact her vengeance, an animal off her leash. This wasn’t the ghostly woman I’d come to know, not by a longshot.

  And if I could look at myself at that moment, I was far from being the man she knew.

  “It feels good to be back in the flesh,” Akame said, running her hands along our body, armor falling off and clattering to the floor. As the chaos and bloodshed continued around us, her hands found our groin and she was at once fingering herself and stroking my cock—or maybe I was? “This can be better if you just give yourself over to me. Imagine, a life of pleasure, you simply sitting back and letting me bring the world to its knees. This one, yours… others? All of it can be ours, and…” She moaned, and I understood why—the pleasure that ran through our shared bodies was intense, threatening to overtake any last bits of cognitive power I could muster.

  But I found I could resist. Maybe it was that all my recent sexual escapades had finally brought me to the point that I could overcome sexual pleasure with mental power. Or maybe I simply needed my team and knew they needed me. Whatever the reason, I cut her off mid-scream, stopping it, and cast her out.

  The resulting blue balls was nearly crippling, sending me to the floor as I let out a groan of pain. She was there in front of me, panting, eyes narrowed in hatred.

  “Give yourself to me,” she growled. “With me, your life will be perfection.”

  “Without you, it already is,” I countered, then yanked the mask from my face again. Even as I threw it against the wall and watched it shatter, I knew it had reappeared in my bag again, and she had returned to a section in the back of my mind, ready to come out when I needed her.

  That was fine, as long as she didn’t take control now.

  I pushed myself up and saw Suiko floating in a pool of black and purple blood, corpses all around her. She stood there, staring at me. Those black eyes were unnerving, even more so when she started floating toward me, long claws extending as if I were next on her menu.

  “Remember,” I said to her, and reached out mentally. This time, instead of her bringing me to a memory, it was my time to extend the gift her way.

  We were together, the first time we’d been intimate. I held her close, caressing her cheek, and said, “We can beat this, together.”

  I left the bounds of the memory, kissing her and focusing on our minds. We needed each other.

  “Thank you,” she replied, and the memory shattered, leaving her to collide with me in the ship. Those claws were gone; it was simply an embrace. She buried her face in my chest, and Basty extended to hold us both in his own sort of embrace.

  When the others entered, Devasla blasting a section of the wall out of her way, they froze at the sight. I could only imagine what it must have looked like.

  “She’s safe?” Milrae asked.

  I nodded.

  “Chirop?” Suiko asked.

  “Yes, I left her with Yuki.”

  “That was… dangerous.”

  “What are we doing that isn’t?” I glanced around, about damn sick of this ship and the hunters, then spotted the spirit image of Randi. To my surprise, she was in the next room over.

  19

  “Follow me,” I said, and pulled Suiko into my chest as I ran. The others came without question, and we all went charging into what had to be the armory. It was a tall room, one half of the floor extending to accommodate the massive trappers lined up there. Closer, all manner of armor and weapons were arrayed along the walls, and there was Randi, a massive rifle in her arms aimed point-blank at a male hunter.

  Randi’s eyes darted over to us, and she gave me a subtle shake of her head before pulling the trigger. Hunter brains and pieces of skull went flying, the man dropping at her feet.

  Still, she fired, again and again, until the rifle was out of ammo and the hunter was nothing but a bloody pulp.

  We stood in silence, while she let the rifle fall with a clang to the floor.

  “No…” a voice cried, and we turned to see that main hunter lady, Galeva, standing at the doorway on the far side of the room. She took a step toward us, removed her three-striped helmet, then hesitated. To my surprise, she wasn’t quite as disgusting as the other hunters. She almost had a womanly look to her, as if she was possibly half-hunter, half-something else. The main difference between her and normal women were the three sets of eyes arrayed one above the other and the ridged bones along her forehead. All three pairs of eyes filled with fury, and she bowed her head. “They will pay for this, Grandfather. Even if not today.”

  With that, the woman turned on her heels and vanished into the darkness of that doorway. The door slammed shut behind her, enforced by a blue energy field that came to life.

  Trappers started to move, activating.

  “Do we go after her?” I asked, feeling intense exhaustion coming over me.

  Randi looked at us, then the bloody pulp on the floor. “Me, I say we go home. My sister can be dealt with another day.”

  Sister? Of course, if this hunter was her father, and the grandfather of the hunter lady, that would make them at least half-sisters.

  “We can’t go yet,” I said. “We’re still missing Thunderbird.”

  Randi shook her head, and said, “You’re not. She’s… gone.”

  “Gone?” I asked, heart clenching.

  “Her sister came for her, took her—I saw them outside of this place. From the trappers. But that was a while ago. If you want to find her, you’re going to have to make a separate trip.”

  I shook my head, trying to come to grips with that idea. Jalee was with her sister, and nowhere near our current location. With a push, I used Akame to force myself into Randi’s mind to find out if she was lying. The Lamia cursed, thrashed about, then collapsed at my feet, staring up at me with hatred.

  What she said was true—I could feel it. I even got a sense of which direction they’d gone, and where the Lamia had seen them when they took off.

  “Go back, then,” I said. “Those of you who need to rest, recover. I’m going after her.”

  “And if she doesn’t want to be followed?” Randi asked.

  “I don’t believe or accept that.”

  With a glance around, seeing the trappers coming to and turning our way, I said, “Hurry.”

  “There were others,” Randi said, and she nodded to a section of the room that wasn’t visible from where we stood. I frowned, ran over, and saw what she meant.

  Cages of monsters. Men and women. They were in various states of wounded, many turning to us with hope in their eyes.

  “We leave them here, they die,” Milrae said. Glancing back at the trappers, she added, “We simply let them free, they end up captured again, then likely die.”

  I stood there, staring, trying to comprehend what she was saying. “You want me to rescue them?”

  Milrae nodded.

  The others stared at me, waiting. But the first of the trappers was up now, turning to face our way. It was time to move.

  “Bring ’em,” I said. “We can sort it out back home.” As they went to break open the cages, I pointed at the trapper nearby and said, “And someone find a way to blow the shit out of those!”

  “I’m on it,” Devasla said, all smiles, and ran over to the ledge near them, ducking under a sweeping attack by the one facing us. What followed from her as I connected the sun disk and opened the portal was nothing less than amazing.

  One second she was standing there looking all sexy, the next she was glowing too bright for me to even look at. Then she was gone! A rumbling sounded and the ground shook, starting to give out around the ship, as we could see through the windows. Bursts of lava shot through the bottom of the vessel, and it tilted, floor giving out beneath the trappers where they stood. Many fell away into the glowing opening below, more lava shooting up and threatening to end us all. Suiko was there forming a barrier, and Void joined her to protect us.

  Meanwhile, Milrae had managed to get the bars open, and Koharu and Lizzy were ushering the monsters to the portal, Randi taking up the rear. As she passed me, she shouted, “That’s all of them,” and went through.

  I shouted for the others to go but wasn’t about to leave Devasla behind. Maybe I could go through and summon her again as I’d done before, but I wasn’t willing to take the chance. That, and I wasn’t sure it would work, since I’d tried before with no luck. When it was only me, Basty and Suiko, scooting toward the portal and watching the ship start to slide, I knew I had no choice. To my relief, Suiko shouted, “She’s coming!” then shot out to the edge, reached, and came back with a very dark, as if burnt to a crisp, version of Devasla.

  “Get her to me,” I shouted, and took hold of her, though doing so sent pain through my body and smoke up from my hands. Together the three of us went through the portal and let it close behind us.

  This time we came out in the air above a tree, just outside of the walls. We went tumbling and I hit a branch on the way down before slamming into the ground. I lay there with my hands scorched, black with lines of red. The pain was almost unbearable. My mouth opened to scream, but I pushed it back, grunted, and went to my knees, trying to push myself up.

  Devasla was doing the same, trembling with each move. She met my gaze and asked, “Did I do good?”

  I gritted my teeth, trying to build up the energy to reply. It was Basty who did, however, plopping down and saying, “Real good,” before running over and leaning his head on her shoulder.

  She laughed. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve seen worse, but it’ll take me time to recover.” She tried to stand but collapsed. “Fuck. Maybe a lot of time.”

  “Ferris,” a voice said, and I looked up to see Randi. She had the others behind her, including the monsters. Lowering herself to me, she took the sun disk. I started to protest, but she put it back in my satchel, then gave it to me. “You were amazing. Let me…”

  She heaved me up, arm around her shoulders, and said, “Get the other one, you all. This man and his team just saved your lives and made a good step toward saving your world.”

  I didn’t know what to say as I stumbled past them, watching the rescued monsters bow their heads to me in respect. There had to be at least a dozen there, men and women, ranging from straight-up demonic-looking to others with animal parts like spiders or even one that resembled a unicorn. Of course, they were nude, but probably for the first time, it didn’t strike me as odd at all—I didn’t even look. I simply noticed out of the corner of my vision.

  We made it to the house, where the others were waiting. Kinara came running to meet me, sobbing in my arms, then quickly licking at my hands.

  “It can wait,” I said. “How…?”

  “She’s recovering,” Kinara replied, clearly getting that I was asking about Ahlaksiz.

  Bloodsong stood in the doorway behind her and nodded. “Sleeping right now, but she’ll be fine.”

  Kinara strained her neck, done licking, and said, “So many new ones, but one missing.”

  “J—I mean, Thunderbird, yes.”

  Kinara’s face contorted into despair.

  I held her close, hoping my hands would heal sooner than later. This sucked. All of it sucked.

  “We have to go back for her,” I said.