Crazy Seduction(erotica)

In the molten rock could be seen three large shapes which appeared to be swimming in the lava. They each had three limbs ending with large paddle-like appendages. They rose to the surface, then plunged deep only to surface again. Each time they did, the lava would heave.

“This beats the shit out of a light show!” he muttered, and Freyja burst into nervous giggles.

Magnús moved the drone closer, and the three slowed their movements, sinking into the molten rock until only their heads were poking out. They could see the hair-like tendrils on their heads twitching.

He glanced at the sensor feed from the drone, and he could see he had less than twenty seconds to get the drone out of that heat. When he looked back at the screen, he saw the closest creature rise slightly, and something told him to move. He pulled the controls back and to the side abruptly as a jet of molten rock shot by. He pushed the controls and flew the drone past the creatures once more, rolling the flying camera in a loop to evade another jet. He was using an evasive pattern to get the drone back over the lip when it went into an uncontrolled spin. It landed, bounced once, and stopped, luckily with its props pointing skyward. He sent a query to it, and it responded back with a low battery alert. All four props were still functional, so he sent it the command to return home on the quickest route.

When the drone got close enough to see detail, they could see the landing pads were badly melted, and the heat shielding was bent and dangling on one side.

Freyja observed Magnús carefully removing the damaged heat shield with pliers as the metal plate still had some melted rock clinging to it. When she looked back to her laptop, she shrieked as the readings were quickly climbing, indicating an imminent eruption. She threw the computer into her backpack as Magnús stopped the recorder and put it into his pack as they both began to run.

The ground rumbled under them, and they ran faster. The caldera roared, the ground heaved, and a plume of fire and rock was ejected upwards as they ran for their lives.

As they approached base camp, they could see the others scrambling into the back of the truck, which was already beginning to move, the driver losing his nerve.

“WAIT!” Magnús yelled, waving his arms, and Pavel glanced back with a look of terror on his face. He scrambled into the back of the truck and screamed something as he flailed his arms. The engine revved with a cough of black smoke, and the vehicle jolted forward to roll toward the road.

A boulder ejected from the caldera, roughly half the fleeing truck’s size, but many times its mass landed on it from above. Magnús and Freyja were thrown to the ground by the impact. He scrambled to his feet, staring at what had once been a truck filled with people, and gave himself a shake. There was no time. He pulled his stunned wife towards the camp where a beat-up old jeep was parked next to the tents. He shoved Freyja into the passenger seat and jumped behind the wheel. They were on the road in seconds, and he put his foot down as the road had long, straight sections. The problem was, it snaked back and forth down the side of the mountain while the eruption went straight down. Once he saw his chance, he put the nose of the jeep over the side and drove straight down the mountainside, working the breaks hard. Freyja screamed as the jeep was always seconds away from crashing, but somehow Magnús kept the jeep’s wheels on the ground.

More boulders fell from the sky, and he had to brake hard and veer wide to avoid the damage, but he kept up the speed as much as he could. He crossed the serpentine road several times, and on one occasion, he floored the jeep through a patch of shrubs to get to the road beyond.

Finally, he was forced to head straight across pasture land, crashing through fencing and down farm lanes, until he reached an actual road. He wasted no time but put his foot down and drove like a man possessed amongst the other drivers, all trying to do the same. He was less concerned about his vehicle’s condition, so he was willing to drive through a gap between cars and lose paint in the process. No one was willing to stop to argue with fiery death breathing down their necks.

Magnús wasn’t proud of what he did to get himself and Freyja clear of the blast, and truthfully, he wasn’t even sure how he managed it during those initial minutes. As he stood on the side of a road, miles away from the horrifying devastation unleashed by the mountain, he thought of the looks on the faces of Freyja’s colleagues in the back of that ill-fated truck. He saw their terror and their guilt, but they weren’t going to wait for the two of them.

Strangely, if they’d waited, they would have avoided the boulder, but they couldn’t have moved fast enough to get away in time. Magnús and Freyja would be dead as well.

Dead before they could tell the world of the creatures they’d seen in the caldera. Perhaps the cause for the rapid escalation of the eruption. They had proof. They just needed to upload it.

They held each other tight as they watched the distant city burn.

Lise-Anne Hoek, Minister of Security for the Hidden Races Council, was ready to call it a day, and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.

The reports she’d been getting this morning left her at her wit’s end. Sightings of odd behaving rainbows followed by stories of horrifying creatures were coming in a steady stream.

A farmer in Montana had most of his herd of cattle decimated by one of those ribbon creatures before the man managed to blow it out of the sky with his hunting rifle.

A steel mill in Pittsburgh was severely damaged when something alive in the molten metal attacked the workers. The local firemen were being called heroes for thwarting an invasion of lava monsters.

Most damning of all was a report from Columbia where the two surviving members of a team of volcanologists posted actual video of these lava creatures in a caldera moments before the mountain erupted. Their survival story was flooding the Internet as it was sensational, compelling, and combined with additional video of their desperate escape, impossible to deny. She’d have her team begin their effort to debunk the creature in the lava aspect, but in her heart, she knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Lise-Anne had no agents in Columbia available to silence these well-respected experts in their field. Truthfully, it was too late.

Things were going to shit.Belonging to NôvelDrama.Org.

She’d convinced herself that if they contained Mr. Gable, these events would stop, but as last night proved, it just got worse.

She contemplated sending an order to terminate him, but wiping out the Fae at the same time was a little extreme.

Her desk phone buzzed from her personal assistant.

She slapped the button. “I said I wasn’t to be disturbed!”

The voice was hesitant but firm. “Yes, Ms. Hoek, but Ms. Chandra is here and indicated she knows the true source of the events being triggered.”

Lise-Anne paused. Ms. Chandra had to be Mahati, the one working with Mr. Gable. Anything she said would be biased. Still, she was a Chandra, and sparing her a few minutes could avoid difficulties with her family.

“Send her in.”

The door opened, and Mahati stepped inside the office and closed the door behind her. She took the chair Lise-Anne gestured to and smiled politely. Lise-Anne did her best to suppress her scowl as the young woman looked too well-rested while she felt like death warmed over.

“Good morning,” Mahati began.

“I’m not sure I can agree,” Lise-Anne replied sourly and received a nod for it.

“I’m here representing my client, Henry Gable, and his employers, VRL,” the lawyer began.

Lise-Anne just held the younger woman’s gaze, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“You’re holding Mr. Gable against his will, against Baba Yaga’s direct command, and endangering the Fae,” the lawyer asserted calmly.

“You have evidence to back up this claim?” Lise-Anne said coldly.

“I do.” She opened her briefcase and slid a photo across the desk. On it was a clear image of the Minister’s assassin.

“Minkah Kamilah Nassor Meskhenet. Bastet assassin on contract with the Hidden Races Council. Currently on special assignment in New York City. Witnessed on more than one occasion in contact with Henry Gable in her feline form and once in her Human guise. Last night Henry Gable was being abducted by parties working for Carl de Bellisle when they were executed by a highly-skilled assassin. The odds of two professional assassins of the Bastet’s skill level being in proximity to Henry are astronomical. Once these would-be abductors were killed, Henry was taken.”

“All this proves is that there is a serious leak in my department which I will address,” Lise-Anne said grimly.

Mahati smiled. “I believe you are going to be too busy in the next little while to be focusing on housecleaning.”

Lise-Anne’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the Nāga suspiciously.

“You weren’t the first or most senior member of the Hidden Races Council I spoke to about this. Chancellor Mugawee was not pleased to be informed that the actions of his Minister of Security would be drawing the attention of every significant security agency in this country,” Mahati said with a single raised eyebrow.

Lise-Anne froze then scowled. “What are you talking about?” she snapped.

Mahati’s expression hardened. “If you are going to run the most important security agency on this planet and make life and death decisions for the citizens you are tasked to protect, it would be the responsible thing to do to have a complete picture of their interconnections with the world around them before you take steps that might cause a decrease in our security. This means researching more than the widening social circle Henry is developing.”

She shot the Minister a look of scorn then continued. “Henry Gable is a brilliant software developer. Potentially the most brilliant to date. This has drawn the attention of the Director of Homeland Security, Stephen Dawes, the Director of the NSA, Wallace Granger, the Director of the FBI, Charles Starkley, and the Director of the CIA, Maurice Hall. All are attempting to woo him away from VRL for his security application development. They consider him a critical asset of the US Government who must not fall into the hands of America’s enemies. And you’ve just imprisoned him.”