How To Tame Your Tikbalang Ch 12

Tala's eyes snapped open with a suddenness that stunned her and she jolted bolt upright in Buhawi's arms.

Shit! I forgot to untie Buhawi.

She scrambled off the bed to find her bag and extract the keen little folding knife that was her everyday carry (living in Sin City meant going about armed, after all).

She walked back to the sleeping Tikbalang and gently lifted each extremity so she could slice the abaca rope off with a clean swipe of the nifty black Sypderco's blade. By the time she'd gotten to the last bindings on his left ankle, Buhawi roused and eyed her with a sleepy little smile pushing up one corner of his full lips.

"Hey, goodess mine," his voice slurred a bit over the 'goddess' part of that sentence as he rolled over on his belly. "My back's sore like you wouldn't believe."

The pleasure gems were sitting on the bed and Tala picked them up, putting them in a bowl on the bedside table that she'd filled with some of the water from the beautiful bathing pool as Buhawi spoke before turning to him. She picked up the sex-vine thing and popped it into the bowl, too and set the smoke and lightning thingamajigabob on the table beside the bowl.

Tala smiled back at her lover.

My lover? Where did that thought come from? Well, maybe my fucker? Fuckee? Shit.

Her confusion was not visible in the lines of her face, but it made for some interesting storms in her eyes and Buhawi saw that much more quickly than he wanted to.

"What's between the ears, my lovely witch?" Buhawi worked to keep the question cool, casual, even. But the worry knit his brow as he propped himself up on his elbows.

"Nothing." Tala's response was loaded with a lot of somethings, but damned if she'd admit it now. She rummaged in Buhawi's duffle bag by the bed, as much to keep her face from view as to find something, anything that would salve the wounds she'd inflicted on his tough Tikbalang hide. "Do you have anything here even remotely resembling an anti-bacterial cream or hydrogen peroxide or iodine? Bandages? First aid kit?"

"Is that all you're worried about, my love? You seem to be all pink and flustered," Buhawi said evenly. "I love how you go into a full body flush when you are embarrassed, or horny, or..." he let that sentence drift off tantalizingly, knowing full well Tala hated hanging sentences.

Tala popped her head up over the mattress and glared at Buahwi. "Well, go on, finish the statement. And don't think I didn't catch the L-word you inserted oh so casually."

"The L-word? Since when can a communicator like you not be able to say the word 'love,' sweetness? C'mon, you can say it. Just one and a half syllables, 'love.' C'mon." Buhawi was back to teasing Tala, knowing full well he had her exactly where he wanted her: Over a damned barrel.

"Look, I'm worried about the whole 'tattoo your name in Baybayin with a fresh streak of lightning' thing, okay?" Tala's temper exploded with each syllable she bit off. "I don't know if I did that right and I'll be damned all to the world below if I have to do that again because, as kinky-hot as whipping the crap out of you was, I can't bring myself to look at what I did to you. I'm not a sadist and I will not repeat that."

"Come to the bed, darling woman," Buhawi said, cocking up a knee and displaying his mouthwatering eight-pack and obliques to best effect (not to mention the other parts that made Tala's heart go all pitter-pat in a happily quick syncopation). "I told you that if you make me bleed, my body will make more blood. And don't worry about the cuts and scratches—they're not bleeding anymore because we monsters heal really fast."

"So why the fuck are you complaining about being sore?"

"Because I want you to pamper me a bit, you silly female," Buhawi said on a laugh. "I'm appealing to your tender underbelly. To get you within arm's reach. So I can ravish your pretty little

puki

again. With my mouth. Maybe my fingers and a few toys... definitely with my

tarugo

."

Tala picked up the nearest bolster pillow and began hammering Buhawi on the head and about the shoulders with it and, forced to defend himself from the pillow assault, he yanked another pillow and parried as best he could until they both collapsed on the bed in a hailstorm of laughter.

Buhawi wrapped his arms around Tala when they could finally breathe evenly again and threaded his fingers into her sex-wild hair, turning her head to face him. "Look, you used the lightning and smoke toy as both flogger and quirt. It channels lightning straight from the sky. So does the Adarna feather because that bird is a mix of fire and lightning. So it's all good."

"This ritual is not like a recipe you can improvise on, Boo," Tala said, her anxiety back in spades. "I'm so sure I went wrong with the last part." Her eyes went luminous with unshed tears and she bit a quivering bottom lip.

"Don't cry. Please, for the love of the Old Gods, don't cry," Buhawi said, pulling Tala close to his chest so he wouldn't see her spill those treacherous tears that made him fall all to hysterical bits of useless Tikbalang meat. "If something went wrong, then tell me why the gashes on our upper arms are closed now. Because they are."

Tala brought her head back up off Buhawi's chest and peeked at the area on his arm that had been strafed by the two poisoned arrows and they were indeed healed. Then she looked at her own injury and her eyes grew even wider. "They are. But that poison is supposed to stop the healing, isn't it? Does this mean we aren't poisoned anymore?"

Shafts of pain shot through their arms as Tala posited her query, as if in reminder of the fact that they did indeed still have poison running in their blood.

"I guess not." Buhawi's sharp inhale and the darts of pain zinging in his body and hers as he spoke pushed him chest to chest with Tala. "We still need the scales. Why don't you go parley for them while I read up the preparation of our remedy? Because, while the poison won't kill us anymore, it will fucking hurt like a huge bitch ever after and make us do rash things we really shouldn't."

Tala nodded and reached for her clothes. Donning the tank top and gym shorts, she made her way to the cavern opening swiftly and with purpose to her stride.

***

When her feet stepped onto the talcum-like surface of the sandbar, Tala found Jairasiya and his consort, Siuraya, lounging against a rough boulder, kissing softly.

The

siokoy

couple slowly parted and turned their eyes to the Babaylan, smiles wreathing their faces.

This is it. If I am truly a full Babaylan, they'll give me the scales we need. They'll know

, Tala thought to herself.

Please, Bulan, let me not have done this wrong

.

Siuraya rose gracefully from the sand, her scales making little rainbow sparkles in the air like a shimmering aura of color spawned by the moonlight against the dark velvet sheen of the sky. She stretched out her arms to Tala and unfurled her palms in welcome.

"There is a change I sense in you, Babaylan," Siuraya's voice carried softly as she walked to meet Tala halfway. "Your power has grown like the sun rising to its zenith. You completed your ritual?"

"I think I did," Tala responded, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably. "But I am not sure."

"If you were able to pull the third golden hair, godling, then you completed the ritual successfully," Jairasiya said, rising behind his wife and welcoming Tala in the same way as his consort. "That hair would not have been plucked if you did not use enough lightning."

"Where's a plug socket when you need one, eh?" Tala's question was unintentionally flippant, but she was quite uncertain of what she was now and that insecurity came right out of her mouth.

"You need no plug sockets, Babaylan," Siuraya said with a serenity that made Tala want to yank on the

siokoy

's hair until her neck snapped. Tala tamped her temper down.

They aren't human, you dolt. Don't expect them to understand what makes you so afraid.

"The ritual was completed as it needed to be, with enough lightning and will, with the Tikbalang's fight and submission and your domination, reluctant as it must have been, if I read your body movements right," Jairasiya said, his observations making Tala even more uncomfortable.

Tala's hands were busy fidgeting with each other and her shifty feet had begun their own dance, as if the sand were hot and not cooled by the

Habagat

winds blowing in from the north.

Siuraya walked closer to Tala, her eyes soft with sympathy for the Babaylan. She motioned to Jairasiya, silently bidding him to come to her side. The

siokoy

flanked Tala and walked her away from the rock they'd been reclining against as they kissed, moving a safely far distance from it before turning her back around.

Jairasiya cupped Tala's face in his webbed hands and spoke to her calmly and reasonably. "If you are indeed a full Babaylan, you will be able to move that rock over there." He pointed to the boulder with his full lips and looked back at Tala. "Then, while it is moving, you can shatter it with lightning called straight from the sky. That, my dear, should prove to you that you are what you set out to become."

"Jairasiya is right, young one," Siuraya concurred. "You will have to try that and see for yourself how your power has grown. Then we can give you our scales in a fair trade. Already I quicken with new life that I will allow my mate to carry to term in a few days' time, so I know you have come into your own. Our children are already made. You need to believe in what you now are."

"Visualize it, right? Make what incantations I know?" Tala's upswept right brow underscored her queries and the

siokoy

couple nodded in syncronicity with each other.

Tala closed her eyes and envisioned the boulder rolling left, then right. She opened her eyes to see that it was, indeed, rolling as she wanted it to roll. She lifted it up to the sky, about even height with her head and the boulder levitated to the desired height.

Then the Babaylan extended her left arm to the heavens, silently calling for a lightning bolt that streaked down to hover over her open palm, frozen in the sky and subject to her will until she unleashed it by pointing her index finger at the boulder.

She let loose an incantation in Latin from the

Bestiario

, the one meant to shatter glass and wood because she couldn't call anything else to mind. She reshaped the oracion, substituting the Latin word 'lapis' for the other words underscored by Beatriz and let her trapped lightning bolt fly.

The bolt passed through Tala's body, exiting from the tip of her forefinger in a jet of white light and firing all her nerve endings. The passage of the lightning through her arms and chest made Tala hyperaware of her surroundings. The color dancing on the

siokoy

s' scales just outside the corner of her eye was so very clear, the shapes of the stars were well-defined behind the boulder and above the horizon splitting sea from sky. She could hear her own raspy breaths as if they'd been broadcast over a 7.1 surround sound system at full volume.

Time seemed to slow down to the point that she could see each individual molecule of plasma from the lightning shoot toward her target. The rock shattered into a granite firework display, its shards falling gracefully to earth as the ear-splitting cracks broke it into a round blast of gravel and sand.

"Gods of war, I did it!" Tala's cheer rang across the small isle and into the cave to Buhawi's ears and the Tikbalang smiled as he continued reading Bulan's spellbook, his finger on the recipe for

tiyanak

venom antidote.

"Yes, beautiful Babaylan, you did," Siuraya said, her chiming voice brimming with glad laughter. "We did tell you so," she said, rubbing her belly with a loving hand. "And my Jairasiya will soon grow round with our fingerlings. Well done."

Jairasiya bowed his head to his consort, then turned ot repeat the gesture as he faced Tala. "As promised, here are our scales." The

siokoy

king opened a lovely, large clam shell to show Tala a pile of beautiful, irridiscent scales. "A dozen from me and another dozen from my beloved. We also included 24 more scales gifted by our people, for you to keep, just in case."

Tala cupped the clamshell in her trembling hands and looked both

siokoy

in the eye. "Thank you so much, Jairasiya, Siuraya. I—I don't know what more to say except thank you."

"You are welcome, Babaylan." Siuraya spoke the words with a beautiful smile. "Now, go to your Prince. He needs you."

***

Tala was dancing on her way back into the cave, where Buhawi was setting out red pillar candles, black salt crystals, what looked like a large piece of kelp and feathers from a rooster's gaudy tail on the table by the tide pools.

"Scales incoming! Who's the Babaylan? Who?!" Yeah, she was pumping her fist in the air like a champ, alright.

"You the Babaylan, my witch-goddess!" Buhawi answered, not bothering to hide the jubilation in his voice. "And I love you for it. To bits. To absolute bits," the Tikbalang said unabashedly as he caught Tala up in a happy, sweep-her-off-her-feet-and-spin-her-world hug. "I am not letting you go for the rest of my life, babe." The last statement was a whisper against the cleavage between her breasts, words that made her go hot and cold all over—in both a good and a bad way.

Because she was leery about dropping the precious scales, Tala didn't brain Buhawi as was her first reaction. Instead, she stared down at him with fright lightening her eyes almost to amber, her pupils mere pinpricks in her irises' fields of old gold.

"Whoa, Nellie! Rewind and dub that over, Boo."

"Not on your life, Ta."

Tit-for-tat time

. Buhawi told himself as he teased Tala.

If she sees fit to give me an atrocious nickname, two can play at that game

.

"Seriously? We have an antidote to make and this is the worst time to lay declarations of undying love on me, buster."

"What better time is there? We're poisoned. There's a Sharespearean touch to this, us being star-crossed lovers and all, my Juliet."

"

Gago

. We're not committing suicide and we are not pre-teen kids whose families won't let us marry." Tala rolled her eyes.

Please, Bathala, give me patience right now. And please make this big lug release me

. She tried to wiggle out of Buhawi's embrace, to no avail.

"Well, there is that. But the poison part. And you have a knife. So sexy, yeah. Edge-play. Mmmmm." Buhawi wrapped a big hand around Tala's nape and pulled her in for a slow kiss that began with him coaxing her to open her mouth with his tongue and ended up with both of them breathlessly tongue wrestling and playing tonsil-hockey with gusto and vigor.

By the time he pulled away, Buhawi knew his Babaylan had acquised to his persuasion. For now. Which was just fine because they had an antidote to make.

Tala walked out of the Tikbalang's embrace on unsteady legs and set the clam shell down among the rest of the ingredients. She took a deep breath to focus her mind and steady her hands as she got down to brass tacks. "Okay, hit me with it. What do we have to do?"

"You take one of the red feathers and breathe on it. Then make me breathe on it." Tala followed the instructions Buhawi was reading from Bulan's book. "Then you put the feather on the seaweed sheet."

They went through the motions until all the enchantments and antidote ingredients were assembled and wrapped in the seaweed and the red candles lit from the lightning Tala was getting so much better at calling and aiming.

"Now, bind the package with your power, Babaylan. Just close your eyes and visualize it transforming into a potion. Transmute the ingredients with your mind," Buhawi instructed, his nose firmly in the book. "Keep your focus now."

Tala held the precious package of antidote in the palm of her left hand and covered it with her right. She chanted the Bestiario's spell of transmutation under her breath, even as she crafted a crystal bottle in her mind and filled it with the shimmery liquid she imagined an antidote of

siokoy

scale would look like.

The flat glowing rectangle in her hand elongated and gained a bulbous curve pushing her hands apart as it grew a neck and stopper of cork. Tala felt the beads of sweat forming on her brow as she held on to the vision while the darts of pain from the poison returned and almost made her drop the bottle of antidote.

Buhawi saw her hand shake and he gently put his bigger hand beneath her shaky one, catching the overbalanced bottle. "Thank goodness you made a stopper," he said, his chuckle coming out strained as he, too, fought the pain an weakness the poison sent through his system.

"So what next?" Tala turned intent eyes on Buhawi as he referred to his mother's spellbook and turned beet-red.

"Well, we need to drink the potion. You first, then me. Then..."

Tala swigged her half of the potion and handed the bottle to Buhawi, cocking a curious brow up at him as she swallowed. "Then..." One hand was moving in a 'please continue' gesture as she passed the flask on to the Tikbalang.

Buhawi knocked his shot of antidote back like a pro and swallowed the potion. "Then... we have to go back to being pervs. How do you feel about butt sex?"

"Butt what?"

"Me up yours. Not the front."

"You have got to be effin' kidding me."

"Nope." Buhawi read the passage he was referring to from Bulan's spellbook under the heading

'After the Antidote: Exorcising the Aftereffects.'

"After imbibing the full dose of the antidote for tiyanak blood venom, the poisoned parties must engage in anal sexual relations. First the female, then the male, with the female penetrating him using an apparatus strapped to her loins," Buhawi read, careful to keep any inflections out of his voice, though he was feeling rather conflicted about the instructions he was reading to Tala.

Of course I'd love to be in that butt, Buhawi argued with himself. But I don't want to hurt Tala and I am kind of, well, massive.

Definitely not human down there no matter how it looks.

"I have to take that up my butt? All the way kind of up the butt?" Tala swallowed nervously as she eyed the anaconda in Buhawi's board shorts, which the loose board shorts could not hide at all. "Fuck me sideways," she muttered, heavy on the sarcasm.

"Well,

Inay

says nothing about being fucked anally and sideways..." Buhawi began to explain when Tala yanked the book from his hand and swatted his arm as hard as she could. "But maybe we should, considering my size..."

"I'm not speaking literally." Tala said. "I'm talking about physical impossibilities."

"It's not physically impossible," Buhawi said, reclaiming the book from Tala's nerves-cold fingers. "But if you read on, it should be possible because, and I quote: 'If either receiver of a phallus up the rectum is fearul of tearing, which is reasonable, the antidote allows the imbiber great flexibility and ability to stretch beyond normal parameters in all areas of the body—including the anal passage. Of course, it would still be prudent to lubricate the area and the phallus in question beforehand.'"

"You aren't bullshitting me, are you?" Tala's question caught on a quaver as she looked up at Buhawi's dead serious face.

"I'm being honest. And I promise you I will make it as good for you as I can." His face was earnest and there was worry in his eyes and Tala couldn't bring herself to think he was telling even a smidgen less than the truth. "There are so many ways to make the hurt feel good, baby." His voice dropped to a dominant, sexy whisper, and Tala had the sneaking suspicion that, as much as Buhawi worried about causing her pain, he did want to fuck her in the ass.