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
