This story is a bit wordy and fairly long, so if you are looking for immediate gratification, you might want to look elsewhere.
------------- -----------------------
The following story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between actual persons, living or dead (or just confused) is entirely coincidental. Please do not copy/redistribute the story, in part or in total, without the author's permission.
This story takes place in the fictional city of Springfield, California several hundred years in the future, so don't go looking for it on a map. And in my little fictional world, there are no unwanted pregnancies or STD's, except as plot driving devices. The author encourages the practice of safe-sex.
This story also consists entirely of f/f sexual intercourse.
--------------- ----------------------------
Veronica sat on a ledge on the mountain that she and Eliza often climbed together, but at the moment she was alone. Things had gotten scary for her . . . scarier than they had ever been. And she had been in some bad situations, the most recent of which was being captured and tortured to within an inch of her life, only to be saved at the last moment by her half-dead lover and a Living Jewel. Kelik had used The Alchemist's Dream to mystically combine the two women, allowing them to share each other's strengths and minimizing their weaknesses until both women "evolved" into new life-forms entirely. They called themselves Hybrids, and they were faster, stronger and more efficient than either humans or vampires. Veronica had been human once. Eliza had been a vampire. Now, both women had only one other person like them in the world, and that had been enough.
But while her body had changed, she found that her loyalties had remained stubbornly consistent. A month earlier, they had recovered The Dragon's Breath, a Living Gem that was supposed to allow them to open a dimensional bridge back to Terra and reunite the two worlds that had been separated by the radical pro-human group known as the Purity. But the Purity had launched a fevered and almost desperate attack on the U. S. military base known as Fort Crass to steal some of the Living Gems, particularly The Dead Man's World, which was supposed to be able to be used in the casting of doomsday magic. And in the process, they had killed the venerated and respected Ambassador Kelik. The same vampire who had saved the lives of Veronica and Eliza . . . Veronica's friend and Eliza's mentor. Eliza and her normal nemesis Valar had sent out messages to all the Terrans remaining on Earth, letting them know what happened and calling them to arms.
Eliza was bound and determined to declare a Radotanida, or a Blood War, on the Purity. It was a feud that required the total annihilation of your enemies . . . until every last drop of blood they had was spilled on the ground. Veronica knew her lover had almost completely snapped. She had been attacked, her lover tortured with Eliza sharing the pain, her friend and comrade Wyrm had been disfigured and was missing an arm, and one of her truest friends had been killed by the Purity just because he was Terran. Her heart was coated in hatred, and Veronica could feel the vileness beating within the chest of the woman she loved.
But the World Council and United States government, once they learned of what Eliza was planning, refused to condone it and were in the process of making sure it didn't happen. They refused to help contact or move Terrans who wished to participate in the war. They warned Eliza against taking any type of independent military action. They refused to allow Eliza or Valar back into Fort Crass until they called everything off. They warned and screamed and threatened until their faces turned blue. Eliza didn't care. But Veronica did. She felt her lover's anger and even understood it, but she had lived her life by a set of rules. What Eliza was proposing was effectively genocide, even if the Purity tried to surrender. And Veronica couldn't condone that, however justified Eliza felt. She had tried to reason with her lover, but Eliza would have none of it. And as a direct result of her conflict with the government, she had refused to yield possession of The Dragon's Breath.
Due to government interference, the number of people who had made their way to Eliza's compound numbered only about a hundred, but they were a scary hundred or so. Everyone who had arrived had military training or combat experience. There were sixty vampires, twelve lycanthropes (In earth legend, these were known as werewolves, werebears, etc.), fifteen gargoyles, ten succubae, and six trolls, not including Thug. It was this last group that scared even their own allies.
Veronica had gotten to know Thug reasonably well in the last year, and had grown to respect his power and his mind. She had seen that particular troll beat up a state-of-the-art attack helicopter by himself. But trolls were normally solitary, and the only time you saw more than one at a time was when they met to mate (trolls had the capacity to be both male and female, so it was not uncommon for both creatures to be pregnant after such an encounter). Neither the information contained in the Arcanum or the history in Valar's brain had ANY recollection of this many trolls coming together to make war. Actually, there was no precedent for trolls going to war at all, and Veronica was somewhat terrified of what the seven-to-ten-foot, half-ton-plus regenerating trolls would be able to do as a single fighting unit.
She smelled the air and could tell that someone familiar was approached.
"Hello Allyson," she said, trying to take comfort in the warmth of the setting sun.
"I thought I'd find you here," the human woman said. Allyson and Dennis Murgo were members of Eliza's security team. They had all worked together for years before the recent unpleasantness, and they also felt their loyalties being tugged in opposite directions. They had liked Kelik, and they were boiling under the skin at the thought of what had been done to their friend Wyrm, who was still breathing through a tube while being outfitted with a state-of-the-art prosthetic arm. They wanted revenge, but they weren't sure if they were ready for the total annihilation of a group, particularly if it involved violating as many international treaties and conventions as Eliza intended.
"So, is this as awkward for you as it is for me?"