Shielding herself against the white-hot fire surrounding her, Lisa curled up at tight as she could. Rather, she tried to, anyway…

‘Where are my fucking legs?

‘Fuck, I’m bleeding all over… Can’t back up… fucking bomb is behind me – Shit! Just like last time!

‘Mom! Help me! I need… to… nuugh… can’t… flare… Got… Go forward!’

‘I am really, really fucked…’

Lisa reached toward a face she knew and pushed as hard as she could against the expanding white fire she had pulled into the teleportation zone with her, then the white fire consumed her. As she blacked out, her shield failed and the nuclear explosion pushing her forward through the teleportation zone caught up with her. In less than an instant, what was left of her torso, head and wings were vaporized.

No longer contained by Lisa’s mind, the nuclear fire blasted out into the physical universe in the form of a great fireball and fell to earth like a small comet, creating a crater several hundred feet wide and fifty feet deep where Kentucky Lake once existed, two hundred years before. The crater slowly began to fill with water from a subterranean river.

~~~~~

A small, stooped figure moved in the bright sunlight. It was a man – old and hunched over and filthy. His long, ratty hair swung heavily as he waddled along. The small, wiry figure froze suddenly as though stalking something, then leaped several feet to one side, landing on all fours.

“Ahh, ahh, ahh!” The sounds of triumph came from a raspy, dry throat.

The four-inch-long roach was the first creature he’d seen in several days. He held it carefully, but firmly, in his hands, not wanting to kill it prematurely.

“Ahh, my beauty,” the raspy voice said, the sound grating against his own ears. “My gift to you, my beauty…”

Fumbling in an animal-skin pouch, dirty, cracked fingers with black and broken nails fished out a long, smooth stick, whittled thin, like a toothpick sharply pointed at one end. Delicately, lovingly, the strange, dirty man inserted the end of the stick into the roach’s back end and gently, slowly skewered the bug through the entire length of its body, carefully holding it so that it wouldn’t wriggle off in its frenzied, futile efforts to escape.

The man straightened out from his hunched-over position and held his prize up in the sunlight; glistening, maniacal eyes watching the creature’s dance of death on the end of the little stake. After several moments it quit moving.

“You, I name Hethemtima,” the man intoned, his cracked voice strong with hate and loathing, “and this little shaft is my gift…

“And this…” He bit off the head of the roach and ate it.

“And this…” He bit the creature in half and pulled the top half of its torso into his cracked and broken mouth with his blackened teeth. Once in his mouth, he pressed the inch-long morsel against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, savoring the life-giving juices that flooded his throat.

Chewing the delicacy for a moment, he swallowed, nearly passing out in ecstasy from the sensation of real food in his starved and bloated stomach.

Unceremoniously pulling the rest of his meal off the stick, he sucked it into his mouth and squished it like the other piece, sighing in deep pleasure as bug juice filled his mouth and throat. He swallowed joyfully and bellowed his pleasure out into the hot, dry wind.

A distant thunder in the sky answered his call, echoing and reverberating toward him from the parched horizon. It could have been a sonic boom, and for a brief instant, very brief, he thought that it was. But the machines were all dead, now, and so were the people who would fly them.

He carefully cleaned his stick in the dirt and placed it back in his pouch, then continued his hunt. It was only a moment before he caught another one.

“Ah! This little mound is full of you!” he cried out as he held the insect up in front of him.

Once again, he staked the tiny creature, insuring that it suffered as much as possible at his hands.

“You, I name Elsa!” he intoned, with less of a tremor of hate. “You I will take while you still twitch in my grasp so that you may feel yourself being consumed. May this make your worthless, everlasting life worthwhile…” he cackled for a moment… “Or at least, your death!”

Pulling the entire roach off the stick with his teeth, he smashed it around in his mouth with his teeth and tongue and swallowed, bit by bit, as the pieces became small enough for his parched throat to handle.

His aging body strengthened by the meal, he stood upright, straighter than he had for the last several days, and looked around, not seeing his staff.

Enraged, and closing his eyes tightly, he envisioned the object of his desire and screamed, “Staff! Where are you? Come to me…”

Then it was in his hand; once again where it belonged. He gazed at the nearly two meter-long pole longingly, knowing that, someday, it would be put to the use for which he intended.

Elsa (Elisabeta, rather) had promised that, in the centuries to come, she would find him – come back to him. And this would be his gift for her for giving him his deepest desire. Once she received his gift, he would then feed on her to make certain that she would never offer that gift to any other.

Of course, it skipped his mind that there was no one else around for his Elsa to grant everlasting life, if he ever found her, that is. He was the last man on earth, and quite possibly, the last mammal living. It had been years since he’d even seen a rat. Only insects could tolerate the intense radiation that now bathed the planet.

His roiling stomach reminding him of why he needed his staff, the last man on earth turned toward the softened mound where he’d found the two roaches. This was probably a common grave – the site of a mass burial. There would be many, many roaches in here. All he had to do was dig them out.

With grim determination, Vlad Tepes shoved his staff into the earth and began searching.

~~~~~

‘Fire in my mind… Mind made of fire. I could control it once… I remember. But now it controls me… consumes me… can’t back up… need to flare. Flare? Yes… I remember… The fire creates… the fire consumes… I consume myself… and create… anew…’

The muddy water in the blast crater bubbled and boiled, then blew skyward as the tiny, mind-made, mud volcano erupted steam, mud, and a live body from its depths.

‘And God formed woman from the mud in the bowels of the earth…’

“Like hell…(cough)… he did!” Lisa exclaimed, trying to lift herself up out of the hot, slippery mud in which she found herself lying.

“Fuck!” she cried out, frustrated and sliding down the slippery embankment yet a third time.

Exhausted and gasping for air, she looked up at the rim of the crater far above her, closed her eyes, and concentrated. Her body disappeared, then reappeared lying on the rim of the crater.

“That’s more like it…” she panted, then sat up and wearily looked around. “I can teleport again!”

There was dry desert and flatlands almost to the horizon, then baked brown, rolling hills continuing on to the west. To the south, it looked the same. To the north and east, the flatlands seemed to go on forever.

“Where the hell am I?” she asked no one in particular.

‘Praetor! Can you hear me?’

There was no response. At least, none that she could detect through the roar in her head. Now that she noticed it, Lisa couldn’t concentrate on anything else. It upset her to be out of touch with her Praetor. She’d always felt it in the back of her mind – watching, recording – always non-commentally interested in her activities, and now it wasn’t there. It wasn’t… anywhere.

‘Oh, God! I’m fucking lost!’

Realizing that she wasn’t going to be able to detect any life signs while the sun was up, Lisa stood up, a little shaky in handling her new body, and began walking around the rim of the crater, trying to decide which way to go.

‘Well, at least I have legs, now… and mind-fire to feed on…’

~~~~~

Vlad had collected and skewered almost two dozen roaches in the last hour. He skewered them so they couldn’t escape while he sought out more of the little delicacies. He hoped he didn’t find too many more – he was running out of his little whittled capture sticks. If that happened, then he would have to smash them and eat them as he caught them like an animal – a lesser form that had no use for tools or the brainpower to enjoy or understand the delicate art of…

‘Is any *fucking* body out there?’

Vlad stood straight up! The grateful little roach he was chasing scurried beneath a rock and started digging into the soft earth, happily getting out of sight from the hairy monster that pursued it.

Closing his eyes, Vlad made an image of his surroundings, gradually increasing his space and taking in everything around him. He could feel the thousands of insect life forms around him, and knew, now, exactly where he needed to dig if he so desired to fill his belly.

Ignoring the inconsequential insects, he cast his mind out in the direction of that frail, almost unheard call and saw her. Like him, she was dirty, naked, and covered with mud; thin and half-starved, as well.

‘Elsa! The witch! She is returned to me, as she promised!’

Coldly, now, he understood how he could lure her nearer to him. It had been nearly a hundred years by his reckoning since he had seen another human being. Then there had been two; both female – Hethemtima and her accursed daughter, Elisabeth – Elisabeta!

‘Yes – you think I didn’t recognize you, Elisabeta? Your body was different, but you – the one hiding inside – you, I recognized. In all this time, and throughout all of your pitiable lives, you hadn’t even changed your name as you lived from body to body.

‘And so because of that, I had thought you would stand beside me against the hated Hethemtima, but No! You chose HER! The one who had only to provide you with a body to purchase your allegiance against me! And now, you shall reap your reward!’

An evil, sly grin crept over his features as he thought about how he would lure the evil witch to him. As he carefully constructed his mind trap, the hated witch seemed to look up and peer right at him across the hundreds or thousands of miles that separated them.

‘Who’s there?’ Lisa thought as she concentrated on the life form that tickled her consciousness.

As she quested with her mind, she suddenly got a very clear image of exactly ‘where’ the other life form was. She teleported. As she arrived, the image around her seemed to shift in a dizzying fashion. The strange, little man vanished and was gone from her sight.

‘Where’d you go?’ she thought at it.

‘He’s behind me!’ she suddenly realized, and ducked down.

The ‘whoosh’ of a long staff missed her head by only inches. Instantly enraged, she turned and screamed at him.

“Who the hell do you think… Auuwk!”

Vlad had continued spinning around as his first attack missed and sailed over her head. As he increased his momentum for a second strike, the witch had tried to put a spell on him. But before she could utter more than a few words, his staff had smacked against the side of her head and cracked her skull.

The witch fell to the ground, knocked silly by his staff. Trying to rise, Lisa felt her head where it had been struck. Her hand came away covered with blood. She stared at her bloody hand for a moment, then passed out and collapsed backward onto the dirt.

~~~~~

‘Macario, my beloved, I’m home!’

‘Yes! Shove that magnificent shaft up inside me – I need you so badly. Harder! That’s it! Make me feel it…’

“Urrk!” she moaned, then grimaced as Mac’s hard shaft seemed to shove up through her belly. “Not so hard, Love…”

In response to her loving request, Mac shoved his cock another foot up inside her. Now she was sure she was filled with him and tried to relax as her pussy clenched and her belly cramped around his magnificently hard…

Lisa’s dream was shattered as the shaft shoved up past her heart and cut off the air to her lungs.

‘What the hell…’

She tried to choke it back down as it forced its way up through her throat and into the back of her mouth. Terrified now, she tried to clear her throat and mouth of whatever it was that prevented her from breathing and suddenly realized she couldn’t move her hands. They were tied behind her.

“Uunnk!” she croaked, trying to understand what was happening to her.

She could feel someone down between her legs and kicked at whoever it was. Her toes dug into something soft and warm – flesh! Surprised at her first success, she kicked again, harder this time. Then she felt as though she was being levered into the air. Kicking and grunting, still unable to breathe, she felt whoever was back there drop her as her foot connected with soft, warm flesh again.

The hollow thump of wood sounded heavily as she landed and the reverberation jarred through her entire body and her skull. The force of the impact as it traveled through the shaft was especially cruel to her teeth and mouth. Seemingly in response to her kick, whatever was crammed up inside her and cramping her pussy and belly so badly was shoved even further up. In shock, she felt (and watched with terrified eyes) the massive round object continue out through her mouth and past her face another foot or so.

‘I… Oh… That’s a stake!’ she finally realized. ‘I’ve… been… staked. Alive…’

Feeling around with her feet, she affirmed that, indeed, there was a stake sticking out of her other end. Gripping it as tightly as she could between her feet, she tried to straighten her legs and pull the stake back down. All she got from her effort was some splinters in the soft, curved bottoms of her feet as they slid down the nearly smooth, round pole.

“Ah-aa,” someone nearby said, “You can’t escape that way, my darling Elisabeta…”

‘He knows who I am?’ Lisa thought, her eyes widening in surprise.

“Yes, I see you recognize that name,” Vlad continued. “You betrayed me, you witch! And you know what happens to those who turn disloyal… After all, you yourself used to impale them for me. Do you not remember, Elsa?”

Lisa tried to turn her head to see who was ranting at her. The voice sounded oddly familiar…

“And when their bodies responded to the shaft ripping through their intestines, you would ride their hardness until they spewed their life energies into your belly. Then you would continue your work until they were truly gutted – impaled from bottom to top.

“Do you remember lying on top of them as they twitched in their death throes? You told me you always wondered what it felt like – to die like that. They fascinated you. Remember?”

Vlad turned her over so that she was on her back. She still couldn’t see him because her neck was nearly bent double backwards. But she could feel him. He was beginning to do to her what she had done to so many others. And her pussy was wet, ready and quivering for him.

The instant Vlad shoved his cock into his beloved Elsa, she shuddered and clamped down on him in orgasm, her oxygen-starved body twitching and jerking as she came.

Vlad watched as Elsa’s nipples grew hard and felt her orgasm as she clamped down hard on his cock.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “You remember me! Your cunt remembers me, as well.”

As he fucked her tight pussy, made tighter by the shaft shoved up through her ass, she seemed to get wetter and hotter. Soon, it felt as though his cock was on fire – liquid fire that soothed even as it burned his hardness. Dropping down on top of his beloved queen, Vlad wrapped his arms and legs around her as tightly as he could.

Now, he could feel every twitch, every convulsion, every failed attempt to breathe that his dying wife made. All too soon, he felt his cock erupting into her hot, liquid-fire vagina. In response to his orgasm, he felt her begin her final death throes – her pussy clenching and throbbing in one final, magnificent orgasm.

As Lisa came that one last time, she flared her body, returning it to the energy from which it came.

‘Come with me, my eternal love,’ she whispered into Vlad’s mind as she flared his tired, old body into energy to join with hers. ‘I have been wed to both the Lord and the Devil, and I have returned to the one I treasure most! Now, join me – in eternity…”

The fiery energy from their merging slowly roiled up into the air, Vlad and Elsa both pure energy, now. The fireball puffed out of existence as she teleported.

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