SECRET OF THE TURTLE MEN, CHAPTER 14
"The Djinni Queen"
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
If they were to enter the Valley of the Djinni after dark, they had a long wait. Pavel and his friends sat down with their backs against a rock and prepared to wait.
In retrospect, Pavel had to admit that their action was foolish. To hope to approach a valley filled with flying creatures unobserved was beyond foolish, it was foolhardy. They had been warned by the Angels that to approach the Valley of the Djinni was to be captured.
So they had been sitting for less than a few minutes when the Djinni came to collect them. Pavel froze when they came in view, but it didn't matter, he was picked up along with his friends and flown to the valley.
The Djinni were rather wasp-like in shape, with a narrow waist and distended abdomen. But their legs, eight of them, were divided in tasks the same as a humans' are; the bottom four were all a Djinn came to rest upon, and the four top ones moved in well-practiced harmony to clutch Pavel's arm and hold it tightly to the smaller thorax. The face was larger than a wasp's in proportion, though still too small to house a brain the size of a man's, the totality of it was half the volume of a man's head, and most of this was
When their capture was imminent, Pavel spoke up quickly. "I am an emissary from my valley. Let me speak with your leaders."
"We serve our queen." the left Djinn said to him in a faint and blurry but understandable voice, interspersed with louder clickings of the mandibles which were stroked rapidly together to make the syllables. "We take you to her. She has called for you."
"Good." Pavel said, though that didn't sound right.
"How did your queen know we were coming?" Jethro demanded.
"The queen knows all. We are her daughters. We take you to her. She has called for you."
"What's a daughter?" Pelen asked.
"Beats me." Jethro said.
"A female child. Like a son, but female." Pavel defined for them.
"Hunh!" Jethro said. "No wonder I never heard of it. A useless word."
"On this planet, I guess so." Pavel agreed. "Along with sisters, mother, aunt, niece and...and such." He couldn't think of any other words. "They needed them back on Earth."
"So this planet has some females on it after all." Pelen said, looking at one of the Djinni. "Are you all females?"
"All." the Djinn affirmed.
Pavel would have continued this, but now he could see into the valley of the Djinni at last. As they neared the ridge's crest, he had become aware of a concentrated humming sound. It was like a sustained "zzzz" sound, but somehow more oppressive in tone. It grew louder by the minute, and when at last they could see into the Djinni's valley, they could see its source.
There were a thousand, thousand small holes in the valley, in the ground and in the valley walls and above all of these hung the pink mist like an iridescent pall, but this was not the source of the sound. The land itself was stripped bare of every last scrap of greenery, but this was not the source of the sound. The sound...that was the beating of Djinni wings.
The Djinni were crawling over and around each other, so many that it looked more like a dark, enormous amoeba that quivered and sunk and rose up again, pulsating in a vaguely nauseous rhythm of life incarnate.
Pavel blinked, focused his eyes, and then realized that the blur was real. This mass was not solid, but was a thousand thousand fluttering wings, and wriggling bodies that moved in and out of the myriad holes. The Djinni's population was enormous, far more Djinni lived than humans in all the valleys Pavel knew of, including Turtle Valley and the Arab Plains. If they chose to attack, mankind was doomed!
The Djinni flew with their captives to a hole no different than any of the others. If it had a differentiation, it was in the larger numbers that poured into and out of it; Djinni crawled along its bottom, both sides, and top, to enter and to leave in a helter-skelter order. It was into this chaos of moving bodies that the Djinni took Pavel and his comrades.
Pavel had no idea what to expect. He could only compare this to the images of Earth hive-insects he had seen, bees and ants. These Djinni had affinities with both.
Instead, he and his friends were carried above the crawling mass to a separate and quite comfortable chamber. This chamber had tapestries and cushions arranged in a way that indicated a solid knowledge of Arab culture and practices and perhaps a trade with the plainsmen as well. It formed a little, empty alcove away from the buzzing, twitching hive just beyond, so that if he ignored the loud persistent droning sound that stirred the air almost uncomfortably rapid around him, if he ignored as well a smell that pervaded this place, somehow almost brittle, like smelling the sound of dry twigs snapping beneath your feet, but also cloying and sticky but not unpleasant, almost as if you were inhaling air around a clog of your own nasal mucous. That was what this smell reminded him of, mucous, slime, goo and ooze, disgusting but not in direct contact with himself, more as if he would touch it if he moved in any direction! He felt ill.
"This is not right." Pelen said warily. "None of this is what my friend described to me. Where are the cells with the row upon row of human captives, groaning as they feed the growing larvae? Where are the small tunnels through which he crawled, desperate to escape with his life?"
"Fools." came a Djinni voice, but this was not faint, it was strong and resonant.
And through a parting of the tapestries thrust the head of the Djinni Queen. The head was the size of Pavel's chest, the mandibles were twin scimitars that could slice a man in half without trying. "Fools." the sword-mandibles clicked at them once again.
"But that's what he told me." Pelen insisted. "Why would he lie to me?"
"Why did the Angels lie to us as well?" Jethro said. "There are no rows of human slaves being eaten alive here, either."
"But the Masters wouldn't lie to us." Pelen insisted.
"They can, and do." the Djinni Queen affirmed.
"All right." Pavel said. "So you don't plan to sting us and stick us into little cells for your young to feed off of. What, then, do you need from us?"
"I do not need you." the Djinni Queen said. "I am sufficient for myself, I and my sister-Queens."
"So there's more than one Queen here." Pavel pressed.
"We are sixty." the Queen confirmed. "We each have our daughters to serve us. We gather the bounty of this world and it is enough. We are content here."
"So why did the Angels try their best to scare us away from here?" Pavel pressed. "You don't need anything from us."
"No." the Queen said. "But you are needed just the same. Rest yourselves and I will bring you the answer."
And the frightful head stuck itself back into the tapestries and vanished.
"Hmph!" Jethro looked around. "We might as well be back in the palace." He threw himself back onto the cushions with a careless abandon, and Pavel smiled as the gray-clad uniformed body bounced as a response before settling into lush comfort. "Lie down, Pelen, and relax. We're in no danger here."
Pelen was looking about, more frightened-acting than he had ever been. "This is not right." he said. "We are here, and the Masters did not tell us of this." Pavel went over and took the shivering young man in his arms. Pelen clutched him like a little child. "My friend, why are we here?"
"I don't know." Pavel said. "But we'll find out. I know this is a strange place..."
"But it isn't." Pelen said suddenly. "I have been here before."
"What?" Jethro said.
"I remember it now, like a bad dream, all misty in my mind, but there. A year ago, when I had just come of age, the Masters came as they do for us at such a time, and they took me away. They brought me here. To this room. To this very room."
"Really?" Jethro was interested, sat up in the cushions, gray body surrounded by lush blue that framed him like some rare jewel. "Then what happened?"
But Pelen only clutched Pavel tighter and shivered.
And through the tapestries, it came.
This was the nightmare they had imagined, but you could see within the form that this had nothing to do with the Djinni, unless it changed somehow like a caterpillar would into a butterfly. A bee nymph resembles the adult bee, this was a large and ungainly form, not the lithe figure of a Djinn. It waddled towards the three humans like walruses, the two front projections were like stubby couch legs and they rolled and pulled themselves along by these legs, dragging the rest of their dead weight behind them. Its face was blind, three sockets were there but no other features adorned this questing head.
Pavel turned, but there were only the three walls to turn towards. They were trapped, unless they could jump over this creature. But beyond it came...the Angels.
"Masters!" Pelen cried out in joy, tearing himself away from Pavel to throw himself to his knees in supplication. "Masters, please, take us away from here."
The Angels ignored him. The creature with them, it sensed him and went towards him.
Pavel jumped to Pelen's side, ready to defend his friend, but the creature only nudged at Pelen's body, as if curious, or affectionate.
"What is this?" Jethro demanded. Of them all, he had not moved from his cushion, though he had moved into a crouched position there, like a tiger ready to spring.
"Take off those clothes." one of the Angels demanded.
Pelen got to his feet, and pulled at his clothing.
"Why?" Jethro asked.
The Angel looked at him. "Take off your clothing, or it will be taken off for you by the Djinni."
"Why would the Djinni do that for you?" Pavel asked.
The Angel gave an odd smile to Pavel. "Because we paid for your services, that's why, clone-child. You are not Turtle Men which we brought here for this; you are renegade humans and the Djinni can keep you as long as they want. Now take off your clothes, our...companion is waiting."
Pelen was nearly nude, for he had continued to obey the Angels' command. He had dropped his trousers to his ankles, and the white beast went over and nudged him, then nudged harder.
Pelen staggered, hampered by his captive feet, for the thing had squatted upon his pants, and he fell backwards onto the soft cushions behind him, and the creature...it centered itself on his cock and nuzzled in.
"Better." the Angel said. He did something with a small item in his hands that Pavel couldn't see clearly, and suddenly...suddenly the room blossomed with pink mist.
Pavel gasped as the mist touched him. He only now realized that he had been free of it for as long as they had been inside the Djinni's valley. Those many, many beating wings somehow dissipated and dispersed it. It hovered over them, but it didn't contact them, except, obviously, here in this room where it was channeled in.
"What do you want out of us?" Pavel said as the mist stroked his body like many intimate fingers. God, this stuff was concentrated. He could see it, not as the near-transparent mist of his native valley, this was a palpable fog that blurred vision in the room.
"Get out of your clothes and get over there and help your friend feed him." the Angel commanded.
"You'd better do as my mate says." the other Angel, which had been silent up until now, said. "If all three of those maws aren't filled before the nymph settles in, it'll go hard on your friend."
That was enough for Pavel, that and the mist that stroked his body. The Angels were feeling the presence of it as well, they began to reach mindlessly for each other. Pavel felt Jethro's hands and arms encircle him, and felt his own mind going. This was the onset of the rut.
He almost-bodily dragged Jethro with him over to the creature. Pelen was gasping as the thing suckled at his penis, and Pavel saw the other maws questing about; they had a limited amount of independent range of motion, and one of them focused on him.
"Jethro, get to the other side." Pavel gasped out as Jethro's lips found his neck and kissed him there, not a perfunctory touch of the lips, but a long, hungry clutching that sent pulses of pleasure down his spine. "To the other side." Pavel insisted, pushing at him blindly. He had to move fast. Jethro was away from him, the hands released him, and Pavel realized that Djinni had entered and lifted him away, helping them in their morass of fumbling human desire. Another Djinni's dry, barbed, handless forelegs reached for Pavel's clothing and tugged it bodily away from his skin. Pavel heard his clothing tearing, the thin silken cloth giving way under the arcing strokes of the Djinni's leg/hand/arm, and Pavel was soon bare to the waist, and he felt the chitinous bodies pushing him closer to the...what did the Angel call it? The nymph.
It was easy enough to push his cock, that hard, throbbing, painfully erect cock, into the soft maw of the nymph, and when he did, it was...it was glory!
This was not the pulsating attentions of Jethro's talented body, this was not stroking motions at all, somehow this nymph was feeding electrical impulses directly into Pavel's nerves of his cock. His nerves there knew only one purpose, that of feeling, and when the cock was erect, the feeling was of course sexual, so the pulses that fired through him from the nymph were turned into feelings of ecstasy.
It was like finding an immediate orgasm, yet it was not quite so intense and mind-numbing. Pavel was able to look around, caught up in rapture but otherwise aware, his lungs couldn't decide whether to pant or to shut down entirely, for now the sensations emanating from his captured cock were thrilling through his entire body.
The nerves found new paths, took on new roles. Pavel felt it now, the way his body wept forth his precome into the nymph's maw, but more than a mere dew of clear liquid, this was a trickling of his very essence that shunted out of his loins. A small, very small, climax struck Pavel, and he shuddered, gasps, and this increased the flow briefly. Then it subsided, and Pavel was again caught on the brink. He looked and Pelen was gasping in the clutch of his own orgasm, sweating, panting and thrusting blindly upwards with his hips, and Pavel took the small control of his body he still had and moved down to join Pelen on the cushions, Jethro still erect with but one knee on these high cushions, resting in this manner, his blond face softened by desire on the other side of the white mass of the nymph.
Pelen, released from his ejaculation, fell limp against the cushions and Pavel took him gently in his arms. Seeing them, Jethro moved down to join them and now the three friends held each other in mutual desire, a semi-circle of male lust connected by the hub of the nymph's blind head.
Pavel kissed Pelen gently, quivering with the effort of movement, and Pelen reciprocated with a trembling stroke of his hand upon Pavel's chest. Jethro's gray-uniformed body pressed coldy against their own bare forms (where had his shirt gone? Pavel didn't know!) and when Jethro reached for a kiss from Pavel, Pavel leaned over and gave it gladly. Pelen turned it into a three-way kiss, lips touching lips, half-and-half, all the way around, yet not a kiss, for their bodies quivered with their need, and ecstasy struck Jethro and his groans of pleasure exploded against their tender skin.
On and on it continued, Pavel feeling his body churning as it struggled to meet the need. It was like his entire chemistry had turned over to this one task, and still his male essence poured out of him into the nymph's feeding maw, coaxed from him by the thrills of direct stimulus that continued to pour into him in exchange.
"How long?" Jethro groaned, and Pavel looked at him, saw he was speaking to someone behind Pavel.
Pavel groggily, bleary-eyed, turned to see who it was. The Djinni Queen.
"How long?" Jethro croaked once again. "How long will you keep us here?"
"Fools." the Queen said and her head withdrew once more, vanishing into the tapestries and pink fog that filled the room entirely now, like a steam bath only without the heat.
Yet she had answered their question, Pavel realized. She didn't intend to ever let them go. She would keep them here, feeding the nymphs brought by the Angels, for as long as they lived.
As if the punch of a bully's fist, orgasm struck his brain once more. Pavel shivered, groaned, and held his friends tightly. And the nymph fed on.
THE END OF CHAPTER 14