Page 19 of Dark Stars

When he woke, it was to sunshine and the smell of something cooking. Rabbit, maybe. Peeling his eyes open, he looked around and quickly found Alejo sitting by a small campfire roasting a pair of rabbits. He was staring off into the distance, a frown etched deep into the lines of his face.

"Everything all right?"

Bobby asked.

Alejo jumped, knocking his improvised rotisserie and sending the rabbits straight into the fire. Swearing he fished them out and got them set aside.

"You bastard!"

he said, rounding on Bobby.

"Sorry! I didn't mean to, I promise."

Bobby pushed himself upright, feeling better than he had in ages. He could feel Azathoth's power thrumming through his blood, but it was muted for the moment, sleeping quietly. Hopefully it would stay that way.

"Has everything been all right? Are you all right?"

"Been better,"

Alejo said with a wobbly laugh.

"Honestly, been worse though. Gonna be hard for anything to top being backstabbed by the man I loved and sold to a demon. Also, all those bugs coming to our aid was pretty fucking cool."

He nodded across the fire, and Bobby laughed to see the largest fucking praying mantis he'd ever seen just chilling on top of his backpack like one of the guys.

"That one decided to stick around. She's really chill." One of the girls, then, whoops. Not that the insect probably cared about such things.

"How are you?" He dug out a bottle of water and handed it over.

"What in the hell happened? I get the best blowjob ever, go to sleep peacefully, and wake up to my boyfriend tentacled out and half of them ripped off and/or eaten."

"They were eating me?"

Bobby bristled.

"Fuckheads. Now I'm definitely not sorry I ate them."

Not that he had been anyway, but still.

Alejo laughed.

"It was quite the sight to see, all of the ripping and shredding and feasting. I thought my family get togethers could be a bit much, but now they're gonna seem positively boring."

"I will gladly take boring."

Standing, Bobby stretched out thoroughly with a loud groan.

"I will also take a jacuzzi, but I guess that will have to wait."

"Do you even have a jacuzzi? Your house seemed ninety-five percent books."

"I can change it however I please, so tell me what you desire, my love, and it shall be. We can also buy or build a new house."

"We'll figure it out. Right now I'd rather eat and get moving again. We've been here a good nine hours now. Never seen you sleep so much."

"I usually don't, but almost being killed by those souped-up assholes took it out of me."

"I thought those things were light work for you. Didn't you fight them in the caves?"

"Those consumed Azathoth's blood. These ones have consumed the blood of the Unnamed Darkness, another of Azathoth's offspring, and just as lazy as the rest of their siblings, offering their blood to humans and my worthless cousins, so they can do all the work."

"One of my cousins was a pedophile, so you know, rotten family everywhere. At least your relatives just eat each other."

Bobby barked a laugh.

"True. What happened to your cousin?"

"He went missing, and my aunt and uncle finally boarded up an old well on their property."

"Still better than he deserved, no doubt."

"Oh, for certain, but better to have done with little fuss. He's lucky his own parents tended the matter. I think the rabbit is done, if you want any?"

"I'm good."

Bobby did break down the rabbits though, heaping all the meat on a plate before handing it over.

"Shame we don't have the fixings for rabbit tacos or something."

"Man, that would be delicious. Maybe we can do that in the near future. I'll text pictures to all my relatives. They'll be so jealous; we don't get good rabbit very often where we live."

"Pretty sure they're a thing in town, this area is fond of that kind of thing. Eat up. I'll see if I can forage up some sort of vegetable or whatever."

"This will be fine for now, sit your ass down,"

Alejo said.

"Seeing you in pain and bleeding out enough for ten elephants wasn't pleasant. Just stay there."

Bobby sat.

"I'm sorry."

"Nothing to apologize for. Not your fault all your relatives looked at you, saw you were bothering nothing and no one and just wanted to be left alone, and said 'absolutely fucking not'. Relatives, man. I love mine, mostly, but I'd still throw them off a cliff some days. Why do you think I didn't really complain all that much when they ordered me to go hide all the way across the country."

"I went to a whole sperate plane of existence, for all the good it did me. Anything else happen while I was out?"

"No, everything has been quiet. The bugs told me so. Still getting used to that. I don't know what tipped it, them coming out to help me like that. Crazy sight, I'll never forget it."

He wolfed down several bites of rabbit, with no signs of slowing down, rapidly dwindling the heaping plate, pausing only for the occasional sip of water.

"They've always been your familiars, but you never needed them quite like you did last night. Clearly they were happy to finally be summoned."

Alejo took a tiny bit of rabbit and set it in front of the mantis, who after a moment, took it.

"Pretty sure they mostly eat bugs, but she seems pretty happy with that for now. You can go do your thing whenever you like, milady."

The mantis only continued to chill there after her snack, seemingly content simply to be.

Bobby poked around their supplies and was delighted to discover some instant coffee, even packets of cream and sugar.

"Where did you filch all this?"

There was an entire large ziplock of the stuff, even stirrers, with all manner of shapes and brands. Tubes, packets, even fancy hard packaging like he usually saw butter and some ketchup come in.

Alejo gave a little grin.

"Hotel rooms, truck stops, wherever. Surprisingly useful stash."

"It is."

Bobby made them coffee, and then walked around a bit just to stretch his legs.

"I'm still annoyed they got to me, but I guess it's a moot point now, save that they'll be ready for us at the next point."

Finished with his food, Alejo set the empty plate aside for the ants and other insects that immediately swarmed it.

"What if we didn't go to the next one in the circle? It would be more walking, but what if we cut across? Going with the clock thing, we've destroyed six, seven, and eight. What if we just said fuck it and went all the way back to, I dunno, five or something?"

"Chaotic, I like it. Not really how you're supposed to break these sorts of things. It causes a lot of instability, but it's better than just walking into trap after trap. If we're going to do that, though, we're going to need transportation. That much walking is impossible, and increasingly unsafe anyway."

Alejo brightened.

"Four wheelers?"

"Four wheelers,"

Bobby agreed.

"Stay here, don't leave the circle, I'll be back with the goods shortly."

"Will do."

Bobby kissed him, quick and sharp, and then slipped into the darkness and through it to where he knew a local was selling his four wheelers. Not even thirty minutes later, he was headed back, the proud owner of two four wheelers, one an obnoxiously bright blue, the other a truly impressive lime green.

"Oh, my god, best day ever!"

Alejo said.

"Can I have the green one?"

"How could I ever dare refuse my beloved?"

Bobby said dryly.

"Though I worry I've been replaced, judging by that gleam in your eye."

Alejo giggled, abandoning his examination of his new toy to come over and kiss Bobby soundly.

"If I recall, there is a blow job in want of repaying."

"Aren't we a little bus—"

"Shoosh."

Bobby shooshed. Except for a soft grunt as he was pushed up against a tree. And a flood of praise and shameless begging as Alejo sucked his cock like it was a final exam and sixty percent of his grade. Hollowed his cheeks out, worked his tongue on the underside, took him all the way down with a skill that fucking high end pros would admire. His hair was as soft as ever, thick and almost fluffy, as Bobby gripped it without pulling painfully.

"Fuck— Alejo— fuck—"

was all the warning he could manage before he was spilling down that warm, tight throat.

When he could function again, more or less, he pulled Alejo to his feet and kissed the taste of himself right off that wicked mouth.

"Oh, to have the time to fuck you through a mattress and straight to the floor."

Alejo laughed.

"Soon, hopefully. Once we get rid of this damned circle, surely that's the end of the problem?"

"Yeah, should be. My relatives will only be disrupted so many times before they grow bored or too irritated to keep bothering. We can finally relax, focus on us."

"Learn what it really means to be a child of dark stars,"

Alejo said in a slightly wistful tone.

"It's not always this level of crazy, right?"

"Rarely, I promise. The last time I dealt with something like this was at least two hundred years ago. My relatives interfere across many planets and many planes, and forget as many schemes as they instigate. If we'd noticed this six months later, it's possible everything would have been long over and done with. There really is never any telling."

"Well, that's family all right. Mine aren't all the size of planets and a bajillion years old, is the only real difference."

Bobby drew him into one last kiss, then reluctantly drew away.

"Come on, off to location five. Hopefully it will be easy to deal with—easier than this last one, anyway. Eight, I guess, if we're really leaning into the clock thing now.

"I'm so excited we have wheels now."

"I think I'm afraid that you're so excited about zipping through the woods at high speeds. Please don't get clotheslined by a low hanging branch of something."

"Silly monster, that's what protection spells are for,"

Alejo replied with a scoff.

He cast the spells like he'd done it a thousand times, which he probably had, given the familiarity with which he operated the four wheeler.

"Normally we ride through much more open areas, but we've taken ours on vacation to forests and mountains and stuff. There's not many terrains I haven't driven on at this point. Snow, mostly, which has its own toy."

Then he was gone, leaving Bobby scrambling to catch up, both laughing all the while. He'd programmed the coordinates into their respective GPS systems, a nice perk of the four wheelers he'd bought.

He really didn't like Alejo in the lead, as that put him closest to danger, but he knew better than to say something like that out loud—and Alejo could handle himself, he'd more than proven that. Without him and his bug army, Bobby would not be as well off as he was. Probably not dead, but not all that close to alive either.

So he was perfectly capable of taking the lead, no matter how much Bobby's protective streak chafed over it.

They arrived in practically no time, what felt like mere minutes instead of the hours of walking it would have required otherwise. Loud and obvious, but that hardly mattered anymore.

Everything was quiet, unremarkable, and the few protections in place didn't even require real power to dismantle. All he needed once he'd broken the altar was a snack, which was easily obtained as he didn't have to hide his power as thoroughly as before.

"So where next? Right up to four? Or back across the block to try for nine? How scattered do we wanna do this? We'll need gas really soon, too."

"Gas I can take care of,"

Bobby said.

"Stay here, keep watch."

He slipped through the dark again to a hardware store where he bought gas cans, and then to a gas station to fill them up. Thankfully, a sheepish looking dude walking up to a gas station was an ordinary enough occurrence that all he got was offers of help and well-intended, if slightly condescending, advice.

Once he was loaded up and out of sight, he slipped through the dark again and back to Alejo.

"Here we are, all set. And when that runs out, I'll get us more, though I think we'll be running into supply stashes at some of these points, since they're preparing for war."

"Fuckheads,"

Alejo muttered around the protein bar he was eating with little enthusiasm. Which was fair, because Bobby had yet to find a protein bar that didn't taste like disappointment to some degree.

"So where to, you think?"

"Let's head to four. Now we can move quickly, we'll be there before they have time to act. I think we can hit four and three before we switch back to nine, ten…"

"Then back over to two, one, twelve, and thirteen? So they'll be waiting for us at thirteen inevitably, but hopefully all this darting around will do what we hope and scatter them, maybe frazzle them a bit."

"That's the hope. Let's move."

As they'd hoped, having speed on their side made it absurdly easy to take out sites four and three. Maybe they should have done this from the start, though it would pay to remember that they were drawing attention this way. Lots of attention. And their luck wouldn't hold for much longer.

After another quick snack, though thanks to all the family blood in his system now, he wasn't really wanting for energy, it was back to go go go.

"Stop,"

Bobby called out as they approached site nine. Alejo slowed down and turned to come back to him before killing the engine.

"I can feel another trap. Similar to what nearly fucked me up the first time, though not my cretin cousins, I don't think."

"So we rush in and take them by surprise,"

Alejo said.

"They aren't going to be expecting a bumrush."

"Being careful has gotten us this far,"

Bobby said.

"The four wheelers got us this far."

Bobby sighed.