Chapter 9

Releasing Cthulhu

cademia was the one place the Mummery was thin. The sort of immortal being that went into academia was not inclined to ever interrupt their research to fake their own death, after all, and tenure was forever. Yet because of its insular nature—and due to academics being notoriously good at following the letter of draconian rules while breaking them in spirit—academia was forgiven Immortal Beings That May Or May Not Be Vampires Exist being segreto di Pulcinella.

There was use in having someone in the antiquities department that had been studying history since Università di Bologna had been founded. Dottoressa Antonella Maria Chiara Liliana Rosa Di Napoli presided like a dragon empress over the archives—all of them—and guarded them with all the smiling promise of violence of the best librarians. These days, she had an assistant, solely to help with digital matters,¹ and it was Bidetti who answered the phone down in the archives, that very few had the number of.

‘Pronto.’

The answering language was not Italian but Romanian-accented Vulgar Latin, which meant only one thing.

‘Resti in linea, prego,’ Bidetti said, trying to keep her voice from shaking, and very gently set the phone down, going to find Dottoressa. There was only one person who ever would speak fluent, vulgar Latin to Dottoressa, and he had only called once before, in Bidetti’s lifetime.

‘Dottoressa?’

‘Hm?’ came the irritated grunt; but she was always irritated when interrupted, and was currently bent over cleaning a new acquisition with a very tiny brush, a loupe clipped to her large, boxy spectacles.

‘É…’ Bidetti swallowed hard.

‘É? É? É? É chi?!’ Dottoressa snapped, sitting up and pulling the loupe up, peering at Bidetti with her dark eyes narrow.

‘I-il Voivoda, Dottoressa.’

Antonella sucked her teeth, and swore impressively all the way to the phone. ‘Che cosa vuoi, vecchio bastardo?’ she asked, when she got there, because she had always firmly believed that scholars were outside the hierarchy of society.

‘Good evening to you too, Doctor,’ came the reply, smooth as silk, the Latin a pleasure to the ear, despite the slight accent to the vowels. ‘I have an assignment for you. There are antiquities that will be arriving from Ilam soon. When they do, you must attend to them immediately, and find out all you can.’

‘Hmph! Why are you sending me antiquities from Iran, of all places?’ but she switched to the common language they shared as a mark of respect. The Voivode did not speak Italian well, despite his mother tongue being its cousin; and she did not speak Romanian well, particularly the very local and medieval dialect he did. But they were both of them old enough that Latin had been the lingua franca of the world, not French (thank God!).

‘Because one of the Great Old Ones lies in the mountains nearby, and the Seers have begun to bestir themselves, particularly the American Cults, and we must keep ahead of them.’

‘I’m in agreement with you on that, at least,’ she admitted grudgingly—she hated to agree with anyone.

The Switchboard was run out of Rochester because Rochester had been the first high-tech city, and the Switchboard was that old. During the advent of radio and telephone service spreading across the world, just after the Treaty, the first act of cooperation between vampires and Hunters was to set up a private phone network; and unlike the other phone companies, that had phased out copper and switched to the lower quality of VOIP, The Switchboard still remained copper. Vampires didn’t believe in upgrades, they believed in maintenance. It meant that, in a small office building in Rochester, there had always been a telephone exchange. The ground floor was taken up by various shops over the years, and was currently an antique shop, because antique shops were quiet. The building was well-insulated and entirely wrapped in a faraday cage, because what use had they for wifi signal when everything was hard-wired? Privacy was critical, and there were enough ancient vampires with deep enough coffers to maintain such things.

The Operators were all carefully vetted, a mix of elder Hunters and monsters; but they weren’t the only part of the Switchboard—there were servers that hosted the ongoing body of information that Hunters used, from maps of various sorts of activity to a log of every hunt since 1880, this maintained, added to, edited by slightly younger Wizards.² It was carefully locked and warded, unhackable by virtue of not being connected to anything that wasn’t also in the room with it. Monsters and Hunters both believed in the security of hard copies, which could only travel so far, and could be burned.

Where the Old World operated their database in old universities guarded by vampire princes, the New World had the Switchboard, just as carefully guarded by everyone.

When the Red Phone rang at two-fifteen that afternoon, it was picked up by the wizened, well-manicured hand of Diane, who had manned the Control Desk since time immemorial. She was A Woman Of A Certain Age, always perfectly dressed and made up exactly how one expected a really efficient secretary to be, smelling faintly of jasmine and sandalwood perfume.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said, with the perfect, accentless, crisp diction coloured by the low, smoked timbre of her age. ‘This is Diane, how may I be of service?’

‘Hi!’ Aix said immediately, relieved and glad all at once when they woke up in the cave again. ‘Ohhh my gosh I’m so sorry we got interrupted! What happened? Why did the chain snap? Are you hurt?’

The flurry of concern was endearing. Toward the end of your sharing your data about the sea, you began to play with me.

‘Ohhhh,’ Aix sighed, hands covering their mouth. ‘So—so we could have mind sex, and that would count?’

You’re excited by the idea.

‘Of course I am! It’s a new thing I’ve never done!’ Aix paused, and laughed. ‘But you may not have known that about me. I’m a neophile—I seek new sensations, new… spices, to add to sex. The base level kind gets boring immediately.’

More eyes opened, and Aix was starting to understand that was the equivalent of a word that humans couldn’t express verbally—the ‘???’ that they and their friends constantly bemoaned not being able to verbalise.

You taught me that sex was fun?

‘It’s pleasurable and fun generally, as in for the species. Individual tastes vary all over the place. On an individual level, humans are pretty diverse. Other than being social and telling stories, we don’t have any consistent traits across the species—well,’ they amended, ‘we usually have the same general bauplan, I suppose the differences we call ethnicity seem trivial to other folks. Anyway, when it comes to culture, language, personalities? Everything in here,’ Aix said, tapping their temple. ‘Varies all over the place. Some people love sex, some people hate it. Some cultures venerate it as magic while also fearing it as monstrous, and some cultures just think it’s as ordinary as sleeping or eating. Some people are happy with the basic sexual behaviour I described the other day, some people—like me—need more complicated stuff to get sexually aroused.’

What “complicated stuff” do you need? He asked, pleased that his human was so willing to try a telepathic joining, which felt much more intimate than physical, to Cthulhu. It was more than he’d hoped for when he’d started studying under Azathoth,³ and certainly he had not thought Aix would offer such a thing, for it required a great deal of trust.

Aix concentrated—not closing their unusual blue eyes, this time, but looking into Cthulhu’s much more ordinary red ones—and showed him. It was not objects, but stories—and a partner willing to tell them with Aix, a partner who had never stopped playing the great and universal human game of ‘pretend’, a partner who understood and enjoyed a linear hierarchy with ritual interactions that made socialising predictable. Everything else was simply ideas for The Game.

And there were so many ideas.

The chain around Cthulhu’s other wrist vanished—and this time, Aix did not startle, but seemed to take it as encouragement, trying to stop the stem of his own thoughts enough to ask WhatdoyouwantDoesthatsoundfun?

The questions overlapped, layered with curiosity and fear of rejection. At least, Cthulhu thought, the fear of rejection was shared between their peoples. Slowly, he moved his hands to cup Aix, and was gratified when Aix cooperated with being picked up.

So that’s why everything changed when I called you “little one”…

Pleasure burst outward from his human, at the words, and now he understood just why, and how to do it again.

‘C…can we fuck now?’ Aix asked, in a breathless voice that Cthulhu assumed was what happened when humans were aroused. Interesting! That implied their sounds had to be made with exhaled breath…

Now was the additional challenge—Cthulhu focussed, with more than a little difficulty now that he was also aroused, on sharing how his own body worked. That Aix had shared so much, with such depth of self-knowledge, meant that Cthulhu could more easily fine-tune his own telepathy to the right pattern and shape for his human. This time, there was little give and take; instead, their minds began to truly sync. An image given immediately sparked a dozen ideas, words, questions in Aix’s mind.

You have a hectocotylus! And it’s near your mouth like with a spider! Can I see? Is it smaller than the others? Aix gasped in time with a surge of delight as Cthulhu shifted the tendrils covering his mouth, showing a much more slender, smooth, sparkly one, properly a tentacle.

Bioluminescence! My favourite! Aix slowly leaned back in the warm hands, spreading their legs and realising—in the manner of dreams—that they’d been clothed before, but were naked now. Is it sensitive?

Much the same as yours. May I touch?

Appreciation and relief that Cthulhu had ‘picked up’ on ‘consent’. Yes please!

Carefully, and slowly, he brought Aix closer to his face, a little hesitant, anxious even though the research he had said none of his bodily chemistry would conflict with a human’s. Still, Aix was so small, and uncommonly fragile, and Cthulhu didn’t want to lose him. He gingerly touched the top of Aix’s thigh with the hectocotylus (what a lovely word!), and when his human didn’t react with pain or fear, the tension drained.

Are you… nervous? Aww, you’re nervous? That’s so cute! It’s okay, big guy, I’m okay. Came the rush of comfort, and Aix reached a hand to gently touch the sparkling tendril. ‘Shh, it’s okay, you’re not hurting me, sweetheart.’

I wanted to be sure, before touching somewhere more vulnerable to harm.

Love.

Even though he’d been told how quickly humans bonded, how they were creatures made of love, and how Aix particularly seemed to be ‘broken’ according to most, and loved too easily even for a human, it still was nearly overwhelming, a wave like a tide breaking over the shore, and imagined in such terms by Cthulhu’s sea-loving human.

Then and there, Cthulhu realised he would move the stars for Aix, all for this gift, this ‘love’, given so freely even in the face of all the harm it had done to Aix before, even considering the pain, his human decided no, it’s worth it, it’s always worth it, you should always tell someone you love them when you do.

Aix felt the pause, the surprise, and the immediate sense of wanting to hold, wanting a closeness Cthulhu couldn’t currently have, the tendril responding as independently as Aix rather expected, given octopuses, and exploring Aix’s cunt, feeling its way down the mons, that star-glow tip finding their clit and Aix’s eyes fluttered closed, and they bit their lip in a smile, humming on a breathy exhale. Yes. Yes yes yes, darling, yes… good boy….

Oh.

The dynamic had reversed.

Cthulhu put in a little more effort to not simply explore the sensations of tasting, touching, smelling his human, but directing the hectocotylus to venture below the clitoris, nudging between the labia and into the acidic orifice they protected. Enclosed in the warmth, Cthulhu’s body had certain urges, and he restrained their enthusiasm, but not their goal—to go deeper, to find the unfertilised gametes. He was briefly distracted by the ruffled, folded tissue just inside the entrance, and spent some time lingering, stroking back and forth along the texture while his human held very still, quiet pleasure coming off them in waves, hips canting and opening further in encouragement.

That’s it… good boy… gooooood boy….

The praise was making him understand just why Aix craved it, but more to the point—the fact that Aix immediately gave the thing he most wanted, himself. It was so instinctively generous, and… what had Aix called him before? Cute? It seemed to have a bit more layers of meaning than ‘endearing’. Cute things were endearing, but they were often small too, and generous, and thoughtful. Aix was all these things.

Cthulhu understood that the writhe of his exploring the vaginal passage was less intense than touching Aix’s clitoris, but that it wasn’t unwelcome, simply not likely to result in an orgasm. Which was better, really, as it gave Cthulhu time to learn, to savour the alien tastes and sensations. Humans were acidic, and pleasingly sweet, and as he delved deep, he found the soft, rounded cervix.

It was a feat of will to not push at the closed opening. He let Aix see how much he wanted to, thinking perhaps it would please his human to know how intoxicating his body was.

It did please his human, and Aix shared desires to be filled in that way, to have his womb filled with eggs, or liquid, or anything fertile and heavy; but too, the conviction that this was not possible in reality, that the uterus wasn’t designed to do that, and Aix wasn’t sure it could be done pleasurably or even safely. Humans were adaptable, but they didn’t edit their genes and shift on purpose, the way Cthulhu’s people could.

But the fact that Aix knew what gene editing was… that was promising. The fact that there were animals of earth that could shapeshift, that was promising. That humans overcame their lack of natural ability to shapeshift by cutting themselves apart and sewing themselves back together differently… was horrifying, it was fascinatingly horrifying. Aix had been subject to other humans laying open his skull, and changing the way his mouth aligned, because it was aligned harmfully; as well as having to have faulty genetic tissue removed, before it duplicated wrong and caused damage not because of destruction, but too much creation, in the wrong place.

Aix understood the synchrony of two minds, had a name for it as he had a name for everything, and it was strange and lovely: Dreamfasting, the word echoing with the strange hypnotic music of humanity, the story of a world like Cthulhu’s, connected all as one, via the Dreamscape. Cthulhu shared the quiet beauty of his own life, understanding at once that the stars frightened his human, who preferred small spaces to hide, preferred planets to the void. So Cthulhu showed him small spaces, lush shadowed landscapes full of fishes and the sparkling stars of bioluminescence. He closed his hands a little further around Aix, to make him feel safe, and felt the last chain vanishing, the last Seal undone, and braced himself for the Fall.

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