Hall of the Mountain King Chapters 12 and 13

I.

Michele and Fitz walked quietly through Endless Caverns, impressed by the sheer beauty of it. Michele hadn’t known what to expect, after the let-down of the Skyline Caverns, but the Endless Caverns lived up to their billing. It was just as impressive as Luray Caverns had been. Gigantic stalactites and stalagmites were on display here…hundreds of them. Michele regretted now that she hadn’t taken her Skyline Tour Guide aside and asked him what had happened to all the stalactites there…why there were only a handful. Was Skyline so much younger that only a few stalactites had formed, had they all been broken off for some reason…or were the conditions that produced the anthodites such that far fewer stalactites and stalagmites were formed? She’d have to do some research.

As they reached ground level once more…steps up from cavern level were steep…they went into the gift shop, as usual, and Michele picked up a ball cap and a couple of T-shirts. The t-shirts went into a bag, she put the ball cap on her head. It was extremely cool – a bat with a wing and body on the bill of the cap, the other wing rising up onto the face…and the colors were complimentary -- a brown bat on a dark blue cap.

As they walked out of the gift shop, Michele’s eyes wandered over the people waiting to enter the cave, and a cold chill suddenly ran through her. She recognized one of the men…it was the false Mr. Largo, who had precipitated her abandonment of her Taran Tula persona four weeks ago.

Her face remained expressionless as her eyes passed over him and both she and Fitz walked past. She knew that she looked 100 pounds thinner now – especially since she was wearing a t-shirt tucked into her cargo shorts, which showed off her flat stomach, and her face had a completely different shape without the cheek pads she’d worn to further give the illusion of overweight. Not to mention she was wearing a ball cap that hid her hair – which was a different shade and a different style, anyway. There was no way he could recognize her.

But what was he doing here?

Well…it had to be a coincidence. Even if he was searching for Taran Tula, and connected her to Michele Bravo – but how in hell could he have done that? – he wouldn’t have tried to track her down at this cave!

She glanced back, and saw his back heading into the entrance to the cave, along with several other people. Whatever he was doing there, he hadn’t recognized her.

Nevertheless…

“Something wrong?” asked Fitz, as they reached the car. “You look lost in thought.”

Michele grimaced. “I was just thinking…there’s a loose end…one of my projects…I won’t bore you with the details…but I was just thinking, maybe I’d better cut it off.”


II.

Gus Keller walked towards the entrance to the caverns, after purchasing his ticket. His eyes wandered over the people emerging from the gift shop. Jeez, the cavern operators must make a ton of money on their overpriced souvenirs….hey, that girl was wearing a pretty cool cap, with bats on it..he’d have to pick up one of those on the way out…

He walked into the cavern followed by several others, including several children. Everyone was duly impressed by the awe-inspiring rock formations.

Bat cap on head, Keller returned to his car and thence to his hotel room. So, okay, it had not been an entirely wasted trip. That cavern had been pretty impressive. But now was the time to utilize a little patience and common sense. He would stake out Michele Bravo’s home, and wait for her there….like a spider waiting for a fly.


III.

That evening, Fitz and Michele lay in bed, watching the Sci Fi Channel. Or SyFy channel, as it was now known. It was one of those SyFy channel-produced TV movies, with prehistoric creatures wreaking havoc on modern day campers, complete with bad CGI, bad actors except for the one “name” actor who hopefully had been paid a great deal to lend his name to the drek, bad dialog, and a ludicrous plot. They were watching it somewhat in disbelief, just to see how bad it could actually be.

When the commercials came on, Michele muted them with the remote.

“From TV drek to movie drek,” Michele murmured, as a commercial for the new hit movie Twilight – Eclipse, came on. “I’m really tired of this vampire craze…”

“What’s wrong with vampires?” asked Fitz. “I thought you liked that sort of thing.”

“Let me show you something,” Michele said, reaching for her laptop.

She went to YouTube, did a search on “Fright Night Club Scene,” and then played it.

“Now, that is a sexy vampire,” she said, indicating the sweat-shirt clad Chris Sarandon, portraying Jerry Dandridge, entering a smoky nightclub and seeking out his quarry, the movie hero’s girlfriend, Amy. He proceeded to seduce her by a dance.

“Whew,” said Fitz, after the six minute clip was over. “That was hot. Or hawt, as the kids today say.”

He got up on his knees and looked down at her recumbent form.

“We should learn to dance like that,” he said.

She grinned up at him. “I’d like that.”

“But for now….”

Fitz slipped out of his underwear, and Michele propped several pillows behind her head, so that she was laying down but her head and torso were slightly elevated. Fitz straddled her on his knees, and his erect cock rubbed against her face.

Michele licked her lips and then licked out at his cock. He pressed it forward, into her mouth, and she accepted it, relaxing, sealing her lips around it. She gazed up at him as he began, very gently, to thrust his cock into her mouth, as far into her mouth and throat as she cared to accept it. He looked down at her, smiling his appreciation, then as those little tendrils of pleasure began to coil in his thighs he licked his own lips, and his torso shuddered a bit.

Michele enjoyed the look of bliss on his face as she pleasured him, and when he came she swallowed his cum.

He unstraddled her and lay back. “Mmmmm, that was nice.”

“Now do me,” she commanded, handing him her vibrator.

He scooched closer to her, lying his body next to hers, turned the vibrator on and placed it between her legs. He knew exactly how she liked it – she’d shown him, long ago, and it was his turn to watch her face as she lay back, eyes closed, enjoying the feeling of the warm, cylindrical piece of metal on her clitoris. He rubbed it back and forth, up and down, in circular motions, always nice and slow.

Her eyes opened wide as she felt herself about to cum, and she tilted her chin upward and grimaced with the pleasure of it…again and again…

IV.

As she drifted asleep, Michele was doubly satisfied. She had intended her next erotic adventure for Dighton & Forrest to have been a recreation of Eve Marie Saint and Cary Grant’s North by Northwest action on Mount Rushmore…but there was no denying that the steaming heat of “Jerry Dandridge” and “Amy Peterson” was indeed so very, very hot…so hot that sometimes she actually watched that scene while pleasuring herself as a sort of mental stimulation -- better than porn any day ....perhaps she’d give her readers a dose of vampire sex next…

Michele Bravo pulled on her cargo shorts. They felt a bit tight, and she swore. This is what came of two weeks of travelling, with no biking or other exercise (so much for sex being a great form of exercise), and perhaps more egregiously, having hot chocolate sundaes for dessert after lunch as well as after dinner.

Well, she’d still been in the need for comfort food after the shock of the false Mr. Largo. And now he’d shown up again. By rights she should treat herself to a peanut buster parfait, but she’d have to resist. And tomorrow she’d have to buy a collapsible bike so she could get in some exercise during the rest of this trip. She was also a member of a health club chain that was supposed to have outlets everywhere…she’d better start looking for those, too, so she could get in a little swimming and a little weight training. She’d been allowing herself to slack off for too long.

Well, hell, she thought. She’d just got handed another shock – a worse one – the false Mr. Largo might know her identity – her real identity – as Michele Bravo. If that didn’t call for comfort food nothing would. She’d go have that buster bar parfait and give up on her desserts for lunch starting tomorrow.

“Feel like a Dairy Queen, Fitz?” she asked. “My treat.”

Fitz looked up from his computer. “No thanks. Are you having ice cream cravings?”

“Yes…I’ll be gone for half an hour or so.”

“Take your time. I’ve got to take notes on this documentary.”

“Okay. Later.”

Michele spent the time at the DQ savoring her parfait and trying to come up with a plan to discover what was going on with the false Mr. Largo.

She repeated to herself her belief that no secret agent bent on tracking down the “infamous Taran Tula” would just come to the Endless Caverns in the hopes of accidently seeing her. If he had been reading her blog…and he must have done so, he would have known she was going there, but not the time of day or anything like that. Why, if he knew Taran Tula was actually Michele Bravo, even go to the caverns at all? Why not stake out her apartment?

Michele took out a pocket notebook and made some notes. Their next stop was the Shenandoah Caverns. What if she were to mention that in her blog…and give the time of day – having some plausible reason for going into that much detail, of course – that she’d be there. Then, if she saw the false Mr. Largo again, she’d know that he had in actual fact been following her.

In one sense she hated to do it. If there was any kind of confrontation, she could hardly dispatch the false Mr. Largo with Fitz as a witness. And she didn’t know the terrain surrounding Shenandoah Caverns…if she needed to make a quick getaway she wouldn’t be able to do it…

No.

What she would do would be to post an entry that she’d been called home unexpectedly. So if the false Mr. Largo were following her, he’d go stake out her apartment to wait for her return. Meanwhile, she’d continue her cavernous adventures…her main writing was going into the magazine, anyway, not the blog…

But how to find out if the false Mr. Largo were staking out her apartment?

Easy. She was the head of Spindrift Security, after all. She’d put one of her operatives on her apartment, with instructions to find out if anyone else were watching it. And if anyone else was…find out – discreetly – who he was and who he worked for.

She’d draw up a likeness of the false Mr. Largo and send it along, to give her operative a heads up, but if the false Mr. Largo were working for the police or some other law enforcement agency, chances were they’d have half a dozen agents staked out around her place.

Finishing her peanut buster parfait and her plan at the same time, Michele sighed and got up. She’d make her sketch, then send an email later on tonight, setting things in motion. Then, there’d be nothing to do but wait.