Lauren stood looking at the beach house, hands on hips, head shaking in wonder. "Daaaamn," she murmured, then turned to grin at Carrie. "I thought it looked good in the e-mail pictures, but - daaaamn."

Carrie smiled and shrugged. "That's our Megan." Her eyes roved over the soft teal walls, the half-dozen wind chimes swinging from the eaves, the broad white balcony stretching around all eight sides of the house. Surf roared enticingly behind it. "Good thing we knew her before she became a big-time Boston lawyer. We'd never have made it to a place like this otherwise."

Lauren put her arm around the taller woman's waist and laid her head against her shoulder, both out of affection and because here, she could. Back home in Nowheresville, North Carolina, there was no such thing as lesbian PDA. College in Charlotte had been better; at least they'd had a social group and a few bars to hang out in, but in the end family ties had pulled them back to Carrie's hometown while Megan had gone on to a successful career up North. She got to live in the open full-time; Carrie and Lauren just got to vacation there.

Their eyes met and, grinning, they started up the freshly-painted steps to the balcony. Megan had designed the place herself and had only been down here a few times so far; the house was still so new that it had yet to see its first full summer. In fact, Carrie and Lauren were Megan's first official guests. She couldn't get away, herself, until the weekend; but she'd invited them to come on up and enjoy themselves until she arrived. All they had to do in the meantime was take care of Howard; Megan was giving his usual keeper the week off.

Carrie dug the key out of her purse and turned to Lauren, suddenly nervous. What were they doing at a beach house in Innsmouth, Massachusetts? For a moment she had the ridiculous notion that the key might not work and they'd end up having to drive all the way back to North Carolina, shut out as ever by a society that didn't accept them.

But the twinkle in Lauren's eyes reassured her, and Carrie slipped the key into the lock. It turned easily, the click covering her sigh of relief. Then they stepped inside and she sighed again.

Bookcases and artwork lined the walls - real artwork, not those cheap seascape prints you could buy for $20 at your local Wal-Mart. An open staircase of pale, polished wood led up to a second-floor landing that mirrored the balcony outside. In the center of the living room was a sunken space in which were scattered a number of expensive but comfortable-looking couches and chairs and a gigantic, cylindrical aquarium.

"So this is Howard," murmured Lauren, stepping down into the little space and approaching the tank with interest. For a moment, she couldn't spot the octopus among all the colorful plants and coral, but then a dusty lavender tentacle unfurled from a small cave. Another tentacle quickly followed, and then the whole creature emerged, almost as though he'd heard his name and had come out to see who was talking about him. Golden, horizontally-slitted eyes regarded her with an unexpected intelligence.

"Damn," said Carrie, coming up behind Lauren and putting her hands on her shoulders. "Creepy-looking thing, isn't he? So, I don't know...alien."

Howard's eyes shifted to her, and she shuddered.

"Nah," Lauren shrugged. She reached out to touch the glass, and Howard lifted a tentacle in response. "I think he's kind of cool. Especially those suckers. They're beautiful in a way, don't you think? All those perfect white circles lined up in long, neat rows."

"All I see is sushi." Carrie folded her arms. "I just hope he can't get out of there. I saw a video online where an octopus the size of a cat squeezed through a hole just an inch wide." She glanced critically at the canopy covering the tube. It looked secure enough, but....

Lauren snickered. "You know Megan. I'm sure this is the biggest, safest, most expensive aquarium on the market. Besides, where would Howard go if he got out? Octopuses can't survive out of water."

"They can for a little while. I did some research."

Lauren's lip quirked. "You would." Suddenly she turned away from the aquarium, eyes alight. "So, what should we do first: unpack, or hit the beach?"

"Hey, look, he's changed color!" Lauren dropped her beach gear carelessly on the rug as she started toward the aquarium. Howard had gone banana yellow with irregular brown cross-hatchings, making him look a bit like a giraffe in reverse.

"Yeah, they do that," Carrie answered, eying the octopus critically. "They can change on a dime. It's supposed to be for camouflage, but he sure isn't blending into anything right now."

Lauren grinned, hooking a finger into Carrie's bikini bottom. "Maybe he's just showing off. You know, a single guy, all alone in this big, empty house, when suddenly two attractive young ladies show up...."

"...Who are quite happy with one another, thank you very much," Carrie finished. She drew closer both to Lauren and to the tank. On the opposite side of the glass, tentacles fanned out around her face. "Of course, he doesn't know that, does he?"

Lauren shrugged. "Or doesn't care. I have to say, he really does seem taken with you."

Half unconsciously, Carrie pulled away. Then realization hit her and she glanced guiltily at her watch. "Shit. It's not me he wants; it's food. All this time we've been out on the beach, he's been waiting for dinner."

"Oops," Lauren grimaced. "Good thing he can't tell on us." She glanced at her own timepiece. "Well, we're not too late, anyway. So what do we do?"

Carrie reached for her purse. "Didn't you read the e-mail?" she teased, flashing the printout she'd made of Megan's instructions. She knew full well that Lauren had been more interested in the pictures and the sightseeing opportunities than in the more mundane parts of Megan's message. But that was all right; Carrie was content to take care of the boring details and give Lauren the lead once they started adventuring.

Following Megan's directions, she went into a side room where a second aquarium squatted, smaller and barer and loaded with pale, scuttling crabs. Carrie picked up a nearby scoop, reached into the tank, and carefully swept up a crustacean.

Lauren's expression was equal parts fascination and disgust. "Is that what Howard eats?"

"You really didn't read the instructions, did you?" Carrie smirked. "Octopuses will eat just about any kind of seafood, living or dead. But you know Megan. It's only the best for Howard: fresh, live crab each and every day."

Scanning the printout again, she worked the canopy off of the aquarium, then tipped her squirming catch inside and resealed the lid.

The crab drifted slowly to the bottom of the tank.

For several long seconds, Howard continued to lounge among the coral, seemingly uninterested in his visitor. Oblivious, the crab began to explore its new environment, moving closer, moment by moment, to the yellow peril.

Suddenly Howard pounced.

Too late, the crab saw him and tried to scuttle away; but Howard was just too fast for it - faster, it seemed, than water resistance should have allowed. In a moment he had his prey wrapped tight and drew it, struggling, into the web-shrouded base of his tentacles. The membrane bulged briefly as the crab struggled; then all motion ceased and Howard drifted back to the bottom of the tank.

"Don't tell me he's swallowed that thing already," Lauren murmured in awe.

Carrie smiled. "Oh, no. He's just bitten it and paralyzed it with his venom. Now he can munch on it all night at his leisure."

They watched as Howard turned a satisfied shade of scarlet.

"Are you sure you don't want to come with me?" Lauren teased, cocking a hip and swinging her handbag invitingly.

Carrie rolled her eyes.

They'd spotted the scrapbooking store on the way into Innsmouth. Lauren had wanted to stop immediately, but Carrie was driving, and Carrie placed scrapbooking stores somewhere around the fifth circle of hell. Lauren had only pouted for a moment; she knew she'd get her chance to go back later on.

And here it was. Their second day in Innsmouth had dawned bleak and rainy; there would be no going out on the beach today. After a morning of exquisite lovemaking, Carrie found herself drawn to Megan's seemingly endless book collection, while Lauren was itching to get out of the beach house. There was no question of one of them exploring the town without the other, but as for the scrapbooking store.....

"You go ahead," Carrie urged, fingertips tingling already. All those sweet, creamy sheets, she thought, ready to give up their secrets for a simple caress. All those other lives available for living at the part of a page. And all of it in her mind, where everything was bigger and better and more beautiful than reality ever could be. Scrapbooking? Pfft, that was for amateurs. Not that she'd ever tell Lauren that. "I'll be fine," she smiled, trailing her fingers across the spines of a leather-bound shelf as Lauren bopped on out the door.

Really: leather-bound books in a beach house? Goodness only knew what Megan's shelves in Boston looked like. Carrie imagined autographed first editions of Shakespeare and maybe a Dead Sea Scroll or two vacuum-sealed behind glass.

The thought made her glance at Howard, who seemed to be studying her as keenly as she was him. At the moment, he was sporting a truly lovely shade of grass green. Not bad. She gave him a grudgingly appreciative nod and turned back to the books.

The leather-bound volumes were fascinating but also intimidating, and many of them looked too old and fragile for Carrie to risk handling; so she moved on to another wall and a case of books more to her taste: well-used paperbacks in a variety of gaudy but slightly faded colors. There were adventure novels; there were crime dramas; there were (ugh) bodice-rippers; and there were - yes! - there were treasures: classic fantasy, horror and science fiction novels from the days of her mother and her mother's mother. Dunsany, Derleth, Bloch, Carter...Lovecraft, of course. And here was a new one: Clark Ashton Smith. Her lips quirked at the outlandish title: The Abominations of Yondo. Yep, that was just about her geek speed. She tipped the book out from the shelf and grinned delightedly at the cover: a caged man chained to a cliff face, mysteries lurking in the blasted landscape behind him. The table of contents promised a collection of short stories with such outrageous titles as "The Enchantress of Sylaire," "The Dweller in the Gulf," and "The Third Episode of Vathek." Ohh, she just had to take a better look at this.

Clutching the book tightly but carefully to her chest, Carrie retreated to the downstairs bedroom. The sheets were still in disarray and smelled of sex. She smiled, feeling more at home here now that she and Lauren had brought a bit of themselves into the place. She propped all the pillows into a single pile against the headboard and settled in atop the messy sheets.

Carrie had been reading in bed since she was a kid, and this was just the kind of storytelling that had entranced her most back then. Before long, she was so deeply engrossed in the imaginary lands of Hyperborea, Atlantis, and Zothique that she lost all track of the world around her.

Something moved in the corner of her vision. She barely noticed it.

Something touched her bare ankle. She noticed that.

Starting out of book-trance, she looked up over the top of the pages to find Howard hunched at her feet, the tip of one tentacle lightly caressing her ankle.

Her first thought was, How the hell did he get out of his tank? But that was quickly followed by, Wow, look at all those beautiful colors.

Howard's skin was flickering like flame, gold and scarlet and orange with just a hint of gas-hot blue. His eyes met hers, horizontal pupils drawing her in like the coals at the heart of a roaring fire. No, not a fire - a bonfire. Carrie's every nerve sizzled with the heat of it, but it didn't hurt. On the contrary, it felt absolutely fucking fantastic.

The colors danced in her head and Howard's slitted gaze pinned her to the headboard as he twined a tentacle around each of her legs and pulled himself upwards.

Part of Carrie realized just how wrong this was. Not only should Howard have been unable to escape from his tank, but he certainly shouldn't have been able to get all the way in here and, holy shit, to actually get up on the bed and - holy fucking shit - to breathe air like a land-dweller and be clearly intent on mating with one.

But that was only part of Carrie. A small part. The rest of her was twisting like parchment in an inferno of sudden need. Her rational mind was fast turning to ash, and her body would soon follow unless....

Howard's tentacles were amazingly long. With most of him still around her knees, he reached out one long arm and slid it under her jean shorts. A single sucker found her clit and did what suckers do best. Carrie screamed in ecstasy.

Suddenly he was on her, as quick as he'd been with the crab the night before. An onslaught of tentacles descended on her hips, and Carrie's feeble human hands helped them rip her shorts and panties to shreds. Then it was time for the suckers again - more of them now, inside and out, teasing clit and lips and g-spot simultaneously - with still more of them slicking their way up under her blouse and bra and giving her nipples the same delicious attention as her cunt. The very last tentacle found her mouth. She took it in eagerly, relishing the taste of salt and alien flesh.

There was nothing left of Carrie's mind to protest now. It had all been burned - or sucked - away, and all that remained was pleasure. Every cell flared with an orgasm the likes of which she'd never even imagined. She could do nothing but experience.

Somewhere in the midst of it all came a brief flare of pain, right at the center of her being. Bit me, she thought, and flashed for a moment on the paralyzed crab. But she wasn't paralyzed, and that thought was swept away as quickly as every other had been, inked out by a new and darker round of orgasms that took her to depths, rather than heights, of ecstasy. Of course, by this point, she couldn't even tell the difference.

"Carrie? Where are you?" Lauren dumped her purse and shopping bag on the floor and scanned the living room. Hmm, no Carrie - and no Howard, either, though he could easily be camouflaged and/or hiding in a cave. "Carrie?"

"In here," came a slurred voice from the bedroom. Lauren grinned. She knew that tone: Carrie had been playing Solitaire while she'd been gone, and she hadn't been playing with cards.

Lauren walked to the bedroom door, grinning even wider at the sight of her nude and sweat-drenched lover splayed limply across the bed. "Damn, girl, you've been having way too much fun without me."

Her grin slipped a notch as she slowly began to realize something was wrong with the space between Carrie's legs. But Howard had adopted the same tan-and-rose pattern as Carrie's nether regions, and Lauren's brain was slow to take in the impossibility of what she was seeing. "Is that--?" she began, hesitant, horrified. "Is that--?"

"You know," murmured Carrie, her voice less slurred now but huskier, "I never thought I'd want someone named 'Howard' between my legs; but holy fuck, Lauren, you've got to try this for yourself."

The octopus's eyes swiveled to meet Lauren's; and she staggered under the realization that she was facing an intelligence at least as great as her own, yet utterly, incomprehensibly alien.

Then Howard began to change colors.

The Inducer, all eight tentacles still wrapped around his initiate's quivering body, turned his attention to the new prey. He watched her pupils widen, her mouth slacken, her nipples harden as the combination of patterns and pheromones and sheer eldritch power overcame her merely human will. She stumbled forward into the room, hands limp at her sides.

The Inducer gave his initiate a mental nudge. "Come to us," she whispered, holding her arms out wide.

He lifted a tentacle and hooked it into the prey's waistband, drawing her into the combined arms of controller and controlled. He sensed the fear and resistance lingering in her mind, but knew they weren't strong enough to save her, especially not when her own lover was adding to the Call.

They drew her in, ten arms, one mind, and wrapped her tight in their slick embrace. Her eyes had rolled up even before they'd finished undressing her.

The Inducer glowed scarlet with delight. The Mother of Tentacles would be pleased with today's catch.

They waited until nightfall, when they could leave the beach house unobserved, whiling away the daylight hours exploring every secret niche of all three of their bodies. Their combined ecstasy rippled through the ether, setting the Mother's own flesh aquiver.

The initiates sensed Her already, knew She awaited them, ached for the consummation only She could give them. Hands linked, they smiled at one another and nuzzled the mantle of the Inducer who hung between them, tentacles wrapping lovingly around each of their necks. Together, they stepped into the surf.

Waves rolled over them as they moved deeper, deeper into the intermediate world between them and the Mother. Nictitating membranes slid down over the initiates' eyes, retinas adjusted to see through the gloom, gills opened in their necks to allow them to breathe as the Inducer did. They swam down, down, the weight of the water both crushing and totally unimportant.

Most of this journey was strictly necessary. Their destination lay nowhere on this earth, yet could be reached from any body of water deep enough to submerge a biped. But there was a rightness to approaching the Mother this way, beginning in Innsmouth where Her children had first breached the surface less than three weeks ago. Besides, the initiates were enjoying their new gifts, and it pleased the Inducer to allow them a bit of foreplay before the Mother had Her way with them.

But at last the temptation became too great even for him to resist. Muscles flexed within the part of him that lay outside normal space and time, opening a gateway to Her realm. Together the three of them swam through.

Even changed as they were, the initiates were still unable entirely to process what they saw before them. In an attempt to make sense of the senseless, their minds conjured the image of a great crevasse, as wide and deep as the space between stars. But there were no stars here, only Her. She was the crevasse. And within Her immeasurable depths lay more crevasses, some fluttering with fleshy pink lips, others fringed with tentacles in a thousand different sizes and shapes and colors, still others festooned with strand upon strand of pearlescent eggs. And everywhere there were eyes, horizontally slitted and golden, overflowing with a knowledge that reached beyond time itself.

A swimmer cannot prostrate herself with nothing to prostrate herself against; but in the inky, quivering masses that had been their minds, the two initiates did their best.

Pleased, the Mother beckoned them closer.

The Inducer led them down into the crevasse, thousands of tentacles kissing and caressing them as they passed, until at last they reached a pink-lipped opening barely larger than the three of them entwined. A single stubby tentacle, half-hooded by the surrounding lips, rose from one end of the slit.

The initiates swam to it eagerly, embraced it together, and began to kiss and suck in an ecstasy of devotion. The tentacle swelled, the lips flushed and fluttered, and the initiates felt all of the Mother's immeasurable flesh tremble with pleasure.

A sudden suction from below broke their hold on the tentacle and drew them down between the lips, into the body of the Mother herself. She was soft and warm and nubbly in all the right places. The initiates trailed their hands and lips and tongues up the canal as She sucked them deeper, up through a tight little sphincter and into Her womb Itself.

All was warm, scarlet, silent - aside from the ancient heartbeat that pulsed in time with the initiates' swollen clits. They and their Inducer were pressed tight in the confined space, flesh to flesh, mind to mind, ache to ache.

As they waited to be reborn, the Mother instructed them. She used no words, no communication any human could have understood at all. But they were Hers now, and Her thoughts were their thoughts. She had a name, which their still-half-terrestrial brains translated in part as Bastbutis. She had brothers and sisters as ancient and powerful as She, some lurking beyond the stars, some in dimensions inaccessible even to Her, a couple in cities deep beneath the oceans of their own tiny earth. But They were all sleeping or dead or both, whereas She had been awakened millennia early by some sort of puny human activity in just the right spot of just the right deep ocean trench.

She neither knew nor cared about the details. All that mattered to Her was that the earth was now Hers for the taking. She had assumed command of the oceans immediately and effortlessly, and had remade its inhabitants to suit Her needs. Now She was birthing the sort of children She required to bring all land-dwellers under Her sway.

Even as the knowledge formed in their heads, the initiates sensed the presence of two new creatures within the womb. The pale, half-spectral Firstborn swarmed up the initiates' legs with tentacles much like those of the Inducer; but unlike the Inducer, these two seemed uninterested in what lay between those legs. Higher they climbed and higher, until they settled atop the initiates' heads and twined their tentacles around them from ears to neck.

The initiates felt the Firstborn rear up, then the sharp stab of beaks plunging down through their skulls and deep into what had once been their minds. But now they were Her minds, and the fresh venom spreading through them sent the initiates' bodies bucking and twisting within the tight womb walls until at last they were expelled, reborn as true children of the Mother of Tentacles.

Another flex of the Inducer's gifts brought the three of them back to the beach house, the two bipeds standing before their eight-legged brother, who reposed once more in his aquarium. They gave him a long, affectionate glance, then turned to face each other, curious to see what the Mother had made of them.

From a human point of view, each child saw her lover much as she had always been, though nude now and dripping wet - not a bad combination, they thought in tandem. They were more closely united now than they had ever been before, loved each other - and their brother, and their Mother - more fully than they had ever known they could love. Their nipples hardened in unison, and the spaces between their legs grew even wetter.

But that was only what they saw from a human point of view. New, eldritch senses revealed the spectral Firstborn still cradling their heads. They glowed like crowns, marking their hosts as members of the new, superior race that would soon inherit the world.

Of course, the truly superior part of each symbiotic pair was the top half; the bipeds to whom they clung were merely sources of information, food, camouflage, pleasure...whatever Bastbutis might require at any given moment. But in Her infinite wisdom, She had restored most of their original thoughts and personalities, though they were now harnessed quite thoroughly within the tentacles of Her Firstborn. And that was only as it should be, thought Carrie and Lauren; after all, bipeds were inferior by their very nature. At least they knew the bliss of being joined with their betters.

The ex-humans smiled at each other. They had found acceptance at last. And they would share it. Ohh, how they would share.

Driving back into town that night, Carrie and Lauren smiled at many a passing stranger, noting the spectral octopod atop his or her head and being noted in return. The Mother's base in Innsmouth was well established, though not yet complete. After all, this was tourist season.

Guided by the communal wisdom of all Innsmouth's linked children, they parked as close as they could to the biggest bar on the busiest block of the strip. The combined scents of beer and pot wafted out into the street, where they struggled against the salty ocean breeze and lost.

Hands joined, hearts quickening, the new children stepped inside.

Steve was lounging against the bar, back to the rail, when he saw the two dykes walk in. They didn't look like dykes; in fact, the shorter of the two was damn hot with her curvy little figure and dark, spiky flip. The taller one was a bit plainer and a bit smaller in the chest; but she had legs a mile long, and Steve liked the golden highlights in her curls. In his mind she became a beach volleyball player in a tight little spandex uniform, patting her teammate's ass.

No, they didn't look like dykes; but they were holding hands, and the glances they shot one another were definitely about more than friendship.

Steve nudged Justin, who grumbled about his spilled beer for a moment before following Steve's pointing finger. "Sweeeet," he murmured, eyes locked tight on the girls even as he took another sip.

Almost as if they'd heard him, the dykes' eyes met his and Steve's. They smiled, the shorter one saucily, the taller one more demurely. Clasped hands swinging, they walked up to the bar.

"Hey," said the shorter one. "I'm Lauren, and this is Carrie."

Holy shit, all that and and a Southern accent! Justin thought he might be in love.

"Well, heeeeey right back, y'all," Steve drawled, too drunk to realize just how awful his caricature sounded.

Justin winced, but the girls seemed more amused than offended. Something told him it would take more than a bit of verbal leering to put these two off. Not that they came across as sluts; it was just something about their eyes, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. He found himself both excited and slightly unnerved.

"Are y'all residents here or tourists?" Lauren asked, pouring the Southern syrup on a bit thicker than before. "We're tourists, in case you can't tell." She cocked her head charmingly in acknowledgement of how unlikely this was. "We just came up from North Carolina a couple of days ago."

"We're from U. Mass.," Justin said quickly, before Steve could put his foot in both their mouths again. "Boston."

"Oh, really?" Carrie smiled again, more broadly this time. "We've got a friend in Boston, Megan Spearman. She's a lawyer."

Steve grinned lasciviously. "And is she...like you two?" His eyebrows jiggled, and Justin rolled his eyes.

Lauren rolled hers, too, though she still didn't seem terribly offended. "What is it about guys and lesbians?" she sighed. "Is it really that much hotter to think of two women fucking than to think of yourself fucking a woman?"

"Oh, no. No, no, no," Steve shook his head, trying hard to make it look like he took her question seriously. "What's hot is us fucking two women fucking."

Amazingly, both lesbians totally failed to slap him. In fact, Carrie actually smirked. "That's what I always tell her, but she just keeps asking and asking."

Steve leered Lauren up from bottom to top. "Maybe she likes the idea, too."

Justin sighed and turned away. Even girls as tolerant as these must have their limits, and Steve was doing his damndest to find them. Justin had better cut out before the two of them decided to rip out his throat along with his friend's.

"Maybe we both do," Lauren purred.

Justin froze.

"And this is Howard," Lauren announced, snuggling her whole body up against the tank as the four of them stood together in the sunken area. "He can be soooo much fun. But you'll see that for yourselves in just a little while."

Justin and Steve blinked at the octopus, which flashed through a psychedelic series of colors in the space of heartbeats. Or maybe that was just the weed the girls had given them in the car on the way out here. That was some high-grade shit, the best either of them had ever had. They told them they'd found it right here in Innsmouth.

Lauren's comments about the octopus didn't make much sense; but by that point, little else did, either.

She took Steve by the hand, and Carrie took Justin; and together the two women led them into the bedroom.

The bed was a mess, a torn and crumpled paperback lay on the floor, and the whole room smelled of sex and...salt water? Must be some kind of kinky lesbian shit, thought Steve, hardening already. He smirked at Justin, who looked equally dazed and aroused.

The two girls seated them on the edge of the bed, then stood in front of them, arms around each other's waists, hips touching.

"So," purred Lauren, eyes locked on Carrie's even though her words were clearly directed at their guests, "you boys like to watch girls make out?"

Even Steve couldn't tell whether he answered in the affirmative or merely grunted. Either way, it was enough. Lauren took Carrie's face in her hands and kissed her deeply, passionately; while Carrie's hands roamed down Lauren's waist to her buttocks and began to squeeze.

After a long, long moment they turned to eye their guests, both of whom had their hands inside their pants.

"Now it's your turn," Carrie said.

The two men grinned and started to rise, but Carrie held up a hand. "Oh, not with us," she snorted.

Realization dawned slowly in their fogged brains. They gaped at her, then at Lauren, then at one another.

"Uhhh...." Steve managed at last.

Lauren put a hand on her hip. "Oh, so it's okay for two men to enjoy two women getting it on, but not vice versa?"

Steve's boner shriveled like a slug in salt.

Justin took his hand out of his pants and used it to gesture desperately. "It's, it's just--" he stammered. "It's just that we don't swing that way - and, well, you do."

Steve nodded in eager agreement. Justin always had been the clearer thinker of the two of them.

Lauren, however, was unimpressed. "Oh, so we're nothing but entertainment to you, is that it?"

"Well," Steve spluttered, "you're entertaining yourselves too, right?"

"But we can do that just as well alone as with you watching."

Aw, shit, she had him there.

Once again, Justin came to the rescue. "Um, we thought you brought us here so we could all...entertain...each other."

"Exactly." Carrie nodded and folded her arms. "We got the ball rolling, and now it's your turn."

Steve's mind flashed back to the flirtation at the bar. What the hell had happened between there and here? Right up until a moment ago, he'd been sure he was about to have the night of his life, but now? These girls were just plain freaks. Face flushing, he carefully averted his eyes from Justin's.

After an agonizingly long silence, Lauren spoke again. "Carrie, I think these boys need their minds broadened a little. What do you think?"

"Lauren, I think you're exactly right."

Eyes gleaming, the two of them started toward the bed. Lauren took Steve by the shoulders and Carrie took Justin; and together they pushed the stunned young men back against the mattress and leapt astride their thighs.

Relief flooded Steve's body, most especially his dick. They'd just been fucking with him after all. Well, no problemo; he could take a joke as well as anyone, especially a joke with a punch line like this. Lauren's hands ripped open his fly and yanked his shorts down around his knees. Deciding he might as well help her out, he shimmied out of his boxers and was delighted by the look in her eyes as his boner sprang free. She was hungry.

Lauren glanced over at Carrie, who had Justin in exactly the same position as Steve. A wordless message passed between them, and they looked down again.

"Now close your eyes," Lauren said - no, they said, in perfect unison. Steve obeyed happily, assuming Justin had done the same. But really, who the fuck cared what Justin did? Steve was about to get his, and that was all that mattered.

Soft, wet warmth twined around his cock, and he moaned with pleasure. Then the sucking began. Holy shit, he thought, this girl was good. She was getting the whole shaft at once, from every angle! He licked his lips and began to pump his hips. Oh yeah, the whole shaft at once...every angle....

Wait a minute. How was that even possible? He cracked his eyes open.

Lauren sat astride his thighs, but she was fully upright, grinning like a shark. Then what was--? Steve's eyes dropped to his crotch, and the haze of beer and pot vanished in an instant, revealing a pulsing lavender tentacle and a single slit-pupiled eye.

Steve screamed.

He tried to pull away, but Lauren's hands came down on him with the force of a man three times her size. "Stay, boy," she snarled. Steve looked into her eyes and whimpered. Her expression hadn't changed a bit, but the hunger he saw there took on a whole new meaning now.

Desperately he looked to Justin for help, but his friend's eyes were still closed and his face was slackly blissful. A thin stream of drool trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Lauren grabbed Steve by the cheeks and wrenched him back to face. "Forget about your buddy," she snarled. "He never even heard you scream. We decided to go easy on him since he had a teensy shred of decency. Not that either of you deserves the deluxe initiation ceremony, but--" She let go of Steve's cheeks and caught his fist just as he started to swing. Seemingly without effort, she forced his arm back down.

Unfazed, she continued. "But don't worry, Stevie-boy. We're not mean people. You might feel a bit, let's say, conflicted, at first; but by the end of the initiation, you'll be enjoying yourself every bit as much as Justin is."

The tentacle resumed its pumping and sucking, and Steve moaned. He was stiffening again, despite himself. How could he not? It just felt so fucking good...even though it was so fucking wrong. Hell, Howard wasn't even a girl octopus! He closed his eyes again so he wouldn't have to see who - or what - was giving him the best blow job he'd ever had in his entire life.

"Uh uh, Stevie-boy," Lauren chided. "You'll have more fun if you look at Howard. Really, you will. I promise."

Half unwilling, Steve cracked open his eyes. The octopus was shifting colors again, lavender to scarlet to purple-black. It really was kind of fascinating, he realized. And it gave him something to focus on while his body did what it was going to do whether he liked it or not.

But of course, he did like it. Well, parts of him did - and more parts of him were liking it with every second. Mental fingernails scrabbled across his internal landscape as he was dragged, inch by inch, into the worst sort of pleasure he could ever have imagined.

He shot his first load when the tentacle slipped between his ass cheeks.

The three women stood on the shoreline, united both by the mental bonds of symbiosis and the physical bonds of Howard's tentacles. He rode Megan's neck, but his arms were long enough to wrap around Carrie and Lauren's shoulders as well.

They'd sensed her coming long before she reached Innsmouth. Of course, by that time, the fact that she, too, was a child of Bastbutis came as no surprise. Why else had she invited them to her beach house, if not to join her in the most exquisite slavery imaginable? Lauren and Carrie had spent several hours showing Megan just how grateful they were.

But now that the sky had darkened, it was time to return to the shoreline. There were others here, too: children of the Mother scattered up and down the beach, all staring achingly into the waves. When their numbers reached critical mass, the force of their combined longing would transport the earth itself into Bastbutis' eager womb. And who knew what She would make of it then?

But that was months, perhaps years, away. For now they simply gathered in their scattered little conclaves and adored Her from afar.

"You know," said Megan, breaking their reverie, "this was where it all started, right here in Innsmouth. A guy was fishing on a dock one day when he brought up an octopus. She'd let herself be caught, of course, and tranced him before he could even think of killing her or throwing her back. He took her home to his family, they invited friends over one and two at a time, and the revolution spread. Before long, there were enough children here for the Inducers to start surfacing in bunches. We trucked aquariums down to the beach and they just teleported right into them."

She smiled at the memory. "That was how I got Howard. I'd already been initiated by a cute young bartender, and Mother Bastbutis saw the potential for me to recruit on a broader scale than most of Her Innsmouth children. She told me just what sort of aquarium She wanted me to make; and once I'd finished it, in he popped, all golden-eyed and glowing like a sunset." She reached behind herself to pat him affectionately. "I loved him from the moment I saw him."

Sighing, Carrie and Lauren wrapped their arms around her waist and snuggled closer. It was just so romantic.

"I take him with me everywhere," Megan went on. "In case you haven't figured it out yet, he really doesn't have a keeper in Innsmouth. He follows me to Boston, where I have another aquarium just like this one. Our conclave there is coming along quite nicely.

"And now it's your turn," she finished.

The Mother of Tentacles didn't have much of a presence in North Carolina yet, aside from a handful of conclaves along the coast. Lauren and Carrie lived much further inland...but there was a lake nearby. It wasn't quite as dramatic an entrance into Bastbutis' realm as the Innsmouth surf, but they could do worse. For a moment, their linked minds reflected on the challenges facing recruiters in earth's desert regions. Poor things, they'd have to make do with wells or even, in some sad cases, mere bathtubs. Carrie and Lauren were the lucky ones.

They joined their hands across Megan's bare waist and smiled. They just couldn't wait to get back to North Carolina. It was time to teach those rednecks a thing or two about inclusion.