Chapter 5 #2
Torin reaches around, and I’m confused about what he’s doing until he drags out the pendant on the chain around my neck. “I can feel an immense amount of magic coming from this. What is it?”
Quickly, I pull it free from his hand and tuck it back into my shirt.
Most people don’t notice the chain, and I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who has been able to feel the magic coming from it.
“It’s… it allows me to store magic I’ve borrowed.
I’ve attached specific magic to it… magic I don’t want to give up.
I can store some magic, but it takes a lot out of me to attach it to the pendant.
For example… I didn’t want to give up the ability to have a familiar,” I say as I reach up and pet Kit.
She leans into me and squints her eyes in pleasure.
“The connection I have to her is stored in this pendant.”
“What about the other two spots?”
When the hell did this man become so observant?
“Those are…” I freeze when my eyes lock onto a building I pass almost every day on the way to work at the library. Just yesterday it looked normal, and today… it looks dilapidated.
“Stop here,” Torin orders as he gets off the bike, which sends me stumbling and nearly falling. Kit’s claws dig into my shoulder and her tail whaps me in the face while she hangs on tight.
“I know, Kit,” I say, rubbing behind her ears before I ditch the bike and text Imani to meet us here.
As I walk up to the building, I discover that there are strange vines shifting up its sides. They move so slowly that I have to concentrate on one to even see that it’s moving, almost like they’re strangling the structure.
“What… is this?” I ask.
Torin scrutinizes the building. “That’s what we’ve come here to find out.”
“Backup is coming. Let’s wait for them.”
“I wait for no one,” he says as he reaches the locked door and begins tugging on it.
I grab his arm and pull him away from it.
I mean… I know I already tried killing him with a bike, but I’d prefer not to have to explain to Imani what happened to him.
“Something’s not right here. Just… calm down and let’s wait it out.
I have a feeling Imani and the others know more than they’re letting on.
Look at the way people are walking past without even noticing this.
It’s like no one can see what’s happening here. ”
Torin eyes the people hurrying off to work before he evidently grows bored of them and turns his attention back to the building.
I watch while the vines inch across the door Torin was just trying to get through. He appears rather impatient as he paces in front of the building before looking at me.
“You said that anyone you touch, you acquire their magic,” he says before he takes my hand. “What about me?”
Not for the first time, I find it surprising that I feel nothing from him. Initially, I thought perhaps he didn’t have “magic” in the way others around me do. Since he’s a god, maybe his power isn’t exactly magic but something else, something I can’t obtain.
But he seems oddly discouraged when I shake my head.
“What is your magic?” I ask but before he can answer, a car pulls up, followed by several others.
Imani hops out and rushes over to us. “Do you know how long we’ve been searching for this?”
“I can’t believe no one has called it in,” Vinny states as he joins us, appearing rather confused.
“Look around you; no one is even noticing this. They’re staring now because you’ve all pulled up looking like you’re from the mafia,” I say, gesturing at their nondescript black vehicles.
“So can they not see what we’re seeing?” Imani asks.
Vinny shrugs. “I drove by this place just an hour ago and it wasn’t like this. Or I didn’t realize it was like this… I can’t quite tell.”
“What are we waiting for, let’s head in,” Torin says, but Imani slides in front of him.
“Tell him we need to secure the area, create a barrier around it, and then test what’s happening before we go inside.”
I tell Torin this but he just looks perplexed by the whole thing. “So we just… stand here and do nothing?”
“We do whatever Queen Imani demands.”
He stares at me, blatantly unimpressed. “I see. Let me try speaking to her.”
“You know English now?”
“I read some of your books. As a god, it is important to quickly learn the language of new cultures to spread my outreach.”
Torin turns to the woman. “Hello.”
She looks surprised. “Hello. I am Imani.”
He might be able to mimic words he’s read… but how could he know how they’re pronounced? Or what they mean? I guess he is a god, after all.
“I am Torin, please use me gently. Riley was very rough and dirty with me.”
My head whips around. “What kind of books did you read?”
“The ones with the pictures. LOTS of sex. Lots. I didn’t know your culture was so sex heavy. I decided that I’d apply that same wording to the fact that you tried to kill me on one of your death mounts.”
Imani, who is still recovering from that, barely gets a chance to say anything before a man named Jackie walks up with a box of donuts.
“You guys want some donuts?”
Torin, who is still dreaming about pizza, perks up. “Oh god yes, fill me up, Daddy.”
I clamp a hand over his mouth.
“What did you teach him?” Imani hisses like any part of this is my fault.
“You think I took him home and just taught him… whatever this is?” I snap.
“Or is he mimicking something he heard in bed last night?” Imani asks. “Did you fuck the god?”
Torin removes my hand. “I am killing it with my newfound knowledge. As a god of love, I approve of all of the sex stuff I read last night.”
“No! Stop! Do not repeat anything you saw in those books. Those were… just… why did you grab those books to read out of all of them? I have so many books and you picked the… the…”
“They were the only ones with pictures… and so many dicks. All the dicks. Big dicks. Thick dicks. A lot of dicks. While I excel at picking up languages quickly, pictures do hasten the process. And from the pictures, I have deduced that you are a very horny man.”
“I’m going home,” I decide.
Imani’s arm stops me. “No, no you’re not. I have to hear how the god of war and love only learned sex terms.”
“He said he read… some books while I was sleeping.” I look over at the man who is grinning like a fiend. He knows what he’s done. He’s enjoying every minute of it. Is this karma for the bike? Is this what I get for wanting to put him in rollerblades to see what happens to him?
“I would like to borrow these books,” Imani says while I die inside.
“I would like to feast,” Torin declares.
Yes, this is good. Let’s forget this topic and move back to the donuts. “Which one would you like?”
“I want it long and hard,” he says proudly in perfect English. He grabs a long donut and a regular donut, looks me in the eyes, and presses the long one against the hole of the second one before winking at me. Then he laughs and heads over to stare at the building while consuming the donuts.
“I’m going to go home and die of shame. He is now in your hands,” I announce.
“Riley the Perverted Peasant, come over here,” Torin says. “Come look at this.”
I grab a donut and, since I’m nosy, head over to see what he’s looking at while pretending I didn’t hear his moniker for me.
“What is it?” Kit’s paw reaches out for my donut as though I’m just going to hand the whole thing over to her.
I peel off a piece and feed it to the familiar who chews loudly in my ear.
“Can you feel that? Or is it only me?”
I move to stand beside Torin and unusual magic floods around me, which is definitely different from the last time we’d stepped up to this building.
Suddenly, I feel the familiar tingle of magic rushing into my arms even though no one has touched me.
And the magic that is now pouring into my mind is incomprehensible.
Usually, when I acquire new magic, knowing how to use it is like second nature, but this?
I have no idea what this is. The magic is wild, out of control, and I don’t even know where it came from since no one touched me.
Pain eats at the tips of my fingers as I stumble, and then I’m falling but it shouldn’t take this long to hit the ground. It’s like the world has dropped out from under me as I flail, reaching for anything to grab on to while darkness consumes me. Everything is so dark.
I hit the ground on my hands and knees as that unfamiliar magic washes through me, like it’s bubbling out of control. I want it gone. I need it gone. I reach out with aching fingers still covered in my gloves, knowing I need to replace it with different magic before it consumes me.
“Vinny! Vinny!” I shout, reaching into the darkness behind me to touch him and use his magic to replace whatever the hell this is inside me, but as I do, I realize that I don’t hear anyone. “Kit? Kit!”
Where the hell is Kit? She was just on my shoulder and now she’s gone. I pat my shoulder, searching for her, but did she fall off when I fell?
“Kit?”
Anxiety eats at me as it sinks in that not only can’t I hear anyone in this dark world, I can’t feel my connection to Kit. I never used to experience anxiety, and I don’t even know what to do with it. It’s such an unfamiliar feeling and it makes me infuriated at myself for being so weak.
Fighting to calm myself, I press my finger against my pendant, but all of the magic it holds is still intact, telling me that there must be a reason I can’t reach Kit.
My stomach tightens while I slowly rise to my feet and wave my arm in the darkness until it smacks against a wall that I back up into. There shouldn’t be a wall behind me. Where the hell did it come from?
“This is really peculiar. Didn’t expect you to just dive on in,” Torin says. “Massive balls on you, eh?”
Relief floods through me at the sound of Torin’s voice.
Never thought I’d be so damn happy to hear it.