Chapter 12 Bound Forever
BOUND FOREVER
Artur
The afternoon slipped away as Cesar and I found new and rather innovative ways to pleasure each other.
To say I had found my heaven would have been an understatement.
This man, someone I had only known for a handful of days, had treated me like a regular human.
The magical community at large had a lot to learn from the bone witch.
Despite whatever ailment he might have been facing, his kindness, empathy, and compassion won out.
That, and he had a lip-smackin’ body—and one hell of a technique for edging.
I hadn’t come so hard in years, if ever.
As we lay in bed together, wrapped around each other’s limbs, snuggled together, we continued to discover new sticky patches and matted hair in the oddest places. It made us giggle. We engaged in pillow talk.
I knew it wouldn’t last.
Something this beautiful never does.
“What’s this from?” I asked as I ran my fingers along a long scar on his chest.
“Ah, yes. Childhood injury. I fell off a mausoleum while trying to collect bones. Landed on a tombstone and got a displaced fracture. A break so bad a rib stuck out. I was lucky the shard jutted out through the skin and didn’t puncture a vital organ.”
I sucked in a breath. “That sounds nasty.”
“Oh, it was. But being a bone witch, the healer took a different approach. He removed the shard and gave it to me. He said a bone witch having a piece of their own skeleton could come in handy. So, I have one rib that’s shorter than the others.
I still have it here somewhere.” Cesar got up and started to look through the bookshelves that lined his bedroom.
“You kept it? That’s morbid.” I glared at Cesar.
“Oh, come on. Makes total sense. Ah, here it is.” Cesar held up a glass vial that was no bigger than his palm. There were several sharp-edged chips in the container. He shook it, and it made a rattling sound.
“Where’s your hummingbird?” Cesar asked, a mischievous look on his face.
“In my tunic. Why?”
“Give it to me for a second.”
“Ah, okay.” I got off the bed and fished for the charm in my clothes. When I found it, I gave him back his handiwork.
Cesar popped open the bottle, shook out one of the splinters into the palm of his hand, replaced the cap, and then stored the bottle back on his shelves.
Taking the bone chip, he stuffed it inside the hummingbird’s little body.
“There. It’s yours again, and now you’ll always have a piece of me with you when I’m not around.”
Cesar handed the bird back to me, and as he gazed in my direction, the smile on his face held a touch of sadness.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, returning the grin.
“Despite all this gloriousness, I’m thinking about what’s coming up in the next few days. I’d like to forget about it, but it keeps rising to the surface like a zombie clawing its way out of a grave.”
“Well, that’s an image,” I said, and shivered.
“’Tis, isn’t it? The whole holiday season is giving me the heebie-jeebies. I never get spooked by the dead, and yet, my skin crawls thinking about that corpse locked away upstairs,” Cesar confessed.
“Fuck, I forgot she was there.” I shuffled uncomfortably. “I can’t believe we’ve had an afternoon of depravity while she lies rotting up there.” I pointed toward the ceiling.
“She’s dead. There’s no way she’s going to get up and do anything without some major assistance from me.
The family uses some complex spells to make sure the decay has been slowed.
Trust me, in this heat, a body doesn’t stay fresh for long.
It only takes a handful of weeks for a dead body to decompose here in the tropics.
So if there’s any thought of reanimating someone, there are preservation spells used. ”
“I’ve heard as much. In my head, I know all this. Logically, I know she’s not going to sit up, come waltzing downstairs, take a seat, and watch us. But still! Eww.”
Cesar laughed. “You know, one of the things I have been thinking about is what Tom said regarding my Tio Orlan. I had no idea that Tom’s resurrection had sealed my Tio’s fate.
I don’t want that to happen to me. I mean, it will eventually, but I’m not ready for the memory ward at La Jolla hospital just yet.
And then there’s this.” Cesar waved his finger between us.
“Not ready to let this go anytime soon.”
Cesar leaned in and gave me another deep kiss. Each time his lips touched mine, it took my breath away. He pulled back, smirked, then licked his lips in satisfaction. “Elena seems to think that Día de Muertos will be my undoing.
“Staring into the face of your disease has got to be unnerving. And Elena has a point.”
“I’ve seen what the magical onset of dementia does.
I will confess, it scares me.” Cesar stroked the side of my face.
“I want more time with you. But if I could offload some of the magical responsibilities, it might stave off creating more holes in the head. Remembering this afternoon would be fantastic.” Cesar waggled his eyebrows.
He then grabbed my cock and shook it. “Plus, I’d like more time to play with this.
” Then he looked deep into my eyes. “And you.”
“I’d like that too. Do you know any other bone witches? I mean, aren’t they kind of rare?”
“They are. There’s no one else in the city.
Doesn’t mean others can’t perform the ritual.
Several witches I know can harness the energy required to do it, but they don’t go about the resurrection the same way, and it’s not as solid a reanimation as my technique. The magic tends to peter out quicker.”
“How does that work? I thought you had to be a bone witch to bring the dead back?”
“Nope, not necessarily,” Cesar replied.
“Okay, explain. I don’t get it.”
“If you’d had a proper mentor… Okay, think of it like this.
We all have the ability to tap into the energies around us and redirect them.
It’s what a witch does. But each individual has an affinity.
Some are Garden Witches, while others are Shadow, Lunar, or Elementalists.
Some have theorized that your talent is a direct reflection of your personality.
We can all perform spells and incantations.
I can carve a charm, but so can you. You just have to know how to channel your abilities.
“But the flavour behind the power, it will always tend to lean toward the affinity. For instance, one year, we had a Garden Witch reanimate a corpse for a family. She was a talented witch, no doubt. But once the resurrection occurred, the corpse had all kinds of sprouts, vines, and shoots growing out from it. Which made sense.”
“Ah, I think I get it. But I could still assist, no?”
Cesar sat up. “No, Artur, I couldn’t ask that of you.”
“Why not?” I frowned as the reason dawned on me. “Oh, yeah, untrained and chaos follows. Sorry. Not sure what I was thinking.” I huffed and turned away.
“No. That’s not it.” Cesar slid his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in closer, forcing me to look at him.
“You’re more than capable. You have reservoirs of talent and ability.
More power than I’ve seen out of most of the witches in this community.
But you’d need time to harness the spell, and some training to ensure you could focus your energies. ”
“What if Elena helped?”
Cesar thought for a moment, then tilted his head to one side as a smirk formed. “You know, I think you’ve got more instinctual talents than anyone gives you credit for. That’s an interesting prospect. Why did you suggest it?”
“Well, she’s a Seer, right? So, if she’s in the room, she can watch the pathways of power, see the outcome of what I’m doing, and then help and guide me. I, on the other hand, can manipulate the odds of what is going to happen.”
“Mi amor, that is brilliant.” Cesar climbed on top of me. He was hard again.
“Damn man, do you ever tire?” I grabbed his ass, kneading the muscles.
“Hmmm, I like that.” Cesar bent down and kissed me again. “It might be willing to play, but I can assure you there’s nothing left in the tank. Maybe later.” He winked at me. “Come on, let’s go down to the workshop. I have an idea.”
“Oh, I’m game.” Cesar climbed off me, and as I got off the bed, I bent over to pick up my undergarments.
“Don’t you dare put that on. Bring your hummingbird.”
“You are a fiend, but I love it. Sure.” I grabbed it from the nightstand where I’d placed it after Cesar had altered it.
“I like seeing you naked—you’re beautiful. Now, come with me. Got the bird?” Cesar started toward the hallway, then glanced back and gestured for me to follow.
I nodded, then followed my sexy bone witch.
Up in Cesar’s workroom, he sat down on a stool in front of an open space on his desk.
“Give me the charm.”
“Sure, here.” I handed it over.
Cesar laid it on the table.
“Now, I’ve already reanimated this once before. Bringing it back to life momentarily shouldn’t be hard. It’s small and light. This is a good first step for you, so we’re going to give it a try. If we can do this, we’ll spend some time today doing bigger and bigger animals.”
I beamed at Cesar. Somebody had confidence in me.
Cesar got up from his stool, gesturing for me to take a seat.
“I’m going to stand behind you and guide your actions.”
“Okay.” My tummy did a flip. As exciting as this was, it also scared me a little. After all, as beautiful as the charm was, it was a dead thing.
“Put your hands on the skull—okay, well, maybe your finger. It is small.” I did as Cesar instructed. The tip of my finger rested on the side of the head. “Now, close your eyes, and think about the hummingbirds we saw earlier today while we were having fun in the dipping pool.”
That wasn’t hard to imagine, but my mind wandered away from the tiny flying creatures and remembered Cesar’s blowjob while I sat on the edge of the pool. My cock twitched.
“I said, remember the hummingbirds, not our escapade.”
I turned to look at him, shocked that he knew. “How?”
“Because you’re sporting a rod again.” He chuckled. “Birds. Think birds.”
“Okay, okay.”
I closed my eyes and thought back to this afternoon, gazing up from the wading pool. The clear blue sky overhead had big, white, fluffy clouds, destined to darken with the heat of the day and, by evening, grace us with a thundershower.
The vines growing up the wall had clusters of bright orange and yellow tubular flowers. Iridescent emerald feathers darted one way, then the next, as the minuscule helicopters hovered in place while their beaks descended inside the flowers in search of the honeysuckle’s nectar.
“Good, very nice. Now, feel the energy of those birds. Fast, sharp, quick, erratic; think of all the things that make them so unique and different to every other being on this planet.”
As I concentrated on what the energy would feel like living inside a hummingbird, my body tingled. I felt fidgety, uneasy, like I needed to move. As if I had a yearning to visit every flower within the neighbourhood. To eat. To fly.
“Excellent, Artur! I can feel your aura changing. Now take that captured energy and direct it into the skeleton in front of you.”
This was going very smoothly. Too easy.
Taking the frenetic feeling and pushing it all toward the one finger that touched the skull felt as if it had been a task I’d done a hundred times before.
I could almost hear a woosh from an unseen magical breeze that swept through my body and removed all the hummingbird characteristics.
“Fantastic! Artur, open your eyes. Look what you’ve done.”
As I peeled my eyelids open, the little bird floated in front of me, tilting its head from side to side as if sizing me up. The wings beat so rapidly I couldn’t make them out.
A hum filled the room as the bird zipped and darted around Cesar and me.
I stared in fascination, watching the little guy move around, then turned to look at Cesar, who had the biggest smile plastered across his face.
“You are one talented witch. A first-time resurrection should have taken you a little longer to master, but look what you’ve done!” The look in Cesar’s eyes made me melt. “I’m so very proud of you.”
Puddle.
I leaned back against him, turning my head so my cheek rested on his naked, furry tummy.
“I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“I think, in time, you would have. Like I said before, you have reams of power. We just need to work together so you can finally learn how to master what resides within you.”
Cesar bent over and kissed me. Not just a peck, but he held my chin in one hand and kissed me so deeply that it took my breath away. One of Cesar’s hands ran down my chest, tickling the trimmed hair until he found my now very hard cock and gave it a stroke or two, making me leak a pearl of pre-cum.
I moaned.
And then, without warning, the bird dashed in front of us, chittering, squeaking, and zipping to and fro.
Cesar and I both glanced up to see the creature lift its head, screech, unfurl its wings, and begin to vibrate.
As we both stared in confusion, the bird ripped itself in half, then flung each portion toward my shoulder and Cesar’s.
There was a momentary hot burning sensation as the skin on my arm erupted in tiny pinpricks of pain.
The half skeleton buried itself into our bodies.
Cesar was pounding his flesh, but all I could do was stare in horror.
As our skin parted and allowed entry for the tiny beast, I was shocked to watch the skeleton writhe into my muscle and then be swallowed up as my body healed at an exponential rate, covering the half charm in record time.
As the burning cooled, each of us had the outline and bumps of what looked like the side profile of the hummingbird emblazoned on our shoulder.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it looked like a brand.
“Well, I don’t think that was supposed to happen.” Cesar looked worried.