Chapter Four
I toss the paper money on the dirty counter at the shitty truck stop. I just want to pay for my fuel and get the fuck out of here. The place smells awful, and it is just crawling with them.
Humans …
Nasty, unintelligent creatures who don’t deserve the land they live on or the air they breathe.
I hate humans. They are always lurking around and skittering this way and that like little bugs. Such greedy and selfish beings, who shouldn’t be able to call Earth home. Why the Gods seemed to favor them was beyond me.
Instead, the non-fae magickals all got to work together to “keep the balance” by protecting these weaklings from the knowledge of magick and from destroying our precious Earth with their chemicals and senseless destruction.
Everything is a balance.
Our mighty purpose was given to us to help uphold this precious balance from the Gods themselves.
Too bad I don’t care.
In my opinion, humans are weak and moral-less beings. It’s way past time that they either toughen up or just be gone. Permanently. I’m tired of cleaning up all their stupid, careless, human messes and using my gifts to help bring balance back to the world in the wake of their constant chaos.
War. Pollution. Killing. Poisoning. Destroying.
All in the name of something they want and don’t have.
Disgusting.
Especially when there were bigger, scarier beings that required my special... expertise.
The lady at the counter gets my change and leans out much farther than needed to hand it over. I try not to grimace or shudder when her dry, orange skin brushes against mine. She has heavy makeup on, and her shirt buttons threaten to pop under the pressure of her completely unnatural breasts. The sight makes my body threaten to expel my lunch.
Why the boobs?
Why did the beauty of a pair of breasts have to get mutilated by a so-called Doctor, so they can appear larger?
I love boobs for fuck’s sake! Bring on the titties! Free the nip and all that...
Why the hell humans find it necessary to put plastics and other devices into their bodies to “enhance” their “attractiveness” is lost on me. I saw a human once that had this jelly stuff added to their ass. Their ass, for fucks sake!
That has to make shitting more difficult. Not to mention if a guy were to...
You know what? Never mind.
The gas station lady is like a human child’s Barbie Doll toy whose proportions were all off, and who suffered a grave disfigurement to her face at one of those cosmetic testing facilities.
Internally laughing at my own joke–fuck off, I’m funny–I look at her face and try to keep my own expression passive. She smiles at me, showing off the lipstick that marrs one of her front teeth. She is saying something to me, probably an offer of some kind based on her body language while placing the change and a tiny slip of paper in my hand, but I just can’t stop looking at the lipstick on that tooth.
I can’t help running my tongue across my own teeth.
Doesn’t it feel weird?
How does she not know it’s there?
Should I say something?
Nah.
I nod my head and turn away, only noticing then that the scrap of paper isn’t my receipt like I thought. Instead, it has the name “Jessica” and a series of numbers on it. She gave me her phone number. I blink at it for a minute, then laugh out loud while crumpling the paper and tossing it in the waste bin on my way out the door.
Yeah, thanks but… just no. Not happening, lady.
Not that I’m a prude or anything. Au contraire! I’m quite the ladies’ man.
Maybe it’s the hair?
I do have nice hair. It’s jet black and hangs all the way to my shoulders when I don’t have it pulled back in a tie. In the sunlight, it almost looks like there is a green or purple sheen to it. I worked hard to have nice hair because it is one of the very few physical traits I inherited from my father. But his hair is always so dry. It drives me nuts.
So yeah, I have nice hair, a decent-looking face, and a body that is lean and able to run for miles but lacks any predominant abs. Unlike my brothers, of course, who I am pretty sure were just born ripped.
I snort at the image that thought brought to my head. A tiny baby flexing his arms and abs like a human meathead. Ridiculous.
Anyways, I’m still one sexy beast.
And maybe my attractiveness might have a tiny little thing to do with the fact that demons exuded pheromones every time they’re horny. That is one of the aspects of being a half-demon that I still have to endure. It was great sometimes when all I wanted was a fast release without all the effort.
Don’t get me wrong here. I give as much as I take and all parties left equally satiated. Hell, most of the time we even parted as friends.
Other times… the pheromones were nothing but a burden.
I shudder at the memory of when I was a teenager reading a book in the local human library that turned out to have… spicier scenes than I originally realized. Ever seen twenty humans break out into a full-blown clothes-ripping orgy before?
Yeah. Ten out of ten do not recommend.
I still can’t look at a library without shuddering. That was also when I learned that my pheromones were not species-exclusive, gender-exclusive, or age exclusive.
At least that elderly librarian went out with a smile on her face. I can’t say as much for the two guys who brought her that final bliss, but hey. Life is all about experiences, right?
I don’t think that image will ever be fully scrubbed from my mind.
Awkward. As. Fuck.
I had heard stories that once you were mate bonded, your pheromones weren’t interesting to other prospective mates anymore. Almost like a commitment protection. Not that anyone mated would even consider stepping outside of their bond. I’m not saying that cheating never happened, but it was incredibly rare. You were mate bonded to the person or people who balanced you best and gave you what you needed.
Instead, it was more of a ‘not having to worry about holding in your pheromones because of how it can affect others’ kind of thing.
Although, forever is a long time. I don’t know if I’m really interested in any of that crap or not.
However, I did have a firm rule about never messing around with humans. They had no loyalties or morals, and smelled like decomposing meat, even when freshly bathed and full naked. Not to mention that too many of them were riddled with weird fucking diseases. Some of them were even diseases from fucking.
What kind of insane shit is that?
I was never sure if I could get any of their diseases or be able to heal from them, but I’m not even remotely interested in testing that. Magickal women were not scarce, and naturally STD-free, so I’m certainly not anywhere close to desperate enough to try it.
Stepping out of the shitty building, I head straight for my motorcycle, hoping to avoid any more interactions with the humans that swarmed this type of place. That’s what you get for using human-created contraptions though.
As a general rule, fae and non-fae magickals all try to avoid the use of motorized vehicles, since they add to the problem the humans are creating with the environment. In fact, a fae or non-fae magickal could be punished with a sickness and stunted magicks for going too far against their fated purpose. The severity and length of both would depend on how deep the infringement had been.
Certain magickals were allotted more wiggle room with certain things than others were.
In other words…
Half-breeds like me are freaks, and kinda get ignored. Even by the Gods.
Since I haven’t gotten punished for using the bike so far, I figure it’s ok. Once I had some downtime — ha! ha! — I had drawn up plans for alterations to the bike that would make it run off rainwater. So I have plans to make it better. That should count for something, right?
Right??
Climbing on the bike, I briefly stretch out my legs and back, before settling in and flipping the ignition. Feeling the bike come alive under me always brings a smile to my face. The deep rumble from the engine reminds me of the sound a female sometimes makes when I play hard to get. It has been a little over three years since I have gotten laid and with the way my thoughts are drifting, you could tell that was obvious.
It hasn’t been for lack of volunteers mind you, and I still release those pheromones that prove my body is willing and ready.
But there is just something missing from the whole song and dance of it. The females I encounter all seem so boring. Their hair is dull, their skin is too rough, and their is smell almost sickeningly sweet.
None of them make me feel alive. None of them make me want to actually jump into the final act. It’s sad, really.
I mean what the fuck is my problem?
I just need to come. But nope! I can’t even seem to jerk off anymore.
It must be one of those slumps you just have to push through. I hope so anyways. I don’t even want to think about a life without sex. That brief thought alone makes me shudder slightly.
I kick the bike into gear and swiftly pull out of the station lot. I want to get some miles in today and see if I can find some clues in the next magickal village on where to head on my search.
Maybe I will just fuck the first female in that village that makes a move on me. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I won’t even try to suppress the pheromones so that there is no stopping it. Then I can get all this stupid shit out of my head and focus better on the task at hand.
After all, I have a monster to hunt.
I had heard a rumor that three years ago, another witch had sacrificed her life force to put the monster in a hibernated state. That would explain why I hadn’t felt its menacing presence in the back of my mind. The feeling that always reminded me of a mosquito, buzzing in your ear.
That was what had happened when I was younger too, maybe around eleven years old. Suddenly one day the buzzing stopped, and there was silence. I had been able to go all the way through my teenage years in blissful ignorance, without any interruption in my education, magickal training, and combat training.
It almost made me miss it.
Almost .
But I had felt the moment that monster woke. It called to my blood, and I knew I had to find it and end its torment in the magickal world.
Too many lives were lost.
Far too many to count, and I was the only one who could stop it.
I hadn’t found it before it went dormant last time, but I have to keep trying. I knew that it would wake up again, and this time I would be ready for it.
After a few more miles down the road, I see a little lookout spot off to the side. Those ones that humans use so that they can pull over and take pictures. It was abandoned this time of evening, and the space would serve my purpose perfectly.
I pull over and kill the engine. I don’t even bother hopping off my bike to do this bit of magick, as it’s quick and will have me moving again soon. I pull a small dagger from my boot and poke the tender skin on my index finger. Once a small drop of blood wells up, I let it fall into the air before catching it in a magickal breeze. It takes no concentration at all to keep the blood drop swirling gently in the air in front of me.
I close my eyes and focus my intent on the words I send into the droplet.
Invenire Locum Creatori
The blood continues to gently swirl… and nothing happens.
Breathing deeply to focus myself, I’m not prepared for what feels like a magickal punch straight to the gut. I lose all concentration and my blood hits the dirt with a splat.
What the fuck was that?!
I go on alert. With a hand still on the dagger, I pull an air shield in around me and the bike, while scanning the area. I figure that staying on the bike is the smartest move in case I need to get the hell out of here in a hurry. Sometimes if you got too close to a magickal village without announcing yourself first, they would make it known that you were not welcome.
I was trying to figure out which direction the attack came from when a tiny breeze somehow squeezes past my barrier. It carries the scent of lemon and lavender, with a sweetness that makes my mouth water.
Oh ok.
I’m just going crazy.
That makes perfect sense.
Not.
I brace for something else to happen. Only it doesn’t. There is nothing but the quiet sounds of nature. Well, that and the pinching sensation that is drawing my attention to my stomach. It really hasn’t been that long since I’ve eaten something, but I guess that could be the problem.
Hunger-induced insanity. That’s a thing, right?
Putting my dagger away and tugging my pack open in front of me, I pull out a granola bar and my water. It will have to hold me over until I reach the village I’m scoping out or make camp somewhere. I scarf the granola and drink down the entire contents of one of my several water bottles.
Once I put away my bottle and granola wrapping, I make sure my pack is closed and secure and pull out my boot blade again. I want to try just once more and hopefully this time, there will be no strange interruptions. Again I drop a bit of blood into the air and speak my intentions into the scrying spell, changing up my verbiage, while focusing my intent.
Inveniet Eam Locus
My blood begins to move through the air on its own now. The searching spell is looking for its target. Unlike usual though, it doesn’t split into two- with one pointing in the direction of my father, and the other pointing towards the monster I’m hunting.
What the fuck?
That was a simple spell. It should have worked. Except, it clearly didn’t. So what went wrong?
I give an irritated huff, but before I can assess the cause of my failed tracking spell, the gut punch happens again, making me wheeze for breath. Only this time it feels as if my body is being pulled in the opposite direction than I was currently headed. Adrenaline starts pumping through my body and I’m filled with complete shock and terror. I have to run… er… no I can ride there faster.
The wonky scrying spell abruptly stops its sluggish movements through the air and stretches in the direction I’m being pulled.
That’s when it hits me, and I realize what all the strange feelings must be from.
The Creatori is awake again.