“Fuckward you had better have a damn good explanation for what’s going on or I’m gonna rip off your cock and shove it down your throat,” she shouted, earning a shocked look from Belinda.
Wilburn looked down at her and calmly raised an eyebrow. A flush crept up Stacey’s cheeks. Wilburn had never carried himself so confidently and aggression had always been the quickest way for her to get what she wanted from him. Now though, Wilburn felt their size difference, and more importantly, felt the weight of his own power. Listening to her now was a little like watching a terrier trying to intimidate a bull mastiff.
He smiled down at her, and the flush grew deeper, her mouth twisting into a frustrated scowl. “I’m glad you’re safe Stacy. This has been crazy.”
He looked around at all of them. “I think you all deserve a little more explanation of what’s been going on.” So, over the next hour of flying he told them everything starting from the first time he started seeing through Zuha’s Obfuscation all the way to the duel with Demetrius, leaving out only the more intimate moments, making it seem as if binding Zuha as his virga had magically changed her back, rather than her doing so after losing his virginity to her.
Belinda and Bernard knew everything already, but they sat silently throughout, nodding when appropriate. Buddy and Siobhan had only gotten an abbreviated version before. Wilburn almost felt bad about their being there, only it was hard to. He liked them. For the first people to bond as his famulus he couldn’t have picked any better. It was hard to feel bad for something he didn’t truly regret.
Stacy was the only one with absolutely no clue what was going on, and she looked like she wanted to interrupt several times. When he was finished, she was the first to speak. “So basically, you got turned into a superhero and dropped into an episode of Game of Thrones, only with psychics and now I’ve been dragged into it to because superheroes always have their girlfriends or best friends made into targets. That about right?”
Wilburn blinked. He wouldn’t have put it like that but… “That’s actually a pretty fair summation.”
“Damn right it is,” Stacy said, looking pleased with herself. The smugness didn’t last long. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“That’s up to you, I think,” he said. “Some of his famulus are still bound to Demetrius in addition to me, but I severed your connection as soon as I was aware of it.” That hadn’t been difficult to do in the great hall of his mind palace. Some of the threads of light connecting his treasures seemed impervious but others were barely there at all. Demetrius’s connection with Stacy had been one of the latter kinds.
“You could go back to college and live out a normal life if you want,” he offered, and for a fleeting moment, he thought about making that offer to Siobhan and Buddy. As if seeming to sense this, they both stiffened and narrowed their eyes, as if silently daring him to banish them from his side.
“Dragons and psychics and shapeshifters are real!” Stacy shouted, exploding to her feet. “And you want me to go back to pretending the world is perfectly normal? Oh hell no, dipshit. Hell no, you’re stuck with me. I’ll transfer to UH as soon as we land. There’s no way I’m missing out on this shit. How do I get super powers?”
Wilburn thought back to what had happened with Athena. He didn’t sense the same light or connection in Stacy and, despite her being his famulus now, he wasn’t about to tell her that sex might do it. She’d been his friend for too long, if an overbearing one, and deserved better.
He settled on, “I don’t know. But as soon as I figure out how to get you some, I’ll let you know.”
She grinned. “Cool.”
“Same here, if you can swing it,” Buddy said. “Maybe I could get laser vision or learn to fly.”
Bernard glanced at him, speaking for the first time in Wilburn’s memory. “That is not how the primuses’ abilities work.”
“Don’t ruin my buzz, man,” Buddy said. “Come on, you never day dreamed about being a superhero?”
“No.”
The group devolved into playful bickering while Wilburn watched in silence. It was an old habit of his, watching and listening to people. For years it had been his primary form of interaction, being a part of a group but not the conversation. It felt good now, instead of frustrating, to sit back and let his treasures be.
He wasn’t sure what it was that made him glance over to catch Demetrius studying them. The primus turned virga looked away as soon as Wilburn caught him, his sharp face stoic. With a sigh, Wilburn got up. “Be right back, guys. I need to go take care of something.”
Stacy looked past him to glare at Demetrius. “Throw his ass out the airlock.”
“I’ll help!” Siobhan added cheerfully. “Do planes have airlocks?”
“I don’t know,” Stacy admitted, and that sparked a whole new conversation and debate behind him as Wilburn closed the distance between him and Demetrius.
He stopped in front of Demetrius, not giving the other primus enough room to stand up. Wilburn towered over him and the other man tightened his jaw.
“We need to talk,” Wilburn said, crossing his arms.
“You’re the boss,” Demetrius said flatly. “Whatever you so goes.”
Wilburn sighed. “Seriously, man, what is your malfunction? This whole fucking mess…because Zuha didn’t like you?”
Demetrius flinched. “That…that wasn’t it. I am…sorry, Master, for the trouble I have caused you.” Every word seemed to hurt him, as if by speaking them he was stabbing himself in the chest.
“Okay, you start calling me ‘Master’ and we’re going to have problems. It’s weird enough when Belinda or Zuha do it, but they at least make it sound sexy. No offense, but you are so not my type.”
Demetrius blinked. “Uh, right. Glad to know that.”
The blonde reached over and grabbed Demetrius’s hand. He stiffened but didn’t push her away.
“Please tell me that we did not just go through all of this because you had a crush on Zuha?” Wilburn said.
“That wasn’t it,” Demetrius said promptly. So promptly he to surprised himself. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”
“That’s not the only thing,” Wilburn said. “No being a douche to me or my people.”
Demetrius nodded. “Understood.”
Wilburn glanced over his shoulder to make sure his famulus were completely engaged in their conversation before speaking again, this time in a quieter, more threatening voice, one threaded with power from the Tower of Domination. “What did you do to my cousin?”
Demetrius swallowed. “I bound her as my famulus. That was all. I never…I said things to make you angry because I wanted Zuha. I never wanted anyone to get hurt.”
Wilburn’s eyebrows rose. “You challenged me to a fucking duel. With swords and guns and shit.”
“That…did not go as planned,” Demetrius said, sinking in on himself.
“No shit,” Wilburn replied. “What was the plan here. What the fuck was all this really about.”
Demetrius didn’t answer at once. He was shaking, his knuckles white on his blonde famulus’s hand. “I am too weak to be a psion,” he said, voice barely above a whisper.
Wilburn blinked. “What?”
“I am too weak,” Demetrius repeated. “I’ve…I’ve managed to conceal just how weak I am, but it’s all smoke and mirrors. House Vespa couldn’t afford for me to become the House Lord if everyone knew how weak I am. I had…I had to appear strong. Zuha…Zuha used to be the psion of House Leo before she got trapped in bellua form. If I could make her my virga, no one would doubt my abilities.”
He sighed. “That’s why I had the catnip that day we met. I was trying to lower her defenses while she was distracted maintaining her obfuscation to bind her.
He looked down at the floor. “It doesn’t matter now. House Vespa…Styx will have killed my parents by now and me…the House cannot be led by a virga. They’ll destroy themsel
ves trying to put someone new in charge and the other Houses will pick them off.”
Wilburn thought for a moment. “Why can’t a virga be in charge?”
Demetrius scoffed. “No one would accept a virga as House Lord.”
“Is that a power thing or a politics thing?” Wilburn asked.
Demetrius shrugged. “A little of both. Most members of the House are virga to someone else, but the Lord never is.”
The seed of an idea began to take root in Wilburn’s mind. He stored it away in the vaults of his mind palace where it could grow and be kept safe for later.
“You owe both Zuha and my cousin apologies,” Wilburn said.
Demetrius looked up in surprise. “Your cousin? But she’s not a primus.”
Wilburn scowled.
“I’ll do it, of course,” Demetrius said hurriedly. “I just don’t understand. You’ve made her you famulus, and she’s strong-willed, but that’s all she’ll ever be. Just a famulus, barely a step above the imuses.”
Wilburn’s scowl deepened. “You don’t actually think you did anything wrong, do you?”
Demetrius shrugged. “I misjudged you. You were more connected and far more powerful than I suspected. I thought for sure that a new primus, with no name or House, would have easily breached defenses, even if you were strong. Defeating you and claiming Zuha…the illusion of my strength would have been perfect.”
“Apologize to her,” Wilburn said. “And think about why you owe it to her.”
“I will,” Demetrius promised.
Wilbrun started to leave, then stopped. “I’m sorry about your parents. From what I saw they were horrible people, but they definitely loved you.”
That broke something in Demetrius. He fell into his blonde famulus’s embrace and wept.
Chapter Twenty-One
Normal life seemed anything but normal after they landed in Houston. Stacy caught another flight to go back to her school so that she could start the moveout process and transfer to Houston, followed quickly by Siobhan. Demetrius and the famulus Wilburn left him returned to his own house while Wilburn moved into Zuha’s. Buddy already had his own place and they were all having to cram to make up the work they’d missed for their classes.
Athena had become quiet and withdrawn, stoic save for the few moments when Wilburn caught her looking at him, which she always pretended she hadn’t been doing. He couldn’t hear her thoughts any more. That was probably a good thing. He wasn’t sure what all extolling her entailed but he intended to find out with her as soon as he was caught up on all of his late work. She’d been instrumental in getting everyone moved and situated, easily settling into Zuha’s house, though the opulence seemed to unnerve her a little more now that she was more aware of things. Demetrius it seemed, had never had a good hold of her, most likely because she’d had the potential to become a primus.
Wilburn still hadn’t asked her about her past. He figured that was something he’d learn about eventually when they started building her mind palace. At least the voices in his head had known everything that had gone into his own, so he assumed he’d be learning a lot more about her.
Zuha’s relationship with House Leo was precarious. Styx, it turned out, was infamous among the Houses. A little over a month ago, Styx’s own House, House Draco, had vanished. From what the other Houses had been able to piece together, every single man, woman, and child had been murdered. Until Styx had shown up at House Vespa, they had been presumed dead as well. Their being alive begged a number of terrifying questions. Not the least of which was the state of the two-headed dragon primus’s sanity. According to Zuha, many believed that Styx herself had murdered her own House, which she assured Wilburn was ludicrous because that just didn’t make any sense.
Wilburn wasn’t so sure. He recalled when he’d fed experiences into his mind palace, how many of them weren’t actually his own. And he recalled waking up with the taste of blood on his tongue in the hospital. He couldn’t have reasonably explained himself to anyone, but he was convinced that House Draco’s fall and his own extolling were connected somehow. It had been about a month ago, after all, that he’d finally been able to speak with other people.
Zuha drove him to campus where they both sat for their algebra exam. The material was exactly as hard as Wilburn had feared but everyone else in the class had studied at least as much as he had and their answers were practically being screamed at him. On the one hand it was distracting to the point of being almost painful, on the other, he thought he’d gotten enough of his questions right to score an A or at least a B+.
He and Zuha hugged each other with relief when they stepped out of the math building.
“We did it!” she exclaimed.
“I’m not sure which was scarier, fighting Demetrius when he was all bugged out, or those equations,” Wilburn said with a mock-shudder.
“The math is scarier,” Zuha said. “Definitely the math.”
Wilburn grinned at her and leaned in for a kiss. This was one of the changes in his life he most definitely did not regret. Their lips touched and his phone went off. He ignored it, kissing her with enough passion that he could feel several eyes of passersby on them. He didn’t care.
His phone rang again. He broke the kiss, scowling as he brought it up to dismiss the call. Only he didn’t. The call was from Belinda. He answered it to find her frantically trying to explain herself.
“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” he said, after thirty seconds of unintelligible gibberish. “Slow down. Start from the beginning.”
“Athena’s left,” Belinda said, sounding on the verge of tears.
Wilburn’s stomach sank and his heart dropped. “Is she okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did she leave?”
“I don’t know!” Belinda wailed. “I caught her leaving a note on your bed. I went after her. I tried to stop her but-but…I lost her! I’m so sorry, Master.”
“Hey, hey, none of that,” Wilburn said. “You did a good job. You hear me, Belinda? You did good.”
She sniffled. “Thank you, Sir.”
“Look, Zuha and I are on our way home now,” he said. “Where are you.”
She told him and his eyebrows rose. She had followed Athena several miles before losing her. That was some dedication. “I have the note she left,” Belinda said.
“Okay, what’s it say?”
“It’s sealed, Master,” Belinda said. “I think it’s just meant for you.”
“You have my permission,” he said to her, as he and Zuha got into her jaguar and she drove them away from campus. “Unseal it and read it to me.”
There was the sound of shuffling, then tearing paper, before Belinda’s voice came over the phone again. “She has terrible handwriting.”
“Belinda, please read it,” Wilburn said.
“Okay. Dear Wilburn. I am sorry I have to go. There are some things I need to take care of. Please don’t look for me. Thank you for saving my life an everything else. I have your number. I hope to talk to you soon. Love, Megan.”
Megan? He had to mull that over for a moment before it clicked. Her name wasn’t Athena. That was her stage name as an exotic dancer. He’d never asked her what her real name was, he’d just sort of assumed it was Athena and had been cool with that. He felt like an idiot. An inconsiderate idiot at that.
Glancing out the window, he scowled. The clear blue sky was marred by a column of black smoke rising from somewhere nearby. “Belinda are you still there?” he asked, nervousness creeping into his voice as they rounded the corner into Zuha’s neighborhood and a sneaking suspicion came over him.
“I am,” Belinda said. “What’s going on?”
“Did you leave a stove on or anything?”
“Of course not,” she said, then gasped. “That smoke. Is that?”
He found out himself a moment later as they pulled up to find three firetrucks, sirens blaring, parked along their street. Hose
s had been hooked up and men in heavy equipment were spraying down the flames engulfing Zuha’s house.
“Bernard!” Belinda cried out. “My cousin was still there when I left. Is he okay?”
Wilburn had no idea.
“Please, please, Master. Tell me if he’s okay!”
“I’m going to find out now,” Wilburn said. “Don’t come home, Belinda. Go to Buddy’s apartment. Go now.”
He hung up and Zuha parked. There were questions, there were accusations, and there were long conversations. The fire was deemed an accident, but Wilburn didn’t believe it for a second. Neither did Zuha. Accidents like this just didn’t happen to primuses. Especially when they cost the life of a famulus.
Zuha wept for the quiet man when they pulled his body out of the wreckage.
A while later, they learned that Demetrius’s house had burned down as well, killing two of his famulus. Definitely not a coincidence, Wilburn decided, as they all reconvened at Buddy’s apartment. Buddy only had one roommate, but he was off getting stoned with his band, so they had the place to themselves. That was good, because Wilburn wasn’t sure if they could squeeze one more person inside the tiny living space.
“What the hell happened?” Buddy asked when they were all situated.
“Someone blew up Zuha and Demetrius’s houses,” Wilburn said. “They’re good. They made it look like an accident. But we know better.”
Everyone nodded.
“We need to investigate and retaliate,” Zuha said, earning a nod from Demetrius, who followed that up with, “Agreed.”
Everyone looked to Wilburn. It was strange suddenly being the centerpiece of all of this, everyone turning to him for leadership. He thought back to just a few days ago, when he’d wanted to turn his brain off and play videogames for a while instead of properly dealing with his new powers. He felt like an entirely different person now. That kind of delay, of procrastinating and relaxing, was a luxury he couldn’t afford anymore, he realized sadly.
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