Past Lives

by Kirsten Bij't Vuur

  Chapter 1

  As Lukas rolled out of the portal, he landed on his feet and took a good look around, all his senses primed for danger. The place hit him with its hot and stifled air and sulphurous stench, and a dozen memories, all bad.

  Still he felt excited rather than afraid or lost in the past, not in the least because of the weight of the gun tucked in his belt. People often called him good or even innocent, though never naive, but to Lukas that didn't mean much. He was just himself, and now he felt powerful because he had a big gun and friends on their way.

  Part of him wished to take those friends, and the gun, and search these luminescent tunnels for a few of those demons and teach them a lesson, get his revenge on them for what they had done to him. But that side of him was not very strong and he could ignore it easily, so he waited for Melissa to come through the portal, keeping an eye on the tunnel on both sides.

  And the next moment her beautiful face came through, looking around but focussing on him, and he held out his hands to help her through. It was quite a squeeze, Melissa was built on a very luscious scale and tall as well, and as he helped her stand up the thought of her soft white flesh underneath her simple linen dress gave him a flash of heat.

  But this was neither the place nor the time to think of making love, so he suppressed the feeling and kept a good look on the tunnels. His urges had gotten him in trouble often enough, but he hoped he was a bit wiser now.

  Melissa's dad seemed to think so. He had not asked to speak with Lukas before they all came here, but he had spoken at length with Paul, and a few moments with his daughter, and both were in some distress afterwards.

  Lukas' newly awakened Gift had caught their strongest feelings, and both were worried that going to Lukas' world would damage their love for one another.

  Jakob must have warned them that the different morals in the world they were visiting would not leave them untouched. Lukas knew this would happen, but he trusted in himself to right any problems springing up between them because they would be expected to share love more freely. He would

  keep an eye on their feelings, and if something went askew he'd just solve the problem.

  The immovable bond between Paul and Melissa was the foundation of his own stability, the one thing that made his ever strengthening calling bearable, he was certainly not going to let that weaken even the slightest bit.

  Everything would be all right.

  As soon as she was on her feet, Melissa noticed Lukas keeping an eye on the tunnels, so she watched the portal for the next arrivals. Almost immediately, her own luggage came through, and Paul's, then Paul's head appeared, and she helped him out and on his feet as Lukas had helped her.

  When he was on both feet again, they simultaneously shouldered their backpacks and took a good look around.

  They were in a large tunnel, natural or hewn, that was impossible to see in the dim lighting. Come to think of it, it was a miracle there was light at all, it seemed as if the walls gave off a slight luminescence, enabling them to see about ten yards ahead in both directions.

  The air was hot and stifling, and smelled very unhealthy. It was a miracle that Lukas didn't suffer from a lung condition, having been kept captive here for months.

  Melissa quickly checked on him, and he did not seem distraught by being in the place of his captivity once again, he seemed excited, actually. His voice broke the silence of the tunnel: 'This way leads to a large grotto, the other one leads outside, but you don't want to go there, it's horrible and dead and the stench is worse.

  Actually, I suggest we leave this place as quickly as possible. My father told me we can stand in a group and activate the spell once. Will you do the honours, Paul? Your Greek is well-accented, and you have the most power.'

  Standing close together and holding hands, Paul now spoke the spell Hermes had taught all three of them, and Melissa immediately felt it take effect, making her dizzy, the floor seemed to drop a few feet, she couldn't see or feel her body anymore, but before she got really scared she felt a hard surface under her feet and the dizziness stopped.

  The smell alone told her they were somewhere else entirely, it was still hot, but the air was no longer thick, and though it was slightly musty, it was fine to breathe.

  As she looked at her companions in the bit of light a long narrow

  horizontal slit in the wall provided, she could see Paul was fine, looking around him warily but also excitedly.

  But Lukas did not look so good. He was flat on his face as if he'd been struck with something, and reaching out to him she felt he was shaking, tiny tremors running up and down his body. His breathing was heavy and slow, he seemed to be suffering some fit.

  Lukas of course had been taken along on these spell-bound journeys since he was a young child, so he knew the dizzy feeling and the lack of sensory input, he knew it would only last a minute. But as soon as he had found his feet back on solid ground, he was struck with a very powerful feeling, like a lightning strike but only slightly painful, and the overwhelming force threw him to the ground.

  For a moment he could not move, his body was shuddering with the power moving through it, and his nerves screamed at him from the tips of his toes and the bases of his horns, and everywhere in between.

  His body was still paralysed with the shock, and there were tremors rippling through his skin, but he was not in pain and he did not feel bad at all.

  On the contrary!

  The first thing he became aware of, was Melissa holding him and calling to him in a panicked voice. He couldn't understand what she was saying, there was a rushing noise in his ears that drowned out every sound from outside, and he could not move, yet. There was nothing he could do physically until his body had completed its transformation, so he moved his awareness to his own insides.

  The main thing he felt was power, more magic power than he had ever seen accumulated in any being, except his father just before he went through the portal. The power was everywhere, it filled his senses completely, it caused the rush in his ears, and the tremors on his skin.

  As he started to become used to being so full of power, his attention started to broaden a little, and he found other changes. His legs, already heavily muscled, now seemed stronger than mere flesh, they felt as a coiled metal spring, ready for explosive action.

  His mind no longer seemed to have a boundary, very scary at first, to have no limit to his thoughts, but he also found he could concentrate to the exclusion of everything else, and realized he had in fact totally shut off his connection to his friends. It had been totally automatic, and it had been total, for a few moments they had just ceased to exist.

  That was when he realized what had just happened, the detachment he experienced proved to him without a doubt that he had just come into his own, had been transformed into a god. Again, Jakob had alluded to this, Melissa's father had known that the feelings he experienced when healing people were not supposed to stick with him. The mental trauma he lived through with his patients again and again, the physical pain he shared as if he was hurt himself, he was supposed to be able to let that go, to be detached from it, as he was now detached from the two people he loved most in this world and theirs.

  His Gift had come upon him in a world not his own, and he had used it to help people, but the things he experienced whilst healing became part of his own experiences, part of his character. He couldn't let go of them.

  Jakob had known that as soon as he set foot on his own world, his body would transform to house his enormous Gift properly, with the amount of power it needed to be used, and the detachment he needed to stay sane. The fears he had had from the moment his Gift had started to grow out of proportion to his person were no longer based on reality, he could let them go.

&nbs
p; But the love he felt for his friends was now also in danger of being lost, the friends who had come with him to save him from his own Gift, who were risking their lives, and unknowingly, their love for each other, all for him. He did not want to lose the intense love he felt for them in this new detachment and in the expansion of his mind, and fortunately with a bit of searching he found that he still had it, exactly as it had been.

  He wanted to share his life with them so much, the crafting, the loving, the quiet life, hopefully soon enriched with some students and some children, sadly not his own, but Melissa and Paul's would be fine too, or even orphans.

  He wanted to go back to Victorian London very much, and right now he wanted to see and feel his friends again as well as love them.

  When he directed his attention outwards again, he saw both Paul and Melissa really close to him, but averting their faces, eyes closed as tightly as they could. He realized he was glowing with power, so he slammed a shield in place. As soon as the light was gone, they looked at him, in worry and wonder.

  His body could move again, and how!, so he sat up on his knees and felt their intense relief wash over him, and over that, their intense love, and this made him so incredibly happy that he laughed out loud, gathered both of

  them in his arms, and said: 'Wow!'

  When Paul had found himself back on solid ground after the disorientation of the spell, he checked the room they were in and it was as dark as one would expect from a basement, the only light coming in from a ventilation opening high up in one wall.

  The room was empty, the walls made of rough plaster, the floor a magnificent multicoloured mosaic with detailed scenes depicting Hermes in all walks of his life. Looking around, he saw Melissa dropping to her knees, bending over Lukas' still shape. His body looked as if it had been thrown to the ground with force, and little shocks were still causing it to shudder, it was a horrible sight.

  Quickly, he sank to the ground as well, reaching out for Lukas' neck to feel his pulse, and check whether he was breathing.

  His vital signs were fine, but his condition was still worrying, something was going on inside Lukas and it didn't look good. Melissa was distraught, she tried to get a reaction from Lukas but he was not responding. Paul put an arm around her to calm her a little, but in the meantime, he didn't feel all that calm himself. His dear friend seemed to have been struck by something powerful, but it could not have been the spell, it was just a simple translocation spell, and there was no-one here but themselves.

  Slowly, Lukas started to light up as if he was working magic, only the light intensified until it hurt his eyes and he had to avert his face. Then it suddenly went out, and at the same time his friend started to move. Lukas rose to his knees in one fluent move, wrapped both Melissa and himself in a loving embrace, and said: 'Wow!'

  Just: 'Wow!' nothing more, no explanation, but Paul was so happy to see his loving friend alive and looking rather well, that he didn't say anything, he just enjoyed the three-way hug and the love it contained.

  When kneeling became uncomfortable, Paul sat down on the mosaic floor and looked at the others. Melissa was clearly relieved, he knew she loved Lukas nearly as much as she loved him, a fact that had taken him some time to accept, but she had so much love to give, and he had learned to love Lukas himself, so he never felt cut short.

  He took her hand and squeezed it gently, glad they had made it here safely after all.

  And Lukas, whatever caused him to sprawl blacked out on the floor, it

  had clearly not done any lasting damage, and it had been quite profound. He was still a bit stunned, eyes filled with wonder, flexing his arms and hands, touching his incredibly muscular legs as if they hadn't been his for half a century.

  Paul was nearly dying of curiosity, but he had never had the habit to ask people's minds, if one just kept quiet and gave them the opportunity, they usually spoke their thoughts all by themselves, and the extra time he gave them to formulate usually meant they made a lot more sense, and were often a lot more forthcoming.

  In the months he had been together with Melissa, he had noticed that she had started to emulate him in this, which she did now, and so they watched Lukas together, sitting on the gorgeous mosaic floor hand in hand, until he would be ready to explain his exclamation.

  Actually, Lukas had been one of the few people on whom Paul's method had not worked, when they first knew each other his persisting silence had often given Lukas a lot of stress, as he had been aching to tell Paul something but didn't dare to speak.

  Lukas had no idea where his awe of Paul had come from, he had felt it from the first time he met him, and even a growing intimacy with the serious young man had left him still unable to touch him familiarly.

  Of course, they hadn't started out on the best of terms, Lukas had dropped into Paul's life unexpectedly as the dependent alien lover of the woman Paul admired in secret, well, not exactly in secret, for she knew of Paul's interest in her, but at the very least silently, for Paul had managed to hide the depth of his devotion to Melissa incredibly well, so that she only found out about it much later, after she had taken immense trouble to hunt him down and get him to love her.

  But Lukas had felt the intensity of Paul's love for Melissa from the start, and had not understood why the man didn't tell her about it, nor did he understand why his own presence was unwelcome to Paul, for he had no idea what jealousy was.

  Still, Paul had always been friendly to Lukas, had never taken his jealousy out on him, so there was no reason for Lukas to be afraid to touch him. Except that as he got to know Paul better, through being taught by him, through the unfortunate affair with his horns, through working and living with him, he had fallen as much in love with Melissa's admirer as he had with her.

  But by then he had learned that people existed who were strictly monogamous, unable to love more than one person, and Paul was one of them, setting Lukas up for rejection of his own still-growing love for the man he admired for his seriousness, and his artistry, and all right, for his beauty as well.

  Was it his fear of rejection that had caused Lukas to feel such adulation, such an almost fearful love for this man who could have been his son?

  By the time Lukas realized his reverence for Paul was not natural, he could no longer rationalize where it had come from, he could not even resist it anymore, he was hopelessly caught in an unending circle of admiring Paul, wanting to touch him, not daring to touch him, admiring him even more.

  And Paul had not blamed him for that reverence, had accepted his love, had tried to wean Lukas away from his fearful admiration slowly, by becoming ever more intimate with him, by giving himself to Lukas as much as he could. Only when Lukas' real age had become know, at the same time that his Gift had begun to increase beyond human comprehension, had Paul started to become uncomfortable with the awe in which Lukas held him, but by then they had fortunately become so intimate already, that Lukas had gained a lot of trust in Paul's love for him, and he had managed to largely get over the feeling of awe and to just touch him whenever he felt like it.

  So it was now, Lukas was no longer awed by or in fear of Paul, he used the silence Paul offered him for what it was meant to give, time to collect his thoughts, time to formulate what he wanted to say. And he was going to explain to them what had happened, but first he was going to give them a little love, for all the power that had been given to him was overflowing and he wanted to share it with the friends who had given him so much of their own love.

  Melissa could clearly see something had changed, again, or maybe further was better, in Lukas. Paul's silence used to make him insecure or uncomfortable, but now he used it as Paul offered it, to collect his thoughts before he spoke, and this time Lukas' thoughts were lengthy and profound.

  Still, he reached his moment of communication, and with it proved that he was no longer afraid to touch Paul, for he got up, kneeled in front of him, and at the same time embraced him and kissed him ardently.

  That kiss w
as answered with fervour, and as usual, Melissa did not feel excluded by it, but very much stimulated. And after Lukas had satisfied his

  need to give Paul some love, he moved to Melissa herself, and kissed her as ardently and as lengthily, leaving her breathless afterwards.

  Then he sat back down and said: 'I think I just came into my own. My body has changed and my mind has changed, they have adapted to the size of my Gift.

  Your father knew this would happen, Melissa. You will not believe how much power I have, you'll never need to feed me power again.

  I no longer fear my destiny, the trauma and the hurt of the people I heal can no longer control my mind for I have been given detachment. But I greatly fear that the detachment will cause me to drift from my love for you.

  Will you remind me to stay close to you?'

  Of course Melissa had been afraid to lose Lukas since his change had set in, pretty much after he had started healing regularly. He had been growing up so fast, often showing his life-experience, losing his rakishness. A lot of that was due to the things he had experienced of course, and being able to let those memories go might bring his innocence back.

  But at the same time, to suddenly become detached from humanity was a real danger to his loving nature, the part of Lukas she loved most, the heartbreakingly sweet, cheeky rascal, was as far from a god as she could imagine. Melissa knew the coming days would be crucial.

  They would both have to stay close to him and remind him of his love for them constantly, for if they didn't, her fear would certainly come true. It was clear Lukas was now a god, at least in this world, and everyone knew Greek gods were notorious for their thoughtless treatment of mortals, even those they loved.

  Whilst she was contemplating, Paul, always the decisive one, had already taken action. Lukas was in his arms, having his horn-bases very gently scratched, eyes half-closed.

  Of course Melissa wanted her share of the loving too, sitting down next to Paul she kissed him, and soon felt a nimble hand moving up her dress and caressing her thighs with greed. She had had several dresses made in a style and materials suitable to a much hotter climate and much looser morals, taking advice from both Lukas and Frances, the latter having visited modern Greece only a few years ago.