That only made the chaos inside worse.
Later, he came half-awake and opened his eyes on darkness when Shaine coiled against him in bed.
“Thought you’re mad at me,” he mumbled, snuggling close anyway.
“You expect me to sleep with Kevin maybe? And it’s hardly the first time I’ve ever been mad at you.”
“Mm. ‘Night.”
He might have imagined the gentleness of Shaine’s voice when he said, “Good night, Jess.”
The Quicksilver Sphynx
Miscellanea, April 1995
Nick ‘Winter
Heya, folks! Isn’t it great to have spring back? Not that this was much of a winter.
Aaron Fitzgerald and Josh Neumann are getting handfasted! Ceremony, I’m told, is going to be relatively quiet, for close friends and family only, but it’s going to be followed by a huge party to which everyone is invited. Magda ‘Dragonfire being Josh’s sister, I’m told Dragonfire are doing most of the plotting for the handfasting and the potluck, dance, and general celebration to come afterwards. They’re doing it on the full moon, which is Saturday the fifteenth.
Exotica update. About a third of Exotica, rather alarmingly, is graduating this year at the college and some are scattering back to their home towns. Those remaining are planning to organize a production of the Rocky Horror Show. Anyone interested in being in it should contact one of the Exotica folks. We’re going to miss the true Exotica performances, though. You’ll be long and well remembered.
There’s a Renaissance Faire being planned for August, tentatively in the park in and around the trees. I’m told that all ideas are welcome, and the organizers are hoping to arrange food, entertainment, a market, costumes, and all manner of other things. Get ahold of Covens Prism or Shadowstar if you’re interested in being part of it rather than being a visitor.
Coven Sky-Drum is organizing an Earth Day celebration (Saturday the 22nd) in the park. Partly Native, including drumming, partly Wiccan/Druidic, with other stuff tossed in. Apparently there’ll be some tree-planting too, and a healing circle for anyone who feels they need it. They plan to start around noon and run past sunset, until everyone goes home.
As usual, Bryan has some temporary help at the library until all school is out for the summer, although it’s starting a bit earlier this year. This means it will be open more hours, for the use of all those who are busily studying for exams and scrambling to finish major assignments. He already has someone, so don’t get hopeful. His name’s Shaine, he came back to Haven with Jesse.
Dion found some interesting new witch techniques of water magic he’d like to share, I gather he came across an old book by Morgan ‘Starluck himself. Some he says works better than the rest, but water magic isn’t his strongest area, and he’d like to see one of the water-oriented witches try it, along with any other witch who’s curious. Morgan appears to have learned it from a Native shaman, who appears to have had some kind of kin or coven connection with him, but the exact nature of it remains unstated. If I get a chance, I’ll comb through it and maybe try a couple of things, and give you another opinion.
Historically speaking: Giovanna Albertine, a healer to whom we should all be grateful for her many contributions to healing knowledge, died 23 years ago the 12th. Among her accomplishments, she researched and proved the disease-transmission odds between human, wolf, dryad, and elf. Her theory was that the bubonic plague, syphilis, tuberculosis, and… well, you get the idea… were in large part responsible for our present low numbers. If you haven’t been paying attention, we have had HIV cases in Haven and the others, six in fact, two human, two elf, one dryad, and a latent wolf—at present it looks like full wolves are immune, like they are to almost everything else, but they might be able to carry it. Let’s not make AIDS the one that wipes us out. I’m sure Giovanna will forgive me for using her death as an occasion for saying this:
Long live sensuality, but PLAY SAFE so you live long enjoying it!
40
“Kev?”
Kevin looked up fast from cursing silently at his homework for his inability to concentrate. He found the last person he expected hovering in the doorway. “What’s up?” he asked, keeping his tone carefully neutral.
“Can we talk?”
“‘Course we can.”
Jess came all the way in, and joined him on the bed, hands tangled together in his lap and eyes low.
“‘Sela said something… that I don’t know just how evil a trap Rebecca set because I don’t know what happened with you and her.”
Kevin winced. “Evil. Good word.”
“I know someone or other told me you and Deanna were in Rebecca’s coven once, and that has something to do with why she hates you so much, but that’s about it.”
Not something he particularly wanted to think about, but all things considered, Jess had a right to know. For that matter, he’d have faced worse if it would help Jess forgive him. “Originally, it was Dia and I and a wolf we grew up with, Karl. You know Coven Helix, Dia and Gisela’s parents. My parents apparently fell in love while he was here at the college. He’s a mage, although not a remarkably strong one, so he pretty much had to join a wolf coven, but my mother wanted to stay solitary. Which is normally just fine, because with that whole complicated genetic compatibility thing, there’s no one in my dad’s coven he could have kids with anyway. When I was twelve, my dad’s coven moved out of Haven to Ravenrock, combination of reasons that made it pretty hard not to, but my mom wanted to stay here, which was okay with me. Usually with mages, our gifts wake up over a few months around fourteen or so, but sometimes, especially in really strong mages, they wake up in a matter of days or weeks early. Karl decided it was his job to protect me, and where I was, Dia was, of course, so even in high school we were effectively a coven.
“I had a wonderful time showing off, playing games. Most mages do, to some degree. Most mages outgrow it before long, a lot of it is novelty. Sometimes they were more like pranks, and okay, sometimes they were kinda mean, just because I could, and sometimes it annoyed people, but not anything really bad. More brat than bully. If I could show off and get attention by doing something useful or helpful instead, that was good too. Just as well, because my mother pretty much lost or gave up on any control over what I was doing around the time it became clear how strong I am. She was nervous about trying to discipline a mage to begin with, and when I started refusing to obey her, she got outright scared and started giving in more and more. Tomas kept me more or less disciplined while he was teaching me, but training doesn’t take all that long, since so much of it is instinct and practice anyway. So at sixteen, I was a newly full-trained mage, and I was excessively proud of the fact, and there was really nothing to stop me from being a royal pain except that I never liked doing any real harm.
“Along came Rebecca, she moved here from Endor to start at the College. She was a couple of years older, you know how beautiful she is, and we had no idea what she was capable of. Bane must have told you how some wolves get extremely unstable because of being forced to live in ways that go counter to natural instinct? She’s a perfect example. Bryan warned us a time or two, I think he got it from wolves from Endor, but we didn’t listen. We let her join us. Big mistake. Yeah, there’s the understatement of the year.” He looked down, and sighed. “Rebecca is fixated on the idea that mixed-village culture sacrifices individuality and personal freedom for harmony and safety. To a teenager who was being told constantly that I should act more responsible and was more interested in playing and exploring than in a future as an Adept with a boring sensible job and a series of teenaged mages to teach… well, someone telling you that you shouldn’t listen to anyone else and you should only do what you want to do is pretty tempting. For a little while, we saw her as a kind of martyr to free thought, someone telling a brilliant truth that no one else understood, just us, and they were trying to silence her. I started seeing myself as her champion and defender, and she encouraged it to the point tha
t I came within a hair of getting expelled for fighting and intimidation. Karl, well, you have some idea by now what kind of power an alpha has over the rest of the pack, it’s all in how it’s used.” He knew Jess knew that, had watched him struggle with the concept and eventually come to terms with it, under Bane and Eva’s extremely protective and patient—if not always comprehending—care.
Jess listened quietly to Kevin’s tale of everything that had happened and how Deanna had forced a choice and Bane had taken a chance, his expression betraying nothing. Kevin made no effort to hide anything or excuse anything, simply told the truth.
“I’ve been really acting like an idiot, haven’t I,” Jess sighed, when Kevin finished.
“No,” Kevin said. “You’ve been acting like someone who’s been hurt too many times, and as soon as you let your guard down you got hurt again. Believe me, Jess, I am in no position to yell at you. I did a few spectacularly stupid things while I was trying to get my life put back together.”
“Like what?”
Kevin sighed to himself, but now was not the time to leave things buried, not if it could possibly start rebuilding the trust he’d lost.
So he told Jess about the scar that still marked his left arm, about halfway up. He’d gone to Deanna’s, found her and Cynthia talking in the kitchen, and Cynthia mentioned needing to find Lori. Kevin asked if he could help, since he was right there. The whiplash pain when Cynthia had simply looked at him, wondering if he’d attack her for saying no, stayed vivid in his memory, even now. He’d grabbed the knife Deanna was using to chop vegetables, slashed his arm open and sworn to Cynthia on his blood that he’d never attack her or her coven-mates again.
Deanna snagging a clean dish-towel to wrap around his arm. “Idiot. Are you trying to kill yourself?”
“As if anyone but you cares!” And gating himself home.
He’d refused to let Deanna call a healer when she showed up at his door moments later, or to leave the house, so she’d done her best and stayed there to hold him while he spent the next hour crying. For days, he wouldn’t go out, not for school, not to go to Deanna’s, not for anything, and only for Deanna would he open the door; his mother, who hadn’t yet reached the point of physically throwing him out but had already largely dissociated herself emotionally, had tried only once. The phone he ignored or left to his mother to answer. When Bane had asked and Deanna answered, the result was everyone mad at everyone.
Out of the anger and the pain and the fear, though, some good had come.
Opening the door, expecting Deanna, stunned to see Flynn—alone.
“What are you doing here?”
Flynn giving him a tentative smile, violet-grey eyes meeting his shyly and then dropping. “I thought maybe we could see if my cards can turn up anything useful. If you want to try, anyway.”
Kevin looked down at the scar, and held out his arm to show Jess. “I never did let a healer touch it, even though Dia thought it needed stitches. I told her I was going to make sure I never forgot how much it hurt when everyone believed I could never be anything but what they thought I was.” He smiled ruefully. “It didn’t work, I guess. Sometimes I need things pounded into my skull.”
“Sometimes we all do. Except I’ve got Shaine to do the pounding for me.”
What did he mean by that? From what Gisela said, all Shaine did was pour more verbal abuse on him than Kevin would take from anybody, and Jess just let him.
Then again… he’d already come to the conclusion that there was more to Shaine than Shaine wanted anyone to see. On many levels.
“I think,” Jess said slowly, “that’s sort of like why I ran. Panic reaction, get away from something that hurts. And… there’s…” He closed his eyes, struggling visibly with something. Kevin decided to stay quiet and let him choose what he wanted to do. While they’d been talking, the room had turned to twilight; he glanced at the lamp at the head of the bed, undecided, not wanting to startle Jess, but reluctant to continue this conversation all but blind to anything but the heat-image of Jess himself.
Wolves use body-language too much, I’ll miss something if I can’t see. He reached out physically, and switched on the lamp. Jess paid no attention at all, beyond his eyes narrowing briefly until they adjusted.
“I know I messed up by running. But I always run.” He stopped again. “I told you I don’t remember stuff, my life basically starts in the summer of ‘89, and no one can do anything.”
Kevin likely could, but not without heavy damage. “Yes, and that you were in foster homes.”
“For a while. Then I got adopted, by this lawyer and his wife, that was really cool. Except… he didn’t want me, he wanted an instant model family that would make him look good. He started complaining about my hair, I wanted it too long, and about my clothes, I liked black too much and denim and leather too much, I liked moon stuff and pentagrams and daggers and things, I always have for as long as I can remember. But I was just an ordinary kid then, I did reasonably good in school and stayed out of trouble, and none of it meant the kinds of things he thought it did. One night… he had both his partners and their wives over for dinner… and I messed up, I said something I wasn’t supposed to… and… ” His voice broke. “He… hurt me…” He shuddered. “I can’t,” he said pleadingly. Behind Jesse’s dark eyes, for a heartbeat Kevin saw a child, terrified and bewildered. Tentatively, he closed a hand around Jess’.
“I get the idea,” he said gently.
“I lost it. Grades started to drop, I started talking back to teachers when they asked what was wrong, I started getting into fights. I was sometimes depressed and sometimes crazy and I kept doing things I never did before. They said I had a behaviour problem, and I couldn’t tell anybody what was really wrong, that it was just because he was trying to control every thought and every word and every action and make every choice for me and he punished me bad when I did anything else. I ran away, I was fifteen I think, and the cops took me home, they never asked me why I ran. I kept running away. Shaine found me, he taught me who and where to stay away from, everything about surviving. He let me stay with him.” Another pause.
“Jess, if it’s too hard to say, don’t. I’m not expecting anything.”
“I have to tell you why. There were these people I was hanging around with, a bunch of runaways and throwaways and whatever, and one of them offered to let me try what she was on, one night when I was feeling really bad. And it helped, it made me feel better. So I started using it more and more often, uppers to make me feel better and downers so I could relax and sleep, and sometimes LSD just for the hell of it. I tried stopping, once, I can’t remember why, but… after a couple of days of having my feelings completely out of my power to control them… I didn’t have much by the way of physical withdrawal symptoms, maybe a little bit of being wolf even before it was awake. I just couldn’t stand it, having to feel everything, knowing there was a way to stop it if I chose to. You haven’t ever felt anything that awful.” He paused to reflect. “Maybe you have.”
The wild joy of being at the heart of a storm of purest power, knowing he could form it into any shape with nothing but his own will, the wrenching transition back each time… The aching gnawing self-doubt every time he saw Rebecca… Yeah, Jess, I think maybe I have. Kevin saw a single tear escape, saw Jess bite his lip hard; he reached for the box of Kleenex without comment, sent a silent request to Deanna not to let anyone come upstairs for any reason until he said otherwise. She acknowledged without asking why.
“I survived. Some don’t. Most people don’t have Shaine watching their backs, either. At least somebody cared that I was alive, even if he was mad at me a lot. Only, even more, I just got called bad and useless and stuff like that. When Rebecca found me… I hadn’t been home in days, and I know he had the cops keeping an eye out for me. I missed some family thing he’d told me I had to be there for, and it would’ve been bad. I went to a party a friend invited me to, Shaine didn’t come, and sometimes when I used to drink
a lot or whatever, I’d black out for a while and wake up north of the city. Always north, so I think it was more than just trying to be somewhere the local cops wouldn’t spot me. Maybe part of me always knew more than I think I remember, I dunno.”
“I had sort of wondered about that.”
“When I went back, Shaine said I could live with him all the time, and we survived okay. I really truly tried to stay clean, but sometimes on the street things can get so bad, you don’t know how bad… I didn’t slip too often. It helped that it was harder every time. And then I was wolf, and nothing worked anymore, which has to be the ultimate way to stay clean. Only, I was so frustrated and Avryl had this bottle of wine, and it did work on me, and I wanted to not drink any more but I couldn’t, and I don’t remember anything after that. I tried, I really did…” A couple more tears got away, matching the urgency of his voice, and his hand around Kevin’s clenched tight.
All the power of fire and sunlight, waiting for him to call on it…
Carefully, ready to pull back, Kevin slid his free arm around him; Jess resisted briefly, then sagged against him, and Kevin wrapped both arms around the shivering werewolf.
“All I could think was, I fucked up again, nobody’ll believe me…”
“Jess. You aren’t bad or useless. I’m damned proud of you for what you have managed to do, and the more I find out the more proud I get. I think I know what you mean. I can call more power than most mages, and it’s an incredible high. It gives power-tripping a whole new dimension. I came so close, when I destroyed the constructs that were chasing you, only Gisela reminded me there were more important things to do. We aren’t quite as different as you think.”
Black Wolf Page 31
