Forever Young

by Daniel Pierce

  She cried out again, and I could feel her clenching around my length, my lips curling in wonder at the magic of it all. That, along with her shudders of orgasm, were enough to bring me right over the edge with her. I came with a shout they could probably hear in Portland, losing any sense of rhythm as I pumped my life into her, laughing out loud at the completion of our dance. I don’t know if heaven is real, but I damn sure saw the gates.

  I lay there for a moment, then gently pulled out of her, taking her into my arms. She hesitated for a moment, but then relaxed and pillowed her head onto my chest. I pulled the blankets over us, and we fell asleep in moments, the welcoming dreams just a breath away as I listened to her match my breathing, my sighs, and then, at last, my sleep.

  I woke up the next morning to an empty bed but memories filled with pleasure. Margaret must have sneaked out in the middle of the night. The only evidence of her passing through was the state of my sheets, and the smell of her around me, delicate and feminine.

  I sighed and sat up. I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised. I worried somewhat about Margaret’s state of mind. She’d seemed clearheaded enough, but I had no way of knowing for sure. What if these Ferin could mind control one another? What if vampires could mind control us?

  What if the best sex of my life had been the result of something so shady, it wasn’t even possible for humans? To be fair, it might not be a deal breaker. It had been that good.

  I swung my feet over the side of the bed. I couldn’t even be sure that the previous night had happened at all. I could have made a mess of the sheets all by myself. It wasn’t as though young men didn’t have some very erotic dreams. My teen years—and most other men’s—were a walking hardon, broken by awkward fumbling with girls and dreams that could scorch a porn set. It was certainly more plausible than thinking Margaret had flipped a switch somewhere deep in her brain and suddenly decided today was the day she was going to go out and bed some guy she’d dug out of a gas station bathroom.

  That idea still felt more palatable than the chance that Margaret woke up next to me with no idea how she’d gotten there.

  I hit the shower and got dressed, whistling tunelessly in the way you do after a night for the ages. I’d get to the bottom of this, along with everything else. One way or another, I would find some way of checking in with Margaret to make sure everything was okay.

  As I finished buttoning up my flannel, someone knocked on my door. They didn’t give me time to answer it. Tess barged right in, kind of like my mom used to in high school.

  She took in the whole room with one glance. I got the impression those dark eyes of hers missed nothing, especially not the state of my bed. Maybe I should have found a way to clean the sheets or something. All I knew was Tess knew what I’d done within five seconds of walking in, and it wasn’t a great feeling.

  She didn’t say anything, though. She just smirked. “Are you all good and beautiful now? Good. It’s time to go train. Come on.” She headed out the door, her hips swaying just a little bit.

  I stood still in the middle of my room. Why would she see what had happened and just...not say anything? Were nighttime hookups commonplace in the mansion? Did Ferin bang their way through the centuries? Because if that was the case, my new occupation just got a lot more tolerable.

  Had Tess and Margaret spoken after Margaret left my room? Maybe last night had been a test, and I’d failed miserably. Maybe it had been a test of my integrity. I shouldn’t have had sex with Margaret until I knew what was going on a bit better. Or maybe it was a test of my prowess, if a newly made Ferin could be expected to have such skills.

  I wasn’t going to get answers sitting around the bedroom. I hurried to catch up with Tess, closing the door behind me.

  8

  Tess escorted me outside again, back out onto the rocky beach where I’d been yesterday. That told me I’d be working with fire again. That was fine. I liked the idea of working with fire. It was an ability somewhere between raising the dead and flying in terms of coolness, and I welcomed the practice. It had so many possibilities, and not all of them had to involve me trying to burn that ridiculous little beard off Mort’s face. Every little boy wanted to be a superhero, didn’t they? Well, why not just run into a burning building to save kids or a puppy or something? I didn’t know if my fire ability would let me do that, but I didn’t know it wouldn’t.

  More importantly, it seemed like a good idea to get control of my power before burning down the planet with an accidental thought. Yesterday in the woods had been a minor incident, and there hadn’t been any lasting harm, but who knew what would happen next time? And just hoping there wouldn’t be a next time seemed about as good an idea as just crossing my fingers and hoping the vampires would go away.

  Mort sat on the biggest of the rocks, flicking through his tablet. “You know, I’ve been looking through this old treatise on Ferin, and I’m starting to wonder if you might not have some Chinese ancestry.”

  I blinked. “Um, my whole family did the DNA thing a few years ago. I’m pretty sure I don’t.”

  “Hm. Ferin of Chinese ancestry are more likely to have the Fire talent. I don’t know why. It’s only a slight increase in probability since the fire talent is still rare, but I thought I should ask anyway.” Mort waved his tablet at me. “I wondered if maybe you expressed your talent so quickly partially for genetic reasons, but maybe not. Why don’t we get started for today? You’re going to begin with something fairly simple.” He pointed to a little machine on the ground. I recognized a pitching machine, the kind they have in batting cages. “Shoot them. The both of you.”

  Tess pulled a gun from inside her jacket and grinned at me. I didn’t have to ask what he meant, of course. For one thing, no one had given me a gun. For another, we weren’t here for me to practice becoming a sniper.

  I loosened my shoulders and tried to relax. This wasn’t going to be hard. I’d proven to everyone else I could shoot fire yesterday. Now, I just had to do it on command, toward a moving target.

  Mort fired the first pitch, and Tess shot it out of the air with ease. I tried not to gape. I’d never been much for guns. How she could hit such a small target from such a distance, I’d never understand.

  “Your turn,” Mort said and fired the next pitch.

  I didn’t have to hit it with a tiny little projectile. I could just lob the fireball from the center of my being. I did exactly that, hurtling the flames out well past the ball, past the buoy marking boat lanes, and into the sea.

  The ball plopped into the salt water. The waves kept crashing onto the beach, not caring about my shitty aim or Mort’s muffled laugh.

  Tess snickered. “Well, you’ve got range, kid.”

  I narrowed my eyes. I was thinking about it all wrong. “Can I try again?” I didn’t need to focus on the bullet. It was like my dad had said during my short-lived peewee hockey career. Don’t worry about where the puck is. Worry about where the puck will be.

  Mort shot the ball again. This time, I knew where to aim. Figuring out how much juice to give it was harder, but my body seemed to know what to do without my conscious input. My flame met the ball exactly at the apex of its trajectory, incinerating it in an instant.

  “Nice!” Tess grinned at me.

  Mort put us through a few more shots, and I got them all. Once I’d figured out what I was doing, I’d gotten every last pitch right.

  “The next trial is going to be harder.” Mort turned the pitching machine around. “Here. This time, you have to get the balls before they get you. Buckle up. You’re going to get a few bruises from this one.”

  The first ball was aimed at Tess. She gave it a glancing blow, knocking it off its trajectory and out of danger. She shot the next one cleanly.

  The next one came at me. I’d never been a big baseball guy, so I had no idea how fast those balls came at a person when they were on their way. I let loose a stream of fire, right at the thing. It turned to ash before my eyes, which had been the goal.r />
  Mort narrowed his eyes and stroked that little beard of his. He fired another one and then another, in quick succession and straight at me. I was better prepared now, and I got them both. I could hardly believe I’d moved fast enough to pull it off. My reflexes must have gotten better overnight. I was better than I’d been at twenty. I was better than anyone had been at twenty.

  A guy could get used to this.

  He fired off three, which I fielded easily. He then fired four and next five. One of the five caught me on the arm, but it was only a glancing blow. I got out of the way of most of it.

  “Not too bad,” Mort said, coming over to check me out. “Not too bad at all. How do you feel right now?”

  Part of me wanted to make a snarky comment because seriously? Talk of Feelings at a time like this? But he was right to bring it up. If he was going to help me with this ability, he had to be able to guide me and know when I was getting tired.

  Except right now, it felt like I would never get tired. “I feel amazing.” It wasn’t bravado or machismo. “I feel like I could go on for another thousand years, just lobbing fireballs like this.”

  He pursed his lips for a second. “That core inside you, that energy?”

  “Feels fantastic. You don’t even know.” I rubbed at my sternum. “Seriously, I feel like...like a freshly charged battery. I honestly feel like I could go for a long time like this.” I wasn’t getting tired. It was a little weird to get used to, just in terms of the mechanics of it, but it wasn’t like I was doing too much or anything like that.

  “Hm.” Mort raised his eyebrows. “Okay. Why don’t you give me two laps around the course I set up, and we’ll try something different when you’re done.”

  “This is a little too much like gym class for my taste,” I grumbled, but I ran the course. Mort, of course, would have no idea what gym class was like unless he’d read about it somewhere. Tess didn’t have to run. She got to just sit where she was and hang out.

  I couldn’t stay pissed about it for long, though. I used to love to run, and there I was, running faster and better than I ever had in my life. I took three laps around Mort’s little course, just because I could, and I wanted to. I lost track of Mort and Tess before I finished the first.

  Looking back, my innocence about everything was charming.

  Mort stopped me after the third lap. “Okay there, Usain Bolt. Slow it down and bring it in. Let’s try to figure out what else you can do.” He held up a hand. “It’s just an experiment. Plenty of Ferin don’t move beyond offensive uses of their gift or singular uses of their gift for years. Some never move beyond singular uses at all. It seems to have something to do with the strength of the one who made them, and their own capacity for new and different things. I’ve seen geniuses who couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea of their gifts and some remarkably stupid people who’ve gotten the hang of things quickly. I’m not sure which you are.” He gestured to one of the stones, indicating I should sit down.

  I sat. Tess sat nearby, and before us was a fire pit. Long ago, I’d been a teenager enjoying the occasional late-night beach party. I was no stranger to this kind of fire, although as an adult, I understood the dangers of these kinds of events a little bit better now.

  Mort lit the bonfire and stood back. He used a match. I didn’t think they even sold those any more.

  “I could have done that.” I shoved my hands into my pockets.

  “You’d have blown a crater into the sand and turned it into glass, sunshine,” he told me. “Let’s let you learn some control first, yeah? Just sit back and enjoy. I know we’ve been harping on secrecy and paranoia but believe it or not, Ferin life isn’t all about hiding and fighting. We do get to enjoy things once in a while. Otherwise, why bother?”

  Tess leaned into my arm. It felt nice to have her pressed up against me, and for a moment, I felt guilty. Should I be enjoying this after last night with Margaret? Did last night with Margaret actually mean anything? I had no idea what the rules were any more, and that felt uncomfortably like high school, if with far better sex. And fireballs.

  I knew maybe three people who wanted to relive their high school days, and in my mind, those people needed to be watched.

  “Just let yourself go.” Tess rested her head on my shoulder. “Relax. Your gift is fire, right? So just enjoy the fire. Open up your mind.”

  It all sounded tree-huggy to me, but I tried to relax and do what she said. The fire did feel nice on my face, a warm comfort in the cool night. Everything up until this point—from the time I stepped into Maine’s nastiest men’s room until I looked into those flames—had thrown me into chaos and confusion. Even the good parts, like sex with Margaret last night, had thrown me for a loop. Maybe it was good just to sit down and relax with the cozy and familiar. Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with simply enjoying.

  A tongue of flame curled toward me, and I laughed in surprise at its sinuous greeting. It wrapped around my hand, and I imagined it as a playful snake, albeit one that could burn down a house. It was hot, pure, and verging into blue-white, but I only felt the warmth on my skin. Even my clothes never seemed to ignite or smolder as the flame circled around me.

  I tossed an arc of flame from one palm to the other like a Slinky. This was fun. Insurance guys didn’t play with fire. Today was the first real full day of my new life.

  I noticed Mort stayed on his rock a safe distance away. Maybe his hair dye was particularly flammable. “You’re doing great, Jason. Can you tell it to go back into its space now?”

  I almost didn’t understand what he wanted me to do. The fire was exactly where it belonged. Then I got it. The point of the exercise wasn’t for me to play. It was for me to control the fire, like the superhero I’d imagined before. I gently encouraged the flames back onto the wood that had fueled them.

  Mort held his breath. He let it out when all of the flames returned to the fire pit. “Excellent.” There was a note of approval in his voice. “Now put the fire out.”

  I concentrated, but it didn’t feel right. Putting the fire out felt wrong. It hadn’t hurt anything, and it wasn’t going to hurt anything. I inhaled a deep breath instead, drawing all of the flames into myself.

  For a second, my lungs balked. A little piece of me panicked because sucking living flame into one’s chest just wasn’t a normal thing to do. Then that core energy deep inside of me kicked in, and everything felt fine. Better than fine. I felt stronger than ever, if mildly toasty on the inside.

  Mort nodded grudgingly. “Not bad, kid. Not bad.”

  Tess linked her arm through mine. “Let’s go get some grub.” She winked at me. “You get to make the creme brûlée.”

  9

  Mort had plans to eat with some of the other Ferin. “Believe it or not, kid, you’re not my only concern.” He patted me on the back. “Why don’t you two charmers have dinner in the conservatory? It’s gorgeous this time of year, and you’ll have a fantastic view of the stars.” It was a dismissal if ever I’d heard one. So, to the conservatory, we went.

  I honestly didn’t mind. While I had questions for Mort, I could use a little break from learning. And I didn’t mind seeing another part of this huge, old pile of rocks. So far, they had been limiting what I’d been allowed to see, so going into the conservatory was a welcome break.

  I expected the conservatory to be a music room, but it turned out to be a room with a glass roof and three glass walls, mostly filled with plants stretching to a covered sky, their leaves and blooms a riot of colors. The room contained a few little tables with two or three chairs each, nestled among the giant potted rose bushes and miniature lemon trees. The whole room had a distinctly private feel to it, intimacy brought on by vibrant life and careful spacing.

  It felt even more private now since Tess and I were the only ones in there. I ignored the possible snub. Maybe the other Ferin didn’t want to get involved. That was fine. I couldn’t exactly force people to be my friend.

  Tess and I brought
our food out to one of the tables and sitting among the flowers and the stars was beautiful. It was almost romantic.

  “So, does everyone else stay here all the time, or do they come and go?” I asked. I was trying for casual conversation, but I also had an ulterior motive. I hadn’t seen Margaret since the night before, and I was nervous.

  Tess smiled at me with a big, bland smile, like she didn’t know exactly why I was asking the question. “Oh, people are free to come and go. No one’s a prisoner. We ask that new people stick around until they’ve got their feet under them and know how to defend themselves. You know, safety in numbers and all that. But we’re not even the only Ferin in the country.”

  I had to raise my eyebrows at that. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Plenty of Ferin just wander around on their own. I’ve met a few. Some of them kind of lose it after a while, especially if they don’t know what they are or what’s happening to them. Most of them turn out okay in the end. Until the vamps get them, I guess.” She looked down for a second. “It’s definitely a concern.”

  I rubbed at my neck. It would be a long time before I forgot the feeling of those fangs tearing through my skin. “Yeah. Well, I can see why. But people go into the cities or even farther if they want to. Why?”

  Tess frowned at me like she wondered why I was asking.

  I grinned at her. “I’m simply curious. It seemed like you guys were really into the hiding thing, but I was also kind of curious about how you all avoided going stir crazy.” I took a bite of my dinner. “And how much time do people usually spend away from the house?”

  I had a brief moment of discomfort. The room I was using had been available for me for a reason. I decided not to ask about it, though. Right now, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t need to know, either.

  She shrugged. “It depends on them. It depends on why they’re going and where. You can’t expect someone to hop out to San Francisco and just show up the next day, right?” She filled our glasses with wine. “So, what did you think about today’s training?”