by D. Levesque
“Damn, all right. What level am I?”
“No clue.”
5
“What do you mean, no clue?” I ask him, peeved. I was hoping to hear my level.
“Because your level is too high for me to gauge. As an Elv─, an Incubus,” he says smoothly, covering up. “That is normal. Consider yourself above level one hundred, which is the highest I can test.”
“One hundred?” I ask him in astonishment.
“Well remember, I am not testing numbers, but that’s an easy way for you to understand. The levels of magic are more of the amount of power someone has in them. I am just making it easy for you.”
“Is that technology? Like nanobots?”
“What? No, pfft. It’s a magical system.”
“Isn’t your ball technology?” I ask him.
“No, it’s magical. It was created with magic,”
“What does he mean it was created?” Sylvana asks me suspiciously.
“Hmm,” I say. Fuck, I hate lying to them. “Give me a sec to talk to Roger alone?” I ask her.
“Sure?” she says, sounding even more suspicious.
The other two girls look at Roger and me with their own levels of suspicion.
Going to my room, I close the door and move to the bed and sit down. Roger follows me. His ball splits in half, and the top dome moves up so I can see him.
“Shit dude, what if my mom has cameras in my room?” I tell him quickly.
“Oh, don’t worry, she doesn’t. I checked. There are some in the main room, though. But I disabled them.”
“Ah crap, really? All right, thanks for doing that. I like my privacy. Won’t my mother think something is going on though?” I ask him.
“Oh, I didn’t say I turned them off,” he says with a grin. “She is just seeing us all sitting down at the table, looking at the papers.”
“Oh!” I say with a laugh. “Damn, you’re handy to have around.”
“Well, thank you,” Roger says, getting up and bowing at the waist towards me.
“Roger, I hate lying to them, but I am afraid to let this information out,” I tell him quietly.
“You can always use the Voice on them. They wouldn't be able to break your trust then,” he says, just as quietly.
“But I would be breaking my trust with them,” I tell him fervently.
“Brandon, this is too important to take any chances. I won’t tell you what to do, but if you tell them and this gets out, you know from your visit with one of the Elveesians that he wants nothing about them being known.”
“I know,” I say with a deep sigh. Roger is right. I want to tell the girls, but I need to make sure that this doesn’t get out. And if the Voice works the way it’s supposed to, even torturing would not get it out of them. Laying back on the bed, I stare at the ceiling, trying to think of what I should do.
In the last three weeks with the girls, we have gotten close. Not all of us are as close as Johanne and me, I think with a grin. But it’s still early in our relationship. At first, it pissed me off that my mom wanted them as my mates, like I couldn’t pick someone myself. Well, she might have been not too far off the mark. At 32, I still didn’t have a girlfriend and I wasn’t even close to getting married. Now I have three amazing mates.
“You know the only option, Brandon,” Roger says softly.
Sitting up again, I look at him and sigh. “Yeah. But fuck, I wish I could give them a choice,” I tell him.
“Why don’t you?” he asks me.
“What do you mean?” I ask him, puzzled.
“Tell them you have a secret you want to share, and you feel bad having to use the Voice on them to keep it a secret right until death, but it would be the one condition to you telling them,” he says.
Nodding slowly, I think about what he said, and realize it would work. I mean, it means I could tell them, but it’s their choice. “All right, let's go ask them,” I say, getting up. Roger closes his dome and follows me. I walk into the room, and the girls all turn towards me.
“Out with it,” Lina says pointedly. “Something is bothering you.” She taps the empty chair next to her.
I sit down, and Roger lands on the table in front of me. I look at these girls who I have fallen for. Lina, the Vampire girl, who is feisty and speaks her mind and always wants to bite me. Sylvana, the Elf girl who thinks I am more than I am and wants to be with me, not because of that, mostly, but because she cares for me. And then there is Johanne, the Werewolf. She had such a strong military upbringing in the Werewolf camps in Florida that she was the hardest to get out of her shell, though she was the first I officially took as a mate. Damn, that shower still brings up memories, I think with a smile.
“I have a secret, but I can’t let it get out, no matter what. Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad,” I tell them all as wary looks start to cross their faces. “It’s a secret that needs to be taken so seriously that you would have to allow me to use the Voice on you to make sure you don’t tell anyone. But I am giving you all the option if you want to know it, since I hate lying to you.”
“I’m in,” Lina says right away.
“Same here,” Johanne says just as quickly.
“Count me in,” Sylvana says with a smile.
“Think about this. It means me using the Voice on you,” I tell them all slowly.
“And?” Lina asks me, head tilted sideways.
“It means I will be taking control away from you,” I tell her, some of my frustration coming through my voice.
“Brandon,” Sylvana says, reaching across the table and placing a hand on mine, “We said yes.”
“But-,” and Johanne kicks me under the table, causing me to yelp in pain.
“Just do it already, Brandon,” she says with a laugh. “Or do we need to bring you to the ground and force you to do it to us?” she says saucily. Damn, did Johanne just use a double entendre?
“You are all sure?” I ask them, looking at each of them. They all nod at me, with smiles on their faces.
“Are we secure, Roger?” I ask him.
“Yes,” he says, but doesn’t tell the girls that the room is bugged.
Reaching deep inside me, I grab as much of the power from my inner lake as I can hold and I say to the girls, “You shall not reveal what I am about to say in this room right now to anyone, even on pain of death.” I can feel the power leave me, so I know it’s working. I had looked at each of them in the eyes one by one as I said it, and I felt that connection.
All three of them shake their heads as if clearing cobwebs.
“Fuck, I never want to get used to that,” Johanne says, with a shaky laugh.
“Tell me about it,” Lina says, rubbing her eyes as if waking up from sleep.
“Now, what did you want to tell us, Brandon?” Sylvana asks softly.
For the next little while, I tell them about my trip to the mountain, meeting the Elveesian, and my transformation into an Incubus. All of it. I was still not comfortable enough to give the name of the race, as Tatus didn’t want me to let others know it. But I explain to them who Roger is, not that he is a Fairy, but a living being that is also a Guardian left by the last living progenitor. At that, they all scream in surprise.
“Can I see him!” Sylvana practically screams.
“Hmm, that I will leave up to Roger. If he wants to reveal himself he can, but I will not force him,” I tell her, looking at him floating next to me.
All four of us are staring at the floating black ball, and he doesn’t say or do anything. Just when I am about to say something to break the silence, he finally speaks.
“If I do come out, you must not laugh,” he says grumpily.
“Roger, you don’t need to show yourself if you don’t want to,” Sylvana says with a smile at the ball.
“She’s right. I am good not knowing,” Johanne says, agreeing with her.
We all look at Lina. She is staring at Roger hungrily. She sees us looking at her and says accusingly, “What?
I’m dying of curiosity!”
We all end up laughing at her. Roger pipes up after and says, “No, I will come out.”
The ball flies onto the top of the table next to my hands and settles down. Then, it grows to twice its size, causing the girls to gasp in astonishment. Slowly, the lid splits in half and opens up, and the girls get their first look at Roger.
“You’re a Fairy?” Sylvana says in amazement, standing up and moving back from him so quickly that she knocks over her chair. What the fuck? Is she scared of Fairies?
“What is a Fairy doing here!” she screams in shock.
Getting up, I go around and help her, lifting her chair off the floor. “What’s wrong?” I ask her.
Sylvana looks at me and says, “Brandon, they died off over a thousand years ago! He shouldn’t exist,” she continues, pointing at Roger.
“Well, actually, I am much older than any Fairy, or anyone on this or any other Realm, as you call them,” Roger says, rubbing the back of his head.
“What do you mean?” Sylvana asks him, confusion on her face.
“I was alive over five million years ago,” he says.
All the girls stare at him in shock at this little tidbit of news. They all look at me for confirmation, and I just nod my head. “Yeah, he was around when the last of the progenitors were around, but don’t ask him about them since they wiped his memory of them. Also, he calls himself a Techno Fairy since he cannot do magic.”
“You can’t do magic? And how can you be over 5 million years old!” Sylvana asks him in horror.
“Nope, they never gave my race magic like the Fairies you know. Also, we don’t usually live that long. I have been sleeping for a lot of that time, in a sort of sleep pod. What do you mean though, that they died out over a thousand years ago?” he asks her.
Sighing, Sylvana comes back and sits down. “The Fairies were hunted down for their magic for so long. I can’t even say how long. If you kept a Fairy close to you, some humans figured out you could absorb their magic into your pool. They became nothing more than a captive battery. We Elves lived in harmony with them, protected them. But we did not want to enslave them. So we let them do what they wished. And as they loved nature, they went out of the Underworld to the human world.” She has tears in her eyes as she finishes.
“So, they are all dead?” Roger asks her quietly, putting a small hand on her arm.
“As far as we know,” Sylvana says, wiping away her tears. “We, as Elves, didn’t have the knowledge to keep them safe. My mother tells me stories of the last Fairy who died of old age. She had no kids of her own, so she died alone.”
Sighing, Roger says, “I am the last of my kind as well. When I die one day, there will be no more Fairies, magical or non-magical, left in the galaxy.”
“Isn’t there a technology you can use to, I don’t know, to bring them back?” I ask Roger quietly.
Turning to me, he shakes his head. “No, only the ones who created them could have done that.” Meaning a full Elveesian with all the tech and magic at their disposal. Shit, so much for that then.
“Well,” I say quietly. “We should get some food, plan some more, and head to bed,” I tell everyone. “Tomorrow, I think we should go after our first target.”
“Did you say food?” Roger says, perking up at that word.
The next morning, we are all at the same table again, eating. Roger surprised us all at supper last night by just how much he could eat, and eat he did. Miguel was the one who did the cooking again, and supper was steaks, baked potatoes, and steamed veggies. Roger had his own damn plate to himself. The good thing is Miguel knows I need tons of food now, and so he didn’t look at me oddly when I piled two plates, one with four steaks and another full of baked potatoes and veggies.
By the time we were done, Roger was lying down on the table in a state of vegetativeness. Even when I went to bed, he stayed on the table. He must have moved in the night, since when I woke up and came out of my room he was gone from the table and his ball was floating in a corner.
The girls were kind of sad last night as I said we all needed proper sleep for this, so we all had to sleep in our own beds. While I would have loved the company of one of the ladies, it would have meant a tiring day today. And I need all my strength as I have no clue what I will be fighting. So they all went to bed with pouts, but only after I gave them each a long passionate kiss. Lina, I had to practically pull off me, especially after she bit me.
“So what’s this?” Roger asks me, pointing at the liquid in my cup.
“Coffee,” I tell him.
“What’s coffee?” he asks me, sniffing the hot liquid. I have cream and sugar in mine to make it drinkable.
“It’s a drink that energizes you,” I tell him.
“Oh, it has magical properties?” he says, now intrigued.
“No,” I tell him with a laugh. “It has a chemical called caffeine in it that gives you that boost you need in the morning.”
“Personally, I think it’s gross,” Johanne says from across the table, nursing a cup of tea. “This is much better,” she says, taking a sip and making happy sounds.
“I want your blood,” Lina says next to me, leaning in seductively.
“Down girl,” I tell her with a laugh. She laughs and goes back to drinking her own cup of black coffee.
“It’s an acquired taste, I do admit,” Sylvana says, nursing her own cup, but hers is made like mine, with cream and sugar.
“Want to try it?” I ask him inquiringly.
“Hmm. Sure?” he says, sounding uncertain.
Since the cup is too big for him, I hold it as he takes a tentative sip. He pulls away. “Oh, by the Gods, that’s gross!” Then he takes another sip, anyhow. “Though somehow it tastes better the second time,” he says, smacking his lips.
“I need to get a cup for this. Give me a second.” He runs to his ball that he had landed on the table, reaches inside, and pulls out a cup that is more his size. He comes back, puts it into my cup, and takes some into his. Taking another sip, he closes his eyes. “Yes, one can get used to this.”
“Should we tell him about withdrawals?” Lina whispers to me with a grin.
Shaking my head, I grin back. “No, let him find out for himself.”
“Now, from the intel from your mom, Brandon, we are about 200 miles from our target, roughly three and a half hours. If Johanne goes the speed limit,” she adds, looking at Johanne, who just snorts at the comment.
“So, it should take us three hours to get there,” Sylvana amends. “The information that Roger got us is great. Since we were going in thinking it was a smaller force, and now we know better. I would say the first priority is getting rid of those casters. I can take care of those. You, Brandon, need to focus on our primary target. Johanne, Lina, the two of you are on those soldiers. Do you need weapons?” she asks them both.
“No, I have my daggers,” Lina says, producing two sharp daggers out of nowhere.
“Trent supplied me with enough weapons, with suppressors even, to make me more than happy,” Johanne says with a gleeful grin. “And a beautiful Hummer that purrs like a kitten.”
“What about spells? Can’t we cast a sleep spell?” I ask Sylvana.
“I was thinking about that, but if the mages had time, they most likely would have cast a magical detection spell, so anything that smells of magic on that cottage, they will know,” she says, frowning.
“What if I cast a spell on the land?” I ask her curiously.
“What?” she asks, looking at me strangely.
“What if we cast it on the surrounding land? I mean, you taught me the circle of protection. What if we cast that, link them, and then cast the sleep spell on the circle after? I mean, they can’t detect that spell since it’s so wide, but once the sleep spell hits the circle, it will go wide instantly,” I tell her, working out what I had thought about last night while lying in bed.
Sylvana just looks at me, saying nothing, but I can see the
gears in her head going. Suddenly she grabs a piece of paper and a pen and marks a square in the middle of the paper. Then she quickly draws circles around the parameter of the square until it’s surrounded. Next, she runs lines from circle to circle until it’s closed off. She taps her pen on the paper in thought, and then suddenly cries out in understanding.
“Power lines!” She looks at me for confirmation. At my nod, she continues. “You want to feed it power lines. You want to create a circle going around and around, which will keep anything inside. By casting the sleep spell on the circle with those power lines, it will grab the extra spell and throw it wide!” she says in wonder.
“Oh Gods, Brandon. We have never used magic like this! We keep casting the same spells we have been casting for, I don’t even know how long. I am sure the spells I am casting are the same spells that my ancestors used to cast over 100,000 years ago! Yet you just created something new!”
“I did?” I ask her in consternation. “How can I be the first to think of this? I mean, it was easy to come up with. I thought about it five minutes before I fell asleep last night.”
Roger suddenly says quietly, “And he shall change the world.”
“What?” I ask, turning to him.
“What, what?” he says, looking at me.
“You said something,” I tell him.
“No, I didn’t,” he says defensively.
“Roger, I distinctly heard you say, ‘and he shall change the world’. That’s exactly what you said.”
“I was thinking out loud about something I read once, that’s all,” he says cryptically.
“This might work, but it’s not been tested, Brandon. It might just fizzle out,” Sylvana says in thought.
“What if we go in with the assumption that it won’t work? We can have two plans?” I tell her, hopeful. I think it would be cool to try. But something she said earlier makes me ask her, “What did you mean spells haven’t changed? Doesn’t anyone experiment?”
“No, because they work,” she says.
