by Hunter Blain
Taylor and I stepped into Magni’s room, and I was impressed to see it was filled with modern conveniences.
There was a paper-thin TV on the wall with what I guessed to be all the newest consoles sitting on a stand just below the screen. There was a computer desk with a dual-monitor setup, and what appeared to be ancient books stacked next to the wireless keyboard and mouse that glowed with all the colors of the rainbow.
“Magni will be taught the finest of elemental magic while receiving similar training to that which you experienced during your stay.”
“Oh, sweet!” I said, excited for the boy who was no longer a boy.
“Yeah, I’m pretty excited, but nervous.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to it but to do it, kid,” I said, crossing my arms and leaning against the doorframe. “You still got that awesome intermediate wand Ludvig gave you?”
Magni reached down the side of his pants and pulled something out of his compression boxers. It looked like they had a pocket sewn into them.
Holding out the wand with several runes down its length, I beamed a huge smile at realizing that, even while comfortable and in neutral grounds, the kid still held onto his most precious weapon.
“Taylor says he’s going to help me etch my own runes into it to better suit my style.” Turning the wand over in his hand, I saw there was, indeed, room for several more runes to be added.
“Yeah, I can understand that. Ludvig seems to be the linebacker of our little football team, doesn’t he? Always running headfirst into the bad guys.” I thought for a moment. “And always doing a damn fine job of holding them back. Hmph,” I said, admiring the powerful Swedish Supernatural Hunter.
“Yeah, but I think I might be a better ranged specialist.”
I thought back on the apprentice, Magni, as he held Lolth at bay and even managed to bust out one of her eyes with an ice shard he had cast.
“I can see that,” I agreed, nodding in affirmation. I was just so proud of the little shit. “Kid, you’re in damn good hands here. I trust Taylor and the Seelie Court. When they are done with you, you’ll be a certified badass.”
“I thought I was one already,” he joked.
“Nah, you’re just an ass,” I shot back playfully.
“Takes one to know one.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’m rubber and you’re glue and whatever you say...doesn’t matter because we’re both inanimate materials.”
We chuckled at how lame our back and forth was as Taylor patiently waited, blending in with the background.
“Hey, John?” Magni began, formulating his words.
“What’s up, kid?”
“Take care of Ludvig, would ya? He’s...he’s not what you think.”
“You mean he’s not a truly badass supernatural hunting slash killing machine that doesn’t play by anybody’s rules but his own?” I jested.
“Just watch out for him, will ya? He’s been through a lot. I would say more than you could know, but I don’t think that’d be accurate.”
An eyebrow shot up, reaching for my hairline with grasping hands, as I said, “Oh? Do go on.”
“Not my place, dude,” Magni countered as he replaced his wand in the compartment of his compression shorts.
“We start in the morning. Get plenty of rest,” Taylor said to Magni, ignoring that I was still in the room.
“Yes, sir.”
Taylor regarded me and nodded, signaling our time was up.
“Later, kid,” I called over my shoulder as I walked into the hallway.
As Taylor closed the door, I said in a hushed tone, “I appreciate what you’re doing for him.”
The king of the Seelie did something that unnerved me; he leaned in slightly and whispered, “How else is he to have a fighting chance against John the Vampire?”
“How did yo—” I started, cutting myself off midsentence with a half-raised index finger. I remembered Taylor once saying something to the effect of, “I know what I must, and I must know.” But there was absolutely no way in Hell, literally, that he could know what the books had said. I hadn’t told a single soul.
Taylor and I stared at one another, two alpha predators sizing each other up.
In a cold tone, I spoke, “I’m not sure I like the inference, TalGoid.”
“Oh? Pray tell; which part do you not like?”
My pride barked and tugged at the choke collar that only served to infuriate it further. My logical mind stared at the slipping leash and debated on letting it go to correct my friend’s attitude toward me. But then an innocent part of my head tugged on my brain’s shirt as it debated on what to do with the pride that wanted so desperately to be freed. Turning around, my brain regarded the tiny portion of my mind as it said, “But Mistew Bwain, didn’t Deppyweg do the same thing?”
I exhaled the breath I had been holding and forced my electrified nerves to stand down. There would be no fight or flight with Taylor.
“You’re right,” I said with my eyes closed, having forgiven my friend but unable to look him in the eyes. I didn’t enjoy people going around my back on things that pertained to my favorite subject: me.
“It seems Depweg isn’t the only one who has learned something today,” Taylor said with a degree of pride in his words.
My eyes shot open as my brain figured out the message that had been slammed into my ears like an ice pick.
“You son of a...” I drawled as Taylor beamed at having his message received, loud and clear.
“We are all beasts,” Taylor repeated with a nod and an accompanying hand on my shoulder.
The grip my logical brain had on the leash that led to the monster that was pride strengthened at that moment, and I became a better person today than I was yesterday.
29
I bid my farewells to the Seelie, leaving a note with Taylor addressed to my best friend. I asked him to wait a few days, or maybe a few weeks, before giving it to him. I was confident Taylor would know when to give it to Depweg.
Rather than shifting planes using my armor, I decided to respect Gabriel’s advice and take it slow, instead opting to use the portal to my mausoleum.
As I passed through the shimmering portal, I was greeted with the familiar aroma of a somewhat stuffy tomb. Depweg had done a fantastic job sealing it, but it didn’t have any outside airflow. And though the marble of the structure was cool, the humid, sweltering outside air of Houston was not to be denied, spilling in every time the door was opened.
The air between the frames of the portal stilled as the doorway was shut on the other side.
I flicked my eyes to the false panel to open the hidden door and saw it had been replaced with a new one, though the stone didn’t 100% match the tiles around it. I was impressed with how quickly it had been fixed. Then I remembered I had been gone two full days.
Now alone, I closed my eyes and let everything that had happened in Faerie coalesce from the liquid, pliable short-term memory to that of the solid, permanent long term, forever affixed in my mind.
It was also important that I focused not on Depweg, who must now digest his actions, but on my own transgressions. Control was something akin to wrestling a wild pig coated in oil; grip or squeeze too much, and it slipped through your grasp, the freeing momentum aided by how hard you tried to keep it in check. Not enough, and it pulled itself free without contention. It took just the right amount of force to keep something like pride in check at all times, but you had to be prepared for it to start bucking without so much as a squeal in warning.
I looked inward, metaphorically speaking, and regarded the leash in my hands. I followed its length to see it disappear into the shadows where two unblinking green eyes peered at me from beneath an apparent scowl. Pride cared about nothing but chaos. It would cut off your nose to spite your face.
Holding the leash, I did what dog trainers everywhere told you not to do; I stuck my hand through the loop before wrapping the end around my wrist a few times, securing my hold on my sin of pride. The onl
y way it was going to hurt someone else was by pulling my arm off.
The big marble door of the mausoleum clicked and began opening, bringing me back to the now with a light shake of my head and a few quick blinks as light spilled in.
Ludvig walked in with forearms adorned from elbow to wrist with white plastic bags that were stuffed to the brim with groceries.
He saw me standing in the center of the room and let out an, “Oh!” of surprise before almost tripping on his own two feet. I took note that his hand went for the wand tip that stuck out of his tactical pants before he gained situational awareness.
“Hello dere,” Ludvig greeted.
“What’s up, big man? Need some help?”
“No, I fink I got it,” he said, struggling to lean down and push the button to close the door without dropping anything.
Lending a hand, I walked to the far wall and pushed the button that opened the hidden door of the throne in the center of the room.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Hey! You enunciated the th!”
“I always do,” he countered with a deadpan face.
“I...”
Ludvig disappeared down the steps, and after running a hand down my face, I followed suit just as he hit the motion detector to close the door.
“Hey!” I barked, barely squeezing in before it sealed shut. The LEDs illuminated the stairs, and I began a casual stroll down to my home, not knowing what to expect once inside. I wanted to ask if everyone was safe and if that’s why he had all those groceries, but I figured I’d find out in just a few seconds.
Hey, Baleius, think he got enough food to last him at least a da— My words caught in my throat as I looked at the empty control room of my mind. —day, I finished, feeling my heart fill with lead and get pulled down to my guts. Oh man...Baleius...
I placed a hand on my chest and let it glide down my stomach as I felt my incorporeal soul inside the reservoir that was my body. It felt like living in a huge house that was usually full of people, only to find one day that it was empty and everyone was gone. It felt...alien and lonely.
I turned my hands over and over, looking at the features of my mentally projected self. Had I changed? Was Baleius somehow a part of me in such a way that I might be able to tell a difference in something as tiny as a different type of fingernail bed? Maybe a new wrinkle at the knuckle?
And where was Baleius now? If my soul itself had absorbed him instead of just the vessel that was my body, what had happened to his consciousness?
An idea timidly raised its hand, afraid to look like a fool in front of the rest of the class, but also unable to help itself. What it suggested both terrified and fascinated me.
Were Baleius’ own experiences now my own? What kind of important city did he have in his own mind after being sentient since the dawn of existence?
I dove into my mind and had my breath stolen as I saw something that made my brain want to explode out of my skull and flip me off while walking out the door.
My city was there, as expected, but something felt...different about it. Turning all around, I saw the edge of my construct where I normally appeared, and beyond that, enormous structures that scratched the very sky, dwarfing anything I could have built.
“Holy giraffe testicles, Batman,” I drawled, unknowing of the random words I had inserted between the first and last words of the sentence.
With a mere thought, I lifted off the ground and soared through the air like a particularly trademarked superhero. My eyes bulged as I saw what lay beyond the tiny plot of land where I stored over five hundred years of John.
There, outside of the walls of my information city, was an entire country that was the angel Baleius’ entire collected experiences. Within that country were smaller states, all apparently from different eras of civilization. Within those states were a multitude of cities ranging in size and density.
In the sheer beauty of what I bore witness to, my mind created the most befitting exposition, birthed from my limitless wisdom, that could eloquently sum up my entire existence, enough that if I were to choose a poetic line to convey who John Cook was to a random passerby, the plaque above my final coffin only needed to say, “Um...k...”
It would take me figurative years to even start wading through everything that made up Baleius. Of course, nanoseconds would pass on the surface, but still, I would have to endure that amount of time as I tried to learn as much as I could. I was looking at what could possibly be eons worth of information, depending on how literal the Bible was in terms of the creation of the universe. If I were to believe Samael, and he did help God create the Big Bang, then both science AND religion were right. That also meant there could be over ten billion years of information to try and dissect from the angel Baleius.
“Welp...shit...”
The desire to check up on my remaining friends pecked on my skull like a woodpecker (heh...wood), and I returned to my body.
I would go through the freaking country of information piece by piece. It goes with the old corporate slogan; how does one eat an elephant? I forget how it ends, but you get the idea.
Stepping into my home, I closed the front door as Ludvig unceremoniously dumped the contents of the plastic bags on the counter. Tiny Tim rose from where he had been asleep on the couch and began barking excitedly. Jumping down, my sweet baby puppy ran over to me, and I scooped him up with one hand, vigorously tussling his ears with the other. I was met with an unstoppable barrage of tiny tongue lashings.
Bringing down my wittle puppers to hold against my chest, I looked at the mess Ludvig had made.
“Hey,” I began, pointing at the graveyard of plastic on the black countertop. “I thought plastic would have been done in by now. Before I left, people were freaking out over straws and stuff. Though they didn’t really seem to complain much about water bottles.”
“Oh, dese aren’t plastic,” Ludvig said helpfully, ending his statement there.
“M’kay. Care to keep going there, big guy?”
“They’re compostable,” Hayley called out from somewhere in the living room. Judging by how I couldn’t see her, that meant she was in my freaking recliner.
“You’re compostable,” I grumbled as I looked down at my tongue-lolling, tail-wagging puppy, and brought him up for my return volley of kisses.
“Speaking of taking out the trash, princess,” Hayley began, leaning over my armrest to peer at where I stood in the kitchen. “You ready to murder some warlocks?”
“You bet your freckled face I am,” I threw back with a single finger gun. “Oh! I think big guy, here, should come with us.”
Ludvig froze while trying to shove two loaves of bread in a custom place in the cabinet where only one was meant to be stored. The little sliding container pulled out at knee height and held assorted seasonings on each shelf, with one reserved for bread. I guess it helped the kitchen look less cluttered to not have one of those bread things sitting out. You know the ones I’m talking about, with the picture of a bread and the door that slides up to open. Anyway...
Ludvig began nodding enthusiastically.
“Yes. I would very much like to go wif you guys.”
“Good, ’cause ’parently, there’s some holdup in Germany that might need a little TLC. And by TLC I mean, Tough Ludvig Cah...Killin’. I don’t know where I was going with that.”
“Ha!” Hayley called out, which resulted in her receiving the fiercest scowl I had ever delivered in the history of ever.
“Germany?” Ludvig asked quietly. “Why dere specifically?”
“Have it on good authority that there are some bad guys there that need some boo-boos delivered with first-class international mail. And...um...my fist will be the, ah, prepaid...pa-package.”
“Man, you are bad at this today,” Hayley threw out before turning back to face forward in her cha—WAIT, in my fucking chair.
“So you in?” I asked Ludvig, ignoring Warden Broadway, thief of chairs...for now.
&nbs
p; “Yes. Yes, of course,” he said with a tad less enthusiasm this time around.
“Alright, that’s weird,” I said aloud before setting down the hyper Tiny Tim and walking to the living room.
As I strolled, I grabbed the back of my recliner and began pushing it forward, forcing a “Hey!” from the usurper as she had to quickly twist her lower body and shoot out her legs, which she had been sitting on. Once she was out, I smiled and let go of the chair, letting it fling itself backward before preparing to rebound, directly where Hayley was standing.
As the chair-o-death pitched forward, Warden Broadway barked a command word and shot out her fist, which smashed into the chair.
It flung backward and crashed into the wall that served as a bar for the kitchen. On the other side were the bottommost cabinets—like the bread rack thing—oven, and my mini fridge.
The chair splintered into pieces, but not before crashing through the drywall and sending everything that was in the cabinets shooting forward and to the floor where Ludvig was standing, awestruck.
Wide eyes followed the path of destruction leading from the kitchen to Warden Broadway’s outstretched fist. We locked gazes, and I could see that she was embarrassed at her overuse of power.
“My...chair...” I moaned.
“Buy a new one,” she barked defiantly as she marched to Ludvig’s room. Before she slammed the door shut, she called out, “We leave in half an hour.”
Ludvig leaned down to peer at me from under the row of cabinets that hung from the ceiling, and we shrugged at one another.
“Hey,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “Why is your skin all glittery?”
“Shut up, that’s why,” I replied as I plopped down on the couch, turning on the TV with my phone. Tim jumped up on my lap and almost immediately went to sleep. Hayley must have been watching the TV last because the news was on.
The rolling title showed my stupid, grinning face standing on a barren expanse of land, with a caption that read, “Life on Mars. News at nine.”
“Ho...ly...shit! I’m on TV! Neat!”
“No one cares, Team Edward!” a muffled feminine voice cried out from Ludvig’s room.
