The Magician's Blood

by Linda G. Hill

  “So, you’re saying I don’t really have to put up with it all? That we could live a quiet life where I wouldn’t have to be jealous all the time?”

  “It would mean giving up everything. The magic, the tours, the stage, the rush of dancing in public … I don’t think you want that any more than I do. It’s one of the reasons we’re meant for each other.”

  “You’re right. You always are,” she said, putting her hand over his where it still lay on his chest.

  “No, I’m not,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “If what I’ve done to Nina has left her capable of hurting you, then I was very wrong.”

  “You had no way to know how precarious her mental state was going to get. It’s not your fault.”

  “Herman, I’m trained as a psychologist. I should have seen it coming. I was selfish, wanting to get it out of the way so that I could have a life with you.”

  “For what it’s worth, I appreciate the thought.”

  “You won’t if it gets you hurt in the long run.”

  “You mean more than she’s already hurt me? It was worth that,” Herman said. “Every moment I spend with you is a precious gift. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

  “Even when I’m making you jealous?” He raised his eyebrows and wiggled his fingers in her hand.

  “Okay, maybe not then. But the rest of the time.”

  She leaned forward to kiss his lips and he returned it the best he could with the muscles in his neck barely working.

  “Is the feeling coming back yet?” she asked.

  “Touch me and see,” he whispered.

  She started at his throat this time and ran her finger slowly down the line of buttons on his shirt, past his nipples and down, over his stomach to his belly button, past the waistband of his jeans, to his fly, which was where he told her to stop.

  “That’s where the feeling ends?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “I just want you to stop there.”

  She kissed him again and got up to sit on his thighs, straddling him.

  “So now you can feel, but you still can’t move, is that it?”

  He lifted his shoulder in a slight shrug and tapped his chest with his finger. “That’s about it so far.”

  “You can’t even squirm?” she asked, undoing the button on his fly.

  “Not yet.”

  “I guess it wouldn’t be fair for me to …” she tugged his zipper down but left the sentence hanging in the air. Outside in the hall a group of young people walked by the door, laughing, but in the room the fun teetered in Herman’s mind between pleasure and torture.

  “I suppose I could tell you if it was completely horrible,” he said in mock seriousness.

  “Or you could beg me to stop,” she said as she shifted herself down toward his knees to take a close look at what she was doing with his fly.

  “I can’t help you get them off, so you’ll have to … Oh, aren’t you strong tonight.”

  He only begged for more.

  * * *

  By ten o’clock Stephen had mobility enough to sit, an improvement of five minutes over his trip to Antigua. He explained to Herman that he seemed to recover a little faster each time, and that if it had been her, she might have been out for an hour longer, and would wait possibly twice as long before the feeling and movement returned. She told him she wasn’t enthusiastic to try if she didn’t have to.

  “It was disconcerting enough last time you did it to me, and then you only transported me a few hundred feet. But it seems terrible to be completely helpless like you were today.”

  “It wasn’t so terrible,” he said with a smile.

  “Not this time, no. But weren’t you worried at all when you arrived in Antigua?”

  “I knew the sleeping and the inability to get up for a while are normal, but I’ve never been completely paralyzed before. So yes, I was worried until the feeling started coming back. After I realized it was getting better by the minute, I let my anger subside while I talked to my dad.”

  “Speaking of your anger, if you’re going to call my dad, maybe you should get it over and done with.”

  “Might as well.” He dialed the number on speaker and tapped his foot while he waited for George to pick up.

  “Dagmar,” George answered. “Are you alone?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m here too, Dad.”

  “I need to talk to him in private. Would you mind turning the speaker off on the phone?”

  “Do you want me to leave the room too?” Herman asked snidely.

  “That would be good, thanks,” George said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow before I leave for the airport. Okay, honey?”

  “I’d like to talk to you tonight …”

  “Do as you’re told. I’ll try to call you early enough tomorrow so we can have a chat.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” She got up and walked to the door, turning back as she pulled it open. “I’ll go to Margaret’s room. Let me know when you’re done.”

  Stephen waited for the door to close behind her. “Okay, George, Herman’s gone,” he said, not trying to hide his aggravation. “What’s the big secret?”

  “Impeccable fucking timing you’ve got, Dagmar. I was just about to come into a sweet hot pussy when you finally decided to grace me with your call. Asshole.”

  “That’s why you wanted Herman out of the room? So you could tell me that?”

  Stephen could think of a few things to say that would throw George into a complete rage. You sent my pussy away so you could brag about yours? or, If she’s anywhere near as good as your daughter, you must be right pissed, but he held his tongue and waited for an answer.

  “Oh no,” George sang with an audible leer. “It’s not my secret I sent her out of the room for, but it’s all tied in together.”

  “Pray tell,” Stephen said with a sigh.

  “I happen to be poised between the legs of a very naked, very beautiful Alice. You remember her. From the limo last night? She was making out with your whore of an agent.”

  “Congratulations, George.” Stephen forced his voice to sound bored while he wondered if he should be panicking. “You bagged yourself a druggie. How much did she cost you?”

  “She didn’t cost me a cent. But she’s going to cost you a bundle.” Stephen could hear his grin broadening all the way through the phone.

  “How do you figure?”

  George chuckled. “She confirmed you have anger issues.”

  Shuffling from the other end of the phone indicated that the man was getting comfortable. A story was coming, and it wasn’t bound to have a happily ever after.

  “You see,” George continued, “I met her in the lobby covered in blood. She tells me she woke up to find you fingering her bitch from last night, and that when she reached for some for herself, you picked her up by the pussy and the throat, looking like the devil himself, and offered her your dick. Is that right, Stephen, dear?”

  “She has the story a little twisted.”

  “Oh, not by much. You see, I also have a close friend of hers here, and he confirmed the story, with a little help from me. I’m sure I can convey those same sentiments to Herman, much the same way I learned them myself, should I be so inclined. I heard your agent was quite enjoying herself too.”

  Stephen’s fury from the morning began to resurface. He spoke through clenched teeth. “Haven’t you had enough of hurting your daughter, you sick fuck?”

  “Haven’t you?” George asked.

  Stephen took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. Closing his eyes, he counted backward from ten in his head.

  “Whatever you have against me, leave Herman out of it.”

  “That’s easy. Leave her.”

  “Not going to happen, George,” Stephen said, and he meant it.

  “I’m sure with the number of women you have crawling over you on a daily basis, it’s only a matter of time before yo
u get caught again.”

  “You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. And if you think for one second you can blackmail me, you’ve got another think com—”

  “I saw you fucking your agent,” George said, interrupting him.

  “What the fuck are you talking about now?”

  “It hasn’t happened yet but it’s going to, and when it does, Herman is going to know about it.”

  Stephen snorted in frustration. He shook his head, forcing George’s ridiculous last comment out of his mind.

  “Look, I’ve tried being nice for Herman’s sake, George, but you’re pushing it. The sooner you come to grips with the fact that your daughter is a permanent fixture in my life, the better off you’ll be, because it won’t be me who gets hurt by your bullshit, and it certainly won’t be Herman. Don’t make me keep her away from you, because if that’s what I have to do, it’ll be dead easy.

  “Now, why don’t you get to the point of this conversation, because frankly, I’m getting tired of it.”

  George hesitated for a moment. “I trust you’ve taken care of the situation with the pregnant one?”

  “She’ll be out of the country within the week.”

  “Good,” George said. “Just watch your balls, Dagmar. Because I’ll have them hanging from my rear-view mirror if you as much as hurt one hair on Herman’s head.”

  “I couldn’t possibly top your performance, George. Now isn’t that what you’ve always wanted to hear?”

  George was silent. When he spoke again, his voice was uncharacteristically serious. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

  “I’ll keep her safe,” Stephen said, wondering not for the first time if George’s visions were total bullshit, or if there was anything to them. “You keep the fuck out of her head.”

  “If that’s what it takes to keep her in one piece, I’ll do whatever I have to.” George hung up.

  Stephen lay back on the bed, trying to regain the calm he’d felt when he arrived with Herman at his side. It was useless. He stared at the ceiling as his mind drifted to the conversation he had had with his father in Antigua.

  He had opened his eyes to a room that was brighter than the one he’d left. The air smelled different. Saltier. Fresher than the sealed-can scent of a hotel room. He knew at once that he was in the bedroom he’d occupied every winter as a child, in the house that had been in his family since the 1700s. He heard footsteps to his left, and Tarmien Dagmar’s face, so much like his own, appeared in his line of vision.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Okay, he thought, but when he tried to say it, his jaw refused to move. There was no sensation in his tongue. Panicked, he let out a huff of air and strained to refill his lungs, lest he couldn’t. His breath wheezed in and out, and he moved his eyes wildly back and forth as much as he was able, attempting to let his dad know that everything wasn’t all right.

  “Relax, son,” his father said calmly. “It’s probably just the distance. Try to breathe normally.”

  Stephen closed his eyes and forced his breath to slow. He counted to one hundred, concentrating fiercely on each number. When he opened his eyes again his father was there, concerned and waiting.

  Taking a deep breath in he allowed his jaw to relax, and thankfully, this time his lips parted. He sensed saliva in his mouth and he swallowed. Movement was coming back quickly. He tried to speak; it came out in a whisper. “Never … been this … bad.”

  “Give it time.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw his father pat his shoulder, and his eyes shot wide open.

  “I’m paralyzed!” he croaked a little louder. Fear of never being able to move again caused his insides to clench; he felt that, though from the outside there was no sensation.

  “Don’t panic, Stephen,” his father commanded. “It’s probably a symptom caused by the distance. Why did you do this in the first place?”

  The reason. The memory of the morning—what seemed to Stephen like only minutes ago, though he knew it had been hours—came to him, distracting him from his growing panic. When he lay down and closed his eyes in the Edmonton hotel room he was scared, confused, and bewildered by the feelings that had controlled his actions in Margaret’s room.

  “I needed to talk to you in person,” he said tightly, in a voice that was closer to normal. First, he needed to know if the effects of the transport were wearing off. “Touch my cheek, please.” The hand on his skin was distant and cold, like recovering from dental anesthesia, but it was something. He sighed, and Tarmien took his hand away.

  “I’ve been sitting here for almost three hours trying to imagine what was so important that you couldn’t have phoned. Margaret wouldn’t tell me anything except that everyone there is fine.” His father sat beside him on the bed. Normally his dad would have been able to tell what he was feeling by the look on his face. The paralysis prevented it. What Stephen felt was unprecedented anyway. Mingled with his fear of what might be wrong with him was the rage that caused it, still slowly bubbling at the thought of George’s desire to hurt Nina, and with her, his baby in her womb.

  “I almost did something, and I don’t know why. I’ve never been so angry. So out of control.” His speech was almost normal but the relief he felt was overshadowed by the worry that perhaps his paralysis was caused by a brain tumor, or …

  Tarmien cut off his thought. “What happened to make you so mad?”

  “George—Herman’s father. He threatened my baby. He said he was going to hunt Nina down because he thinks she’s a threat to Herman. I was mad after I talked to him, but then I went to see Margaret, and there was a woman in her room, and … I almost lost it.” He would have frowned, if he could, as he tried to describe the experience. “It was like I was in a vacuum, and at the end of the tunnel where the only light shone were their cunts, and the smell of them, and I wasn’t just drawn toward it; I had to own them. It was like a hunger that consumed every part of my being. It was like being in the middle of an orgasm.

  “And my eyes.” He remembered his reflection in the mirror. “They turned red.”

  As he spoke, he watched realization slowly transform his father’s face from concern to horror. “It can’t be …” Tarmien whispered.

  “What? What’s wrong with me?” Stephen felt his hand twitch and realized the adrenaline was helping.

  “I didn’t think it had been passed down any further than your grandfather. I’ve never had any symptoms, but you and Daphne were never …”

  “What?” The volume was returning to Stephen’s voice, and he lifted his shoulders in an attempt to sit up. The muscles in his stomach still would not cooperate.

  “It’s what gives us our powers, in our bloodline since sometime in the fourteenth century … It’s an incubus.”

  Stephen stared at the familiar face and wondered, nauseatingly, if he’d ever known his father. “You’re telling me this now?” The anger simmering inside him rose to his chest, and he recognized distantly that his fists were clenched.

  “I thought the effects had died out with my father.”

  “But we still have powers. What in the living fuck would make you think there wasn’t still a demon alive in our blood?” He’d never spoken to his father in such a way, but Tarmien didn’t flinch.

  “I should have told you. I’m sorry, Stephen.”

  His dad continued to talk but the adrenaline rushing through his veins rang in his ears and drowned out what he said.

  “… it must be the threat.”

  The words snapped him into the present. “What about the threat?”

  “Neither you nor Daphne have ever been in serious danger. I think that’s why I’ve never come close to losing control the way you describe. The nature—the entire purpose—of an incubus is to seduce and impregnate. It has to be the threat to your offspring that triggered this.”

  “That explains why I would have fucked any woman I came into contact with this morning without think
ing about it. But it was only a threat. What would happen if my child was actually in physical danger?”

  “The same thing that happened when my sister, Deborah, died.” He paused and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “My father killed Lotta’s mother.”

  Confusion stole some of the anger out of him. “But, she died in the fire with your sister, after one of the Currys went against the curse.”

  “That’s the official story. Your grandfather confessed to me on his deathbed that he killed her while trying to impregnate her. She died of massive blood loss.”

  Stephen swallowed, thinking about what he might have done to Margaret. He’d been so close.

  “It was the death of my sister that sent him into a rage. It was a freak accident: she and I were in the same room. The power was out and there was an oil lamp. I was only a baby, completely defenseless, and yet it was my three-year-old sister who burned to death.

  “You know it was Lotta’s grandfather, Wilbur, who went against the curse. He took his daughter, Martha, from the estate, thereby breaking the first rule: that the Currys must remain in servitude of the Dagmars. It was that, the breaking of the curse, which led to the fire that killed Deborah. But Martha wasn’t there.”

  “And where was Lotta in all this?”

  “She wasn’t born yet. It was bad enough that Wilbur had made sure the Curry blood would continue by getting his daughter pregnant …”

  “He didn’t impregnate his own daughter …”

  “No. But it was nearly as bad. The story my father told me was that Wilber was drinking one night with friends. Rather than let my father impregnate Martha to end the curse, Wilbur lied to this group of men, telling them that Martha was destined to be raped by my father when she turned eighteen—she was seventeen at the time—for the sake of an old family ‘belief.’ He told them if she got pregnant before then, her destiny would change. His friends understood that if they got there first, Martha would be saved. So they went in a group and raped her themselves, poor girl. That’s why no one knows who Lotta’s father is.