by Harry Nix
“Last chance,” Alex warned.
“Math. Now.”
Alex was getting cold, plus there was the whole stark naked thing, so he shifted, quickly growing to just over eight foot in height, towering over April.
His body layered over in muscle and thick fur and the bones of his face reshaped, forming a snout with sharp teeth. As he grew, the thick vines around his ankles and feet gave way, shredding to pieces.
April stepped back, holding up her hands. “Okay, I believe you’re awake. It's a good thing I was here. Otherwise you’d have jumped the fence.”
Alex rubbed a hand across his eyes, feeling a lack of sleep weighing down upon him. Now he was in his hybrid form the night lit up for him, aided by the three-quarter moon sailing high above. He could hear crickets and other nighttime insects going about their business. Above all those things he could hear April's heartbeat, faster than normal. She was either scared, or excited.
“Parasomnia. In my case sleepwalking and sleeptalking. It gets worse when I'm stressed or sometimes for no reason at all.”
He glanced back towards the house in through the open back door and saw on the clock that was four in the morning. That meant he’d had all of an hour and a half of sleep since the four of them had returned from the successful grave robbing. He turned back to April to see that she'd crossed her arms and was watching him with a curious look on her face.
“So, what's the deal with the burnt grass in the shape of an eight-foot-tall werewolf?” she asked and pointed to the spot near the lemon tree where Alex had piled up leaves a week ago to cover the results of a failed magical experiment. In the intervening time some of the pile had shifted, revealing the burn mark and a few new sprouts of grass.
“I was testing out a virtual spellcasting system to see if I could work out how to cast spells in a safe virtual environment. Unfortunately it turns out it uses far more mana than normal and so is pretty much useless. When I cast flame shield in virtual it consumed all my mana, knocked me out and then somehow did that.”
“Which you covered up so Juno and Nia don’t end your life,” April said with a smirk.
“I'm an eight-foot-tall werewolf – do you really think I'm scared of those two?”
He saw April look him up and down, taking in his body.
“I think happy wife, happy life. Here, let me do you a favor.”
She walked past him and he struggled not to breathe in her scent. He was having a hard time keeping his eyes off her shapely legs as well. His t-shirt only came a few inches below her butt and then her legs were golden, sleek and strong.
April stood next to the pile of leaves and raised a hand. As Alex watched, he saw a translucent screen appear above her and code began to stream down it. A chime of music rang out as the code quickly compiled and she cast her spell.
From her hand, specks of green drifted down like magical glitter. Grass sprang to life everywhere they landed. It was the work of a moment and the black mark was gone, April kicking aside some of the leaf pile to finish the job. She gave one last shake of her hand, as though she was flicking water droplets off her fingertips and canceled the spell.
When Alex breathed in he could smell pine needles, dry and deep in a cool forest.
April turned around and crossed her arms, shaping the t-shirt around her curves.
“There. Now you owe me,” she said, arching an eyebrow.
“Hey, I never agreed to that deal.”
April held out a hand over the newly regrown grass. “I can reverse it if you like?”
“So I owe you a favor now? I already owe Juno a favor for casting cleanse one time. Is this the same sort of thing? Is this the witch method – do small favors and then collect favors in return?”
“Firstly, I'm not a witch but yes generally. I save you from getting chewed out and sometime in the future you do me a favor. Sounds like a good deal to me,” April said.
They stood there regarding each other for a moment before Alex nodded. “Okay, fine. You can have a favor, Juno can have a favor, everyone gets a favor, why not?”
“Good.”
“So I know why I was out here, sleeptalking and walking but why are you up?” he said, changing the topic.
“I couldn't sleep. Part of it is being far from home and my trees and earth. The other part is this amulet. I can't work out what it does. I was hoping if I wore it long enough something would happen,” April said, flicking the amulet that hung around her neck.
“Maybe we just need to cast a really super powerful Analyze spell on it?”
April shrugged, a delightful movement that Alex was more than happy to watch. “Maybe. But it’s going to have to be one hell of a spell because I’ve already hit it with high power.”
In the garden there was a long bench set against the fence line. April walked over to it and sat down. Alex felt there was a moment trembling in potential. Should we go over and sit next to her? Or should he say goodnight and take himself inside? His wolf certainly had some strong opinions on what to do that.
Alex wasn't so sure that the wild thing within him was the cleverest when it came to women given most of the advice was of the pounce nature.
He took a breath and then decided to take the third path for a moment, walking over to the garden shed to collect the watering can. The new succulents he’d planted a week ago could do with some water. He filled the watering can and gave each plant a good soak. As he worked, he could feel April watching him.
“So you’re a game maker and a green thumb as well?” she finally said.
“I guess so. Jane, my adopted mother, had a garden full of these plants. She’d given me many of them, which I lost when my apartment block got detonated the other week. Me and Nia went back to take some cuttings so now here they are.”
April came to stand beside him. She didn't say anything and he only saw the briefest of flickers of the screen above her head and a light chime before her fingers were twinkling again, a rain of green specks falling down on to the garden bed.
“This will help them grow,” she said.
“So who you? Who made you?” Alex asked, repeating back to a full the questions that she had asked him.
Her magic was unlike anything he had seen. Of course it wasn't like he had a large sample size. April finished sprinkling green specks on the garden bed and then returned to the bench. This time Alex followed her. He sat down carefully on the bench, wary that his weight might break it, but it was a solid piece of furniture, although it creaked a little.
“They found me abandoned in the woods. Nymphs don't pay much attention to hybrid babies. There only care for the pure nymph or satyr children,” April said.
“Satyr children? You mean those men with the legs of goats? Big into panflutes? They’re real?”
“Yup. Horny little buggers too. Not so much into panflutes though. Satyrs and nymphs live in the forests, basically playing and fucking. They both don't live long, maybe forty years at most and if a nymph has a hybrid child they’ll just drop it somewhere. It’s not malice – they just put the babies down and wander off.”
Alex could hear pain in April’s voice. He didn't say anything but reached over and squeezed her hand gently. In his hybrid state he was enormous compared to her and for a moment it seemed ridiculous – his gigantic hand with sharpened claws and her tiny one. But he couldn't shift back now to human form unless he wanted to be naked again.
“So someone found and raised you?” he asked.
“It was a teacher at the school. My house was a school, of sorts. I grew up there with a bunch of other lost children.”
“When I was searching for clothes at your house after I went wild, I went into some of the rooms. They felt like they hadn’t been opened in years. Why are you the only one who lives out there?”
Alex saw April frown before she let out a sigh and abruptly plastered a fake smile on.
“I think I need to get some sleep now, so don't go jumping that fence!” she said, waving her f
inger at him like he was a naughty puppy.
She bolted out of the backyard and into the house like she was a jackrabbit with a wild animal chasing it, leaving Alex sitting on the garden bench wondering what it was he'd said. This was the second time in only a few hours that she’d declined to answer him.
Alex sat there for a few moments as April’s scent slowly faded away. The wolf inside him was practically cursing about letting such a luscious morsel slip from between his paws.
“Don't worry dude, I’m sure it’s going to happen,” Alex murmured to himself.
He looked up at the moon and suppressed the urge to howl at it. Despite the Great Barrier working to hide supernaturals from the rest of the world he was sure a wolf howling at four in the morning in the middle of suburbia would likely cause some problem with the neighbors.
Alex took himself inside, raiding the fridge for cheese and a glass of milk. He then headed back to bed where Nia and Juno were soundly sleeping. He shifted back to human form and found his boxer shorts that Juno had pulled off and thrown across the room earlier.
Just seeing his two mates made him want to grab them again, strip them naked and spend what was left of the night feasting on their bodies. But both of them were exhausted and Alex could feel the tiredness pounding behind his eyes. So instead he crept in between them. Nia sighed and moved, placing a hand on his chest while Juno turned over and folded herself into him. As Alex drifted off to sleep he wondered exactly how the mechanics of having three wives in bed with him all at once was meant to work.
3
Alex examined the complicated diagram and list of names he'd written out.
“So they were the Habsburgs and before that they were the Washingtons and before that they were Bonaparte?” he asked.
Juno was driving Boris as they headed into the city. Today she was wearing her schoolgirl outfit again: tartan skirt, white shirt, half undone tie. She’d tied up her blonde hair into a severe librarian bun and stuffed a pencil through it, completing the outfit with a pair of stern librarian glasses. The entire effect was so sexy that Alex was having a difficult time concentrating on his diagram of vampire houses and organizations.
“Maybe it's Bonaparte, Washingtons and then Hapsburgs? I can't remember. But that's why the bitey ones do it – they want to hide, to be unknown. Smaller groups will always give you fake names. If you’ve met a vampire it's almost certain they lied to you about what their name,” she said.
Alex read back over the list of vampire houses that Juno had rattled off. They were all famous names from history, which Juno had explained was another strategy designed to confuse. The way she told it, the vampires gathered into groups the same way the mages did, except their extreme desire for secrecy meant that they didn't keep the same name for long.
“This is ridiculously complicated,” Alex said.
“You’re telling me. The witches have a registrar because it is in our interest to track them and all their land and holdings. There are literally witches who spend all their time trying to figure out what the vampires are calling themselves right now and what they have their fingers in. Vampires are utterly obsessed with messing with property records, too. You try to follow the path of ownership of a single piece of land that the vampires are interested in and it’s guaranteed to be screwed up.”
They turned a corner, Juno taking the drive at a leisurely pace. After being up so early in the morning Alex had slept in and so had his two mates. He’d finally been roused around lunch by the delicious scent of food from the kitchen.
Alex had been expecting a slow start to the day but as soon as he was up, Juno force-fed him and then hustled him into Boris, telling him that they were going to Bailey's. In the meantime, Nia and April had their own business to attend to, Nia still digging into what adoption records she could find for Alex.
Now Alex and Juno were driving to Bailey's. The day was warm and sunny and Alex was relaxed with a stomach full of bacon, eggs and fried tomato. Juno had been giving him a crash course in the supernatural but it was so complicated it made his head hurt.
The best he could see was that most groups arranged themselves into enclaves, houses, covens, packs or whatever it was, depending on what their species was. The mages had enclaves all over America and around the world whereas the vampires had houses.
Werewolves were less formally organized. Outside of Baxter, stretching across the land and up into the mountains werewolf packs held whatever land they could defend. There were rough alliances and vague borders, but according to Juno, stability wasn't a word that werewolves were much familiar with. He'd written down the names of a few packs, only to discover that most of them had been destroyed by warfare between the werewolves and sometimes with mages or vampires. Alex took one more look over the list of names and the diagrams he’d drawn before dropping the pad and pen at his feet and leaning back in Boris' comfortable front seat.
“I assume the witches keep a register of the mage enclaves as well then? Can we get a look at it so we know who to target to get them to leave me alone?” he asked, closing his eyes and enjoying the warm sun that was streaming through the window.
“They got a list, but they’d want payment and it would be more than you have. The best move would be to steal it but we’d want to do a lot more training before we did something like that,” Juno said.
“What’s with witches and payment? Last night April helped with something and then demanded a favor as well.”
“April’s not a witch,” Juno said immediately. “What do you mean she helped with something last night? What are you talking about?” she said, glancing sideways at him.
Alex realized he’d blundered, squarely inserting his foot into his mouth but he quickly recovered.
“I was sleepwalking last night. April cast that vine spell so I didn't jump the fence and after that she used a bit of magic to help those succulents grow.”
“Doesn't really seem enough to warrant a favor,” Juno said, still glancing sideways at Alex.
“Well, she seemed to think it was so eventually I agreed. Can you stop looking at me like that? Maybe keep your eyes on the road?” he said and poked her in the side.
“I’ll keep your eyes on the road,” Juno muttered, but did as he said.
Wait, was she jealous? Alex thought. From his read of the situation so far, it seemed that Juno and Nia were well aware of the attraction between him and April, were even encouraging it. Now it seemed like Juno was unhappy to learn that April and Alex had been alone together.
He wondered if he should ask her directly but then decided to keep his mouth shut. They kept driving in silence, although it wasn’t uncomfortable. Juno reached over to lightly squeeze Alex’s hand before returning both to the wheel. She started humming some song to herself.
Alex took the opportunity to bring up his spellcasting screen. He cast Know Thyself. Even now the screen was still rearranging itself to fit his expectations better.
He scanned over the stats screen, seeing that some of them had improved slightly. Strange things were happening however. Sometimes it showed numbers (although Alex had no idea how it measured dexterity). Other times arrows or other symbols appeared and there was no consistency between the stats. Dexterity had a number and directly below it was Perception +.
He knew it changed to his expectations – did that mean he wasn’t certain what he wanted to see?
He flicked back and forth between various scenes before returning to stats. A new window had appeared.
Resistances
Vertigo
Alex blinked. It hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“So I have a new screen with resistance to vertigo listed. Is that because some mage cast it on me last night?”
Juno threw her hands up in the air and then slapped them down on Boris’ steering wheel.
“Oh, screw you, Captain Handkerchiefs out of the Butt. Are you serious? You have resistance to vertigo after one measly spell?”
Alex tapped on t
he entry but there was nothing more to see. There was no level or number associated with it.
“Looks like it. It says resistance, but it doesn't tell me how much.”
“Seems like you don't need us! And here we were planning to beat the living hell out of you magically later on. Now what are we supposed to do?” Juno said, waving her arms about, being hyper-dramatic. Alex saw she still had a slight smile on her face though. He reached over and gently ran his fingers down her thigh.
“I can think of a few things we could do,” he said.
Juno took a sharp breath of air and her cheeks flushed.
“Stop it, I need to concentrate on driving,” she said, returning her hands to the wheel.
Alex knew she could have pushed his hand away and hadn’t, so he reversed direction with his fingers, gently tickling them up her leg until it touched the hem of her short tartan skirt.
“Please just concentrate on driving the car, little witch,” he said, moving his fingers in small circles below the hem of her skirt.
The blush on her cheeks spread out to cover her neck. Juno let out a shaky breath.
“I am just driving the car, just going to the shop to get some rings and other stuff. Nothing else is happening,” she said in a singsong voice to herself.
Alex moved his fingers higher, brushing under her tartan skirt and up against the front of her panties. He could feel the heat of her, and even in his human form smell that mixture of warm spice and chili that was the scent of her magic and her body together. He started moving his finger against the front of her panties, gently rubbing against her, the slight sound of it seeming unnaturally loud in the car. Juno's breathing became ragged and she kept blinking rapidly as though she was trying to force herself to snap out of the moment.
“I'm just driving the car,” she said.
The good thing about Boris being an old car was at the front seat was one long bench, so there was no console in the way between them. Alex unclipped his seatbelt, hoping Juno wouldn't crash and then leaned over to rest his head on her thigh.