by HDA Roberts
She chuckled and leaned up to kiss me very tenderly on the lips.
"You realise that she can't... she's never... I was never replacing you with her, you understand that, right?" she said.
"It wouldn't matter if you did. We're immortal, she’s not; all I'd have to do is wait and you'd be all mine again," I replied in as sinister a tone as I could manage. She laughed brightly.
She kissed me again, though, more slowly that time, more deeply.
"Seriously, though," I said. "I love you. You can never do anything that will drive me away or make me think that you're trying to get rid of me."
"You really mean that?"
"Of course. I know you."
She grinned and nuzzled at my neck.
“Alright, you’ve convinced me. I will now allow you to properly introduce me to the princesses.”
“It might be the sleep deprivation talking, but huh?”
She giggled, “Well, you’ve helped me accept that Lexi isn’t going to be everything I need, so now you’ll have to help me find a supplement.”
“I didn’t say anything like that! Besides, I don’t think those two swing your way.”
“Yet. They don’t swing my way yet.”
“This is doing nothing good for my prospects of getting back to sleep. That mental image, in particular, is doing terrible things to my blood pressure.”
“It is a nice thought, isn’t it?”
“Please stop.”
“Don’t worry, I’d be willing to share with you. I’ll have turned them into proper little perverts by the end of the month.”
“The only thing I know they swing against more than other women is me, but best of luck.”
“I wouldn’t completely bet on that one, Love,” she whispered into my ear, making me shiver. “The first thing they did when they had the freedom of choice was come live in your house.”
“After which they left for pastures greener!”
She smirked and then shuddered, which created just a wonderful sensation with how she was perched. “Oh, I'm going to do such unspeakable things to them..."
"Tethys, I need my beauty sleep, and I’m really not built for this kind of late-night stimulation!"
"That’s not what Crystal told me. Would you like me to tell you what I have planned for our first night together? I'll tell you very slowly..."
I tickled her, but that only made things worse as she quickly wrestled me onto my back and whispered such filthy things into my ear that I worried my face was going to combust from embarrassment.
Eventually, she settled down again, relaxing against me. We chatted a little, but mostly we just enjoyed the company and the quiet.
“Matty?” she said after a while in a tiny voice.
“Yes?”
"I know that I wasn’t in control. I know it wasn’t me, not really, and I don’t even remember, but I'm sorry about... about what happened. When I... when I tried to-"
I cupped her cheek and made sure she was looking at me.
"Don’t be daft. I can’t forgive you because there’s nothing to forgive. It would be like blaming a computer for being forced to run malware.”
She nodded, smiling tightly, but there was still pain in her eyes.
"I'm so angry about that, Matty," she whispered. "The idea that I'd been used to hurt someone I love... it makes me want to tear someone's balls off."
"We will get him. You and me, we will find him, we will find what makes him weak and we will squeeze it until he squeals. I promise you that."
She ran her nose against mine and closed her eyes for a moment.
"I suppose that I'm glad I can't remember. It makes it easier to pretend it didn't happen, does that make me a bad person?"
"Of course not! Denial is my primary coping strategy, after all."
She chuckled and then shivered. I wrapped my arms around her.
"I'm so sorry that happened to you," I said.
"Hardly your fault."
"I should have been there."
"You can't be everywhere, Matty, and I deliberately told you no calls. This one is my horny fault."
"It's not your fault. You went on holiday, for heaven's sake. And I apologise in advance for what is likely going to be an excessive amount of checking in on you for the foreseeable."
"Ooh, intense, intimate scrutiny? How deep would you like your monitoring to go?" she whispered.
The door opened before I managed to assemble a coherent reply.
"Oh, I just knew it!" Kandi said. "You throw me at the traitor who’s desperate to please and then bugger off to get a good night's sleep elsewhere! Bad form! Do you know what unspeakable things I had to do to get that woman off to sleep?"
I sniggered and Tethys sighed, rolling off me.
"Sorry, I couldn't think of another way to get out of there," Tethys admitted.
"Does it matter at all that I wanted to sleep?" I asked.
"Not especially," Tethys replied, beckoning Kandi over. She sprawled over the pair of us, landing with her head on my stomach.
"What are we going to do about her?" Kandi asked once she was comfortable.
"Suggest that you can still be friends and then point her towards a brand new country on the far side of the planet?" I offered hopefully.
"Men," Kandi said with an exaggerated eye-roll.
I sighed and tried to go back to sleep. Naturally they wouldn't let me.
And once I was fully awake, and thus incapable of getting back to sleep, they seemed to take a perverse delight in shooting down or scoffing at my suggestions, not that I could really blame them. I was no authority on relationships or how to make them successful.
But it was nice not to have to think about impending disasters for a while.
And speaking of disasters...
Des came home the next day.
"I got deported," he complained once I'd got him settled in the kitchen with tea and bacon.
"How?" I asked, a familiar sigh escaping from my lips. It was like Cadet Summer Camp all over again.
"Well, there was a girl..." he started.
It was even the same reason as Cadet Summer Camp! I was suddenly feeling very tired, and this on top of no sleep...
"Well, technically there were two girls, both related to some local-Conclave bigwig."
Okay, that was new, but still...
Wait.
"Both?!"
"Well, one was related, the other was... married to."
I groaned, laying my head into my hands.
"You slept with the wife and the daughter of a government official?"
"At the same time."
"At the sa- and how are you still alive?"
"There were witnesses when he finally caught up with me," he explained cheerfully. "I also had to drop your name a couple of times, that's not a problem, is it?"
I may have whimpered, but in a completely manly way.
It turned out that he had gotten involved with the ladies in question after they saw him perform (because 'fight' was not the correct word by any stretch of the imagination). They thought he was exotic and dashing and oh-so brave... et cetera, you can guess how that went.
And the father-husband had found out about it.
You can also guess how well that went. It was a small miracle that Des hadn't been deported without an important body part or two; though that had been by a whisker, going by what Tethys was able to dig up for me later. Oh, the bribes and presents I had to shell out to smooth that one over...
I welcomed him home (because what else could I do?) and said that I'd continue trying to get him onto the professional duelling circuit. Goodness only knew how I'd manage that now...
I told him what had been going on and he paid vague attention. Thankfully he seemed to take on board the need for guards when he left the house.
Everyone else thought that this was just hilarious, by the way. They especially liked the fact that someone with my face was so much luckier with the ladies than I was. M
y argument, that being chased out of the country by an irate father was not luck, was cheerfully ignored by all concerned... the bastards.
Chapter 47
Waiting for Myrddin to make his next move greatly tested my patience, already worn thin by Bradley and her nonsense. If there was a consolation, it was that the Hyde attacks on my brother and sister Archons didn’t do much damage; just constant skirmishes that sapped resources and forced them to stay near their homes in case something worse turned up.
A distraction, in other words. At least that meant the next phase of our little conflict wouldn’t be too far in the future, otherwise those Hyde were just being wasted.
I anticipated something similar coming for me, but nothing materialised.
I should have known that Myrddin would be smarter than that.
When he finally did come at me, it was from the last direction I’d ever have expected.
"Expelled?!" I blurted out. "What the hell do you mean, I'm expelled?!"
I was stood in the office of Stonebridge University’s Chancellor two days after Des had come home. This was the first time I’d met the man in charge; I hadn’t even know his name before his secretary had called Blackhold with a mandatory appointment time.
Chancellor Martin Yazhu was a fellow of mixed Spanish-Chinese descent. He wore an expensive, bottle-green suit, the silk shirt stretched over an expanding belly. His black hair was thinning at the sides and top, and his cheeks were red from the late August heat. He sat behind a desk almost as old as the university itself, the top covered in faded red leather. There were gold and silver ornaments all over the room, every piece displaying wealth and history. Demise stood behind me, in a corner of the large office. I could practically feel her glare boring into the bureaucrat.
"Which part of that was confusing, Mister Graves?" Yazhu replied, staring me down.
"The part where I've been expelled without a warning or even any sort of preliminary communication. You can't do this!"
Yazhu opened a drawer and placed a document on the desk in front of me. It took me a second to recognise one of the University’s admissions forms. The one I'd signed, in fact; I saw my initials at the bottom of the first page.
"These are the terms and conditions of enrolment," he said, his face cracking into just the hint of a smug smile. He flipped two pages over to a section with a little arrow sticker next to it. "If you will examine this clause, I believe that you will discover my reasoning."
I snatched up the document, seething with embarrassment and anger.
In a nutshell, it was part of the boilerplate that listed the various ways a student was expected to conduct his or herself in and around the University as well as the various criteria by which the University could terminate a place. The paragraph pointed to described one such point.
"When have I been a danger to the student body?" I asked in a low, quiet voice.
"Are you serious? Your bodyguard killed one of our professors as well as three other students. You assaulted a security guard, Cursed another student and have engaged in Magical battles on several occasions. Need I go on?"
I was so angry my hands started to shake.
"Why now?" I asked, getting my emotions under just enough control to stop the room catching fire.
"That's confidential."
"I would consider it a favour if you would tell me," I said, already reaching into his mind.
Under other circumstances, I might have taken the time to persuade him, but I was just too furious, so I gave him a little poke. It was a crude bit of Magic, really; inventively called a Truth Charm, it blocked off the creative parts of the mind, removed any desire to keep secrets and instilled a distinct desire to answer any question put to the subject.
"That remains co-" he started, but then paused as the Spell took hold, his eyes going glassy as his higher functions went into what amounted to a sort of mental 'sleep mode', leaving him essentially a mouth and a memory bank
"Who arranged my expulsion?" I asked.
"Don't know his name," he replied, his perfect English accent slipping into a rolling Spanish. "He came here, gave me a choice: fifty thousand in my personal account or eight million a year in contributions removed from my University's coffers. I made the choice."
"Who contributes that much money to the university?"
"That figure is donated by a private fund administered by the Magician’s Conclave of Great Britain."
“What?!”
He repeated his answer.
Bloody Bradley! I was going to wring her damned neck for this!
I wiped his memory of the last few seconds and let him go.
"I take it that I have no recourse for appeal?" I said as his eyes cleared.
"None," he said. "This decision was made with the good of the student body in mind."
"And if I choose to make this a legal issue?"
His eyes twitched a little at that. Legal meant lawyers, lawyers meant attention, and there was no way that attention was likely to be pleasant for him or his institution.
Especially not with the four firms Tethys and I had on retainer for one thing or another.
"The University would be willing to refund any tuition paid to date, of course."
I glared. He paled.
"Plus a nominal fee for your inconvenience."
"My... inconvenience?" I said softly. "The inconvenience of being deprived of an education? The inconvenience of being forced to abandon the friends and contacts I've made? The inconvenience of being driven from a place where I was supposed to feel safe?"
He recoiled. My voice may have gotten a bit louder towards the end there.
"Tell me, Mister Yazhu, what 'nominal fee' do you feel would be suitable for that... inconvenience?"
He didn't have an answer to that. So I just stood there, waiting and seething, contemplating any number of terrible things, until Demise put a gentle hand on my shoulder.
"Let's go, Mathew," she said quietly.
I huffed out a breath, but did as she suggested, following her out of the building and into one of the squares, leaving that officious little... man behind.
"Matty, easy," Demise said, gesturing upwards, where a bank of black clouds was forming... and rapidly getting larger.
I took a breath and did my best to calm down.
"The bastards got me, Dee," I said, barely keeping my voice from becoming a snarl.
"Yes," she said simply.
I sat down on the edge of a fountain and rubbed my eyes. The clouds were still there, getting steadily darker and more threatening. I was just so angry, and bloody humiliated besides, that I was having trouble with my control, even the water in the fountain was starting to tremble a bit.
Demise sat next to me and patted my shoulder.
"You know what the worst part of this is?" I asked quietly.
She took my hand.
"That he was right?" she suggested.
I nodded, "I put people in danger wherever I go. I draw trouble like manure draws flies."
"What an apt metaphor. I couldn't have selected a better one," said a deep and familiar voice from over my shoulder.
Demise was up like a shot, a three foot-long rod in hand. It didn’t look like much, but it was a Death Magic projector of rather impressive power, and could turn into a sword besides. She raised it as she turned and almost instantly had it pointed square at Ambrosias Myrddin's head.
I really should have known. I just hadn’t suspected that he would be this... petty. It was painful, sure, but it wasn’t really harmful. But then I had taken essentially everything from the man, why shouldn’t he seize every opportunity to hurt me in return?
I stood and turned to face him, a dozen Spells on the tip of my mind, but then I saw him and I stopped. He was hunched over, leaning on a wooden staff, his other hand out to one side, looking very non-threatening.
Too non-threatening. The staff wasn’t even Enchanted, and he didn’t have so much a shield up.
That gave
me pause. Enough that I was able to notice the fifteen or so people standing at windows or in doorways, trying to look inconspicuous, but still rather clearly carrying cameras and other pieces of recording equipment.
It was another trap.
"Easy, Dee, he's here to talk," I said as evenly as I could.
She lowered her weapon and her eyes darted to all the things I'd just spotted plus a couple I'd missed.
"Perceptive, Lord Shadow, I didn't know you had it in you," he said with a smirk.
I almost replied with something rude, but then I had a different thought and took a hold of my temper. Two could play for the cameras, and I might get some useful information out of my enemy if I was able to stay calm.
"Just say what you came to say, Mister Myrddin, this hasn't been a good day," I said as politely as I could manage.
"Oh, I'm merely here to offer my condolences on your loss of place. That must be hard, to know that there isn't really anywhere on Earth that you're wanted."
I smiled, which took him aback a bit. He was expecting me to be considerably angrier than I appeared to be. Thankfully, I had long practice being polite to people that I loathed.
"That is hardly a new state of affairs for me. Besides, I'm no stranger to educating myself, as you know. I'm smart enough to get where I'm going on my own, even if it takes a bit longer."
His cheek twitched a little, obviously thrown by the way the conversation was going. He recovered quickly, though. "And how's the Succubus?" he asked, his tone becoming slick and slimy, "I hear she had an... unpleasant time in custody."
I didn't let it show on my face, but there was a long, ugly, moment there where things could have gone very badly for Myrddin.
And, funnily enough, knowing that was enough to stop me.
He had to know that provoking me like that was foolish... if he was as undefended as he appeared to be.
I cast Mage Sight.
And there it was. Myrddin was being protected by at least a dozen different Magicians, all out of sight, but each of them ready to act at the first whiff of attack. His form was surrounded by faint wisps of energy that would transform into completed defences at an instant’s notice. There was even the beginning of a Teleportation Construct that would whisk him away, though certainly only once the observers had gotten everything they’d need to paint me as a monster.