by Jan Stryvant
"Oh, that's easy to explain," Jolene said. "You have to understand that these are all competing groups. They don't share intelligence on anything important. They're not going to tell any of their rivals about how they tried to grab you and failed spectacularly.
"Also, it's like what you heard the one guy say, they thought your friend killed the first group, and I doubt that the Vestibulum or Gradatim have told anyone, even most of their own members, about what you did to them."
"So, those two I saw arguing with the one guy?"
"Yeah, they were probably arguing over who was going to get you. Remember, some of these groups want you dead, some just want to get their hands on you to take what they think you have."
"Aren't there any groups out there who don't want to get involved?" Sean grumbled.
"Probably," Jolene shrugged, "but I have no idea who they are yet. I think a lot of people are still laying low after yesterday's elemental attack; that was a pretty major event for a small city like Reno.
"But right now, there is one thing I can tell you."
"And that is?"
"Don't set foot outside of this building until you have learned how to keep anyone from scrying your location. Oh, and yes, being underground will block scrying. But it has to be under ground, beneath the dirt. Concrete won't do it; something about the things living in the earth and on top of the soil blocks it."
Sean nodded, "So, where were you two?"
"Jolene went out to talk to her friends in the magical community," Roxy said. "While I was out getting food," and she pointed to two large shopping bags. "I thought I'd be back before you woke up."
Sean snorted and gave Roxy a kiss on the forehead, "Okay, my bad. Now how about we eat and Jolene can tell us what she learned?" Sean gave Roxy a pat on the butt and let go of both of the girls.
"I thought you just ate?" Roxy asked, but Sean could tell she was teasing.
"And what kind of lion would I be if I didn't eat my mate's food when she brought it back for me?" He teased back. From the way her hips twitched as she walked over to the bags, Sean realized that he'd definitely said the right thing. Apparently she liked getting him food, probably just another one of those lycan things he would learn about with time.
"And what did you learn?" Sean asked Jolene, turning to look at her as went and sat down at the table they'd been using.
"Nothing good, I'm afraid," Jolene sighed. "It wasn't ten dead from the elemental attack; it looks like now that it was more than twenty people who were killed."
"Twenty?" Sean joined her at the table and sat down. "Why so many?"
"Well, it turns out that there were a lot more petty scores being settled than any of us realized. Then it looks like that there were five people, not just one, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Innocent victims?"
Jolene nodded, "That's what people are thinking."
Sean shook his head and growled, "I don't care so much about the mages killing each other, but the others? Killing people because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or because they might become allies of mine, if, if, just maybe, just possibly, I might have been left something by my father? Something I just might be able to use?
"If they'd just left this all alone, I wouldn't even know what was going on! Even if I had learned about it, the odds of me actually doing anything about it were zero! I was happy with my life! I wasn't looking to change the world."
Sean just put his head in his hands and stared down at the table. "All of these people dead because of me. Hell! I've killed how many of them now myself?"
He felt Roxy's hand start stroking down his back, comforting him, "It's not your fault, Hon. They did this. They started it; they caused it; they never gave you any choice."
Jolene reached across the table and put her hand over his as well.
"She's right, Hon. Too many of them view themselves as above the law, as above the regular mundane people that surround them. Yes, we're different; yes some of us have powers that others don't. But that doesn't give us, or them, the right to kill or abuse others.
"Sadly, however, this has been going on for far too long."
"Well, I guess it's going to be up to me to try and change it," Sean said looking up at Jolene. "So, what else did you learn?"
"Well, everyone is pretty uneasy right now, and there are a lot of eyes on Reno, which means you too, Sean. Rumors are beginning to spread in the magical community about you, as well as the supernatural ones. No one is really sure what to believe; even the seers are saying things are too confused to know what's going to happen anymore."
"So," Roxy said, "right now the best thing to do is just to hunker down and come Monday we'll go see just what's in that safety deposit box."
"And after that?" Sean asked.
"I guess we wait and see what happens on your birthday."
Sean snorted, "And here I was just planning on going out and getting legally drunk that day."
"Well," Jolene said and reaching into her handbag she pulled out a couple of candles, "as long as you've got nothing to do, how about practicing?"
"You're a slave driver, you know that?" Sean grinned.
"Maybe if you're nice I'll show you all my whips and chains," Jolene teased in a husky voice.
Sean rolled his eyes while Roxy laughed and started setting food on the table.
"Food first, then you can work on lighting candles."
Jolene nodded, "After you eat, I have a new spell I want you to learn."
"Oh? What is it?" Sean asked.
"One to blow out candles, of course!"
It was dark when Sean finally ran out of candles. There were twelve melted piles of wax on the table; he'd spent all day lighting and blowing out each of them, one after the other, for hours. The spell that Jolene had taught him wasn't that hard, but learning it! That was a tough lesson. Jolene's approach to magic was different than the one in his books, and with it he gained a lot more insight on how to do it all.
Now he had all of these thoughts, these spell fragments, as he thought about the two spells he now knew, floating around in his head. He spent some time pulling them apart in his head and trying to get the big picture. Trying to understand how it all worked.
The problem was, he needed to learn some more spells, but not right now. Right now he needed to stretch his legs and walk around for a while. He needed to get some exercise, and while he couldn't go out, he had twenty floors plus a basement and a sub-basement he could explore.
Going over to where Roxy and Jolene were sleeping, Sean woke Roxy up.
"Hmmm? What?" Roxy asked, sleepily.
"I'm going to explore the building, want to come?"
"No, just don't go outside," Roxy yawned and closing her eyes, she rolled over and went back to sleep.
Sean smiled down at the two of them and briefly entertained the idea of waking them both up for some other kinds of fun, but he could feel his lion's urge to explore his current territory.
So stripping off his shirt and pants, Sean shifted into his lion form, and then padded down the stairs to the ground floor to begin his explorations.
There were a lot of exits from the ground floor of course, and all of the ones going directly outside had been boarded up some years ago. There were a few doors to the other tower, but all of those were locked.
The basement was interesting, but it was primarily storage and what looked like a couple of now empty offices for building staff. Sean did find where the electrical power came into the building, as well as the phone and data lines. Each of those spots had an access way, which led out of the building and into an underground vault, that Sean could tell was under the street outside of the building. The overhead tube leading up to a manhole cover gave that away.
The cableways leading out of the chamber and down the streets were of course far too narrow for anyone to go through.
The sub-basement was mostly dank and dark and had a much lower ceiling. It was taken up with a l
ot of waste pipes, and a couple of machines rooms that Sean really had no idea what they were for. He did however find the access to the sewers. It was actually fairly large, and peeking inside, Sean suspected that you could probably travel a fair distance by them, if you wanted to.
But the stench of it quickly dissuaded any idea of going inside and looking around. Hastily closing the door Sean decided it was time to go back upstairs and go to bed, he could check out some of the other floors tomorrow.
Sunday
"Hi, Hon. How goes it?" Roxy said coming up behind him with a large bag of food as he concentrated on evaporating another drop of water. Sean had learned three new spells in his 'classroom' this morning. The first created a drop of water from the moisture in the air. The second froze it into a small bead of ice. The third heated it up, first melting it, and then turning it into steam. Those were the only other spells in the 'Learning to Cast' book.
"Slow, but steady," Sean sighed getting up and wobbling a little, "And surprisingly tiring," he grinned lopsidedly and hugged Roxy, and then kissed her.
"And hungry, very, very, hungry!" he growled as she handed him the grocery bag. There were a dozen quarter-pounder's on the top and he started in on those with a will, sitting down on one of the couches.
"What's it like out there?" Sean asked between bites.
"People are still talking about 'the storm,'" she said making quote marks with her fingers. "A lot of the people who got struck by lighting have finally made the news, as well as the fire at the college, and the suspicious explosions at a trailer park."
Sean sighed and shook his head, "Has my name come up in any of this?"
"No, but I think it's only a matter of time until some bright boy puts it together, or someone in the police department leaks it to the news media."
"How bad was the damage at our apartments? Did the house burn down?"
"I called Cindy, one of my friends on the first floor. She told me that it looks like the top floor got it pretty bad, but everyone else's rooms only got some water damage and the house has been temporarily condemned until they clean it up."
Sean shook his head, "Let me guess, it started in my room?"
"Actually, no, it started in George's room."
"Shit! How is he?"
"Fine I gather. Cindy told me that he told the police that his stereo just suddenly burst into flames while he was doing his homework. So the fire department thinks there was a power surge or something."
"I'm surprised it wasn't in my room," Sean shook his head.
"I don't think they were trying to kill you, just grab you. Remember, there were people watching outside when I ran out of the building, watching us."
Sean nodded, "I guess we just have to wait and see what Jolene tells us when she gets back. You want any of these?" Sean asked, offering one of the burgers to Roxy.
"Thanks, Hon," Roxy said smiling, and taking it she sat down next to him.
Sean noticed she was all but purring and had scooted over to press her leg against his.
"How did I just make you so happy?" Sean asked, grinning.
"When a male shares his food with a female, especially when he's starving, it shows everyone that he's in love."
"Well, yeah, I'm in love," Sean chuckled. "So, is that one from your psych class?"
"Nope," Roxy grinned, "it's a lycan thing. Well, at least with us predators."
Sean shook his head, "You're not hungry, are you?"
"Nope!" Roxy laughed, "I ate while getting you food. But there's no way I'm turning this burger down!"
Sean put an arm around her and gave her a hug. "As long as you're happy, I'm happy."
"So what kind of spells are you casting?" Roxy asked, and then grinned and took a big bite out of her burger.
Sean told her the three spells he was casting over and over at this point.
"They're the last ones in the beginner's book. Once I have those down, I get to move into an intermediate book, with more complicated spells."
"I thought you said it was like computer programming, and you understood it?"
Sean nodded, "I understand the theory completely. But I still have to learn just how to use the language of it, the code. The simple spells look simple, but the act of gathering your power, and then shaping it to form those code words," Sean grimaced, "that's a bit harder than I expected.
"And then there's the mnemonics! A lot of wizards use pretty standard ones, and they're in the books. But after something Jolene told me, I'm not so sure that I want to use those."
"Why not? What did she say?"
"She told me that she just makes up a lot of her spells as she goes along."
"You can do that?" Roxy asked and took another bite.
Sean nodded, "Yeah, you can, but it's not easy. Jolene is a lot smarter than she lets on, and after looking over the language, I can see just how it's done. But the mnemonics that everyone seems to use, they're pretty limiting. I don't know if that's intentional, or if they just grew up that way. They're like a fourth generation language in computing."
"So they hide what's really going on from the user," Roxy supplied.
"Exactly so," Sean agreed. "So I'm trying to come up with my own mnemonic gestures and phrases."
Roxy thought about that a moment, "Just what kinds of gestures do you need?"
"Any kind, really. The hard part is that you need to be able to build on them, so as your skill builds you can easily build more complicated gestures. It's the reason that people have spell books and study them, because they forget just what does which as they get more complicated."
"Why not just use ASL?"
"ASL?"
"American sign language," Roxy shrugged her shoulders, "then you don't have to remember anything, you just write out what you're doing."
Raising a finger Sean started to say, "That wouldn't ...." then stopped, shut his mouth, and thought about it a moment.
"They also have complete words for things, not just letters, right?"
Roxy nodded and ate the last bite of her burger.
"Huh, I wonder why nobody else has thought of that?"
Roxy swallowed the last of her burger and got out a bottle of water. "Maybe they have, maybe it's something that only the powerful users know, maybe they give everyone those standard mnemonics to keep them from getting too powerful."
Sean smiled and pulling her close with his arm he hugged her again, then he kissed her after she'd finished taking a drink from her bottle.
"That's an awesome idea! I'm definitely doing it! Now I just need to find someone to teach it to me."
"Oh, that's simple," Roxy said and holding up her right hand she rattled off the alphabet, making each sign as she did.
"You know sign language?" Sean blinked, looking at her as she smirked back at him, and winked.
"One of my friends growing up was mute. If we wanted to know what she was saying, we had to learn it. Of course, once we did that, we all used it to say things to each other when we didn't want anyone else to know what we were talking about!"
"You must have gotten in a lot of trouble," Sean laughed and shook his head.
"Yeah, my mom and dad had to learn it, just to keep me in line. Then of course dad started making his deputies learn it."
"Why'd he do that?"
"So they could talk to each other across a room without shouting, and without letting the bad guys know what they were up to. Not many people know it."
"Well, I hear Jolene coming; we can start on my lessons later."
"Uh-uh, no playing for you," Roxy teased. "You need to keep studying."
"Awww," Sean mock pouted and went back to work.
"You know, one of you could have come down and carried me up," Jolene said, still out of breath when she finally entered the room a few minutes later.
"Maybe we just want you to keep that nice firm ass," Sean teased.
"Why do I even try?" Jolene grumbled.
"Because we love you?" Roxy giggled.
"And because of what we do to you!" Sean added with a grin. "So, what else have you learned today?"
"That it's a good time not to be in Reno," Jolene sighed, dropping down onto the couch next to Roxy. Sean was already sitting on the floor working on his spells again.
"Oh, neat combo there, Sean," Jolene said, looking over his shoulder a moment.
"That bad then?" Sean asked and finished up what he was doing for now.
"There are so many factions right now, that you can't tell them apart without a scorecard. Those folks who set your apartment house on fire?"
"What about them?"
"They were trying to get their hands on you to protect you from the coming storm summoning."
"Riiiiiight," Roxy drawled sarcastically.
"They panicked. They knew time was short and so they just ran there and did what they did."
"Does that mean that they're good guys?" Sean asked.
"They're better guys than the ones who just want to kill you outright, or take you home and make you tell them everything. But I don't know if I would call them 'good.' Like I said, they were rushed. If they had gotten you, who knows what it could have devolved into."
"So what are the lycans doing?"
"Keeping their heads down and not saying a word. Best I can guess, and trust me, this is only a guess; most of them are waiting to see what happens after your birthday. No one wants to stick their head up, for fear of getting it cut off, unless they know it's worth the risk."
Sean nodded, "Can't say that I blame them."
"Just make sure you stay off the streets, even after you do learn to block their scrying."
"Huh? Why?"
"Because they're all out there, walking around, looking for you. What you did to those four guys from the Harkins' coven? Everyone knows about it now. It even made the news last night, and though the mundanes are thinking drug activity, the people looking for you are concentrating on the downtown area now, because this is the last place you were seen before disappearing again.
"You might get away with being outside in the dark, but in the broad daylight? Not a chance. They're really starting to go crazy out there. Thursday's storm has shown a lot of folks just what some people are willing to do, and now you've shown everybody that you're not going to go down without a fight, a lot of folks are worried and are thinking that there just might be something to the rumors of you carrying on your father's work. There's even this whole 'if we can't have him, nobody can' vibe going out there with some of the groups."