by P. S. Power
It was order night after all.
Chapter nine
The next days flew by fast and hard, as far as Tyler was concerned. No one tried to kidnap, hurt, or kill him, which was a great sign, and the work went smoothly. Books were shelved and other than eating like a pig, pushed into it by Zack and Eve, of all people, nothing much seemed to happen.
The meeting with the new Coalition people went smoothly, and Ty was able to kind of pass work off onto the others a bit more. The work in the music studio was harder than he'd thought it would be, since there was a lot of repetition to get things right. After they finished though, which took nearly a week of nights to get done, the band's part was finished for a while. The songs were put together almost within a day, since Keeley was on the job and she had a team of slaves to do the work.
So, as the next week came around, his actual job was to sit in the house, and wait for things to be put together for him. That part was really hard for him to get his head around. The first album wasn't even due out for six months. That news hit him like a ton of bricks, since he'd kind of figured that he was going to be working constantly through that time. They didn't have live gigs even, though they met to practice a few times a week. That was the plan anyway.
On the good side, he found that he wasn't actually left to his own devices. He had two girlfriends after all, and apparently an Eve now. She showed up every night to help him practice magic. Or, to begin with, more and more complex meditation. The basis of what he needed to learn, or so she kept telling him.
That part wasn't going to last forever. He learned that after they finished with fighting practice one night about two weeks later. Ginger kissed him, then went into the mansion, leaving him with Eve in the yard. If it was a movie there would have been the sudden testing then, given how it was set up. An epic fight to show that he was finally ready.
Instead she sat on the ground, just like always. It was a graceful thing, her black jeans tight but not hampering her movements, which probably had to do with being a Vampire. Otherwise he couldn't see how it would work. They pulled a bit, but Ty really didn't see how a person could sit cross legged like that without splitting a seam. It could have been magic. Possibly extra-stretchy fabric.
He followed along, having an easier time of it, at least in theory. He was in loose gray sweat pants, and a black t-shirt, which was tight enough to show that he wasn't fat, but hadn't ripped when he struggled with the much faster and stronger girls. As far as the fighting went, he didn't have any delusions of grandeur. Eve could take him in a fight by making his head vanish. Oh, it did look like he might survive that, but it would be hard.
Ginger could probably do that too, or get close enough to it that he wouldn't notice the difference.
It was really clear that she'd been holding back a lot as far as raw power. Being delicate with him, like he was the one that had to be coddled and protected. Which was, he knew, probably true enough. Thankfully not all of the Vampires were like that. He'd practiced with Rebekah and Scotty the day before and easily dominated them. They were stronger and a bit faster, but his greater skill made up for that pretty well. That, or they'd realized that his battered ego in that way needed them to sacrifice their own to let him feel all right about himself.
If so, they were darned good friends.
Eve looked at him peacefully, and gave him a small smile.
"So, you've practiced a lot lately. You've learned to hold concepts and can do three at once and add them together into a single thing. That's a great skill, as far as magic goes. Now we need to get you attuned to what magical power is. I want you to try and feel it." She put her hand out toward him, palm up, and nodded at him. "Put your hand over mine, but don't let our palms touch. About six inches?"
Without saying anything he just did it, actually trusting her more or less. Oh, he half expected her to grab him, and possibly blackmail him into kinky sex, but that was all Keeley's fault. She had come to him in her normal form to gloat. So at least it wasn't really his mom. It still shook him when he thought about it, so he took a moment to hold the concept of being open and focused.
Eve nodded at him, like she was able to read what he was doing. Which, he understood almost instantly, she was.
"Now, feel the changes. That's all. Don't do anything else."
To him it felt... Like nothing really. There was no particular warmth, being that they were both dead, and kind of cold. No buzzing or anything that would have been expected that way. What he found though, after about ten minutes of sitting there was that he knew what she was doing. It was soft, and gentle, but there. A concept of projection that interacted with his hand.
In short it was simply subtle on a level that he'd never thought of before.
After he got it, the Vampire nodded.
"You have it. Now, hold that feeling, and interact with my hand. Gently. This is stronger than it seems like it should be, if you have an energy source for it, which you do through your link to The Rotted. Don't for a second think that she can't, or won't, cut you off if you start to take too much. So, slowly, not using too much energy, return the concept to me."
She seemed to tense, like there might be an explosion, or a rush of power. There wasn't. He just held the idea that was being shared, and slowly let it become more powerful until it was about the level that the girl had done herself.
She grinned at him and nodded.
"Perfect. Hold that now. What you are doing is putting a small trickle of magic into the world. This isn't a lot, but if you can do this, you can do magic. I wasn't really sure you could control it. Zack and Keeley both thought you could, but theory and practice are two different things, right?"
Ty could see that, but didn't speak, since it was hard to do that and hold a concept at the same time. He could kind of do that, if he was picking a simple idea to go after, but adding magic was new to him. There would be no dancing while he did this kind of thing for a long while. More like sitting and focusing deeply to get anything done.
After a long while, a time that was over half an hour, Eve nodded a few times.
"Good. Pull it back now. Excellent." Her grin was wicked then, and she let her face hold that while she talked. "Now, I want you to try and add magic to a few basic concepts. You have healing down by your nature, so we won't bother with that. First, why don't you try something simple, like flame. Everyone can generate fire pretty easily. Then we'll work the other basic elements to see which is your personal strongest one." There was something in the way she said it that seemed off. Sly and like she was lying to him.
He wasn't buying it.
"So, you don't think I can do any of it?" It didn't bother him really, since that seemed farfetched anyway.
Brushing her shoulder length hair back she shook her head.
"Honestly? If you throw enough power at it, you can do anything you can hold mentally. What I want you to do is focus so intently that you do it without using much power. That's the key here. Magic takes energy, but the key to mastery isn't in blasting the world into submission, but finding the lowest use of power while still doing what you want to accomplish. So, work on the smallest point, hold the concept of flame and trickle magic to it as slowly as possible, until it burns where you want it to. Hold it in the air, about here."
His hand was still being held out, and she flipped his palm, then gestured about half a foot over his palm. Her hand was hard, he noticed. All the Vampires were like that, as far as he'd seen. For that matter he kind of was too, if not as much. It was apparent when Ty was with Calley. That got him to think about the orgy that had happened. It had been entertaining, but he found something very interesting.
He preferred having one partner at a time.
Taking a deep breath he didn't really need, old habits being hard to break, Tyler recalled the sense of flame. The image was powerful at first, but then, with a lot of discipline, the idea formed. There above his hand, there was a flame. It wasn't visible, but he knew it was there. Then, lik
e he'd done earlier, he started to put out a bit of energy.
Nothing seemed to happen visibly. Moving slowly, holding two ideas at once, he pushed a tiny bit harder. Then again, after taking another breath. There was only the tiniest hint of magic to it all, but on the third try a flickering blue flame came into being.
Then he firmed it up, not adding power, but by making the flame smaller, now that he could tell where it was exactly. The air burned in an oblong space about the size of a sugar cube.
Softly, Eve sighed. That was meant to signal him, he knew, since she didn't breathe all the time, even if she was better about that than most Vampires.
"Not bad. Freaking great, actually. Now, hold it. Try to firm up the idea, and lower the amount of magic. Use only what you need to keep it going." It was a soft whisper. A gentle thing that tickled at the base of his brain.
In a way it wasn't really fair, since it was distracting and made him want to have sex with her, rather than do the cool new trick that he'd learned. Ignoring her as the flame flickered, he did it. The concept grew sharper, and a bit smaller, making the flame respond.
Then he pulled the power back. It was a bit of a shock, but after a while he understood that he only needed about half the power he was using to get the job done.
After a while Eve waved at him.
"And take the power all the way down..."
He did it and the flame just died away.
Rather than reward him with pleasant words or the blowjob that he kind of wanted from her, Eve gave him another task instantly. He had to grin about that, since she was being a good instructor, and he knew it.
"Now, hold the sense of water, in the same place. As little magic as possible." Again her words were tense, but the drop of liquid that was pulled from the surrounding air just hung there in space, until he removed the power, and the large fat drop hit his hand.
She gave him a look that was darker then.
"Earth. Do the same thing. Now."
That was a bit harder, and took more power, but he responded by making the whole thing smaller. Then he slowly allowed the whole thing to grow, making a ball about the size of a dime after a while. It was floating there, the collected dust and detritus of the world hanging in space without extra effort for some reason.
When it came time to do air, the Vampire waved at him.
"I want a blast of air from your hand, about as strong as a circular fan. You get the idea."
That was particularly easy for him for some reason. It should have taken more magic, but it really didn't. The air just flowed, in a blast of fresh air that he aimed at Eve, moving it back and forth, so her hair moved. After a bit of holding that for the practice, she nodded.
"Okay, you need to work on using less magical power to get things done. A lot of that will be in how clearly you can hold a given concept. So, for the next few days, that's what I want you to work on. Now, we have one more thing to do before I get off to work for the day." She still had her crew of trainees to see about. They were all doing well, and Rebekah was already doing it perfectly, with Scotty not really needing her either, but they were still meeting to practice staying up all day with the others, since the newer Vampires needed the moral support.
Tyler laughed a bit and took a deep breath.
"Is it that sex you wanted? I know how you are."
Rather than take offense at him actually having a sex drive, even if she didn't, the girl shook her head.
"Oddly enough, no. What I want you to do is to try and feel what I do when I move fast. It doesn't take a lot of energy really, even if it seems like it should. It's really a kind of time manipulation, not speed. It's a little subtle, but if you can do these things, you can hold and power that too." She stood up, and gestured to him to do the same. "Okay, I'll try to do this without moving at first. Try to feel it, then reproduce the field until you can talk to me, okay?"
He nodded, and then moved a little closer to her. She wasn't wrong about what she was doing. The idea was incredibly soft and gentle. It felt like a bubble that rippled out from her. There were little waves to it, but he could kind of get it. Then he added a tiny bit of power and tried to speak. She was just standing there flickering a bit the whole time, like a person in time lapse photography.
"Hello?"
She didn't respond so he increased the flow a tiny bit more. It took ten tries before she spoke, her words sounding like she was a chipmunk from a Christmas special.
"A bit more? That isn't bad, but you can do more than that. This is nowhere near what you need."
The trick there was the power that was needed. The amount of energy needed was higher than what he'd been using, which meant that he had some work to do. After a bit he gave in and pushed the magic up, which got Eve to grin and speak in a normal voice.
"Walk with me. Around the block here." She moved at a brisk place, but it was just walking as far as he could tell. They moved through the side gate, but just walked as far as he could tell. It was light out, if only just barely, so he could see the world.
Eve spoke to him the whole time, casually.
"This is... Oh, about a tenth of the speed I can actually go. Just to give you an idea. You can throw more power at it, but what you need to really be doing is using your focus to do the work. You can do this with almost no magic, now that you have the trick. For me this hurts. I can handle it, but there's a lot of pain. How about you?" She was placid enough, even if agony was there for her.
Ty shrugged, and tried to concentrate on the concept of speed.
"Nothing like that. I need to... Use less power. I think."
That got a nod, and while he tried, it was harder to do while he moved along. She worked back to the yard, in the back of the place, and waved, slowing back to normal. Tyler followed easily enough, cutting the magic first.
Eve winked at him.
"Not too shabby, kimosabe. Practice without using magic, unless I'm with you. You should be able to get some effects without it. Even regular people can, so it's worth learning. That's the basis of magic. Really, more than that. You did really well. We can start on some other tricks too, after you have these things down. Are you going to go into the embassy today?"
He hasn't been thinking about doing that, since he didn't have a car, but he could jog in, so that wasn't an excuse. It wasn't that far away.
"Sure? Did you need me for something in particular?"
"Nope. Not me. It's just that everyone there kind of thinks of you as the head man, so showing up for some office hours would be nice. Let people meet with you. Cry about how wronged they are and all that. It was suggested to me as your mentor that I set that up. Also, eat more. You used about ten thousand calories worth of energy in the last few hours, so you'll need to eat about twice that, since the energy you give back to Anne is less than what you take in. There's always a loss that way, between any energy source and its use. So go do that."
He nodded at her and headed back toward the back door of the house.
"That always messes with me. How the Greater Demons have all those names. I mean, to me she's mom, or maybe Lucy. Darla is Darla, or now also Allison. Though that part kind of freaks me out. I... You know the thing Keeley did?" He'd told her the whole sad story, including his worries and the sense of violation, but about half the people that had heard the tale had just laughed at him. Like getting laid that way was all just fun and games.
Eve shook her head.
"That was fucked up. If she'd been a guy people would get it. If a man said to a woman that she could take it from him, or be killed, everyone would know it was rape. She knows, by the way. I had a talk to her about it. By the way, she knows what she did. She just doesn't care, because she meant to do it. Greater Demon. Even the good ones can be assholes. It's kind of the definition of the term. I'm here to talk though, if you need?" She looked away and then shook her head slowly. "I've been raped enough in my life to know what it's like. It wasn't your fault. It's hard when no one believes you. I do. Keel
ey does. The trick there is getting her back and not dying at the same time."
That got him to blow out a big puff of air, and then keep moving.
"Thanks. I'll live. It was more about what she'd said really. I guess that on some level I kind of think that Lucy would do something like that, even though she never has. Not that I remember, anyway. That... I don't own my own mind. It... I guess it kind of bothers me."
Eve patted his shoulder, and left him at the back door.
"Well, get through it. I can't fix that for you. You might do it yourself, if you can learn the right things. Have you talked to Tarsus lately?"
He hadn't, since he kind of figured that the Demon would let him know if he had anything. Bothering him wouldn't speed that up, he bet.
"Go, eat mass calories. I have a thing for the next few nights. I should be in and out. I need to go with Bey to Toronto and deal with... You know, can you get some time off? You should come along too. It might have to do with your favorite group of individuals."
He felt slightly baffled.
"Little people? They are pretty awesome as a group. I've never met one that gave me a single problem." Which was true in a lot of ways, so there was no sarcasm to the words.
"True, but I meant feminists. That's their secret headquarters for North America. For the Men's Rights Movement too, which is probably a backlash thing. It's all a waste of time, but some of them have been coming after our people, Vampires, so we need to go visit and make sure some college girls realize that pushing the undead might just be the wrong idea. We'll probably have to kill some of them."
Tyler sighed.
"No. Not if they're Humans... Which is why you really want me to go? To try and keep them alive?"
"Bingo! You're so smart. Now, if you can do that be ready to leave tonight. You'll need to get there I think. Get with Zack and work that out? I don't think you can run that distance without using too much magic yet. Work on that, since we're running back. Walking really. You got that part pretty well. Ninety-nine-point nine percent of us try to physically run at first. You're ahead of the game that way. You'll need to be about five times faster at the very least, or I'll go insane trying to hobble along with you. Like a slow turtle. Barely getting anywhere."