Forever Young

by Daniel Pierce

  I snorted. “Like they had toilets back in your day. Wasn’t bathing, like a capital crime?” I turned on my heel. “You heard him. He’s not interested.”

  Tess swatted my shoulder. “I said to be polite.”

  “Oh, believe me, that was polite.” I felt my cheeks flush in anger. “You’ll know when I’m done being polite.”

  Margaret cleared her throat and stepped forward. “Mort, there was an incident today. Jason took a walk in the woods with Tess.”

  Mort jumped to his feet and clapped his hands. “Splendid! And did he manage to walk without tripping over those ridiculous feet of his?”

  “He did.” Tess lifted her head. “He kept up with me, too. And for the record, he’s already controlling his appetite. But that’s not why we brought him to you.”

  “It’s my charming personality, isn’t it?” I asked, rolling my eyes and looked up toward the ceiling.

  Someone had painstakingly painted the ceiling with stars—individual stars, perfectly placed to resemble constellations and distant galaxies. It could only have been Mort himself. It was his room, after all.

  “Jason, hush.” Margaret laid a finger over my mouth. I obeyed her, mostly because the blood in my brain rushed south. “Jason has just expressed his Ferin ability, which is apparently fire.”

  Mort frowned and stepped forward, edging into my personal space. “That can’t be right.” He circled me like I might be a statue or a horse at auction. “Hmm...Do it again.”

  I choked on my own tongue. “In here? I mean, I know those drapes are ugly, but it seems a little extreme.”

  Mort glowered at me. “I happen to like those drapes, thank you very much. And we may as well go outside. It’s not like you’ll do anything anyway. I don’t doubt that you think you did something special, but it’s simply impossible for a Ferin to express their ability before at least four months. It’s never happened.”

  “Whatever, man. No one gave me a manual. They just left me for the rats.” I shrugged, but I stuffed my hands into my pockets and let myself be guided back into the great outdoors. I didn’t need some ancient hipster to tell me what I had and hadn’t seen. I didn’t need validation, either.

  We went out to the rocky beach, which told me, Mort, at least sort of believed me. He threw his arms out to his sides and then sat down on one of the huge rocks. “Okay, champ. Go ahead. Burn my beard or something.”

  I fought a sneer and tried to throw something at his beard. It wasn’t easy to do. When I’d done it before, it had been purely instinct. Now, I was flailing around in the sand, trying to make it happen. It was like trying to consciously force myself to breathe or concentrating on making my heart beat a certain way.

  Mort just stared at me for a few minutes with one eyebrow raised. “What’s the matter, sport? Can’t quite get it up?”

  I snarled. “It doesn’t just work like that.”

  He scoffed, hiding his smirk with one hand. “Oh, I’ve been doing this for a thousand years. You’ve been doing this for four days. But somehow, you’re the expert now? I’ve seen hundreds of Ferin come and go, kid. I’ve watched them come up, and I’ve watched them burn out. I’ve also watched the vamps carve them like jack o’lanterns. But now you, so new you still smell human, know how these things work? Let me tell you something, child. If it’s a Ferin ability, it works exactly like that. A Ferin ability works when you call it, how you want it to work, and that’s just the way it is.”

  He stood up and invaded my space, toe to toe with me. Margaret bit her lip, but Tess stood by my side. “You might have fire ability, and you might not. You won’t know—you won’t have any way to know—until the human part of your mind shifts over to accommodate the Ferin. It’s the only way for you to be able to work with the energies inside you.”

  Mort poked me in the chest. “There is absolutely no way, no possible way, for someone who was turned four days ago to suddenly go around shooting fireballs at people.”

  “I know what I saw.” I ground my teeth together. Had I always been this hotheaded the last time I was twenty or was this part of this whole Ferin thing? “I know what I felt. And I know those trees were charred. If that’s not enough for you, tough shit. It wasn’t my suggestion to come talk to you.”

  “Good. Don’t waste my time again.” Mort snorted and turned on his heel, heading toward the forest.

  Margaret blocked his way. She was frowning the way women did when they thought men were acting like toddlers. “Mort, wait. Jason, I do believe you. But there has to be some way for you to repeat the event.”

  “I’m not a science experiment.” I turned toward the mansion. “I’m fed up with the secrets. I’m fed up with the bullshit. I’m done with the double secret probation and all that. I’m just done. Thanks for everything, but I’ve got to be moving on.”

  Mort waved a hand. “The vampires will scatter your bones to the four winds.”

  Tess put a hand on my arm. “Jason, come on. Think about this. Don’t think about the fire, dumbass.”

  “Make a fire by not thinking about the fire. Makes perfect sense. Next, I’ll fry up some eggs by not thinking about a frying pan or a stove.” I nodded, scratching my stubbled chin.

  Tess chuckled and nudged my arm. “When you start a fire, you don’t just grab a hunk of fire from one place and put it someplace else. You have to do something else first, right? You have to create a spark or light a match, don’t you? And you did that today. There was a feeling. You felt something before you lit up everything around you.”

  I took a deep breath. Tess wasn’t wrong. I closed my eyes. “Okay. There was a feeling. It was a feeling of being about to go splat, but yes.”

  “No, after that. You were afraid, and you needed to do something about it. Then something inside you...” Tess let her words trail off as if she were prompting me.

  I thought back. I could reach through my memory and grabbed that feeling, that surge from my core. Energy shot from me like an orgasm, and it was all I could do to hold back a similarly ecstatic shout.

  Mort dove into the sand just in time, as a burst of flame shot through the air, passing through what would have been his chin had he not moved. It connected with a pile of brush, igniting instantly. We all stared at it for a few seconds before Mort stomped it out, never losing the look of astonishment on his face.

  The sea didn’t stop. Waves continued to fall gently onto the rocks. Gulls cried out in the distance. The world seemed endless at that moment, and I was tiny in comparison. I was one man, going through changes too profound to understand.

  And I’d just shot a fireball at a man’s beard because he pissed me off.

  Tess linked her arm with mine. She wasn’t going to leave me. Neither was Margaret, who took my other arm. I stood a little taller, a little firmer, with them by my side like this. I hadn’t trusted them to have my back, but I’d obviously been wrong.

  “Still think I don’t know what I saw or did?” I asked.

  Mort spat some damp grit out of his mouth and dusted his black clothes as best he could. “I still don’t think you know what you were doing,” he told me after a moment. “But no one does when they first express their Ferin ability. And I stand by what I told you before: no one’s ever expressed their ability so quickly. Most people take six months or more.”

  I shuddered. Did I have to spend the next six months living under double secret probation, escorted everywhere and only allowed contact with Tess and Margaret? That seemed extreme. “I guess I’m just one of a kind,” I told him.

  He chuckled and held his hand out. “I’m looking forward to working with you, Jason. I can see we’ve got a lot to talk about. Let’s head inside where it’s warm and maybe hold off on doing any more fireballs, hmm?”

  I shook his hand, mostly because I didn’t want to come off as a tool. I still wasn’t a big fan of this Mort guy, but I was willing to listen to what he had to say. If he had indeed been alive for a thousand years, then maybe he could explain my conditi
on, and how the hell I wound up as a self-starting campfire.

  We headed back into the Room of Lavender Death. He must have picked up on my distaste because he laughed at me. “Not a big fan of the color scheme, I take it?”

  I wrinkled my nose and sat down when he told me to. “It was my ex-wife’s favorite color. Last time I drove past the house, she’d painted the whole damn thing lavender.”

  Mort nodded. “I get it. I was married once. Of course, that was nine hundred years ago, and it’s part of the reason we have a strict policy of not sticking around with humans. Melisende and I worked out just fine. Although the local priest had some unkind things to say when I didn’t get the plague from her. One thing led to another, and next thing you know, there was a huge witch hunt going around Tours. Bastards.” He shrugged. “What can you do? Besides shoot fireballs at them until you can get away, I mean. So, you probably have questions.” He sat on his window seat and crossed his legs, his blue eyes intent on me.

  I sighed. I had a million and three questions, but now that I could finally ask them, I had no idea where to start. “How does all this work? Does everyone turn into a Ferin, or just some people? Why are the vampires trying to kill us? And what can kill us, anyway?”

  Mort made a face at me. “Most people start off by asking about the basics. Why me, why now, why can’t I go back to my family kinds of things. You had to be difficult, didn’t you?” He sighed. “Okay, short answer. I don’t know why only some people turn. I guess we must have a stronger grasp on life. No one knows why, or what aspect of us has a stronger grasp. It’s probably genetic, but I’ve never had access to that kind of testing. As for the rest? Well, vampire weapons can kill us. Most human weapons can kill us eventually, although they have to work pretty hard. Natural causes aren’t a problem. You’re not going to starve, you’re not going to die of thirst, and you can stick your head into a whole barrel of wine, and that liver of yours will be just fine. I’d advise against driving afterward, though.”

  He tapped a finger to his lips thoughtfully. “Don’t get your head cut off. You need your heart, too. Not too sure about the rest of you. I’ve never felt too comfortable experimenting. Now, before you get to ask me another question, I get to ask you one. After all, you’re rather extraordinary. You’ll have to indulge me, I’m afraid.” He pressed a hand to his chest in a completely fake gesture of humility.

  “What’s that?” His request seemed fair enough, despite the delivery.

  “Tell me about the one who made you.”

  7

  I lay in my big, luxurious bed that night. My body was exhausted. I could still feel that nuclear core deep inside of me, but the rest of me felt leaden and still. I’d more than earned a night of restful sleep. If I were still wearing one of those fitness trackers I’d loved so much in my old life, I’d have more than exceeded my goal. I’d have doubled it, even tripled it, and had steps to spare.

  Of course, how exactly a fitness tracker would monitor shooting fireballs at people was anyone’s guess.

  Training. When I’d been young before, I’d trained for track meets or wrestling matches. I’d trained for the state championship, and during one special and memorable season, I’d trained for Nationals. Now, I was training for...something else. No one was a hundred percent sure what. And this time, when they said that, I believed them.

  “The vampires seem to have a plan,” Mort told me as we took a quick break before dinner. “I’m not sure what it is. We don’t exactly have a chance to get spies in there, you know? But they do have a plan, and we have to be ready for it when they come.”

  “Whatever they’re planning can’t be good for us,” Margaret added. “It never is.” She rubbed her arms and looked toward the window.

  It all sounded a little too doom-and-gloom for me, but on this subject at least, I was willing to admit they probably knew a little bit more than I did. After all, they’d survived this long, and I was still new to the whole immortality-and-tree-jumping thing. My experience with vampires was quite limited, although from what little I’d heard, it sounded like my encounter was about right. They were assholes with fangs, and there was little to no variation on that theme.

  That bothered me on a deep level. If the other Ferin knew the vampires were after them, wouldn’t it be better to keep moving than to stay in one easily found place? Maybe there was some reason the vamps didn’t look here. Maybe it was easier to defend against vampires from a settled place, like the mansion, than it would be on the road.

  There was so much I didn’t know, and everyone else’s sense of urgency made it hard for me to feel confident about any of it.

  I rolled over. My divorce from Linda had been good, but one reason I waited so long to finally leave was the fact that I just hated sleeping by myself. On nights like this, when I had thoughts chasing each other around like dogs in a pen, I needed someone with me. Just having another warm body by my side, could help calm my brain down and soothe me.

  My bedroom door opened with a whisper-soft click. “Jason,” Margaret said, stepping inside. She closed and locked the door behind her.

  I sat up, heart racing. No one would come to me in the middle of the night for anything other than a crisis, that is unless they were looking for a stash of cookies under my bed.

  Then I got a better look at Margaret. If some kind of crisis had taken place, it had either involved diplomacy or laundry. She was dressed in a silk evening gown, painfully beautiful in deep red. The plunging neckline and halter-style bodice ensured she couldn’t wear a bra, which meant I could see the hard points of her nipples poking through the silk.

  I grabbed the pillow and put it over my lap again. Maybe she should expect guys to get erections when she ran around looking like that, but she shouldn’t have to look at them without her consent either. I had no idea what had brought her to my room, but my response was, to put it mildly, enthusiastic.

  “What’s wrong?” I sat up straighter and tried to think of something other than all that pale skin—something with as little sex appeal as possible. Mort was a good start, and if he didn’t work to cool my jets, then I could always try algebra.

  Margaret didn’t say anything. She climbed into my bed and onto my lap. Lest I have any doubts about her intentions, she took the pillow I’d used to hide my erection and tossed it to the side. When she saw the outline of my hard cock against my boxers, she smiled. Her eyes almost seemed to glow as she pulled me in for a kiss.

  I almost resisted. None of this had been typical behavior for her up until now. Everything had been strictly professional, and I was honestly a little bit freaked out. When I pulled back to look into her eyes, though, they seemed perfectly clear. I couldn’t smell any alcohol on her breath, and she wasn’t stumbling. Margaret didn’t seem drunk, just...ready.

  I claimed her mouth with a searing kiss. It had been a long time for me, after all, and my new young body came with a new young libido, too. She cradled my face in her hands as I tasted her in her all perfection and sweetness. She ground herself up and onto my body, and I let out a whisper-soft groan.

  She took my hand and guided it up her leg, all the way up to her thigh. Margaret acted with certainty, her breath already coming faster as our intentions mingled. As I ran my hand up her hot, smooth skin, I realized she didn’t have a stitch on underneath her gown.

  I kissed her neck, tasting her skin as I went. While I’ve always been fascinated with a woman’s neck, at the moment, there were so many more sights to see. I moved south, planting kisses along her collarbone, then down along the rigid plate of her sternum. Her breasts, encased in silk, rose on either side of my face, a welcome pressure that was both firm and yielding.

  I looked up into her eyes, gauging her comfort as I gripped the curve of her ass, my hands growing confident in their exploration. When she gave me a nod, I took her left breast into my mouth. She moaned as I flicked at her erect nipple with my tongue. The smooth silk contrasted perfectly with the rock-hard surface underneath.<
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  She rocked her hips against mine, dragging her wet body along my hard cock. I still wore my boxers, but I could feel everything right down to her radiant heat, the slick of her secrets as the way was readied, and the need that drove her as she settled, sighing onto me with the weight of a rumor. I moved my hand forward and trailed my finger around her before sinking my thumb in, a messenger for things to come. She groaned and clutched my shoulders harder, and I knew I was on the right track.

  I obliged by adding another finger, addled by the way her hot body felt around my digits. I wanted to be inside of her so badly, I could just about taste it.

  I was going to wait.

  She finally came, clenching onto my fingers as wave upon wave of pleasure washed over her. Only then did I even think about getting rid of my boxers. I laid her down on the bed and hiked her skirt up. Then, I got off the bed and got rid of my shorts. “I don’t have any condoms,” I said.

  She snorted and wrapped her legs around my waist. Well, if that was how she felt about it, I’d give her what she wanted. I was well beyond rational thought at this point anyway.

  I lined myself up and slid inside, and the pain of the vampire’s bite faded in that instant. Everything that ever went wrong—my life, my divorce, and my struggles—gone. The strong walls of her body, slick with desire, need, and lust, took me in like I was made for her. I slid back and pushed home again, the impact a velvet hammer that was better than anything I’d ever known.

  I set a vigorous pace. I’d had been away too long from women, but Margaret was no woman. She was art made real, and she was mine—a sweating, thrusting mass of perfection that clung to me. Our kisses grew frantic as her hips took the lead and my pacing was a distant memory. There was only her, the rhythm, and the heat. Her motion matched me inch for inch as we both reached the same conclusion to let go as one, and our bodies shook in unison. The world fell away. The mansion, the room, the Ferin, even what had happened to me, all disappeared as my entire being focused on her. Margaret’s gasps, cries, and moans of delight—nothing else mattered, and nothing else existed.