I toyed with my glass a little. “It was interesting. Lobbing fireballs at baseballs will probably come in handy someday, but right now, it just seems exotic, like it’s someone else in my skin.”
“It was definitely a sight to see,” she told me with a wicked grin. She pushed her dark hair out of her face. “Especially that first one, when I think you might have ignited an oil tanker.”
I dropped my fork. “You think I what?”
She laughed at me. “We’d have heard the explosions, Jason. Lighten up, would you? The fireball landed safely in the ocean. You might have torched a krill or plankton or whatever lives just at the surface and is the size of a nickel, but it’s fine. We wouldn’t have let you cause an ecological disaster on your first day. Relax.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one lobbing weapons of mass destruction from his brain.” I drained half of my glass in one gulp. That probably wouldn’t help me keep control of my fireballs, certainly not if I did it often enough, but it made me feel temporarily better.
“True enough, but you’re hardly the first Fire Ferin to come through these halls. We don’t see a ton of them, but you’re not the first and won’t be the last. I’ll tell you one thing, though. You definitely impressed Mort.” She raised her glass at me.
“I did?” I wrinkled my nose. “I didn’t think he got impressed. I thought he just got irritable.”
“Well he does, but you’ll notice how he stopped the baseball exercise and moved to something else in short order. That’s when you really knocked his socks off. When you took the fire into yourself, I mean. That’s not something people do for a while, you know? For at least a decade.”
I squirmed in my seat. Tess was giving me a compliment, but it still made my muscles tense up. “I’m already having trouble enjoying this whole Ferin thing, since it came from something as awful as what Death Ginger did to me. I’m not prepared for it to be anything out of the ordinary.”
“Fair enough, but you’ll have to get over it eventually.” Her eyes softened just a bit. “Not to be mean or anything, but that’s how it works. You either come to terms with it in this life, or you lose your mind. “
“Well, that’s bleak.” I made a face. “Any idea where Margaret is? Did she head into Augusta?”
Tess snickered and leaned forward a little, both elbows on the table. “And now we get to the real heart of the matter, so to speak.” She waggled her eyebrows just a little bit. “Why are you so keen to know where Margaret went all of a sudden, hmm?”
I blushed. “Like I said, I’m just curious. There are a lot of rules around here, and I don’t know any of them. The few I do know don’t make sense to me. If I can follow the logic in my head, I’ll have an easier time following them and maybe even figuring them out ahead of time.”
She tossed her head back and laughed. “I call bullshit.”
“Excuse me?” I sat up straighter and tried to look serious and offended, instead of guilty and conniving.
“I’m over a hundred years old, Jason. I’ve seen a thing or two. This is all about last night when Margaret sneaked into your room and fucked your brains out, isn’t it?”
I turned to the left and to the right. Even though I knew we were alone, I had to double check. I wasn’t used to that level of vulgarity from a woman I’d only known for a few days.
I wasn’t offended, and I found it kind of refreshing, but it still shocked me, especially given that Tess grew up in an era when people put skirts on tables just to make sure men didn’t get lascivious thoughts at the sight of legs.
“Jesus, Tess. How do you even know about that?” I leaned close to her. “Did she tell you? Were you bugging my room?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Jason. Most of what you do in there is way too boring to record.” She gave me an old-fashioned look. “To be honest, this is kind of Margaret’s thing.”
“Her thing?” I stared at Tess. I thought I knew where she was going with this, but I didn’t want to believe it.
As it turns out, I’d have been wrong anyway. “Yeah, she does this all the time.” Tess sat back and sipped from her glass, her face going pensive. “You already know all Ferin have abilities. Some have Earth, some Water, some Fire. You get how this works.”
“Right...” I drew the word out in hopes of encouraging her to keep going.
“Well, Margaret’s ability is empathy. She picks up on whatever other people feel. In strong cases, they can project it, which you caught her doing, even if you didn’t know exactly what she was doing at the time.”
I snapped my fingers, trying to ignore the pit in my stomach. “The way I kept mellowing out when she touched me when I first woke up?”
“Exactly. That’s her ability. It works best when she touches someone. And if she’s in close contact for a while and really works at it, she can feel and experience whatever someone else has felt and experienced.” It might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw two spots of pink appear in her cheeks. “It works best if she’s in intimate contact. As in, very intimate.”
“Sexual, you mean.” I hid my face in my hands. “Christ.”
“Look. She wanted to get to know you. You’re obviously unique, and you’re unique in a community of people who are pretty damn special in and of ourselves. The best way to do that, in her mind, was to bed you. It’s the shortest distance between two points.” Tess shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”
I lowered my hands. I didn’t know if I wanted to go out, find Margaret, and shout, or if I wanted to go throw up. I couldn’t understand. “It was...” I trailed off. A memory flashed into my mind, or rather a sequence of memories. My brain replayed every time Margaret and I had moaned in chorus with one another, every time our bodies moved in sync. I’d never managed to come at the same time as my partner until I laid down with Margaret. I’ve heard of a sympathy fuck, but I never expected to be an empathy fuck.
I considered the aftershocks. Maybe it hadn’t been a big deal to Margaret, but it had been the best sex of my life. To think it was just her way of getting to know someone, both irritated and aroused me further.
Tess was looking me over while I tried to get a grip on myself, but it wasn’t in a lustful, I want to eat you up kind of way. She looked almost wistful.
“What’s up?” I asked her, sitting up a little bit straighter. I could work out my own personal issues later. If Tess was having an issue, I should help her deal with it. After all, she’d been helpful to me, both with Mort and in general. And I was the only one here.
“I was just wondering how it was,” she said with a little sigh. Then she all but jumped out of her seat. She gave me a flirtatious grin and a wink, then walked out of the conservatory, boots loud against the stone floor.
I watched her go. Who, exactly, was the sigh for? I couldn’t do anything about it either way.
Margaret had slept with me just to get to know me, and now she’d disappeared. Whatever she’d found while she was rooting around inside my feelings and experiences or whatever, she hadn’t found anything she liked. Well, I could sit around and mope about it, or I could be grateful for the one incredible night I’d had and move on.
I still wasn’t sure what to make of this place or this community, but I’d learned so much today that I knew I had to stick around for more.
10
I still hadn’t seen Margaret by the next day, and I had to admit I could live with that. I hadn’t decided how I felt about everything she’d done—everything we’d done—and the differing assumptions we’d had going into it. In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to sleep with someone who decided words were a problem for someone else to deal with.
I was left to my own devices for a good few hours in the morning, which I decided to put to good use by sleeping in. It wasn’t a luxury I allowed myself often in my old life, but here, I didn’t have a lot of choice. I had to have an escort to leave the building, and the escort had to be either Margaret or Tess. Since neither of
them seemed to be presenting themselves for the occasion, I burrowed happily back down into my mattress and let myself enjoy it.
Later on, Tess did come to fetch me. “All right,” she said with a little grin. “Get up, lazybones, and get ready for work. We’re going to do a little fighting.”
I did a little bit of a double take. “Fighting? No one said anything about that.” I hopped out of bed, eager to be doing something. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad to do it, but you’ve all been kind of handling me with kid gloves. I didn’t think you’d want me playing contact sports.”
Tess grimaced. “Well, to be honest, we don’t. Er, Margaret and I don’t. But Mort made some pretty good points, which include the fact that you’re never going to know what you can do or how to control yourself until you’re under battle conditions. It’s probably a good idea to get you ready for them.”
She led me through the kitchen to the basement stairs, and then down another set of stairs to the sub-basement. I hadn’t realized the mansion had a sub-basement, but I supposed it was inevitable. After all, didn’t all weird supernatural lairs have sub-basements? I shook my head, not quite believing this was my life now, and headed down into the darkened stairwell.
The sub-basement seemed to be confused. It didn’t know if it was a gym, a dojo, or a very strange kind of boxing ring. I’d never seen a ring that involved ropes up to the ceiling, for example, not even for cage matches. Mort waited near the ring with a cup of coffee, straddling a folding chair. “All right, you two,” he said and jerked his thumb toward the ring. “Hop in and let me see what you’ve got. “
My gut twisted, even as I slipped into the ring. “I can’t hit her,” I objected. “That’s not how I was raised.”
Mort raised an eyebrow, while Tess’s mouth twisted with contempt. “I suppose chivalry isn’t dead,” she scoffed. “Look, do you think all vampires are men?”
I shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about it. I’ve only met one.”
“Start thinking about it,” she said. “If you think they’re weak just because they’re women, they’re going to pull out your liver and feed it to you before they kill you. And you’ll deserve it because you let something like sex determine whether you would or wouldn’t fight back.” She rolled her shoulders. “I’m the best one around to help you train right now, Jason. Do you want to fight me, or do you want to go out and wait for a horny moose to come along and see what you can do against him?”
I took a deep breath. “I’d rather roll the dice with the moose. I think he’s a little less pissed at me.” I held my hands up. “Let’s do this.” I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for this exercise.
Apparently, Tess didn’t share my misgivings. She aimed her first punch directly at my face. I blocked that and the knee she tried to drive into my groin, but I couldn’t stop her from grabbing fistfuls of my hair, dragging my head down, and driving her knee into my forehead.
I staggered back, dazed, and Tess stood where she’d been. “I thought you said you fought back against the vampire,” she mocked. “Come on, Jason. Don’t you want to fight?”
“Not especially. I’m a lover, not a fighter.” Christ, my head hurt. I rubbed it, but that just made it worse. She’d tagged me. Hard.
Tess came at me in a flurry of kicks and punches, even faster than she had before. Something inside me stirred just a little, and I managed to block most of her strikes, but grazing blows were enough to get my attention. She wasn’t hitting me with halfhearted shots. She was hitting for real and blocking her cost me in pain and bruises. I grunted with each blow, but I kept my guard up because I didn’t want to spit teeth across the ring.
After a minute I knew two things. Three if you consider the fact I knew she was meaner than me, but the first two are what mattered most. She was faster than me, and she was far more of a fighter than I was at that moment.
I left myself open when I turned a whistling overhand right, and she took advantage without hesitation, her nose for blood leading her to the opportunity. Blocking a punch to my chin left my right side open, and she used her foot to point out the gap; the blow leaving me wheezing and dazed. I’d have bruises on my ribs for days if not longer, but I levered my lungs open and sucked air while turning away, making her come to me. I tried to counter another hard right but found my arm twisted around my back so hard, I thought it must be dislocated.
Apparently, my bone had come out of its socket, but it didn’t stay that way for long. A quick snap and it was back into place. Gross noise aside, I smiled at the speed of my body’s adjustment. Rolling the shoulder, it was sore but functional, a sure sign that being a Ferin meant I was a far cry from any ordinary street brawler. They could get killed. I got hurt, and the results were anything but what Tess wanted. I didn’t get mad.
I got focused.
My heart rate rose, and my eyes narrowed, taking Tess in as a thing—an opponent. Tess wasn’t Tess anymore. She was just a meat bag, albeit one who could kick like a mule. The thing inside me that had stirred before now woke up fully, and the ring changed from punishment to pleasure in the blink of an eye.
She came at me in a whirlwind of punches, too fast for a human eye to see. Fortunately for me, my eyes weren’t human. I kept it simple, ducking under her left hook to deliver a crushing uppercut, sending her flying halfway across the mat.
She landed on her feet, ready to charge back in. I hadn’t stood around to admire my handiwork. After all, if my body could just pop a dislocated shoulder in all by itself, why would something like a bruised or broken jaw slow Tess down? I leaped, just as I had in the forest, and caught one of the upper ropes lining the ring. It didn’t yield, and I began to form a plan.
I swung myself on the line, looking to gain momentum as Tess searched for me. Just as she found me, I let go and launched myself toward her, hands at the ready in a mid-level defense. She leaped for me at the same time, filled with bad intentions.
Her heel crunched into my ribs as the wind left me in a pained rush. I went into a barrel roll when I landed; her recovery was out of my sight but just as swift. We both sprang to our feet, her hands up and my foot leading with a thunderous kick to her chest. Unable to turn in time, the blow sent her backward in a graceless arc, thudding to the mat and skidding to a wheezing halt.
I was on her in a blink. “Do you yield?”
And just like that, she was Tess again, not the enemy. Just Tess with her chest heaving from exertion and exhilaration, pinned down underneath me and a sly smile on her face. “Aw, Jason. How do you know I don’t have you right where I want you?”
Somewhere between brawling and recovery, my body betrayed me. I felt my cheeks flush at the sheer closeness of her, and every drop of sweat on her skin invited me in. It was obvious she knew my reaction. The old me would have felt shame, but no longer. Instead, I met those dark eyes and smirked. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
Mort blew his whistle. “All right, I think I’ve seen enough. Tess, go hit the showers. Jason, why don’t you hang out here and work out against the heavy bags for a little bit? I want to have a chat with Tess, but I’ll be right back.”
I hopped up, freeing Tess from under me. I saw her smirk as she waved and left the training area, followed by Mort.
To some extent, their dismissal stung. Sure, I’d just matched and defeated a more experienced Ferin in a fight, but I was still being left out of the loop. It was more of the same. Go sit at the kids’ table, Jason, the grown-ups are talking.
I headed over to the heavy bag and punched it. I’d been a wrestler, but that sport didn’t include punching. Wrestling was grappling and submission; a chess match with the human body designed to outsmart your opponent, rather than knocking them out. Right then, though, I wanted to punch something—a lot of things—but the bag would have to suffice.
I’d been attacked and left for dead. I was more or less a prisoner in an old mansion, and I wasn’t allowed to see or speak with most of the people I now lived with. Of the peop
le I was allowed to see, one of them held me in contempt, one of them would rather fuck information out of me than sit down and talk to me like I was a person, and one of them—well, one of them was Tess. I couldn’t leave without the information these people had, but I couldn’t verify anything they were telling me either.
I left a dent in the heavy bag this time.
Maybe I’d been a little excessive. I tried to look at it another way. Okay, I’d had the best sex of my life, whatever the reasons behind it were. I could do incredible things with fire. My body was twenty again, and it was going to stay twenty. No more arthritis on the horizon, no more thinning hair, no more fading libido.
And I’d just taken Tess down to the mat.
I stood back and grinned. I was making problems where none existed if I considered what I had wanted from life days ago. Maybe I was still learning all sorts of new things about how this body worked, but the things I could make it do were pretty impressive already. I could breathe fire into my body. I could throw fire at things. I could jump high and run fast, and I could hit like a truck if that heavy bag were any indication.
And I could take down a real Ferin fighter, pin her to the mat, and have us both like it.
Mort returned. He took in the sight of me grinning at the heavy bag and came over to stand next to me. He kept his feet shoulder width apart and crossed his arms over his chest. “Feel better?” he asked, looking at the dent I’d put in his bag.
“Um, I don’t think they’re supposed to dent.” I blushed. “Sorry.”
“It’s all fixable. That’s not what I asked. Are you feeling better?” He stared harder at the dent.
“I guess I am.” I took a deep breath. “All this is new, but the fight just now was exhilarating. And taking Tess down was kind of special.”
He snorted and patted my back. “Yeah, I’ll bet. You certainly seemed to enjoy it, anyway. You want to maybe go take a cold shower before we go outside and do some more fire work?”
Forever Young Page 6