Feeling the way, CH 31 (Patreon)

I got off my bike in front of the dilapidated church. It was getting warm as the sun reached its zenith. A minute later, a GF all-terrain noisily approached and stopped. The smile I gave at beating him here dropped as I saw his shell-shocked expression.

The morning hadn’t gone well for him. We were at the FBI office first thing. I was there to make sure he didn’t change his mind. Or course, the agents who surrounded us kept me in their sight, instead of him, but Jared asked for the agent in charge, explained why, and he was escorted away, while I was escorted to a different office where I was questioned too.

It’s almost like they thought I was there to desecrate them or something.

I’m not the one with the habit of bedding law enforcement agents who are trying to capture him. They don’t have to be after me for me to bed them. Also, a bed isn’t required. An interrogation table works just at well.

I wonder if anyone was watching the camera feed.

And if I can get a copy to send Tom.

“Jared, we can do this after you’ve rested.”

The monkey shook his head, but it was more an act to clear it than negation. “I… I’m going to be fine. I need to deal with….” He motioned to the wreck of a church. “With the one who desecrated it.”

“So, this is one of yours?” I was cautious in how I asked, doing my best to distance the high emotion of the history I was told from the reality of what Jared represented. I knew Damian was a master at manipulating people when he was alive, but now that he was a god, didn’t that just make him like the other gods? It wasn’t like many of them were forthcoming about their intentions. My god might be the most obtuse with what he wanted, considering he only spoke in emotions and intent.

“Yes,” he answered.

“I guess it makes sense. You guys were all about taking over churches, after all.” There I went, being all insensitive.

He shrugged. “I’ve heard about that, but I don’t know what it was about. That was the old one’s work, not the Blood.”

“I’m never going to get used to you calling Damian that.”

“You think having you refer to your god by Him, capital ‘H’ sounds normal?”

“Good point. So Wanna Be was here?”

“I don’t know. The sense of desecration is strong, but we ran into each other before I could do any searching for more.”

I nodded and motioned for him to take the lead.

Inside, it was immediately early afternoon, and the church was well-maintained. Even the traces of our scuffle were gone. The pews were lined up; the candelabras had their candles.

“Is this real?” I asked. “I mean, are we seeing what the magic wants us to see, or is this actually the church, preserved through the centuries?”

“I’m not sure.” He ran a hand over a pew. “It feels real, but I don’t see why someone would preserve this and not make sure the rest of the town survives.”

“Maybe this isn’t what they planned. Magic doesn’t always work the way we think.”

He nodded. “Maybe. The power is anchored in the basement, so that’s where I’m going to be able to tell.” He then whispered. “I hope.”

I didn’t react when he glanced my way. He was entitled to think his fear wasn’t noticeable. He was as much out of his depth here as me. At least he knew what sent him here. I still had no idea why that kid had an image of that stained glass in his head.

A possibility occurred to me and I took out my phone. No signal. I’d have to Elder Brislow if he had figured out which god powered the kid’s magic later. My hackles rose again when I entered the back and looked into the empty sleeping chambers.

“Do you think they intended to be preserved with the church?”

Jared shook his head. “There’s no way power on this level comes from a personal sacrifice. Lives paid for this to happen.”

“The town?”

“Maybe. If we know how to do something like this, I wasn’t told.”

By ‘we’, he meant his faction. The other followers of the Blood, the god of sacrifice and revenge. 

“As far as I know,” I said, “every repository of knowledge about the marks and your magic has been raided.”

“Are you fishing for information?”

“I’m just letting you know what I’ve been told. I hadn’t started walking when all that happened.”

He was silent as he opened the door to the basement. A door I knew stayed open when I chased him out.

“Stop.”

He did, then looked at me, ear canted.

“What if we have this wrong? What if it isn’t preserved, but it resets? That would explain why everything’s like it was before we fought back there.”

“That’s possible. Like I said, I won’t be able to tell what the magic does until I’ve studied the basement.”

“Okay, then we need to ask one question before we continue. What happens to us if we’re still in here when a reset happens?”

Jared looked worried, then relaxes. “The last one happened between the time we left and came back. That means we have at least until nightfall, since that’s when I arrived.”

That was if we were dealing with something happening every twenty-four hours. I didn’t tell him that. He was already stressed enough. A day cycle made sense. That was what we worked on. But thinking only that way was how you made the mistakes that got people killed. The problem was that I couldn’t think of a cycle that would make sense to people back in the early twentieth century. At least, not one that was shorter than a day.

I followed him down the stairs and I used my phone for light, as did he. I don’t care what movie you watch, even those ‘true to magic’ ones that seem to be popular these days. Using your phone for light is a lot easier and less costly than using magic. Balls, light a fire first. Once you’re out of that, then you go to magic.

We were back in the smell of death, old and new.

“Can you feel it?” Jared asked.

“I can feel that magic was twisted into something it wasn’t meant to be.”

He nodded. “Someone tried to appropriate the magic here.”

“Can you tell how long ago?” Wanna Be wasn’t supposed to be able to use magic, but at this point, I was better off assuming the little I knew about him was wrong.

“Not recent, but not as old as the church. Closer to now, though.” He moved to the center. “I’m going to do something, don’t freak out.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m an Orr. We don’t do freaking out.”

He took off his shirt, and I smiled.

“Yes, I definitely see why you might think I’d freak out. Take off the pants and I might have to run away screaming.”

He looked at me, deadpan.

“I’m joking. You have more scars than I’ve seen on a body before—living body I mean, but that’s not going to send me running.”

He looked at his arms and chest. “You’ve seen a body with more scars than I have? Was it someone from the old god?”

I shook my head. “My dads were terrified that my condition meant I wouldn’t be able to handle the sight of mutilation. So, when I was thirteen, one of them took me to an autopsy. It was the victim of a serial killer and he went to town on her hard. She had scars that were two years old. There was not one inch of her body untouched.”

He stared at me. “Was he caught?”

I smiled. “Oh, he died all right.”

“You?”

I snorted. “I was thirteen. We have an overconfident streak, but not that bad of one. Two of my dads worked together on it. As far as law enforcement is concerned, the killings just stopped one day.”

Or course, for the next five years we were under constant surveillance. We might hate each other, but we don’t squeal on our family. Especially when we all agree with what they did.

“Well, showing you my scars isn’t what I was referring to.” He pulled a knife. Something slim with an artisanal feel to it. Then he carefully looked over his left wrist. I was too far to see well, but he moved the point over an existing scar. From a grouping that formed the closest stripe to his hand.

I had questions, but I knew better than to ask them now.

The results of disrupting magic in progress was rarely pleasant.

What he did was anticlimactic, to say the least. He let the blood run down his hand, moving it so it flowed along his index, then knelt and touched the drop forming to the ground.

I waited. I waited some more. I waited again, because it was always when you thought nothing was going to happen that it did.

Okay, I didn’t have that much patience. I opened my mouth and light rippled away from where he touched, causing marks on the floor to glow. Immediately, I could see some weren’t glowing as brightly, as if something was obscuring them, but I followed the light. It went up the wall then the ceiling, leaving behind more glowing marks.

I gawked as I took in the now glowing basement.

One thing is true across all magic. The more of the magical language is needed to power something, you guessed it, the more powerful it is.

He smiled at me. “Feel free to freak out.”

I closed my mouth. “What powers all of this?” I didn’t bother hiding my awe.

“I don’t know. But I’m not worried about that. That was set in place a very long time ago. What I’m worried about is that.” He indicated the partially obscured marks.

Looking at them, I saw how they formed a pattern of their own. Lines on the floor, heading to the wall where they congregate into…

“Is that a door?” I asked and canted my head. The shape was definitely door-like.

“I think so,” Jared answered, looking at the floor. “And the way this is arranged, I think it was set up to feed off the existing magic and… oh fuck.”

“What?” I asked, looking at him over my shoulder.

“I just boosted the output of all of this so we could see it.”

“Okay.” Then it hit me. “Oh fuck. Shut it down.” I backed away from the door, noticing how it’s now shimmering.

“That isn’t how this works. I sent the power in. It’s going to stay there until it gets used up.”

“Really? You just fed power to something you know nothing about?”

“Feel free to freak out now.”

The humor brought me back to myself. “I’m an Orr.”

“Yeah, yeah. Tough guy. Fucks any guy that’s in range. Never let anything stop you. I might be forbidden from harming you, but that doesn’t stop me from researching you. I wouldn’t be in the same state as anyone from your family if I know where they are.”

I smiled. There are days when having a reputation like ours is good.

“What are we looking at here?” I asked.

“No idea. This is someone else’s magic latching onto the marks. Someone needed power and figured they’d use this place as a battery.”

“To open a doorway to—”

Something screeched out of the doorway and flew at us. We jumped in different directions. I pulled my gun as I roll to a knee. I made out yellow fur with spots, maybe rosettes. Jaguar or cheetah. I smirked at the idea of shooting a cheetah, then couldn’t help see Eddy and it vanished.

I fired at it, three shots. My ears ring.

“It’s not real!” Jared yelled. “Some phantom the magic caused to—” his scream as the phantom ran an arm through him sounded like electronic distortions.

I didn’t fire as it kept flying around, muzzle open in a nearly supersonic scream. If three bullets hadn’t done anything. Seventeen more wouldn’t either.

I took aim

Fuck, Dad. Not this time.

I holstered the gun. Jared was scared, but lucid enough to stay away from the phantom.

“What do we do?” he asks.

“Not let it touch us is a good place to start.” I looked at the portal. “When the magic runs out, is it going back in there?”

He stared at me. “How the fuck would I know?”

“Don’t touch that,” I pointed to the doorway.

“Do I look insane to you?”

“I’ve learned the hard way that even sane people do really stupid stuff.” I took out my pen, but drew a blank as to what to do with it. I didn’t know any phrases that affect ghosts since those weren’t a thing.

“Do you have anything that can affect it?” I asked.

“No.” He paused. “Maybe.” He looked around, then ran to the knife. The phantom headed for him.

I was an idiot.

I had to be.

I ran and put myself between it and him.

It was painful as he moved through me. I gritted my teeth because I would not scream. I would not give in to the pain. I was an Orr. Pain is part of my DNA. It was what I drank instead of milk as I grew up.

That and I felt pain that nearly tore me apart not even two days ago. This was nothing compared to that.

It was through me and I could breathe.

“What did you do to it?” Jared asked. And I staggered as I turn. It was like pieces of it had been ripped out. 

“No idea. Now hurry up, because it’s getting over whatever happened.” The missing parts were refilling.

It, no, he. Whatever it was, that was a guy. Nicely hung too. He looked from me to Jared, seeming torn between attacking me because I caused something to him and stopping Jared.

“I need to find a spot.” Jared was searching his arm, running a finger over the scarification.

“You have a lot of untouched fur. Who fucking cares if it breaks the look. Survival’s more important!”

“This isn’t about how it’ll look,” he replied. “I have to stay with the stripes.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

“Because my god orders it! Limitations force growth! Abundance breeds corruption!”

The phantom made a run at Jared and, being the idiot that I clearly was, I moved to intercept it.

It braked off.

We were both as surprised at the action as we stared at one another.

He searched my face, then screamed.

My head exploded with images. And when it stopped, I was on the floor, hands over my ears and the only sound was my screams. I shut my mouth.

“Stop,” I managed to say before Jared forced the phantom back into the doorway. I couldn’t make sense of everything I saw yet. “I know what I did to it.”

“Good, will it help us kill it?”

“No.” I forced myself to stand. The last time I felt this weak, there had been magically enhanced drugs involved, two days of dancing, and a bet as to who could abstain from sex the longest. I won, barely, but mainly because I lost consciousness somewhere in there.

Jared had a hand extended toward the phantom, and blood flowed from his hand to create a cage around the phantom.

“Look, I can’t do this long. That’s my blood that’s flowing. I’m going to lose consciousness at some point.”

“It’s okay.”

“It is not okay. I’d like to live through this.”

“Steven,” I called to the phantom, and his head snapped in my direction. Images of a young man, a young cheetah walking through the remnant of the town, awe on his face, and an old map in his hand flashed, and I forced it away. Those pieces that were ripped out, they stayed in me. Maybe because it flew through me bodily, maybe because I resisted the pain. I didn’t know why, but part of Steven Mullen stayed inside me. The real one, not the thing running around killing boys. “It’s okay Steven. You’re out of there.”

The amazement the young man felt on entering the church couldn’t be measured. Stories he’d heard, legends really, and an old map found in a shoebox in an attic. The things that every adventure book needed. And it was his adventure. And it led him to this church.

All that it cost him was his soul, not that he knew it then. The daughter and wife he promised he’d return to soon.

I forced myself back to the now. When Jared called Steven a phantom, he was closer to the truth than he thought. Ghosts weren’t a thing. The dead don’t remain.

Unless magic was involved.

He didn’t know what the design on the back of the map meant, but he knew when he lit the basement with the lantern that this was where he could do it.

There had always been stories in his family. Stories of magic and power. How his great grandmother had been able to make things move with the wand she’s made. They said that when he was born, she laid the wand next to him. Whispered something, and died the next day.

He didn’t know that until much later. His father had thrown the wand away, a mark of Satan, he’s said. His father had always clung to the Church. So it was appropriate that in this church basement he felt power.

When he drew the lines, the way the back of the map showed. He thought he’d make something else wonderful.

I ground my teeth.

“Wyatt?” Jared called, and he sounded too far.

“This isn’t your fault,” I told Steven. “You didn’t know what would happen. You aren’t responsible for what escaped when you went into the doorway.”

Magic could create ghosts. Bind a soul to a place. And a lot of the time, once bound, no outside force could free that soul.

“It’s okay,” I told Steven. “I will stop him. I will avenge you. You can let go now.”

Once bound, a soul needed to free itself.