Aberrant Magic 7: Durance, chapter 1 (Patreon)

Here I go with NaNoWriMo. Let's see if I can carry this motivation through to the end.  I'm starting with a chapter that will hopefully remind readers about our cast of characters and catch them up on what's happened with the team since we last saw them.

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Darren groaned as he walked through the apartment door. “Oh, that was a long day.” He walked past the kitchen and straight to the couch where he face planted. Behind him, Kavon closed the door.

“All we did was paperwork.”

“Exactly, that's what made it such a long day. Why is it so much harder to file reports than it is to chase down criminals?” Darren forced himself to sit up. The day had been so boring that Bennu had taken off, so Darren hadn’t even been able to get a little shamanic boost. Most days Bennu was better than coffee, but not today.

“Because you like one more than the other?” Kavon guessed.

“You might have me there. That and my supervising agent is a real bastard who just insists on having every T crossed and every I dotted.”

Kavon schooled his face into a stern expression. “Yes, he is.” The corner of his mouth twitched.

Darren laughed. Kavon might be a picky bastard, but he was Darren's bastard. And since they were together, it fell to Darren to deal with Kavon’s streak of perfectionism. Kavon had pulled two beers out of the fridge, but Darren shook his head. If he started drinking, he was going to turn into a couch potato for the night, and he had to get some laundry done. “So, I have it on good authority that both of us have quite a bit of saved vacation time.” 

Kavon frowned. “What?” He sat in his favorite chair and reached for the remote, but he didn’t turn the television on.

“Vacation time. You know that wacky thing most people do when they go to another state when they, weirdest thing ever, they take time off from work.” Darren tried to make it sound like a joke but he was about at the end of his patience when it came to Kavon and his obsessions.

“We just had a vacation.”

“No, we had two days where we visited my mother after her heart attack. That's not a vacation.” Darren had come home twice as exhausted. Growing up, he had always thought of his mother as being slightly Catholic, but now that Darren had Talent, she had crossed the line into being so thoroughly Catholic that she spent two days trying to convince Darren that it was his moral and religious obligation to join the church. That would involve leaving his job, his life, his lover, and his home, but she was oddly fine with that.

From the expression on Kavon's face, he hadn't considered that much of a vacation either. He put his beer down untouched. “If you want to take time off, just file the paperwork.”

“I don't want to take time off by myself. I would like to be a normal human being who takes time off with his family.” Darren still got a little flutter in his stomach when he said that out loud. After years of unrequited love, he got to tell Kavon he loved him and publicly claim him. That made Kavon’s worst traits a little easier to handle.

Kavon said too quickly, “I can't leave the office.”

“Yes you can. I have it on good authority that slavery has been banned, and you are allowed to take time off from work.”

Kavon’s shit look turned rather intense.

Darren sighed. This was going to require effort, but if Kavon was stubborn, Darren was relentless. “Give me one reason why you can't take some time off right now,” Darren said. He crossed his arms and prepared for battle.

“Our unit is the only one handling Talent cases. Criminals don’t stop because we want time off.”

“I would've taken that as an answer several months ago, but at this point there are two supervisory agents. You might want to consider letting the other supervisor carry the weight for a while. Otherwise she might suspect you don’t trust her to do the job.” Darren doubted Coretta would ever reach that conclusion, but her sarcasm was starting to get a little sharp, at least when she wasn’t retreating into overly polite language. A polite Coretta was always dangerous.

“I’m simply saying there's too much work for one team.” Kavon had a mulish expression that suggested some part of him knew he was in the wrong on this one.

“Six months ago one team handled everything. Coretta can handle it for a week or two weeks. Hell, she can borrow Milton and Anne, and she'll have more personnel than we ever had.” If Kavon and Darren took time off, Rima would probably take some vacation time, but that would leave their new mundane team member and their newest magic user to help Coretta’s team on any cases that came in.

“Coretta is an able investigator, but she's a magic user. She needs someone who can handle the shamanic end of the Talent pool.”

“I thought that's why you two hired Joe,” Darren said. “He's a shaman. I even recall you saying that he felt like a strong shaman, so he can handle it.”

Kavon got a constipated expression. “He has an octopus guide.”

“I'm really starting to regret telling you that.” Darren only knew about Joe’s guide because Bennu was a nosy busybody who delighted in finding every guide he could. The small white cattle egret definitely looked out of place perched on the giant orangy sea creature.

“Well you did. Octopus guides are secretive and clever. You should definitely be cautious around a shaman with an octopus guide.”

“I imagine that's why he did so well working undercover when he was in the California office,” Darren said dryly. Kavon disliked change at the best of times, and these were difficult days. Crimes against Talent and crimes committed by people with Talent were both up significantly. Splitting the team had brought in a lot of new agents, but that had also resulted in more tensions.

“Do you want to leave Rima with Milton and Anne? She’s going to shoot Milton if she spends too much time with him.”

Darren felt a little proud of himself. He’d finally gotten Kavon to start using first names. A year ago, Kavon had even referred to Coretta by her last name, and now he could call Agent Sousa ‘Anne’ without tripping over the word. That was even more shocking in the case of Agent Milton Ackie, who had the social skills of a skunk. “She threatened to shoot Les more times that I can count. She never actually did it.”

Kavon pressed his lips together, and every line of his body was tight with displeasure. “I have a responsibility to the Shamanic Council, and what about the ifrit war?”

Now Kavon was reaching. “You ignore the counsel so often that I’m not sure they’ll notice we’re gone,” Darren said. Kavon grimaced, so he knew that had been a stupid argument. “And the ifrit war could be thirty years away. Are we really going to organize our lives around an event that could be decades in the future? Come on, put on your supervisory hat. If you had an agent who refused to take time off and was in danger of burning out, what would you do?”

“I would put them on administrative leave,” Kavon said without a moment’s hesitation. “However, if you're suggesting that I can’t handle the stress, we're going to have a problem.”

“If you plan on going years without a break because the war could start tomorrow… well, you can’t. It’s not healthy.”

“I know what I can handle.” Kavon retreated to their small kitchen. The apartment was nice, but it was small enough that it didn’t offer room for escape. 

“You are exactly like your guide, a big stubborn bull who won't back down even when you should.”

When Darren had been a young agent, Kavon’s glares had scared him. Now he knew they were normal. Kavon wasn’t dangerous until he started filling out paperwork. That’s when intelligent people ran for cover as the official complaints flew.

“Do you really think we have decades?” Kavon asked.

Darren had to admit that Kavon had a point. In the last few months, more magical artifacts were showing up and more high-level guides were appearing. Darren had seen the numbers. In the past, a few young people would end up with guides like Kavon’s bull—big, dangerous, and full of old magic. However, most new shamans had small, innocuous guides. Birds, fish, and squirrels dominated the shamanic landscape. But in the last six months, the DC Council had registered several large land predators, a buffalo, two whales, a shark, and a Steller's sea cow. For a guide to prefer the form of an animal that had gone extinct hundreds of years ago, it had to be old. Something was shifting, and all the guides knew it. Unfortunately, the guides lacked the ability to explain what.

“That’s even more reason for us to get away while we can. We can't work ourselves to the bone, and then expect to be on the top of our game if something happens.”

Kavon brought his hand down on the counter. “And we can't afford to be off on vacation when it starts. You and I have both seen the numbers.”

Anyone who paid attention to the Djedi center statistics would've noticed that DC, Mexico City, West Texas, and the Vatican were all showing vast increases in the number of magical “hot spots” and new shamans coming online. Considering that Darren knew for a fact there were ancient ifrit in Washington DC and El Paso, Texas, that suggested that ifrit guides might have also returned to Mexico and the Vatican. Considering that Mexico was aligned with the Catholic Church, it would be normal for them to hide information from the Egyptian authorities. Some days, Darren really wished that the Talent community was a little less stereotypically human. But people brought all their same political divisions and prejudices into Talent.

“There are these magical devices called airplanes,” Darren said. Sarcasm was never the best approach with Kavon, but damn it, he was tired and cranky and he just wanted to win one God damn fight with the bastard. “If something happens while we’re away, we can come back. In fact, Selma would happily authorize the use of the private jet. This does seem to be a time when a speedy return could be important.”

“You and I both know that Selma will approve anything you ask for.”

“True. She does want to make the ifrit happy, and when I’m happy, Bennu is happy. You, on the other hand, might want to make your lover happy. Come on. We can go visit your family. You know you miss them.”

Kavon looked away. “I do,” he admitted. “However, I don't want to be visiting my family when some evil ifrit comes into our universe and decides to turn us into a smoking crater. Bennu might have astounding powers, but so will every other ifrit that comes back to this world.”

Kavon was annoyingly logical sometimes. “Okay, so we can visit someplace that you don't like. How about that town in Alabama where the local police captain called you the n-word. We can visit there and hope evil ifrit blow up the whole town. Actually, between evil ifrit and Bennu’ habit of underestimating his own power, we might even blow up the whole state. That would be a plus, yes?” Darren planned to never forgive that asshole. Maybe wishing death on the rest of the state was overkill, but Darren allowed himself a homicidal fantasy or two.

Kavon glared.

“Look, I don't even care where we go. DC has beautiful resorts, so we can do a staycation. We can take a week to get away from the apartment and turn the phones off. And at the end of the week, we will be more prepared to handle any problems. As a bonus, Coretta will have had time to gel with her new team without you, glaring at them.” Kavon glared at all the new agents no matter whose team they were technically on. Anne rolled her eyes, Jen made excessive trips to the bathroom, Joe ignored him, and Milton got nervous, which made Milton louder and much less competent. If Kavon didn’t take a break, the whole office was going to be making visits to the FBI shrink.

“Is that what this is about? Are you trying to play interference for Coretta?” Kavon demanded. “If she has a problem with me, she can come and talk to me.”

“Of course I'm running interference. From the first day you dragged me out of the Albany office to join your team, I have always run interference. You run around like a bull in a china shop, pun intended. She never asked me to, and she respects you enough that you’re going to have to be a much bigger asshole before she loses her temper with you, but you’re out of line. She's your equal, another team lead. You can't keep looking over her shoulder as if you're supervising her.”

Kavon’s expression turned guilty. “I'm uncomfortable about her team. I don’t want them to leave her or Les or Ahtisham hanging in an emergency.”

Considering that Joe had done extensive undercover work and Jen had top scores at Quantico, Darren couldn’t see that happening. Jen was young and new to field work, but the others would take that into account when assigning duties. 

“Not only are the number of talent crimes increasing, but we have additional scrutiny on us as well.” Now Kavon definitely felt defensive. His bull showed up, a chunk of grass hanging from one side of his mouth as he looked for a threat.

“If the ATF and NCIS want to create Talent teams, that will take some of the pressure off us. Those agencies can handle their own cases. By the way, this would be another reason for us to take a vacation. You don’t like having someone look over your shoulder, and the observers we've had in the last month have left you stomping around the office.”

“We’re not leaving town,” Kavon said in a stubborn voice that someone else might have assumed meant he was digging in on his position, but Darren recognized a retreat when he saw it.

“Pick a resort.”

“My magical shields are strongest here.” Kavon crossed his arms over his chest.

Darren sighed. Sometimes compromising with Kavon felt like putting his shoulder up to cape buffalo bull and pushing really hard. He got the same results. “We turn all phones off, don’t check email and veg out on a week of bad movies and beat the socks off the downstairs neighbors on the basketball court.” Darren laid out his terms.

After a second, Kavon gave one jerky nod. “Deal. I’ll fill out the forms. But if the office blows up and Kaslov shoots Coretta in the back, I’m going to remind you of this.” Kavon abandoned his beer and headed for the spiral staircase that led up to the small office and large balcony where Kavon liked to meditate.

Darren sighed. Apparently Kavon had demoted Joe to surname-references only. Baby steps. This week, Darren was going to get Kavon to leave the office and maybe next week he could talk him into giving the team a little more trust. Darren rested his chin on his hand and glared and Kavon’s bull. “This is your fault,” he told the guide. “Your protective instincts are all turned on high and it’s sending him into asshole overdrive.”

As usual, the guide ignored the complaint and kept chewing his imaginary grass. Guides. Darren frowned. When Kavon’s bull was around, Bennu usually rode along. Darren’s guide was conspicuously absent. He shook his head and turned his attention to the refrigerator. Kavon’s paranoia was contagious. 

Chapter 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/aberrant-magic-7-22461027 

Chapter 2: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am-7-durance-2-22500473 

Chapter 3: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am-7-durance-3-22514296 

Chapter 4: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am-7-durance-4-22544658 

Chapter 5: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am7-durance-5-22585700 

Chapter 6: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am-7-durance-6-22652631 

Chapter 7: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am7-durance-7-22675390 

Chapter 8: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am-7-durance-8-22684193 

Chapter 9: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am-7-durance-9-22744305 

Chapter 10: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am-7-durance-10-22817775 

Chapter 11: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am-7-durance-11-22905312 

Chapter 12: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am7-durance-22974766