AM 7: Durance, chapter 2 (Patreon)

Darren woke slowly, and he could feel the power flowing between him and Kavon. Most of the time, Kavon quieted their bond, or at least he tried to. After they had visited the deep well of magic and committed themselves to each other, they had become one in a way Darren had never expected. For him, the bond was a constant source of reassurance.

But Kavon tried his best to keep his emotions muted and private. Darren suspected Kavon wanted to shield Darren for his darker emotions. Kavon was a cranky bastard, and it was possible that he simply didn't want to push those emotions onto Darren. If that was his motivation, Darren found it ironic. Kavon might be grumpy, but most of his emotions ran deep with respect and love and protectiveness for his team.

But now Darren wondered if the silence in their bond had simply been stress. With all the new members on the team and the memory of Traci Frane’s betrayal looming over them, even a year later, they had both been guarded. Hopefully a week of vacation would set that right. Already Darren could feel the last notes of excitement and confusion as Kavon dreamed.

It was as if Kavon was shaking free of the work stress. Darren certainly felt much more relaxed, even if he needed to keep pushing aside a stubborn urge to call Rima and ask her how the Little case was going. But if she though Darren was checking up on her, she would gut him. 

Besides, Darren needed to set a good example. Kavon was not going to stop charging into every situation just because he wasn't the lead agent. Darren needed to ease the way for him to let go of a little control. And when he mastered that, the Nobel Prize committee would call him to come get his Peace Prize. The entire law enforcement community of the East Coast would come to that celebration.

Darren ran his hands over Kavon’s side and then trailed his fingers down to where the adept colors stained Kavon’s dark skin. Subtle reds and beiges swirled together into a handprint design on Kavon’s hip. Darren’s handprint. Threads of color escaped the pattern and swirled out into the surrounding skin. Darren traced the lines that led toward Kavon’s stomach. He felt the echoing touch through his own bond mark. That proof that their link was still strong reassured Darren more effectively than any words.

Kavon stirred and slowly opened his eyes. Darren expected his sense of their bond to fade as Kavon reasserted his privacy. Instead Kavon held out his hand, and Darren threaded his own fingers with Kavon’s.

“Good morning,” Kavon said with an easy smile. Darren couldn’t feel any regret or frustration. For all his complaints, Kavon liked being on vacation.

“We have nothing to do and nowhere to go.” Darren leaned closer and pressed his lips against Kavon’s in a chaste kiss. Kavon retaliated with a very not-chaste hand sliding down to cup Darren’s ass. He squeezed it and pulled Darren’s body tight against this. Then he deepened the kiss into something hungry and demanding. Their mutual love and respect and animal lust swelled, filling the bond with a shared desire.

Darren’s cock hardened, but Kavon chose to break the kiss. “I can feel your smugness,” Kavon said. He raised an eyebrow in mock indignation.

Darren laughed. “I like being right every once in a while.”

“You are far too much of a creative thinker to care about being right. That's why you get us some of our best leads, because you don't mind flying off in some insane direction and being completely and entirely wrong.” Soft admiration and a touch of exasperation flowed into the bond.

“That might be true,” Darren admitted.

“Yes, I know.”

“But you love me anyway,” Darren said with a grin.

Kavon tightened his arm, hugging Darren close to his side. “I really do,” he said, and then he placed a soft kiss on Darren with lips. “I love you madly.”

Darren twitched his body and gave Kavon his best come-hither look. “Whatever will we do with the morning?”

Kavon frowned, and for a second, Darren was insulted. He was offering sex. He was offering great sex, yet the bond echoed with confusion and a faint sense of alarm. Then Darren felt it. A tugging. A sense of the world slipping slightly out of phase. A wrongness.

“What the...”. Darren looked around when he realized they had just appeared on the spirit plane. 

However, he had not seen this part of the spirit plane before. The familiar African plain with the vein-like network of tiny tributaries and rivers remained. The brightly painted Egyptian monuments stood in the distance. But one side of the landscape was dominated by a wall of unnaturally brilliant blue ice. A tall waterfall slipped over the ice cliffs, vanishing when it reached the base where the ice merged into the yellowing grasses of the veldt.

An older man and young woman stood next to the ice wall. He was late middle-aged and solidly built. He walked with the sort of confidence Darren associated with power, and he looked incredibly familiar. The man started walking towards them, a smile on his face. Of course, smiling did not always mean friendly. 

Kavon’s shock filled the bond. “Dave?” Kavon stepped forward. “I thought you had moved on to the next realm.”

Dave’s grin grew larger. “How could I when this world is still so interesting?” 

Darren suddenly remembered his first visit to the spirit plane back when Bennu had first chosen him. Kavon hadn’t understood what was happening, so he had brought Darren to the spirit plane to meet his teacher: Dave Boyce. However, not long after that, Bennu had created a massive storm on the spirit plane when trying to save Kavon’s life. Kavon had said the chaos had either forced Dave to move to the next realm or that Dave had gotten hopelessly lost as the magical realm reformed into new patterns. 

Hell, Darren and Kavon had spent weeks traveling the spirit plane rescuing other shamans who had lost their way and couldn’t find the exits. Without help, their bodies would have eventually failed, leaving them trapped here forever. But in all their explorations, they had never seen any hint of Dave.

“I hope I didn't pull you away from anything too important. I tried to wait until your auras had calmed and it felt like you were in a good place to leave the physical world,” Dave said.

Darren was starting to think that the universe in general had something against their sex life. They certainly got interrupted enough.

“It's fine,” Kavon said, even though it totally wasn't. “What are you doing here? And how did you pull me into the spirit plane?”

Dave grinned, and a badger ran up to sit at his feet. The guide tilted his head to the side and studied Darren with undisguised curiosity. He was the only guide who had chosen to make an appearance. Dave said, “Sometimes even an old dog learns new tricks if he tries hard enough and hangs around a while.”

“And if someone can teach them,” the woman said. “I am pleased to meet both of you.” Her features were too sharp to be called classically beautiful, but she was a handsome woman with long black hair and a flowing aqua dress with elaborate embroidery at the wrist. Something told Darren that she didn’t have a body in the physical world. Like Dave, she’d already died. 

Most of the time, when people crossed over permanently, they chose a spirit form closer to middle age. However, this shaman either died young or had really enjoyed her early twenties.

Kavon took a small step to the side as if to shield Darren. Darren would have taken offense only Bennu and Kavon’s bull were missing. Without their guides around, Kavon had much more power. And Darren had the feeling this woman was dangerous. She stepped forward, forcing Dave to the side.

“No doubt you don’t recognize me. I’m Thuya Sherif,” she offered. 

Shock made Darren blurt out, “Thuya as in the dead Egyptian shaman whose suspicious death and we investigated last year?” Darren remembered the woman, both her aged body in her bed and meeting her on the spirit plane where she had still looked old. She had pointed them toward Arlington where Cruz tried to set up his own magical kingdom. Kavon blasted the bond with suspicion and fury, all colored with a hearty dose of fear.

Immediately, Kavon’s bull materialized. The guide shook his head so his long horns swept the air in search of an enemy to gore.

Thuya ignored the potential threat of evisceration, which made Darren worry more. Her guide wasn’t visible, but when they’d met her shortly after her death, Darren had seen her mastodon guide. He had power, enough to damage if not outright destroy Kavon’s bull.

She offered them a sweet, grandmotherly smile that didn’t fit with her youthful appearance. “I appreciate that you took my death so seriously, especially when I was not forthcoming about the cause.”

“You mean you avoided your people on the spirit plane, which left all of your colleagues to suspect something had happened,” Kavon said, his tone dripping with anger. Thuya’s refusal to contact her colleagues on the spirit plane had devastated Salma. From the time Salma’s parents had left her with the Egyptian authority at the age of twelve, Thuya had raised her. Salma had told Darren that she’d expected Thuya’s death, but to have her mentor vanish had been the hardest part of her life since becoming a magical adept.

“I had spoken to them about the necessity of valuing the mission over the length of time one is able to spend in the physical realm.” Thuya’s words carried a mild sort of regret, but not the strong emotion of a mother-figure forced to leave a loved one behind. Darren firmly placed Thuya into a camp with people who mistakenly thought they were morally right.

Dave had been standing to the side allowing her to take lead, but even Dave flinched, either because he disliked her lack of compassion or he felt Kavon’s anger.

“The mission?” Kavon asked coldly. Darren admired his calm because the bond quivered with anger.

“Salma understood that if I chose not to make myself known in the world of Adam’s clay after my death, it meant that I had a more important role to fulfill. My absence served a purpose.”

“Would that purpose be to manipulate me into a relationship with the Egyptian authorities?” Kavon demanded. On the spirit plane, any lie she told would stain the air, which was the only reason Darren expected the truth from her. As much as Darren liked Salma, she would lie or cheat and possibly even kill to protect the world from the evil ifrit. She was a true believer in that mission, and this was the woman who had raised her to have that belief.

“No. Absolutely not.” The crisp, cool feel of honest spread through the spirit plane. “I hoped to manipulate the shaman who had been chosen by the ifrit Bennu.” Thuya shifted her attention to Darren.

Dave said with a shrug, “At least she's refreshingly honest.”

Kavon moved between Darren and Thuya. “And manipulative.”

When Thuya spoke, her words had a weight that filled the air. “At this point, I assume you understand how important it is to focus on the mission. No doubt your own mentor and I have done things which you would perceive as manipulative, however, we both have your success in mind. The consequences of failure are too great for us to worry about hurting feelings.”

“Dave knows I don't care about feelings,” Kavon said. “I do care about information. How long have you two been working together?”

Darren took Kavon’s distraction as an opportunity to move out from behind him.

“Only since I died,” Thuya said. “I was not even aware that Americans understood the nature of the coming war. Of course the Catholics have their own preparations, but their immature approach this whole situation is ridiculous. If they believe superstition can save them from the evil ifrit, they are idiots.” 

No doubt she believed every word, but believing in blind prejudices didn’t make that sort of narrow-minded attitude any less evil. Salma thought the sun rose and set on this woman, but she sounded like a comic book villain. That was probably unfair since she had fought to protect the world since before Darren was born, but truth hurt.

Darren spoke up since Kavon appeared distracted by his own simmering temper. “I’m fairly sure Salma thinks that Allah is going to come in on our side, so I would not be so quick to accuse others of superstition.”

“Oh, I find Salma superstitious as well. However, her superstitions don't prevent her from acting. She doesn't hide in the basement and hope that someone else will fix the world through faith.”

“Thuya,” Dave said sharply.

She rolled her eyes. “Egyptians have always known the war was coming, but we did not fully appreciate that there were others standing with us. Perhaps that is why Bennu chose to return here. Perhaps they forced us to seek alliance because we had grown too insular. Or perhaps they realized that the prison walls grew weak here.”

“Or perhaps your ifirt simply saw someone he liked.” From the tone Dave used, this seemed to be an old argument.

Thuya hand-waved Dave’s suggestion away. “He is an ancient power who has lived for thousands of years. I doubt he would be easily swayed by the sight of a foolish youth.”

Darren looked from one to the other. “What are you talking about?”

“Despite the faith and dedication of others, I was the first to see the ifrit return,” Dave said, his tone and the spirit plane reflecting his smugness. “I left the physical plane and focused my time here because my arthritis and my slowing mind were proving to be too much of a distraction.”

Kavon tilted his head to the side and projected mild alarm. “Dave? What did you do?”

Dave ignored the question and conjured a fallen tree and sat on the trunk. “Do you remember when your bull got caught in one of the ancient rivers?” he asked Kavon.

Kavon had told Darren that story as an example of the dangers on the spirit plane. As a very young shaman, Kavon had grown too interested one of the deep magical wells. Because of Kavon's interest his bull had wandered close and it got stuck. Kavon had waded into the waters and risked being pulled into some great unknown. At least four times he’d told Darren the story, usually when he was trying to impress on Darren the idea that magical guides did not automatically understand the dangers inherent in magic. To this day, one of his bull’s legs was still covered in gray hair where the water had soaked in.

“I remember,” Kavon said slowly.

Dave smiled. “That day, I knew I had to protect you.”

“You knew very little until I came,” Thuya said under her breath.

“Did you die to protect me?” Kavon flooded the bond with his horror and guilt.

“No, I moved to a different plane in order to better fight for my world,” Dave said. “I knew Bennu was not a guide from this realm, and I needed to keep you a safe distance from others. I could do that from here, and at the same time, I could search this plane for the danger I suspected had attracted the attention of the old guides.”

“None of this matters,” Thuya said. “We called you here because the first of the old ones from beyond the barrier has returned. An evil jinn is loose in the world.” She turned to look at the ice wall, and her attention seemed to make a huge crack in the ice wall more visible. The waterfall began with trickles of water from the jagged broken edges. 

Panic wrapped itself around Darren’s heart. “Where’s Bennu?” he asked. No one answered, but the alarm stained the bond before Kavon shut it down.

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