AM 7: Durance, chapter 3 (Patreon)

So far I'm ahead of the game with Nano.  My favorite part of this universe is that I can wallow in it. There are now enough characters, enough threads, that I can weave more interesting tapestries.  This chapter picks up on a number of ideas from other books.  Hopefully the story or relationship isn't suffering because I'm having fun weaving.

Kavon sat up in bed. Nothing in the bedroom had changed, but Darren looked as shell-shocked as Kavon. Over the previous months, Kavon kept reminding Darren that the war could come at any moment, but now that it had arrived, Kavon felt utterly unprepared.

Darren brought his hands up to hide his face. “Great. So we have an evil ifrit who has returned to the world who may or may not have already found a human partner to join with, but we have no idea who the human partner might be, nor do we know which ifrit returned. Yeah. No problem there. And can we even believe Thuya?”

Kavon wished he could dismiss her warning. She was an abrasive woman, but he could feel the energy seeping through the barrier and there had been too many cases of magical hot spots showing up in the DC area. It would explain a lot. Kavon was more worried that multiple ifrit might have slipped into the world.

Darren sat up. “I'm not saying Thuya was wrong, but she admitted that she tried to manipulate me, and she withheld a lot of information the first time we met right after her death. And I’m biased because she’s a raging bitch.”

With a sigh, Kavon climbed out of bed. His hopes for a quiet morning were gone. “I might agree with your assessment of her personality. After Salma’s stories, I had expected her to be more cerebral and devout.” Thuya appeared much more skeptical in real life than Salma’s stories had led Kavon to expect. Normally Kavon appreciated that trait. He wondered if he would have more respect for Thuya if her message hadn’t inspired so much fear. Kavon didn’t like change, and he had the feeling that the world was going to change whether he wanted it or not.

Darren dramatically threw back the blanket. “Apparently we’re both doomed to be disappointed.”

When Kavon headed for the bathroom, Darren followed. “How are you feeling about the fact that Dave is still on the spirit plane?”

“I was grateful to see him again,” Kavon said honestly. He had missed having Dave’s advice, but knowing that Dave had manipulated him since his teen years was another bitter truth. Dave had encouraged him to go into law enforcement back when few shamans ever considered that path. Had he believed that was best for Kavon or had he hoped to put Kavon in a place where he had resources? Or had he wanted to minimize Kavon’s interactions with other shamans to hide Bennu?

As a young man, Kavon had struggled with loneliness. Other agents hadn’t trusted a shaman and the older agents were still steeped in racial and Talent-based discrimination. Those years had been a strain, and now he wondered if he would have chosen another path without Dave’s encouragement. After all, his guide was a bull—which spoke to Kavon’s need to have a herd. He’d grown up in a big family. As an adult, he’d wanted people he trusted around him. But until he’d formed the Talent unit, he’d been alone.

“I can't say I'm thrilled that he’s known about this problem for so many years and he never once talked to me,” Kavon said. Maybe his emotions had slipped through into the bond because Darren waited until Kavon finished pissing, and then he rested his hand on Kavon’s arm. The love and respect that flowed through the bond soothed some of the rough edges around Kavon’s heart. “I trusted him,” Kavon said softly.

“Would you change it?”

No shaman could change the past. “Ask me in a week,” Kavon said. He didn’t have a better answer.

Darren nodded. “When Bennu first partnered with me and we went through to the spirit plane, didn't you ask him about Bennu?”

Kavon washed his hand “Yes, and as I recall, Dave's answer was that he had seen many spirit guides with my bull, and that he hadn't seen that particular cattle egret for many years.”

“Was he lying?”

Kavon sighed. Dave would never be that obvious. Kavon had lost sight of the fact that Dave had a badger guide. The slow hunters would cooperate with coyotes or other predators if it meant improving their own chance of getting a meal. Their claws and teeth could do considerable damage and even wolves hesitated to cross them. Kavon should have been more cautious with a shaman chosen by a badger guide.

“Not even get Dave can lie on the spirit plane,” Kavon said, “not without getting caught. However, I suspect that he was carefully telling only part of the truth. And if Dave was trying to keep me away from other shamans, my guess is that it's some point he had his guide communicate to Bennu that it was important to hide.” Dave always taught Kavon to conceal his Talent from other shamans, so that would make sense. It would also explain why Dave hadn’t seen Bennu for several years. The bond shivered with fear, and Kavon gave Darren his full attention.

“You don't think…” Darren took a breath. “Could Bennu be in trouble?” The second he asked the question, it was as if emotional floodgates opened. The blast of fear that came through the bond nearly knocked Kavon off his feet. 

Kavon took Darren's hand in his and looked Darren in the eye to make sure that his partner listened. “Bennu is fine. If he were injured or in trouble, we would feel it. That's part of the bond we share.” Kavon reached down and touched his soul mark. “I would feel it through the vows we took. You would feel it through the connection you share with your guide.”

The fear faded, but the bond was still heavy with grief and anxiety. “Then why is he missing?”

“If you were searching for a suspect and someone called you on the cell phone, would you answer?” Kavon asked.

Darren snorted. “My boss would eviscerate me if I tried.”

That was true enough. Kavon never wanted to lose one of his team, so if they did anything in the field that put their own or other lives in danger, Kavon would not easily forgive. Ben Anderson learned that when he tried to use his weak adept Talent to target Darren with bad luck while they were in the field. 

After Frane was uncovered as the spy who had actually cursed Darren and stirred up dissension in the unit, Coretta had asked Kavon to withdraw the complaint. As far as Coretta was concerned, Ben was a pawn manipulated by Traci Frane. Kavon had refused, and Ben had transferred to some other field office with a black mark on his record. Kavon felt no guilt about it.

“Exactly,” Kavon said.

“You think Bennu is searching for whatever evil ifrit came through.”

“In which case, he's not going to be easily pulled away from that quest. If he takes his eyes off the field, he might miss his prey.” Kavon headed for the kitchen. He’d left his phone in there and he needed to text the rest of the team. If a magic war broke out, they would be on the front lines. They needed to know.

“Should we call Salma?” Darren asked.

Kavon disliked the idea of calling her away from her work. The El Nogal Djedi Center resented how much money had flowed into Toronto and El Paso, and if they didn’t get some support, they were going to start a witch hunt. And using that metaphor was probably in poor taste, but Kavon refused to make a foolish move just because it would be expedient in the short term.

If he told Salma what was going on, she would fly back immediately, and the California shamans would be twice as pissed, and Kavon couldn’t explain the situation to them. He didn’t know any of those people well enough to share a chocolate chip cookie recipe, so talking to them about the potential for a new guide civil war and purge was out of the question. “We’ll see what we can find before dragging her back here,” Kavon said firmly. He reached for his phone because it was time to talk to their team.

Kavon was texting a confused Coretta when Darren appeared in a pair of jeans and an old t-shirt. Kavon hadn’t even started, so Darren focused on getting breakfast together while Kavon reassured Coretta that he was not trying to check on the status of his cases.

Once Kavon convinced her to head over to the apartment as soon as she had an opportunity to drag Les and Rima out of the office, he put the phone down. “You know,” Darren said, “Another ifrit will have just as many powers as Bennu, but far fewer ethics. If Thuya is right, whatever enemy we have out there, he’s going to partner with whoever he finds most interesting or exciting. And unfortunately all too often interesting and exciting means crazy as hell.”

Kavon didn’t answer quickly. Unlike Darren, he didn’t like to throw theories out too quickly. He preferred to have his feet on solid ground and his conclusions backed with solid evidence. “If Thuya is right that the ifrit are looking for entertainment, it would explain why magic got so out of hand last time.” It would also explain why so many of the jinn stories focused on the delight a jinn took in tricking humans into making ill-conceived wishes. 

“If the only people getting magical powers are the ones that are interesting and exciting, that's not good. Most ethical people I know lead fairly boring lives.” Darren stirred the scrambled eggs and looked over his shoulder at Kavon. “And I include us in that number. As a kid, I thought of the FBI as being exciting and running around firing their guns and arresting bad guys.”

“Hey now, between the paperwork, the training, the workshops, and the interagency cooperation meetings, we do occasionally arrest bad guys.”

“But are we interesting enough to attract one of these evil ifrit?”

Kavon wrapped his arms around Darren’s waist and leaned against his back while Darren cooked. Kavon didn’t want interesting. He wanted predictable. He had too much he loved in this life for him to risk it on a quest for excitement.

“I’m not even sure it's fair to call them evil. If these ifrit are looking for a world to explore, isn't it more fair to say that they’re immature or adrenaline junkies? It seems like any evil came from us.”

It was like Darren to seek the best in everyone, but despite his words, he still projected anxiety. All Kavon could do was hold him and offer whatever shelter he could. Bennu’s choice to partner with Darren meant that they would both be on the front lines, so if Darren needed to think of these creatures as assholes rather than true evil, Kavon wouldn’t argue.

Kavon held Darren until the eggs were finished. As he was plating breakfast, Darren asked, “Those hotspots that showed up in Mexico City in Vatican? Are those the result of creatures who came through the barrier? Could we have several evil ifrit here?”

“I don’t know,” Kavon admitted. The only thing he hated more than change was ignorance. “I think Dave and Thuya are being honest about calling us when they realized the barrier had been breached.” Kavon just wouldn’t put a bet on that assumption.

Instead of taking his plate to the breakfast bar, Darren rested both hands on the counter and leaned over it. “So we’re looking for any human being on the face of the planet who has an interesting life who may have recently come into contact with an energy being from another dimension who was offering to give them phenomenal cosmic powers.”

Kavon rubbed Darren’s back. “That sounds right.”

“Fuck my life.”

Kavon confiscated Darren’s plate and moved both their breakfasts to the placemats. “Oh I think we’re getting fucked over enough already.”

Darren finally followed his food. “We need to bring the team in on this.”

“I already texted Coretta to bring them over as soon as she can get away.”

Darren stared at Kavon in shock. “Seriously?”

“Yes. Seriously. It’s time. I always said I would bring the others in when the time came.” Kavon would not have his people blindsided.

“Everyone?” Darren asked. “Are you going to call in Milton and Joe and Jen? How about Wyatt?”

“Whoa!” Kavon held up a hand. “We don't know our new people well enough to trust them with this kind of information, and Wyatt isn't a part of our team. He works computer support for any number of teams.”

“Wyatt has always had our backs.”

“Against suspects, yes,” Kavon said. “I would never ask him to go against FBI policy.”

“We aren’t.”

“Really?” Kavon said. “We know about a potential threat on domestic soil, and instead of going to our assistant director, we are bypassing White and handling it ourselves off the books. Do I need to explain how many FBI policies we are breaking right now?” Kavon was getting heartburn just thinking about it.

“You’re a member of the shamanic council, and they handle problems in the Talent community.”

“Really?” Kavon put his fork down and turned to face off against Darren. “Did you or did you not take an oath to defend the Constitution?”

“Of course I did.” Now Darren’s aggravation flowed freely through the bond.

“We agreed to put the Constitution and the FBI ahead of personal obligations. Maybe Halverson or McLean could point to the council and say they were acting within the scope of their duties, but the FBI manual is fairly clear that I do not have any right to withhold evidence of a danger, foreign or domestic, to American interests.”

Darren frowned. His silence was enough to make it clear he hadn’t considered the ramifications of this. If White or anyone else at the agency suspected that they had failed to report a danger, they would both get fired. Or jailed.

Darren pushed his eggs around on the plate. “What about Ahtisham?”

Kavon hadn’t realized that he’d stood. His own emotions were running high, and he calmed himself and sat back down. “He can't help us. As a mundane, I don't think this is something he needs to get involved with.”

Darren was more subdued now, and Kavon regretted coming off so strong. “How is he going to feel if he finds out the rest of the team was involved?”

“He has a wife and a child. He's using the unit to get practical experience so he can move into the negotiations team. He’s not going to get upset if we don’t treat him like a bosom buddy.” Kavon wished they didn’t have so many new members of the team because it was going to make it difficult to keep their involvement quiet. Maybe he and Darren should take a leave of absence. Kavon could use his position on the DC Shamanic Council as an excuse. 

“What about Angel?”

Kavon gritted his teeth. He respected when Angel had done, going in undercover against the mob required a lot of guts. But he had read the reports. He knew what Angel did to Matt's uncle, and Kavon could not trust the man.

When Kavon didn’t answer, Darren sighed. “You're still hung up about the Vincent attack, aren't you?”

“I never said that.” Kavon wouldn’t say it out loud because he didn’t need another lecture from Darren or Les. Both were unreasonably trusting around the felon.

“No, but the bond is full of disgust. Angel didn't have a lot of choice.”

“I understand that.” Kavon stabbed the last of his scrambled eggs.

“Do you?” Darren asked. “The last time I visited Angel and Matt, Vincent loved living with them. He was happy. He didn't hold a grudge.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Kavon said.

Darren narrowed his eyes. “He's mentally disabled; he's not an idiot. He knew what his brother was, what his brother had done, and he understands that Angel didn’t have a choice. And Matt gets it, too. Hell, the only person in that house that blames Angel for what happened is Angel. He hated what he did. So what right do you have to judge him?”

Kavon pushed his plate to one side. “You said it yourself. Angel doesn't forgive himself. He knew it was wrong and he went against his own moral code.” Kavon could not trust a man who would do that. Angel had the power to defend himself and Vincent, or—failing that—talking his way out of the situation.

“To save his own skin.” Darren’s voice went up to a near shout. “More than that, he saved Vincent's life, and Matt's, and he saved our case, in case you've forgotten.”

“I don't think he gave the shit about our case. Everything he did benefited him.”

“Really? So did he defend Matt because it was best for him? Did he go up against the mob because it was best for him? I’m fairly sure that if he were as selfish as you think, he would've changed sides and screwed our case over.”

“And then I would've hunted him down, and he knew it,” Kavon said darkly.

“You weren't around enough for him to develop any phobias about your temper.” Darren pushed away from the breakfast bar and headed for the living room window. He got halfway across the room before he turned. “He's a good man. And yes, his morality is a little tarnished, but he has an ethical core that will not bend. More importantly, he is the only person we know that can pull on earth-based magic.”

And that was the core of the problem. When Art Lammas in El Paso had revealed that Native shamanism pulled on power that Talent-based shamanism didn’t, he had rearranged the magical rules as Kavon knew them. As a Native shaman, Angel was an unknown—a variable Kavon couldn’t define or count on. He wanted to keep Angel as far away from any battle as possible. But Darren and Salma and even Art and Zach had all conspired against him. Kavon gritted his teeth before saying, “We don't need him.”

“Really? It occurs to me that when Cruz targeted you, you survived only because I had a source of magic that Cruz hadn’t anticipated. I was a mundane and who could get to the spirit plane and who could use my mundane, natural Earth magic to get you out. Angel has much more than the small amount of magic that mundanes possess just by being part of nature.” Darren held up his finger and thumb an inch apart. “He's got the supercharged version. He could have been spirit walking even without a guide if he had been trained.”

“He isn’t trained, and we can't count on him.”

“Really?” Darren’s dismissive tone made Kavon’s temper boil. But Darren continued before Kavon could say anything. “Art says that Angel’s training is going well. Whoever his Native shaman teacher is, they’ve taught him to spirit walk and start using nature magics.”

Kavon hadn’t known that. He hadn’t wanted to know that. Angel was a felon, and shamans could time walk to watch the combination as someone opened a safe. They could project fear during an armed robbery or make themselves appear more trustworthy to run a con. Shamanic powers were deadly weapons in the wrong hands. Angel might have helped them, but that didn’t make him one of the good guys. “Exactly which powers does he want to learn?”

Darren sighed as if he was disappointed in Kavon’s reaction. “Apparently Earth magic doesn’t have the same flexibility as Talent-shamanism, at least not when it comes to the powers they can develop. That's one more piece of evidence that were talking about two different types of energy. The rules are going to be different. We need every weapon we can get, and Angel brings a different magic to the table.”

“Including him means that he could tell any number of people. I am very willing to admit that if push came to shove, Angel would choose the right side in a fight.” Kavon was eighty percent sure of that, but in order to avoid another fight with Darren, it would leave it there. “However, his morality is more than tarnished. If some newspaper offered him a million dollars for a scoop, do you really think that he would walk away from that?”

Darren crossed his arms. “Considering how much the FBI had to pay him to reimburse him for the magical sink he found, I think he can afford to walk away from a million dollars. And consider this. Art and his Native American buddy have told the shamans in the Southwest about the coming battle. Those same shamans found a teacher for Angel. That means that any time they think it's appropriate, they can bring Angel into this without your approval.”

“I realize that. I'm trying very hard to not think about it,” Kavon said. This was the problem with telling people your secrets. The more people who knew, the exponentially shorter the time information would stay secret. 

“We can tell him and bring him into it or we can shut him out and run the risk that he’s going to get involved in this fight on his own.”

Kavon doubted that. Angel appeared far too good at looking out for his own interests to jump into a war. However, Darren was right that if they wanted to control the flow of information and make sure Angel didn’t interfere, they needed to include him. He sighed. “Text him and tell him to come over after 6pm.” Since Coretta was handling all the cases, Kavon assumed she wouldn’t be able to get the team over before then. In the meantime, he planned to meditate and then call Halverson and McLean and see if they had heard anything about powerful new shamans appearing out of nowhere. 

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