Posted using PostyBirb",
"writing": "\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[b]Red Deer, AB, March 2nd[/b]\n\n\n\nThomas moaned as a wave of well-being pulsed through him in time with the cock in his ass. “Wha—”\n\n“Not yet,” Olavo whispered in his ear. “You make a sound and Limbani’s going to want in on this. I think you need further healing.”\n\nHealing?\n\nThe capybara pulled out, pushed back in. His motion was quick, but not hurried. A slick hand closed around Thomas’s cock and he reflexively thrust.\n\n“That’s it,” Olavo whispered, “move with me.” He picked up speed, and Thomas had to fuck the hand quicker, too.\n\nIt tightened around his cock. “Oh fuck,” the rat groaned as he came.\n\n“Oh yeah,” the capybara gasped, his cock deep in Thomas, pulsing as the ass squeezed it.\n\nHe felt more awake, but this hadn’t come with another wave of well-being.\n\n“I hear him!” Limbani exclaimed as the door burst open. “It’s my turn. He needs all the energy he can get!”\n\nBefore Thomas could even think of voicing his opinion, Olavo was out of him, and the rat rolled onto his back. His legs were over the monkey’s shoulders. “Welcome back.” The cock pushed into his ass.\n\nThis was definitely a good way to be welcomed back from where ever he’d been.\n\n* * * * *\n\n[b]Red Deer, AB, March 2nd[/b]\n\n\n\nThomas staggered out of the bathroom, a grinning Armadillo in tow. He was going to need Olavo to heal him after that session. What was supposed to be him just cleaning up had turned into him against the wall and Gilbert fucking him like his life depended on it. It had been so hard that now Thomas thought his sternum might be dislocated.\n\n“Everyone’s had a turn,” he said, eyeing the naked guys on the large hotel bed. The kangaroo seated by the window was the only one still dressed, and who hadn’t fucked him. “Maybe someone can tell me how the fuck I’m still alive?” He remembered Grant breaking his staff, which would explain the morose expression. Then, or maybe before, lethargy had hit him hard. There were bits of his friends fighting, Grant breaking another staff, them winning and…\n\n“You might remember me fucking you,” the capybara replied, grinning.\n\n“I doubt you did that in the parking lot.” He motioned to the room. “How did I survive to get here?”\n\n“The truck stop we were at is across the road,” Gilbert said, pointing at the other window. Thomas moved to it and looked out. \n\nAcross the road was an exaggeration. Thomas had to search to find it, but it was only a block a way. The low building surrounded by pavement, with the charging station on the far side and the cargo trucks parked against the back fence.\n\n“Where’s the police?” he asked, looking for a sign they had been there.\n\n“They weren’t involved.”\n\nThomas faced the room. “They let you drag a bleeding man away and not one person called the police?”\n\n“First off,” Olavo said, “we removed the dagger and used a healing sigil so you weren’t bleeding. Second. Money talks, or in this case, silences people.”\n\n“Okay, but I was dying. I’m pretty sure you putting cum on me with that sigil thing wasn’t be enough to do that.”\n\n“You weren’t dying,” Gilbert said, “just drained. And even if you had been at door’s death, this is a Marriott Hotel.”\n\n“How does us being lucky enough to come across a second hotel owned by Madoc’s family have anything to do with me surviving even if I had been dying?”\n\n“The concierge in every Marriott knows what it means to be Society,” Olavo said. “I told him who I was, which family I was from. We only needed to be escorted to the back so I could start healing you while the room was readied. If we hadn’t had a healer, then he would have used the appropriate healing phrase to help you.”\n\nThomas stared as the implication sank in. “So you can go anywhere and find all kinds of help at a Marriott?” When Madoc had told him his family owned the chain, Thomas hadn’t expected every hotel could be used as a safe house. Catering to their sexual needs was the only aspect he’d considered.\n\n“Pretty much,” Limbani said, resting against the capybara. “Worldwide franchise, so anywhere in the world a Lewiston finds himself, he can be like home. We’re just lucky none of our families have been locked out like two I could mention.”\n\n“Okay, fine.” Thomas raised a hand to keep Olavo from responding to the monkey’s comment. He had more important things to know than who did or didn’t deserve to be barred from this place. “You all have safe houses, so long as you’re on the good side of the Lewistons. Do any of you know what happened to me? I mean, a dagger in my side shouldn’t have left me feeling like I just teleported to the moon. I was able to stay conscious until the fight was over.”\n\n“Your unconsciousness was because of blood loss,” Gilbert said. “Not the phrase on the knife.” He lobbed something at Thomas, and the rat identified the wooden handle and flinched away instead of catching it.\n\n“Are you crazy?” He glared at the armadillo as the knife fell on the carpet. “That thing nearly killed me.” Thomas looked at it as Gilbert walked to him. The knife was one solid piece of wood, with the dark red inscription written along the side, from the pommel to where the blade became too narrow to continue.\n\nThe armadillo picked it up. “It can’t hurt you.” He turned it and indicated the thin groove in the blade with branches doing to the edge that ended at the guard. “This needs your blood to activate.”\n\n“Any blood,” Olavo said.\n\n“We don’t know that,” the armadillo countered. “The phrase doesn’t identify him specifically, but the effects have to—”\n\n“It drained his energy,” the capybara said. “That means anyone of us with that in them would be in the same condition as he found himself in.”\n\n“But they said that—”\n\n“Can we stick to the important thing?” Thomas asked, cutting Gilbert off. “Why did they try to kill me?”\n\n“This isn’t lethal,” Gilbert said. “I mean, other than the stabbing part, but she didn’t target anything vital. The phrase is sadistically clever, but that wouldn’t have killed you.”\n\nThomas looked at the Armadillo holding the knife. He wasn’t looking at it like he did his grenade, which Thomas felt was a good sign, but… “Why does it sound like you know what that thing does?”\n\n“Because I know how to read,” Gilbert replied, his tone darkening. He turned the blade, so the symbols were visible again.\n\n“He doesn’t remember any of that,” Limbani said, which seemed to annoy Gilbert again.\n\n“This is our magic,” he stated. “On a weapon some other faction used on you.”\n\n“And by your anger, I take it shouldn’t have happened?” Thomas asked.\n\n“Shouldn’t is the critical word,” Olavo said. “The factions are insular. We each have our god, and our overall outlook on the world is strongly influenced by that god. That means we have nearly no reasons to want to interact with other faction when it come gaining something relating to our god, so our power.”\n\n“Different filters,” Thomas said, getting confused looks from his friends but a small smile from Grant.\n\nOlavo shook his head and continued. “For one of us to hand another faction something that can render us unable to defend ourselves?” he seems lost for a second. “Even if you trust that person not to use it on you, when the other families find out, the fallout is going to be huge.”\n\n“Not to mention not a lot of people know Thomas is one of us,” Gilbert said. “The raccoon outright stated Thomas was a target.” He stared at Olavo, who closed his mouth. “I doubt this would be anything more than a wood dagger if they used it against Grant. Even if this is something that was lying around is some war chest, why would they know to pull it out?”\n\n“They saw me with Grant,” Thomas said.\n\n“But they didn’t know you were Society, did they?” the armadillo said in an accusatory tone, looking at the kangaroo.\n\nGrant shook his head. “Kingsley didn’t see enough of him to work that out.”\n\n“Lullaby, the raccoon. She said they had a deal to hand me over to someone. They said they weren’t going to honor it, but—”\n\n“Can we not used the codenames the pangolin chick gave them?” Limbani said over dramatically. “It makes it sound like they’re some powerful supervillain organization.”\n\n“They are evil,” Grant muttered.\n\n“Her name is Shila,” Olavo said, causing Grant’s head to snap up. “And as the one to run right into getting knocked out, you don’t have the credential to judge how powerful they were.”\n\n“Can we focus?” Thomas asked, stopping himself from asking Grant how he was. There would be time for that down the line. “From what she said, it sounded like the deal was for them to collect and then deliver me to someone, possibly in exchange for something that would prevent me from helping Grant escape their grasp again. How many people do you know want me badly enough to make this kind of deal?”\n\nThat they had to think about it didn’t impress Thomas. Until he remembered they didn’t actually know him, whatever had been done to their memory had turned the bat into some background character in their lives instead of the one basically at the center of it.\n\n“That Henry,” Limbani finally said.\n\nOlavo nodded. “Madoc was calling him every day to update him. Since he wasn’t actually Raphael’s right-hand man, that means he was definitely interested in you.” The capybara considered something. “And as a Stoker who clearly is initiated, it’s not too much of a stretch that he’d know sigils and phrases. I don’t know how he’d know to contact this Chamber faction, but that could definitely be his work.”\n\n“Why do you sound so certain?” Thomas asked.\n\nGilbert swore. “Because blood magic is what the Stokers did.” he snapped pictures of the knife, each side even at the end of the pommel. “That’s what got them destroyed. You have no idea the horrors that’s possible when you start dealing in blood without regards for the consequences. I need to get—” he stopped.\n\n“What?” Olavo asked. \n\n“I need to get this double checked,” the armadillo said. “But if this is Stoker level magic, there might be something hidden in there. But I can’t send that to my family’s archivist. I’m going to have to explain how I came across this.”\n\n“You don’t want them to know you’re on an adventure?” Thomas asked.\n\nGilbert waved that aside. “I have no idea where Raphael is with letting the other elders know there’s a Stoker out there. If I’m the one to make the revelation, that’s going to be one shit show I’m not going to enjoy.”\n\n“Call that Madoc,” Limbani said. “He’s a Lewiston. He can get you in touch with their archivist, right?”\n\n“Wouldn’t you have healed whatever hidden thing it did?” Thomas ask Olavo as Gilbert moved away putting his phone to his ear.\n\n“If it caused damage, I healed that, but Gilbert’s right there could be a subtle effect hidden in the phrasing. Blood is extremely powerful. The phrase itself is written in blood, so they were serious about whatever effect this creates.” He was quiet again. “You said Grant was good at remaining hidden, but if this Stoker had even a drop of Grant’s blood, he could make them a scrying phrase capable of punching through just about any warding he could make. If they’ve been after him for any amount of time, and it sounded like this wasn’t the first time they nearly caught him, so blood is something they would—” he stopped and Grant’s quiet voice became audible.\n\n“I don’t know, Shila,” the kangaroo said in the phone, tone flat. “Yes, I know.” Pause. “I didn’t plan it.” Another pause. “Kingsley is pissed.”\n\nThomas took the phone out of his friend’s hand and the kangaroo’s only reaction was to lower his arm.\n\n“Shila, you—”\n\n“Put Grant back on,” the pangolin snapped. “This is more important than whatever you think you need him for.”\n\n“Maybe you didn’t hear the tone he was speaking in, Shila, but Grant needs a minute.” He disconnected her mid retort. He put the phone on the table next to the seat and crouched before Grant. “How are you?”\n\n“It’s fine,” he replied in the same flat tone, eyes distant.\n\n“Grant, looked at me.” The kangaroo didn’t react, so Thomas grabbed his shoulders and gave a shake, causing him to raise his head. “How are you?”\n\n“It’s fine,” he repeated. His gaze was still vacant, and Thomas winced.\n\n“What’s my name?” he demanded, shaking him.\n\nGrant focussed on him. “Thomas.”\n\nThomas breathed easier. “Good. Now, how are you?”\n\n“I’m—”\n\n“I swear to God, Grant, if you say you’re fine, I’m unleashing Limbani on your ass.”\n\n“I don’t do straight boys!” the monkey announced from the bed.\n\n“Bullshit,” Gilbert replied. “You’ll do any guy you can talk into it.”\n\n“I’m pan,” Grant said, then frowned as if he hadn’t intended to say anything.\n\nLimbani opened his mouth, then closed it, taking his phone.\n\n“You shouldn’t have told him that,” Thomas said, trying to not smile. “Once he looks up the definition, you aren’t going to get a chance to say no.” He paused. “How are you, Grant? Really.”\n\nThe kangaroo took a long, shuddering breath. “I don’t know.”\n\n“Okay.” Thomas wasn’t going to argue with progress, no matter how small it was. “Why did you break your staff?”\n\n“I…” he trailed off and his gaze went unfocused for a second. “I didn’t.”\n\n“I saw you break it over your knee, Grant,” Thomas said cautiously.\n\n“That wasn’t my staff anymore. I’d released it.” He fell silent. “I didn’t think it was going to work, but I couldn’t let the Chamber have it. To pass it from hand to hand, use its power to enslave others. I figured that in giving up the power, then destroying what had symbolized it, Kingsley would get the point.”\n\n“Give up your power?”\n\n“My staff was my connection to the universe, Thomas. There can be staves without a practitioner, but there can’t be a practitioner without a staff.” He looked at his hands. “Except…”\n\nThomas waited, but when the rest didn’t come, he prodded Grant. “Except what?”\n\n“I took hold of Harrison’s staff. I wrapped both hands around the shaft and grabbed it.”\n\nThomas was confused for a second, then remember what Grant had told him, his own confusion when he’d watched the kangaroo grab the coyote’s staff. “That shouldn’t have happened.”\n\n“There are encyclopedias worth of rule governing who can touch a staff and under what circumstance. But in the middle of a fight? While being wielded? I wasn’t thinking I was just doing. I should have been flung away the moment I touched it.”\n\n“And yet you grabbed it,” Thomas said. \n\n“But I don’t have a staff,” Grant said with the kind of insistence that screamed there was something wrong with the world. Then Thomas noticed the fear in his friend’s eyes. He tried to understand what about the situation scared him, but short of asking, he didn’t know enough. \n\nBut that wasn’t the kind of thing you went and asked someone about… Oh fuck it. “What are you afraid of, Grant?” he asked carefully.\n\nThe kangaroo swallowed. “There’s only one group able to take a staff that doesn’t belong to them.” He swallowed again, and then he continued. It was barely above a whisper. “What if I’m Chamber now?”\n\nOh fuck, he’d done it now. How was he supposed to help when he knew shit about the Chamber? Well, he did know one thing. “You broke two of their staves, Grant. That scared the shit out of them.”\n\nGrant shook his head. “You don’t understand. I couldn’t have broken them.”\n\n“I saw you do it.”\n\n“What do you know about Hiroshima, Thomas?” the kangaroo asked, his voice trembling.\n\nThe rat had to dredge the memory from deep into his high school history classes. “One of two cities that had nuclear bombs dropped on them to end World War 2.”\n\nGrant nodded. “There was a practitioner safe house about a quarter-mile from the epicenter. There was a staff stored there, hidden so the Chamber wouldn’t get to it. When it was safe, Practitioners went there to take the remains, move them somewhere respectful. Instead, they found the staff completely intact.”\n\n“Alright,” Thomas said. “I’m not up on my nuclear weapon trivia….” Come on, Gilbert, help a frat brother out here. You’re the fucking nuclear scientist here, not me. \n\n“Little Boy,” Grant said, “obliterated everything within a one-mile radius of where it fell.”\n\nThomas swallowed, working out the kind of power that would require. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you did do it. And as the world’s first teleporter, let me assure you, anything is actually possible with magic.”\n\nThe words didn’t have the effect Thomas hoped for. Instead of taking them and rallying around them, he seemed to be shutting himself down. Thomas knew this had to be a crisis of faith level of screwed up, but it felt different. This felt like what he remembered of the time his parents had taken cared of Neil’s father after his wife died. “Tell me about your staff,” he said, remembering how his mother had gently gotten Stewart to speak about her.\n\nThe kangaroo stared at him.\n\n“I mean,” Thomas said, hoping this would be prodding enough, because after this, he was out of ideas. “It is at the center of all this, right? A ramshackle assembly of pieces of wood held together by twine, nails, and I think I saw duct tape, that’s none the less capable of calling down tornados to level building and lightning to blow up vans.”\n\nGrant snorted as Thomas felt Gilbert’s glare.\n\n“It was never supposed to do that,” the kangaroo said, and Thomas kept looking at him expectantly. Come on, keep going. “My staff was going to be about hope, not storms. I made it from what was left behind. From what people used to rebuild. Somewhere in there, there should have been this kernel of never giving up no matter how bad things got. Instead, I ended up with a tool of mass destruction.” He shook his head. “In the wrong hands, Katrina would look like a spring shower compared with what it could have unleashed.”\n\n“And you kept it out of those hands, Grant. For as long as you could, and when you couldn’t anymore, you let it go.” Thomas place a hand on Grant’s knee. He could see the moment forming, how he was going to Hallmark movie his way into pulling Grant out of his depression. He opened his mouth—\n\n“Fuck yes!” Gilbert yelled from the bed, causing both the rat and kangaroo to look in his direction. The armadillo was on the bed, the capybara’s legs over his shoulder, pounding for all he was worth.\n\nThomas realizes someone was missing, and he found Limbani looming over him, looking at the rat and Grant with utter innocence, despite being naked and rock hard. The look of innocence shifted to confusion. “Is story time over?”\n\n“If it is,” a familiar, not particularly happy, woman’s voice said from the television, “We have some important things to talk about.”\n\n“You’re going to have to make it fast, Shila,” Thomas said as the monkey pressed himself against him. “I haven’t been able to find this monkey’s off switch yet.”\n\n“Why don’t you try a terrorist threat that’s going to result in it being just about impossible to cross the border?” she said. “I already have Grant’s passport set up with a physical version waiting for him at the front desk. You guys have to get moving now, if you want to have a chance to pull that ward trick on them a second time.”\n\n“Are you telling me to delay sex just because of a few terrorists?” Limbani asked, offended, then muttered something that sounded unflattering in his language.\n\n“Is he for real? She asked, incredulously.\n\n“If he’s a mirage,” Thomas replied, chuckling. “He’s a very tactile one.” He pulled the monkey up as he stood. “If you get dressed now, I’ll give you dibs on me anytime you want from here to the border.”\n\nThe speculative look Limbani gave him already made Thomas regret the offer, but getting moving was the priority. Which meant. He looked around the room.\n\n“Okay, what have you done with my clothes?”",
"writing_bbcode_parsed": "
Red Deer, AB, March 2nd
Thomas moaned as a wave of well-being pulsed through him in time with the cock in his ass. “Wha—”
“Not yet,” Olavo whispered in his ear. “You make a sound and Limbani’s going to want in on this. I think you need further healing.”
Healing?
The capybara pulled out, pushed back in. His motion was quick, but not hurried. A slick hand closed around Thomas’s cock and he reflexively thrust.
“That’s it,” Olavo whispered, “move with me.” He picked up speed, and Thomas had to fuck the hand quicker, too.
It tightened around his cock. “Oh fuck,” the rat groaned as he came.
“Oh yeah,” the capybara gasped, his cock deep in Thomas, pulsing as the ass squeezed it.
He felt more awake, but this hadn’t come with another wave of well-being.
“I hear him!” Limbani exclaimed as the door burst open. “It’s my turn. He needs all the energy he can get!”
Before Thomas could even think of voicing his opinion, Olavo was out of him, and the rat rolled onto his back. His legs were over the monkey’s shoulders. “Welcome back.” The cock pushed into his ass.
This was definitely a good way to be welcomed back from where ever he’d been.
* * * * *
Red Deer, AB, March 2nd
Thomas staggered out of the bathroom, a grinning Armadillo in tow. He was going to need Olavo to heal him after that session. What was supposed to be him just cleaning up had turned into him against the wall and Gilbert fucking him like his life depended on it. It had been so hard that now Thomas thought his sternum might be dislocated.
“Everyone’s had a turn,” he said, eyeing the naked guys on the large hotel bed. The kangaroo seated by the window was the only one still dressed, and who hadn’t fucked him. “Maybe someone can tell me how the fuck I’m still alive?” He remembered Grant breaking his staff, which would explain the morose expression. Then, or maybe before, lethargy had hit him hard. There were bits of his friends fighting, Grant breaking another staff, them winning and…
“You might remember me fucking you,” the capybara replied, grinning.
“I doubt you did that in the parking lot.” He motioned to the room. “How did I survive to get here?”
“The truck stop we were at is across the road,” Gilbert said, pointing at the other window. Thomas moved to it and looked out.
Across the road was an exaggeration. Thomas had to search to find it, but it was only a block a way. The low building surrounded by pavement, with the charging station on the far side and the cargo trucks parked against the back fence.
“Where’s the police?” he asked, looking for a sign they had been there.
“They weren’t involved.”
Thomas faced the room. “They let you drag a bleeding man away and not one person called the police?”
“First off,” Olavo said, “we removed the dagger and used a healing sigil so you weren’t bleeding. Second. Money talks, or in this case, silences people.”
“Okay, but I was dying. I’m pretty sure you putting cum on me with that sigil thing wasn’t be enough to do that.”
“You weren’t dying,” Gilbert said, “just drained. And even if you had been at door’s death, this is a Marriott Hotel.”
“How does us being lucky enough to come across a second hotel owned by Madoc’s family have anything to do with me surviving even if I had been dying?”
“The concierge in every Marriott knows what it means to be Society,” Olavo said. “I told him who I was, which family I was from. We only needed to be escorted to the back so I could start healing you while the room was readied. If we hadn’t had a healer, then he would have used the appropriate healing phrase to help you.”
Thomas stared as the implication sank in. “So you can go anywhere and find all kinds of help at a Marriott?” When Madoc had told him his family owned the chain, Thomas hadn’t expected every hotel could be used as a safe house. Catering to their sexual needs was the only aspect he’d considered.
“Pretty much,” Limbani said, resting against the capybara. “Worldwide franchise, so anywhere in the world a Lewiston finds himself, he can be like home. We’re just lucky none of our families have been locked out like two I could mention.”
“Okay, fine.” Thomas raised a hand to keep Olavo from responding to the monkey’s comment. He had more important things to know than who did or didn’t deserve to be barred from this place. “You all have safe houses, so long as you’re on the good side of the Lewistons. Do any of you know what happened to me? I mean, a dagger in my side shouldn’t have left me feeling like I just teleported to the moon. I was able to stay conscious until the fight was over.”
“Your unconsciousness was because of blood loss,” Gilbert said. “Not the phrase on the knife.” He lobbed something at Thomas, and the rat identified the wooden handle and flinched away instead of catching it.
“Are you crazy?” He glared at the armadillo as the knife fell on the carpet. “That thing nearly killed me.” Thomas looked at it as Gilbert walked to him. The knife was one solid piece of wood, with the dark red inscription written along the side, from the pommel to where the blade became too narrow to continue.
The armadillo picked it up. “It can’t hurt you.” He turned it and indicated the thin groove in the blade with branches doing to the edge that ended at the guard. “This needs your blood to activate.”
“Any blood,” Olavo said.
“We don’t know that,” the armadillo countered. “The phrase doesn’t identify him specifically, but the effects have to—”
“It drained his energy,” the capybara said. “That means anyone of us with that in them would be in the same condition as he found himself in.”
“But they said that—”
“Can we stick to the important thing?” Thomas asked, cutting Gilbert off. “Why did they try to kill me?”
“This isn’t lethal,” Gilbert said. “I mean, other than the stabbing part, but she didn’t target anything vital. The phrase is sadistically clever, but that wouldn’t have killed you.”
Thomas looked at the Armadillo holding the knife. He wasn’t looking at it like he did his grenade, which Thomas felt was a good sign, but… “Why does it sound like you know what that thing does?”
“Because I know how to read,” Gilbert replied, his tone darkening. He turned the blade, so the symbols were visible again.
“He doesn’t remember any of that,” Limbani said, which seemed to annoy Gilbert again.
“This is our magic,” he stated. “On a weapon some other faction used on you.”
“And by your anger, I take it shouldn’t have happened?” Thomas asked.
“Shouldn’t is the critical word,” Olavo said. “The factions are insular. We each have our god, and our overall outlook on the world is strongly influenced by that god. That means we have nearly no reasons to want to interact with other faction when it come gaining something relating to our god, so our power.”
“Different filters,” Thomas said, getting confused looks from his friends but a small smile from Grant.
Olavo shook his head and continued. “For one of us to hand another faction something that can render us unable to defend ourselves?” he seems lost for a second. “Even if you trust that person not to use it on you, when the other families find out, the fallout is going to be huge.”
“Not to mention not a lot of people know Thomas is one of us,” Gilbert said. “The raccoon outright stated Thomas was a target.” He stared at Olavo, who closed his mouth. “I doubt this would be anything more than a wood dagger if they used it against Grant. Even if this is something that was lying around is some war chest, why would they know to pull it out?”
“They saw me with Grant,” Thomas said.
“But they didn’t know you were Society, did they?” the armadillo said in an accusatory tone, looking at the kangaroo.
Grant shook his head. “Kingsley didn’t see enough of him to work that out.”
“Lullaby, the raccoon. She said they had a deal to hand me over to someone. They said they weren’t going to honor it, but—”
“Can we not used the codenames the pangolin chick gave them?” Limbani said over dramatically. “It makes it sound like they’re some powerful supervillain organization.”
“They are evil,” Grant muttered.
“Her name is Shila,” Olavo said, causing Grant’s head to snap up. “And as the one to run right into getting knocked out, you don’t have the credential to judge how powerful they were.”
“Can we focus?” Thomas asked, stopping himself from asking Grant how he was. There would be time for that down the line. “From what she said, it sounded like the deal was for them to collect and then deliver me to someone, possibly in exchange for something that would prevent me from helping Grant escape their grasp again. How many people do you know want me badly enough to make this kind of deal?”
That they had to think about it didn’t impress Thomas. Until he remembered they didn’t actually know him, whatever had been done to their memory had turned the bat into some background character in their lives instead of the one basically at the center of it.
“That Henry,” Limbani finally said.
Olavo nodded. “Madoc was calling him every day to update him. Since he wasn’t actually Raphael’s right-hand man, that means he was definitely interested in you.” The capybara considered something. “And as a Stoker who clearly is initiated, it’s not too much of a stretch that he’d know sigils and phrases. I don’t know how he’d know to contact this Chamber faction, but that could definitely be his work.”
“Why do you sound so certain?” Thomas asked.
Gilbert swore. “Because blood magic is what the Stokers did.” he snapped pictures of the knife, each side even at the end of the pommel. “That’s what got them destroyed. You have no idea the horrors that’s possible when you start dealing in blood without regards for the consequences. I need to get—” he stopped.
“What?” Olavo asked.
“I need to get this double checked,” the armadillo said. “But if this is Stoker level magic, there might be something hidden in there. But I can’t send that to my family’s archivist. I’m going to have to explain how I came across this.”
“You don’t want them to know you’re on an adventure?” Thomas asked.
Gilbert waved that aside. “I have no idea where Raphael is with letting the other elders know there’s a Stoker out there. If I’m the one to make the revelation, that’s going to be one shit show I’m not going to enjoy.”
“Call that Madoc,” Limbani said. “He’s a Lewiston. He can get you in touch with their archivist, right?”
“Wouldn’t you have healed whatever hidden thing it did?” Thomas ask Olavo as Gilbert moved away putting his phone to his ear.
“If it caused damage, I healed that, but Gilbert’s right there could be a subtle effect hidden in the phrasing. Blood is extremely powerful. The phrase itself is written in blood, so they were serious about whatever effect this creates.” He was quiet again. “You said Grant was good at remaining hidden, but if this Stoker had even a drop of Grant’s blood, he could make them a scrying phrase capable of punching through just about any warding he could make. If they’ve been after him for any amount of time, and it sounded like this wasn’t the first time they nearly caught him, so blood is something they would—” he stopped and Grant’s quiet voice became audible.
“I don’t know, Shila,” the kangaroo said in the phone, tone flat. “Yes, I know.” Pause. “I didn’t plan it.” Another pause. “Kingsley is pissed.”
Thomas took the phone out of his friend’s hand and the kangaroo’s only reaction was to lower his arm.
“Shila, you—”
“Put Grant back on,” the pangolin snapped. “This is more important than whatever you think you need him for.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear the tone he was speaking in, Shila, but Grant needs a minute.” He disconnected her mid retort. He put the phone on the table next to the seat and crouched before Grant. “How are you?”
“It’s fine,” he replied in the same flat tone, eyes distant.
“Grant, looked at me.” The kangaroo didn’t react, so Thomas grabbed his shoulders and gave a shake, causing him to raise his head. “How are you?”
“It’s fine,” he repeated. His gaze was still vacant, and Thomas winced.
“What’s my name?” he demanded, shaking him.
Grant focussed on him. “Thomas.”
Thomas breathed easier. “Good. Now, how are you?”
“I’m—”
“I swear to God, Grant, if you say you’re fine, I’m unleashing Limbani on your ass.”
“I don’t do straight boys!” the monkey announced from the bed.
“Bullshit,” Gilbert replied. “You’ll do any guy you can talk into it.”
“I’m pan,” Grant said, then frowned as if he hadn’t intended to say anything.
Limbani opened his mouth, then closed it, taking his phone.
“You shouldn’t have told him that,” Thomas said, trying to not smile. “Once he looks up the definition, you aren’t going to get a chance to say no.” He paused. “How are you, Grant? Really.”
The kangaroo took a long, shuddering breath. “I don’t know.”
“Okay.” Thomas wasn’t going to argue with progress, no matter how small it was. “Why did you break your staff?”
“I…” he trailed off and his gaze went unfocused for a second. “I didn’t.”
“I saw you break it over your knee, Grant,” Thomas said cautiously.
“That wasn’t my staff anymore. I’d released it.” He fell silent. “I didn’t think it was going to work, but I couldn’t let the Chamber have it. To pass it from hand to hand, use its power to enslave others. I figured that in giving up the power, then destroying what had symbolized it, Kingsley would get the point.”
“Give up your power?”
“My staff was my connection to the universe, Thomas. There can be staves without a practitioner, but there can’t be a practitioner without a staff.” He looked at his hands. “Except…”
Thomas waited, but when the rest didn’t come, he prodded Grant. “Except what?”
“I took hold of Harrison’s staff. I wrapped both hands around the shaft and grabbed it.”
Thomas was confused for a second, then remember what Grant had told him, his own confusion when he’d watched the kangaroo grab the coyote’s staff. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
“There are encyclopedias worth of rule governing who can touch a staff and under what circumstance. But in the middle of a fight? While being wielded? I wasn’t thinking I was just doing. I should have been flung away the moment I touched it.”
“And yet you grabbed it,” Thomas said.
“But I don’t have a staff,” Grant said with the kind of insistence that screamed there was something wrong with the world. Then Thomas noticed the fear in his friend’s eyes. He tried to understand what about the situation scared him, but short of asking, he didn’t know enough.
But that wasn’t the kind of thing you went and asked someone about… Oh fuck it. “What are you afraid of, Grant?” he asked carefully.
The kangaroo swallowed. “There’s only one group able to take a staff that doesn’t belong to them.” He swallowed again, and then he continued. It was barely above a whisper. “What if I’m Chamber now?”
Oh fuck, he’d done it now. How was he supposed to help when he knew shit about the Chamber? Well, he did know one thing. “You broke two of their staves, Grant. That scared the shit out of them.”
Grant shook his head. “You don’t understand. I couldn’t have broken them.”
“I saw you do it.”
“What do you know about Hiroshima, Thomas?” the kangaroo asked, his voice trembling.
The rat had to dredge the memory from deep into his high school history classes. “One of two cities that had nuclear bombs dropped on them to end World War 2.”
Grant nodded. “There was a practitioner safe house about a quarter-mile from the epicenter. There was a staff stored there, hidden so the Chamber wouldn’t get to it. When it was safe, Practitioners went there to take the remains, move them somewhere respectful. Instead, they found the staff completely intact.”
“Alright,” Thomas said. “I’m not up on my nuclear weapon trivia….” Come on, Gilbert, help a frat brother out here. You’re the fucking nuclear scientist here, not me.
“Little Boy,” Grant said, “obliterated everything within a one-mile radius of where it fell.”
Thomas swallowed, working out the kind of power that would require. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you did do it. And as the world’s first teleporter, let me assure you, anything is actually possible with magic.”
The words didn’t have the effect Thomas hoped for. Instead of taking them and rallying around them, he seemed to be shutting himself down. Thomas knew this had to be a crisis of faith level of screwed up, but it felt different. This felt like what he remembered of the time his parents had taken cared of Neil’s father after his wife died. “Tell me about your staff,” he said, remembering how his mother had gently gotten Stewart to speak about her.
The kangaroo stared at him.
“I mean,” Thomas said, hoping this would be prodding enough, because after this, he was out of ideas. “It is at the center of all this, right? A ramshackle assembly of pieces of wood held together by twine, nails, and I think I saw duct tape, that’s none the less capable of calling down tornados to level building and lightning to blow up vans.”
Grant snorted as Thomas felt Gilbert’s glare.
“It was never supposed to do that,” the kangaroo said, and Thomas kept looking at him expectantly. Come on, keep going. “My staff was going to be about hope, not storms. I made it from what was left behind. From what people used to rebuild. Somewhere in there, there should have been this kernel of never giving up no matter how bad things got. Instead, I ended up with a tool of mass destruction.” He shook his head. “In the wrong hands, Katrina would look like a spring shower compared with what it could have unleashed.”
“And you kept it out of those hands, Grant. For as long as you could, and when you couldn’t anymore, you let it go.” Thomas place a hand on Grant’s knee. He could see the moment forming, how he was going to Hallmark movie his way into pulling Grant out of his depression. He opened his mouth—
“Fuck yes!” Gilbert yelled from the bed, causing both the rat and kangaroo to look in his direction. The armadillo was on the bed, the capybara’s legs over his shoulder, pounding for all he was worth.
Thomas realizes someone was missing, and he found Limbani looming over him, looking at the rat and Grant with utter innocence, despite being naked and rock hard. The look of innocence shifted to confusion. “Is story time over?”
“If it is,” a familiar, not particularly happy, woman’s voice said from the television, “We have some important things to talk about.”
“You’re going to have to make it fast, Shila,” Thomas said as the monkey pressed himself against him. “I haven’t been able to find this monkey’s off switch yet.”
“Why don’t you try a terrorist threat that’s going to result in it being just about impossible to cross the border?” she said. “I already have Grant’s passport set up with a physical version waiting for him at the front desk. You guys have to get moving now, if you want to have a chance to pull that ward trick on them a second time.”
“Are you telling me to delay sex just because of a few terrorists?” Limbani asked, offended, then muttered something that sounded unflattering in his language.
“Is he for real? She asked, incredulously.
“If he’s a mirage,” Thomas replied, chuckling. “He’s a very tactile one.” He pulled the monkey up as he stood. “If you get dressed now, I’ll give you dibs on me anytime you want from here to the border.”
The speculative look Limbani gave him already made Thomas regret the offer, but getting moving was the priority. Which meant. He looked around the room.
“Okay, what have you done with my clothes?”",
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