Durance (Aberrant Magic) Read online

  Aberrant Magic 7: Durance

  Copyright © May 2020 by Lyn Gala

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.

  Editor: Sue Laybourn

  Cover Artist: Natasha Snow

  Published in the United States of America

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning

  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. This e-book is for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  Table of Contents

  Disclaimer

  Acknowledgment

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Also By Lyn Gala

  Acknowledgment

  All of us have unkind feelings toward 2020, but for me it came on the heels of 2019—a year that went down as the worst of my life. Some days, I had trouble getting out of bed, and the endless support of the community of readers has sustained me. Shin would call me. John gave me so many compliments that even my insecurities had to retreat. Mandy encouraged me to write whatever helped me find my muse, even if a popular series had to wait. I think she saved my ability to write at all. Carolyn and Jeanette, Emma and Sarah, Beth and Maryam all sustained me over at Patreon. Heather and Eija and SJ left comments that kept the muse fed, even when I wanted to quit. The whole community at Patreon and Facebook actually did that. So did the supportive fans who snapped up Earth Fathers and kept buying my works, even when my life fell apart and I essentially vanished from my on-line and professional life. After thirty-two years of partnership and companionship, I had to learn to live in a house that was too quiet, and I don’t know that I could have without the community I am blessed to be part of. Not hyperbole—just truth. People always talk about how it takes a village to raise a child, but sometimes I think it takes a village to sustain an artist. You have sustained me, and I am so grateful that my poor ability with words cannot express the depth of my feelings.

  Chapter One

  Darren groaned as he walked through the apartment door. “Long, damn day.” He passed the kitchen island and collapsed onto the couch.

  Behind him, Kavon closed the door. “All we did was paperwork.”

  Bennu had taken off, so Darren hadn’t even been able to get a little shamanic energy boost. Most days Bennu was better than coffee, but not today. “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?”

  “Because you like one more than the other?” Kavon followed Darren into the living room and tossed the mail onto the coffee table before he doubled back to the refrigerator.

  Darren flipped through the stack. “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 held up two beers, 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. And apparently pay bills. Joy. He came to a classy cream envelope and tore it open. “Huh.”

  “What?” Kavon settled on the couch with his beer.

  “Art and Zach are getting married.” Darren held up the announcement.

  “The El Paso cops?” Kavon leaned closer to read the invite. “I guess they’re angling for a gift.”

  Darren backhanded him. “I suspect Zach is trying to mend some fences between Bennu and Pochi. I get the feeling that they have a contentious history.” The longer Darren partnered with Bennu, the more he got flashes of emotion that suggested Bennu had been the bad-boy of the ifrit crowd, breaking rules at every turn. That explained why Bennu had never partnered with Kavon.

  Before they’d become lovers, Darren suspected Kavon had had an intense and potentially sexual relationship with his FBI rulebook. If mystical guides chose partners with similar personality traits, Kavon and Bennu were a horrible match. Bennu, like Darren, was a little more flexible about working around rules.

  After a long silence, Kavon asked, “Do you want to go?” Confusion drifted across their bond.

  Darren flashed Kavon a smile for even making the offer. “Nope, but we can buy them a nice card. I’m glad they’re finally tying the knot. They seem to really work as a couple, ya know?” Darren sighed. “Did you ever think about getting married?”

  Kavon put his beer down and his emotions grew sharper.

  “Like when you were a kid,” Darren clarified. He wasn’t fishing for a proposal. Besides, the bond they shared with their guides would last this lifetime and the next. It didn’t get more permanent than a soul bond.

  Kavon’s emotions settled. “I guess I assumed I would get married one day. Almost all the adults I knew were, so I’m not sure I considered any other options. But having Talent changed things.”

  “Lots of people with Talent get married.” Hell, the invitation from Zach and Art proved that. “Why did that change anything?”

  Kavon rolled his beer bottle between his palms. “It wasn’t easy. Even before I chose to follow the shamanic path, my Talent put distance between me and other people.”

  Darren toed off his shoes and tucked his feet under him. Kavon rarely shared stories from his childhood, and Darren tamped down his rabid curiosity out of fear that it would push Kavon into an emotional retreat. He asked, “Why?”

  Kavon huffed. “A lot of teens have shamanic markings when they first get their Talent, even if they haven’t chosen to be a shaman. The glow fades later if they choose to take the path of using dead magics.”

  “Yeah, that’s how most of them find out they have magic,” Darren said. No matter what television and books for young adults suggested, Talent didn’t give kids unlimited cosmic powers. That took hard work and years of practice.

  Kavon grunted. “Those markings are particularly difficult for teenagers. A faint light that highlights every blemish plus adolescent acne...” He tipped his beer up, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.

  “That would h
ave sucked.” Darren had been a popular athlete in high school and he still felt as if he’d barely survived. He couldn’t imagine how much worse it could have been.

  “Oh yeah.” Kavon untied his shoes and pulled them off before propping his socked feet on his coffee table. “Being black made it worse. Kids were judgmental anyway, but when the Talent marks appeared, they were... cruel.” Given Kavon’s habit of downplaying his pain, the reality would have been much more sadistic than anything Kavon would admit.

  Darren asked, “Can we go to your class reunion so I can threaten some people?”

  “I’d have to arrest you for intimidating idiots.”

  “Oh, it would go beyond intimidation.”

  Kavon finished his beer in one long swig. “Do you know that makeup that shamans use to hide their marks?”

  “Sure.” Les had a few tubes of the stuff in his desk to hide his adept marks on his hands. They were even more conspicuous than shamanic marks which only glowed when a shaman was using his power.

  Kavon’s voice grew distant. “They didn’t make that stuff dark enough for my skin, so my mom tried adding dark eye shadow to make it match. She told me it looked fine, but...” He took a deep breath and the bond was ominously devoid of any emotion.

  “This isn’t going to be a happy story, is it?”

  “Some kid called me nigger-rig, and that’s what my classmates called me the rest of senior year.” Kavon’s voice was flat, and before Darren could come up with a response, he headed for the kitchen, empty beer bottle in hand.

  His uncle Jack used that phrase for any rush job or half-assed patch that he didn’t expect to last. His mother used to scream at her brother every time he’d said it, but that didn’t stop him. But taking that offensive term and then applying it to a person—a kid... Darren needed to make these guys pay. Their newest agent was a weedy man who looked like he had endured his share of teasing. Maybe Darren could send Milton on a search and destroy mission through these assholes’ credit reports. However, if Darren showed any sympathy, Kavon was going to shut down tighter than a clam.

  Darren blew out a breath and projected as much normalcy as possible. “My mom wasn’t thrilled when I started showing more interest in boys than girls around fifth or sixth grade, but even after I settled on the gay side of the street, I assumed I would get married, adopt, and shepherd a gaggle of children to church twice a year.”

  Kavon came back with a second beer. “Do you want kids?”

  “Now? Hell, no,” Darren said. Even if they managed to reduce the number of hours they worked, there was still the impending threat of war. Other people could keep living their lives in blissful ignorance, but Darren and Zach and everyone partnered with one of the old ifrit guides had to focus on the coming battle. The evil ifrit could break through into Earth’s dimension at any time. “Besides, I gave up religion for Lent. I can’t exactly take kids to church when I can’t find one.”

  “It’s not Lent,” Kavon said dryly.

  Darren snorted. “Like you’d know.”

  “Oh, I would. Your mother would be calling to make unsubtle hints about serving the church. Apparently she gives up manners for Lent.” Kavon turned on the local news station. His emotional lockdown on the bond started to ease, and the jagged edge of exhaustion and grief stained the air.

  Darren cringed. His mother was obnoxious in her new-found devotion to Catholicism. But it wasn’t like Kavon to point that out.

  “If you want to go to the wedding, we have quite a bit of saved vacation time.”

  Darren wondered about Kavon’s sudden willingness to take the time off. “They should celebrate with their friends,” Darren said, “but we should spend that banked vacation time on us.” When Kavon gave him a confused look, Darren continued. “We could go to the beach, waste some money on fancy hotels or restaurants, you know, take a vacation.”

  Kavon’s frown deepened. “We just had a vacation.”

  “No, we had two days where we visited my mother after her heart attack. That's the opposite of a vacation.”

  Kavon shrugged. “If you want to take time off, just file the paperwork.” Despite his calm tone, his emotions felt conflicted—almost hurt.

  Darren rested a hand on Kavon’s knee. “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. “Give me one reason why you can't take some time off right now.”

  “Our unit is the only one handling Talent cases. Criminals don’t stop because we want time off.” Kavon turned the volume up on the television. The commentator was complaining about the city resources diverted to cleaning up magical spill areas.

  “There are two supervisory agents,” Darren said, over the television. “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.

  “There's too much work for one team.” Kavon had a mulish expression.

  In the past, Darren had allowed Kavon to get his way, but enough was enough. They both needed down time. “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.” The two newest members of the team would probably appreciate a break from Kavon’s intensity. It took getting used to.

  “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 grimaced. “He has an octopus guide.”

  “I'm starting to regret telling you that.” Darren only knew about Joe’s guide because Bennu delighted in meeting new guides. The small white cattle egret looked out of place perched on the giant orangey sea creature.

  “Octopus guides are secretive and clever. You should be cautious around a shaman with an octopus guide.” Kavon sounded ready to launch into lecture mode.

  “I imagine that's why he did so well working undercover when he was in the California office,” Darren said dryly.

  The tone must have hit home because Kavon narrowed his eyes and, more significantly, quieted the bond. “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 twinge of pride at getting Kavon to use first names. A year ago, Kavon had even referred to Coretta by her last name. “She threatened to shoot Les more times that I can count. She never did it. I’m a good eighty percent sure she won’t shoot Milton.”

  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 council so often that I’m not sure they’ll notice we’re gone. And the ifrit war could be thirty years away. 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?”

  “If you're suggesting that I can’t handle the stress, we have a problem.”

  Darren grabbed the remote and turned the volume down. He didn’t need to hear about the statistics on rising Talent-based crime and hate crimes against those with Talent. “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.” Clearly expecting that gruff comment to end the debate, Kavon retreated to the kitchen. However, he had underestimated Darren’s powers of annoy
ance.

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

  Kavon crossed his arms. “Do you think we have decades?”

  Darren had to admit that Kavon had a point. 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 partnered with small, innocuous guides: birds, fish, or squirrels. But in the last six months, the DC Council had registered several large predators including two whales and a shark, and other powerful guides like a bison latifrons 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 slapped his hand against the counter. “And we can't afford to be off on vacation when it starts. You and I both know it’s coming.”

  DC, Mexico City, West Texas, and the Vatican were all showing vast increases in the number of magical “hot spots,” so Kavon was probably right. Darren knew for a fact there were ancient ifrit in Washington DC and El Paso, so that suggested that ifrit guides might have also returned to Mexico and the Vatican. Considering Mexico was aligned with the Catholic Church, it would be normal for them to hide information from the Egyptian authorities. Some days, Darren regretted that the Talent community was so stereotypically human with political divisions and prejudices.

  “There are these wondrous devices called aeroplanes,” Darren said. Sarcasm was never the best approach with Kavon, but he was tired and cranky and he just wanted to win one God damn fight. “If something happens while we’re away, we can come back. In fact, Salma would happily authorize the use of the private jet.”

  “Salma will approve anything you ask for.” Kavon’s tone made it clear he didn’t approve.