Dread Nemesis of Mine

chapter 5

Elyssa gripped me in a fierce hug. "It'll be okay. I know you hate it when my dad bosses you around. I'll talk with him and work something out."

I kissed her on her lovely forehead and forced a grin. "I know, babe. I know."

Someone cleared their throat. I turned and saw Bella tapping her foot impatiently.

"We should practice more before you run off, young man." She motioned me back over.

Elyssa nodded. "We're going to need every advantage if what Christian says is true."

"I'll be more of a liability than an asset if I have to rely on magic," I said with a groan. Hard to believe, at one point, I'd wanted to learn magic so badly. But after finding out I couldn't wave a wand, say a silly word, and defeat practitioners of the dark arts, some of the—ahem—magic had gone out of learning.

Bella made me sit down in a chair and resume my meditations. Instead of meditating, I found myself thinking about Elyssa. I sensed her hot, welcoming presence nearby, thanks to my incubus sixth sense. We'd made love for the first time in a dingy hotel room just a week ago. Talk about magic. I sent out a questing tendril of incubus essence and found the halo of her aura feet away. She seemed amused with my academic efforts.

I tapped against her halo. She flinched, and for a moment, her defenses sprang up reflexively, cold and impersonal. Then she realized it was me and opened up, even more amused than before. But beneath the surface of her amusement simmered love, spiced with a bit of lust. My demon senses burned with desire to dive right in. But if I did it without tempering my mood, Elyssa and I might get more than we bargained for. I sure as heck didn't want us to rip each other's clothes off in front of Bella.

Easing back on the throttle, I evened out my emotions, trying to match her amusement, rather than the lust.

"Do you feel anything yet, Justin?" Bella said, seemingly from somewhere far off as I concentrated.

Oh, I felt something all right. I felt a grin spread across my face and quickly tightened my mouth so as not to give myself away. With my incubus senses extended, I could taste some of Bella's emotions, namely frustration and concern. She really cared about me and was worried sick about my abilities. A wave of guilt came over me. Here I was, screwing around while she was dedicating time and energy toward helping me.

Easing back on the emotional throttle, I started slowly withdrawing my senses, trying to focus instead on the magical energy in the air around me. The thread of my essence abruptly tingled in a way it never had before. The feeling was so alien, it shocked me out of my trance and my eyes jolted open.

"What is it?" Bella asked.

"I felt something weird."

"Describe it."

I shrugged. "I dunno. All tingly. It made me feel funny."

"Funny?" She took a seat across from me, gaze intense.

"Well, not funny like when someone touches you in your no-no place, but—"

"Justin, be serious."

I sighed. "Let me see if I can find it again." I closed my eyes and breathed deep. Nothing happened for what seemed an eternity. I realized whatever I'd done had been with my incubus senses extended, so I pushed it out in different directions. Still, nothing happened. Setting aside the emotions emanating from Elyssa and Bella, I forced back my own frustration and probed for the strange sensation again.

All of my senses tingled with such abruptness, I yelped and jerked back. My chair fell over backwards with me in it. Bella leaned down, her violet eyes laughing at me though her mouth held a firm line. She offered a hand and pulled me up with dhampyric strength that belied her petite frame.

"I think you've found the magic," she said, a note of triumph in her voice.

"Did you really?" Elyssa said, eyes wide with delight.

I grinned. "That's magic? It feels nothing like when it's trapped in a circle."

"How does it feel?" Elyssa said. "All I feel when I'm in a circle is pressure in my ears."

"You don't feel the static in the air?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"Strange." I shrugged. "I feel pressure in my ears, too. Depending on the amount of magic in the circle, it's like an electric charge in the air." I set my chair upright and sat again, extending my incubus senses. When I focused on the tingling sensation, it flooded back, nearly overwhelming me. It wasn't unpleasant, just weird.

"Do you feel it?" Bella asked.

I opened my eyes, maintaining my link. Usually when my demonic senses were active, I saw the ghostly, glowing auras of the people around me and sensed their emotions. Looking at Bella and Elyssa, I saw them now, both glowing and healthy with positive emotion. In addition, I noticed a smoky haze in the air and motes of bright light, some drifting lazily, others zipping past like little stars. A bright ball of white the size of my head rotated around a similarly sized ball of glowing black, their twin orbits carrying them down until they vanished into the ground. Tiny capillaries of light pulsating between black, white, and gray ran through the floor and the walls as well. The lines zigged and zagged in places, sometimes broadening into finger width streams before narrowing into a line so thin as to be almost invisible.

I reached my hand for a hazy puff of gray floating before my eyes. It swirled around, insubstantial as a cloud, feeling like nothing to my hand. A spark of flickering ultraviolet passed through Bella's head and out the other side. I snatched at it, but my hand closed on nothing.

"What are you doing?" Bella asked, dodging away.

"The magic. It's all around us!"

She quirked an eyebrow. "Yes, that's generally true."

"And it's like little clouds shooting stars, and lines."

Her other eyebrow climbed even with the first. "What are you talking about?"

"The energy!" I swirled a little cloud with a finger until it resembled a miniature tornado. "This is freaking awesome."

"Justin, you can't actually see the magic around us, although you can feel it."

"Are you sure?" I looked at her through my incubus senses, watching her aura cloud gray with doubt. I shrugged. "Maybe it has something to do with the way I'm sensing the magic."

"And how is that exactly?"

I explained it to her.

"You never described it like that before," Elyssa said, frowning ever so slightly after I finished. "I mean, I guess we've never sat down and talked about it."

"Intriguing," Bella said, tapping her chin. "Arcanes have a sixth sense for magical energy. It is possible your incubus sixth sense is entwined with your arcane sense, and it is this which grants you the ability to see the magical energy, or at least a representation of it."

I felt elated. Magic suddenly went from boring and pointless to something I could actually do and see. I flicked my senses on and off, looking at the magical energy. "Maybe I have a sixth and seventh sense. I mean, why does everyone always call it a sixth sense anyway?"

Bella waved my question away with a flick of her hand. "This is fascinating, Justin, it truly is. But whatever it is will have to wait further study. First, you need to learn to store the energy in your well. Otherwise, it really does you no good."

"Can't I channel it straight out of the air? Does it really need to go into storage first?"

"You need to concentrate the energy inside so you can focus and bend it to your will. You can't do that without filling your well. It's the same as making a circle. The more concentrated the energy, the more powerful your spells will be. This is why Shelton and I had you practice blowing out candles and lighting them first. Such a feat is possible even without storing any energy, though we had hoped you might stumble your way into it as many new practitioners do, without us explicitly teaching it."

I looked at her. "You mean most newbs can store energy instinctually?"

She nodded. "Just like your incubus senses triggered without you controlling them. I believe your primary instincts as an incubus have overshadowed your magical abilities. It's really no surprise. In fact, I would surmise from how similar you are in appearance to your father that you inherited more from his side of the family than from the Arcanes on your mother's side."

"I agree," Elyssa said. "He has his mom's nose, judging from the pictures I've seen of her, but everything else looks a lot like his dad."

I touched my nose, trying to remember the shape of my mom's before she abandoned me and Dad to supposedly rescue Ivy from the clutches of her evil parents. "Okay, so how do I store the magic?"

Bella leaned back and balanced her chin on a hand, eyes distant with thought. After a moment, she pursed her lips and said, "How do you fill yourself with emotional energy?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. My tendril sucks it in automatically, like I'm drinking with a straw."

"Perhaps you could do the same with the magical energy?"

"Sure, why not?" I closed my eyes and reached into the place inside where I caged the demon and loosed my senses. When I opened my eyes, I saw the wondrous universe of magical energy again. Extending a tendril, I made contact with a puff of magic. The tingling sensation made me feel giddy as it curled around my probe and melted into it. Other particles of magic drifted toward the curling strand of my essence, drawn to it like a magnet. Soon, the air around it was hazy with energy.

"I'm doing it," I said with a jubilant shout and pumping a fist in the air. "Booyah!"

Bella squeezed my hand. "Great job, Justin."

I glanced at her and saw a similar haze around her aura. "Are you drawing in magic, too?" I asked.

She tilted her head. "How did you know?"

"I can see it melting into you."

"Within a minute or so, you should feel full, as though you've just eaten." She patted her stomach as if to illustrate her point.

"If it's anything like when I feed on emotions, I don't feel full so much as I just don't feel ravenous anymore." I really wasn't feeling full at all from drawing in the magic except the exhilarating rush of energy as it flooded along my senses.

"It shouldn't take long," Bella assured me. "Most new practitioners have a much smaller well which expands with use. You have to stretch it little by little or you might feel sick."

I continued to draw in magic, watching as it flowed from the tiny veins in the floor, up to my tendril, and into me. After another minute, I gave Bella an unsure look. "I don't think I'm doing it right."

She touched my chest and spoke a word, closing her eyes in concentration. "I sense energy in you, but I'm not very good at determining how much magic you've drawn in. Someone versed in arcane healing arts, like Meghan Andretti, could probably tell you more." She opened her eyes and smiled. "In any case, you probably have enough energy to work with."

I closed my eyes and walled up the demon part of me. I wondered sometimes if it was really a part of me, or if I had an alien presence living within. It brought a whole new meaning to the term "inner demons".

"By the way, you need to practice absorbing magic without closing your eyes first."

"But I have to close my eyes so I can concentrate."

Bella offered an apologetic smile. "I don't expect you to get it down pat today, but if you're in a situation requiring fast thinking and magic, you won't be able to close your eyes and concentrate."

My heart sank a little. "Dang. I thought I'd really improved."

She squeezed my hand. "You're doing great, Justin. You just learn differently from anyone else I've ever taught."

"He's definitely different," Elyssa said with a wink.

I stuck out my tongue at her. "Ha, ha."

"I'm going to make some tea and then we'll resume lessons," Bella said, and left the room.

Something prodded my leg from within the front pocket of my jeans. I leapt to my feet and felt inside, finding my new phone. "What the hell?"

"What?" Elyssa said.

"My phone poked me in the leg."

"Oh, you must have it set to poke instead of vibrate."

I glanced at the caller ID, but it was blocked. "Hello?"

"Justin, it's Felicia."

Adam Nosti's little sister, who just so happened to also be a vampire. I sucked in a breath. "Are you okay? Are you still spying on Maximus?"

Static crackled in the receiver, obscuring some of her words. "…don't have time. Maximus has something new for recruiting." More white noise obliterated whatever she said next.

"I can't hear you," I shouted into the microphone. "Reception is really bad." I turned on the speaker so Elyssa could listen in.

Felicia's voice cut in for a second then back out, leaving us in silence. I thought I'd lost her, when suddenly, she was back. "I don't know if you can hear this, Justin, so I'll repeat it again. Maximus has some kind of blood potion. I don't know where he got it, but it turns people into vampires."