Chapter 96

Chapter 96

After dropping off Artica, I returned home just after my curfew.  My parents were already asleep.  They hadn’t even texted me asking where I  was, so I went upstairs without disturbing them.  I reviewed my text messages and emails.  The contractor said he would finish on Friday instead of next Monday.  I didn’t regret using my charm ability on him if this was the ultimate result.

I planned to use the cabin house immediately, so I had to set a number of things in motion to get the place ready.  The containers in storage needed to be emptied.  I had the vehicles, spirits, gold, and furniture.  I also wanted to upgrade the security with everything going into the property.  Amelia had added a remote video at the door, as I requested, but that was not going to be enough.  The fiber optic cable had been buried from the street along the driveway and would go live on Monday.  I also had a backup satellite internet receiver going in February.

I started sending Artica notes on things to do.  The cars would be moved in after the contractors, and we still needed plates for them as well, which meant a big tax hit.  Maybe  Bedelia could expedite that process.  The issue with the spirits was even after expanding and maximizing the wine seller, and I only had room for 2,640 bottles.  I had the master list and selected most of the aged hard liquor, ignoring the wine.  I arranged to have the surplus stock, mostly wine, removed from its shipping container and stored in an underground vault especially made for this.  The vault was in West Virginia, and you could rent secured cages that could hold 1,000 crates, which equaled 12,000 bottles.  I rented two cages in the old coal mine to make sorting the bottles easier.  The facility was usually used by vineyards that wanted to age their wine in a safe environment for insurance reasons.

The last thing I noted to do was to get the winter wolf pelt to the cabin from Iris’ house.  It had a silky texture, and I thought maybe using it as a location for Eilina’s core enhancement.  The pelt would make her first time special.  I asked Artica to handle the transfer.  Artica texted back with a request to set up insurance for the Raptor.  It was the last step to get the license plates.  I deferred the job to Bedelia.  She was good with paperwork or at least knew someone good at paperwork.  I got two hours of sleep before hockey practice.

The school week progressed smoothly.  Hockey practice was more about going through the motions for me.  Classes were boring, but I was adding a fair number of books to my mind space from the school library.  Sometimes I pulled books based on requests from Lilith, and other times I just selected what I thought was interesting.  The most interesting part of the school day was lunch.  I ate my lunch that Abigail had made while eyeing Rob and Yuki.  I didn’t know if I should try to get Rob back into my friends circle.

Rob had been my best friend since first grade.  Growing up, I was the odd, skinny kid, and he was always there with me, being supportive.  We played hockey,  video games, did homework together, and hung out in town for the past decade.  But could I trust Rob with my secret?  Rob was an avid churchgoer.  The church held demons as the ‘embodiment of evil.’  Maybe I could reveal myself to Rob as a mage.  It had worked for my sister.  If he panicked, then I could always charm Rob and make him forget.

Speaking of my sister, she had sent me a message that Maya had made the first varsity eight and dropped her 2k time to 7:04.8.  This was good and bad as Maya had hinted that I had played a role in her massive improvement to Paige.  Since Maya still had not contacted me, I didn’t know if she forgave me for not telling her the truth.  Paige hinted at wanting the same enhancement treatment in her recent text messages.

That would not happen, but maybe she could take my elixir from a cup if it had a long enough shelf life.  Would she even want to?  What would she choose—strength, endurance, or the recall elixir?  Why was I even considering this?  The recall elixir was greatly helping Abigail both in classes and in her quest to learn magic.

Abigail also had been doing a great job in keeping secrets.  She even texted me when people pressed her for information about me.  On Wednesday morning, I rewarded her with a long run and quick session of sex in the woods at her insistence.

Abigail was excited when we returned to the car because Bedelia said her core had almost stabilized.  Maybe in another week, I could start using my saliva on her and vortex her aether core.  She was so eager to help me harvest life essence.  Abigail and Iris were the only two people who knew how my abilities worked.  Even with Abigail’s major power increase and future as a Medicus, she still wanted to please me.  I wasn’t sure how I had gained such strong loyalty from her.  I think it was that I genuinely cared about her and showed it.

At lunch that same day, I approached Rob alone during lunch and asked to talk to him after school.  He reluctantly agreed to meet me at my house at 4:00 later today.  When Rob showed up after waking from his house, we went up to my room.

“Caleb, thanks for the citizenship papers.  I know they could not have been easy to obtain, but we can’t hang out.  I just want to say goodbye to you in private,” Rob immediately went for the jugular.  He was twitching and uncomfortable saying it, so I thought that maybe I could convince him otherwise.

“Rob.  I am not selling drugs or involved with any criminal elements,” I retorted exasperatedly.  Rob frowned, not believing me.

Rob tried, “Maybe after college, we can connect.”  I realized he was more worried about himself than our friendship.  Maybe if he was a real friend, he might have tried to talk to me and stop me from doing whatever criminal thing he thought I was doing.  I decided that I was still going to try to save this relationship.  It felt like my friendship with Rob was one of the few threads I had left of my humanity.  If I didn’t try, I would be abandoning my past self almost completely.

“I discovered magic, Rob.  I can do real magic,” I said with seriousness.  Rob rolled his eyes.  I held up my hand and materialized my tetsubo I from my mind space.  His eyes were bugging out.

He reached out to touch the tetsubo.   He took it from me and examined it for a good five minutes, even swinging the club before looking up.  “I don’t understand,” he said with disbelief.  “What are you doing to make money with your magic, making objects out of thin air?”  His voice was soft and cracking.

I smiled as Rob was open to listening to me, and I had a chance.  “I am delving into magic dungeons and collecting magic crystals like a video game.”  My thought process was to introduce Rob to the transits.  His aether core was just 0.16, but I would just bring him in once so he could see it and confirm it.

“What?  Video game?  Are we in the Matrix?  What are the crystals for?” he asked, falling backward with weak knees.

“No, Rob.  The best way to describe the dungeons would be as links between realities.  The crystals are used to power magic and create magic items,” I said, trying to be as vague as possible.  “There are elves, orcs, dragons, and beastmen.  Some even on Earth, but our planet is not the most desirable place to live.”  I stopped there as telling him about other inhabited planets in our universe might be too much for him to handle.

I spent the next hour describing various species of beastkin and other sapient races.  I avoided the races with darker histories; vamps, demons, and trolls.  There was no need to give Rob nightmares.

Rob shook his head, “I need time, Caleb.”  This was not good.  I planned to erase his memory if he appeared unable to accept the new reality.

“You can’t tell anyone, Rob.  It would just put both of us in danger.  When you are ready, I will show you,” I offered Rob.  Rob loved fantasy books and games, so I was a little shocked he was hesitating.

“Yeah, give me the weekend.  We can talk on Monday,” Rob said, handing me back the tetsubo.

I vanished the weapon.  I thought about saying more but didn’t, and Rob left in a daze of introspection.  We both eyed each other for the rest of the lunches that week.

After my talk with Rob, I met Bedelia for our second session.  It went much the way of our first session.  Her frustration at the short 30-minute oral cunnilingus session not advancing to intercourse was on her face.  I even gave her the job of purchasing some land not connected to either of my personas.  I explained I wanted to build a warehouse to store excess furniture and possibly some cars.  She took the task seriously as I trusted her with an important task, and she saw it as a way to get closer to me.

Bedelia asked, “If my core reaches upper tier 2 in time for the assault on the aboleth, can I join you?”

I scoffed as I had been waiting for the question.  “Don’t you think Rincewind would notice that your core has advanced so far?  I can tell he has some type of magic that reads a person’s core.  That was evident in the way he looked at and treated Artica.”

Bedelia deflated a little.  She was smart and should have realized this, but I knew she wanted to impress the old wizard.  She tried a different tact, “Maybe he would help you and give you resources?  I mean, getting access to his personal library is a huge amount of trust.”

Once again, my mind flashed to Andromeda’s warning of not trusting anyone.  “Bedelia, you know it takes me time to trust people.  I will see after the Aboleth encounter.”  I was just stalling and had no plans to include the ancient wizard in my orbit.  Thankfully, Bedelia dropped the topic.

After school on Thursday, Artica picked up the truck.  She picked me up, and I thought the small white-haired catkin girl driving the massive off-road truck was kind of sexy.  I aged into my Apollyon body, and we went to check out the progress on the cabin.

The contractor’s men were still very active, trying to meet his self-imposed deadline.  The pool was being lined, and the hot tub was being installed.  He told me his guys would be back to wet the concrete patio for another week to help cure it.  I told him it wasn’t an issue as Artica would be living here, and she could do it.  They also needed to backfill the retaining wall and put down new grass sod.  They had installed an automated sprinkler system for the new sod, and I listened for an hour as the contractor told me of the importance of heavy watering until the new grass took root in the soil.

As we toured the place, I had my phone and checked off all the work I had paid for both on the interior and exterior of the property.  They really had finished everything so quickly.

Artica and I walked the house and the garage apartment.  Artica was examining the property for a sixty-thousand-dollar security system she had ordered.  She had some training in installing security systems.  The expensive system had small, hard-to-spot cameras tied to two central hubs, one on-site and one off-site.  When we entered the master suite on the first floor, Artica joked about putting a few cameras in there.  I said that was fine as long as they were hidden cameras.  Artica’s mischievous look told me she was going to do it.

We also discussed what furniture would be replaced from the shipping container that held the expensive antiques.  Artica informed me that the climate-controlled storage facility had been prepaid for one year and was located near Front Royal, VA.  Bedelia was working on purchasing land to build a secure warehouse, not under Caleb or Apollyon.

Thursday night, I took Iris out on a date to Vincent’s.  It was supposed to give us some teenage normalcy, but we talked mostly about when we planned to go to the city of Kealon.  Due to the distance, we needed at least a week to travel from the crab cave.  She conceded to wait till the last week of May when school was out.

Iris was wearing a short blue dress, exposing her pale thighs.  Since she was driving her truck, she parked on a dirt side road after dinner without asking me.  “Caleb, Do you want to have sex tonight?”

“It is your date, Iris,” I said, smiling.  “I am game for whatever you want, but we can just go back to the house.”

Instead of driving, Iris scrambled over the center console to straddle me in the passenger seat, and started kissing me, “No, let’s do it here, like normal teenagers.”  Her hands grasped my neck as she forcefully kissed me.  My own hands rubbed her ass as her blue dress rode up to reveal her panties in her cramped position.

Iris was sucking on my tongue, and I knew what she wanted.  She wanted me to give her some saliva.  She was addicted, and I gave her a tiny dose as I added a vortex.  She immediately started grinding her hips.

I couldn’t think of a good way for this work.  Maybe if we reclined the seat or moved to the back.  But Iris had a plan.  Her hands dropped to my groin, and she unbuttoned my pants, and my erection eagerly poked straight up as she forced my pants down a few inches.  Iris spun around to sit in my lap.   My cock poked between her legs.  She pulled her panties aside, repositioned, and lowered herself carefully.

Iris grunted on the descent and started to grind and squirm her hips while turning her torso and locking her lips again with mine.  I gave her more saliva, and the cramped space made her squeeze my phallus tightly.  She came to a quick orgasm.  We continued in this position, with me giving her small doses to keep her arousal heightened as she achieved one orgasm after another, eagerly seeking the primal endorphin release.

It wasn’t the most romantic sex I had had, but Iris was delighted with our coupling away from the prying eyes of the others in the house.  She whispered, “Come, Caleb, finish.  I’m ready for you.”

I waited till she built to her fourth orgasm I came with her.  It used the opportunity to see if my guesses on how many enhancements a person could take depended on their core’s tier.  Iris was lower tier 1 and already had an enhancement.  I cycled to my recall elixir as we came together.  As I fished in her, we kissed more passionately as she rested her lower body.  This had not my favorite position, as my pants now had wet spots.  I asked, “Did the enhancement take hold?  I gave you the memory enhancement,” I said to her as our kiss ended.

Iris looked at me seriously, “Way to kill the moment.”  She focused, “No, I didn’t feel any change like when you gave me the endurance enhancement in New York.”

That was not good news.  It meant a lower tier 1 core could only take one enhancement.  A new enhancement wouldn’t overwrite the old enhancement.  Abigail had all three enhancements and all were functional with her lower tier 2 core.  I don’t know why my thoughts returned to Paige.  She just had a lower tier 1 core.  If she did want an enhancement, she could only choose one.  I cleared my thoughts of my sister, and Iris drove us back.

On Friday, I met the contractor in the afternoon.  His men would be back on Monday to clean up the rest of the sight, but the work was done.  We talked for a while, and I talked about building a concrete climate-controlled warehouse on the property Bedelia was working on purchasing anonymously.   He gave me a few contractors that he knew who could build a 12,000-square-foot facility.  It wasn’t something he normally built, but he knew one particular guy who specialized in concrete bunkers.  I thanked him for the effort and transferred him $20,000 to give his employees bonuses for getting the job completed so fast.

Saturday’s hockey game was an even match.  I didn’t need to use my inhuman physicality or play ridiculous minutes for the game.  We won 5-3.  After the game, I showered and got ready for my date with Traci.  She was picking me up and wanted to surprise me with her plans.  I smiled, getting into the blue Ford Taurus.

Traci was wearing a very skimpy outfit and smiled weakly.  Since I had a reputation at school, I was expecting to get some life essence this evening,  I complimented her, and we were off.

<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>

Rob was confused.  He needed advice from someone he could trust and wouldn’t betray his confidence.  There was only one person he could go to.

Before church on Sunday, he went to the confessional.  Father Fitzpatrick usually was in early before the sermon to give confession.  Sometimes, he wasn’t, as he was still preparing his remarks for the service.  Thankfully, today, he was as the light was on.  The booth was empty, and Rob went in and the Father slid the door covering the screen open.

Rob started to detail his sins, starting with his sexual encounter with Yuki last night and then lying to his mother about what they did on their date.  Then he told the priest about Caleb and his demonstration of magic….