This place is exactly what you’d expect from an old, moldy Victorian house. I can already see the layout in my mind. As expected, the girl doesn’t take the door at the top of the stairs, but what looks like a secret passage under them, that leads to a ladder. She climbs up it as awkwardly as she descended the first one, which makes it clear she’s never left her hideout before. Using ladders is far from routine to her.
I can’t help but let my eyes take in the sight of her ass cheeks as she makes her way up the rickety piece of wood. Heart-shaped, generous and juicy. I lick my lips. It’s been over a year since I’ve been with a woman. Before my core got shattered, when I had the world at my feet, I had many women. I’d made it a rule at a certain point that I’d never fuck a woman more than once. But this past year I haven’t thought of sex even once—until now.
I should probably not read too much into it. With a woman’s ass dangling in my face, it’s hard not to think about sticking my cock in her.
She pushes open a trapdoor, and crawls into what must be her room. I slide in, and she hurries to close it.
“Just promise me you won’t hurt anyone, no matter what, and I’ll help you, no questions asked.” I can hear tears and fear in her voice.
“You’ll help me whether I promise or not.”
I must say, hers isn’t the typical girl room. The walls are grey and moldy, the window bricked up, and the only source of light is an old lamp on a wooden table that she’s now struggling to light up. She’s having trouble because of how hard her hands are shaking. I walk over and snap my fingers, sparking a flame. She frowns at me in the glow of the lamp.
“I thought you came looking for me because you didn’t have any magic left?”
“I have the basics.”
The wooden table is laden with books, an ancient skull, a crystal globe, and a few dolls made of socks, their braided blonde hair made of hay. I pick one up, and cock an eyebrow.
“You do voodoo?”
She snatches it from my hand, scowling, forgetting how afraid she was of me only a moment ago.
“Don’t touch that.”
My lips quirk up in a half-smile—another thing I haven’t done in a while. “Not exactly what I expected a mage of light, like you, would do.”
“Come on. Lay down here.”
She shows me to a divan by the walled-up window. As I head toward it a piece of darkness jumps from the divan into her arms, and nestles on her shoulder, under her hair. It’s a black cat. It hisses at me, baring perfectly white fangs.
“This is Nazarean, my familiar,” the girl says, stroking the cat under its chin. “He’s old, grumpy and hates people, so don’t take it personally.”
I come ostentatiously close to her before I sit on the divan. The cat hisses again, arching his back, while hiding deeper under her hair. “Not exactly ready to protect you, though, this familiar of yours,” I mock as I rest against the musty back of the divan.
“Oh, you have no idea. Now I’m gonna need you to lie on your back.”
“I won’t.”
“What do you mean, you won’t? You will if you want me to help you.”
“I won’t be lying on my back here, in a house where enemy guards roam.”
Her lips part and her eyebrows rise, as if she suddenly remembers who she’s talking to. Fear returns, and she tenses up.
“Like I said, I’m gonna need to get some things,” she says, already retreating towards the door.
“What things?”
“I told you, my stuff from the library and—”
“Tell me exactly what you need. I might be able to help without you having to run the extra errands.”
She pauses, understanding what I’m doing.
“I won’t tell the guards anything. You made it perfectly clear you’d kill them all, and I won’t let anyone die for me.”
“No, but you could tell them I’m here, and run away with them. Abandon the hideout. Your guards don’t stand a chance against me in a fight, but they could whisk you away from here.”
“You have serious trust issues.”
“And how is that a bad thing? You’re under my enemies’ protection, you’re one of them.”
She slaps her hands against her thighs, seeing has no way around this. She walks over to the table, sorting through her books like she doesn’t know exactly what she’s looking for.
“You are a creature of fire, so I need to call on a source of fire. But fire is the hardest element to work with because, unlike water or wind or earth, it can get out of hand very quickly, and disastrously.”
I get up to my feet, the divan creaking as I lift my weight off of it. I join her by the table, picking a random book of spells and leafing through it.
“You have a powerful and rather harmless source of fire magic just outside your doorstep, actually,” I say. “Arthur’s Seat, the rocky peak that presides over Flipside Edinburgh is a dormant volcano.” I close my eyes, feeling my way down into the crusts of the Earth. I don’t have the magic necessary to move it, but I can still sense my way to it like it’s a part of my body. “It hasn’t been active in over a million years, and there are layers upon layers of hardened magma over the fire that boils in its depths, but the magma chamber is still there. You could use that energy. You’d only need to stir the source just a little bit, it should be enough for the first round.”
“First round?” she repeats, frowning. “You will have me do this more than once?”
“I had some serious amounts of power before your friends, Lysander and Arielle, blew my core to pieces. I don’t think one fill will do, so. But don’t worry, I’ll only need your help until I get to the Firestone that was stolen from my crown centuries ago. That will make me whole again.”
“The Firestone?” She narrows her eyes, as if sifting through volumes of knowledge stored inside her pretty head. My cock stirs in my leather pants. Intelligence shines in her rosy-cheeked face, and I’ve always had a soft spot for intelligent women. “I’ve heard stories about the Firestone of the Crown Jewels of the Fire Court. It is said Apophis sent Wraiths to steal it from the Fire Realm and destroy it, but they never got to. The King of Flames—You got to them before they could destroy it. They only managed to hide it, here, in Flipside Scotland.”
She has no idea that she just validated the only information that I got from the Wraiths before they died.
The cat moves smoothly from the girl’s shoulder to her folded arms, her thick, shiny blue-black ponytail caressing it in the process until it slips off the animal. As I watch the male cat arch and stretch, nestling in her arms, I feel a pang of an alien feeling in my heart. A feeling I’ve never had before. Like I want to be in the cat’s place, in some weird kind of way.
“So what you need is for me to help refill your tanks until you find the thing that will restore your power completely, is that right?”
“That’s right,” I say, my voice deep, and slightly menacing. “Tell me what you need, and let’s begin.”
She returns her attention to the books, sifting among them.
“You say we can use the dormant volcano. I suppose it’s safe to do if the lava is buried deep under hardened layers of magma and the chamber isn’t very heated. I guess I could draw on its power, and channel it within your body. But I would need the spells, and I don’t have them in here.”