Darkness Dwindles

DARKNESS EVOLVES Chapter Nine

After Daniel left I went back to continue watching Chris play his video game. His fighter was standing in the middle of a clearing, beating off a flock of flying nasties that a wizard had just sicced on him. There were also some armored skeletons. Chris dispatched them easily and then went on to kill the wizard.

"You're a pretty good player," I said.

"Thanks." He smiled shyly. It was less sexy but more honest than the grin and wink he'd given me earlier. "Someday I want to work for a game company." After a moment he added, "Sinslayer's a paladin, so the undead are pretty easy to take down. What's coming up next is going to be harder."

What came up next turned out to be a company of goblins waiting to ambush him just outside the entrance to a ruined temple. There were also a couple of large troll-like creatures. It got pretty hairy. At one point Chris had to run and hide behind the temple while he healed himself. He picked off a couple of the goblins that came after him, then waylaid the trolls one at a time. After that the rest of the goblins were pretty easy.

There were a few traps inside the building, and something that looked like a Balrog from LOTR, but nothing as bad as the ambush he'd faced outside. The Balrog was guarding a beautiful elvish sword and shield that Chris scooped up, along with some gold and a few lesser weapons and magical items. He took as much time sorting through the treasure as he had fighting, deciding what was most valuable and what wasn't worth taking.

While Chris was going over his winnings I closed my eyes and tuned into Tarriel. My captive spirit greeted me with puppy-tail wagging eagerness. In response to my desire, it fed me a real-time video of my brother. Daniel was seated at a bar counter, nursing a beer and watching a football game on TV. Other than an old man sitting a couple seats away, he was alone. The room behind him, filled with a mixture of small round tables and high-backed booths, was almost completely empty.

I watched for a minute, long enough to verify that nothing was happening. Then I left instructions with Tarriel and returned to my body. I leaned forward to slide my arms over Chris' shoulders and down his chest, cupping his crotch in my hands.

"Can you take a break any time soon?" I whispered in his ear.

"What's up?" He grinned at me. "Is Kiddo feeling frisky?"

I nodded.

He glanced at the clock. "Hold on and I'll check out." He fiddled at the controls and the scene faded to a menu.

"Okay," he turned to me with another grin. "Anything in particular you had in mind?"

"Yeah," I said. "I want to fuck." I turned and headed for his bedroom.

"Right." I heard him say as he scrambled out of his chair behind me. "I'm always up for that."

As I walked, I pulled my t-shirt off and dropped it onto the carpet. When I got to the edge of his bed I slid my pants and underwear down and kicked them aside.

Chris stood in the doorway, his mouth open in a little `oh' of surprise. His eyes ran up and down my body, lingering on my stiff boner.

"Wow — you really are frisky!"

"So why are you still wearing clothes?"

Hastily he shucked them. He messed his hair up pulling his shirt over his head, and knocked his glasses awry, but that didn't stop his supercock from nosing skyward. He definitely was up for fucking.

"Come here and let me suck you first," I said.

He came over and I guided him down onto the bed. I reached up to slide his glasses off and placed them on the nightstand next to his alarm clock. As I leaned over him he ran his hands across my chest.

"You're so smooth," he said. "Do you wax?"

"No." I scooted down and latched onto his cock. A couple small scrapes and bruises near the top were evidence of the wild ride I had given him last night. I sucked on his cockhead for a minute (covering my teeth with my lips this time) and then released it and began licking my way down. It took a while to get to the bottom. I lathered his balls with my tongue, sucking each one into my mouth and rolling them around.

Chris sighed and ran his fingers through my hair. He spread his legs, letting the knees fall way from each other to give me maximum access. I let the second ball slip out of my mouth and continued licking downward, moving into the funky borderlands between his ballsack and asshole.

"Oh," Chris moaned, his fingers curling against my scalp. He liked that. Good.

I continued licking, sliding my tongue up and down his taint, pushing up against his ballsack and down into the crevasse of his ass.

Chris' body shifted as he leaned over to reach toward the nightstand.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Getting a condom."

"Wait," I reached up to lightly brush his perineum with my fingers. "I want to fuck you."

"Really?" He paused, sounding surprised. In front of me his cock gave an excited little jerk. With a supercock like his, he probably had to pitch a lot more than he caught. "I don't know if I have Trojans that'll fit you, Kiddo."

"Can you push your hips up?" I asked. Time for a distraction. "I want to rim you."

Chris slid his legs up until his knees were in the air and the soles of his feet were flat on the mattress. He tilted his pelvis, angling his ass upward.

I dove in, sliding my tongue up and down his crack, flicking it across his puckered hole. It tasted kind of shitty, but not too bad. The hairs on his legs brushed against my cheeks as I licked. I took some time away from his hole to nibble on his thighs.

"Oh," Chris moaned again, jacking himself as I worked on him.

"Higher," I tugged on his legs. "Roll back and get it up in the air."

Chris rolled back until his knees were hanging down near his face. Now his ass was totally exposed. I went back in, sliding my tongue into his hole, twirling and darting it in every direction. Dropping lower, I placed my mouth over the lips of his ass and played it like a giant funky clarinet, practicing my vibrato.

"Holy Jesus!" Chris gasped. He was almost ready. I wanted him too worked up to resist me barebacking him; my seed had to get planted deep.

On his ass I played a melody of dark arousal that rang through Chris' body. The veins of his shaft pulsed to each beat of the music. Under my palms his thighs vibrated with a high-strung tension.

Now. I lifted my head out of his crack and uncoiled upward, sliding my rigid cock between the mounds of his ass and down into the wet hole my tongue had dug open. Even without lube my cock slid in smoothly to the hilt. I folded over his hips and looked down at Chris.

The puppy-dog eyes were glassy and wide, like shiny brown buttons. His cock hung in front of his face, so huge and stiff that he looked in danger of losing an eye. Precum glistened across his blood-flushed cheeks.

I dropped my hands onto the mattress on either side of his head and started fucking.

"Ungh," Chris grunted. "Auuurgh!" Drool and precum sheeted across his chin.

For the first time ever I was fucking someone. It felt great. But it made me sad, too, because I knew that I would never do this with Daniel. My brother might — eventually — get into sucking me off, but he'll never want me to fuck him. I'm sure I could get him to let me do it, but it would hurt him. I don't mean physically, `cause I could make it feel as good to him as it clearly did for Chris. But that's the problem: Daniel could never stand the idea of being fucked and liking it. It's too foreign to his sense of himself, to his masculinity. For all his metrosexual artist veneer, deep down he's basically a straight jock. Straight jocks don't get fucked, ever.

But with Chris I had no worries; we were both having a great time. It didn't take long before we hit climax. Chris came first, after just a couple of dozen thrusts, the cum flooding his face in ivory spurts. I came a couple of seconds later, pouring myself deep into him. I pushed my pelvis hard up against his ass, grinding into him as everything I'd withheld the night before came out in a flowing, spasming rush of pleasure.

"Hugh-hach!" Chris gargled.

For a moment I thought he was choking on his own semen, but it was laughter. He swallowed and, still laughing, grabbed a fistful of comforter to wipe his face.

I eased out and fell onto the bed beside him.

"God — Kiddo," he gasped when he was able to speak. "That was awesome!"

"You liked it?"

"Hell, yeah. Where'd you learn to rim like that?"

"An incubus taught me."

"Right." He chuckled some more. Slowly he rolled himself flat onto the bed, grimacing as his vertebrae unkinked. He turned his head to wipe his face some more on the comforter. "Wow, I'm a mess." He sat up. "Time for a shower. What about you?"

"Not yet," I said. Somewhere in the back of my mind Tarriel was tugging on a shirtsleeve. It wanted my attention. "I'm gonna rest here for a while longer."

"Okay," he grinned. "I guess you've earned it."

He climbed out of the bed and headed for the bathroom. I closed my eyes and tuned back into Tarriel's live reality feed.

Daniel was still sitting at the counter. A bar of late afternoon sunlight from the opening door bisected the dingy room. The light faded as the door closed. Blinking in the dimness Amber took a few uncertain steps into the bar. She was dressed in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved University of Chicago t-shirt. Slung over one shoulder was a large leather knapsack-sized purse.

Amber paused to let her vision adjust and scanned the room. Her eyes hesitated on Daniel, dismissed him, and continued on before their gazes could lock. She walked over to a booth and seated herself.

The waitress wandered over to take her order, then wandered away. Amber pulled a three-ring binder and a pen out of her purse. She opened the binder and started reading, pen in hand.

Daniel waited until the waitress had brought Amber's drink and left. Then he picked up his beer, walked to her table, and slid into the seat across from her.

"I'm waiting – " Amber's voice began firmly, then trailed off as she looked up and got a good view of him " – for you, I guess." She studied him. "You look good."

"You mean for someone who's just had an ethnicity transplant?"

Amber grimaced. "How did that happen?"

"Damnedest thing. Fell asleep in a tanning booth and woke up a week later looking like this."

She frowned.

"Come on Amber, that's funny." He sighed. "A lot funnier than what really happened."

"What did happen?"

"The short version is that I was working in my studio and one of my paintings came to life and told me to get the hell out of the house. I ran into the preserve and the house exploded. At least it seemed like an explosion at the time." He shook his head. "It was bad. I made my way to Joey's car — not quite sure how — and he took me to some cheesy motel. I passed out, or fell asleep or something, and when I woke up the next morning I looked like this, praise be to Allah."

"Shit," his smile slipped away. He ran his hand through his hair. "I'm so full of it. Sorry, Amber, I can't help it. It's all so fucking awful. What's been in the news?"

She put the pen down and closed the binder. "The plane crash, images of your house, photos of people on the plane. There's also one of you. No pictures of Joey. They've been interviewing authorities and families of passengers, plus some of your neighbors. There was a blurb from one of your cousins. They don't know if you were in the house or not, but they're assuming you were, since they've heard nothing to the contrary."

"What are they saying about the cause?"

"It's a mystery. Possibly mechanical malfunction, they say, but more likely it was something wrong with the computers."

"No one thinks it was intentional?"

"None of the lightblind authorities do."

Amber reached into the purse beside her and pulled out another three-ring binder.

"Here," she slid it across the table.

Daniel cracked it open. Wrapped in plastic and tapped to the inside of the binder were five bound stacks of twenties and two of fifties.

"Thanks." He closed the binder and put it on the seat beside him. "Which cousin?"

"Albert Meltzer."

"Really? Haven't heard from that side of the family since Dad died."

"How are you doing?"

Daniel looked away. "Honestly, I have no idea. Things have gotten so fucked up. All those people are dead. They were just going about their lives, minding their own business, and now they're dead."

He shook his head. "You know," he said in a low voice, "when I first got the moon gift, I thought I was a monster. After I met you and your family, I felt like I wasn't so much. Now I'm thinking that maybe we're all monsters. Maybe Vivana is right and Darkness really is evil."

Amber reached out and touched his hand. "Maybe," she said, "or maybe we're all creatures of light and darkness, and being a monster is about what you do, rather than what you are."

"Monster is as monster does?"

She smiled and squeezed his hand. "Exactly."

"Well," Daniel took a deep breath and slowly released it, "that's just it. The things I've been doing lately are pretty crazy, and Joey ... something's happening to Joey. I thought I was staring to understand things, but now ... "

He stared down at the table.

"What's happening to Joey?" Amber asked softly.

"He's changing. You said he was a sorcerer, that he was becoming powerful. Maybe that's all it is. Or maybe it's that he's growing up. Since the plane crash he's been calling the shots more than I have. It's almost like we've reversed roles, like he's the one who's protecting me now. Look at this — "

Daniel pulled the cross out from beneath his shirt. "He gave this to me. He told me that he had rehabilitated the demon and given it a new name. It's like my guardian angel now."

"Tutelary spirit," Amber muttered, her eyes fixed on the cross. She began to reach towards it, then stopped herself and carefully tucked her hand back in her lap.

"He ... " she bit her lip, "he named it, you said?"

"Yeah."

"Did he tell you the name?"

"Yeah. But he said I shouldn't tell anyone else."

"Good." She sat back and looked down at her drink. Her face was a blank porcelain mask. But as she raised the glass for a sip, her hand trembled.

"What? What is it, Amber?"

"He named a spirit. You say it so casually." She shuddered. "Your brother is a spirit-namer. He can command demons. Have you any idea how rare and powerful that makes him? The most that any coven or sorcerer I know of can do is drive them away or bottle them up. He's turned one into a tutelary spirit bound to a talisman."

She watched the ice swirl around in her drink as she stirred it slowly with the straw. "You know," she murmured, "that actually makes sense. It fits the Lugdunum Proposition to the tee."

"Amber ... " Daniel growled.

"Sorry." She shook her head. "Things are starting to make sense. The Lugdunum Proposition is a very old theory. It proposes that a sorcerer becomes a spirit-namer by surviving demonic possession. Something about the experience of possession itself is essential to the process."

"And that's exactly what happened to Joey," Daniel finished. "But how does it explain what's going on now?"

Amber looked up. "Your brother may well be the only spirit-namer alive today. I wouldn't expect the demons to be too happy about his existence. One of them may have decided to try to eliminate him."

"Okay," Daniel nodded, "that does make sense. But why would it come after me?"

"Because you're vulnerable — or were before Joey gave you the talisman — and he needs you now as much as ever. He always will. That hasn't changed."

"I don't know. It's starting to look like he can take care of himself just fine."

She shook her head. "That's not what I meant. Do you remember when I asked you to go to the Valley as my satelles?"

"Of course."

"I told you that satelles means bodyguard, or protector. It does, but that's not all that it means. The original meaning, especially, was very different."

"I assume you're going somewhere with this?"

"Yes, I am. Satelles also means companion. It's the origin of the word `satellite.' In the classical world, when Darkness was deeper, a satelles was the companion of a powerful magician or magical being. He wasn't a bodyguard, but he was still a protector."

"Of what?"

"Of everyone. The satelles kept his companion from using his power indiscriminately. He was a buffer between those with lesser Darkness and one with Darkness so deep that interaction between them was perilous."

"I don't follow. How?"

"By embodying everything that makes humans the best of what we are: honesty, fairness, love. You're the lifeline to Joey's humanity. He'll always need you, just as the world needs you by his side."

"Shit." Daniel looked away. He rubbed his face. "I guess I never thought that I'd be the sidekick."

"I know the feeling." Amber sighed. "I thought that I was going to be the one to complete Mercedes' Project. The story doesn't always turn out the way we expected, does it?"

She stirred her drink. "Your uncle, Walter, would know this: I heard once that everything in the universe is traveling in an orbit. Everything circles something larger."

"Like fleas on fleas?" A slow smile warmed Daniel's face. "So everyone is someone's hero, and every hero's someone's sidekick? I like that."

They sat silently for a while.

"How much of this do you think Joey knows?" Daniel finally asked.

"I'm not sure. Mercedes was one of the most well-versed practitioners I've ever met. It depends on how much of her knowledge her shade retains."

"How do we help him?"

"I don't know. I'm not certain he needs it."

They were silent for a while longer.

Daniel sighed. "Twenty-two lives, Amber. Gone just like that."

"This is not your fault, Daniel."

He bristled. "It's not Joey's fault either."

"No, of course not. That's not what I meant."

"Sorry."

He nodded to her drink. "Buy you another?"

"Why not?" She smiled. "I hear you're good for it."

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