Chapter Two
Darren woke with powerflowing through the bond he shared with Kavon. In a blink, Darren fell though that conduit and lost himself inside Kavon’s dream, filled with caricatures of their work friends. Darren mentally clawed his way back to himself and clutched the blanket.
In his sleep, Kavon stretched and reached blindly for Darren. The second Kavon rested his hand on Darren’s chest, affection and soft forms of longing filled the bond.
Darren ran his hands over Kavon’s side and trailed his fingers over Kavon’s hip where the adept colors stained his dark skin. Subtle reds and beiges swirled together into a handprint design. Darren’s handprint. Threads of color escaped the pattern and danced out into the surrounding skin. Darren traced the lines that led toward Kavon’s stomach, and he felt the echoing touch through his own bond mark.
Kavon opened his eyes slowly. Darren expected his sense of their bond to fade as Kavon reasserted his privacy. Instead, Kavon held out his hand, and Darren threaded his own fingers with Kavon’s.
“Good morning.” Kavon offered an easy smile. Contentment and desire flowed through the bond.
“We have nothing to do and nowhere to go.” Darren pressed his lips against Kavon’s in a chaste kiss, and he wanted more. He yearned for Kavon to pin him down and fuck him hard. Maybe Kavon felt that hunger because he squeezed Darren’s ass. Then his kiss became hungry and demanding as animalistic lust tangled with their underlying love.
Darren’s cock hardened, but Kavon chose to break the kiss. “You seem to need something.” Kavon pressed against Darren’s cock and the pressure almost made Darren’s eyes roll back in his head.
Darren gave Kavon his best come-hither look. “Whatever will we do with the morning?”
Kavon frowned, and for a second, Darren was insulted. He was offering morning sex, yet the bond echoed with confusion and a faint sense of alarm. Then Darren felt it. A tugging. A sense of the world slithering out of phase. A wrongness.
“What the—” The spirit plane swirled around them, creating a tornado of color and power. It settled into the familiar African plain with the vein-like network of tiny tributaries and rivers. The brightly painted Egyptian monuments stood in the distance. But one side of the landscape was dominated by a wall of brilliant blue ice. An enormous waterfall slipped over the ice cliffs, vanishing when it reached the base where the ice merged into the yellowing grasses of the veldt.
A man and woman stood next to the ice wall. He was late middle-aged, solidly built, and walking with the sort of confidence Darren associated with power. He also seemed familiar. The woman was much younger and the way she walked at his side without touching suggested a professional rather than intimate relationship.
Kavon’s shock filled the bond. “Dave?” Kavon stepped forward. “I thought you had moved on to the next realm.”
Dave grinned. “How could I when this world is still so interesting?”
Darren remembered his first visit to the spirit plane back when Bennu had first chosen him. Kavon brought Darren to the spirit plane to meet his teacher: Dave Boyce. However, not long after that, Bennu had created a massive storm on the spirit plane when trying to save Kavon’s life. Kavon had said the chaos had either forced Dave to move to the next realm or that Dave had gotten lost as the magical realm reformed into new patterns.
Darren and Kavon had spent weeks traveling the spirit plane rescuing other shamans who couldn’t find the exits. But in all their explorations, they had never seen any hint of Dave.
“I hope I didn't pull you away from anything too important. I tried to wait until your auras had calmed and it felt like you were in a good place to leave the physical world,” Dave said.
Darren was starting to think that the universe in general had something against their sex life. They got interrupted enough.
“It's fine,” Kavon said, even though it wasn't. “What is going on?”
A badger ran up to sit at Dave’s feet. The guide tilted his head to the side and studied Darren with undisguised curiosity. Dave said, “Pulling you into the spirit plain is a neat skill, isn’t it? Sometimes even an old dog learns new tricks if he tries hard enough and hangs around a while.”
“And if someone can teach him,” the woman said dryly. “I am pleased to meet both of you.” Her features were too sharp to be called beautiful, but she was a handsome woman with long black hair and a flowing aqua dress with elaborate embroidery at the wrist. Something told Darren that she didn’t have a body in the physical world, although he couldn’t explain why he thought she’d already died.
Most of the time, when people crossed over, they chose a spirit form closer to middle age. However, this shaman had either died young or had enjoyed her early twenties.
Kavon took a small step to the side as if to shield Darren. Darren would have taken offense, only he had the feeling this woman was dangerous.
She stepped forward, forcing Dave to the side. “We’ve actually met before. I’m Thuya Sherif,” she offered.
Shock made Darren blurt, “Thuya, as in the dead Egyptian shaman whose suspicious death we investigated last year?” He remembered the woman, both her aged body in her bed and meeting her on the spirit plane where she had still looked old. She had pointed them toward Arlington where Cruz had tried to set up his own magical kingdom.
Kavon blasted the bond with suspicion and fury, all colored with a hearty dose of fear.
Immediately, Kavon’s bull materialized. The guide shook his head so his long horns swept the air in search of an enemy to gore.
Thuya ignored the potential threat of evisceration. Her guide wasn’t visible, but when they’d met her before, Darren had seen her mastodon guide. He had enough power to damage if not outright destroy Kavon’s bull.
She offered them a sweet, grandmotherly smile that didn’t fit with her youthful appearance. “I appreciate that you took my death so seriously, especially when I was not forthcoming about the cause.”
“You mean you avoided your people on the spirit plane, which left them to suspect something had happened.” Kavon’s tone dripped with anger. Thuya’s refusal to contact her colleagues on the spirit plane had devastated Salma. Salma had told Darren that she’d expected Thuya’s death, but to have her mentor vanish had been the hardest part of her life since becoming a magical adept.
