I slept so long, it felt like a resurrection, one of those perfect mornings when you feel like you’ve slept for a hundred years.
Lydia was curled up against me, pretending to be asleep. I kissed her forehead and said, “We made it, it’s morning.”
She gave me a quick good morning kiss and I staggered to the bathroom, clawing at my back. “One night and this fucking demon has crippled me.”
“I warned you!” Lydia shouted from the bedroom.
It was one of those nights you’re kind of sad to wash off, but the clock was ticking, and I had shit to do. I had risked everything on this, betting that surrendering to Lydia would make me stronger instead of weaker, giving me the courage I needed to learn magic, and turn my whole goddamn life around.
I put on my oldest torn clothes and came back to her. She was obviously surprised, expecting us to spend the day in bed. I leaned in and kissed her for real.
“I will never be as focused, as energized, or as full of magic as I am right now,” I said. “So, I gotta use this. I’m gonna go work out.”
Lydia blinked. “Work out what?”
I laughed. “I’m gonna go get some exercise. There are no gyms in the Zone, so I’m gonna go climb a building. You have to report to your Master now, right? Now that we’ve… You need to tell him what I’m doing today. You tell him this is the happiest day of my life, and I’m out practicing magic and conditioning my body, getting ready for whatever comes next. He needs to hear the new guy is with the program, so he will leave me alone and let me train, for as long as I possibly can.”
Lydia sat up and enunciated very carefully, with just a hint of menace in her voice. “I am going to tell my Master you are with the program, because you are with the program.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
* * *
I had been planning my training regimen for weeks, without admitting that’s what I was doing, gathering every bit of Captain Cobalt footage I could find, converting the video to 3-D holograms, copying his movements in my living room.
I told Lydia it was an exercise routine from a video game, but I was actually standing in the shoes of a dead hero, wondering if I could use magic to duplicate his powers. I had no way to make myself stronger or tougher yet, but I had gotten pretty good at levitating my own body, and if I could find a way to combine reduced body weight with simple human strength, I thought I might be able to recreate one of Captain Cobalt’s most impressive stunts, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, making incredible leaps onto, and sometimes completely over buildings.
Captain Cobalt couldn’t truly fly, after that first day at Pearl Harbor, but he could leap incredibly high and keep himself aloft much longer than gravity would normally allow. Researchers speculated that the barrier that kept him from truly flying was mental rather than physical, and that he would eventually have been able to fly like a bird or a plane.
I had been practicing takeoffs and landings at the bunker, and now it was time to test it for real, attempting to jump from ruined building to ruined building here in the Zone. The spacing between them wasn’t perfect, and I wasn’t sure I could get enough momentum to go from lower roofs to higher ones, but I figured simply pushing myself up with levitation wasn’t actually cheating.
The only real computing challenge was to map my hologram of Captain Cobalt onto the real-world environment of the Reclamation Zone. But computers had gotten pretty good at this kind of thing, and it only took a couple hours to have my holographic hero performing all the moves I wanted to learn, cobbled together from a century of video clips.
It would have been simpler to make the figure a wireframe, but there was something poetic about it, watching my projection of Captain Cobalt flicker through different eras and costumes, even changing from color to black and white at times, as I pulled certain poses from ancient newsreels.
It was fascinating to see visual proof that his powers weren’t static. The Captain had grown in power over time, getting stronger and more dynamic through the years, until he was barely touching the ground between leaps.
I was drawing heavily from early footage now, from those first days when he was weaker and a little shaky, just like me. I took my monochrome Captain through the first jump and tried to follow behind, crashing unceremoniously into the crumbling brick of a brownstone when I timed it wrong.
It took a dozen tries to get that first jump right, before I finally got enough of a running start to fling myself onto the roof. But I hadn’t thought about how hard it would be to stop, once I had momentum pushing against my reduced weight. I skidded on the rough gravel of the rooftop and sailed right off the edge, plowing into the side of another building as I fell.
The red brick of this one got a little redder as it peeled off a layer of skin, creating a long smear of my blood as I panicked in mid-air. I finally caught myself on a windowsill that thankfully didn’t have glass in it anymore. Then I forced myself to calm down and slowly levitate down, for the long walk back to my starting point.
My grainy silent coach didn’t judge me, he just respawned, and watched me crash into the same fucking building again. I smacked into that red brick so many times, I actually learned where the handholds were and created some new ones, clearing out windows that still had glass in them, carefully checking for shards before I tried to grab the frames. Is this why so many heroes wore gloves?
I finally learned how to reverse the spell and push down at the top of my arc, touching the surface of the first roof before springing to the second. The third was a few stories higher, creating a rough stairstep of three buildings, each a little taller than the last, until I got a nice easy jump down for the fourth.
I had mapped out a rough course of ten buildings I could jump from traveling from Storrow back to my front door, zigzagging and backtracking at points where the nearest roof was still too far.
I suffered a hundred cuts and scrapes as I plowed into the sides of buildings that day. God knows how many infections I would have tomorrow, after cutting myself on old dirty glass and jabbing myself with rusty nails. I resolved that I would not go home to sleep until I had touched the roof of all ten buildings, but I went home early after number six, the one that almost killed me.
It was an old warehouse with one wall collapsed, with big open windows that used to have glass in them. Wind howled through the thing and made it sound like a giant beast. There was an old chain hoist hanging from the ceiling and I simply could not resist trying the swing, planning to grab it at my full weight and reduce weight at apogee to fling myself out the window.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
But when I finally caught it, the chain broke. More accurately, the hook in the ceiling broke, leaving the chain I was holding attached to absolutely nothing while I was at full extension. Instead of swinging back up and out as I intended, I was plummeting straight to the stained concrete floor, still clutching a useless length of chain as if it might magically reattach itself as I fell.
But I had been using levitation all day, and stopped a dozen shorter falls, so I was able to let the chain go and save my life, about six feet before I hit the ground. The rusty chain crashed to the concrete and coiled in a neat pile as I floated above it, but I had to float up to the ceiling and scoot myself over with handholds so I could let myself down next to it instead of straight on it.
A sane man would have stopped and gone home at that point. Instead, I floated all the way up and clawed my way across the ceiling, looking for another hook. I found one that looked strong enough and pulled the chain up after me. This time I pulled it all the way down so I could test it from the ground, to make sure I wouldn’t be killed by another weak hook or a weak link in the chain.
It seemed stable so I got another running start, swung myself toward the window, and almost died again, because this hook was farther away, and I hadn’t used enough momentum to get all the way there. I kept swinging until it got dark, vowing not to go home until I got myself through the window.
I finally did it and found myself in a dangerous expanse of open space, overshooting so badly I almost ended up in the water. I had to reverse the levitation again and push down, so I could land on a stretch of concrete instead. My knees buckled with the impact, forcing all the air out of my body in a giant whoosh. I knelt on the ground for a while, gasping and wincing from the pain, and decided it was time to go home.
It was my own fault for changing the plan and trying to go through this building instead of just leaping from the roof, but swinging from that chain had felt so incredible, I knew I was going to try it again.
* * *
I limped back in the door, covered in cuts and scrapes, hobbling on sore knees and a twisted ankle that was just starting to hurt. Lydia ran over and helped me inside.
“I’m not gonna be much fun in the bedroom tonight, but can you do that healing thing again? I was kinda countin’ on that.”
“Timothy, what are you doing to yourself?”
I smiled at her. “Yeah, it hurts pretty bad right now, but I had an amazing day. It works, Lydia. The magic actually works, but it’s a little scary, using it that much. I wasn’t expecting it to feel this good.”
I looked in her eyes. “You’re not the biggest temptation in the room, are you? It’s the power itself. It’s like a drug, right? My ancestors, they had to keep casting bigger and bigger stuff to get the rush? I’m just starting, but that levitation felt so good, I didn’t feel half these cuts. There’s a breakover point, right? A point where the power starts using me?”
“I won’t let that happen,” Lydia said. “It feels overwhelming because it’s new right now, and because the magic is so thick here. It’s easier when you draw the power from me. That’s part of my function, to serve as a source when you’re casting in places where magic is scarce, and to regulate how much you get, so you’re always in control.”
She didn’t say the obvious bit, but I saw it immediately. Kovach bodies were bred to use magic from Hell, so most of my ancestors couldn’t cast until they bonded with Lydia. Instead of getting addicted to raw power from the Earth, all my ancestors had been addicted to her.
* * *
She was back in human form for me the next day, wearing modern jeans and a loose white t-shirt with anime characters on it. No way she brought that with her from 1986.
“Back to human right away, huh?”
“It’s comfortable for me,” she said. “And I know how much you like this.”
“Oh wait,” I said. “I see what this is. You’re wearing your human costume as a form of erotic cosplay. Okay, hang on, I can do this.”
I made an elaborate throat clearing noise and did my best community theater line reading: “Hello, normal human girlfriend, how was your day?”
“It was great,” Lydia said brightly. “I humiliated a co-worker and bought something expensive on credit!”
I had no idea Lydia had this in her. I laughed so hard; I damn near cried in my casserole. “You say you don’t have a sense of humor,” I said, wiping my eyes. “But you do. It’s twisted, and dark as fuck, but you’ve definitely got one.”
We had a completely normal dinner, eating together at my little cracked table. I described my workout, and my growing comfort with the levitation spell. I expected her to nag me about learning the book, but she was letting me off the hook tonight, showing me just how good this could be, proving that she could be exactly what I needed.
We washed the dishes together, side by side, with me leaning over to kiss her neck and smell her hair again. Then I took her to the bedroom, and we made love like we were nothing special at all. She made me untie her shoes and struggle to get her jeans off. She dropped the succubus routine and started making “mistakes,” fumbling and slipping and jabbing me with elbows like a normal girl.
There was a sweetness to her now, a vulnerability that had been missing the night before. It wasn’t just sex this time. It felt like something twisted up inside me was finally letting go. I felt like she was healing me, repairing some ancient damage in my soul.
“I can’t change the contract,” she said, “and I can’t change the things you have to do, but I can give you this, every night, for as long as you live.”
* * *
I fell asleep with her arms around me and her head on my chest, convinced that I was going to pull this off. Maybe Lydia’s tricks worked on those other guys, evil pricks like Stefan and my grandfather, but I was a good person, maybe the first truly good person to ever be caught up in this contract, and I had a plan to steal the cheese right out of this trap.
While I was in my head, celebrating my courage and virtue, Lydia was quietly rearranging the furniture in my heart. And somewhere in the night, while I was fitting myself for a t-shirt that said World’s Smartest Mouse, Lydia curled up in the lonely place, and made herself at home.
* * *
When I came home the next night, with a slightly smaller collection of cuts and bruises. Lydia was waiting, naked under the covers in her human form, like a present that had already been unwrapped.
She gave me a little placeholder kiss and said, “Get cleaned up, and come back to me.”
But as soon as I got back in bed, she threw the covers back and went full succubus on me, pushing me down on the mattress with one hand; not hard enough to hurt, using just enough strength to scare me.
“Now that we have an understanding,” she said. “There are some things I need to punish you for.”
“Excuse me?” I started to laugh, but she was already straddling me, so all I could say was, “Oh god. Oh my god.” Two seconds later, she was full on riding me, forcing herself down to emphasize words.
“This is for making me wait, and this is for all your little jokes. But the rest of this night, the rest of this night is for letting that witch steal your first time.”
Oh, come on, you guys didn’t think I was gonna get away with that?
My punishment continued into the next morning. Then I got some sleep and requested a little more.
* * *
I noticed a buzzing noise the next day and ran out to the sidewalk. “Hey Lydia, come out here!”
She walked out into the sun and looked where I was pointing.
“Somebody’s trying to send a drone in here. You’ve got demon senses and stuff, right? Watch this thing with all your demon stuff and tell me if you see a spell or an astral thing.”
The drone crossed the threshold of my sidewalk, and I started counting down. “Five, four, three, two… dead.”
The drone lost power and crashed onto the cracked asphalt, seconds after it entered the Zone.
“Okay, were you watching? Please tell me, what did that? What did you see?”
“I didn’t see anything,” Lydia said.
“No magic, no curse thing? Nothing I could see from the gray?”
“Nothing,” Lydia said. “This is old magic, god magic. The ancients had things we still don’t understand.”
“The ancients had magic that even demons don’t understand?”
“Not all demons are the same,” she said. “The original demons were just gods who lost a war. Most of those left with Satan or have sunk so deep into Hell they can’t even come up anymore.”
“So, this is not normal magic, this is some kind of Nergal thing?”
“Timothy, please,” Lydia snapped, “stop saying his name!”
I waved her off. “Don’t worry about it, me and Nergal are cool.”