Evanescence 12

Chapter 12

My eyelids flutter open and I inhale this wonderful combination of scent’s old straw, fresh hay, clover and the smell of sex. Shaun and I had just made love and I’ve never felt like thing in my life. It’s quiet inside of me for the first time in awhile, all of me satisfied. The layers that are me all happy for various reasons.

And of course just to be a girl, I’m actually a little freaked out. Shaun, My Shaun is a caster, a mage of somekind. I’m lying there being spooned and watching the sunlight starting to wane.

His fingers drift over my naked breasts and he’s touching me playfully. I bite my lower lip then ask.

“So how long?”

“How long what?”

“So how long have you been doing magic?”

“My powers quickened in me the night you tried to kill yourself, during the accident. I heard and we were actually at the hospital waiting when I started shorting things out. My mom knew what was going on once she saw me unintentionally make the pop machine start releasing free cans of pop. I was a danger to you and everyone else in the hospital so she got me out of there and sent to Grandpa to learn from him.”

“Him…Huh, I’m not too familiar with some of the male styles of magic Shaun just what is it that you do?”

“Artifice.”

“Artifice? I’m not really familiar with it.”

“It’s craft magic, it settles into the stuff for craftwork and the trades. I’m what Grandpa calls a lightning bug.”

“Lightning bug?”

“My magic has mostly to do with electricity and electrical devices.”

“But what is it? What does it come from?”

“It’s an Amalgym. It’s mostly enchanting, but you often if you’re like me you drawn on the elements, I’m strong in air and earth mama too, magnetics and metals have a lot to do with what I do. There’s some old traditions and stuff too but I’m not really that far along with my studies, not like you are.”

“I’m just starting too Shaun.” I roll over to stare at him questioningly.

“Really, you have a huge amount of power; I mean mana and essence too.”

“So just how do you know that?” I shield myself pretty good, if I give off too much of a signal them I’m really easy to find and that means a lot easier for the bad guys to kill me.

“Uhm…Raine I was literally plugged into you remember.”

“Oh…Yeah…” I can’t help but to blush, really, really red., Then Shaun kisses me. It’s one of those really nice romantic kind of kisses where the guy takes your head on this gentle hold and draws you into him for a kiss. It’s long and it’s slow and it’s that nice kiss that we girls dream about all the time, see in movies, read about.

We neck and stuff for awhile and after another half an hour of fooling around we break it off because his phone was vibrating. Shaun closed his eyes for a moment and I can feel his mama swirling into and through the phone? He nods to himself and I feel him do a sending? He sent mana, a spell out through his phone? He opens his eyes and looks at me. “That was mom, she was wondering where we were and if we were still coming to the house for supper.”

“Yeah, definitely….what did you just do?”

“I’m a lightning bug remember. My power works on electronics and related stuff. I can use it with my phone and a bunch of other things.”

“Artifice.”

“What?”

“You said it’s called Artifice, I’m not calling you a lightning bug.”

“Alright, C’mon lets get cleaned up.”

Shaun led me out back to a rain barrel where we sacrificed one of his tee shirts as washcloths and get cleaned up from our intimate moments. It’s not a bath but enough that I’m not feeling Ick when we get back into the car.

We drive to his house and they’re all still out in the field harvesting. Shaun and I take a quick shower and I change into a pair of his jeans and plan on reworking them by sending my power into the waft and weave of the cloth.

SHE is there looking through his closet but SHE’s the trans-girl her. “You know we try and be the women that we feel that we are inside but there’s this weird funny little thing that no matter how girly we are there’s something sexy, different about wearing the clothes of the guy that you’re with. You know I miss that when I’m a lesbian.”

“Hello, I haven’t seen YOU for awhile.”

“No not since you through your fit over you know who.”

“Alecia is dangerous. I’ve seen what she can do remembah?” Joanna is slipping up to the surface. She/I/ We lost friends and family to her and hers.

“I was there, Raine.”

“An so wuz ah Cherie, I see wit mah own eyes what kind o’ monster she is.”

“Well I’m not here to fight about it.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.” I feel the slave part of me retreat from the foreground, I swear I can feel my complexion darkening and my hair picking up curl when I’m strongly being my Joanna self.

I sigh; I really, really hate fighting with HER. It’s like having a fight with your MOM/Sister/ Best Girlfriend and Lesbian lover all rolled into one. I’m a woman, I know it in my heart and being on the outs with her just feels wrong.

I look at her, try a shy smile and she gives me this big sister goofy grin back. “How about you show me how to work with these jeans?” I ask raising an eyebrow.

“Sure.”

SHE comes over with some of his shirts and a few other bits like a couple of old ties of his and she begins to show me some stitch-witchery. I let my mana sink into the cloth like water then I reach into the power and feel it out, touch each strand and get to know it. Then it’s holding onto the cloth, the threads as I pull stitches and seams and even threads apart and put them back together into a shape that I want.

It’s more and even better than that because I tear the ties apart magically and use the colored threads to make some girly embroidery. SHE shows me how to form the jeans onto me like a second skin, perfectly tailored to my body and even how to stress the fabric so it feels like I’ve had these jeans for years. I go with a boot cut jean with little random embroidered wildflowers here and there on them making them look all hippy-chique and vintage.

The left over material I make into a denim baseball cap with the symbol leaf dealie from the TV show Charmed on the front of it in embroidery. It’s kinda fun and my head is full of all the cool things that I can make and recycle into other things. It’s too bad I can’t unravel someone’s clothes in an instant but this takes time to do but a whole less time for me to do this by hand or on a machine. I mean I could if I used essence to do it instead of mana but stuff like that is not what you use your life force for in a spell.

SHE grins at me like she just…well SHE knows what I’m thinking. Hey I’m a girl, of course I’m thinking about my clothes. I give HER a hug and SHE hugs me back.

“Go on Raine you go have a fun night with your boy Faraday.”

“Don’t you mean boy Friday?”

“Nope, Google it sometime, you’ll get it.”

I stick my tongue out at her and she tickles me. Until I’m running squealing to the bathroom to pee in just my underwear. She’s giggling and fades out. Shaun’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind when I get out of the bathroom.

“Uhm Raine are you alright?”

“Uuh…yeah? Why?”

“Well you just went in there and then burst out of there giggling and freaking out?”

Shaun’s actually scratching his head just completely lost. I giggle at him, SHE must have stopped time for us while we settled things and she showed me stitch witchery. He’s got that guy look that just says she’s (Me) is hurting my head. I giggle again. I swear I feel his brain just turn around in his head and say “That’s it I’m outta here.” There’s this really cute look on his face like the kind a dog gets when it’s trying to figure something out…his head even tilts from side to side. I can’t help it, it’s just too cute. I go over and kiss him and scratch him behind his ears.

The kissing is great but do you know how hard it is to not laugh at something like that?

I step back into his room and slip into my “New” jeans and pull on one of his way bigger than me tee shirts and hem it with just a bit of power. Shaun looks at me. “Neat trick, so you’re a stitch-witch?”

“Nope, I just can do it.”

Shaun does this fake cocky frat boy lean in the doorway. “So like what’s yer major?”

I laugh, well giggle. “You need about another forty pounds of muscle and a lobotomy to make that believable.”

He grins and starts up the stairs. “You’re Wiccan right?”

“Yep.” I’m not lying, a large part of my majik is Wicca, but so is voodoo and thread magic and a bit of oriental herbalism and healing and who knows what else. “I just touch on other things.”

“You would with the power that you have going on.”

I catch up with him. “Shhush, I’m trying to keep this whole different than other people on the down low. It’s bad enough that she’s out there.”

“You mean the Vampire from Dairy Queen. Yeah I’ve been working on a few things.”

“You have?”

“Yeah, I saw how you reacted. You knew her, or about her.”

“She’s old Shaun a couple of hundred years and really dangerous.”

“It’s a good thing I’m working on things then.”

“You’ll show me?”

“Yeah, after supper.”

“Cool, the stuff I’ve been doing hasn’t been working.”

We head up the stairs and head out to the fields where Shaun’s family is still pulling stuff out of the ground. The air is full of the scents of the earth and His dad’s there and his mom and his sister Jill…

I used to have such a thing for Jill as a younger guy. She was that hot older sister your friends had that was cool. I lusted after her, and now I know that I really secretly just wanted to be just like her.

Okay scratch that, I though up to three seconds ago that was the deal with us. Jill…Wow. Jill used to be the big breasted blonde cheerleader type that most guys drooled over. Me I liked her because she was wicked funny. She was smart, right into all of the college prep classes and she loved cars and knew stuff about them and she was just about the only girl I knew who could play an electric guitar. She was the prom queen with the body and the long blonde hair and now…

I watched this girl wearing hip hugging army combat pants that showed off a black lace thong. She was wearing just this bit too small black tee shirt that really showed off her breasts and her navel area where she had this great chic-six pack. Her hair was cut military short and looked really good with this killer tan of hers. Her body had this sheen of sweat on it from how hard she was working and there was this smile of satisfaction on her face. The stunning thing was that my Hooker self…knew her? We had been lovers one night when she was on leave. I hadn’t been working, and I’d nearly got forced to do a freebie when this navy seal chick stopped Big Eddie Sims from bashing my head into the alley wall until he could tag the place with my blood. Jill bought me lunch at a diner and she treated me decently and she even made sure I got back safely to my shithole motel room. I was bi and I had kissed her just to thank her and Jill had kissed me back.

That was actually the best night of my life. She even gave me her deployment contact numbers. We talked when she was there and when I could. I was very much in love with her. And she deserved better than me and when she had started talking about coming to see me on her next leave I went on a bender and…died.

I’m more than a little in shock. I knew Jill as Raine and I knew her and had fallen in love with her as ……….and I never clued into it until right now.

Then there’s the fact that I had always assumed that the people that were part of me were long dead. Not actually close to my own age. WTF!!!???

There would’ve been a point where I’m sure I’d have fainted. But instead, I’m just lost, stuck staring at Jill as she’s pulling potatoes out of the soil and shaking the dirt off of them. I want to cry for my loss, I want to scream that I love her. I want to run away in shame of what I had done to her, to myself, to my…our life. I wanted to throw up. My other selves kind of come to my rescue with this little perception of Oh Shit in several dialects.

Shaun looks at me and grins. “It’s been awhile huh? You used to have such a thing for her back in the day.”

“You have no idea.” I stare at her for awhile before trying really hard to shake it off. We walk over to help and she looks at me with those big blue eyes of hers. I swallow hard but I don’t look away. She smiles and dusts herself off. “Rainbow? Is that you?” I nod a bit still the whole deer in the headlights thing.

“Uhm yeah….surprise?”

“Holy shit, you’ve changed. I mean I heard that you decided on becoming a girl and now that I’ve seen you. Damn you’re flat out gorgeous.”

Okay, that gets me blushing but at the same time I pout at her. “I’m not flat.”

Jill grins and gives me the checking me out once over. “No, no you are not. But you’re still gorgeous.”

“And you’re flirting with me Captain.”

“I might be and just how’d do you know I’m a Captain now?”

“I’m a witch.”

Jill laughs and Shaun looks at me and so does his mom and we share a quiet smile between us for a second. Jill does check me out a few times and is mildly shaking her head. I can guess the thoughts. I don’t look like a boy anymore. I know it, I’m not meaning to be conceited or anything but I more than pass. My magic and being the Evanescence has been changing me. I can see bits from each of my other selves in my appearance. Some might call it cheating but if they want to have all the other stuff that’s going with it then they’re more than welcome to it.

Sorry, Jill and the whole thing between me and…………has me really shaken up. I get bitchy when I’m like that.

We finish the last five rows of potatoes and Shaun and his dad are pulling the carrots and the turnips. They machete off the green tops to go into feed bags, Shaun’s mom cooks them and pickles them I guess. It’s fairly late by the time that we’re done and get the stuff into the barn bins where they keep them. We ate supper which was already cooking together. A nice pork roast and boiled new potatoes with fresh garden vegetables

Jill and her mom and I took care of the leftovers and I kind of went into my southern slave zone by slicing the rest of the roast up and plating it then making potato salad out of the remaining potatoes. Jill had gave me looks and her mom smiled at me and thanked me for my help.

Shaun comes in all cleaned up and looking good and walks up and circled his arms around me. “You wanna go see a movie?” I lean into his embrace, he smells good. “Mmm, yeah a bit of mindless movie watching sounds good. Let me go get cleaned up.” He kissed my neck which did nice things for me. It took a little bit of effort to want to leave his arms but I do. I leave him to talk to his sister.

I get downstairs and I take a shower then Stitch-spell myself a dress out of …hmn there’s actually not much here. I close my eyes and fill the room with Mana, I breathe, keep the flows steady and feel. There are fibers, tiny micro-particles in the air. I touch each of them, well more like soak them in my mana and it’s my power that I move, mold, and spin. I spin cloth from the air, there are moisture bits I can use and things that can make colors. Strands form like hair follicles and strands to cloth. I flow the things together and new underwear, A new bra with hooks of nearly bone like ceramic I form in the same way as the cloth only I bind the base structure in a web like way like fiberglass. My dress I make in a short simple v-neckline and to the elbow sleeves, it’s a navy blue color and My under things I color to a pale soft blue.

SHE is there watching me. I look over at HER and let a few tears fall. “Why?, Why her, why me? I though I only channeled the souls of just past lives?”

“You do, but it isn’t limited to your ancestors Raine, you call the lives of all those with the power of your blood no matter when they lived, or live.”

“But, but it’s Jill…I really loved her! Why did I have to come back to here, to her?”

“That’s part of magic Heaven; as much as we try to use it, to control it there are things that are still beyond the reach of all of us.” Heaven was my street name when I was a hooker.

“Even YOU? But YOU’RE The GODDESS?”

“Even me, and I’m glad for that.”

“YOU are?”

“Yes, if there wasn’t something out there in the all that was that is that makes us learn, makes us question and even catch our breath in amazement then what’s the point in living?”

“Even YOU?”

“Especially me, if I never had lessons to learn myself or things to move me then I think I’d be long since gone from all the times my heart’s been broken.”

“YOU”VE had YOUR heart broken?”

“Raine, I am who I am and even what I am is a woman. What woman hasn’t had her heart broken?”

I look at HER and SHE looks at me and I can see it, there’s not just all of our pain that all women have felt, lived through and with, but there’s stuff in there that’s HER’S if anything there is that female connection through that. SHE get’s it and not just in some cosmic way, but personally too…just like the rest of us.

It helps, it takes some one that hurt and confusion and puts into a new perspective. It’s strange but not that the more human she seems the more I can connect to her spiritually. Not to offend people but it’s like the difference in like praying to Christ and actually talking to/with him as a person. It doesn’t change who he’d be but at the same time it really would.

We hug and cry on each other and this…feeling, this connection. Mother, Aunt, Sister, Friend…I’m not sure how long it goes but it feels like a long time. I cry, Heaven…cries and I and her/Heaven turn myself over to her arms and Heaven’s lifetime of pain comes pouring out. Her addictions fight her release…I accept them, make them my own and so does the others inside of me and us. We dilute them accept them and finally even after being dead…I’m free.

SHE looks at me afterwards and smiles.

“I’m so proud of you Rainbow, that’s as hard a thing as I’ve ever seen. Heaven going as she had been wouldn’t have seen the light, her soul might have never fought through it. Maybe this was why? C‘mon daughter of mine you have a date and let‘s get you cleaned up.”
***
Shaun and I drove into town and ended up at the theater and we geeked out while watching Voyage of The DawnTreader. It was a good movie and I enjoyed it. The green mist, the evil gave me the willies and was too close to parts of reality. I liked Lucy and to me she’s better than Susan. And Caspian…he was very, very good for me.

There was still some magic in there for me. The scene with the boat going though the flowers was beautiful to me. And even though I know it’s all special effects and everything I’m a little girl feeling that awe when Aslan is there on the screen.

The whole thing was great. The caramel corn, sharing it with Shaun hands touching, his arms around me, getting to lean against him, crying because of the movie and not other stuff. Everything just was great.

Of course that’s why on the drive home and intending to get a snack somewhere or just go do something else tonight I spot the vampire…Alecia.

“Shaun, slow down it’s her.”

I watch her as she comes out from the YWCA dressed in a light pink zip up hoodie and a soft yellow top and grey with pink trimmed yoga pants. She’s got a gym bag with her and even a yoga mat. We slow and keep back and watch her as she get’s into her cute little car and heads off. Shaun pulls away and starts to follow her.

We’re driving for about a half hour and there’s a bit of traffic. There’s this wave of something that washes over the areas. Shaun’s car sputters and the radio explodes into sparks. The lights in town go out, and cars stop…except Shaun’s but I can feel magic of somekind eating away at his protections.

Then I notice everyone’s not freaking out, at least not where I can see. They all seem tranced out?

The Vampire’s not effected either. And I’m pretty sure she didn’t do this either as she’s looking around just as confused as us. Her car’s dead though like the others.

Then I see movement. I work one of Joanna’s spells, one to see in the dark. Useful when escaping slave hunters.

There’d this black guy walking down the middle of the street. Long dreads or braids but in a nice set of dress pants and matching jacket. He’s really handsome, darkly handsome. He’s got this necklace with a huge chunk of emerald on it that pulses with power and a club, a cudgel of sorts and he’s heading right for the Vampire.
Heaven recognizes him, Shea…he’s from the UK, but he was working the eastern US. A singer, and a real Irish bastard. He has power and there’s this keening in the air…like music. I think he’s singing.

He get’s closer and closer and the Vampire steps back until she get’s to her trunk and rips it completely off the car then reaches in for a shotgun. She gives him both barrels from twenty feet away. The shot hits him, there’s smoke rolling off of the holes from the blast and it doesn’t even knock him down. She gave him both barrels…

Shea’s eyes glow green and in a blur of speed he gives her an uppercut with his Shileigh that sends her flying back fifty feet and crashing down ontop of Shaun’s car.

Alecia coughs up some blood as she hits.

Shea starts whistling as he’s coming at us. He smiles… “Oy now wott do we ave ere now?”

I think we’re in serious shit.

*** CONTINUED IN VAMPYRE 3***