NOVEL NEXT Chapter 72 She Knows
Chapter 72 She Knows
Anya struggled to break my grip. My elixir was making her stronger, but it would not approach my strength even when she fully absorbed it. Worried she might hurt herself, I said, “Relax. I already knew you were a catkin. I am not going to hurt you. Let’s just talk for a bit before I drive you home.”
She finally relaxed and said, “What are you? Mother checked you, which means your disguise must be at least tier 2.” I smiled at her statement, and she retreated.
“I was born a human. I am no demi.” I guess that was correct. Demons were not considered demihumans.
Anya relaxed and asked, “Mage? You are kind of young to be involved with the Magus Arcanum.”
“No, no. Relax, I am not part of any organization. I just thought you were very attractive and wanted to go out with you. Your card trick at the end kind of forced my hand. I wasn’t going to play stupid,” I said while releasing her, and leaning back to give her space.
Anya calmed down, was silent for a while, and finally explained, “You were right.” She inhaled deeply, “I have been in a kind of heat for the catkin. For some reason, we cheetahs get it worse than most catkin, probably due to our higher metabolism. We are closer to rabbitkin in our drive. It has been messing with my head and affecting my practice and schoolwork. When my mother noticed, she offered to find someone…then you just kind of happened.” She laughed, “When I was dressing for the date, my mother said to just milk you and then to use the hypnosis card.”
“So, how was it? I mean, it was your first time….” I asked, wanting to get some praise for my efforts.
A grin crept onto her face, “It was better than expected. I am sore and will have trouble walking until I get a restorative potion.” She bit her lip, “How was I?”
“Amazing! My dick got the massage of its life in your….” I stopped talking, thinking I was being too crass.
“Yeah? Go on!” Anya said excitedly. Her nipples hardened under her blouse and bra.
I continued at her, urging, “Your hot pussy worked me so hard I will also have trouble walking. When I take a shower tonight, all I am going to think about is your magnificent body. I can’t wait to get your thighs around me again.” Her face fell at the last statement.
“Sorry, Caleb, but this was a one-time thing. My mother allowed it so I could work out my distraction. After we lose our virginity, the drive to fuck isn’t as strong. It is more controllable.” I heard her words, but her body was flush and breathing heavy.
“Oh well, that is too bad. Well, I will drop you off at home then.” I said, getting ready to leave.
“One second, I have to go pee,” Anya got out and ran into the woods. I watched her go, and she went behind a tree to squat. I didn’t understand since I had already seen the goods. I also had to pee, so I got out and peed on a nearby tree. It was in clear view of Anya, and I made sure to harden my length.
Anya paused, coming into view as my stream painted the tree. I just looked over at her and smiled. I was certain she would ask again, but she rubbed herself through her skirt for a few seconds before getting in the car. I should have turned on my lust aura. As we started to drive back, I asked, “So, are your parents worried about the new Alpha Pack Leader?”
Anya didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Finally, she said, “You are extremely well-informed. We only heard two days ago.”
“Well, I have only known Jade for a month, but I think she will do a good job,” I said casually.
“You know her!” Anya rasped. “We were told she is one of the world’s ten most powerful adept catkin! My parents think that means she isn’t too smart,” Anya said. “Oh, please don’t tell her I said that!” She grabbed my arm, “Please!”
We were at a stoplight, and I slipped into my mind space to check my aether harvest, 116/160. I gained forty-six life essence! Pandora looked at me and said, “She is a good piggy bank. Keep her on the line.” I nodded as that was my thought exactly. I probably just bumped her tier as well.
Returning to the car, I looked at Anya, “No problem, but I hope we can have another date sometime and maybe somewhere more comfortable, like a bed.” Her eyes widened, and her eyes moved to my groin.
“Yeah, if that is the price I have to pay for you to keep my secret,” she said with lust clearly evident in her voice.
We were getting close to her house, and I had to ask, “Anya, do you really like pain? I just mean you responded when I was rough with you.”
“I know it is weird. When I started figure skating falling was the most enjoyable part. I mean I don’t like getting punched or cut or anything stupid like that. I just like the feedback and feeling the brief intensity. I am a masochist. It is embarrassing.” She shrunk in on herself.
I didn’t know what to say. Should I be supportive or try to get her help? Is it even my problem? “Anya, I don’t know what to say. If you are ok with it, then that is fine. If you need help…I can probably help,” I offered.
“You can? I mean, I never thought about it. I haven’t told anyone. What can you do?” She sounded curious and dubious.
“It is similar to the hypnosis card you tried to use on me but much stronger,” I said with seriousness.
“No. I mean, I don’t know. Not right now. I just like it. Is it bad? I don’t know why I told you,” Anya was extremely conflicted.
“It’s fine,” I said, pulling into her driveway. The mailbox read Deleon. So it was Anya Deleon.
Anya got out and smiled at me, “Thanks, Caleb. I had a great time.” She hesitated, “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“Anya, your secret is safe with me. If you ever want me to try and help, you have my number. As she turned, I pulled my bracer from under my seat and read her core numeric. She shut the door and went into her house.
I looked at the bracer, 1.12. Damn it. I just made another lower-tier 2 catkin. I started driving and tried to think about what I should do. Eventually, I called Jade and put it on my car speaker. Jade picked up almost immediately.
“Caleb! Thanks for calling. Are you coming over? I really could use a break.” Jade was excited to hear from me.
“Is this line secure, Jade? Is anyone listening?” I said conspiratorially.
“Yes, but give me a second. I can double-check. Artica has excellent skills.” It took twenty minutes before Jade came back on the line, “We are good, Caleb. What is so Cloak and Dagger?”
“Do you know the catkin family outside of Richmond with the last name of DeLeon?” I asked.
“Give me a few minutes,” Jade said, and I heard her striking keys. “Yeah, they are demi dentists. A few red flags but nothing serious. What is the problem?” She asked seriously.
“Red flags? What does that mean?” I asked, worried.
“They have a history of working on vamps and demons. Both races are DNA from the catkin council. DNA means Do Not Assist. Two incidents with vamps in the last five years and a demon incident eleven years ago. The alpha cleared them in all cases. Give me a minute, and I will review the cases,” Jade said.
I was anxious as I waited on Jade. Finally, she said, “Yeah, nothing big. Two vamps were expelled from their family, and the DeLeons filed their teeth so they could blend easier into human society. The demon…says here they were coerced by him for the periodontal work.”
“Ok, so nothing bad. Jade, you know what I did to you to make you stronger?” I started.
“Yes, Caleb?” She asked cautiously.
“Well, the daughter of the DeLeons, her name is Anya, she got the same treatment. She is now lower tier 2,” I relayed.
Silence on the other end. Jade’s tone was different when she spoke. It was authoritative and irritated, “Caleb, you can not go around doing this. You need to talk with me before doing this. I am responsible for the safety of all catkin in my territory. If you raised my bodyguards, that is one thing. But random catkin?”
Jade’s attitude irked me a little. She was ok with me doing her a favor. “So Jade. Anya is a good person. I am giving you a courtesy call to put out a potential fire. I expect Anya to do extremely well next month at the figure skating trials. Do what you need to but don’t hurt her,” I said casually.
“Caleb, I would never hurt anyone. If tier 2 catkin started sprouting like flowers in spring in Virgina, not only will the catkin come calling but every other beastkin council,” she said honestly. “I can sequester Anya. It will put her under my direct command.”
I interrupted, “As long as she can still compete. It is as important to her as going into transits is to you.” Jade growled irritably on the other end.
“Fine! I just found a large ranch for my cornerstone. The sale will close in a few weeks, and she can become my aide. Please don’t keep doing this, Caleb. I can only afford so many aides,” Jade tried to add some lightness to her tone.
“What is an aide? Will she still be able to do her figure skating?” I asked.
“Yes, an aide just means she is being trained to take over for me in case I am killed. She will have a normal life, and I will pay all her expenses, school, hobbies, sports, etc... If she is tier 2 I can probably find a good use for her. Her file doesn’t say much—no magical aptitude with spells or enhancements,” she paused, “If I do this, Caleb, then I need a favor. Artica. I still need to convince her, but I want you to enhance her. Frost is too resistant, but after you do her sister, I think I can convince her.”
“Fine, but no Monsoon. I don’t swing that way,” I said firmly. Jade asked me a few questions about Anya before hanging up. I think I did the right thing.
I felt I was getting my cock stuck between a rock and a hard place. Juicing up my partner’s core with my saliva helped me get a lot more life essence, but when I improved them, they became more powerful. Then they drew attention to themselves and, by relation, me. I also had been tracking my gains from the same partner. The first time I took life essence was the most profitable for me. After that, I had to work harder to get close to the same, so I was getting diminishing returns.
I pulled into my parent’s house and went upstairs to shower. I smelled awful and didn’t want my parents to catch a whiff. Dad knocked on my door when I was in the shower, and I just told him I was with Iris, and we had sex. He said to come down for dinner when I was clean and hoped I had used protection.
I was shocked to find my mother had made meatloaf for dinner. The potato crust was burned, but with enough ketchup, it was edible. We talked about colleges. They wanted me to get a degree. They kept asking about where I was going to play college hockey. I didn’t think I was going to have time to waste on college…or college hockey. I placated them, saying I would look into it. I didn’t have to worry about it till the fall anyway. Colleges still thought I was just entering my junior year, so they had not been pressing me, just scouting me. When they found out I was a senior next year, the pressure was going to greatly increase. After dinner, I went upstairs.
Spending time in my mind space was out. My aether pool had been drained from practicing martial arts and opening the portal in New York. I lounged in my sitting room. I needed to choose an enhancement. I already knew it was either going to be either my incubus wings or the elixir of recall. So I was deciding between enhancing myself or my partners. I spent an hour going back and forth.
In the end, I chose the elixir of recall. I needed to test out my theories on how many elixirs a person could take. Knowing this would help me figure out my future ability purchases and give me options for my partners. Better memory should help not only Abigail but anyone who was trying to learn magecraft. It sucked that I couldn’t use my enhancements on myself.
I slept on the couch instead of making my way to my bed.
When I woke, I texted Rob to take the bus. My car needed a thorough cleaning, and his sister would definitely notice. I scheduled a cleaning for today. It was an independent contractor that my dad’s dealership sometime used. I put in the notes that I would pay double if they could get it done immediately. I dropped off the car, left the keys, and planned to pick it up after school.
The school day was boring. There were six periods in the regular school day, and we had double-length periods Monday and Tuesday this week to take our exams. My first exam was my math exam, and I finished in 30 minutes and had over an hour to sit. I didn’t want to use aether, so I just scribbled on blank paper.
I was actually surprised as I sketched with a pencil. It was an excellent facial portrait of Iris. When the exam ended, the girl who sat behind me stopped me. She shyly asked, “Caleb, I didn’t know you drew. I, uh, I draw as well, but….” She was trying to find the courage to talk to me. Her name was Carrie and kept to herself. She was very plain looking. She didn’t finish her statement and instead took a large book from her bag and pushed it into my hands. “Give it back after the study period.” She left me with a bright red face.
I remembered Carrie was in also my study hall. Study hall was next, which meant I was going to have to sit for two hours doing nothing. I made my way to the library and sat in a study room, and opened the book. The first few pages were of students studying at their desks. Then a cat in different poses. It was the same cat, so I guessed it was Carrie’s. My drawing was good, but I didn’t have the mastery I saw here. Carrie’s images had shadowing and depth to them. She was extremely talented. Then there were two images of me, one at lunch with Rob to my left and Iris to my right. While their images were blurry, I could figure out who they were by their poses and clothes. The next image of me was in my hockey uniform skating. I didn’t realize Carrie had come to a game.
The next few images were sceneries; a woodland, a lake, and an old house. Then a facial portrait of me. It took the entire page, and she must have studied me in extreme detail to draw this. I looked around the room, and Carrie was in another sketchbook, scribbling but stealing glances at me. I was sure her core was just a weak lower tier-1, and she was plain looking. She was obviously pining for me and too shy to approach.
I paged through the rest of the images, and there were two more of me. I got up and walked the sketchbook to Carrie, who suddenly got extremely nervous. I handed it to her and said, “Amazing work. You are extremely talented. If you ever want a model to draw, let me know. I bent over and wrote my number on the inside cover of the sketchbook she had loaned me.
The ball was in her court. I figured even if I raised Carrie up to lower tier-1 it shouldn’t draw too much attention. That was if she even had the courage to call me.
My exam last period was also quickly completed, and I looked at the clock most of the time, watching it tick down to freedom. I bolted out of the classroom and the school to go and get my car. I texted Rob I would swing by and pick him up in 15 minutes at the school.
My car was ready, and I paid double, and I even gave the young kid a $100 tip before leaving. The car smelled amazing and looked super clean. As I picked up Rob and Sophia, Mary texted and said she was at my house to work out. Apparently, Rose was studying for an exam tomorrow, but Mary still wanted to work out.
I let her know I was almost home. Sophia commented that the car was actually clean. I offhandedly said I had it cleaned professionally, as the car was starting to smell funny. Rob turned red, and I didn’t dissuade him from thinking I cleaned the car because of his tryst with Yuki. I mean, Yuki had her own car for them to use.
I dropped them off, and pulling into my driveway Mary was standing there in her school clothes. They always came already changed, so I thought maybe she was planning to change in front of me to entice me. Mary offered a weak smile. We went inside and to the basement and Mary put down her backpack, “Caleb,” she started, “I wanted to ask you something.”
I looked up from getting the dumbbells ready. “Yeah, sure. What?” I said, unconcerned.
“When we did our 2k test last Thursday,” her tone had a chill run through me. Mary hadn’t even started to change. “Do you remember what our final times were? I wanted to send the splits and final time to my coach. It was that erg over there. I will just get it from the memory.”
Mary moved slowly, and I just watched as she flipped the screen and pressed the buttons. She frowned. Of course, I knew the monitors had a memory, and I had looked up how to and cleared them. Paige had used me as her record keeper when she rowed in high school to jot down her times and splits. Mary looked at me, “The entire memory is blank?”
“Yeah, I cleared them. You didn’t seem too happy with the results, so I thought it best to erase them,” I said evenly but sensed Mary was digging. My mom texted me and said she was not going to make it to work out with us… small mercy as I sensed something was coming from Mary.
Mary didn’t seem to know how to proceed as she had expected to find the times on the erg and confront me. Maybe she had overcome my charm and remembered parts of the test. I just asked, “Mary, what is wrong?”
She looked hard at me, took out her phone, and quickly went to the end of the video and handed it to me. She stood back as I watched the video of her and Mary get excited, cry and talk excitedly about college, and then this heartless young man came in and told them sorry, but it was not going to happen. Damn, I seemed like such an asshole in the video.
I handed her back the phone, and she said, “Don’t use your juju magic forgot sauce on me again,” she warned. “Tell me what happened. Others have the video, and Rose knows as well, so tell me. What happened in the video.”
I pulled up my sleeve and activated my bracer on Mary, 0.55. So she was barely upper tier 1 for her aether core. Her core also looked somewhat malleable, so it could still grow more if I put effort into it. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t created another tier 2 core. Tier 2 cores could resist my charm effect. “Sorry, Mary, but I need answers.” Her face went panicky as she realized I was going to charm her again. She tried to bolt into the bathroom and but I grabbed her and pinned her to the wall, and looked into her eyes.
“Mary, I am not going to hurt you, relax.” It took a few more words before she calmed. “Mary, go and have a seat on the bench press.” She complied. I took a deep breath, “So Mary, tell me what happened. How did you get the video, and who really knows and who has copies of it.”
Mary explained how she had been recording her blow jobs of me so she could watch them in bed before going to sleep. She found the video on her cloud and watched it. I should have thought of that. I had my pictures automatically uploaded to my own cloud but didn’t think of videos. She told Rose, and they both made copies of the video. They then went to the boathouse and did a 2k test there, and their times were out of this world. Mary told Rose she would confront me, so that was why Rose wasn’t here this afternoon. It was in case I charmed Mary again.
Well, wasn’t this just the flaming bag of dog shit on the front steps. “So, are you and Rose mad?” I asked Mary.
“I am not. I want to make sure this…strength is not going to fade with time. Rose didn’t like being hypnotized by you, but I think she is fine with it,” Mary answered honestly.
“Yes, I gave you your physical enhancements, Mary. It was from my semen if you haven’t figured it out yet.” I started.
Mary interrupted, “That was our guess. We could feel the changes, and when the taste changed….” I held up my hand, and she stopped talking.
“So, what was your goal in confronting me this afternoon?” I asked Mary.
She answered honestly, “I was hoping to coerce you to make sure you didn’t take away the enhancements, and if they needed renewal, you would do it for me.”
I reached out and broke the charm thread on Mary. The intense feeling of calmness and friendship would fade. Mary was a smart person. Before I had become an incubus, I would have said she was way smarter than me. But coming here so underprepared? She obviously didn’t know I was a demon or what I could do.
Mary’s eyes cleared, “So Mary, I charmed you again. Don’t worry, and I didn’t take anything away from you.” I was going to try the honest approach, and if that failed, I would have her forget, “So Mary have you heard of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry?”
The next hour I tried to explain to Mary that magic was real and there were demis living among us. I figured telling her about the transits, and higher layers was just too much at this point. Even with the lingering charm effect, she was dubious and kept asking me to demonstrate magic.
I aged myself down to seven years old, and she lept up and ran her fingers over my face and my body, not really believing her eyes. I then had to explain that Hogwarts was not real but that there were other schools out there for magic. That was when my dad came home and came downstairs. When he saw us talking—and since we were fully dressed he went back upstairs.
“So Mary, I am going to let you decide. I can close this door for you and ask you to forget everything you learned and have you erase all the videos. Or if you want, you can be brought in, and Iris can explain things more.” I said.
Mary got excited, “I knew it! You and Iris are not together. You just both know about all this!” Her face told me she was excited at the prospect that I was ‘available.’ I shook my head is disbelief.
“So, Mary, what is your choice? Will it be the red pill? Or the blue pill and going back to your normal life?” I asked.
She immediately got my analogy to the Matrix, “I want to know—give me the red pill. I want to know everything. Caleb take me down the rabbit hole,” she said seriously. The fact Mary got my Matrix analogy was kind of sexy.
I laughed, “Mary, I barely know anything. I have only scratched the surface of knowledge.”
Mary had a doubtful look on her face, “How will I know if you hypnotized me or not? I mean, how can I trust you…”
I smiled, “You can’t. Just know that I have not hurt anyone since I gained my powers. I have only helped people, like I helped you and Rose.”
Mary was smart and quickly figured I had given my enhancements to others and asked, “How many other women have you helped Caleb?” She asked with some curiosity and fascination.
“I man never kisses and tells,” I said with a smile. “Let’s go to Iris’ house. You can harass her. There are some elves and an orc over there as well.”
“Like in The Hobbit?” Mary asked excitedly.
“No. Our orc is mostly civilized as long as she gets her daily slice of pizza.” I said lazily. I was going to pass Mary off to Iris’ house. Maybe going down the route of wiping her and Rose’s memory was a better choice, but I preferred to let people make their own choices.
Mary said she would talk to Rose, and she was sure she could convince Rose, so I would let her. I was having enough trouble juggling life anyway. When I knocked on Iris’ door, Eilina answered, “Caleb!” she screamed and gave me a hug, and I felt her hands drift to my ass.
I peeled Eilina off of me. “Eilina, this is Mary. She is somewhat new to the world of the Magus Arcanum. Bring her to Iris and tell Iris she can answer Mary’s questions. I have things to do.” I grinned and walked down the steps as Mary gave Eilina a short wave in leaving. Yeah, nothing could go wrong there.
I drove home and put on my rollerblades, and played in the backyard in front of the garage while thinking. College, transits, life essence, hockey, Magus Arcanum, Dexter, new house, Vida… I had no idea how I was balancing it all.