Covenant (boyxboy)

Chapter Thirteen

Connor gave a cry of surprise behind me, pulling at my jacket as his legs clamped around my hips. I made sure he was secure and balanced, but then I had to put all my focus into lifting us up. It was significant work to maintain a gravitational interruption for the amount of time it took to get us high enough to top the trees. Once we'd floated up there, the bike's thrusters helped build forward momentum. I added what force I could without letting us drop.

Connor let out a stream of elated curses that would have made his twin sister proud. He clung to my back, and kept switching to look from one side to the other at the landscape passing below us. "We're fucking flying! Holy shit, are you kidding me?! I'm on a freaking flying motorcycle! Jesus, Ezra, you're fucking Hagrid!"

I didn't know what he meant, but as long he was happy it didn't matter.

Levitating at this height took effort, but nothing compared to some of the panicked trips I'd made to Texas. I didn't push even half that hard now, because there was no rush, and I wanted to conserve energy for something else later on... something he'd like even more.

I moved us at a deliberate, easy pace, making sure the mountains blocked any view of us from the highway. I only had to drop us to the ground once, when a helicopter got a little too close and could have seen us. But otherwise, we were able to make it over the series of cliffs that encircled our destination: a small, crystal clear lake tucked into a valley virtually inaccessible by foot.

The upper winds buffeted us around quite a bit until we could drop below them. We set down near the edge of the lake, right next to the campsite. I took a second to rest as Connor leapt from the bike and went running toward the water.

"This is awesome!" he shouted. The echo pleased him so much, he yelled a few more times.

I watched him spinning around, marveling at the scenery. "Maddy's never going to believe this. Where are we?"

"We call it Azazel's Mirror."

"He was one of the Watchers, right? We learned about them in Elioud Studies."

"Mm."

"So this is a Nephilim place?"

"For a human to get here it takes three days of extreme rock climbing. The wind patterns make flying in dangerous. Humans don't come here much, so my people like it. Especially the Reserved."

"That water's like freaking glass, you can see all the way to the bottom. I've never seen anything like that! Can we go swimming?"

I had to chuckle. "Stick your hand in."

The instant his finger touched the water, he wheezed. "That's freezing!"

"Still want that swim?"

"Gonna pass, thanks."

I laughed and opened up the saddlebags. "I'll start on the tent. Find wood for a fire."

He ran off, and I got to work laying out the tent poles, ground stakes, and canvas. It was all Nephilim manufacturing. The tent floor was inflatable, using a psychic-powered air pump the size of a quarter. The poles were aluminum, wired with microscopic silver to make it easy to heat with a little angelic energy. And the fabric was a more developed version of the smart climate control stuff we made for NASA: it reacted to temperature and weather conditions by adjusting permeability and thermal retention. It would keep occupants dry, and cool or warm as needed.

Connor returned as I was driving the last stake pin into the ground. He dropped an armful of wood on the pile he'd been working on. "Whoa! Can I go in?"

I swept the door flap aside, and he crawled past me until only his sneakers we're hanging out. "So cool!"

I grinned, and waited for him to back out. "Let's get the fire going."