The Eldritch Trials

Chapter 5: All through the night

Mac

I'm so glad this isn't my real family.
There are people everywhere. I've barely managed to lose Jade who thinks I need 'supervision' because I 'already got cursed multiple times' and 'am being followed by an Eldritch horror'.
"Will you go? You have to reveal yourself to Gale," I snarl, under my breath.
"I will at the time of his birth, that's how it's supposed to work," the horror chuckles.
"Fine, just, get to it," I mutter, looking at the time. My mother will be off soon. I feel bad. But I also felt bad for Gale. I like him, he's nice and I feel sort of like I should keep an eye on him for her sake. He's her real son. I know she loves me too, but. There's a too in there isn't there? The least I can do is keep an eye on him.
"What are you doing here?"
"I was invited," I say, smiling as I spin to address the speaker. My father, Shane Soren, too much time in crypts has left him disturbingly light on his feet. Right now he leans against a pillar in the massive courtyard. His family home yet he couldn't look more out of place. Tall, rugged with a scar on his left cheek, chestnut hair shaved short, and as usual carrying a half a dozen magical objects.
"Are you implying my brother didn't invite me to my own nephew's birthday party?" He asks, hand on his chest, "Seriously?"
"What are you doing here? I didn't invite you, you moron,"  meet my biological father, he couldn't look less like Shane if he tried. Alec Soren is distinctly business casual, with faded black salt and pepper hair and grey eyes, he looks perpetually nervous I'm just going to assume that swapping out your kid for somebody else's will do that to you.
"Sir, you must recognize Shane Soren, he's one of the most famous vampire hunters in the world, he once slayed a whole pack of werewolves, he's a hero," I say, innocently, which implies I know who Shane is, and not Alec, which is not how the situation should go.
Alec's face quivers with annoyance but he can't figure out who to get mad at.
"You heard him, I'm famous," my father says, gripping my shoulder and leading me away, we get a couple of paces before we crack up.
"Did you plan that?' He laughs.
"Absolutely not," I laugh as well, "Did you see his face?"
"Gods that was priceless, all right, how did you get in— before he has us both thrown out?"
"Gale asked me to come, now how long have you been back? Did you see mom?" I ask, folding my arms. We haven't heard from him in weeks.
"Oh, trust me boy, I found your mother first," he says, smiling slyly.
"Yuck, you coming back tonight?"
"If I can escape yes, I'd sooner your mother's bed than my gilded cage, if she'll have me in it," he says, dryly, "I'm home for a few weeks— can your mother be induced to get you out of school and go hunting? I heard of werewolves up near the border, it'd be fun."
"Really?" I kind of have a lot going on but that would be fun.
"Don't you have a lot going on?" The horror asks.
"Course, you can still cast yeah? I brought you a new amplifier, here," he says, withdrawing a dagger from his coat, "See if that'll work."
I take it and immediately pain shoots through my arm. I drop it quickly.
"Hell's bells, kid, how many magical objects did you touch?" He laughs, retrieving it. Now, amplifiers use magic and just, well, amplify it, but they still require a pull. A cheap and not entirely sound trick is to draw way too much magic through an amplifier, then literally throw it away before it can drain your energy to feed itself. The downside of that is you can't touch the amplifier ever again, in your life or the next one, without paying the price of magic. This is like the sixth time he's found some random old magical object and at some point in my lives I used the thing to do something stupendous and then threw it away.
"Nope, yeeted that one as well," I wince, clutching my arm.
"Freaking amazing, dude, you had a fantastic time I'll give you that," he laughs, putting it away, "Every time I find a magic object now, all the other hunters think I'm crazy, I'm like 'gotta take this home see if my kid also touched this', they don't even believe me, by the way."
"Sorry," I wince, still in pain.
"It's hilarious at this point, anyway, stops you from stealing my stuff," he says, cheerfully.
"Thank gods you're here," Gale materializes from the throng of people to walk directly up to Shane and try to crawl under his jacket.
"Hey man, happy birthday," Shane says, hugging Gale tightly.
"What's the matter?" I ask, frowning. He looks sadder than usual.
"I just want to go," Gale mutters. His soft chestnut hair is damp with rain and he's wearing the same rumpled clothes from the school day.
"Want to go practice spells somewhere? Or get a drink? Hey you're sixteen—and you're sixteen next week why don't I buy you each a beer?" Shane asks. So we lied to him about my birthday so he wouldn't become suspicious, my mom and I feel bad but we figured it was safer this way. We only put it off by a week though.
"Really?" Gale asks, hopefully.
"Sure you're old enough for a beer, come on let's go find a bar that's open—,"
"You see why I didn't invite you?" Alec is catching his brother by the back of the neck.
"I see it now, yeah," Shane nods, weakly.
"I'm just tired dad, I want to go to bed," Gale mutters.
"Fine, yeah, go on, so long as it's not somewhere with him," Alec sighs.
I melt away into the crowd. I have no interest in being around my biological father especially not with a horror around that we both can see.