Exile Empire, Exile The Second

Chapter 10 - Kairos

"I don't know where to go first," I told him on the other side. We were on the bus from Horseshoe Bay to downtown Vancouver, and I was trying to think of somewhere we could leave our stuff and sleep when it was time.

"Hotel?" Sorin asked. "We could grab a room and start from there."

"With two beds, yes," I replied quickly. I was fine having his support, but I wasn't about to take the train to bang town simply because we were together. That whole magic bond and never escaping it thing put a damper on my horniness (or did it? All of this was so damned confusing).

"Of course," he said, laughing to himself. I heard him say something under his breath, but I didn't understand it. It was in Swedish. I suspected it was something about me being trouble, and he wouldn't be wrong.

He did that from time to time, spoke under his breath in Swedish. I hadn't recast the translation spell because I thought he should have some privacy from my intrusion, but it made me wonder what he said to himself.

After a quick online search for anything available, we wound up in a decent motel just on the border of Vancouver and Burnaby. It was close to the Patterson SkyTrain station and made for easy and quick travel. After we got settled, I suggested we head straight to my old apartment building to see if there were any magic traces left behind.

"Are you able to see auras or glyphs?" I asked him as we got onto the train.

"I can see both," he said sitting next to me, his thigh pressing against mine. "I can open my vision too, and follow scent lines or magic traces through the air or on surfaces. I've been trained in some, but also learned through the years."

"You told me you couldn't when we met one time," I replied, frowning.

"I didn't know how much I could trust you," he replied. Simple and straightforward, I appreciated that.

"Can you trust me now?" I asked.

"I can trust you enough to share this information, yes," he replied. "The fact is, I can see and some of my people can perform magic. My magic is centered around the shift, so I'm unable to do much beyond that."

"I didn't know wolves could do any of that," I said. "I haven't known many, you know. Other than a couple here and there in Wildwood."

"I'm not exactly like others," he said. "My clan has been tightly involved in the same celestial providence as your own. As all the guardians. Because of this, there are some differences, but we're similar to your own clan in many ways."

I made a noise of interest, but didn't reply. I thought about that, how our blood both went back centuries to the time before the great divide. Before humans had driven magic into the fringes and away from the public view. Our families or clans had been knitted together, fingers woven in fingers, hand in hand, stride by stride, for time immemorial.

So why hadn't I heard of him? Why did I know nothing of the Vargyrs in Sweden? It was strange to me to think of Sorin growing up there, living his life parallel to mine, so distant and far away. Neither of us knowing of the other until we grew older and fate or guardian magic drew us close.

"This is our stop," I said as the train pulled into Broadway station. It was the closest one to my old apartment and a pretty easy walk from here. We stood up and made our way through the crowd and I noticed they parted for us again, like they had before Empire magic drained from me.

We took the stairs down to street level and at the bottom I noticed a hundred-dollar bill on the ground in the center of the station, people walking past it like it didn't exist in the same realm as them.