Pangaia: Agendas (Year One: Fall)

Chapter Three - Denver

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Why did he bite her?

Because she smelled delicious.

Denver wasn't one to think deep fatalistic thoughts about much of anything. However, when he smelled something good—no Divine—he knew it meant something and to take advantage of the opportunity when he had the chance.

At Pangaia they called him a vampire. Denver knew better than to believe that gossip. He wasn't quite sure what his blood lineage was but he knew a few things: he'd never been dead, he grew old, and he could be outside in the sun.

Oh, and he loved garlic. Loved it.

Blood also attracted his attention, and that's where the confusion came from.

He could smell blood types and plenty of other juicy genetic details about an individual. Creature type? Yup. Family connections? For sure. Quality of health? Very potent—and important. Anything a doctor would get from a blood test, Denver smelled.

Handy, very handy.

He didn't go around sucking blood from everyone he found interesting. In truth, he didn't suck the blood of many individuals at all. Humans were boring and didn't taste that great.

Divine, now that was another story. Divine were a pure sugar buzz and addictive like crack. They were a rare treat. Most Divine knew they had to stay away from "trash" like him.

The girl—Cheyenne? Yeah, he was pretty sure that was her name. She might as well have been wearing a neon sign that said "Naive, easy target!"

A good person wouldn't have taken advantage of her. Denver wasn't a good person. He was pretty sure he wasn't a person at all, though he didn't actually know what kind creature of myth he was.

Demon? Angel? Mutant? Alien?

The people who knew didn't want to tell him, and he didn't care enough to find out.

What he did care about was getting his fix.

Sometimes at Pangaia he bargained a few drops of Divine blood in exchange for favors. He also traded his own blood for access to other magics. Spells someone of his kind shouldn't have been capable of performing, yet he could.

Denver should have had a lot of questions. He didn't, because he didn't care.

He didn't care about much of anything. King of indifference. Always ready for a party.

The high he got from biting Cheyenne lasted so much longer from any of the other Divine members he'd dranken from. Perhaps because he'd gotten more than a couple of drops, or perhaps there was something else different about her.

She feels like destiny.

Ew. What kind of crap was that? Nope. Rejecting that thought.

She tasted great. She enjoyed the bite just as much as he did. She now had an interesting story to tell. They'd never see each other again.

Everybody won.

Now he had to head back to Pangaia before they realized he'd left campus.

At seventeen, Denver might as well have been an adult. As an almost adult, he felt he should be able to leave school grounds whenever he wanted—and to do so beyond the chosen borders provided by the faculty. He didn't do well with restrictions. Anyone who told him "No, you can't do that" he found all of the reasons that he could.

That "spoiled" and "disobedient" attitude is why he was nowhere near ready to graduate. He'd been a Sophomore for three years.

Not showing up to class didn't help, of course. Why go when he already knew the material?

Yet, he couldn't leave because his foster parents didn't want to take care of him. They pawned him off on the boarding school staff in the hopes that they'd never have to see him again. All Denver had to do was make it to eighteen. Then he could leave and do his own thing.

Every so often, he did find a way off campus on his own. Magic helped him sneak out and back in again. As far as anyone at Pangaia knew, he was roaming around campus and dodging his classes like always—not in the city four hours away.

He'd been sent on a mission. One of Denver's many connections with the underworld needed him to go to the city and do some scouting. Always looking for an excuse to leave campus and go anywhere else on someone else's dime, Denver leaped at the job. That was the other problem about not quite being an adult who had foster parents who didn't care whether he lived or died—he had a huge lack in funding to do what he wanted.

They kept money from him on purpose. They weren't dumb. They knew he'd blow it on something stupid and frivolous. He wouldn't deny it, either.

Until then, he did the work of angels and demons and other creatures to get the money to entertain himself with, off campus. A smart man would save it for when he inevitably had to leave the security of Pangaia. For Denver, that was just another bridge to cross whenever he got there.

They can't kick me out before I graduate. I need a diploma.

Denver shoved his hands into his pockets as he walked back to the motel he'd been calling home for the past week or two. A shiver running down his spine. The high of his bite was slowly starting to wear off and the true weight of what he'd done settled on his shoulders.

Lucien sent me to watch Cheyenne. That was the only reason he knew her name. "Find her, watch her, and figure out how to bring her to me." Those were his exact words. Not find her, watch her, and bite her because she smells good.

"Crap," Denver whispered. "Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap."

Only he didn't actually say crap.

Why Lucien couldn't go to Cheyenne himself, Denver didn't quite understand. He'd never been given those details. Normally, he wouldn't be curious. Since Cheyenne was Divine and clearly not an average human like he'd originally thought, his interest was piqued. Biting a Divine would not go unnoticed by anyone.

I should head back now. Definitely earlier than he'd originally planned, but given the circumstances, being back in his dorm might give him a shot at a solid alibi. Just in case.

If Cheyenne is actually Divine and doesn't know it, this might come back to bite me. No pun intended. He chuckled. I'm hilarious.

When he returned to the motel, he checked out. He had just enough cash for a bus ride back to Pangaia.

He decided to hitchhike instead. There was still more fun to be had.