previously titled beserk
A young gay witch with deadly powers on the fringe is traveling the U.S. in search of a substitute for suppressing his magic and a way to control his powers. Ezra Pierce was born into a religiously strict family with no one...
"in all the wild world, there is no more desperate a creature, than a human being on the verge of losing love." w o r d c o u n t : 1,065
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Progress was minimal, as it often was for young witches. But after a week, Ezra had finally managed to maintain an electrical current in his hands. It was a small victory but it felt monumental.
"For that, you can have a night off. Go have fun, you crazy kid." Alice said with a fond smile. She was careful not to touch him, learning that two days in. The second her skin met his, his powers went haywire and knocked Alice back a good thirty feet.
He nearly burst into tears, apologies pouring from his mouth as Alice leaped up and brushed herself free of dirt. Her clothes were singed and the ends of her hair were smoking but she was ultimately unaffected.
"Niki has been wanting to take you to a bonfire down on the reservation. Emily simply adores you and they won't shut up about how great you are." Alice explained with a wide grin.
"Oh, I don't know." Ezra began before he felt a hand clap onto his shoulder.
"C'mon, Ezra. It's gonna be fun." Niki prompted with a sly grin. Her eyes were half closed, an arm thrown around Rosalie's shoulders. "Be ready in an hour, I'm gonna go nap."
The two made their way inside, leaving Alice and Ezra alone in the backyard once more. "Why is she always sleeping?"
"Niki has an inherent gift. She can talk to people in their mind. It's like the opposite of Edward. While he can hear you and you can't hear him, you can hear Niki but she can't hear you. It leaves her exhausted. When, or if, she's changed into a vampire the gift gets stronger and takes less energy. But for now, she needs constant sleep." Alice explained, inclining her head toward the house in a silent message for him to follow.
"Why does she need to use it so much that she sleeps all the time?" Ezra asked curiously as they stepped into the house.
Alice curled up on the couch next to Jasper. The two men had never been introduced but they knew each other.
"Power draws from different energy. Some people have to sleep constantly, some people eat constantly. But to answer your question, if Niki practices now, she'll skip that stage when she turns and be able to manipulate her power better right off the bat and she'll end up more powerful in the long run." Alice explained as she brought her head to rest on Jasper's shoulder. "I think you're going to need to eat more. What would you like? Esme and Edward are the natural cooks."
Upon hearing his name, Edward appeared in the room like a ghost. "I don't believe we've been formally introduced." He grinned, keeping his hands firmly in his pockets. "I'm Edward."
"So you're the mind reader," Ezra noted as Edward breezed into the kitchen.
"And you're the witch." He added smugly as he rummaged through the fridge, not bothering to ask Ezra of his preference. Not that Ezra cared. He was never picky, he'd eat anything placed in front of him. "Are you planning on starting school with us?"
"You're going to school?" Ezra asked, cocking a brow. "Why would you want to do that?"
Edward smiled in amusement as he began to rapidly slice vegetables. "It helps maintain the allusion that we're normal. It's much easier and allows us to interact with the population. After that, we traditionally get another college degree. I have a masters in Latin, a bachelor's in biomedical engineering, and law, and a Ph.D. in business." Edward explained. He scooped up the vegetables and slid them into a pan, a sharp sizzle emerging from it.
"You must like school," Ezra noted.
"It's something to occupy my time," Edward said with a shrug, placing an abundance of noodles into the pot of boiling water. "So are you starting school with us?"
"I already graduated once and it was hell enough so I'm gonna go with a hard no." Ezra didn't have fond memories of high school. In fact, he didn't have fond memories of his entire town. He wasn't ready to go through the trauma again.
"Is college an option?" He poured some alfredo sauce into to noodles.
"With no job? No. Plus I've found this witch thing is pretty much a full-time job. From what Alice said there are some covens in Oregon that might take me but ever since the trials in the 1200s they've been extremely selective with accepting members that weren't born into their coven." Ezra explained as Edward sat two plates down.
As if the food was begging her, Niki bolted down the stairs and threw herself into the chair.
"Why don't you make your own coven?" Edward asked and Ezra's browed.
"I don't have anything I'd need for that. The knowledge, the funds, the numbers. The witches who do start their own covens never start until their well into their hundreds. Even then they're always classified to a single area and finding at least five witches in the U.S., not already in a coven, and in the same class is almost impossible." Ezra explained, all in one long-winded breath.
"Alright, alright, I get it." Edward grinned. "But why are you all covens all defined to a single class?"
"We have to be. Witches of a class work better together. Different classes create too much strife." Ezra pointed out, shoving a large bite of pasta into his mouth. "It's not like I have any experience. All of this is Alice's explanation to me. Alabama isn't exactly chock full of witches and open minds."
"Anything is a possibility until you yourself have eliminated the contingency," Edward stated as Niki finished her pasta.
"Can you assholes quit sucking each other's dicks and let Ezra do something with the rats nest on his head?" Niki grumbled, shoving the last forkful of pasta into her mouth.
"What's wrong with my hair?" Ezra let out a whine as he reached up to his hair. Rosalie brushed into the room, pressing a kiss to Niki's hair.
"It looks like you ran headfirst into a wall and proceeded to smear it onto a tube tv." Rosalie pointed out as she pressed her face into her girlfriend's neck. "Use a brush or something. Damn."
