The Captivator

Chapter 7

Assuredly with no grace, my jaw hangs slack and my eyes are wide. I jerk my jaw shut and there is an audible snap as my teeth clack together. I narrow my gaze at her.

“Where are my manners?” she says off handedly as she sits back down. “My name is Deca and that frightening looking fella who was shouting just a minute ago is Brayden.”

What in Hell? I wonder to myself, Is she seriously cutting to introductions after dropping a bomb like that?

“What in Hell are you talking about?” Vyn speaks for me. My muscles clench at the similarity of our thoughts. On my other side I can sense Jeremiah not missing a beat, but instead waiting for the conversation to play out, never missing a word.

“She’s right,” I agree soundly. “You can’t just stop in the middle of our palaver. And how is it that other Captivators aren’t aware of this summoning?”

Deca rolls her eyes at me then shakes her head, her pink streaks rippling in the waterfall of her obsidian hair. “It’s not for me to say,” she explains and turns her gaze to Brayden. I follow in suit and direct my question to him.

With a sigh (there seems to be a lot of sighing and head shaking today) Brayden says, “They do. You are, however, the first Captivator-in-training we have told and you are also underage.”

Now an older looking woman perhaps in her fifties argues in a southern drawl, “Brayden, you can see the Converter on her wrist as clear as a kitten in a box of puppies. So don’t you go around and put people down like that.” The woman incredulously returns to her busily moving hands where I am astounded to see an ugly pink bundle of yarn accompanied by two knitting needles that look suspiciously similar to animus crystal. I see Jeremiah quirk one side of his lip upward, his familiar mark of amusement. I am startled by the keenness of his observations.

“Auntie Marge, stop it,” groans another unknown face. The term is used in familiarity, not in relation, that much I can sense.

A guttural laugh erupts beside me. Vyn. Always Vyn.

“These are your ‘heroes’? These are your elite warriors?” Vyn cackles with a wild grin, her golden hair swaying gorgeously as her body is wracked with raw amusement. “I’m amazed you weren’t overrun by these rouges by now.”

I see Marge’s eyes gleam and without raising her gaze she hurls one of her knitting needles with deadly aim. But Vyn, forever agile in her seventeen year old form, narrowly dodges the needle. However, I see cherry red demon blood splatter on the floor flowing from a thin cut on Vyn’s lovely cheekbone under the abyss of one of her chocolate brown eyes. I see her left eye twitch. Jeremiah, for once, seems startled and deeply upset. He snarls at Marge with demonic ferocity. Marge in turn meets Vyn’s breathtaking eyes and drawls in good humor, “Now honeybunch, don’t go disrespecting your elders.”

Perhaps it is the expression of horror on Vyn’s face at being called honeybunch, but I cannot suppress the affinity I have taken for Marge.