Old World Magic

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Authors notes :

I have three items I'd like you to read before you begin this chapter.

First, up until this chapter Mike Naughton's life has had it's ups and downs, but he's been somewhat blessed. This chapter gets dark as he explores some unpleasant themes. I'm going to try to be tactful with them, but if you'd rather keep your enjoyment of this story lighthearted then don't read this chapter. I'll do a quick recap at the beginning of chapter 12 to sum up what you've missed. But I hope you enjoy it and like the darker aspects that Mike has to face in this chapter.

Secondly, If you read the comments on chapter 10 you know that I lost my hard drive and the entirety of this story. I was in the middle of writing chapter 15 when I lost my HD so I lost 4.5 chapters. I mention this because in addition to the writing that I lost (as well as 2 other stories) I also lost all of my notes. I had about eight pages of notes on character backstory, description, relations, secret agendas, etc. Because of this I'm combing through back story to make sure I try to get descriptions right for characters, but I ask that if you notice I describe something incorrectly (for example, if I mention Erin's hair being black, even though it's red) please don't be too upset, just leave me a feedback and I'll fix it.

Finally, I'd like to apologize for the long delay in this story. Because of the dark nature of it, Literotica has declined several versions of this chapter (this is my 4th revision). This chapter has 'lightened' in tone significantly, but it's still a bit dark. Consider yourself warned.

Enough yakking, onto the story.

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I awoke to the feeling of Erin rolling off the large king sized bed. I didn't open my eyes right away, but felt her body weight shift the mattress. I then heard the soft sibilant sound of her feet on the hotel room carpet and then the bathroom door shut. Breathing in a deep breath I filled my nose with the scent of the bed sheets and pillows around him. It was a heady mix of sweat, lust, and some strange fruity scent that I assumed came from Erin's shampoo. Women liked fruity smelling shampoos. She'd kept me up for quite awhile last night, and we'd fucked for hours, well past sun up. I'd fall asleep only to wake up later with her mouth sucking me cock back to hardness, or her hand stroking me eagerly.

I wasn't tired though. Far from it, the sexual energy I'd absorbed had me practically brimming with unspent mana. It was almost as if my body were one of those tuning forks and I was vibrating. I know that Adam, my mentor in magical training, had often referred to my ability to hold mana as if I were a vessel and mana were water I would hold. But at that moment, laying in my post coital hotel bed, I thought that analogy was somehow wrong. Mana wasn't something that I simply held or contained, something that I used up and came back to me when I rested or had sex... no that was wrong somehow. Mana was as much a part of me as any part of my body. When I was fully rested and full of mana, I was full of potential. I was like a runner who was well rested and had eaten well, and was at the starting line of his race.

I opened my eyes and immediately regretted it. With a small cry, a tiny yelp of pain, I rolled backwards away from the windows and crashed down to the floor next to the bed. The curtains were wide open and it had to be around ten in the morning. The room faced to the west, looking out over the Vegas strip, so I didn't have direct sunlight shining in the windows. But if you think that makes a difference, you've never been to Las Vegas.

Slamming my eyes shut to slits I stumbled, naked and fumbling, over to the windows to close the curtains. They wouldn't move at first and I realized they were on some sort of computer control. Cursing I finally got some mesh shades to roll down over the windows, leaving the room still far too bright for my tastes, but much more comfortable. I rubbed my eyes as I heard Erin start the shower in the bathroom.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes and simply let myself wake up. Only after a minute or so did I get up and go to the suite's kitchen and start some coffee. Just as it began brewing, there was a knock at the door joining this half of the suite to the other half, where Ruby was staying. I thought about putting some clothing on. I looked down and realized that not only was I nude, but I absolutely reeked of sex. Well, there would be no hiding it from anyone, let alone Ruby a succubus. Demons who fed on sexual energy like her would be able to sense the carnal acts that Erin and I engaged in all night long as easily as I could read a stop sign.

So, with no need for modesty I went and opened the door to the other half of the suite. Ruby stood there, a slinky black silk night gown draped over her form. Rather chaste for her, it wasn't see through, but actually covered her body from her breasts to her mid thigh. "Hello Mike," she practically purred, "I see you had a good night. That petite little irish girl I'm assuming?"

Ruby wasn't overly impressed with Erin. As the head of a brothel, she appraised most women the way a butcher would appraise a cut of beef. In Ruby's opinion, both as a brothel madam and as a succubus, Erin didn't really stack up to some of the other whores she'd interviewed the night before. I nodded my head and stifled a yawn as Ruby came into the room to retrieve some items she'd left there in shopping bags.

Ruby rummaged through her shopping for a moment, bending over at the waist to show off her flawless legs and perfectly shapely ass. She wiggled it slightly and asked, "Got any left over energy for lil' ol' me?"

I couldn't help but chuckle and I shook my head no. I almost asked if she hadn't had enough, having heard her, Jade, and what sounded like possibly a half a dozen men through the wall all night long. But I knew better than to ask a question like that. As a succubus it was quite literally impossible for her ever to be fully satiated sexually. So instead I answered honestly, "No, I need to save my mana today. I need to practice and no offense, I can't spare any for you right now."

Succubus fed off life force and the energy that came from sex. The old rumors and legends about them fucking men to death, leaving them a dried husk, were greatly exaggerated. Certainly they could do that if they wanted, but it was a poor craftsman who abused their tools. Though I often got the feeling that Ruby looked at me more as a dinner plate and less as a tool. In any regard Ruby drew sexual energy from whoever she fucked, and since that was how I recharged my 'mana batteries' as it were, I was like a delectable feast hot and ready for her. Every time I fucked her, instead of recharging my batteries, it drained them. That wasn't something I was able to afford right now as my plans for the day meant I'd need my magic at full strength.

Ruby pouted and shrugged, "Well, I had to ask." She stood up and pat me on the cheek and turned to head back over to her side of the suite. She stopped in the doorway, one hand on the doorknob and sniffed the air a few times. "Smells like sex in here Mike." She said as she chuckled and closed the door.

I smiled and decided that Erin had enough privacy in the bathroom. I made my way into the room finding it steamy from the shower, and turned on the overhead fan. She pressed her body up against the glass partition in the slate tile tiled shower and frowned, "Awwww," she said, "I like it all steamy." I begrudgingly turned the fan back off and then nodded as she gestured for me to come join her with a crooked finger.

I didn't get much actual cleaning done after joining her in the shower as she seemed eager to caress my body and make out with me like we were teenagers. Though in fairness, she had been a teenager not too long ago. I had to keep reminding myself that we looked to be the same age, around twenty, though I knew she was twenty two, she still looked so young to me. I had just celebrated my thirty ninth birthday, or my twenty first, depending on if you were going by my time on this planet, or what my current drivers license said and my body looked like.

I used the time to probe her mind deeper, just letting the long make out session go on and on, letting my body be on autopilot as I mentally delved into Erin's memories and thoughts. I'd had a sense of the darkness inside her last night, and I was determined to find out more about her. Slowly I swam through the murky miasma of that dark spot in her mind. Deeper and deeper I delved until I came across what I knew to be the object of my search.

To try to explain the process of sifting through someone's memories and thoughts would be woefully inaccurate. How do you explain to someone, blind since birth, what the color red is? We can use analogy, but we can't ever make them see. So too I use analogy to describe what I found inside Erin's thoughts and memories.

I wasn't startled by the large safe when I found it at the center of the darkness inside her. It was comical looking, like a safe one might see the coyote drop on the road runner in one of those cartoons. In fact, it even said 'acme safe co.' on the front right below the large black dial. I had expected something like this... something that keeps certain thoughts locked away, private, safe. They weren't being kept private from me, no, they were there to protect Erin's own mind from these thoughts. If she never thought them, never revisited these memories, then they couldn't hurt her.

I knew I could 'crack the safe' as it were. I could force open the lock and see what was inside. But what damage would that do to Erin? Certainly she'd never be able to close that safe again, and I didn't know what kind of a change that would bring about to her personality. No, I needed to find a better way, a gentler way, into this part of her mind.

"Mmmmmm" Erin said as she pulled away from me in the steamy shower. My attention snapped back to the real world and I found that I was leaning against the wall as she stroked my cock. "Looks like you want more? I can count on one hand the number of guys who've been as horny as you. Most are done after one round."

I smiled and shrugged, moaning as she stroked my fat cock. Length wise I wasn't all that impressive I suppose, but when Renia had reshaped my body she'd given me an extra bit of girth. Nothing massive, but I felt comfortable knowing I was well above average on length and thickness. Erin's hand was both slippery and gripping on the skin of my shaft in the warm shower spray. But she licked her lips and said, "I don't know if I can take this monster again, I'm still a little sore from all the hard dicking you gave me last night. How's a BJ sound?"

I shrugged, "Who am I to argue?" True enough, this woman had literally fucked herself raw on my thick tool last night. Amazingly she'd done it for her own pleasure too, she hadn't charged me a slim dime for her company, despite being a higher paid Vegas escort. I guess that meant that I was doing something right.

Erin dropped down to her knees on the shower and took my hard shaft in both hands. Leaning forwards she lightly kissed the very tip of my cock before looking up at me and smiling. I nodded and she focused then on my pleasure. As good as it felt when she took me into her warm mouth, I focused and delved back into her mind. The magic that allowed me to read her thoughts was strengthened with physical contact and sexual contact even more so.

In moments I found myself at the 'safe' again and looked around for connecting memories or thoughts. It was as if even the dark thoughts that surrounded it were trying to keep their distance. But I found one string, one thread that seemed to have a strong connection to the safe. Gripping that thread I followed it and found a memory.

A young girl with fair skin and shockingly bright red hair flounced down the hallway of her school. Long sleeved shirt worn to hide dark purple marks, jeans to cover old marks gone yellow as they healed. To everyone that saw her she beamed and glowed with the youth and vigor of a girl on the verge of teen years. But this memory didn't show history, it was memory and as such was sculpted by how Erin recalled it. So I saw a shadow, a blackness as dark as india ink trailing in her wake. This cloak of oblivion devoured all it touched, turning the shiny metal lockers to rust and rotting the flesh off the people she passed. As much as the young girl feigned innocence, she knew, what had happened to her, the betrayal, the pain... it had warped and darkened her and everything around her.

She stopped at a locker and laughed at a joke her friend made as the darkness around her settled on them, transforming them from children her age into animate corpses. Everything she had been the week before was now dead and gone, shattered in a single act of betrayal and horror.

"Twelve, forty two, twenty three," she muttered as she unlocked her locker.

I knew the point of that memory then. I threw myself away from the hallway that she'd filled with hidden pain, and returned to the dark spot in her mind. My 'fingers' felt the lock on the safe, it was cold, but well worn. Despite putting these things in here to be locked away, it was obvious that this safe had been opened many times over the last decade.

"Twelve, forty two, twenty three," I repeated as I opened the safe. Inside there were stacks of papers. Some of them written in ball point pen on lined paper. Handwriting shaky and unpracticed, as if written by a girl far too young and with far too much to keep inside. Some of them more steady yet with handwriting that jagged and spiked with barely constrained anger. The effect of a woman's psyche remembering her abuse.

Each page I touched flooded my mind with these thoughts, these memories, these... vile images. I wanted to be sick as I experienced what Erin had.

"Uh.... Mike?" Erin asked me still kneeling at my feet in the shower, "Are you ok?"

I snapped back to the real world and looked down at her. My cock had gone completely soft, unable to maintain an erection when flooded with the darkness that lay inside Erin's mind She looked up at me however and said with concern on her face, "You look pale, like you're about to pass out, and you just kinda went limp on me."

I stammered for a moment before apologizing and saying that I must be human after all. Last night had been too much on me and with the heat of the shower I guess I couldn't maintain. She smiled and stood up and kissed my cheek, "That's ok, I'm not really in the mood anymore anyways," she admitted. I knew why too. I'd released those thoughts and now she was probably subconsciously trying to round them back up and put them back in that safe. But she couldn't do that without thinking about them, and those thoughts and memories were enough to turn anyone but the sickest of minds off.

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Erin was a fair chef and made us breakfast. During that time she told me how she 'kind of liked me' but that she couldn't get involved with anyone right now. I then told her how I needed the services of a call girl over the next week and asked if she'd be interested. She seemed a bit wary when I told her that I'd need her to be exclusive to me, worrying about the price her call service would charge me. But once I told her that the casino would be picking up the price she was quite excited and said she hoped that I could work it out. She left shortly after leaving me to take a proper shower and prepare for my plan for the day.

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"Thirteen eighty" the cab driver said as I looked up at the glass front building. It was only three stories, one of those types of office buildings that you see nestled into plazas that might have tanning salons and pier one type stores all across the nation. The building itself was unassuming, reflecting back the grey and brown with dots of green that made up the landscape. Yet to me it sat squat, like a fat toad, surveying the surroundings with a malign presence. That was probably because I knew what awaited me inside though.

I peeled out a twenty and was about to pass it to the driver in the front seat when a thought occurred to me. "I'm only going to be about half an hour to forty five minutes at most. How long would it be for you to turn off your on duty light and wait for me to come back out?" I'd learned the hard way that you couldn't just 'hail a cab' here in Vegas the way you could back in NYC. You had to call and have one come and pick you up, and I wanted to be free of this place as soon as possible when my business was done.

The cab driver, a sleepy eyed mexican man tapped the sign next to his meter that said the rates, along with a notice that the rates were monitored by something called the Nevada Taxi Authority. The sign read that it was twenty cents every twenty four seconds spent idling. I did some quick math in my head, rounding the numbers. It would be worth another twenty to hold him here for a little while. "Ok," I said, "Here's what I'm going to offer you." The cab driver turned around and looked at me head on instead of just in his mirror as he had so far. I pulled a hundred dollar bill out of my wallet and held it up. I made sure that it was clearly visible to the camera that was mounted on his dashboard and pointed back at me. "I'll give you this hundred dollar bill right now. You wait here for up to an hour, take your lunch, stretch your legs, whatever. Then when I come out, you take me back to the hotel. I'll let you keep the rest as a tip, ok?"

It was a hell of a deal, even asking him to wait for an hour at those rates would normally only be like thirty bucks. Less than another thirty for a round trip to and from the hotel, and that was a forty dollar tip. Probably far better than a normal cab driver ever saw. He didn't have to consider long before nodding and holding his hand out. I snatched the hundred back quickly and said, "Ah, but let me write down your cab number first." I knew that New York City cab drivers could be held accountable for ripping off passengers, and hoped that Vegas wasn't too different. Jotting down his badge number and the cab number, I handed over the bill and went into the office building as the cabbie drove to the far end of the parking lot to park in the shade of a nearby billboard.

The reception area was much as I'd expected. Lots of glass, smooth tile floors, potted plants that could withstand both the air conditioning and the hot air that blew in when customers entered. But most of all, a dour looking receptionist who had to be pushing sixty. Rail thin and stern looking she didn't smile as I approached the desk. "Hi," I said in as pleasant a voice as possible. I was aware of the fact that despite the custom fit suit I was wearing, I did still look like a very young man in his early twenties. An older woman like this would probably think I would waste her time and I had to be kind and professional so as not to cause her to dismiss me. "I'm here to see Francis Solaris. I don't have an appointment but it is rather urgent."

She raised an eyebrow and typed something into her computer. Then looking up at me she asked, "Nature of the meeting?"

I glowered and decided that nice wasn't going to cut it. I could have used my magic but decided to hold off for just now and with an equally stern face answered, "Personal business that Mr Solaris will want to discuss, and would not want you involved in. Now please direct me to him."

The old woman returned my scowl, "I'm sorry sir we're not in the business of..."

I let my magic free and let my mind touch hers just briefly to confirm what I thought as she spoke. But then I cut her off and straightened my back till it was ram rod straight and spoke loudly, "You know, for a woman who's got to be approaching retirement, you certainly have to be wondering if this argument is worth it. I understand, I pulled up in a cab. So you must be thinking to yourself, 'hey this young man is wearing a nice suit, but he pulled up in a cab, not a town car, he must not be important.' But what you're also not realizing Janet," I paused letting it sink in that I knew her name even though there was no name plate on the desk nor was she wearing any badge to identify herself. The use of her name rocked her back, startling her that I knew it. "What you're not realizing is that accent you're hearing is New York City. I'm more comfortable in a cab then I am on a G6. So you have to ask yourself this, 'Is a man who wears a thousand dollar suit and flies from New York to speak with an account manager in person, going to put up with disrespect from a secretary?"