Levi slid through the streets of Reno on his floundering hover-board. The damn thing was listing and he had to keep leaning left to balance it out as it continued to tilt to the right. The Air runes that were supposed to be keeping the thing off the ground needed re-worked but he sucked with Air magic. Earth he could get by with, but Fire and Darkness were the only elements he felt comfortable enough with to try and repair professional work.
His board gave another lurch as the screwed-up matrix over-strained another rune and broke the enchantment completely. Light flashed and a small wave of magical power erupted as the board flipped and only Levi's quick dismount kept him from slamming face-first onto the street. He landed half-jogging and caught himself on a streetlight before he ate asphalt. He looked around with a sigh.
The heat reflecting up off the asphalt and concrete had turned the entire city into a giant frying pan. Only a few people determined or stupid enough to be out in this weather were outdoors and the streets were nearly empty of both pedestrians and cars. At 2:00 PM on a Tuesday most people had better places to be. Levi spotted an empty bench beneath a half-withered tree. It wouldn't provide much shade but Summer in Nevada was hot on the best of days and even a mixed-blood like him was uncomfortable when it was over a hundred.
He slid onto the bench and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the collar of his shirt, before flipping his board up into his lap so he could look at it. The results were as he'd suspected, three broken runes.
"Shit..."
He swore darkly. Three runes would cost him damn near three-hundred bucks to get fixed. He could buy a whole new board for that much and he didn't have that much money anyway. He'd only just graduated high-school a week ago and was leaving for college when summer was over. He'd need to spend what little savings he had on books and tuition unless he could find work somewhere. Not that there was much calling for a darkness mage, especially a mixed-blood one. Darkness wasn't a branch of magic that leant itself to commercialization, and although race discrimination wasn't supposed to happen it always did. It might have been alright if he was part fey, or nephilim, or something a little more PC, but being part demon usually turned off prospective employers. He was only 1/16 demon but the stigma was still attached.
His demon blood was thin enough he looked like a normal human but he wasn't. It was part of the reason he was so skilled with Darkness and Fire magic, but the price for that skill was high, and he couldn't even cash in on it. Darkness wasn't good for much but corruption and death, and all the things he could probably make that would sell were also illegal.
He sighed as he leaned back against the bench. The sun beat down overhead and the sad looking tree wasn't really helping. He could always just hoof it back home to the Air-conditioning at his dad's house but that was all the way across town and it would be a miserable walk in this heat. He was weighing his options when someone slid onto the bench beside him and bumped him hard enough to push him nearly off the bench.
"Hey Legs, whatcha doin'?" Came a teasing female voice as his best friend punched him in the arm. Levi's eyes flicked up to sparkling green eyes and a impish grin. He sighed in mock exasperation then righted himself, taking the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the long tanned legs that he loved so much. It always amused him that his own long chicken-legs had earned him the nickname Legs, when that's the one he always called her in his own mind. It was a damn shame she was a lesbian.
He'd liked her for almost as long as he'd known her, but romance was a great way to kill a friendship. Still, her tastes ran the other direction so the point was a moot one, but as a drop of sweat ran down her long neck and disappeared down her collar he really wished she wasn't.
Alice wasn't a beauty, 5'10 and lean with a long sharp face. She had non-existent breasts but decent hips and everything lower was grade A. Alice looked like the epitome of the female athlete. Her pixie cut blonde hair made her look younger than she was and if it wasn't for her amazing ass she'd look like a boy. Her loose athletic shorts and her basketball jersey didn't do much to feminize her but it did at least let Levi see her long legs.
"My damn board broke... Again." Levi grumbled as he leaned the broken board against the bench.
"How many times is that? When are you gonna throw that piece of crap out and get a new one?" Alice asked him, her voice was a cool alto, deeper than most girls, but it had a throatiness to it he'd always liked. Then again, he was part demon, so he liked pretty much everything about all women. That was where his problem was, being part incubus made sex... complicated.
Sex as an eighteen year old guy was complex enough without throwing in sex-demon mojo. He didn't have enough incubus in him that girls threw themselves at him or anything, but physical contact with any sort of sexual connotation would usually trip his magic. His first kiss had proven that to him.
The girls were playing spin the bottle at a party back in ninth-grade and Mandy Tanner's single peck on his lips had ended in her trying to rip off his clothes and rape him in front of fifteen people. That had pretty much done it for any possible relationship for the rest of his high-school days. So he was still a virgin. It wasn't that he couldn't have gotten a girl, but how was he supposed to know if a girl actually liked him or was just drunk on his magic. It seemed wong to put the whammy on someone just to get off.
"If you wanna pay for it, i'll be happy to buy it." Levi said bitterly, coming back to the conversation. "I'm broke as hell."
"You're the best mage I know. Christ, if I had your talent I wouldn't even both with college." She said as she splayed herself out on the bench. Alice acted about as feminine as she looked. She was loud, crude, and didn't have a dainty bone in her body.
"Who needs Fire magic done in a damn desert, and don't even get me started on Darkness." Levi sighed. "At least with a degree I could move somewhere and find work doing magical research or something. Besides, the college gave me a fat scholarship, affirmative action and all that. Apparently, they needed to bring their number of mixed-racial students up."
"Well, go charm a few widow's then. I know old Mrs. Carver would fork over some green for a ride. She's always watching you when you're around. Hell, you could make a circuit of it. " She said with a grin as she elbowed me in the ribs.
"I'm not becoming a man-whore." Levi said exasperated. "I've got some standards. Besides, I want my first time to be special."
