FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"... therefore, I am certain you understand why I'm doing this," Damian said to the man seated across from him. "I can't let this kind of--" Something crossed his wards, no, someone. "You'll have to excuse me a moment, I need to take care of something."

Damian leaned back in his chair and fed power in the marks. He'd remembered the ease of contact astral travel had allowed with his people when he was a prisoner within the hearth, and it had been a power he had been quick to replicate. He hadn't expected to need it to deal with Denton.

The nondescript room faded until it was nothing more than the impression of a room, faint red hues to mark where things might be. In eight area, just outside the building, he could see the marks of his wards, still glowing with the alarm of being crossed.

Denton floated a few inches off the floor, glowing brightly in the power his god granted him.

"Tell me why," he demanded.

Damian stood, his form bright, but no more so than anyone of his faction marks as he was. He expected he couldn't see the brightness of his own power because he wouldn't be able to see anything else. Denton had lives with it most of his life; was he used to it?

Damian yawned. "You'll have to be a little more specific, there are so many things I'm doing."

"Why the fucking game? Why pretend to want to work with me when all you were doing was using me?"

"Did I hurt your feelings?"

"Do I fucking look like my feelings are hurt?" Denton yelled, flashing bright enough Damian placed a hand before his eyes, do no avail his body had no more ability to block his vision than the building.

"Yes."

"Fine! Yes, I thought you could be a decent guy. I fucking believed you when you said what you'd done to my family was because you were an arrogant kid, to me because you were driven insane by your imprisonment."

"Both were true. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy using people, playing them." Damian smiled, formulating a plan. He'd intended on contacting Denton to have something like this conversation. It was needed due to the new information he'd been provided, but having Denton here, in this state meant he could do more than simply trick him into doing part of the work for him. He might be able to remove him from the board too.

"Playing? That's it? You were playing with me?"

Damian shrugged. "What can I say, you're entertaining. I'd intended on stringing you along for much longer and then stabbing you in the back like the villain I am, but that deer of yours worked things out," he spat the last words. "He's lucky I couldn't wring his neck right there." He stopped, blinked, as if just realizing what he'd said, then smiled. "But this isn't about him, is it?"

Denton watched him. The light too bright to make out features, but Damian expected he was confused. Hoped he was.

"What are you hoping to accomplish by going after the Gray Church? You aren't trying to take it down. You know those cardinals are followers of your god."

"Oh you are so smart, aren't you?" Damian ask, letting his calm break. "If you're so smart why don't you tell me what I'm doing then?"

Denton snorted. "Zee's the one who worked it out, now me. He's the smart one, I'm just the one with the ability to follow the threads you left dangling."

"Then I should go pay him a visit and ask him what he thinks he's butting into," Damian snapped. Threads? Of course, that was how Denton did it, picked a threat and followed it to its origin, but what thread was he talking about? Damian had let go of all the thugs in San Francisco as he left.

"Don't even think of touching him. This is between you and me."

Damian raised his hand to placate the glowing cheetah. "Fine, fine. You and me. Blah blah blah. You're no fun, you know that?" he felt through the threads he controlled. One of them would register Denton's touch. "And of course I know they follow Sahataan, if they didn't I wouldn't be able to steal their power, I explained that to you already. That's why I couldn't steal yours, you were paying attention, right?"

"Then why? You follow the same god, why would you reduce his pool of worshipers?"

"Do I come across as someone who gives a damn about other people?" There. This was the thread, but who was it? "I don't care what they want. I don't even care what Sahataan wants. All I want is power. My own power."

"You can't get that at the expense of other people."

Damian stared at the cheetah, the surprise real. He couldn't be that naïve. He laughed, deep and full. "Oh, you are so full of surprise, Denton. I never thought that you, of all people, would believe that one." He sobered. "Of course I can. It's the only way to get power. And it isn't our invention, our ideas. What do you think gods do? They get their power at our expense. We do all the work, they reap the rewards. Every time you do magic, a little goes to yours. A little goes to mine when I do it. You fuck, same thing."

"It's a symbiosis, they don't kill us or hurt us. They grant us power in return for what we do for them. What you're doing is parasitical."

"Denton, Denton, Denton. Do you really think the gods are nice benevolent beings here to see to it you have a good time? A good fuck? We are cogs in a machine to them, each has a part to play in making them more powerful."

"I don't believe you, I felt--"

"Then how are you still alive!"

Denton stared at him.

"I wipe out your entire family line, but somehow you, an eight-year-old kid, miraculously survives? And it was a miracle, as in a godly intervention, don't think otherwise. I had accounted for you, trapped in the basement with your mother while dear old dad went and pitted his magic against mine. You should have died there!"

"My dad saved me."

"No, he was busy trying to put the fire out."

"My adoptive dad," Denton corrected. "He had to come back because he'd forgotten something, saw the smoke. You made the magic to keep us from breaking out, but you didn't think about someone trying to break in. He broke a basement window and my mother passed me along to him. She went back to get my father, but they didn't make it." His words had a lack of emotions Damian didn't get, he should be livid about it, instead it was as if he barely remembered it. As if those were things he'd been told about. He did have a point about the windows. He hadn't considered someone intervening, but that was simply something else he could use.

"Do you really think I'm that stupid?" Damian rolled his eyes. "Of course I considered someone might come to help. The magic was all-encompassing. No getting out, no going in. That adoptive father of yours? He wouldn't have gotten in; not without help from someone a lot more powerful than you and me. Not without a god intervening."

"Fine, so He saved me. If you're trying to make him sound like some parasite, you're not succeeding."

"That's because you're not thinking this through," Damian said in exasperation. "If he saved you, why didn't he save your mother? Or your father? How about the rest of your line? He had the power to stop me, so--"

"You weren't his follower anymore, he couldn't touch you."

"True." Damian smiled. "But clearly, your god can influence things. How else did your adoptive father get there in time? So why didn't that happen with anyone else?"

Damian watched the cheetah falter. He took the time to feel the surrounding of where the thread ended. A room, other people, each with a thread leading back to him. Magic surrounded each of them. Denton sat there. He felt the magic, it had a sense of familiarity to it. He'd encountered it before. The margay he'd taken possession of when he'd found out Denton existed. He hadn't been able to move his body, the magic had held him in place. It was the same magic here.

These were the men his brothers had sent to attack Denton's company, to try to kill the cheetah. Damian had forgotten about them and hadn't been able to tell their thread apart in the large number Daniel had held. He'd broken the closest threads, all those in San Francisco, and these few had gotten lost in all those Damian held.

"No," Denton said, his voice shaking. "No, I don't believe you. You're twisting things."

"Denton, why would I even bother, when the facts are right there, if you just look for them."

"No, He might not care for us the way we care for one another. Maybe you're right, and we are just part of a grand plan, but He wouldn't throw us away."

Damian smiled and spread his hands. "Then explain to me why you're still alive. Why you, who happen to be his champion, survived what should have been a genocide? And don't correct me, I know genocide refers to species, but there isn't a word for wiping out a family. So yes, not only does his champion survive, but low and behold, he has so much power he can copy that of anyone around him." Damian paused, tapped a finger on his lips. "It's almost as if, can you imagine it, by having all of them die, all their power funneled into you and became this pool of potential you can use." Damian's smile grew as Denton's face fell. "It's almost as if your god allowed me to kill everyone because he wanted you to have all that power, isn't it?"

"No." Denton said, with forced confidence. "No. He wouldn't do that. He wouldn't allow that to happen. You're lying, you're trying to--"

"Come on, Denton. I'm good, I'm even great, I'll admit that, but don't you think you're giving me a little too much credit here? Maybe you need to do some research, look into all the ways the gods have screwed us over. And who knows, maybe you'll even find something in there to help you take your revenge?" Damian felt Denton's attention on him, the force of his focus. "You never know, maybe there's something there that the gods don't want you to know. That you can use to find justice for what was done to your family?"

The cheetah began speaking, probably asking a question, but Damian didn't let him. This didn't end on answers. Denton would have to find them on his own.

"Well, I'm done here." It put a finger to the bundle of thread he'd assembled before him. "And I'll even be nice and not kill them, after all, it isn't like the knew they were betraying me." He burned the thread. And Denton's screamed in protest as the connection broke and he vanished.

Damian smiled, enjoying the memory of the cheetah's betrayed voice. He'd been so certain he'd get answers.

"This is a risk," Sahataan said.

Damian didn't bother hiding his annoyance. He spun to face the god. "Really? Then maybe you should have told me about the fucking God Killer from the start." When I could have laid careful planes of my own, he thought behind the wall. "I was right in the middle of his life, I had his confidence, I could have slipped small details here and there so he'd come to the right conclusion with having to be force-fed it."

"You made him angry."

"Of course I did. I can't have him think rationally. I'm going to have to make sure he stays busy now. Fuck, like you haven't given me enough work already, first that deer, now this. How do you expect me to mount a war with all these distractions?"

"What if he uses the Killer himself?" Sahataan continued, ignoring Damian's words.

Damian forced his annoyance down. Screaming at a god was the definition of futility. "He won't. His anger has to be hot for him to do lash out. I'm going to make sure it stays cold. He's going to find it and I'm going to have my agent there to make sure I get it. Just, try to keep the distractions down from now on, will you?"

Sahataan looked at him, the weight of the being pushing him down. The message clear. Damian served Sahataan, not the reverse. Not for always, Damian told himself behind the wall. Not now that you've handed me the tool for my revenge, you son of a bitch.

And he was alone on the astral plane again.

He calmed himself. Patience was all that was needed and his plans, all of them, would come to fruition, and Damian was a patient man.

He reentered his body and opened his eyes, looking at the angry mule deer tied to the chair before him. Damian smiled. "Now, Marcus, where were we?" he took out his knife. "Ah yes, sending your husband a message."

He grabbed the deer's muzzle and forced the jaws open. The anger left the eyes, replaced with fear as the knife moved close.