Chapter 3.51 – Super Magic

Disclaimer: violence, blood

Thanks to Mercuryfoam for creating the fist fight animations that I couldn’t bring myself to make.
Sorry that ‘yellow sim’ and ‘blue sim’ weren’t the pairing you had in mind! 😬

What is the worst way in the world to be woken up?

Wyatt had experienced quite a few of them, surely. Bucket of cold water, check. Upturned mattress, check. Hell, Sage had even jolted him awake with a swift lightning bolt once, after a particularly heavy session. That one hurt. But none of those rude wake-up calls even came close to the latest one; April, frantic, crying and screaming his name.

The drug-induced stupor he’d been dozing in was immediately shattered by her screeching, which simultaneously shredded both his eardrums and his heartstrings. Why was she so loud? What had happened?

Where was he?

His head, which felt at least three times bigger than usual, rolled over his shoulder, past the wailing vampire, until he spied the empty tea jug on the table.

Ah, right. Shit.

Wyatt had experienced this a few times; the fuzzy, phased memory recall as his previous night’s antics came flooding back. He and April were alone in the room, there was no sign of Caleb. And April was freaking out. Wyatt reckoned he must’ve seriously screwed up his datura dosages and rendered them all zombies. Vampire zombies? Whatever. He could fix it.

He struggled upright, wondering what time it was and hoping he had enough time to haul ass, whip up the antidote and get everyone seeing straight before his mum—

“—Is bleeding!” He caught in the midst of April’s ramblings.

“Bleeding?” he repeated stumbling over the coffee table and letting out an involuntary shower of sparks. His head spun a full circle before coming to an uncertain stop. Shit. He’d once accidentally doubled the measurement and hadn’t been this wasted. And there’d definitely never been any, ugh, blood before. Apart from the time that Broof was so loaded that he walked into a door. Or that time Becky fell down the steps. Or… OK, there was sometimes blood. He sighed.

Groaning against the brightness of the light and the high-pitched noise that April kept emitting, he allowed her to take his hand and to start dragging him from the room. Woah, her hands were so cold.

“Apes,” he moaned as he jerked his arm from her frozen grip and tried to slow her down. “Not so fast—”

“We need to hurry!”

“Why? Whatever he’s injured, it’s OK – he’s a dead dude, he won’t get any deader from a few flowers or a cut.” I think. “Lemme go to my room for a bit,” Wyatt said as calmly as he could, given the fact that his ears felt like they were going to explode. “I’ll fix up an antidote in no time—”

“There is no time!” April cried. “He’s going to kill her!”

“Wha—?”

“He attacked Mel,” she sobbed. “They’re on the roof! There’s blood everywhere! Weren’t you listening to me?!”

“Blood… everywhere?” Woah, no. Obviously he hadn’t been. “Sorry, I guess I missed that. Shi—oot,” he hissed. “They’re on the roof? Why did he attack her?”

“Because of me!” she wailed, creepy black tears streaming down her face as she attempted to resume dragging him along. “Because he saw me kissing her!”

“You kissed her?”

April nodded. Her body folded into sobs; her were words broken. “Please. You have to do something before he really hurts her.”

Yeah, he really did, but he had no idea what. The effort of waking up and dragging his feet this far had him knackered – how was he supposed to restrain a bloody ancient vampire? With renewed vigour – or high on trepidation, he wasn’t sure – he sped up his jelly-legged canter towards the roof ladder.

From above he could hear sounds of some sort of struggle punctuated with snarling and shouts of, ‘you missed again, fopdoodle!’

“Oh, she’s alive!” April gushed in relief. “In that case, there’s something else you should know…”

“Oh goddess,” Wyatt groaned, wondering how this situation could be worse. “Let me guess; he’s naked and covered in whipped cream?”

April sniffed back a sob in surprise. “Yes. Well, not the whipped cream part. And more than that, I… um, how did you know that he was naked?”

“I-I didn’t, it was a joke… I… fudge. He’s naked? Really?” Wyatt breathed sharply, looking back up the ladder.

“Now is not the time for jokes,” April said, sounding very much like her mother for a moment. “Yes, he’s naked. Wyatt, tonight Caleb and I… we, um,” she paused, twiddled the fabric on her shorts and looked like she was psyching herself up to say something. “Well, we did… you know.”

He did know. “Do I need to get the chart?” he half-joked.

April’s eyes shot wide. “N-no! I wanted to do it! It was fine,” she whispered, somewhat unconvincingly. “But I think… I think somehow, during it, I broke the binding.”

Wyatt was beginning to feel like he was the one being repeatedly punched in the face. “Woah, really?” was all he could manage.

April nodded. “Really. See, I drank his blood—”

Ick. “Uh, OK.”

“I know, it’s revolting.” April grimaced. “After I drank I felt really weird. And he told me not to stop drinking, but I did stop. And previously, he’d told me not to kiss anyone and then I went and kissed Melinda straight afterwards.”

“Wait – hold up. You kissed Melinda right after bonking Caleb?”

“Oh my goodness! When you put it like that…” April squirmed and covered her face. “That makes it sound so… so slutty!”

The corner of Wyatt’s lips jerked into a small smile. Like father like daughter, he thought, before realising the weight of the words. His face fell as the struggling and snarling above temporarily paused with a sickening thud before resuming.

“Wait down here,” he instructed in a whisper.

“Why?” she whispered back.

“Because there’s not enough room for all of us on the roof thanks to all the props required to cover up Caleb’s non-existent penis.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Wyatt muttered. “Seriously though, stay down here. This could go so badly and if it does, I’ll need you to get help.”

“How can it go badly? You’re Wyatt! You’ve got super magic!”

“Yeah, that’s the problem—“

“You can do anything! I believe in you! Wipe the floor with him!”

“Geez,” he sighed. “OK, first, I’m not gonna ‘wipe the floor with him’, I’m gonna restrain him. Second, look at me. I’m wasted as balls, Apes. Look, I’m gonna go up there and do… something. But if this all goes tits up – and it really might – I’ll need you to get help, OK?”

“How do I do that? Call Broof?”

“No, that’d be pointless, unless Lilith is with him…” Wyatt thought for a second. “Better option, faster option, would be to summon Mum. You can try and leave, via the store – it’ll probably hurt to try and traverse the barrier, I would think, I dunno how she rigged it, but she’ll know you’re trying, she’ll come ‘porting. Or if you want the slower, more unreliable method use my phone to call her and hope she can remember which button to use to answer it – it’s in my room.”

April pouted, no doubt disappointed that Wyatt wasn’t going to go in, guns blazing and turn the naked vampire into a pile of ash. She seemed to be mulling something over as Wyatt struggled up the ladder, missing rungs and almost falling back down at one point as his limbs and brain refused to communicate.

With way more effort than should have been required, Wyatt finally managed to reach the hatch and, with a final pull, hauled himself, face-first, on to the roof terrace.

It took him a while to steady himself and the sudden whack of fresh air didn’t help with reminding him how trashed he was. Why was he up here again?

Oh, right, yeah. He’d come to break up the dogfight.

Through the hazy blur of both his actual vision and the swiftly-moving objects before him, he could just make out a pair of grey, humanoid shapes that appeared to be Caleb and Melinda. He had hoped from April’s description, that they would be upright in some easily-distinguishable and totally separatable position that involved minimal magical intervention. 

They weren’t, of course.

Heaving a sigh that went completely unnoticed by the duelling duo, Wyatt managed to find his feet and tried to make a plan. Caleb was on top so maybe he could cast some sort of elevation? That wouldn’t hold him for long, but maybe long enough for Melinda to wriggle out from under him.

Heck knows what would happen afterwards. Maybe Caleb would turn on him. Or turn him on.

Wyatt’s thoughts had rapidly descended into filth as they seemed prone to do around Caleb, so it was no surprise to him that his first attempt at casting backfired.

By some miracle, he managed to avoid falling down the ladder and regained enough composure to notice that the pair before him had fallen suspiciously still and quiet.

Shit.

As Melinda stopped moving it all got very real, very fast.

Wyatt had defended Caleb when his Mum had insisted that he was dangerous, that everyone was capable of redemption, that his infliction didn’t immediately make him a monster. But maybe she’d been right. Maybe there was no hope for him.

Wyatt’s heart sank. He wondered if the better option here was to just get his Mum and let her do whatever she needed to do.

But as he peered down the ladder, April was looking up at him. She had remained dutifully mute throughout but she didn’t need to speak for him to hear her, clear as day.

She was terrified and, like it or not, she was relying on him to pull himself together and step up. He knew that attempting to cast was risky, especially when blitzed, but he couldn’t rely on his mum forever. He’d made this whole damn mess, he needed to sort it. And maybe it could still be done amicably.

Unfazed by the unconscious girl at his feet, Caleb rose with an eerie level of calm.

“Where is she?”

Wyatt kept his eyes scrunched firmly shut as he drew up his energy. Hindered by distraction, he whipped his thoughts to imagine his mum in her bathing suit – the slightly-too-small one with the thong. It usually always worked to rein in the horniness, but even that image struggled to block the mental image of Caleb’s phenomenal physique which still pervaded his thoughts.

He needed to focus.

I’ve got this. Holy crap, his ass is so damn peachy… No! Focus!

Wyatt watched as Caleb slowly drifted skywards, supported by the strings that he had woven, until he hit something none of them could see only a few feet above the ground. Wyatt pouted, feeling the resistance trembling through his suspended guest and himself via their invisible bond as he repeatedly nudged Caleb’s face against Sage’s defences and wondered what the heck to do next.

Caleb smirked. “What are you trying to do? Bang my head against this thing until I fall unconscious? It would take more than that,” he laughed, gesturing to the ground beneath him.

“Not cool, dude,” Wyatt hissed through his teeth, like a kettle releasing its steam. His insides bubbled as they boiled, threatening to spill over. “Apes,” he called, without breaking his hold. “You severed the bind, right?”

“No!” Caleb called out, twisting in the air, fighting the hold and forcing Wyatt to channel even more energy into keeping him put. “She didn’t! April, come here!”

“Yes!” April called back. “I did!”

Wyatt’s arms shook as Caleb writhed and attempted to rip his way free. “So, if I blow this jerk to bits, you’ll be OK, right?”

“Oh my goodness.”

“Is that a yes?”

April fell silent. By this point, Wyatt’s extremities were numb. Everything told him this was a terrible idea, that he needed to stop before nature forced him to. But one look at the girl on the floor and back at the snarling, smug face in the sky and nothing else mattered. There was no amicable here. This guy needed to go, one way or another.

“Apes! Yes or no!” Wyatt shouted, hearing her only whimper in response. “April! Yes or nooooo!” he roared over the deafening crash of waves in his ears as he lost all control of his magic, sending Caleb powering through the barrier and shooting through the night sky like a monkey strapped to a rocket.

The roaring in his head turned to ringing and Wyatt felt deflated.

He didn’t hear April approach from behind him, barely registered her as she slipped past and ran straight to Melinda.

“Is… is she OK?” he asked.

April ran her fingertips over Melinda’s lips and gently cradled her face. Wyatt wondered what she was looking for. What signs of life did a vampire have?

“Mel,” April whispered, nudging her friend. “Wake up Mel, he’s gone. You can wake up now.”

The weak, squeaky voice that responded was music to Wyatt’s shattered eardrums.

“Did I win?” Melinda asked.

April laughed and kissed Melinda’s forehead. “Yes, you won. You were so brave and awesome. Then Wyatt sent Caleb flying over the rooftops like it was nothing!”

“Walk in the park,” Wyatt said brightly. He wiped his blood-covered hand on his sweatpants as he blindly felt around for the ladder. “I’m just gonna go lie down because that was… so easy.”

“Can you help me get Mel downstairs?” April asked. “The sun will be up soon.”

The pulsing in Wyatt’s veins grew hotter, boiling him from the inside. The tile beneath his hand bubbled and crackled at his touch. If he tried to help them now, he’d turn them to ash for sure.

“No,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I mean, Mum’ll be here in literally a minute – there’s no way in hell that she wouldn’t notice that. She’ll help you.”

“Are you OK?”

“Me? Yeah, awesome,” he croaked. “I just drew a little too much magic, that’s all. I’ll be fine.”

Just fine.

I’ll be…

…fine.

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