Page 95 of A Subtle Scar
Chandler shook his head. “Not the kind of sick I meant. The kind of sick that would burn a boy on the stake because he’s a witch, that kind of sick.”
Hermes grunted, gave the door a final turn, and pulled it open. “Of course. Sorry. It’s the boner. Makes thinking hard. Fuck! Not a pun.”
Chandler stopped pulling and looked at me. “I mean, I’m curious. Was he always like this?”
I shrugged. “Once when we were in Rome to see the races at the Circus Maximus, he ate a whole pomegranate, then complained he could feel its aphrodisiac effects kick in, and he just couldn’t bear it a moment longer.”
Hermes turned and pointed a naked finger directly at my forehead. “Oh, don’t you pretend you didn’t enjoy sneaking off to the stables for some aphrodisiac effect! Youbeggedme for more!”
“Well, oookay then,” Chandler said.
I let him head deeper into the bunker because Hermes’s magic hadn’t snagged on anything.
“Fuck. Let me make light,” our boyfriend said.
He reached for the wall with the hand I hadn’t magically bound to mine and infused it with a neat little spell. Most mages would have cast a ball of light, but Chandler had gone for a more understated piece of magic that made the walls around us glow. The spell looked to have a component for movement, and when Hermes began walking, the light followed.
The tunnel itself was, like so many modern tunnels, dull and unremarkable, just gray all around, the floor worn from people frequenting it quite a lot.
“It smells like the living are where they shouldn’t be,” I said.
“Yes, funky,” Hermes said. “Lacks all the humid mustiness of a nice cave or well shaft.”
“It stinks like unwashed clothes on unwashed asses is what you’re trying to say,” Chandler said.
“That too,” I said. “I wonder where everybody is.”
“I could go look,” Hermes said.
Chandler shook his head. “No. We aren’t…I don’t know. We aren’t there yet. Let’s just walk. It’ll be fine.”
Arguing with our boyfriend clearly wasn’t going to get us anywhere, so we all went forward. Hermes kept making sure not to hit any dangerous magic while Chandler attempted to move faster than I let him.
The bare, angular walls eventually turned to decorated angular walls with openings leading to other rooms. Chandler’s light spell became obsolete the moment we got to the “windows.”
“We are taking the outside inside,” Chandler read from above an old poster showing a green field with some horses on it. Old light bulbs shone on it from sockets placed directly above it.
“This one saysThe air is cleaner on the inside,” Hermes read from a poster showing a tulip field.
“That statement is demonstrably wrong.” Chandler pushed his spell into one of the rooms. “Bedroom? With no door? This is getting better and better. And by better, I mean uncomfortably freaky.”
“You two are going to gang up on me, but I’d like to mention that even the seediest brothels in Herculaneum had curtains,” Hermes said.
I clicked my tongue. “Frequenting brothels is not something that you mention to our boyfriend because it is not an attractive quality.”
“I like to go and have fun in clubs. A bit of Domming and subbing, you know. Some people are into exhibitionism, but that’s not what this is,” Chandler said. “Having said that, I never paid for sex.”
Hermes frowned. “I take your point, Ronny. Baby, I can accept that you had inferior human cock before we met you, but I’d prefer it if you never mentioned it again. I feel the strongest urge to erupt inside you right here and now to make sure you know the only cocks you are allowed to have fun with are mine and Ronny’s.”
“Needy immortals,” Chandler mumbled, but the color in his cheeks was unmistakable, a delicate blush. It stirred my arousal as well.
“I’d have let you. Erupt inside him,” I told Hermes.
A nod of understanding passed between Hermes and me. The no cock except ours was the only reasonable policy when it came to our boyfriend, and we both knew it.
Chandler, oblivious to Hermes and me, navigated the bunker, and his urge to get wherever it was that drew him grew. At the same time, he spoke less, took less note of the things all around us.
Hermes and I did look, our eyes easily seeing into dark rooms where old toys rotted, where magazines showed laughing models in faded colors. A record player was the most modern piece of technology I spotted, and reusable diapers, strung up to dry, were among the scariest sights, those, and some kind of medical chair with restraints for the head, arms, and legs. This was without a doubt worse than the villagers with their desire to burn their own.
