Give Me Back My Prompts - 4. 557 - Portal Stones Don't Just 'Go Missing'

“And then I hid it somewhere he won’t find it,” the Demon Del Deorion finished with a smug grin.

Across the uneven and beer spattered surface of the wooden table, the Prince of hell smiled at him, arching one perfect eyebrow. Deorion had always thought Nassau to be unfairly pretty, even when he’d been stripped of his powers and his feathers and banished from the world below. Not that the smoke flavoured demon would ever do anything about it, after all being consort to the Wind gave him rather special privileges.

And Yosui is such good fun in bed….

And on sofa.

“Oi!” Deorion lowered his pint with a scowl. “Stop living vicariously in my dirty mind, Nas.”

“Well if you will leave it open…” Nassau commented. “And you live with Yosui, I mean really.”

“Gods hate secrets.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You never do, but when have I ever been wrong?”

Nassau drew a perfect circle on the table with the condensation of his ale.

“If I remember correctly, you were the one who assured Kiorl and I that you could handle just two salamanders.” The Prince rolled his eyes. “All you had to do was not let them escape, breed prolifically, and then lose control of their evolution altogether.”

“You ain’t ever going to let that go, are you?”

“Nope.” Nassau finished his drink, refilled the tankard by rapping on the table with his knuckles, and returned to their original conversation. “You realise we’ve been punishing Shax for losing that thing for the last couple of decades.”

“Good.”

“You stole it off him!”

“He bet it in a game of cards with an Immortal! Boy deserves to be taken advantage of.” Deorion grinned wickedly. “An’ he’d be sort of cute if he stopped polishing his horns for five minutes.”

“Deorion! What would Yosui say?”

“He’d tell me to shut up, drink my beer, and invite you back to the house for dinner. You know he remodelled the roof terrace… again. He’s been dying to show it off.”

“Well, alright.”

Nassau paid for their drinks with a handful of slightly grimy coins, which on close inspection from the bar staff would turn out to be ancient, Roman, solid gold, and worth about as much as the ground rent of the pub itself. Out on the street, Deorion dug around in his pocket, then lit the end of a long brown cigarette by licking it, before held the drug between two slim fingers as he inhaled. His fire glowed hotly for a moment.

“You ever think of asking Them to fix yours for you?” Deorion gestured with his fag to the winding patterns of almost delicate flame which flickered along Nassau’s arm. He’d always thought Nassau’s good looks were improved with it, but he also knew how much their memory hurt the demon who, despite being almost all-powerful, he would always think of as a boy.

“No.” Nassau hugged himself tightly, then shrugged into a long coat with sleeves to hide the painful tattoo. “I don’t think They would anyway… and it’s all I have left of him.”

“Nas….”

“So tell me, where did you hide the portal stone, Deorion?”

They walked together side by side, and for all the world saw them, they were just two young men: one supremely beautiful, pale with long ash brown hair and grey eyes; the other black skinned, handsome and chiselled, but dressed in apparent rags, smoking like a man relaxing in a pavement café. The streets of Camden had seen far stranger sights, even in the middle of the day, and no one paid them much attention, expect to leer over Nassau’s incomparable deliciousness.

“You remember when the gods insisted on having The Games every year, and I told you about the time one of the messengers fucked up and brought the wrong guy?”

“Yeah.”

“I sent him home with it, seemed like the simplest option.”

“What?”

Deorion turned when he realised his companion had stopped walking.

“Nas?”

“You gave a portal stone to a human?” The Prince asked in disbelief. “Have you completely lost your mind?”

“Nassau, you worry too much. Nothing bad happened, did it?”

“Yet.”

“Humans live short lives Nas. Don’t worry about it. Thing’s probably already been long lost.”

“You’re always so damn sure of yourself Deorion,” Nassau muttered. “C’mon, I suspect your boyfriend is being creative in the kitchen again….”

*

James Markus swept his hand across the kitchen counter top for the final time, and sighed. Jordan was waiting for him down in the removals van along with Jemma and the dogs, but he couldn’t bear to leave the flat so soon. They’d chosen to stay there, and then one thing had lead to another: marriage, better jobs, the first of the dogs adopted from a shelter and coddled like he was their little one. Then their next door neighbour had decided to sell, and Jordan had suggested they buy the apartment and expand. The twins had brightened up their lives enormously, fulfilled a desire James hadn’t even known he’d had before, and now he could barely believe his children were seventeen, and practically adults in their own right.

“Da?” Jadyn laid a hand on his shoulder. “C’mon Da, Papa’s waiting.”

“I know, I’m coming.”

“Wyoming is going to be awesome y’know.”

“How the two of us managed to raise a couple of rodeo nutters I’ll never understand.”

Jadyn laughed.

“Da! You’re so funny.”

The boy moved around the rooms he’d grown up in, now standing empty of their possessions. Automatically, he opened the tall cupboard which had been built into what was once the old living room where they used to store their coats, and frowned down at the floor. It was not quite empty, and among dust bunnies and scraps of old receipts, something glinted.

“Da? What’s this?”

The glass sphere in his hand glimmered invitingly, but as he turned to his father, all the blood drained out of his face, and the smile Jadyn was so used to seeing was replaced by a look of fear.

“Drop it!”

“Da?” Jadyn frowned, not knowing what could have made his father so scared so fast. It was just a glass bauble after all. “Da?”

“Jadyn!”

Jadyn glanced at the globe in his hand, but it was no longer transparent, but filled with an inner fire which glowed hotly. He couldn’t look away.

“Da!”

But it was too late.

The portal stone was full, and it read the intention deep in the back of Jadyn’s mind, something he hadn’t even been aware he wanted, something he’d never verbalised, not even in his own head. The boy who’d been adopted before he could even remember by the best parents anyone could have ever wished for nevertheless had always been curious about where he came from.

The world went white, everything fell away, and twenty terrifying heart beats later, Hadyn looked out at an alien landscape with which he was totally unfamiliar.

“Oh,” he said. Then realising his father wasn’t around to admonish him, decided a swear word might be in order. “Fuck.”