Rich Boy: Growing Pains - 1. Chapter 1

It was a scan of a good, color picture from a newspaper. The caption below the picture mentioned that Worthington Michael Sinclair, V, was the sole heir to the Sinclair fortune and had miraculously survived the accident that took nearly all of his family. In the picture, he was wearing that dark suit at one of the many funerals that had taken nearly a week, and there was a bored expression on his face rather than one of grief or any other emotion.

Cold Hearted Killer?

That was something new, printed above the picture in large, bold, italicized font. The whole thing was packaged all nice and neat on a webpage and being circulated around the e-mail network of students that he now attended school with. Brandon had forwarded it to him after one of the potential recruits for Mike’s Riders, the motorcycle gang that he rode with, had received a copy.

I look so pale. That was the only thought that Worthington was able to summon up at the sight of the picture. The Worthington in the photograph had been a totally different person, mentally as well as physically. A year ago he had been pale, very slender, almost effete is how he’d say it now. In the present time, he was taller, much more muscular, and his skin was a healthy tanned bronze while his hair was several shades lighter, almost platinum blond and cut into a crew cut instead of the carefully gelled hairstyle he’d worn back then.

There were other changes though, much more than the obvious physical ones. Changes that were far more profound than a new tan, or shorter hair, or a physique many would kill for (and he spent a few hours on every other day). A year ago, the Worthington in that picture had been half of a person, mentally.

His mind had been split into two by a geas put on him by his untrusting father. The Sinclairs rarely trusted anyone they could not control through money, blackmail, magic, or all of the above. Even as a child, Worthington had been powerful, and influenced early on by a female mage that his Uncle, a sworn enemy of his father, had sent as an agent. Her job had been to make him ‘weak’ by teaching him what it was like to love and be loved.

All Sinclairs viewed that as a weakness, and when his father discovered her work, he’d not only killed her immediately but began a series of spells on his son that would, after the death of the father, end up splitting Worthington the Fifth’s psyche into two personalities. The struggle to merge the two had been painful, and costly, not only to Worthington but to his half-brother Jamie as well.

For most of his life, Worthington had lived a dual existence. Most of the time he was one person, a spoiled only child of a rich, powerful family that wielded great influence in a variety of arenas. He attended a boarding school and spent very little time in the company of his parents, and he was gay. Not openly gay, but from a relatively young age he’d been sexually active and sought all sorts of physical activities with other guys whenever and wherever he could. Not that he would ever be open about his sexuality. No, he planned to get married, have children, and still have his fun without anyone being the wiser about what he truly preferred in his bed.

The rest of his life was the secret part, the part that overshadowed everything else and caused the real problems after the death of his parents in a freak lightning storm he now knew to have been an attack by his Uncle. Almost every night during the times when he was home, his father or his mother would come, lift the spells that kept him under tight control, and he would remember all of his life and would remember about magic. Then they would teach him his family heritage as well as magic before the geas descended again on him and he went about his life believing he’d had no real contact with uncaring parents.

At school, where magic was taught at night as an adjunct to the regular lessons of the privileged offspring of the elite, the geas would again be lifted, and he would learn more magic. Those lessons had taught him much, and he was a good pupil when his mind was allowed the necessary freedom. By fourteen he had mastered magic that would leave those of lesser ability fumbling, and by the time of his parents’ death, he was bordering on achieving even greater ability in the realm of magic.

Magic was the Great Secret. All those who were born into families of mages were taught to keep it secret from mundanes, humans without magical ability. If mundanes, and their government, ever truly understood the powerful machinations that were possible with magic, no mage would be truly safe or allowed their own life free of tight controls and supervision.

Most mages followed one of two paths: the Light and the Dark. Worthington’s family, and the families of all those he attended school with and went with to the secret magic lessons at night followed the Dark path. Some might call the Dark path evil, but he understood the difference between Dark and evil. Certainly the Dark was a path easier for an evil person to follow, to use, and to wield without fear.

His aunt from this mother’s side had rejected the Dark and left it, and her family for her Light-following lesbian lover long before Worthington was born. After the death of his parents, she was the only living family member left besides his Uncle, the man who had killed all of the others, and Worthington had been given into her custody.

From them, he had learned more about the Light path, and come to understand it far more than most Dark mages. There were many similarities between the two paths. Both were about the exercise of control. Light and Dark taught mages to control their mage abilities, and from there to control the world around them. In both paths, mages were taught to protect the Great Secret, to keep magic from the uncontrolled knowledge of mundanes. Many spells between the two were very similar as well, accomplishing the same ends by slightly different means. Except for certain higher-level spells, a Dark mage could even learn many Light spells, and the opposite was true as well. He knew from personal experience casting the Light version of a spell he’d learned from the Dark path was more difficult, but could be done.

The differences though were vast gulfs, a real divide as large as the famed Grand Canyon in Arizona, as deep as the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of any ocean in the world.

There was always a price for power, and for those who followed the Dark, it was about making sure someone else paid the price. The more powerful a Dark spell, the more necessary it was for another person to pay the price. When a Dark mage as powerful as Worthington sought to work with a Channel like dark-haired, boyish-looking Brandon, it was the Channel that paid the price by being soul-bound to Worthington.

Certainly, Worthington paid some price in the soul bonding, else Brandon would have received nothing from the spell at all, but what he paid was far less than the soul-deep changes that had occurred in Brandon. Whether it was a bit of magic, a bit of blood, pain or anything else, the Dark taught its mages to make someone else pay the price for the power it gave.

The Light, on the other hand, valued the sacrifice of its own mages. When blood was required for Light magic, a Light mage gave his own blood. When pain was necessary, they gave their own pain. That was why Jamie had sacrificed his virginity to save Worthington when the geas-created part of his psyche almost won their internal battle. Jamie’s sacrifice had cost him the path of the Light, but had brought about Worthington as he was today, neither Light nor wholly Dark, but rather one of the few who walked between the two paths: A Gray Mage.

Jamie now walked that path with him, both searching out a way for himself when everyone said there were only two paths. They learned Dark magic from Byron Jones, a teacher at Worthington’s former school, and it was from him they’d learned the joining spell, the spell that was now the reason that Worthington felt so alone, and kept jabbing at the barrier in his mind like someone using their tongue to poke at a sore, loose tooth.

The picture in front of him was no real concern to him or the way it was spreading around the high school he now attended with his brother, Jamie, as well as many other people in his life. None of them, none of the important people in his life would believe the thrust of the message, that he had killed his family in a bid for money and power. Whoever was doing it was jealous, and seeking to demean him. It could be anyone, really, and would at worst be a distraction from the real problems he was facing.

“You okay?” Brandon’s voice came from the doorway to his room, and Worthington turned to look at the short, dark-haired young man who was soul-bound to him. While they were both sixteen, bordering on seventeen, Brandon often looked several years younger but acted at least a decade older. In addition to going to school himself, studying magic and helping another young Channel named Carl, Brandon acted as his personal assistant, taking care of any number of confusing details for him.

“Yeah, let’s just ignore it for now,” Worthington said with a sigh as Brandon nodded while coming into the room, shutting the door behind him.

“I’ve received confirmation from the dwarves,” Brandon said with a sigh. “Today is on for sure.”

“Well, it’s about time,” Worthington growled He was glad for something that would take his mind off the problem that occupied most of his thoughts these days. They should have known the joining spell would have serious side effects for them. In his way, Byron Jones had warned them before they did it the first time, but they had not heeded his warning as about them. The man had not known they were related as closely as they were, or he would have never taught them the spell.

Most of the world knew them as cousins through their mothers. Jamie’s biological mother was Elizabeth, the younger sister of Worthington’s own mother. A lesbian, Elizabeth had conceived Jamie from the same fertility clinic that had impregnated her partner years earlier. That birth had been their oldest son Richie. She thought sperm from the same donor as Richie’s biological father was fertilizing her child.

Worthington Michael Sinclair the Fourth had other ideas though. He wanted a backup heir no one knew about in case his then-unborn son had not lived or failed to pass muster. With his money, it was easy to pay the fertility clinic to use his sperm for Elizabeth’s child, and he’d gotten two sons, born just a few weeks apart when his wife delivered a full week late and Elizabeth two weeks early.

Worthington the Fifth and Jamie Bradwell were officially known as cousins, which was correct from their mother’s side, but they were also half-brothers sharing the same father. It was a level of relationship so close that it was normally forbidden for them to conduct the joining spell more than once. From Byron Jones’s explanation that day they had thought it was just usual Dark path nonsense where brothers would never trust each other. Most Dark path brothers kept each other at arm's length even if they did not openly feud as did Worthington’s father and Uncle.

It was to their dismay that they now knew the prohibition on brothers performing the spell was about more than typical Dark path paranoia.

“They will expect us at twilight.” Brandon continued with a smile. He had a right to smile. Worthington had let him deal mostly with the dwarves and Brandon had managed to pull off quite a few concessions from a race largely regarded as the toughest negotiators in existence.

“We’ll be there,” Worthington assured him. It would not do to be late, or early, not after all the mess Brandon had gone through, albeit he had been backed by the long years of experience from Randall Smythe, Worthington’s father’s attorney.

“Stop picking at it,” Brandon said with a hint of disgust. He hated that Worthington had made him watch for certain signs of behavior. Brandon hated anything that was critical of Worthington.

“Shut up.” Worthington snapped irritably. “Crap, I’m sorry Brandon. You’re just doing what I told you to do.”

“It’s okay.” Brandon shook his head sadly. “If trying to ignore it doesn’t work, maybe we should talk about it? We haven’t tried that yet.”

“He’s having fun right now.” Worthington frowned. He owed Brandon a lot, and not just for the way he was doing a grown man’s job while only being sixteen. The longer this went on, Worthington was finding that Brandon was more than just a kid from a poor, abused background that had latched onto him for safety and protection. “I can feel the joy inside of him right now, whatever he’s doing.”

“Jamie’s out in the pool with Richie, Billie, Josh, Colin, and Carl.” Brandon shrugged. “I don’t need to be bound tightly to him to know he’s out there having fun. I can look out your window and see it.”

“I know.” Worthington frowned again.

“Why are you in here staring at that stupid message instead of out there with him?” Brandon asked.

“They’re his people, not mine.” Worthington’s voice was caustic. He could remember parts of Jamie’s childhood still as if it had been his own. It felt like Richie was his brother too, at times, and that he’d known Billie all his life as his brother’s best friend. “We’re not supposed to mix things like that anymore. Jones says we must slowly split apart what has been joined, including the memories. We’ve been working on it bit by bit, but it takes time to split them apart and separate them back into where they were supposed to be.”

“Why is that?” Brandon asked with real curiosity. “I mean, I’ve never really understood what was going on besides the fact that the joining spell was creating a new consciousness inside of you and Jamie.”

“You were there when Housemaster Jones explained it to us.” Worthington frowned at the memory. It had been that day after the battle with the Demon Lord, the day when they’d gone swimming together, the last time they’d truly been close to each other. It was a bitter memory for Worthington.

“That was at the meeting at the hotel downtown.” Brandon nodded. “We were on the other side of the room, though, with the people that Jones brought with him. He was only talking to you and Jamie, and we thought the two of you were going to blast him apart from the expressions on your face. Afterward you told me the basics, but that was it.”

“Well, you got the basics of the explanation,” Worthington said bitterly. “In people as closely related as Jamie and I, the spell has severe side effects if it is used more than once.”

“But why?” Brandon asked. “I mean, it doesn’t make all that much sense why the magic would do this.”

“It’s an unusual Dark spell, which is one reason why it’s not very popular.” Worthington sighed as he tried to structure his explanation in a way that Brandon could understand. “You understand that with most Dark spells it takes power from the caster, and some other price from another person.”

“That’s why some people think of Dark as being evil.” Brandon nodded. “Like when you soul-bonded me, it required pain and blood. Most of it was my pain, and my blood, mixed with a single drop of blood from you.”

“Right.” Worthington nodded without any other reaction to the memory that called up. He’d been under the control of his father’s geas when he did that, and would not do it now, or at least that’s what he kept telling himself. “The joining spell is a little different. Two mages have to cast it equally, and it takes from both equally. Normally it mixes them together in a truly equal joining so that as long as the spell lasts, they are one. It was made to allow Dark mages who needed to work together to do it without having to worry the other Dark mage was about to stab them in the back and make them pay the whole price for whatever they were doing together.

“Part of the side-effect of the spell is that even afterward the two people are slightly mixed together.” Worthington continued his explanation. “A little of their DNA mix together. If they’re already related, it brings them closer together. If they’re very closely related it does something else.”

“Like what it did to you and Jamie, making it appear like you two are twins.” Brandon nodded in understanding.

“That’s too simplistic.” Worthington frowned. “We thought it was just mixing our DNA together, making us like twins but it was doing more than that, much more that. If we had only done it the once, that is all that might have happened, but we did it more times, far too many times. It didn’t just mix our DNA together; it combined them and made us into a new person, a combination of who we were genetically before. We’re both taller than we should be, and our bodies are much different than they were. That’s the spell, and the Dark at work. It did more things as well.”

“The consciousness,” Brandon said softly.

“Yes, that is the true danger of the spell,” Worthington said. “It’s the Dark’s true price for it. The more we used it, the more a consciousness formed between Jamie and I. This thing, it took our minds and began to meld us together, like someone taking two different shirts and sewing them together to make a new shirt. First, it changed us physically, and then it started changing us mentally. We didn’t even really notice it happening, just thought it was the way things were supposed to be until Byron Jones pointed out what was happening. If we don’t stop it, the consciousness will succeed in melding us into one being with two bodies, and Jamie and I will cease to exist as individuals.”

“And it is a creature of the Dark, right?” Brandon asked.

“It is the purest form of Dark there could be.” Worthington shuddered. “The Dark formed it inside us, and it is totally dedicated to the Dark. The first phase of undoing this has been hard. We’ve had to keep this barrier up between our minds so that we can’t see through each other’s eyes, know each other’s thoughts. It’s kind of like walking around with one arm and one leg missing. Everything’s off-balance, incomplete.”

“But it’s not as bad as it was at first, right?” Brandon asked, and Worthington took a deep breath before exhaling it slowly.

“No, it’s not as bad.” He admitted. “I miss it still, though.”

“What’s next?” Brandon asked. “I mean, I know you’re working with Housemaster Jones to find an Adept who will help.”

“We’ve already started the next phase.” Worthington sighed. “The first phase was about keeping the barriers up in our mind, our minds. We also had to keep physically separated. No more sleeping in each other’s bed, no more sex, no more doing everything together. The next phase has to deal with our memories.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Brandon admitted.

“The consciousness was taking our memories, and weaving them together.” Worthington tried to explain. “It was like we had both lived each other’s childhood. I could remember my tenth birthday party, and my father raping me later that night, and I could remember the red bike that Mom got me, and the look of pure jealousy on Richie’s face when he saw it. They weren’t Jamie’s memories or my memories, they were all our memories, together as if we had just been one creature born and living in two separate bodies. Now we have to find these memories, one by one, and rip out the seams so that they are two separate memories. I have to remember that it was Jamie’s bike, not mine, and he has to remember that he never had a father who did those things to him.”

“But why don’t you just erase the memories that aren’t yours?” Brandon asked.

“We can’t,” Worthington said irritably. That was what he’d wanted to do. He’d had enough experience with losing control of his mind to another identity within him. As much as he loved Jamie, and he cared about Jamie with all his heart, and as much as he had loved the feeling of them being together, being one, he didn’t want to lose control over his mind to another entity altogether. Both of them had paid too high a price for what he was now to lose it to a new entity brought about by the Dark. “The consciousness, the Sinclair as it thinks of itself has woven those memories into our being too tightly. At this point, we can’t get rid of them altogether without pulling out the roots of our own memories at the same. It’s like two trees that have grown so close together that their roots and trunks are entangled. The best we can do is separate the trunks, and mark the roots in such a way that we know which roots are mine, and which are his.”

“I think I understand.” Brandon frowned. “When will all this be done?”

“Months, or more,” Worthington said with a sigh. “There’s more down the road we have to do, some of which will require help from an Adept, which you know we’re trying to get.”

“They all want a lot of money.” Brandon frowned.

“Well, money’s one thing I don’t have to worry about.” Worthington grinned, hoping to change the mood, lighten it a little.

“That’s for sure.” Brandon snorted. “You’d be hard pressed to spend all the money you make in a week, and that’s just from letting your investments sit.”

“I have no interest in all that business stuff my dad did,” Worthington admitted. He wasn’t his father on many levels, no matter the man’s attempts to mold him into what the man wanted him to become.

To his father, magic had been another tool in his arsenal for business domination. For Worthington though, magic was so much more. Part of that was because Worthington was more powerful than his father ever had been, more powerful than any Sinclair male in generations. Worthington had enough power that one day he would be a full Adept, the most powerful and skilled of mages.

Already he bordered on Adept status. Certainly he was powerful enough without the added power that he could summon through his link with Brandon. The soul-bond between them allowed Worthington access to all of Brandon’s magical resources, and the boy was a Channel, one of the rarest types of mages. A Channel had very little inborn ability with magic but could tap into massive reserves that they could not use. Instead, they could link with a mage and provide that mage with all that extra power. It nearly doubled Worthington’s power to be able to do that, and since Brandon was soul-bound to him, only he could tap Brandon’s power.

Being an Adept was about more than power, which was why Worthington and Jamie were not quite Adepts yet. It required a great amount of skill and practice with magic, something that could only come with time, and it was about creativity, the ability to create new forms of magic, new spells. There Jamie had outperformed him until their joining spell had merged them so much more closely.

The Dark had also increased their power a bit, made them both a little stronger in anticipation of the Dark being that would emerge when the joining had been completed, and they had lost their individuality. Now they were even in power, just as they looked exactly the same physically. Worthington had found he was more creative with magic, and Jamie had found he had more skills than previously. The major difference between them was that Worthington had a soul-bound Channel.

Jamie had access to a Channel in the form of Carl, the now-fourteen-year-old young man who had been a former student at the same boarding school Worthington and Brandon had attended. Unlike Brandon though, Carl had rejected the idea of being soul-bound to a more powerful mage and had been kicked out of the school, but not before being punished. His punishment had included being raped by geas-bound Worthington and his memory of that event controlled so that he would always remember it but be unable to tell anyone. When Worthington had been going through the process of integrating his geas-bound identity with that of Michael, the identity that had really taken root only after coming to Phoenix, he had freed Carl from the controls he had placed on the boy.

Worthington’s Uncle, the televangelist-mage who had killed all of Worthington’s family except for Aunt Elizabeth, had found Carl and used a Sinclair-family secret technique to force the boy to do his bidding. Then he’d set Carl as a spy on Worthington by moving him to Phoenix. Worthington and Jamie had found the boy, figured out what had been done to him, and Jamie had freed Carl by using the same dark-technique to reset Carl’s loyalties.

Now Carl was ‘adopted’ by Jamie in most ways, like a younger brother. He lived with Jamie, and his family didn’t even remember his existence. Carl was now pretty much a happy young man, eager to learn more about being a Channel and who helped Jamie whenever he could, but he was not soul-bound to Jamie. That meant Jamie could not necessarily use his power without Carl’s assistance like Worthington could do with Brandon, and it also meant that if he wished, Carl could link with and help any other mage.

Measured in pure power alone, Carl and Brandon were about equal. The soul-bond though made Brandon and Worthington stronger together than Carl could be with any mage. Neither he nor Jamie minded though. The truth was neither would want to go through what it would take to soul-bind Carl to Jamie.

The Dark consciousness did want that though, and it was one of the reasons Jamie was so much stronger than Worthington in resisting it. It knew that with two Channels soul-bonded to the two Adept parts of itself, no one would be able to stand against it regarding magical power. Not even if every Adept in the world banded together would they necessarily overcome it with its combined might at that point.

For good or bad, Worthington was well on the way to becoming an Adept and would reach that status before too many more years had passed. Already he did many things only an Adept could do, and he understood that. He loved the world of magic, and while he also enjoyed things about the mundane world, he knew that the world of magic was where his heart lay.

There was more to magic than mages, as he knew better than ever before. Dwarves were creatures of magic, and he was dealing with them over an abandoned mine he had bought to use as a meeting place with his mage-teachers. Now it was becoming more than that, and later tonight he would see what the dwarves had made of it. Even without seeing it, he had a sense that it would be an important place for him in the future, a place where the world of magic was stronger than any of the mundane residences he might call home.

There were more than dwarves to the world of magic, he knew. It was only a few months ago that he had fought and defeated a Demon Lord, summoned from another dimension. There were more creatures in those other dimensions, some he knew of, most he didn’t. Then there were the creatures of magic who lived in this world, hidden from mundane sight in the mountains and wilderness that remained in the industrial world.

Many of these creatures had fled the Old World with the finding of the Americas, and as humans followed, they had moved westward until they entered deep hiding in the few wildernesses left. If you knew where to look, you could find dwarves, elves, pixies, brownies, kobolds, ogres, trolls, and many other creatures out of human legend or fairy tales. The problem was knowing where to look.

By and large, these creatures had lived the past few centuries with no overt contact with humans, even human mages. Sure, there had been occasional contacts, especially between the Light branches of races like elves and Light mages. Dwarves and other creatures had donned magical disguises and occasionally made forays into the human mundane world, but for the most part they kept to themselves, until now.

It had been the Dark dwarves that had sought Worthington out, seeking to build a settlement amidst the old mine that Worthington had recently purchased. When some of the other magical creatures had found out about the settlement, they had nearly gone to war with the dwarves until an agreement had been reached. Then the dwarves had approached Worthington to reach an even bigger agreement.

That had cost tens of millions of dollars, mostly because of the speed with which he had to work. The deal could not take years to complete as many land deals took. He had less than a month to do it, and his father’s attorney Randall Smythe had his work cut out for him. Still, the purchases had been made, and while the final paperwork would not be done for another month, the dwarves had taken it as completed and begun fulfilling their part of the bargains.

This was the world Worthington wanted to live in, the world of magic. He would go to school, university, and would learn enough that he could keep abreast of the mundane world but it was the magic world that would hold his attention. Worthington wanted to study magic, and creatures of magic. He wanted to explore the other planes of existence and learn the creatures that dwelt there. There was a change coming, a change he could feel deep in his bones, and he knew that whatever form that change took, it would be best for him to know all he could of the world of magic.

“You need to do something fun.” Brandon broke the silence that had filled the room while Worthington ruminated on his future and his past. “Why don’t you go swimming? You know that just because they’re friends with Jamie, it doesn’t mean they don’t like you too.”

“It’s not that.” Worthington frowned. “Jamie’s there, and we’re supposed to avoid unnecessary contact. Do you think we could, being in a pool together? That’s a little bit too much.”

“I’d say go see Jeremy, but he’s still in Florida.” Brandon frowned and frowned even more at the look of hurt that crossed Worthington’s face. That was another sore point for him.

Jeremy was Worthington’s mundane lover. They’d met on the wrestling squad, and he’d fallen for Jeremy big time. It had been Jeremy the Demon Lord had sought to use as a tool against Worthington, and after Jeremy’s home had been destroyed in the battle, Worthington had arranged for his family to receive a new home as a ‘donation.’

The new home was just a few blocks away, and the family had received a two-week vacation to Disney World for free. What was more, Worthington had nothing to do with it. It had come as a gift for families of the trailer park that had been dislocated because of the ‘freak storm’ that had destroyed their homes. That was the cover story used to keep the real reason, a magic battle between mages and demons, from public knowledge.

Even before the joining spell, Jamie and Worthington had been growing closer and had an odd three-way relationship with Jeremy, who seemed to love them both. The mundane didn’t really understand what was going on now, and why the both wouldn’t be in bed with him at the same time. It had put a strain on their relationships, with Jeremy refusing to make any sort of choice between the two men he loved. Until their relationship was resolved, Jeremy would be their friend but nothing more.

“Yeah, well maybe it’s for the best that he’s not around.” Worthington sighed, and Brandon winced at the pain in his voice.

“What about Barry?” Brandon asked after another long silence. “He hasn’t left for college yet, and he’s not doing anything today that I know about. Why don’t you call him and see if he wants to do something, like go for a ride.”

“It’s a hundred and fifteen out there.” Worthington snorted.

“Then ride up north.” Brandon retorted. “It gets cooler just an hour or two up north.”

“Fine,” Worthington said with a sigh, and Brandon was smiling as he left the room. A quick phone call revealed that Barry was as bored as Worthington, and thought a ride would be a great idea, as long as they got out of the heat. It only took Worthington fifteen minutes to change out of the shorts and t-shirt he wore and squeeze into the riding leathers he liked to wear when riding.

The black leather pants were well padded and had everything he needed to survive a wreck on a speeding motorcycle. A black t-shirt went on underneath the black and yellow leather-riding jacket, and he headed out his bedroom door. One of the nice things about being a mage was that he could leave a mental message with Brandon about where he was heading. His Aunt Elizabeth and her partner Stacy were sticklers for making sure they knew where he was. Until he turned eighteen, they made it clear he would always keep them informed of his comings and going.

He couldn’t complain about that too much.

His real parents hadn’t cared much beyond his use to them as an heir, and that he did not disrupt their plans for the future. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that Stacy and Elizabeth cared for him as a person as if he was as much one of their children as Richie or Jamie. That thought warmed him inside and made their restrictions chafe less than they might have otherwise.

Phoenix summer heat hit him as soon as he entered the garage. Unlike the house, it was not cooled by air conditioning and was sweltering in the early afternoon heat. Wearing heavy leathers didn’t help the heat, and he was sweating by the time he opened the door and wheeled his bike outside.

This bike was another custom bike, built to replace the ones he had wrecked fighting demons. The top-of-the-line Ducati he’d bought as a temporary bike was now Rob’s personal machine. A tall, sandy-blond haired wrestler, and a mage, Rob was currently at lessons with the teacher-mage that Worthington had hired months ago.

The bike roared to life, and Worthington put on his helmet, being careful to jack in the helmet’s radio to the bike’s power system. It wasn’t necessary, except that Brandon had gone to a lot of trouble to find a system that would work. Spread around the valley were several radio relays for the frequency these helmet radios used. The power amplifier Brandon had arranged to be installed on the bike of the members of the MR gang boosted the signal enough so they could talk to each other from anywhere in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.

Towards the end of the fight with the demons, Worthington had formed a Mage Council with the predominantly Light mages that lived in the area. It was the first mage government of any kind, anywhere in the world, for the last several centuries. Not since the Demon Wars that had toppled the Mage Lord Sinclair had mages willingly come together in any form of government.

The Council existed for the specific purpose of defending the area’s mages from attack by outsiders, and if all parties requested it, to arbitrate disputes between mages. So far they had only had to deal with the demons, and no requests for arbitration had been made. As the only Adepts, even if only in potential, he and Jamie had been named as heads of the Council, rotating the actual chair position between them each year. Worthington held it the first year and had spent many days of the last few months working with the Council to establish how they would operate.

The group of young motorcycle riders that had aided in their defenses during the demon attacks had been the first real bone of contention between him and the Light mages of the Council. Once the demon threat was over, they had wanted to wipe the memories of all the human riders. These young men had risked their lives and spent a lot of time riding patrols that had protected mages.

They had expressed a fervent loyalty to Worthington that had surprised him and found an answering loyalty in him. Yes, he paid them for their work, but they had taken the motorcycle ‘gang’ that had really been a loose affiliation before and named it Mike’s Riders. Most of them knew him as Mike, or Michael because when he first started attending school and met them, he had been going by that name. It was the identity that had led him to reject his family’s geas and forge a different path as a mage than they had expected of him.

Eventually, a compromise had been reached when he’d explained his plans for continuing to use Mike’s Riders as a part of the area’s defenses. It had taken nearly a month of work, but he had managed to alter the anklets that he’d given the gang to warn of nearby demons and to provide them some limited protection from the evil creatures. Reluctantly the Mage Council had agreed to his compromise and accepted the help of the human riders.

The anklets were still protection from demons and many other forms of magical creatures. They were even a limited form of protection against mages. Any mage attempting to tamper with the wearer of the anklet would receive a nasty surprise, and a warning set there by Worthington. Further, as long as the wearer was in the Phoenix area, Worthington would know of the tampering.

If it occurred while the wearer was outside the area, he would know next time he stood near the human rider.

All of them understood that the silver anklet was part of their protection and their status as a member of Mike’s Riders. So long as they wore it, they were part of the group, and their memories of magic were largely intact, although they could not speak of magic to anyone who wasn’t a mage, or of Mike’s Rider’s either. If they ever removed the anklet, or it was removed from them, one last spell would wipe their memories of anything to do with magic.

If they wanted to leave the group, they knew it would be better for them to come to Worthington and tell him. When he wiped their memories, the whole experience would be a lot cleaner and less painful than just taking the anklet off. With that condition though, the Mages Council had agreed to not having to wipe them immediately, and that had been Worthington’s goal.

All thoughts and concerns slid from his mind as he got on his bike and roared down the street. It was hot outside, but it faded to comfortable warmth as he accelerated and the wind pushed against him. By he reached the freeway, he had even stopped picking at that barrier in his mind, and rather just enjoyed the feeling of being free on the motorcycle, with nothing between him and painful death but his reactions and skill.

“Mike’s on the road.” He said as he pushed the transmit button on his handlebar. Even he could hear the simple joy in his voice. Life may have thrown him a lot of problems, but for now, they were behind him, and the open road was in front of him. If Barry were going to join him on the ride, he’d have to hurry.

Life was too short for him to wait around.