Eventually it got too hot to fly, and he found a place to land—a house that actually didn't look to be in too bad a condition, out by itself in a ring of hills. There was a pool behind it, but from the looks of it, it wasn't anything he wanted to land in, as it was mostly empty and brackish looking.

  It took him a while to figure out why the house, which was deserted, had been left alone. It was in a small box canyon in an area full of box canyons, and the entryway had been partially obscured by a rock fall that hid the dirt road that turned into it. The only reason he'd seen it was because he was flying fairly high—well, high for him, at least.

  Looking through it, he found a lot of survival rations, all of which were still good, if the twenty-five year date was to be believed. The water inside worked; his guess was that it was spring-fed from something up on one of the sides of the small canyon.

  Thanking his good fortune, he used his magic to cast a small fire in the fireplace, and made dinner. That done, he set up several ward spells, shifted into his lion form, and curled up on the cool tile floor in the bathroom. Between the wards and the number of closed doors, he figured he'd have more than enough warning if someone came along, but from the looks of things, he was fairly certain he wouldn't be disturbed.

  Come the morning, he spent a fair bit of time examining the inside of the house, now that he could rely on something more than his night vision and a small light spell. He didn't know if the house still had power, and the idea of lighting the place up at night didn't sound like a smart one.

  Besides the food, of which there was a lot, he found a map of the area with the house marked on it. Best guess, he was now about twenty miles from his intended destination, which was to the west of where he'd been heading by a fair amount. He found a compass—actually, he found a couple of them—and he took one of the smaller ones to help keep him oriented when he left.

  He'd apparently covered a lot of distance yesterday, and when he shifted to bring out his wings, he'd discovered he had a pretty severe case of muscle cramps! He probably should have left them out while he'd slept, but then again, maybe it was better that he'd postponed it until after he'd rested.

  In either case, he was in no rush, and spending another day here wouldn't be a problem. Though he did plan to go out later, when the muscles in his wings weren't as tight or as sore, to fly around the house and the canyon a few times so he could learn the landmarks around it. It might very well be a place he'd want to come back to, especially if it wasn't that long a trip to get here by wing.

  He also discovered that the house had two bedrooms, with beds, though the blankets and sheets had been removed, folded up, and put away. Some of them were still in decent shape, but most of the others had succumbed to dry rot. At least the furniture, which was either made from wood, synthetics, or a combination of the two, was still serviceable.

  Sitting down, he stretched out his wings to ease the cramps a bit, then decided to cast his 'stats spell', as his father liked to call it. Typically most magic users didn't start teaching their kids serious magic until they were eighteen. Sean, his father, had started instructing them as soon as they'd finished puberty.

  Part of that was because he'd been teaching SJ, who was the second oldest of his children, about his lion abilities, and since the stats spell helped with learning, he'd had to teach him magic so he could teach him that, as well.

  His father had then ended up teaching the others, so they didn't feel left out. Mihalis often found it a point of amusement, how easy it was to guilt his father on certain things, especially when it came to learning. But because of that, he'd been well trained in magic and enchanting, long before most magic users even got started. True, his magical strength was still rather weak, compared to his older brothers and sisters, because his powers were still maturing, but he had a couple of multipliers his dad had made him, which helped.

  Casting the spell, he started with his physical stats. As a lion and a dark elf, he'd been pretty gifted with those, especially after all the training his mother had put him through. His constitution and strength were both at nineteen and his agility eighteen. That'd made him pretty happy…until he'd learned Alska's agility was at twenty. True, her strength was way lower than his, but her constitution was almost as good. Even Fira, who was a year and a half younger than him, had higher agility. Being lighter and smaller had its benefits.

  His mental skills were a different story. While his intelligence and even his wisdom were good for his age, they still had a long way to develop—especially his wisdom, which was only at thirteen. They weren't things he could change by anything other than studying and experience, and as he'd learned after his time with the lionesses, experience was something he was sorely lacking.

  Then again, before they'd come along, he was at a twelve. So maybe they'd been good for something, at least.

  Reasoning and memory were different; he could affect those a lot easier by focusing on them and putting his accumulated effort and energy into them. They both had a huge effect on his ability with spells and magic. He probably had better stats there than most magic users a year older than him, but that was due to having started a lot sooner than they did, as well as his father's methods.

  His lycanthropy skills were good—integration was maxed, and regeneration was doing well—though he pushed a little more into that, due to where he was going.

  As for his magical skills, his ability was incredibly high; he got that from his father and his mother. His mana pool was small, compared to his older brother SJ's mana pool, but it was way larger than a human's would be, due to his being a lycanthrope and needing that power to regenerate and shift.

  The tradeoff was, if his pool ever got to zero, and he was injured, it could force him into negative numbers. While negative numbers were painful for a human, usually resulting in unconsciousness, for a lycan, it was deadly, and it usually couldn't be stopped before the body consumed itself—a process he'd been told by his father was incredibly painful.

  So he was very careful to never cast his own pool down below half because he'd learned from experience that healing could really eat into it.

  He reflected on that for a moment. The lion power pool had taken over his healing completely when he'd gone into a rage and killed all the mindre and even the ridder. Looking back on that now, he was surprised he'd been able to grab hold of it and use it like that. According to those lionesses, that wasn't something someone like him was supposed to be able to do. Yet when it came down to his fight with Rose, he'd had no problem at all with grabbing onto it to counter her using it.

  He'd have to keep that in mind for the future. He'd never asked his father about the lion power pool, or rather, he'd never asked him about using it directly. He knew all the lion powers—or 'mystic shit', as his father laughingly referred to it—were powered by that pool, which somehow came from all the lycans alive in the world, which was why the amount of power in it was constantly changing.

  All lions had their own power pool they normally used, which was refilled by the main pool, not unlike his mana pool. But if you had the skill and the ability, you could grab directly from the main pool, and for the larger and more difficult abilities, there was no other way to use them.

  Looking back at the spell, his will stat, which was probably the most important stat for casting magic, was also embarrassingly low. Then again, maybe that was why he'd been such easy prey for Rose and the others? Maybe being agreeable all the time, being willing to go along, wasn't as good an idea as he'd once been led to believe. Maybe he needed to learn to say 'no' more often, or at least not be so agreeable, always going and doing whatever he was told.

  Then again, Troy had this way of talking you into things, and if they were fun, he'd always been more than willing to sneak off and give it a go…

  His lion abilities hadn't changed a whit—but then, they really didn't. Those were like going into a store and buying things, and he'd already bought all the abilities he'd wanted. Most of them were more than he could afford, though he'd been told as he got more experienced, they'd 'cost' less.

  For some of them, he could even grab the power from the power pool, but that got pretty tricky. He hadn't understood all the rules involving that, and his father hadn't really explained them—he'd thought that was because the ability was beyond him, especially after what Rose and the others had been telling him.

  It seemed that a lot of it revolved around what your 'generation' was, and for most lions, that was fixed, and there were very few at the top of that pyramid. Rose was an F2.5, and she, and the others, were all quite sure he was an F3, because while Dad was an F1, Mom hadn't even been a lioness when he was born. She'd since been infected by an F1, Estrella, who Rose and the others believed was an F2. So where that put his mom, he really had no idea, but he had a sneaking suspicion she wasn't an F3, because, he now realized, he wasn't one either.

  Because he'd outdrawn Rose from the pool.

  That ability was apparently based solely on where in the generational hierarchy you fit. There was no way to change it.

  Maybe the reason his father hadn't taught him how to use the power pool wasn't because his father didn't believe he couldn't do it; maybe it was more that his father didn't want to give his young son access to that kind of power until he was mature enough to use it.

  Which, considering what he'd done to Rose, had obviously been a good idea. Too bad he'd figured it out on his own, or she'd still be alive.

  Shaking his head, he went back to the spell. It was unfortunate that there was nothing in the stats program that told you what your generation was. If the First or his dad knew, neither of them had ever bothered to share that with him. Not that it really mattered; he didn't think they'd be wanting to see him after he'd killed Rose…

  Shaking his head, he 'scrolled' down to the bottom of the display the spell gave him as he tried to forget about his problems and find something a bit more cheerful to think about. Maybe he could find something about how his wings manifested…and that was when he got his biggest shock, because right below his 'Lion' tab in the spell, there was a new one, marked 'Winged-Demon'!

  There were three basic categories, but the thing at the very top was a pair of what almost looked like 'gauges'. The first one read 'Available', and that was how much power he had—which wasn't much, apparently. The second was 'Burning', and it showed how much he was currently using. Right now it showed him what it was costing him to maintain his winged form. It wasn't very much, but if he didn't kill another djevel in the next few weeks, he might be in trouble.

  The three major categories were: Mental, Physical, and Power. The first two reminded him of the way his other stats were laid out; no doubt the spell had been influenced by his own biases on how to display it to him, but then according to his father, that was the point of the spell in the first place: To organize it all so you could understand it.

  He looked into Physical first, and there were a number of 'abilities' there, the first being 'Manifest incubus form'.

  That stopped him a moment. Incubus? He recalled hearing Dad and several of his mothers referring to Mom as a 'succubus' when she had her wings out. So he guessed that made sense. Next to it, he noticed the cost was a percentage of his power pool, which was an interesting way of looking at it. Going down the list, he saw that all the abilities had their costs laid out that way, and the ones he couldn't afford had an infinity symbol beside them.

  He also noticed that several of the other abilities didn't have names—or not ones he could read. The second one was 'Heal Self', and cost way more than the one for manifesting his incubus form. The third was 'Heal Others', and it had the infinity symbol, just like the obscured ones listed below it. So he guessed he had to learn them somehow? Or maybe they unlocked once you had enough power?

  Shaking his head, he looked at 'Mental'. There were three subcategories there, and they were: Empathy, Influence, and Dominance. And right off the top he could see that each one was more expensive than the one before it.

  Empathy had three he already knew: Detect Feelings, Determine Allegiance, and Detect Subterfuge. All of those costs were incredibly low, lower even than the cost of manifesting! He realized he'd been using them, unconsciously mostly, with Rose and the others. That was also part of what had attracted him to Jenny, knowing her feelings were true, despite his lack of experience.

  Influence had Voice, Charisma, Persuasion, and the rest were blacked out. These were more expensive, and again, each one was more than the one before it. Had he really used those? He wasn't sure he had, yet he knew them.

  Dominance worried him. The first one was 'Sway Mood', and he barely had enough to use it. Convince was next, and he didn't have enough for that one. There were quite a few more after that, but again, he couldn't read them.

  That brought him to 'Power', and four of the six were clearly there. The first was 'Feed', and he blushed when he read it. He gained power by having sex. He didn't take it from his partner, it just manifested, but the amount was quite small.

  Following that was 'Meal Estimation'. Apparently he could look at a djevel and find out how much he'd get from killing it.

  'Push' was interesting. Apparently he could give power to others?

  'Pull' worried him. Obviously he could take power from others, but it wasn't clear how it worked. Both Push and Pull seemed to be variable, based on what he wanted to do with it.

  Closing the spell, he realized he had a lot to think about. Some of it looked a little disturbing, but none of it looked all that bad.

  He then wondered how many of these abilities mother had? He knew she'd killed a lot of djevels, both in the Onderwereld and in Reno. She had to have a lot of power stored by now—a lot of power.

  Mihalis spent most of the next day in the house as well. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that the best time to show up would be when the sun was a few hours from setting. Most djevels were more active in the dark, when it was cooler, especially during the summer. Also the darkness would play to his own strengths and abilities, if anything should go wrong, and he had to shift forms.

  He'd taken the time to examine his 'incubus' form in a mirror, and he not only had the main wings, which were huge, he had the smaller set on his head, just like his mother did, and he had a tail that ended in a spade-like tip. He hadn't even noticed the tail, because as a lion he had one, so he was used to it being there.

  When it was getting late in the day, he checked his few meager possessions one last time, used the compass he'd grabbed to get a bearing, then took off and headed in the direction of the settlement or town, or whatever it was called.

  He gained some altitude because he had no idea exactly where it was, so hopefully he'd be able to find it, or at least find the road to it, and use that to find it. The terrain around this part of Black Rock was alien to him, because the tops of everything was flat, but then something, wind, rain, or water, had carved it up, and in some places, it looked like the ground had just cracked and shifted, rising or lowering in the process.

  He had to stop twice to check his bearings, but an hour later, he saw the road, because there were a couple of djevels on it. He thought briefly about swooping in and killing them, but he had no idea how things worked here, and he couldn't afford to make mistakes right now.

  It took him a minute to follow the road and there, up on the top of a big flat area, he saw it. It was walled with a barrier of some sort, and there were two main gates that went inside. It looked like a completely disorganized mess from above, with no real order to it. Stone buildings, wood buildings, tents, metal containers, and even a few trailer homes and RVs. There were also what looked like a couple of helicopter landing pads on a few of the buildings, and he suddenly noticed there were a couple of things tracking him that looked suspiciously like guns.

  Tucking his wings, he dove down fast, while putting up a shield spell, then aimed for a spot about twenty yards from one of the gates. Snapping his wings out and trying not to wince at the sudden pain of it, he managed one of his best landings yet. Shaking his wings out and folding them behind his back, he looked at the group guarding the gate. Several of them appeared to be human, but he wasn't sure they really were, and the rest were djevels. The djevels were four råge armed with swords, two ridders also armed with swords, and the humans all had firearms.

  It was then that he noticed the big sign about the gate. It read: Bartertown.

  It was one of the humans who challenged him, speaking English.

  "What'dya want here?"

  He looked at one of the ridders. If he was going to pretend to be a djevel, he needed to act like one, which meant he needed to act like a stuck up, self-centered prick—he had experience with that now.

  "Is he in charge here?" he asked the ridder in Demonic.

  "Yes, I'm in charge," the man replied. "And I can speak Demonic when I need to, which I don't need to when speaking to the likes of you."

  Mihalis frowned. "I had no idea humans ran Bartertown. Of course, this is my first time here, so imagine my surprise."

  "Humans and demons run it," the ridder he'd addressed replied. "This one here, he's in charge of the gate, for now."

  Mihalis nodded. "I understand." He turned back to the man who'd addressed him. "What I want is to go inside."

  "Maybe we don't want you inside."

  "Maybe I want to kill you all, because I'm hungry, and you all look so very tasty," Mihalis said, smiling.

  "That'd be a quick death," the man growled.

  "Only because I don't play with my food," Mihalis responded and decided to try to use a bit of the 'Voice' from the influence ability. It was cheap enough, after all, and he noticed they all froze for a moment.

  "There's a toll," the man said after a moment.

  "But not for me, right?" Mihalis said, again leaning on the voice ability.

  The man growled again, but the others were already moving out of the way. With a smile, he walked through the gate and into Bartertown.

  The first thing to strike him was the smell. It wasn't quite a stench, but it was definitely nasty. He wondered if it was the smell of possessed humans, and just then the wind shifted, and he realized it was the guard he'd been talking to, who took advantage of his distraction to shoot him in the back.