Refuge at Clifftop

  By K.L. Noone

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2020 K.L. Noone

  ISBN 9781646563272

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * * *

  For Kells, who told me I wasn’t allowed to be too mean to Holiday. Happy endings always, I promise! Also for Awesome Husband, even though he thinks Chris Evans is “too wholesome.”

  * * * *

  Refuge at Clifftop

  By K.L. Noone

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 1

  “You don’t have to worry about the random magical surges,” Ryan protested across the connection, “I swear we’ve got it under control.”

  Captain Justice, on the other end of the holographic call, crossed muscular arms in the Guardian Tower and said, “Hmph,” with exactly the same inflection Ryan recalled from his days as Tim’s teenage sidekick.

  He refused to cross his arms in turn. Or to scowl. He wasn’t fifteen anymore, and he even considered Tim a friend. Mostly. Some days. “Really it was just the one time, and we’ve figured out why, and Holly has better shields in place now.”

  Holiday Jones, settled into the reading nook of one of Clifftop’s stone-hewn walls and big windows, looked up from an enormous academic study of Elizabethan witches and made an apologetic face at him, which was not an expression that the world generally expected from the last Sinister Sorcerer.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Ryan observed to him, ignoring Tim and the communications array for the moment. “It was ours. John and I were distracting him, Tim, okay?”

  “No.” Captain Justice regarded Ryan, and by extension both Ryan’s partners and the whole secret base of Clifftop, with the well-meaning judgment of a heroic mentor. “It’s not okay. If you’re going to be a team leader—”

  “We have to take it all seriously. I know.” He did possess a moderate amount of guilt about the power-flare that’d lit up skies over Tokyo—but only moderate. Nobody’d been hurt, they’d been celebrating a successful and painless defeat of Mistress Nyx’s night demons, and he and John had been busy making sure that Holiday had been feeling excellent. In the aftermath. Atop a skyscraper. In the rain, full of exhilaration and cheerful ecstasy. “We do. And it won’t happen again.”

  “Half the sensitives in the city reported spontaneous—”

  “I’m really very sorry!” Holiday called over. With that luscious English-rose accent, hair pulled into an absentminded messy braid of waist-length night-black over one shoulder, he might’ve been an artist’s model, a painting, a vision of elegance framed by the window and the sunset. “It’s all my fault, don’t listen to Ryan, I should’ve been keeping up better shields!”

  He’d had Ryan’s hand inside his Sorcerer’s robes and John’s mouth claiming his, at the time; Ryan hadn’t been at all surprised that their youngest partner had lost focus for a moment at the abrupt and glorious climactic peak.

  The focus hadn’t even been the problem, or not exactly. Holly’s shields should’ve held.

  They hadn’t. And the edge of worry prickled down Ryan’s spine like one of his own lightning-bolts.

  Holly’s powers kept growing. Kept manifesting. Kept spilling over. Sometimes in unexpected ways. Nothing bad so far. But that was…well. So far.

  Ryan’s parents, as their medical and research backup, possessed a vast amount of scientific giddiness about this development. Both Doctors Yamamoto adored Holly and John, and thought of their son’s chosen partners as family; Ryan knew they did. They’d said so. More than once. And both John Trent and Holiday Fortune Lyndsay Jones—who had different but painful family histories of their own—got quietly visibly happy when reminded that Ken and Betty considered them sons-in-law already.

  Holly had thought he’d had the magical flare-ups under control. He’d known he’d been getting stronger—portals that would’ve taken effort two years before simply appeared when asked, and the energy-strings of the universe came readily to hand without searching—but he’d also thought he’d woven sufficient protections into one of the inherited family focus-rings.

  That emerald had cracked. Shimmers of jade and sapphire and saffron had poured out into the night, overflowing with sensation. Ryan and John, a bit busy themselves, had laughed, kissed him more, been right there with him: rain-drenched and giddy in the aftermath of a triumphant mission.

  Ryan glanced away from the tabletop communications link, over at the window-seat. Holly, framed by rough stone and oceanic waves and indigo skies, looked back: lovely as raindrops on glass, or sonnets, or the stunning wild crack of electricity splitting a velvet night. His pretty hazel eyes were very wide and very honest with remorse.

  The worry bit like tiny sharks made of shocks: nibbles at fingertips, at nerve-endings.

  He wanted John to come home; he wanted to talk to their third and oldest partner; he wanted all three of them to talk. He didn’t know how to bring this question up. He would—they didn’t keep secrets—but it’d sound better coming from John’s steadfast experienced tactfulness. Holiday still had that tendency to flinch from disapproval. Expecting punishment, rejection, pain. Taking the weight of the world onto those slim shoulders and believing he deserved it: redemption for a bloody supervillain-in-training past.

  Ryan chewed a lip. Did not open another secure channel to message John over on the stealth jet. He did trust Holiday. With his heart, with his life.

  He wasn’t at all worried about Holly reverting to any sort of evil Sinister Sorcerer mindset. That’d cracked apart even before the death of Holiday’s supervillain parents, when a seventeen-year-old Holiday Jones had chosen to rescue a child instead of assisting with the apocalypse, and Holly six years later was the sweetest and kindest person any of them knew. Holiday Jones sat with frightened kids and put artistic talents to work drawing them comforting pictures on scraps of half-scorched paper; Holly liked children more than Ryan himself ever would.

  He was worried, and didn’t want to be, about the extent of those powers.

  Holiday Jones could walk through walls and into dreams. Could stand on the Moon and assist United Space Exploration forces with the set-up of delicate equipment. Could unthinkingly hold out a hand and ask the universe for hot tea, and discover his abandoned half-drunk mug steaming again.

  That’d been yesterday. Ryan had laughed—Holly had actually been surprised, not doing it on purpose—but had felt the shiver like the touch of fate at the base of his spine. What would happen when Holly got even stronger? When Holiday could coil time around himself, or might persuade a star not to die, or began to wonder about life in other dimensions?

  What would happen, he’d thought, if he and John remained very human?

  He’d made himself set the question aside. He did so again now, deliberately; and said to Tim, over the communications array, “We’ve got it handled. Thanks for checking in.”

  Tim sighed. Ryan lifted an eyebrow at him.

  Tim gave in: a teacher who could regard his former Lightning Kid with wryness and a smile. “I suppose you know what your team needs…call us if you do need anything, though. Cori Celestial might have some advice about energy and control, I know it’s solar in her case, but still.”

  “Sure.”

  “Say hi to John for us.”

  “Will do,” Ryan agreed, and saluted, mostly just to be annoying; and let the link die.

  “I could’ve apologized more.” Holly tucked feet up, hugging a knee, setting the book aside. He had on rose-pink fuzzy socks and cozy pants and one of John’s old sweatshirts, too large for him; sleeves slid down and made him even younger, harmless, lacking in danger. He wasn’t. “Or talked to him for you. I know you don’t always like to. Though—I expect that might’ve been tactless. If we’re concerned about me.”

  “We’re not, and no worries, it’s just Tim.” Ryan waved a hand, wandered over, perched on stone beside those pink sock-toes, wrapped a hand around Holly’s ankle. “He thinks I’m still fifteen years old and about to set my own hair on fire. Which I only did once, and only because the Uncanny League had a lightning-reflector set up specifically for me. How’re the sixteenth-century witches?”

  “Fascinating.” Holly’s eyes got happier, bright in the way of a scholar who’d finally been allowed historical plays and books instead of relentless magical survival-at-any-cost training. “I’ve been exchanging messages with Professor Wallis—you know, over at Oxford—and she thinks my reading of those sonnets as coded magical desire spells might be worth pursuing. I’d publish anonymously, of course, or give her the credit.”

  “Would you have to?” He rubbed a thumb over Holly’s ankle: memorizing the delicate bone, fair skin, reminders of control and surrender. From the swift little smile, Holly liked that too. “It’s your idea. Your research.”

  “It is, but…” Holiday didn’t quite shrug—too casual a gesture for those years of studied poise—but the emotion lay in eyebrows, complicated hazel ruefulness, the hand resting atop a book’s cover. “It’s not as if my name’s not recognizable. Everyone would know. And yes, peer review would be anonymous, but publication, having my name on it…there’d be questions. How qualified I am in the first place, or worse…whether I’ve convinced people my interpretation’s worthwhile using the Sorcerer’s powers, or simply intimidated them into it.” Fingertips flicked sparks into Clifftop’s domestic air; they flared and vanished, short-lived lonely fire-flecks.

  Ryan’s hand tightened. “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s fairer than I deserve.” Holiday did that not-a-shrug again. “The idea’ll be out there, even if Professor Wallis publishes it under her name. I did once try to explode, er, all of London.”

  “Because your parents told you to,” Ryan retorted automatically. “Not because you wanted to.” But that was an old argument, and one they occasionally continued to have; Holly recognized the depth of supervillain conditioning and manipulation but countered that he’d still done it, and he’d done it without asking questions, hoping for parental approval. Ryan and John tried to offer support, kisses, chastisement and absolution in the bedroom if Holly needed that, and bedrock certainty that their youngest partner deserved love.

  “I know,” Holly said now. “I know. But it’s easier to just…not.” His eyes were older, at the moment: the eyes of a Sorcerer, wearily considering self and humanity. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s not right.”

  “I do love you.” Holly stretched the leg out, let Ryan’s hand slide up his calf, drifting higher. “I love that you’re angry on my behalf. I love you touching me.” The storm gathered, swirling silver and violet and imminent over the ocean. Anticipation wove ribbons around Clifftop’s rocky secret-base island walls, intimate and breathless.

  “Works for me.” Ryan tapped a rhythm over Holly’s calf, purposeful drumming with just a breath of power behind it: tiny hints of future sparkling sensation, command and pleasure. “You want me to do some touching now? Remind you that you’re ours, the way you want to be, where you belong?”

  Holiday Jones, with all those excited submissive tendencies abruptly even more on display, looked at Ryan’s hand, looked up, and said, “Yes please.”

  “So polite.” He trailed the hand up, discovered Holly’s arousal, all nice and fat and stiffening even more under caresses, over comfortable stretchy pants. “You remember what we said, though. You don’t get to come until John’s back home. Until we both say you can. All ours, and you know it.”

  “Mmm. Yes.” Holly tipped his head back against the stone of the window-ledge; his hair unfolded itself from the braid, at least the end of it. “I love that as well. As you know. Being yours. If you—oh, speaking of. John’s nearly back. About eight minutes, I’d guess.”

  None of the proximity sensors had picked up the jet’s approach yet. Ryan lifted eyebrows. “You know how close he is?”

  “I can feel him. You as well. Sort of low-level awareness, really, most of the time. Sharper if I pay attention.” Holly hesitated, nibbled that plush lower lip, watched Ryan’s face. “I’ve been able to do that for a while. I’m not certain when it started.”

  John had agreed to go out and assist with evaluations for some of the Army’s newest supersoldier program candidates, not without some reservations but with a fair amount of loyalty. He’d resigned his commission over a decade ago but remained on good terms with the program he’d once volunteered for and the cause he’d once eagerly signed up for; the Army appreciated former Colonel Trent’s willingness to come back and advise, and in general were pretty good about letting him leave again, not without some goodnatured jokes about civilian superhero life.

  Those jokes tended to be made by people who hadn’t known John well. Who hadn’t known Robbie Rivers, all golden and shining and heroic, the other supersoldier program success and also John’s first partner in every way possible. They’d been a pair even before acceptance into that special secret experiment, a perfect flawless match with a shared love of terrible puns and hands-on woodworking; they’d been a set, codenames Mercury and Sundown, kind and tall and competent in the face of mad scientists or mutant Gopher Men.

  The whole world had wept at Robbie’s funeral. Ryan remembered that: the awful relief of knowing the devastating bomb hadn’t taken out the Earth after all, because Robbie Rivers had made sure of that. Rain’d been falling then too, silver on black, streaks of watercolor hurt that flattened the world to grey.

  The Army top command who remembered Robbie tended to be kind to John. Not just because supersoldier muscles and telepathic illusions could knock them all flat in a heartbeat, either.

  John Trent these days folded those large arms around both his new partners and held them close. John liked cooking, and building bookshelves for Holly’s newest rare acquisitions, and coming up with new challenges for Ryan’s gymnastic-obstacle practice course. And if Robbie’s dog tags remained in that box on the bedroom shelf, no one minded: John had and always would love Robbie, and loved Ryan and Holiday now. None of them was the same person they’d once been; but they were all here, all in for this and for each other, in the present.

  Yes, said the back of Ryan’s head, and what’ll Holly be, in the future? When he leaves you all behind?

  He squashed the voice under bricks made of love and self-directed anger. Holiday had begun looking more apprehensive, as if afraid of displeasure, and even sat up a bit more and tucked the leg back up, out of Ryan’s lap.

  That couldn’t be allowed to go much further. Ryan reached over and took both graceful aristocratic hands in his, grip firm enough to be a message. “I’m not mad at you. John won’t be either.”

  “It’s an invasion of privacy, isn’t it.” Holly’s gaze slid away: toward the sky, the streaks of dusty rose and smoky blue in the grip of oncoming purple clouds. “I’ll try to turn it off. I promise I haven’t been listening in or tracking you or anything. It’s just that I seem to know where you are, if I focus. You’re both very clear. I’ll try to make it stop if you think I should.”

  Ryan said a phrase under his breath that he’d picked up from his grandmother’s more colorful Japanese vocabulary, and then, “No. I said we weren’t mad about it, and we’re not. I don’t mind you knowing where we are, okay?”

  “But you are upset with me.”

  “I’m not…” He wanted to run a hand through his hair, wanted to yank lightning out of light-bulbs and storm clouds, wanted to punch a mock antagonist on John’s redesigned obstacle course, wanted to never let go of Holiday’s hands in his. “No. I’m not. It’s nothing you did.”

  “Something I might do,” Holly said, and Ryan remembered all over again that Holiday Jones had been trained by masters of psychology and strategy, taught to use every weapon in that arsenal of beauty and magic and brilliance. “Something you’re afraid of. About me.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Ryan told him. “You know that’s true. I know who you are, I know you save people, and I know you know I know that. That’s what matters. That’s what’s important, Holly, okay?”

  “Yes…” Holly said. “…sir.” But the word, which should’ve been playful—happy, inviting, settling into that dynamic—landed quiet and bruised as a torn feather between them.

  “Listen,” Ryan said, more urgently. Thunder muttered over waves, beyond the window; the waves crashed against rocks in reply. “Listen, Holly—yeah, there’s something I’ve been thinking about, I don’t lie to you, I won’t, not now, not ever. But it’s not your problem. It’s not even a problem. Just something I have to sort out. I love you, we love you, understand?”

 

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