Dashing Devil Omnibus 2: Books 4-6, page 43
“I’m going to put both of you into a dream-like state to make things easier,” Mindy purred to both of them.
His darkest love didn’t bother walking them through it. As soon as they were comfortable, she dragged them into Boyd’s mind. They arrived together, in a hug that mimicked their bodies’ positions in reality, except that now they were standing just outside of the wooden slat room that contained his Gestalt Mind.
“We are making a pit stop here first,” Mindy explained. “Silvie should be reintroduced before we continue.”
Boyd’s Gestalt stood and came to the edge of his room, his gaze locked on Silvie who remained tucked against Boyd’s side. He could tell his Gestalt did this, because the formless black cloud stopped being formless; it took on a distinctly Boyd shape. It almost looked like his shadow had pulled itself out of the cloud and then added a third dimension—if his shadow was made of silent, black flames, that is.
“Hi, Stacey.” The darkly burning version of him spoke for the first time in Boyd’s presence. He sounded a lot like Boyd when he let himself be growly, except smoother.
It seemed to come more naturally to his other self. “I’ve missed you.”
Silvie pulled Boyd’s wing up around her after a little shiver ran through her. “Um… hello.” She leaned up just far enough to look up at Boyd, then over to Mindy, then back at Boyd. “What do I call him?”
Boyd got the sense that his Gestalt was frowning, although his facial features remained nondescript in his current state. He was genuinely upset that she didn’t recognize him for who he was.
“He’s me,” Boyd rumbled softly to Silvie before saying more loudly, “but don’t be too upset about it. You don’t exactly look like us right now.” His words didn’t seem to help all that much, because his Gestalt bristled instead of settling down; he was still upset.
“So, I guess I should call you Boyd, or, um… Darling?” Silvie glanced between the two of him.
Boyd sensed that she was concerned about upsetting one of them, but wasn’t sure how to avoid it. His Gestalt apparently wasn’t paying attention to that, because he continued to grow more upset. The dark flames he was made of became agitated while growing hazy at the edges, returning to smoke.
Boyd glanced at Mindy, who frowned at his Gestalt before turning to Boyd with a raised brow. She gestured towards his fraying shadowy form with an open palm, conveying that she wanted him to fix it.
Boyd turned back to his Gestalt and growled, “Pay attention to our Bonds, you dolt. I’m supposed to be the blockhead, here.”
Mindy sighed, but the edges of his fiery form solidified as his Gestalt took offense.
“She was worried about upsetting me, so she’s a little uncertain—but cut the woman some slack. This is a weird situation. Besides, if you had been paying attention to Silvie’s emotions, you would have sensed that she shivered in excitement at your voice, not in fear the way you took it.”
That mollified his Gestalt quite a bit. “Yeah, that’s right. If you weren’t so deep in your own feelings, you could have been all proud and cocky and really impressed her. Now, you’ve missed your chance.”
Boyd grinned at his shadowy self before turning to look down at Silvie, tucked under his wing and arm. “Just to make sure this isn’t an issue again… please tell me that you understand that he,” he gestured with his chin to his other self, “is me.”
“Oh, sure.” Silvie blushed up at him.
The fact that Boyd had sensed the excitement his Gestalt elicited in her had embarrassed Silvie. She beamed at the shadowy fire representation of him, still within his wood slat room. “You are part of my Darling, which makes you my Darling. The two of you pretty much being merged has been great. Even the sex has gotten better.”
Boyd blinked as the Black Flames seemed to melt away from the representation of his Gestalt, leaving Boyd looking at himself standing behind the wooden slats.
“Huh,” Mindy intoned, “didn’t expect that to be quite so important. The little shit in there must have been hiding more from me than I thought.”
“Don’t judge me too harshly,” the him behind the slats rumbled smoothly, smiling wanly at his gothic love. “Even now, she’s still a little bit afraid of me… which is my fault.” He sighed, turning a frown and sad amber eyes on Silvie. “I let things get a little too intense for her liking a time or two.”
Silvie snuggled more closely into Boyd, but giggled, “more than just a time or two.”
“She isn’t actually afraid of you, dolt.” Boyd rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you make her nervous, but it’s the ‘what might this guy get me to do’ kind of nervous, not a ‘this guy might hurt me’ trepidation. Pay attention to the Bond, and stop projecting your emotions onto her.”
Boyd honestly found it refreshing to have a conversation with himself after weeks of improvised communication.
“Oh…” His Gestalt blinked, then turned and asked Silvie, “It is?”
Boyd rolled his eyes again. “We really need to work on the whole believing her over ourselves thing.”
“Yeah, we do, but I’m a bit surprised you’re the one to…” His Gestalt’s voice trailed off as Silvie and Mindy broke into a shared fit of giggles. Pursing his lips, he finished with, “We’ll talk about this later.”
“That might be best.” Boyd fought the heat that attempted to enter his cheeks. Getting caught arguing with himself was a new kind of embarrassment.
“But yes, you big lug,” Silvie managed through her giggles, “Darling summed up my feelings regarding you nicely. I’m not scared of your blended form at all, but… I think it’s good that you’ll be together. You like seeing how far you can push, which is fun, but… um…”
“Without him, I can push too far.”
His Gestalt nodded his understanding. They had come to that conclusion when Boyd had pulled him back from pushing their little inventor further than they needed to.
“We’ve discussed this. I used the Bond incorrectly in that regard, looking for absolute limits instead of comfort zones. From now on, I promise only to push you right up to the limit of your comfort zone… unless you specifically ask me to go further.”
The purr that he finished with elicited another shiver from Silvie and she pressed even more firmly into Boyd, though not in fear. She really liked the sound of that.
“Kuh-he. Alright,” Mindy interrupted, “this will only go one way if I let this continue and, while this is a fantastic development and cleared a block I didn’t even know needed to be cleared, it was not the goal of today’s session.”
She gestured to the Boyd behind the slat walls. “It’s mostly symbolic, considering that you have walked around with a more stable version of him for weeks, but I did build some things into the cloak construct that will help me in this process… so pull him on.”
“Before I do, I just want to make sure I understand what’s happened here,” Boyd replied, holding Silvie against him firmly. “That I didn’t see him as me because he thought Silvie was afraid of him… is that why he turned all smoky?”
“More or less,” Mindy confirmed. “I had previously assumed the smoky appearance was just a representation of your Power. I’ve never heard of a Gestalt that matched their host so closely. Normally, they are something like a higher form of the Changed they assist—like Raev and her giant fox.”
“Aww, poor Darling.” Silvie pouted at his Gestalt. “I was never truly afraid of you.”
“Dolt!” Boyd chuckled. “She’s been pulling you up out of me to play with for years.”
“Well, yeah, I know that now,” his Gestalt rolled his eyes back at Boyd. “At the time, I thought it was an accident.”
“Yeah, but she hasn’t exactly been shy around us since we started merging regularly,” Boyd replied. “You’ve had plenty of time to adjust your perceptions.”
“Kuh-he!” Mindy laughed at that.
Shaking her head while smiling at him, she explained, “You’re the last person that should be giving that advice… to yourself. Okay, I’m not sure you two are meant to talk like this, so let’s move things along. Pull him on.”
Boyd imagined pulling the cloak on and resumed feeling how he’d felt just moments ago on the couch bed. “Alright, I’m just going to smack you with it. I would love to be gentler, but this is one of those times I have to hurt you to heal you—so I’ll apologize in advance. It’ll be better soon. Then Silvie will take you to Raev for a pampering session they’ve prepared.”
With that, Boyd was alone. He was surrounded by darkness and the echoing voices from his past:
“The Changed don’t think like humans do. They don’t feel like we do, and that makes them unpredictable—even to themselves.” Miss Trisha, his first educator’s voice flowed out of the darkness. “This often leads to difficulties fitting into human society, criminal behavior, and often violent outbursts. As all Changed are Powered, this can be devastating to the humans around them.”
It had been his first introduction to Changed, but was not the only warning he’d received in his childhood. As if summoned by this thought, a series of voices began to deliver those early lessons all over again—each and every educator or other authority figure from before he Changed:
“Always be alert around the Changed. They are unpredictable and often volatile.”
“The Changed are not like us. Some may look mostly human, but inside, they are something else entirely.”
“The Changed are to be regarded with caution and skepticism. They’re not like regular folks.”
Chapter 44
“It’s a tough lesson, Boyd, but the Changed, they’re a danger to society, and we must protect ourselves.”
This last lesson came from Victory Seeker when he was twelve, not long before his own Change. One of the boys that Boyd thought had a lot of potential Changed the year before and had just gone Primal, hurting another kid before he could be restrained and sent away.
There was more, so many more, but they overlapped and blended in with each other. They all had the same theme, though: Changed were dangerous and not to be trusted.
The darkness burst into blinding brightness and Boyd found himself in the body of his thirteen-year-old self. After blinking his eyes several times to get the spots out, his heart sank. He knew this memory and stayed far away from it every time it tried to rear its ugly head, shoving it back down as deep as it would go to delay its return.
“Boyd?” Silvie asked from behind him to get his attention, although she was still Stacey at the time. “What’s going on with your back?”
“I don’t know but it’s itchy, why?” he asked as he walked alone, leading a small group on their planned route through the Wild Lands. It was a survival week, and they had to reach the next position in time for the scheduled supply drop or it would probably be gone before they got there. They didn’t have time to stop and talk. They also had to stay alert, attacks were regular.
“It looks like you have those little nubs that Hope got before her wings came in,” Silvie commented, “but there’s an extra one near your butt.”
His mouth went dry, and he reached up to his forehead, which also itched. Part of him knew what was happening, but was both afraid to confirm it. He didn’t have the luxury of being distracted by that fear, given his responsibility to the seven trainees assigned to his team. Sure enough, two little nubs were forming there, too.
Boyd was becoming a Changed, and he would be no angel.
He pressed on through that mission, getting his team to the supply drop and reporting himself unfit to lead or continue the exercise. The Change would be distracting at the least but could be painful depending on the extent of the mutations.
Silvie took over leading the team, but time seemed to pause when he approached her before leaving on the transport. He was required to brief her on aspects of the mission she was unaware of as the prior second in command.
He was still in the memory, but the much more mature version of Silvie stood just off to the side, concern in her shimmering silver-flecked light blue eyes. “You’ve got this,” she said with certainty before fading away like a ghost and the memory resumed.
“So, I’ll see you back at base?” young Stacey asked as he approached, a worried pout on her lips.
“I’ll be quarantined until my stability can be assessed, like they did with Hope,” Boyd replied as he closed the distance. Stacey’s blue eyes shifted up to the nubs that had formed on his forehead, “It should only be a few days, so I’ll be out before you get back. Stay focused on the mission and making it back safe. I’ll be fine.”
The disgust he saw in her pretty eyes that had been drawing his attention more and more made him wonder if she would be happy to see him when she got back.
“Now hold on, stop stop stop, that’s all wrong!” The adult Silvie’s voice suddenly echoed through the clearing of their supply drop and the memory came to a screeching halt. “That’s not how I remember it at all! How do I… oh, so it went like this.”
The memory rewound a few moments to when Stacey’s eyes moved up from his eyes to his forehead. This time instead of containing disgust, there was only curiosity. “I distinctly remember wondering if you were going to have antennae or something and thinking it might look pretty cool if you ended up with like… bee features. The devil look is totally better, but I didn’t consider it at the time.”
“Kuh-he!” Mindy’s laugh echoed through the clearing as the memory continued, having been paused while Silvie spoke. The conversation was the same, Boyd kept it simple so it only lasted a few minutes, but Silvie complained about several more moments that she said he remembered all wrong. She would then pause, rewind, and change it to be in line with her remembering of the events.
When he remembered her tone containing the type of anxiety induced by proximity to a friend who might be becoming a monster, she insisted it contained only worry for a friend who didn’t seem to be taking his plight well. When she asked to see his back, the curiosity in her posture wasn’t that of someone at a freakshow, but someone who was hoping to give him a bright side to consider. Wings were cool after all, and his nubs were in a similar spot to Hope’s so he would likely grow them.
“So, more of my memories were modified?” Boyd asked as the memory ended with him turning and trudging towards the grav sled that would remove him from the field, potentially for the last time.
“No,” Mindy said gently.
Boyd found himself once again surrounded by darkness, but this time he wasn’t alone—Mindy and Silvie were pressed against him. He was lying in the darkness, but was also back on the couch-bed in the Great Room. “This is just the result of how memory functions. It is very rarely perfect and often tinted by our preconceptions, even as the remembered event occurs.”
“But couldn’t that mean that it’s Silvie who is misremembering it?” Boyd asked into the darkness.
“Yes,” Mindy confirmed, “but for this particular memory I doubt that is the case. Being in an activated emotional state makes it much more likely for memories to be different from the actual event. You were in the middle of a very controlled breakdown. Silvie was concerned for her friend, but much more stable at the time. In the end, it is your decision who to believe—as will be the case with all the others.”
“All the others?” Boyd asked with concern. He understood the goal after experiencing the process once, but wasn’t looking forward to going through it repeatedly.
Without reply, the process began to repeat itself with most, but not all, of his encounters with his silver-haired love from that point until they left the PAC. There were a few notable exceptions, ones he was grateful were excluded for reasons other than his love’s misremembered reactions to him.
By the time he was done, he was exhausted but also felt very, very loved. Any thought that Silvie might not have loved him before being Enhanced was completely banished. He had no idea how he confused so many lustful looks with wary glances, but she was very insistent on the topic. She allowed that there were some troubled expressions, but corrected his belief that it was because of the harm he might do to her concern about the pain he was obviously in.
“One last step, but you’ll have help this time,” Mindy said as he settled back into the darkness between his loves. “Silvie? Viewer participation is welcome, but don’t go too far. Let him do most of it himself.”
“Okay, if it goes like you said, it’ll be fun,” Silvie bubbled. “Just let me know if I need to ease off.”
“Uh, what are…?” Boyd began, but was in another memory before he could finish asking what was next.
He was in the quarantine room, four plain steel walls with heavy shielding. His Change was complete and the risk of him turning into a flaming giant that destroyed the facility during his transformation was over, and he would be let out soon. First, Victory Seeker wished to speak with him.
He stepped into the room, the heavy blast door booming closed behind him. A figure who had always been a pillar of strength and guidance in Boyd’s life, now stood before him with an expression that was a complex mix of disappointment and concern.
“Boyd,” Victory Seeker began. His voice carried a weight that seemed to press down on his very soul, “you must understand the gravity of what has happened. Your Change… it’s not just a physical transformation. It carries implications far deeper, far more dangerous.”
Boyd, still grappling with his new, demon-like appearance, looked up, searching for a glimmer of the support he so desperately needed.
Victory Seeker continued, unyielding, “You look into the mirror and see a demon. What do you think that means, Boyd? Appearances are not just appearances. They can be a window to the soul. The dark impulses, the primal urges you feel – you must be terrified of them. They will lead you down a path from which there is no return.”
Boyd’s hands clenched involuntarily, his new claws digging into his palms. He had hoped for reassurance, for some sign that his mentor still believed in him.
