Chapter 17: A Bath

~~ Delta - Aug/02 - (Earth - Feb/2095) ~~

Jahn didn’t enjoy the trip through the mountains.

While his leg got better, it had been many years since he had physically exerted himself on suck a walk. The Giants forced a faster pace than he had maintained in the previous weeks of walking. His leg had meant that he stopped for as long as he walked.

What muscle tone he had redeveloped was lost in his fever. At least now, after eight days of walking, he was actually keeping up with them, sort of. He was pretty sure the fact he could watch Alec’s arse when he walked in front of him kept him going. If he wasn’t so tired when they stopped, he’d have approached the young man.

He had gotten lazy over the last three hundred years or so. He mostly sat in his office in whatever country he had been running his company’s from. He had learnt to perfect a glamour that he used to age himself over about fifty years and then he had to die and resurrect himself again.

It had become more difficult as technologies improved, as he couldn’t hide his DNA. He also had to be careful if he met anyone with the power to see through the glamour, as he had been nearly unearthed on several occasions.

Cameras had also become an issue, as they were hard to fool. If he knew they were there, then he could manipulate them, but he had to see them first just like everyone else. He’d had to make a journalist or investigator disappear on more than one occasion when they had gotten to close.

Jahn had also had to plan two deaths ahead in case he had to move suddenly. It was also harder to leave a body in place in order to inherit his recent companies. He had lost several fortunes due to having had to disappear suddenly.

Because of his bling, he couldn’t kill if not threatened directly, and this had caused him problems as well. Fortunately, he had little difficulty finding a willing sap who with a bit of compulsion or good hard cash would do the dirty deed for him.

He hadn’t had a lot of success over the last seventeen hundred years producing kids either. He only managed one about every forty to fifty years. He had planned to resurrect himself and marry his granddaughters.

His kids had the poor grace, not to reproduce as often as he would like either. He thought about his progeny as he walked and stumbled over low growth in the dim dark forests. He had lost track of most of his progeny from the first thousand years or so.

Wars, lack of technology, and constantly having to shift being the main causes. Plus, on Earth, they named the child after the father in most places. This made daughters harder to find, and he did prefer having daughters if he did screw women. This was so he could later claim the daughter in an attempt to strengthen his gene pool and create more magical people.

Jahn started thinking back, and he realised he hadn’t produced a child for more than ninety years. He met Helen May back in 1965 when she was just eighteen. She had that spark that hinted she had magical ability. He hadn’t stayed with her for more than a year. She gave birth to Belinda May just before he had to disappear in 1964.

Belinda was thirty-seven when he found her again in 2001. She was a successful Real Estate agent but hadn’t married or had any kids. He had little trouble coercing her into letting him into her bed. He was in the process of rebuilding his fortune, so he married her. In 2002, Belinda gave birth to Helena.

He had felt that Helena had potential and stayed with her mother for another ten years, but she didn’t produce any more children for him. He was due to reincarnate, so he made Helena his heir and then he shifted to Australia. He had decided to see if any of his progeny still existed there.

If he remembered right, back in about 1870, he had a son. But for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the family name that they had used back then, although he remembered the woman. Her name had been Karric.

She had been a rare beauty and very tall like most of her tribe. He was sure that her tribe they had Giantess blood in their veins and were probably from one of the original ancestors who had landed in Indonesia.

It had said in his wizard’s history books that the Giants could change their skin’s pigment to suit the climate they lived in. Hador’s people were much lighter-skinned than Karric’s people had been, but then that could have been due to the Genteli influence too.

He had blinked to the Kimberley Region on the West Australian coast, where he had been looking for rare minerals to make his alloys when he came across her and her tribe. They mostly lived on a small island off the coast.

He didn’t usually go for tall women, but she had a strong magical energy that he couldn’t resist. He had even compelled her to go with him to Queensland next where he was chasing some Rubies.

He had been with her for a good dozen years before he left. Being able to teleport even the 200km at a time that he could with his current set of bling had been very useful. He’d only been able to maintain that distance when he was with her. He hadn’t been able to go as far with anyone else he had met on Earth in tow.

He still bemoaned that he hadn’t been able to teleport more than 100m since he had gotten sick after the accident with the Special Forces thirty-three years before. Fortunately, it had been far enough to get himself out of a few jams, but he still missed having the ability to go a lot further.

He had produced his last Australian daughter a hundred and fifty years before in around 1950. Her mother had reminded him of the woman who had a previously given him the son, she had the same energy.

He found the last daughter that he knew of in Australia had left her home and he could not find a record of her after that. The Darwin authorities had terrible records for their indigenous population back then, particularly for the more remote tribes where she had been living when he found her.

Forty years before now, he went back to America but his daughter Belinda and her daughter to him, Helena had both died. He found that Helena married a guy by the name of Ricky Smith. She had produced twin daughters and a son. Both of her daughters had also had daughters, as did the son. However, they were too young for him at the time being only ten.

He got more involved in the space program as it had finally reached a point where there was now possibly a way to get home. It was twenty years before he thought of them again. Only to find two of the great-granddaughters had died because of a factory fire and one he couldn’t trace.

His grandson’s daughter was not a nice woman, and she had a weak energy signature. She didn’t attract him at all. Getting rid of the husband would have been easy enough, but she was a spiteful bitchy woman. So that line of succession had dried up as well.

“Shush,” Alec said.

Plucked from his wool-gathering Jahn stopped.

Apparently, he had been mumbling to himself. He suddenly felt his medallion get hotter. He looked slowly around the bushes to sense where the danger was coming from. He stopped and pointed. Hador sent Yves to circle around where he had pointed out the direction of the threat.

They stood still and listened. Jahn turned slowly. The animal was moving. He realised he was close to a large tree with lots of low branches. He started sliding back closer to the other men. Then two large yellow cat’s eyes locked on to his. He started back peddling as the catalo sprang.

Their eyes stayed locked, and the Catalo followed him to the ground to land with a whoomphing thud on his chest. It forced the breath out of him. He tried to breathe back in only to find he was breathing in the last foetid breath the catalo breathed out.

A spasm racked its body, and the claws on its outstretched paw dug into his shoulder and ripped back as it died, causing him to scream in pain.

The others had all heard the snarl as it jumped and Yves spear thumped into the animal, but it still landed on Jahn. They rushed over, and Hador and Snorre rolled the animal off him. They were both relieved to hear him moan.

Alec dropped beside him and laid a cloth over the shoulder that was now bleeding freely from the three long claw marks in his skin. Hador shivered. This was the second Catalo they had killed in as many days. They were a smaller cousin to the Catalan on Davinia.

Alec looked at Jahn, “We didn’t meet a single predator on our journey to the Ring Cavern. Are you cursed Master Mage?”

Jahn shrugged. “Maybe I just smell good,” he said and then moaned at the pain in his shoulder and his sore chest.

Hador bellowed out a laugh. “Mage, I thought your smell would keep them away.”

“Then maybe you need to find me somewhere I can bathe,” Jahn retorted. Giants apparently only bathed once a week. When hunting they didn’t bathe much at all.

Alec grinned at Jahn, “Yes, we could all probably do with a bath. How about the hot springs, Hador? I can clean his new wounds better there as well.”

Hador nodded, “Yes, it has been a while. I don’t object to swinging past them. We will be home in five to six days, so a bath will not hurt.”

Yves looked at the large male Catalo he had just killed. “He has a fine pelt Hador. Now Snorre and I will have even better bride chests. Janta will like this fur in her chest as well.”