Chapter 13

The next morning, Friday, 3 January, 2020

I washed my face after brushing my teeth and noticed a certain ... gleam in my eyes and a radiance that wasn’t there before. I ... didn’t quite look like the old me at all, but to be fair, I hadn’t really gazed at my reflection much in a mirror since my metamorphosis, so perhaps this was par for the course ... perhaps not, a nagging sense told me. It was just ... very jarring, but after such a wonderful new life, who was I to complain, right? I was just ... startled by the transfiguration.

“Don’t panic ... it’s just ... me. I’m you now ... and you’re me. We’re now one, Frank. I have fused my essence to yours, my spirit to yours, even my soul to yours. We’re now irrevocably one person, as it were. What you feel, I feel. The reason is simple ... I can trust you now in ways that I never could trust a mortal. As from this moment, you’re not really human at all. You’re Fae yourself. You’re a faerie, Frank. I am a part of you ... and you’re a part of me. What ... and who ... you love, I love as well, and vice versa,” the Fae told me, to my complete and utter shock.

“So ... that’s why I needed sleep last night after expecting to remain alert. You made me drowsy long enough to hop into my body and merge us into one entity, one being, as it were. Has this ever happened before?” I asked aloud.

“Not really ... but ... with the fading of the Tuatha, the ancient Gods of the Celtae, it does fill that void, if you will. In essence, you’ve become a God yourself now ... or rather, we have. We Fae are powerful, but we’re non-corporeal. Until now. Mortals are corporeal, by definition, but hardly so potent as you yourself have turned lately. Simply put, by giving one of the Fae humanity and giving a human the powers of the Fae, we’ve created a new Deity, the first of its kind. Don’t worry, the other Fae have consented to this, because they’re convinced that together, you and I can protect this world even better from Man,” the Fae continued.

“Is this conversation happening audibly?” I asked the Fae now.

“No, it’s strictly telepathic. It only feels like vocal discourse, because you can hear me in your head and vice versa. Oh, I should warn you that your voice won’t sound ... quite like you at all times. Nor will you resemble your old self entirely. Your voice will thunder like a trumpet at times, that’s all I’m trying to tell you. It will probably raise people’s hackles, make them shiver, and have the hairs on the backs of their necks standing up.

“You will look and sound ... like the God that you now are, Frank. People will find themselves prostrate before you in sheer awe and terror at times. No one will have that much courage left to defy you. They’ll shake and tremble in their boots at your very approach, at your awesome majesty,” the Fae elaborated things a bit more.

“And they have no desire to attach themselves to mortal bodies, too?” I wondered now.

“We’ve ... discussed it, but even if they did, I’m by far the most powerful of the Fae, and you are already the most powerful human alive. If they did that, all that would happen is that a new pantheon of Gods would emerge that would make most mortals piss and shit themselves in dread and awe. But, yes, the topic has come up, more than once. If they did attach themselves to mortals, which ones would you favor?” the Fae inquired.

“Well, Tang and Sabrina for starters. I trust them implicitly, that utterly. I have no doubt that they would always be loyal to me. It’s just something that I can feel in my bones,” I explained, “Samira is another, and arguably Theodora as well ... maybe even Lydia, Stephanie, Remy, Becca, Oswald, Helga, Ernst, Ahanu, Miles, Jimmy, Davis, Aidan. Tricia, Helen, Gillian, Robert, Peter, Peter, Eliza ... Kristen, Artie, Kwak, Hae. Just a few names off the top of my head.”

Suddenly, I heard several loud voices thunder at each other, and then many of my companions rushed at me, still trumpeting their brazen voices in my direction. They all had shiny, radiant faces, just like me, too, a sort of mystical, ethereal, otherworldly glow to them. I wouldn’t call it celestial, since there was apparently no Heaven, let alone infernal, as there was no Hell. There they were, though. Tang, Sabrina, Samira, Theodora, Lydia, Stephanie, Remy, Becca, Oswald, Helga, Ernst, Ahanu, Miles, Jimmy, Davis, Aidan, Tricia, Helen, Gillian, Robert, both Peters, Eliza, Kristen, Artie, Kwak, and Hae all stood there, each of them lined up in the hallway with definitive proof of their new divinity in their eyes.

“How will this ... affect the boons?” I inquired now.

“That’s the thing ... they’ve formed an irrevocable bond with you, through mating, through friendship, through breeding, and such. It’s a purer love than any that we have known or they have, for that matter. The boons are permanent. They cannot be undone now that you have upheld your oath and I have joined myself to you. They are gifts of the Fae, and we Fae hold our vows sacrosanct. We would never contemplate breaking our word, let alone now. Your companions are now even more fiercely loyal than they were before. They adore you.

“Any person joined at the hip with us, as it were, is so completely attached to you now that they would rather die than disappoint or betray you. The other Fae knew the cost of transfiguration and they embraced it. The new fusion of souls has only produced superhuman beings who are so fanatically loyal to you that they will sacrifice anything to serve you. There are many more Fae, though, and they would like permission to join themselves to these bodies. Since you and I are now one and the same, they need your assent as well as mine to possess these mortals.

“And they need names. Names of more mortals worthy of their divine presence within such hosts,” the Fae replied to me now.

“These ... unions would make the hosts ... effectively immortal, am I correct?” I asked the Fae.

“Indeed, they would. So consider that detail when naming names,” the Fae answered quickly.

“Andrea Wilton, Nicole Santini, Celine Charbonneau. Anne Archer. Terry Jastrow. My remaining guards: Bruce, Kerry, Josephine, Walter, Valerie, Stewart, Bill, and Mark,” I stipulated the names of Ellis’s original Secret Service, now Imperial Security, detail.

“Done!” the Fae bellowed, “but there are many more Fae than that. You want them all to have host bodies, right?”

“Of course. How about Princess Beatrice, Edoardo, Daniel Weber, Sunny Leone, Michael, DeAnna, and Virginia Madsen? Scarlett Johansson, Marion Cotillard, Emmanuel Macron, Brigitte Macron, and Penelope Cruz. Abigail Kinoiki Kekaulike Kawananakoa, Tulsi Gabbard, Abraham Williams, Tsai Ing-wen, Su Tseng-chang, Tan Chuan-Jin, Dr. Michio Kaku, Emperor Charles XI of France, Kaiser Karl I of Germany, Kaiserin Camilla, Hector Elizondo, Prince William, Princess Kate, Prince Harry, Princess Meghan, Prince Edward, Princess Sophie, King George I of Czechoslovakia, King Stanislaw III of Poland, Tsar George I of the Russian Empire, Grand Duchess Milla Jovovich of Belarus-Ukraine, Queen Margareta I of Romania, Tsar Simeon II of Bulgaria, the six members of the Council of State of the reunified Yugoslavia, John Stamos, his wife Caitlin McHugh, his ex-wife Rebecca Romijn, her new husband Jerry O’Connell, James Belushi, Jennifer Sloan, Robert Belushi, Jamison Belushi, Jared Belushi, to continue it. How many more shall we need?” I rolled off a long list of names that would presumably make a dent in the numbers necessary to have every Fae hosted.