Criminal Beware: The Lykanos Chronicles 1

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I was restless that evening, there was no other way to describe it. It felt like a ringing in my limbs, an indefinable energy from which I was offered only the smallest moments of peace by the distraction of a chore. I knew that I needed to have exerted myself further this morning at the athletic club, but I was under the tutelage of a trainer who was adamant that I was to go slowly, ensuring that I learned a necessary discipline. I wondered if I could return for a quick half-hour tonight, but expected that I was too late for that ruse.

My thoughts primarily went over my experience this afternoon, the sensation of seeing the man's thoughts as he spoke to me. I felt sure that if it had happened to me last year, I would be bereft with anxiety or fear. But this evening, all I felt was a dull wonderment at the sensation. If anything, it was a source of calmness in me, as if it were merely another one of my senses, like hearing or smell. If I took the time to focus on them, I would likely feel the same appreciation for them, but little more than that. It was simply another sense that was present and functioned in concert with the others on a subconscious level.

More interesting to me now was how far I might eventually rely upon on it. Would it quietly integrate with the other senses, as I expected, my mind drawing another's mental imagery as my eyes drew reflections of light from the material world, or my ears pulled in the sounds emanated from around me, all without conscious decision? I thought of The Book of Forbidden Knowledge, how it described the Second Site as a photograph of something happening far off, or an omen of something to come. But this new experience was not like that at all.

I went in search of my copy and took it with me to the bathroom. I decided that I would attempt to calm down with a bath and opened the facet to draw the tub with hot water. Waiting for it to fill, I studied my face in the vanity mirror, a ritual that I always fell upon before walking into the shower. It was a habit I developed as a boy to look for acne that needed attending to before I would step in to wash.

I was immediately distracted from analyzing my skin by the striking color of my eyes. It was startling to see them, even in the limited illumination of the bathroom, the vanity bulbs casting a warm hue over the space. My eyes were a lighter shade of blue, almost the crystal color they'd been when I was a small boy when my mother had shown them to me in her hand mirror as part of a game to teach me my colors. I became absorbed by them, studying the texture of my iris, its veined map of subtle morning glory shades that gleamed iridescently in the light.

So much younger, I thought to myself. As a man who'd just entered his thirties, I might be scoffed at for such a claim, but it was undeniable that my face had changed in the past decade. The lines on my forehead now remained etched in the skin even when I relaxed my brow. The color of the skin was less uniform and had become dryer, losing that fresh glow from boyhood when even the most biting autumn winds couldn't crack it. The west coast clearly agreed with me, and I smiled at the face of my younger self who'd unexpectedly shown up to greet me.

Perfect weather and exercise - a very simple fountain of youth.

I worked the buttons of my starched white shirt, gently unfastening them and letting the garment fall to the floor behind me. Again, I was struck by my appearance. My chest and shoulders were larger, the contour of my physique unmistakably fuller, as it had been at nineteen. I had arrived at adulthood after years of fifteen-hour shifts devoted to collecting and distributing luggage throughout the many floors of the Palace Hotel. Even with a trolley, the heavy lifting had been exhausting, and my body had grown and strengthened to meet the needs of those long days. In truth, I'd barely been aware of it until one weekend when I'd landed in the middle of a stupid fight and realized with astonishment that my arms possessed immense power. I'd sent a threatening young man sailing onto his back with a single punch to the face, standing in awe of the previously unused strength that had naturally extended through my shoulder and arm. However, the promotions I'd received during my twenties had eventually brought about a mostly sedentary day at work. And the multiple attempts I'd taken to embrace exercise to relieve work stress and offset the price of my new responsibilities, did little to stop the softening and decrease of those once-taut muscles. Turning thirty, I had the form of a healthy man, but the hard sculpture of nineteen was long behind me.