The Lapis Chronicles:Psychic Slaughters Two

The Lapis Chronicles:
Psychic Slaughters Two

Copyright © 2002 By Cassandra J. Houston

To:

Lapis Lawrence Stone for the use of the name.

Gabriel for the use of the name and inspiration.

Dinner and Conversation



The parking lot of the Epulae was full, as usual. Lapis found himself
driving to the nearest parking garage without even trying to find parking
on the street. The attendant stared as the two men climbed out of the car.

Lapis and Gabriel were so used to stares that they barely noticed them
anymore. They walked the four blocks to the restaurant holding hands, but
not speaking.

They had to duck their heads to get into the front door of Epulae. They
quickly spotted Satya and walked to the table, completely ignoring the
hostess, who stared after them.

They shook hands with Satya and Violet before sitting. They sat down next
to each other and stretched out their long legs.

\"I see you got one of my Dad\'s tables.\" Lapis said, settling in.

\"I thought it would be a good idea.\" Satya said. His legs were dangling,
as the chair he and his girlfriend were in were higher than usual.

The waitress approached. \"So this is what the new girl was talking about.\"
she said, grinning at Lapis and Gabriel. \"She said there were giants back
here.\"

\"Hi Lisa,\" Lapis said. \"How ya been?\"

Lisa shrugged. \"I\'m alive. That\'s nice.\" and she pulled out her pad. \"I
hear you graduated top of your class from that school of yours.\"

Lapis turned half a shade darker. \"Dad\'s been here.\" he moaned.

Lisa laughed. \"Of course he\'s been here. The Institute owns this place.
He\'s a regular. Talks about you all the time. He told me about that new
house of yours too.\" she said, sounding impressed. She looked at Gabriel.
\"And I\'ll bet you\'re glad he\'s back, too.\"

Gabriel turned red in his turn. Lisa chuckled as she leaned into Lapis.
\"I\'ve been keeping an eye on him for you.\"

Lapis raised his eyebrows. \"Good. He can be a slutty little bitch if you
don\'t keep your eye on him.\" he whispered, loud enough for everyone at the
table to hear.

Gabriel looked at Lapis in mock outrage. \"Humph!\" he snorted. \"You\'ve been
spying on me, have you? Well that\'s nice, isn\'t it? Some nerve.\"

Satya was sniggering. Violet looked very anxious. Lisa stopped chuckling
to say. \"I think your making your friend nervous.\"

Lapis and Gabriel looked at Violet. \"I\'m sorry, love.\" Gabriel apologised.
\"We act like this all the time. Probably why Satya wanted us to come here,
so we wouldn\'t embarrass him.\"

Violet smiled warily. Lisa tapped Lapis on the shoulder with her pen. \"How
tall are you two again?\" she asked and Gabriel noticed Violet perk up.
Apparently this is something she also wanted to know.

Lapis looked at Lisa, grinning. \"I\'m six foot five and Gabriel is six foot
nine.\" he laughed. \"I\'ll never forget when I first saw him. I stopped dead
in my tracks. Satya ran right into me.\"

Satya laughed, remembering. \"Lapis had never seen anyone taller than he
was. He was the tallest in the school before Gabriel transferred from the
UK.\"

Lisa sighed. \"Shame.\" she said. \"I have a friend who just loves tall men.
She would just about cream her pants to see you two.\"

Gabriel frowned slightly. \"That is not an image I want to carry around
with me all night, Lisa.\" he said.

Lisa laughed. \"Sorry, but it\'s true.\"

\"Well, she can look, but that\'s it.\" Lapis said, wrapping an arm around
Lisa\'s shapely waist. \"You are the only girl for me.\"

Lisa slapped his shoulder. \"Please. You are gay as a spring day. I can\'t
do a thing for you.\"

Everyone at the table laughed at this, even Violet. \"Well, you can get me
one of those twenty ounce steaks and two baked potatoes.\"

Gabriel lit up. \"Make that two.\" he said, eagerly.

Lisa started writing. She looked over her pad at Satya. \"Same for you?\"
she asked, her eyes twinkling.

Satya grinned. \"I have never had an appetite to compete with these two.\"
he said. \"I think we\'ll stick to the salmon, thanks.\"

Lisa wrote, grinning. \"A gentleman, ordering for the lady.\" She gave them
one last smile and walked away.

Violet was watching Lisa walk away. She asked, \"Is she,\" and she struggled
a moment. \"Polleo, right?\"

Lapis nodded, smiling. \"Very good.\" he said. \"But, no. Lisa is not Polleo,
she\'s a Insciens, like you.\"

Gabriel lifted a single eyebrow. \"But there is a difference.\" he said
firmly.

Violet gasped and stared at Gabriel. \"How did you,? she asked.

Satya gave her half a grin. \"All Polleo are telepathic, m\'dear.\" he said.
\"We have to think about it among each other, sometimes. To keep them out of
our head. Keep some privacy. And keep from being invaded by people we
don\'t want reading our minds. But with Insciencs it is different. We do
not have to work on keeping their thoughts out. It is almost instinct. If
not we\'d have the clatter of Insciens thoughts in our head all the time.
Most of us learn how before we are three years old.\"

\"You know Lisa is Insciens because she\'s a waitress. Don\'t get me wrong,
Lisa is smart as a whip,\" Lapis said. \"She\'s top of her own class at the
University of Chicago. But she doesn\'t know the first thing about telepathy
or farsensing or psychoportation.\" he shrugged. \"At best they are parlour
tricks. At most it is something she can admire, but not do.\"

\"Polleos tend to be in business. The weakest of us work the stock market
or gamble in some shape, form or fashion.\" Gabriel said. \"That\'s why we\'re
all rich. Our hunches pay off.\" and he chuckled.

\"The strongest of us.\" said Satya. \"Lapis and Gabriel. Myself. We wind up
at school. There are four schools around the world. I went to the US one.
Gabriel went to the UK one, then transferred. They are rightfully called
the Oceanic Institutes. They are Schola Scientia, the Schools of Knowledge,
where we all graduated from, it\'s also known as the Pacific Institute. The
school Gabriel went to is the Atlantic Institute. Also known as UK Schola
Scientia. There are two others in the Indian Ocean and the Arctic Ocean.
You know, the USOI, the UKOI, the IOI and the AOI.„

Lisa reappeared with drinks for everyone. \"I hear you are all legal now.\"
she said, eyeing Satya and Lapis. \"Twenty-one and ready to take on the
world.\"

\"Just our corner of it.\" Lapis said, grinning.

Lisa touched him gently on the shoulder before walking off again.

\"So what makes you so powerful?\" Violet said, baiting.

Satya looked at Lapis and Gabriel. \"Parlour tricks, gentlemen?\" he said.
Both Lapis and Gabriel shrugged. \"Alright, then. Look at Gabriel. Watch his
hair.\"

\"Oh no, not the hair again.\" Gabriel moaned.

Violet watched as Gabriels hair went from red to jet black to blonde.
Satya stared at him unblinking. Gabriel\'s hair went from a dark blonde to a
blonde as pale as his skin. Then it filled in with his natural colour.
Gabriel ran his fingers through his red locks.

\"He lives for changing my hair colour.\" he said. \"Thinks redheads are
unnatural or something, he does.\"

Violet\'s mouth was open in shock. Lapis laughed. \"A simple parlour trick,
like Satya said. He likes me with blue eyes from time to time. He scared
the life out of me one morning. He got bored and Morphed me while I was
sleeping. I woke up looking like an old picture of my grandfather he found
somewhere. Blue eyes and blonde hair. Another morning I woke to find black
eyes and a afro. My mixed heritage fascinates Satya. I got him to change
me back then I hung him out a window.\"

\"You can\'t,\" Violet began and Lapis shook his head.

\"I can Morph. It\'s not my Speciality, but I can do it OK. I can,
however, hang somebody out a third floor window without laying a finger on
him.\" he said, grinning. \"Psychokinesis. I can also have an influence on
fire and water.\"

\"Then why don\'t you,\" Violet began again.

Gabriel waved a dismissive hand. \"We aren\'t witches. We don\'t cast spells
or ride brooms or any of that rot. There is no such thing as magic. Only
Nature and the power of the mind. We can\'t do everything. We each have
something we\'re good at and develop it at school.\"

Lisa was coming through the crowd holding a large tray. The tray suddenly
rose far above her head and drifted over to their table. Lisa was right
behind it. \"Thanks, whoever did that.\"

Gabriel grinned. \"Wouldn\'t you like to know.\" And he winked at Lisa as the
plates arranged themselves in front of their proper recipients.

\"Show off.\" Lisa said, grinning at Lapis. He winked at her and she turned
and walked away, chuckling to herself.

Dinner was a cheerful meal. They chatted and laughed and joked about
perfectly normal things. Violet learned that Lapis was a rabid Cub fan.
Gabriel earned a friendly punch on the arm when he commented, \"See, it\'s
not just Insciens who are insane.\"

Lisa reappeared once the meal was over asking how they enjoyed it. Gabriel
winked at her. \"You are beautiful and you cook too. How very wonderful.\"
Lisa cleared the table and reappeared five minutes later with a carafe of
coffee and one of water. Gabriel smiled. \"She remembers.\" he said, but his
smile faded when she tossed tea bags in front of him. \"Blimey!\" he groaned.

Lisa and Lapis laughed at him. Lisa reached into her apron pocket and
pulled out a tea strainer and a small package of tea leaves. Gabriel
sighed. \"I knew you loved me, sweetheart.\"

Lisa also produced two cigars, which she offered to Lapis and Gabriel who
first looked to Violet, who shrugged, then took them with wide grins. She
handed Gabriel a guillotine type cutter and he snipped the cigars. She laid
a black ashtray on the table between the two smokers.

\"And an Onyx six-forty-two, too?\" Lapis said, raising his eyebrows. He and
Gabriel lit the others cigar with pyrokinetics. \"What\'s the occasion?\"

\"You are my favourite customers,\" Lisa said. \"Well, next to your father,
that is.\" and she patted Lapis on the back. \"And I don\'t care if you do
have the hots for each other, you are two of the best looking men that come
in here. Someday we\'ll have to go someplace together, so I can watch you
in a normal environment. Someplace where you have to use a match to light
a cigar.\" and with that she gave them another winning smile and left.

\"She must be sincere.\" Gabriel said, chuckling. \"We are a couple of the
best looking men to come in here. Well, next to your father, of course,
Lapis.\" and he dodged the fist sent his way.

Puffing happily, Lapis and Gabriel sat back and visibly relaxed. \"So, you
two gonna tell us how you got together or what?\" Lapis said, grinning at
Satya and Violet around the Onyx.

\"Actually I have you to thank for it.\" Satya said to Lapis.

Lapis raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

\"Last Christmas break, remember? You and I were supposed to meet for lunch
then go off to Marshall Fields? Violet was in the booth behind me, being
stood up, too.\" and he held up his hand, cutting off Lapis\' words before he
had a chance to form them, in his mind or with his voice. \"I understand why
you blew me off.\"

Lapis took the Onyx out of his mouth. \"I didn\'t blow you off. I completely
forgot about it. That was the day after Gabriel and I told my father about
our relationship. Again. The three of us were up till dawn talking about
it and I didn\'t wake up until something like four o\'clock the next
afternoon.\"

Satya was nodding. \"I know all that, Lapis. I wasn\'t mad then and I\'m not
mad now. But I got to talking to Violet and it was great. I didn\'t have to
worry about shields or anything, for a change. We went out once before I
went back to school and we wrote each other while I was away.\"

\"Is that what you were doing all that writing for?\" Lapis marvelled. He
looked at Violet. \"Polleo don\'t do a lot of writing. Especially when we\'re
in school. Almost all communication is done through telepathy. So imagine
my surprise when Satya suddenly starts getting mail and sending mail.
Everyone wanted to know what the deal was. Receiving a letter at school is
unheard of. He wouldn\'t tell me a damn thing.\" He flicked the ash off of
the Onyx, stuck it back in his mouth and grinned around it at Satya and
Violet.

\"I told her everything by spring.\" Satya said, looking at Violet. \"About
being Polleo, about school, everything.\"

Gabriel was silent throughout, his eyebrows raised quizzically. He slowly
removed the Onyx, gently flicked the ash into the ashtray. \"Understanding.\"
he finally said, his face obscured by the smoke of the Onyx.

Satya sighed. \"I\'m really happy, guys.\"

Both Gabriel and Lapis nodded. \"We know you are.\" Lapis said. \"And we are
happy for you.\"

Lapis paid the check when it was brought to them, leaving Lisa a very
generous tip and the four of them left Epulae and began walking towards the
garage where Lapis had left the Beamer.

In front of the garage they parted. Satya lived within walking distance.
Again, the attendant stared when he returned the Beamer to Lapis. Lapis
ignored him.

Driving north on Lake Shore Drive, Lapis glanced at Gabriel. \"I have
missed you, my Angel.\"

Gabriel turned his head and smiled. \"Well, there\'ll be no more going off
to school with you. We\'ll probably be working together, if the rumours are
true. You\'ll be a Protector, just like your Dad. You\'ll get sick of me
soon enough.\"

Lapis kept half an eye on the road. \"I don\'t think I could ever get sick
of you.\"

Gabriel sighed. \"There are plenty of guys in this city that would kill to
have you. How ever can I compete?\"

\"There aren\'t plenty of guys that love me.\" Lapis said. He glanced at the
tall redhead again. \"Besides, I have a definite taste for very tall
redheads. Ones from England in particular.\"

Gabriel chuckled. \"Well, that narrows it down a bit, doesn\'t it?\" he said.
He stretched a bit. \"I am tired. You better get me back to your place and
tuck me in right and proper now.\"

Lapis nodded. \"I can do that, I think.\"