CHAPTER 156

Dana bowed her head in contemplation, then nodded. "This rush of mine should have worn off some time ago. I think it's why I lost track of time, I'm used to falling out of the rush. It's like having the perfect amount of caffeine, you feel all inspired and energized, but you know it's going to wear off eventually so you try to get as much done as you can."

"You're smiling," he told her.

"Why, so I am." She grinned at him. "And before you ask, I'm not fixed or anything. Slashed open my forearm earlier, didn't even hurt. Being dead has made me a little careless at times, I will admit. Has its perks, though." With that statement, she rolled a tire over to the jeep and lifted the chassis off of a group of cinder blocks with one hand.

"I knew you were strong, but this?" He watched in amazement as she casually stuck the wheel back on and then tightened the nuts down with an old-style bar-type lug wrench.

"That's about my limit," she explained. "I can actually feel the strain in my bones from it. If I lifted it too quick, I would probably snap my spine or rip a muscle. The human body is an interesting place when you don't feel pain anymore. It really reminds you that you're just a bowl of pudding piloting around a robot made of meat."

He frowned at the visual, but she wasn't wrong.

"Sometimes, if I'm not too involved with whatever I'm working on, I can actually feel how my joints work," she continued. "Or how my muscles contract and extend. It's almost like I'm able to shut out the noise and really feel all the things my body can do."

"You mean kind of like when you're falling asleep and can hear your own heartbeat if it's quiet enough?"

She feigned shock. "Discrimination! Check your privilege, beating heart."

It had been a while since he had seen Dana and Lily hanging out, and he now worried just how much the succubus had rubbed off on the zombie.

"But yeah, close enough." She put another tire on the opposite side of the first. "You wear your body your whole life without really understanding how it moves. There's a process in there that we take for granted. Have you ever tried to program a robot to walk? It's super hard, but toddlers can nail it pretty quick. I had a professor once who was obsessed with biometric design."

He nodded, now lost in thought. It was easy to see her point, but now he could apply it to his immediate problem. Instead of his own body, it was his magic that had him flummoxed. He used to have good control of it, but those were just baby steps.

"What's the fine line between understanding how something works versus just figuring it out?" he asked. "When do I know if I'm overthinking it?"

She shrugged. "Ask a baby, I guess."

Frowning, he turned his attention to the dirt floor of the barn. Thinking about how a baby learned to walk, he could easily picture how they would use something to stand up first, then move. Was there a way he could learn to stand first instead of having to hit the ground running?

The clearing Abella had taken him to was teeming with life, which had overwhelmed him. Looking at the dirty floor of the barn, he could see the occasional sprout of dead grass along the boundaries of the building. This was a place that was connected to the earth, but minimal on nature. Could he connect with it as he had in the glade?

When he closed his eyes, he could sense that thick bass note from before. It was dim, as if very far away. He tried to focus on it, and shifted in his chair to get comfortable. His hand slipped off the side causing him to brush his fingertips in the dirt. The volume in his head jumped several levels on contact.

Okay. That's interesting. He put the palm of his hand on the ground and waited. The musical tones pressed against his flesh and a sense of peace permeated his body. His magic matched the rhythm and pulsed outward from him, scattering loose dirt away from his hand.

Even with his eyes closed, he could sense where Dana stood. His senses expanded, and now he could feel the family of mice that lived in the corner behind boxes of motor oil.

The sensations were there, but they were quiet compared to the cacophony from before. Little by little, he expanded outward from the barn. The land around them was largely short brush, so he met plenty of burrowing critters waiting on warmer days to emerge from their homes. He felt the corners of the cabin, then immediately withdrew when he discovered an intense presence. Unsure if it was the entity that he sensed, he decided to expand his senses somewhere else.

The land around the barn was covered in snow, yet teemed with life that hungered for warmth. The fleeting thoughts of small mammals and insects touched his consciousness like whispers. As he explored the land, he felt it try to cling to his magic. It was easy to imagine that his magic was similar to sunlight, and that it could nourish the surrounding property. If he wanted, could he wake up the vegetation as he had in the clearing?

He took in a sharp breath as he realized that the sexual nature of his magic still applied here. While he hadn't dug a hole in the ground and fucked it physically, his magic was currently mixing with the earth in a very intimate manner. It was inside of him just as much as he was inside it.

For just a second, he thought he heard a woman's laugh. Whether illusory or not, it definitely belonged to the cabin.

What could he even do with this knowledge? Was it just this land, or could he connect with the house, too? Maybe it would be a means to speak directly to the house, or even his other properties. If they were alive, then surely they had desires that he could assist them with. Maybe the house wanted a new coat of paint, or the cabin wanted to cut some trees for a better view of the mountains.