by SJ Himes
“Yes,” Simeon smiled, his fangs dropped, sharp as sin and making Angel wish he could kiss his lover through the bars. “A few skulls were cracked in the making of this rescue.”
Angel laughed at the unexpected humor. “Did you chew up and spit out Malis?” Angel hoped.
Simeon shook his head, auburn locks falling over his brow. “She has gone to the police, seeking their support in her actions today. She wishes to counter the bloodclan’s assertions that you are now one of ours and no longer under the purview of the Council or human law.”
“The Council hasn’t enforced its own laws on this continent in decades. They accept tithes and taxes and fees, but lifting a hand and maintaining law and order? Not in my lifetime. They gave up any right to authority the moment they left Boston at the height of the Blood Wars. And the cops stay out of practitioner bullshit unless humans start dropping or they’re called.”
“Agreed. Her actions today will not go unpunished,” Simeon stroked his face, carded cool fingers through Angel’s hair. “I can smell blood, my love.”
“Bump on the back of my head. It stopped bleeding a while ago. It doesn’t even hurt.” A small lie, but one that would keep Simeon from going berserk. Simeon’s fingers found the bump and gently investigated, but there was nothing but a slight swelling and some dried blood. Angel held back a wince, his head felt hollow from the pain. He might have a small concussion. Simeon gently pet the area, and his cold fingers felt good before they warmed from contact with Angel’s body. “We need to get out of here. This is not a defensible position.”
“You’ve been shackled. Can you still work magic? Let me break them.” Simeon reached for the cuffs, but magic sparked and Simeon hissed, pulling back his hands. Red burns littered his mate’s elegant fingers.
“Is there anyone else down here with us?” Angel asked. The burns on Simeon’s fingers faded away almost instantly. Simeon was old—he healed fast.
“There is a mortal woman two cells down, unconscious. She appears to have been knocked out. Blond, thin, but otherwise unharmed. Shackled as you are.”
“Giselle Hardwick.” Angel chewed on his lip. “Let me know if she wakes. I don’t want any witnesses.”
Simeon nodded and slowly withdrew from the bars. Angel missed his touch, but it was wise to have some distance while Angel worked magic.
Angel stood, shoulders back, hands hanging in front of him, the chains swinging gently.
His father once told him iron acted as a dam, and magic was a river. The iron dam held back the river of magic that flowed in all practitioners, releasing only a trickle to be expressed out in the world as executable magic, as spells. The weaker the practitioner, the more magic was repressed by the iron. High-ranked practitioners, like wizards and sorcerers, could work around iron, so the means to subdue them were augmented by spells and runes that increased the inherent magic-dampening qualities of the iron.
As it was with any river, if the dam was overwhelmed, it would break. All Angel had to do was unleash the magic he held in his core, maintain the output, and push against the iron. By the end of their experiments, neither Raine nor August could prevent Angel from escaping iron shackles, even the more powerful ones they used on their enemies during the Wars.
It had been over fifteen years since Angel had done so though—and he hadn’t a direct link to boundless primordial death magic then either. “The iron may explode if it superheats too fast. Be ready to duck,” Angel warned, and Simeon’s eyes grew wide with concern.
“Should you? Angel, wait for Milly. Surely Dame Fontaine can free you.…?”
“No time, you said it yourself. We’re going to have company any second.”
Angel closed his eyes. He needed to hurry, but he couldn’t do this fast. He wasn’t joking about the iron exploding when he overwhelmed it. He’d done it before. Thankfully, one of his late uncles was a fire mage and healed the wounds made by flaming, liquid metal.
Death magic was everywhere, in everything. From dirt and stones to people and pets, even in leaves on trees and the very air they breathed; death magic exudes from all things. Minute amounts in the living, more in the dead, the most within the dying, and heaviest in places of death, such as battlefields, graveyards, murder scenes; plague ridden areas; and areas that suffer from famine. It lined the forest floor, the shores of the sea, and the bottoms of oceans. In fossils and mummies, pyramids and mausoleums, museums, even the street outside Angel’s front door. Everything mortal and living was actively dying. Only certain species of fae were wholly immune to the process. The truly immortal were antithesis to death.
All of mortal creation gave off death magic. It was one of the many reasons why necromancers were so feared and despised the world over—most practitioners were restricted to personal reserves, the ambient magic available wherever they were, and artifacts charged up. Sorcerers, could use all of that and the veil. The dimensional wall magic slipped through into the spaces between realities gave sorcerers an edge, as the best of them could access and harness the veil’s power, but a necromancer had more access to raw power from the start. Death magic could be harnessed by those without the affinity, but it took artifacts and complex spells and time and energy, all of which would crumble when confronted by a necromancer.
Angel gathered his personal energies, a simple meditation exercise taught to all practitioners. Find his focus, find the edges of his reality then, unlike in meditation, he would not calm it, but gather it together, find the force that held him back, and attack with a single, sustained focus.
He was not Isaac, able to withstand burns, immune to fire, protected by his affinity. All he could do was hope that, as he pushed outward on the shackles, they went fast and the metal did not have time to burn him too badly. His sweater was spell-proof and warded to protect him from the elements. He would not share the dangers with Simeon—his mate would not allow him to proceed. Milly could release him, but he had no idea where she was and being handicapped, even to a minor degree by the shackles, was not something he wanted to endure when Malis could return at any moment.
Heat came fast, and then the pain. Smoke rose, burning at his face and nostrils. “Angel!” Simeon called to him. It grew worse, and Angel hissed out in pain, agony and the stench of burning flesh radiating up from his wrists. “Angel, stop!”
A snap, and then metal bits ricocheted off the stone walls. Angel blinked, eyes tearing, and coughed. He shook out his hands, bending his fingers, checking the damage. He had blistering welts around his wrists—several were deep enough to worry him, but he could still function. “I’ll be fine,” he told his mate, though he wasn’t sure. Simeon grumbled and shook his head but said nothing. “Bars are warded. They’re set in the stone with runes keeping them in place. But the iron is old, over a hundred years for sure. They look solid, but they’ve also been sitting in a damp dungeon for decades. And I can’t overload these without killing myself—there’s too much metal, they will explode. I could shield myself from the atomized metal, but it will flood the passage and hurt anyone living. Gisele can’t escape, and I don’t know what it will do to you.”
“What do you want me to do?” Simeon asked.
“Can you grab the bars? I could touch them, so you might be able to. Be careful.”
Simeon gripped the bars with his bare hands and nothing happened. Angel sighed in relief. “Think you can bend them enough I can slip out?”
“Will the wards let me?” Simeon asked, eyeing the carved sigils in the stone and metal.
Angel grinned despite his pain. “These cells are for incapacitated practitioners. Forged to counter magic, not supernatural physical strength. They weren’t fashioned to prevent a four-hundred-year-old vampire Elder from going all alpha male on them.”
Simeon chuckled and raised a single brow, eyes gleaming. “‘Alpha male’?”
“Show me those muscles,” Angel teased. He backed away, in case the metal shattered when Simeon bent the bars. He cradled his wrists to his stomach, a
lready regretting not waiting for Milly to release him, but he’d die before he mentioned the pain he was in. His stomach roiled, and he was sweating under his clothes.
“They are wrought iron,” Simeon said as he got a firmer grip on a single bar. Thankfully, there were no cross bars, only vertical bars set four inches apart along the exterior wall of the cell. Angel had no idea how he got into the cell to begin with—there was no door. Likely a spell he couldn’t access from inside the cell and probably only known to the enforcers who threw him in here. “Wrought iron bends, it’s not brittle like cast iron. I will make it yield.”
“Save the dirty talk for when we get out of here.”
Simeon smiled like he couldn’t help himself. Angel did his best not to show his pain.
When the bar bent, it did so with a smoothness that reminded Angel of putty. Less than a second after Simeon began pulling, the bar gave way. The ends buried in stone remained unmoved, but the center gave under the extreme strength in Simeon’s hands and arms. His vampire barely even broke the equivalent of a sweat—the bar was defeated. Angel’s brows got lost in his hairline when Simeon grabbed a pair of bars, one in each hand, flexed, and opened a space wide enough for Angel to simply walk through. They looked like a child’s putty, warped and bent, rust flecks and bits of black paint dusting the floor.
“Fuck.” Angel breathed out. He was thankful he was in so much pain; an erection would make it hard to walk out, especially in damp, cold jeans. Angel accepted the help Simeon gave him and stepped out of the cell. He didn’t fight the hand that cupped his face, lifting his mouth to his mate’s. Simeon took his mouth hard and deep, bruising in its intensity. Angel panted and whined, writhing against Simeon until his injuries complained and he was forced to stop. “We must go,” Simeon whispered, their lips wet, brushing over each other’s with each panting breath Angel took.
“Yeah,” Angel agreed, wincing. His arms were throbbing in time with his heart. “Feel like busting out one more person?”
“The professor?”
He nodded and walked down the passage. She was indeed two cells down from his, sprawled on the floor, a bruise on her temple. She was soaked and muddy. “She’s the person running the graverobber ring, along with Lady Heather’s bodyguard. He was at the college when we went to visit. Malis had no interest in him at all, so I guess he didn’t make the trip. Lady Heather is just another mark to Giselle, but she knows where the ghost is, so I need her. The bodyguard likely knows too, but I don’t wanna waste time hunting him down. And she invaded my privacy—she gave me a reading by tarot without my permission.”
Simeon growled at that, a deep rumble, and his emerald eyes flashed before returning to normal. Simeon eyed the wizard with disfavor and did not look happy, but he nodded. “Very well. Watch for the return of our hostess while I fetch your criminal.”
Angel kept watch, the passage empty. Simeon had likely been in the consulate for twenty minutes now and the closest precinct was fifteen minutes away. Malis was going to be here soon if she wasn’t already. He didn’t know what time it was, but rush hour was a bitch in this part of town.
The bars gave way to Simeon, who stepped into the cell, stooped down, and lifted Giselle over his shoulder in a fireman carry, her long blond hair tumbling out of its bun to trail on the floor. She was already covered in grime, otherwise Angel would feel bad.
The human woman in his arms was thin and lightweight. Simeon moved carefully, unaccustomed to such contact with a female of any species, and he acted with more care than he would with Angel. He didn’t want to break her by accident. She felt far more fragile than he remembered women being from his younger years. Yet back then, women of his clan fought alongside men in battle, chopped down trees, hunted, and reared wild younglings in the dangerous mountains of Éire. This one spent a lot of time with books, tea, and things that smelled of death.
He made the connection—this woman was a frequent visitor to the apothecary shop. Angel’s supposition she was indeed the thief and responsible for the despicable crimes victimizing the dead and their families appeared to be correct.
He heard people approaching the door to the dungeons just as Angel called his name. “Simeon, I think we have company.”
“We do indeed, my love. Is there another way out of here?” Simeon asked, though he didn’t sense one. Just solid rock and far too small grates covering tiny and poorly made sewage drains.
“Not that I noticed. We can fight our way out, stay hunkered down until dark and you can get Batiste to send reinforcements, or…” Angel paused. His face had gone pale, his naturally tanned skin waxy. His mate was in pain. Angel was good at hiding it, but Simeon knew him.
“Or?”
Shouts came down the stairs. Simeon could hear Malis. She was back. She would not be the Council’s top magister if she weren’t a serious threat. “Angel?”
Angel leaned on the wall, a hand lifting partway to his head. He looked unwell. “Or I can blast us out of here, like I did the wall at the Macavoy mansion.”
Angel groaned, and Simeon heard his heart begin to beat faster. “Angel, you’re going into shock. Sit down.”
“Shock?”
“Yes, love. Your wrists are burned, you were knocked out, and left in a cold, wet cell in a dungeon for over an hour. Sit your arse down before you fall.”
“Okay.” Angel slid down the wall to land on his rear. Thankfully, not in a puddle. Simeon went to his mate and carefully lowered his burden to the ground next to him. She was still out cold.
“Mind the professor for me, love. I’ll get us out of here.”
“Okay.” Angel whispered, resting his head on the wall, slow blinking. “I didn’t think I was so bad.”
“The great Angelus Salvatore needs not be all-powerful, all the time.” Simeon whispered. He pressed a kiss to Angel’s brow. “Don’t help me. All will be well.”
He straightened and strode forward, halfway down the passage. Several mortals were above them on the next level. Over a dozen heart beats. Police were on the street. He pulled out his smartphone. It was just after lunch. The sun would be high in the sky, shining down on them. Batiste could not send aid until the sun set. He typed out a message to his master then tucked his smartphone into his trouser pockets. He shrugged out of his suit jacket and returned to Angel. He draped it over the fallen woman and checked on his mate. Angel was blinking up at him. “Milly has my satchel and athame. I can still cast, still fight.”
“Another shall fight first. A moment, love.” Simeon loosened his tie and opened the collar of his shirt. The huntsman whistle Angel gifted him weeks before hung on its silver chain, the small artifact shimmering in the lamplight. He held it to his lips and blew. The whistle was silent, but the call was answered.
The hellhound, now named Scáth, or Shadow, formed from darkness and hellfire. It grumbled as it grew from the stones, solidifying. Its dark fur shimmered with green flames to match the hellfire embers glowing within its eyes. The great beast was a shade of memory, a long-forgotten breed that sired the modern-day wolfhounds of Ireland. This breed fought against the Romans thousands of years before, hunted boar, faced off against trolls and orcs. It stood as tall as Simeon’s waist, and on its hind paws, stood taller than Simeon.
Scáth padded over to Simeon, whimpering in joy, wagging his weapon of a tail. His great jaws with two-inch fangs fell open as he panted, happy to see his master. “My sweet pup.” Simeon chuckled. He scratched under the hellhound’s chin, the hellfire offering him no harm. Scáth wagged his tail even harder and gave him fire-spiced doggy kisses on his hand. “Tabharfaidh mé grá duit agus grá agus fuil duit.” At those words, Scáth snapped his jaw shut, ears pricking up, eyes intent. Simeon pointed to the stairs. “Cúlghairm.”
I offer thee love and affection and blood. Rearguard.
The hound yipped and gave an all too human nod before loping to the base of the stairs. He blended in with the darkness there, the light from the next level up not reaching around corn
ers for the hellhound to be seen from above. His flames dulled, so as better to conceal himself. His growls were heard though, and the practitioners above discussing how to get down without Simeon ripping them to shreds all stopped talking.
“I can fight.” Angel whispered. He didn’t even seem to notice Simeon had summoned the hellhound.
“Regain your strength, first. Let me help.” Half his senses on the staircase and his hound, Simeon removed a cufflink, rolling back his sleeve. He lifted his wrist to his mouth and sliced into his own flesh with his fangs. Blood dripped from the deep bite. “Drink, Angel.”
Angel was slow in understanding, but after a few blinks, he leaned forward, mouth open. Simeon helped, and soon Angel was sucking deep mouthfuls of Simeon’s thick blood down his throat. He caressed Angel’s face, the sharp angles of his cheeks, the lush pink of his mouth. Angel took more than usual, and Simeon let him. Scáth barked. He checked, and there were shadows on the stairs. Sorcerers attempting to see what was going on perhaps.
Simeon whistled, and Scáth advanced on the shadows creeping down the stairs. Jaws snapped and someone screamed, Simeon turned to the fight.
12
Dead, and Not Quite Gone
Angel groaned when his wrists began to itch fiercely. The sensation was unpleasant, and he pulled back his sleeves in time to see the deep burns heal themselves. Blisters receded, weeping edges of flesh sealed, Simeon’s blood forcing his flesh to heal without scars. It was faster than usual—Simeon bit him during sex, and the bite healed by morning. Angel swallowed, thick, minty-chocolate laced blood still lingering on his tongue. Simeon let him drink a lot more than he typically did. He closed his eyes, the passageway spinning, and felt the slight bump on the back of his head fade away, the dull ache and the fogginess that accompanied it easing to nothingness.
He blinked his eyes open. Simeon was at the far end of the hall, and his fiery pet fought at his side. Scáth grabbed an enforcer by his calf, shook the man, and Simeon slashed with his claws. A sharp word, and the hellhound dropped the poor man, whom Simeon then picked up with one clawed hand and tossed back up the stairs, winging him wide around the bend to land with a thud the next level up. Several people were shouting, and spells were bouncing off walls and the floor. Simeon dodged a nasty green and orange ball of spinning light, and the rock it landed on cracked and bubbled. Angel forced him himself to focus. His mate was not dying down here after being so sweet as to rescue him.
