by SJ Himes
“And if I cannot guarantee any of what you are requesting?” The vamp leaned down slightly, his voice low, the sexy burr to his words making Angel’s nerves dance with something other than fear.
“Then I level this building on my way out, with undead bonfires lighting my path.” Angel may not be able to level this building before he was torn apart, but he could certainly end a few immortal lives before he died.
It wouldn’t be the first time he decimated a swarm of undead.
The vamps at his feet hissed, twisting against his will, staring up at the Elder vamp. He stared back at them for a long moment and then nodded his head.
“I am Simeon, Elder of my Master’s Bloodclan. You are?” Simeon was an ancient name and fell out of use over a hundred years ago. That just elevated this vampire’s age in Angel’s estimation.
Angel hesitated, thinking. It wouldn’t be hard to track him down, he knew for a fact he was the only necromancer in the whole state, so withholding his name was pointless. If they wanted to track him down later, they could, especially since Isaac and Greg were in here for hours.
“Angel Salvatore.” Simeon’s eye twitched again, and Angel knew it was because of his name. Simeon recognized it, as did most supernats in the greater Boston area. In fact, most of the fangheads in the Northeast knew his name, and his reputation earned him a wide berth. “No violence or harm to me or mine. That includes the two men passed out in my car. My brother Isaac Salvatore and Gregory Doyle.”
Simeon watched him for a breathless moment as if trying to see past Angel’s name to the man underneath. Everyone who knew the history of how Boston’s Blood Wars ended knew his name and that wasn’t arrogance. Especially the vampires. Simeon gave a short nod, and then to Angel’s surprise, gifted him with a brief but sincere bow at the waist, Simeon’s glittering eyes briefly aglow from deep within with a flash of power.
“I offer my sincerest apologies, Necromancer Angel Salvatore, for the affronts made to your person and safety while under our roof. May you leave in peace, and no violence or harm shall be offered by our hands, to you or those you claim as yours.”
Angel searched his eyes as the vampire’s words rang out through the bar. The subtle hissing stopped, and even without looking, Angel, sensed a lessening of tension in the room. Angel saw no sign of deceit in the emerald green eyes still holding his and nodded curtly in acceptance.
Angel looked away from Simeon and stepped back, the two vamps following him as if he held their leashes in truth. Angel saw hatred in their eyes, and fear. He had removed their freewill, and easily, and for an undead creature accustomed to being on top of the food chain, it must be a horrible thing to experience. Angel refused to feel bad, and steeled himself against any remorse.
Angel could still feel his blood in their bodies, saw the drying sheen of it on their lips. He closed his eyes and called to it. Sorcery required an absolute knowledge of one’s body and a complete awareness of self. This extended to the living parts, so viable blood cells lining the throats of a vampire counted as well.
He pulled at the power still rushing through his body and called to the blood in the vampires. He needed to get it out of them anyway, as his blood was about to be making them very ill any minute now. Their eyes bulged as they suddenly started to gag, and Angel loosened the bindings on their bodies enough for them to vomit on the floor. Thankfully none landed on Angel, and the stink of blood and whatever liquid that passed as vampire bile filled the air.
“Back away,” Angel warned quietly and took a step back himself. He sent a burst of kinetic magic out, pushing the two vamps away, causing them to skid on their knees across the tiled dance floor. Simeon moved with him, and Angel leveled his focus on the puddle of bloody vomit.
Angel took his hand away from his neck, and held bloody fingers over the floor. He could feel everyone’s gaze on him, especially the searching regard of Elder Simeon. Angel let go of the power he was pulling through the veil, and the atmospheric pressure dropped in the room. As it left, he snapped his fingers.
The fire flared fast and hot, the puddle of vomited blood burning to ash in seconds. Red and orange light danced across the faces of humans and vampires, and Simeon hissed in surprise beside him.
Smoke lifted slowly into the air, and the black mark on the floor was all that remained of the blood. He was a sorcerer—leaving any usable traces of his blood behind was an invitation for another magic-user to exploit it. That was a risk he couldn’t afford to take. Angel sighed, and stretched his neck, shoulders tight. He needed a fucking nap. And a shower. And some stitches, dammit.
The two vamps stood fast and snarled at Angel, eyes wild and promising death. They managed one step forward until a wave of cold, foreign power knocked them back. Their faces relaxed, and they dropped back to their knees. All the fight was gone from them, and it wasn’t Angel’s doing at all. The power was cool and sweet, with a hint of a spicy chocolate essence. Angel flicked his eyes over to Simeon, and there was shimmer in the air around him as he flexed whatever Elder vamp mojo he was packing.
Simeon turned his back on the cowed vamps, and the room’s occupants slowly started to move as everyone made an obvious effort to go back to their business. Angel held his ground when Simeon came into his personal space, forcing him to look up. Simeon was over six feet tall, and his suit clung to him like a second skin, showcasing a chiseled physique that flowed over the floor with a supernatural grace. Not even the most talented ballet dancer could move with the elegance of an old master vampire.
Pale skin was normal for a vamp, and Angel could see small flashes of tattoos that peeked above his jacket collar. His hair was long, but not too long, swept back in thick waves that made Angel’s fingers itch to touch. A chuckle, rich and smooth, brought him out of his musings. Angel flushed, realizing he had been staring, and for a while now. He looked back into Simeon’s eyes, the green so vibrant and true that the shade colored his whole horizon.
Angel dropped his eyes and took a small half-step back. Staring into a master vamp’s eyes was an invitation to lose your life. He knew better, but the old vamp’s appeal was strong. There was not much a vampire could do to him that he couldn’t get free of eventually, but he didn’t want to take his chances. Not even the promise of no violence would keep him safe from seduction.
“I need to go,” Angel said, looking back up but not making eye contact for longer than a second.
“Wait,” the vampire said, one hand stretching out towards Angel as he backed away. There was desire in his eyes, and Angel found himself wanting to reach out and take the vampire’s hand. That was such a bad idea. Angel shook his head, and turned around, pushing his way through the crowd. Once people saw who he was they parted before him in a rush, whispers and growls following him as he left the building.
Angel got in his car, and after checking on the two idiots passed out in the back seat, he left before he could do anything else remarkably stupid, like burning down the building or kissing the Elder. It was a shame, really—Simeon was exactly Angel’s type, and he wanted nothing more than to climb that supernat like an amped up eight-year-old attacking a jungle gym at the park.
There was a ton of reasons why it was a bad idea for the lone surviving Salvatore necromancer to get involved with a vampire—many of whom were dead and their ashes scattered over the holy ground King’s Chapel.
Angel Salvatore may be the only necromancer in the state, but ten years ago, the Salvatore Clan was the most powerful and distinguished magical family in the Northeast, right up until the end of the Blood Wars. Angel’s family, all but for him and Isaac, died at the climax of a generations long war between Clans, their throats ripped out by an army of vampiric assassins.
Angel and Isaac lived because Angel burned that army to ash and dust.
The kiss was soft, sweet, and Angel was too tired to move away. That’s what he told himself, but as Simeon’s mouth slanted over his and the bigger male rolled until Angel was under his hefty weight, his
whole thought process about how bad of an idea this was flew out the window. When Simeon’s tongue slid between his lips and took a leisurely stroll through his mouth, Angel moaned in encouragement and lifted his hips, desperate for some friction on his achingly hard cock. Simeon slid between his thighs, and Angel moaned again, loving the way the big vamp’s hips held his legs open, his weight pushing him down into the bed.
It was the iron-hard length pressing insistently to his own that snapped him out of his passion-dazed state. Angel pulled his mouth away, and his head pushed down on the mattress so he got enough distance to look the elder vamp in the eyes. “Up, now.”
Simeon’s mouth was wet, his lips red and swollen from their kiss. His eyes were dark with desire, and they settled on Angel’s mouth, his luscious mouth begging for another taste. Angel fought back his hormones, refusing to press another kiss to the lips of the very dangerous predator holding him down on the bed…no matter how damn good it felt, this was a bad idea.
“You taste like sin,” Simeon whispered over his mouth, and Angel’s tongue darted out of its own volition and ran along Simeon’s lower lip. A sharp white fang nipped the tip of his tongue before Simeon sucked him back in for another kiss. Angel arched his hips off the bed, kissing him back, heart racing. Why was this a bad idea again?
Somewhere in the apartment, a door crashed, and heavy footfalls stomped across his hardwood floors. Simeon tensed on top of him, and they both ended the kiss and turned to the bedroom door just in time for the wood panel to explode inwards, shards flying across the room. Simeon moved so fast Angel forgot how to breathe, rolling them both off the bed to the floor. Simeon landed beside him, fangs bared, eyes glowing. Angel flattened himself to the floor, watching underneath his bed as clawed feet crushed the remains of his door, gouging the floor and rugs as the intruder came into his room.
Chattering, like beetles scuttling over stones, filled his room, and Angel’s eyes widened in disbelief as a multitude of clipped voices quietly called his name.
“Angelus, Angelus….” The chattering increased, making his ears hurt. A rumble vibrated under his hand, and Angel turned to see Simeon snarling, his body taut as piano strings. Angel gripped a handful of Simeon’s shirt and pulled until Simeon looked at him, his green eyes aglow. He shook his head, silently pleading with Simeon to stay down.
A single vampire, even one as old as Simeon, was no match for a demon.
Chapter Three
Even Demons Need a Break
“Don’t! Stay here,” Angel breathed in Simeon’s ear, and he yanked on the vampire’s shirt when he tensed in reaction to the demon’s shadow racing over the wall. “It will kill you.”
The floor shook as the demon crushed the shattered pieces of the bedroom door underfoot, its shoulders scraping the sides of the doorway. He looked back at it through the empty space under his bed, and the sight of grey-scaled and yellow clawed feet attached to thick, heavily muscled legs made his stomach want to crawl out around his spine and hide. The air stank of damp earth and rotting flesh, and Angel swallowed back a dry heave as he struggled to breathe past the odor and his building fear.
“What is it?” Simeon hissed back, but Angel had no time to answer. He had seconds to stop the beast before they were both torn to strips of red meat.
Angel looked up at his nightstand, his alarm clock showing it was minutes ‘til sunrise. He just had to last until then. A demon this big had to have been summoned nearby, since he hadn’t heard screaming from civilians and the sounds of police sirens. If he could find the circle, he could stop the demon.
“Angelus…” The demon’s voice was many, a teeming mass of fractured tongues weaving together to form words in a language not its own. A large, three-fingered hand rose over the bed, latching into the edge of the bedframe inches above their heads.
Angel let go of Simeon’s shirt, bringing his hands together. He had no time to summon the ambient energy or pull from the veil—this was fast and dirty. Angel pulled on his dwindling reserves, still recovering from the last couple of days of doing major work and little sleep. It hurt, like he was setting fire to his insides—he pulled his palms apart, and the shimmering ball of fire and light that appeared between his hands crackled.
The demon roared, so loud Angel’s ears throbbed with pain, and the bed was ripped away, the mattress going one way, the frame breaking apart. Angel yelled, tossing the ball of raw power straight at the demon’s scaled and warped face. It screamed, rearing back, a twisted amalgamation of humanoid and reptilian characteristics. Simeon grabbed Angel around the waist and ran—as only a vampire could, blurring Angel’s apartment as Simeon took them past the demon, out of his bedroom, and out past the living room. They ended up in the hall outside his front door just as the demon screamed in thwarted rage, tearing after them.
“Outside! Get us outside!” Angel yelled, and Simeon hesitated. It was nearly dawn, so Angel understood Simeon’s reluctance, but the enraged beast charging at them gave them little in the way of options. Angel ran down the hall, heading for the stairs, but Simeon came up behind him and picked him up, speeding them down the three flights of stairs and out to the street in mere seconds.
The building he lived in was at the back end of the statehouse, at the three-way intersection of Hancock, Myrtle, and Derne, and at this time of morning should be busy with early traffic. Simeon stopped them in the middle of the street, and Angel staggered back, head swimming from the shock at the vampire elder’s speed. His bare foot scraped over the pavement, and he looked down.
Angel backed away from the scorched and melted summoning circle charred into the surface of the intersection. It was the point of summoning, and Angel cursed himself mentally for being too tired to notice a fucking summoning in what amounted to his front yard. He would have noticed the surge of veil-drawn power when the sorcerer summoned the demon through dimensional boundaries if he wasn’t running on empty.
The streets were quiet, the air still and heavy. Dawn was lightening the city, but it was minutes away. He had some time. The demon, depending on how powerful it was and the type of binding used to hold it here in this plane, would either disappear with the dawn’s light, or run amok on the streets, the spell controlling its actions disintegrated with the sunlight. As long as the summoning circle was intact, the demon may be able to stay in this dimension after dawn.
Angel rapidly scanned all four directions, even checking the rooftops along the back of the statehouse, but there was nothing. No sign of the sorcerer who summoned the demon in a wanton display of reckless artis praecantatio. The street should have traffic, pedestrians and cars, yet nothing. It smelled of swamp and rotted meat, and Angel faced the townhouse that held his apartment just as a roar shook the windows and the shadowy silhouette of the demon filled the main entrance.
It stalked down the short stairs, claws sparking on the sidewalk. It swiped at a car parked at the curb, and metal screamed as rips in the metal body appeared beneath the beast’s claws. Ten feet tall, with a hunched back and large, greyish-green scales that glittered in the pre-dawn light and streetlamps, the demon moved with a disjointed gait that invoked an instinctual reaction to back away from that which wasn’t normal, wasn’t part of this world. Its head was lizard-like, with a many-toothed mouth that held more tongues than necessary, a writhing red mass of wet flesh that resulted in the multi-toned voice from one mouth, all hissing Angel’s birth-name.
“We need to leave!” Simeon shouted, grabbing Angel’s hand, preparing to zip them away again. The demon advanced, crouching on all fours, its long, whipcord tail smacking the ground and cars as it joined them in the road.
“We leave, it’ll start killing people as it tries to follow! I have to banish it!”
“Dawn is coming, Angel….” Simeon said, his cold hand around Angel’s hand tightening, dragging him backward as the demon approached. It hissed, head down, tail lifting as it changed its balance, the demon becoming more animalistic, less humanoid, its nature warping again
in its preparation to attack. Angel gathered another ball of raw energy, his insides aching as he pulled on his almost empty energy reserves.
He threw it, and the scales along its face scorched and the beast screamed, shaking its head as sparks fell. Red flesh showed through the worst of the burns on its snout, and it roared at Angel, scoring the pavement with its claws.
“I know! Distract it! Don’t let it grab you!” Angel said, hoping Simeon would do as he asked and not disappear. The first rays of sunlight would soon start reflecting off the cloud cover, and depending on how old Simeon really was, he would either be able to withstand the early light or begin to burn.
Simeon snarled, frustrated, but Angel was thankful when Simeon blurred, and instead of running away from beast and dawn, charged the demon crouching in preparation for its leap. A splash of rancid blood flared out along its side as Simeon raked it with his own claws, and the beast spun to follow him. Angel ducked as its tail flew over his head, whistling through the air.
Angel let Simeon play bait and turned his attention to the circle burnt into the intersection. It was about twelve feet across, the runes and lines made of melted asphalt. Shoving aside his curiosity at what could burn that hot and be so precise, he searched amongst the designs for the markers that held both the demon here on this plane and sent it after Angel.
A vampiric screech made him flinch, but the swearing that soon followed in some form of ancient Gaelic reassured him Simeon was still in the fight. He spared a glance over his shoulder, to see Simeon darting and slashing, a housecat foolishly tangling with a larger, far meaner cougar. If the demon caught Simeon, he would be dead…again.
Returning his efforts to the symbols in the summoning circle, he sent his will out, the pain at reaching for the veil tearing at his spirit, his insides. Pain both physical and spiritual, that he pushed aside. He would sleep when he was dead, or hopefully after the demon was banished.
