by SJ Himes
“Hey, man. Been a while,” he said softly, holding back his tears. The smile was strained, but Angel managed it. Dull, flat eyes swiveled and spun before locking on his own, the once brilliant blue reminiscent of dirty water. Where living eyes held a glimmer of emotion, these were truly dead, void of anything but a slim awareness. “Do you know who I am?”
“Angelus Salvatore……Necromancer. My best friend’s son….my student…” August’s spirit whispered past dry, cracked lips, the venom-burnt lower lip splitting with a twisted mockery of a smile. “Angel….no, what…have you done?”
“I’ve done what you once warned me not to do,” Angel said, his whisper full of the tears he refused to shed. A cool hand came to rest on the middle of his back, and Angel drew some small measure of strength from Simeon’s offer of comfort. “I’ll risk it to avenge you, Uncle Auggie.”
The old nickname slipped free before he could stop it, but it came naturally. A decade may have passed, but old emotions were still strong.
“Avenge me?” Split lips cracked further, hellfire embers hissing. Hollow eyes that held the tiniest of awareness glimmered like a flame in the far distance, and Angel dug deeper, pouring more power into the dark constellation that kept August’s spirit in this place and time. “Vengeance for what? Where am I?”
“City Morgue in Boston, Auggie. I’ve called you back. You got murdered, my old friend. Right in front of me, I might add. Can you tell me who killed you?”
“Vampire.” August’s spirit stirred, the distant flame sparking brighter as if experiencing remembered terror from the moments before his last living breath were coming back, revisited on this side of the veil. Angel bit his tongue, hating himself in that second. The longer he held August’s spirit here the more the spirit would recall, and surely none of it was good.
“Yes, I know,” Angel assured his old friend, holding August’s face, imparting what comfort he could. “Do you know the bastard’s name? Can you tell me what happened?”
“Came for me at home,” August replied, Angel leaning closer, dry lips brushing his ear. “Took me from the street. Vampires, one old. Very old. Old World vampire, he had an accent, still strong.”
August would know, too. He had been a canny sorcerer, observant and intuitive. If he claimed one of his attackers to be an old vampire, then he was right. The average age of most vampires in the United States was around the two hundred mark or younger, and any vampire older than that would be one of the rarer ones. The older generation of vampires escaped Europe during the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s, and they came to America with the intent to claim territory and raise new clans. The strongest of them were rumored to be over a thousand years old, like Boston’s new Master. The older the vampire, the more known they were, each year on this earth spreading their influence through fledglings and the human species’ capacity for propagating urban legends down generations.
“Why? Do you know who they were?”
“Yes…..”
“Who was it, August? Was it the new Master of Boston?” It only made since for Angel to ask, though if August had lived in Hartford for the last ten years he may not know who the new Master was here in town. Even Angel had only seen him once, and never in person, a distant glimpse at vamp HQ when he had gone to cure the newest crop of fledglings sick from magic poisoning.
A door creaked down the hall, taking Angel’s attention from his questioning, head turning to the door. Simeon moved so fast he was impossible to see, the door to the room they were in swaying shut as the Elder went out into the hall. Trusting Simeon to handle whoever may be coming, Angel looked back to August, the hand holding the athame over August’s heart shaking once with strain. He needed to hurry.
“Who killed you, August?”
“Deimos,” August answered, the flickering flame in his dull eyes sporadically flaring before dimming. Angel wavered on his feet, beginning to feel the effects of severe power drain. “His name was Deimos.”
Angel had no idea who that was, but he could find out.
The door slammed open, Simeon appearing in a violent rush of fog, a man wearing a security guard uniform hanging limply from one hand. Simeon dropped him to the floor, where the man gave a disheartened groan and passed out, obviously in no fit state to do his job. Angel quirked a brow at the Elder vamp, but Simeon was staring at the revenant, his face stricken.
“Simeon? What—”
“We are out of time, mo ghra,” Simeon said, breaking free of whatever state he’d been in and coming to Angel’s side. “The fog was noticed. The receptionist will be raising the alarm once he realizes the guard won’t be back.”
“Fuck, the coroner will be back here next.” The coroner was a wizard and was capable of giving Angel more than enough trouble, not to mention he would be able to ID him to authorities. Angel’s face was well known here.
“Angel…”
“Hey, Auggie,” his lack of time and choices careened around in his head and heart, and the tears came even as he moved the athame closer to the corpse’s chest. It was time to say goodbye.
The revenant’s eyes blazed, August’s spirit clawing its way closer, more of the man he once was present in his lifeless eyes. “Forgive me for abandoning you. My guilt was too much. After Raine…. he was my everything. Seeing you was like seeing him.”
The love between August Remington and Raine Salvatore had always been part of Angel’s life. He grew up in their shadow, the two men inseparable, even after Raine married and had kids. Angel closely resembled his father and seeing him every day must have been too much for August to bear. Getting away from the surviving Salvatore boys was probably the only way August could function. Angel couldn’t completely understand it, but he could forgive it.
“It’s okay, Auggie. I get it. I’m not mad at you, I never was,” Angel whispered, pressing the athame’s tip to the corpse’s chest, separating flesh. “I swear I’ll avenge you.”
“He wants you dead because of that night, Angel. He fears you,” the revenant whispered, the spirit retreating, the dark constellation dying down to ash. Angel let his hellfire die with it. He had seconds left. “Deimos fears your power. Deimos wanted to know what I taught you, how you killed so many vampires at once that night. I refused to tell him how you did it, even when threatened with my death. I left him no choice but to kill me.”
“His mistake,” Angel replied with a harsh whisper, thrusting blade through bone and muscle into the heart below. “Rest, August. I’ll see you again one day.”
The blade sliced through the heart, thrust to the hilt, and the dark constellation went out with a soft sigh and flicker of smoke. The lifeless eyes were empty, the spirit returned to its proper place, the body once again a collection of dead flesh and bone.
Angel yanked the athame free, falling back against the wall of lockers, gasping for air. The drain on his reserves was cut, and his power rebounded back into him, and Angel battled for control. Fog writhed and twisted, and Angel heard voices yelling near the front of the building.
“Angel?” Simeon said his name, and he could hear a touch of worry under the accent. Angel pushed off from the wall and grabbed the black leather rope, his hellfire surging along its length. Angel broke the fire resistant spells in the woven thongs, and the leather burst into flame, falling to gray ashes in seconds. He needed to erase their presence and fast. At least enough that identifying who had been in here would be impossible. The venom and the dark constellation’s remains might be traceable back to Angel, considering the rarity of the spell and ingredients. He had erroneously assumed that August would be autopsied by now, and ready to be sent to the crematorium, and any evidence of his tampering would remain undiscovered and burnt with the body.
“Simeon, grab the body!”
Angel fed power to the fog, creating a white wall in the hallway that obscured all sight. He carefully repacked his bag, making sure the jars and athame were secure before yanking open a line to the veil. They were already discovered—no
w he had one last task to complete and no time for subtlety.
He knew the second the coroner sensed his presence, as the alarms in the morgue went off, red lights flickering.
Thankful Simeon did as he asked, and the vampire hefted the corpse over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry without any hint of squeamishness. Angel led the way to the hall, trusting in luck they wouldn’t run into anyone standing in the mist. Voices, muffled by the fog, rose behind them as they jogged for the garage bay. It took them longer than he liked, but they made the parking lot. Sirens wailed in the distance, evidence someone called the police.
He had to get at least a block, even two, away before his presence would be undetectable to the coroner.
Angel ran, Simeon at his side, pulling a thick wall of fog around them as they regained the streets adjacent to the morgue, the sound of their passage swallowed by the mist. Angel led Simeon down side streets for almost twenty minutes, needing to look up at a corner to see the street signs to know for certain where they were. They were most certainly out of range, and he opened the veil further, channeling more power into his core and making it his own. Rarely did he open himself so fully to the wild energy past the veil, but he needed to be at his best right now—getting caught so soon hadn’t been ideal, and he had no time to crash after that major spellcasting.
Angel sighed in relief. They weren’t that far from Beacon Hill and the Commons. Another ten minutes, the city around them empty of all signs of life, human or otherwise. Trees rose from the fog, and Angel ran faster, Simeon and his cargo silent at his side. Even in the dark of night and the wall of fog that cushioned them, Angel recognized the Commons, and they ran into the park.
“Central Burying Grounds, hurry,” Angel gasped out, deciding he would need to get back into swimming, his lungs burning from their rapid escape. Simeon, of course, showed zero signs of strain, even with the burden he carried. They took the winding paths towards the old cemetery, the dormant trees popping up out of the fog like specters.
All practitioners were to be burned, ostensibly to keep the body safe from desecration by other magic-users attempting to steal latent powers from the deceased, but it was also tradition, long-standing and ancient, dating back to the days when men cast spells with the bones of mammoths and wore cloaks made of dire wolf pelts. Casting the ashes on holy ground was another layer of protection preventing abuse of a deceased’s remains.
It was what Angel did with his family.
Not soon enough for Angel, they made the cemetery, the short iron fence no match as Angel gripped the top and jumped over, his bag banging on his hip. Simeon was over before Angel even landed in the dead grass, and Angel pointed to a spot nearby, a few feet from the slim headstones. Simeon carefully put the body down in the wet, dead grass, and Angel took the Elder’s arm and pulled him away.
One last thing to do.
Angel turned his mind inward, and raw, wild and unfettered, veil power surged up from his core, and he let it free, giving it one focus, one command. Death magic in its truest form, the consumption of life and matter, thought and desire—the mourning pyre was how all of Angel’s kind used to depart this world, and never more true than for a necromancer. It was a bittersweet and heavy irony that Angel would be the one to light the pyre for his mentor, the man who taught him the spell in the first place. It was no longer common practice for the spell to be taught, with the onset of laws and government facilities taking over the disposal of human remains.
“Ignis luctus pyra,” Angel cast, and with a sub-audible woomfph, the body burst into flame. Grass burned to a crisp in a short radius around the body, flames rising several feet in the air. It was an ancient spell, and once given a target, the mourning fire consumed it entirely until nothing remained but ashes, feeding on the death magic.
Chapter Eight
Making Alibis
“Angel?”
“Hmm?” Angel stared at the makeshift pyre, mind lost to memory and flame. The grass was wet beneath his ass, his pants soaked in a few places, but he’d been too close to his limit and sitting down and catching his breath, not to mention settling his careening emotions, had been the wisest thing he’d decided in ages.
“Why did I steal his body?” Simeon sat beside him, cross-legged and looking more than rumpled. His tux was stained, from the body and the grass and their swift escape from the morgue. The vampire was still visually arresting and beyond appealing, his hair falling in a dashing manner over his brow, his green eyes catching the light from the failing fire, glittering like tiny shards of glass.
“August deserved a proper send-off,” Angel muttered, eyes locked on the lowering flames. The fire, veil-fed, had quickly consumed August’s remains, and all traces of Angel’s casting gone with him. All that was left was a few stubborn pieces of blackened bone, but the mourning fire was steadily eating away at it. “And he wasn’t going to get it from the authorities. Least I could do for the man who taught me most of what I know. And I figured we’d already broken a dozen laws resurrecting him, so what was a little body theft added on top?”
Simeon huffed a laugh as if surprised Angel could find any humor in their situation, and Angel could see Simeon smiling at him out of the corner of his eye. “Every day I see some new layer to you, a ghra, and I find myself drawn in deeper each time.”
Simeon came closer until they sat hip to hip. Angel sighed, weary. While he was not tired in a magical sense, his connection to the veil still buzzing in the back of his mind and keeping him topped off, he was tired emotionally and mentally. His quiet life, while not exciting or full of affirming moments, had been all he knew for the last ten years. Now a vampire he’d never met before, and never heard of, was coming for him. His quiet and boring life was unraveling, revealing a new pattern in the thread that he wasn’t too pleased with—but there was no changing it.
He was raised during the pinnacle of the Blood Wars—he was incapable of backing down from a mortal threat. Old, old habits were battling with his desire to keep his life quiet and uncomplicated.
Angel dropped his head, resting it on Simeon’s shoulder. The Elder froze for a moment as if afraid Angel would change his mind and pull away, but the longer Angel stayed there, the more the vampire relaxed. Angel’s body heat seeped into Simeon, the vampire warming, sharing the heat between them.
The bones grayed to ash and crumbled apart, and the meager light cast off by the dying flames fell to darkness. Death magic consumed, the mourning pyre went out. Human bodies, even sorcerers’, had little in the way of death magic in their remains, and the mourning fire always went out when the body was consumed, keeping collateral damage to a minimum.
Unlike the undead. Angel cut off that dangerous thought before it could throw memories back in his face.
Overhead the moon and stars were obscured by gathering clouds and the growing fog, this time of nature’s making. Darkness in the Commons was extreme, even amidst the scattered iron lamps and the reflected glares from the high rises.
“Who is Deimos, Simeon?” Angel asked after long minutes of quiet contemplation. The vampire’s face when the revenant spoke the name was bothering him, and Angel could tell Simeon knew something.
Simeon was silent, and Angel could almost feel him thinking about whether or not to tell him anything. After a few minutes, Angel still leaning against the vampire, waiting patiently, Simeon spoke.
“My Master heard about what happened here when we moved the Bloodclan to Boston. About you and your family, I mean. Not many details to go on with the vampires slain, since supposedly none survived, but rumors abound. One rumor is that the clan destroyed was betrayed by one of the clan’s legates—you know this term?” Simeon asked, interrupting himself.
“I do—it’s the third rank in a Bloodclan hierarchy. Master, elder, legate, unranked masters and then the clan soldiers, and then the average bloodsucker.”
“The only name we heard aside from the families directly involved in the feud was Deimos—who betrayed his cla
n in exchange for wealth and magical powers gifted by the Macavoys. My master sent inquiries to Stonegate Prison where the members of the Macavoy clan guilty of the attack on your family are serving out their sentences. The one name they got back was Deimos, and that he had been a legate in a smaller Providence Bloodclan. He disappeared just before the attack on your family. The assumption was that the Macavoys or one of the other families killed him to prevent him from disclosing details of the attack before it could be enacted. No one knows if anyone else survived, and that name was the only one we got.”
Angel absorbed that bit of news, his body tensing for a moment before he consciously relaxed.
“Forgive me, a ghra, for not telling you,” Simeon whispered, head down, face in shadow. “I did not wish to pain you more in regards to your past. All we had was a name, nothing more.”
Angel stared ahead into the darkness, eyes unseeing, thinking. He should probably be mad. Angry that Simeon never told him any of this, but then common sense kicked in. Why get mad when he made it so no one was willing to discuss with him the events surrounding his family and their murders? Not that he would react that badly, but he never volunteered to speak of it, and never encouraged people to speak to him if they did broach the subject. He shut down, emotionally and behaviorally, and really, what would he have done if Simeon told him? Angel never went after the Macavoys after what they did, nor any of the other families. Knowing the name of a presumed dead traitor would have done nothing to change the fact his family was dead. And this traitor hadn’t betrayed the Salvatore’s, but his own kind and Bloodclan and any retribution that was owed him would come from the vampires, not Angel.
