Hexbreaker - Jordan L. Hawk

by Jordan L. Hawk

  “Greedy boy,” Cicero teased. His lips kissed the base of Tom’s spine again. Then the bed rocked slightly as he shifted position. “I’ll go slow, but tell me if it gets to be too much.”

  Tom nodded. Cicero had certainly seemed to like it when they did it the other way, and—

  A gasp escaped him as Cicero pressed in. “Relax,” Cicero murmured, which was easy for him to say. “Bear down, if you want—that can make it easier.”

  It did. Cicero slid in further—and then something relaxed involuntarily. “There we go,” Cicero said. “Is this good?”

  “Aye,” Tom said. “More. Please. More.”

  Cicero’s fingers tightened on his hips as he pushed in. “Fuck, Thomas,” he panted. “You feel like heaven.” He grunted as he started to thrust with shallow strokes.

  Then his cock hit just right, and Tom bucked beneath him. “Oh hell, like that, aye, please.”

  Cicero laughed, a joyful sound, and did it again. Tom groaned and gasped, rocking back to meet Cicero now. Cicero bent over Tom’s back, wrapping one arm around Tom’s chest and grasping his prick with the other hand.

  Tom became aware he was making a low, animal sound in his throat, but he didn’t care. Cicero’s cock opened him, invaded him, left him with nowhere to hide. Their bodies moved together like one thing, and Cicero’s hand stroked him, a tight tunnel slick with oil.

  “Now, Thomas,” Cicero growled. “Feel me here with you. Reach for the magic.”

  And oh God, he could feel Cicero, so intensely. His prick inside, his arms around, and something else, something more, twined with Tom deeper than any fucking could reach. Something hot bloomed in his chest, right behind his heart—the vibration of magic, but in him now, not outside.

  “Aye,” he gasped. “I feel you, I feel—”

  “Focus on the hex.” Cicero’s voice was harsh, strained, as if it took all his will to hold back from coming. “Touch it and feel.”

  Tom wrapped his fingers around the silver disk. A flat bit of crystal set into one side bit into his palm. On the other side, he could sense the lines of the engraved hex. They almost seemed to form a cage meant to hold something wild.

  Cicero cried out sharply, thrusting hard as he climaxed. Tom’s body acted as a conduit, magic flowing into the hex, until it was full and vibrating.

  “Light!” Tom gasped.

  The crystal blazed, blue white light spilling from between his clenched fingers. And Cicero’s hand was on his prick, tugging, and it was too much, too much, and he shouted as he came.

  Tom let his head drop. His arms felt weak, and he collapsed into the bed. Rolling over, he held up the hexlight.

  “We did it,” he whispered in wonder.

  Cicero chuckled and plucked the glowing light from his hand. “That we did, my witch.”

  Tom grinned. “Your witch. I like that.”

  Cicero’s eyes softened, and he leaned in to kiss Tom tenderly. “So do I.”

  Cicero tucked his gloved hands beneath his armpits in an attempt to keep them warm. He and Tom huddled in a doorway within sight of the Rooster’s side door, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Scarves muffled the lower parts of their faces, and he’d borrowed an old hat from Tom, which hung ridiculously low over his forehead. Not that many people were about in the cold to notice them, but after dancing at the Rooster, he didn’t want to take the chance that anyone would recognize him on the street.

  Not that they’d likely been looking at his face when he danced. But still.

  “Rook and Dominic have been in there half an hour,” Tom said, voice muffled by his scarf. “What did they have planned?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Tom sighed, but it had an affectionate tone. Even though Cicero faced away from Tom, he sensed his witch’s presence. He had the feeling that, if pressed, he’d be able to say exactly where Tom stood, in what attitude. Whether he was happy or sad. How fast his heart beat.

  After making love, they’d slept the afternoon away in each other’s arms. Eventually, Cicero had slipped out of bed, leaving Tom behind while he shifted into cat form. He made a circuit of the apartment, rubbing his head and sides against everything in reach, making sure it all smelled like him, too.

  He glanced at Tom, and the sight of his lover’s face made his heart swell with emotion. He’d been so lucky to have found a good man like Tom. If he hadn’t walked into Ferguson’s office that day…

  Perhaps they would have met anyway. Maybe there were such things as fate and fairytale endings.

  The sound of muffled cries drifted from the Rooster. Cicero returned his attention to the building, his nostrils flaring automatically as he sorted the wind for scent. Not that he could smell much in this form.

  The sounds grew louder—the front door must be open now. People spilled across the intersection with the side street, and colored smoke appeared above the roofline, lit from below by the gas lamps.

  “Fire!” Tom gasped. “Blast it—they were supposed to cause a distraction, not burn the place to the ground! And why the devil didn’t Sloane keep the anti-fire hexes charged?”

  “Don’t worry.” Cicero grabbed Tom’s wrist before he could take off up the street to assist. “There aren’t any flames, just colored smoke. It’s a sort of firework. Mingzhu’s relatives over off Elm make them.”

  “Mingzhu?”

  “She’s a carp familiar.”

  Tom’s mouth opened, then closed. “You’re joking.”

  “Not at all.” Cicero returned his gaze to the side door, which remained shut. “It’s a rare form, and valuable. She and her witch patrol the waterfront, search for bodies in the river, follow river pirates back to their lairs, that sort of thing. She’s very beautiful, for a fish. Gold and white.”

  The side door swung open, and the guard whose nose Tom had broken ran out, bluish smoke trailing after him. In the distance, bells clanged—the fire company was on its way. “Now.”

  They raced up the street and darted into the side door. A haze of smoke hung in the air, and Tom started to cough. “Rook overdid it—what a surprise,” Cicero muttered.

  The hall was deserted as they made their way to the cellar door. “Let me go first,” Tom cautioned. “In case there’s another trap hex.”

  There wasn’t. Sloane appeared to think they wouldn’t dare come back. Or be foolish enough to do so, perhaps.

  They hurried to the wall with the concealed entrance and hastily shoved boxes aside. The door was locked, of course, so Tom took out an unlocking hex. “Open,” he murmured. The door swung open onto darkness. Cold air drifted out, bearing on it the smell of damp brick and slime.

  Cicero took out their hexlight and passed it to Tom. He felt something, like a sharp tug behind his breastbone, as Tom drew on his magic to charge it again. “Light,” Tom murmured, and the crystal began to glow. Raising it above his head, Tom stepped cautiously into the tunnel. With his other hand, he drew the revolver Dominic had given him. “Which way, do you think?”

  Cicero slipped in beside him. To the left the tunnel sloped gently down toward the waterfront. To the right, it headed up. “Left?” he guessed. “The neighborhoods are always worse the nearer you get to the docks. Anarchists aren’t generally well to do.”

  “Good point.”

  “I’ll go ahead in cat form,” Cicero said. “I can see better, and if there is anyone else down here at the moment, I’ll spot their light long before they spot yours.”

  Tom didn’t look happy. “Be careful.”

  “I will. Remember, I can call you for help now, any moment I need it.”

  “Still, be cautious.”

  “I always am, tesoro.”

  Cicero shifted and made his way down the tunnel. If he had to guess, it was an old drain, blocked or built over and long forgotten. The brick walls were narrow, and the floor formed a “v” shape, which would make footing treacherous for Tom. The scent of rats sent his whiskers to twitching. For now, he ignored them, even when he caught si
ght of a tail whisking out of sight into a crack between the bricks. He stalked bigger prey tonight.

  An unevenness to the bricks and the scent of fresher mortar caught his attention. He sat on his haunches and studied the tunnel ahead, tail curled neatly around his feet. Tom caught up with him in a few moments.

  “Huh,” Tom said, inspecting the recent alterations. “An iron door. See how it’s set into the ceiling, ready to drop? The lever will be a bit further on. Some of the more organized tunnel gangs use them in case of a raid. Gives everyone a chance to clear out while the police are trying to get through. Most of them ain’t as sturdy as this, though.”

  He sounded worried. Cicero’s tail twitched as they continued on, past the door. As Tom had guessed, there was a lever set into the wall another twenty feet or so down the tunnel.

  The silence in the tunnels felt unnatural, somehow. They passed evidence that people had been down here: cigarette ends, a bit of newspaper that still stank of the fish it had wrapped, an empty bottle. Probably this was just a pass through between the Rooster, the warehouse, and wherever the anarchists holed up, as Tom had suggested.

  Other scents drifted on the air, and Cicero slowed warily. A conglomeration of animals had been through here.

  Familiars?

  And beneath their living smell came something else. The whiff of blood.

  Cicero eased forward, nearly on his belly. The tunnel came into a vault, where other drains joined to form a larger one. Water trickled down some of them, and the bricks were green and slick.

  A dead body lay in the center of the room.

  Cicero’s back arched, and he let out an involuntarily hiss. Tom went pale in the ghostly light, and he approached the body cautiously. Cicero shifted back to human form and joined him.

  There was little left of the man. He’d been all but torn to pieces, savage bites showing in his flesh, one arm ripped clean away. As if he’d been set upon by beasts. Only his face remained relatively unscathed.

  Phelps.

  “That’s the man who came to the apartment,” Cicero said, his voice shaking even as he spoke. “Why is he here?”

  “I don’t…” Tom shook his head, clearly bewildered. “What happened to him?”

  Cicero took a step back, as if to put distance between himself and whatever had happened. “He was torn apart by animals. Familiars, they must be, because why else would they be down here?” Bile rose in his throat. “Dogs. Reptiles. Cats. I even thought I smelled a hawk.”

  Tom’s blue eyes widened, and his skin turned the color of old cheese. “A hawk?”

  “Yes.”

  Tom stared at Phelps for another moment. Then something seemed to fall into place. “It’s a trap,” he said. “Run. Run!”

  Cicero didn’t waste time arguing, only shifted into cat form and headed back the way they’d come. Tom charged after him, steps echoing loudly off the close walls of the vault. The revolver felt heavy in his hand, and the hexlight flung insane shadows on the rough brick. Behind him came the excited barking of dogs, the bay of a wolf.

  The ki-ki-ki of a goshawk.

  It couldn’t be Molly. Molly was dead these last eight years. But she shifted into a goshawk, and had been a part of the gang, and Sloane’s hexes were similar, if not the same, to the ones they’d stolen, and—

  And what had Phelps said at the apartment? “I saw someone else from the old days. I passed on your regards, of course.”

  Tom had assumed Phelps meant another member of his old gang, but what if he’d referred to Molly? What if Phelps, in the course of threatening her, mentioned the name Tom Halloran? The name that just happened to match that of the bartender who’d been trying to get into the tunnels beneath the Rooster.

  Phelps had been mauled to death and left here, his face untouched, for them to find.

  There came a loud squeal of unoiled metal against metal. Ahead of them, the iron door began to ratchet down.

  “Go!” Tom bellowed. “I’m right behind you!”

  Cicero easily passed beneath the lowering door. But Tom was slower, his footing less certain on the sharply slanted floor. The door squealed closer and closer to the ground—

  He flung himself onto his side and rolled, praying he wasn’t crushed by the heavy iron. Instead, he caromed off of it, just a few inches too wide to fit. He caught a glimpse of Cicero’s eyes, the only thing he could make out amidst the black fur and shadows.

  Then the door slammed shut between them.

  “Thomas!”

  Tom scrambled to his feet. He could feel Cicero’s fear hammering at the back of his brain, but it was all distraction at the moment. He braced himself, feet firmly on the floor, gun leveled and ready to fire.

  Dogs loped up the tunnel in front of him, accompanied by a wolf. An adder clung to the wolf’s throat like a necklace, its tongue flicking in and out toward Tom. Their eyes reflected the light he still clutched in his hand. He might be able to shoot one or two, but the rest would fall on him and tear him to pieces. He was going to die here, just as Phelps had died.

  At least Cicero had escaped.

  There came a footstep behind the familiars. One of them had taken human form to pull the lever, no doubt. Tom squinted into the darkness as the steps approached. The pack parted, and his light fell over features shockingly familiar, even after the passage of years.

  Molly.

  “Liam?” she asked, and her voice cracked, like ice above a river of sorrow. “Fur and feathers, Phelps wasn’t lying. It is you.”

  Ropes bound Tom to a chair; it creaked whenever he moved, but seemed far too sturdy to be easily broken. Molly and the familiars had taken his gun from his unresisting hand, then herded him back down the tunnels. Eventually, they’d brought him to this damp basement. Marks on the floor showed where furniture had stood until recently, but only a few chairs and a small table remained. High above, a narrow window looked out onto ground level. Its glass had been broken out, and the distant sounds of the predawn city drifted in.

  “We have to leave,” said one of the familiars. His breath steamed in the bone-chilling cold of the basement. “There’s no time for this, Molly. Kill him and be done with it.”

  “There’s time,” she replied heavily. “Go on, the rest of you. I’ll be along soon enough.”

  Several of them gave her worried looks, but none objected, merely trooped away up the stairs. Whatever was going on, clearly Molly was in charge.

  When they were gone, she slowly crossed the room to stand near Tom. She wore a plain dress, gone gray from a thousand washings, the sort of thing that a factory worker or rag picker would wear. The light of the single lantern revealed silver threads in her red hair and played along lines in her face that hadn’t been there the last time they’d seen one another.

  “You’re alive,” he said, lips numb. “Saint Mary, you’re alive. I thought…”

  “You thought you were the only survivor. So did I.” She sat down in the chair opposite him. “You’re a copper now, ain’t you, Liam?”

  There was no point in lying anymore. “Aye.”

  She shook her head, her expression one of disbelief. “Danny must be rolling in his grave. And your parents…it’s a mercy they didn’t live to see this.”

  “I didn’t set out to be one!” he exclaimed, although why he felt he had to justify his life to her, he wasn’t sure. Maybe because they’d been family, once. “If I’d known you were alive, I would never have done it,” he went on, which was nothing but the truth. “I would have found you instead. What happened, Molly?”

  She looked away, rubbing at her upper arms as if for warmth. “A familiar feels it, when her witch dies,” she said, her voice cracking. “Did you know?”

  “Nay.” And it had been his hexbreaking that had killed Danny. “I’m sorry, Molly. I didn’t think it would hurt him.”

  “Neither of us did. And it ain’t like we had the time to consider. Not in the midst of fire and blood, and your da eating your ma’s face.”


  His gorge rose, but he forced it down. “I killed him, too. Da. All of them as weren’t shot by the other gangs or burned up by the fire. They called it a riot, after. No one knew what really happened. Except for us, I guess.”

  “I know.” She glanced back at him. “I went to Chicago. I was a feral now, so I found other ferals, and we banded together. Lived as best we could. Lot of politics happening in that city, after the Haymarket affair. Hard times for a lot of people.”

  “But you came back to New York.”

  “A few months ago.” Her expression eased slightly, to one more of triumph than sorrow. “Big things are taking place here, and I mean to be a part of them.”

  “The hexes?” he asked.

  “Aye. I went to the old tunnels, searched in all the old stashes. Your da was smart—he put one aside, in a safe place. Thinking he’d sell it later, I’d wager, or else use the design to make more.”

  “Smart?” Tom wanted to laugh, but from bitterness rather than humor. “He used one of the damned things himself! How fucking smart was that?” He tugged at the ropes. “You know what these hexes do, Molly. You saw it with your own eyes. I had to put down Danny and Da and the rest like a bunch of mad dogs, and you’re making more of them? Why would that seem like a good idea?”

  She rose to her feet. “Don’t you judge me, copper. You’ve spent years upholding everything that’s wrong with society. Just a hired thug with a gun and a nightstick, jumping to do the bidding of rich bastards like Roosevelt who sit sipping champagne in their private clubs. And all the while ferals are enslaved and drained until they die, and no one gives a fucking damn!”

  The lantern light glittered in her eyes, and her mouth was a savage red slash against her ivory skin. “Well not me. I ain’t going to just stand around and do nothing. There are people who want to reshape the world, boyo. And we ain’t going to let a little blood stop us.”

  His heart pounded. This sounded worse, far worse, than they’d ever guessed. “The anarchists?” he asked.