The Wicca-Man: Tongue-Tied

by Emily Veinglory

  “I smelt Thane on him,” she said. “And all over this place. On this bed.”

  “Whatever you’ve done to young Thane,” the elder said, “undo it. Witch.”

  He put more disdain into the word than Sean would have thought possible. It was hatred devoid of any respect, like a man might have for wounded livestock, fit only to be destroyed. Part of Sean would be happy to do whatever this monster said, if only to have the binding free to use on his attacker instead. Although the thought of a besotted elder vampire about the house ...

  “Thane has to be here for me to undo the spell,” Sean said as reasonably as he could whilst hardly able to draw breath. His voice came out as little more than a squeak, and he prayed he could just buy a little time. After all, what he was saying was entirely true.

  “I guess that if you killed the witch, that would do it,” the girl said helpfully.

  This, unfortunately, was also true. The elder laughed. Sean tried to think of some other working that he could use without ritual or grand gestures -- and came up with nothing. Given a week or two to prepare, he could make the better part of the city forget their mother’s name, or give every woman within miles the urge to eat lemon sorbet, but since encountering what he thought of as the god of the shadows, Sean had not paid much attention to the narrowly focused glamours that could make any individual do anything, let alone anything useful. Like any ardent academic, Sean had deflected his interest into patterns and possibilities. The theoretical structure of magic and what it told you about the world still interested Sean. He just wasn’t the sort of man who wanted to actually wield that kind of power anymore. If it wasn’t for Granny’s unsolicited input, I’d already be dead.

  Sean tried to cobble together a feeling of how to work a quick and dirty glamour just to hold them off long enough for him to escape. But the situation didn’t lend itself to complex and arcane thought.

  The elder leaned over him, gaping mouth smelling like a fish market, and Sean lost any grasp he had on rational thought and tried futilely to struggle, but he could hardly move. He tried to shout and barely emitted a feeble squawk as fingers like iron bands squeezed the air from his lungs. With one final gulp, he managed to whisper, “The binding makes him protect me, so if I die, it might have a bad effect on him, a recoil.”

  Even he had to admit that he was a terrible liar, and the very attempt seemed to irritate the elder vampire. The girl laughed shrilly, but it seemed as much from nervousness as amusement, as the elder struck, biting down on Sean’s shoulder deep and bruising, piercing, hard.

  Sean screamed then, with fear so great he felt the sound came more from his stomach than his lungs. He shouted and did everything he could, which amounted to little more than throwing his head from side to side. Hark to the great witch-man now, little more than a beast to the slaughter. Damp covers twisted around his legs. Sean flailed his arms, feeling one wrist caught and cut. He distantly surmised that the girl did not intend to be left out of the feast.

  Sean felt detached from his body, even from the pain. He ceased to struggle, as escape became a blatant impossibility. The sting was only pain this time, pain that grew until it drowned his mind. By the time the elder stepped back from him, he felt cold, too weak to move, He barely saw the elder make some gesture to the girl as he left. And she stood standing over him like a human incarnation of the sword of Damocles. A feeling too weak to be panic washed over him, but his body could manage no more than a feeble jerk in response, fear fading only as awareness fled.

  His last thought surprised him. It was a comfort that Thane, at least, would be free.

  * * * * *

  Sean drifted into a state of dim discomfort, not really aware that he was alive. He was cold, but dreaded even trying to move. A slight sound brought him up towards the unwelcome embrace of consciousness.

  Were they still there? He willed his body to move, but it remained frigid and still. Only with creaking reluctance did his fingers clench slightly, with an associated wet tearing sensation in his left wrist. In the blackness behind his flickering eyelids, he struggled to remember. He felt a surface against his back, too soft to be floorboards. The world focused slowly, as if even his eyes were too tired to see. A figure loomed over him, and Sean flinched, raising his hands to fend off --

  But it was Thane that leaned over him, a strangely comforting presence. Sean was lying on his own bed, and pain lay in every limb. His heart stuttered and steadied. If Thane was here, then he was safe. In such a short time he had come to trust a man, a creature really, that he barely knew.

  “I came back just in time,” Thane said, placing his hand carefully on Sean’s forehead.

  Sean was surprised that his immediate response was to wonder if his survival really was for the best. Perhaps death at the hands of a monster was the most merciful escape his dilemma offered, certainly the surest release for Thane. At least it avoided harm to others, the thing any true Wiccan should care about the most.

  But he recognized this mood. He stumbled into depression from time to time, when surrender seemed the easiest solution to any tribulation. It was too cowardly a thought, and Sean pushed it away. He had dithered too long, and it was well past time he acted, that he lived properly according to his beliefs. Harm none. But was that even possible now, that none would be harmed in the midst of this tangle?

  “They aren’t dead?” Sean asked with dread. He looked weakly to the side and saw nothing but his familiar, unkempt room. Everything was just as he had left it, without the slightest sign of a struggle. Only his covers had been changed for fresh sheets still scented from the dryer and the old wooden chair pulled over so that Thane could sit by the side of the bed. The Venetian blinds let in slits of predawn grey to show how the night had bled away.

  Thane smoothed back Sean’s hair. “No more dead than they started out,” he said. “They were a bit too quick for me, and my main concern was you, not them.”

  “But an elder ... How could you possibly?”

  “Loving someone deeply gives you courage,” Thane said and then sighed. “But actually the elder had already gone, and the girl didn’t make an issue of it. She just left. She’s a thinker, that one. You never know what she’s up to.” Thane settled back in the chair. “It is strange, you know. I suddenly know what it’s like to care for someone. I was so lost, and I didn’t even know it, so heartless. I killed even when it was not needed. Other people were not even real to me except for what I could take from them. I could never go back to that. Not now that I have you, someone who does not wish death even upon vampires who tried to kill him.”

  Sean looked up at Thane; the vampire’s eyes were deeply shadowed beneath somber, slanted brows. This rather added a wrinkle to things. Sean had been assuming that the best thing for Thane would be release from the spell, but what if that was not the case? The Drull binding had changed Thane, seeming to imbue him with deeper feelings, even with a conscience. It sounded as if he would even choose to stay bespelled, and whose choice was that, after all? Who was to say Sean had the right to change Thane back to what he was without even asking? And yet how could Thane really be making a sincere choice whilst still affected?

  Thane kissed Sean quite chastely on the cheek. “You’ll be weak for a few days,” he said. “But I don’t think you’ll need hospital. Bites such as these, deep but clean, they heal and do not take infection.”

  Thane seemed coolly familiar with how the damage a vampire inflicted could be borne. It was a chilling window into his former life, but even this was balanced with tenderness.

  “Don’t worry about anything now. Just rest,” Thane urged. “I am sorry that I misjudged the other vampires’ mood, but we can talk about what we need to do, tomorrow.”

  Sean struggled to assimilate the flurry of peril and pain he had undergone, to see some way forward. He felt ashamed that he had no words; his mind drifted on eddies of confusion.

  “We do need to talk,” Sean whispered.

  “We do,” Thane agr
eed as he pulled the cover up over Sean’s chest. “Tomorrow.”

  Sean watched Thane slip from the room, with muted regret. He would have felt safer if he could still see Thane, but closing his eyes, he could hear quiet movements in the living room. Sean raised his hand but stayed it before he touched the source of the ache at the base of his throat. Right now he didn’t really want to know how bad it was.

  He would have to find a way to understand what Thane really wanted, what the real, essential Thane would freely choose. And that is what he would do.

  * * * * *

  Thane called in sick on Sean’s behalf early in the morning. He also called Laura at home to say that Sean would not be at the convocation scheduled for that night. It was a relief to have an excuse, under the circumstances.

  Thane dropped the exams into the department. They were all marked, but the remaining grades still had to be entered into the database by the end of the day. There were a few more exams to come in, and then Sean would have no onerous duties for several weeks. At least nothing Rhea couldn’t handle. She could do the data entry, and Thane might give her something to think about when it came to her amorous intentions.

  When Thane returned, he chided Sean to eat, but settled for brewing tea from herbs out of Sean’s jars; there wasn’t anything as prosaic as a teabag to be found in the place. Sean made him bring each one through to make sure he didn’t mix in one of the poisonous herbs. It was a Stepford Wives sort of experience, except that in this case Sean knew full well what kind of creature lurked below this smooth, domesticated appearance. In his weakened state, there was very little that he could do but wait and hope to Hecate that something would come to him, some way out of the spider’s parlor (or to get the spider out of his).

  At about 5:30 p.m. the doorbell rang. Sean frowned. No one ever came to his place; he never invited them, and his few friends were too courteous to push the matter, although they sometimes joked about his inhospitable ways. Thane answered the door, and Sean heard the startling sound of both Kevin’s and Laura’s voices from the cramped hallway. His worlds were colliding with a vengeance; they must both have been worried by whatever excuse Thane had given and decided to drop by.

  He could hear a muttered conference between Thane and his visitors.

  “... got beaten up,” Thane explained as he showed them through without hesitation.

  Kevin’s face creased with concern when he saw Sean, but his voice was still light. “Gay-bashing?” he asked.

  “Witch-bashing, more like,” Laura said with a frown.

  And that pretty much got the whole thing over with, as their mutually surprised expressions proved. Sean was out, and out, at least where the two people he could probably called ‘friends’ were concerned. He really didn’t have the strength for this, and Laura was glancing back at Thane in a way that suggested she had just worked out that the overgrown houseboy was a vampire. That was a whole other level of complication; Sean distracted her as best he could.

  “Hi, Kevin, this is Laura. We’re both witches; she’s in my coven. Hi, Laura, this is Kevin from work, and yes, I’m gay. I guess you gave me a few chances to mention that, but, well ...”

  They both stared at him blankly for a moment, processing the information.

  “Dark horse, aren’t you,” Kevin said. “Any chance of a cup of that tea?”

  It was a blessed relief to discover how truly trustworthy and sensible Kevin was, even though they had never been exactly close; Sean had to concede that was entirely down to him, after all. Kevin went out to help Thane in the kitchen, giving Sean just long enough to whisper to Laura, “Yes, he is a vampire. I used an old family binding spell on him and suffered a visit from some other vampires who don’t like it.”

  “So it wasn’t him?”

  “Thane? Hardly!”

  “Talking about me?” Thane asked archly. He and Kevin had come back with tea and biscuits, and there was soon a makeshift tea party spread over Sean’s desk and the lower part of his bed. Thane sat on the bed with easy intimacy. Kevin was on the chair, and Laura perched upon the desk.

  “A witch and a behaviorist,” Kevin said, eyeing the more ornate home altar Sean kept on the top of his bookshelf. “How do you manage that?”

  “Oh, don’t get him started on that,” Laura said. “I know more about radical behaviorism than I ever wanted to. But I do feel a fool for all those times I tried to set you up with my female friends. Why didn’t you tell me? I have male friends, too, you know. Some of them are very nice.”

  “You needn’t bother now,” Thane said in a tone that was not entirely in jest.

  “So you two are ...” Kevin asked.

  Sean said, “No, not really.”

  Thane said, “Yes.”

  Sean met his eyes. “Thane, it bloody well isn’t going to work out. For reasons you well know.”

  Thane shrugged and smiled in that way a person does when they are blindly ignoring you. Kevin and Laura exchanged glances. Sean closed his eyes and prayed for the earth to swallow him up. He knew he was being horribly impolite, but he couldn’t stand the way the circle of this cozy, but false, domesticity was expanding. Apparently his pained expression reminded everyone that they shouldn’t be bothering a man in his state. Sean heard Laura stand and felt her fingers briefly on his shoulder.

  “You should rest, and I must get to the grove for the convocation,” Laura said. “Kevin, I saw you came in your own car. Perhaps you could give me a lift up to the gardens?”

  “Oh, certainly,” Kevin said, clearly thrilled at having the chance to talk with her. “We’ll pop by tomorrow, I imagine,” he said. “Maybe you’ll be up to a proper chat then.”

  Thane let them out. Sean called out belatedly, “Laura, don’t tell them ...” before running out of words that he wanted any of the neighbors to overhear. “Damn.”

  He shuddered at the thought of the conversation Laura and Kevin would be having on the way, let alone what Laura might let slip to the almighty bloody Opal, coven crone and pagan puritan. Thane returned to tidy up and dim the lights. Sean was just dozing off when Thane came back and settled on the edge of the bed. Sore as Sean felt, he certainly was going to be sharing the bed -- that temptation, at least, was out of reach. Sean opened his eyes and gave Thane a glowering look. Then he thought better of it.

  “I appreciate that you saved me, that you’re looking after me.”

  “It’s a just the spell, surely,” Thane mocked gently. “Not any virtue of mine.”

  He stripped off his clothes and slid under the covers with exceeding care, occupying no more than a few inches at the edge of the mattress but sliding his arm carefully, supportively under Sean’s head in place of the slumped pillow. The darkened bedroom was restful and still, not broken even by a lover’s breath.

  Chapter Three

  Dawn broke, or at least Sean’s consciousness collided with it, to the electronic bray of the landline. The phone’s ring was set, quiet deliberately, just a little bit too loud for even the laziest of men to ignore. Sean fumbled forward and found his reach blocked by a well-defined pectoral muscle and the protests of his own lacerated wrist.

  “Are you sure you need to get that?” Thane sighed and reached backwards, answering the phone himself with a propriety and non-specific “Yes?” Then, “Just a moment.”

  Sean lay back down with the cold plastic receiver pressed to his ear.

  “Was that it?” asked the distinctively piercing voice of Opal English, current crone of the coven and she-who-must-be-obeyed beneath the outwardly egalitarian creed they followed. Her voice, like the phone, was always pitched to be too piercing to ignore, perhaps as an innate countermeasure of her disagreeable personality and inability to say anything worth listening to.

  “You have something to say, Opal?”

  “Word came to the convocation that you have used coercive magics, black spells, and as such are not eligible to be one of our number. Our coven has no desire to shelter such as you improperly with
in the accord.”

  Something deep in Sean’s gut curdled. “Does the condemned man get to speak in his own defense?”

  “We have called an emergency meeting. I do hope that you appreciate that our members are giving up their precious Saturday afternoon to deal with this matter with full rigor, when there really is no valid defense for your actions.”

  Gods forbid that my world falling apart should interfere with repotting the petunias or walking the dog. Sean screwed his eyes shut and wondered why the hell Laura hadn’t at least given him some warning he was under the vulture queen’s all too beady eye. Any practitioner who wasn’t in a recognized coven was pretty much fair game. It was a loose association of all of the groups within the accord that policed and protected their members and left anyone they declared outside to fend for themselves against the more vicious elements of the occult subculture.

  “I guess I’ll be going with ‘self-defense’,” he muttered. Maybe it will cover me for crone-icide, too.

  “You do know that we never held with that convenient codicil of the Lucien creed, young man. And deep in my heart I knew you did not have the moral fiber to abide by the holy rule as it stands. But make what excuses you wish. We’ll meet at my domicile by noon, if you please. Do not bring that creature with you.”

  It was a relative pleasure to hear the drone of the dial tone after the fingernails-on-blackboard cadences of Opal English, the woman who put the ‘b’ in witch.

  “Oh, I am so screwed,” Sean muttered.

  “Your wish is my command,” purred Thane.

  Sean pried his eyes open. Thane’s expression suggested, fortunately, that he was joking. Sean didn’t feel up to anything more than a brisk yawn and the arduous task of turning over to sleep on his other side -- albeit at the risk of turning his back, and other portions of his dorsal anatomy, on Thane. But he did need to find some way to stay in the accord, or he would have more to worry about than an amorous revenant.