by TA Moore
“Took?” Madoc said. Then he dragged Took in close and kissed him with rough, almost desperate, possession. One hand stayed twisted painfully tight in Took’s hair and the other touched his face like it was precious. After a moment he leaned back and gave Took an exasperated glare. “Next time, you stupid bastard, close your eyes.”
It took a moment for Took to remember he didn’t need to breathe, so he couldn’t be literally breathless. He hitched a breath in raggedly. “What? Why?”
Madoc let him go and bent down to grab the naked Waring by the scruff of the neck. He dragged the limp sprawl of body to its feet and let him dangle. His lip curled with disdain.
“Because now we know how Waring got into his victim’s houses,” Madoc said. “He was inside them.”
That wasn’t right. It wasn’t wrong either.
Took rubbed his forehead. The stuff in his head felt like… light and cinnamon, alive as it writhed in an effort to get free of him. It ripped away, shred by shred, but he grabbed at it as it went.
A girl with no eyes and tea that made his mind splinter.
Books. Frustration. Surrender.
Skinny scarred arms, the flutter of black wings. All the little pale kids made of matchsticks and fire.
A car. A name. A—
“I didn’t do it,” Waring rasped as he opened his pale green eyes.
The threads of something that Took had fitted together went up like foxfire. He flinched away from the inside of his own head, but it didn’t want him just the bits of… other. Waring convulsed as the foxfire backlashed into him, his veins lit up from within as it scorched through. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he screamed.
It was only the second noise he’d made in years, and it flecked his lips bloody.
Madoc spat out a curse and wrestled Waring down onto the bed. Bare heels battered against the frame until they split and the fire struck out from his body at Madoc’s arms. Took reached for his gun, but other than the comfort of its weight, he wasn’t sure what to do with it. Madoc pinned Waring down by the shoulders as the boy flailed and screamed until the energy that burned through him finally flickered out and he went limp.
“Remember when people thought you were a sorcerer?” Madoc said as he finally leaned back. Unlike Took, who the fire had mostly left alone, Madoc’s fingers and forearm were striped with burns. “He is one.”
Took expelled what air he had left in his lungs on a whistle. “That was magic? Real magic?”
“This?” Madoc held up his burned arm and flexed his fingers. “That was magic. The cost of it was his…. No. Not silence, he could have written his denials, then. His voice. The ability to communicate.”
A car. A name. A… something….
It wasn’t a memory, more like a dream. Someone else’s dream, sketched in their dream symbols and scribbled lines.
“He hid them,” Took said. He rubbed his forehead again as if he could squeeze something else out, but it had all burned up. “Somehow he hid them. That’s why he held his tongue for so long, to keep them from being found.”
“Why speak now?” Madoc asked as he got up off the bed. He waved one hand at the still, singed boy draped on the thin cot in the uncomfortable sprawl of the profoundly unconscious. “What did it gain him?”
It had been just at Took’s fingertips, whatever scrap of memory he’d caught from Waring. He could see the car—the long, sleek Mustang nose that faded back into a sort of car-shaped notion, and the name was Gra… ce? Gra… y? A second longer and he’d have what came next.
Maybe? How could he?
“What happened?” he asked.
Madoc rubbed his thumb down the raw lines that ran from his lower eyelid to the corner of his mouth. “He jumped into you, crawled in through your eyes, and then tried to rip my face off. Luckily he didn’t seem able to access any of your training, and he was a piss-poor fighter. Sorry about the—”
He pointed at Took’s mouth. Took licked the blood off his lips. It had tasted better before, when he hadn’t tasted the heady sweetness of Madoc’s blood.
“I’ll assume it was necessary,” he said. “How did you… dislodge him?”
Madoc shrugged and walked over to hammer against the heavy metal door. “I didn’t,” he said. “He just didn’t seem to be able to keep control of you. Twice you just sort of collapsed, like your strings had been cut, but he managed to hang on to the reins. The third time he just spilled out of you, like old milk from a jug, and collapsed.”
“So you hit me again?”
“You came up swinging,” Madoc countered coolly. “I didn’t know what effect the… possession… might have had on you.”
Took wondered what it would be like for someone to find themselves in his brain. It was locked doors, trapdoors hidden under rugs, and basic things that he never thought about—the wine they’d had at the party when he’d been… thought he’d been taken, for example—because it triggered a cascade of bad memories until something split a scar open and the worst memory spilled out.
He could hardly blame Waring for cutting out. If he had the option, he might too.
“I think he left… thoughts, memories… behind,” Took explained slowly. He paused while Madoc hammered on the door again. “Bits of magic maybe? I could see them in my brain, fragments of Waring caught in aspic. I think he could see it too as I picked through them. When he broke his silence, I’d just seen a car, half of a name, and… something important. Something he really didn’t want me to see.”
“Like what?”
Took spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t know,” he said. “When he spoke, it all went up in flames. Only impressions are left. Guesswork.”
“Better for him if you got more,” Madoc said dourly. “Once the boyars know he’s a sorcerer…? Some of them were too, once. They know how to track the fracture lines. It might take a while, but they’ll crack the boy open like a lobster.”
The last thing that Took wanted to feel for Waring was sympathy, not when the inside of his mind still ached with the intrusion. On the other hand, he knew what it was like to be used, to be broken open and your insides picked out. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
“Do you have to tell them?”
Madoc gave a fatalistic shrug and gestured at the salt-crusted walls around them. The flare of magic had spread fractal patterns of green through the medium. “They’ll know.”
The hatch of the door popped open and James stared in. Gray eyes found Madoc first and then flashed to the sprawled, naked, bruised body on the cot. In the absence of any other context, Took couldn’t blame his old instructor for the flash of bleak, terrible anger that crossed his face.
“I will have your badge for this Madoc,” James snapped, his face pulled in tight, angular lines framed by the narrow rectangle of the slot. “Then I’ll lock you up down here in the deepest hole I can find, down where you’ll never even smell fresh air on my clothes again. And what the hell, Bennett, you just let him brutalize that kid?”
Took flinched at the accusation. He’d have hoped that James knew him better than that, but then…. Madoc could say the same. Took should have known better than to suspect him, yet he still had.
“The boy’s a sorcerer,” Madoc snapped as he rapped his knuckles against the door. “He nearly killed us. We’re lucky salt blocks pure magic as well as inhibits us, or he would have walked out of here in your skin.”
James looked dubious. “I’ve never seen him do anything like that. Not even light a match or stir a breeze.”
“It takes a year to work a spell,” Madoc said. “And magic is fickle.”
That still wasn’t enough to convince James. It was Took’s turn to gesture at the walls. “Look at it,” he said. “If it wasn’t magic, what did we use? Limeade?”
It took James a second to pick out the lightning-bolt spray of green over the walls, half-hidden between the one set of shelves upright and the door to the small, barren bathroom. Once he did, he still had a suspicious cast t
o his mouth, but he let them out.
“I had no reason to suspect the boy was—”
“No, we all had reason,” Madoc said blankly. “We just didn’t see him. Do you know the protocols to bind a sorcerer?”
James reluctantly shook his head. He frowned at Waring’s still body as though he wanted the unconscious young man to do something to prove Madoc’s allegation.
“I never had need,” he admitted. “I’ve seen a dozen so-called magic users, claim they can cast a miracle to summon a dragon or ride the storm. They were all left with their dick in their hands when nothing happened.”
“Trust me,” Madoc said grimly. “The one time their spell works, you’ll be glad to have some recourse. Do you have a graveyard on site?”
James drew back in distaste. He still looked suspicious. “What possible fucking reason do you have to ask that?”
“Because I assume you have no stable,” Madoc replied with a grim smile. “I need iron nails, from a horseshoe or a coffin. Whichever is easiest to find.”
James rubbed his hand over his head. “Neither is easier,” he said. “Would a nail from the store not do as well?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Took asked. He felt suddenly exhausted, as though he could just lie down and sleep in the salt. The inside of him felt raw, as though whatever Waring had done had chafed him on the way through. Revulsion curdled in his stomach at the thought—the same sick knot he felt whenever the VINE psychiatrists probed too hard about what he’d forgotten—but he couldn’t muster anger. That flash of Waring’s motivation was still too sharp in the back of his head. If Took had been that desperate to protect something, maybe he’d have done the same thing. “Iron is iron.”
Madoc shrugged. “Or it isn’t,” he said. “A coffin nail or a horse nail is what’s prescribed. Why risk being wrong?”
“I’ll send a guard to the nearest ranch,” James said. “It will cause fewer questions than if I sent him to defile a graveyard. That will take a few hours, though. We don’t encourage people to settle nearby, even if the land were hospitable enough to draw them.”
“Take your time. I still need to speak to the boyars, add this wrinkle to the ones we already handed them.” Madoc paused as he turned to look at Took. “You should go back to the plane. The boyars wouldn’t speak to you anyhow, even if I wanted you to be under their attention. Feed. Rest.”
It was masochism that made Took take a sidelong look at James. He already knew what he’d see, the discomfort in gray eyes and distaste in the curl of a lip, because they were what he felt… usually felt. After the last few days he had spent too much energy to muster much self-loathing.
A little of course—he was tired, not dead—but it was mixed with a dose of bitter defiance. Maybe it was all the salt. He hoped it lasted.
“If you’re sure?” he said.
Part of him squirmed uncomfortably at the idea he’d just leave Madoc to deal with this. He’d gotten used to aggressively pulling his weight as the only human Biter in the field. But he still had a meeting to attend, and it would be easier if he didn’t have to sneak from under Madoc’s attention to do it.
“Go,” Madoc said. He kicked the leg of Waring’s cot with his foot. “This doesn’t fall under your purview.”
Calculation flickered over James’s face. It didn’t take VINE’s best behavioral scientist to follow his train of thought. However uncomfortable he was with the idea of Took’s hunger, he judged he’d be a lot more uncomfortable with a tired, pissed-off cardinal in his passenger seat. And no one ever seemed to come away from the boyars without being pissed off.
“I’ll drive you,” he said. “I have to go into town anyhow, and then Agent Madoc will have the car when he’s ready to leave.”
“That works,” Took said. “Thanks.”
Madoc scowled but nodded reluctantly. “That’s convenient.”
After one last look around the cell, James shook himself and stepped back into the hall. “Give me five minutes to brief my team. This will have roused some of the lighter sleepers. I want everyone prepared and with answers for the ones that still talk.”
“I’ll come with you,” Took said quickly. He guiltily avoided Madoc’s eyes as he ducked out the door after James. Maybe he couldn’t muster much anger against Waring, but the idea of being shut up with him—
He didn’t know why he still fought. It never worked. Maybe it was stubbornness or the fear just short-circuited everything else to hijack his body and make him flail. One of them dealt him a casual blow that made his ears ring, before they threw him into the room. It stank like a trap house, that acrid stench that reached down to what was left of Agent Luke Bennett, and they locked the door behind him. In the dark, he sat up and said… The words were gone, scratched out of his brain. They wouldn’t come back for him for a long time.
—was something different.
Madoc stepped out after them. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of being locked in there either, or the singed, biological smell that clung to the salt.
“Three nails,” he told James. “Best to get six, in case you need to do this again.”
“He’s slated to die soon,” James said. “If it takes a year for him to muster a spell—”
“They won’t execute him now,” Madoc said. “Not even for dead dhampirs. There are maybe a hundred sorcerers in the US, all in the Senate’s employ, and maybe a dozen of them have any real power. Most would spend a year to win an hour’s glimpse into the future or give their enemies scabies. He’s too valuable to kill if they can break him. And if they can’t break him, they can trade him back to the home country. Tepes collects magic users like a child collects baubles.”
For the first time, James seemed to register the bitter chill of the prison. He shuddered and rubbed his hands together.
“I’d choose the sword,” he said.
“As would I,” Madoc said. “But he won’t get the choice.”
He turned to Took and caught his hand. The brush of his lips over Took’s knuckles, the hint of fang behind the soft curve, was sweetly familiar but felt more intimate than a kiss under James’s watchful eye. Heat caught at the tips of Took’s ears and between his legs as Madoc grazed his tongue along the dip between Took’s knuckles.
“Rest,” Madoc said in a low, rough voice that was somehow thickly sexual. “You’ll need it.”
Then Madoc cast a sidelong glance at James, and, in reaction to whatever he saw or didn’t see, tugged Took in close for a kiss. Took had been wrong; this was more intimate—the cool, sticky sweetness of blood on Madoc’s lips, like salted lemonade on a hot day, and the pressure of his hand against the small of Took’s back.
It was a pissing contest and it should have raised Took’s hackles, but instead he leaned into the kiss.
New York was too far, even for Madoc, to get back. Whatever reason West had for the lies that now rattled around Took’s head like old dice, this was okay. He could have this.
After a long moment, Madoc broke the kiss. He gently brushed the back of his fingers over Took’s cheek, and then James cleared his throat uncomfortably. Fair enough, Took thought as he stepped back and tried to compose himself. It wasn’t the place, and no matter what he thought in the heat of the kiss, it probably wasn’t something he could have, not realistically.
Bu it was, he realized with an ache in his chest, the only thing he could think to want.
Point made to… Took? To James? To the vampires behind their steel doors?…. Madoc stepped away. He smoothed his ruffled hair back from his face with one hand.
“I won’t be long,” he promised. “Then we can work out what Waring needed to hide.”
“Who,” Took corrected. He hadn’t realized he was certain of that until he spoke, but he saw the matchstick girls that Waring remembered sharply in his mind as he spoke—colorless children against the black of his mind, almost see-through, as though they’d been emptied out, with pipe cleaner arms and legs. “Them.”
M
adoc briefly raised his eyebrows at the confidence in Took’s voice and then nodded. “For his sake,” he said, “I hope you’re right. Living children might be the only thing to buy him… some sort of life.”
James cleared his throat. “Nine nails, then,” he said, his voice harsh and unkind as he bounced off the salt. “If I’m to watch the poor bastard rot.”
THE NEON letters marched the bar’s name crookedly across the front of the building—Gone to the Dogs. Took checked his phone, but there’d been no other messages since the address he’d received just before he left the East Coast.
Took rolled his head from one side to the other and felt the bones in his neck pop. Undead or not, that still felt good. Prepared as he’d get, Took shoved his phone into his pocket and walked up to the front door.
The big old boy slouched in a chair next to the door stuck his leg out into the threshold, cracked motorcycle boot braced against the frame. He thumbed the brim of his cap back and peered at Took from under the shadow of it.
“You got the teeth to drink here, boy?” he drawled.
Took took a twisted satisfaction in peeling his lips back from his fangs in a humorless threat display of a smile. He’d spent too many hours of his life trying to bulk himself up with enough testosterone to earn entry to this bar, every other bar, his mom’s house whenever his dad rocked through and felt like stopping. The flash of fear on the bouncer’s face was payback for every shove, cuff, and shake he’d weathered.
With his tongue he pushed his fangs back up into their sockets. For once, they didn’t pop back down.
“Good enough?” he asked.
The bouncer lurched to his feet, his eyes nervous as he searched the darkness of the parking lot for backup. He hammered the door behind him with a heavy-knuckled hand.
“You picked the wrong bar to slum in, wetmouth,” the bouncer growled. He reached around to the small of his back and pulled out an extendable sap. A snap of his wrist extended it. “You ain’t gonna have any teeth when we finish with ya.”
