Surrender the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  Memories of sunny summer afternoons spent in the library poring over language lessons reared. Benjamin took a deep breath and cracked his neck. If Tzadkiel were Greek, then this would be much easier if the man translated. Still, Benjamin’s pride said he had to give it a shot.

  “Mu…” Benjamin read out, his fingers already tracing the first letter.

  Gravel crunched beneath Tzadkiel’s boot.

  “Omega…” Benjamin shook his head. He would have thought he’d at least remember the alphabet.

  Tzadkiel stepped in so he and Benjamin stood shoulder to shoulder. “Show me where you see the letters?”

  “Here.” Benjamin grabbed Tzadkiel’s hand. To Benjamin’s surprise, Tzadkiel, rather than drawing away, allowed Benjamin to manipulate his fingers over the granite, tracing each letter. Cool skin warmed readily to Benjamin’s touch. The scent of musk coated the back of Benjamin’s throat. They were definitely outside a vampire lair.

  “It’s ancient Greek, not modern,” Tzadkiel said, not unkindly. “That’s why it’s stumping you.”

  “Whatever,” Benjamin muttered.

  “Mu, omicron, lambda, omega, nu,” Tzadkiel explained, running his fingers over the shimmering carvings with an expectant air.

  Tzadkiel waited, and Benjamin wondered if he was supposed to try again himself. Instead of telling Tzadkiel to fuck off, he retraced the letters, mimicking Tzadkiel’s pronunciation. The man nodded his approval, and Benjamin fought back the urge to preen.

  “It spells mōlon.” Tzadkiel pronounced the first vowel as long, and the second as short.

  Benjamin repeated the word. Tzadkiel corrected his pronunciation. Benjamin pronounced it again, getting it on the second try. They continued, Tzadkiel’s fingers moving with Benjamin’s own over the letters of the second word with more patience than Benjamin’s uncle had ever displayed.

  “Lambda, alpha, beta, epsilon,” Tzadkiel explained, as if they had all the time in the world. “It is pronounced lah-vey.”

  Benjamin repeated the pronunciation, and got it on the first try.

  “Good. Very good.” Tzadkiel took a half step back and strung the words together with seeming intention. “Mōlon labé…”

  Nothing happened.

  “Um.” Benjamin cleared his throat and glanced over his shoulder. “Was something supposed to happen?”

  Tzadkiel cursed in Greek, or at least in Benjamin’s experience, that kind of inflection in any tongue usually signaled foul language.

  “You try it.” Tzadkiel slapped at the stone and took a half step back.

  “Mōlon labé?” Benjamin made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat following his own performance. The words that had been so powerful on the other man’s lips had come out like a half-assed question. “Sorry. That was pathet—” Benjamin started to apologize, when all around him the Common went dark. Tzadkiel’s aura seemed to pulse against a dome of lavender light.

  Nyx must have used a different obfuscation spell, because hers had never looked like this. Just from examining the light it cast, Benjamin could tell that anyone standing outside the radius would see only the bandstand and a woman who seemed to have a thing for incense and candles loitering in the snow. Probably not even Nyx could see them, standing outside the circle as she did.

  “What the hell?” Benjamin muttered.

  Tzadkiel lifted his palm and laid it flat against the granite. Shoulder muscles hunching, he pushed at some unseen pressure point. Stone grated against stone, and damp air rushed out. Anticipation crackled through the air.

  Indicating the door, Tzadkiel offered to let Benjamin enter first. “Shall we?”

  Benjamin looked over his shoulder. Nyx had the duffel. Akito would be here soon. It couldn’t hurt to see what they were dealing with before he let his friends go inside.

  Benjamin put a hand to the hilt of his walking stick, prepared to draw his ninjato. “After you.”

  They stepped over a granite threshold, Tzadkiel first, Benjamin second. They were at the mouth of a network of branching passages, Tzadkiel at their head. The fine hairs on Benjamin’s arms prickled. Behind them, the stone door shimmered abruptly and closed.

  Metal slithered against leather. Tzadkiel turned, brandishing a sword. A knife dropped from his sleeve into his free hand. Compact and wickedly curved, it had been designed to shred flesh. The knife was a hunter’s weapon. Except Benjamin had only ever known one other hunter who had carried such a blade, and the man who’d designed it had been his grandfather. This knife had the same ebony handle, and the Fuller family crest engraved in one side. In fact, its swooping lines had been one of the last things Benjamin had seen with his natural sight.

  The moment froze and fractured, leaving death’s final chill in its wake. Benjamin knew what Tzadkiel would say before he spoke.

  “I am the War King. And I have time for you now.”

  Chapter 8

  For a triumphant moment, Tzadkiel stared down the villain whose bloodline had been responsible for bringing his mora to its knees. When the first sword blow came, he was more than ready to fight. The hunter’s slimmer ninjato hit his Greek xiphos with force. Tzadkiel twisted his hand so the flat of his blade deflected the strike, turning it away with ease.

  Two hands gripping his sword handle—its dragonhead a snarling reminder of all Tzadkiel had lost—the hunter held nothing back. The cane, which had acted as the weapon’s sheath, lay discarded near the entrance. Around him, Tzadkiel registered scents of decay and disuse. The unreality of his home’s destruction fueled the fire of his anger, upsetting his focus. He deflected whip-fast slashes, holding his ground, but not easily.

  The hunter danced deftly over rubble, forcing Tzadkiel into the downslope. It had been so long since he had fought with a weapon, so long since he’d fought at all. He’d forgotten the numbness that came with the repeated blows, the fatigue that could overtake arms unused to being raised. He should have trained longer, planned better. If only he’d had the luxury of time. Now that he had the hunter where he wanted him, he would not allow himself to lose.

  Metal rang against metal, lighting the darkness with sparks, confusing Tzadkiel’s night vision. He shunted Benjamin’s sword to the side, the opposing blades catching until the two were locked at the bottom. For a moment, Tzadkiel and his nemesis stood face-to-face. He could have, should have, followed through with his knife.

  Benjamin’s breath came in gasps, his chest heaving in counterpoint to Tzadkiel’s own. “Bastard.”

  “Yield,” Tzadkiel said through clenched teeth, “and I will gentle your death.”

  The hunter’s answering laugh was sharp. “Don’t worry. I like it rough.”

  Lust shivered along Tzadkiel’s spine at the implicit invitation. He broke the deadlock as Benjamin’s booted foot grazed his shin. The hunter’s sword arced, and Tzadkiel brought up his xiphos in a horizontal block. Benjamin’s hard, two-handed blow reverberated from Tzadkiel’s arm to shoulder, depositing adrenaline into his midsection.

  “Never let it be said I failed to honor a man’s last wishes.” Tzadkiel’s feint forced Benjamin closer to the knife.

  The sliding clang of metal against metal echoed down the tunnel. Benjamin’s counterstrike pushed Tzadkiel back, and he stumbled over a corpse that had been abandoned in the corridor—the body of a young woman, newly dead, and not one of his mora, who were all male. The sinister implications were clear. Unless this woman had been an enemy—a dark witch perhaps—some of his mora were indeed freely drinking human blood. Indiscriminately killing.

  The moment of startled inattention cost Tzadkiel. The hunter’s ninjato cut the air near his face. It was another moment before the sting of sweat and the trickle of wetness along his cheekbone alerted Tzadkiel that Benjamin had cut him—an injury similar to the one Benjamin’s uncle had delivered at the outset of Tzadkiel’s torture.

  Rage fueled Tzadkiel’s war cry. He rushed the hunter, not caring if the gods themselves heard them clear to Mount Olympus. Still,
Benjamin met him blow for blow. Desperate for any advantage, Tzadkiel forced power into repressing his aura. He dropped his knife into his opposite hand and moved in, both weapons poised to strike and maim. The hunter twisted out of the way of the first attempted blow, and then the second, showing a prescient skill despite the blind fighting that Tzadkiel hadn’t anticipated.

  “You thought darkness would throw me?” Benjamin’s laugh was sharper than his blade. “Well, fuck you.”

  “Your parents died like you will.” Tzadkiel used his tongue as a weapon. “Begging. Cowards. Their blood soaking the dirt.”

  The hunter bristled, the air charged with his fury. “I’m going to be your worst nightmare, bloodsucker.”

  Tzadkiel and Benjamin circled each other, trading positions, until Tzadkiel claimed the ground farthest from the corpse. He swung hard and fast, pressing a momentary downhill advantage. The hunter retreated, sword arm up in a series of awkward blocks. Sweat ran into Tzadkiel’s eyes, but he pressed on, punching upward with his knife while simultaneously crowding the hunter with his sword. Benjamin danced backward and stumbled over the body. Tzadkiel advanced, unrelenting. Free hand raised, Benjamin caught himself face-first against the tunnel’s curved wall, and the ninjato clattered to the ground.

  White skin over flexing knuckles glowed in Tzadkiel’s night vision: mercy.

  Tzadkiel positioned his knife so the point settled at the base of Benjamin’s skull. “Hands on the back of your head.”

  Hysterical laughter burbled past Benjamin’s lips, but he did as instructed. The sour stink of sweat hung in the air. Red trickled down Benjamin’s pale wrist. Tzadkiel swallowed against a surge of hunger. Benjamin’s shoulders, already a rigid line, tightened further. Somewhere water dripped and echoed, the only sound in their subterranean world.

  Tzadkiel breathed deep, relishing the euphoria of victory. He ran his tongue over his teeth, worrying the place where his fangs had once nestled. It would be so easy to feed on the elixir pumping through Benjamin’s veins, to sate the twin desires of lust and burning hunger.

  Somehow, common sense asserted itself over desire, and Tzadkiel stepped back, knife still poised at the base of Benjamin’s skull. “Untie your shoes.”

  “What?” Benjamin gave Tzadkiel his profile.

  Tzadkiel increased the pressure of the blade against Benjamin’s flesh. The hunter hissed.

  “Untie. Your. Shoes.”

  Haltingly, Benjamin lifted one foot and cradled his ankle. While he undid his bootlaces, Tzadkiel kept the blade pressed close. There were a dozen different ways Benjamin could disarm him, but judging from the way the hunter’s fingers shook, he had realized his odds of winning at this juncture were slim. Until his life was truly threatened, he’d wait for an opening that would present him with a better advantage than his weaponless state now afforded. At least that’s what Tzadkiel would have done.

  “Give them to me.” Tzadkiel held out his free hand to receive the laces.

  “You think you’re going to hold me with those?”

  Taking the proffered fastenings, Tzadkiel trailed his fingertips across Benjamin’s palm. The hunter shuddered. With sudden movement, Tzadkiel jerked Benjamin’s arms behind his back, and at the same time kicked his legs wide. Unbalanced, the hunter fell forward.

  “Do not worry.” Tzadkiel spoke around the knife, now in his teeth, as he bound slim wrists with rough tugs at the rawhide. “I have more than leather laces in my repertoire.”

  “Fuck you.” Benjamin bucked, but failed to gain his freedom.

  Tzadkiel spun him around and leaned in, his thigh to the hunter’s sex. Pain or pleasure, your choice, he intimated with a subtle application of pressure.

  Benjamin grimaced, but his body betrayed him, responding. “I knew you were nothing but an animal.”

  Tzadkiel grabbed a fistful of the hunter’s curls and yanked downward.

  Benjamin cried out.

  “The animal,” Tzadkiel said, bending closer to Benjamin’s ear, “was the so-called man who tore my fangs from my jaw, and tortured me for thirty-six hours in his basement. You were related if I recall, yes?”

  “Fuck you,” Benjamin bit out again through clenched teeth.

  “Always so eloquent.”

  Moving with swift, unyielding steps, Tzadkiel pulled Benjamin by his hair, deep into the mora’s one-time subterranean home. No torches were lit, and no servant rushed forward to take his coat. No brother clapped him on the back or asked how he fared after this long journey’s end. In fact, no brother of his would ever do so again. They were completely and utterly alone in a place Tzadkiel had once known as a citadel and a home.

  Mildew and the stench of death assailed Tzadkiel. Ice formed along a greeting chamber’s rock ceiling, melting as it reached the warmer interior walls. The resulting stream dripped from the shreds of a tapestry that had once proudly displayed his family’s ancestral home at the base of Mount Olympus. Near an antechamber door, an overturned chair offered springs but no cushion—merely the bones of furniture on which honored guests and visitors had once perched while awaiting an audience with Tzadkiel and his brothers.

  The floor dipped, and Tzadkiel’s right hand met open air. The hunter hissed, absorbing the pain of a hard yank. Tzadkiel secreted himself in a niche and felt for the lever that would open his chamber door. He pulled upward and was rewarded when a click sounded on the opposite wall. Tzadkiel jerked the hunter inside, shoving him to the floor where he landed in an inelegant heap. An oil lamp to the right of the door lit at the touch of a match, and the soft glow illuminated fur throws, a desk with its inkpots and fine pens, his wardrobe, and two high-backed chairs that hugged a fireplace. He ran his hands over the mantel, the desk, and the bed, marveling that they had withstood the destruction so apparent everywhere else.

  Benjamin licked his lips in a nervous tell. “Where are we?”

  The wardrobe caught Tzadkiel’s eye. He crossed to it. The man was nothing more than a sacrifice now—an animal whose blood would appease the gods. Stripping, Tzadkiel searched the wardrobe for a fresh shirt and jacket. A mirror reflected the decades-old scars that marred his chest, but he paid them no heed. They would heal soon enough. He donned clean leather pants and a new pair of boots with quiet efficiency. Knife and xiphos were secreted in their sheaths once more. Though his hair was long and badly in need of a cut, he only combed it with his fingers. His shearing could wait. He had a kylix to gather and a sacrifice to make.

  With purposeful strides, he crossed to the wardrobe once more. He opened a hidden door at its back with a press of his palm. A sturdy safe lay hidden inside. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, resting his fingertips on the dial. The combination was a few twists and turns short of a road map to hell, but he recalled each and every digit. A final rotation produced a satisfying click, and the door swung open. He reached inside, and closed his hand around…nothing. Shock had him leaning into the wardrobe, then grabbing the lamp to peer inside the small safe. Only he and his brothers had known the combination.

  Benjamin struggled awkwardly to his knees. Ignoring him, Tzadkiel proceeded to search the room with increasing frenzy. In frustration he fisted an inkpot and hurled it against the wall. Its contents dripped, leaving a dark stain. He searched every inch of the room with heart-pounding frenzy—the blood in his ears so loud he failed to hear his own hoarsely whispered prayers until he caught his haunted reflection in the room’s mirror. Dark, hollow eyes stared back at him, as devoid of light as he was of hope. He brought his fist down on the desk, making the lamp jump. Perhaps the cup had been taken from the safe to the central chamber by one of his brothers before their deaths?

  The hunter, who had managed to scramble to a standing position near the foot of Tzadkiel’s bed, notched his chin. Tzadkiel’s strides ate up the distance between them, and he hoisted the hunter over his shoulder.

  “Untie my hands and I’ll show you what a real fight to the death looks like,” Benjamin threatened, struggling against the un
doubtedly uncomfortable position.

  “Do not seek to hurry your death, hunter. It will come soon enough,” Tzadkiel warned. Leaving the room, he turned left, seeking the ceremonial chambers at the heart of his mora’s home.

  A sharp pain spread in Tzadkiel’s side. The hunter had bitten him where his jacket had ridden up. Taking a corner wide, Tzadkiel was rewarded with the sound of Benjamin’s skull impacting the wall. The man’s curses followed, ending with the words parasitic bastard.

  “A strange insult from a man who lowers himself to biting in combat,” Tzadkiel observed.

  “Fuck you,” Benjamin spat for what seemed the umpteenth time since they’d met.

  Tzadkiel laughed darkly, knowing where to land his blow in order to wound Benjamin the most. “Even if I had the time, the invitation to debase myself with you is not something I would welcome were you the last man on earth.”

  Benjamin inhaled sharply, but for the moment at least remained silent.

  Tzadkiel approached the mora’s central chamber; the high-walled space echoed his hurried footsteps. Imperfect night vision showed him the hulking shapes of displaced chairs, and the central dais on which his kathédra—or throne—should have perched. He scanned for the nearest sconce, his gaze skipping over and returning to white-shrouded shapes that appeared to be hung from the walls. He frowned. Why would someone have placed storage sacks in here?

  His vision resolved, and in his shock at what it revealed, Tzadkiel released his aura, unable to hold its energy in check. The hunter slid slowly off Tzadkiel’s shoulder, and wobbled to his feet as horror raked fresh claws down Tzadkiel’s spine. Grim, he stared up at the nearest bundle.

  Devoid of souls, stripped of all earthly connection, the creatures before him—if correctly called into being—were traditionally used in the most apocalyptic of supernatural armies. They fed on human flesh and, extremely willful, could only be controlled by magic even darker than they.

  “Holy shit…” Benjamin breathed. “Are those…?”

  “You’d call them zombies,” Tzadkiel said, lighting one of the many torches in iron sconces around the large chamber. “We call them keres. But no matter the language, they spell death.”