Chapter 9
Wrapped in white sheets and bound with hemp rope, corpse-like creatures hung from hooks on a high, rock chamber wall. The wide-eyed keres reminded Benjamin of bundled herbs waiting to be plucked down for use in some diabolical tisane. Death’s sickly sweet stench permeated the room. The vampire poked at one of the bundles. The ker twisted on the end of the rope, its jaw unhinging in a silent scream.
“Oh, holy fuck.” Benjamin’s gag reflex went into overdrive, and he nearly christened the mora’s floors with bile and coffee.
Tzadkiel moved down the line of zombies until he had prodded all but two to life. “These are dead.”
“If those are dead, what are the other ones?” Benjamin choked on the question.
“Experiments, not fully formed, but close,” Tzadkiel observed, peering at one of the creatures. The thing convulsed and keened. “Very close.” Tzadkiel glanced over his shoulder at Benjamin. “Still think I’m the monster?”
“Hell yes,” Benjamin snapped, spitting the foul taste from his mouth. “Only vampires are foul enough to create something that disgusting.”
Thinking of all the time he’d spent getting obliterated on alcohol, Benjamin was ashamed. He should have been out hunting every night, exterminating the fuckers who had made these things.
Tzadkiel whirled on him, danger crackling, jagged red against deep purple. “The magic in our blood can be used to make these creatures, but this is not the mora’s doing.”
Benjamin nearly choked on a derisive snort.
“Believe me or do not. It is nothing to me,” Tzadkiel said, considering the zombies, or whatever they were, once more.
“If your people are so innocent, then how were these things made?”
While Tzadkiel’s back was turned, Benjamin sawed frantically with the sharp edge of his his thumb ring at the rawhide laces that bit into his wrists, not caring that the position and motion forced the rough leather deeper into his skin. He’d keep the vampire distracted with questions until he managed to set himself free.
“They aren’t things. They are…were…people.” Tzadkiel shook his head in slow, seeming disbelief. “Dark magic was used to curdle vampire blood, souring its life-giving properties, and then it was fed to these poor souls and turned them.”
One leather strand began to unravel. Benjamin’s pulse sped up.
“Sounds to me an awful lot like how vampires are made.”
“It is a crime punishable by death for one of my people to do this. Most of them do not even know how. Those who do know how remember why we do not do this, and would not attempt it again. Though…” Broad shoulders started to turn toward him. “Our kylix is used in the ritual.”
“Ha! Even you can’t claim your people are innocent.”
“It wasn’t my people who did this.” Tzadkiel faced him now, seeming to loom over him even from this distance. “They wouldn’t dare.”
Benjamin thrust up his chin, using the motion to disguise his efforts to free himself. “Then who did it? You seem to be saying you’ve done it before.”
“I know of only one person with both access and means who would be foolhardy enough to attempt this.” Tzadkiel stepped closer. “This type of magic is too dark for the fae. If tainted by this act, they would be cut off from faerie forever.”
Benjamin’s heart banged against his chest. He had to get free before the vampire reached him. Torchlight flickered with palpable menace, seeming to grab for him in grasping, claw-like surges.
“Who then?” he challenged, unable to think clearly through the adrenaline haze to attempt more. “Who did it?”
“The Morgan.” Tzadkiel neared as he named Nyx’s father—the head of the Boston coven. “The only thing that eludes me is his motive.”
Benjamin jerked hard and the bindings fell away. Gaze landing on the torch, he sprinted for it, intending to use it as a weapon. In a blur-like rush Tzadkiel was there before him. They grappled, and Benjamin raked the sharp, silver point of his ring along Tzadkiel’s throat. Blood gushed hot and wet over his hands, and his grip on the wooden torch slipped. Tzadkiel’s boot heel met Benjamin’s chest. Pain exploded in Benjamin’s sternum, and he flew backward to land in a heap on the ground. Looming above him, Tzadkiel pressed his boot into Benjamin’s ribs. Benjamin writhed. The vampire tottered, his boot descending in an ungainly stomp. Benjamin heard the crack of bone before he felt the flash-fire of pain. He screamed and curled into a ball to protect his tender middle. The motion only made things worse. He gasped, not knowing whether to fold in two or stretch himself out to avoid his misery.
Tzadkiel crouched, the torch in his hand. “Do you really think yourself in a position to play this game?”
Benjamin gasped a defiant “Fuck off” and clenched his teeth to quell a sob.
Raised by his collar, he was dragged and lifted so his coat snagged on an empty wall sconce. His feet sought purchase, but he found none. His shoulders hunched around his ears as his coat pulled tight around his injured torso. The vampire considered him for a long moment. Flames crackled, their heat an implied menace. Benjamin turned his face away and waited for the scent of his own burning flesh. At least being set on fire would make him forget the pain in his ribs.
“Do you wish your friends to live?” The vampire’s voice was considering, the question not at all what Benjamin had expected.
Benjamin snapped his head around, forgetting his own pain in his fear for Nyx and Akito. “What?”
“Your friends. If you cooperate—help me regain my kylix so I can stop this travesty—I will allow them to live.”
Intent on suffering through his own demise, he hadn’t thought of what Nyx and Akito might experience at the vampire’s hands. “Touch them and die.”
“You are hardly in a position to make threats.” The flames danced close, the heat almost unbearable as the vampire leaned in. “Do we have a bargain? Or do I kill you now, and then your friends?”
Mind clouded with a vision of Nyx’s lifeless corpse hanging on a rock wall, Benjamin sputtered foul curses until a hand covered his mouth, silencing him. Black blood, the acrid stench of acid and iron, the sound of his parents’ voices as the vampire’s hand covered his nose and mouth. He sucked air in through his nostrils. Hyperventilation threatened to overwhelm consciousness.
“Help me retrieve the kylix, and I will let them live,” Tzadkiel explained again, his hand falling away.
“Why the hell do you need my help?” With a belligerent mistrust he didn’t have to feign, Benjamin notched his chin. “And if I do help you what guarantee do I even have that you’ll keep your word about Nyx and Akito?”
The vampire shrugged. “My quarrel is not with them, hunter. It is with you. I find I like the poetic justice of you participating in your own demise.”
“Who are you? Old King Cole?” Benjamin breathed deep against the pain in his side and tasted salt running down the back of his throat. “After you call for your bowl, what comes next? The pipe and fiddlers three?”
“You talk in riddles,” Tzadkiel said. “Answer the question. Will you help me in exchange for your friends’ safety?”
“Why do you need the cup?” If he were going to win against the vampire, he needed as much information as possible. “Answer me that first.”
Benjamin mentally squinted into the creature’s over-bright aura. He attempted to discern the expression on Tzadkiel’s face. Memory crooked an enticing finger, and he recalled haunting navy eyes, almost black, unless caught in a beam of light. They’d been staring at him past a regal nose—that same nose that compelled a cruel dip in the sensual lips below.
“My strength will return tenfold if I drink of the magic in your blood from the kylix. I will be able to relay that strength to my mora.” Tzadkiel lifted a curl from Benjamin’s shoulder and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, considering. “Obviously, for that purpose I need the cup, and I need you alive and close by. Then I can fight the Morgan and regain my mora’s home.”
/> Mind hazy with pain and fear, Benjamin failed to discern any immediate means of betrayal he might use to undermind the vampire’s plan, but realized if he agreed to help Tzadkiel, he would live to fight another day.
“Fine,” Benjamin bit out, his voice thready with pain. “But only to keep Nyx and Akito safe.”
“I mean it when I say I will kill your friends if you betray me. Think now before you give me your word.”
Benjamin sneered, though the effort made nausea well from a threatening migraine. “You assume the death won’t be yours.”
Torchlight jabbed upward along rock walls. The sharp bite of sweat mingled with subterranean dampness as Tzadkiel leaned in. “I do. And you should too, if you want your friends to live.”
A cold wind played with Benjamin’s hair, casting a shiver down his spine. There really wasn’t a better deal to be had, though he’d been honest about attempting to kill the vampire first if he could.
“So which will it be?” Tzadkiel pressed.
Benjamin nodded, pretending wary agreement. “If you’ll keep your part, I’ll keep mine.”
“You have my word that your friends will not be harmed, as long as you and they do not get in my way.”
With those words, Tzadkiel plucked Benjamin from the wall, and set him on his feet. Benjamin staggered away from the vampire and propped himself against a stone pillar at the room’s center. He gingerly straightened his coat collar, trying not to let on exactly how much his ribs and head hurt.
Tzadkiel replaced the burning torch in a wall sconce. The room’s majestic proportions, hewn out of solid bedrock, suggested he and Tzadkiel were far below the ground. Purple, of course, flared, casting everything in a color Benjamin would forever associate with the vampire.
“We have to find the kylix quickly,” Tzadkiel mused, pausing before the keres.
Benjamin studied the keres from a healthy distance. “They’re gross looking, but they don’t seem all that dangerous.”
Tzadkiel faced him. “They heal more quickly than we do, and exist only to feed and kill.”
“Sounds like you know a lot about them for someone who claims not to have created them.” All Benjamin had to keep him upright was his anger, and damn him if he wouldn’t use it. “Or maybe it’s just because you’re so much alike? Even the vamp I slaughtered on the Common last night had a green aura like these.”
A low growl said the cheap shot had hit its target.
“You are amused now, but you will not be when these creatures keep attacking…Even after you take their heads. As for why the vampire’s aura was green, it was because he has allied himself with the Morgan who now controls his actions.”
Benjamin recoiled as he pictured headless torsos scuttling toward him, clawing at his legs and tearing at his skin. “How do you know all this?”
“I have fought the keres before. As did your ancestors.” The vampire raked a hand through his hair. “You are right about one thing, hunter. My people have created these creatures before, but mark my words, no man who lived through those times would make that mistake again.”
Chapter 10
The hunter huddled in on himself, one arm across his ribs. Though his expression remained defiant, his posture told a different story. It would take very little to break the man completely, as Tzadkiel had been tempted to do when Benjamin had accused Tzadkiel’s mora of creating the keres.
“What do you mean?” Benjamin licked his split lip. “That we’ve fought them before? That you’ve created them before?”
Tzadkiel fixated on Benjamin’s mouth. He could almost taste the sweetness of the hunter’s blood as that darting tongue sampled what Tzadkiel himself so badly craved. His self-control hung by a thread, more of a spider’s wisp really, ready to snap at the least provocation.
“You do not know your own history?” Tearing his gaze away, Tzadkiel removed himself to a safer distance.
Benjamin’s nostrils flared, a sure sign Tzadkiel had touched a nerve. “I know enough.”
It was likely that the hunter knew very little, or remembered little. He had been only a boy when his family had been taken from him…murdered. Tzadkiel forcibly shook off the dangerous sentiment. Benjamin might have been an innocent then, but his relations had been the most diabolical representations of humankind Tzadkiel had ever known—and he had known quite a few over his long span.
“The Trojan War—”
“I know about that.” Benjamin batted at the air with his free hand. “We fought with you to retrieve Helen. She was…the sister of…of…”
“She was my great-grandfather’s sister. My grandaunt,” Tzadkiel interjected. “The daughter of Zeus and Leda, and the sister to Castor and Pollux.”
“Yeah, that.” Benjamin’s finger snap echoed down the corridors leading to the central chamber. “You don’t have to give me the whole history. I don’t understand where the keres come in. That’s all.”
Tzadkiel raised one brow, but otherwise didn’t comment on Benjamin’s doubtful knowledge.
“The keres come in, as you say, because my brother Zeuxis created them to hide inside the Trojan horse and overwhelm the gates once inside.” Memory spooled backward to that black day, and Tzadkiel folded his arms protectively over his chest. “It was a perfect plan according to my brother, apart from the keres having no loyalty. Once they finished with the Trojans, they turned on our own army. Your family and mine fought side by side to vanquish them. After, your enmity for us was born.”
Zeuxis had acted on his own, without the mora’s or its archon’s approval, and had suffered the consequences—they all had. Their victory plan, the Trojan horse, had turned into a bloodbath that history had thankfully forgotten—something that, unfortunately, Tzadkiel had never been able to do. He pushed away memories of his brother’s execution at the hands of their uncle—their Justice Giver—and trained his attention on Benjamin once more.
“So why not do it again? Overwhelm Boston and take over the city?” Benjamin scoffed. “Sounds like something you and your family would do.”
Tzadkiel blinked at the hunter, at first not comprehending the insult. On the heels of hot anger came another, more chilling surge of understanding. If someone were intent on doing that very thing—on taking over Boston and overwhelming its populace with untold horrors—they would have reason to create keres. He didn’t believe that was exactly what was happening, but perhaps something very, very close.
“This coming from a family of fortune hunters who prey on the lives of innocent men?” Tzadkiel bit out. “My brother died for his crimes, and yet you still hunted us—for our wealth.” He swept out a hand, indicating a room that had once housed an abundance of treasures, now all gone, then jabbed a finger in Benjamin’s direction. “If I had truly desired to harm you or this city, you would no longer possess a head with which to cast your foolhardy aspersions.”
Tzadkiel disdained torture as a rule, but there was nothing he would not do to see his mora safe. The hunter was lucky to still be alive and relatively in one piece. Had it suited his purpose, Benjamin’s death would have been a fait accompli.
Long fingers raked through tangled curls. The spiked portion of Benjamin’s thumb ring caught on the strands, and he tugged it away with a frustrated jerk. “If my rib wasn’t broken, I would take you out.”
“If tonight was evidence of your battlefield prowess, please excuse me if I do not worry overmuch.”
The hunter gaped at him. His open mouth reminded Tzadkiel of a fish speared on the banks of the Charles. He flopped around, gasping and sputtering, until he found the words with which to vent his indignation.
“We’ve killed your kind over and over.” Spittle flew from Benjamin’s lips when he leaned in. “They died like you will. Begging.”
Tzadkiel forced Benjamin’s back against the pillar, his palms to either side of the hunter’s head. The lethally focused repartee twisted and coiled in on itself, forming a knot of adrenaline-junkie lust in Tzadkiel’s belly. He tried, and f
ailed, to recall the last time a man had dared to confront him thus.
“Do you want to know how many of your kind I have slain in my time, hunter? Without the assistance of my mora? Do you wish to know your great-great-grandfather’s dying words?” Tzadkiel let his voice go silky with menace, a smooth pour of honey that spoke of dark deeds and even darker nights. “I know your history. I know every last breath and every last request.” His rough exhale disturbed Benjamin’s hair. “I know the taste of your blood and its lineage—the flowering of the fruit on the vine. Its slow fermentation and decay.”
Benjamin paled so his bones seemed to visibly shrink under his skin.
“I know how you are going to die.” Tzadkiel curled his fingers against the cold, unforgiving rock and leaned closer to Benjamin’s ear. “I know how you will taste, and how you will beg for your life.” Hardened consonants combined in a savage caress. “I know how you shall smell—of blood and bile—when I tear your throat out.” He growled with his exhale. “That is my promise.”
Twisting, Benjamin brought his weight into a headbutt. His skull met Tzadkiel’s jaw with a sickening crack, and Tzadkiel stumbled backward, his hand to his face. Something popped when he flexed his jaw.
“You have a death wish, Benjamin Fuller.”
“The only thing I wish right now,” Benjamin replied, hand to his skull, “is for a drink.”
Footsteps sounded, breaking into the argument. Tzadkiel tensed, shifting his attention over Benjamin’s shoulder.
“…went this way.”
The witch.
Benjamin stood taller, but Tzadkiel placed a staying hand on his shoulder. The muscles there bunched, so tense it was as if they’d turned to stone. Benjamin attempted to move forward, but Tzadkiel pulled him back.
“They’re my friends.”
“I’ll see the three of you dead first, and damn my promise, if you tell them what you know.” Tzadkiel ducked them into an anteroom off the nearest corridor. “Your friend is a witch, and I’ll not have her running to the coven.”
Surrender the Dark Page 10
