Benjamin faced him. “And how exactly do you propose to keep all this from them?”
The footsteps grew louder. A flashlight’s beam cut across the darkness. They couldn’t afford to be caught arguing, not if Tzadkiel wanted to keep his promise. He had no doubt Benjamin’s friends would attack if they thought anything amiss. Worst case, one of them would get away to alert the coven of Tzadkiel’s return. Best case, Tzadkiel would have to kill them all or be killed himself. The only way to keep everything from going to hell was to pretend he and Benjamin were allies. Strong allies. Perhaps something even more.
“I have an idea,” Tzadkiel said. “Play along, and get rid of them any way you see fit.”
Without time to explain, he leaned in and claimed the hunter’s lips in a kiss.
Chapter 11
Benjamin jerked back at the contact with Tzadkiel’s mouth and attempted to shove the vampire away. Tzadkiel, however, was quicker. Hand gripping Benjamin’s nape in a way that spoke of centuries—perhaps millennia—of practice, Tzadkiel held him immobile. The royal purple aura flashed and brightened with something Benjamin’s hunter-senses recognized as desire. Flesh, warm and supple, not marble hard and cold, met Benjamin’s lips.
The vampire kisses like a human.
Benjamin’s first thought struck him as absurd, and then he couldn’t think at all. Lips that had begged him for water, for silence, for life, now demanded passion. Sparks of white and deep mauve obscured the subterranean world around him, focusing his attention on the flash-bang of his arousal. As before, contact with the vampire blew him apart from the inside. Adrenaline, fear, animal instinct, all combined to light his nerves with an awareness he’d only experienced when fighting the heinous creatures. In short, he felt alive.
Lungs burning, Benjamin gasped when Tzadkiel let him up for air, then pulled his nemesis in for more. Drunk with lust, he barely registered voices in the tunnel, or the polite cough and tap on his shoulder. Taste. He needed to taste. Plunging his tongue into a rough and tumble battle with Tzadkiel’s, he tasted his own blood on the vampire’s tongue. Tzadkiel growled and clamped his hand more insistently on Benjamin’s nape, forcing him to open his mouth until every spare inch of his world was filled with a different kind of mayhem. Tinged with smoke and salt and a warm earthy essence, Tzadkiel tasted of nightmares laced with forbidden desire. A one-hit addict, Benjamin couldn’t get enough of the resulting rush.
The cough and tap came again, more insistent this time. Benjamin shrugged it off, refusing to rouse from this wonderful dream, and attempted to fall back to sleep—to fall back into to Tzadkiel’s embrace.
“Benji!” Nyx punched Benjamin in the shoulder, and he rocked forward into Tzadkiel.
Pain shot to his rib, jolting Benjamin from passion’s spell. He protested into Tzadkiel’s mouth, and the vampire ended the kiss with a painful nip at Benjamin’s still-bleeding bottom lip. Tzadkiel made an appreciative, almost hungry sound at the back of his throat.
Benjamin’s arousal kicked hard. “Zeus.”
He had the distinct impression Tzadkiel grinned evilly back at him.
Anger flooded Benjamin’s veins with a different kind of heat. What right did the vampire have to make him feel things that only a human should have been able to make him feel? Heart hammering, Benjamin faced his friends.
A man with long dark hair and a slack-jawed expression stared back at him. “What the hell are you doing, Ben?”
“I…Wow.” It was Benjamin’s turn to gape as he beheld Akito for the first time.
The contrast of light skin with a waterfall of jet-dyed hair, luminous eyes, and swooping brows left Benjamin speechless. A large, square-cut diamond twinkled in one ear—the effect on the whole startlingly piratical. No wonder Akito’s high school experiences had been so miserable. Despite his lean, well-cut musculature and deep chest, he was more arresting than most males and females Benjamin had known before he’d lost his sight. Everyone had been green with envy, but Akito had been too insecure to realize it.
Benjamin started forward, needing to embrace his friend—to hold Akito’s face in his palms—but Tzadkiel pulled him backward. Forearms looped loosely over Benjamin’s injured rib, Tzadkiel settled his chin on top of Benjamin’s head. The position would read as relaxed and intimate, as if they had all the time in the world.
I have time for you now.
Tzadkiel’s embrace brought him to full understanding of the ruse the vampire was attempting to perpetrate, and Benjamin shuddered. Briefly, he thought of betraying Tzadkiel’s secret, but squashed the idea for now. He couldn’t chance Nyx and Akito coming to harm because of him. One way or another, he had to keep them away from the vampire, or at least make sure they stayed in one piece until they could find a way to regroup.
Benjamin settled on an argument as the most expedient path to getting Nyx and Akito to leave. Feigning a frown, he searched out Nyx’s golden aura. The dark spikes of her hair stood wild, as if she’d battled more than internal demons when she’d passed through the mora’s tunnels. He wanted to shout at her and Akito to run, to get as far from him and Tzadkiel as fast as they could. Sure, they might be able to best the War King, but when he betrayed the vampire, Benjamin needed to be certain of victory.
“If you’re here, who’s guarding the door?” Benjamin asked, knowing the observation would provoke a fight.
Akito gaped at him. “Are you joking? Who’s guarding the door?”
“Have you seen what’s decorating the walls in this place?” Nyx jabbed a finger back toward the central chamber. “Because if you have, then I don’t know why we had to come looking for your sorry ass, or why you’re not topside on your phone with the cops. Instead of tongue-fucking your new friend.”
Benjamin managed to keep his face impassive, but inwardly cringed.
“Alerting the authorities would be a mistake,” Tzadkiel warned.
“You’re not serious,” Akito said. Benjamin noted Akito’s still-bandaged hand from their fight last night and wondered how bad the lacerations from the vampire’s fangs had been. No, they were definitely in no position to fight the War King tonight and win.
Benjamin leaned back so Tzadkiel’s chest supported his weight. The position took some of the pressure off his ribs. “We have it under control.”
“No. No way.” Nyx shook her head, emphatic. “I see what you’re doing, and you’re not going to go cowboy on this one, Ben. We fight as a team, or we don’t fight at all. Whatever the vampires are doing, it’s really dark magic. A complete break with everything we know.” She jerked her chin in Tzadkiel’s direction. “And then this asshole appears out of nowhere claiming to be your long-lost relative? Something stinks here, Ben. In fact it reeks.”
Tzadkiel shrugged and Benjamin detected a telltale rustle of steel against leather. He had unsheathed his knife, disguising his hold with a closefisted grip behind Benjamin’s back. The vampire thrummed with repressed aggression, his warning clear. Either Benjamin would make Akito and Nyx back down, or their deal was off.
“Look. I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but you wouldn’t understand.” Benjamin squeezed the hand Tzadkiel had draped over his shoulder hard enough to grind bones together. “I’d like to do this with Tzadkiel.”
“What?” Akito’s laugh was disbelieving.
Nyx’s expression flickered and shut down.
“You know how it is.” Benjamin shrugged. “It’s the first time I’ve ever had the chance to be a real hunter, you know? Not just playing at it with you two.”
For a long moment, nobody spoke. Akito and Nyx regarded him as if he were an alien—some stranger they’d never quite known, or perhaps an enemy they’d harbored unknowingly in their midst.
“You’re serious?” Nyx asked.
Benjamin nodded, wishing they had come up with some code word in their childhood—some phrase that might have told his friends they were up a creek and needed to paddle hard. He searched for a metaphor that might indicate what they were all re
ally up against.
“There are just some…demons…it makes more sense to slay on your own.” Tzadkiel was nothing if not Benjamin’s biggest demon, as both Nyx and Akito well knew.
Nyx’s aura flared at the word demon.
Akito punched fingers through his hair and muttered, “I can’t effing believe this.”
Though Benjamin wasn’t terribly familiar with Akito’s face and gestures—his furrowed brow and twisted mouth spoke more of confusion and hurt rather than veiled understanding. Benjamin’s stomach rolled, making room for the lump that worked its way from his throat to his abdomen. He’d never hurt his friends like this before. They were all the family he had.
“Sure, Ben. It’s your life. Here.” Nyx held out Benjamin’s cane. He hadn’t noticed she’d been carrying it.
He reached for the cane, and her fingers brushed his, lingering with what Benjamin hoped was a meaningful pause. He gave her hand an answering squeeze. She nodded once and turned to Akito, jerking her head in the direction from which they’d emerged. They left, and Benjamin watched until her golden aura winked out of sight.
Chapter 12
Tzadkiel kept himself and Benjamin to the better-lighted Boylston Street on Boston Common’s southern side. Snow hampered their forward progress some, but Benjamin walked with a surefooted gait given how much pain he must have been in. Tzadkiel supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised after the man’s performance in their underground clash.
Face upturned, Benjamin appeared focused on the tall buildings. “I can’t remember moving this fast outside of a fight.”
By fights of course Benjamin would mean the slaughtering of Tzadkiel’s mora.
“How many?” Tzadkiel asked, unable to stop himself.
“How many what?” Benjamin lowered his chin to take Tzadkiel in. “Fights have I had?”
Tzadkiel eyed the hunter, not bothering to hide his antipathy now that they were away from the man’s friends. “How many of my people have you killed?”
Benjamin’s lip curled. “Not enough.”
“How many?” Tzadkiel insisted. “I have a right to know.”
“How did my family die?” Benjamin whirled on him, arm wrapped around his ribs as if he held himself together from the outside. “Quick or slow? Did you slit their throats or drain them dry?”
They paused at the corner of Tremont and Boylston, waiting for two vehicles to pass. Slush splattered Benjamin’s coat, making the hunter flinch. Tzadkiel didn’t know what to say. He had called 911 using the uncle’s telephone—his last conscious act for a long, long time—and alerted the authorities to the boy’s presence before fleeing.
“I woke up before the ambulance arrived.” Benjamin interrupted Tzadkiel’s memories of the event. “I tripped over them—fell on top of my mother.” Voice faltering, he shook his head. “She wouldn’t wake up. I kept trying to wake her up.”
“They didn’t suffer,” Tzadkiel lied, though he didn’t know why.
He’d killed the uncle outright—broken his neck with a satisfying twist and crunch of bone and cartilage. Benjamin’s father, he’d strangled to unconsciousness before the mother descended the basement stairs. Then he’d done the same to her, recognizing in her face and features the bloodline he’d been fighting for millennia. He’d drunk deeply from his victims—slitting their throats and sucking at wounds that would never heal.
It had been the first time Tzadkiel had ever resorted to feeding outside of ceremony. He’d needed to feed. The blood had been the only thing that had enabled him to heal enough to go into hiding—to survive. If his blood hadn’t been so freshly tainted with iron it might even have healed him.
Though Tzadkiel regretted Benjamin’s terror and his orphaned state, he couldn’t regret the taking of those three lives. And he certainly didn’t regret doing what he’d had to in order to endure the hell the hunters had brought down upon him and his own family.
“Twelve,” Benjamin replied. “I’ve killed twelve.”
Tzadkiel gasped. The man who walked next to him now had taken almost as many of his people in twenty-eight years as the uncle, father, and mother had in forty. Before Tzadkiel recovered from the information, the hunter continued speaking.
“I couldn’t sleep through the night for the longest time. I heard your voice everywhere. The doctors called it PTSD. They put me into a psych ward after I was released from the hospital. They thought I’d never get out.” Benjamin rubbed his arms in a self-conscious gesture. “Neither did I.”
The office windows captured Tzadkiel’s and Benjamin’s reflections. Almost equal in height, one blond and one dark, Tzadkiel thought they resembled two friends out for a late-night stroll. Nothing could have been further from the damnable truth. Sympathy warred with anger, warred with pain. Tzadkiel clenched and unclenched his jaw, holding back a flood of emotion through sheer will alone.
“Then I met Nyx and Akito.” A smile ghosted over Benjamin’s lips as the hunter rambled on, apparently unaware of Tzadkiel’s reactions to his story. “I could see her, you know, because of her magic. At first I thought it was some new delusion. Then…” Benjamin shrugged. “I found out she was in the hospital because she had told her best friend her mother was from faerie and her father wanted to kill her. When her friend told on her to her teacher, the school made her see the school psych nurse who had her committed after finding coven stuff in her locker. But at least she wasn’t with her family.”
“And your other friend?” Tzadkiel asked, curious about the journey Benjamin the boy had taken to become the man who walked beside him tonight.
“Akito was in because he thought he was a superhero. He’d tried to jump off a building to prove it to the kids who’d been bullying him for being in foster care.” Tossing his head, Benjamin seemed to throw off the painful knowledge. “Anyway, Nyx and Akito taught me to fight. They were the only people who believed I wasn’t insane. They’re the reason I worked at appearing sane enough to get out. Probably they’re the reason I’m alive. And they’re sure as fuck the only reason I’m helping you.”
Picturing Benjamin locked inside a sterile building, alone in the darkness, turned Tzadkiel’s stomach. Though they were enemies now, Tzadkiel had never wanted any harm to come to the boy.
“Why are you telling me all of this?” Tzadkiel asked when they turned toward Chinatown.
It wasn’t as if Tzadkiel had earned the right to such intimacy, and it wasn’t as if he had asked for a rundown on Benjamin’s personal life. In fact, he probably should have discouraged the story. Though the knowledge wouldn’t affect his decision about executing the hunter, it would make it more difficult for him to accomplish the deed. Perhaps that was the point.
Holding his middle with his forearm, Benjamin trudged alongside Tzadkiel, his reply breathy with pain. “Because I want you to understand.”
“Understand what, exactly?” Tzadkiel asked.
Flickering neon illuminated their way as they walked in the middle of a quiet side street, rather than on the un-shoveled sidewalks. The restaurants themselves had been dark for hours.
“First, why I chose to help you find your cup and stop the coven.” Sweat glistened on Benjamin’s pale brow, and he paused to wipe it away with shaky fingers. “Nyx and Akito saved my life, and I’m not going to let you hurt them. I know how much effort it took for my family to bring you down.”
A sardonic smile lifted Tzadkiel’s lips. If the hunter thought he was powerful now, it was a shame he would be dead when Tzadkiel first sipped his blood from the kylix.
Though he planned to keep his word, he would do what he had to in order to accomplish his aims. If the hunter went back on his promise, Tzadkiel could use this leverage with a clear conscience.
“You said ‘first,’ ” Tzadkiel prompted. “Is there a ‘second’?”
Benjamin winced on a too-deep breath. “I’ll never stop trying to kill you or your people.”
Brave words for a man who now ran his free hand along the buildings they
passed in order to remain upright. The walk had clearly exhausted him in his injured state. Still, Tzadkiel was glad he hadn’t let on exactly how diminished his own powers were at present.
“You killed my family.” Benjamin straightened and sucked in a pained breath. “If I can kill everyone you love in return before I take your head from your shoulders? Then you and they are dead men. My killing twelve of your people will seem paltry in comparison.”
Inhaling, Tzadkiel drew himself to his full height. “Careful, hunter. You’ve taken enough from me that I already see no need to gentle your death.”
“Bring it on.” Benjamin stomped the snow off his boots in careful taps as he clutched his midsection. “I’m not a coward.”
Tzadkiel drew back his upper lip. Empty sockets pulsed underneath his gums, as if his fangs extended. “I suggest you rethink your tone with me, pup.”
“You want to do this here?” Benjamin’s grin wasn’t nice. “Because I know where we are, and I’ll use it to my advantage.”
Tzadkiel raised one brow, wondering how much the hunter knew. “And where do you think we are, exactly?”
They were, in fact, where Tzadkiel had intended—standing in front of the place he was fairly certain housed his kylix. If he were the coven, he’d certainly have kept the object here where they held their meetings.
“We’re near the coven’s shop.” Benjamin pointed to a rickety building at the end of the alley. It seemed to slump drunkenly into its neighbors, in search of support. “They sell herbs, candles, potions, and other stuff to tourists here. It’s a front though. Their meeting rooms are also here.”
“How do you know all this?” Gaze narrowed, Tzadkiel wondered if he’d let himself be led into a trap. It would be classic if he’d thought he was leading his enemy when in fact the enemy knew all along what was in store at the end of the journey. What if Benjamin had been part of the coven’s plot all along?
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