“Would one of you guys like to do the honors?” He swept out his hand.
“Let me.” A shape, glowing a putrid blue-green, separated itself from the visitor’s hut.
Benjamin tensed, attempting to align what he knew he was seeing with what he knew he had heard. If this was his friend, then the man had undergone a transformation from which no good had come. This aura appeared to be one part ker and one part vampire.
“Akito?” Benjamin asked.
The ugly aura drew closer. “Yeah.”
Terror, confusion, delight, and anger warred. Refraining from the urge to either hug his friend or to beat him senseless with the mallet—there’d be time for that later—Benjamin handed over the tool to Akito.
“Hold this.” Akito passed something to him.
Silk slid against Benjamin’s fingers. It was a drawstring bag. As heavy as if it were filled with rocks, it swayed in his grip. As Akito struck the first blow with the mallet, Benjamin felt the bunched material, widening the opening. Pulling at the fabric, he plunged his hand inside to touch impossibly cold metal.
Realization dawned. “Holy fuck, Akito.”
The sound of mallet hitting metal rang among the fireworks and the magic bursts. “I thought maybe you could use it.”
They wouldn’t need the thing—or Benjamin’s blood—once the pentacle was broken. The Morgan wouldn’t have a one-man all-you-can-eat buffet of magic, and Tzadkiel would be able to return home with his mora. Boston would be all right and Benjamin would be able to hide the bag and its contents before he and the vampire met up. He’d make sure Tzadkiel never found it—at least not until Benjamin could get out of town and…
Coward.
Benjamin swallowed down self-recrimination. Akito’s second hammer blow fell. Then the third, and the fourth, like a death knell. Before the last blow was struck, Benjamin stood on a precipice overlooking his own life, and he saw his future. He knew beyond a doubt what would happen next. It was the only possible outcome, and one he was destined to fulfill.
The last mallet blow rang, and the red light that stretched down the pavement, branching from path to path, forming the pentacle…remained lit.
Benjamin waited another moment for it to disappear. When it didn’t, he whispered, “Gods save us.”
“What happened?” one of the weres asked.
“The—” Benjamin ducked reflexively. An explosion, followed by the scent of burning flesh, then another burst close by, kicked up clods of pavement and frozen dirt.
The quieter werewolf tumbled, his body falling neatly in two separate halves. There was no time to respond, and no way to fight. The coven’s arsenal was powered by the megaton bomb equivalent of magic still contained by the pentacle and channeled to the Morgan.
Benjamin, Nyx, and Tzadkiel had been outwitted. There had been two parallel lines of silver running under the pavement. They formed a pentacle within a pentacle. Benjamin had killed one of them, but the second one remained intact. As a result, the Morgan still controlled the market on Boston’s only ley line. He would spin death from his well of magic until no one in the city who opposed him remained. There was only one hope for Boston’s vampires now, and Benjamin held it in his hands. The kylix.
Chapter 28
Battles from Tzadkiel’s youth had smelled of dirt and sweat, animals and excrement, blood and flames. Warfare with the Morgan, in contrast, smelled of all those things, but with one overlying and undeniable addition. The scent of his trapped magic was like no other. Decay, ruin, despair, and bitter herbs, combined with charred ozone and expended cordite. That was how war smelled when you fought witches who blended magic with death.
Embattled against her husband, Lady Morgana was like a summer rain driven by a cool breeze. Except that breeze was made of glass shards and raindrops like silvered knives. Sharp, cold, brittle, and overbright, her fae magic broke boundaries of light and sound that pierced the skin and overwhelmed the senses, driving men mad with imagined pain and internal turmoil. What on the surface was a clean death, left behind a mindless shell whose body imprisoned the spirit that remained.
Midnight had come and gone. The moonbeam bridge ritual had been completed. At least Tzadkiel’s forces had managed to protect the fae for that long, and Lady Morgana’s connection to faerie and its magic was fortified for now. For a full quarter hour, Tzadkiel had fought and awaited the flood of magic that should have been released to him with the pentacle’s destruction. At twenty minutes past the hour, seven of his men dead—their souls twinkling like macabre constellations against the bloody snow—understanding had come. The hunter had turned his back and left Tzadkiel’s mora—and all of Boston—to its fate.
Magic trapped by the pentacle rushed in a white-bright stream to the spire of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument at the top of the Common’s highest rise. Next to the monument, the Morgan used his staff to direct the keres. Warring energies cracked the night sky in lightning bursts. The zombie-like creatures kept coming. There were too many. For each one he managed to cleave and burn, two more seemed to stream in to fill the void. Lady Morgana’s magic, though fed by her fortified portal from faerie, could only incinerate so many.
Vowing vengeance on the coven’s leader, Tzadkiel turned to Lady Morgana. The fae Lady stood on the top of the park’s pretty little bridge, hair billowing and white gown shining.
“I am taking my people and charging the Common in hope that if we breach the barrier we will be able to remain,” Tzadkiel shouted.
Behind Lady Morgana, a golden-haired man crumpled to the ground, beset upon by keres who tore at his flesh and lifted their bloodied faces to the sky in vacant-faced triumph. Tzadkiel forced himself not to turn away, but it was a near thing. The scents and sounds of this battle were too like the ones that had assaulted his senses and emotions at Troy.
“You cannot hope to fight and win against my husband while he controls the ley line. Where is your hunter?”
Tzadkiel’s heart turned to ten pounds of stone at the reference to Benjamin. “He has failed. Or run. There is no way to tell.”
“Fickle, foolish, human heart.”
“Fickle he might be, but I doubt I can call him foolish.” Truly, if Tzadkiel were in Benjamin’s position he might have done the same.
Lady Morgana whirled, a staff appearing in her hand. She struck down a ker with a cleaving blow. The creature’s head fell from its shoulders. Lady Morgana issued a stream of fire from her fingertips that immediately incinerated the beast.
She turned her lovely face back to him. “I spoke of you, not the hunter.”
It had been so long since Tzadkiel had been called human, he blinked in surprise. He was human, with all the incumbent emotional frailties. It was only his body that survived the test of time.
“As if one from faerie can speak of love of anyone but the self,” Tzadkiel argued, too tired to hide his spite.
The Lady’s beautiful smile turned wooden. “Go. Enjoy your funeral, for that is surely what it will be, arrogant man.”
Turning away, Tzadkiel marched toward the Common. His men followed, somehow cutting a swath through the shuffling, shambling tide of animated flesh. Those who were allied with the Morgan, he killed without mercy. As their War King he meted out justice, separating their souls from their chests with one hand as he took their heads with the other. Rather than pausing in prayer, he cursed their souls to Tartarus. As Tzadkiel and his remaining army advanced, Lady Morgana, behind them, deigned to extend the protective bubble of magic from her perch on Lagoon Bridge. The ghostly translucence reflected milky white from the waters below.
While Tzadkiel guessed her shield would give out at the Public Garden’s edge, he kept on his charge. The mora did not retreat with him at its head. His men would die fighting the enemy. Cowards were not allowed to enter Gemini. Only warriors found their way to the constellation where their ancestors waited with a hero’s feast. Hope might have been lost, but honor was not.
To his right, Alexandros went
down, swarmed by several of the keres that were impervious to anything but fire. A were charged in, the torch he held brandished to set several of the keres aflame. Inhuman cries, moans, and the sound of cracking bones and wet flesh prompted memories of loss and the dearth of hope—not to mention centuries of strife—that had followed Troy.
Tzadkiel’s anger blazed white-hot. Fueled by emotion he no longer cared to contain, he continued his charge, hacking and slashing, Dryas beside him. The weakened shield wall around the Public Garden loomed, repelling the jagged red and black bursts of the Morgan’s magic. As Tzadkiel prepared to charge through, a figure crossed the barrier. Thinking the man a coven member, Tzadkiel swung his sword. The scent of elderflower hit him, stopping Tzadkiel’s blow a millimeter from Benjamin’s neck.
“Cup…” The hunter shoved a black silk bag at Tzadkiel’s middle.
Tzadkiel caught the bundle reflexively. Benjamin fell to his knees, unwinding his scarf.
“Two pentacles. Couldn’t get the other.” Ragged breaths distorted Benjamin’s words. “Drink now. Maybe you’ll be able to turn the tide on the Common—destroy the other pentacle.”
“Other pentacle?”
“There were two…one inside the other.” Benjamin hurriedly drew a diagram in the bloodstained snow. The lines of a second pentacle appeared parallel to, and slightly to the inside of those of the first. “We only got one.”
Behind Tzadkiel, Dryas protected his back. Flanking him, two of his warriors kept the area clear of the keres. At Tzadkiel’s feet, the hunter tore at his coat and shirt. He’d cast his cane to the pavement and knelt bare-throated, head canted. Tzadkiel frowned at Benjamin in confusion.
“Your blood isn’t…” powerful enough without the kylix, he almost finished, but stopped when he registered the familiar weight of the overlarge object in his hand.
He looked down, fingers tracing contours and ridges of the scene from the birth of Pollux. Joy ripped through Tzadkiel, releasing hope that soared on elation’s wings. They would win this battle—perhaps not the war, but his mora would live to fight another day. He had his kylix. Now all he needed was…Benjamin’s life.
Tzadkiel took a step backward as, around him, the battle became inconsequential.
“You have to,” Benjamin insisted, correctly reading Tzadkiel’s reluctance.
The hunter stretched the wings of his shoulders backward so his chest thrust out, hyperextending his neck. Barbells glinted in the half-light, piercing nipples that had contracted to painful-looking points in the frigid temperatures. Tzadkiel’s gums ached at the sight. He breathed deep through his nostrils, knowing the hunter spoke the truth. He allowed himself to imagine the moment when hot blood bathed his hands and tongue as he drank from the cup. Rather than a vision of victory, he saw only Benjamin’s lifeless body, its translucent skin devoid of its glow.
Hands spasming around the cup, Tzadkiel moved behind Benjamin. Around him the sounds of battle receded in the face of the internal war he now waged. How could he have doubted this man?
“You realize what you’re offering?”
“One favor is all I ask in return.” Benjamin swallowed hard, head turning so he tracked Tzadkiel’s movement around him. “Will you help Akito?”
“Akito?” What had happened to the fighter that Benjamin needed to trade his life for the man’s?
“There’s no time.” Benjamin shook his head. “Just do what you can to save him from whatever the Morgan did to him, or he did to himself. I don’t think it was good.”
Beyond Benjamin, Tzadkiel saw the trajectory of the battle and all its players. If he had Benjamin’s blood, he would be able to feed them a War King’s power and strength. They would be faster, stronger, more in tune with his direction. They might not be able to defeat the Morgan or cross in to the Common, but they would be able to annihilate the keres in the Public Garden.
Honor demanded Tzadkiel kill the hunter. Duty required he save Boston from the coven’s clutches. The gods mandated he see to his mora’s welfare. Love, on the other hand…love sought mercy and found hope in other methods. He looked around at the battle, and watched as a knife pierced another friend’s side. White energy spurted from the wound. Tzadkiel could do nothing to stop the man’s death, all of their deaths, unless he had Benjamin’s life force coursing within him, drunk from the kylix, raised in supplication to the gods.
Tzadkiel placed the cup between Benjamin’s spread knees. Gods, how could he go through with this? Around Tzadkiel, the world seemed impossibly dim, as if all the light were sucked through a straw that led to his heart. Tzadkiel’s shoulders sagged, and he ran an agitated hand over the top of his head. He needed to know the answer to one question.
“Why are you doing this?”
Benjamin’s chin came up. Magic flickered in light and dark lines across his scars, deepening some and erasing others. Tzadkiel catalogued the hunter’s breaths, each one bringing them closer to his last, until Benjamin searched for and found his answer.
“I can count the number of people I’ve ever loved on one hand—less than one hand.” Benjamin uncurled three fingers from his raised fist. “The number of people I can save?” He widened his hands. “That’s innumerable.” He licked his lips and swallowed another ragged breath. “Tell Nyx and Akito…tell them I said not to be angry. They can’t deny me my sacrifice without condemning me to a life I wouldn’t choose. That’s my childhood all over again, and the gods know I would never go back there. To that time—to what my family did to yours.” Pinning Tzadkiel with his attention Benjamin said clearly, “If I’m free to choose, then I choose honor. I choose my friends. I choose you.” He thumped his fist over his chest for emphasis. “I choose.”
The moment lengthened, the seconds and breaths counted as glimmering pearls, all the more precious for how few of them Tzadkiel knew they had remaining. Benjamin’s words rang like a Greek prayer of old, and he felt them carried up to the heavens—to the very gates of Gemini. Surely, the gods had heard them and would grant the hunter a hero’s reward.
“Though my mora’s pardon is not mine to grant, I would give you a life for what befell you at my hands.” Tzadkiel cupped Benjamin’s cheek in his hand, and delivered a gentle answer. “Is that something you would accept? If I could?”
“The only thing I want,” Benjamin said, kissing Tzadkiel’s palm, “is your forgiveness.”
Tzadkiel searched the hunter’s face and found the truth. “You already have it.”
Benjamin gave a small smile. “Then I’ll die happy.”
Leaning in, Tzadkiel answered him with a lingering kiss that made promises both of them knew could never be kept. Tender and warm, they shared tastes and sips of each other’s mouths that left Tzadkiel’s chest aching for air and his body thrumming with so much life he knew it would crest its levies and flood them both with its resulting tide.
The fighting around them closed in, telling Tzadkiel he was nearly out of time. He separated himself from Benjamin with a reluctant tug and moved behind the hunter. A shudder wracked Benjamin. Once the shaking began, it did not stop. There was no comfort Tzadkiel could offer at this lonely crossroads of both truth and destiny. He would be glad to die with Benjamin. He had no wish to live after this. Taking the knife from its sheath, he examined the gleaming blade.
“It will have to be the knife.” Tzadkiel paused, attempting in vain to soothe and to explain. “You understand…I have no fangs?”
Benjamin, on his knees, nodded. “As long as it’s you, I—it’ll b-be all right.”
Tzadkiel felt the battle quickening around him. Benjamin’s shoulders shook with unrepressed tremors. Tzadkiel smoothed a hand over bunched muscles, doing his best to soothe. Cold seeped into his palm from Benjamin’s skin. Breaths expanded the hunter’s chest on deep pulls as he struggled to gain control of himself. Someone thumped against Tzadkiel’s protective shield, and the world faded in for a moment, then out once more. He couldn’t delay any longer.
“I am sorry, hunter,�
� Tzadkiel whispered and grasped the knife firmly in his palm.
Benjamin tilted his head back, baring the column of his neck. Alabaster skin gleamed taut over pulsing blue vein. One quick slash—then the filling of the cup, and its offering to the gods—and it would all be over. Everything. The threat of the coven’s war, thousands of years of sieges and slayings. His people would be at peace. Everyone would be safe.
Tzadkiel closed his eyes and wound the fingers of his left hand in Benjamin’s hair for the last time. Steadying himself, he tightened his grip. Benjamin’s shuddering breaths trilled up his arm. So alive. This man who should have been his enemy—whose blood both honor and justice demanded be shed—was his soul mate. The strength of Benjamin’s blood connected them already, in a way Tzadkiel had never known. He would not slaughter the hunter like an animal, no matter what the gods demanded of a sacrificial offering. They could all be damned.
Kneeling behind Benjamin, hand dropping to Benjamin’s shoulder, Tzadkiel set down the knife and pulled the hunter back against his chest. Shuddering gasps tore from Benjamin’s lungs, and he shook beneath the band of Tzadkiel’s arm.
“Sh, now. It’s all right,” Tzadkiel whispered for his lover’s ears alone. “Sh, now. Brave boy.”
Holding Benjamin close, rocking him to and fro, Tzadkiel quieted him until his breaths were almost normal. The hunter sagged, the line of his back seeking Tzadkiel’s heat.
“You are not a coward,” Tzadkiel murmured, putting everything he wanted to say into that one sentence. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was all he had.
Benjamin turned his head to the side, exposing an artery.
Tzadkiel tightened his arm and struck, gambling everything on impulse. Benjamin’s arms jerked. The hunter cried out once, then quieted with a final moan. Sweet blood, bright with the flavor of elderflower, earthy with sage, spurted across Tzadkiel’s tongue. Closing his mind to all else, Tzadkiel forewent ritual and drank the first pulses directly from the vein. He took deep, sucking pulls of Benjamin’s life force.
Surrender the Dark Page 24
