Taste the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  “If you’re here to say your goodbyes, you might want to make it quick.” He cast a pitying glance at the bed. “I don’t expect him to last the night.”

  Tzadkiel nodded gravely before sliding his gaze to Lyandros. “May we have a few minutes alone with him?”

  “Of course.” The doctor snapped off his gloves and tossed them in the trash on his way out the door. “Clear the room please.”

  Following orders, the staff trailed out past Lyandros. When the last person left, he closed the door with a quiet snick and faced his brother. Taking the kylix from its satin bag, the War King regarded his Justice Giver with quiet gravity.

  “Come here.”

  Lyandros’s brows shot up. “I thought you did not want me to bond with him?”

  “The time for petty feuds is over.” Withdrawing his dagger, Tzadkiel held it hilt first to Lyandros and then frowning, seemed to recall something and put it away. “We do this fully or not at all.”

  Lifting Akito’s inert wrist, Tzadkiel beckoned Lyandros forward. Lyandros knew what he had to do to start the ceremony, though he’d never been responsible for this portion. “You really want me to bond with him?”

  “It would seem…” An internal struggle etched Tzadkiel’s strained features. “It is the only way for you both to live.”

  Lyandros took Akito’s wrist from Tzadkiel’s palm. His fangs pushed from their engorged sockets. Running his thumb over pale flesh and weak pulse point, he realized he’d never touched his tribute before. Not really. The bodies they’d had in Faerie had been made of illusion and magic. Moonlight and fantasy. Here, they were where they belonged. Or, at least Akito was.

  “If it does not work…” Lips over Akito’s wrist, Lyandros paused to regard Tzadkiel.

  “Then we have lost nothing that would not have been lost anyway.”

  “Thank you, brother,” Lyandros said, taking a deep breath. And struck.

  Chapter 28

  White light bled from Akito’s fingertips, stuffing his eyes and pores until they overflowed. Pressure built and crested—a reverse birthing—as he tried to shove his soul back into its too-small housing. He writhed, searching for an escape from the burning pressure. A rebounding snap separated him from the pain, and he floated upward, drifting over a body he recognized as familiar.

  That’s me. But not me.

  His body was only a shell—the vehicle that carried him through the physical plane. Tubes lay on the floor, dripping something damp, and blood stained the white pillowcase next to his head. Cocking his head, Akito eyed himself, curious. Why would he want to go back to being trapped in that shell when the universe was at his disposal? With all its frailties and limitations, it was a wonder the human body lived to walk the earth at all.

  Lyandros brought the kylix to Akito’s lips once more. He watched as his own head lifted without prompting and he drank deeply. The cup was taken away, and he fell back to the bed. Above, Akito felt as if he held his breath.

  “Damn you,” Lyandros growled in frustration. “You will survive.”

  Curiosity licked at Akito’s awareness. The vampire wanted him to return to that broken thing called his body. If he did, he would experience more pain—not only here and now—but over an eternity.

  Immortality on the physical plane did not equate to absence from pain or death. It would mean he healed quickly, could not be touched by disease, and would perhaps move on to the vampire equivalent of Valhalla—Gemini—when he crossed over. Centuries, perhaps millennia, of mishaps, gunshot wounds, and knife fights, angry friends, and the potential for living without the man he loved loomed.

  Lyandros.

  When Lyandros had entered the hospital room with Tzadkiel, Akito had noticed the way his soul seemed to walk both inside and outside of his body. Though the Justice Giver lived, his time on the physical plane would be short.

  “I don’t want to live without you,” Akito whispered, and drifted away from the bed as if he were a balloon a child had once grasped but negligently set free.

  “Return to your life.” Face tilted toward the heavens, Lyandros commanded him. “Be the warrior I saw in you—that I see in you. Fight for our mora—fight for your friends—by my side.”

  The Justice Giver’s face, haggard with fatigue, arrested Akito’s retreat. Tension vibrated the ether.

  When Akito didn’t come forth, Lyandros sighed.

  “So be it,” the Lyandros said, bowing his head.

  Stepping back, he joined Tzadkiel, and both vampires cupped their hands. Greek flowed from them in a song-like prayer, beautiful clear notes more crystalline than any Akito had ever heard, except from one other. Nyx. Stepping over the threshold, Benjamin joined Tzadkiel. Their combined voices lifted in the chant.

  Akito swayed, entranced by the music, his spirit tingling. Drifting closer, drawn in like a snake to its charmer, he twisted and floated toward the welcoming well of Lyandros’s hands. Heat caressed him, lulling and ethereal, as the song wrapped around his ghostly limbs until his being was cupped in the Justice Giver’s palms. Benjamin too, covered him with his hands, no less comforting in their weaker magic.

  Relaxing, Akito sighed. Everything was all right. He would be okay. They would send him to Gemini where he would meet Lyandros someday soon. Except…if Lyandros failed to move on, there would be no one to greet him in Gemini. Akito tensed, his spirit snapping awake.

  “Now!” Lyandros said.

  As one, Lyandros, Tzadkiel, and Benjamin slammed their palms over Akito’s corporeal chest, the impact cataclysmic. Light and sound roared, atoms split and mushroomed outward in a chain reaction that went on and on and on. Akito animated, screaming.

  Lyandros held him. “Do not worry. I am here, warrior.”

  But it wasn’t going to be okay, because…

  Welcome back.

  The Morgan’s softly worded welcome nearly split Akito’s head in two. He fell from the bed, tubes and wires tangling around his feet, clutching his skull. His skin burned where he touched his face, and he gasped. Red-gold light sang from his pores, much like Nyx’s own aura, but with a quality he mistrusted. He squinted at his hand and saw flames licked his skin, his anger producing a corporeal effect.

  It would appear you have returned even more useful to me.

  Hatred for the Morgan welled, tainting Akito’s growl with animalistic rage. “Get. Out. Of. My. Head.”

  “Akito…” Lyandros reached for him.

  Akito instinctively recoiled, knowing whatever his anger had done to him it would hurt anyone who touched him. “Get back.”

  The Morgan practically tap danced with glee. They would have been better off letting you die. Now I will use you to kill every one of them before you and I take a well-earned vacation in Faerie.

  No. No. No.

  A cooler presence brushed at the edges of Akito’s awareness, wraithlike, powerful, and with the authority of all Akito’s favorite heroes combined. He instinctively turned toward that presence, gathering it closer to him. A shield and a weapon, he recognized as the Justice Giver’s energy.

  Lyandros?

  Fear dissolved like spun sugar in the cooling rain. Inside his mind’s eye, the hospital room receded, and Akito saw himself step from the shadows to face off with the black robed Morgan. He hadn’t seen the witch since the night of his close escape with Lyandros and Isander into Faerie. Time had not softened the evil brittleness edging the man’s features.

  “So, we meet again, slave.”

  Licorice root and paraffin, combined, curled through Akito’s nostrils. In those scents he recognized himself, but also a darkness that was all the Morgan’s own. Believing Lyandros fueled his power and stood at his back, Akito saved his energy, waiting for the moment when he could do maximum damage with the Justice Giver’s help.

  “Save the small talk.” He cracked his knuckles, and gold sparked from his fingertips in hissing pops. “It’s time for you to pack your bags and go.”

  The Morgan, undeterred, approached. A
black tipped fingernail caressed Akito from earlobe to jaw as the witch mockingly considered him. Where once that touch had compelled Akito to escape within himself, he stood his ground, unflinching and unimpressed.

  “Last warning,” Akito ground, barely moving his lips.

  A smile cracked the brittle landscape of the Morgan’s face. The witch leaned in, his breath ghosting over Akito’s ear. Akito’s gorge rose, but he remained still. Calm before the storm.

  “I think I’d like to see what you think you bring to the game now, Aki-to.” The Morgan walked around him, making a survey of his prize. “How can I use you against them? Can you see how whenever you run, you only make me stronger?”

  Memories of how the Morgan had tortured his body and mind knifed through Akito. He fisted his head in pain, nearly doubling over, the man’s evil his personal kryptonite. In the anger and despair, he saw himself clearly.

  Not a hero. Not a friend.

  Nothing.

  “That’s right,” the Morgan said, robes rustling as he circled Akito with undisguised glee.

  Weeks in Lyandros’s arms, kneeling at his feet, pushed against the darker tide and broke like white foam. Cooling. Soothing. Bright and moonlit. Those visual hallmarks reminded Akito of his lover’s attentions. Honey-dark laughter and silken sheets. He recalled this and more from his time with the Justice Giver in Faerie. A time when he hadn’t been invisible at all, but rather seen and pleasured and comforted as well as comforting.

  “You are nothing,” the Morgan whispered from the darkness.

  Akito’s head snapped up, and he stepped to the center of his internal spotlight to confront and expel the evil within him. “I. Am. Everything.”

  The Morgan’s red energy crackled, forming a ball that pulsed black at its center. “We shall see.”

  Heat pulsed from Akito’s fingertips, setting the darkness aglow until it reached the far corners of his mind and filled it with the eerie hum of Northern Lights. Holding up his hands, he pushed outward, sending light into the darkest corners. A crackling groan filled the space between him and the Morgan. Pressure built and walls splintered.

  The Morgan threw his forearm upward to shield his face from the light. Akito knew the power of a million suns shone within him. Where the light should have blinded him, however, it made him see more clearly. He controlled it and the darkness because they were of him. Part of him. Nothing and no one existed inside himself that he did not allow.

  He whipped his hand outward, and the ball of light shattered, resonating with a supernova-like blast that tumbled him backward. Tendrils of the Morgan’s energy whip corded outward and detached from his skin as the coven leader was propelled away. Hands tingling, Akito sagged, depleted, and waited for the Morgan to strike back. A string of heartbeats lengthened and nothing happened.

  The Morgan was gone.

  For good.

  When Akito came back to himself, he sat on the floor in the middle of the hospital room. Tzadkiel and Benjamin regarded him from the edge of the bed while Lyandros, behind Akito, rubbed his shoulders.

  Akito let his head fall backward against the solid wall of the Justice Giver’s chest. “Thank you.”

  “Of course,” Lyandros answered.

  He ran his tongue thickly around his mouth, and something poked his tongue. Gingerly, he lifted finger to his mouth and tested the foreign object. Holy crap. He had fangs.

  “You’re stubborn as shit, you know that?” Ben supplied.

  “If we’re back to you being an asshole, then I guess I’m going to be okay,” Akito answered, withdrawing his fingers from their probing. “But I couldn’t have done it without Lyandros.”

  Benjamin stood, crossing to plunk down in front of him and removed Akito’s hands from their exploration. “You mean the turning? Because I’m pretty sure Tzadkiel could have done it too.”

  Akito knew as well as anyone that any member of the mora, if they had the kylix, could turn another. The ritual magic only required the blood of Pollux and the gods’ blessing to be completed.

  Lyandros encircled Akito’s waist with an unmistakable possessiveness.

  “Nah.” Examining his hands in Benjamin’s own, Akito squeezed. His fingers no longer glowed with what he was rapidly coming to think of as his fires of conviction. “I meant for helping me with the Morgan.”

  From his perch on the bed, Tzadkiel frowned at their little group. “What do you mean?”

  “Lyandros,” Akito explained, leaning his head back so the Justice Giver’s stubble caught at his hair and rasped against his scalp. “He fed me the energy to kick the Morgan out of my head.”

  Lyandros’s breathing stilled. “I did no such thing.”

  Tilting back his head, Akito eyed Lyandros. “Yes, you did. I felt you there. The power of your connection.”

  “I told you once that touch of any kind was your prerogative.” Pulling back, Lyandros squeezed Akito’s shoulders and stood, tugging Akito with him. “You ordered me to stand back, and I did not break my word. Either on this plane or any other.”

  “But…” Skipping his attention to the now-silent hospital monitors, Akito frowned. “I know I felt you there. At my back.”

  Benjamin, standing by Tzadkiel now, tilted his head. “Are you sure it wasn’t just you?”

  “What do you mean?” Akito asked, frowning.

  “Well, the glow you had? I think we all saw it, not just me.” Benjamin seemed to seek confirmation from Tzadkiel and Lyandros. “It was amazingly bright. Almost like you were expelling the Morgan with light.”

  Akito looked up, dumbfounded, from contemplating his hands. “That wasn’t just in my head?”

  “I do not believe so.” Tzadkiel stood, casting a worried look at the door.

  “Wow.” Helium-like happiness filled Akito. “So, I did that?”

  “We should leave before the medical staff return,” Tzadkiel said, and poked his head out.

  Benjamin laughed darkly. “They’re going to have your photos on the six o’clock news for body snatching, you know.”

  “I can stay here with Akito,” Lyandros offered. “Until they release him.”

  Still in awe over his ability to kick the Morgan’s ass on his own terms, Akito dropped into the guest chair. “Yeah. I don’t want you to get into trouble.”

  By the door, Lyandros and Tzadkiel conversed in hushed tones. Something about a cab and money.

  “I’m sorry.” Benjamin stopped in front of Akito. “For everything.”

  “I heard the conversation in the mora. About turning me.”

  Arms crossing his chest protectively, Benjamin seemed to shrink in on himself. “Yeah?”

  “It’s all good. I was a pain in the ass,” Akito said, throwing Benjamin a bone.

  “Thanks.” Benjamin licked his lips, and Akito could almost hear him wishing for a drink. “I’m an asshole.”

  “Yeah. You are.” Color spotted Benjamin’s cheeks, but Akito continued. “But it means I’m in good company.”

  Smirking, Benjamin grasped Akito’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

  With a wide-armed shrug, Akito mirrored Benjamin’s expression and pulled him in for a hug.

  When they separated, Benjamin grew serious. “Do you think Nyx is all right? Lyandros said she…”

  “He,” Akito corrected, automatically.

  “Ugh.” Benjamin made a face, dropping his hand to his thigh. “I’m never going to get used to this, am I?”

  “It’s easier when you’re around him,” Akito said. “But I don’t think Nyx would care. That’s not really where he lives emotionally, you know?”

  The fae were a strange race. Gender as a concept, while it existed, didn’t matter as much as it did to some in the human world. Though, Nyx had spent a lot of time growing up in Boston, so maybe he would have to adjust more than most fae would in a similar situation.

  “Yeah.” Benjamin, running his fingers over the head of his cane, shifted his stance from one foot to the other. “But he was all right w
hen you left?”

  “As all right as you can be while trying to stage a coup of the fae court?” Akito, trying to be reassuring, could recall only his last glimpse of Nyx. Dark hair blowing back from his face, poised on a high tree branch, he aimed one of his golden, glowing arrows at the guard below. “Was it your idea to send him to Faerie?”

  “No. Some fae came to get him after his brother died.” Focused on the dragon’s head at the top of his cane, Benjamin ran his thumb over the metal in mute contemplation. “I wanted to come too, to help him, but Tzadkiel wouldn’t—”

  “Benjamin…” Tucking his wallet into his inner jacket pocket, Tzadkiel called from the doorway.

  “Sure. One sec.” Benjamin surprised Akito, coming to Tzadkiel’s figurative heel more quickly than Akito expected. “See you back at home?”

  Home…

  Akito stood, smiling. “Of course.”

  Awkwardness rushed in to fill the gulf between them. Their friendship had eroded over the past months. How could it not? The foundations, however, remained. Understanding he and Benjamin both desired to rebuild their relationship would be enough to move forward. Arms wide, Akito invited another hug.

  “I want to hear all about…well, everything. Later.” Benjamin embraced him quickly, then slipped away with Tzadkiel.

  Lyandros and Akito had only a few moments alone before the hospital staff entered. Several long hours of tests and incredulity ensued, during which Akito was predictably labeled a medical miracle. When he and Lyandros finally grabbed a cab back to Boylston Street, Akito sagged against the back seat with a weary sigh.

  They rode in silence for several minutes before Lyandros said, “I saw the shades on the Common on the way here.”

  Akito rolled his head to the side to regard Lyandros. The Justice Giver’s expression was one of strained worry, the lines around his mouth and eyes painting him as older than Akito had remembered from their time in Faerie. “I know.”

  Lyandros shifted on the seat to take him in more fully. “You do?”