by Thomas, Ian
No, they corrupted innocents with the supernatural for their own ends. Not to say other supernaturals didn’t have agendas. That would be a lie. Yet rarely so puerile as cults.
Matteo knew McLachlan. He knew his struggles. He knew his faults and he knew his strengths. While he sat apart from the supernatural communities – former demonic vessels pretty much a community of one as far as Matteo knew – McLachlan fought, bled, and lived as one of them.
Ben was wrong.
Lying in the night, no less troubled than when he was asleep, Matteo chased his fears around and around in his mind. Doubt was a cruel bedfellow. If he had to swear on a bible a testament regarding McLachlan – a feat not taken lightly given he was possibly the oldest living Catholic – he knew the man to be true and not what Ben painted him as. Yet Matteo had known McLachlan for about thirteen years. Ben; ten times that figure. Which left him more beleaguered of mind and spirit than he felt capable.
Such was his mental fatigue Matteo did not notice the shadow that fell over his house. Nor the coldness that accompanied the woman through the door. Only when her foot took the last flight of stairs to his room did he stir from his disquiet.
“Illyana?” he called out softly.
“There was a time you’d have sensed me from the street,” came the reply from the shadows on the stair. “Seems I came at the right time.”
Matteo sat up in the bed, eager to see her. His manhood swollen in anticipation. He pulled on a pair of boxers as a measure of modesty.
Cresting the landing, the night parted and the siren stood in the doorway. A golden silhouette incongruous with the cold shadows that enfolded her. Illyana. While the legend of the first werewolf was apocryphal, one fact always remained clear – the werewolf curse only applied to men. If a woman survived the bite of the wolf – by intent or accident – she would become a siren instead. An eternal woman who psychically fed on the souls of men. Creatures of captivating beauty with gossamer voices, they were supernaturals as old as vampires and werewolves.
“It’s good to see you,” he said, getting up from the bed and going to her.
“Stop.” But his arms were around her, drawing her close. He didn’t react when her skin burned him, even through the fabric of her coat. Gingerly, she returned his embrace, the warmth of him enveloping her. When she felt the blossom of hunger in her body, she pushed him away. “I said stop.”
“I’m happy to see you.”
“So happy you’d suffer a siren’s kiss?”
When Matteo didn’t answer, she regarded him closely. Her vision accustomed to the dark, she saw him as quite vibrant in the dark room, his bare skin bronze with energy emanating from him like vapor.
“What is it?” she asked concerned.
“Take off your coat,” he said warmly, gesturing to an armchair.
She did as suggested, but not without commenting. “There’s only one reason to take a coat off in a bedroom.”
“Is there?”
“Given that you could practically install a revolving door here, I think you know the answer to that.”
“How’ve you been?” he sat on the end of the bed, almost eagerly. As she reclined into the chair, one leg crossing the other, he leaned forward, his elbows resting on his thighs.
“Stop,” she replied coolly. “We’ve never been ones for small talk. At your age I think you’d know better. And yet I’m being the adult here.”
“How is asking after you being immature?” he said defensively.
“That would have more impact if you didn’t have an erection like some pimply teenager.” She cocked an eyebrow at him. Her face was its usual beautiful mask. Ice blue eyes studied him, full lips set in an impassive line, chin lifted strongly. Matteo had always considered her beauty breathtaking, her Russian heritage freezing a layer of unattainability over her. Even when she had been mortal. Becoming a siren had only accentuated her looks to make her allure lethal.
“Sorry,” he said, embarrassed. “Thank you for coming.”
“When the Pack Lord calls…”
“It wasn’t a summons,” he said quickly.
“As if I’d respond to a summons.” A hard smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
“Hence, not a summons.” He took a breath at last. “How long’s it been?”
“A few years,” she said, softening some but still wary of him. “Not since the funeral.”
Matteo took a moment, his memories of the funerals following the Pack War were harrowing. So many dead for nothing.
“Do you miss him?” he asked.
“Every day.” Her voice gave away nothing but he felt the temperature drop suddenly. His warm skin prickled at the chill.
“So do I.”
“Do you miss her?” Illyana asked directly.
Matteo was taken aback. A worse memory pulled at him cruelly. Unbidden, but now very real to him. It pressed in from all sides, threatening to smother him worse than the nightmare of the stable and the bloody slaughter. With the tragedy in Marseilles, he had been powerless. With…her. Well, his inaction had cost her dearly.
“Little harsh bringing up Evelyn,” he bristled, fighting to regain his composure.
“You brought up Dominic,” she replied coldly.
“Not to hurt you.”
“But you knew it would.” She shifted in her chair, squaring herself to him. “Matteo, we can play lost loves or dead lovers or whatever game you want, but we’ve known each other long enough to cut the bullshit.”
Absently, he stood and walked to the window, his desire waning. He felt her eyes on him as he moved, this time he was in silhouette.
“What’s happened?” she asked finally.
“You haven’t heard?”
“Should I have?”
He looked back at her, his expression lost in the shadows.
“It was after the funeral.” He returned his gaze to the window. “A few nights later. That’s when I last saw you.” She shifted again, this time uncomfortably. “You’d holed up in that hotel. Cut off everybody. Yet you opened the door to me.”
“That was a mistake.”
“Looking back, yes. But at the time, it was the only thing you needed.”
“I almost killed you.”
“But you didn’t.” He turned back to her. Then crossed the floor and stood before her, offering his hand. Tentatively she took it and let him pull her out of the chair. At his touch, she felt the hunger blossom again in her. The taste of a werewolf was intoxicating. A desire she struggled to contain.
“Matteo,” she said firmly, “what happened?”
He answered her with a kiss, his arms enfolding her again. She felt him stiffen as the first shards of pain dug in, but his taste was divine. Her breath catching, warmth flooded from him. Fighting her mounting desire she pushed against him and broke them apart.
“This will hurt you.”
“No, it’ll heal me.” He kissed her again, the vapor she had seen emanating from him began seeping into her. Illyana kissed him back. She had denied herself far too long. Minor lapses over time perhaps, but she hadn’t taken a life since the Pack War. Her hunger had been tempered by Dominic, Matteo’s fellow werewolf and best friend.
And her sire.
A distant niece of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Illyana and her family had been taken amid the February Revolution of 1917. The Russian Empire was crumbling amid food shortages and civil unrest due to World War I. Dominic had fallen for Illyana, scared for her life, and rightly so. Rather than have her face a Bolshevik firing squad, he sired her full-well knowing the outcome. To Dominic, it didn’t matter. He hoped their love would temper the worst of her siren nature. And for the most part, he was right. Yet it left him ostracized greatly from the wolf packs, including his own. A breach Dominic’s sire, then Pack Lord Thomas, could not repair. Matteo, however, accepted Dominic into his pack having relied on his counsel and friendship for the better part of three centuries.
“Stop!” She pulled away from
him.
Matteo said nothing, He merely opened his arms to her, palms outward, supplicant and offering. “I’m yours. As you wish. How you wish. You’ve denied yourself long enough, Illyana.”
“So you’re doing this for me?” Anger choked her voice.
He said nothing, remaining passive. A look of peace softened his features in the dark.
“This pain. Me. What I could do to you. It won’t eclipse the pain you’re suffering.”
“The hell it won’t.”
Shocked at his intent, Illyana drew back further from him. “And you would ask this of me? I won’t be your path to oblivion.”
“I was yours once.”
“Fuck you!”
“What I was hoping for,” he said wryly, his piece hardening.
“Then call someone else. Laurana’ll do it in a heartbeat.”
“But I trust you,” he pleaded.
“To be a fool,” she added, grabbing her coat. “To be naïve.”
“No.”
“Then to be your death?” she asked angrily. “I don’t think so.” Illyana turned and strode from the room. “I’ll see myself out.”
Roaring into the night after her, Matteo hid his shame with frustration and anger.
X
This should draw him out. Henry thought, watching the life drain from the woman’s eyes.
Enough wallowing in self-pity and Catholic guilt, time they brought this tease to a proper bitter end.
“Want me to scrawl some kinda bloody message on the wall?” the young vampire asked, pulling back from the corpse. Chin smeared with blood, she was quite the messy eater. “Revenge? Beware? We’re coming for yo–”
“Less is more.”
“Sure I get that,” she replied, though he wasn’t sure if she did. “Then maybe rip her arms and legs off. Make it kind of a treasure hunt around the city?”
“While I do appreciate the idea, there needs to be a horrific elegance to this.”
Not one to shirk effort when it came to torturing a foe, they’d already stalked the young woman from the building to her home, lured her outside, coerced her to accompany them, and then killed her back where she worked. Vinaio. Anything more would be gratuitous.
“So I gotta ask,” the young vampire tilted her head toward Henry. “First the coffee shop, now the coffee cart. This like a Starbucks thing? Are you a Mormon?”
“No,” he smiled. Her stupidity was quite refreshing. There was something so quintessentially 21st Century about her that gave him perspective on the world. Insular, incurious, and self-absorbed. Henry appreciated such overt narcissism. Hell, he celebrated it. How else could he have taken this lesser Mean Girl from her college campus and enjoyed watching her kill her friends and family. Hardly about to admit it to anyone – not that he had any confidantes to admit it to – but Henry had been surprised at how easy it had been to corrupt the young woman. Seemed she was half-way corrupted before they even met. Which he was learning was almost the default setting of this modern era. “More a comment on coffee being a social lubricant.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“I’m still hungry,” the vampire said. “Anyone else I can kill?”
“We’ll find you a snack on the way home.” He set about arranging the woman to hide her struggle. “You’re only to kill to make a statement.”
“We should subgram this. Really send a message.”
“No.”
“Do you know how many followers I’d have if you let me post this shit? Like I’d be the next Tay-Tay. Or that gay dude on YouTube.”
Henry took a deep breath. “You have to remember you’ve evolved. You don’t need those petty distractions anymore. Those are for the mindless. Seeking fulfillment through virtual validation. You have transcended that noise. You are power incarnate. Every whim, every desire fulfilled.”
“Then why can’t kill I someone else?” She pointed to a man walking past the lobby doors. “Like him.”
“Soon,” Henry said, pulling her to him. “Patience first, then we can act with abandon.”
“But I want to eat now,” she whined.
“Trust me.” He kissed her bloodied mouth. “It’ll taste that much sweeter.”
A means to an end. That’s what she was. A murderous ingénue. A distraction of his own. A concubine when the urge took him. Another plaything in his game of blood and death.
XI
Matteo // 6:12
Looks like we have another body.
Meet at Vinaio within the hour.
Feeling the world was very much against him getting any rest, McLachlan caught the N train from NYU to the Flatiron District. Wedged into the train with the morning commuters the text message gnawed at him. Their violence was intruding more and more on civilians. His accords did little to protect them it turned out.
Another dead body.
Shaking his head, he dreaded to tell Rebecca.
The common occurrence of ‘dead guys’ in his life already countered against him as potential boyfriend material. Which surely would’ve been a red-flag in any Cosmo advice column ever. Not that Rebecca struck him as a Cosmo kinda girl.
As the train jolted to a stop he let it shake the worries from him. Too much of his attention had been diverted recently. Understandably so given The Ordeal with the Cult, starting something with Rebecca, and Dylan’s return among other matters. Amid which had been the first dead body at the Daily Grind coffee house. Now a second. And he still hadn’t had a proper audience with Gracchus to discuss the body being a vampire attack. Ashamed he was no closer to any answers, now a second person had died. Possibly due to his inaction. A matter that would not sit well with Matteo. Nor Gracchus for that matter. Especially given possible dissension among his vampire court.
“McLachlan!” a voice called behind him as he climbed the stairs to the street. Turning, Eddie edged his way through the commuters, his dimples and handsome face awarding him clear passage.
“Hey,” he replied once Eddie was next to him on the stair. “You got the call as well.”
“Looks like Papa Pack Daddy learned to mass text. Lock up your daughters.”
“Maybe that’s what he’s been doing on his own lately,” McLachlan muttered.
“You noticed that too huh?”
When Eddie had pulled him aside at the airport, McLachlan had hoped for more than a fleeting update on Matteo’s health. Apparently, ‘yeah, yeah, fully healed’ was all Eddie had been capable of, focusing instead on how he should approach things with Hayley. At the time, McLachlan had stopped him, saying he was the last person to ask for dating advice. But Eddie had barreled on regardless. Pretty soon McLachlan had a full and detailed, if unwanted history of Eddie and Sarah’s break up, along with a text-by-text account of Eddie and Hayley’s dalliance since exchanging numbers. So many other issues going on and this was what Eddie was preoccupied with? Hardly blameless himself, McLachlan wondered if perhaps this was how Eddie was coping.
“Should we be worried?” McLachlan asked.
“You mean you’re not already?” Eddie gave him a sideways look and knowing smile. “He’ll be okay. Sometime it’s better to let them go off lick their wounds and then come back when they’re ready.”
“And it’s not like he’s actually taken off or anything.”
“Exactly,” Eddie said as they reached the street. “So we thinking this another vampire attack?”
“Got the same message you did,” McLachlan shrugged. “Still haven’t gotten in front of Gracchus.”
“I fucking hate vampires,” Eddie mumbled.
“Aren’t you supposed to be the diplomatic one?”
Eddie avoided answering, shoving his hands deeper into his coat pockets. Vampires recklessly killing and a werewolf showing prejudice, however muttered, McLachlan had to wonder if the accords were stable. Which left the wiccans. During Matteo’s infirmity, the wiccans had seemed congenial, mixing easily with the wolves present, even extending courtesy to Gr
acchus and his emissary when they arrived. Probably for the best, McLachlan hadn’t mentioned that the last time he saw Gracchus, he and his men had been fang-deep in a cult-cleric buffet. He only hoped no one else had noticed how healthy the vampires had looked, having sated their spartan thirst on so much blood. Even though he learned later they were not clerics but hired mercenaries to one of the eight seats, McLachlan’s guilt didn’t extend to their deaths.
“How was last night?” Eddie asked, proving diplomacy was indeed one of his skills.
“Fun,” McLachlan replied, recovering some of his levity from the not-a-second-date overnight spent at WNYU with Rebecca. He’d had a good night. Admittedly, the mystery of the radio show was lost for him now that he had seen what went on in the studio. Not that the reality was any less interesting. What happened off-air was often far more entertaining, or at least uncensored. McLachlan was impressed with how professional Rebecca and Mouth were. The show ran like clockwork. Every call handled with genuine interest and care. Songs intro-ed and outro-ed professionally. Competitions ran ethically. To some extent he did miss their phone conversations. Having Rebecca all to himself, their words only meant for each other. That privacy was rare of late. Yet he wouldn’t trade what was developing to go back to just talking on the phone.
“And Mouth?”
“Little less of a dick each day,” McLachlan said with a laugh. “Making progress.”
“He’s a good guy,” Eddie said as the jogged across the traffic-clogged avenue.
“That I know. You’ve met Dylan, you can see I’m pretty tolerant of dickish behavior.”
“You including yourself in that score?”
“Screw you, man-whore.”
“He’s just protective of Rebecca. Do you blame him?”
“What? You think he’s gonna be any less protective of Hayley?” It took McLachlan a second to realize Eddie had stopped abruptly in the street, his mouth agape. Head thrown back, McLachlan laughed. He did enjoy seeing these oh-so-mature and experienced wolves laid low by the modern world. At least he wasn’t fumbling around in the dark by himself.