To Summon Nightmares

by J. K. Pendragon

  "Well, I guess, but—" Niall looked confused. "I assumed you'd want to stay out of it."

  "Well..." Cohen gulped. "You thought wrong. I want to know what's going on. And I want to help if I can. And..." He bit his lip and pressed on. "I'd like you to stay for dinner. In fact, you have to stay for dinner, because if you don't tell me what's going on properly, I'm going to go to Myrna and tell her everything you told me last night."

  Niall raised his eyebrows. "Are you blackmailing me?"

  "No!" said Cohen, even though that was what it sounded like. "It's just that I can't sit by and let bad things happen without doing something about it. I have to know what's going on, so I can make the right decision. You understand, right?" He hoped Niall did, because he didn't want to make Niall hate him.

  But Niall didn't look angry. "I understand," he said. "All right, I'll stay for dinner. And I'll try to explain things better. But listen, Cohen, if you get involved in this, it could be really dangerous."

  "I know that," said Cohen, and his heart leapt uncomfortably in his chest. "Life's dangerous. But listen, I bought stuff for a vegetarian dinner, so you'd better stay."

  Niall laughed, and Cohen was pleased to see the corners of his eyes crinkle again. "All right, I'll stay."

  Chapter Six

  Niall grabbed a change of clothes from the back of his truck and went upstairs to change in the bathroom while Cohen set about making a pot of mushroom soup. It was freezing in the house. The cold stone walls seemed impervious to the heat outside, and Cohen could almost feel the cold radiating through the carpet below him as he made his way to the kitchen. He shivered and zipped his hoodie up, turning on the oven again for warmth as he stirred the soup.

  Niall appeared a few minutes later wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, the unbuttoned uniform shirt sadly nowhere in sight. "Cooking the old fashioned way, I see," he joked.

  "Yeah, well I didn't really feel like cleaning up chunks of mushroom from all over the kitchen," replied Cohen. "Does magical cooking require explosions?"

  "Only if I'm doing it, apparently. Dishes?"

  "They're all dusty, you'll have to wash them. Luckily I grabbed soap." Cohen ducked down to pull the bottle of dishwashing liquid from one of the bags.

  "Cheers," said Niall, taking the soap from Cohen and they set about getting ready for dinner. It was strangely comforting, just like dinners at home with his family. He wondered what Niall's family was like.

  "Thanks for staying for dinner," he said after a while. Not to fill the silence—it wasn't the uncomfortable sort—but because he really did enjoy having Niall there.

  "Thanks for having me," Niall replied simply, and Cohen felt a bit of frustration. This was a little too polite and cold, the conversation stiff and rehearsed. He wanted more.

  "It's a bit lonely here," he admitted. "I thought it would be nice to be alone for once, but it's a bit too much, you know?"

  "You're close to your family?" Niall asked. He was washing all of Cohen's dishes, setting them to dry on a dishtowel with quick, sure movements.

  "My sister and I were home-schooled," said Cohen. "And my dad works from home. We live in a pretty small flat, so yeah, we're always on top of each other."

  "I'd be scared of this big old house if I were you," said Niall, glancing around. "I mean, not me, I grew up in an old house, but they're different from flats."

  "I like it," said Cohen. "It feels more... real, I guess."

  "You're a romantic," said Niall with a small smile.

  "I'm a writer," agreed Cohen.

  "You're a fantasy writer, specifically," agreed Niall. "All about nostalgia and escapism, right?"

  "Not necessarily," said Cohen. "But I guess my books were. I kind of had this longing for a world where things were simpler and more complex at the same time." Niall gave him a questioning look, so he continued. "I mean, we live in a world where daily life is boring and morality is complex."

  "You want the opposite?"

  "I did," said Cohen. "But I guess it's stupid to think that just because daily life gets more complex, morality will get easier."

  "Morality always gets more complex." Niall sighed, drying off bowls now and setting them on the table. He sat down and leaned on his arms. "The more confused I get, the more simple I want my life to be. What do you do when faced with a moral quandary?" He looked up at Cohen, who realised that he was asking as a legitimate enquiry.

  "You try to make the best decision?" Cohen suggested as he balanced the pot of hot soup to the table and put it down on top of one of the oven mitts. "You pray about it?"

  "Do you?" Niall asked. "Pray?"

  Cohen sat down, feeling a bit queasy. Well, he'd wanted a deeper discussion and gotten it. "Not really. I used to. My family is really secular, but I sort of picked up on it as a kid. I thought it could help me with all the bad things I was feeling."

  "Did it?" Niall was ignoring the soup, looking at Cohen instead.

  "I thought so," sighed Cohen. "You know how a lot of people come out as kids, but I managed to repress it for years. So I don't know," he concluded. "I think praying just helps you to go through with the things you've already decided to do."

  "I can't decide what to do," said Niall, reaching for the soup at last. "So that doesn't really help."

  "I'm sorry," said Cohen. "What are you trying to decide on?"

  Niall smiled sadly. "It's not really a topic for dinner conversation."

  "Tell me later, then," said Cohen and Niall agreed.

  After dinner they headed upstairs to Cohen's bedroom to take advantage of the space heater. Niall, however, stopped Cohen when he went to start it up, and instead went and knelt by the fireplace. There was no wood, and Cohen had no idea what he was doing, until Niall started to mumble under his breath, and slide his hands along the hearth. Suddenly a warm, purple light bloomed and sparkling flames crept up, bringing with them heat and a warm, flickering light.

  "Oh my god," breathed Cohen, bending down to survey the fire, which seemed to be burning off of nothing but darkness. "Oh my god, you—Niall, this is—" This was so much more real than the exploding can of beans. This fire was real and warm and so obviously magical that it made his head spin.

  "Magic," said Niall, a little smugly. "I told you."

  "But—I—" Cohen backed away from the fireplace, staring from Niall to the fireplace and then back to Niall. "Was that really powerful magic? Won't they be able to track you?"

  "They won't, it was just minor witchcraft," said Niall. "People do it all the time; they don't bother to pick up on it. And anyway, I've got these wards up, remember? They can't see inside."

  Cohen stared at the fire for a little longer. "I need to sit down," he announced at last, and did so on the bed. Niall sat next to him.

  "I learned all this stuff from inside Kathleen's head," he explained softly. "Jacky and I—we were just kids when they took us. We wouldn't have been able to survive on the outside without her. She knows so much."

  "When you..." Cohen shivered. Magic was real. And everything Niall had told him was real. "You," he whispered, turning to look at Niall's face in the firelight. "You were locked up, for years. How are you still okay, how are you not s-so angry..." His voice shook with the injustice of it. He wanted to grab Niall and hold him tight, save him somehow, even though it had already been done.

  "I..." Niall looked stricken for a moment. "I don't know. I am... I think. It's so hard to feel anything. I think I'm fine, and then I have such bad dreams. Sometimes I think it's not real. That I'm still in there, they're just tricking me..." His eyes darted to the mirror on Cohen's dresser. Cohen had removed the sheet on it, and Niall was staring at it with fear in his eyes.

  Cohen jumped up, grabbed the sheet from the floor and tossed it over the mirror so that it was completely covered. That seemed to relax Niall a bit, and he slumped. "Thank you," he breathed. "I'm sorry, it's just... mirrors. They used to watch us through two-way mirrors." He looked away from Cohen, the lines of his ch
eeks clenched in frustration. "I know it's not logical, I just can't help but feel like someone's always watching me."

  Cohen walked towards Niall tentatively. "I'm sorry for asking you about it," he said. "I didn't mean to dredge up bad things."

  "It's okay," said Niall, and he stared at the mirror for a few more minutes before glancing at Cohen. "You're shivering," he said, looking concerned.

  "Oh," Cohen's arms crept around him. "Yeah, it's just a bit cold still." That wasn't the real reason he was shaking, of course, but he didn't want Niall to know how angry and upset he was.

  "You might as well get under the blankets," said Niall, gesturing to the bed. "If you want I can hold you... I mean," he looked a bit embarrassed, but he was still looking at Cohen, the embarrassment in his eyes second fiddle to sincerity, "to warm you up. I'm always warm."

  Cohen shivered again, but this time at the thought of Niall touching him. Not even in a sexual way, just in the desperate way he'd wanted to hold him and take his pain away. "Okay, yeah," he said, and he felt his lips tremble a little. He really was cold. "Okay," he said again, and then hurried to take his shoes off and scramble under the covers.

  Niall followed him, holding the blanket up as they both got under the heavy comforter, fully clothed. Cohen set the pillows up and then Niall put his arm up around Cohen's shoulder and Cohen snuggled into him. He was warm, like a thrumming centre of heat, and his body through his thin t-shirt felt hard and angular and so comfortable. "Oh god," he whispered. "That is so much better."

  Niall wasn't saying anything, but his breathing was hard and Cohen could feel his heart beating in his chest.

  "Are you okay?" he asked, looking up at Niall, who glanced down at him.

  "God, yeah," he said. "I'm sorry, it's just been so long since I touched someone."

  Cohen frowned and snuggled closer. "But didn't you... with Jacky?"

  "Not after we escaped," said Niall, his body stiffening again with the memory. "He didn't like to be touched anymore, and I... I wasn't sure if I wanted to touch him anyway. I thought he'd get better. I thought we could both get better."

  "What happened?" asked Cohen. "You didn't tell me what you did after you escaped."

  Niall took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "We left London. Went to Russia, actually. Kathleen speaks Russian so we both can, too. Ruskij. I got a job there, and we rented a place. I was careful about everything, and so was Jacky. I thought, I really thought he'd start to get better."

  "But he didn't?" mumbled Cohen, wishing he wasn't making Niall talk about this, but suspecting that Niall wanted to talk about it anyway.

  "You know how I'm not really angry?" Niall shifted, and Cohen straightened up a bit so that he could look at Niall. "I guess I had to give up on anger because otherwise it would drive me mad. I think it drove Jacky a little mad. Or maybe he was mad already, and this just gave him something to aim for. He became obsessed with destroying the Guild, bringing it down. I agreed that maybe there was something we could do to stop them taking advantage of people, but nothing violent..."

  "Violent..." repeated Cohen. "What does he want to do to them?"

  "I don't know," sighed Niall. "I didn't like looking into his mind too much. I just know he has so much anger there, that he doesn't care about people dying, or even about himself dying."

  "But why is he here?" Cohen pressed. "Why is he killing people here? One of his victims was a little girl, she can't have had anything to do with the Guild."

  "He's using them as sacrifices," said Niall. "There used to be Druids here, in this part of Ireland. They found a pit with something in it, something that had been locked away a long time ago, to keep it from destroying the world. Or that's what the legend says anyway."

  "A Titan?" whispered Cohen. "Like when Zeus locked away the Titans? That kind of thing actually happened?"

  "I don't know," said Niall. "Probably something like that anyway. So the Druids set up a way to free the Titan and control it, if the need ever arose."

  "That's completely stupid," gasped Cohen. "That's more stupid than summoning a demon! No offence."

  "Summoning a demon was the stupidest thing we've ever done," agreed Niall. "And now he's going to go and do something even more stupid."

  "You have to stop him," said Cohen, nearly jumping out of the bed with urgency. "Niall, you can't let him do that."

  "What am I supposed to do?" asked Niall. "Turn him into the Guild? I might as well turn us both in. He'd rather die than go back to them, so would I. Should I kill him? Or let the Guild do that, slowly?" He was angry, his body stiff, no longer touching Cohen.

  "You can't just let him get away with what he's doing, though! He's killing people! It'd be the lesser of two evils."

  "Right," agreed Niall. "Fine, you're right, he needs to die. You've made that decision, so why don't you carry it out?"

  A cold shiver passed through Cohen. He swallowed, a lump hard in his throat. "I—I couldn't," he whispered.

  "I know," said Niall, his voice cracking. "I couldn't, either. And because of that I'm just sitting here letting him kill people, but what am I supposed to do?"

  "I don't know," said Cohen, finally recognising the moral quandary that Niall was in. "You could try to talk to him again, to stop him?"

  "He's hell-bent on it," said Niall. He wrapped his arms around himself and sunk into the bed. "I suppose I could try again."

  "No," Cohen reached toward Niall, wanting to touch him again, wanting to comfort him, but feeling like his comfort was utterly useless. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to judge you like that."

  To Cohen's surprise, Niall reached forward and touched his hand, sliding his strong fingers between Cohen's soft, shorter ones. Then he reached forward with his other hand and touched it to Cohen's face. Cohen gasped, the touch shocking. His felt like his heart was going to burst. All at once he wanted to flinch away and cry, and reach forward and kiss Niall so hard that he forgot about everything else.

  Niall's fingers were clenching Cohen's hand tightly, while the fingers of his other hand made their way to the back of Cohen's neck to tangle in his hair. He seemed to realise what he was doing, and tried to pull away, but Cohen kept his hand, holding tight.

  "You shouldn't get involved in this," Niall said firmly, still trying to tug his hand away. "You shouldn't get involved with me."

  "I wish I hadn't," admitted Cohen. "But now I have, I can't just go back and pretend this never happened. I'm involved now. I want to help."

  "You can't help," said Niall.

  "But I can try." Cohen reached out and began to copy Niall's actions, sliding his hand over Niall's cheek, the skin soft but peppered with sharp stubble. He slid his hand back over Niall's strong jaw and into the soft warmth at the nape of his neck. "I don't know why I'm feeling this way. I promise it's not because you're dangerous or exciting or anything like that. I wish we were both completely normal."

  He realised the double meaning to that as soon as he said it, and became aware of his body once again, all the ways it was wrong, for himself and for Niall. He could feel the binder pressing against his chest, and the way he should be reacting to Niall's smell and his warmth but wasn't.

  "You feel normal to me," said Niall, his voice so soft it was almost a whisper, but with the strength of his voice behind it. "You feel like..." He seemed lost for words, his mouth open. As if he was waiting for what he wanted to say to come, but he had forgotten, or whatever it was didn't exist, hadn't up until this moment.

  Cohen kissed him.

  He'd never felt anyone react to a kiss the way Niall did. It was as if his entire body caught fire, like a roaring beast of desperation had burst out of him. He pressed forward, engulfing Cohen with his mouth, his warmth almost overbearing but irresistible. Their mouths opened and Niall's tongue slipped in, teasing the roof of Cohen's mouth until he moaned from the shivers of pleasure. Niall's hands were on Cohen, like hard clamps digging into the soft flesh of Cohen's waist, pulling him closer. He leaned over Cohe
n, pressing his thigh between Cohen's legs, and Cohen clung to Niall desperately, hopeless and helpless in the face of Niall's desperation.

  He could hardly breathe, but air seemed less important than the feel of Niall's wet tongue and lips against his mouth. Cohen dug his fingers into the muscle of Niall's back, pulling him closer. It was as if Niall wanted to devour him, and Cohen wanted to be devoured; he had never felt such heat, never wanted so badly. There was a fire between his legs, burning him up, threatening to tear him in two.

  He squirmed a little and moaned Niall's name, and Niall seemed to come to his senses. "Oh my god," he gasped and threw himself off of Cohen, backing up from him with a look of panic in his eyes. "Oh my god, Cohen, I'm so sorry!"

  "Uh," gasped Cohen, because he seemed to be incapable of making any other noises. He shoved himself up from where he had been lying flat on his back and pressed his legs together. His groin was still on fire, a searing, throbbing slash like he'd just had his dick cut off a second ago. It wasn't an altogether unpleasant feeling, but he could have gone without the mental analogy. "Feeling a little deprived?" he asked Niall, who looked like he was about to explode with embarrassment.

  "I honestly don't know what came over me," he said through his hands. "That sounds horrible and cliché but it's true."

  "I'm just that sexy," quipped Cohen, and Niall lowered his hands, his gaze hot on Cohen.

  "You are," he said. Cohen wanted to make a token protest, but Niall was obviously telling the truth, and who was he to argue? "Was that okay?"

  "More than okay," Cohen reassured him. "But I... I should stop you before we go any further, because I..." he sighed. "I can't do a lot of things that, you know, normal—cis," he corrected himself, "people can do."

  Niall leaned forward to draw Cohen back into his arms, pulling the blanket up over them. "It's okay," he said. "I'm okay with doing whatever you wanna do."

  "I-I've only been with girls before," Cohen blurted out.