by SJ Himes
“Yeah, I would agree. But no proof. I was twenty and a mess, and everyone was either afraid of me or treating me like glass. I was in no place to really push for more answers. There wasn’t anyone left from the Bloodclan that got enthralled, either, so none of them could come forward to place blame on the particular sorcerer who destroyed their clan. They all died.”
Angel was lost to memory, the sound of ripping flesh and hissing, screams of terror and pain ricocheting behind his eyes and filling his ears. He squeezed his eyes tight, and clung tightly to Simeon, willing the horrors to retreat.
“Even the Master and his Elders? We knew of the history when our Master moved us here, but there are many pieces still missing to the tale. We absorbed the few lone vampires here in the city, but they knew nothing about what happened. What do you know?”
Angel thought about it, but his mind was stumbling, images of August propped up against the wall, interspersed with memories of his family strung out across the floor and in the front yard of his childhood home too much to handle. Here was comfort, and support, and all he could do was cling, and hope Simeon knew what to do after that. Tomorrow was soon enough to be strong. All he could do right now was try and hold himself together.
“It was a clan from Rhode Island? Maybe Providence? I can’t remember ever asking, I wasn’t in a place to get answers. I don’t know if the Master and his Elders fell with the rest of their clan. When they attacked, they were as rabid and unthinking as zombies, and a helluva lot faster. None of them were capable of rational thought, even when my family cut them down in droves before being overrun.” Too late to stop it, a sob broke free, and Angel buried his face in the soft silk of Simeon’s tie. He was going to end up ruining the silk with his tears, but Simeon held him tighter and Angel let them come.
For years, he’d been alone. Even when Isaac was living with him, Angel was alone. Being a parent and big brother left little time for mourning, and there had been no one to turn to after his family died. August had bailed, too overcome by his own grief, and the foolish belief that if he’d been with Raine Salvatore the night of the attack that he might have been able to save them. Angel had been home that night, and all he could do was get Isaac to safety in the mansion’s panic room and then run back into the fray, expecting fully to die.
“Haven’t seen August for years,” Angel said, muffled by Simeon’s tie. “I thought he left town. I heard at one point he moved to Hartford. Why was he here? Why didn’t he come see me if he was in town? I might have saved him from…Maybe.”
“Perhaps, mo ghra, you were a reminder of his grief. Seeing you would have been too much. Not fair, but only too human.” Simeon had stopped rubbing, merely cradling Angel in a protective embrace, and Angel’s lids drooped, and he was moments from sleep, even as he struggled to think. Simeon kept talking, lips brushing over the top shell of his ear, and Angel let some more tears slip free. “Don’t put his death on yourself. Only the one who killed him is responsible.”
“I know,” Angel replied, but he had yet to believe it. What he wouldn’t give for a quiet life, free from his past. “I don’t know why he’s dead, other than it’s to do with me. That means someone out there wants me and is willing to do anything to get to me, including summoning demons and killing innocent people to do it. And I don’t think the cops will be doing anything to stop it.”
Simeon was gone again when he woke in the morning, and it was sometime before noon by the angle of the sun. Angel was tucked in on the couch, his boots off, stripped down to his underwear, under the ratty afghan that he’d taken from his old home years before. For a foolish second, he thought to check for bite marks, but Simeon wasn’t an idiot. It was a guaranteed second death for a vampire to drink from someone like Angel unless Angel felt like saving him or he could get to another magic-user in time.
“Dammit, he never told me why he was in a tux. Fuck, was he fine,” Angel grumbled, sitting up, afghan pooling in his lap.
“I was dressed in a tux, Angelus because there was a welcoming party for a foreign dignitary. I’m glad you appreciated the sight, my love,” Simeon said from behind him, and Angel squawked, falling from the couch and standing in a mad scramble of limbs. “I left when it became too onerous. Which I’m glad for, incidentally, as you needed me last night.”
“Holy shit! Don’t do that!” Angel shouted, confused. “It’s daytime!”
It was indeed, the sun streaming in from the street-side windows, alighting across the couch and most of the living room. Simeon was standing in the kitchen, covered by shadows and holding still.
“Why the fuck are you here, Simeon? Do you have a second death wish?” Angel was freaking out. If Simeon took even a single step forward, he would be a pile of ash. “Why didn’t you go home?”
“A vampire came into your place of business, your territory, and killed a man you knew and cared about. This is after a demon was sent here to kill you. Did you truly think I would leave you alone, Angelus?” Simeon asked, tiny flashes of fang showing Angel just how displeased he was.
“That’s sweet and all, but I’ve been taking care of myself for years now, I don’t need a sitter.”
“I beg to differ.”
Angel gaped at Simeon, who did nothing but smirk at him and cross his arms over his wide chest and wait while Angel figured out how to reply. “People actually say that?” Angel whispered, and Simeon snorted, an inelegant sound that contrasted with the silk dress shirt he still wore.
The tuxedo jacket was draped over the back of the couch, and Angel found himself reaching for it, caressing the smooth cloth, enjoying the heavy yet fine feel to the fabric. “How long have you been trapped in the kitchen?”
Simeon appeared to think about it, but he answered quick enough. “Since dawn. The sun should make it into the kitchen in an hour or so. I would have been safer in your bedroom, but I was most reluctant to have you out of my sight.”
He rolled his eyes at the overprotective statement but made no comment. Angel couldn’t hear the worry in his voice, but Simeon would indeed be trapped and then exposed as the day waxed on. Angel didn’t have blinds sufficient to block the sun and keep Simeon from burning.
“Hold on a few minutes. Stay in there, okay?”
“Nowhere else to go, mo ghra.”
Angel chuckled at the sardonic reply, and carefully put the jacket back down.
He wasn’t as tired as he should be, for some reason. Maybe there was some magical benefit to sleeping on a vampire’s lap though he doubted it. He remembered feeling safe, and relaxed, even with his painful memories. Sleeping with Simeon left him refreshed, and he didn’t know what to do about that.
Angel faced the windows, pale gold light streaming in. The sky was clear, a few random fluffy white clouds coming into view before the wind chased them away. It was a day shiny and bright, a rarity this late in the season. It wouldn’t last, though, the evening bringing more rain and some snow. Angel stepped closer to the windows and closed his eyes.
He called his second sight to the fore, and the sigils and runes written on the windows shone like liquid gold. They were part of his wards, to keep them from being broken and forcibly opened. Glass was highly receptive to spells and magic, and these windows already knew his magic. Angel reached for the veil, and with a thin tendril of thought, opened it to a trickle. Even with so small an opening in the veil, the energy that poured out from the fissure into Angel was enough to make him mentally stagger. He absorbed it, made it his own, and kept a part of his mind on monitoring the energy flow. He welcomed the filling of his mental reserves, and exhaled, relaxing as best he could.
As best as anyone knew, vampires were of a magical origin to which sunlight was inimical, the radiant energies put off by the UV and the extreme magical energies of the solar system’s yellow star of a sufficient strength to tear apart the mysterious force that animated the undead. Angel recognized it as a type of death magic, the force that animated the sentient undead, a primordial magic that was
ancient and enigmatic and impossible to fully understand. The actual how of a vampire’s existence left him stumped, along with millennia of necromancers. What he knew for certain was that if Simeon was exposed to direct sunlight, he would die a second death, reduced to ash.
Angel’s wards hummed and vibrated when he made contact, the near-sentient magical constructs responding to him as would a trained pet. He spoke to them all, wordless murmurs of affection and reinforcement. He searched among them for the runes that identified Angel as their master and creator, and saw how they reflected his will—and there, as Simeon had said, was their recognition of the vampire’s permission to be there in Angel’s space. Where Angel’s magical signature varied from emerald green to new spring verdant, Simeon’s Invitation was a sapphire and silver cord, cool and sweet to the touch. Angel tasted chocolate and spices on his tongue in a sensory overlap, his body creating an echo in response to Simeon’s presence in the wards.
The sigils on the windows were the ones he needed to change. He spoke to the runes and sigils, the designs responding quickly, and when he pulled at them, twisting their shapes, they almost resisted, until he showed them what they were to become—the magical equivalent of a mirror. Able to distinguish between those welcome, and uninvited. The sigils latched onto the Invitation, and Angel fed them power, guiding and tweaking as the sigils rewrote themselves to match the mental diagrams he worked out as he went along.
When it was done, when it was successful, a single tone resonated through Angel and the wards. It rocked Angel to his very center, and he laughed in response, awed and overjoyed. Magic done right, a magic that created, even for a necromancer, was joy and celebration and brought with it a euphoric high. Angel rode out the wave, and slowly withdrew from his wards.
“What have you wrought, necromancer?” Simeon’s shocked whisper brought him all the way back, to see Simeon staring at him. The sunlight had moved closer to Simeon while Angel was occupied, and a tiny sliver was touching Simeon’s shoe, creeping up his lower legs.
“I…,” he coughed and tried again. Angel opened the connection to the veil and let more energy fill him up, making it his own. The hours of restful sleep and channeling the veil into his reserves directly was restoring him faster than days off from casting could ever manage. “I made UV and radiant magic reflective runes. Radiant magic is the rare type of magic that is inherent in raw sunlight, and is partially responsible for why vamps burn. Though I’m sure you know that. Instead of spells that maintain grayish-translucent panes of glass and allow heavily filtered light to pass through, which is done with commercially treated glass, I’m letting the light through, the visible radiation that our eyes translate as sunlight—but the radiant magic and the UV rays that burn vampires, is reflected back out. So, sunlight can come in, but the parts of it that would kill you stay outside.”
Angel smirked at the absolutely bemused and confounded expression on Simeon’s face. The Elder vampire finally looked away from him to the sunlight climbing his legs, and Angel chuckled when Simeon hesitated. “Seriously, Simeon, cleaning ash outta the floorboards would be a pain in the ass. It’s safe. I used your vampiric magical Enter At Will Card, your Invitation, as the basis for the spell. The wards won’t let you burn.”
Simeon growled, but he bravely took a step forward, fully into the light. Angel held his breath, a tiny part of him afraid he messed up somewhere, but when Simeon stood for a whole minute in direct sunlight without a single whiff of smoke or flame, Angel grinned. “Awesome. And, man, you need a tan.”
Simeon’s pale complexion was obvious and stark in the golden fall of light. Angel smiled at the fiery highlights in the vampire’s dark auburn hair, and his green eyes reflected the light like shards of glass. Simeon lifted his hands, gazing at the shadows his fingers made, still lost to wonder. Angel laughed again, then noticed he was damn near naked. He was wearing just his underwear and been standing around almost naked, casting in front of Simeon the whole time.
Coffee, food, and clothes. A shower and a toothbrush would be nice, too. “Gods, I’m gross. I’m gonna go take a shower. Don’t step outside or you’re going to fry.”
Walking into his bathroom and turning on the water, Angel waited for the hot water to kick in. He just managed to strip off his underwear and get under the spray when he found himself crowded back against the shower stall, six plus feet of naked, horny vampire looming over him.
Tongues melding, hands grabbing and holding, and steam rising. Angel gasped, Simeon taking his opening and kissing Angel as if he were starving and a kiss was his only sustenance. A rapidly warming hand tilted his head back, another gripped his hip and yanked him forward, lifting him off the slippery tiles. Angel grabbed Simeon’s shoulders and wrapped his legs around the vampire’s lean waist. Simeon chuckled, and Angel growled back, too turned on to do anything but buck impatiently with his hips, nails scoring Simeon’s white flesh.
He gasped when Simeon pulled his lips away, the vampire kissing down the side of his neck, his big hands reaching down to cup Angel’s ass, fingertips dipping into the crease of his ass. Simeon sucked hard on his neck, working up a mark, and Angel arched into it, feeling a dangerous hint of fangs. No punctures, but near enough that Angel moaned, his cock so hard he could feel his heart beating in the throbbing length. “Simeon!”
Simeon lifted his head, green eyes taking up Angel’s entire field of vision, and the vampire snarled, “You are a treasure, and you give me such a marvelous gift as the light. Will you be mine, mo ghra? No one else’s, only mine. Be mine, mine to treasure forever.”
A hand worked its ways down between them and wrapped tight around their cocks. Simeon stroked, hard and slow, squeezing almost to the point of pain, jerking them off as one. One stroke, then two, and Angel broke. Angel came with a scream, writhing, and he answered without thinking. “Yes!”
The next few minutes were a strange mix of languid kisses and sleepy sighs, wandering, exploring hands and shivers. Angel rode a high greater than any magical one before it, his brain futilely trying to catch up to what just happened. If it wasn’t for the fact the water was starting to run cold, he would think he was still asleep.
Simeon carried him out of the shower, drying him with a towel and setting him on his feet. Angel shook his head, trying to find his brain to form a coherent thought, but it took him a few minutes.
“What was that?” he asked, rubbing his face as Simeon knelt naked at his feet, drying his toes. “And oh god, that’s an image.”
Simeon grinned up at him through wet bangs, and Angel found his fingers threading through the strands. “Seriously, what just happened and why do I feel like I got hit by a demon train?”
“That, my Angel, was an orgasm. Surely you’ve had one of those before?”
“Not like that.” His whole body was quivering. His fingers were buzzing and his head swam, and he moaned as his cock valiantly tried to rise to the sight of Simeon kneeling naked and wet at his feet.
“Then it’s good I’m here now, isn’t it?” Simeon said, smug only as a naked man can be as he rose to his feet, tossing aside the towel. Angel got his first good look at the vampire since the whirlwind jerkoff in the shower. “I plan to give you more of those.”
Simeon was a mix between a marble statue carved by an old master, and one of those naked veteran pictures on social media. Covered in ancient tattoo designs and scars cut in place while he was alive, Simeon was all warrior. The sophisticated undead James Bond from the night before was gone, and in his place was a wild and untamed man, regardless of his lack of heartbeat. Angel swallowed, and his cock went right back to interested. Simeon noticed, but he made no move to touch. Simeon’s own cock rose thick and hard from a neatly trimmed patch of dark red hair, uncut and flushed with the faintest of rosy hues, large balls nestled tight under the base of the shaft, showing Angel just how aroused Simeon was. Angel wanted to touch, and badly, and he was having trouble remembering why he shouldn’t. Why was he fighting this so hard?
Angel went, and Simeon gathered him close, arms rising to hold him secure and tight. Angel exhaled, a ragged breath, but let his head fall to rest on Simeon’s hard chest, and his own arms came up to return the embrace. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
“I know, mo ghra,” Simeon whispered back. “I’m certain it’ll kick in soon enough.”
It was now evening, the sun down by a few minutes, and vampire-safe outside his walls. Angel had spent the whole day cleaning his place, taking the rubble of the destroyed bed to the trash chute a few feet down the hall from his apartment door. Angel had fun flipping the torn mattress down the stairs and out to the curb, thankful that big item pickup was the next morning as he dragged it down the street half a block and left it at the designated spot.
Simeon offered commentary from his spot on the couch, like a housecat that learned to talk. Angel ended up giving the Elder his laptop and the passwords to his video streaming service and let the undead man binge watch TV all day, sitting in the sun. Angel got a kick out of Simeon watching a teen television show about vampires, the vampire sighing or shaking his head the whole time.
Angel tugged on his coat, pocketing his keys and cell. His bag was slung over his shoulder, packed with supplies he would need on his errand tonight. Simeon was behind him, patiently waiting, and Angel seethed. Simeon had been right, and when Angel’s brain kicked in, he was plenty mad. Not at Simeon, not entirely. He could have set the vamp on fire and kicked his ass outta his shower, but he didn’t and now he kept hearing the words ‘will you be mine’, over and over in his head. And his own needy agreement. The joy and satisfaction he’d experienced telling Simeon yes still left him dazed.