by SJ Himes
Angel sniffed and sent Simeon a wry glance when the heavy scent of mint and chocolate filled his nose. Simeon was vamping out, eyes glowing, fangs bared, and his claws grew to sharp points on his fingers. He was about to ask why when hissing echoed in the room, and Angel flared the athame awake with hellfire just as the shadows moved and dark figures leapt from the corners.
Simeon moved so fast Angel could not see what happened, only that a fledgling lay broken at the Elder’s feet, and another slammed against the wall, falling unconscious to the floor. The shadows moved again, and he brought the athame up, scoring the ribs of another fledgling, claws reaching for his face and neck.
The fledgling screamed a high-pitched wail that left his ears ringing. His hands flared with hellfire, the flames responding to the rush of adrenaline in his system, and the fledgling blurred as it ran, screeching as it disappeared into the depths of the house. Simeon cursed, and ran his hands over Angel’s face, looking for injuries.
“I’m fine! Keep moving. I fucked that one up but it can still function,” Angel said and ran for the door to the rest of the house.
“Where is Deimos, can you tell?” Simeon asked, his voice slightly warped due to his fangs.
“He’s upstairs somewhere, with Isaac,” Angel said, and he ran for the stairs, counting on Simeon to see the fledglings coming before he could. The central staircase went from the middle of the house and wound its way all the way up to the third floor before smaller stairs took their paths to the individual turrets at each corner of the mansion. Isaac’s red flame sparked somewhere above them, and Angel had a sinking feeling he knew exactly where his brother was.
Angel ran upwards, leading the way, Simeon guarding his back, light from the burning athame casting its glow on the walls, and off the pair of eyes just at the top of the stairs. The wounded fledgling crouched, black blood dripping down the stairs, and it was warped past any semblance of humanity as it bared its fangs at them. Simeon roared a challenge, and the fledgling leapt. Angel dove to the side, and Simeon caught the newborn vampire in his arms, restraining it, its impact nothing against his superior strength. A sharp, wet crack came from the vampire’s torso, and the fledgling went limp, its spine broken. Simeon dropped it, and it rolled down the stairs, landing in the grand foyer.
Angel crawled up the stairs to the landing, and paused, breathing hard. Simeon was putting out waves of pheromones, making Angel’s body twitch with the instinctive need to flee, his lover in full hunting mode. His eyes were a brilliant green, burning as brightly as Angel’s blade, and Angel figured their chances of success where pretty damn good.
“Deimos!” Angel yelled, ready to end this and go home. “I want my brother back, fucker!”
His words echoed off the stone walls, silence his answer. Isaac burned somewhere ahead, and Angel pointed the way, Simeon going ahead of him this time. They took the hall to the right, and Angel’s guess for where Deimos put Isaac was accurate.
During the attack that night so many years ago, Angel saved Isaac by dragging his little brother into the family panic room. His entire family but for Isaac had all been downstairs in the dining room when the attack came, and the older members of his family activated the estate wards, but not fast enough. The wards were always on, the ones at the boundaries of the property, but they were soon submerged by the sheer numbers of undead. That night the wards around the house rose in a haphazard manner, leaving gaps in the protections big enough for the horde to stream through, overwhelming his family in sheer numbers. Raine Salvatore had driven most of them back, and after Isaac was secured in the panic room, Angel had joined his father in beating the vampiric army back, until only Angel was left standing, having drawn the unthinking undead away from the mansion and his little brother. It was there he made his last stand and cast his spell.
The mourning fire spell, cast wide and without discretion and fueled by the veil, had obliterated everything carrying death magic, feeding voraciously upon the ancient magic in each of the undead. They were an endless conflagration of pyres, burnt into his memory. He still did not know how exactly he managed it, nor if he could duplicate it. The concept of using a funeral spell as an offensive tactic had never crossed anyone’s mind, and Angel was lost as to how he managed it.
He awoke not long after, and dragged himself back to the house and upstairs, to the panic room, keying in the code that would open the door. Isaac was inside, catatonic with grief and fear, curled in a corner of the room. His brother was just coming into his powers, but Isaac had enough skill to know when each of their family fell, and Angel did not need to tell Isaac they were orphans.
Isaac was now in the same room, the hidden panel open as Angel had left it all those years earlier, his little brother propped up in the same corner, trussed in iron shackles, eyes shut, a trail of blood running from one temple.
“Shit!” Angel swore, and Simeon entered the room, heading for Isaac. “No, wait!”
Before Angel could say trap, a heavy weight slammed into Angel’s back, sending him careening down the hallway. A deep hiss and a rumble echoed down the hall as Deimos hit the door latch, and the panic room door slid shut with a resounding thunk, trapping Simeon inside.
“Angel!” Simeon’s roar was full of rage and despair, muted by the heavy door. The panic room walls and door were over a foot think, made of steel and stone, and impossible to break through. There was a release inside, but with Isaac knocked out Simeon would have to waste time searching for it.
Deimos chuckled, his dark eyes burning from within, and Angel crawled backwards, looking for his athame, having lost it in his tumble. He didn’t need it, but it helped.
“I am going to kill you,” Angel swore, using the wall to get back on his feet. He felt odd—lightheaded, dizzy. He must have hit his head when Deimos sent him rolling down the hall.
“I think, necromancer, that I am going to kill you. With you dead, I can kill Simeon, and I will get the spell from your darling little brother,” Deimos hissed, all traces of French accent gone, his ruse as Etienne over. The vampire stalked down the hall, backing Angel away from the panic room. Angel stumbled, his legs forgetting how to work. “If you were taught it, then so was he.”
Many had made that mistake, thinking the spell he used was hereditary, but Isaac didn’t know. Isaac hadn’t wanted to know.
He tried reaching for the veil, but his control slipped away from him, and his mouth was dry, his eyes heavy. “What the fuck did you do to me?” Angel whispered, falling back against the wall, grasping helplessly for anything to keep him upright.
Deimos stepped closer, into the light from one of the windows in the hallway, and lifted his right hand. Claws fully extended, and dripping in blood. Angel’s blood.
He felt it now, a streak of icy flames along his back and ribs—Deimos had slashed his back open, from hip to shoulder, each claw leaving a deep grove through which he was bleeding to death. He could save himself if only he could focus, but his mind was slipping away.
Angel fell to the floor, blinking slow, panting heavily as he bled out.
He was going to die, in the place where his family died before him. Simeon was still alive, the hallway reverberating with sound as Simeon tried to bash his way free. Isaac would be safe as long as Simeon survived—Deimos was no match for the Elder.
Claws hovered in his narrowing vision, stroking over his face and neck. “It is a shame I cannot drink from you, necromancer. I would taste my victory,” Deimos whispered, chuckling. “Simeon never got to taste you. His bonds to you as his Leannán never set in, did they? He never thought to have you drink from him, too busy chasing me. Too late for love to save you.”
Love.
Angel closed his eyes, heart slowing, body growing cold. His last thought was to be of love. That wasn’t such a bad thing, not at all. He never thought he would have it, never sought it out. But he was glad, so very thankful to have been given a taste of what love would have been like, a life spent in Simeon’s arms. He would
never know what it would feel like to be a vampire’s beloved, Simeon’s Leannán, and that regret burned in his heart.
He never thought to have you drink from him…. but he had. Angel did drink from Simeon, biting his flesh as he came from a powerful orgasm, his lover’s blood rushing down his throat. As Angel knew his own blood, and could sense and control any undead that drank from him, Angel went looking for the traces of his lover in his body. He sank deep into his mind, his body dying around him, and there, his own life-force dimmed, Angel saw the thin tendrils of Simeon’s blood, his essence, twined around his soul. The beginning of a bond was there, nascent and unformed, but enough for Angel to see what would have been, and help it along. Without the pain of dying distracting him, Angel used the power of his own life on the brink of death, and reached for Simeon, that bastion of strength and support and undying love he sensed just out of reach.
He knew it worked when he found a cool, minty presence in the void, full of despair and grief, and bitter rage. He tied a bond around that cool beacon that glimmered in the black, and called.
Simeon.
Shock, confusion…. then hope, obliterating all in its path, love on its heels. That love poured into Angel, and he took it in, melding it, molding it with his magic, and Angel opened his eyes, pushing the power he received selflessly from his lover out into his own body, and took a breath.
He was no longer in the hallway, the fledglings standing over him having dragged him into a room, circling him and whining like the feral beasts they were without a master strong enough to make them retain their humanity. Angel breathed in again, and out, and sent his magic to the mortal wound in his back, sealing the claw marks in fire and magic. Simeon kept sending him strength, the Elder a bottomless well from which to draw, and Angel breathed in, gathered Simeon’s essence, and released it.
The fledglings fell as one as if their strings were cut. They lay limp and unmoving on the floor, and Angel carefully pushed himself to his feet, eyes searching for Deimos.
His blood had soaked his clothing, and he squished as he walked. He was in his parents’ bedroom, and Angel growled at the sacrilege when he realized Deimos had set up residence in their room.
“Deimos!” Angel screamed, rage and righteous fury finding one voice in his own. “Deimos, you bastard!”
The door crashed open, and Deimos gaped at him, eyes darting from the three fledglings incapacitated on the floor, and back to Angel, the vampire unable to understand. Angel roared out his fury, reaching for the veil at the same time Simeon sent him another burst of power, a horrific crash sounding through the house as the panic room door lost its battle with the trapped Elder.
Angel raised his hand, Deimos hissing, and the vampire leapt at the same time he cast, a writhing bundle of pure fury and flame arching across the space between them. A blur swept through the room, and Angel found himself in Simeon’s arms, the Elder moving him out of the way as Deimos crashed to the floor where he had been standing.
Angel’s hellfire moved as snakes, stabbing into the vampire, consuming his undead flesh in green flames, eroding him from the inside out, thin wails of anger and pain clawing at Angel’s ears. Angel fed his hellfire snakes more power, and Deimos died a fiery death, reduced to ash and fractured bits of scorched bone.
Simeon clutched him close, and Angel threw his arms around his lover’s neck, holding on for dear life. “I love you.”
“I love you too, a ghra.”
Angel lost track of how long they stood like that, leaning on each other, emotions careening from the bond between their spirits. It was thin but strong, and Angel embraced it with care, knowing he had the power to sunder it, just as he had the power to forge it, and he would need to tend it with love and respect for it to grow stronger.
“Angel?” He lifted his head from Simeon’s shoulder and looked to the door.
Isaac stood there, bloody and bruised, but free of the iron that muted his powers. Isaac hovered in the doorway, as if uncertain of his welcome, but when Angel moved toward him, his little brother ran at him, the brothers colliding in the middle of their parents’ bedroom, holding each other tight.
Epilogue
New Beginnings
“Move it another foot to the right,” Angel directed, and Simeon pulled the heavy steel bedframe across the floor, settling the king-size bed in its new spot.
“I do not understand why we are not staying at the Tower, a ghra,” Simeon complained, for the thousandth time.
“We are not living at the Tower for many reasons, chief of which is Batiste is a douchebag, and he won’t stop making eyes at Isaac,” Angel retorted, grabbing the new sheet set and snapping out the fitted sheet, tucking it around the mattress, Simeon helping. “And Daniel hates it there. I don’t blame him for what that asshole Deimos made him do. Not to mention Bridgerton is insufferable as an Elder. That vamp oozes arrogance. He gives me heartburn.”
“Yes, but with the four of us in this one apartment….” Simeon mused, brows furrowed as they made the bed.
“Who said you were moving in with me?” Angel said, straight-faced, and got a pillow in the face for his quip. Angel laughed, Simeon grinning at him in return. “Look, there’s room. Isaac is back in his old room,” his brother having given up his apartment after Greg’s murder and his abduction, “Daniel gets the study down the hall I never used, and you and I are in here. Sure, kinda a snug fit, but you like it that way,” Angel grinned at Simeon and winked, his lover growling, flashing him a fang.
“You two stop flirting and get out here! Lunch is ready!” Milly yelled from the kitchen, Daniel and Isaac laughing. Angel grinned, and jogged out of the bedroom, Simeon following.
“Milly, it’s not lunch after sunset,” Angel argued, grabbing a bowl of clam chowder and a handful of oyster crackers. He settled in at the island, Simeon getting a cleverly disguised blood unit bag from the fridge and a straw. It looked like a juice bag but held a whole pint of O negative, Simeon’s preferred vintage.
“Close enough,” Milly retorted, tossing a cracker at Angel. He caught it in his mouth and grinned, which made Milly snort out a laugh. “Eat up boys, tomorrow we have a long day ahead of us at the studio. Try number fifty million to get the Serfano boys to shield.”
Daniel groaned, moping, but he ate his chowder anyway, fending off Eroch as the little dragon kept trying to steal the crackers out of his bowl. Angel had offered to send Eroch home, the geas lifted from the little dragon when Deimos died, but Eroch had merely chirped at him, and went back to sleep on Angel’s pillow. Angel had a sinking feeling he had just picked up his first familiar, but as they went, a dragon was kind of the pinnacle of sidekicks. He had no idea what to do with the wee beastie, but he was good company on nights Simeon had to fulfill his duties as Elder and Angel didn’t want to trek to the Tower to see his lover.
Daniel was officially listed as his apprentice, and with Batiste and Simeon’s backing the young sorcerer was avoiding punishment for his part in Deimos’s schemes by serving Angel, at least until Angel repaired the broken and incomplete education Daniel had in the higher arts.
Isaac, for all that he acted carefree and fine, carried a heavy weight of grief in his heart and eyes, and it made Angel grieve along with his little brother. Angel never did like Gregory Doyle, but the man’s love for Isaac had been a constant, as true as his alcoholism and perpetual laziness, but real all the same. Angel and Isaac were nowhere near where they should be in terms of actually fixing their relationship, but some of Isaac’s walls were down, and Angel was trying to learn how to listen as a brother, instead of as a reluctant parental figure. Angel had hope they might end up in a good place.
Daniel had gotten the Collins to back off, and with Angel finding the rogue vampire and killing him, the Mayor of Boston had offered Angel an official job as a consultant to the BPD. Angel took it after careful consideration and a fully vetted contract, giving him the choice to help or not, at his discretion, and his fee was hefty. Batiste had made the to
wn’s brass very unhappy, and Detective Grant Collins was sent on a long sabbatical, ordered to think about his priorities. Angel’s liaison was Collins’ old partner, the always charming Detective James O’Malley, who hit it off splendidly with Simeon, the two men speaking in Irish every chance they met.
A knock came at the door as Angel was rinsing his bowl in the sink, and Simeon went to answer it. “Simeon! So good to see you,” Detective O’Malley said, greeting the Elder, the two Irishmen shaking hands and murmuring to each other in a fluid string of words Angel had no hope of deciphering. O’Malley laughed and nodded at Angel as he approached the door.
“Got a case we could use an outside opinion on,” O’Malley said in lieu of a greeting, lighting a cigarette. “Several dead bodies stomped into jelly, pentagram burnt into the floor, and a really big hole in a wall.”
“Sounds like someone summoned a demon,” Angel replied, leaning on Simeon, his lover hugging him close. “Either that or they resurrected a mammoth.”
“So that mean you coming?”
Angel looked up at Simeon, who nodded, reaching for Angel’s bag and repaired weather-proof sweater. Angel took them, Simeon grabbing his apartment keys from the wall.
“Milly, I’ll see you at work tomorrow,” Angel called as he stepped into the hall. Eroch gave a chirp and jumped into the air, winging his way to Angel, landing on his shoulder. Milly rolled her eyes and waved, and the boys went for second helpings of chowder, ignoring him. Simeon followed him out into the hall and shut the door, and Angel waited patiently, listening.
His wards activated, Daniel a second behind Isaac as his brother and apprentice made sure their home was protected while they were out.
O’Malley led the way, and Simeon took Angel’s hand, the bond between them flaring brightly before it settled with a gentle glow. “Ready, Leannán?”