by Lissa Kasey
Page got to his feet, looking like little more than a zombie himself, tired, strung out, but also unwilling to take any sort of initiative on his own. Seiran was glad there were no weapons in the house other than the knives right here in the kitchen. He didn’t need Page thinking that suicide was a way out again. No matter how worried any of them were about the Dominion coming for them.
The kids headed upstairs, and Seiran was relieved that they were safe. He would make sure they all stayed safe. Even Page. Seiran reached out and spelled all the cutlery to not inflict self-harm.
Jamie squinted at him. “Really? You’re already running on empty and you couldn’t just say, hey Jamie, fix this?”
“You’d need a spell,” Seiran protested. “I don’t.”
“Show off,” Jamie said as he picked Seiran up and sat him in a chair at the table beside Gabe. “Eat. Then it’s off to the shower and bed for you.”
“Even with the Dominion about to rain down holy hell?”
“Even with. We have the Pillar of Earth, the Pillar of Water, and a fucking god of death magic in this house right now. Not to mention the fae child, the three super baby witches, oh and your best bud’s lovers are upstairs zonked out, so he’ll be here soon enough, which means crazy siphon power too. I think we’re good.”
“The Dominion have numbers,” Gabe said.
“But not power. They’ve spent decades destroying the powerful before they can live long enough to actually control it. That works in our favor, not theirs.”
“Are we really starting a war with the Dominion?” Seiran wondered. It felt surreal. He’d spent half his life bowing to their will to keep his family safe while he built up wards and alliances to protect them just in case. He had always hoped it would never be necessary, meanwhile still waiting for the hammer to drop. And now that it had, he felt strangely unsettled.
“Depends on them,” Jamie said. “But the vampires aren’t going to let this go, and the number of bodies means the humans are involved too. That’s a lot to try to overcome with some spin doctoring.”
It was, but it seemed the press was already trying to make Seiran out to be the bad guy. “I guess it’s war then.”
Chapter 26
Gabe had expected more protesting, rather than letting him return to his space downstairs with Seiran. But Seiran had eaten, and then used Gabe’s downstairs bathroom to shower. Jamie had dropped off a pile of clothes, which Gabe left on the counter, giving Seiran some space. Gabe lingered near the bathroom, not trying to be creepy, but worried that Sei would fall or pass out in the shower.
His aligning memories were a bit jumbled as he worked to make sense of them, but it didn’t feel like there were gaps anymore. He sent Mike a few questions while keeping an eye on Seiran. This whole mess with the Dominion felt like something he would have prepared for, and he had a weird feeling that he had? Or at least started to. It was something he’d learned to do over his long lifetime, prepare for just about anything.
He had a lot of questions. Most of them centered on his distrust for the Dominion. It sounded like Tanaka was promising that the Dominion would cooperate. Gabe didn’t know if he believed she had that kind of power.
We had a meeting before I went to ground, Gabe texted Mike. Did anything come of it?
Mike sent back a link instead of a reply. The first was to an article about a non-profit organization, with a vague overview of details about what it did. Though it seemed related to studying magic. Gabe frowned at it, scrolling through the page and trying to read between the lines.
There was a logo for the organization that looked familiar, and when Gabe navigated his phone back to the main screen, he saw an icon there. An app for the organization? He clicked it, and it suddenly said “Scanning for facial recognition.”
Would that work with all the changes to his appearance? Maybe he would need to shave and cut his hair? It seemed to chug for a minute or two before finally confirming his name and opening to a long list of information.
Welcome, Senior Advisor Santini, would you like a tour? The app said in a female voice. But he didn’t have time to sort through the app right this minute, as Seiran was swaying. Gabe took a step toward Seiran as he emerged from the bathroom.
He was dressed in a pair of pajamas with DuckTales print all over them. Hair hanging loose around his face and looking exhausted. Gabe raised a brow.
Seiran gave him a tired sigh. “No hard conversations right now, okay?”
“Sure,” Gabe agreed. “I’m going to jump in the shower. Let’s get you into bed though, before you pass out.”
“I’m fine,” Sei said as he teetered toward the bed and half fell in it. Gabe followed and lifted him the last little bit, tugging the blankets over him. “I heal fast. Especially inside the house surrounded by earth.”
“Will the wards drain you?” Gabe wondered if there was another way to keep them all safe rather than relying on Seiran alone.
“The wards have been layered and fed for over a decade. They can last years without renewal.” Seiran curled up under the blankets, closing his eyes as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Gabe turned out the light, since he didn’t need it even in the dark of the basement, and headed to the bathroom to shower. He smelled of earth and faintly of death magic. Though he suspected the latter would not fade completely unless he went another long spell without using his power. He stripped and stepped under a warm spray of water feeling alive—tired, but alive.
He let the water wash over him and closed his eyes to relax into the heat as it soothed his muscles and eased his mind. He would not be burying his power again any time soon. No matter how the people of this modern world feared it. Having that magic swirling inside him was settling, clarifying, and made him feel strong.
He tried not to reflect on the past too much. The lingering memory of Tresler’s forced bond, a violation that bothered Gabe more than he thought it should. His mind had not been his own. How he’d held back the revenant as long as he had, Gabe still wondered. Fear of hurting Seiran? Pulling away, and abandoning him, had likely saved them both from Gabe’s rising self-destruction. But he had no plans to use that as an excuse. Nor did he think he was suddenly forgiven. With time, perhaps he could be.
If Seiran had left Gabe in the ground the first time, the bond would likely have been broken by time. But Gabe wasn’t sure that Tresler would have ever been discovered. At least not before he’d caused a lot of damage. Sam wouldn’t have been saved either, even if the guy bitched about being a vampire all the time. Gabe knew he was happy where he was, stalking the night, and spending his days with his guys.
Gabe decided he would leave the past in the past. It had always worked before in his long years. Moving forward, trying to learn and adapt had always been the best survival option. He would take each day as it came and try to make himself more open and communicative. His long years alone meant he was used to shutting himself away.
Seiran hated that. He wanted a partnership, and Gabe decided it was the least he could do to share more. He also realized it was going to take a lot of doing to actually be forgiven. Action rather than platitudes. That was what Seiran had been saying.
Gabe stepped out of the shower, dried off, and ran a comb through his hair. He dug through his clothes, finding not pajamas like Seiran had, but boxers and sleep pants, which he suspected was better than nothing when he was in a house full of children.
He tugged on the clothes and turned off the light in the bathroom, plunging the space into darkness. He wondered about Kaine, and how the child in the mortal world became some sort of Prince of the fae across the veil. An agreement with Bryar, Sei had said. He’d have to ask more specifics about that one. Gabe had also felt the truth Sei had been unwilling to confirm when Kaine blamed himself for Sei’s lack of control over his own power. Gabe had thought that had been his fault, going to ground had cut their bond down to almost nothing. But Seiran’s emotions, careful as his words had been, indicated that he had in
fact, given a lot of power, more than necessary perhaps, to Kaine’s creation. Interesting.
Gabe climbed into bed beside Seiran, who was already fast asleep, and wrapped himself around Sei. That felt right. He wasn’t the same man Gabe had known all those years before. Sei had always been cynical and a bit needy. His trauma triggering a lot of personal issues. And while Seiran hadn’t buried the trauma, as much as learning to adapt to it, he seemed to function better in difficult situations, not shutting down as he once had. But Sei’s instincts of self-preservation had always been good. He also focused more on his kids than himself, doing things to protect them, which benefited them all in the end. Gabe would have to make sure that didn’t become a crutch that held Seiran back.
He stretched out his senses, wondering if he could still feel the dead, and was surprised to find he could. A long tie to them reminded him of days many centuries past, in which he used armies of these to guard him and his while they slept each day. The Dark Ages had been dark for a reason. Filled with wars, battles of all species, ending in bloodshed and bodies enough to guard him forever.
Necromancer? Gabe texted to Mike. Had forgotten that little bit.
Seems you forgot a lot. But you buried that a long time. Mike responded. How’s your memory now?
Gabe thought about it for a while. Everything was there. An intensity that almost felt like memories of a memory in some cases. The oldest of them faint enough he wondered if they were real.
Mostly there. How goes the questioning? Zombies didn’t by nature speak much. Once they were beyond a certain point of decomposition, they couldn’t magically find a voice and the mind was so far gone, there was nothing left to pull from them other than the rattling bones of a skeleton. Those not lost to the earth’s renewing strength, like Steve, would still have enough brain matter to speak full sentences. But Gabe couldn’t recall many who had been fresh enough to question.
Recording dental impressions. Have Steven Brody and two other somewhat juicy corpses singing tunes.
It sounded gruesome, like they were torturing the dead, though Gabe was pretty certain it wasn’t necessary.
Some of the oldest have begun to shatter. We’ve sorted them as close as possible to age of death and are documenting as fast as we can.
Gabe wondered if he should be there to help. He didn’t think he had the motivation to pull himself away from the sleeping witch in his arms, but if he had to, he would.
Do you need me there?
No. Mike replied. Stay with Rou. The Dominion is up to shady shit. Let us handle this end.
Gabe frowned at his phone. He’d never been one to stand on the sidelines when a battle was looming. He knew Mike was stronger than most assumed he was. But one of Mike’s skills was his charisma. It was one of the reasons Gabe had changed him and kept him close over the years. Everyone liked Mike, and the vampire came across as approachable and engaging. Though Gabe knew he was one of the more powerful of his get.
Call if you need me, Gabe sent back, knowing it would not have to be a phone call, but a tug on the line of his magic. Dozens of his get were in the area. More than he’d met at the bar. Called by Mike to this situation? Or already here and waiting?
Rest. We got this. Been preparing for over a decade.
Gabe sighed. Too many questions, but he was tired. At least he’d get a nap.
Seiran’s phone sat on the nightstand. Sam had sent him a comment about being busy and to fuck off, which had made Seiran smile before he’d stepped into the shower. An odd friendship they had. At one time enemies and rivals, they actually almost seemed closer now than Seiran was to any of the others, including his own brother. Even if their banter wound up in a war of cynical teasing. It was a trust level, Gabe thought. Both abused and learning to survive in different ways. But Gabe suspected the two had more in common than not.
He put his phone beside Seiran’s and tugged the blanket over them both. Maybe they both could rest a while? They could begin to tackle the problems of the world tomorrow.
He did fall asleep, though the dreams were a bit of an unsettled mess from the past. He vividly dreamt about the fog of hunger and rage that had taken control before he’d went to ground. The feel of Tresler trying to control him, Gabe’s revenant fighting back the only way he knew how, through blood and terror. The backbone of a vampire, really. It was a darker side he had tried not to show Seiran all those years ago. Would Seiran have run if he’d known? Maybe. He would have been smart to run away rather than be locked into their bond. Vampires were volatile at best.
Gabe also dreamt of the corpses. Steve who seemed to sit in a chair, still as stone, staring straight ahead at the golem. In the same room? Gabe didn’t try to make his mind follow any of them. It gravitated toward the dead because they were his. And he could see the troubled mess of the golem through the eyes of the dead.
Page’s attempt to free them from torture, bound them to another kind of torture. Had they found the body for the last unclaimed soul inside it? Gabe studied the lines of the ties for a while, knowing he could unravel the whole thing, but releasing just one would be impossible. All or none. Gabe followed the ties a dozen times, trying to find a way. If they didn’t find that body in the second killing field, did that mean there were even more dead? How long had the witches been slaughtering without consequence?
Gabe sighed and let his attention wander from the golem. It wasn’t a problem he could solve right this minute.
They were still loading everyone into another giant room in that warehouse Max had set up. The space the vampires had been in, while being cataloged and defined, but not feeling fully dead. There was a partition put up between the groups. But the vampire side was dark. The bodies sealed in body bags, all tagged and marked. Max’s crew must have been hard at work.
Gabe wondered briefly how he had enough people to work through the backlog of corpses. It wasn’t something any Joe Schmoe could do. Searching for trace evidence, fingerprinting, getting dental impressions, all while dealing with violently tortured and maimed dead. That wasn’t for the faint of heart. Yet the efficiency in which vampire investigators moved, led Gabe to believe this wasn’t their first rodeo cataloging crimes like this.
He’d have to ask Max about it. Max… Titus… Gabe’s memory floated briefly to their time as humans before the change. The short attempt after their change had been disastrous. Neither man who they had been as humans. Max had never given up the idea of world domination, while Gabe had lost complete interest in it. It was why Gabe and Seiran fit so well together. Both had insane amounts of power, but neither really cared for that ultimate level of control. In fact, to Gabe, it was a burden. As if he needed to deal with an entire world of problems. Perhaps that was an issue now as well. If he hadn’t taken a step back, and the world still feared him, would Seiran be safer?
Gabe let out a long sigh, relaxing deeper into sleep. He actually dreamed for a while. Floating in weird bits of colored memory from the walk through the veil, which had tried to pull the revenant out of him, to strange wanderings through dark forests and moonless nights. Seiran’s dreams, Gabe realized. The calm of the earth resettling. Gabe soothed the rising waves of rolling power with ease. It was like creating a steady blip on a heart monitor. Spikes too large caused trouble, and too small meant death. Seiran slept deeper as Gabe set a rhythm to the magic.
His long years had given him lots of practice. The dead had always been a mess of rising and falling surges. Plagues and wars adding to the ever-rippling flow of his power. It was how he’d lived as long as he had, able to manipulate the waves to his benefit.
He wandered through a handful more of dreams tied to his past before finding himself drawn back to the dead. Like something had again pulled on him, a startling half awareness that had him reaching for the corpses with worry.
It was curious that everything felt so still, almost in suspended animation. Though some of the skeletons fell, as if the magic holding them together would suddenly vanish and they did
indeed shatter. The vampires were prepared, as each set of bones stood above a body bag. They fell and landed in a bag, which was labeled and ready for them to be moved. Gabe’s power not eternal in this case, even though the Focus bond had extended it.
Not many of the old dead remained standing. The few fresh enough to have any living memory left were seated like Steve was, but still as only death could make them. Sam oversaw the group, which was almost all vampires. A handful of Seiran’s MI investigators lingered. Gabe recognized Emmaline, who sat with Tanaka as the two went over paperwork.
Over all, everything was quiet. Too quiet.
Where had that tug come from?
Gabe waited, lingering on the edge of sleep, awareness on the dead, as though waiting for it to pull again. Did someone in these families have death magic? He knew with enough spells and maybe a pact or two with demons, any witch could animate a corpse. Getting it to truly obey was another thing altogether. That took blood and regular sacrifices. Even Page, with his magic so fresh and untrained, would not have been able to hold the dead long. The golem had begun to unravel because blood died. Even in the human body, blood cells died and were used to refeed the body or they were shed. Spells weren’t all that different, needing regular renewal.
Gabe kept his awareness half locked to the dead, linked firmly to Steve. Murdered by his own mother, Steve’s soul was gone, but within him lingered a dark edge that could be called. Gabe finessed the feeling, trying to recall all the details. It had been so long. The murdered always had a touch of the darkness within them. It could be fed to become almost revenant like, though in humans, and apparently witches, it was weak enough that he would really have to feed them power to get them to move.
Steve was fresh enough that sitting within the mind as it began to decay, empty of all living force, the darkness seemed to rise like the crawl of mold over a water-filled room. Not a pleasant feeling, but Gabe vowed he would ensure Steve went to ground soon. The earth would reclaim him as it should, giving the body true death.