“Good,” Drake mutters, turning the blade over and over in his hands before sheathing it in his belt. “We’ve got at least one of those on our tracks.”
“I meant you could use it on—”
“I know what you meant, Father. I’m being gracious enough to ignore it. Now, do you have any leads on where the Soul-Thief might be?”
The priest hesitates, but shakes his head. “I’m sorry. All I know is that for a creature of that size to have penetrated so deeply into the city without raising an alarm, it must have a master, someone powerful. I’d suggest looking at the larger gatherings of nonhumans.”
Drake nods shortly, thinking privately that a simple “no” would have sufficed. Being unhelpful is one thing, but giving dangerous advice is far another. Just because he’s tangled with groups of immortals and survived, or fended off a few attacks, doesn’t mean he’d intentionally want to go looking for them.
Not for the first time, he wonders how exactly the Church chooses their Champions, and whether they try and kill them off on purpose, or if they’re just that bad at knowing how to do their jobs. It’s probably incompetence, he realizes sadly. There’s no way malice is that successful. That’s simply not the way of the world.
With a sinking feeling of acceptance, Drake makes his way back outside. He has to look around for a second before he sees Shane, lying in a crumpled, twitching heap on the ground, looking for all the world as if he’s been tortured.
Drake runs to his side, ignoring the warnings in his mind that Shane can’t be trusted, that he’s still very dangerous, that he’s not the man he used to be. He grabs Shane by the shoulders, shaking him gently and calling, “Shane? Shane? Can you hear me? What happened? God, I was only gone fifteen minutes!”
“Long enough,” Shane gasps, and there are actual tears on his face, some hot, some obviously frozen from the cold. “My boss showed up. I’m…” His lip quivers, and his hands come to rest on Drake’s strong arms, clutching him close. “I’m not exactly feeling a hundred percent right now. Tell me you at least got something good out of that rat bastard.”
Drake winces. “I wish you wouldn’t call him that. He’s a good man, and you brought that fight on yourself, what with how you came into service a few years ago.”
“Spare me, I don’t want to hear about your new boyfriend.”
“Father Aaron is not—”
“I meant God. Were you cheating on me with him when we were together, baby? Did you wait until I was asleep and get on your knees for him?”
Drake stands, dumping Shane onto the ground in a heap. “Get up,” he says coldly, glaring down at him. “We’ve got a long ways to go, and I don’t want to carry your lazy ass the whole way.”
“Long ways?” For all the biting sarcasm he’s been throwing around, Shane looks unsteady on his feet, as if he could easily collapse at any moment. “Where are we going? Do we have a lead after all?”
“Nope. That’s why we’re going to see Jiri.”
“Yes!”
“You’re paying her.”
“Damn it!”
Drake finds himself smiling, no matter Father Aaron’s warnings echoing in his head. It is too easy to think of Shane as the man he used to be, the same way he starts to smell his mother’s baked chicken and rice if he craves it hard enough. No matter how Shane might make his old jokes, suck his cock, nuzzle up to him and nip at his earlobe the way he used to, he’s still soulless, still a creature of the Ice King with no way to feel. Everything it looks like he’s feeling is just a reflex, the twitching limbs of a headless chicken, designed to mess with him and play on his emotions.
Yeah, he knows that’s the truth. It doesn’t make it any easier to ignore when Shane cuddles up to him on the drive, hand splaying over his thigh, tracing gentle patterns.
“Remember that time we ran out of food on the road?” he asks, unable to stop himself because Shane seems the same, if even for a minute.
Shane frowns, white teeth worrying at his bottom lip a bit. “Not sure. Remind me? Doesn’t come as easily lately.”
“In the Adirondacks. We were tracking a Wielie, and it had made off with some kid.”
“Monsters tend to do that,” Shane agrees absently, flicking on his wipers as it starts to snow. “I think they take the kids because it freaks us out more, as humans.”
So he still thought of himself as human. Good. “We ran out of food on the second day, and you started bitching almost immediately.”
“I used to get pretty hungry.” His voice is odd, almost curious, as if he’s asking a question. It’s creepy, and Drake nods quickly, changing the subject.
“You kept trying to summon food, but you’ve always been so bad at figuring out organic things.”
“Never knew much about ‘em. Always lived in cities?” The question is strange, as if Shane still isn’t sure entirely who he even is. It’s the kind of thing that had made Drake leave in the first place, not content with living with a man who only looked like his boyfriend.
“Then you—”
The car hits a bump, and Drake slams into the door. “Damn it, watch the potholes!”
“Wasn’t a pothole. It was a dog.”
Drake’s eyes go wide. “Shane, stop, it might be someone’s pet.”
“Was someone’s pet,” Shane says, unconcerned. “I saw a collar. So, we were in the mountains?”
He saw it clearly enough to see the collar, and he didn’t bother to swerve. Drake swallows hard, looking out the window, not even sure if he wants to know what’s coming. “Never mind,” he says at last, and brushes Shane’s touch off his thigh. “It was a boring story anyway.”
Fourth Interlude
Sixteen Years Earlier
Drake wakes in the middle of the night, and he wants.
It’s not anything he usually craves, usually more than content to grab his boyfriend and bend him over the arm of the couch, shove him to his knees in the shower, or fuck him on the kitchen table just after breakfast, but God, sometimes that ache is strong.
He tightens his arms around Shane, nuzzling into his neck, nibbling a bit at the skin. That draws a low whine, and Shane swats at him. “Stop it. ‘m tryin sleep.”
“I’m horny.”
Shane buries his face in the pillow. “I’ll blow you in the morning, god.”
“I don’t want your mouth. I want your cock.”
Shane stops grumbling. It’s a rare enough request that it’s still something of a novelty, no matter that they’ve lived together for a few years now. “Oh yeah? What brought this on?”
“I don’t know. Fuck me?”
He’s on his back in an instant, Shane kneeling over him to press long, sucking kisses against his neck, arranging them so they’re pressed body-to-body, skin-to-skin from chest to feet, sliding slowly against each other. As much as Drake’s filled out, Shane has as well, all long lean muscle on a frame that’s shot up nearly a foot since he was fifteen.
It’s been an easy month for business, something obvious by the lack of any fresh bruises or cuts on either of them, no casts or braces required for basic movement. Either the creatures they catch are getting more and more eager to die, Shane had remarked, or they’re getting far, far better at killing them.
Drake closes his eyes, still sleepy no matter that his body burns with Shane’s touch on his chest, one thigh sliding up between his legs. “Sometimes I wonder why you stay with me.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I love you. Hand me the lube.”
Drake grabs it from the bedside table, passing it over, and bites his lip when he feels the first press of a cool slick finger against his hole. It wriggles carefully into him, Shane always conscious of the fact that he’s not as practiced at this, neither of them as used to the other this way, neither of them quite sure how to make it good.
Still, variety is nice once in a while, and makes up for a lot of awkward fumbling.
Drake lets his thighs part, sighing at the slight ache of two long fingers pre
ssing inside him now, eyes locked on Shane. “Always think you’re gonna find a mage and run off with him. Someone who can keep up with you.”
“Don’t be fucking stupid. There aren’t any mages around who can keep up with me.” Shane bends to kiss him, sucking on his lip, his tongue, as he slides a third finger inside. “Shh, don’t tense up, trust me, I’m not gonna hurt you.”
It’s true, for all it’s strange. Drake wonders sometimes about Shane’s family, the mysterious mages he never talks about, the ones who had apparently been so powerful and yet been unable to stop whatever tragedy had befallen them. Then again, he tends to shy away from the subject, knowing how Shane gets whenever it’s brought up. Whatever happened, they were apparently powerful, if Shane’s any indication. Of all the humans they’ve gone up against, very few are even a match for Drake, and all he’s got is a good head on his shoulders, a good gun, and some martial arts training. Against Shane, there’s no competition.
He wraps his arms around Shane’s neck, pulling him down close as he rocks into the touch, almost, almost enough, definitely good, filling that place inside him that only feels empty once every several months. “So you’re not gonna get tired of your pet human?”
“Not as long as you keep making such cute noises when I fingerfuck you. Spread your legs, baby, let me in.”
It’s hard not to feel vulnerable like this, even when he wants it more than anything right now. Hesitantly, he lets his thighs fall apart the rest of the way, eyes trailing down Shane’s torso, fixing on his cock, hard and dripping and rubbing insistently against his. “You can take a little revenge, if you want,” he gasps, as Shane angles down to rub against his ass, not quite pushing inside yet. “If you wanted to smack me around a little, I wouldn’t—”
“That wouldn’t be revenge.” Shane kisses him again as he pushes in, going as slow as he ever has, giving Drake time to adjust to every slick inch as he’s stretched. “I love it when you slap me around, and it gets us both off, so stop talking about revenge. The—shit, you’re so fucking tight—only revenge I want is to, to, to make you feel as—”
“Stop talking.”
Shane shuts up.
He moves slow, Drake breathing deliberately, trying to focus on the pleasure of that filling ache inside of him. It stings, no matter how careful and slow Shane goes, no matter how much lube he uses, and most of the time Drake has to concede that he’s just not built for this, not like Shane obviously is.
Still, sometimes there’s nothing he wants more.
He sighs through his teeth, shoving down into each thrust, running his hands down Shane’s back to grab that perfect ass, squeezing it in his hands. “Fuck me,” he says into Shane’s ear, following it with a nip of his teeth. “Fuck me, fuck me, Shane, just—”
Shane loses his control, every bit that he’s been holding back in the attempt to be gentle, and slides in to the hilt, making Drake yelp. “Sorry. Sorry, you just feel so good.”
“’S fine, keep going!”
Shane gives him a startled little smile, happiness-anxiety-amusement-lust flitting across his face. “God, you really want me bad tonight.”
It’s way past time to deny anything of the sort, and Drake doesn’t try, bucking down into Shane’s thrusts, loving the expression on Shane’s face when he loses his mind, loving the kisses and the bites he accumulates, loving the way Shane’s gentle hands are such a stark contrast to his deep, thorough thrusts.
He feels it when Shane comes inside of him, reaching down to stroke him off until he follows a few seconds later, shaking and twitching and groaning as the ache finally, finally goes away.
“Fuck,” he sighs, as Shane gently pulls out to flop onto his chest.
He can feel Shane smile against his chest. “That hold you over for another year?”
“Probably. Thank you.”
“You’re making me breakfast. Least you can do after waking me up.”
Chapter Seven
Madame Jiri’s Palm Reading and Tarot hasn’t changed since the last time Shane was here. It’s still a little dump of a place, tastelessly decorated inside and out. Hell, for all Shane knows, she does it on purpose. The whole Blind Psychic thing is probably some sort of draw for idiots who think spiritual powers are linked to outward appearance.
It’s annoying to have to buckle and unbuckle their sword belts every time they get in and out of the car, but it’s better than courting accidental impalements, and teleportation is still too inaccurate to be worth the trouble. Besides, Shane hasn’t quite mastered the art of showing up with clothes on, though he’s so far managed to laugh it off as intentional.
Shane knocks on the bright pink door, sending out a little trail of his power to see if Jiri’s inside. It’s swatted away after a moment, and a few seconds after that, a familiar old woman opens the door. “Rude,” she says without preamble, confusing Drake. “You always were rude, Shane Conell.”
“I haven’t changed that much.”
“And that’s a pretty lie. Drake, I wasn’t expecting to see you again after last time.” Jiri doesn’t look like anything other than a short, squat, wrinkly woman. Her eyes are droopy, her skin sallow, and her hair is not only pure white, it’s obviously been falling out for some time now, leaving her with patchy clumps where it’s abandoned her head.
Then again, no human woman would have been able to parry Shane’s magic like that, no matter how “powerful” a mage.
The disguise is a good one, and thorough. Shane’s even seen what lurks underneath the false skin, and he can’t see more than the faintest trace of it peeking out. A normal human would see even less. He has no idea what Drake sees.
“With all due respect, Ma’am, you poisoned me,” Drake points out, but Jiri waves that away.
“A job’s a job. You knew the risk when you paid my price. Come in, come in.”
The inside is just as revoltingly tacky as Shane remembers. A bright yellow couch with orange slipcovers fills up most of the room, with pastel pink curtains and a mud-brown carpet, not to mention eye-burning knickknacks purchased from every part of the extensive Ethnic section of the local Farmer’s Market, something Jiri never seems to get enough of. The whole place reeks of patchouli incense, probably the only thing strong enough to cover up what really happens in here.
Jiri seats her wide, wrinkly self on the most comfortable armchair in the room, navigating with no difficulty despite her obvious blindness. “I’ve raised my prices,” she begins, and Shane doesn’t bother sitting on the ugly couch.
“Then we’re leaving. You already ask for too much.”
She glares at him, and a whip of power catches him across the cheek, sending him sprawling on the couch as Drake tries not to snicker. “Rude again. I’m also raising the value of what I’m selling. Three facts about your subject, not just one. And you get the full package, past, present, and future.”
“All definite?”
“You know better. Definite past, probable present, possible future. Take it or leave it.”
“And the price?”
The old woman sips a cup of tea that’s magically appeared at her elbow. “I’m ready to procreate.”
Drake makes little choking sounds behind him, but Shane only shrugs. Maybe a few years ago he would have felt disgust, but this is far and away different from the usual numbness. This is the sort of numbness only acquired by spending a significant amount of time in Frozen Court orgies, where there’s no telling what anyone will turn into.
Drake would hate it, he thinks, with a dark little smirk. “Fair enough. Your people go into heat, huh?”
“A rude way of putting it, Mr. Conell. But yes.”
“Okay.” Shane stands, already plucking at his sword belt. “You mind if I cast an illusion on you? So you don’t look so ugly?”
Another whip of power arcs at him, but Shane’s ready this time, catching it with his own and sending a shock back down it. Jiri starts in surprise, blind eyes wide, and the power withdraws. “Do that again
,” Shane says softly, “and it’ll be something worse than a shock.”
She nods, and he can almost feel the disdain radiating off of her.
“Right. So. Let’s get this party—”
“Not you, Ice-Heart. Him.”
God, Shane can’t help but laugh at the expression on Drake’s face. It’s as if he’s been asked to make out with a Wielie, all severed limbs sewn on wrong and prehensile tongue. “Um…Shane’s footing the bill this time, Ma’am. No offense.”
Jiri sips her tea. “No deal.”
Drake stands, giving her a respectful bow. “Thank you for your time. We’ll see ourselves out.”
I forgot how damn squeamish he is about sex sometimes. Well, with anyone but me. Shame, that was our best lead. Shane opens the door, flipping the old woman off as he goes, and has nearly shut it behind them when he hears what he’s been waiting for.
“Wait!”
Slowly, trying not to smirk because she’s so obvious, Shane opens the door. “Yes? Did you reconsider after all?”
Jiri scowls at them, hopping off the chair with the spryness of a woman half—a quarter her age, at least, waddling over and glaring up, up, up. “You are rude, and your heart is ice. He is handsome and kind.”
“I’m rude and my heart is ice and I’m handsome,” Shane counters. “And I’m willing to stick my dick in you, whereas he can’t.”
“You mean won’t.”
Drake clears his throat, obviously embarrassed. “No, uh, sorry. He means can’t.”
She frowns, which makes the wrinkles on her face multiply, almost completely obscuring her theoretically blind eyes. “Your vow to the Church leaves you impotent?”
“N-not exactly.”
“He’s a homo,” Shane supplies, taking too much enjoyment out of it, no matter that enjoyment stings as he feels it, tainted by fire. “Can’t get it up for a lady, especially not one that looks like you. So it’s me or nothing, Medusa.”
Her face puckers as if she’s bitten into a lemon, and Shane tries not to gag inside. He tries remembering some of those orgies and the really unfortunate creatures he’s entertained as a member of the Ice King’s Court, but it doesn’t do much good. “Look,” he says hastily, trying to compromise, “what if I offered you a deal? You want a kid of Drake’s so much, and honestly, neither of us really want to touch you. How about we both jack off into a cup and you squirt it in with a turkey baster?”
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