“That’s unusual.” Nyx echoed his own reaction to the name. “Sexy, but not the kind of thing you can throw out there when you’re about to come.” She tossed her head back, deepened her voice, and imitated the throes of masculine orgasm. “Oh fuck yeah. Right there. Fuck. Gonna…gonna…” Hips surging, she grunted a caveman-worthy “Zaad-key-el!”
Benjamin’s shoulders shook with repressed laughter. Soon both he and Nyx were guffawing, his hangover nearly forgotten as Nyx continued to improvise.
“Shut up.” Breathless, Benjamin slapped at her shoulder with the back of his hand.
Nyx’s aura flickered as she wiped at her eyes with her knuckles.
Benjamin rinsed and dried his hands, then tossed the dishtowel on the counter. “Freshen my coffee?”
“What am I now, your mother?” she asked, but liquid burbled against ceramic once more. She placed the cup on the counter with a blithe “Here ya go.”
“Thanks.” At least his hangover was almost bearable. Though the laughter had rattled his brain inside his skull, his mood had lightened.
He grabbed the mug with his unscalded hand. At the table, he toed the chair and positioned it so he could sit. Nyx joined him. Benjamin sipped his coffee tentatively. His stomach gave a weak protest, then quit bitching. The paper rustled again. He took another sip of coffee, and his taste buds sighed. The grandfather clock in the hall chimed five times. Shit. He really had slept late.
Nyx stood. The seal on the fridge door released its suction, and lovely cold air rushed onto the back of Benjamin’s neck. “You want toast and eggs? We need to hunt tonight. You need your strength.”
“No.” Revolted by both ideas—food and hunting—he dropped his hand to his abdomen. “Gods, no.”
“We’ll go back to the Common when Akito gets off work. Look into your theory about that door.” The toaster springs squeaked, then a plate thudded to the counter. “Jam?”
“No food.” Benjamin lifted a staying hand. He’d forgotten that they hadn’t had a chance to perform an after action analysis. “We missed our chance last night. The energy will have dispersed with the storm.”
“Even if we can’t get a reading, we can try to open that door you were seeing in Parkman Bandstand. Besides, we might catch another vamp,” Nyx pressed. “You could question it instead of killing it.”
Black blood dripped from a leather apron onto the entryway’s parquet floor.
“No.” Benjamin shook his head a little too violently, and immediately regretted the movement. “You never talk to those things.”
They played on your sympathies, lured you in, and used your humanity in a bid for mercy and understanding that they turned violently against you when you were at your most defenseless. Only one thing could come from talking to vampires—a bloodbath of epic proportions.
“But—”
“Can we please change the subject?” He didn’t want to remember last night’s snapping slice of flesh and bone until well after his fourth aspirin and sixth cup of coffee. And he especially didn’t want to have more flashbacks. Ever.
“Sure.” Nyx’s shrug was implicit.
Benjamin rested his head on his arms again, wishing to the gods he hadn’t drunk so much last night. Sure, he was an alcoholic, but he didn’t usually try to down a bottle of Scotch all by himself. Three or four drinks were adequate to get him sufficiently obliterated, enough so that the nightmares didn’t rear their ugly heads until well after he’d fallen asleep.
“I wonder why I could see that door last night, but never did before,” he mused into his sleeve.
“What?” On the other side of the kitchen, the toaster lever sprang. “I can’t hear you.”
He lifted his head and immediately regretted the motion. Nyx puttered around near the counter.
“I was wondering why I could see that door in the bandstand last night. It must have always been there, protected by magic. I can see magic, but I never knew it was there.”
“Hm.” Metal clinked against glass, then scraped against toast. “I suppose I amplified a protection seal around the door with my spell. It was probably designed to avoid detection by hunters if it leads to a vampire bolt-hole.”
Benjamin grunted, his curiosity quickly dampened by the throbbing behind his skull. He really shouldn’t have had so much to drink last night.
“I feel like I’m forgetting something…” he mumbled, and lowered his head gingerly to his elbow. Every time he tried to scan his memory for the information, however, his head throbbed and the details skittered back into a dank hole.
A plate hit the table in front of him. The nut-sweet scent of wheat toast and raspberry jam assaulted his nose. He jerked away from the smell. Damn it. Nyx never listened. Almost simultaneously, the front doorbell rang shrilly, splitting Benjamin’s skull.
“Come in,” Nyx shouted before the din subsided.
Benjamin groaned. “For the love of Zeus.”
The front door opened and closed. At least Akito hadn’t slammed it.
“We’re back here,” Nyx called.
That was it. He was investing in industrial-strength earplugs. What the hell was wrong with his friends? Given Benjamin’s traditional post-hunt activities, Akito had to suspect he was suffering. Booted footsteps neared the kitchen door, and Benjamin opened his mouth to deliver a bit of brilliant sarcasm on the wisdom of—
Wait.
Benjamin, head lifted, trained his attention on the door. Akito didn’t wear boots, and he walked almost silently.
“Nyx”—Benjamin stood, mentally searching the kitchen for a weapon—“Akito’s not off work yet.”
Keeping his back to the counter, he edged closer to the knife block. Nyx followed his lead and stood. Time slowed, contrary to his quickening pulse.
“Did you lock the front door?” he whispered.
She shook her head. “I never do when Akito’s coming, because…”
Because Akito knew better than to ring the bell on a day when Benjamin was likely to be hungover. He silently finished the thought for her.
Shit.
A floorboard creaked in the hall.
“Akito?” Nyx snapped. “Cut the shit and get in here.”
Benjamin slid a knife from the wooden block with a quiet ting. The door creaked. Benjamin tightened his grip, and recalled the last time he’d held a blade in self-defense in this house. As it had so long ago on that fateful day, his grip slipped with moisture—sweat, this time, not blood. Not yet.
Chapter 6
Tzadkiel stepped into the kitchen. Though he knew he should announce himself, he couldn’t help staring. In the comfort of his own home, the hunter hadn’t donned his sunglasses. Exposed, the place where his eyes should have been was comprised of scarred and sunken skin. Bruises underneath spoke of languid dissipation and opium dens, while vacant skin-covered sockets—their ruined canvas a lacy network of puckered ridges—were a haunting reminder of the damaged boy that did nothing to diminish the beauty of the man.
“Who the fuck’re you?” The snarled inquiry came from a woman Tzadkiel had barely noticed in the study of his quarry.
“I am Tzadkiel.” Stepping forward, he extended his hand.
Full mouth set in a firm line, pointed chin jutted, the woman eyed him from under a sweep of black hair. Ignoring Tzadkiel’s hand, she cast a sideways glance at Benjamin. “This the guy from last night?”
Lowering—but not relinquishing—a wicked-looking butcher knife, Benjamin nodded, his pale skin flaming scarlet.
“Nyx,” the woman said, assessing him as she took his proffered hand.
Tzadkiel inhaled deeply and caught her scent—fresh air layered with the musky tang of herbs, the silky warmth of paraffin, and the uniquely metallic scent of moonlight. A silver cuff on her right wrist, stamped with Celtic symbols he didn’t immediately recognize, fairly vibrated with power. Yes. The woman was a witch, but the moonlight told him another story. She was part fae. He filed the detail away for later study.
“A pleasure.”
Tzadkiel stepped back from the witch at the first possible moment.
His attention shifted inexorably to Benjamin, who faced him with a mixture of wonder and wary curiosity. The expression painted the hunter’s scarred-yet-beautiful face with a sublime chiaroscuro of youthful vulnerability. If Tzadkiel had still possessed fangs, they would have elongated with a painful snap.
Benjamin cleared his throat, depositing the knife in an over-full dish drainer, and slouched against the counter with his arms folded. “What are you doing here?”
Good question. After leaving the hunter last night he had cursed himself for not luring the man to the mora’s stronghold. He’d damned himself for fair play, and for being too much of a coward to enter this very house when he’d had the chance. Now he’d be forced to deal with two enemies instead of one.
“I’ve come to properly introduce myself,” Tzadkiel said, setting in motion the plan he’d concocted.
Benjamin straightened, his upright posture pushing the twin barbells of his nipple jewelry against the white cotton of his undershirt. Tzadkiel tore his gaze from the lurid display. Now was not the time to indulge his weakness for pretty men.
“Last evening didn’t seem the time…” Tzadkiel began, then shook his head and started again. “I know what you did on the Common.” The truth would give him an emotional advantage that he could use in setting the stage for his lies. “I know what you are.”
Benjamin moved in front of Nyx, shielding her from Tzadkiel, his motion so smooth he appeared more graceful boxer than a man whose lack of sight should have put him at a disadvantage.
“I am a hunter.” Tzadkiel pretended not to notice Benjamin’s obvious maneuver. “Like you.”
Behind Benjamin, Nyx gasped.
Tzadkiel almost congratulated himself, until, in the hallway, the grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour. Aged springs warped the tune, catapulting Tzadkiel into the past. Every hair on his arms stood on end. He’d heard that clock toll every fifteen minutes for thirty-six of the longest hours of his life, while enduring torture that had been a part of his too-frequent nightmares ever since. Curling his hands into fists, he forced himself to swallow down a surge of bile that accompanied an almost paralyzing mixture of anger and fear.
Benjamin thrust out his jaw, as he seemed to struggle with, and triumph over, his own internal demons. “Bullshit.”
The challenge focused Tzadkiel’s well-honed survival instinct. The grandfather clock ceased to exist, as did the scent of the dank basement he hadn’t been able to expunge from his nose from the moment he’d entered the house.
“Oh. I assure you. I am every bit the hunter you are.” A rueful smile tightened facial muscles that had seen too little use over the past decades.
Benjamin shifted his weight from one foot to the other, belying his pretense at confidence. “I’ve always known I’m the only hunter left.”
What the man said was all too true. Benjamin’s family—and now Benjamin himself—had been the last determined enemies of Tzadkiel’s kind. Just as Tzadkiel’s mora was all that remained of his own.
“Did you think none of us were left behind in the old country?” Tzadkiel forced an even brighter smile.
Benjamin’s mouth tightened. The witch laid a hand on his shoulder, but the hunter shrugged her off with an angry jerk.
“Prove it.” Posture defensive, chin lifted, Benjamin enunciated his challenge.
Tzadkiel couldn’t help admiring Benjamin’s self-preservation instinct, however little good it would do him in the end.
“Tell me,” Tzadkiel began, praying he guessed correctly, “how would I have seen you deal the death blow with the sword secreted in your cane—how would I have even known who or what you were fighting—if your lineage were not my own?”
Benjamin’s chin notched another fraction, the gesture accompanying his reply. “You could be a vampire, immune to Nyx’s obfuscation spell. Or a witch.”
Nyx circled around to the door, blocking Tzadkiel’s exit. “He’s not a witch.”
Tzadkiel’s vision tunneled, his system preparing him to fight. He shifted to keep both adversaries in his sight.
“Why would I not have killed you last evening when you so kindly invited me inside your home, and were incapacitated by alcohol?” Cocking his head, he feigned bemusement. “When you were alone?”
“Who knows why vampires do what they do?” Benjamin curled his fingers around the counter’s edge. “They’re irrational, bloodthirsty monsters.”
Tzadkiel, who was feeling nothing if not bloodthirsty, drew back his lips to display fangless gums.
Nyx examined the display of what Tzadkiel knew to be straight, even, and perfectly benign teeth with a jaundiced eye. There would be no telltale bulge where his fangs had once been and the gums had healed over. Not anymore.
“No fangs,” she asserted.
Outside, muffled footsteps neared—someone approached the house. A hinge squeaked at the front door, then a fluttering thump said the mail had been delivered—a little late, perhaps because of the holidays or the bad weather. Benjamin’s fingers twitched as he apparently registered, then dismissed, the familiar sound.
“I know what bothered me about you last night.” Benjamin indicated Tzadkiel with a jerk of his chin. “If you’re a hunter, then you have magic I should be able to detect. I saw your aura when you walked into the bar. You’re hiding it from me now. How?”
Hoofbeats couldn’t have sounded louder than the momentary galloping in Tzadkiel’s chest. So, Benjamin had seen him after all. There had been a moment when Tzadkiel had reached the top of the stairs and had seen Benjamin slouching indolently in the velvet and leather wingback chair. Long legs sprawled open, sunglasses reflecting the sparkle of the somewhat gritty bar’s ironic chandeliers, the hunter had looked half pirate and half king of his chosen realm. Tzadkiel’s control had slipped.
“You can’t obscure your own?” Tzadkiel asked, not knowing what he’d say until the words left his mouth.
Of course the hunter couldn’t hide his aura. Only Tzadkiel’s blood-born family had developed that skill—a necessary defense against Benjamin’s kind. But would Benjamin, with his incomplete training, know this?
“I—” Clearly not expecting the counter-question, Benjamin turned his attention briefly toward Nyx. “Should I be able to?”
Nyx shrugged. Apparently, the hunter could detect the witch’s aura as well as Tzadkiel’s own. It made sense when Tzadkiel considered that perhaps all supernaturally gifted creatures gave off a particular wavelength of etheric energy a hunter’s senses might detect. He’d always thought the sixth sense all hunters possessed homed in only on their prey.
“I had assumed all hunters could—at least my parents taught me as much,” Tzadkiel said, rushing to fill the gap in Benjamin’s knowledge—and further the deception. “We will have to compare notes when this is over. Perhaps share a few new skills.” He continued, addressing Benjamin’s original question obliquely with, “Your friend can see me. She knows I’m not a…a vampire.”
Benjamin turned his head toward Nyx. “Can you?”
Tzadkiel repressed a small smile, knowing what she would see when she used her powers to scan him. A War King’s presence was nothing like others of his mora.
Arms folded across her chest, Nyx swept Tzadkiel with her gaze. She had banked her witch fire some time ago, whether deliberately or out of exhaustion of her powers, Tzadkiel couldn’t tell. “It’s deep purple. Not like the vamps’ blue, or that green from last night.”
“Green?” Tzadkiel asked, taken aback, then quickly clamped his mouth shut.
Benjamin canted his head in seeming consideration. Tzadkiel almost felt him straining to see an outline or glimmer, anything that might help him puzzle out the stranger who stood in his kitchen. Under the fluorescent light, the hunter’s skin had taken on a yellow cast that couldn’t disguise the excitement that pinked his cheeks. Heat emanated from him in shocking disproportion to the chill in the air, maki
ng Tzadkiel all too aware that a very real answer to his hunger stood before him.
“If you’re not an enemy, then why are you hiding from me?” Benjamin asked.
“I always cloak myself when I know the Sons of Pollux are near.” Tzadkiel deliberately dropped in his mora’s proper name, rather than using the vernacular vampire of which Benjamin seemed overfond. “I have no desire to let them know what or who I am.”
“Where do you come from?” Benjamin asked, continuing his inquisition.
“We discussed this last evening. Greece.” At least that much was the truth, though he hadn’t been to his homeland for centuries.
The hunter’s vigilance remained unwavering. “Why are you here?”
Tzadkiel frowned. The question, even to him, was ridiculous. “To kill vampires, of course.”
“But why now?” Benjamin pressed.
Tzadkiel resisted the urge to expel a harried breath. He’d spun enough lies now to bury himself in a minotaur-sized pile of manure. Facing down an invading legion had never seemed as difficult as this. He really should have simply taken the hunter outright last night when he’d had the opportunity.
“A coup among your local…magical factions…” He forced himself not to glance to Nyx. “Has weakened the Sons of Pollux to the point we believe their threat can be permanently reduced.” The words tasted sour in his mouth, but he forced himself to speak them. “Or eradicated altogether. Just as we’ve managed in my own country.”
The hunter’s brows rose precipitously. “Is this why they’re feeding in the open now? Desperation?”
“Feeding in the open?” Shock compelled Tzadkiel to repeat the information.
Benjamin’s attention brushed Tzadkiel’s skin like a palpable touch. “We were on the Common last night following up on an eyewitness account when that vamp attacked us.”
“I had not heard…” At least in this Tzadkiel could tell the truth. “That is concerning.”
While the Sons of Pollux were known to drink from the vein, they were not beasts. They drank from willing acolytes, taking only what they needed to sustain their magic, never leaving a husk behind unless forced to desperate measures. All those who offered themselves were given the opportunity to attain immortality. The rest lived out their days in sensual comfort within the mora. Tzadkiel himself had been mad with hunger when the indigent had happened upon him in his subterranean lair, and that had been the only reason for the man’s death. Shame and regret followed in memory’s wake.
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