Surrender the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  “What’s your plan?” The witch broke into Tzadkiel’s troubled musings.

  “Sorry?” Tzadkiel asked, not understanding.

  “Your plan.” She leaned back. “You didn’t come all the way from Greece without one, did you?”

  Benjamin snorted, his repressed laughter an indication of a shared joke between him and the witch.

  “When my inquiries went unanswered, I assumed there were no longer any hunters in the area. I came to explore the situation, and then planned to contact my family.”

  The witch’s lips thinned. She appeared to know he hadn’t revealed the entire truth, or perhaps had lied outright. She opened her mouth to speak, but Benjamin cut her off.

  “If you are who you say you are, then you shouldn’t have anything to fear from me or from Nyx.” The hunter flipped a palm upward and shrugged. “So show yourself. I promise there aren’t any vampires here.”

  Tzadkiel repressed a curse. Revealing himself to the hunter in this house, where they’d last met as enemies, seemed imprudent, to say the least. Surely, the man would recognize him. Yet, if Tzadkiel wanted Benjamin to trust him, it was the only thing he could do.

  Nodding sharply, Tzadkiel cast his lot with the Fates. “As you wish.”

  One deep breath, and then another, expanded Tzadkiel’s lungs, and he let go of the stranglehold he kept on his aura. With each inhale, his world enlarged, until the bounds of his power overflowed the dam he’d constructed. It was as if he stepped out from behind a wall. Colors grew brighter, sounds sharper—the ticking of that blasted clock and the thrum of a diesel engine down Pinckney Street rattled the cage of his composure. Energy buzzed at his fingertips, his extremities awakening as his limbs warmed. The last of his power released, filling him. When no cry of recognition came, he blinked his eyes open.

  Ignoring Tzadkiel completely, Benjamin spun in seeming wonder, mouth gaping. “Holy fuck.”

  “What’s going on?” the witch asked. “What do you see?”

  Tzadkiel frowned as the hunter ignored them both and haltingly explored the room.

  “Everything,” Benjamin breathed. “I see everything clearly.” He finally turned to Tzadkiel, but just as quickly averted his face. “Except you.”

  It was Tzadkiel’s turn to be dumbfounded. Though the place where Benjamin’s eyes had been remained as empty as ever, apparently the hunter’s etheric sight detected anything bathed in the glow of Tzadkiel’s aura. Nyx, who had been watching the proceedings with wary interest, pushed away from the door. For more than a few minutes, she and Tzadkiel watched as Benjamin examined object after object with giddy wonder lighting his face.

  “Amazing,” Benjamin breathed, laughing. “It’s like someone turned on the lights, except they’re purple and a bit foggy.”

  “I agree,” Tzadkiel murmured dryly. “Amazing.”

  Benjamin glanced over his shoulder, then quickly away again, almost as if direct perusal of Tzadkiel’s person pained his hunter’s sight.

  “Do you have any lingering doubts?” Tzadkiel forced the question, though he was pretty sure he wouldn’t like the answer.

  “Many,” Nyx said warily.

  Tzadkiel met the witch’s gaze. Reflected in her eyes, he saw himself as she did, surrounded by light, reminiscent of the sun’s corona billowing in a solar wind. He had a horrible moment of wondering if she knew who and what he was.

  “We’re going to the Common,” Benjamin announced, breaking what was promising to be a gunfighter-style standoff between Tzadkiel and the witch.

  “What?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Tzadkiel and Nyx pinned the hunter with their attention.

  “You said there was Greek lettering on the plaque in the bandstand,” Benjamin said, fairly vibrating with excitement. “I bet Tzadkiel could read it.”

  Tzadkiel didn’t have to force his surprise. “Is the plaque significant to you?”

  Of course, he knew Benjamin spoke of the door to the mora’s secret network of tunnels and rooms—their effective stronghold—that ran beneath Boston Common and to points east and south in the city. But how had the hunter come across its bespelled entrance, and how much had he guessed? Though Tzadkiel shuddered at the thought, if the hunter could see the door might it be possible for him to open it as well?

  “I think it’s the entrance to some vampire bolt-hole,” Benjamin said.

  Tzadkiel’s lip curled at the comparison of his ancestral home to that of an animal den, but he quickly masked his expression with one of feigned surprise. This development could actually be very, very good for him. If the hunter and witch got him into the stronghold—and he could separate the friends—then he might be able to carry out his plan more quickly than he’d anticipated. Dispatch Benjamin, drink his blood, and break whatever hold the coven had on the Common. If only he knew the source of that hold.

  “Why would you trust him?” Nyx jerked her head toward Tzadkiel.

  “Oh, I don’t.” Benjamin’s lips thinned, but his face still shone with anticipation. “But he can help us, I think, in case we’re attacked again. That is if he is who he says he is.” Then the hunter nodded, as if in agreement with the outcome of some internal debate. “And we can keep an eye on him at the same time.”

  Benjamin was already out the kitchen door, the oak panel swinging behind him. Yes, the hunter was leading them precisely to where Tzadkiel had wanted to go. He should have felt triumphant, but instead he felt as if the situation had spiraled out of his control.

  “Come on.” Benjamin stuck his head back in the door. “Nyx, drop Akito a text. See if he can leave work early and meet us at the bandstand.”

  The witch gave Tzadkiel a look as if to say, This is your fault.

  What can I do? Tzadkiel silently answered, a shrug accompanying his moue. He’s your friend.

  They tromped into the front hall, following Benjamin, who sat on the stairs tugging on his boots.

  “Don’t you think you’re going off half-cocked, Benji?” The witch looped a rainbow-hued scarf around her neck as she spoke. Likely she knew the futility of attempting to stop the hunter in his present mission.

  Benjamin straightened and combed his fingers roughly through his mane. “I have a plan. I’ve had one for years, in case we found their nest, and that’s what I think this is.”

  “Oh?” Nyx asked.

  Tzadkiel’s raised brows mirrored the witch’s curious expression, he was sure. Benjamin’s answering grin was evil incarnate, all canines and wolfish satisfaction.

  “We’re going to scout for structural weaknesses. Then I’m going to come back with explosives to blow the place sky high. I don’t care if there’s a crater in Boston Common when I’m finished.” Benjamin lifted his backpack suggestively, as if it might already contain the necessary accoutrements of destruction. Hair storm-tossed, expression wild, he rounded on Tzadkiel. “Let’s go.”

  Tzadkiel’s fingers curled in sudden, claw-like rigor mortis. Visions of the hunter strung up in the mora’s central chamber, stripped of his clothes, dying slowly of a thousand salt-scourged knife wounds, acted as a balm to his temper. He managed to take in a calming breath.

  “Indeed, hunter.” Lips pulled back into an expression that felt more akin to a death grimace than a smile, Tzadkiel held the door open, and followed Benjamin into the night. “Nothing would please me more.”

  Chapter 7

  Benjamin regarded the outside world for the first time since that fateful Sunday as a boy. Depth perception, rhythm, and balance spun him in a dizzying dance. The first block of the walk to the Common had been a little iffy, and he still felt vaguely nauseous. It was almost as if his feet had forgotten how to walk. Sight wasn’t a sense he knew how to use any longer.

  Ahead of Benjamin and Nyx, Tzadkiel walked purposefully down Joy Street in the direction Nyx had pointed, his aura too bright for Benjamin’s senses to truly comprehend. Long-legged and broad, the man’s physique at once puzzled and inspired, but it hurt Benjamin to
gaze upon for more than two seconds together. Instead, he studied granite lintels limned in the aura’s deep lilac hue. Slate roofs sported a glistening layer of lavender ice. He slowed, absorbing minute details he’d taken for granted as a boy until Tzadkiel drew far enough ahead that the world became dim and he had to trot to catch up.

  Beside him, Nyx’s disapproving silence pulled at his attention.

  Benjamin pursed his lips. She was going to harsh his buzz. “What?”

  “Nothing.” Worry undercut the brightness of her tone. “I mean, aren’t you concerned about following some stranger to a place where you could be jumped and overpowered? If he’s not from Boston, don’t you wonder how he found out you were here?”

  Yes, he did. Point of fact, Benjamin had formed the plan to leave the house for that very reason—to get himself and Nyx out in the open where someone would at least hear them if they screamed. His backpack contained a vampire go-kit with a bottle of iron-laced acid and other tools of his trade; it was something he had at the ready out of a self-professed mixture of preparation and paranoia.

  “I assume he’s better trained than I was.” Rather than giving voice to his fears, he briefly eyed Tzadkiel’s back, then lied to Nyx. “You know, having family and all.”

  “No.” Nyx shook her head and shoved her hands in her coat pockets. “I doubt it. And even if he is who he says he is, two of you against an entire nest of vampires aren’t great odds.”

  “You think I would do something that stupid? Fight the entire mora at once with nothing but my ninjato?”

  Benjamin pressed his lips together, holding back a more sarcastic retort. Of course he wouldn’t attack an entire clan of vampires after dark. He’d at least wait until daylight before he breached the stronghold and took it down. That was when they were at their weakest—though he doubted even that disadvantage would allow him to fight and kill more than three or four of the creatures at once.

  “I think you’re distracted.” Nyx swept her arm outward, indicating a row of parked cars. “By being able to see, and by the idea that you might have a family of sorts. And by the idea of revenge.” She let her hand drop to her side. “Why did this guy appear only now, Benj? Why not before when you were a kid and really needed him? His family could have trained you…if he is who he says he is.”

  Benjamin, together with Nyx and Akito, had been christening Boston’s streets and alleys with vampire blood for over ten years. No vampire, however, had ever been able to obscure itself from Benjamin’s second sight. Still, it didn’t mean Tzadkiel wasn’t something else equally dangerous, like a supernatural bounty hunter of some kind who worked for the vamps.

  “Look.” Benjamin sighed, wishing he could ignore Nyx’s warning and his own internal alarm signals, and simply get lost in the improbably violent beauty of the icicles that hung with frozen menace from Beacon Hill’s brownstones. “I get it. This is stupid, but it’s a chance I’m willing to take. That plaque might conceal a door. I’m hoping Tzadkiel can lead us to something.”

  Nyx’s answering laugh was rueful. “Temptation. He’s going to lead you to temptation.”

  Though Benjamin could see Nyx’s features—their perky lines softened by luminescent eyes—better than ever, his sense of her was obscured by Tzadkiel’s aura. Golden hues were subsumed and smeared with violent purple, the color of royalty and ferocious summer storms.

  “He’s that good-looking?” Benjamin asked. Curiosity, it seemed, wasn’t lethal only to cats.

  Pitched to a painful fervor by the novelty of sight, Benjamin’s libido was at an all-time high—one that made him starkly aware of a need to get Tzadkiel alone. Not just to question him out of Nyx’s earshot, where she’d be safe from any threat, but also—if the man turned out not to be a threat—to see if they might complete some of what they’d started the previous evening. In which case, Benjamin no longer cared what kind of fuck it was—pity or otherwise—as long as the act was hard, intense, and ended with both him and Tzadkiel replete with exhaustion.

  Nyx seemed to consider the man, who walked just far enough ahead to be out of earshot, and gave a little shudder. “Yeah. He’s sin incarnate.”

  Slowing, Benjamin contemplated visions of himself entangled in a violent embrace that for once had nothing to do with fighting. Nyx moved ahead of him, clearing his peripheral vision of her aura. Reflected movement in a parked car’s passenger window snagged his attention, and he turned his head to frame object and motion together.

  A man in a long wool military coat faced off with him in the glass. Benjamin lifted his fingers, and the man lifted his fingers too. A wild cascade of curls framed a strong jaw, reaching to sturdy but slight shoulders. Benjamin touched his own jaw, his fingers rasping against stubble. The other man scratched his chin too. The car in which he gazed was a low one—a sporty coupe, sleeker than the ones he recalled from two decades past—and Benjamin bent lower, fascinated, to come face-to-face with…

  A monster.

  He stumbled backward, a scream caught in his throat, and the monster retreated as well. The thing that had stared back at him only had half a face. Its eyes were a crisscross of ugly, sunken scars that distorted the bridge of its nose and made a ghostly ruin of the macabre visage.

  “No,” Benjamin whispered, the one word as hoarse as if the swallowed cry had shredded his voice.

  Frantic to find a way to hide from his own reflection, he scrounged in his pockets. Where were his sunglasses? Short, sharp breaths tore from his chest, and he patted his pockets in increasing frenzy.

  “What is it?” Nyx trotted back to him.

  “Glasses.” Benjamin choked on the word. “Where are they? I can’t find my sunglasses.”

  Gentle fingers slid into his inner jacket pocket and withdrew the case. With shaking hands, Benjamin took the glasses and slid them on his face as Tzadkiel returned to where Benjamin and Nyx stood.

  “Everything all right?” Tzadkiel asked.

  “It’s fine.” The response came out sharper than Benjamin had intended. “I’m fine.”

  Keeping Tzadkiel in his etheric peripheral vision, Benjamin did the equivalent of squinting into the sun. Nyx took his hand in hers. Steady and warm, her fingers curled around his palm with a reassuring squeeze. The comforting gesture made him feel human again. Almost.

  They continued down the hill as a group. Tension was so thick Benjamin swore he could cut it with his sword. Trying not to look at any more car windows, he kept his attention fixed somewhere out over the Common. In the distance, perhaps sixty feet outside of Tzadkiel’s sphere, was only darkness.

  Congregated at the stoplight, they awaited the signal change. Cars rushed by at a dizzying speed. Had things always moved so fast? Benjamin gripped his cane reflexively. Though he could see fine, he’d brought it along both out of habit and for the sword secreted inside.

  Nyx’s phone buzzed, and she gave Benjamin’s hand a squeeze before letting go and fishing in her pocket. Akito, she mouthed, raising a finger, and hung back several paces as they crossed the street.

  Benjamin paused on the steps overlooking the Common. Tzadkiel seemed to hesitate and take a deep breath as well. His aura flickered, casting broken purple tendrils over the formerly dark expanse. As they moved into the Common’s open space, the light filled in again. Snow blanketed the ground everywhere but the pathways. Pavement bisected the Common and melded into the darkness beyond. Hand gripping the banister, Benjamin descended the steps with more care than he normally used when relying upon feel, sound, and reflexive memory.

  As they neared the rink, the ice skaters drew and held Benjamin’s attention. Bright music and laughter, lovers holding hands, and wobbly children found brief illumination in Tzadkiel’s aura. Benjamin walked backward, keeping the tableau in view until it winked into darkness as they moved out of range. Tzadkiel approached Parkman Bandstand with purposeful strides. When Benjamin reached the structure, Tzadkiel was already there, considering a space where Benjamin could see a panel in the side of th
e rotunda. A group of teens played music from a boom box on the platform above, using the bandstand as a makeshift dance floor. A few of them sat on the railings, smoking and sharing an illicit beer.

  Arms folded, hands cradling his elbows, Tzadkiel appeared to consider the place where Benjamin had noted the hidden doorway the evening before. In the shadow of the man’s aura the door was completely visible. Unlike the ornate maintenance entry on the other side of the bandstand that could be clearly seen by anyone, this portal sported a series of faded, carved Greek letters.

  Nyx trotted up, carrying Benjamin’s backpack, and let it, as well as her own, fall to the ground with a resolute whump.

  “We need to open the door,” Tzadkiel said. “It’s sealed with magic. Can you see it?”

  “Yeah. It’s so weird.” Benjamin approached the portal cautiously. “I mean, why would there be a door right here in the open?”

  Tzadkiel joined him. “I imagine it’s not visible to people without certain…abilities,”

  “Akito said not to go in without him.” Nyx, already unpacking her herbs and candles, didn’t look up from her task. “He’ll be here soon.”

  Relieved to be acting and not reacting, Benjamin ran questing fingers over the barely visible lettering. “I’ll go in first. You next, Tzadkiel. Akito will bring up the rear. Nyx will make sure we’re not seen.”

  Above them the teens jeered at the “freak with the candle fetish.”

  Benjamin quelled the urge to vault the steps and show them what a freak really looked like. Instead, he perused the unusual lettering on the plaque. “It’s…This is Greek, right?”

  Tzadkiel’s answering nod was a curt ripple of his blazing aura.