Benjamin returned his attention to Tzadkiel. “None of your business.”
“If you plan to betray me, I suggest you think again, hunter.”
Benjamin uttered a hoarse “Fuck off” in the habitual retort Tzadkiel now recognized as the hunter’s knee-jerk fear response.
Tzadkiel opened his mouth, intending to press the point, but the creak of door hinges aborted his intended interrogation. He and Benjamin simultaneously pressed their backs to the wall of the nearest building; to an outsider it could only appear choreographed precision.
Out of the shop stepped three men. One had short red hair and wore a navy blue peacoat. The man next to him sported a frayed denim jacket and ripped jeans inadequate for the temperatures. The third of the trio Tzadkiel recognized as the Morgan, or coven leader.
Spiked white hair and a dark turtleneck tucked neatly into pressed trousers shouted beatnik chic. To look at the man, one would never know he was one of Boston’s two most powerful witches and head of the oldest North American coven.
If the men came down the alley and turned left, Tzadkiel and Benjamin both would be exposed. The hunter could fight using the sword secreted in the cane he clutched, but would quickly lose in his injured state. Though Tzadkiel itched to go on the offensive, he knew he was no match for the Morgan at present.
The men drew closer and Tzadkiel dampened his aura. Benjamin inhaled sharply—perhaps in disorientation—but didn’t make any other sound. The Morgan and his companions approached the intersection of the alley and street, appearing to angle toward the left. Tzadkiel gripped his knife and prepared to draw his sword. Intent on the men, he didn’t register Benjamin’s movement until the hunter stepped into the light of the only functioning streetlamp. A black orb appeared in the Morgan’s hand, but the man stayed the twitch that would have released it.
“Mr. Morgan.”
Tzadkiel repressed a curse. The hunter was going to betray him.
“Benjamin?” The Morgan moved forward, separating himself from the other men, who exchanged wary glances. As the coven leader neared, Tzadkiel scented blood and death—the kind of death that only dark magic could bring. If he’d harbored lingering doubts that the man had been responsible for creating the keres, he no longer held them.
“Sorry to bother you, sir, but I didn’t know where else to go.” Benjamin staggered, holding his rib. “A vamp got the better of me tonight, and the hospital’s out of the question.”
A smile flitted across the Morgan’s face, but was quickly replaced with an expression of fatherly concern. “Is Nyx with you?”
Tzadkiel barely breathed, waiting for the words that would give away his location.
“No, sir.”
The Morgan’s two companions came closer at a gesture. He said to one, “Fetch a vial of bone broth.”
While Redhead removed to do his master’s bidding, Benjamin opened his coat and shirt at the Morgan’s insistence. Though his jaw clenched with the effort, Benjamin didn’t make a sound while he submitted to the coven leader’s prodding and poking.
“Looks like you were lucky,” the man commented, glancing to Benjamin’s wan face. “Where is Nyx this evening?”
“We had a falling out over a guy I’m seeing.” Benjamin swallowed once, a gesture that brought Tzadkiel’s attention to his neck. “We haven’t spoken in a while.”
The Morgan searched Benjamin’s face, likely sniffing out any lies. Tzadkiel, however, knew the hunter’s replies had been sufficiently vague to skirt the truth. After a moment, the witch’s frown turned into a knowing smile.
“Such a hothead. Like my wife.”
“Yes, sir,” Benjamin said. “I’ll pass along your regards.”
Tzadkiel raised both brows at the promise, as did the Morgan.
“Do not bother to lie to me. I know my child hides from me with your aid. Someday I will discover where and how.” The Morgan’s smile failed to reach his eyes. “You and I are aligned in our fight against the vampires. That is enough to make us allies…for now.”
A few more minutes of small talk, the reappearance of the Morgan’s assistant, and the administration of bone broth—the drinking of which made Benjamin gag—gave Tzadkiel time to climb to the top of the nearest brick building and hide. Not until the men had disappeared from sight did he climb back down to where Benjamin, shirt lifted, coat opened, ran light fingers over fading bruises. Tzadkiel uncloaked his aura, making himself visible to the hunter, and Benjamin quickly lowered his shirt.
“Why didn’t you betray me?”
“You think I’d kill you before I have a leg up on that bastard?” Putting his coat to rights, Benjamin lifted his head. “For reasons even beyond those keres—if he’s even creating them—the man needs to be taken out.”
Tzadkiel raised a brow, dubious.
“Besides…” Benjamin broke into a self-satisfied grin and uncurled his upturned palm. “I got these.”
A gaping Tzadkiel nearly kissed the man, this time for real. Benjamin saved him the embarrassment by stalking to the coven’s ramshackle storefront. It was a moment before Tzadkiel realized the hunter intended to use the stolen keys here and now, without planning or forethought.
Tzadkiel crossed icy pavement in a burst of preternatural speed. The effort cost him, but he managed to stay the hunter’s hand. Benjamin looked over his shoulder. The spiderweb of cracks in his sunglasses fragmented Tzadkiel’s grim-faced reflection.
“What?” Benjamin asked, key poised at the lock.
“We need to plan our attack, not rush in like fools.”
Blond brows rose. “Are you afraid?”
“I beg your pardon?” Tzadkiel almost sputtered. No one had dared call his bravery into question since his brothers and he were knee-high to— “No. Neither am I foolhardy enough to enter this particular situation without preparation.”
“This is our chance,” Benjamin shot back. “You think the Morgan’s not going to notice his keys are conveniently missing and set a trap if we wait until later?”
Tzadkiel scanned the front of the building, assessing. Iron bars protected the shop windows. Covered in peeling red paint, the door appeared to be metal and quite solid. If it came to breaking and entering, keys presented a better option.
“How do you know there is no alarm system?”
“There probably is.” Benjamin shrugged. “But we don’t have time to piss ourselves over it if you want to find your precious cup.”
Though Tzadkiel hated to admit it the hunter was correct. Undoubtedly the Morgan’s paranoia over the missing keys would lead the man to take extra measures to secure the shop. This would likely be their only opportunity to search the building unless they wanted to waste time on concocting a subterfuge.
“If you wish to keep your hand attached to your person, take care not to lay it on my mora’s most sacred object.” For emphasis, Tzadkiel tightened his fingers around the hunter’s wrist.
Benjamin barred his teeth. “Let go.”
After an appropriate pause, Tzadkiel stepped back. He waited as the hunter tested each key in the rusty door. Perhaps planning was overrated in this particular war. After all, nothing could have foretold his ambush and betrayal, or his torture and his mora’s subsequent downfall twenty years past. They’d taken all the precautions in the world, and still been taken unawares. He had waited long enough to regain control over his life. He refused to allow another night to pass before he claimed what was rightfully his.
Chapter 13
As Benjamin tested each key, Tzadkiel watched from over his shoulder like an animate gargoyle. Finding the right one, he turned it in the lock with a meaty click. He was surprised when no poison dart ejected from the knob to prick his hand. By rights the witches’ storefront should have been booby-trapped. Business, Benjamin supposed, would have suffered if a tourist or customer were maimed accidentally setting off whatever spell or gadget the witches might otherwise have installed on the door handle.
Benjamin stepped over the thre
shold and an ear-splitting alarm sounded. Though he’d been expecting the alarm, his heart threatened to choke him in its bid to leap out of his chest. The baritone warning INTRUDER! INTRUDER! INTRUDER! accompanied a banshee-like shrieking. Well, that explained why the door wasn’t booby-trapped.
Tzadkiel immediately moved deeper into the shop, and Benjamin followed. Rickety wooden wardrobes, almost as old as the shop itself, listed in the direction of the slanted floor. Dried herbs dangled from hand-hewn beams, scenting the place with their dusty aromas. The shelves along the shop walls contained labeled jars that rivaled Benjamin’s uncle’s onetime collection of the weird and nauseating.
As if by prearranged signal, they both began overturning furniture and pulling open cabinets to disguise whatever theft they might later commit. By the time they’d finished tossing the room, every cabinet was opened, box shaken out, and drawer pulled and dumped onto the floor. Unless you counted the release of a jar of about a hundred now very happy lightning bugs and a lazy two-headed garter snake, they uncovered zero items of interest.
“Where would they keep the kylix?” Tzadkiel demanded, pushing his hair out of his face. The harried gesture made Benjamin’s fingers curl.
Having talked about the shop with Nyx, Benjamin knew a little of the space. He mutely pointed toward the back. Tzadkiel followed his direction, and they both emerged through the curtain that separated the front from the rear.
Beyond the drapery, it was another world. Separated from the sky above by only a glass ceiling and its supporting steel girders, the space was a greenhouse for the coven’s herbs, where moisture and heat formed a nearly tangible wall. Purple-tinted greenery, lit by Tzadkiel’s aura, cascaded from raised planters in lush defiance of winter.
Tzadkiel bent over a bag of potting soil, made a neat slit, and dumped it onto the floor. Several more met the same fate in quick succession, filling the air with a loamy dampness. Next came the bags of manure. After overturning some empty pots, Tzadkiel looked to Benjamin who pointed to another door. Covered with vines, it was barely visible to anyone who didn’t know it was there.
Tzadkiel held up his hand and Benjamin tossed him the keys. Parting the vines, the vampire found the right key and shouldered through the door. Benjamin followed, drawing his sword. From Nyx’s description, he knew the coven’s ceremonial chamber lay beyond. The crouching hulk of a fabric-draped altar confirmed this knowledge.
Before the altar was a ceremonial circle surrounded by enough pillar candles to be visible from outerspace. In the center of the ceremonial circle in the currently dark room was a chair. In that chair was a person. As Tzadkiel’s aura lit the chamber, the slumped and tied form of a female came into view. Benjamin took in light hair, a slender form, and a medieval-style dress complete with bell sleeves.
The vampire crossed the circle, blithely blowing out a few candles as he went. Purple-tinted smoke curled through the air, seeking escape in the rafters. The woman’s head snapped up. A bruise marred her left cheek and her lip was split, but platinum hair and eyes the color of sea glass—not even Tzadkiel’s aura could obscure that iridescent green—remained startling in their loveliness. A golden glow like Nyx’s, but infinitely more powerful, formed around the woman. Bright and incandescent, it increased until it overpowered even Tzadkiel’s aura. He’d heard enough stories about this woman to know better than to look at her, let alone talk to her.
Benjamin shuffled backward, muttering, “Aw, fuck.”
“Untie me,” the woman said, her voice bright and sweet as a gentle summer rain.
Oh hell.
“Tzadkiel!” Benjamin warned. “Don’t—”
“Do it, and whatever you ask of me shall be yours.”
Benjamin repressed a hysteria-laden snort. According to Nyx, whatever gift they asked her for, she would turn inside out and use against them. The result would be a deeper, fresher pile of shit than the one Tzadkiel had left scattered over the coven’s greenhouse floors. Standing back, he could only watch as Tzadkiel dropped the Fuller dagger from his sleeve and made short work of the ropes.
The woman stood and waved one hand. As the alarm shut down, silence rushed in to fill the void where cacophony had reigned. Benjamin sighed. His ears thanked her even though his brain still screamed for him to run. Instead of obeying the impulse, he bowed low, as did Tzadkiel. Nyx’s mother, after all, had a reputation for being a stickler over courtly manners.
“Lady Morgana.” Tzadkiel straightened, addressing her. “This is unexpected.”
Benjamin gaped. “You two know each other?”
“We’ve crossed paths…and swords…from time to time,” Tzadkiel said, his tone considering.
Nyx’s mother cast the vampire a sideways glance and smiled. “It seems I am in your debt, War King.”
Benjamin looked between them, and decided he didn’t want to know what she and the vampire had gotten up to in their past history. Whatever it was, it’d either piss him off or gross him out.
He settled on a prudent, “What’s going on?”
“No time. My consort—foul creature—returns.” With another wave of her hand, Lady Morgana vanished, leaving Benjamin and Tzadkiel to fend for themselves.
Typical.
“C’mon.” Benjamin made for the fire exit at the rear. The metal, barred door, he recalled, would lead into a service alley that dumped them out near Chinatown gate. “Lady Morgana will get you that damned cup if you ask her the next time you see her.”
He deliberately left out that Tzadkiel would probably need to give up his left nut to close the bargain; but if the vampire knew Lady Morgana, then he knew this fact already.
The front door banged open, its report aborting Tzadkiel’s reply. Raised voices came from the shop. Tzadkiel’s hand went for his sword, and Benjamin groaned in dismay.
“Please,” he begged. “Let it go. Ask Lady Morgana. You rescued her. She can get the cup. We have the leverage we need.”
Amazingly, Tzadkiel heard reason. They burst out onto the street through the back door and broke into a dead run, making it all the way to Boston Common without stopping. Tzadkiel paused at the border briefly. It appeared to take concentrated effort on his part to cross into the Common. He pushed on though he shook visibly with the exertion.
By the time they paused at the base of the Earl of Sandwich snack hut, boarded up for the winter, Benjamin bent over, hands on his knees. “I really gotta spend more time at the gym.”
Tzadkiel withdrew the keys from his coat pocket, examining them. Nearly recovered, Benjamin snatched the ring from his fingers and marched over to a nearby storm drain.
“Don’t—”
Benjamin let the keys drop. They clattered, catching in the narrow channel, and he kicked them through with a vicious swipe of his foot. Joining Benjamin at the grate, the vampire bent low.
“We could have bargained with those—perhaps traded them for information,” Tzadkiel said, voice echoing into the sewer’s hollow well.
“No. We couldn’t.” For once Benjamin knew he was a step ahead of Tzadkiel. The vampire was too close to his goal to think clearly. “We were probably caught on camera letting Lady Morgana go, and even if we weren’t they’re going to be so pissed they’ll fry us on sight and ask questions of our ashes later.”
Tzadkiel lifted his head, his aura shimmering across the Common in waves of violet-chased purple that still caught Benjamin’s breath.
“Who was there to take photographs?” Tzadkiel asked.
“Huh?”
“Photographs,” Tzadkiel said as if the word explained everything.
Benjamin frowned and shook his head, unenlightened.
Tzadkiel made an exasperated sound at the back of his throat. “You said they might have caught us on camera?”
Benjamin chuckled at the absurdity of the misunderstanding. Weren’t security cameras a thing twenty years ago? He gave a mental shrug. Judging by the mora’s chambers, they didn’t take up with technology much. Hell, they didn’t e
ven have electricity down there.
“Video camera. Security cameras. They’re a little different now. They can save a digital video to a place accessible remotely. Probably the Morgan is viewing your harebrained hostage rescue as we speak.”
He realized he’d have to warn Nyx he’d seen the Morgan and Lady Morgana, but he couldn’t unless he wanted to risk giving his situation with Tzadkiel away. For fifteen years they’d all done whatever they could to keep Nyx away from her parents, and in one night Benjamin had not only potentially alienated his friend, but given both of her parents a reason to renew their search for their offspring on the way to Benjamin’s front door.
“Fuck,” Benjamin muttered, crossing a preternaturally quiet Beacon Street.
Beyond his sunglasses, Tzadkiel’s aura was fractured, a result of looking through the broken lenses. The situation he found himself in felt equally broken and unfixable. At least his ribs had been healed.
“What is it?” Tzadkiel asked.
“You’re a menace,” Benjamin complained, trudging up Joy Street’s southern slope. “Was there a point to us running in the front door, through the building, and out the back?”
“You are the one who insisted it had to be tonight, hunter,” Tzadkiel said.
“I suppose it could have been worse,” Benjamin grumbled, not wanting to admit his own part in the cock-up. “Unless you count that there’s probably now a price on both our heads.”
“As you pointed out, Lady Morgana owes me.” Tzadkiel walked at Benjamin’s left. “I would call that a tentative point in my favor.”
“You can call it what you want. I call it terrifying.”
“Where does Lady Morgana call home now?” Tzadkiel’s tentative tone said he likely agreed with Benjamin’s assessment.
Still aching for his friends, Benjamin couldn’t resist the opportunity to lash out. “I have no idea, and you separated me from the only person I might be able to ask.”
They had reached the house’s front walk. Tzadkiel stopped short and turned slowly to face him. Benjamin folded his arms over his chest, waiting for the full knowledge of who Nyx was to sink into Tzadkiel’s thick skull.
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