Surrender the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  Tears of repentance, salty with pain and sadness, mingled with Benjamin’s blood, and Tzadkiel knew not whether they were his lover’s or his own. Then he remembered. Benjamin couldn’t cry. Gasps of fear and a deep longing for forgiveness, rode over Tzadkiel—Benjamin’s emotions. His lover’s deepest desires knifed through him with each heartbeat. Tzadkiel took the man into himself, bonding with him even as he’d killed him. This last hunter and his only love.

  Benjamin sagged with a last shuddering gasp. Tzadkiel reluctantly released him, holding the kylix to the shredded flesh to drain the remaining blood into the cup for a far more meager offering than was proper. When the last trickle slowed to mere drops, Tzadkiel knelt in the snow beside Benjamin’s body.

  “Father Pollux, Zeus, god of all,” Tzadkiel began, raising the cup to the heavens, “hear my prayer…”

  As he prayed, the universe seemed to hold its breath. Then, exhaled. Clouds parted above him, swirling to reveal the night sky. Tzadkiel’s vision took in stars that no mortal eyes could see. These too seemed to move, aligning until the portal to Gemini opened and the heavens built a bridge to call the hunter home. White energy vibrated the kylix, heating it almost beyond Tzadkiel’s endurance. Still, he gripped its bowl in his palms and continued his entreaty to the gods for aid in battle in exchange for Benjamin’s sacrifice.

  The ground shook beneath Tzadkiel’s knees and Benjamin’s soul streamed upward in a breathtaking display. Power trilled up Tzadkiel’s arms to his heart. He breathed deep and released the gods-bestowed strength, feeding it to his men. Around him, those who only moments before had been scattered and weak took up their swords. The hunter’s death had not been in vain.

  Chapter 29

  Insignificant and unnoticed, small up against the reality that was the universe, Benjamin spun. Solar wind and particles of sunlight brushed his face, pinpricks to his awareness. In the distance hung the constellation Gemini. He stretched toward it, instinctively yearning for the place he recognized as home. His speed increased, stars buzzing past at unthinkable velocity.

  When he arrived, it was twilight in his ancestral realm. Swirling clouds of royal purple and the gentlest lavender trailed in cottony wisps over a star-dotted landscape of lush valleys and rolling hills. Not a planet, he knew, but a plane of existence, his heaven and the home of his gods.

  He drifted to the ground. Soft grasses brushed his feet. He twisted, gazing upward, toward a swath of stars that seemed so close he might reach up and pluck their gem-bright orbs from the sky. Among them drifted memories from which he shied, visions of a past that seemed too foreign now to comprehend.

  When he looked around again, a man walked next to him. Tall, broad shouldered, and with the grace of a willow married to the power of an oak, he studied Benjamin with a smile playing about his full mouth. “You seem to have lost your way.”

  Benjamin frowned, ducking under the limb of a tree laden with succulent-looking yellow fruit. “I’m here to offer my soul that victory might be granted to the Sons of Pollux.”

  Yes, that was right. That was why he had come all this way. Wasn’t it?

  “My brother will be glad to hear this.” The smile did not falter.

  Gaze widening, Benjamin went to his knees in the wet grass, a himation he didn’t recall donning swirling about him. He bowed his head. “Castor, it is an honor.”

  “Rise.” Castor reached down to help him up. “You have come too soon, young hunter. I must see you home.”

  “No…” Benjamin began, but then couldn’t remember why he should remain.

  There was a very good reason why he needed to stay—couldn’t go back to the murky place that was home. If nothing else, it was lovely here. Blossoms perfumed the air, and no pain assailed him. His hair fell about his shoulders and—he reached a hand to his face—his lashes brushed his fingertips.

  “The War King awaits you,” Castor reminded him.

  Tzadkiel.

  Memories filled the space in his mind that had remained carefully blank. He looked up, swiftly, into navy blue eyes. “But the mora will be lost.”

  “Balance has been restored. A life freely given, for a life freely given.” Castor stepped closer and covered Benjamin’s eyes with one large palm. “You will live out your years with the immortal Sons of Pollux. There, you will find joy.”

  The ground became insubstantial beneath his feet, and Benjamin floated freely once more. This time, in darkness. Softness brushed his skin, the velvet fingers of the universe a caress he craved.

  Time wound backward, replenishing the skein, until Benjamin relived the moment of his death. Tzadkiel’s arms had wrapped around him, holding him close, and there had been nothing more natural to Benjamin than to expose his neck to the lethal embrace. Torn skin and rent muscle registered in the flash-fire of limbic system–driven panic. Sedative and sensual, Tzadkiel’s mind washed over Benjamin’s in a figurative handclasp. The vampire walked him through each slowing heartbeat until death seemed not just inevitable but a natural and lovely part of life. The beauty of his sacrifice, in those last moments, was reflected back at Benjamin in the fullness of Tzadkiel’s gratitude and love.

  Unspooling in its natural direction now, time bounded forward once more to the present. Benjamin hovered over his own body. He’d been brought to the mora’s theatre where he appeared to lay in state on a raised table draped in deep purple velvet. The mora formed a circle around his pale, inert form. Tzadkiel stood beside him. Benjamin stepped toward his own body, pulled as if a magnet drew him to his flesh.

  What had happened in the battle? Where was the Morgan? Lady Morgana? He scanned the throng and found Nyx and Akito to one side. Relief washed through him. His friends were safe. Tzadkiel was safe. The mora hadn’t been destroyed.

  “For what purpose has this man been brought before us?” Tzadkiel’s voice rang out, a clear beacon that drew Benjamin’s attention.

  Dryas replied, “To prepare him for your sentence, sire.”

  “Wait. What?” No one paid attention. No one could hear him. Benjamin spun around to take in the throng. He noted Tzadkiel wore a white himation edged in silver, a blood-red rectangle of cloth around his shoulders. Dryas held a scroll.

  “On whose head do we enact our judgment?” The War King’s voice held all the ice of their first meeting. No emotion. No light.

  This was a trial? Benjamin’s attention went to his body. A wooden stake had been clasped in inert hands that rested over his heart. His trial?

  A scroll rustled, the page unfurling a list that contained Benjamin’s name, read in clear syllables by a vampire Benjamin understood to be a page. The reiteration of his crimes came next, and a reading of Benjamin’s own acceptance of the sentence that had so recently been passed upon him—his mortal death at Tzadkiel’s hands.

  What the fuck? They were condemning him after his death? Castor had said he was a hero. That he had died too soon. Had he been sent back only so he could attend his own trial?

  The page droned on. Benjamin had killed members of the mora. His clan had stolen from the mora. He had increased his own wealth on the backs of the Sons of Pollux. He had participated in the torture of their War King. He had trespassed on sacred ground. The list went on until Benjamin thought it might never end. He clenched and unclenched fists in anger and shame. Fuck. Mercy. Well, he couldn’t say he hadn’t asked for this—but to condemn him after he was dead seemed not only disrespectful, but also ungrateful.

  He bristled, indignant.

  Hush, hunter. You distract me. Tzadkiel’s admonishment rang through Benjamin’s mind. Let me work to convince them.

  He jerked around to pin Tzadkiel with his gaze. The War King, face impassive, seemed to stare directly at him.

  You can see me? Benjamin gestured to himself.

  Yes. We are bonded. I gave you a drop of my blood to return your soul here. Tzadkiel blinked once, slowly. Now hush.

  “The hunter came to me, worked with me to bring about our victory in battle today
. He and his friends rescued our kylix of their own free will. I say to you”—hands upheld, Tzadkiel displayed a silver hammer in one and the kylix filled with a shimmering liquid in the other—“that in his death he washed clean his crimes against us. He has proven himself a friend to the mora, and deserves a hero’s welcome into our fold.”

  “We have no archon—no Justice Giver or King Ruler—to gainsay our War King, so the matter must be put to a vote,” Dryas said, coming to stand by Tzadkiel. “Does our War King agree to abide by this judgment?”

  The men’s stances, their shifting gazes and restless forms, lent the impression they had been listening to debate over the matter for a while before this more formal phase of judgment had been entered.

  “I do.” The circle shifted, expectation arcing. Tzadkiel held up a quieting hand. “But know this. If Benjamin Fuller moves on to Gemini, your War King shall follow. Our strategoi will appoint a new archon and rule at its head.”

  A thrill went up Benjamin’s non-corporeal spine, and he wasn’t alone in his reaction. The entire mora looked to one another, mumbling their dissatisfaction with the notion of the War King’s intended sacrifice.

  “You cannot think to sway us with threats of your death. You were absent from us for—”

  Dryas lashed out with the head of a staff he’d held in his right hand. It appeared to be made of marble on one end and onyx at the other. The man fell to his knees, his irreverent and treasonous speech abruptly cut off.

  “Speak again and suffer a traitor’s death,” the general snarled, then turned to Tzadkiel. “We accept your condition, sire, and will now vote. So that the will of the gods will not be subverted by the weakness of men, all will vote by ballot except your strategoi.”

  Benjamin came to stand by Tzadkiel. You should have made a longer speech. Even I wasn’t convinced.

  Tzadkiel threw Benjamin a quelling look, but spoke to his general. “We accept. If there is a tie, then you will cast the deciding vote.”

  Slips of paper were produced, along with a pot of ink and a quill. Each man approached a small table in turn, and cast his ballot into a black box. Benjamin looked on with surreal anticipation. If the men voted against him, then obviously the wooden spike would be driven through his heart so he couldn’t be turned. If they voted for him, he wasn’t sure what would happen next. Since he was already dead he didn’t so much fear the passage of his life as he did Tzadkiel’s. The War King would be devastated if his people voted against him.

  The votes were all cast and two men counted them, handing each to Dryas to separate into two piles. They were counted three times. Finally, Dryas looked up, his brow furrowed.

  “Sire…”

  Tzadkiel ceased pacing the length of the table on which Benjamin’s inert body lay. Agitation hummed along taut shoulders as he faced his mora. “Whatever the outcome, Dryas, tell me. I am unafraid to die.”

  “By my vote…” Dryas flicked his gaze toward Nyx and Akito who had stepped from the shadows. Nyx’s witch fire was dim, and Benjamin saw for the first time the burns that extended from her right cheek down her neck.

  “There is a tie?” Tzadkiel asked, seeking confirmation.

  Dryas nodded, returning his attention to his War King.

  Benjamin wanted nothing more than to hold Tzadkiel’s hand in comfort as the vampire had done for him. There was every possibility that the strategoi would covet the position of War King and vote against Tzadkiel to secure that power. A cunning and disloyal man would have easily acted in his own self-interest. Benjamin, knowing little of the relationship between these two, couldn’t say which way Dryas’s vote might go.

  “I have reservations about the hunter…”

  Tzadkiel nodded his understanding. “You must vote your conscience, and I count on you to do so.”

  “But I trust my War King’s judgment in all things.” Dryas bent to write down his vote. One word. He held it up. Live.

  Relief burst from Tzadkiel in a palpable wave. He threw the hammer to the ground, and pulled the spike from Benjamin’s inert hands. Benjamin instinctively went to stand at the top of his funeral bier. Nyx and Akito clasped hands and pressed their foreheads together in obvious relief. Dryas scooped up Benjamin’s limp form and tilted back his head. Tzadkiel placed the cup down, sliced his wrist open with the knife, and pressed the resulting flow to its rim. He then lifted the cup to Benjamin’s lips.

  “Blood of my body, I give to you, Benjamin Fuller. Rise, and walk with me as my chosen life mate, one of my mora, and my friend.”

  Benjamin had the surreal experience of watching from outside himself as his lips wrapped around the bronze cup and he drank. The life magic in Tzadkiel’s blood animated him, assisting the ritual. When the cup was empty, Tzadkiel stepped back and handed it to a servitor who wiped it clean with a white cloth. The cloth was then placed over Benjamin’s face, and his world went dark.

  —

  “Come back to me, hunter mine,” a deep voice, like fire-warmed ice, beckoned.

  Gravity asserted itself upon Benjamin’s body, its clutching fingers a force he was powerless to deny. He fell, hard and with a speed that forced air into now-burning lungs. Without warning, he struck the earth, re-entering his body with an impact that rent the first breath from him in the form of a scream.

  Pain assailed his limbs, spine, and fingers. No part of him was immune to the reawakening of his vessels and organs. Sparks became brushfires of sensation that left him reeling in misery. He bowed upward, attempting to separate himself from a spine that seemed destined to push its way up his skull and out of his mouth.

  “Hush…” Gentle arms rocked him as he writhed, and—he knew—prevented him from injuring himself with his flailing.

  Swallowing against a dryness that felt like glass shards, he catalogued each and every one as it wormed its way to his gullet and swam around in food poisoning’s equivalent of week-old unrefrigerated meatloaf. When he heaved, the bucket was there, and Tzadkiel held him steady through the wracking tremors that followed. Hot and cold flashes alternated, chasing after each other with dog-meets-cat intensity.

  “Where?” Benjamin managed after what felt like hours.

  Tzadkiel held him closer. “With me.”

  A smile found its way to Benjamin’s lips. Exhausted, he slept. When he reawakened it was to the press of something cold to his lips and an arm under his neck.

  “Drink,” Tzadkiel said.

  Benjamin’s lips wrapped around a straw and he found the strength to suck salty, tangy liquid. He nearly spat.

  “What the hell is that?” he managed.

  “An herbal drink from your friend Nyx.” Tzadkiel turned to put the cup on a table, and Benjamin fell back against pillows.

  “Disgusting.” Benjamin made a face. “I thought it was blood.”

  Tzadkiel hissed breath through his teeth. “No, hunter mine, that tastes…much better.”

  Saliva pooled in Benjamin’s mouth, and his gums ached at the thought. Disconcerted by the sensation, he attempted to look around. Where were they? Hazy at first, like an old tube television he remembered from his childhood, the room resolved into view. It was the iron room he recalled Tzadkiel speaking of from his first visit to the theatre. A table sporting the kylix lurked heavily in one corner. Warmly flickering gas lamps provided welcome illumination and brightened what otherwise might have been the overly severe décor of heavy tapestries, deep fur throws, and velvet bed hangings that had been brought into the formerly barren space.

  “Looks like a vampire’s bedroom,” Benjamin observed, running his tongue over his sore gums.

  Tzadkiel, in the act of lifting a bowl of what smelled like chicken broth from the table, cast an arch look over his shoulder. Mirth glimmered in his gaze.

  Benjamin threw him a lopsided smile. “Just seeing if you’re paying attention.”

  “Oh, I’m paying attention, all right.” Tzadkiel ladled more broth into the cup. “You’ll see just how much when you have recovered.”<
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  Plucking at the fur throw tucked over his lap, Benjamin frowned, the expression setting up a tiny headache behind his sinuses. “Um. Exactly what am I recovering from?”

  “What is it that you recall?” Tzadkiel settled one hip on the bed and spooned up some broth.

  “I remember…” Benjamin shook his head. “I remember kneeling before you in the Public Garden. That’s it.”

  “That is probably for the best.” Tzadkiel, looking relieved, put the spoon to Benjamin’s lips.

  Benjamin sighed and then opened his mouth, giving the War King his mother-hen moment though he really wanted nothing more than to feed himself. Truth be told, he did feel like he’d awakened from the dead. Completely washed, wrung, and hung out to dry, his arms felt little better than wet laundry. The broth was salty on his tongue, just like Nyx’s herbs had been. He made a face.

  “Who’s your cook? Your entire mora must have blood pressure problems.” That word again. Blood. Benjamin clapped a hand over his mouth, as his gums seemed to split open along the top. “Ow. Fucker.”

  “The transformation affects everyone differently,” Tzadkiel observed, putting down the bowl. “You seem to be having needs for something other than food.”

  Tzadkiel retreated to another room for several minutes and returned with a silver goblet.

  “As your maker and life mate, I could allow you to feed from me, but given how squeamish your stomach appears to be, this might be best.” Tzadkiel held up the goblet.

  Its contents smelled of sandalwood underlain with crisp, cold apples plucked before an early frost on a cold autumn day. Benjamin’s mouth watered, the saliva running down his throat and preparing the way for the elixir Tzadkiel offered.

  Without thought, or breath, Benjamin snatched the cup with greedy abandon. The first taste exploded across his tongue, provoking an emotional firestorm. Lust, rage, fear, love seared his psyche…followed by visions so intense it was as if he lived inside Tzadkiel’s skin. Strong arms—his, but not his—wrapped themselves around his chest. Emotions of deep concern and then fear paraded past. Those same arms held him immobile. He saw the column of his throat exposed and experienced Tzadkiel’s terror-chased elation as he struck at pale skin, rending the pliant tissue beneath. Blood as bright as elderflower wine sang across his taste buds. He drank until his stomach hurt, and then filled his kylix and drank more, driven not only by hunger but also by the need to make the hunter live. To make Benjamin live. Then, bone-deep despair, worry, and rage consumed him, followed by endless hours of battle that culminated in a stalemate. Neither the fae nor the witches had advanced their cause, and remained entrenched on the Common and in the Public Garden.