Taste the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  With aching slowness, a glow formed, a hazy blue-violet streaked with jagged darkness. The aura coalesced, bubble-like, around Akito, embracing his body in a bright blue shell that, if Lyandros hadn’t known better, he would have called protective. In fact, at first, he believed his prayers had been answered. As the light around the man grew, however, its form took on qualities both familiar and strange.

  Lyandros gasped. The aura was one he had seen many times before. Nascent magic fought to infiltrate Akito’s soul and bind it to the gods. Not to carry him to the afterlife, or for protection, but to bring him over from the mortal world to the immortal. To make him a vampire.

  Time broke over the bridge like a wave, pushing motion forward. Nyx’s frantic footfalls registered alongside the rumbling train on its way to Kendall/MIT. All the ordinary sounds and sights of life underscored with the deeper resonance of looming death that Lyandros recognized all too well.

  “Akito!” Lyandros didn’t know what made him shout. He knew better than to think he might be heard.

  “Get out of my head!” Clapping his hands over his ears, Akito pitched forward, and fell.

  Nyx arrived a moment after and nearly toppled over the wall. She leaned over the iron balustrade with a shattered cry. “No!”

  Fumbling her phone from her pocket, she dialed with shaking fingers and made the call that would send the emergency services to the river. Lyandros joined her at the wall and looked down. No soul had yet separated itself to join them on the bridge. Longing tugged at him.

  It would be so nice to be able to talk to the man…

  Lyandros shoved the thought away.

  So much for answered prayers. He watched as, eventually, the police boat hauled Akito from the water. At a distance, the man appeared limp, his coat a waterlogged parachute that likely had dragged him to the river bottom. A police cruiser blocked traffic, its lights slicing across the bridge’s stone towers and drawing pedestrian attention until a small crowd gathered to watch the drama unfold.

  “I have to get to the hospital,” Nyx said to an officer. “I’m his appointed next of kin.”

  Hope somersaulted through Lyandros. Had Akito survived? From Nyx’s too-pale features and the bright sheen to her eyes, Lyandros couldn’t tell. The female was battle hardened, he judged with no little admiration, as he slipped into the back of the police cruiser with her as a stow away. She frowned and looked around, as if sensing him.

  It had been decades since he’d ridden in a vehicle of any sort. He spent the short trip to Mass General pondering his options. If Akito passed on and his spirit remained on the physical plane, he would be disoriented. He’d need someone to help him acclimate to his afterlife. For one who had evidently been destined to become one of his mora, Lyandros would do nothing less.

  Lyandros followed Nyx to the emergency room. In a secluded bay, Akito lay on a gurney. They’d intubated him. Wires ran from beeping, hissing machines, and a pouch that hung from a steel pole fed fluid into his arm. His naked chest, pale and dusted with copper-brown, confirmed Lyandros’s suspicions that the man dyed his hair. For some reason, this made Lyandros smile.

  Lyandros’s smile slid away as he heard the words, “Broken neck, not sure how he survived.”

  He stepped closer to the sheet-draped gurney and studied the medical readouts over which the doctors seemed to puzzle. Akito’s body should have been exhibiting signs of hypothermia and distress, but the readouts on the screens appeared normal.

  Lyandros retreated, folding his arms over his chest, considering. If Akito were indeed mid-transition—something that should have taken only hours to complete—then his body either needed to finish changing or his soul would eventually fully unmoor itself from the physical realm and start the journey to the afterlife.

  Nyx, who had been standing quietly by listening to the doctors’ reports, was asked to step away to fill out paperwork, leaving Lyandros alone with his…well, his brother of sorts. Any man who had been transformed by ritual into a Son of Pollux—as the vampire mora’s descent from that son of Zeus proclaimed them—technically had the same blood running through his veins as Lyandros himself.

  “You are dead,” Lyandros reminded himself. “You do not have blood.”

  The blue glow surrounding Akito pulsed completely black, bringing Lyandros’s head up. It pulsed blue, stronger this time, and the machines faltered. A nurse came in to check a line, and left with her brow furrowed. Frost formed on the air, as crystals of Akito’s spirit detached one fragment at a time from his body.

  Dark fell outside, but Lyandros remained, awaiting the inevitable. He told himself his interest in the man’s passing over went beyond self-interest, beyond lust or loneliness. He had a duty to see Akito into the afterlife. As he stood vigil, cerulean coated the space between Lyandros and the gurney; its jagged flashes of black a reminder of the unfinished transition that would have saved this man’s life had it been complete. In a final push, reminiscent of childbirth, Akito’s soul rent from the physical plane. It would take time for the light that made up his spirit to coalesce, but what did Lyandros have if not time?

  Akito’s body, on life support, continued to breathe, his chest rising and falling in unnatural jerks. His heart continued to pump blood. Everything was in working order, it appeared, except for one very important component—the wide-eyed man who stood before Lyandros had separated from that body and come to join the ranks of the dead.

  Chapter 4

  Akito kept his back to the hospital bed. He didn’t need to see evidence of his predicament to know he was in deep shit. Deeper than he knew how to handle, and he’d handled a lot in his time hunting vampires with Benjamin and Nyx. One glance at his machine-sustained body on the bed behind him and he knew he’d achieved his aim. He’d successfully jumped off the Longfellow Bridge. Now he was dead. Sort of. They’d hooked up his body to machines to keep it alive—a shell.

  Akito probed the place in his mind where the Morgan usually lurked and found it empty. Vivid tortures mellowed, their sharp edges eroded by distance from the man. There was space now to just be. No pressure to perform or be anyone other than who he was. Dead men didn’t make history, after all, and he had already done all he would ever be able to do to protect his friends by ridding them of himself and the threat his unwanted bond with the Morgan had posed.

  Rather than following his first impulse toward self-congratulation that he’d succeeded thus far in his goal, he attempted to stare down the man—ghost rather—who appeared to prop himself against the far wall. Mint-green paint shimmered behind him, casting a sickly pall over his otherwise severely handsome face. He wore head-to-toe leather, from his black well-fitted trousers to a flowing, robe-style coat that fell open to reveal a dark-burgundy leather lining.

  Akito skipped his gaze over that broad chest. The lack of a shirt allowed a view of a black leather harness crisscrossing skin that seemed to light him eerily from within. Attention drifting downward, Akito appreciated well-muscled leather-encased thighs and some seriously boss black boots. The effect of the getup overall should have been bizarre. Instead, the man wore the clothes with a confident disregard that trod on the heels of a mouth-watering sensuality.

  Gaze moving upward, Akito studied the ghost’s face. Hair shorn with military precision showed to advantage the severe sculpted lines of harsh but well-balanced features. Taut skin seemed to mold itself over prominent cheekbones, and a razor-sharp jaw darkened with a half-day’s stubble did nothing to soften an impression of dispassionate and perpetual judgment. When Akito finally met them, thickly lashed eyes of Aegean blue pierced him with their unflinching regard.

  “It takes a while to get used to—being dead.” The ghost incorrectly guessed the direction of Akito’s thoughts. Perhaps because they had once been his own?

  “I don't mind it,” Akito decided.

  And, why should he? The hard part was over. Now that he had crossed over, or whatever you called it, the fact the Morgan no longer held sway over him s
eemed a pretty damned good tradeoff. Of course, if he’d known that hitting the water and breathing it in would hurt so fucking bad, he would never have had the guts to jump at all.

  “Most are not so…accepting of their fate.” Lyandros’s formerly smooth brow furrowed. “You have a warrior's quietude regarding death.”

  The word warrior dropped from well-formed lips in a reverential caress. Akito felt, as well as recognized, the respect in the observation.

  “I’m not a warrior.”

  Akito shied away from a comparison he’d never be able to live up to. He hadn’t jumped out of anything other than ten tons of crazy. The second he’d tipped over, he’d looked back for that damned rail, but it had been too late.

  “Looks like you are, though.” A tip of Akito’s chin indicated the man’s garb, and he stepped forward, hand extended. “I’m Akito.”

  The stranger stared at Akito’s outstretched hand. Silent. At first, Akito thought he might shun the greeting. Then, honest eyes, naked with longing, lifted from a study of Akito’s hand. The need Akito saw there took his breath away, and was quickly shut down—a fire banked so suddenly that Akito wondered if he’d seen it at all.

  “I am Lyandros.” Paying his respects with a nod, Lyandros fisted his hands by his sides.

  Turning the name over in his head, Akito tested its syllables. It had a ring to it, not unlike Tzadkiel.

  “Lyandros?” Akito said aloud. His expression widened as he realized where he’d heard that name before. “Lyandros Dragoumanos?”

  It was Lyandros’s turn to appear surprised. “You have heard of me?”

  As Justice Giver, Lyandros had ruled as one of the archon, a triumvirate, with the War King, Tzadkiel, and the King Ruler, whose name he did not know. Only Lyandros had the power to pass judgment on his brothers, while the King Ruler had the power to veto Tzadkiel’s edicts. It was a system of checks and balances that had worked well for the mora for thousands of years.

  “You’re kind of legendary…Justice Giver.”

  A dark brow lifted. “Oh?”

  Long before he’d become the mora’s Justice Giver, Lyandros had begun his career in the mora overseeing a harem of men, called tributes, who had been sentenced to a period of servitude for crimes petty and great. Stories—likely tall tales—abounded among the mora about the War King’s dead brother, Lyandros.

  Dodging Lyandros’s question with one of his own, Akito asked, “Is this sort of after-death Welcome Wagon customary?”

  “Usually the honorable dead are sent on to Gemini. The War King will perform the ritual for you when it is your time.”

  “Gemini…” Somehow, Akito doubted the god Pollux would want him in his realm any more than Tzadkiel had wanted him as part of the mora.

  Lyandros briefly inclined his head in a show of respect. “It is my privilege to assist one of my people.”

  “Y-your people?” Involuntarily, Akito stared at his body on the bed. “But I’m not a vampire.”

  “It appears your transition has been aborted or held in check somehow.” Muscles flexed along Lyandros’s jaw, giving the impression of barely leashed control. “But my ancestor’s blood is the reason that you survived the fall. It is clear in your aura.”

  Akito swallowed, keenly aware that if Tzadkiel hadn't approved of the events that had led to this moment, Lyandros, as the mora’s Justice Giver, would likely look on them even less favorably.

  “I assume once they take me off life support my body will die.” Though the subject was macabre, Akito approached it head on. He had done what he came to do in this life.

  Lyandros turned his face toward the bed, and Akito had the pleasure of studying the Justice Giver’s handsome profile in secret. Akito didn’t know about the man’s tributes, but if that intense scrutiny had been directed at him, he would have knelt without hesitation. The thought brought the Morgan to mind, and he flinched. No. Kneeling had been a kink he might have fantasized about once upon a time, but now the idea just made his stomach roil.

  “Your friend—Nyx—told them no. She is keeping you on the machines.” Lyandros shifted to include Akito in his view. “You are healing more slowly than a fully transitioned vampire might, but already there is a difference in your visible injuries. I predict you will heal.”

  He would…heal?

  “No. That can't happen,” Akito found himself saying. “That can't ever happen.”

  Remembering the injuries from which he’d seen fully transitioned vampires recover gave Akito pause. He recalled the gash on his wrist closing after his attempted self-transformation closing with surreal swiftness, and shuddered.

  “I would think this news would bring you joy.” Lyandros looked at him askance. “All suicides I have met experience extreme regret over what they have done the moment they act on their ideation, even before their death throes rend their souls from their corporeal housings.”

  Akito approached the bed and stared down at himself. He didn’t know what a person was supposed to look like after they’d sustained the kind of damage he had, but he certainly didn’t look like he would have expected. He recalled feeling his impact with the water’s surface. At velocity, it had been like hitting cement.

  Machines hummed, capturing his attention. Bewildered, he turned to them. They were the reason his body lived. The reason he might, as Lyandros had said, survive. The empty space in his mind lurked, awaiting the Morgan’s return. If he went back, not only would Nyx be in danger, but the tortures would resume.

  As if outside of himself, he watched his hand reach for the plugs and wires. Fingers curling around the wires, he pulled. The machines continued beeping. Again, he grabbed and yanked, more emphatic. This time, he saw his hand pass through the bundle in a surreal swipe.

  Each snatch at the wires increased his bewilderment and his frenzy. It was as if he were real and everything around him a dream. No, not a dream. Dreams were never this cruel. If his soul ever entered his body again, it would be an absolute nightmare. One from which he now knew he might never escape.

  Chapter 5

  Akito’s somewhat unhinged behavior was closer to the reaction Lyandros had come to expect from the newly dead. The stages of denial, anger, and frantic bargaining, however, usually centered around a stubborn clinging to life. This coming-to-terms progressed through stages, the last of which was and would be a shock-laden acceptance. So, when Akito looked up at him, kohl lined eyes wide, and uttered, “But I can’t live. I don’t want to live. Don’t make me go back,” Lyandros found himself momentarily stumped. What was he to say? How was he to give comfort and advice?

  Recalling the warrior staring down at the Charles River, Lyandros realized Akito had gazed upon the water like a lover whose embrace he sought—his homecoming and his reward after a long battle. Ritual, honor, and peace had been the hallmarks of Akito’s graceful, swooping fall. Suicides were universal in their regret, their last minutes spent wishing for the power to turn back time and remake that one, irreversible choice. Therefore, Lyandros had to believe, in the face of Akito’s response now, that he hadn’t committed suicide. He’d committed a sacrifice—one he was desperate not to see undone for all its apparent hardship.

  “I need to unplug these wires.” Gray eyes upturned in supplication, Akito pleaded, “Help me.”

  Powerless to help, even if he had wanted to, Lyandros could only watch over his charge as Akito renewed his futile attempts to dislodge the electrical cords.

  “Akito, stop,” Lyandros said, firmly though not unkindly. “Enough now.”

  The warrior surged to his feet, turned to the bed, and plunged both of his ghostly hands into his corporeal chest. Akito’s body, on the bed, rose upward, his back bowing as if drawn taut on a string. The machines squawked with alarm. Lyandros took a startled step back. In his decades as a spirit, he had never encountered a ghost whose body remained viable. Nor had he met a man who so sincerely sought death.

  Wrapping his arms around Akito, Lyandros removed him to a safe dis
tance, and the alarms quieted. Akito’s surge forward nearly broke Lyandros’s hold. Muscles straining, he struggled to hold onto his self-appointed charge as the nurses entered at a run to check the machines.

  “Fucking let go of me.”

  “Stop,” Lyandros growled, tightening his hold. “You cannot fight the will of the gods.”

  “Fuck the gods.” Akito landed a vicious stomp on Lyandros’s instep.

  Pain shot up Lyandros’s leg, ghostly nerves firing from muscle to muscle until he was physically aware in a way he hadn’t been for a very, very long time. With that awareness came two things: anger and desire. Anger that Akito would curse the gods who had given him a second chance at life, and desire driven by the long-dormant sensations coursing through him. It had been so long since he’d touched or been touched. Each brush of all-too-tangible flesh quickened his arousal.

  With a maneuver born more of instinct and practice than of conscious thought, Lyandros brought Akito with him to the floor and rolled Akito beneath him. Hands clawed for his face and he yanked them high, pinning them over Akito’s head. Akito’s head butt nearly caught Lyandros’s chin. This, Lyandros thwarted with a press of a forearm against his captive’s throat.

  “Yield,” Lyandros commanded through gritted teeth.

  Akito’s frustrated growl vibrated into Lyandros’s arm and chest, activating regions lower. He ignored, by will alone, the rousing of his sex. If Akito had been his tribute, the man would have made recompense for his insult to the gods with the gift of his well-formed body. There was a pause, and then a meeting of their eyes. Dark lashed, and wet with unshed tears, Akito’s held an uncertainty that Lyandros found wholly captivating.

  “Do you yield?” Lyandros asked, knowing the warrior’s honor would prevent him from attempting to harm himself again once he had given his word.