Akito’s cries lit the chamber now, his aura sparking in waves of pleasure as Lyandros found the desired angle and impact. Fangs fully extended, Lyandros held back. Their points throbbed in time to the life force that coiled deep in preparation for his orgasm. He didn’t want this moment of forgetting to end. When it did, some part of him knew, the world would come crashing back in.
Duty. Honor. His mora’s plight. All would reassert themselves as burdens that he would have to bear. And bear them he would. But for now, for this moment while he joined with Akito’s body, he could forget.
Akito shouted a profanity when Lyandros boosted his impossible pace. Desire asserted itself, not to be denied. He pushed it back through will alone, and his orgasm bloomed again, quicker this time. A narrowing of vision and sense toppled his bid for control, and he drew Akito upward, yanking his head backward, and struck.
Life, sweet life, burst across Lyandros’s tongue in pulses of dark licorice. He gulped greedily, his orgasm shattering his vision. Back muscles tightened. His legs shook. Pleasure lifted him until he danced with the light and the dark in equal measure. He didn’t feel alive, exactly. He felt whole, in a way he hadn’t since… He couldn’t recall when.
Contracted muscles gave out. He fell forward, Akito bundled underneath him, and pressed the line of the warrior’s back close. This, he thought, drifting down from that breathless perch, is the only way to die.
Chapter 10
Tiny sparks—tingles more than sensation—arced over Akito’s skin as he trailed fingertips over his neck. The spot where Lyandros had bitten him throbbed. Not a pulse exactly, but a confirmation of his existence. He turned his head to gaze at the vampire. Lyandros rested next to him on the enormous bed, dark lashes fanning above the ridges of high cheekbones. Tattered brocade hangings created an illusion of intimacy that Akito basked in.
It wouldn’t do any harm for the moment to pretend that Lyandros had been a real lover, and it took even less effort to visualize the room as it must have been in its heyday. A mammoth hearth would have crackled with a warming fire, its glow casting intimate shadows up the walls. The silver-edged dressing mirror, covered in a layer of grime so thick it had ceased to reflect light, stood at attention near the wardrobe. Akito pictured the Justice Giver attended by his tributes, dressing there for the day.
Warmth and regal quietude combined in the placement and quality of the furniture and fixtures. It appeared from the room’s present chaos that Lyandros had left in a hurry, or his tributes had. Nothing had been put away. An open book on the bedside table, and a half-burned pillar candle, spoke of a life abruptly cut short.
Rolling, Akito sat up on one elbow and looked down at Lyandros. Sooty lashes fluttered before rising. The vampire seemed sated, relaxed, and human.
Lyandros lifted his hand and traced the same spot Akito had been worrying a moment before. “There are no marks.”
Akito frowned. “Should there be?”
Lyandros shook his head. “I had not fed in this form. I did not know what to expect.”
Akito ran his tongue over his canines experimentally, prodding the points and imagining fangs. At one time, he had believed he would grow fangs—become something more than human. Would Lyandros have allowed him to feed from him? Or was feeding a topping and bottoming thing in the vampire world?
“Does it feel good?” Akito wondered aloud. “To feed?”
A small smile lit Lyandros’s eyes. “Oh, yes.”
Akito settled on his elbow and closed his eyes. “Tell me?”
“Hm.” Warm contented rumbled from Lyandros. “It is like…being filled with magic. With life. You are connected to the person whose essence you imbibe, and to something larger. Something eternal.”
Scrunching his eyes closed, Akito tried to imagine what that might feel like—to be connected to another being. Sure, he’d been close to his friends, but he’d always felt one step to the left of them and a little bit invisible. Okay, a lot invisible.
“What do you remember?” Akito asked, before he went down memory’s rabbit hole. “From when you were killed?”
Lyandros’s forearm tightened. “Everything.”
Akito recalled his own death clearly—his leap from the bridge and the drowning. The experience had been nothing short of horrific. The cement-like impact and sucking pull, then the first burning lungful of water. Somehow, he’d thought jumping would be romantic—like flying. Instead, the moment he had felt gravity’s grip, he’d suspected he’d made a mistake. There had been no other way to save himself and to save Nyx, though… Had there?
Sliding Lyandros’s arm, Akito propped himself into a sitting position. Lyandros did the same. They sat across from each other, Akito cross legged, and Lyandros against the headboard. Lyandros’s gaze took on the faraway cast of reminiscence.
“We were negotiating with the City—with the mayor—on our access through the mora’s tunnels to the harbor. It had always been our escape route in case of discovery or invasion by the hunters. What came to be known as the Big Dig, to place the elevated highway underground, threatened to cut off that access.”
Akito nodded, knowing this part of the mora’s history. “You went to meet with the mayor—to back Tzadkiel in his negotiations. In Chinatown?”
“Correct.” Lyandros shifted his gaze, meeting Akito’s. “I followed later, as had been prearranged.”
“Yeah.” Clearing his throat, Akito licked his lips. “I heard you were jumped by the hunters when you arrived.”
Lyandros clenched and unclenched his jaw, the muscles leaping visibly. “They shot me. I thought I would heal quickly, but then…the woman, she told me the bullets had been modified with something to keep us down.”
Guilt tightened the muscles at the back of Akito’s neck. Though he hadn’t known Benjamin when all this had gone down, he couldn’t claim innocence in his treatment of the vampires.
“Tzadkiel was there. He saw some of it.” Akito waited a moment, allowing the information to sink in. “He wasn’t inside, in the meeting.”
Lyandros’s gaze shifted side to side, rapid-fire as he seemed to digest the information. “You mentioned they captured him? Tortured him?”
“Yeah,” he answered, warily.
Lyandros stood rapidly, forcing Akito to lean back or be knocked over as the vampire left the bed. “And who held the mora together in his absence?”
“With you—and Isander—assumed dead, your general, Dryas, kept things together as best he could, but he had a lot going against him.” Lyandros resumed pacing, his nakedness a distraction Akito tried valiantly to ignore. “The coven betrayed you and your brothers to the hunters.”
Prowling before the hearth, the sleek muscles of his flank tightening with the motion, the Justice Giver did not so much digest as visibly dissect the information. He stopped as suddenly as he’d started, his head snapping around, eyes ablaze. “What was the coven’s goal?”
“They’re hoarding the river of magic that runs through the ley line and under Parkman Bandstand.” Akito flipped one hand upward, indicating Lyandros’s bedroom and, by extension, the mora’s stronghold. “The magic that runs through here.”
“To. What. Purpose.” Lyandros ground the words to powder between clenched teeth.
Akito stood, gathering his trousers from the floor and stepped into them as he ordered his thoughts. Sure, he’d heard a lot of shit while he had been the Morgan’s prisoner, but most of it had centered around the Fae king not denying the Morgan his rightful place, and how he’d been bowing and scraping to his traitorous bitch of a wife for far too long.
“It has to do with the Morgan’s war with his wife. He wants to use the magic to overtake Faerie. The mora, I think, just got in the way.” Shrugging into his shirt, he flicked the buttons through their holes. “Well, that and your kylix was useful to him in creating the zombies—I mean, the keres—for his supernatural army.”
The ley line running through Boston Common was Boston’s only remaining source
of magic. This knowledge was well known among the city’s supernatural denizens.
“Nine hells,” Lyandros muttered, clutching the top of his head. “Has my brother regained the kylix?”
Akito swallowed hard, his fingers pausing over the last shirt button. He tried and failed to think of a way to explain without revealing his own role without lying, and failed. “I, um, I stole it back for him.”
“You—” Lyandros’s classic double-take allayed Akito’s fears of discovery. Almost. “You outwitted the Morgan?”
Motions brisk, Akito tucked in his shirt and swept his coat from the floor. “Don’t act so surprised. I’m not totally useless.”
“No. That is. It is not what I meant.” Lyandros ran agitated hands over his head once more. “The Morgan is very strong. Even more so now, apparently. It would have been a feat for any of us to accomplish.” Stepping before Akito, he bowed his head, reverential. “I thank you for your service to the mora, warrior. You are a credit to your blood.”
Heat sprang to Akito’s cheeks. “It wasn’t…I didn’t really do anything.”
“You did.” If Lyandros grew any more awed—not a comfortable look on him—
Akito decided he might drop to both knees.
“Look. Anyone would have done it.” Turning away, Akito grabbed his boots. “Can we change the subject?”
“Of course.” Silence weighted the air.
When Akito straightened, he found Lyandros frowning at something, gaze distant. “What?”
“How did the Morgan get the blood to make the keres?”
Shit.
“Blood?” Think fast.
“Yes.” Lyandros shook his head. “Making the zombies requires the magic of the undead. Of the mora. He would need the blood of a vampire.”
Akito closed his eyes. It was as if he saw a train coming his way and deliberately stepped onto the tracks. “The Morgan imprisoned a vampire. His blood is used in the rituals.”
Lyandros’s head snapped up, and he skewered Akito with his attention. “One of our mora is in the hands of the Morgan, being used for vile acts? Has anyone attempted to reclaim him?”
“Uh—” Akito flushed. “I think everyone thinks he’s dead.”
Please don’t ask me how I know all of this.
“How do you know all of this?”
Dammit!
“I—uh—I had to infiltrate the Coven to get inside and steal the kylix to get it back to Tzadkiel.”
Akito waited for a thunderous blast from Lyandros. When it never came, he opened one eye. The Justice Giver’s stare turned, rather than suspicious, even more admiring.
“You risked much, warrior.”
“Don’t look at me like that.” Guilt acted like emotional sandpaper, and Akito snapped against the discomfort. “I’m nobody’s hero.”
All he’d ever wanted to be—all he’d spent his life attempting to achieve—he’d fallen so short of, it almost seemed a joke. Falsely earning the Justice Giver’s reverence twisted the tragedy of his existence into something that smacked of cosmic irony.
“I beg to differ,” Lyandros said, beginning to dress. “But seeing as how the topic unsettles you, we shall speak of something else.”
Akito shrugged, looking anywhere but at the vampire.
“What role did Benjamin play in this?” Lyandros asked, too astute by far.
“He has magic in his blood, and he offered it to Tzadkiel. Tzadkiel drained him and used his blood to heal himself during the battle.”
Akito tossed the information out, too worn down by the constant emotional chafing to avoid the question, and waited for Lyandros to ask him what kind of supernatural creature Benjamin was—were, vamp, witch, fae, or something else entirely.
Lyandros’s “It would seem we are indebted to both you and your friend,” was so wholly unexpected that Akito stared at him, dumbfounded, for several long seconds.
Akito stood, using movement as a cover for the guilty expression he couldn’t hide. “Sure. Yeah.”
Pausing at the doorway of Lyandros’s version of a recreation room, he wished he could find a ball gag for himself so he didn’t have to submit to the emotional probing of his past. At some point Lyandros was bound to ask—and find answers to—more questions. Once he did, Akito knew his history would become the equivalent of a rock garden, and that Lyandros would leave no stone unturned until he had the landscape properly arranged.
“Let’s see if we can get into the theatre,” Akito suggested, determined to distract the Justice Giver. “Maybe we’ll be able to find out some news.”
Lyandros shifted, gaze skating around the room. “It would be best if we put our efforts elsewhere. Who is the vampire the Morgan captured?”
Akito took a step backward. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I really don’t think he’s alive. If he is, he’s a vegetable.”
“Akito,” Lyandros said, not unkindly. “Only the blood of the living can create life. The vampire is alive, but perhaps in a thrall.”
“Oh.” Akito blinked rapidly. “I didn’t think… Tzadkiel seemed to accept that the vampire was dead.”
Lyandros made a face. “There is a reason we once ruled as a triumvirate. My brother might be our War King, but he is not infallible.”
“The vampire has silver hair,” Akito offered, then realized he was in danger of blabbing more than he should and clamped his mouth shut.
“I do not know of a mora member with silver hair.” Lyandros frowned, seeming to search his memory. “However, many clansmen would have—or should have—been made since my passing. I am surprised no one else has attempted to retrieve him, regardless of whether he is presumed dead.”
Akito snorted. At least that question he could answer. “I think Tzadkiel has his hands full.”
Lyandros began to dress, motions brusque. “Then we will help him.”
“What do you mean?” How in the name of all the gods could they help the vampire? As far as Akito could tell, they couldn’t even help themselves.
“No. I intend to rouse him.” A dark grin made a macabre mask of Lyandros’s features. “He will have to rescue himself.”
“So, basically, you intend to wake the dead?” Akito mused, not really wanting to think about the Morgan or his sick brand of magic.
“Or the undead, as it were,” Lyandros agreed.
Akito shivered, following Lyandros from the room. He only hoped they didn’t wake something else with their ill-planned scheme—the Morgan’s notice. Akito had a horrible feeling that if the witch knew of his presence, not even death would prevent him from worming into his brain. Dead or alive, there wouldn’t be anywhere left to hide.
Chapter 11
Lyandros marched northward through the dank, rubbish-strewn tunnels of his ancestral home with single-minded determination. The mora’s resources must have been depleted, indeed, if they had left one of their men in the Morgan’s clutches. Dead or no, even their clansman’s corpse would have deserved better. Akito trotted behind him, his footfalls the barest wash of sound against the etheric plane they traversed—somewhere between the physical and beyond.
“Wait,” Akito implored.
Guilt propelled Lyandros onward. He’d been playing bedroom games with Akito when he should have been asking questions about his mora. Worse, all these years, he should have been keeping an eye on his people. He’d been taking the coward’s way out—avoiding them because he hadn’t wanted to feel pain. He swiped the air in front of him, mouthing a silent curse. At least if he had been among them, he would have felt something in place of numb half-existence.
“I said, wait,” Akito repeated, catching up. “Do you really think it’s such a good idea to go this way?”
“If you are worried about the Morgan, he cannot see us.” Halting, Lyandros faced Akito. The mora’s front door, beneath Parkman Bandstand, loomed just ahead in the murky darkness. “We are spirits, remember?”
Running a hand around the back of his neck, Akito let out a harried breath. �
�I’m thinking about the shades. I’m not up for fighting them again and carrying off a rescue mission.”
“Ah.” Lyandros glanced to the door. Dawn had not yet arisen, but it wasn’t too far off. He could feel it. “You are correct.”
Lyandros gazed over Akito’s shoulder, considering. “I suppose we could go through the theatre.”
Akito blanched, seeming to shrink into himself. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.”
“I understand.” Knowing he needed to admit his weakness so he could conquer it, Lyandros continued. “I confess that I am not keen to glimpse my brother for the first time under these circumstances.”
“He misses you. I know that,” Akito offered, tentative.
Lyandros sobered. “And I him.”
A rueful look overtook Akito’s expression at some reminiscence. “Your brother can be…”
“Intractable?” Lyandros offered.
Akito rolled his eyes. “I was thinking a pain in the ass.”
So many times, when he’d been up against Tzadkiel, Lyandros had thought the very same thing. Understanding arced between him and Akito, sheepish humor chasing closely after.
Unexpected laughter edged Lyandros’s response. “There is that.”
Through Akito, Lyandros connected with memories long avoided and, by extension, with his brother. The past cascaded into the present, filling the well of his loneliness with the knowledge that his brother existed. No matter his feelings, if he had family on any plane, he would never truly be alone. Which made it more important that he act now, when he’d been remiss in his duty for so long.
“Come. I know another way.” Lyandros turned to an antechamber at the mouth of the tunnel.
Akito followed, seeming lost in thought.
They approached a sealed archway. Brick lined the place where once a door had opened onto the tunnels that led to the harbor. The work smacked of Dryas’s keen leadership. Lyandros sent a silent prayer of thanks to the gods that Tzadkiel’s general, the strategoi, had survived.
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