Taste the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  Crumbling mortar, washed inward perhaps from a decade old flood, allowed Lyandros to pass through the space and into the collapsing tunnel beyond.

  “I’m never going to get used to squeezing through tiny holes,” Akito said, following with a grunt. “I feel like toothpaste.”

  Lyandros latched onto Akito’s grim humor, using it as a cold comfort. “An unattractive thought if ever there was one.”

  Akito eyed him, clearing his throat.

  “What is it?” Lyandros asked.

  “Why is it that you and I could, um, you know?” Akito cleared his throat. “Have sex?”

  Visions of looming over Akito and partaking of the pleasures his body had to offer made Lyandros’s nostrils flare. The non-sequitur caught him off guard and, without his mind at the helm, his body responded. No matter the place or the circumstance, it seemed the warrior would forever rouse him with a rapidity that took his figurative breath away.

  “I think I mentioned that we vibrate at the same level. It’s why we can see and fight the shades, among other creatures of this plane.” Lyandros shrugged.

  There was a moment of silence, then, “Have you had other lovers while you’ve been dead?”

  “No.” Lyandros suppressed a smile. “Not on this plane.”

  “Why? Haven’t you been lonely?”

  Oh, he had been bone-achingly lonely, but he wasn’t about to discuss the bleak nature of his afterlife with a virtual stranger, no matter his heroism or how good they were together in bed. It was enough that he had bowed to the questions about his death. Though he’d fucked many men during his corporeal existence, not one of them had known him well enough to earn the right to such intimacies.

  “We have another hundred yards before we reach the edge of Chinatown.” Lyandros pointed toward the tunnel ahead. It sloped from beneath the subway’s shallower subterranean network. “We can come up close enough to the coven’s shop to surveil the situation.”

  They passed under a wide drain. Street lighting crisscrossed the tunnel, throwing the grating’s pattern against the wall. The shadow elicited comparisons to prison bars, and he was reminded, not for the first time, that death was an ironic life sentence from which he would never know true release. The only moment of joy he’d experienced in the last twenty years, the only carnal pleasure, had been with the man walking behind him. A hero, by all accounts, who had saved the mora from utter annihilation with a selfless act. The idea he might owe Akito an answer to any questions he asked nibbled at Lyandros’s conscience, but he brushed aside the idea. For now. He needed his wits about him if they were to infiltrate the coven without notice.

  He’d told the warrior there was little to worry about but, in truth, he’d wondered. If the Morgan’s magic were powerful enough to plot a full-frontal assault on the fae, then there was no telling what other planes—including the ethereal—he might have infiltrated. The notion took on weight as Lyandros considered the recent uptick in shade activity in the city.

  He and Akito reached a ladder, above which an iron door loomed. Lyandros peered up, hands on his hips, and considered the problem. The seal was too tight for them to pass through. Also, the door was made of a material around which a ghost could not navigate—iron. He felt its repelling force even from this distance, and peered ahead to another grate.

  “Do you want to go in the front door?” Akito whispered, seeming to read Lyandros’s thoughts.

  “You do not need to be quiet—” Lyandros broke off, catching a glimpse of Akito’s face.

  If ghosts could vomit, the warrior was in severe danger of casting up the leavings of his last meal on the tunnel floor. Was he afraid of the coven even though he had bested the Morgan?

  Lyandros frowned, attempting to puzzle out the conundrum. “Are you unwell?”

  Akito made a motion that told Lyandros to just keep walking.

  Nodding in the direction of the light, Lyandros noted, “We’ll have to come up onto the street directly.”

  A hard swallow preceded Akito’s, “What’s above us here?”

  “A gambling club—I think. Or it used to be.” It was, in fact, the establishment outside of which he’d met his demise twenty years ago. “I have no idea what it is now.”

  The tunnel sloped upward, putting them within reach of street level. Squaring his shoulders, Lyandros made for the grate. Without giving himself time to think, he forced his way into the open air. Akito joined him and they stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the sidewalk. The early morning air snatched greedily at the moisture coming off the harbor, seemingly reluctant to allow the rising sun a toehold to morning.

  “Tell me what we’re likely to find inside the coven’s shop,” Lyandros directed.

  “They have a lot of perimeter alarms. Magic triggers. I doubt we’ll get in undetected, even in our”—Akito tipped his chin downward, looking at himself and frowned—“insubstantial state.”

  “So…” Lyandros inclined his head toward a lifted shoulder. “We need to think of a way they might not have considered.”

  He crossed the street, needing to see the building. His memory conjured a dilapidated structure with a rickety greenhouse behind. Akito followed, all but dragging his feet. Lyandros pretended not to notice. Two blocks saw them through a warren of streets. Brick and clapboard structures seemed to sag into themselves, too weary to stand and yet too proud of their one-time importance to fall apart altogether. At the end of a short alley-like street, the coven’s shop listed into its neighbors. One wall abutted a sturdier apartment block. Next to Lyandros, Akito stared wide-eyed at the façade, as if the building might leap forward to throttle him.

  “All right?” Lyandros asked.

  Akito nodded minutely, his gaze never leaving the shop.

  “Very well, then.” Studying the foundation and roofline, Lyandros came up with his plan. “The least likely spot for them to have protected is the chimney. They wouldn’t expect anyone to fit through the narrow opening.”

  Akito’s expression painted him dubious. “I think they’d be less likely to expect us to materialize through a pane of glass. Can we do that? Like we did with the door?”

  Glass, being an amorphous substance—something of a slow-moving liquid that mimicked a solid—could be navigated through with a certain amount of effort. Solids were easier. Less like swimming upstream. Lyandros had always wondered why. “It’s a little uncomfortable, but it can be done.”

  “All right.” Akito inhaled, sharp and short, climbing the fire ladder to the building next door. “Let’s do it.”

  In the novel position of following instead of leading, Lyandros climbed after him. At the top, they paused to get their bearings. Low-pitched rooflines sawed at the sky, culminating in a series of taller concrete structures that obscured the harbor’s edge. After a moment, Akito approached the roof ledge. Lyandros joined him and, together, they considered the greenhouse’s glass roof. Sunrise’s rosy hues reflected from the glass, creating the illusion that a new day broke both above and below.

  Turning his attention to Akito, Lyandros had an eerie moment of déjà vu. Zen-like acceptance becalmed the warrior’s features, making of them a serene old-world mask. That same expression of resignation and acceptance had been on his face before he’d tipped forward and consigned himself to the Charles River’s not-so-loving arms.

  Lyandros opened his mouth to instruct Akito to wait for him here. There was no reason for them both to risk themselves. Before Lyandros could speak, Akito pitched forward. Black coat rippling, form distorting, the warrior slid through the glass inch by painful inch head first.

  “Dammit!” Lyandros cursed. “That’s not how you—”

  Akito flailed, twisting, clearly panicking.

  “Hell.” Lyandros leaped after him.

  Head first, he gave momentum to the motion so that he pushed through the glass ahead of Akito. Twisting on his way through, he grabbed Akio’s legs, and yanked hard on his way down. Akito popped through the glass. The pane shattered, spra
ying twinkling shards onto the floor. They sat side-by-side for a breathless moment.

  “Next time,” Lyandros growled, not a little harried, “await my instruction.”

  Akito nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  They both glanced up as the glass reformed of its own volition, sealing the hole neatly. Akito’s “Shit” tangled with Lyandros’s “Gods be damned,” and they both scrambled to their feet.

  Akito reached the partially open door at the back of the greenhouse first. Lyandros followed, abating the impulse to brush glass from his clothes. This had been one of the rare times he’d seen a ghost affect the corporeal plane.

  “Where?” Lyandros asked.

  Akito glanced around the space they’d entered. It’s unlit candles and haphazardly scattered chairs said a meeting had occurred in the ceremonial space, perhaps recently. Runes had been drawn in chalk on the black, painted floor. The story scratched there told of human sacrifice. Lyandros curled his lip. If he’d been corporeal, no doubt he’d have smelled blood and other fluids from whatever rite the coven had performed.

  “They used to be good people.”

  “The Morgan? Good?” Akito was aghast.

  Lyandros cast Akito a sideways glance. “Perhaps not him, but he was not quite so—” His nebulous hand wave indicated the floor. “Blatant.”

  Akito exhaled, lips thinned—a hiss that spoke at once of disgust and disbelief. “If he got any more blatant, he’d be hanging his victims from the CITGO sign.”

  “Too true.” Looking around, Lyandros spied a stairway and another door. “Where to?”

  Jerking his chin, Akito indicated the spiral staircase. Lyandros preceded him. They emerged into another open, but much tighter space. An attic room. Lyandros paused, sweeping his gaze over its cramped quarters, a table at the room’s center drawing his attention. Draped in a white cloth it supported the form of a sleeping man with hair the color and texture of spun silver. Pale as death, as placid as a cloudless summer day, lay the vampire who’d been captured by the coven and impressed into service for their vile blood rituals.

  At first, Lyandros thought his eyes played tricks on him in the dim light. He approached the bier, his hand outstretched. Those features—the straight nose and firm mouth, the rounded chin that tapered to a blade-like jaw—he knew them better than his own.

  “Gods. Isander,” he breathed, reaching out a hand. “What have they done to you?”

  Chapter 12

  Akito gaped at the bier. Fear of discovery and of the Morgan shrank in the face of his newly acquired knowledge. The vampire he’d communed with in his failed attempt at a blood rite was, in fact, one of the archon—the mora’s ruling triumvirate—and Lyandros’s actual brother. Gods, if Tzadkiel had known whose blood Akito had stolen, a stake through Akito’s heart would have been the gentlest sentence the War King would have meted out.

  “Hell,” Akito whispered, nearing the table.

  The familiar attic room, along with memory’s dimly shrouded horrors, seemed to recede and the vampires took center stage. So many nights, Akito had watched in abject horror as Isander had been drained by the Morgan time and again. While he’d felt sorry for the vampire, Akito had thought him likely dead—or past saving, at the very least. The fact the vampire had a name and a family, both now known to him, shifted the ground beneath his feet.

  Side-by-side with Lyandros, Akito studied Isander’s serene face. His gaze lingered over a strong jaw, and a full mouth with its pronounced cupid’s bow. Next, the linear landscape of nose and cheekbone. Hollow and gaunt, those features appeared to sink into the once-regal face. Silver hair cascaded, Sleeping Beauty-like, around the vampire’s shoulders, leeched of all color. The thick fall of hair surrounded shoulders that might once have been sturdy, but now spoke of famine and frailty.

  “He’s not dead?” Akito mumbled, guilt pouring over his shoulders to weight them down like a cloak of hot lead.

  “No. Bespelled, most like,” Lyandros murmured.

  Recriminations the War King had lain on Akito’s shoulders broke through memory’s thin walls. He had assaulted a living being for his own gain.

  “I wasn’t sure…” Akito trailed off, realizing he’d been about to make excuses to Lyandros.

  Lyandros didn’t seem to notice Akito’s aborted attempt at an apology. Good thing, because if he had to explain the apology, he’d have to explain what he’d been apologizing for. If Tzadkiel’s response had been any indication of what kind of justice vampires meted out, then their actual Justice Giver’s response promised to be the equivalent of a ten-megaton bomb landing at ground zero. Its target? Akito’s head.

  Akito had a feeling Lyandros had never done anything halfway. Probably, he didn’t know the meaning of the concept. If Lyandros were half as passionate in his judgment as he’d been in bed, then his retribution would be no less a complete annihilation than the orgasm he’d given Akito. An image of Lyandros looming above him sent a frisson of lust-laden fear up Akito’s spine. Arousal buzzed, pooling at his tailbone.

  A clattering rumble outside the building, perhaps downstairs, snapped Lyandros’s chin up. “What was that?”

  Akito frowned, knowing he’d heard the sound before, but unable to immediately place it.

  Garbage bins?

  The rumbling continued, ending with a clang.

  “Shit.” Akito whirled toward the exit. He knew what that sound was. “We have to get out of here.”

  Lyandros grabbed his arm, jerking Akito around. “We do not leave without my brother. Without the King Ruler.”

  “What?” Akito’s voice, pitched high, seemed shrill to his own ears. “No. We go now.”

  He attempted to jerk away. No way was he dying twice to get the Morgan out of his head. Long fingers bit into his other arm.

  “There will be no cowardly retreat here.” Lyandros shook him. “We take him, or we meet our final ends trying.”

  Bringing both fists up and outward, Akito used his forearms to break Lyandros’s hold and stepped back. The Justice Giver snarled something in Greek that it cost Akito vital moments to ignore.

  “Look. Unless there’s something you haven’t told me about how to affect stuff on the physical plane? When I’m about as useless as a fucking shred of toilet paper in a shit storm?” Akito swiped his hand through the air down his length, indicating his incorporeal body. “Then I don’t see how we can help.”

  The shop’s front door opened, muffled voices trailing up to the attic. Akito sprinted to leave, but Lyandros jerked him back by the collar before he’d taken two steps. Lashing out, Akito brought his elbow high and twisted. Lyandros ducked and brought Akito around so that he pinned him in a standing Nelson. Arms under Akito’s, Lyandros clasped his hands at Akito’s nape. Akito attempted to break the hold with a side twist, bending to grab Lyandros’s legs. Sweeping Lyandros off balance, however, proved impossible.

  Fear squashed the air from Akito’s lungs, thwarting his breath so that oxygen only seemed to enter in a thin trickle. He didn’t care if ghosts didn’t breathe—the memory of his physiology acted as a lever, jacking his hysteria sky high. His mind turned to jelly, and the Morgan’s voice seemed to bleed into his ears.

  Rat in a maze.

  Find the cheese.

  Run little rat, run!

  Akito screamed and a wind kicked up to rattle the attic walls. A handful of softly glowing jars fell off the shelves nearby. Their contents dribbled onto the floor and swirled in the air. Lyandros released him.

  “Stay calm, warrior.” Lyandros’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. “Listen to me. Listen to my voice.”

  He tried to run again. Was swung back.

  A sharp crack snapped Akito’s head around, clearing his vision and pushing the memory of air into his lungs. Gasping, he lifted a hand to his cheek. The ghostly flesh there was hot. Lyandros loomed over him.

  “I am sorry,” Lyandros said, his apology immediate. “I need you calm. Can you do that for me?”

 
Akito swallowed hard, straightening. His chest moved in ragged approximations of inhales and exhales, though no air disturbed his nasal passages. The lack of feeling disconcerted him, but he kept his mouth shut, afraid of the panicked words would spill out if he didn’t.

  “Later, if you would like to talk—” Lyandros caressed Akito’s face, two fingers easing the sting of the slap. “I would listen.”

  “Thanks.” Voice raw, Akito cleared his throat.

  “Tell me. What was that sound?” Lyandros asked. “The metal?”

  Laughter threatened to claw its way from Akito’s stomach. He swallowed it down, along with the taste of acid and bile. The room seemed even smaller than before, as if the walls themselves had moved inward, hemming him in. Somehow, he managed to answer the Justice Giver.

  “Iron shutters coming down over the building’s windows and doors.” Not one crack or crevice he could think to exploit that wouldn’t contain iron. Probably the shit was in the walls too. They were well and truly fucked. “I’m going to bet we can’t get out.”

  Running a harried hand through his hair, Lyandros eyed the wreckage on the floor. Only a few jars remained unscathed on the shelf. “Nice work.”

  Akito’s brow tightened. “I did that?”

  Lips curled into a wry smile, Lyandros glanced to him. “Strong emotion. It can affect the physical plane.”

  “Oh.”

  Downstairs, someone shuffled some chairs around. Voices trailed into the attic, audible now. “I’m telling you it was just some dumb kids with rocks.”

  “I didn’t see any rocks in the greenhouse, did you Sergei?”

  “Only in his head,” a third voice said.

  “Shut up,” the offended witch muttered. “The Morgan will bash your skull in with a rock if we wake him up for something as small as a broken pane of glass. Nobody could’ve gotten in through there. The hole would be too small.”

  “I’m telling you, I heard something in here.”

  “Nothing’s moved. Nobody is in here.”

  “What about upstairs?”