Taste the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  Palming the back of his tribute’s neck, Lyandros drew him close, holding him. Akito, likewise, clutched at Lyandros’s middle, his rocking strokes setting the swing into a creaking rhythm that Lyandros swore made the tree roots themselves groan.

  “Come for me, tribute,” Lyandros coaxed in Akito’s ear.

  Akito shuddered in response. Three hard jerks and a moment of frozen bliss followed. Pleasure lighted Akito’s face, painting his features with sublime beauty. Lyandros watched, wishing he could put that expression there again, and always. Akito fell forward with a satisfied whimper. Lyandros stroked his tribute’s back and floated with him on afterglow’s all-too-brief cloud.

  Drumbeats were the first indication Lyandros had of the king’s displeasure. Nudging Akito, he separated them, and righted himself. Trousers, he drew on without thinking. His harness, he bunched in one hand.

  The fae king, flanked by guards, grotesquely beautiful robes flowing, approached, face livid. “That was no show of your command over your tribute.”

  Lyandros bowed and Akito knelt by his side. “On the contrary, majesty. I never give anyone but my tributes access to my body.”

  Mottled purple bloomed across the king’s papery skin. “Take them to the scaffold.”

  Guards had moved behind Lyandros and were already grabbing his arms when an arrow, bright and golden, blossomed out of the king’s chest. The fae jerked once, surprise widening his eyes. He looked down, understanding and horror dawning, as red spread across white.

  Nyx, bow in hand, stepped from the assembled crowd, Isander behind him, and the king crumpled to the ground. For a moment, no one said a word. Then, pandemonium reigned as Lady Morgana shrieked in recognition of her son.

  In their bid to capture Nyx, the guards let Lyandros and Akito go.

  “Come.” Lyandros dragged Akito to his feet.

  They made for a hidden niche with a lily pad strewn koi pond. Before they rounded the bend in the path, a liveried fae attendant appeared before them, Lyandros’s boots and a disc-like object in his hands. The bronze circle glinted in the rising sun, and Lyandros blinked at it. It had been so long since he’d seen his shield—his seal of office—he wasn’t sure his eyes hadn’t betrayed him.

  “The prince sends his and his apologies,” the attendant said, handing Lyandros his seal.

  Lyandros glanced back to see that Nyx, sword high, had engaged with the guards. The king’s dead body lay in a heap on the ground.

  “Shit,” Akito said, and started to run back to Nyx.

  Lyandros grabbed him by the arm. “We have to go.”

  “I’m not leaving Nyx.”

  “You have no choice. Come. Now.” Taking his shield and boots, Lyandros dragged Akito with him and ran toward the mouth of the maze.

  Akito stumbled along with him, throwing curses. “You can’t leave them here.”

  “They know what they are doing,” Lyandros reassured, though he had his own doubts on the matter.

  They reached the koi pond without pursuit, but he didn’t expect their advantage to last long. Setting the shield into the circle on his harness, he put his arms through the straps. As he buckled the leather, the shield hummed to life. His boots, he shoved onto his feet before straightening.

  A golden glow began to light the water. Sunlight poured up from fissures in the lily pads. Grabbing Akito’s hand, Lyandros tugged him toward the pond’s stone lip, and withdrew from his pocket the object Nyx had given him earlier. A small hunk of metal that had once formed half of Nyx’s transfiguration cuff. The other half of that bracelet, Lyandros now wore—his seal of office. Nyx had used both objects long ago, their magic the key ingredient in a transfiguration spell, but they were no longer of any use to anyone but their owners.

  Lyandros touched the water, stirring it with his fingers, and his shield sparked. Magic arced, impacting with the sunlight gilding the pond. In the murky water, a reflection bloomed. The jagged monuments of Boston’s Granary Burying Ground. Jerking Akito with him, Lyandros jumped into the center of the mirage-like scene. Rather than falling and twisting through time and space as they had before, Lyandros landed, crouched on uneven turf. Standing in Boston’s oldest graveyard, the dew-laden grass under his feet, he turned, and tossed the metal into the disappearing sun portal as he, Nyx, and Isander had discussed.

  As hoped, the artifact acted as a magnet that drew magic to it. The vortex flashed once with a low, bass sound, and then sucked inward. Trees bowed, a result of the vacuum as Boston’s remaining magic hurtled toward Faerie. The door closed, and whether it would open for anyone, ever again, they could not guess. Everything, so far, had gone to plan. Too good to be true. He laughed, wary relief lightening his mood. Wind continued to tug his hair as more and more magic was displaced and scattered like ash in a firestorm.

  “Did you see that?” Lyandros asked, looking around for Akito.

  A woman who walked past a monument with her daughter gave him wide berth, and hurriedly moved on. He frowned, looking down at himself. Rather than a ghostly form, his body was solid. No light passed through his chest, and his seal hummed against his skin, warming it against an unseasonable chill. He held his hands up to the sky, fingers spread, and gaped in wonder.

  He was alive?

  Lyandros stepped to the side, off the path, and paused, looking around. No dark head with a waterfall of shimmering hair presented itself within his view. And yet, he felt Akito’s nearness, though the buzz of their connection was indistinct. Scanning the winding walkway and lawn with its tombs and hillocks, he moved toward Tremont Street and the exit. As he traveled, the connection remained the same, neither growing nor lessening in intensity, as if Akito walked near him. He frowned. The connection should have lessened or increased in intensity if he moved farther or closer to the warrior. He searched the park over without any change, realization gradually nibbling at his awareness until understanding dawned.

  Moonlight and magic had fashioned a body for him while they were in Faerie. That body had traveled with him back to Boston. Akito, however, whose body still existed on life support in a hospital less than a half a mile away, could not command two forms in the same realm. The magic that had sustained Akito’s form in Faerie had disappeared upon his return. On the heels of that realization came another. Though Lyandros knew life—felt it in the rush of the air on his skin and the sweet scent of the earth’s loamy depths in his nostrils—he had never, in twenty years, known death…until now.

  Chapter 26

  Lyandros spun around, a bewildered frown pulling his features downward. Though the Justice Giver didn’t speak, it was as if Akito could hear the him shouting his name. Someone had set up a low table outside the Granary Burying Ground with pamphlets for a tourist event, and tourists jostled past with children and strollers. At the Tremont Street entrance, a man in a Paul Revere costume chatted with onlookers about Boston’s storied past.

  “I’m here!” Akito jumped up and down, waving his arms at Lyandros.

  The Justice Giver turned, cocking his head. What the hell was the matter with the vampire? Akito waved harder, stepping into his path. Lyandros, gait unfaltering, continued in his direction. Akito stumbled in his attempt to move out of the way. He tumbled forward, hands held out. Where he expected to touch leather and skin, he impacted only air. A buzzing crackle akin to an electric shock jerked him upright.

  Lyandros kept coming and his and Akito’s life forces briefly tangled. Akito tried to jerk away, but his spirit unraveled as if he were no more than a sweater snagged on a protruding nail. Lyandros shivered, and Akito’s soul sprayed outward, expelled like water from a dog’s coat. Understanding lit his last conscious thought. He was dead, and somehow, Lyandros was alive.

  For a time, he floated in a void as slowly, his essence came back together, each particle of his being clicking in a chain reaction until his spirit reconnected. When he first re-coalesced, the world was a prism. Light and sound refracted, distorting reality. Astral winds buffeted him to and fro
as he struggled to pull himself, literally, back together. By the time he accomplished the task, Lyandros was long-gone, the time now closer to six a.m. the next day, judging from the clock atop Park Street Church.

  An early morning hush had spread over the Common. Few people strolled the now-quiet pathways, their conversations a barely-audible murmur. Loneliness threaded his awareness, and Akito pondered where Lyandros might have gone. His attention turned toward the mora’s theatre. Would the vampire have gone there?

  Approaching Boylston Street, Akito found his gait slower and his sword heavier. By the time he reached the M. Steinert building, he barely had the strength to slip through the cracks between the glass doorway and the jamb. He repeated the exercise inside, and stepped into the darker theatre.

  Greek clay and bronze oil lamps lit the space with their warm glow. The hum and buzz of conversation drew Akito past the guard and down the stairs to the gathered vampires. He scanned the meagre crowd for Lyandros, gaze alighting on Dryas who conferred with his senior officers. Other vampires gossiped and loafed nearby with a rare air of happy relaxation.

  “—don’t think he’s gonna go for it,” remarked one newer recruit.

  “Well, he did just return from the dead. I would think his own brother would grant him a favor,” answered another.

  Akito drew closer to the two vampires, one of whom sat on the stage edge, legs dangling, while the other leaned against the low curtain wall, his elbows propped on the stage.

  “Dunno, Giles.” The latter stared in the direction of Tzadkiel’s quarters. “Did you see the expression on the War King’s face when the Justice Giver mentioned him?”

  “Mentioned who?” Akito voiced the question aloud, though neither vampire would hear him.

  Giles kicked the heel of his boot against the stage with a hollow, stuttering thu-dump, thu-dump. “I wager they’re banging heads over whether to turn the bugger now.”

  Turn the bugger…

  Akito’s eyes widened. They were talking about him?

  He sprinted to Tzadkiel’s quarters and ran straight through the wood door without stopping, and popped through into the chamber with a gasp. Where walking through glass had been cold, wood was uncomfortably warm. Tzadkiel’s low tones and Lyandros’s answering rumble registered first, as his vision faded in with dappled slowness.

  “Your argument holds no weight in light of the man’s actions.” Tzadkiel

  “He is my tribute and it is my duty to protect him. In accordance with the will of Themis, it is my judgment that rules here.” Lyandros.

  Even Akito knew what Tzadkiel’s reaction to the less-than-diplomatic wording of Lyandros’s assertion would be. The War King got in his brother’s face, leaning in with his lip curled. His dominance rippled over the room, a palpable surge of feral energy an alpha werewolf would have had trouble denying.

  “I meant no disrespect,” Lyandros amended, holding Tzadkiel’s gaze.

  Benjamin, perched on the back of an arm chair, tapped one foot and chewed at a hangnail.

  “Choose your words more carefully next time, Justice Giver, before I close this hearing.”

  Hand on Tzadkiel’s arm, Lyandros squeezed. “I am sorry.”

  Akito settled on the edge of the desk, near Benjamin, to listen to what was, effectively, his trial. The two brothers faced off for another hour, debating the mora’s laws, precedents, and whether Lyandros had the right to turn Akito’s broken mortal coil to that of an exalted Son of Pollux to save his life.

  Benjamin remained silent, his expression partially hidden by the mirrored sunglasses he habitually wore. Either Tzadkiel had finally managed to school his bonded mate to keep his opinions to himself until otherwise asked, or Benjamin had become ambivalent to Akito’s existence.

  Remembering Nyx’s tale of Ben’s grief at his injury and coma, Akito had to believe the former. The latter? Well, that was simply too painful for him to contemplate.

  “You should not have taken him on,” Tzadkiel answered, apparently unwilling to budge an inch. “His sentence was banishment.”

  Lyandros removed his hand and raked it through his hair with a heavy sigh. “Only because I was not there to dissuade you.”

  “Actually…” Benjamin dropped his foot to the other seat arm with a thunk that brought both vampire’s heads around. “You were reluctant to banish him, Tzadkiel. You did it because I asked you to.”

  Tzadkiel rounded on Benjamin in a way that would have made any other man cringe. Benjamin, however, didn’t move, didn’t flinch. The rhythm of his breaths remained undisturbed as Tzadkiel stared him down. Akito, struggling to understand why his friend would have abandoned him in such a way, swallowed against the sudden constriction in his throat.

  “Actually…” Tzadkiel mocked, head tilted before growling low enough so that only Benjamin—and unbeknownst to him, Akito—could hear, “I banished him because I would have snapped his neck had he insulted you in my presence one more time.”

  Benjamin’s head tilt matched Tzadkiel’s. “Which is why, vampire, I made the request in the first place—to save his life.”

  Tzadkiel blinked, his only outward show of surprise. “You what?”

  “I knew you couldn’t control him, and I sure as hell couldn’t.” Shrugging, Benjamin took off his glasses to polish them unnecessarily with the hem of his shirt. “And Lyandros already told you why he was mouthing off the way he did—the Morgan was controlling him. So, I guess I don’t understand what your beef is with letting my friend—someone who saved my life way before you did, I might point out—” Benjamin put his glasses back on and lifted his face to Tzadkiel in challenge, jugular blatantly exposed. “Live.”

  Akito watched the scene unspool before him, breathless with the revelation that all the time Benjamin had only been trying to protect him. From Tzadkiel. Predictably, the information didn’t go over well with Tzadkiel, who straightened so slowly that his leathers creaked.

  “You and I will discuss this later,” the War King said ominously.

  Benjamin nodded sharply, seeming to come to an agreement with his mate. “Whatever you want.”

  Tzadkiel’s right brow arched. “I’ll take you at your word. Though it has proven less-than-reliable of late, hunter.”

  Akito sucked in a breath at the hard consonant that punctuated the moniker. Whatever love play these two got up to later, it promised to be rough and full of retribution. He didn’t know whether to envy or pity Benjamin.

  Turning to Lyandros, Tzadkiel studied his brother with dark intensity. “You would keep Akito under your dominion?”

  “For as long as the goddess Themis deems.” Lyandros, blue eyes steady in their regard, answered his War King. “That was his punishment for drinking of our brother’s blood from the kylix without permission.”

  Tzadkiel shook his head slowly, fists clenching and unclenching by his sides, and Akito found himself relieved that Lyandros, and not the War King, was responsible for overseeing his sentence. At the thought, apparently more loudly broadcasted than Akito had intended, Lyandros slid his gaze sideways to where Akito stood.

  Though Lyandros’s lips never moved, Akito heard the Justice Giver say, You will never cause me this magnitude of strife with my brother and my mora again, or I will have your hide, tribute.

  Akito lowered his eyes and bowed his head in submission. Lyandros nodded once, sharply, and turned away, leaving Akito with the distinct impression the Justice Giver knew he stood nearby.

  “We will wait until nightfall, when my magic is strongest,” Tzadkiel decided, turning with him.

  “Your magic?” Lyandros jerked back with his surprise. “I am not to turn him?”

  “I do not want the bond muddying your judgment.” Lyandros drew a protesting breath, but Tzadkiel raised his hand.” If Themis ever releases him from your service, then I give you leave to make him your mate. That will have to do.”

  Lips pressed into a thin line, Lyandros nodded in acknowledgement. “Very well.”


  A vampire approached, his attention trained on Tzadkiel. He stopped before his War King with a curt head bow.

  “Speak,” Tzadkiel snapped.

  “The door to the mora’s stronghold from the theatre…” Gaze darting to Lyandros, the vampire finished, “It’s open.”

  Lyandros homed his attention on Tzadkiel, and Akito pressed both hands together, fingertips under his chin.

  “Can we enter?” Benjamin asked, straightening.

  Tzadkiel sent the hunter a quelling look before returning his attention to the recruit. “Well?”

  “Yes, sire.” Barely contained jubilation vibrated over the younger vampire. “We were awaiting the completion of your conference before we approached for your orders.”

  “May I suggest,” Lyandros stated, deferential now that he’d attained his objective, “that we do this at nightfall? The Morgan will have set traps, and we will need to be at our strongest with the magic on the Common so thin at present.”

  “Yes…” After a thoughtful pause, Tzadkiel breathed deep. “A few more hours will not make a difference.” Dryas approached, and Tzadkiel turned to his general. “Double the guard on the underground entrance and instruct the mora to sleep.”

  “Yes, sire.” Dryas executed a military turn and went back to the milling vampires with their orders.

  Tzadkiel, addressing Lyandros, said, “It is a poor homecoming, but I am afraid I have only a pallet before my fire for you to sleep on.”

  Lyandros rested a palm on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed. “It is good to be able to sleep, brother. I do not much care where.”

  The three vampires settled in for their rest. Implications of Tzadkiel’s agreement to fully turn him only hit once the mora quieted and the vampires slept. Benjamin curled on his side, Tzadkiel behind him. The War King had thrown one arm carelessly over his hunter, and the two seemed to repose in harmony. Lyandros was a mountain of muscle under a gray blanket near the fire. Akito watched him sleep and wondered at what tonight would bring.

  Understanding that the Morgan would still be in his head when he returned to his body did not escape Akito. Nothing had changed about his mind or his ability to fight off the coven’s powerful leader. Of course, the magic accessible to the witch had diminished considerably. Perhaps that would help? He contemplated Lyandros’s sleeping form. Lips parted, face relaxed, the Justice Giver appeared less immortal warrior and more vulnerable human.