Taste the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  “When you entered the room. I saw your spirit standing next to you.” Entwining his fingers with Lyandros’s, Akito studied their knuckles, side-by-side. “Like it was trying to separate from your body.” He met Lyandros’s searching gaze. “How do you feel now?”

  “Fine.”

  “Do you think it’s because you had my blood from the kylix?”

  A hesitant dip of Lyandros’s chin formed his answer. “I think so.”

  “So, what now?” Akito asked.

  Lyandros turned his face away to gaze out the window at Tremont Street’s shops. “We wait and see.”

  Akito took a deep breath and let go of Lyandros’s hand. Now seemed like a good time to set their relationship record straight. They were back in Boston, and Akito understood that Lyandros would expect different things from him. There were likely other tributes that would be recalled to the mora, their banishment over now that the Justice Giver returned. While the idea of sharing Lyandros with other vampires sent his emotions into a tailspin, he was all too glad to do so if it meant he could remain at the Justice Giver’s side. Squaring his shoulders, he prepared to speak.

  Violent movement on the Common tore his attention away from what he was about to say, and he sat forward. “Stop the car!”

  Lyandros, following Akito’s gaze, shoved money at the driver before the taxi stopped moving. They were both out of the car and racing across the street before Akito fully understood the extend of what was unfolding.

  The Morgan and the vampires had engaged in battle. Tzadkiel, sword high, led a charge to divide the witches from the weak trickle of the ley line’s remaining magic. When the War King had said that he would see Lyandros and Akito at home, Akito hadn’t anticipated he had not meant the theatre.

  Apparently, Lyandros, standing dumbfounded with a gathering crowd of onlookers at the pavement’s edge, had the same thought. “Brother, what are you doing?”

  Diving into the fray, the Justice Giver raised his xiphos high and brought down his first opponent. Akito, joining him, fought at his lover’s back to protect his people, and to take back his home. Instead of fighting to kill or take from the mora, he fought to be one with them and to reclaim the friendships he had lost. He fought to live.

  Chapter 29

  By Lyandros’s side, Akito had fought like a proverbial demon possessed. Lyandros had admired, even amidst the fray, those elegant pirouettes and decisive moves that had helped the mora claim the day. Laying back, ensconced behind the now-clean tapestries that surrounded his bed, he watched Akito flit about the room, readying things for their bath.

  Above their heads, the Common lay quiet now. The space, two days ago, had been littered with the souls of the dead. The vampires, Tzadkiel had sent rushing to Gemini, one after the other, while the meagre band of his remaining mora looked on. The press had come and gone, as had the authorities. Each had been given the same story—a costumed theatrical called a flash mob had enacted an impromptu tribute to a late pop star’s song about zombies.

  The keres had been the most difficult to dispatch, but dispatch them the mora had done. The ley line remained in the Morgan’s control, but both his forces and the coven’s foothold had been weakened. Magic would take decades to refill the chasm left behind by the faerie vortex. While the Morgan might hold the Monument and the area of the Common near Park Street Station, he no longer held the mora’s stronghold.

  Akito paused by the bedside. “Ready?”

  From the wall at the opposite side of his chambers, chains rattled. Though Akito flinched, he resolutely kept his gaze affixed on Lyandros’s face.

  “Something wrong?” Lyandros asked.

  He had been expecting Akito’s commentary on the tributes chained to his wall since the battle’s end. Though the two vampires had been sentenced years ago, before Lyandros’s death, their subsequent banishment had led to their working for the Morgan over the intervening years.

  “No, sir,” Akito answered, hands fisted by his sides.

  The formal answer took Lyandros aback. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and frowned. “You have behaved strangely since we returned. What is the matter?”

  Though he’d asked the question previously, Akito had demurred and Lyandros had blamed the prevailing gloomy mood on the mora’s losses. Dryas had been slain in battle, and only twenty-two vampires remained, including Akito and the hunter. If the coven hadn’t been so severely weakened, the Morgan could have easily completed their annihilation.

  “Your bath is getting cold.” Akito’s evasion narrowed Lyandros’s eyes.

  Standing, Lyandros shrugged out of his robe and let the fabric slide to the floor. “Then we shall bathe.”

  He encircled Akito’s wrist with his hand and tugged him toward the chamber. The water steamed, casting fog-like tendrils over obsidian and marble tiles that formed the Greek key border running along the periphery of the floor and top of the walls.

  Turning Akito, Lyandros flicked open the buttons on his warrior’s shirt.

  “I can undress myself.” Pushing Lyandros’s hands away, Akito scowled.

  Lyandros, folding his arms over his chest, decided to end the game they played. “Tell me what bothers you, or I will take one of those tributes down from the wall and put you up there in his place.”

  Air hissed through Akito’s teeth. Eyes blazing, he growled something low that Lyandros could not hear. Jealousy’s green-tinged tendrils wrapped the moment and squeezed. Lyandros understood, then, that the problem had to do with his house guests. He wanted Akito to feel free to voice his thoughts.

  “Speak up.” Lyandros closed in on him, pretending not to understand the issue.

  Akito jabbed his finger toward the bedroom. “I don’t understand what they’re doing in there.”

  Lyandros bit the insides of his cheeks. Though the situation was grave for those who hung on the wall in the next room, Akito’s jealous temper lightened the mood considerably. That he cared enough to want Lyandros to himself seemed a promising start to their relationship. None of his tributes had ever cared before, but perhaps that was because they were not his bonded mates.

  Lyandros caressed Akito’s cheek with solemn care. “You have no reason for jealousy. I promise.”

  He would not, and could not, touch those vampires—his tributes—ever again. In fact, the thought filled him with disgust. Charis and Gabriel. They had once both shared his bed, sometimes both at once. Lyandros had thought them beautiful at one time, if treacherous. Now, he knew better. The vampire who stood before him now had eclipsed all others with his gray eyes and shining dark hair.

  “I’m not jealous,” Akito protested.

  The lie resonated over Lyandros’s skin like a living snake. Spinning Akito away, Lyandros stripped him of his robe and prodded him toward the tub with a smack to his backside. A handprint bloomed, red against white skin. Akito’s shoulders stiffened, and his breath hissed into his lungs. He looked over his shoulder, desire pooling in his gaze even as denial formed on his lips.

  “I’m not jealous,” Akito asserted. “I’m ashamed.”

  Mouth open to rebut what he thought Akito would say, Lyandros snapped it shut again when the tenor of the remark registered. Floundering for a moment, he finally managed, “Ashamed?”

  Akito jerked his head toward the bedroom. “They’re traitors.”

  Lyandros leaned against the wall, and the cold tiles sent a shiver up his back. “Yes. They are.”

  “And…you judged me a traitor.” Akito drew out the sentence for emphasis.

  The vampires in the next room had once been petty thieves. They had stolen from the well-appointed homes in Beacon Hill, risking exposure of the mora and shaming the laws handed down to them by the gods. Sons of Pollux did not steal. Over the past several years however, one of them—Charis—had graduated from thievery to aiding the coven in its war against the vampires. A death sentence was all he had to look forward to. The only reason he had not yet been executed was that there had been
more important matters to attend. Gabriel, on the other hand… Well, Lyandros had not yet thought on what to do with him. Exactly.

  “You think I compare you to them?” Disgust took up residence in Lyandros’s middle, souring the meal he’d shared with Akito, Benjamin, and Tzadkiel not an hour before.

  “Don’t you?” Akito whispered, either unable or unwilling to meet Lyandros’s gaze.

  “I—” Lyandros began to answer on rote, but stopped, knowing Akito deserved a more considered response. He gestured to the tub. “Let us bathe while we talk.”

  Shoulders back, Akito comported himself as a warrior, without the guilt or inner turmoil that had once burdened his shoulders with a sloped hunch. It was obvious to Lyandros that Akito had little, if any, remaining guilt over the situation that had brought him under Lyandros’s oversight as Justice Giver. Whether that was a result of his new evolution or what he called the superpowers that had allowed him to gain dominion over his own mind against the Morgan, Lyandros could not say; however, he did know one thing. The confidence suited him, and there was much Lyandros would do to see that it was not removed.

  Water sluiced over the side of the tub as they entered. Sitting opposite Akito, Lyandros lifted a sponge and grinned as he recalled the last time they had shared a bath. In Faerie. Akito must have recalled too, because he sat well back, his blush progressing from his visible-chest to the root of his hair.

  “Do not worry.” Lyandros squeezed the sponge, sending a trickle of water over his own chest. “We will only be conversing.”

  Following the path of the cascading droplets with his eyes, Akito licked his lips and remarked huskily, “All right.”

  “So, your crimes…” Lyandros sat back and Akito’s attention swept up to his face.

  “Yes.”

  “You were banished for disrespect.” Holding up one his index finger, Lyandros counted off the list as he recalled. “And you were made my tribute for drinking from the kylix without leave from the mora.”

  Akito’s Adams apple bobbed. “Yes.”

  Twisting pursed lips to the side, Lyandros considered the implications of Akito’s past actions. “You did steal.”

  Akito sank down several inches, bringing his wine-dark nipples to the waterline. “Yes. I suppose I did.”

  Lyandros tried and failed to ignore the way the oil light glistened and shimmered over his tribute’s skin. Cock lengthening, he drew his limb upward to hide his burgeoning arousal. “But you stole to help the mora, not to harm it.”

  Shrugging, Akito glanced toward the open doorway. “I think both you and Tzadkiel mentioned that it wasn’t my intention or my reasoning—or even the Morgan—that you objected to, but the results.”

  “True. But there were extenuating circumstances there…” Lyandros allowed.

  “You’re trying too hard now,” Akito objected, holding up his hand when Lyandros scowled at him. “I fucked up, and I’m paying for that with my freedom. I get it. I just don’t like it that those two in there have the same sentence. That…that people look at me and think I might be like them. I’m ashamed and I wish I could go back and fix everything so I could walk by your side out there.” A pale hand lifted from the water, trailing droplets as Akito pointed vaguely toward the door. “And in the bedroom, I like kneeling for you. I want you to take me to the brink and beyond. Use me. Punish me. I’ll get off on it, I promise. As long as you and the rest of the mora respect me.” The words tumbled from Akito, rolling like an avalanche of need to rest at Lyandros’s feet. Eyes lifted to Lyandros, he ended with, “Please.”

  Slowly, Lyandros nodded. “I understand.”

  “You do?” Akito sat forward, naked hope creasing his brow.

  “I do. And I think there might be a solution.”

  Though he had no good answer—once sentenced, Akito’s tribute bond could only be broken via the will of the gods—he thought he might be able to enact a plan that would, at the very least, allow Akito to save face. Their bond as mates had been cemented outside the mora’s view. Many of the men took lovers and had unusual relationships. Some delighted in dominant play, while others had more ordinary tastes. Historically, no one had looked askance at a paramour who wore a collar or chose to dine at his mate’s feet.

  “First, however,” Lyandros continued as he lifted the sponge and pulled Akito to him. “You will need to apologize to my brother and his consort.”

  Technically, Akito should not have been allowed to live under the mora’s roof—indeed would not have been turned if not for his relationship to Benjamin and Lyandros—without having done so. It had been Tzadkiel’s original edict, as Lyandros understood it.

  “I would have done that anyway.” Akito sighed as Lyandros ran the sponge over his chest.

  More and more, these past several days, Lyandros had begun to cast aside his identification of Akito as his tribute. Their bond was strengthened now by ritual and blood on this plane. The intent of the turning had been one that not only created a vampire but also a life bond. Lyandros frowned, realizing he truly had no clarity when it came to judgment over Akito as tribute any longer.

  “What’s wrong?” Akito asked.

  “I thought, in truth, that given the exchange and your good deeds, that Themis would release you from the tribute sentence. But she has not.”

  Akito sucked on his lower lip, worrying it between his teeth. “Do you not want to be connected in that way anymore?”

  “I will always want you,” Lyandros whispered hotly against the column of Akito’s neck. “How can you not see this, agapitós? I do not need to have you serve me in order to consummate our love.”

  Grip slipping audibly against porcelain, Akito adjusted his handhold to better leverage his thrusts. “Did you just call me…beloved?”

  Lyandros drew Akito to him in one fell swoop. Half the water seemed to leave the tub and rain to the floor. Pressing his free wrist to virgin lips, Lyandros issued his only command. “Feed.”

  As any new vampire might, Akito fell to work with a feral snarl. Lyandros jerked once, his cock sliding along the cushioned cleft of Akito’s ass. Sucking pulls, audible and greedy, issued from Akito’s mouth. Blood swirled on the water, turning it pink, and Lyandros imagined his love coursing from his heart to Akito’s.

  Lyandros gently pried his wrist away. “Can you feel it now?”

  Harsh breaths created a seesaw rhythm he encouraged with touch of fingers and tongue. Arousal lengthened Akito’s cock once more, giving Lyandros ample real estate on which to focus his ministrations.

  “I feel it,” Akito answered, thrusting into Lyandros’s hand as he came. “Gods. I love you too.”

  “I know,” Lyandros whispered, tasting salt as his lips gently brushed sweat-dotted skin. “Tomorrow, we will pray together to Themis, and ask if she will allow us both to begin anew.”

  Chapter 30

  Akito awoke to metallic clanking in the early morning hours. Blearily, he stretched out a hand. Lyandros’s place was cold. Lifting his head, he opened one eye, but darkness pressed against his eyeballs. Perhaps he had imagined the sound? No. There is was again. This time a shuffling groan accompanied the sound, followed by a barely-there order to “Shush.”

  Sitting up gingerly, he peered between a crack in the curtains. The room seemed empty other than Gabriel’s form and another, elongated shadow that danced against the wall next to him. Cast by nothing at all. Charis’s chains, hung empty. Fear prickled along Akito’s arms and crackled upward to his nape. The thing by the wall wasn’t a shadow at all, and the hellish red glow lighting the room wasn’t the fire. It was a shade.

  Assessing the situation, he came up with two options. Either he was dead again and didn’t know it, or something about his newly gained vampire status allowed him to see the eerie things. Breathing quietly through his mouth, he reached under his pillow and reached for the dagger he had slept with ever since the Morgan had infiltrated his life and his mind.

  His heart beat so loudly he was certain the s
hade could hear it. The thing continued, somehow, to focus on its task—releasing the vampire prisoners from the Justice Giver’s prison wall. Slipping silently from between the sheets, Akito palmed the dagger. He had one chance at this. The second the vampires saw him, they would warn the shade, and it would either find a way to kill him, or it would disappear.

  Lyandros, where are you?

  The question trilled along his connection with the Justice Giver…his lover…his mate. Heady stuff for a sidekick, he thought, and then mentally shook his head at himself. He had better focus, or he would ruin any chance he had to kill the shade. Taking a fortifying breath, he stood on the mattress and bent his legs, prepared to leap.

  Leave them.

  Akito froze. That had been Lyandros’s voice.

  Why? he asked.

  “Because you are dreaming.” The answer, voiced in his ear, jolted Akito awake.

  Gasping, he lay on his back, staring up at Lyandros’s concerned face. The vampire, poised above him, stroked his hair and searched his gaze. Running his tongue thickly around his mouth, Akito gazed about the room.

  “I was sleeping?” The dream had felt so real.

  His gaze alighted on the far wall, where chains hung limply from Charis’s niche. Akito sat up and Lyandros jerked back, ostensibly to avoid being brained. Heart thundering, Akito leaped from the bed. Cold stone floors giving way to lush carpet, and he crossed the room in three long strides, Lyandros behind him. The niche was definitely empty. Gabriel regarded him with wary alarm, green eyes following his every movement

  Akito got in the vampire’s face. “Where is he?”

  “Hold.” Lyandros placed a quieting hand on his arm.

  Whirling, Akito went for his sword. “You don’t understand. The shades somehow took Charis to the Morgan.”

  “Charis is dead, Akito,” Lyandros said, not unkindly.

  This time Akito did freeze. Hands hovering over his snap, he took in the seriousness of Lyandros’s expression. “Dead?”