“Good. They deserve happiness.” There was more, so much more, that she wanted to ask. She now understood why Baba Yaga couldn’t tell her all she knew.
But perhaps…
“You don’t have a problem showing me things that have already happened.”
The other woman tipped her head in curiosity. “Some things, Goddess.”
In a quiet voice, Lina asked, “Can you show me how my parents died?”
Baba Yaga’s gaze narrowed. “I can. But are you sure it’s something you truly wish to see? Things such as that cannot be unseen.”
Lina picked at her cuticles. “I know Edgar killed them. I want to know exactly how. I want to see how someone who pretended to be my friend and care about me all those years could do something like that.”
“You want to fuel your rage.” Her lips curled in a knowing smile. “Do not lie to me. I have seen far too much in my life to be taken in by simple artifice.”
Lina met her gaze. “I want to make sure there’s no way in hell I will ever forget what those bastards are capable of. I want to make sure that I don’t misplace my mercy when the time comes.”
An amused grin crept across Baba Yaga’s face. “My dear, you are wiser than your years.”
They were suddenly standing beside a desolate rural road, just after dusk, but before full dark had settled in. A dense, purple light clung to the landscape. The air felt thick, soupy, still.
A typical August night in Florida, much like the night her parents died.
She turned, studying the area.
It was where her parents died. She knew the road, had struggled for years to take any possible route to avoid driving past the spot.
“How soon?” Lina asked her.
She nodded. “Very soon. We are just observers. We cannot interfere.”
“I understand.” The evening settled around them. “Why can’t I just figure everything out at once if I’m a goddess with all these powers?”
“You cannot harness what you don’t understand. And you are mortal-born. Goddess, yes. Powerful, yes. Omnipotent and omniscient? No. No one being, mortal or not, has all those powers. Only the Goddess of us all, and she’s not about to share her powers, I’m sure.”
“That sucks.”
“Yes, it does. Unfortunately, it is life.”
“So what was that vision I saw first before I came here? Those people on the moor. Who the fuck is Ysimel, anyway? That woman in my vision?”
Baba Yaga smiled. “Information for you to store away for later, Goddess.” Her expression hardened. “Forget nothing.”
They waited. A few minutes later, Lina spotted a large, beat-up, four-door land yacht of a sedan, a huge clunker that looked three feet from being ready for a crusher. It pulled up, turned in at a dirt crossroad, and turned around. It stopped a few yards short of the road, where it couldn’t be seen by any vehicle coming around the turn.
Lina took a deep breath and waited. She knew the driver.
Edgar.
When she saw headlights sweep over the trees lining the curve, she knew it was about to happen. Steeling herself, she watched as Edgar gunned the engine of his car, which weighed at least three times as much as her parents’ small two-door Honda.
Then his back tires kicked up a rooster tail of dirt as he pulled out and hit them at a sharp angle on the driver side, sending the small car rolling.
Lina choked back a sob. Despite her parents’ car being totaled, Edgar’s car was still drivable. He put it in park, got out, and walked over to the Honda, which now lay on its roof in the ditch, crushed against a tree.
That was one thing the FHP could never figure out, how another car could hit them and still get away.
Now, she knew.
Baba Yaga softly spoke in her ear. “Do you wish to go see them?”
She shook her head. “No, this is close enough.”
Edgar stooped down and reached into the driver-side window. After a moment, he nodded and went around to the other side.
She couldn’t help but see as he passed through the beam of his own remaining headlight that his hand was covered with blood.
After checking on her mom, Edgar wiped his hand on the grass, got back in his car, and left.
Lina took a long, shaky breath and slowly let it out again.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ve seen en—”
She opened her eyes and found herself in the van with her men. When she looked out the window, she realized they’d driven less than a mile from when she first joined Baba Yaga in Wherever-the-Hell-That-Was-Land.
She closed her eyes again.
* * * *
When they reached the house, the other men started hauling their bags inside. Zack grabbed Lina’s wrist and arched an inquisitive eyebrow at her.
She let out a sigh. She never could keep anything from him.
No wonder. He’d seen all her moods countless times, throughout many lives. She tipped her head toward the house. He followed her inside, through the house, and out the kitchen to the back patio to what she was beginning to think of as their “talking bench.”
She leaned against him, and he slung an arm around her, pulling her close.
He kissed the top of her head. “Paid a visit to old Baba Yaga, did you?”
“How’d you know?” His insight didn’t even surprise her anymore.
“I felt you check out there in the van for a little while. Did she bring you there, or did you go on your own?”
“She says I went on my own, but I’m still not quite sure how.”
She sensed Jan stick his head out the back door. Upon seeing her sitting there with Zack, he quietly retreated.
They did learn fast, she had to hand it to them.
“Aaannnd?” Zack asked.
She choked back a sob. “She told me the whole story. About our first lives and the cockatrice and the dragons. Everything. And she showed me how we died. How they died.”
He nuzzled the top of her head. “And?”
She quietly said, “I asked to see how Mom and Dad died. I wanted to see for myself how Edgar killed them.”
“Oh, sweetie.” He held her tighter as the floodgate exploded. Her grief and agony and pent-up anger, her loneliness without them and their love.
After she cried herself out, she asked a question she hoped didn’t come out wrong. “Why couldn’t you tell Edgar was one of them? Or Lenny?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been asking myself that question, too, sugar. Kael thinks maybe it has something to do with that book. Maybe they’re using spellwork, or dark sorcery, or something. I sure as shit didn’t like Edgar from the moment I met…” His voice trailed off.
“What?”
“Oh, shit,” he whispered. Then he bolted to his feet and ran into the house.
Slightly irritated, she followed. He was yelling for Kael, Jan, and Rick to join him in the kitchen. He pulled the ancient book out of his carry-on and laid it out on the kitchen table, open to the dog-eared page they’d discovered in Yellowstone.
The page that marked the ritual used to murder Kael’s family.
“What?” Lina asked again.
He shook his head as the other three men entered the kitchen. Zack’s finger scrolled down the page as his lips silently moved while he read. When he reached one passage, his jaw dropped in shock.
“Holy fuck.”
“Zack, please,” she said. “What is it?”
He looked at Kael, then Lina. “Edgar and Lenny used Kael’s family for an occlusion spell.” He slammed his fist against the table, making the large, heavy piece of furniture shake. “That’s how they did it. The fuckers used Kael’s family for the occlusion spell. But they needed one more victim to do a third person.” His gaze once again fell on Kael. “There was at least one more person in on this. Were you supposed to be home that day?”
In obvious shock, Kael nodded. “Yeah. I’d gone out hunting with some of my friends. But I was supposed to be home. Normally would have bee
n home.”
“Son of a bitch,” Rick said, sitting at the table and spinning the book to get a better look at it. “So they had at least one accomplice.”
“Yep,” Zack said.
Lina reined in her irritation. She refused to lose her cool when they were talking about Kael’s family. Unfortunately, she couldn’t make heads nor tails out of the book’s text. Although most of the pictures were fairly gruesome and gave her a pretty good idea of the meaning of the accompanying text.
“What is an occlusion spell?” she asked. “What did they do to his family? How do you know for sure there’s another accomplice?”
Zack glanced at Kael, who nodded. In a soft, sad voice, Zack explained. “The spell they used—the whole book, really—isn’t just black magick or dark spellwork. It’s evil sorcery at its worst. When Jan said this was like a metaphysical cookbook from Hell, he wasn’t far off.”
He took a deep breath. “An occlusion spell allows someone to pass themselves off as someone or something else. It might not make them totally look or smell or whatever like their intended target, but at the very least it nullifies them so that they appear ‘normal’ to whoever it is they’re trying to fool.”
“Okay.”
Zack took another deep breath. “I’m guessing, based on their victims, that they were trying to pass for dragons. Or at the least, to pass the sniff test with dragons. This spell requires an equal exchange of an adult for an adult, or if it’s a child victim using more than one, for the spell to be effective. They killed them, and then both drank and bathed in their blood.”
Lina felt the world spin. Jan and Rick rushed to her side and helped her into a chair.
“Get her a bucket,” Zack told them. “Looks like she might urp.”
She felt like she might urp. When she got hold of her nervous stomach, she looked at Zack. “Okay, so how do you know there were three murderers?”
Kael heavily sat in another chair and scrubbed at his face with his hands. “Because those notes they made in the margin to modify the spell is to occlude three people, using not just my sister, but me, too.”
Chapter Ten
Zack watched as Kael composed himself. He finally sat up and shook his head. “I think we now have a prime suspect in Bertholde’s murder,” Kael said.
Not wanting to disagree with him, but knowing he had to speak up, Zack stepped behind him and put his hands on his lover’s shoulders. “But not the only suspect, unfortunately. We don’t know if Lenny had help or not in Yellowstone. The fire destroyed his camp and his truck, including all evidence except for what Brodey and Lina brought back with them.”
Kael laid a hand over Zack’s. “I know.” He sounded beyond weary. “But I can hope. How many of these fuckers can there still be in the world? They’re antisocial as fuck, normally. Their powers are diluted from years of inbreeding with each other and breeding with humans.”
Lina nodded. “Lenny was already dead when Bertholde was murdered. It can’t be coincidence that the knife she was stabbed with is identical to the one we brought back.”
Zack, playing Devil’s advocate, shook his head. “It doesn’t mean the third conspirator was the one with the knife, or that they were working in tandem with Lenny. It could have been a coincidence. He never said anything to you about it, did he?”
“No.” She let out a frustrated scream. “I want these assholes found!” Lina exclaimed. Then, her face went blank.
Zack watched as Lina closed her eyes. With her elbows propped on the table, she clutched her head in her hands. Jan and Rick started to intervene, but he stopped them.
“No, wait. Leave her alone for a minute.”
She sat there, slowly swaying back and forth for several minutes. When her eyes popped open, she looked around, startled. “What happened?”
“You tell us, babe,” Zack said. “Was that a vision?”
She slowly nodded. “Everything looked blue.”
“Something to do with the cockatrice?”
“Yeah. I think so. I’m not sure.” She reached for the book and paged through it, pausing near the back of the book. She pointed at a drawing. “There. That. I saw that. It was etched in a flat rock.” The illustration showed three spirals interlocking with each other and surrounded by various arcane symbols.
The men gathered around the book. “What the fuck is that?” Jan asked.
Rick shook his head. “Damned if I know.”
Kael smiled. “I know exactly what that is. It’s the Tablet of Trammel.” He reached across the table and squeezed Lina’s hand. “And better yet, I think I know where it is. Or, at least, I know how to find it.”
“Well, do you feel like sharing?” Rick asked.
Kael leaned back, looking happy for the first time since they found out who was responsible for his family’s murder. “I need to make a phone call and track down my old drinking buddy, Blackie.”
* * * *
Lina had a thousand questions more, but Jan, Rick, and Zack insisted it could wait until morning. Jan and Rick herded her upstairs, while Zack followed Kael to their wing in the house.
“Drinking buddy, huh?” Zack teased Kael once they were alone in their room. “Is that code for ‘fuck buddy’?”
“No.” Kael unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it in the hamper. “He’s a wolf. I haven’t seen him since a little after…” His expression darkened for a moment before he shrugged. “He was one of my hunting buddies back in the old days. When we couldn’t find them, I went to Ireland for a while before coming here. I lost track of him and the rest after that.”
Zack suspected the “since a little after” thought Kael didn’t finish was his family’s murder. “I thought you said he was a drinking buddy?”
“That, too. That wolf could drink nearly everyone else under the table, no shit.” He pulled Zack into his arms. “But he was also arrow-straight, my man.” Kael kissed him. As always, Zack felt like the world melted away around them. “He could never hold a candle to you,” Kael breathed in his ear. “No one can.”
“Then take me to bed and show me.”
“Gladly.”
He fell backward onto the bed, pulling Zack with him. Zack laughed. “Should we get naked first?”
Kael laced his hands behind his head. “Be my guest. You know I love watching you unzip me.”
“Mmm.” Zack sat up and worked on Kael’s belt, then on the button and zipper of his jeans. Kael wore boring tighty-whities. They perfectly highlighted the prominent bulge of his hard cock straining against the fabric.
Zack bent his head to the bulge, gently nibbling on him through the fabric. Kael’s head fell back onto his pillow as he softly moaned. He stroked Zack’s head. “Don’t tease me.”
“I love to tease you. You know that.” He didn’t stop, running his teeth over his cock through the fabric and driving Kael frantic.
“Please, Z. Do it!”
With a chuckle, Zack hooked his fingers in the waistband of Kael’s briefs and slowly pulled them down. His cock, now freed, sprang up, rigid and engorged. A single glistening, pearly drop of pre-cum dotted the head of his cock.
“Mmm.” Zack’s tongue flicked at his slit, scooping up the drop. “That’s what I like.”
Kael’s cock jumped. Zack wrapped his fingers around the thick member and slowly started circling the engorged head with his tongue. Taking his time, he swiped his tongue over the smooth head, along the sensitive ridge, lightly flicking at his glans.
“Yes!” Kael breathed.
Zack shifted position so he knelt between Kael’s legs. He still hadn’t pulled his jeans off him. “Tell me what you want.”
“Jesus, Z, I want you to suck my cock!”
Zack wrapped his lips around the head of Kael’s member, swirling his tongue around it as he took it deeper into his mouth, until it hit the back of his throat. He bobbed his head up and down slowly, using his tongue as well as his lips to massage every inch of his flesh. With his left hand, he reached between Kael�
��s legs and cupped his sac, gently squeezing and massaging his balls the way Zack knew he loved.
Kael moaned and tried to thrust his hips up to force his cock faster and deeper into Zack’s mouth. When Zack pinned his legs down, he grabbed Zack’s head and tried to take control.
Zack reached up and pushed his hands away. “Stop it. I’m driving. I can make this last all night.”
“I don’t want to wait all night!” Kael’s plaintive tone made Zack chuckle. “I want to come!”
“You will, baby. You will.” He knelt back to his work, enjoying the warm, tangy taste of his lover’s pre-cum. Kael’s cock grew even more rigid under firm strokes from his tongue and the suction of his mouth. He loved making him come. Even more, he loved drawing it out, tormenting him in the best way possible, until Kael was frantic and begging for release.
This time was no exception. Zack’s own cock throbbed, almost painfully, inside his jeans as he worked over Kael’s member. His lover moaned and squirmed and tried to wriggle free, but Zack relentlessly kept him pinned to the bed as he used his lips and tongue on him.
Finally, as he felt Kael’s cock grow even harder and his sac draw up tight. Kael’s entire body stiffened. Zack went deep and long, ready when Kael’s juices exploded into his mouth. He swallowed every drop of his hot stream of cum as it shot down his throat.
As Kael trembled, Zack continued gently licking and sucking until he rested his cheek on Kael’s abs and held his softening cock in his mouth.
Kael stroked Zack’s hair. “That was fantastic,” he whispered. “That was absolutely fantastic.”
Zack smiled and lifted his head after applying a last kiss to his lover’s cock. “Now we can get naked.”
Kael laughed. “Yep.”
They shucked their clothes and climbed back into bed, this time with Zack on the bottom and Kael between his legs. Kael immediately swallowed Zack’s rigid cock deep into his mouth and enthusiastically began to suck on him.
Zack happily moaned. “Yeah, that’s right. Hard and fast, baby. Hard and fast.”
Kael knew better than to try to drag it out for Zack too long when Zack was this horny. If he made him come hard and fast, he nearly always regrouped in a few minutes for a second round…with his cock buried deep inside Kael’s ass. Which was exactly where Kael wanted it.
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