On the edge of the Granary Burying Ground, the War King, Tzadkiel, crouched above his quarry for the second time that evening. Lamplight shone from the businesses across the way, casting Benjamin Fuller’s features in a half-shadowed mask that revealed a ruined visage crisscrossed with glossy scars. Acid burns.
The telltale sweetness of elderflower and spring rain had heralded the hunter’s approach, fomenting vivid memories as only scent could. As a child, Benjamin Fuller’s blood had spoken of sweet sage and bright elderflower. As a man, he smelled no different. Tzadkiel’s thirst reared, threatening to cut him off from sanity, safety, and every careful plan he’d made over the past decades. He’d had to stop following the man earlier lest he give in to that temptation.
All those years, even through the haze of pain and rage, and loss of memory of who he was and what his wounds had meant, Tzadkiel had catalogued the aroma of Benjamin’s blood. In his dark hole, wasting from the injuries the boy’s uncle had inflicted, he had fantasized about the taste of that magic-laden elixir—the healing properties secondary to the hollow ache it would soothe. An ache so intense no human food could sate it. Famine consumed his universe, eating at the walls around him until he floated in a void where nothing existed except the hunger itself. Eventually, he had become that hunger; memories of any sentient self abandoned and forgotten in the desperate bid to survive at the edge of insanity while his body struggled to find enough magic in his acid- and iron-tainted blood to heal his wounds. Now that he was fully awake and at least strong enough to move freely about the city, his hunger pulsed with beacon-like brightness. Fixated on its glow, Tzadkiel struggled to think of anything else as he watched the hunter.
Oblivious to danger, Benjamin paused below the maple tree’s gnarled bough to slip a pair of sunglasses onto his face. Broad shouldered, slight in stature, with the elegant gait of a dancer, he had grown into a glorious specimen. Given his lack of heavy muscle and his missing eyes, no one would consider him a threat, unless they knew his lineage. Tzadkiel, cloaked in shadows and magic, watched in wary fascination as the man gesticulated rudely at the sky and walked across the street to a drinking establishment. A subtle black and white sign proclaimed it the WHISKEY TANGO LOUNGE.
When his nemesis had disappeared inside the bright and rowdy bar, Tzadkiel leaped down from the tree. If he had been restored to full strength, he might shield himself and the hunter from view and drain the man down to his very marrow. Instead, he headed in the direction of Boston Common and let Benjamin Fuller go. For now. From a distance, lamplight appeared to halo the park’s ironwork fixtures, their globes suspended like motionless fireflies branching from path to path. When he reached the boundary to the green space, hesitation gripped him. His foot moved back from the pavement, seemingly of its own accord. He frowned and tried again. Pushing into the open space of pavement in front of Park Street Station, he stared, bewildered, at the park beyond.
Fatigue washed over him, making his knees turn to water. Jaw clenched, he leaned forward and shoved against the exhaustion. With a stumbling, shoulder-first gait, he managed the few steps past the T station vestibule onto the lane that led toward the Common’s center. As soon as he’d crossed some seemingly invisible boundary, his strength rushed back. Looking over his shoulder, he scanned for any threats. He had thought himself over these bouts of weakness, but this one had been different from the rest and much worse.
A gaggle of college-age students hooted to each other in the distance, boisterously marking their journey from bar to bar. Tzadkiel forced himself onward, solitude cushioning him in its familiar embrace, insulating him from the group even as he catalogued its progress. He had been alone for so long, it was almost as if he’d forgotten how to be a part of even himself. Slowly, his labored breaths evened out until he felt more himself.
Near the snow-dusted expanse to the left of Parkman Bandstand, he slowed. Home was so close. He automatically scanned for the hidden door in the base of the structure. Though he knew where it was, it was undetectable. Apparently, the magic at his disposal remained too weak to see and activate the opening. No matter. He would locate members of his mora tonight, in the open, and allow them to escort him inside.
In the distance a police radio squawked. Scuttling leaves formed mini dervishes in swirls of falling snow. The hunter’s lingering essence teased Tzadkiel’s nose, overpowering the traces of diesel fuel and baked goods drifting from Tremont Street. Among these other scents were those that smacked of home—musk and earth and the metallic note of fresh blood. Also he detected something like ozone, but with a sweet bite that spoke of decaying lavender. It was a scent he recognized, but not one he’d expected to find here tonight. Tzadkiel sniffed the wind, scanning the ground until he found the source. Ten yards off, sparkling shards of light danced and mingled in a tiny maelstrom.
Slowly, he crossed the expanse of snowy earth and knelt to run his hand over the ground. On the second pass, heat poured into his palm. Gaze scanning the Common, he mentally traced the hunter’s scent along the path he had followed—a path that led to the juncture of several walkways by which Tzadkiel now knelt. Knowledge and understanding collided. That he could still see the soul’s aura meant that the vampire to whom it belonged was newly dead. The hunter had slain one of Tzadkiel’s subjects here. Tonight. Choking on anger and grief, Tzadkiel drew forth his kinsman’s life force, pulling it from the ground until light pulsed and danced in a thousand tiny pinpricks against his skin.
“You will be avenged.” Tzadkiel rose, the energy cupped in his palms. “As your War King, this I vow.”
Trees groaned throughout Boston Common, their gnarled limbs seeming to catch streamers of fog from the night air. Ancient ceremonies, unused for decades, returned on a rush of dormant memories. Faces from other battles, and even greater casualties than this one, filled his mind’s eye. Hands held skyward, Tzadkiel opened his palms and set the light free. A streak, not unlike a shooting star, skated from his fingertips and illuminated the low cloud ceiling before winking out of sight. Then he waited.
Minutes passed as he scanned the heavens in silent threnody. He sought a flare that would indicate the opening of the heavenly gates to the constellation Gemini. Without his subject’s name and the formal ceremony that should have accompanied Tzadkiel’s pleas, however, there was little hope of convincing the gods to open their doors. Still, it was Tzadkiel’s duty to try.
When the bells of Park Street Church chimed the half hour, and the clouds hadn’t parted, Tzadkiel tore his gaze away from the sky and added another failure to his growing list. At eleven on a cold winter’s night, there was little activity around Parkman Bandstand. The skating rink was closed for the night, and the outbuildings that dotted the rest of the park were boarded up or locked. Even the lights that dotted the Common seemed to glow few and far between, lonely beacons in the vastness of the sparsely populated space.
He closed his eyes, and stretched his senses. The exercise tightened the muscle at the bridge of his nose, etching craggy tendrils of pain across his forehead and into his temples. Ignoring the discomfort, he unlocked dormant abilities that had until recently been inaccessible to him. At first he detected only the stale air of the subway tunnels and a tang of salt on the wind. He breathed more deeply, relaxing into a part of his mind that had been quiet for so long he didn’t know if it still existed. Rust and metal flaked in chunks of brown and black, figurative hinges creaking, as Tzadkiel pushed at the mental door that connected him with the oldest of his mora. A tendril of ancient, earth-tinged silence touched Tzadkiel. The concentration of power he recognized as his strategoi—his military commander—Dryas.
Opening his eyes, Tzadkiel saw he faced toward the Financial District. Guided by instinct, he wandered, pausing to test for the man’s energy every so often. Several times, he lost the trail and was forced to retry the exercise. Something that once had been as natural to him as breathing was now akin to a toddler’s first steps—wobbly, unsure, and fraught with error. The dearth of magic in his blood made him weak where once he had been strong—where he would be strong again. When he finally ended his search at a small park above an underground garage in Post Office Square, he suspected he’d erred. His people would have no reason to gather in this place.
Finding no one in the snow-blanketed strip of open space, he gazed upward. Granite and glass office buildings towered overhead, cutting a jagged circle in the night sky. Snow swirled above. The scene was reminiscent of an Art Deco snow globe, projected in shades of black and white. Shadows threw themselves across sheltered pavement, flat and unmoving. Vacant stone benches squatted in the small park’s artificial light. No one was here, and yet…Yes, there it was. The bright knot of energy he’d recognized.
“I am your War King,” Tzadkiel announced, rotating slowly to view the area. “Show yourself.”
Six men stepped from behind the arbor’s classical columns, seeming to materialize out of the darkness. Tzadkiel recognized their faces, and the memories that went with them filled his mind with bitter regret. A seventh man emerged from behind the underground garage’s elevator vestibule, drawing Tzadkiel’s attention.
Dryas.
Tzadkiel shoved down the urge to go to the man in welcome. Friendship had no place in this moment. Calling on ceremony and ancient right, he claimed his due.
“I am Tzadkiel, son of Demarchos, and I am your War King.” From his back, Tzadkiel unsheathed his sword, an ancient xiphos that had belonged to his great-grandfather, the demigod Pollux, son of Zeus. “Kneel or be judged a traitor.”
The six looked to each other, their whispered conversation snatched away by the wind. Tzadkiel caught the words archon, witches, forbidden until Dryas stepped forward to meet Tzadkiel.
“If you are the War King”—Dryas swept Tzadkiel with his gaze—“then first you must answer for your absence before we kneel to your rule.”
Tzadkiel blinked away his surprise. Violence had always been a possible outcome of this first encounter—likely even, as the mora should have chosen a new ruler in his stead—but he’d never imagined outright denial of his identity. Was he so unrecognizable after his injuries that his own people failed to know him? Surely his unshorn hair and thinner frame wouldn’t render him a stranger.
“I am your king.” Tzadkiel pulled back his hair, fisting it in one hand while holding his sword in the other. Twisting his head this way and that, he allowed the lamplight to touch his features. “And I must needs answer for my absence only to the Justice Giver.”
A murmur went up. Wide-eyed disbelief morphed inexorably into recognition at Tzadkiel’s mention of the office his brother Lyandros had once held. As one of the mora’s leading triumvirate, or archon, only its Justice Giver could dispense judgment on a War King. Likewise, only its King Ruler could veto a War King’s decisions.
Dryas made a slicing motion with his hand, cutting off the men’s chatter.
“Nothing of the old ways remains. The office of Justice Giver died with your brother Lyandros.” Dryas stepped closer and knelt, as did the men behind him. “Sire.”
Though he had been almost certain his brother had perished that horrible night, twenty years ago, the confirmation was a blow. Tzadkiel put out a hand, supporting himself against an ironwork lamppost.
“Rise.” The command rang hollow, lost in the despair that filled Tzadkiel’s chest.
Dryas stood, and the men with him.
“There is no archon?” Tzadkiel searched Dryas’s face, seeking confirmation. He might have misheard. Must have misheard. “You have chosen no Justice Giver? No King Ruler?”
A safeguarding triumvirate, stronger than one individual, unbreakable in its guardianship, the archon was their governing body. All three offices—Justice Giver, King Ruler, and War King—had been held by Tzadkiel’s blood-born family, as had been the mora’s tradition. Though Tzadkiel’s family was gone now, why had these offices not been filled with those whose lineage was nearly as ancient as his own? Those he, and his father, and his grandfather before him, had sired through the blood rites the gods had afforded in lieu of procreation?
“As glad as we are to know you are alive, it is dangerous for us to gather, sire.” Gaze scanning his one-time troops, Dryas added, “It is unsafe for you here. It is not safe for any of us.”
“Dangerous? Unsafe?” Tzadkiel returned the words, lip curled. “Since when are the Sons of Pollux cowards?”
Anguish briefly drew Dryas’s mouth and brow into warring lines. As if unable to bear the humiliation, the general looked away. Tzadkiel pictured his strategoi as he’d been in the old days, shield high and xiphos raised, leading a charge with his battle cry. A pang of longing for kinship and welcome rent Tzadkiel’s chest so thoroughly, that when he looked down he was surprised he did not bleed.
“There is much you have missed.” Dryas motioned toward the shadowed arbor from which he’d emerged, and Tzadkiel followed. In the summer, vined plants would grow up the sides of the arbor, their leaves fluttering in the wind to form a canopy between the ground and the sky. On this eve, only the vines’ skeletal remains reached through the openings like so many grasping fingers.
“Where have you been?” Dryas asked. “Why have you not returned before now?”
Tzadkiel sat on one of the stone benches, as his court—such as it was—assembled around him. “I was tortured and held by the hunters for nearly two days, and—”
Dryas’s outraged gasp, echoed by the rest of the men, forced Tzadkiel to pause. He raised his hand to stave off their anger. While he understood their reaction—would have joined in, had he been in their place—they did not have time for such luxuries as sentiment.
“They shot me with a tranquilizer, then injected acid and iron into my veins to dampen my magic so I would not heal.” He left out the gorier details, knowing they’d only incite more fury. “I managed to kill them all thanks to their carelessness; however, I was not strong enough to come to you before now. I barely knew my own name with that poison running through my veins.”
Dryas cupped the sides of Tzadkiel’s face and brought their foreheads together. Tzadkiel gripped one hand in solidarity, managing a reassuring smile before he drew away.
“I am here now, though, old friend. As you can see.” Tzadkiel took in their ragtag band. “We will weather what remains of this overlong storm together.”
“Where were you?” Dryas shook his head, memory clouding his expression. “We searched everywhere.”
Though the cold seeped through Tzadkiel’s leathers, the damp did not, for which he was grateful. He was so damned tired of the dark and of the cold.
“Boston’s subways and tunnels have many dark places to hide. I must have lost my way and climbed into a disused pit connected to the tunnels near Cambridge Street. I remained there for some time.” He shuddered, and tried to disguise the involuntary gesture with a shrug. “I came to myself for any length of time only recently…because I was discovered by a man who wandered across my path, and…” Turning his face away to hide his shame, he forced himself to admit what he’d done. “And I fed.”
Implicit in the statement was that he’d broken their vow—not to drain a man who was unwilling to be turned, and who was not an immediate threat or active foe. Even now Tzadkiel felt the man’s blood, weak though it had been, pulsing sluggishly through his veins, healing him and reawakening his abilities.
“You were not yourself. No one would blame you.” Dryas touched Tzadkiel’s shoulder. “He would have—”
“No.” Tzadkiel shook his head, emphatic, and met his general’s eyes. He would own his actions. “He would not have harmed me.” Swallowing hard, he squared his shoulders. “But it is done, and I am here now. So tell me. What has come to pass in my absence?”
Tzadkiel’s quiet, commanding demeanor, much like one he might have assumed in the general’s tent on the battlefields of Troy, drew Dryas closer, seeming to settle him. Time and place peeled away until Tzadkiel could almost feel the tight leather straps of the shin guards and the weight of his shield resting high against his thigh.
“The coven has been taking over the Common.” Dryas leaned forward to draw an outline in the snow. Tzadkiel recognized the rough geography of Boston Common and the Public Garden, separated by Charles Street. “They fought the weres at the Public Garden last summer, but the weres lost, as have we, in our attempts to reclaim the space.”
Though he did not interrupt, Tzadkiel wondered how the coven and pack warring against each other could be anything but good for the mora. Dryas held up a finger, catching Tzadkiel’s frown.
“We have made some progress, regaining a small corner.” Dryas made an x on the topmost portion of his map. “But the coven are doing something that keeps us out of the mora’s stronghold.” He made another x, indicating home. “Ultimately, we believe they intend to claim the entire space as their own, excluding all other supernatural creatures and hoarding the magic of the Common for themselves.” Dryas’s expression grew hopeful. “Perhaps, however, now that you’ve returned, we can use your abilities to take them unawares?”
Tzadkiel shook his head, extinguishing the light in his strategoi’s eyes. “At least not until I’ve communed with the gods in ceremony using the kylix. I need strong magic—strong blood—to restore my full abilities.”
At his full power, Tzadkiel could feed his strength to his mora, direct them with mere thought, and encourage them to acts of bravery and commitment that men on their own found difficult to undertake.
“Given the campaign-like nature of your map, I take it you’ve had some allies in taking that portion of the Public Garden?” Tzadkiel surmised the space to be closest to the Boylston Street side.
“Yes, but we won’t last. A few of the weres, who helped us only briefly, were killed. They and their Alpha have retreated to one of the harbor islands.” Dryas’s expression was grim as he stared down at the makeshift map. “Also, the coven has found some other power to animate the dead to use as a makeshift army.” The general’s dark eyes lifted. “The Morgan has also convinced some of our number…to defect and share our secrets.”
Rage clenched, fist-like, behind Tzadkiel’s breastbone. That any of his people would ally with the male coven leader, the Morgan, was a blatant betrayal. Those who had helped their enemies would be shown no mercy when the time came to deliver justice. That was, if the Morgan didn’t kill them first once he no longer required their aid.
Tzadkiel forced himself to speak calmly. “And what is this you mentioned of the mora’s stronghold?”
“It is only accessible to those who have allied with the coven. Even if our people had not scattered, we cannot enter unless we find a way to open the door.”
Tzadkiel scrubbed a hand over his face. That at least explained his own difficulties in crossing onto Boston Common, and his inability to enter their stronghold.
“What is the center of the spell?” He dropped his hand, disgusted with his own powerlessness. “The rite, whatever it was, must have been cast using a strong focal point to repel us from our home so effectively.”
“We have not been able to determine the exact point, but we believe it is in this area.” Dryas drew a line between Frog Pond and the Park Street T stop to Parkman Bandstand.
Tzadkiel nodded his understanding. There was a ley line here, that much he knew. Concentrations of power that ran through the earth, ley lines acted like rivers of magic. Where they met, the energy could be channeled using ritual objects. Sometimes what bound these lines was artificial, other times a natural part of the landscape.
“And the kylix?” Tzadkiel asked, referring to the ceremonial cup that was the focal point of the vampires’ own magic.
The kylix had once belonged to Pollux himself, and aided the mora’s every ritual, imbuing them with the will and power of the god. Tzadkiel would need the cup to perform the blood rites that would restore him to full control of his faculties.
“It is still in your chamber, in the stronghold, as far I know. We have not been able to enter in order to reclaim it.” Dryas’s stricken gaze met Tzadkiel’s own. “I have failed you, sire.”
Features once filled with strength and confidence had been worn to a haggard sharpness. Dark eyes sank into a too-lean face and possessed an edge of feral intensity. No wonder the mora’s greeting had been less than welcoming. It had seen many changes thanks to Tzadkiel’s inability to return since his run-in with the hunters, and none of them good.
“No.” Tzadkiel dropped his boot from the bench and paced away and back again. “It is I who failed you.”
He laid a hand on Dryas’s shoulder in solidarity and determination. “We’ll reclaim what is rightfully ours, my friend. I swear.”
Dryas opened his mouth to speak, but a sound like rushing wind—though with a clear, high cry behind it—brought all their heads around.
“The coven,” his general said. “We must not be caught together. Their magic is too strong at present. It is better to strike them from behind, as dishonorable as that may be, and live to fight another day.”
Gods help them if their ancestors could see them now. Tzadkiel, however, was in no physical condition to disagree with his strategoi. He allowed Dryas to make the call.
“I will come to you at the new moon,” Tzadkiel promised as they scattered in opposite directions. “Gather as many of our mora as you can, and bring them with you to the…” He searched his memory for a flat, open space, from which they might spot their enemies’ approach. “Is there still an open lot on Summer Street, across the canal?”
Dryas nodded. “Yes, sire. It is used for vehicles now.”
“Good. We will meet there.” He clasped Dryas by the shoulder one last time. “I will have a plan for us then.”
Dryas slipped into the night, and Tzadkiel, cloaking himself in darkness, did the same. When he crossed into the more populated tourist areas near Tremont, his steps slowed. Light spilled onto the pavement at his feet. Wishing for strength, and for allies, or for at the very least revenge, he gazed up at the windows of a posh drinking establishment. Across the way, the Granary Burying Ground—along with the tree he’d perched in earlier—stood silent sentinel to the revelry. Men whom Tzadkiel had counted as allies in his mora’s long fight against the hunters were buried in that hallowed ground. A nascent plan formed in his mind, and the spirits of those men seemed to whisper their approval.
Yes. The idea was elegant in both justice and symbolism. He needed blood strong with magic. If it were drunk in ceremony, and the ancient cup containing it raised in supplication to the gods, the resulting surge in his power would be great. If the offering were virile, strong enough to heal him fully and allow him to disperse the power to his mora, perhaps the resulting magic might even give him enough power to overrun the witches and banish them from the Common for good.
This all required the blood of a man with rare qualities, magic chief among them; but also darkness and evil—a darkness so black that it would negate Tzadkiel’s oath against taking the blood of the unwilling.
There was only one man he would sacrifice in so crude a manner—one whose blood was strong enough to accomplish all Tzadkiel required. He looked toward the drinking establishment the hunter had entered earlier. Knowledge and intent collided. Yes. There was such a man. And Tzadkiel knew just where to find him.