Benjamin regarded the outside world for the first time since that fateful Sunday as a boy. Depth perception, rhythm, and balance spun him in a dizzying dance. The first block of the walk to the Common had been a little iffy, and he still felt vaguely nauseous. It was almost as if his feet had forgotten how to walk. Sight wasn’t a sense he knew how to use any longer.
Ahead of Benjamin and Nyx, Tzadkiel walked purposefully down Joy Street in the direction Nyx had pointed, his aura too bright for Benjamin’s senses to truly comprehend. Long-legged and broad, the man’s physique at once puzzled and inspired, but it hurt Benjamin to gaze upon for more than two seconds together. Instead, he studied granite lintels limned in the aura’s deep lilac hue. Slate roofs sported a glistening layer of lavender ice. He slowed, absorbing minute details he’d taken for granted as a boy until Tzadkiel drew far enough ahead that the world became dim and he had to trot to catch up.
Beside him, Nyx’s disapproving silence pulled at his attention.
Benjamin pursed his lips. She was going to harsh his buzz. “What?”
“Nothing.” Worry undercut the brightness of her tone. “I mean, aren’t you concerned about following some stranger to a place where you could be jumped and overpowered? If he’s not from Boston, don’t you wonder how he found out you were here?”
Yes, he did. Point of fact, Benjamin had formed the plan to leave the house for that very reason—to get himself and Nyx out in the open where someone would at least hear them if they screamed. His backpack contained a vampire go-kit with a bottle of iron-laced acid and other tools of his trade; it was something he had at the ready out of a self-professed mixture of preparation and paranoia.
“I assume he’s better trained than I was.” Rather than giving voice to his fears, he briefly eyed Tzadkiel’s back, then lied to Nyx. “You know, having family and all.”
“No.” Nyx shook her head and shoved her hands in her coat pockets. “I doubt it. And even if he is who he says he is, two of you against an entire nest of vampires aren’t great odds.”
“You think I would do something that stupid? Fight the entire mora at once with nothing but my ninjato?”
Benjamin pressed his lips together, holding back a more sarcastic retort. Of course he wouldn’t attack an entire clan of vampires after dark. He’d at least wait until daylight before he breached the stronghold and took it down. That was when they were at their weakest—though he doubted even that disadvantage would allow him to fight and kill more than three or four of the creatures at once.
“I think you’re distracted.” Nyx swept her arm outward, indicating a row of parked cars. “By being able to see, and by the idea that you might have a family of sorts. And by the idea of revenge.” She let her hand drop to her side. “Why did this guy appear only now, Benj? Why not before when you were a kid and really needed him? His family could have trained you…if he is who he says he is.”
Benjamin, together with Nyx and Akito, had been christening Boston’s streets and alleys with vampire blood for over ten years. No vampire, however, had ever been able to obscure itself from Benjamin’s second sight. Still, it didn’t mean Tzadkiel wasn’t something else equally dangerous, like a supernatural bounty hunter of some kind who worked for the vamps.
“Look.” Benjamin sighed, wishing he could ignore Nyx’s warning and his own internal alarm signals, and simply get lost in the improbably violent beauty of the icicles that hung with frozen menace from Beacon Hill’s brownstones. “I get it. This is stupid, but it’s a chance I’m willing to take. That plaque might conceal a door. I’m hoping Tzadkiel can lead us to something.”
Nyx’s answering laugh was rueful. “Temptation. He’s going to lead you to temptation.”
Though Benjamin could see Nyx’s features—their perky lines softened by luminescent eyes—better than ever, his sense of her was obscured by Tzadkiel’s aura. Golden hues were subsumed and smeared with violent purple, the color of royalty and ferocious summer storms.
“He’s that good-looking?” Benjamin asked. Curiosity, it seemed, wasn’t lethal only to cats.
Pitched to a painful fervor by the novelty of sight, Benjamin’s libido was at an all-time high—one that made him starkly aware of a need to get Tzadkiel alone. Not just to question him out of Nyx’s earshot, where she’d be safe from any threat, but also—if the man turned out not to be a threat—to see if they might complete some of what they’d started the previous evening. In which case, Benjamin no longer cared what kind of fuck it was—pity or otherwise—as long as the act was hard, intense, and ended with both him and Tzadkiel replete with exhaustion.
Nyx seemed to consider the man, who walked just far enough ahead to be out of earshot, and gave a little shudder. “Yeah. He’s sin incarnate.”
Slowing, Benjamin contemplated visions of himself entangled in a violent embrace that for once had nothing to do with fighting. Nyx moved ahead of him, clearing his peripheral vision of her aura. Reflected movement in a parked car’s passenger window snagged his attention, and he turned his head to frame object and motion together.
A man in a long wool military coat faced off with him in the glass. Benjamin lifted his fingers, and the man lifted his fingers too. A wild cascade of curls framed a strong jaw, reaching to sturdy but slight shoulders. Benjamin touched his own jaw, his fingers rasping against stubble. The other man scratched his chin too. The car in which he gazed was a low one—a sporty coupe, sleeker than the ones he recalled from two decades past—and Benjamin bent lower, fascinated, to come face-to-face with…
A monster.
He stumbled backward, a scream caught in his throat, and the monster retreated as well. The thing that had stared back at him only had half a face. Its eyes were a crisscross of ugly, sunken scars that distorted the bridge of its nose and made a ghostly ruin of the macabre visage.
“No,” Benjamin whispered, the one word as hoarse as if the swallowed cry had shredded his voice.
Frantic to find a way to hide from his own reflection, he scrounged in his pockets. Where were his sunglasses? Short, sharp breaths tore from his chest, and he patted his pockets in increasing frenzy.
“What is it?” Nyx trotted back to him.
“Glasses.” Benjamin choked on the word. “Where are they? I can’t find my sunglasses.”
Gentle fingers slid into his inner jacket pocket and withdrew the case. With shaking hands, Benjamin took the glasses and slid them on his face as Tzadkiel returned to where Benjamin and Nyx stood.
“Everything all right?” Tzadkiel asked.
“It’s fine.” The response came out sharper than Benjamin had intended. “I’m fine.”
Keeping Tzadkiel in his etheric peripheral vision, Benjamin did the equivalent of squinting into the sun. Nyx took his hand in hers. Steady and warm, her fingers curled around his palm with a reassuring squeeze. The comforting gesture made him feel human again. Almost.
They continued down the hill as a group. Tension was so thick Benjamin swore he could cut it with his sword. Trying not to look at any more car windows, he kept his attention fixed somewhere out over the Common. In the distance, perhaps sixty feet outside of Tzadkiel’s sphere, was only darkness.
Congregated at the stoplight, they awaited the signal change. Cars rushed by at a dizzying speed. Had things always moved so fast? Benjamin gripped his cane reflexively. Though he could see fine, he’d brought it along both out of habit and for the sword secreted inside.
Nyx’s phone buzzed, and she gave Benjamin’s hand a squeeze before letting go and fishing in her pocket. Akito, she mouthed, raising a finger, and hung back several paces as they crossed the street.
Benjamin paused on the steps overlooking the Common. Tzadkiel seemed to hesitate and take a deep breath as well. His aura flickered, casting broken purple tendrils over the formerly dark expanse. As they moved into the Common’s open space, the light filled in again. Snow blanketed the ground everywhere but the pathways. Pavement bisected the Common and melded into the darkness beyond. Hand gripping the banister, Benjamin descended the steps with more care than he normally used when relying upon feel, sound, and reflexive memory.
As they neared the rink, the ice skaters drew and held Benjamin’s attention. Bright music and laughter, lovers holding hands, and wobbly children found brief illumination in Tzadkiel’s aura. Benjamin walked backward, keeping the tableau in view until it winked into darkness as they moved out of range. Tzadkiel approached Parkman Bandstand with purposeful strides. When Benjamin reached the structure, Tzadkiel was already there, considering a space where Benjamin could see a panel in the side of the rotunda. A group of teens played music from a boom box on the platform above, using the bandstand as a makeshift dance floor. A few of them sat on the railings, smoking and sharing an illicit beer.
Arms folded, hands cradling his elbows, Tzadkiel appeared to consider the place where Benjamin had noted the hidden doorway the evening before. In the shadow of the man’s aura the door was completely visible. Unlike the ornate maintenance entry on the other side of the bandstand that could be clearly seen by anyone, this portal sported a series of faded, carved Greek letters.
Nyx trotted up, carrying Benjamin’s backpack, and let it, as well as her own, fall to the ground with a resolute whump.
“We need to open the door,” Tzadkiel said. “It’s sealed with magic. Can you see it?”
“Yeah. It’s so weird.” Benjamin approached the portal cautiously. “I mean, why would there be a door right here in the open?”
Tzadkiel joined him. “I imagine it’s not visible to people without certain…abilities,”
“Akito said not to go in without him.” Nyx, already unpacking her herbs and candles, didn’t look up from her task. “He’ll be here soon.”
Relieved to be acting and not reacting, Benjamin ran questing fingers over the barely visible lettering. “I’ll go in first. You next, Tzadkiel. Akito will bring up the rear. Nyx will make sure we’re not seen.”
Above them the teens jeered at the “freak with the candle fetish.”
Benjamin quelled the urge to vault the steps and show them what a freak really looked like. Instead, he perused the unusual lettering on the plaque. “It’s…This is Greek, right?”
Tzadkiel’s answering nod was a curt ripple of his blazing aura.
Memories of sunny summer afternoons spent in the library poring over language lessons reared. Benjamin took a deep breath and cracked his neck. If Tzadkiel were Greek, then this would be much easier if the man translated. Still, Benjamin’s pride said he had to give it a shot.
“Mu…” Benjamin read out, his fingers already tracing the first letter.
Gravel crunched beneath Tzadkiel’s boot.
“Omega…” Benjamin shook his head. He would have thought he’d at least remember the alphabet.
Tzadkiel stepped in so he and Benjamin stood shoulder to shoulder. “Show me where you see the letters?”
“Here.” Benjamin grabbed Tzadkiel’s hand. To Benjamin’s surprise, Tzadkiel, rather than drawing away, allowed Benjamin to manipulate his fingers over the granite, tracing each letter. Cool skin warmed readily to Benjamin’s touch. The scent of musk coated the back of Benjamin’s throat. They were definitely outside a vampire lair.
“It’s ancient Greek, not modern,” Tzadkiel said, not unkindly. “That’s why it’s stumping you.”
“Whatever,” Benjamin muttered.
“Mu, omicron, lambda, omega, nu,” Tzadkiel explained, running his fingers over the shimmering carvings with an expectant air.
Tzadkiel waited, and Benjamin wondered if he was supposed to try again himself. Instead of telling Tzadkiel to fuck off, he retraced the letters, mimicking Tzadkiel’s pronunciation. The man nodded his approval, and Benjamin fought back the urge to preen.
“It spells mōlon.” Tzadkiel pronounced the first vowel as long, and the second as short.
Benjamin repeated the word. Tzadkiel corrected his pronunciation. Benjamin pronounced it again, getting it on the second try. They continued, Tzadkiel’s fingers moving with Benjamin’s own over the letters of the second word with more patience than Benjamin’s uncle had ever displayed.
“Lambda, alpha, beta, epsilon,” Tzadkiel explained, as if they had all the time in the world. “It is pronounced lah-vey.”
Benjamin repeated the pronunciation, and got it on the first try.
“Good. Very good.” Tzadkiel took a half step back and strung the words together with seeming intention. “Mōlon labé…”
Nothing happened.
“Um.” Benjamin cleared his throat and glanced over his shoulder. “Was something supposed to happen?”
Tzadkiel cursed in Greek, or at least in Benjamin’s experience, that kind of inflection in any tongue usually signaled foul language.
“You try it.” Tzadkiel slapped at the stone and took a half step back.
“Mōlon labé?” Benjamin made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat following his own performance. The words that had been so powerful on the other man’s lips had come out like a half-assed question. “Sorry. That was pathet—” Benjamin started to apologize, when all around him the Common went dark. Tzadkiel’s aura seemed to pulse against a dome of lavender light.
Nyx must have used a different obfuscation spell, because hers had never looked like this. Just from examining the light it cast, Benjamin could tell that anyone standing outside the radius would see only the bandstand and a woman who seemed to have a thing for incense and candles loitering in the snow. Probably not even Nyx could see them, standing outside the circle as she did.
“What the hell?” Benjamin muttered.
Tzadkiel lifted his palm and laid it flat against the granite. Shoulder muscles hunching, he pushed at some unseen pressure point. Stone grated against stone, and damp air rushed out. Anticipation crackled through the air.
Indicating the door, Tzadkiel offered to let Benjamin enter first. “Shall we?”
Benjamin looked over his shoulder. Nyx had the duffel. Akito would be here soon. It couldn’t hurt to see what they were dealing with before he let his friends go inside.
Benjamin put a hand to the hilt of his walking stick, prepared to draw his ninjato. “After you.”
They stepped over a granite threshold, Tzadkiel first, Benjamin second. They were at the mouth of a network of branching passages, Tzadkiel at their head. The fine hairs on Benjamin’s arms prickled. Behind them, the stone door shimmered abruptly and closed.
Metal slithered against leather. Tzadkiel turned, brandishing a sword. A knife dropped from his sleeve into his free hand. Compact and wickedly curved, it had been designed to shred flesh. The knife was a hunter’s weapon. Except Benjamin had only ever known one other hunter who had carried such a blade, and the man who’d designed it had been his grandfather. This knife had the same ebony handle, and the Fuller family crest engraved in one side. In fact, its swooping lines had been one of the last things Benjamin had seen with his natural sight.
The moment froze and fractured, leaving death’s final chill in its wake. Benjamin knew what Tzadkiel would say before he spoke.
“I am the War King. And I have time for you now.”