Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

L io almost didn't recognize Errante or Ringmaster Rafe in jeans and casual shirts—a blue button down with the sleeves rolled up his forearms in Errante's case and a T-shirt advertising "See the Flying Galliers at the Carnival of Mysteries" in Rafe's. Lio had worried that Errante never left the Carnival, but now he sat at the conference table with Bel, Morrisey, Farren, Lio, and Jessa, sipping coffee and waiting for security to bring Udeall.

"Is that an actual Carnival?" Farren asked as he regarded Rafe's T-shirt.

"Sure is. Set up on the outskirts of Atlanta. You should pay us a visit." Rafe gestured at his shirt. "The Flying Galliers must be seen to be believed."

"Is there a fortune teller?" Jessa asked. "One of my hosts used to go to a psychic for advice."

Lio felt the need to defend Madame Persephone's reputation. Like Errante, she knew pretty much everything. "Madame Persephone is more than a mere fortune teller."

Jessa turned pleading eyes to Farren. "Can we go tonight? Please?" She batted her long eyelashes.

Farren turned toward Morrisey, who was looking everywhere but at Farren, who grinned. Hopefully, Lio would someday be able to communicate silently with Bel with such ease, not just in moments of crisis.

"After work," Farren promised. "Provided we finish up here."

A tap came at the door. Morrisey rose and opened it.

Two members of the Alternate Entities Task Force stood in the hallway, flanking a somewhat unkempt Udeall. Even cuffed with two guards, she inspired fear in Lio. All those years of being under her control…

Bel reached under the table and took hold of Lio's hand. Lio hadn't shut down their budding bond, which broadcast his fear. He squeezed Bel's hand, trying to communicate his appreciation for the support.

"Don't worry," Bel murmured. "The room is shielded. She can't use any of her powers here."

Sadly, neither could anyone else, which left Lio feeling like he was about to enter a prizefight with one arm tied behind his back.

"Bring her in." Morrisey beckoned toward the far end of the conference table.

The guards sat, as did the very subdued and handcuffed Udeall. "I suppose you brought me here to gloat," she said, her voice a bit raspy.

"Not at all," Farren began in his usual cheerful tones. "First, I'd like to introduce you to Errante Ame and Ringmaster Rafe of the Carnival of Mysteries."

Udeall studied both at length. "You aren't Domusian. I don't know what you are, but you're not human either."

"What we are is of no importance to you," Errante said smoothly. "It is the information we can provide that you will find most interesting."

Udeall glowered. "There's nothing you can say to me that I want to hear."

"That may be true." Errante relaxed in his chair, the opposite of Udeall's guarded tension. "However, I understand you are a follower of Set."

"You're not worthy to speak Set's name," Udeall growled. Actually growled.

"Ah, but I am," Errante replied. "You see, I knew Set long before he ever came to your realm. Do you know yours isn't the only place he destroyed?"

Udeall stared straight ahead, studying a wall. A muscle twitched in her jaw.

Errante continued, undeterred by the silence. "Do you know why he destroyed those worlds?"

"For the glory of his name and to increase his power." The words were spoken with too much zeal, like a true sycophant.

"Yes, but it was not the noble endeavor you appear to believe. You see, Set murdered many people without remorse to gain their power. He wiped out one man's entire family and then tried to destroy that man out of fear and hatred. The battle raged for several centuries, Set destroying world after world, realm after realm, in his search for his rival. When they finally met, his rival bested him. In the realm and timeline we currently occupy, he died centuries ago."

Udeall stiffened. "I don't believe you."

"It matters not to me one way or the other what you believe, but it is the truth. I am the one he sought, and I killed him. Too late to save my family, I'm afraid, but Set can do no more harm."

Errante knew Set. Had killed Set. He really must be old, then. And definitely not human.

Udeall shot to her feet. "Liar!"

Both guards jumped up, tasers at the ready.

Errante wasn't backing down. "Do you know why he wanted you to banish Tenebris? Because he consumed their power, but if several joined together, they could repel him. But he has been long dead. Your kind have killed millions for no reason. You have allowed your realm and people to perish for a being that is ancient history."

Udeall remained silent.

"Udeall, I didn't know you in Domus, but I have heard your name," Farren said. "They said you were fair, generous, and a good mentor. I see now it was all a lie. You were nothing but self-serving. What did Set promise you in exchange for betraying your people?"

"He said his believers would join him in his travels. That we would be gods." Udeall didn't sound quite as certain as she had before.

"He'd never have done that." Errante regarded Udeall with a hint of pity in his uniquely colored eyes. "Set was jealous and would never share power."

"I did what I had to," Udeall said, with a stubborn tilt to her chin.

Farren kept his voice calm, a counterpoint to Udeall's ravings. "You have no recourse. We've ruined all your plans."

Udeall hung her head. She'd played her last hand and lost.

A tingle swept over Lio's skin, like static. Had someone lifted the shielding?

Farren stood, striding to Udeall, seeing eye to eye. "Udeall, for betraying your people, for costing untold innocent lives, I sentence you to banishment. May you find your false god in oblivion."

A shining spot appeared in the air near Udeall's head, growing larger. Udeall shrieked. The inky black aura swirled around her, clinging to her, even as the edges strayed closer to the portal.

Everything had happened so quickly at the warehouse that Lio hadn't had time to observe the process closely, acting on pure instinct. Now, he watched, riveted, as a soul pulled free of its host.

The edge touched the portal, dipping inside. Udeall shrieked again as the blackness suddenly vanished into the shining portal. The portal snapped closed, disappearing.

The woman's body fell from the chair. Bel rushed to her side, dropping to the floor and pressing two fingers against her throat.

Farren placed a hand on Bel's shoulder. "The being who inhabited this body is in the great beyond now. The human Udeall displaced is beyond our help."

Bel's sorrow permeated his connection with Lio. Lio sat on the floor, taking Bel's hand. Bel saw Udeall as more than a monster and would need time to grieve, even if the person he grieved never truly existed.

Lio opened the bond as much as he could, sending over love and comfort, though he couldn't mourn Udeall's loss.

But he could mourn what Udeall had done to him, to Bel, and to so many others.

He and Bel stayed on the ugly gray carpet, clinging to each other while Nutrixes came and carried the body away. It took several moments for Lio to realize the room had gone quiet. He looked up and saw no one, just him and Bel. He rose, offered Bel a hand up, and pulled his lover to his feet.

Farren came back through the door. "Is there anything we can do? The offers still hold. You're welcome to stay here in Atlanta. You can work with FAET or find independent jobs and live civilian lives."

Bel met Lio's gaze. "Can you bring everyone back in?" Lio asked. "We might have a crazy idea we want to discuss with everyone."

Morrisey, Farren, and Jessa rejoined Lio and Bel in the conference room. Lio no longer hid holding Bel's hand and joined their fingers on the tabletop.

He waited until everyone settled to begin. "You met Errante Ame. I'm not sure what kind of being he is, but he has some mind-boggling powers to move the entire Carnival of Mysteries to different places nearly every night."

Farren nodded, glancing down at Bel and Lio's joined hands and then up at their faces, a smile tugging at his lips. "Morrisey and I have never seen his like before, either, but we're certainly glad he backed us today."

"From all I've heard, he is a good man…spirit… whatever , who feels responsible for his enemy causing Domus's extinction." Lio paused, waiting to see if anyone offered input. They didn't, so he pushed on. "I've been told that legends often have their start in reality. Domus legends say a Tenebris and a Lux created the realm. I don't know how this was possible, but Errante assured me it's true."

Farren murmured softly to Morrisey while Jessa tapped away on a tablet computer. Life as normal for them. Lio and Bel were just two more travelers who'd entered their orbit. They'd continue working as a team long after Bel and Lio left.

Lio took a deep breath and exhaled a whoosh of air. Now, to suggest the most bizarre plot FAET had likely ever heard. "If it's true, Bel and I would like to recreate Domus, or at least someplace similar. What we've seen here tells us that Domusians need a home of their own, not just a place in a previously occupied world where some see us as the enemy. A home of our own."

Farren leaned back in his chair, tapping an ink pen on the table until Morrisey stopped him with a scowl. "Sorry. Bad habit. Anyway, how do you propose to make that happen?"

"We don't know," Bel said. "We don't even know if it can happen. We only know that we want to try."

Jessa lifted her attention from the computer, her eyes wide. "But what happens if you fail? Can you come back here?"

Lio exchanged a look with Bel, who gave him a gentle smile that sent flutters through his heart. "No. It's a one-way trip and a risk we're willing to take. We'll be together." Lio tore his gaze from Bel's to find Morrisey scowling.

"A legend? Really? You'd risk your lives for a legend?" Morrisey snorted. "Seems like a damned fool thing to do."

Lio tapped into his connection with Bel and got his approval before speaking. "People have risked a lot more for a lot less. Errante has offered to help us, and I don't think he would have if he didn't think we stood some chance for success. But we're not going right away. We have learning and planning to do first. We just wanted to let you know what our end game is."

"Even if you could do this, it might take centuries," Farren chimed in.

Lio nodded. "Yes. It would. But nothing worthwhile is ever fast or easy, is it?" His heartbeat raced. Could this actually be real? Could he, Bel, and the others make this happen?

For long moments, no one spoke. Morrisey broke the quiet with, "We'll do whatever we can to help."

Lio followed Bel back to the room that they now intended to share—officially Bel's. There were so many plans to make and details to work out. They could all wait until later.

Neither said anything on the way. The moment they entered and closed the door, Bel wrapped Lio in his arms, pressing their foreheads together. Words weren't necessary. The bond had grown. Through the power Lio poured into Bel, he felt his own emotions radiate back at him: fear, anxiety, hope, and excitement.

They tipped their heads, lips meeting, mouths opening, tongues sliding together. This was no frantic coming together but a gentle exploration of the bond, where each of them stopped being an individual and became part of something so much… more.

Lio rested his hand against Bel's cheek, enjoying the rasp of coppery beard stubble against his fingertips. The disparity in their Domusian stations would've made others judge them. Domus hadn't been perfect, but perhaps the remaining Domusians had learned from their mistakes and were now prepared to make a better home for all their people.

Few existing Domusians would survive to see the plans come to fruition unless they changed bodies many times, possibly not even Bel and Lio, but they had to try.

Bel stepped back, pulled his FAET T-shirt over his head, and dropped it on the floor. Lio mirrored his actions. Slowly, slowly, they stripped to nothing, standing naked before each other. Would conjuring their former bodies even work? Lio hadn't tried anything like this since waking in a human body. He closed his eyes and focused on memories of bright light and wings, of floating on breezes and taking sustenance from the atmosphere.

Something clicked into place in his mind. He opened his eyes to see a shining being before him, beautiful in its radiance. Now, he fully understood why some people might catch a glimpse of someone like Bel in his natural form and call them an angel. He shone with inner light, roughly the shape of a human, but with a gorgeous golden aura and the appearance of wings of light, which he fanned open and closed.

Lio didn't need to look at himself to know he appeared a deep, deep gray, nearly black, lit by inner light but nowhere near as radiant.

"Look at yourself," Bel sent a mental image.

Lio turned around to see himself in the full-length mirror. Instead of pure darkness, he glowed pearl gray, swirling with darker colors, though his aura appeared inky black. Before, he'd taken the label of Tenebris as an evil thing since humans would've called him a demon.

No longer separated by an outdated tier system, he and Bel mirrored each other—darkness and light, two halves of a whole. He turned back to Bel and stepped forward, blending the dark with the light, joining their souls and their bodies.

The image might be pure illusion, but it reflected them as they were.

Like the first Tenebris and Lux came together and created Domus, Lio and Bel had found each other. One day, they, too, might become legends.

"I want to hold you in human form," Lio said. He'd met Bel as a human, first held him as a human, and he still hadn't gotten over the association of his Domusian body with his imprisonment.

Together, they dropped the radiance, appearing as human men once again, Bel with his beautifully defined muscles, the luxurious mat of copper-colored chest hair, and erect cock. There was nothing gentle about their coming together. They grasped each other's shoulders and devoured each other's mouths.

Lio and Bel connected in a rush of firm muscles, hard cocks, and desire, barely reaching the bed before collapsing, Bel on his back with Lio on top. Lio grabbed the tube of lube on the nightstand and a condom. He slicked two fingers and reached back, slowly circling his hole before pressing in the tiniest bit, while Bel slipped on the condom and propped on his elbows to enjoy the show.

He watched every movement, which Lio exaggerated because Bel wasn't in the best position to watch those fingers. Lio also added sound effects, moaning as he prepared himself.

His fingers felt so good at his opening, stretching, getting him ready for so much more. Bel stroked Lio's thigh, never taking his eyes from Lio's thrusting hand.

"Damn, Lio. I want to be in there."

Lio tossed the tube away and rubbed the remaining lube from his fingers onto Bel's cock, adding extra strokes to be teasing.

Bel rolled his head back, letting out a long, low moan. "Oh, Lio. You're killing me here."

A smile played over Lio's lips. He directed Bel's cock to his hole, circling with no pressure. Then he sank down. Oh, the delicious burn. The overload of sensory input as they joined in the human way.

Bel gasped, gripping Lio's hips. "You feel every bit as good as I've been imagining all day."

They moved as one, establishing a rhythm, Bel thrusting upward and Lio dropping down, Bel's cock rubbing intimate places inside Lio in just the right way. So glorious, the pants and moans, the bunch and release of muscles, the soft groaning whenever something felt particularly right.

Lio leaned down and claimed Bel's mouth while doing his best not to let his tempo falter. He straightened and stared down at the light to balance his darkness, now understanding how two very different people fit together so perfectly.

He rose and fell, reveling in every thrust, the sliding of Bel's cock into his body, the connection.

Pressure began in his groin, along with tingling at the base of his spine. Lio laced his fingers with Bel's, arched his back as every muscle seized, and let go, raining pearly drops onto Bel's chest. Bel tensed, crying out, and joined Lio in ecstasy.

Lio collapsed onto Bel, his body shuddering, panting for air, and feeling totally drained in the most glorious of ways. Aftershocks coursed through him. Bel wrapped strong arms around Lio and simply held him while their heart rates calmed.

White light enveloped them both, and suddenly, there was no Lio or Bel, just two halves of a whole. Lio felt the love in Bel's heart, his insecurities about the future, like Bel now felt Lio's.

But where did one start and the other end? Did it matter? Not to Lio, Bel, or their fully-formed bond.