Chapter 23

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

My world was dust and devastation.

Flecks of what used to be my vampire slipped through my fingers and onto the ground, smothering his jacket in fine, gray powder. Everything sounded like rushing water, my palms didn’t feel the grit of the ash as I scooped up fistfuls and squeezed.

I wrung my eyes shut, blocking out reality as I tried to focus on my magic. I reached for the tendrils, focused with everything I had on getting the tug of ice back into my arms. I knew I could bring him back, knew I could pull him into the ash like I had done at the tomb.

I had to.

I had to bring him back. It was the only shot I had to undo what had been done.

My temples were pounding, lungs stuck in a half-breath.

I couldn’t feel my magic anymore.

No annoying ants, no cold tendrils.

There was nothing. It was gone.

It had left with the scythe, now in the hands of some evil bitch who had taken one of the most important people in my life with her.

The crushing weight of my magic abandoning me sent me into a spiral, and I had been moments away from gasping my way into unconsciousness until I felt the warm numbness of powerful charm magic.

The rushing blood in my ears faded, my breathing eased, and I took a full breath to beg for Sias to let me pass out. I didn’t want to be conscious anymore.

His eyes were stuck in a frozen block of ice with a golden center, sadness surrounded by an anger so sharp it bled to the surface.

“You need to breathe.” His hands flanked my face, his voice a steely anchor keeping me from sinking under. His charm magic shielded me from hysteria, allowing me to wade over to the shallow end of despair. I still hurt, still bled from the hole that used to be my heart, but I could focus, I could rationalize in a weird, numb way.

“My magic is gone,” I told him, my eyes still pouring tears even though I wasn’t sobbing anymore. “I could bring him back if I had my magic, but it’s gone.”

“I know. I know.” He held me still so I couldn’t look back at Zane’s ashes. “Listen to me, Dallas. We cannot do anything more for Zane right now.”

“I can bring him back—” I insisted. Sias shook his head slowly.

“No, love. Not here, not now. Right now, we have to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

“I can’t leave him,” I cut in. “I’m not leaving him here. Not like this.”

Sias slipped his fingers through my hair and wiped my cheeks, then glanced around the room.

“Stay here,” he told me, springing up from where he had kneeled beside Zane and me, his magic still over me like a blanket.

When Sias returned, he was tossing out the cotton balls from one of the flip-top glass jars resting on the desk. The glass was set between us, and Sias gently removed Zane’s clothing from where the ashes had collected. His shirt, jeans, jacket and boots were shaken out and folded with careful movement, Sias treating everything that had touched Zane like it was sacred.

We took our time scooping up Zane’s ashes and placing them in the jar, one handful at a time.

It was the hardest yet the most serene thing I had ever done. Each handful took more of me with it, and by the time we were sweeping the finest pieces up with pinches, I felt like a ghost.

Sias closed the lid and locked it, setting it on top of the folded clothing before passing it to me.

“I need you to stand up now,” Sias told me, his hands on my upper arms. I could feel the pressure of his grip, but my body had gone cold. My mind was a blaring wind of white noise, and I could barely follow what he was saying. His charm magic rippled and pulled me a little more from the paralysis, soothing my pain enough to get me to my feet.

I watched distantly as Sias took my knife and kneeled by the door, busting the lock open with a few twists and a good kick to the seam. I was led out with one hand on my back, Sias holding my knife in his other.

The messenger that had been guarding the door was gone, my magic detector had gone blissfully still, the only sound the pulsing hum of Sias’s charm magic.

I kept waiting for the attack, waiting for the inevitable wave of grunts sent to finish us off. Surely at any moment, Hei would show back up to finish what she started. She’d storm down the hallway and slice us through using my stolen scythe, cut us up into pieces next to the shattered jar of Zane’s ashes.

But she never came.

The grunts never came.

The building was abandoned, silent minus the hum of the generator left running. The gate that had been tossed over the exit had been pushed up, fresh footprints in the mud near the entrance.

They had left us behind to rot down there, without even the courtesy of viewing us as a threat.

Either they hadn’t expected us to figure out how to get the door open, or they didn’t care. They had stolen what made me powerful, killed my vampire, and locked me in a room with a disarmed incubus to wither away and die.

Honestly, not a bad plan.

I had been pretty successfully stomped into the ground from all of that.

But Sias hadn’t.

He escorted me from the old medical facility, and kept me walking when I wanted to curl up and lie on the floor. His charm magic never wavered, never let me dip back into the ache that was waiting just below the surface.

He kept me from wanting to give in to how fully I had been destroyed.

Even in my grief, I saw how angry he was that there wasn’t a fight waiting for us on the other side. I saw how he held the knife in his grip, knuckles white and shaking. The muscles bunched over his jaw as he held the silence, how his eyes never flickered to any other colors, holding on to the cold hurt with the boiling rage center.

I had never seen them stay in one palette before.

Moving to the car and getting into it was a blur, so mundane and unimportant that my mind erased it the moment it happened. I held everything Zane was to my chest, wondering absently if I was ever going to wake up from this terrible dream.

“We’ll go get you a bag packed, gather Kevin and Zane’s cat, then get you back to my place,” Sias was telling me. “You can rest there and be safe. I don’t want you alone right now.”

“Twig,” I told him.

“What?”

“The cat.” I watched some tears fall onto the lid of Zane’s jar. “Her name is Twig.”

“Sorry. Twig,” he whispered. “We’ll get Twig.”

The sway of the car rocked me, the bland landscape of cold city and dark clouds whizzed past as Sias drove. I listened to the rhythmic dusting of the drizzle, the hum of the windshield wipers as they tossed away the droplets. A sound of plastic knocking against glass pulled me from the deep tunnel I was in.

My emotional blocker hung between me and Zane’s jar, bouncing against it as we rolled along.

It was still set to “on.”

I felt a piece of myself die at seeing that, knowing he didn’t feel how much it mattered to me that he was dying in my arms.

Sias glanced over as I rolled the window down, the string snapping as I ripped it off my neck and threw it out into the rain.

“I never told him how much I cared about him,” I confessed. “I never said a goddamn word.”

“He knew,” Sias told me. “Without a doubt.”

“I’m a coward,” I confessed. “I was so fucking scared he’d figure it out. What the hell is wrong with me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Dallas. There is no wrong way to love someone.”

Somehow, my heart managed to break a little more, the charm magic slipping enough to let a sob sneak through.

I had loved him.

So, so much.

I hugged his jar to my chest and cried, whispering hopes that he could somehow forgive me.

I wasn’t sure how the void worked when you didn’t have necromancy powers anymore, but I clung to the belief that somehow, in some way, he could hear how sorry I was.

By the time we arrived back at my apartment, my eyes were swollen and red, my head was throbbing, and Sias was working overtime to keep his charm magic in place. I had calmed, able to stop crying enough to catch my breath.

The charm helped keep me in a state of numb stasis, even as we rolled up to find all of my shit sitting in the rain.

Moving trucks were parked around the building, and people were pulling things out of Barnaby’s store wrapped in plastic.

“Gods and Saints,” Sias hissed, climbing out of the car the moment he threw it into park. I followed in a haze, leaving Zane’s clothing behind but still holding the jar.

My couch was soaked through, my swords thrown onto the cushions. My awesome chest of vampire-killing stuff was thrown onto its side beside my bed, which was soggy and beyond saving.

Most of my stuff was ruined, and I was apparently homeless.

It would have been really fucked up if I wasn’t already at rock bottom. Instead, it was kinda funny, because I had slipped into such a state of dark humor it was basically a branch of the void.

“Did you guys wanna piss on it before you go?” I asked one of the guys throwing stuff outside. “Think it would add a nice metaphor to the day.”

I thought it was at least chuckle worthy, but Sias sure as hell didn’t. He flew into boss daddy mode and started snapping orders, demanding information and threatening in a way only he could manage. Within just a few short minutes, the seizure of property was halted, the workers retreated to wait for instruction, but the damage was already done.

Barnaby’s shop was closed. Most of his stuff was gone. All my things were ruined anyway, and I didn’t fully care.

Barnaby materialized out of what seemed like thin air as I watched my couch drip, his face crumbling with worry.

“I can’t find them!” he was telling me. “Dallas, I’m sorry. I-I’ve been looking for over an hour.”

“Can’t find who?” I blinked, my brain having a hard time processing more than one thing at a time.

“Twig and Kevin!” He ran his hands over his hair to push the wet strands out of his face. “I think Twig ran off when they showed up. I opened some wet food, but she won’t come when I call her.”

I rubbed at the pain behind my eye.

“Wait. Kevin?” I asked. “He’s missing?”

“His tank is empty. His water is still there but he’s not in it!”

The stinging eased as I took a breath.

“He’s okay. He’s in his safe house.”

“Safe house? Dallas, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying to you right now,” Barnaby said, flustered and panicked. “Kevin is missing . Your fish is not in his tank.”

“He’s fine, Barns. It’s fine.” Some wind knocked over one of my mugs sitting on a table, and I watched as it rolled off and shattered, the shards landing in a puddle next to some old magazines that had turned into soggy mulch. A prickling wave of agony bit at the lining of my stomach as a cold realization hit.

“Zane’s books,” I breathed. “Where are his books?”

“I put them in a suitcase.” Barnaby gestured somewhere I didn’t really catch. “I grabbed them before they could get too wet. Some got a little soggy but…” he let out a long breath, eyes welling. “Dallas, I’m so sorry I let this happen. I’ll replace everything that got ruined.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “None of it matters.”

It was about that time that he noticed the jar, and his sorrow turned into something else.

“Where’s Zane?”

I didn’t need to answer. He noticed how I hugged the glass to my chest.

I had never been hugged like Barnaby held me in the rain that day. He held me with the same heartbreaking strength I had felt sinking my heart since the moment Zane died.

I held on to him like the life raft he was, and we cried for everything we had lost that afternoon.

I wasn’t alone. Not anymore. I had another brother to cry with, and that was more than I’d had in years.

“We’re going to be alright,” he promised me, leaning back to rub my arms with his hands. “We’re going to get through this, you and I. Somehow we’re stuck together, despite your best efforts.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, huffing my best attempt at a laugh. It fell a bit short, but I got a watery smile from him regardless. “I guess we are.”

“Barnaby.” Sias came over, a bag in his hand weighed down with something heavy. “Pack up a bag for a few days. I’ll help you navigate this tomorrow.”

Barnaby accepted the bag and peered into it, wiping his eyes as Funus peered up at him.

“There, there now,” Funus consoled. “Chin up, my friend. Nothing some tea and a good night’s sleep won’t cure.”

“Gods, I’d love some tea.” Barnaby inhaled life back into his soul through some tears. “I need to find a suitable hotel to stay in until I find someplace to go.”

“You’ll be staying at my estate,” Sias corrected. “I’ll have a room set up for you. Skip the formalities of refusing and go pack.”

“I’m almost too tired to be polite.” Barnaby slipped Funus’s bag onto his shoulder. “Dallas, we still need to find Twig and Kevin.”

I meandered around the building and into a neighboring alleyway, the plumes of heat from the coin laundry dryers filtering out into the street above. It smelled like fresh towels and fabric softener, and gave a pocket of warmth if you walked through at the right time of day.

I kneeled near some old crates that had been stacked near a recycle dumpster, moving them aside to reach the little alcove crafted from insulated boxes and repurposed pieces of a doghouse.

Inside our small bugout bunker was Kevin in his reserve fishbowl, sitting inside a tiki house waiting for me to arrive. His heating light was on, but it was angled to help keep Twig warm as she napped in a little circle beside his bowl.

“Good boy, Kevin.”

“Now, how in the hell—” Barnaby asked from behind me, standing next to an equally confused Sias. I hadn’t noticed they followed me over there, which meant we were going to have to move the bugout bunker in the future.

Kevin blew an angry bubble at me.

“Sorry,” I said, giving him some bloodworms. “It’s been a long day. I let my guard down.”

Twig blinked up at us sleepily, standing to stretch her butt out and mew for attention. I scooped her up and passed her to Sias, who tucked her into his nice thousand-dollar jacket to keep her warm. Kevin eyed me as I picked up his bowl but didn’t give me too much shit. I think he knew I was going through something.

Barnaby packed a modest suitcase of clothing and some belongings, and Zane’s books were placed in the trunk beside it.

I didn’t bother to grab anything besides my weapons and chest. Everything else was junk, things I didn’t care to try and save. None of that shit mattered anymore. Not really.

None of us spoke as Sias drove us away from our home.

I knew I should have felt bad for Barns, should have done more to try and comfort him after losing everything he had but I was too deep into my own despair to focus on anything other than the raw ache that constantly ripped down my chest. I selfishly didn’t attempt to do anything more than exist.

In another life, only a week or so in the past, I would have been over the moon that I was staying in Sias’s home. I had been trying to summon the courage to ask him to let me stay, to be closer to him. This wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind during those daydreams. They definitely involved less death and zero total, soul-crushing heartbreak.

It kind of put a sour taste to the experience.

I placed Kevin on the dresser in my room, plugged in his heater and promised to get him a better tank as soon as I could. The room was big and beautiful, with a private bathroom and a bed made of feathers probably harvested from an endangered species of silk bird. Everything was rich and wooden, perfect and pristine.

I would have really loved it if I could muster a fuck to give.

Instead, I sat on the silk bird bed and set Zane’s jar beside me, wondering idly what he would have thought about the place. I knew for sure he’d want to see Sias’s library, set up a little reading nook near the window so Twig could climb into his lap while he read. Said little beastie climbed the expensive comforter and marched around, sniffing everything with each step.

She nudged Zane with her face, rubbing both sides across it.

Even in death, he was hers.

“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” I scratched at the base of her tail, her namesake sticking straight up. “I guess I’ll be taking care of you from now on. We gotta talk about the poop box, you little runt.”

Sias came in, approaching carefully to set Zane’s folded clothing on the foot of the bed. Twig trotted over and climbed onto his jacket to claim the spot for herself.

It made my heart ache.

Sias’s magic had eased enough to let me feel the gentle needling of grief, but still kept the tidal wave from crushing me. I had to blink more tears from my eyes as he came to sit beside me, close enough to comfort without overwhelming me with contact.

“I’m not going to assume I know how badly you’re hurting, love. And I’m not arrogant enough to believe there’s anything I can offer you in this moment that could help ease that pain,” he whispered, the gentlest I had ever heard him sound. “Tell me what you need, and it’s yours.”

Twig was napping on Zane’s jacket, his ashes only a few inches away. My heart was so heavy, I thought it was going to fall out of my chest and sink to the core of the planet, combust and turn into a black hole.

Beyond grief, beyond sadness and pain, the easiest emotion to grab onto was scorching and vindicating. White-hot hate blistered through and it burned me from the inside out, tempering my mind into a honed weapon.

“What I need.” I paced myself, worried flames might erupt from my mouth if I spoke too quickly. “Is a powerful, rich, vicious bastard with access to resources, who can help me burn everything Florence Pierce is to the ground.”

I met Sias’s gaze, his eyes flaring yellow in the center while the edges stayed ice blue.

“That’s what I need,” I told him. “I need the worst side of you, the darkest part of you.”

“You have it,” he promised in a whisper.

When he offered his hand, I took it and squeezed.

Florence Pierce was done. Her legacy was done. Everything she was, everything she could have been, everything she dreamed of was going to be ash and death and destroyed.

And I was going to be the vengeful asshole who lit the match.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Kevin swimming. I barely registered what he was doing until he was in midair, the display of acrobatics flipped my heart.

The double backflip.

Zane had really taught him the double fucking backflip.

The sound of Kevin landing back into his water with a little ploop brought a splash of clarity. Revenge was still on the table, but there was another plan in place. Something crazy, deadly and probably impossible.

But so was love, right?

“I know what I need to do,” I whispered. “I need to get my scythe back.”

“Whatever you need, darling,” Sias agreed. “I’ll help you get your revenge. There’s nothing that can stop us.”

“We’re not going to just destroy them, Sias.” I smiled, feeling hope punch through the rage, the sadness and the darkness pulling me down into dust. I felt it bloom like a flower over my heart.

“I’m going to rip the void open and get my vampire back.”

To Be Continued