18. A Savage Wound

"The sunlight wards are perfect," Angel murmured as he examined them with his inner vision. He was in the foyer of the Mansion, Milly upstairs showering after Rory healed her few minor injuries.

"Ignacio added Master Batiste and me to the wards—it's a pleasure to stand in the sun in this grand old house." Simeon said from his spot under a beam of sunlight coming through the foyer windows by the front door. "This place has far too many windows to be comfortable for the undead without the wards."

Angel frowned a bit, feeling bad that he hadn't been able to accommodate his mate before. Considering how much time they spent at the Mansion lately, Simeon must be relieved to have more freedom of movement.

"I'm sorry." It came out before Angel even realized he was talking.

"For what, mo ghra?" Simeon asked, emerald eyes curious.

"All the times I dragged you here, I guess. It's a damn graveyard full of sunlight, laying bare old memories and endless grief." Angel inhaled roughly. "And I kept you penned up in the damn library like a pet or something."

"Angel," Simeon was in front of him so fast he never saw Simeon move. "Don't you dare."

"Dare?"

"Speak badly of yourself. I love you dearly, and you'll not speak badly of yourself. You did the best by me that you could—there's no forcing the magic, my love. You know this. And this was not a failure on your part. The magic is in place now, and I'm safe in this building."

Angel tried to smile. Simeon was so earnest and sincere—he made Angel emotional in all kinds of ways. "I love you, too. And you're right. I wouldn't be upset if Daniel had succeeded in casting this before his transformation, I'd be proud of him. I think it's bothering me that it was Ignacio that succeeded where I didn't."

"By succeeding to cast the wards, he proved the Mansion to be his home?"

"Ouch," Angel sighed. "Yeah. I want to treat him like an outsider, but he's as much family as Isaac or Daniel, and I'm so torn on how I feel about him being here and being alive. The wards were laid perfectly because this place is his home, and that rankles."

A scuff of leather on stone drew his attention to the base of the stairs. Ignacio stood there, Ashwin a few steps above him on the stairs. Leo was nowhere to be seen, and Angel hoped the boy stayed away for the immediate future. Ignacio eyed Angel with a pensive stare, and Angel returned it boldly.

It was time.

"Where the fuck were you?" Angel said softly, emotion making each word tremble in the air between him and Ignacio. "Where the fuck were you?"

Ignacio didn't pretend to misunderstand his question. "Protecting my son."

"What about your great-grandson?" Angel demanded angrily. "Grandpa Artie was your great-grandson, and he is dead, his sons and daughters dead, his grandchildren dead! All of them are dead!"

"Arturo knew about and supported our decision to stay in Europe after the attack on us in Spain." Ignacio said calmly, as if what he was saying made any sense whatsoever. "He asked us to stay away from Boston."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Angel understood the words but they were not making any sense; there was no context to clue him in. "He knew you were alive? Bullshit! No one knew you were alive!"

"Everyone knew," Ignacio replied evenly, though his brows creased a bit. "You knew, you had to have known. Isaac was too young, but you were old enough to know. Don't pretend you didn't know why we were gone so long. You never responded to my messages. I thought—grief is all-consuming; I thought you didn't care to involve us, as we were strangers to you."

He lost what control he had, gone in a wave of grief and rage.

"What the fuck are you talking about!" Angel shouted, and he charged across the foyer to Ignacio. Simeon kept pace with him but refrained from holding him back.

Ashwin moved up beside his mate, but a simple gesture from Ignacio had Ashwin stepping away. Angel crashed into Ignacio, fisting both hands in his shirt and trying to shake the larger man, to no avail.

Ashwin made to intercede but Simeon stepped in front of him, some silent communication happening between the two vampires. Angel snarled up at Ignacio, "I never knew a damn thing about you. To me, you were dead and gone, history in truth. Never once did I think about you outside of history lessons, not until Ashwin came sniffing around last month. Even then, I doubted it—how could you be alive and not be here with us? After what happened?" The last came out tortured.

"Why?" Angel all but screamed, strangled by sobs.

Big hands grabbed his wrists, not crushing, but firm, careful of their strength.

"How old were you when they died?" Ignacio asked urgently, but with care, as if afraid of the answer.

"What does that matter? You're standing in front of me, this grief is a savage wound, and I can't breathe."

"My love," Simeon extracted Angel from Ignacio swiftly, gently, guiding him to the stairs and making him sit on the bottom step, head between his knees. "Breathe slowly, take it easy. Just breathe."

Angel tried. His heart was racing, adrenaline and grief raging through his body. Nothing but grief was left in him.

The tears came, and hot trails burned down his cheeks, tears falling to the stone floor with tiny splats he felt more than heard. Simeon sat beside him, and a hand rubbed up and down his back along his spine, warming up and trying to soothe.

A pair of dark leather boots came into view, then Ignacio was crouching down in front of him, going to one knee so they were close to the same height. Ignacio exhaled, gathering himself. There was pain in his eyes, the crow's feet lines bracketing them deepened by grief. When he spoke, it was even and calm, but his gaze was intense and focused on Angel.

"How old were you?" Ignacio asked, then shook his head once, as if impatient with himself. "Never mind, you must not have been twenty-one yet. I can't believe I never realized that–I am so sorry. Your grandfather, Arturo, my great-grandson, hadn't yet told you the family secret. Kept from all Salvatores until their twenty-first birthday, and they were sworn to secrecy thereafter. Our existence was hidden from the world, first to cement the falsehood of my passing, and then to keep us safe from the Council."

"What?" Angel gasped out, face wet from tears, words choked by grief. "I don't understand."

"Iggy and I finally cemented our bond the year before he supposedly died." Ashwin stepped in and continued the tale, putting a hand on Ignacio's shoulder in comfort. "It increased his power exponentially and drew the attention of the Council. He was asked to work for them and refused. The harassment began soon after, the High Council aiding the Macavoys and Melbournes behind the scenes during the conflict. It drove the Wars to a fever pitch, and so…"

"We faked my death when my mother, Astoria, fell in battle destroying the Melbournes. It was the easiest way to make the Council lose interest in the conflict. By then, my elder son Arturo, your grandfather's namesake, was old enough to lead the clan, and I stepped back. We left for Europe, and with a few exceptions, stayed there almost exclusively since my death was faked." Ignacio said, taking over. His voice was roughened by pain, his expression taut with a rising grief. "My brother Aurelio chose to move his family to Spain as well, establishing the cousin branch you must have known about. We'd return every generation or so to see the family, to let the next generation know we were alive, meet new family members…We were planning a trip back the year you turned twenty-one, the year all Salvatores were told the secret. But Arturo warned us to stay in Europe; the Wars were at a fever pitch, and the Council was rumored to be in town. My great-grandson warned us away. Said it was a bad time to bring an infant to a war zone."

"I don't…" Angel stammered.

Ashwin came and sat beside Angel. He spoke softly but clearly, his gaze earnest. "Iggy and I spent years traveling. We'd go years before trackers found us and we'd need to move on. Almost twenty years had passed since the last Council enforcers came for us—we thought at last we were safe. We decided to have a family, finally, after a century of it just being the two of us. We found a surrogate, and settled in Spain near some of Aurelio's descendants, our Salvatore cousins, and waited for Leandro to arrive."

"What happened?" Angel asked, trying to gather himself.

Ashwin grimaced, an old pain in his eyes. "A week after Leandro was born, the surrogate appeared on our doorstep saying that High Council enforcers had come knocking on her door, asking about the parents of the child she had delivered. She refused to tell them anything, but they threatened her. She came to us to warn us of their intentions, but instead led the Council right to our doorstep. The resulting fight left her dead, and us on the run with a newborn."

Angel had nothing to say. He merely stared at Ashwin, then looked at Ignacio, who merely nodded once, confirming Angel's unspoken question. Ignacio appeared as exhausted as Angel felt.

Ignacio continued the tale, speaking in a deep timbre that carried grief. "While we were on the run, we talked about where to go. We called Arturo to discuss our options. When we failed to hear back from him, we learned…about the Massacre. My descendants, wiped from this earth, all of them but two. A mass killing, rumored to be orchestrated by the High Council. And us with a newborn." Ignacio sat heavily on the floor with a long exhale, took a deep breath, and then continued. "A newborn in an active war zone, a place of mass murder, a place where the entire family except for two people were slain? We could not risk it. We were afraid to risk the crossing in case we were ambushed by the Council, and we were being actively hunted, afraid as well to bring the Council back to Boston with us if we sought sanctuary here. Arturo's last message to us was to stay away, and so we did. We did try to reach you, but we never got a response, and had no other way of contacting you that the Council could not root out."

"Did you call? Because we weren't here. We left the Mansion. We were in Beacon Hill days after it happened." Angel said, wiping at his face and the tears streaming from his eyes.

Ignacio stood and pulled out something from his pants pocket. He held out the small round object, and Angel took it without thinking, feeling the subtle thrum of elementalist magics once it was in his hand.

"Oh," Angel sighed in revelation. "A talking mirror." He opened the silver compact, etched in heavy detail, revealing a silver-backed mirror with startling clarity for its age. "Where's the twin to it?"

"I'm not sure," Ignacio replied. "It's bespelled to be hidden from magical senses unless in physical contact with a Salvatore by blood who is also of age. I can't find the matching mirror that belonged to Arturo. It's not in his bedroom."

Angel shut the compact, handing it back to Ignacio. Once it was out of his hand, his ability to sense the magic disappeared. A subtle and masterfully made artifact. Angel was impressed. "I think I know where the matching mirror may be."

He stood and walked past Ignacio toward the very first door of the foyer, one he ignored, walked past daily like it didn't exist. Sealed and locked, never to be opened again.

The parlor was the largest room after the library, used for greeting guests, or as the family gathering spot when it was just them. Angel's grandparents would sip tea by the windows, his father would lie on one of the couches with August, discussing their day, and his mother would play with Isaac by the hearth, showing him how she grew a seed into a flower. Cousins would play cards or chess, or video games in the far corners away from their grandparents, as the noise was a bit much. His grandfather Arturo, Artie, had been a powerful elementalist who was over a hundred years old and still quite spry, but a handful of twenty-somethings playing video games very loudly was his limit.

Angel set the spells to lock away the room the very day it was sealed by a cleanup crew sent by the human authorities. It had been destroyed, torn apart, covered in gore and bodies flung everywhere, human, practitioner, and vampire.

The vampires burned. Seconds after Raine fell in battle in the front yard, Angel set them all aflame with the mourning fire spell, flash-fire quick, jumping from one bewitched vampire to the next, killing them faster than the spell they all consumed the very same night they came for the Salvatores.

The parlor was full of death, even now. It was where most of the Salvatores died, and a great many vampires as well.

"Angel?" Isaac called to him, and Angel realized he was standing outside the parlor doors, hand extended a hairsbreadth from the knob. His brother was there, presumably because Simeon called him, worried.

Isaac came to his side, took his free hand, and gripped it tightly. "We don't need to open the door."

Angel swallowed roughly. "I need to know."

Isaac squeezed his hand, and bravely said, "Okay. Go ahead."

Removing the spells was easier than he thought. They were the same preservation spells he placed on the rest of the building, the estate maintenance spells humming happily in the background.

He canceled the preservation spells, the energy dissipating quickly. He dismissed the locking spell next, and it went with a whisper. And then it was just the doorknob, bronze metal waiting, cool to the touch.

It turned easily, far easier than he was expecting, and the door slid open with a sigh of stale air and a hint of dust.

And blood.

The scent of grief was overwhelming, pain and anger mixing the emotions into a heady combination that made his mate's heart race, pumping hard. Angel was as raw and vulnerable as he'd ever seen him, and for him to be so in front of others merely proved how deeply it affected Angel in every way.

Isaac had come quickly, answering Simeon's text by running down the stairs to his brother without hesitation or need for an explanation.

Angel standing in front of the parlor doors was all the explanation needed.

Simeon was not one for pushing people. He had more than enough patience to watch boulders erode to dust. Pushing Angel to confront the profound loss and grief in his past was something Simeon didn't hold with—there was no rush. They had eternity, and Angel was not growing older. If he wanted to wait ten minutes, another ten years, or ten centuries to confront his losses, then Simeon would be there the whole way, supporting his healing however it happened.

He stood by Angel's shoulder opposite Isaac, and watched as Angel finished reaching for the knob and turned it.

Simeon controlled his instinctive response to the blood and death that escaped the parlor as the door swung inward. He kept his defensive reaction under control and his fangs and talons in—the danger was long gone.

It was dark but for the light seeping through ragged curtains. Little was visible past the door, but what he could make out was devastation.

Pooled blood had been hastily wiped up, but the stains were left untreated. Furniture was righted, but the damage remained—broken bits hung haphazardly, tears and scorch marks on upholstery and cushions. The wooden floor was scorched and gouged, rugs thrown to the side of the room in a heap.

"Oh Hecate," someone whispered, broken and aghast. Simeon turned to see Ignacio waver on his feet, and Ashwin was there, holding up his mate. Ignacio was crying silently, tears escaping unnoticed as he stared at the devastation in the room.

Constans came down the stairs, likely having sensed his mate's distress, and weaved through the others and made it to Isaac's side in time for the brothers to open the other door and push both wide.

"I never asked," Isaac spoke softly, almost a whisper. "I never asked what was past the door."

"I never wanted you to," Angel replied, pulling himself together enough to answer Isaac. "It's worse the farther in you go."

"Will you think less of me if I don't go in?" Isaac asked, voice thin with pain.

"Of course not."

Simeon took Isaac's place as Angel stepped into the parlor. Isaac stayed in the doorway with Constans, wrapped in each other's arms. Ignacio remained frozen in place, Ashwin propping his mate up.

The view was more of the same, but it became very clear to Simeon then that a large number of people had died in that room, bloodily, and with a fight. Scorch marks from burning vampires littered the walls and floor, the ceiling darkened by soot. There were places where spells hit furniture and the walls were blackened and reduced to char. Clearly at least one of the deceased Salvatores had been a fire mage.

The room was quite large, and in every corner and along every wall were signs of a battle. He smelled the lingering scents of death, vampires, and blood. So much blood.

Angel's spells had sealed the room perfectly. Preserved everything as it had been days after the Massacre.

The only thing missing was the bodies, and the ashes of burned vampires.

"My love, go to Leo. Keep him from coming down here. He cannot see this." Ignacio said to Ashwin, the sorcerer standing in the doorway, having come in a few steps behind them.

"I love you, and I'm so sorry. I'll distract him." Ashwin kissed Ignacio on the cheek, and blurred away, presumably going to their son.

Simeon agreed silently. No child should see this room. Not in its current state.

"I was barely standing in the immediate aftermath. The bodies were tended to, the windows replaced, and then I sealed it." Angel said, not speaking to anyone in particular. His voice was hollowed out by grief. "Anything that wouldn't burn when I cremated them I put in their rooms, and I don't remember anyone with a mirror. But then, I wasn't looking for one, so maybe… I was a mess. Shattered. I was on autopilot." Angel looked back a bit over his shoulder. "Who had the mirror's twin?"

"Arturo." Ignacio answered, stepping farther into the room, pale beneath his tan, his eyes haunted, cheeks wet from hastily wiped tears.

"I…" Angel exhaled hard. "He was over here." Angel walked deeper into the room, to the far wall and the cold hearth. Angel stopped not far away from the wall, staring down at a large black stain in the wood. "Here."

Angel went still, too still for a mortal, and Simeon saw horrors in his eyes. He went to his mate, and gently ran a hand down his back, trying to soothe. "Let me look, mo ghra." Angel gave a distracted nod, dark eyes wet with tears, face pale.

Simeon stepped away from his mate and began searching the area. Underneath furniture, under the rugs askew on the floor, and it took less than a minute for Simeon to find the small silver mirror under a pedestal side table along the wall by the hearth. He reached under the table, prying it free from behind the table legs, and carefully stood, holding it out to Angel.

The silver was tarnished by blood. Easily fixable.

Angel took the mirror with a grimace, and as soon as it touched his hand, it glowed a soft blue, a hum of magic emanating from it, enough that Simeon could feel it as well as see it.

"Only a Salvatore by blood and twenty-one or older would get a reaction, much less be able to use it." Ignacio said quietly, holding the mirror's twin in his own hand, a matching glow coming from his as well. Ignacio appeared wrecked, emotionally destroyed, but he was regaining some of his stoicism as he spoke. "It's how we kept in contact through the decades. My son carried it, his son, and then Arturo. It would have gone to Raine and then you after Arturo passed. My life was a closely guarded secret, to protect everyone from the increased attention of the Council. They refused to take no for an answer, and so I faked my death, pretending to die with my mother."

Angel stared down at the mirror in his hand, slowly turning to face the doorway. Fingers clenched around the compact, Angel finally looked at Ignacio.

"I believe you."

That was all he said, all he seemed able to give. Ignacio nodded, slipping the mirror he held back into his pocket.

Angel was unmoving again, but for his hand shaking a bit. Angel smelled of extreme stress, a spiking heart rate. Panic.

"Mo ghra," Simeon went to Angel, taking the compact, Angel unresisting. He put it in his own pocket, and he slowly and gently scooped Angel off his feet and into his arms in a bridal carry.

Angel curled into him, burying his face in his suit jacket, hands fisted in his shirt. Simeon carried Angel past Ignacio and the others, pausing by Ignacio for a heartbeat. "Seal and lock the doors, please."

Ignacio nodded. "I will." He looked at Angel in Simeon's arms, his eyes wet with tears and full of a matching grief, and Simeon scented the deep grief pouring off the practitioner. Ignacio said nothing further, choked by pain, merely nodding once more and stepping back to let Simeon pass with Angel. The older man reached out hesitantly for a moment, hand shaking, but Simeon shook his head briefly and Ignacio dropped his hand.

"We're going home for a short while. Privacy for the afternoon, please." Simeon requested, though it came out like a gentle order. Everyone nodded, quiet, even Isaac, who was weeping silently as Constans held him. He suspected the younger Salvatore would retreat to the Tower with Batiste.

Simeon carried Angel to the stone archway in the library, hearing the doors of the parlor shut behind him. A few hours alone in Beacon Hill was what Angel needed, with tender care and love. Simeon would provide what his mate needed, always.