Taste the Dark Page 2

The Morgan followed him, his voice everywhere and nowhere. I am curious. If you’re not a vampire, what are you?

  On very mortal legs, Akito made his way across the city to the battle on Boston Common. Gravity weighted each step with a sense of impending doom and knowledge of the inevitable.

  Don’t you know? After all I’ve taught you?

  He clapped his hands over his ears as he ran, the cup banging against his back where it dangled from the drawstring.

  Tell me. What are you?

  Perhaps he should have skipped the blood and tried for that kiss?

  Maniacal laughter rent the winter air, ozone sparking on his tongue, and Akito recognized it as his own. If he wasn’t a hero, there was no way in hell he’d ever be a fucking prince.

  Tell me. Now.

  Arms wide, bag dangling from one hand, Akito gave in, saying the words the Morgan had taught him. “I’m nothing! I’m nothing at all!”

  Chapter 1

  Gray water streamed around pitted granite pillars that disappeared precipitously into the Charles River’s murky depths. Lyandros Dragoumanos perched atop one of the six towers on Boston’s Longfellow Bridge. Clouds roiled, racing across the water, a reflection of his mood. If it hadn’t been a heavily overcast day, he would have been able to tell the time by the angle of the sun. Instead, he relied on the increasing sounds of foot traffic behind him on the bridge’s pedestrian walkway. The afternoon commute had begun, and that meant the time in the twenty-first century was somewhere between four and five p.m.

  Sunset was a relatively new phenomenon to him, and he reveled in it. Fading light spoke of transformation and the magic at the threshold of life and death. Here, on this bridge, watching the darkness approach, he felt the promise of the peace that had been denied him for twenty long years. Stretching a translucent hand toward the sky, he mentally shut out the traffic noise, the voices, and the sound of the wind whistling around the turrets. In their place, he imagined star song and the brush of inky black heavens welcoming him to his final resting place in the constellation Gemini. He could almost feel the night against his fingertips. Silky, cool, a waterfall of soothing darkness, it would wrap him in its embrace. That blue blackness shimmered with the pewter gloss of moonlight. A horn blared, nearly beneath his feet, and Lyandros opened his eyes. The daydream resolved, but a blue-black cascade remained the center of his universe.

  A man with hair the color of midnight, its sheen at once a homecoming and a promise, paced the sidewalk below the tower. Lyandros shook his head, attempting to untangle the entwined images of heavens and hair. It was a ridiculous comparison; still he couldn’t help making it. As he watched, the man rounded the base of the stone tower twice, stopping at the low, waterside wall. He circuited several more times, his black leather coat undulating with the violence of his strides.

  “Akito!” Some yards away, a woman ran toward him.

  The man—Akito—jerked at the sound of his name. “Leave me alone, Nyx.”

  “Not effing likely.” Nose-to-nose with the glaring Akito, Nyx displayed a forcefulness Lyandros had rarely seen displayed by even battle-hardened soldiers. “You’re coming back with me.”

  Akito wrapped his arms around his lean torso and scowled. “You’re not my keeper.”

  The word keeper sent a frisson of awareness through Lyandros. The sensation coaxed long-forgotten feelings to the fore—feelings from a time before his death when the world, and men like Akito, had knelt at his feet in supplication.

  “Don’t make me blast your ass.” Nyx’s growled threat made Lyandros examine her more closely.

  Conflicting strata formed her aura. Its luminescence suggested she drew magic to her like a magnet attracted iron shavings. The particles buzzed angrily around a wrist cuff she wore and swirled in the air nearby but few landed. She was a witch, unless he missed his guess, but for some reason used the jewelry to hold magic at bay.

  Akito’s aura, on the other hand, held greenish highlights along with a familiar blue. Intrigued, he glided down from his perch. The ritual, regimen, or whatever Akito had been engaged in had left his hair in wild disarray. Wind whipped at the strands now, a result Lyandros guessed of the energy storm the witch had kicked up. Power surrounded Nyx in uncontrolled waves that disturbed the air and made Lyandros’s ghostly skin prickle with electricity. Though the sensation was unpleasant, he embraced it. Feeling something was so much better than what he usually felt, which was nothing at all.

  “Please.” Silvered nail tips flashed in the fading daylight as Nyx laid a hand on Akito’s arm. “Come back with me.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.” Akito gazed longingly at the water. “It’s not like anyone would notice if I didn’t come back.”

  Nyx sighed, as if she’d heard the words before. “I’d notice.”

  The warm rumble of Akito’s reply was lost on the wind, but after a brief glance at the water, the man’s anger appeared to deflate. He and Nyx moved off in the direction of downtown Boston. Compelled, Lyandros followed. Akito’s swaying coat became a fixation. The garment, reminiscent of a samurai’s robes with its bell sleeves and belted middle, identified him as a warrior. The wide bottom would ensure ease of movement no matter the angle or range.

  Lyandros found himself wishing he could see the man fight. The display of rangy muscle coupled with unselfconsciously fluid movement promised to be spectacular. Against reason, a vision of Akito gracefully lowering to his knees before him resurfaced.

  “My tribute…” Rather than utter Akito’s name, Lyandros voiced the title he longed to bestow on this man.

  Akito’s hair swayed against his back as he walked. Inky and soft, the shimmering blue-black curtain mesmerized Lyandros until he knew he might get tangled up and lost in those strands for hours. Though he hadn’t so much as touched another being, living or dead, for decades, Lyandros imagined burying his nose in the thick strands and breathing in the scent of anise and dewdrops. As his tribute, Akito would have existed only for pleasure and service.

  Lyandros’s pulse beat faster. Or rather, it would have once. Now, he had no pulse. No breath. No life. Yet, in his pursuit of this stranger, he recalled adrenaline’s thready pull, and the quickening heaviness in his sex—the powerful high that came with a hunt. Closing in on the pair, Lyandros reached out to Akito. A millimeter from contact, his fingertips arced with static and he abruptly pulled back at the sensation. How strange and wonderful. It was almost as if he’d touched the man. He tried again, and this time Akito whirled.

  “I told you. There’s someone following us.” Eyes the soft gray of rain-kissed clouds sought the space where Lyandros stood. The man’s mouth looked as if it should be smiling, but had forgotten how.

  “Gods,” Lyandros whispered, frozen in wonder.

  Twin vertical lines marred the space between Nyx’s brows. She waved one hand in a figure eight. A heavy, silver cuff imprinted with a design that seemed vaguely familiar winked from under a sleeve.

  “Eff this thing. I can’t do anything with it on.” The witch rubbed at the cuff, glaring. “I’m getting so sick of it.”

  Akito tugged at her. “Let’s go.”

  Lyandros raced ahead of the friends, then walked backward, waving his arms. “Hello? Can you see me?”

  No response.

  Like an insane person, he jumped up and down arms above his head. “Can you hear me?”

  Akito quickened his pace. The murmur of the witch’s voice—magic’s tinny tones entwined among each strand of the reply—lifted in worry. Nyx followed Akito’s backward gaze, and Lyandros felt magic sweep over him like a living force. Against his better judgment, he continued to lope after them.

  Déjà vu gripped him, and he abruptly dropped his arms. A vision of himself twenty years ago, walking dazedly through Chinatown, wondering why nobody looked at him, sliced his hope to ribbons. He clenched his fists against the impulse to continue the useless farce. He’d done this a lot in the beginning, and had promised himself never again.
No more frantic wall tapping and spirit shenanigans. And yet, the man—and Lyandros—had felt something. Lyandros was sure of it.

  They’d reached the edge of Boston Common where claw-like fingers of oaks and willows scratched at the twilight sky. Evening traffic streamed past. Motion and color, sound and light, swirled together. Nyx and Akito’s footfalls beat against the pavement, the latter’s leather coat swinging against strong calves with the sound of a broadcloth sail against a full Nor’easter gale. Though it shouldn’t have, the thought he’d frightened them cheered him. At least someone had noticed him.

  Fixated on Akito’s lean shoulders and trim hips, he crossed with the duo onto Beacon Street. Fingerless black gloves peeked from beneath the leather samurai coat’s matte black sleeves. A black turtleneck, and black form-fitting trousers suggested pirates and rakish ninjas. One half villain and one-half vigilante, the ensemble had the appearance of a uniform, precisely fitted and often worn.

  Unless Lyandros missed his guess, that glorious black hair had once been another color. Akito’s skin was too pale, his eyes too bright, for it to have been otherwise. The effect was startlingly mesmerizing in its studied, yet uncanny incongruity. The fellow crossed into Boston Common and the witch followed.

  At the iron fenced periphery, Lyandros stumbled to a halt. The one thing he’d been unable to bring himself do since his death was take himself home. When he had been alive, this stretch of open space in the middle of Boston comprised the center of his world. Underneath were a network of tunnels and rooms of which the city’s populace new nothing. The vampire mora’s ancestral stronghold.

  Akito’s swinging coat disappeared around a bend in one of the Common’s many footpaths, and Lyandros let his hands fall to his sides. He shook himself mentally by the scruff. The man was just that. A man. No different than the rest, and just as unreachable. Physical contact or no, Lyandros had never been one to succumb to romantic fancy in life or death. He refused to allow himself to do so now. Yet, it was full on dark by the time he gathered his wits about him and began the trek back to his tower.

  As he walked, he berated himself for his carelessness and stupidity. To be out after dark in Boston’s spirit-filled streets was unwise. He wasn’t a coward, but there were some things with which he’d learned not to tangle. Ghost or no. Four hundred-year-old angry shades—those spirits who had lost their connection with their humanity and feasted on the remnants of those rare dead who still possessed a soul—could easily tear him to shreds and dine on the pieces. He’d seen it happen to other ghosts, and the memory loomed large more than a decade and a half later.

  Vowing not to leave the bridge so close to dark again, he broke into a sprint and didn’t stop running until he rounded Cambridge Street. Street lamps shone brightly here. He need only keep out of the shadows where the darkness fed despair and gave strength to the things that made skin he no longer possessed crawl up the back of his neck.

  When he reached his stone tower on Longfellow Bridge, he slipped through the cracks in its mortar. Although the tower was hollow and had no floor, he’d assembled the artifacts of home inside. Memories—only strong ones sufficed—had been used to spin a ghostly bed and blankets. A campaign table and chair, an oil lamp, and a few books he’d memorized several lifetimes ago, made up his meager belongings. He had fashioned a bright mosaic floor and tapestries from memories of his father’s chambers. This was home.

  Phantom limbs leaden and eyes weary, he shed his leather jacket and draped it over the back of the chair before falling into bed. He closed his eyes. The bed ceased to exist, as did the tower’s granite walls. His fingers curled in on themselves, and his world became a pair of gray eyes and a cascade of silken hair. He rolled over, contentment threading its way along his consciousness. Somewhere out there was Akito. A man he could touch. He was not alone.

  Chapter 2

  Akito darted across Boylston Street. Blaring horns and squealing tires briefly blotted out the ever-present hellhounds shredding his sanity. The brand at the back of his neck burned—the place where the Morgan had marked him as his property. If only his plan to become a vampire had been successful, he wouldn’t be risking his life trying to outrun demons that, though he couldn’t see them, he knew were real.

  I own you. The Morgan’s phantom fingernail dug into the brand. You can never escape. I will find you.

  Akito vaulted up the three steps to a building with the name M. Steinert and Sons etched into its façade. Coat flapping, he yanked open the door and sprinted to the hallway’s far end where he beat his fist against the wall. The heavy glass door to the street slammed open behind him. He whirled in a defensive crouch, katana unsheathed.

  “What the eff was that back there?” Nyx glared up at Akito through dark bangs, hands braced on bent legs. “Were you looking to get flattened by that truck?”

  Sheathing his weapon, Akito turned his back and uttered the password at the wall. “Filotimo.”

  A previously hidden door swung open along a frayed wallpaper seam. The scent of oil paint and plaster dust rushed out. Akito stepped into the darker space, terror’s sour aftertaste coating his tongue.

  Nyx followed with a muttered, “Hell’s bells.”

  At the landing, Akito paused to compose himself, and Nyx stopped with him. Oil lamps—the mora’s preferred method of lighting—shed their glow at regular intervals along the walls. From the lower gallery, he and Nyx had a view of the enormous underground space. Once used for entertainment and festive gatherings, the Victorian era theatre now served as the mora’s home. On the stage, several vampires, under the watchful eye of their general—or strategoi—ran through katas.

  The clanging of bronze swords mixed with construction sounds. One vampire, sparring with another, landed a clever blow, winning his round, and onlookers clapped him on the back. Akito braced his forearms on the ironwork railing, settling in to watch the next combatants. He and his friends had once sparred like this.

  “Where’s Ben?” Akito asked the question with an absent-minded wistfulness he hadn’t intended to show.

  “With Tzadkiel,” Nyx answered.

  “Were you thinking of sparring with him?” Nyx ventured, sounding hopeful.

  “Nah.” The time for friendly fighting had long passed. Next time he and Benjamin crossed swords, it’d be the real deal.

  Benjamin Fuller had been Akito’s best friend, next to Nyx, and his confidant for as long as any of them could remember. They had met as children, and been inseparable ever since. That was, until Benjamin had laid to rest his family’s feud with the vampires and become the War King’s consort. Now, it seemed he and Akito agreed on nothing and argued about everything.

  What an excellent idea. Fight the hunter now in the name of sport, then gut him. Watch the life slowly drain out of his face as he dies at your feet.

  Akito pressed the heels of his hands to his temples and squeezed. The Morgan’s exhortations of late had become stronger, more angry and violent. One of these days, Akito had little doubt, the witch would—and could—make him do the dark and twisted things that had, until now, been merely suggested.

  Nyx inhaled, as if preparing to speak, but exhaled slowly, saying nothing. She didn’t, and couldn’t, know the Morgan was the voice in his head. Every time Akito had tried to tell her, Benjamin, Tzadkiel…hell, anyone, the Morgan had all but made him swallow his own tongue.

  “What?” Akito spoke through clenched teeth.

  “He wanted to see you.”

  “Benjamin?” Akito issued a derisive snort, dropping his hands. “Why?”

  If it was so he could call Akito a spineless coward again, the Morgan wouldn’t need to crawl inside Akito’s brain to goad him to murder. He’d commit the act all on his own.

  “No. Tzadkiel.”

  Hope propelled his mood rapidly upward. “Has he found a way to complete my transition?”

  Nyx shrugged, not meeting his gaze. “They sent me to get you.”

  Akito inhaled, chest ballooning, a
nd expelled a laugh. “Why didn’t you say something on the bridge?”

  “You were too upset.” Nyx, eyes lifted to the ceiling, avoided his gaze.

  Akito tilted his head back. A fresco of Pan and wood nymphs frolicking in a forest danced above them. “It’s finally going to be all right.”

  Nyx remained tersely silent. How could she not see how awesome this news was? If Tzadkiel wanted to see him—deigned to speak to him—then the War King must have found a way to complete the botched transition from human to vampire.

  A cool breeze from above heralded the opening of the entry door. A moment later, Nyx cast Akito a meaningful look that told him someone stood behind him. When Akito turned, he saw both Benjamin and Tzadkiel had joined them. Heavily muscled and garbed in black leather, the War King deepened shadows and weighted the air with his mere presence. Light seemed to bend around him to seek an alternate, safer, route to its destination.

  In contrast, Akito’s one-time best friend, Benjamin, was fashioned in sunlight. Blond curls corkscrewed in rich abandon around sturdy yet slender shoulders, and his lean build seemed more inclined to a dancer’s delicate pirouettes than the forceful jabs and slashes of the competent swordsman Akito knew him to be. Side by side, Tzadkiel and Benjamin were a study in contrasts.

  “We were out looking for you.” Benjamin edged the statement with accusation.

  Akito bit back a Morgan-inspired, Good for you, wonder boy and lost himself in his fantasy that was about to turn into reality. How would they turn him? Would it be a ceremony with the mora? Or something more private?

  Memories of the black blood he’d vomited after his failed transition made him a little queasy, but he quickly brushed them aside. If he had to have a supernatural stomach flu to finish what he’d started, then he’d gladly embrace whatever disgusting physical inconveniences might accompany the change.

  “My quarters. Now,” Tzadkiel commanded.

  Excitement skipped up Akito’s spine, and he repressed a wild grin. “Sure.”