Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Thirty-Two

 Notes: Bringing the threads together, soon we'll have a proper showdown...

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Thirty-Two

***

Chapter Thirty-Two

 

Photo by Carson Masterson

After an hour of further interrogation, Ciro manages to satisfy his father on two more points: first, that he should keep Maria alive to sweeten the pot with Angelo, and second, that he’s not going to get anything out of going after Annette and her family. That took some doing, but Ciro was able to talk around the idea of Angelo’s obsession with him to the point that, with his useful powers and the Benet family’s fall from grace after losing control of both Jacqueline and Annette, it might have been for the best anyway. Not to mention, Nephele was the one who prompted the entire mess in the first place, so it’s churlish to be upset about the lie now.

It’s not the end of either issue, he knows that, but Victor seems willing to wait and see how things fall out with Angelo before committing to vengeance in either case. That’s the most Ciro can ask, and he’s finally remanded to his room, escorted by Richard and two of his father’s dogs just in case he starts getting ideas.

There are no ideas, though. Ciro’s not thinking about anything except how tired he is, and how much his arm still hurts, and how much he’s looking forward to showering and disinfecting himself and maybe taking a nap. He doesn’t let himself think anything else until Richard shuts the door behind him, locking it loudly, and then…

He knows he’s being watched, so Ciro goes through the motions of investigating his room first. He’s surprised that it hadn’t changed at all from what he remembers—Ciro was half convinced his father would set everything in here on fire in an effort to expunge Ciro from his life, but no. Of course not. He’s put a lot of money and time into molding Ciro to fit a particular model, and this room represents that effort. There’s a walk-in closet full of bespoke suits, fine leather shoes, and a wall of watches and jewelry and designer sunglasses. All the accessories a stupidly wealthy young man could need, except for the latest phone, which—yeah, he isn’t going to be given one of those any time soon.

The sheets are fresh, and the comforter is downy and soft. Berber carpet covers the floor, and original art, including a Hokusai print, cover the walls. The bathroom is almost as big as Ciro’s last apartment, and the shower is big enough to fit five people easily.

The windows are more than barred here—they’re covered in steel mesh. Nothing is going to be flying in and out here.

Ciro walks slowly to the closet and takes out a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. He opens a drawer and picks out a pair of boxers and some socks, both exquisitely comfortable, then turns and heads to the bathroom. The surfaces are all pristine, and the shower caddy is stocked with his favorite brands. He’ll come out of here smelling like bergamot and orange blossom.

He’d sooner bathe in raw sewage, but the shower is his best shot at getting in touch with Angelo, so he’s got to steam it up and make things look busy. Ciro turns on the shower, making it hot enough to steam, and strips off his clothes. He holds them up to his face, inhales the last vestiges of the frangipani scent from Angelo’s burned refuge, then drops them to the pristine floor. His raven flaps its wings as they enter the shower, then hops down to the floor to avoid the direct spray. Steam wells thickly, and Ciro scrubs a hand through his hair, closes his eyes, and reaches for the golden thread he felt earlier.

It rises immediately, a wellspring inside of him that’s so much easier to notice now that he’s felt it once already. He has to push to keep it from spilling out, in fact. Ciro doesn’t need that kind of scrutiny from his father right now. All he needs is to connect one thread to his raven, and then…

It’s a variation on a tracking spell, and if there’s one thing Ciro knows, it’s tracking. His familiars are experts at following someone else’s magic. The only question is whether he can send this raven through magic itself. It’s yet another thing he’s never tried before, and he wishes he could run it by Annette to see what she thinks of the spellcraft before going all in on it.

If wishes were fishes… Ciro bends down close to his raven and looks it in the eye, then unspools a slender, almost invisible golden thread from his chest. “Go to him,” he whispers, and loops it around his familiar’s wings. As soon as the thread crosses over itself, the raven vanishes.

Ciro exhales heavily with relief. It’s on its way back to Angelo, or at least he hopes it is. He sits down in the spray, closes his eyes, and focuses on the connection he still feels to his familiar. It’s solid in his mind, solid as it sits on the back of a chair, as it hops across a table and up onto a shoulder and—

“Ciro?”

It’s odd looking at Angelo through his raven’s eyes. Ciro isn’t sure why the colors in his face look so different from normal until he remembers that ravens see in ultraviolet. Angelo…he glows to Ciro, the smooth planes of his face stark and bright even in the relatively dim light of his kitchen. His eyes are tired, but the expression on his face is beautiful.

“Ciro, sweetheart…” He reaches out and strokes a gentle finger down the raven’s head. Ciro wishes he could feel it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I should never have left you alone. I should have seen what was going on, I—”

Ciro can’t control his familiar as closely as he’d like to all the time, but in this case it does exactly what he wants, and pecks Angelo in the middle of his forehead. That stops the self-recrimination, and a second later Angelo chuckles. “Fine. Okay, fine, I won’t. But you should know that I’m not going to let this go. I’m not letting you go.”

Ciro can’t speak through his bird, but surely the tapping system is easy enough. His familiar pecks the tabletop twice, a firm no.

“Not happening.”

Tap-tap.

Angelo shakes his head. “If it makes you feel any better, baby, I’d have to come anyway to get Maria. I’m not leaving either of you to face your father alone.”

Tap-tap.

“Nope, that’s not negotiable. Don’t worry.” His lips thin. “I’ll be prepared. Now you answer some questions. Are you hurt?”

The arm isn’t even bad enough to mention. Tap-tap.

“Do you think there’s any chance you can get yourself out of there?”

Fuck, Ciro wishes. Tap-tap. Nothing that he can see yet, at least.

“All right. What about—”

A pounding fist on the bathroom door startles Ciro out of his reverie, breaking the easy connection. “You have one minute to get out of there before I drag you out,” Richard yells. “Mr. Hambly’s orders.”

Fuck. Ciro can’t leave the shower without a familiar. Otherwise, his father’s going to ask what he spent his magic on, and if he has one of his dogs bite him again he’ll see that Ciro is communicating with Angelo.

Fine. All right. He did it with Annette, he can do it now.

It was way easier to reach out to his magic and draw it to him when he was on the same fucking coast as his flock, but there’s no choice. And according to Annette, it shouldn’t matter, so really it’s just Ciro’s mind playing tricks on him and making this harder than it needs to be. He can do this. He can do it, damn it! It’s his magic, and his father might have taken everything else from him right now, but this is Ciro’s and he’ll be damned if he gives one more thing to that rancid, morally rotten bag of deomposing dicks masquerading as a person worthy of his time, his consideration, his goddamn—

A raven hops out of his chest. It had glossy feathers and is ever-so-slightly larger than the other familiar, but Ciro doesn’t think they’ll be able to tell. He stands and shuts off the water, then holds out his arm. The raven hops on, and he stares into its bright black eyes and smiles.

I’m still not alone.

 

Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Fourteen: Part Two

 Notes: We're getting out of here! YIPPEE-KI-YAY, MOTHERFUCKER!

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Fourteen, Part Two

***

Chapter Fourteen, Part Two

 

Photo by Valentin Muller

Kieron would never have made it to his destination without two very important discoveries. The first was that apparently, there was no central monitoring AI on the system to tag him for whoever was watching, so instead of having whole teams of mercenaries descending on him, he only had to deal with stragglers in ones and twos.

The second was that Blobby could make himself into grenades.

That was something that Kieron really wished he didn’t have to discover, but when he rounded the corner leading to the door he needed and found an actual group of people on guard outside, he almost took a flechette round to the face before he ducked back out of sight. “Fuck,” he muttered. “We’ve got to get in there, but I’ll get cut down before I can get close enough to fight them.”

A single unit of Blobby’s matrix was pressed into his hand. “Oh honey, I’ve got one already.”

It suddenly beeped and began to glow a menacing red.

“Shit, okay—” Kieron hoped he was interpreting this correctly and tossed it down the hall, almost getting his fingers chewed off by another razor round in the process. Some of the shrapnel cut his hand, but he had bigger things to worry about right now than a blood trail. Those mercs would be on him soon, and—

There was a rather quiet ba-poof from down the hall. Kieron began to turn to see what had happened, but Blobby applied a surprising amount of pressure to the pressure points at the base of his neck just then. Clearly, he was being warned to wait.

Not too long, though. Someone’s going to find us, and we haven’t even gotten to the motor pool yet.

After almost a full minute, Blobby finally relaxed. Kieron rounded the corner and raced toward the door, ready to…well, he wasn’t sure what. Pounce if someone moved? Swallow down his gag reflex if people had been blown to pieces? What he found instead, though, was everyone lying on the ground, alive but nearly motionless, their faces contorted in expressions of disgust. The air still smelled faintly rotten.

“Baby,” Kieron murmured, “what the hell are you made of?” He’d turned his piece into some sort of smoke bomb that had put everyone to sleep…or poisoned them.

He’d figure it out later. Kieron lifted one of the guards’ hands up to the reader beside the door and pressed until it glowed green. Then he ducked, because—

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM! BLAM! There it was, six shots from the ancient style of handgun that his grandfather had tried to make part of his personal mystique. Kieron knew he would shoot first and ask questions later, so he didn’t give his grandfather the chance to murder him. Once the gun was empty of its old-fashioned bullets, he rose up just enough to see over the desk and shot his stun gun straight into his grandfather’s chest.

The corpulent man convulsed hard enough to drop his gun. Kieron hoped he hadn’t just given the old bastard a heart attack—he needed him to get out of here. He was unconscious, but that would just make this next part easier.

Kieron ran over behind the desk and grabbed the General’s hoverchair, tilted it back so the man stayed put, then wheeled it out into the hall. “Blobby, watch our backs,” he said, then checked his internal map one more time and began the mad dash for the motor pool.

Blobby fired off two more grenades on the way to put people down, but the motor pool was close enough that they made it there in under two minutes. It was grey and raining outside—perfect. Kieron looked around briefly for Carlisle, but saw nothing to indicate anyone was waiting for him. That was fair, it was fine, it was… He honed in on the closest vehicle that looked worth something, a low-lying skimmer that seated four, and ran the General over to it, using his hand to open it up.

“This is what you get for body-coding everything,” he murmured as he settled into the pilot’s seat. It had been a long time since he’d flown a skimmer—not since Trakta, and that had been a very modern one, not this antique that looked like it was old when he was a child. But Kieron knew the General’s standards hadn’t fallen that low—

“Get out of the ship!”

A familiar man stood in front of the skimmer, an enormous old-school launcher on his shoulder. “Turn the engine off and get out of the skip,” Trapper repeated, his voice magnified somehow so that it penetrated the hull. “Leave the General inside. Do that, and I promise to make sure you die easy.”

Was he going to shoot the skimmer down with the General inside? Kieron didn’t think so.

“You’re being targeted by three different snipers,” Trapper went on, and—ah. That was different. Maybe he shouldn’t have chosen a vehicle with a transparent top. “They have orders to fire on my mark. If you’re not out of there in ten seconds, they’ll start shooting off pieces of you.”

Fuck.

“You think we can’t do it? We’re not about to let you take the General from us.” Trapper sounded satisfied, and why not? He was getting just what he wanted. “You have eight seconds. Seven.”

Fuck. Blobby wasn’t big enough to shield against snipers, and Kieron wasn’t sure shots like that wouldn’t destroy the little bot anyway. No.

“Five.”

He would have to surrender.

“Four.”

Maybe he’d be able to—

“Three.”

Maybe he could—

“Two.”

Elanus, I’m sorry. He reached for the com.

“O—”

The darkness suddenly shattered, with what seemed like every light in the motor pool turning on at once, leaving stars in Kieron’s eyes. At the same time he heard an engine roar, and a second later a larger, all-metal gunship lifted off the ground and hovered over his skimmer.

Carlisle stayed! And she was blocking the sniper shots. Now they could—

Trapper shouted something and pointed his launcher up at her ship. Kieron automatically ran through the startup sequence and sent the skimmer lurching forward. He smashed right into Trapper’s chest, knocking the man down and probably breaking half his ribs.

Time to go!

Using the skimmer’s electronic viewer to help navigate now that his night-vision was destroyed, he kicked it into high hear and shot out of the compound as fast as he could, the gunship still hovering above them.

They were out.

Now all they had to do was stay that way.

 

Lord of Unkindness Chapter Thirty-One

 Notes: Time to settle in, reacquaint ourselves, maybe have a loving father-son talk...ha, NAH!

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Thirty-One

***

Chapter Thirty-One

 

Photo by Aiden U.

Hambly Tower is far enough outside of Downtown Boston to be an absolute eyesore against the skyline. It’s thirty-eight stories tall, and while most of those levels are rented out to subsidiaries and the top three are reserved for the family’s living quarters, it still means a huge amount of wasted space. Wasted space is wasted money, and when Ciro was young he asked his father why they left so many stories empty. He’d thought it was deliberate, but only got smacked for his trouble and sent away.

Now he knows it’s because those extra stories are getting harder and harder to fill. The number of people who want to associate with the Hamblys has gone down over the years, and so the empty office space gets larger and larger. And because his father has an ego to match the size of his stupid skyscraper, there’s no way he can bring himself to offer deals on rent, or God forbid to sell the tower and relocate somewhere more comfortable and affordable. No, the tower is the symbol of Hambly power, and so they stay in it despite the fact that they’re witches, for fuck’s sake, with animal familiars would all would enjoy being outside far more than confined to the marble-floored gloom of the Tower.

There had been ponds, back when his mother was around. Now the ponds are all covered over, plastered and painted and turned into “signature pieces.” Victor’s Dobermans roam the halls of every floor, even the ones where other family members live, a constant reminder of the fact that he’s in control.

And each and every window is barred. That’s a new one.

“Sit down,” Victor says as he rounds the enormous desk in his private office on the topmost floor of the building. It used to be all dark wood and plush carpet and leather furniture; now it’s stainless steel, chrome, and glass. One style of power exchanged for another, and Ciro doesn’t like either of them. His heart aches even harder for colorful fabrics and comfortable cushions, soft lights, and the smell of soup warming on the stove.

He disguises his heartache by setting his bloody hand down on the armrest, careless of the way it smears. Richard is less than pleased, judging from the way his cougar growls, but Victor just smiles.

“You must be relieved to be away from Nephele.”

Ciro startles. That’s not the direction he expected his father to take this conversation. He is relieved, in fact; was surprised but happy when, as soon as they got to the Tower, Victor told Nephele in no uncertain terms that she should go and check on her father, who was still unconscious on the floor below, and leave him and Ciro alone to “reacquaint ourselves.”

She’d regained enough control of her voice at that point to squeak out, “No, I want to stay with Ciro!”

“You need to remember how to be a proper daughter before I’ll even think of letting you act like more to this family,” Victor had said warningly, and Nephele’s eyes had widened like he’d slapped her. “Go. To. Your father. I’ll call for you if I need you.” Not when, if. Her eyes had been frantic as the Dobermans had basically shoved her and her rats out of the elevator.

If Victor was expecting a thank you for getting Nephele out of the way, he’d be waiting a long time. Ciro doesn’t say anything, just stares with an expression of perfect boredom at his father, who smiles in response.

“You know, I got the most interesting sensations from my familiar when it got its teeth into you.”

Ciro curses internally as he suddenly remembers that old trick. His father used it all the time on him when he was a child and thought Ciro was lying about something. Once one of his dogs bit someone, it could access their thoughts and emotions. The transfer wasn’t clear, more impressions than anything else, but it was still something he should have remembered.

“You were impressively calm. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such emotional control from you. Clearly, you learned a lot during your time away from the family.”

Ciro still says nothing, just maintains his blank stare. Victor tuts reprovingly. “And here I thought you were doing better. You’re in a poor position to negotiate, my son, but there are some things of value you could bargain with. For example.” He sits back and steeples his fingers. “When were you going to tell me you managed to make Angelo Fabroa fall in love with you?”

Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck. “He’s not in love with me,” Ciro says as calmly as he can.

“No? Because that’s not what I hear from other people.” He pulls out his phone and turns it around. There’s a video cued up on the screen. It’s of a familiar, defiant young face, mouth open to shout even as the wind blows her black hair into it. He pushes play.

“Fuck you!” Maria screams, her hands clenched into fists. “Fuck all of you! You better let us go, or the Boss is going to fuck you up! You people picked the wrong man to mess with. Angelo’s going to tear you a new one if you hurt even a hair on Ciro’s head, do you he—”

He pushes pause and waits for Ciro to react. Which he does, with a caustic laugh and a shake of his head.

“She’s one of his subordinates,” he says with a shrug. “Naturally she idolizes the man, but she doesn’t know him well enough to speak for him. I was in the process of negotiating a deal with Mr. Fabroa, and she thought it meant more.”

Victor nods. “Quite the deal, if it meant giving you space in his family’s private cabin. I’ve had plenty of good witches look for that place off and on over the years, but it’s completely resistant to spells—or it was, at least. I expect it’s nothing more than ash now, thanks to Nephele’s rather rash actions.” He leans in a bit. “What did it contain? Was there a library? Powerful artifacts from his people?”

Ciro frowns. “What do you mean, ‘his people’?”

“The kinnara, of course.” Victor’s smile finally reaches his eyes when he sees Ciro flinch. “It took a lot of digging to learn that about him, and there’s far more legend than fact about them, but one thing that seems to ring true in story after story is the kinnara’s faithfulness to their chosen partners. And it certainly seems to me like you qualify as the person he’s chosen, Cyrus.”

He scoffs. “Because of a single outburst from one of his workers? She’s grasping for any straw she can think of to keep herself alive; of course she’d try something like this. That has nothing to do with the reality of the situation.”

“Hmm, I think there’s more to it than that.” Oh, his father looks exceptionally pleased now as he pulls something else up in his phone. When he holds it out again, there’s no video, but there is a message queued up.

“Mr. Hambly.” It’s Angelo, oh no, it’s Angelo and he sounds pissed. Cool, but clearly angry. “You’ve got a lot to answer for. Sending your niece here to disrupt my operations is bad enough, but her attacks on my employee and my personal property require compensation. Unless you’re looking to start a conflict with me that you’re not ready for, you had better be prepared to make reparations.” There’s a pause, and then, “I want your son present for negotiations. I’m not done with him, either.” The message ends.

Ciro’s mouth feels bone dry, but he makes an effort to speak. “That doesn’t mean much.”

“On the contrary, I think it means a great deal.” Victor leans forward slightly. “I’ve been in business a long time, and I know a desperate man when I hear one. You’ve got him wrapped around your finger, Ciro; he might not even know how tightly himself yet, but he will.

“He’s right about one thing—I don’t want to start something with [name] if I can avoid it. There’s too much I haven’t been able to find out about his finances. I haven’t had enough leverage to force him to comply, but with you here.” His eyes glitter with both malice and pleasure. “I think the tides are finally turning in my favor.”