Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Thirty-Five

 Notes: Let's get this party started!

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Thirty-Five

***

Chapter Thirty-Five

 

Photo by Mariola Grobleska

Ciro would give almost anything for the numbness that used to come to readily to him. Ever since he let Angelo take him in, the lack of feeling that was starting to overwhelm him has pulled back. Even when he uses his magic, it’s like having a protective golden blanket covering his body, protecting him from himself. But now, back on the couch and weighed down with rats covering his legs and a Doberman to either side of his torso, Ciro is uncomfortably aware of his own form. He feels every touch—the scritch of claws sinking into his clothes and the thud of stubby tails knocking against his thighs. The only space for his raven is on top of his own head.

Ciro’s sure he looks like an idiot. The important thing, though, is not to look like a victim. If Angelo walks in here and sees Ciro in tears or worse, he won’t react well. If all Ciro can do at this point is keep blood from being shed the moment his father and his lover are in the same room together, then that’s what he’ll do.

The distant power he’s learned to feel through his chest roils in response to his own sense of indignation at being sidelined. It’s here to be used, so use it! The temptation is strong, but Ciro knows he can’t give into it. He’s not as strong as his father; he’s just not. That’s a lesson he’s had beaten into him over and over throughout his childhood, and he’s learned it like second nature by now. His father and Nephele combined…well, that’s so impossible it doesn’t even bear thinking about. No, the best thing he can do is protect Angelo by being an obedient little captive until he figures out his lover’s plan.

Because Angelo has to have a plan. He must. Otherwise he’s walking straight into a trap, and Ciro can’t bear to even think about that. It’s impossible, it’s infuriating.

He’s smarter than that. Angelo will know what to do.

The intercom on Victor’s desk sounds. “He’s coming up,” Richard says.

“Good. Make sure he catches a glimpse of the girl, but don’t engage. If he comes your way, kill her and make your escape.”

“Understood.”

“You can’t kill her,” Ciro insists. “Maria is important to Angelo. If you kill her, he’ll never negotiate with you.”

Victor looks at him with an odd expression Ciro can’t quite understand. “I might have been too hard on you after all,” he says  finally, and Ciro wonders when he slipped into an alternate dimension where his father admits to potential wrongdoing. Even Nephele is taken aback. “I believe in instilling a reasonable amount of humility in those around me, but you take it to lengths that verge on stupidity.

“You’re the mate of a kinnara, my son. I could have that useless girl cut into pieces and tossed along his path, and he would still come to me if it meant getting his hands on you again.”

“But he won’t,” Nephele asserts from where she’s standing in a corner, no fewer than five dogs penning her there so she can’t come back to hunch over Ciro like a vulture. “Because he’s mine, Uncle. Remember, you promised me Ciro would be mine.”

Victor doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at her. Ciro can feel Nephele’s tension rise through her link to her familiars, who are twining around each other and chittering angrily, but not quite biting yet. He focuses on his own familiar instead—the comforting weight, the warmth, the feeling of love and protection—and then realizes that he can feel another bird.

His other bird. The familiar he sent to Angelo is still with him, and they’re both almost here. Ciro lets himself slip into his other bird’s eyes, and he sees the double doors of this office right ahead of them, turns and sees that he’s on Angelo’s shoulder. His lover seems to sense the change, because he turns and looks at Ciro’s familiar. He doesn’t say anything, though; his mouth is in a terse line, and a second later he bends over to set Chiffon on the floor. Ciro has to flap wildly to keep his perch, and not just because Angelo is bending over. He brought Chiffon? What was he thinking? He can’t help it—he pecks Angelo in the middle of his forehead.

“She’ll be fine,” Angelo says in a very measured tone. Then he steps forward and, without knocking, enters the room.

Ciro slips back into his own eyes to look at Angelo. He’s dressed in a suit of embroidered silk, his hair slicked back, gold around his neck and in his ears. He looks distant, powerful, and so beautiful Ciro’s heart aches to see him. The raven on his shoulder suits him somehow, and if Ciro didn’t know better he’d say Angelo was a witch himself.

But he does know better, and now that they’re together again he can see the gold threads emanating from Angelo’s body like waves, curling around and over him. Those threads reach for Ciro the second Angelo walks through the door, and Ciro braces himself for the rush he’ll feel the moment they touch him…

But the touch never comes. Something blocks them from reaching Ciro, a shield extending more than a foot in front of the couch, and it strikes Ciro that his father never does anything without a reason. The things he’s filled this room with, all his objects of power…one of them must be responsible for keeping Angelo’s power from touching him directly right now.

If Angelo realizes that, he doesn’t let on. He doesn’t even look at Ciro, just keeps his eyes on Victor, who sits behind his desk with the smug air of a man aware that he holds all the aces. “Mr. Hambly,” Angelo says evenly.

“Mr. Fabroa.” Victor nods his head. “I see you brought a guest.”

“I could hardly leave Chiffon behind,” Angelo says airily. “She pines without me. Don’t worry, she’s no threat to you.”

“I’m not talking about the dog.”

Angelo tilts his head at the raven, which leans over and preens gently at his hair. Nephele makes a furious noise, and when Angelo smiles at her, he goes from calm to vicious in an instant. “Everything that belongs to my mate belongs equally to me.”

Victor nods slowly. “You admit it, then.”

“Of course I do.”

“Then I hope you came ready to bargain.” Victor extends a hand toward the chair across from him, but Angelo shakes his head.

“I don’t bargain with thieves. I hope you came to this meeting ready to apologize for taking what’s mine.” His voice is cool and controlled, and Ciro’s heart is in his throat. He doesn’t know what kind of game Angelo is playing, but Victor hates being dictated to. “You’re going to relinquish my mate to me and give us your blessing, and a promise of distance from here on out. I also expect the return of my employee.”

“Oh, is that all?” Victor’s tone is mocking. “I think you’ll find that I’m the one holding all the advantage here, Mr. Fabroa. What can you possible do that would compel me to give my son to you for nothing?”

Angelo crosses his arms and looks around the room. “You’ve done a good job here,” he says almost absently. “Some of these artifacts are impressively powerful. You’ve even blocked the manifestation of my bond to Ciro, and you’ve limited the amount of power you and yours can do down to your familiars.”

“Your point?”

Angelo smiles. “My point is, you’ve cut off all spell power. What you didn’t cut off is internal manifestations, and that shows me that you know almost nothing of kinnara magic. You’ve left me my internal power, which is all I need to sing every last drop of emotion out of you.”

Victor looks a little puzzled. “What, you’re threatening to make me into some sort of automaton?”

“Oh no. You’ll stay a man…a man who is unable to feel a single thing, from anger to joy to pain. And before you start thinking that’s a good idea,” Angelo adds, “consider this—with no emotion to drive your actions, and no pain resulting from them, you’ll do…nothing. Nothing at all. You’ll sit there until you die of dehydration, in a puddle of your own filth, utterly unmotivated by anything and everything.

“You’ll lose your empire, and you won’t even notice.”

Victor looks aghast in a way Ciro has never seen before. He could cheer…but from the way the dogs are growling and the rats are seething against his skin, he knows it’s far too soon to take anything for granted.

Especially a win.

 

Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Sixteen, Part One

 Notes: I love monsters. I just do. And my kiddo loves bugs, so this one is a cross-inspiration ;)

Title: Hadrian's Colony, Chapter Sixteen, Part One

***

Chapter Sixteen, Part One

 

 

Photo by Viktor Talashuk

Kieron was intimately familiar with terror.

He knew the terror of deep space, being on the edge of the universe clamped between nothingness and near-death. He knew the terror of growing up without an anchor, no parent to protect and guide him. He knew the terror of living among people who hated him, of loneliness, of loss. He knew the terror of loving someone so much that the thought of their death was worse than any fate he himself could suffer. And yet…

He’d never known a terror like this before.

The ground rippled like a wave behind their ship, more sharp black wedges breaking the surface, and Kieron braced himself against the ceiling with both hands as Carlisle suddenly blasted the engines, jerking the ship straight up and spinning it at the same time. Alarms blared wildly, screaming warnings as Carlisle got the narrow ship to turn end-over-end down the canyon—toward the beast that was trying to eat them, but he barely had time to catch his breath before he realized that a shift had gone on. The sine wave-motion the creature was traveling in took it smoothly beneath them as they flew up and over, and Kieron had just enough time to see what looked like the head of the beast, consisting of a wide, flattened maw edged in those terrible shovel-teeth, burst through the ground and flail as it tried to catch them.

It failed, but it wasn’t giving up. Even as they straightened out and Carlisle punched up their speed, the beast dove back through the rocky crust and into the ground, which shifted like sand in the places it had already tunneled once before.

“Get us out of here!” he shouted at Carlisle.

“We need to stay in the canyons,” she shouted back, and—what the fuck?

“Why!?”

Carlisle didn’t reply, just kept checking her instruments as she sent out ping after ping in an effort to read the limits of the walls that surrounded them.

Kieron resisted the urge to keep questioning her. Whatever her reasoning was, he had to let her get on with it unless he wanted to fight her away from the controls, which—bad idea in the middle of a chase. He glanced back, but the tiny viewport at the stern of the ship didn’t give him much of a view. Deciding to be useful, he took a second to clamp the General’s chair down. As little as he liked the man, he liked the thought of being smashed by his power chair even less.

A sudden turn to the left happened sharply enough to send Kieron flying into the wall. A new plethora of alarms began to sound, these ones indicating structural damage to the ship, as they straightened out once more.

“Find a place to sit,” Carlisle yelled to him.

It was tempting to just stay where he was on the floor, but Kieron was stricken with an incurable need to know what the hell was going on. He didn’t want to die without knowing it was coming, and if that meant staring a monster in the mouth as it crunched him to pulp, then he was going to fucking stare it down. He crawled over to the copilot’s seat and hauled himself into it, buckling in with difficulty. Blobby got into his lap, and Kieron looked down at the little bot with concern. It was covered with blood. “You shouldn’t be able to bleed,” he said slowly.

“You’re bleeding,” Carlisle snapped. “Handle that head wound before you get spatter all over the control panel.”

Oh, shit, he was bleeding from the head again. Kieron winced as he tried to staunch it with his bad hand. Concussion, you’ve got a concussion. And none of these ships had Regen.

At least they seemed to be outpacing the tunneler, even if Carlisle wasn’t willing to let them leave these damn canyons. Still… “Take us up,” Kieron insisted.

“The second there’s space,” Carlisle said. “We should be clear in another minute or so. We just have to—fuck!” The entire ship rocked, and a second later there was a hideous wrench that felt like the floor was about to be ripped right out from under them. “That’s our back legs. Damn it.” She checked the readings again. “I thought we were faster than it.”

Kieron swallowed as he stared out the viewport. “That assumes there’s just the one of them.”

“How many can there be in here?”

He pointed. “At least one more.” And it was no more than a thousand feet ahead of them, rearing up and blocking the entire canyon with the breadth of its segmented frame. Hell, it was even larger than the last one. It reminded Kieron of a…what were those things on Trakta called…a centipede, that was it, only this centipede was wider than the freighter they were in and going to crush them if they didn’t—“Climb, now. Climb fast.”

“We’ll be shredded by the top!”

“The ship is fucked either way, but at least up there we won’t be eaten alive!”

Carlisle swore as she adjusted power to the engine, sending them skyrocketing upward at an angle that was almost sharp enough to scrape the belly of the ship against the belly of the beast. Fire flamed against it, but it didn’t seem to notice, and even as they rose up its massive head began to curl again, readying to crush them back down to the ground and carry them into the earth.

They would never be found. Elanus would never know what happened to him. The terror was sharper than any pain, flattening Kieron’s mind into nothing but a panicked buzz, love and hate and every other emotion lost to the overwhelm. Kieron clutched Blobby close and waited for the impact, and—

The scream of metal on stone filled his ears, and then he heard the whistle of wind on top of that. But they weren’t in the canyon anymore. They were above it, and the tunneling creature was falling away from them. They also didn’t have a left-side wall anymore.

“We won’t get far,” Carlisle screamed over the noise as she heaved the ship back toward the far side of the plateau. “Look for a spot that’s thick enough to hold us!”

Kieron did his best to look, he really did. But while adrenaline was keeping the pain away, he was still seeing double of everything, and he could barely breathe. All he could do now was hold onto his baby boy and watch as the jagged-edged canyon top came closer and closer.

Metal shrieked, rocks crumbled, and everything went dark.

 

Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Thirty-Four

Notes: Angelo's almost here! Surely there's nothing to do but wait at this point...

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Thirty-Four

***

Chapter Thirty-Four

 

 

Photo by Nikolett Emmert

The level of pomp and circumstance that goes into preparing for Angelo’s visit is, frankly, excessive even for Victor Hambly.

Ciro, woken up far too early after such a late night, sits on one of the couches in his father’s office and watches as the place is transformed from starkly intimidating into something far more sumptuous and, frankly, far more powerful. In fact, it seems like his father is pulling every expensive artifact in the entire Tower into this one room. His assistants have their hands full finding places for them all, especially given the fact that Victor has what must be his entire pack of familiars crammed into the room as well, and the result in the end is a combination of haphazard luxury and zoophilia.

“What’s the point?” he mutters into his coffee.

Richard smacks the back of his head. “Shut up.” Richard was the one to wake him up this morning, and he accompanied Ciro from his room to Victor’s office. Apparently he’s been given the job of babysitter, and equally obviously he’s not happy about it. His cougar growls and snaps at Ciro’s raven, who hops from the back of the couch to the top of his head. His bird’s feet dig through his hair for purchase, and Ciro winces inside. A coil of golden magic soothes the pain, and he fights the urge to smile.

Angelo is on his way, and Ciro is done lying to himself about how he feels about it. He’s not happy Angelo is going to be walking into this awful place, but he’s confident that the man will at least be able to get himself out again. Victor might be a master manipulator, but Angelo has standing of his own, and magic that will protect him. It’s possible that he’ll come out on top in the confrontation that’s coming. And if he doesn’t…

Ciro presses one hand lightly to his stomach. His nerves feel like butterfly wings beating against his ribcage…or a distant flock of ravens. Given enough time, he can augment Angelo’s magic with his own. He can’t pull them through quickly, but he’s not helpless.

A minute later Nephele bursts through the door, a wave of rats following in her wake. Half of them swarm the couch Ciro is on, crawling across his lap and up his arms, while the others stay with his cousin as she stalks over to Victor.

“Uncle!” she hisses, coming to a halt in front of him and putting her hands on her hips. “Why don’t any of my spells work in this room?”

Wait, what?

Victor sips his coffee. “Interesting. What kind of spell were you attempting?”

“That’s not the point!”

He tilted his head consideringly. “It is if you’ve been under the impression that it’s all right to use magic in my private suites.”

“It’s…I…” Momentarily stymied, Nephele rallies. “Ciro is my fiancé! I just want to know where he is! I’m allowed!”

“You don’t tell me what’s allowed and what’s not,” Victor says coldly. “Don’t forget that. As for the spells…I’ve simply pulled something out of storage that I thought might be useful in this meeting. It gives people access only to their inherent magic, none of the extrapolations that come from it. That means you, and I, and the others of our kind will have our familiars here, but none of the spells we can glean from them. Similarly, Angelo will be limited in what he can do. I expect to learn a great deal about what kinnara are capable of today.”

Ciro forgets the cup in his hand, forgets the rats, forgets everything except the surge of panic he feels for Angelo. He doesn’t know how his father learned what Angelo is, but—

“A what?” Nephele asks with a frown.

“A very special magical creature.” Victor looks over at Ciro and must see the fear inside of him, because he smirks. “He doesn’t hide it as well as he thinks, and a little investigation into the remains of his parents’ home in California confirmed it. A kinnara…and he’s made you into his mate. Just perfect.”

Nephele slams her hand down on the desk. “Ciro is mine! He’s not some random witch’s mate!”

Victor gets to his feet and stares her down. “If you don’t—” They’re arguing, but Ciro doesn’t hear any of it. He’s too busy reaching out to Angelo, trying to communicate with him the way he did yesterday. The golden thread loops around the raven he sent to the other man and then Ciro is there, looking through its eyes. He sees Angelo inside a car, dressed in a formal black barong embroidered with gold thread. He hops onto his knee, sees Angelo look down at him.

“What’s wro—”

A scream of his name pulls him back to the office. In the midst of the argument between Victor and Nephele, Richard has left and returned—and he’s got Maria by the arm.

“Ciro!”

He shoots to his feet, then staggers and falls as Richard’s cougar leaps at him, forcing him down and sitting on his back to keep him from getting up. His raven flutters up near the ceiling, as desperate and confused as he is.

Maria looks awful—bruised, bloodied, and exhausted. And yet—“Are you okay?” she demands as she struggles against Richard’s grip. She glares at his father. “What the hell is wrong with you, treating your son like this? Do you really not care if he hates you?”

“Emotion is cheap,” Victor deigns to reply. “Ciro can feel whatever he likes. I own him, and you as well.”

Maria bares her teeth. “No one owns me.”

“Yet here you are, bound against your will.” He shrugs. “A little witch who doesn’t even have the power to manifest her own familiar is no threat to me. I’d honestly prefer to simplify my life and get rid of you right now, but if Mr. [name] is as sentimental as my son seems to think, you might have some use as a bargaining chip. So.” He looks at Richard. “I want her visible as he comes out of the elevator. He’s already been warned about what will happen to Ciro if he tries anything here, but let’s test his resolve. Stay with her after that, and if I send one of my familiars to you…” Victor looks at Maria again. “Push her over the rail. We’ll see if she’s lucky enough to survive a thirty-story drop.”

“Don’t!” Ciro shouts—tries to, but the cougar’s weight presses him hard into the floor, and her claws are sharp against his skin. “You don’t have to threaten her!”

“I know,” Victor replies. “But I want to.”

“Hey, fuck you, dude,” Maria snaps, her bound hands clenched into fists. “I hope you choke on your own fucking tie, you douchebag!”

Victor’s expression sours. “Get her out of here,” he says, and Richard drags Maria back out the door, kicking and shouting the whole way. Ciro wishes he had half of her fire; this shouldn’t be happening. If he only fought harder, if he only…

The cougar finally gets up and follows Victor out. Ciro scrambles to his feet to follow, but four snarling Dobermans block the door, snapping at his arms and legs and backing him up until he’s on the couch again. Nephele’s rats immediately cover him protectively, as thick as a blanket, and Ciro closes his eyes and struggles to breathe under the press of animal, rank and scrabbling and far too much.

“Your softness for him does you no favors, Nephele.”

“He’s mine!”

Victor snorts. “You’re going to learn some important things here today, my girl. Be mindful that you learn the right lesson.” A phone chimes, and Ciro cracks an eyelid open just in time to see his father smile. “Ah. Our guest of honor is here at last.”

No….

“Let’s find out just how much he values you after all, Ciro.”