Lord of Unkindness Ch. 10

 Notes: Ooh, we're getting SPICY! And not in the good way!

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter 10

***

Chapter Ten

 

Ciro is a dismal human being.

He knows it. The life he’s living isn’t much of a life; he’s trying to build a life, so that he can leave this shadow state behind. There’s a lot to do before that can happen, though, before he finally has the resources to disappear into the world as a whole new person. He needs money, he needs magic, he needs connections that go beyond his family. He needs a new identity, he needs a place to go, he needs a place to go after that. He needs to be free and clear of all human connection that could tie him, and that’s the real reason that Angelo is so dangerous. Being around him again, just for a few hours, reminds Ciro of how nice it is to be near him. To talk and laugh and eat his cooking, to watch him work and be taken care of and think about how he could take care of him in return.

That was all Ciro ever hoped for out of whoever he ended up with. Arranged marriages were never about affection, but he knew that affection could grow there regardless. His parents had genuinely been friends, partners, up until his mother’s passing. He’d seen it in others; he’d felt that much with Annette before Nephele had almost killed her. Annette had been like him; a pawn for her family, but willing to make the most of it. But she wouldn’t live in the house of someone who’d tried to kill her, and Ciro’s family wouldn’t let him go, and then…Annette was gone anyway. Taken off the board by an assassin who left no trace behind, just anguish at her loss.

But Angelo was still there.

Stop it. You’re going to fuck yourself up. Ciro tells himself this all the way back to Vernon, taking two different buses and keeping one hand on his phone the whole time.

Angelo might text. He might call. What will Ciro do if he calls? Should he answer? He shouldn’t, but if he doesn’t then Angelo won’t let Maria let go of her connection to him. Unless she already has, which seems likely. Maybe—

His phone buzzes. Ciro whips it out and stares down at the unfamiliar number. His throat feels hot and tight, and his heart is about to beat out of his chest when he finally opens the message and reads

[Hey birdbrain!]

That’s not Angelo. Disappointment and relief battle for top position in his brain for a moment, and relief wins out.

[What?]

[What’s up?]

He scoffs. [Pretty sure you shouldn’t be wasting time talking to me right now.]

[Why, because of the gorilla? Bossman put him down, everybody’s okay now. You should have stayed; I could have Ubered home with you.]

[Not happening.]

[Yeah, not happening now at least. Because you ran like a scaredy cat.]

Ciro huffs the barest whisper of a laugh. If only she knew. [That’s me.]

[What, you’re not even going to defend yourself? Come on, argue with me!]

[No.]

[Yes.]

[No.]

[hahahaha you’re doing it right now!]

It’s stupid. It’s inane. It’s fun, and Ciro relaxes into the dumb back and forth as he gets off the bus and starts to walk. His raven perches on his shoulder as soon as it can, preening his hair as they walk off into the darkness toward his awful apartment building.

The affection from his own magic makes Ciro feel warm and comforted, and the banter with Maria is just distracting enough that he doesn’t notice the foulness around him like he usually does. Even entering his building is less morose than usual, because he doesn’t have to look at the mildew stains on the walls or the vomit in the corners, he can focus on something other than the smells of old food and fresh cigarette ashes. He just types on his phone, easy, until he unlocks his door, steps into his apartment, and—

Crunch.

Ciro freezes as he stares down at the floor, transfixed by the sound he’s just caused to be. His phone buzzes with a new message, but he doesn’t look at it. He can’t. He can’t even bring himself to look up from the floor, where a slide of his foot reveals that he’s just stepped on a cockroach. It’s still twitching, just the antennae. It’s almost an inch long, mahogany brown, and the rustle and shift deeper in the apartment tells him that it’s far from the only one in there.

His raven hunkers down on his shoulder, cawing fiercely. It’s protective; he can feel that his magic wants to lash out, but Ciro can’t let it, not yet. Not until he knows for absolutely certain that he’s been found by…

“My dear nephew.”

Fuck. It’s his uncle. The phone in his hand thunks to the floor, dropped by newly nerveless fingers.

“Shut the door, Cyrus,” his Uncle Magnus says from where he sits on Ciro’s awful futon. He’s leaning back with his legs crossed, the perfect picture of gentility in his expensive suit and slick haircut, but Ciro knows better. He can feel the storm brewing within his uncle, sense it in the flutter of thousands of wings and the scuttling of tens of thousands of legs. Ciro shuts the door even as his instincts go into a panic. His raven flaps and flaps and flaps until—

A hundred roaches fly into the air and swarm his bird before Ciro can so much as scream. He does scream as his raven flutters and flaps, striking out, but the roaches are prepared. They burrow into its feathers and sink into its body and crawl into its mouth, and before Ciro can do anything to save his familiar, it’s a hollowed-out husk on the floor, seething with his uncle’s power. He turns wide eyes to his uncle, who smirks, his upper lip twisting from the palate scar.

This is why Uncle Magnus is so dangerous. Not because of his raw power, but because of the insidiousness of it. Nephele is the family’s next generation powerhouse, but Magnus keeps everyone in line for his brother. Losing Ciro was a personal failure for him. Now that he’s found him, he won’t let him get away again.

It’s over already. Barely half a year of freedom, if this can even be called freedom, and now he’s found and he’s going to be dragged back. The walls feel like they’re closing in on Ciro.

“Sit with me, my boy,” Uncle Magnus says, gesturing to the futon.

“No,” Ciro husks out. His lungs are on fire. He can’t breathe. He leans back against the door, fighting panic and losing. His magic is responding, it’s coming, but it feels so far away. “No, no…”

“There’s no use in denying the truth that’s right before your eyes,” his uncle says. “Your little tantrum is over, Cyrus. It’s time to come home.”

“No…”

Uncle Magnus’s eyes glitter in the lamplight as he continues, “Nephele will be so happy to see you. She’s missed you so much.”

Ciro squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t want to see her.”

“You don’t have a choice.” He hears his uncle shift on the futon. “And neither do I. If it were up to me, I would get her a better husband. There are men out there who are less powerful but more easily biddable, and she’ll perform better with someone who won’t challenge her authority. But she loves you, so…”

“She doesn’t love me,” Ciro snaps, glaring at his uncle. “Obsession isn’t the same as love.”

“It’s is for us,” Magnus replies. “And I’m going to give my daughter who she wants, restore my brother’s faith in me, and bring you down a notch all at the same time.” He laughs as he gets to his feet, and a wave of shiny brown bodies parts as he steps over to Ciro.

“You think you’re going to have any kind of freedom after this behavior? Your father is going to keep you leashed to Nephele’s bed, with your magic locked down tight. Perhaps after you give her a child you’ll be allowed to walk around with an escort, but I doubt it.”

Ciro is shaking. He can see it, picture this awful fate as clear in his mind as reality. He’s shaking, and the door is shaking, and the world is shaking, but his uncle just laughs. “Foolish boy. Your father will never trust you again. He’ll make Nephele his heir and you nothing but a breeder, and that’s all you should be after all the ways you’ve fucked up. You’re no better than your goddamn mother, you stupid little—”

There’s a crash. A flurry of black, zipping around the room. And then—

A raven crashes into the side of Magnus’s head, but it doesn’t stop there. It goes right through his skin and skull and into his brain, and a second later black ooze pools out of his far ear. Magnus’s eyes go black, and his face goes still, and he falls to the floor, crushing dozens of his own familiars in the process. They swarm him protectively, half of them spending themselves to heal him while hundreds more launch themselves at Ciro, but there’s another raven, and another, and another. They swoop around Ciro like a cyclone, snapping at roaches. The edges of their wings blur with power, becoming blades that interact and join and expand until the entire apartment is vibrating with Ciro’s protective energy. It’s not enough to completely stamp out his uncle’s concentrated power, but it’s enough to give Ciro the time to wrench the door open, run out into the hall with his birds, and flee.

On the run, yet again. One way or another, this little life? It’s over.

Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Five, Part One

 Notes: Meet...Blobby!

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

***

Chapter Five, Part One

 

Kieron wasn’t an engineer. He did all right, of course—he had to be pretty good at fixing things to be the sole permanent resident on Cloverleaf Station for three standard years—but he’d never had a lot of formal education in actually designing his own machines. Sure, there were a zillion and one AI programs that were happy to do it for you, but they were all proprietary in some way and Kieron had no desire to be tied down to using someone’s specific components or sharing his work with their mega-code. He didn’t give anything inside himself up if he could help it.

Elanus didn’t have to give anything up, because everything he worked with stemmed from his own company, his own mind. He’d created the first true artificial intelligences the settled galaxy had ever seen, as far as they knew—and was keeping them as secret as possible, thanks to his former business partner and mentor’s race to sell Catie off to the highest bidder. He was a brilliant designer, and Kieron was sure that whatever he came up with that was meant to help him dirtside, it would be amazing.

It didn’t…look amazing, though.

“I can hear you pouting, stop.”

“I’m not pouting,” Kieron protested, although he absolutely had been pouting, he just wasn’t sure how Elanus knew when he was facing the opposite way. “I just thought you were making a robot, that’s all.”

“Blobby is a roooobot!” Catie chirped happily. Of course she’d already named the thing. And of course its name was Blobby, because that was what it looked like—a mushy pile of barely delineated gray lumps that oozed back and forth like they were caught in a tiny tide.

“You have to know about morphologically adaptive bots,” Elanus said, finally turning his head to look at Kieron. He was smiling, but there were lines of pain around the edges of his eyes, and the way he sat let Kieron know that his back was starting to hurt. Kieron sighed and walked over, then started rubbing in broad, light strokes down the sides of Elanus’s spine. “Oh, that’s so nice, you can stop sometime next week, let’s—”

“I know about morphologically adaptive bots,” Kieron said, steering them back on course. “But I’ve never seen one that looked anything like this before.” Adaptive bots were made of interchangeable and often flexible materials that allowed them to adapt to the role at hand, but even then they tended to have some sort of shape to them. This one just looked…confused. And melted. Very melted.

“Of course you haven’t,” Elanus scoffed, his eyes falling shut as Kieron dug his fingers into his shoulders. “I’m not working with ancient technology here. This is a custom morphological matrix that I developed myself, held together with minute atomic forces instead of the usual magnets and screws. If you had any idea the lengths I had to go to to create some of these alloys, you wouldn’t be denigrating Blobby, trust me. Blobby is the next generation of bot.”

“Great,” Kieron said, letting the sarcasm through because he knew Elanus liked it. “But right now Blobby looks incapable of purposeful movement, much less being able to work with a human.”

“How dare you! Blobby is a great listener.”

“Blobby’s maaatrix is adapted to handle all sorrrts of sensory input,” Catie added. “Figuring out how to respond appppropriately will take some time, but—well. We have time.”

Yeah, they did. Thanks to him. Kieron pushed away his maudlin thoughts and focused on what Catie was actually telling him. “So you want me to train Blobby.”

“I’ll helllp! And Daddeee will help! But…um…”

“You’ll have to run field tests, of course,” Elanus said, his eyes still closed. “It’s not like I can take Blobby out there on my own yet. It’s too bad, honestly, because I thought a lot about the tests I planned to put Blobby through when I had a moment here, but he’ll be way more useful to you if it’s your style he adapts to first.”

Kieron smiled. “He?”

“Just a placeholder, and I know, overly gendering things is stupid, but I’ve already got two daughters, you can’t blame me for wanting to switch things up, right?”

That was…huh. “Does Blobby have the same level of sentience that Catie and Lizzy do?”

“No.” Elanus’s response was swift and sure. “I won’t be setting that code free anytime soon, and it’s not like the girls are eager to replicate it in someone else either.”

“Weee’re special,” Catie said petulantly. “I don’t waaant to be lesssss special.”

Elanus smiled. “You two will always be the most special to me, honey.”

“But meeeee first.”

“Catalina…”

“Daddeeeee…”

Time to head that particular argument off at the pass. “When will Blobby be ready for me to try out?” Kieron interjected.

“Oh, now,” Elanus replied. “I mean, the programming isn’t perfect, but his adaptive features should be able to keep up as long as you don’t go too far. I can tweak from a distance, and Catie can step in and take over if things go really bad.”

Was that a possibility? Who was Kieron kidding—it was them, things going bad was more than a possibility, it was practically a certainty. “Then let’s get started.”

“Are you sure?” Elanus looked up at him, for once shorter than Kieron since he—well—couldn’t exactly stand up right now. “It’s still raining out there, and Catie’s sensor issues are ongoing.”

“Sorryyyyy…”

“Not your fault,” they both said at the same time.

“It’s fine,” Kieron said. Honestly, he was feeling a little cooped up after a full cycle inside of Catie, despite the fact that he’d barely been able to step foot outside her door before. Her recyclers were running at full bore, but it still smelled musty in here, and her ambient rechargers were sapped by the rain the way they wouldn’t have been if it was a sunny day. If Kieron left, he could at least give her overloaded systems a break for a bit. “Let me get my EV suit on and we’ll give Blobby a try.”

Of course he could put the EV suit on just fine this time—fucking bullshit mental health issues, why did he have to have such a complicated brain? Hopefully he didn’t pass any of his bullshit on to Blobby during training. A few minutes later, after a very extensive scan that made Catie’s engine whine a bit from how hard she had to work, he stepped out onto the muddy ground in front of the creche with a splatter.

Blobby, apparently of its own initiative, followed a moment later. It just lay on the ground like, well, a blob, though.

“Educational matrix running,” Elanus called out. “Try giving Blobby some directions.”

“Okay.” Um. “Blobby,” Kieron said, barely holding back his surprise as the bot seemed to shiver with anticipation, “evaluate the terrain and use the best morphology at your disposal for traversing it.”

Blobby quivered, then rolled into a ball and bumped around for a few feet in either direction. It tried a cube next, then a pyramid with much less success.

Kieron ran a hand down his wet face. “Guys, I don’t think Blobby’s programming is quite ready for—”

Then Blobby changed again, and Kieron had to eat the words he’d almost said. “Oh, wow. Wow.”

That…was a lot of legs.

Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Nine

 Notes: A little negotiation, a little dinner, a little rampaging...all the good stuff ;)

Title: Lord of Unkindness, Ch. 9

***

Chapter Nine

 

Ciro’s raven stays on his shoulder all the way to the kitchen, not because he asks either. It’s like the bird is just as happy to be back together as he is. Angelo doesn’t say anything, but the sidelong glances he throws at Ciro along the way are enough to let him know that Angelo feels like this is barely sufficient healing. Ciro still can’t feel his fingers below the first knuckle, but that’s enough for him to get almost everything done without fumbling like a fool, and that’s all he needs.

For now. He knows he’s got to reunite his magic eventually or die, and the whole purpose of running in the first place was to avoid dying. Ciro isn’t suicidal, not right now. He hasn’t been for a while, but he doesn’t want to put himself in a place where he’s got to choose again. With his magic spread out, he’s as safe as he’s going to be. He needs to be satisfied with that.

And he needs to leave Angelo. But stepping into the kitchen and taking in the delicious scent of meat and vegetables coalescing in the instant pot on the counter, Ciro’s willing to wait for the meal to be over first. He steps over to the pot and inhales deeply. “Smells good,” he tells Angelo, who in turn starts to laugh. “What?”

“I’m glad you think so,” he snickers from behind his hand. “But that’s actually Chiffon’s food.”

Ciro blinks and takes a step back. “Excuse me?”

“The ingredients are all human grade!” Angelo protests. “I would never feed Chiffon anything I wasn’t willing to eat myself.”

“That’s still…” Gross, he wants to say, but he doesn’t want to offend. Besides, it really does smell good. Better than a lot of the stuff that Ciro has been eating lately. “So what are we eating for…” What even was the time? “Dinner?”

“Aroskaldo,” Angelo says, turning toward the fridge. “Something light and easy for your stomach.”

“My stomach is fine.” But it rumbles at the thought of the savory rice porridge, and Ciro knows Angelo hears it when he pulls chicken and fish sauce out of the fridge.

“It’ll be better with some of my aroskaldo in it. Then we can talk about more, if you’re still hungry.” This time the look he shoots Ciro is edged with heat, and it echoes through his body like the ring of a gong.

For just a second he lets himself remember how good it felt to be with Angelo. He wasn’t Ciro’s first, but he was his first man, and the person who convinced Ciro he was, in fact, very bisexual and liked men. This one, specifically. Those lips against his skin, firm hands touching him, slick and slow as he opened him up, the sounds that came from that sinful mouth as he fucked inside Ciro just a room away from the rest of his family, made him work to keep his scream down when he came and—

It’s impossible. Ciro can’t let himself even entertain the thought, because he needs the walls he’s built over these past six months. They give him the strength to endure, to hurt himself with his own magic by sending it away, to work jobs that send him places that make him sick, to live in places that make him want to curl up in a ball and cover his head with his arms. Being with Angelo makes him feel vulnerable, and he’s not going to give into that weakness.

Besides, for all his sweet words, Angelo’s the one who left without so much as a backward glance after they had their fling. They parted as friends, sure—they were friends before that, too. But assigning any more meaning to something that clearly meant more to Ciro than it did to him is asking for trouble.

Ciro sits down at the little table in the dining alcove and focuses on his bird instead. He watches as it hops down from his shoulder onto the table, searching for crumbs, then startles when it snaps a piece of chicken out of the air.

Chiffon starts to whine, jumping up and putting both paws on Ciro’s knee in an effort to make himself more visible. Or maybe he just wants to be held. Either way, Ciro gives in to temptation and picks the dog up. He’s so tiny, but there’s something about the energy in his little body that feels like it’s spilling out over the edges. Ciro’s magic is intrigued—this is the first time he’s ever met the little dog, but he can tell there’s something more to him. He’s just not sure what. He scratched the dog under the chin, and a second later the pup rolls over in his lap and displays his belly in a shameless grab for more scritches.

“He likes you.”

“He’s a little opportunist,” Ciro says as he gives in and pets the dog. “I bet he’s like this with everyone you invite to dinner.”

“Far from it.”

Ciro fights against the curl of warmth that tingles in his chest at the thought that he might be special. He sits there and pets Chiffon instead, silent and appreciative of the puppy’s weight, and does his best not to startle when his raven flies over to Angelo and settles on his shoulder. Angelo, for his part, takes it in stride—as he should. Familiar magic always reacts to him like this, from what Ciro’s seen. Even Nephele’s hateful familiars don’t snap at Angelo. More than he can say for how they react to him.

The memory of scrabbling paws and sharp little teeth, yellow eyes in the darkness and ropy, hairless tails wrapping around his wrists and ankles make Ciro bite his lip in an effort to dispel it. He hardly even realizes he’s shut his eyes until a soft finger taps his chin. “Don’t hurt yourself, honey.” Ciro opens his eyes and looks down at the table to see a bowl of a thick, congee-like rice porridge in front of him. It’s got green onions on top, half a hard-boiled egg by the rim, and smells strongly of garlic and chicken and comfort.

“Thanks,” he says, has to say—his mother raised him to be polite even from a superior position, and he’s far from superior here, even though he doesn’t want to do anything to imply debt. He starts to eat and almost groans at the flavors. Holy shit, that’s good. Not quite like he used to have with his mother’s family, but close enough to make him feel nostalgic and better than anything else he’s had in a while.

The first few minutes of their meal are conversation-proof, because both of them tuck in like it’s been a long time since they last ate. It’s not until the huge bowl is half empty that Angelo starts to talk. “It’s probably hard for you to believe, but this house is actually very secure.”

Ciro snorts. “This house is literally attached to your place of business. Maria told me you have employees, clients, all sorts of people in and out of it.”

“And none of those people are allowed in the house.”

Ciro raises an eyebrow. “None? None at all?”

“Maria is,” Angelo allows, “but she doesn’t live here; she’s got an apartment over the garage. She only comes in if it’s an emergency, and those are few and far betwee—”

A door slams open somewhere, and a familiar voice calls out “Boss! Boss!”

Ciro can’t help but laugh at the long-suffering look on Angelo’s face. “In the kitchen,” he calls out, but it’s clear he’s annoyed. Maria careens in at a skid, her eyes widening as she takes in the intimate tableau—Chiffon still on Ciro’s lap, Ciro’s raven perched on Angelo’s shoulder like his own personal gargoyle.

“What’s so important you couldn’t text first?” Angelo asks sharply.

Maria puts her hands on her hips, as ruffled as a chicken in a windstorm. “Excuse you? I did! Why didn’t you answer?”

Angelo goes from irritated to dumbfounded in an instant. He pats his hip, probably feeling for his phone, but gets nothing. “It must still be in the bedroom,” he mutters, and oh…Ciro doesn’t want to take that personally, to let the knowledge that Angelo let his concern for Ciro cause him to forget something that he’s clearly used to having all the time, but it does. “Sorry, my bad,” Angelo continues. “What’s going on?”

Maria lets go of her indignation as fast as it came. “Um, it’s Bets…she’s here.”

“And…”

“And she brought her brother.”

Angelo stiffens. “He’s high again?”

“Rampaging,” Maria confirms. “Fort got his familiar to sleep on the way over here, but he’s gonna wake up soon and you remember what happened last time he woke up on PCP.”

“Fuck.” Angelo pushes to his feet, frowning when Ciro’s raven flaps off his shoulder and onto Ciro’s. “I’m sorry, I have to take care of this.”

“It’s fine.” It’s more than fine; it’s the chance Ciro needs to get out of here without having to talk about something he frankly doesn’t know how to address. If he’s lucky, he can—

Angelo gestures at the whiteboard hanging on the wall near the back door. “Write your number down for me.”

“Why?”

“So I have a way to contact you after you sneak out.”

Ciro frowns. “What makes you think I’m going to sneak out?”

“Are you kidding? Look at your raven.” He does, and—ah. The bird is staring fixedly at the door, even though Ciro’s been focused elsewhere. Trust Angelo to be able to read his intentions in his familiar. “Just give me your number, okay? That way I don’t have to waste Maria’s time tracking you down.”

“Just don’t track me down, then.”

Angelo huffs in irritation. “Ciro, can you just—” There’s a sudden crash from somewhere nearby, and a bellow that practically rattles the dishes. “Shit.” Angelo turns and runs out the door without another word, Chiffon trotting behind at his heels.

Maria isn’t so quick to leave. “You gonna do it?” she asks, shrugging a shoulder at the board.

“You gonna copy it down for yourself if I do?” Ciro challenges her.

“Of course!” She grins at him. “You’re interesting, you know? I want to talk more.”

Angelo shakes his head as he gets to his feet. “Don’t bother, I’m actually very boring.”

“Bossman doesn’t think so.”

“He’s a sentimental idiot.”

Her smile drops. “I know. Which is why you’re going to leave him your number, so I don’t have to hunt you down again. Right?”

“Are you threatening me?” Ciro asks.

“Not a threat. A promise. He wants to know you’re okay. I want him to be happy.”

“Your boss doesn’t need you to manage his life,” Ciro tells her.

“You’d be surprised what he can use help with,” Maria says as another bellow echoes through the kitchen. “Case in point! Gotta go!” She turns and runs, leaving Ciro and his magic alone at last. He feels like he ought to be relieved to be out from under the pressure of their scrutiny, but…he’s not. He stares at the whiteboard for a long moment and contemplates leaving it be, walking out of here and getting on the first bus out of town, and starting over from scratch. Surely Maria’s power has a radius—she won’t be able to track him forever. He can leave them both in the dust, for good.

His raven pecks the side of his head, viciously hard. “Ow. Fine.” He scrawls his current number down before he can talk himself out of it, reasoning that he can always change phones once Maria’s dropped him from her radar. Then he heads out the same way they left, walks down a slender hallway and out a door into the sultry summer night air, and orients himself. He’s in a small, tidy backyard that’s completely fenced in, but there are two gates. One leads toward the road, and the other leads toward the warehouse, where he can hear the sounds of a huge creature rampaging.

It must be bad if Angelo doesn’t have it handled yet. Ciro needs to leave, but…his feet follow the wrong path, the one that leads to the warehouse. He doesn’t go in, not quite, just peeks in through a crack in the door and sees—

A silverback gorilla, huge, at least five hundred pounds and with fists like sledgehammers, is running around the big room, stalking around the man lying on the table in the middle of it. The man appears to be unconscious—is this his familiar? How is it awake while he isn’t? Maria is standing in front of an older woman wringing her hands in the corner, while Chiffon stands and growls close to the door. And Angelo…

He’s got his arms spread wide, a line of gold glimmering in between them. The gold washes like a wave out from his grasp, spreading away from him and gradually hemming the gorilla in. It seems to sense it, too, its circles and spins tightening as it bares its long fangs in agitation. It tries to run at Angelo but can’t make it through the gold, so instead it turns and jumps up onto the table.

“No!” the woman screams out. “Stop him, he could kill him!”

Familiars don’t kill their masters…except maybe, in some situations, they do. This one looks ready to take out the man lying beneath it, banging its feet and hands in a terrifying show of strength on a table meant to hold the weight of a horse and still making it shake.

Angelo drops his arms. The gold vanishes, and he hurries forward just as the gorilla lowers its massive mouth toward the man’s head. Ciro gasps, unable to stop himself, and gathers his little bit of power, ready to strike as the gorilla pounds its chest and jumps at Angelo.

A rush of wind catches it midair, spins it around, and slams it to the ground. Angelo is a vision in gold, his outline blurred by the intensity of his power. He holds the gorilla down without even touching it, his voice murmuring something soft and soothing. The gorilla slowly begins to calm down, its fists unclenching.

Ciro feels like his heart is going to explode. He has to leave, now, before he runs in and throws himself at Angelo. He’s always been impressed by the man, but seeing him in action like this, not raw power but refined, exquisite, beautiful…it’s too much. He turns and walks blindly toward the path that will take him to the street.

A tiny golden shadow darts past him. Chiffon stops just ahead on the path, and Ciro wonders if the pup is there to stop him. Instead it barks once, ducks it head to savage a bug, then turns, wagging its tail at Ciro like it expects a treat.

“Um…good boy.” Ciro gives Chiffon a few pets, which the shih tzu accepts graciously, then it runs back to the warehouse. Ciro’s raven squawks once, then launches into the air and flies south.

Got it. Time to go.