Lord of Unkindness Ch. 19

 Notes: What the what are they even doing? Let's find out!

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter 19

***

Chapter Nineteen

 

Ciro expects yelling. It would track, given how most of his intense emotional interactions have played out. When things get hard, people yell. If you don’t yell, then you’re not being heard. If you’re not being heard, then someone else is speaking for you, and that can only lead to things you don’t want. Ciro, for all he feels he’s right, also knows that Angelo cares for him. Of course he doesn’t want Ciro to make this decision. Of course he’s going to yell at him for it.

Ciro doesn’t expect the magical panic attack.

It’s subtle at first. Angelo doesn’t say anything, just stares at Ciro, his eyes wide but his pupils dialing down to pinpricks. He isn’t touching Ciro with his hands any longer, but it still feels like he’s touching him somehow. An intense pressure rises up all around them, like they’ve just sunk several atmospheres deep into the sea without moving at all, and then—

All around them, gold magic appears out of nothingness, once-smooth threads clinging and clumping together like clots. They stick to Ciro, gummy and cloying, clutching at him all in time with a regular thud thud thud that it takes far too long to realize is Angelo’s heartbeat.

“Angelo, stop,” Ciro says, but it’s as plain as day that Angelo can’t. Ciro isn’t even sure he’s hearing him right now; he’s just staring, looking at Ciro but also looking through him, and whatever he sees is bringing tears to his eyes. His hands are still outstretched, and after a moment Ciro tries to take them again.

Zap! A spark stings his hands as soon as he makes contact. “Fuck!” Ciro swears. He looks around, but he can’t sees the walls anymore, or the ceiling. Hell, he’s not even sure if he’s still standing on a floor or if he’s been transported into a place where nothing exists but Angelo’s magic. Which, if that’s the case, things have gone very, very wrong. He tries to touch Angelo again, but the spark is even hotter this time.

Fine. He can’t use his hands? He’ll use what’s left of his magic. He summons his bird, raven-sized once more, who lands on his shoulder and casually pecks at a clump of sticky golden thread. It immediately unravels, stretching out and away like harp strings drawn taut, and Ciro smiles as his bird flies. It uses its beak or claws to pierce each puff of Angelo’s misbehaving magic, calming it down and smoothing it out, until the last clump is finally absorbed back into their surroundings. Then his raven lands on Angelo’s head, bends over, and very deliberately pecks him in the middle of the forehead.

“Ouch!”

The gold vanishes. They’re back in the bedroom, Ciro half dressed and Angelo totally nude and a bunch of harsh words, regrets, and strange magic lying between them now. Angelo looks stunned, like he can’t believe what’s just happened. Now’s the time for Ciro to press his advantage, to get himself out of this mess once and for all and give Angelo his life back.

But…what just happened wasn’t normal. That was far from normal, far from healthy, far from anything Angelo ought to be dealing with on his own. Ciro couldn’t go yet, not if he was just going to make things worse than he already had. He steeled himself, then reached out and took Angelo’s hands again.

No sparks. No pain. Just Angelo, taking a sudden deep breath as though Ciro’s grip is reeling him back into his body. He stares at Ciro for a long moment, then blinks away the suspicious shine in his eyes. “Shit,” he says tiredly.

Feeling encouraged, Ciro takes a step closer to him. “What was that?” he asks quietly. “I’ve never seen your magic do that before.”

“It’s never done that before,” Angelo replies, looking down at their hands. He smooths his thumb over the back of Ciro’s left wrist, where a particularly sticky bit of magic had pulled at his skin.

“Why do you think it did?”

“I don’t…know for sure.”

Ciro sighs. “Hazard a guess, then.”

Angelo’s lips twist in a self-deprecating smirk. “And have you run away from me even faster? No thanks.”

That isn’t fair. “I’m not leaving because I want to. I’m leaving because it’s the only way you’ll have a life.”

“Thanks for making that very important decision about my life unilaterally for me,” Angelo says caustically. “That definitely makes me feel better about all of this.”

“I’m trying to do the right thing here,” Ciro insists.

Angelo drops his hands. “You’re trying to do the thing that’s simplest for you, instead of putting the hard work in to actually make a change for the better.”

Where is this coming from? “I’m not—”

“Yes you are!” Oh, there’s heat in his voice now, genuine anger. It’s almost a relief to hear it. Here comes the yelling. Only it’s not a yell. Angelo, it seems, doesn’t need to yell to be heard when it’s just the two of them. Ciro always wants to listen to him, and Angelo knows it. “You’re so ready to run, you don’t even want to try and make a plan that could save your life.”

“I don’t want you to give up your life for me!” Ciro snaps.

“It’s my life to give,” Angelo snaps right back. “And if you bothered to talk with me instead of at me, you’d have learned that I know someone who can help you learn to channel your magic in a different way. She’s done it before, and under at least as dire circumstances as what you’re going through right now. If anyone can show you how to change your magical signature, it’s her.”

What the… “Why didn’t you say that before?”

“When did I have the time?”

“I don’t know, maybe while your magic was gluing itself to me so I couldn’t move was a good spot for that little revelation!”

The fire goes out of Angelo almost as fast as it came back to him. He lets go and sits down on the edge of the bed, dropping his head into his hands, and says something under his voice in a language Ciro doesn’t know. After a moment of pulling his head out of his own ass, Ciro sits down next to him. “Why did your magic do that?” he asks gently. He can tell it means something to Angelo, but he’s not sure how bad it is. “Is it painful? Does it hurt you?”

Angelo scrubs a hand through his hair but doesn’t look up. “Not…exactly. It can hurt. Not you,” he hurried to add for Ciro’s sake. “It won’t ever hurt you.”

“That’s good, but I don’t want it to hurt you.”

“That’s not something either of us can control, I’m afraid.”

“Why not?” Ciro asks. “It’s your magic, so you’re the one who controls it.”

“Not under these circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

Angelo shakes his head. “I’ll tell you later, if it becomes relevant. Right now I want to focus on you.” He sits up, and as soon as he’s upright Ciro’s raven perches on his shoulder. Angelo smiles a little, but his eyes are fixed on Ciro’s. “Look. I appreciate that you want me to be able to live my life like I always have, but that’s not an option for me now. There is no way that I’m leaving you to face your fate alone, whether that means confronting your family, hiding so well no one ever finds you, or changing your magic so much that there’s nothing to track you with. I just can’t do it, so please don’t ask me again.”

It’s the way he says it, so simple and forthright, that gets to Ciro. It’s clear now that it’s too late for him to back out of this without repercussions, and not just for himself. “All right,” he says at last. “Fine. So…you think I need to learn a new way of using my magic.”

“I do.”

“And you know someone who can help me do that.”

Angelo smiles a little. “I do.”

“And she’s not going to be pissed at getting dragged into this.”

“She won’t like it, but she’ll acknowledge the debt when I call it in. And from what I understand, she owes you a debt as well, so she really can’t say no.”

Ciro can’t think of anyone off the top of his head who owed him a debt. He hired his services out for money, not favors. Who is this mysterious woman?

Angelo interrupts his thoughts before he could ask. “If we do this, though, you have to promise me you’ll really try,” he says. “No putting in minimal effort and then flouncing off to die your way when it doesn’t work out. I need to know you’re as committed to your own life as I am, Ciro.”

Ciro sighs, because that’s the heart of the issue, isn’t it? He’s not sure he’s worth it, worth all the fuss and bother and pain. Wouldn’t it be easier just to be on his own again, to run until he’s caught and fight until he’s dead? But that wouldn’t be easier on Angelo. Ciro’s let them get tangled together, magically and otherwise, and he can’t leave without doing damage to the one person he wants safe more than anyone else.

Which is, of course, the point. “I promise,” he says solemnly. “I’ll work hard at it. Who’s the teacher?”

A little levity finally comes back to Angelo’s face. “Oh, you’re going to like this. It’s Annette.”

Wait.

What?

Who?

How!?

Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Nine, Part Two

 Notes: Ooooh, let's have some threats, shall we?

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

***

Chapter Nine, Part Two

 

The second Kieron sent the transponder code, he began thinking about a backup plan. The truth was, he had no idea whether or not Lizzie was actively monitoring above this planet right now. Sure, she and Catie could communicate, but that was because they had complementary programming and a bond that went beyond spacial mechanics and into the realm of “it’s a sister thing.” Lizzie was always listening for Catie, and vice versa. But Lizzie was accustomed to Catie being the go-between for communications with Kieron and Elanus, especially at such a long distance. Without her to wave the proverbial flag and get Lizzie’s attention, this might be a futile exercise, in which case…

Well, Kieron was right beside the control panel, which was lifted off the flight deck flooring and surely had its own insulators. If the floor was to be electrified at any moment, getting on top of the panel was a good call. Once he was up there, using Trapper as a human shield was the next step. The man was arrogant, still sitting there spinning his chair in little semi-circles as he smirked at Kieron, just waiting to prove him wrong. He had a small hand blaster on his right side, Kieron’s left—how nice, he’d be able to grab that easily once he got his other arm around the man’s neck. Once he had a human shield, he’d be in a decent negotiating position again.

Of course, there were a lot of things that could go wrong with that scenario, not the least of which being his mo—Carlisle, who was watching him like a predator searching for the weakest link in the herd. Kieron decided to confront the staring head-on. Besides, conversation would be a good distraction from the ticking clock. “What?” he said flatly. “Afraid I’m going to make a break for it?”

“You don’t have anywhere to go,” she replied, and Alissa laughed in agreement.

Kieron didn’t say anything, he just met her unblinking stare with one of his own.

“Um…boss?” Doubles asked from where he’d slumped down at the table. “What’s with the…thing?”

“There’s no thing,” Carlisle said evenly.

“Oh, she denied it without even trying to talk around it,” Alissa said, heading over to sit next to Doubles. She stroked her short, thick fingers across the back of his hand, her deep blue hair glowing green in the strange yellow light. “Now we know there’s a thing.”

“Thirty seconds,” Trapper intoned.

“If you’ve got something to say to me, then just come out and say it,” Kieron said.

Carlisle shrugged. “I’ve already said my piece, and you denied having any formal training. You can’t blame me for trying to figure out your lie, can you?”

“I’m not lying.”

“I know a soldier when I see one, Desfontaines.”

Kieron sighed. He wasn’t going to be able to put her off forever…which was fine. He just needed to put her off for long enough to distract everyone. “Why, because you spent some time in a fighting force yourself? Is that how you lost the eye?”

She stiffened minutely. “That’s none of your business.”

“Hey, you’ve made me your business, turnabout’s fair play.”

“Dude,” Alissa broke in with a scowl. “If you haven’t noticed, you’re a fucking prisoner right now, okay? We’ve got you dead to rights, so how about you just stand there and look pretty until your people call back or we get tired of waiting, huh?”

“No.”

Surprisingly, this came from Carlisle.

“No what, boss?” Doubles asked.

“No, Desfontaines is no prisoner.”

Trapper rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you made a deal, whatever. Functionally, his ass is ours right now. Has been from the moment he stepped onto our ship.”

“Mm. No, I don’t think so.” Carlisle took a step forward, her eyes intent on Kieron’s face. “The second you boarded, you were looking for outs. Weaknesses in our defenses, in our alliance, in our hardware. You’re not the type to gamble with your life, not when you’ve got a kid to try and get back to. You’re determined to survive, and that means you’re planning for the worst already, aren’t you?”

Kieron hated the way his mother was able to read his strategy like she was seeing inside his head. “You’re projecting.”

“Hardly. The control panel is also electrified, by the way.”

“Boss—” Trapper began, but Kieron cut him off.

“No it’s not. You haven’t shielded any of the visible couplings in the steering chassis. You’d blow out your own ability to drive.”

“Not at the voltage we’re talking about.”

“In a ship this old, with most of its storage space going to weapons and food, I doubt you’re willing to take the risk of blowing something accidentally.”

She smiled slightly, as if pleased he’d seen through her bluff. “We’ve got a secondary protective system.”

Kieron smiled. “Gas in the vents?”

“Boss,” Alissa murmured, “how does he—”

“Maybe you’re pirates after all,” Kieron continued. “That’s the sort of thing a person does when they’re worried about being boarded or transporting hostiles. Neither of which I’d put past you. Regardless, none of you are wearing masks to protect you from…probably concentrated nitrous oxide, isn’t it? So it’s a matter of who wakes up first, or you’re betting you can get to masks faster than I can because you know where they’re stashed.” He glanced around, then slammed a hand down ten inches below the top of the control panel on the hidden drawer he knew he’d find in this model of ship. The drawer popped open, and two small nasal rebreathers fell out.

Trapper immediately drew his weapon. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, Desfontaines, but you keep pulling crazy shit like this and I’ll shoot you for the hell of it.”

“Save your breath, Trapper,” Carlisle said calmly. “He could disarm you faster than you could pull the trigger anyway.”

Trapper looked betrayed. “Boss.”

“What have you brought on our ship, Carlisle?” Alissa demanded, pushing to her feet.

“Watch your mouth, Lis,” Carlisle snapped without turning away from Kieron. “Or you’ll play even harder into his game. He’s trying to divide us, to make us forget that we’re waiting for a transmission from his people.” All three of the others suddenly turned and stared at the radio like they’d forgotten it was even there. “Exactly,” Carlisle went on. “It’s been, what, two minutes now, Trapper?”

“Closer to three,” he said. He pushed to his feet and backed away from Kieron, keeping his weapon up.

Shit. Kieron could have attacked then, but there was still a chance he could get out of this without bloodshed. Four against one was bad odds. “Listen,” he said, raising his hands carefully so everyone could see them. “I’m not here to cause anyone harm. You’re the ones who played that game first, if you remember.”

“Yeah, then you turned out to be some sort of crazy badass who even makes the boss nervous,” Trapper said. “No way we’re dealing with you now. I say we shoot him and dump the body.”

“Seconded,” Alissa immediately said. Doubles just blinked and looked like he wanted to shrink in on himself.

“Your people haven’t checked in,” Carlisle noted. “I think you’re lying about them being out there, Desfontaines. And if you’re lying about that, then you could be lying about everything.” She pulled her own gun, and Kieron bit back a curse. “Too bad.”

Time to go nuclear. “My battery pack is set to explode.”

There was a collective blink. “What?” Alissa asked after a second.

“The uranium battery pack in my environmental array. It’s rigged to blow the second my vitals stop transmitting to it.”

Alissa, Trapper, and Doubles all looked dumbfounded. Carlisle, on the other hand, looked oddly satisfied.

“What the fuck?” Trapper exclaimed. “That’s bullshit.”

“Check for the signal if you don’t believe me. You’ll pick it up.” Blobby could take care of that, Kieron was certain.

“It’s like you wanted to be caught,” Doubles said with a whine.

“I didn’t want anything to do with any of you.” Truer words were never spoken. “You forced this. Now, you can either be patient and wait a little longer to hear back from my people,” and I can work on my next backup plan, “or you can disrupt my vital signs and blow yourselves, and your ship, sky-high.”

Carlisle began to speak, but a new voice cut through the tension and broke it to pieces. “Kee? Is that you?”

Kieron grinned and flicked the microphone switch. “Hey, Lizzie. It’s me.”

Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Eighteen

 Notes: Oooh, things are getting intense! Who knew communication could be so hard? (we knew, we all knew)

Title: Lord of Unkindness, Chapter Eighteen

***

Chapter Eighteen

 

“No!” Ciro sits up and pulls away in one motion, and Angelo’s not fast enough to keep his head from hitting the pillow before he too sits up.

“Ciro.” He holds out a placating hand, but Ciro isn’t having it.

“That’s a terrible idea. Are you insane? That’s bullshit!” He wants to get up and pace, but he’s naked now and can’t quite stomach getting back into his old, filthy clothes. He settles for sitting at the far edge of the bed and pulling the blankets right around his waist, so no roving hands can distract him. “The last thing I need to do is attract attention by pulling my magic toward myself! How do you think they found me the last time?”

Angelo looks unimpressed with his objections. “Given that your family is ridiculously wealthy and runs a telecom company, I think there are literally dozens of ways they could have found you. Bribing people for access to CC camera systems, hiring hackers to look for any sort of digital footprint you might have left—hell, even hiring an old-fashioned private investigator to find you. Or a firm of private investigators. It’s not like you tried to hide yourself in the wilderness, baby. You chose a city. A shithole of a city, but a city.”

Ciro shakes his head. “They do their tracking with familiars. You know that, you know they don’t like to hire contractors unless they have no choice. No one in the family is a good enough hacker to trace me—I was the best of them all. And private investigators are a useless expense when magical investigators will do just as good. They work on regular humans and on witches.”

Angelo sits up and crosses his legs, settling in for the argument. “All right, let’s consider that. Your family lives on the other side of the country. This is a big damn place. Even with all their familiars, given the fact that you had no reason to pick Vernon in particular, that’s a lot of ground to cover and familiars are delicate. Nephele didn’t have hers run all the way from Massachusetts to California, that’s for sure.”

“Not her,” Ciro agrees. “Her father. Uncle Magnus is the one who found me.”

“Cockroaches are even more of a stretch than rats.”

“They’re hard to kill and they fit in luggage,” Ciro replies doggedly, batting at his bird when it flies irritatedly at his head. “Stick a hundred into a hundred different bags at the airport, send them to a hundred different locations, and let them start sniffing for trace. I’ve seen him do it before.”

“Even if you’re right,” Angelo says, “the best defense isn’t to send your magic away! It’s to coalesce it around you into a strong defense!”

“I’ve got over a hundred ravens! That’s a huge fucking flock of coalescence!” How does Angelo not see that all this does is make it even easier for Ciro to fuck up? How does he not see how dangerous it would be for him? “This isn’t going to work,” Ciro says, looking around the room for wherever Angelo has stashed his own clothes. They’re not the same height, but he’ll figure something out.

“Whoa, whoa. Hang on.” Angelo reaches out a hand but doesn’t touch him. “Please don’t be hasty. I think…” He frowns thoughtfully. “I think we’re talking around a misconception. Ciro, do you think you don’t have any power outside of your familiars?”

Great, now they’re talking witchcraft 101. “My familiars are my power,” Ciro says impatiently. “That’s how it works with witches like me. Our familiars are the physical and spiritual representations of our power, existing outside of us but connected to us. We control and commune with them, and can restore them with time and effort if one is used up, but they’re primarily a static creation.”

Angelo nods slowly. “And what are other witches’ familiars for?”

“The same fucking thing,” Ciro snaps.

“But they’re not the same thing, because other witches don’t require their familiars to be present in order to do their magic,” Angelo says. “They help, for sure. It’s easier to do magic when there’s a familiar to channel it or augment it, but they’re a construct. A tool to utilize magic, not the person’s magic in and of itself.”

Ciro shakes his head. “That’s a whole separate class of witch. We’re different from them.”

“No, you’re not.”

Ciro clenches his hands. “Yes we are, it’s the first thing we’re taught as children! Our magic lives in our familiars! We have nothing without them!”

“Ciro.” There’s a tenderness in Angelo’s face that makes Ciro’s hackles rise. “That’s not true.”

He can’t stand it any longer. He gets up and grabs for his filthy, waterlogged jeans. Pulling them on feels like pulling on a layer of cold slime, but he persists until they’re up all the way.

“Ciro, stop!”

“You’re wrong,” he snaps without looking at Angelo. “You just don’t get it. This is a fundamental aspect of my magic—you think I don’t understand my own magic?”

Angelo, not to be outdone, gets out of bed. Unlike Ciro, he doesn’t give a shit whether he’s clothed or not. He’s bathed in the golden light of his own magic, and his nudity is less of a vulnerability than it is simply a fact. Ciro feels envy rise up as he glances at him, but refuses to meet Angelo’s eyes as he comes closer. “I know this was the way you were taught,” Angelo says, frank but calm. “But your family aren’t the only multi-familiar witches I’ve worked with over the years, and several of the others have used their magic very, very differently, with great success.”

“Not my family, though,” Ciro points out—harsher than he needs to be, harsher than he wants to be, but this is a matter of life and death now. Both their lives, potentially, but he cares about Angelo’s far more than he does about his own. “Not my family, so you can’t say that whatever ability you’re talking about crosses over. None of us work magic outside what’s kept in our familiars, and—”

“Your mother did.”

Ciro goes blank. He…he can’t think of anything to say to that. He doesn’t know anything to say to that, because he doesn’t know enough about his mother to refute it. He wants to refute it—this is an argument he can win, that he needs to win for both their sakes, but…

But he remembers little things. Little magics his mother used to do with her hands, like healing a cut on his face or mending a bruise on his knee. He remembers how she could coax a flower to give off a stronger scent, or widen its bloom. Warming him up with a touch when he was cold, or the one time they went sledding and she was able to pull him, on his sled, up the steep, steep hill over and over, never faltering, never falling, never getting tired.

Her familiars had been fish. Koi. His father had hated them, but she never listened to his insults or hatred. His mother had been a goddess in the water, and she’d done the sort of specialized work with her fish familiars that had helped cement their family’s value and expertise in the magical community.

Cheng Mei could do magic without her familiars at hand. Not dramatic magic, not that Ciro had ever seen, but…

“It’s not the same.”

“It can be,” Angelo says. “Your mother’s skills at hands-on magic suffered during her marriage to your father, but they never went away entirely. This is something that you can learn.”

Ciro shakes his head. “I don’t think I can.”

“I think you have to.”

“I—”

Now it’s Angelo’s turn to raise his voice. “What are you going to do without your magic? Hunker down in a wilderness somewhere and hope against hope that you’re never spotted by the wrong magic user? What about when your father gets desperate enough to share your family’s business with other people and hires specialized bounty hunters to hunt you down? What about when he decides to do business with a blood clan?”

Ciro balks. “He hates blood magic.”

“He hates having you out of pocket even worse,” Angelo insists. “He’ll get there eventually, especially if what you told me is right and your uncle isn’t able to resume his work for the family. He’s going to need your strength to prop up your family’s status in the magical world, and he won’t care who he has to hurt to get it.”

Ciro stares at Angelo in dismay. “Then it’s even more important that I get away from you, soon,” he says grimly.

“No. You’re safe here,” Angelo says. “My parents’ magic is strong enough to turn eyes, magical or otherwise, away.”

“Then I’m stuck here forever.”

“Ciro—”

“And so are you,” he goes on, knowing that he’s hit on a thread here that he’s got to pull. “This place won’t let me stay without you, will it? It’s meant to be your sanctuary, not mine. I can only be here with you, and you can’t stay here forever.”

“I can stay as long as I need to,” Angelo says.

Ciro shakes his head. “You can’t. You can’t, you’ve got a business and employees and other people to help. You—your whole life revolves around helping people, and familiars, and—you can’t give that up for my sake.”

“I won’t be giving anything up,” Angelo insists. “I’m here because I—Ciro. You—you know.”

You know I love you. And he does know, he feels that, but he also knows he doesn’t deserve for Angelo to turn his life inside out. Not for as long as it might take him to learn an entirely new magical discipline, which could take months…years. “I won’t do that to you,” Ciro insists quietly. “I can’t. I’ll—I’ve got to leave.”

“No.”

“I’ve got to. I won’t trap you here, I won’t…” He turns blindly, looking for his shirt, for anything he can shove on his feet to make the first few miles easier.

“Ciro!” Angelo grabs his hands and pulls him back to face him.

“I won’t.” Ciro pulls his hands free but doesn’t look away. He needs Angelo to see this next part, see the truth in his face. “I would rather die than trap you.”