Notes: Aaaand that's a wrap for Lord of Unkindness! Omigosh, thank you for reading along with me. I know it's not perfect, I've made mistakes here and there, but I hope you enjoyed the ride. We've still got Hadrian's Colony going, and I'll come up with a new story to torment--I mean, share and make you happy with--soon enough!
Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Forty
***
Chapter Forty
Photo by Daniel Lincoln
“Fetch.” Ciro throws the ball to the far side of Angelo’s warehouse space. “Go get it, Chiffon. Fetch!”
A dog runs to fetch the ball. The dog is not Chiffon, who puts tiny paws up onto Ciro’s knee and gives him a sweet, innocent look he absolutely doesn’t believe.
“You don’t fool me,” he tells the pup, scratching Chiffon behind the ears. “I know you’re smart enough to do this. You’re smart enough to do whatever Angelo asks of you; you can fetch a damn ball.” Said damn ball is dropped at Ciro’s feet by one of his dogs.
Well, all right, it’s not exactly a dog. This particular familiar is the result of three months of intensive work at integrating his inherited power, weekly sessions with Annette on expressing that power, and a shit ton of therapy. Ciro didn’t even know there were therapists who specialized in fuckery like he was going through before this, but between Angelo and Annette they have him covered.
This dog, at a distance, looks like a regular dog—some sort of mutt, maybe a Labrador retriever blended with a Spanish water dog. Cute, but not remarkable. It’s only when you get closer that you notice the hairs are actually feathers, glinting blue and black in the sunshine. This dog has no teeth, but a muzzle with serrated edges like a beak had a baby with a bread knife. This dog’s eyes are completely black, and when people reach their hand out to pet it, it only gives them a single glance’s warning before it tries to bite. Ciro stopped taking it out in public for walks after it almost took a toddler’s hand off—the kiddo was fine, but Ciro wasn’t.
Honestly, from the moment he manifested this chimera of a creature, he’s been unsure of it. Part of him wants nothing to do with it, wants it gone, but his mate won’t have it. “It’s you,” he explained gently one night as Ciro lay in bed beside them, after waking both of them up from his nightmares. The damn dog was right there, staring at him from the spot it had claimed on the floor. “It’s a part of you now, and I love all of your parts. Even the hard ones.”
“It’s violent, it’s unnatural, it’s evil—”
Angelo’s hand stroking his face had stopped his diatribe before it really got started. “Nothing about you is evil,” he insisted. His familiar—because that particular raven is never joining the flock again, not when it’s been singled out as Angelo’s favorite—perched on his head, preening at Angelo’s thick black hair. It felt like Ciro was touching him, through the bird, a calming feedback loop he gratefully fell into. “You have more power than you know what to do with, that’s all. Some of it’s strange, but that’s just because it’s new. You’ll figure it out, baby. I have faith in you.”
I have faith in you is a cheat code, as far as Ciro is concerned. As soon as Angelo says it, he has to at least make the attempt to figure his shit out.
He reached down and picks up the tennis ball, neatly halved thanks to the dog’s sharp beak. “You broke it,” he says sourly. The dog tilts its head at him. “This is bullshit. You need to learn control, because I’m not having custom balls made just so you can—”
“Mini Boss!” Maria runs in through the large open doors at the back. “We’ve got an issue!”
Ciro stands up, his magic circulating through him like an electric current. “Don’t call me that. What kind of issue?”
“Gang fight, they got their familiars involved. Two of them are fucked up pretty bad.”
And Angelo was off tending to a kelpie on someone’s private property today. Shit. Well, if there’s anything good about having a shit-ton of magic at his disposal, it’s the ability to fix things he otherwise wouldn’t be able to. “I can probably stabilize them.” Put them into stasis, at least, until Angelo gets back. “Tell their witches to bring them in.”
“Um.” Maria wrings her hands together. “The problem is, they’re from opposite sides. Angelo’s worked with both of them before, he wouldn’t turn them away, but…they’re already beefing with each other, and they arrived outside at almost the same time. I’m afraid they’re gonna start fighting here.”
Oh, hell no. Ciro isn’t putting up with that sort of shit. “They’re out front?” he clarifies as he heads for the door.
“Yeah.” The rafters overhead rustle, but Ciro ignores it as he walks out into the hot California sun, Chiffon on one side, his weird new dog on the other. Two different muscle cars are taking up the entire driveway, and there’s a whole fucking menagerie of animals around the people who are shouting.
On one side is a heavyset man with a red bandana and a woman whose eyes are glowing—a bruja, for sure. She’s got a fucking harpy eagle perched on the car behind her, while the man is standing in front of a panting, bleeding familiar in the shape of a pit bull. On the other side are three men, all of them white and wiry, one of them showing the gun at his hip like he’s going to pull it at any second. Behind them are a limping doe, a cat with black fur, and—
A Siberian tiger. Holy shit. That’s a hell of a familiar to be carting around LA.
“All of you shut up, please,” Ciro says in a clipped tone as he gets close to them. The man with the bruja looks tense and furious, ready to start yelling, but she immediately sets a hand on his shoulder and he swallows whatever he was going to say.
The guy with the Siberian tiger isn’t as smart. “Who the fuck are you? Where’s Fabroa?” he demands.
“Not here. I can help you, though.” Ciro turns to the man with the doe familiar, but the tiger’s owner decides he doesn’t like being ignored and pulls his gun.
“I’m fucking talking to you, bitch! I don’t work with people I don’t know, and I—”
Ciro tilts his head and his dog darts forward, leans up, and neatly bites the gun in half.
A steel ball won’t be tough enough, Ciro thinks even as the little fucker stares at his piece with wide eyes. Everyone goes silent.
“Bring them inside,” Ciro says like he was never interrupted. “And I’ll see what I can do while we wait for Angelo to get back. It’s going to cost you for bringing your trouble to our place, though. Or,” he continues, “you can leave right now and never come back, and my familiar probably won’t hunt you down.”
“She’s bleeding really bad, man,” the guy with the doe familiar whispers. “I can see her guts. She needs help.”
The bruja whispers something in her companion’s ear, and he nods. “No disrespect meant,” he says, raising his hands. “You say you can help, I believe you. No need for Poochie there to bite me, eh?”
Ciro smiles. “No need at all. Bring them in.” He leads the way into the treatment area. It’s dark, even with the big windows and the lights going, and it takes everyone except the bruja a while to figure out why. She’s already looked straight up, one hand going to the eagle sitting on her gloved arm in a warning gesture.
“Madre de Dios,” she whispers as the ravens covering each and every rafter on the ceiling shifts like a flock of starlings or a school of fish, wings flapping in tandem.
“Holy shit,” the guy with the Siberian tiger says with much less calm. “What the fuck is going on here, man? When the fuck did Fabroa get a bunch of guard birds?”
“Since I moved in with him,” Ciro says. “Put the deer here, please.” He gestures to the table and the witch who belongs to her lifts the doe tenderly and sets her down. She’s panting, with deep damage to her right foreleg and belly. Ciro doesn’t know enough about healing to help her, but he does know how to stop time.
Crazy that it’s easier to stop time in a localized area than it is to fix something. Maybe someday he’ll have more confidence in his understanding of anatomy, but right now he leaves that to Angelo. He calls down a bird, transforming it into a silvery bubble of light just a foot over the deer, who goes perfectly still. Her witch shudders. “I…can’t feel her the same,” he says slowly. “I mean, I see her, I can tell she’s alive, but our connection is…”
“It’s paused,” Ciro explains. “Just for now. I’ll remove the spell when Angelo gets home and he’ll fix her up the right way, but until then she won’t get any worse, and she won’t feel a thing.” He turns to the man with the bandana. “Let’s see your dog, then.”
The man takes a step back. “Hey, he’s not that bad off, you know? Just a few missing teeth, a—”
“His jaw is broken,” the bruja interjects. “If you want him to be able to eat, you need to let this man do his job.”
“But mija…”
“No,” she snaps at him. “You say you want him fixed, I tell you where to go. You don’t back out now just because you’re afraid of some deep magic. Forgive him,” she says with a curtsey to Ciro. “He doesn’t understand.”
Ciro isn’t entirely sure he understands either. He’s been getting this reaction from a number of traditional magic users ever since joining Angelo back in California. There’s some aspect of his power that they seem to comprehend better than he does. Now’s not the time to admit that, though. “It’s fine. I’ll make sure he’s taken care of,” he assures her. “Get him on the other table, please.”
The pit bull is reluctant, though, whimpering and whining in a true reflection of its witch’s doubts until Chiffon steps forward and barks at it, once. Just once, and then the dog settles and tucks its wounded face between its paws once it’s up on the table. Another raven-turned-time bubble freezes it, and then there’s nothing to do but wait for Angelo. Which…
“Boss is on his way,” Maria says, cell phone in hand as she darts back into the room. “He just finished up the other job, he should be here in less than an hour if traffic doesn’t fuck with him.”
“Good.” Ciro turns to his guests. “The witches who these familiars belong to can stay. The rest of you have to leave until treatment is finished.”
“What if he tries to fuck with our guy?” Half-Gun demands.
Ciro arches an eyebrow. “Do you really think I’m going to let that happen?”
“I mean…”
“Understood.” The bruja bows, and so does her eagle. To his surprise, Ciro’s dog inclines its head to her. “Raoul, I’m going to ask my mother to get the kids from daycare and take them for the night.” She says something to him in Spanish then that makes him laugh, then flounces back out the door.
The tiger and cat bros are less inclined to leave, but after a few more minutes of bluster they go, eyes darting up at the ceiling and back down compulsively as they step out. Ciro waits another minute, then turns to the witches left behind. “You guys want something to drink?”
“Wouldn’t say no to a beer,” Raoul says.
“Vodka,” the doe’s witch says, then nervously adds, “Please.”
One beer and one shot turn into two, then three, and by the time Angelo gets home the witches in question are both a little drunk and feeling a lot more gracious toward each other. They’re hashing out the details of territory and don’t even realize Angelo is there until Ciro gets up to greet him.
“Hey.” He leans in and captures his lover’s lips in a soft kiss. Everything has been soft with Angelo since Ciro has gotten here, and it might get old someday, but not yet. Not by a longshot.
“Hi.” Angelo looks curiously at the tables. “Time suspension?”
“Yeah. I figured it was the safest way to go.”
“Good call. Hello, darlings,” he adds, scratching Ciro’s evil dog under the chin, then doing the same for Chiffon. His raven caws as Ciro rolls his eyes. “Right, then.” He smiles at the witches. “Let’s get your familiars all healed up, shall we?”
Ciro has seen this spell dozens of times by now, but watching Angelo’s golden threads knit flesh, settle organs, and set bones never fails to amaze him. He does it all while the time spell is going, one more sign that they’re mates—otherwise he wouldn’t be able to effect any changes while the spell was in place. This way, the healing is as close to instantaneous and painless for the familiars as possible. When Ciro finally releases his spell, both familiars are slow to get to their feet, the memory of hurt still strong in them, but some gentle touches from their witches are enough to set them to rights.
“Hell of a job,” Raoul says.
“Yeah, thanks man.” They both pay the exorbitant rate Ciro has set without a word of complaint, then head out to reconnect with their crews.
Angelo watches them go, then turns to Ciro. “I was given to understand that we were almost in the middle of a gang war, and then I come home and find everyone calm and quiet, drinking together.”
“I’m not a liar!” Maria calls from deeper inside the house.
“Didn’t say you were,” Angelo calls back, “but seriously, Ciro…”
“They decided discretion was the better part of valor after my evil dog bit one of their guns in half.”
Angelo laughs despite himself. “You can’t keep calling him ‘evil dog,’ that’s not a name! I vote for Darling.”
“I’m not naming my evil dog ‘Darling.’”
“Well, I’m not calling him ‘Evil Dog’ either. That’s not something we can shout at a dog park without attracting attention.”
“We can’t take him to a dog park! Because he’s evil!”
Angelo sighs. “I think he’ll act a lot better once you calm down about him, sweetheart.”
Ciro brushes the comment aside. He’s been alone all day, minding the home front and missing Angelo, and it’s past quitting time. “What do you want for dinner?”
“Don’t pretend like you’re cooking,” Angelo replies, letting the change in subject go as they head back into the house. Ciro feels a susurration go through his ravens, and glances upward comfortingly. Soon, he tells them, then follows Angelo into the kitchen, where Maria is pulling a casserole of some kind out of the oven.
“I’m cooking,” she says imperiously. “And you better appreciate my mother’s world famous nacho casserole. This is from the old country.”
“Your mother lives in Santa Barbara,” Angelo says.
“And her nacho casserole is legend there too!”
It’s delicious, actually. Ciro even has seconds, which makes Angelo smile; he’s been trying to fatten Ciro up since he came home with him, but it’s an uphill battle. Ciro feels so full of magic all the time that eating food on top of that tends to make him feel ill, but he’s slowly getting better.
Everything is getting better with Angelo, Maria, and Annette to help ground him.
Maria leaves after dinner, and once the leftovers are in the fridge, Angelo takes Ciro’s hand and pulls him back to their bedroom, which is deliciously cool compared to the rest of the house. They take a quick shower together, and then Angelo sets up incense, music, and gets Ciro to lie down on his back before massaging a healing ointment into his hands.
They’re improving, slowly. He still can’t feel his fingertips, but the more control he gains over his magic the more the numbness recedes. Being around Annette helps; his father hadn’t lied when he’d taunted Ciro about being with his own kind. He could fly back to the east coast and hang out with his family for a few days—he likes their new setup, an expansive estate in the country, and most of them aren’t so bad—but he’s only been twice in three months, and primarily for work.
Because nothing, and no one, is as good for him as Angelo. His kinnara, his lover, his mate. Ciro is as good as married now, connected to this man for life, and he couldn’t be happier about it. It’s something he never thought he’d have, and when he bows at his mother’s tablet—which they brought with them, of course—and speaks to her, he lets her know not to worry about him. He’s going to be all right now.
Angelo’s roving hands range beyond their initial boundaries, up Ciro’s arms and over his shoulders, down his chest and sides, smoothing and soothing with every step. Ciro, blissed out, spreads his legs eagerly when Angelo touches his hip, welcoming him close to his body.
Predictably, Angelo loves it. If Ciro was inclined to name the thing they’ve got going on, Angelo would be a service top all the way. There’s nothing he likes better than to spoil Ciro and be appreciated for it. “What do you want, baby?” he asks. “I could stroke you off…I could blow you…”
“Fuck me,” Ciro murmurs, eyes on Angelo’s hard cock. “I want to feel you inside me.”
“I want that too, but you had a big day.”
Ciro arches his back and smiles. “Not anything I couldn’t handle. I’m in the mood for a challenge.”
Angelo smirks. “And you think that’s me?”
The challenge is getting you to let go. “I know it is. C’mon, fuck me. Put your fingers in me, get me all nice and wet for your cock.”
“Dirty mouth,” Angelo chides, but Ciro knows he loves it by the way he scrambles for the lube. He slicks his fingers, then smooths the pads of two of them over Ciro’s hole, softening his entrance. “Let me in, baby.”
Ciro throws his head back and groans as Angelo presses two fingers inside, slow and steady. He loves this part, loves the prep, loves being touched like he’s something special. Sex was always so rushed before this, secretive and hurried, something to be ashamed of. Angelo takes his time now, and Ciro never asks him to go faster, only slow, slow, slow. “Harder.” Well, that too. He’s learning a lot about his preferences since getting together with Angelo, and Ciro is surprised to realize that while he likes soft, sweet kisses, he still enjoys a rough, hard fuck too.
“When I think you’re ready.”
“I’m ready now…hnn.” He starts to pant as Angelo presses against his prostate. “Nn, ah, ah…”
“Good,” Angelo says, staring at Ciro like he’s his whole world. It should be too much—it was too much before. Now Ciro relishes the attention.
It’s okay to be loved. It’s okay to crave affection. It’s okay to desire intimacy beyond anything he’s earned. He can’t earn this thing between them; it’s just given. It’s a part of them. All Ciro can do is accept it, or hurt his mate.
He’s done hurting Angelo. Hopefully Angelo isn’t quite done hurting him, though. When he finally slides his cock inside, Ciro clenches down while pulling Angelo in tight with his legs. “Don’t be gentle,” he begs. “Not tonight.”
Angelo makes a wounded noise, but he manages to nod. “Not tonight,” he says, then pulls back so slowly that Ciro can feel every inch of his cock as it stretches his hole. It’s delicious but not enough, and then—Angelo slams back inside, jarring Ciro hard enough to make him cry out, and that?
That’s perfect. Angelo keeps the heavy, hard pace, making every thrust into a fucking stab, and it feels so good Ciro is seeing stars from it. His cock is dripping precome onto his stomach, so hard it’s almost touching his abs. One touch from either of them will set him off, and he doesn’t want that. He wants to draw out the pleasure, the pain, the ache he’s going to feel, but there’s only so long he can go without coming.
“Angelo, I can’t—I have to—”
Angelo kisses him, soft lips a chaotic counterpoint to the pounding his body is taking. “Come for me, baby, let go. Just let go.”
One quick pump with his hand is all it takes. Ciro comes, pleasure and magic lighting up his entire body. Evil dog howls, Angelo’s raven caws from its perch in the corner, and inside the warehouse a thousand dark bodies take flight, soaring out of the open windows and into the night like an avian tornado.
He’s got to be more careful about that. Local ornithologists are beginning to show an interest.
For now, though, Ciro feels nothing but sticky and sweet, released from the tension of the day and his own magic. “’ngelo,” he slurs. “’love you.” That’s all it takes for Angelo to tip over the edge, thrusting hard enough that Ciro can practically feel it in his throat as he comes deep inside of him, lighting him up with golden threads.
They come down together, panting kisses into each other’s mouths until Angelo finally softens so much that he slips out with a sigh. Usually they would clean up immediately, but tonight Ciro holds on to his lover when he makes to leave the bed. “Not yet.”
“You’ll regret it when you wake up sticky,” Angelo warns, but he settles back down next to Ciro and pulls him in close. Ciro closes his eyes and just listens to his lover’s heartbeat, the more beautiful thing he’s ever heard. Hmm…
“We should call him Ventricle.”
Angelo stirs out of his peaceful state and stares at Ciro. “What?”
“Evil dog. He looks like he’d make a good Ventricle.”
“Nobody makes a good Ventricle.”
The hell they don’t. “We can call him Ven for short,” Ciro offers. “But I like it. It’s creepy enough to remind me of where he comes from, but still friendly.”
“Right,” Angelo says sarcastically, “because naming pets after body parts is so friendly.”
“You named your dog Chiffon, you have no room to speak.”
Angelo sighs and lets his head fall back on the pillow. “Fine. Ven it is.”
Ciro beams at him. “Thanks, babe.” He kisses Angelo’s shoulder, lips lingering on his smooth skin. A few golden threads stir into existence, reaching toward Ciro like magnets. He smiles at the sight of them.
He’ll never wonder whether Angelo loves him or not. Never have to fight for acceptance, not of his magic and not of his sexuality. He’s finally with the one person who takes him as he is and only tries to make him better when it means making him healthier and happier.
And Ciro couldn’t be happier than right now. He closes his eyes, curls in close to Angelo, and lets his mind wander until he’s sleeping, and flying, and seeing through the eyes of all his ravens, an unkindness that has been so good to him.
He’s free.
