DeVante's Coven (34 page)

Tony kicked and twisted in the air trying to make himself fall, anything to get to the floor so he could do something, stop the torture, stop the sound of Roderick in agony.

Something grated hard and broke, and he crashed to the floor, one foot hitting Roderick’s cage and sending an electric shock right through him. Roderick’s screams stopped.

For a hundredth of a second there was stunned silence.

And then Lily’s high-pitched wail filled the air, expanded into the open space of the warehouse and doubled back on itself, growing louder—more paralyzing than Roderick’s screams—freezing the whole room.

Except for Lily herself. Her wail continued, and Tony felt hands scrabbling at the gag, the blindfold, and then he could see with his eyes, and he rolled to his side and let her unfasten his hands.

No one moved. Tony sat up and freed himself of the chain around his chest, directing Lily with his hands and eyes to free Daniel, who was a sobbing, shivering mess. Tony tried to see how to get to Roderick, get him out of the fucking cage. He ran towards the cage.

Callum stood as if dumbstruck, metal wand raised half in the air, and Tony wrenched it out of his hand. Someone had him by the shoulders then, and Tony moved to strike out with the wand, but DeVante’s voice flowed over him. “Stand aside,” and though DeVante made no move at all, the front of the cage popped open.

DeVante made a ‘cutting’ motion at Lily, and as the echo of her pitiful wail faded, each of them came in close to form a tight little group: DeVante stood behind Tony, hands on shoulders, Lily clung to Daniel’s hand and pulled him across the ten or twelve feet of floor that had separated them from the rest. When she got close enough, she pressed her body against Tony, crying quietly, and he looped an arm around her. Reed stepped in close and draped his arms over Daniel’s shoulders. Roderick, injured somehow, crawled slowly on his hands and knees from the cage, and came to rest at their feet, the fingers of one hand curled around DeVante’s calf, clinging, his other hand resting on Tony’s shoe. He wasn’t crying, but he was panting and his eyes were oddly glazed. A phrase ran through Tony’s head, and then repeated.

Together we stand.

Chapter 36



How to take the light

When the last echo of Lily’s unendurable wail died, Callum turned to face the lot of them.

“Your answer,” DeVante said, and each stared in turn at this creature so arrogant he thought torturing one of their own would bring him to their favor.

“Impressive,” Callum sneered. “And so smug, to think you’ve won so easily, but I am stronger than you ever thought I could be.”

And I am weaker,
DeVante thought to himself, but kept the thought close and tight. He knew it was true, that he was weaker than he had ever been, with this band of young ones gathered around him, his children every one.

Emily had started his heart melting, but it was Daniel, he thought, who softened him the rest of the way. Oh, he had always been soft on Roderick, of course, but it was Daniel he stared at, Daniel who brought light and brightness into his dark heart; it was Daniel for whom DeVante broke so many of his self-imposed rules.

And suddenly he knew that Reed broke rules for Daniel as well.

Did it make him weak, caring for them, about them? He had always believed so, just as he believed loving Emily left huge holes in the cold shield he held around himself to keep safe.

Emily, Daniel, forever Roderick… and now Tony, Lily, Reed somehow. It was like a family all of a sudden, each on their path, him watching over them all and guiding if need be.

Today they faced an enemy as one—and each
does
have talent, something DeVante had not considered consciously. Combined are they undefeatable? Or is each merely a chunk out of DeVante’s armor, to be used as a tool to bring him down?

He stooped down and dropped a hand to Roderick’s head.
How hurt are you, Fledgling-Mine?

I don’t know,
came the answer.
My brain is addled. I can’t even connect shoes to bodies to names. I see naked feet under a flowing dress and I know I should know who she is. Your boots I’d know anywhere. The rest might as well be tree trunks.
Even Roderick’s mental voice was worn and weak.

Stay within the safety of the trees,
DeVante told him, and smoothed fingers through the softness of Roderick’s hair.

“Meet my tribe, my coven,” he said to Callum, and laid a hand on each as he named them. “Roderick, my future. Daniel, my weakness. Lily, my redemption. Tony, my hope. Reed, possibly my equal.”

He felt their surprised eyes on him, but he ignored them, staring into Callum. “They are all my children. Does it make me weak, Callum, to love them? In our old days together we certainly would have thought so, for though we were companions many years, there was never love for each other in that. We scoffed at love—we still scoff, do we not?”

“Power, DeVante,” the other man said, “is the only thing to count on, the only strength.”

DeVante gave his trademark non-committal shrug. “I never discount power. But perhaps there is more to immortal life than power and cold control. It is something I have recently come to consider. I have learned to appreciate beauty and gentleness, and joy.” He glanced down at Roderick, on his knees, oh how his dark son hated to be on his knees—and pain sliced into his chest—that his irrepressible brat be so damaged he was reduced to this without command—and the pain gave way to anger, sharp and hot, and he was done with Callum, ready to quit this stupid game, and take his children home.

“Callum, you have damaged the one that is truly mine, and I suggest now you back slowly down and run. Run with your tail between your legs, old friend, for my wrath will surely follow.”

“No!” Lily’s voice, as she stepped forward.

Callum’s lips smiled, though the expression did not change the ugliness of his face. “I no longer run, DeVante. I no longer fear you.”

He held up his hands and they turned into glowing balls of white light. His smile turned into a laugh and he threw up his hands, the glowing orbs rising into the air, hovering for a split second, then dropping with lightning speed straight at DeVante.

DeVante took a quick step back, pulling his leg from Roderick’s grasp—Roderick had experienced enough of this one’s inner fire. He watched the glowing balls come toward him, then held out his arms, welcoming the light, embracing it, and they struck his chest and burst into him one at a time with a shock of pain.

Through hot pain DeVante saw clearly the dance that needed to follow, and he made the first move, hoping the others would manage to synchronize.

Daniel is light,
he thought to himself, and reached a hand to Daniel’s shoulder, and the energy flowed through him into Daniel.

Daniel smiled and whispered into DeVante’s mind,
I am your light,
and he in turn placed a hand on Tony, saying out loud, “You are safe in the light.”

For one short moment Tony’s whole body pulsed with the energy… “I am,” he said, his face rapturous as the light diffused. “I am.”

For several moments they all stood in silent awe and waited for something more to happen. The warehouse was quiet but for the skittering of mice.

Finally DeVante said, “Interesting tactic. I would like to learn that trick.”

Callum glared. “I told you they have talent. What would it take to convince you, and them, that we could own the earth?”

DeVante bent down and scooped Roderick into his arms like a child and held him cradled to his chest. “What will it take to convince
you
we have no interest in owning the earth?”

“If you were my queen we could stop all wars, make sure no child ever went hungry. Make the world a just and fair place, all the world, over time. You could have peace.”

Her voice when she answered was soft and sad, but carried clearly through the empty space. “Could we stop fate or chance so no pigeon ever broke a wing and lay flapping on the road in a frenzy of terror? Heart pounding in desperate fear as it faces oncoming cars, waiting in dread for the final crushing moment, its last awareness of life one of unendurable pain? Can you guarantee that?”

“Of course not,” Callum said, and his voice was scathing. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then you certainly can’t fix me,” she said, and the soft slap of her bare feet sounded sinister as she advanced on him.

DeVante watched, cradling Roderick gently against his chest, murmuring to him, but prepared to drop him and engage Callum if need be.

“You can’t fix me,” Lily repeated as her feet slap-slapped the concrete in a quick one-two, one-two beat. She walked right up to Callum’s face, and said, “This is how utterly broken I am.” She opened her mouth and let forth a wail that filled the room, pulsated against all four steel walls and reverberated back in on itself, engulfing them. Daniel cried out and covered his ears. Tony just grinned. For a moment DeVante wondered what Tony found amusing, but then he saw Callum backing away, and Lily advancing, tears streaming down her face. The cage waited, open, behind Callum, and Lily pushed him with her voice, her presence, her invasion of his space, until the back of Callum’s heels hit the bottom rail of the cage and he fell into it. She slammed the door closed, still wailing.

A ball of white flame appeared at Callum’s fingertips and he lobbed it at the door. By the time it hit, he’d formed another one.

DeVante stepped forward and put one hand against the door’s bars, holding the bulk of Roderick’s weight with his other arm. When the first globe hit he directed it back at Callum.

Callum was flinging the third when he realized the first and second were coming right back at him. His face was a caricature of outrage as the first globe struck, then the next, and then the last. His arms flailed as he made a failed attempt to catch and redirect them.

DeVante again became aware of Roderick, limp in his embrace. He tried to slip into Roderick’s mind but found only a jumbled mess with hardly a coherent thought whatsoever.

He walked towards a door, through it, and out into the crisp night air.

It was not in his nature to panic, but holding Roderick, knowing his fledgling was damaged, perhaps beyond repair, made DeVante so terrified he could think of nothing but escape to familiar ground. He knew what he had to do, but it was unconscionable to leave the rest of them stranded.

Daniel would be all right. And Tony, who did not require shelter from the sun.

Lily needed to be led, encouraged. DeVante thought she might welcome the sun rather than fend for herself.

He stood on the sidewalk, his mind resting on Roderick’s, unable to sift through the maelstrom of bizarre images that overtook Roderick’s thoughts. He tried to push Roderick into sleep, to protect him, but the usual open and malleable mind he knew so well was fragmented and lost.

Chapter 37



How to take the lead

Reed wondered about his place in this little group, oddly enough, more than he wondered about the things he’d just witnessed. He thought perhaps later he might gasp in disbelief and rip his own eyes out for what he’d seen, but he could not process any of it now. It was the stuff of sci-fi, not real life. Daniel was more extraordinary than Reed could ever have imagined—and so were the rest of them.

And Lily—God, the pain in her voice as she asked for nirvana—Reed had looked back in time to see her face as she described her perfect world to the man called Callum. She wasn’t being facetious… her face reflected that she dreamed for a world without random pain or senseless suffering. He honestly couldn’t fathom how she got through each day feeling so intensely even the injustice of natural events.

Outside the warehouse, DeVante stood and turned a slow circle as if he didn’t quite know what to do, and Reed realized they weren’t in San Francisco anymore.

“L.A.,” Reed said quietly out loud. And it was Los Angeles to be sure, and not Beverly Hills. Reed recognized the street, the neighborhood, although it had been a long time. Those were very strange days, indeed, weekend forays to intense leather bars, dungeons, kneeling at a Master’s feet and submitting to his hands. Strange that events should lead him here again.

And fitting, it seemed. For one instant he wondered if there was such as thing as coincidence.

DeVante addressed them, Roderick barely conscious in his arms. “Roderick has been damaged. I must leave you all behind to ensure his safety. Perhaps it will be a test of your ingenuity to find shelter on your own.”

The little group looked at Reed, Daniel with trust shining from his eyes, Lily quiet and calm. Tony raised a shoulder in a half shrug, and said, “Lead on, old man.”