Page 12 of Dark Stars

"No clues as to which way we should go?"

Alejo asked, and the exhaustion in his voice was agonizing. Bobby wasn't normally so sloppy or careless; he should have gotten Alejo out of here a long time ago.

Bobby stroked his cheek and kissed the corner of his mouth, then turned around and said, "Climb on my back. I'll carry you for a bit."

"I don't need—"

"Alejo, please."

"You are the worst,"

Alejo muttered, but did as requested, arms warm and solid as they wrapped around his neck. Bobby kept hold of his legs as they gripped his hips, and continued on, picking the right path as it smelled slightly fresher than the left.

Eventually, thankfully, they started to climb up again. At various points it was a slippery and steep climb, but that was only a problem for creatures that couldn't adapt to their surroundings at their pleasure.

Bobby almost laughed in relief when he saw shreds of light slipping into the dark. Weak light, probably a setting sun, but light all the same. On his back, Alejo had long since passed out from exhaustion.

Outside, in a part of town he definitely didn't recognize, Bobby continued to walk until they were well away from the caves and standing on a lakeside beach. There was a distant fog steadily rolling in, the water and the sky were gray, and the last dregs of sunlight were fading fast.

A beautiful night, spooky and delightful, if not for the fact he'd worn his lover to exhaustion and they had his great-grandmother's cultists after them. Not his best work, to be sure.

It was time for a break. Rest, regroup, think up a proper plan of attack.

Risking the arcana necessary, he folded them away into the dark and reappeared in his own home, along with all their belongings. The vehicles he'd worry about later, as they were well-hidden and the cultists wouldn't know to look for them anyway. The cultists would have felt the disturbance for certain, but they'd have no idea where it had promptly vanished to.

Gently shifting Alejo, still out cold, off his back, Bobby laid him out on the bed and got his shoes and jacket off, made certain he was comfy—as comfy as anyone could be sleeping in jeans, but he wasn't about to strip and change the man while he slept.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he rested a hand on Alejo's temple and cheeks. Warm, but not feverish, so it really was just exhaustion. All the climbing, walking, arcana, fear, and adrenaline had taken him right out.

His father would strangle him for being so cavalier with a delicate human.

Leaving Alejo to rest, he fetched his phone and texted Harold and Jones a quick summary of all that had happened and that he was home again for at least a day or two.

That done, he went to go see about food. As he didn't keep much in the house, and he didn't want to leave Alejo alone, a grocery order was…well, in order. Once that was done, with instructions to just leave everything on the porch, he went to get a shower.

He came out of the shower, still damp and flushed with heat, to find a vampire at his kitchen table.

"What brought you all the way out here?"

"Noise,"

Jones said, finishing his coffee and pouring a fresh cup.

"Lots and lots of chatter in the neighborhood."

Neighborhood meaning the supernatural world. Bobby poured his own cup of coffee and leaned against the counter sipping it as he said, "I'd imagine so with cultists running around."

"Not just that. I've been hearing stuff about your boy. The demon, the dumbass what originally summoned him. I think two worlds are about to collide, and it's gonna be ugly."

Bobby snorted in amusement.

"What in the world would worshippers of Shub-Niggurath care about a demon? They're far too arrogant to lower themselves to a being that isn't primordial, even an impressive demon like Leviathan."

"I'm more concerned about the fella who summoned Leviathan to begin with. That boy getting mixed up with your sort? Bad idea."

"He shouldn't be able to find Alejo, and if he does show up, he'll become a snack."

"Don't think your little brujo would like that much."

"He's not brujo, and he'd never know."

"I can tell you from experience that never ends well. Don't murder, eat, or otherwise end the life of your lover's exes without their knowledge and permission. Trust me on that one."

"Fine,"

Bobby said, maybe pouting slightly, because if he could just eat the stupid bastard a lot of problems would go away, but fine, he'd do it the human way. For now.

Jones' brow rose.

"If he ain't brujo, what is he?"

"Mine, but a combination of brujería and vodun that makes him wholly unique."

"Fair 'nough. I'd still be on alert, because the cult might not care about a lowly demon, but a demon sure as hell will care about arrogant, foolhardy humans, especially if it's still bound to the dumbass that started that whole mess."

He scowled pointedly at Bobby.

"And that demon now has fresh, fairly given primordial blood."

Bobby touched his tongue to his top lip before grinning.

"Awful stupid of someone to just hand over fresh primordial blood."

Jones stared hard another moment, then sighed.

"You know what? I don't want to know. You got your warning. I've got shit to do that don't concern you and your mess—but if you drag that damned cult here to Briden, I'll burn you like a witch of old. Hear me?"

"I hear you. Where's Harold? I would have thought you'd both come to see me."

To his complete and utter shock, Jones' cheeks turned the faintest hint of dusty rose.

"He's sleeping. We…had a rough night chasing a pack of redcaps and feral werewolves."

Bobby eyed him thoughtfully. Redcaps and werewolves, even feral ones hellbent on chaos, weren't enough to put Harold down for an entire night. But if they got into a bad spot and a certain vampire got hungry… "So does his blood taste good, Sheriff?"

"How 'bout you fuck all the way off, star worm?"

Bobby grinned and set to making breakfast for the two of them—omelets, bacon, and biscuits. He also pulled a bottle of blood from his fridge, setting it amongst the juice and fresh pot of coffee. All the while he recounted everything that had transpired since Jones and Harold had helped them at the hotel.

"What a fucking mess,"

Jones said as he finished, wolfing down food between bites.

"Cultists, rampaging monsters, a pissed off demon skulking about, and who the hell knows what's going to show up next. Why can't I ever settle in nice, peaceful, quiet towns? I swear this one was when I started."

Bobby snorted.

"The primordial undercurrents say otherwise. You're a trouble magnet. Must be why you and Harold—"

"Shut your mouth,"

Jones said sharply.

Bobby froze with a bite of omelet halfway to his mouth. That had been unusually harsh. Like he'd struck a nerve that Jones hadn't been happy to realize was there.

"Jones, what's really going on?"

"Nothing,"

Jones said.

"Nothing at all. Thank you for breakfast. I'll keep you apprised of anything I see or hear."

Then he was gone, as swiftly and quietly as a winter wind, leaving a chill in his wake.

Jones and Harold had always circled each other, sniping and jabbing, stubbornly refusing to admit they were flirting, that something burned between them. Now, though…he'd missed something, and that something was hurting Jones.

One more problem on the list.

Gathering everything up, he cleaned the dishes and kitchen, then started on a stew that would simmer for several hours and some fresh bread. He wasn't usually much for cooking, but it was something that helped and soothed troubled humans—and vampires—so he'd do it. Happily.

Once the bread was rising and the kitchen tidied up once more, he ventured into his many, many shelves of books, until he reached the small space he kept clear for times when he needed to visit home. He could simply go when and where he chose, but such cavalier travel between worlds, between planes of existence, could cause untold damage. So he'd made himself a door.

Stepping into it, he unlocked it with a gentle push of arcana. The sigil carved into the floor and then soaked in his blood flared to life with his firefly green light. With a brilliant flare, he vanished.

He reappeared in a time and place that the universe had mostly forgotten, of ancient, pulsing stone and dark stars, a shattered moon that reflected the dull red light of a dying sun.

In front of him was a temple carved from dark purple stone threaded with shimmering veins of black and red, the bones of a creature older even than his family, forgotten even by them. Before he could move, a figure appeared at the top: tall, lithe, dark skin, dark hair, and eyes that gleamed like backlit frosted glass, smooth and unmarred. Once, apparently, his father's eyes had been a delicate brown, almost gold, but after endless millennia as his mother's beloved, he had absorbed much of her essence, making him immortal, powerful, and no longer entirely human.

Human enough still, though, to teach his son how to be one.

"Bobby,"

his father greeted. Once called Ahmad ibn Sa’id al-Bahili, nowadays he simply went by Ahmad or, more often amongst Bobby's relatives, Consort of the Secret One.

"What brings you here, my beloved son?"

He embraced Bobby tightly and kissed his cheeks before cupping them to study him closely.

"You look tired. And frustrated."

"It's been an interesting few days,"

Bobby replied, and relayed all that had happened since he'd agreed to help Harold by dealing with the cult.

They sat on a smooth, long rock that served as a bench in an area of the temple that most would not recognize as a garden, filled with pustulant, writhing things and something vaguely resembling purple and black ivy that slithered and sucked at anything it considered an interloper to its territory.

"The kamleps are doing well, I see."

"Yes, they recovered from the fungus just fine. You've quite the situation on your hands, but I am happy you have at last met your beloved. I cannot wait to meet him. I don't envy you having to dance around your great-grandmother's followers. They were wretched evil back in my time, and I doubt they've changed much in the centuries since."

That wasn't how his parents had met, but their situation hadn't been all that different. Ahmad had been summoned as a scholar of the obscure and dark, in a time when that should have gotten him killed as a worshipper of the devil, or something like that. He'd been called to examine strange ruins, and an even stranger green substance that was very much like stone, and yet like no stone anyone had ever seen, that thrummed and sang in the mind and turned men mad.

The very same material that made up the collar around his throat now, showy and extravagant and nothing his modest, humble father would have tolerated in his old life. But there was very little he would not do for his beloved, the primordial being he'd fallen madly in love with against all logic, reason, and sense.

Ahmad cupped his cheek, stroking his cheek bone gently.

"You will handle it all just fine, my precious son. You've conquered worse just in recent times."

"I'm more concerned about Alejo. He's very fragile."

"Yes, you lot do like to call us humans that,"

Ahmad said with a fond chuckle, letting his hand fall away.

"He's tougher than you credit, and marked by our lovely stars here for you, so do not insult him and those stars by questioning their choices. That way lies things even you would be troubled by. That being said, your Alejandro strikes me as the hopelessly romantic sort."

"Well, like would recognize like, Father."

"None of your smart remarks,"

Ahmad said with a smile.

"I'm saying, don't be so hard on yourself. He's an adult and made his own choices, including those that led to him being so worn out. Nothing a night's rest won't fix. It's not the first time he's done it to himself, and it certainly won't be the last. All part of being young, I assure you."

Bobby knew that, of course he knew that, but all the same, it was reassuring, to hear it directly from his father.

"Do you ever get tired of it? All this?"

"In the earliest days, I was easily overwhelmed and intimidated by it all. There were days I ran away to somewhere quiet and safe to give myself a moment to breathe. But I never regretted it, no. Never wished I'd made a different choice. Why would I? I would have lived a normal life. I would have died and become earth, and then only dust, and then nothing at all. Here I will live for as long as it pleases your mother, and should she decide to kill and consume me tomorrow, I would still be part of her, and I would have it no other way. She defied the terrible, eternal dark to have me, she keeps me well in a temple made of the bones of the universe itself, and she loves without condition. Who would want any other life?"

"Most humans, I would think,"

Bobby said dryly.

"Don't know many who don't mind that their spouse may one day eat them like a spider finished with mating and tired of the mate."

Ahmad laughed.

"If I was like most humans, she never would have chosen me. I have lived a long life, more years than any human can really count. She is the love of my life, and you are our perfect son, the sign of our union, our love and trust and joy. I cannot fear death, even at the hands of my own beloved, when I have lived so joyous a life. If the dark stars really marked Alejandro for you, then trust them and him. He will get frustrated, and overwhelmed, and sometimes seek the things he once defined as normal, but he will never regret."

"Thank you, Father. I always value your counsel."

"I am always here for you, my son. Now run along before your relatives come for your head, as they are not best pleased with you right now, little mischief maker."

Bobby laughed, hugged his father tightly, sent out a greeting and farewell to his mother, and departed.

Back in his own space, the first thing he noted was the shower running. Alejo was awake. Bobby headed for the kitchen, because humans always wanted food, especially when everything was upside down and topsy-turvy.

All signs of his bread and stew were long gone, save for half a loaf of bread sitting on the counter in a basket, and a container of leftover stew in the fridge. Well, at least it hadn't all gone to waste. Foolish to have left it all, but clearly Alejo had woken up and tended to—and enjoyed—all.

Of course, that would have been hours ago. Alejo was probably hungry again.

What time was it? A glance at the clock showed it was going on three in the morning, so he'd been gone for quite some time, even though the conversation with his father had lasted only minutes. Just waking up meant breakfast, so breakfast he would make.