Page 8 of Resurrection

“Absorbed by the earth…”

“Your witch’s element is earth.”

“Did he put me in the ground?” Gabe’s right arm suddenly ached. He could vaguely recall it crumbling as branches or something ate away at it.

“No.”

That was very firm. Gabe sighed. His head pounding. Too many memories trying to find a place at once. It hurt more than he thought any memories should, even scattered ones.

“It will all come back,” Titus assured him.

“Does he hate me? This witch of mine?” Gabe wondered.

“Possibly.”

That didn’t bode well. “And he’s powerful.”

“He’s the Pillar of Earth. None more powerful in the world. At least of the accepted magics.”

Well, fuck. Gabe sank down to rest his forehead on the floor. He’d never been one to run away, but he felt like maybe now was the time to start.

“You and I were lovers once,” Gabe whispered.

“In our mortal days. We tried briefly after being turned. Though, as most of our kind, that ended badly. Vampires rarely spend eternity with other vampires. Our cold blood and prickly natures don’t lend well to relationships. We seek the living because they are life and warmth, rather than just blood. I go by the name Maxwell Hart now. You may call me Max. And you are Gabriel Santini, also known as Gabe. Once we experience our first death, we leave many names behind, but you’ve used Gavriil and Gabriel for most of the last millennia. Does any of that help?”

Gabe caught the image of a bar, a loft, an apartment, places, empty, and again that face, partially hidden from his memory. Long dark hair? His witch perhaps? “Bonded to a witch…”

“You loved him once,” Max said. “Maybe you’d already been very far gone. Tresler’s scheme had been building for years. It’s likely he’d begun to take control of you before you met the witch.”

Tresler. Another face. Vampire. And the memory of him dying, head severed as plants devoured every bit of him. Had Gabe’s witch done that? It had snapped something inside of Gabe, awoken him to pain so intense that even now he gasped at the strength of it. The memory of his arm being so badly damaged, taken over by earth magic and slowly feeding on him as the earth often did. And emotionally, that was too much. His brain felt like exploding into a saturation of light, and leaving it all behind.

He didn’t want to remember that kind of pain. Would anyone?

“Who killed Tresler? My witch?”

“Sam,” Max answered. “Borrowing your witch’s power, and awakening to his own.”

Sam, the vampire with sarcasm on speed dial. He hadn’t seemed all that powerful.

“Don’t let him fool you. Sam is a witch as well as a vampire. A very rare type of witch. He is a siphon as well as a fire witch. And while he may breathe irritation and snark, Rou is a good friend of his. If you were to break bonds with me, Sam would put you down permanently to protect his friend,” Max said.

“Rou is my witch.” Gabe clarified.

“Seiran Rou, Pillar of Earth, head of the Department of Magical Investigations at the Dominion, is your Focus.”

The Dominion brought up a handful of scattered and startling images. None of them good. “The Dominion is a cult?”

“In a lot of ways, yes. Though it is as accepted nowadays as Christianity.”

“And as destructive?”

“Yes,” Max agreed.

“Fuck.”

Chapter 4

It took Sei longer to get home than he had hoped it would. Long enough that his stomach growled the whole way, and he ended up calling a cab because he hurt too much to drive. The department clinic had looked him over and found nothing life threatening, just lots of bruising. And he’d called ahead from the office phone to let Jamie and Kelly know he would be late getting home.