Page 17

Chapter 17

The Night Hunt

Cian

T he weathered wall of large, tumbled stones groaned and snapped as the archway disappeared, leaving Cian and Fenric at the very bottom of the garden on the Salvatore estate. The evening hour was early enough that they could see clearly in the twilight hues.

Fenric turned to jump up and sit on a flat stone big enough for two. Cian joined him without being asked, making sure to sit so they were touching, Fenric giving him a brilliant smile before leaning all his weight on Cian’s shoulder, tilting his head back to peer up at the stars just becoming visible.

“Thank you for the date,” Fenric murmured after a few moments, and Cian looked away from the stars to Fenric’s face. Fenric was staring up at the sky, but his cheeks were flushed slightly, and he was pressing into Cian from knee to shoulder.

“You’re welcome,” Cian replied huskily, taking in Fenric’s profile, his eyes adjusting well enough to the darkness to see every detail, enchanted as always by those green eyes that were so like gems.

Fenric glanced at him from the corner of his eye before he braved turning to face him directly. “Maybe we can do it again?”

Cian nodded, holding Fenric’s gaze. “Certainly. You can pick next time.”

Fenric grinned, fangs and eyes bright even in the darkness, catching what light there was from the heavens. “I can’t wait.”

Fenric leaned his head on Cian’s shoulder with a heavy sigh, resting his weight on Cian, a lodestone of warmth and affection.

The lamps within the garden came on, illuminating the wall at their backs. Crickets and nocturnal critters chirped, sang, and rustled in the grass and bushes, the night as alive with activity as any summer day.

The life in the surrounding area included the assassins located in the dunes, and the enforcers stationed around the outermost perimeter of the estate. Several of the mortals were camped out not that far from where Cian and Fenric sat, though none were in sight or in range of mortal hearing.

“Humans or supes?” Fenric asked, snuggling closer. Cian lifted his arm and Fenric tucked himself into his side, getting as close as possible. Cian held Fenric, enjoying the warmth and the connection.

“A few humans, all practitioners, and a pair of vampires to the south. Their energies don’t match the Boston Bloodclan, so they aren’t Connie’s people.” Cian informed Fenric as they gazed up at the stars together. “The humans are in the dunes just past the ward lines to the north, and the vampires are probably either on the beach or the water—they keep moving. Let me check.”

Cian sent a cursory touch to his brother’s mind, and Rory was there instantly, thankfully not distracted by his mate. He asked without words for Daniel to check on the precise location of the vampires Cian sensed, and he felt the moment Daniel joined the mental linkup with Rory. Daniel was of the shore, the land and the sky and the sea, balance in all things, and it was a mere thought and no effort at all for his mind to precisely locate the two undead beings who lay in wait south along the beach, on the same path that Rory, and now Daniel, liked to take on their morning walks.

The vampires were corrupted by blood magic, the hint of it escaping a well-crafted spell meant to be triggered at the sight of a target. The vampires had arrived moments after sunset, and were barely feeling the effects of the corrupting magic in their systems. They had a few hours before the magic in their bodies killed them.

We won’t be taking walks anymore until the assassin problem is dealt with, Rory told him, mental voice terse and angry. Shall we join you?

Practitioners and vampires. I’ll ask if they prove onerous. Tell Daniel thank you , Cian said to his brother.

Daniel says you’re welcome, and that he’s sorry.

For what? Cian asked.

Angel asked what was distracting him—it’s dinnertime up here in the Mansion and we’re at the kitchen island—and Daniel told him what you’re doing. The blood-magic tainted vampires have him worried. Angel’s asked us to assist you both.

Cian sighed. More the merrier. Don’t be too long, Fenric might grow impatient.

Fenric might grow impatient? Rory’s amusement came through loud and clear. I’m more worried about you!

Cian chuckled and withdrew from his brother’s mind, understanding the unspoken directive to wait for him and Daniel before tackling the assassins set up around the Mansion.

That was fine with him. More time to watch the stars with Fenric.

Fenric

Watching the Brennan twins hunt was a thing of beauty. They moved like one being, no need to communicate verbally, each a half of one whole. When Rory and Daniel joined them at the wall, the twins shared a quick glance and then they led the way into the dunes without a word.

Fenric shadowed Cian, as Daniel did Rory, both pairs moving through the sea grass dunes with silent tread. Fenric was impressed with Daniel—he was only recently reborn, and yet he moved with an innate grace that all sidhe possessed, as if he’d never been human. He only knew Rory and Daniel were out there because he was using senses other than sight and hearing. Daniel and Rory glowed to his senses like little fireflies of green and silvery blue that danced in the night air.

The wind shifted, bringing with it the cool from the ocean, the subtle susurration of the waves a backdrop to the night’s song. The breeze spoke of undead beings, carrying hints of blood and metal. Old, nasty blood, too—not the coppery tang of a vampire, but the stagnant pools of blood magic. It left a horrid taste in the back of Fenric’s mouth as he breathed in the scents of the vampires.

No guns, though, the scents of gun oil and powder absent. Vampires tended to use the tools they came with naturally, or an edged weapon like daggers or swords in addition to fangs and talons. Fenric had yet to meet a vampire that used guns, even the vampires involved in contract work.

They reunited at the base of a low dune just before the grass gave way to the sand of the beach. Cian slithered soundlessly up the side of the dune on his belly and barely peeked over the top before he slid back down to them. He held up two fingers and pointed them to the right side of the dune, making eye contact with Rory, who arched a green brow and nodded once. Rory gestured to Fenric and Daniel, palm out and then down—asking them to wait. Fenric wanted to pounce on the undead intruders and see how he fared against a vampire assassin, but he was interested in what Rory had planned.

He did wish he could hear the twins, but alas, that was not a skill he possessed, being an only child. Maybe if he bonded with Cian, but that was a thought for another time, in a less dangerous moment.

Rory surprised him by taking a seat on the grass, one hand out to the earth, pressing it flat to grass and sand. His eyes closed, and a long moment passed—then cursing arose from the other side of the dune.

“The hell? What is this?”

“A trap! Run!”

Rory smiled. The earth under their feet trembled and a spattering of sand fell down the dune as the vampires went from startled to frightened. Fenric smelled fresh blood on the breeze, and a growl escaped from his throat before he could stop it.

Rory opened his eyes, and his grin was wicked. “Shall we meet our visitors?”

Cian vanished from sight, his glamour all-encompassing.

Fenric wasted no time in jogging around the dune, and he came to a surprised stop before a snicker broke free and he bent at the waist, laughing. Daniel came running out and skidded to a halt in the sand, eyes wide and mouth open in a mix of surprise and dismay. Fenric gasped out the last of his laugh and straightened, trying to be serious, but he was so startled and impressed with Rory’s method of capturing the vampires that he was having some trouble.

Vamped-out with fangs dropped and eyes aglow, the two vampires were in killing mode, if not for the thousands of roots wrapped around them. They were nearly encased in roots—some were as small as strands of hair, running in size up to a great anchor root that must have belonged to an ancient, monstrous tree, nearly petrified by time.

The vampires were spitting and hissing, much like cats, but ineffectively, as the roots had muzzled them, leaving them to gnash their teeth on hard wood, mouths full of splinters. They were held frozen in poses like puppets, as if they were about to blur away and Rory caught them the nanosecond before, marionettes suspended in roots instead of ropes.

Cian was nowhere to be seen, but Rory came out of the shadows and stood between Fenric and Daniel, and the vampires growled and hissed, the sound muffled behind roots, their eyes glowing red. Any levity that Fenric was feeling evaporated as the vampires made it clear they wanted to rip Daniel and Rory to shreds.

And they stank of blood magic, the spell laid on them both triggering the instant Daniel and Rory came into their line of sight.

The vampires had been bespelled to go after the newlyweds. Fenric growled again, low in his chest, ready to tear into the bound undead monsters and end their suffering.

“They’re dying,” Daniel said quietly, squinting at the vampires as he used his inner vision. “Not quickly, but they’ll be dead in a few hours, regardless. A spell was just set off on them both. It looks like….oh no.” His expression was horrified, and he put a hand to his mouth.

Rory sighed, and put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “It’s the same spell used in the Massacre on the Providence Bloodclan.”

“Can it be lifted?” Daniel asked around his hand, almost a whisper.

Cian reappeared next to Daniel, and the vampires snarled louder, trying to break free, but thankfully they were bound tightly, so tightly that the vampires were harming themselves as they fought to get to their targets. They were healing just as quickly as they hurt themselves, but still, it had to be unpleasant. Their reaction meant Cian was also a target, which meant in turn that the cover story of his death was unraveling.

Cian spoke to Daniel but kept his eyes on the vampires. “You could lift the spell from them, wash them clean of the corruption, or Angel can burn it from them with his hellfire.” Cian shrugged, clearly not stressed by the situation in front of them.

“They were sent to kill us,” Daniel turned to Rory. “Shouldn’t I let them die?”

“You need not be merciless unless you feel you must be, my love,” Rory assured his mate.

Daniel nodded, and Fenric was both disappointed and proud of the young sidhe when Daniel pulled out his phone.

“I’m texting Angel about this, can you hold them?”

“They are trapped good and tight, my love, take your time.”

Daniel’s fingers flew over the screen, and then a faint buzz heralded Angel’s reply a moment later. Daniel looked up from the screen, grim-faced. “Angel says he trusts me to make the decision.”

Fenric frowned, and while he didn’t know Daniel all that well yet, he did know that the tender-hearted young sidhe wasn’t the type to kill in cold blood—even a mercy kill. “That’s a rough decision to make. We can maybe exile them like we did with the humans Cian and I caught earlier today if you don’t want to make the call, but they’ll still need to be cleansed of the blood magic or that’ll be a real short exile.”

Daniel nodded, thinking. The vampires continued to struggle fruitlessly, and Daniel stared at them for a long moment before he dialed on the phone.

“Who are you calling?” Fenric asked, curious.

“Constantine,” Daniel said, holding the phone to his ear.

The City Master of the Boston Bloodclan answered after one ring, Fenric able to hear the conversation as clearly as if it were on speaker.

“Daniel, what can I do for you?” Constans said, warmth in his tone. The City Master was fond of the young sidhe.

“Hello, Constans, I’m sorry to bother you, but we’ve caught two vampire assassins at the beach down here outside the Mansion. They’ve been bespelled by blood magic.”

“Have they harmed anyone? Are you and Rory well?”

“Rory caught them, no injuries. I was wondering if you would come take custody of them?”

“The magic is killing them; they will die before dawn. It may be a mercy to kill them now if Angel won’t burn out the magic.” Constans said, though not unkindly.

“Cian says I can cleanse them myself. It’s the same…the same curse that killed the Providence Bloodclan. I don’t want Angel to have to deal with this, and I don’t think these two vampires are here willingly. They at least deserve a chance to explain themselves.”

“Your compassion is never a weakness, dear boy,” Constans said. “I am sending Ellora and Miguel with a squadron of soldiers to take custody of these vampires. If you would cleanse them of the blood magic while you wait, that would be appreciated. They’ll need to explain why they’re in my territory without permission as well.”

Daniel glanced at Rory and then Cian, both sidhe nodding. “I’ll do that now. Thank you, Constans. Tell Isaac I said hello.”

“I shall. Be careful.” Constans promised before he hung up.

“I hope I did the right thing,” Daniel sighed as he put his phone back in his pants pocket.

“You redistributed the decision-making to the qualified person,” Cian said with a tiny smile, gently nudging Daniel’s elbow with his own. “Your mercy is a gift, little brother.”

“Who’s going to walk me through the cleansing?” Daniel asked, biting his lip, and Rory wrapped an arm around his mate and hugged him close. Daniel smiled at Rory and hugged his husband.

“I shall, beloved. Don’t worry, I have faith in you.”

Cian ducked around the newlyweds and went to Fenric. He held out a hand and Cian took it once he was close enough, meshing their fingers and squeezing gently. “Come. Let’s leave them to it,” Cian said, tugging on their joined hands and leading Fenric back into the dunes. “Rory can talk Daniel through the process. It’s close enough to a healing that they’ve got this covered.”

“Where are we going?” Fenric asked, knowing better than to worry about Rory and Daniel. Rory alone was more than enough to subdue two vampires—Daniel was exceptionally powerful in his own right, too. They would be fine. Healing and cleansing magic was outside his wheelhouse, and there was little he could do to help except kill the vampires, but that was off the table now.

“There’s more assassins hiding in the night,” Cian reminded him, and Fenric grinned widely, entirely content to follow Cian into the dark.

Cian

The practitioners were a spare handful of targets, four men with discordant energies and auras that stank of pettiness, greed, and slimy evil.

Cian glamoured himself and Fenric to be invisible, both sitting atop a dune, the moon rising in front of them, and it would have been a romantic spot to spend time with his kitten if it weren’t for the small camp of assassins below them in a leeward, flat patch of ground between dunes.

They were outside the ward lines of the Salvatore estate, but not by much, about twenty yards from the demarcation between public land and private property.

There was a small powerboat pulled up on the sand of the beach on the other side of the far dune from where Cian and Fenric sat, visible from their angle where they sat atop the higher dune. The waves rocked against the stern, its anchor and rope tossed up higher on the beach past the high tide line. The sand was churned up from the tread of many trips back and forth from boat to camp—a literal camp, one with tents, a fire pit, and chairs set out around the fire.

They’d been there for a few days already, and while they pretended to be campers enjoying the beach, the discordant energies, auras, and the gruff, awkward, and slightly antagonistic way the group interacted with each other gave them away to Cian.

Strangers or loose acquaintances, pooling resources and skills, hoping to take down bigger, harder targets. Such as a clan of exceptional, powerful practitioners and their assorted supernatural mates and friends. A foolhardy task, and one that Cian would see fail before it even began.

Three men were in the camp below, talking quietly, the firelight glancing off their faces, none of them faces Cian knew or recognized. Their accents were from assorted Eastern European countries, a mixed bag of practitioners, though none wore the insignia of the High Council.

Contract killers.

Two were powerful wizards, going by their auras, and the other two were sorcerers. None had tapped the veil, not this close to the Mansion, as the inhabitants would sense it, but the potential was there. The fact that they had yet to make a move on the Salvatore Clan was why they were still alive.

Angel had no mercy for those intent on harming his people.

The fourth was farther from the beach, a sorcerer, closer to the ward lines, walking along one portion of the wards, not close enough to trigger them, but close enough to examine the defenses with his inner vision. Cian tracked the eddy and flow of ambient magic as the fields were disturbed just the slightest amount by the passage of the fourth practitioner, and when Cian expected him to return to the camp, the fourth instead turned and retraced his path.

He had his target.

Cian gently nudged Fenric and, still holding hands, they quietly slid down the back side of the dune they sat upon, making nary a sound to be heard over the crashing of the waves. The practitioners had set up small defenses outside their camp, alarms set to blare if tripped, alerting them to anyone approaching—but like most magic crafted by practitioners, the sidhe were unrecognizable and they were able to walk through the traps without tripping them.

Cian pointed in the direction of the lone practitioner making his rounds along the wards, holding up one finger, and Fenric nodded, grinning, clearly excited.

There was a shimmer and Fenric transformed—no tiny alleycat this time, but rather a large black cat that came to Cian’s hip, head bigger than his spread hand. Fenric purred quietly, rubbing his chin on Cian’s leg a few times before his ears pricked upward and he stared into the shadows, tail twitching.

Cian made sure the glamour held, and whispered, “I would talk to this one first, my kitten. Let us hear what he has to say for himself.”

Fenric grumbled but that was all the protest he made, looking up to Cian to lead the way. Cian rubbed a hand over Fenric’s head and continued deeper into the night, all senses alert for danger. Fenric peeled away from him and disappeared into the darkness, soundless and as black as the shadows.

In a matter of minutes the sorcerer was visible in the night, picking his way over the dunes, going slow in the dark, no flashlight or mage light to illuminate his way, merely the rising moon and stars overhead. He was dressed like a man on vacation—board shorts, boat shoes, an ugly, colorful shirt, sunglasses holding back his hair atop his head. Only his oily, foul aura gave him away as something other than a mundane human on a beach trip.

Fenric growled low and soft in the shadows, the sound carrying in the still night air. The sorcerer paused in his walk, carefully listening and looking all around, but Cian saw no signs of a spell to enhance the senses. He silently scoffed at the fool. The mortal did not see Fenric in the tall grass mere feet away, ready to pounce, eyes locked on his prey.

Cian continued until he was standing right behind the sorcerer, and he slowly, carefully, opened his mind and senses. The man’s heart beat faster, adrenaline coursing through his veins, and he jumped the slightest bit when a cricket chirped in the grass. The mortal shook his head and turned his attention back to the wards—he did not see Cian, still glamoured to be invisible to mortal senses.

This one thought himself unnoticed, the lack of reaction to his presence enough to have him lower his guard, his mind and emotions vulnerable, and Cian sent out his awareness, mentally sorting the threads of thoughts and wants that hovered on the surface of the sorcerer’s mind, searching for the core of the man. He rarely used this ability, as humans were largely boring and unpleasant to know on such a deep level. The last time he used it was on a human doctor at Blackguard Prison.

Greed, avarice, desire—those were expected, and he nudged those aside, following within a few strides as the mortal continued on his walk along the wards. Fenric kept pace within the grass off to the side, paws soundless, eyes locked on the mortal.

He found the threads of nervousness, anxiety, and fear this one worked hard to suppress. How silly, for fear was nature’s way of keeping mortal creatures alive. He teased the thread of fear free and tugged, the mortal’s unprotected mind and emotions spiking with sudden panic, making the man stumble and fall to his knees, shuddering as a wave of fear rushed over him. A startled cry escaped, quickly stifled, and Cian seized that fear and pulled harder, a cry of terror escaping into the now perfect silence of the night, the world aware of the predators hunting.

Cian dropped his glamour, listening to the night, but the mortals back at the camp had heard nothing, unaware that their compatriot was in trouble.

Fenric slinked from the grass and sat in the path of the mortal, as tall as the mortal was kneeling on the ground. The mortal jerked in alarm and tried to move, but Cian wrenched hard on his mind and emotions, and the human faltered, curling over his center and crying out in panic.

“Shush now,” Cian whispered, walking up to the mortal and coming around enough for the man to see him past the tears streaming from his eyes. The mortal struggled, his mind attempting to reach for his magic, but Cian waved a hand and with a tiny push of energy, sand began to rise from beneath the sea grass, crawling like giant ants up the mortal’s legs and sides, until ropes of sand held him fast in unbreakable shackles, his struggles futile. An old trick he was delighted to employ again—for sand was not earth, but tiny, tiny stones, a cacophony of whispers under each footstep on the beach, the most ancient of remains.

Cian stirred the thoughts of the mortal, everything he needed to know coming to the fore, the slimy oil of evil rising to the surface along with images and emotions.

“Tell me your name,” Cian ordered quietly, locking eyes with the mortal.

“Francis…Morton,” the mortal gasped out through gritted teeth, trying futilely to fight Cian’s power. “What…who are you?”

Cian waved a hand, dismissing his question. “Why are you here, Francis Morton?”

He knew why Francis Morton was there in the sand dunes, pacing the borders of the Salvatore estate, but the questioning got him closer to the center of the mortal. Closer to total control.

“Here….contract. The boy.” Morton gasped out, and an image of Leo came to the front of his mind, old surveillance photos of the small Salvatore family in another country, the boy running on a playground at night under bright lights, Ashwin and Ignacio in the background watching over their son.

“Why are you here, Francis Morton,” Cian asked again, crouching down so they were eye to eye. “Tell me truly.”

“Take the boy and kill the parents,” Morton gasped out. The sickness that rose behind those words from the core of the man told Cian that Leo would have been in immense danger of a horrible kind if this monster ever got close to him. Contract killer he might be, but a monster of the vilest sort as well. He would have eventually delivered Leo to the Council, but not without harming him first.

“And your compatriots?” Cian asked softly.

“Same…same contract.” Morton stammered out, sweat rolling down his face into his eyes.

Same contract meant they were after the boy. Whether they were the same type of monster as Morton mattered not. They meant to kidnap Leandro. To harm a child.

A flick of Cian’s wrist and a dagger came to his hand, glinting in the moonlight. Morton had no time to process his impending doom before the blade met flesh and Cian took his head.

Blood fountained as the heart beat on, the body unaware it was now dead, and Cian neatly avoided the spray with a long step backwards.

Fenric hissed as the sand fell away from the corpse and it toppled to the side, soaking the grass, the vile mortal’s eyes staring up at the night sky from where the head lay by the body. He, too, adroitly avoided the spray, growling and snarling his delight in the man’s death, clearly pleased by Cian’s actions. Fenric lifted a leg and pissed on the corpse, showing his opinion with brutal honesty.

Cian breathed in and out, over and over, releasing the feeling of having touched so vile a mind and soul as that of Francis Morton. Many had called Cian a monster in his long years, but that was one evil that Cian would never condone—there was always a worse monster out in the world.

He flicked his dagger, energy coursing over the blade, burning away the blood, Cian not wanting to touch it in any way to clean his dagger. He sidestepped around the blood and the body, Fenric kicking sand on the corpse behind him before he trotted to catch up with Cian as he retraced their steps.

Fenric

He had never seen Cian so angry before. It was a quiet sort of rage—not one filled with shouting and yelling, but a silent, steady, and enveloping rage that filled the air around him with a shimmer of power, as if his rage were a living thing. It flowed and ebbed like the tide, Cian the center of gravity, each beat of his heart sending out a pulse of power.

He hadn’t had access to the dead assassin’s inner thoughts like Cian had, so he couldn’t be sure what had made Cian so incandescently angry, but considering it had to do with Leo, he could guess.

Cian’s subtle glamour was gone—the sidhe strode openly and with purpose toward the camp, Fenric nearly running to keep pace with him, energy beginning to crack and snap in the air. The sand beneath them trembled and the grass shivered in waves as Cian passed.

His rage heralded his approach better than a flashing neon sign. Fenric felt the practitioners activate their magics, shields raised. The remaining sorcerer tapped the veil with a thump through the ambient magic fields, the additional power rippling outward from his location.

They cleared the side of a dune and the camp was in front of them. Fenric darted to the side, avoiding a spell to the face, and he cleared the distance between him and the nearest wizard with a single leap. He breached the shields as if they were tissue paper, paws extended, claws out, and took his quarry to the ground, landing hard enough he felt bones break under his weight. The wizard yelled and Fenric snarled in a rage of his own when a bolt of fire raced along his left flank.

The pain was excruciating but Fenric ignored it, and with jaws wide he bit through the wizard’s neck, crushing his arteries and esophagus. The man died choking on his own blood.

Sand rose in a furious blizzard as magic flared and the two remaining practitioners attacked together. Cian lifted the hand holding the dagger and pointed it at the mortals. The dunes shook, sand cascading downward, swirling in the air and around the feet of the practitioners, rising like water. They shouted and tossed spells at Cian, who dodged them with mere slips of movement, his mercurial eyes a tempest. The wind came crashing down from above, howling, deafening the screams of the mortals, and Fenric retreated behind Cian, out of range of the maelstrom Cian called down on their heads.

Sand rose and the wind drove downward. Blood bloomed in patches on the mortals as the sand shredded skin and clothing and the wind stole the air from their lungs. Spells went in all directions as the men twisted and tore uselessly at themselves, trying to escape. The sorcerer lost his connection to the veil, the power fluctuating in the ambient magic fields.

Shouts fell to whispers and the sand rose higher, the flat clearing changing into a tomb as the maelstrom covered them completely.

A heavy shift in air pressure made his ears pop, and Fenric shook his head. The ground ceased trembling, the sand fell from the sky as the wind died away to a soft breeze. The dunes that once surrounded the campsite were shorter, the camp gone, all traces of the tents and fire erased.

The pressure in the air grew stifling, making Fenric shake his head, ears popping again. The sand covering the bodies and camp shivered once, and to Fenric’s surprise, there was a crushing roar of sound that came from within the sand pile as the sand turned to stone.

Sandstone.

Fenric knew the mortals were dead when Cian dropped his hand, the sidhe breathing hard, eyes glowing. He flicked his wrist to dismiss the dagger back to the ether.

It was over.

Fenric transformed, hissing in pain as he retook his sidhe form and sat heavily on his ass. His shirt along his left shoulder and down his side and the inside of his left arm was scorched, the skin underneath blistered and raw, weeping fluids. He was healing, but slowly, as the damage was extensive, and he was looking at hours of pain.

“Fenric!” Cian rushed to his side and knelt next to him, hands hovering as if afraid to touch him. “Rory is coming; hold still for me.”

“It’ll heal on its own, you know that,” Fenric gritted out, trying not to wince at the sensation of sand in the raw, open wound. The sand was going to slow down his healing as his body forced it out first before he could heal completely.

“I’ll not have you hurt,” Cian replied forcefully. “I refuse to have you in pain.”

Cian held out his hands over the gaping wound and closed his eyes, the swirling tempest of grays and blues hidden from view as Cian’s hands began to glow a golden shimmer. The pain in his side increased briefly, Cian somehow healing him. It took Fenric a long moment for his brain to reboot—Cian was borrowing Rory’s powers to heal him.

It was slow going and the pain pricked at him with each particle of sand that was lifted from his flesh, but Cian was helping. A fresh fall of sand came down from one of the dunes off to the side, Rory running down the dune with Daniel on his heels.

Rory sprinted to Fenric and knelt at his injured side, Cian blinking his eyes open and slumping a bit, and Fenric reached out his right hand and pulled Cian to his uninjured side, holding him close. He pressed a kiss to Cian’s temple. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Cian said with the intonation of a vow.

“A nasty burn. I’ll have you sorted out in a moment, don’t worry,” Rory said as he took over healing, dulling the pain immediately and somehow forcing the sand from the wound all in an instant. Daniel took one look at the burn and went a startling shade of white, a hand over his mouth.

“Look away Daniel, it’s alright,” Fenric told him with a grimace. “I’d rather not have you puke on me.”

Daniel said nothing but he turned around with a fast nod and thankful eyes.

Cian carded fingers through his hair and down his back, over and over, as Rory worked on the nasty burn that ran from shoulder to hip. The bit under his arm was the worst part, but it healed up with nary a scar to show for it after a minute under Rory’s hands.

“Thank you,” Fenric breathed out as he went limp in relief, Cian catching him and practically dragging him into his lap, arms wrapped around him. Cian pressed his face into Fenric’s hair and held onto him, trembling.

Rory put a hand briefly on Cian’s shoulder, squeezing once before he let go, Cian not lifting his head from Fenric’s hair.

“You’re welcome,” Rory said to Fenric with a soft smile before the healer stood and went to his husband.

The night was quiet, crickets chirping in the grass again now that the storm was gone. Fenric wrapped his arms around Cian and held on tight, not in the least bit willing to let go.