19 Dáinn
DáINN
Wrapped in shadows, I fade into the middle of a mortuary autopsy room.
From the other side of the table, Basil Barnes shrieks, dropping a pair of rib shearers to the floor.
His lilac eyes glow brightest white as he pulls all the spells of gods and men to the tip of his tongue, ready to curse me into oblivion.
“Hello, Baz.”
He staggers back. “Hecate’s tits!” Shoving his work tray aside, all the metal instruments rattle. “Dáinn—why must you always do that?”
Unleashing my shadows, I let them swirl about the room, darkening the harsh lights of the fluorescents to set a mood more akin to a medieval surgery.
The effect does wonders for the old man currently cracked open on the autopsy table.
My shadows give his face a look of austere distinction, like a Bronze Age king.
Baz strips off his black surgical gloves, tossing them on the tray. “It’s really you then?”
“Who else can pass unnoticed through your wards?”
Stepping around the table, he pulls me into a firm hug. “Where the hell have you been?” Baz presses himself against my bony chest, patting my back. It feels strange to be touched. I only ever do the touching, and only with my hands. “Gods, I thought you were dead.”
“I am dead.”
“How long has it been, old friend?”
“Too long,” I rasp, breathing in his sweet, familiar scent.
A smile quirks his lips as he leans away and takes me in. “You haven’t aged a day.”
“Nor you.”
He chuckles, returning to the other side of the table. “You’ll have to excuse the mess. Work never ceases, you know.”
I glance around, taking in all the tastes and textures of the room.
The sharp acidity of embalming fluid stings my throat.
It’s layered with the old parchment smell of decay, the earthiness of exposed organs, the iron tang of blood, and the lemony fresh scent of floor cleaner.
I look to my friend. “Do you still go by Basil Barnes?”
He shrugs, untying his autopsy apron and tossing it over the open body. “When it suits me. I’ve been running this shop for a few decades now.” He magics a business card to the tips of his fingers, holding it out to me.
I take it and read aloud, “Barnes & Sons Mortuary Services.” I glance over the card at him. “Which generation of ‘son’ are you playing now?”
Plucking the card from my fingers, he vanishes it in a wisp of purple smoke.
“I believe I’m currently Basil Barnes the Fourth .
. . or perhaps the Fifth. It’s so easy to lose track of these things.
Whenever someone starts asking too many questions, I just move my operation a few countries over. And so, the wheel of the world spins.”
I’ve missed hearing the cadence of his voice. He settled on using a British accent a few centuries ago, but it’s easy to catch echoes from his past. Honeyed words whispered to his lovers in Latin, curses muttered in Ge’ez, a funny turn of phrase in Proto-Germanic.
Basil Barnes is a mage, an immortal creature almost as rare as I am.
He says there are twenty in total, though I’ve never met another.
He appears now as a young man, tall and lithe, with pale white skin.
His features are sharper than I remember, ageless in that way of immortals, complimented with rouge and eye powder to make his angles shimmer with each turn of his head.
His tousled silver hair frames his face, hanging to his shoulders, streaked with strands of black.
All this is anchored by a pair of bright lilac eyes.
As beautiful as he is, it was his strange aura that first drew me in all those centuries ago.
There’s no color to it. His soul exists only in shades of grey, like his morality.
Sometimes it appears smoky, or fine as mist. Other times it’s dark and stormy like a great, thunderous cloud.
It’s always changing with his many moods.
Speaking of changing moods . . .
I glance to the door, watching as it slams open. A vampire zips into the middle of the room with a burst of inhuman speed. Fangs bared, he pits himself in front of Baz, squaring off against me. “Back up, you grim reaper motherfucker! Before I rip out your throat and drain you dry!”
I glance to Baz, who just rolls his eyes.
The vampire is a large specimen of a man, with a muscular build, flowing golden hair, and blood-red eyes.
He wears no shirt, only a pair of tight leather pants.
His body is adorned with scarification. Runes branded across his chest mark him as belonging to Baz.
He carries more scars over his shoulders and down his arms, all self-inflicted.
There’s nothing Baz enjoys more than a little ritual blood play, which makes vampires the perfect playmates.
Every few decades he gets a new one to obsess over and lavish with affection.
Sighing, Baz wraps a long-fingered hand around the vampire’s throat, pulling him back. “Clarence, my darling, once again, you prove yourself worse than completely useless. If my friend were really here to attack me, I’d be dead ten times over by now.”
The vampire flinches. “I’m sorry, master. I didn’t feel the wards trip. There’s no excuse—”
“Shh.” Baz strokes down his chest with both hands, his touch intimate and proprietary as his fingers brush over the scarified runes. “Silly little vampire, wraiths are immune to my wards. And they have no blood for you to drain. Which is why we must always treat them as a friend.”
He nods. “Yes, master.”
Leaning in, Baz kisses his jaw. “Fangs away, pet. Go ready yourself for your nightly punishment, hmm? Leave us alone to talk a little business.”
With an eager whimper, Clarence retracts his fangs.
“So sweet,” Baz whispers in his ear. “So pretty when you disappoint me. Your punishment will hurt tonight. You’ll like that, won’t you?”
The vampire nods again. “Yes. Thank you, master.”
“Good. Now, run along, dearest.” Baz lets him go and Clarence disappears in another burst of speed, slamming the door shut behind him.
I smirk within my cowl. “He seems nice.”
Baz just shrugs. “I give it another decade. Two at the most. He may be utterly wasted as a bodyguard, but he really is exceptional at performing fellatio. It’s a shame you have no cock, Dáinn, or I’d let you try him for yourself.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“You could always watch us if you’d like—”
“Baz, this isn’t a social call.”
He blinks twice, his lilac eyes glowing faintly as his smile turns sharply to a frown. “How disappointing. You scorn me for centuries. And now, moments after appearing uninvited in my shop, you demand my assistance?”
“I didn’t scorn you—”
“Here was I, thinking you had gone forever,” he continues over me. “No note, no telegram. Have you really never learned to operate a phone? You must get with the times, Dáinn, lest they leave you behind.”
“I couldn’t contact you.”
His eyes narrow in suspicion. “Couldn’t or wouldn’t? My friend, I have not seen you for—”
“Two hundred years, six months, three days, five hours, and seven minutes.”
He takes me in from cowled head to shadowy bottom, his aura shifting from pale grey to stormy charcoal. “What happened to you? Why did you never visit me?”
I don’t know why I can’t just tell him the truth. Perhaps I’m too ashamed. He’ll have so many questions, and I haven’t the time to explain. I must return to Jasper. I must secure his help. I rattle a low, rasping sigh. “Baz . . . please.”
With a gasp of knowing, the mage stretches his arm out over the autopsy table. Reaching into my cowl, he wraps a hand around my throat. He hisses as the iron of Ludmilla’s collar burns the flesh of his palm. “No—” He drops his hand away, tears welling in his eyes. “You’re bound? To whom?”
“Ludmilla Latchko.”
The mage snarls a low curse. “That nasty, villainous cunt is still alive? When did she take you? How the hell did she even find you? You were always so careful.”
“Not careful enough.” My tone is hollow with regret.
“It’s an abomination! A slight against the natural order!
” With a wave of his hand, he disappears the open body and the table it lies on.
Then he steps in close, grabbing me by the shoulders, his hands smoothing down my arms to take my hands.
“I see it now. My poor friend, I feel the wrongness in you. How old is this binding?” He lifts one hand, inspecting my bony fingertips. Turning it over, he checks my palms.
Gently, I slip my hands from his grip. “One hundred and seventy-two years . . . give or take a few months.”
“Oh, Dáinn, how can you bear it?”
“My life is an endless torture,” I rasp, drifting slowly back. “Humiliation and grief without end.”
A pair of tears slip down his pale cheeks, leaving tracks in his coral pink rouge. “Why did you not tell me? Maybe I could have helped.”
I shake my cowled head. “Impossible. She kept me caged.”
His indignation flares. “What, all this time?”
“I’m only here now because of a loophole in our binding,” I rush to explain. “I don’t know how long I have. I need your help, Baz. My life depends on it.”
Nodding, resolve shines in his eyes. “Yes, of course. What do you need?”
I’m wary by nature, especially when it comes to wraith matters that could make me vulnerable. But if I can’t trust Baz with this, I can’t trust anyone. “What do you know about humans who can stop a wraith from devouring a soul?”
“What do you mean?”
I suck in a rattling breath. Best to come right out with it. “I was devouring a soul tonight and a human told me to stop . . . so I stopped.”
His brows furrow with confusion. “But—wraiths can’t stop.”
“Well, I did.”
“But you can’t—”
“Baz, I stopped,” I say over him. “Do you want me to bring you the witch and show you the chest where his heart still beats?”
“What happened? Explain.”