Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Dom glared at the small square parchment note hovering in the air in front of him. He despised being summoned. If he touched the floating note, it would drag him to an unknown place where he would face interrogation as if he were an assumed-guilty deviant on trial.
The mage designated as his liaison to The Mage Conclave liked to pull him to somewhere hot and far too sunny. The leadership council of seven would never ask Dom to join even though he was as old as most of them. The prophecy made Dom too risky to allow him a position of power over other mages.
He didn’t need to be reminded of the prophecy like an errant child. He was bloody well aware he wasn’t allowed to have a woman as an acquaintance or friend. If the Conclave had its wish, he’d never get within a mile of an interesting female of any species for the rest of his existence.
The only way that was possible was if they locked him up again.
For the first time in centuries, he tasted fear. Not from the demon’s threats before it returned to its underworld home. Not from whatever the mage on the other end of this summons had to say. This fear started the moment a lycan with honey-colored eyes worried he’d get hurt.
“You have compassion, and desire runs hot in your blood, which means your heart isn’t truly black.”
“Damn it.” He swiped the few items on his kitchen table to the floor. His favorite teacup shattered, sending liquid everywhere. Gratification at its destruction dissolved into disappointment.
He thought he had a smidgeon of control over the trajectory of his life. This proved those fickle Fates got their jollies from wrecking him.
He shouldn’t be surprised. He survived day to day from one episode of insane human disaster he had to avert to another. It started two hundred years ago, after the witch prophesied about him: Your child borne of a love forgotten but never gone will be the destruction of the world you know.
The Conclave locked him away for twenty years until one of the Fates set him free.
She needed him to resume the periodic work he did for them—the business of thwarting disasters.
He adjusted lives here or there. He saved this person but not that one.
He sent demons back to hell, exorcised possessed humans, and moved chosen people out of the way of an accident.
All of it was miscellaneous bullshit, like adjusting stones on a chessboard to manipulate lives into their intended destinies.
After the Fates released him, the Conclave bound him in a different way.
He tugged at the black obsidian ring they’d tricked him into wearing.
As usual, it didn’t budge. The mages monitored him with this.
They judged him. They sent threats of interning him once more in that deep well or ending his life.
After almost two centuries, their threats bounced off him.
Threats weren’t necessary. He’d never allow himself to become the harbinger of destruction.
If the prophecy came to pass, he’d kill himself or his child or both.
He thought he’d finally found freedom tonight. How he craved relief from the empty isolation of his life with the death he longed for. Then the most exquisite creature he’d ever encountered messed it up.
Better to get this summoning over with.
He touched the levitating paper.
On instinct he held his breath, which helped with the vertigo upon arrival and kept him focused on keeping his mouth closed. The landing was never dignified, and often ended in a mouthful of whatever lay on the ground.
In a whoosh, the magic sucked him to somewhere too bright. He squinted and pushed up from a sandy shore. Grains of the white pestilence littered his dark clothes. He wiped the sand away, but he’d be finding grains of it in crevices for days.
“Over here.” Dojin flashed a smile on his smooth face. His features seemed styled in honor of an Asian emperor and his perfect beauty lulled humans into compliance. Dom had witnessed even humans who distrusted people of Eastern descent get goofy around him.
Dojin sat on a bench positioned to stare out at the quiet crystalline-blue water.
They must be somewhere Caribbean or Mediterranean given the water’s transparency.
Dom resented the slick Korean who was centuries younger than him.
Dojin must’ve been less than a century old when assigned to monitor him.
He sat as far away from Dojin as possible.
The fact a mage so young had been chosen several years ago to liaise with him made him cautious.
No mage who trained with Dojin still lived—including the guy’s master.
No foul play was suspected. Simply bad circumstances, but Dom remained suspicious.
Dojin would probably be eating while killing him…
like he was now as he munched on some sort of bread.
“Long time since we’ve had a meeting. I assume you to be well,” Dojin said with his mouth full.
Dom kept his eyes focused on his handler, watching for unnecessary hand movements.
“Times sure are different, aren’t they?” he rattled on. “However, human fashion has evolved exquisitely. Bread?” He pulled a new slice out of the container next to him and offered it Dom’s way.
“Why did you summon me?” He crossed his arms, too tired to tolerate chitchat and too skeptical to accept food.
Dojin tsked. “A bit of small talk won’t hurt you.”
“It’s distraction so you can try to manipulate my mind.” He filled his mind with an image of light so bright that if Dojin tried to read him, he’d be blinded.
The mage winced, which was a victory. “There was a disturbance in the Source last night.”
The Source was the fiber of their magic. There were two magi whose sole duty was to monitor for deviations and seek out the causes. Said monitoring happened around a magical pool housed deep in the Himalayas.
“What kind of disturbance? The kind that sends you to ask me to hunt something that scares the other mages? Or the kind that means you intend to hunt me?”
“Its meaning is unclear. Just a ripple in the pool. Has anything of consequence happened to you?” He cocked his head and rested his hands on his toned abdomen.
“The Conclave senses a disturbance and I’m their first suspicion? Figures. Instead of showing up themselves, they send you. What a bunch of pussies.”
“Did something happen?” Dojin’s ridiculous grin fell.
“I was attacked by witches and almost decapitated by a demon last night. Maybe my near-death experience caused a ripple?”
“You survived. I assume the demon and witches are dead.”
“The demon is gone. The witches I’ll sort out tonight.”
“Nothing else?”
“Are you asking if I fucked a woman after I almost had my head chopped off?” He laughed bitterly.
“Have you been interested in a special lady recently? Perhaps you met one on the streets of Paris who struck your fancy?” He winked and gave him a conspiratorial smirk as if Dom might divulge lewd details.
Paris? How did Dojin know where he’d been? He squeezed the obsidian ring deep into his fist. How precisely could it track him? The piece was only designed to transmit ripples in the Source, or so he’d thought.
“I don’t take lovers.” He vowed abstinence long ago.
There was no other way to avoid the prophecy manifesting.
Before the foretelling, he and a female mage occasionally found solace in each other until she died after a witch attack.
Before her, there’s been another. Someone who betrayed him.
“Unlike you, I don’t sleep my way across Europe and Asia. Abstinence helps me meditate.”
“Abstinence is for pussies. Come on, Dom.” He wiggled his fingers as if about to dive into a delicious meal. “I need the dirty details. Has there been someone recently?”
“I’m bound, remember?” He held up the ring. “I feel nothing between the ring and the cilice.” He patted his left thigh where the sharp prongs imbibed with a potion intended to suppress sexual desire cut into his skin. “I preserve the world as regulated by the Code and as directed by the Fates.”
“Ah, the Fates. Do they still speak to you? So odd they chose you and not one of us who isn’t cursed by such a tedious destiny.”
“Next time I see one of them I’ll tell them you volunteer to be their first call to deal with human catastrophe instead of me. You’re obviously more virtuous and less problematic.” He hadn’t meant that to come out as sarcastic as it had.
“No thanks. Being the Fates’ errand boy sounds tedious.”
“Are we done?” He stood.
Dojin clasped his hands together and brought them to his lips as if saying a prayer. “We’re here to protect you, as you know.”
“You didn’t exist when the Conclave protected me right after the prophecy was told.
They threw me into a windowless cell where they left me to rot in darkness.
Alone.” Had there been a hint of effort to figure out what the prophecy meant?
No. There hadn’t been a single word of kindness.
The Conclave administered punishment immediately, as if it were his fault the witch got high and uttered the words…
“It can’t have been that bad.”
Dom snarled, “You’re here out of fear. Yours and theirs. No one knows what the witch’s words meant. I’m not even allowed to seek out the company of a lady without having to report the details of the encounter.”
“We don’t care if you have a favorite or if you find company—so long as it’s purely transactional. This is the price you pay to be allowed to continue your existence.”
“I’m so glad you clarified that for me. Good for you is I no longer seek out sex.
” The Conclave was composed of mages with an array of powers; if they banded together, they could potentially destroy him without even leaving their meeting space.
That was a big if. The egos of the bunch might make organization into performing a single act impossible.
“You make a difference, Dom. You’re gifted to know when to be at the right place at the right time. Or perhaps you’re told where to go. Enslaved to a deity, eh?”
“That’s me,” he muttered.
“Don’t stray from the path. We’re watching.”
He pushed off the bench to stand. “There will be a moment when all of you want my help to deal with something none of you can handle. I won’t forget this.”
“If we discover you’ve developed an emotional attachment to a woman, we will destroy her and end you.”