9. Ira #2
"It's survival for him, too," Cain counters, his voice dropping into a lower, more intimate register.
"Adaro's coming. The Church is already tracking the flare Aven left across the city.
He's been glowing like a star for hours.
You can't cage him, Ira. You can't just put him in a warded room and hope the world forgets he exists.
He needs the bond to stabilize that power before it burns him out from the inside.
His mind'll shatter before his body does if he stays open like this. "
Aven lets out a shaky, bitter laugh from the edge of the room.
He's tucked his knees up under the blanket, looking smaller than he did five minutes ago.
"This is great. Really. I'm a circuit. I'm a battery.
I'm a fated mate. Does anyone want to ask if I actually like any of you, or are we just going straight to the part where you hook me up to the grid? "
I look at him, and for a second, the tactical assessment fails.
I see the way his hair curls around his ears, the way his bottom lip's bitten raw, the way he's looking at my cross with a mixture of terror and longing.
He's a man who's been told his whole life that his soul belongs to God, only to find out it apparently belongs to a vampire, a witch, and an exorcist who doesn't know how to be gentle.
It's the same violation, just dressed in different clothes.
"I'm not the Church, Aven," I say, and my voice is softer than I intended. I don't like the way it sounds. Vulnerable. Exposed. "I don't use people as fuel. I don't turn living things into conduits for my own convenience."
"You just use them as projects," Aven snaps, though his eyes are darting toward the shadows again.
The spirits are screaming outside, a cacophony of the dead that only he can hear, and his flinch is so violent it nearly knocks him over.
He looks at me, then at Cain, then at Soren, who's still holding his hand as if it's a lifeline.
"God, can you make them stop? Just... for five minutes?
They're asking me for things. They're cold. They're so cold."
I look at Cain. "Can you?"
Cain steps toward Aven, his hands held out as if he's approaching a wounded animal. "I can give you the silence again, Aven. If you let me in. If you allow the tether to ground the noise."
Aven looks at Cain, and the denial in his eyes is crumbling.
It's a Denial Loop I've seen a thousand times in the field, someone fighting the very thing that'll save them because they're afraid of the cost. He wants Cain's touch.
He wants the quiet. And he hates himself for wanting it because he knows Cain brought him here like a piece of bait.
"Don't touch me," Aven whispers, even as he leans forward, his body betraying the words. "I don't... I don't know who you are. I don't know what any of this is."
"I'm the man who's going to keep you alive," Cain says. He doesn't touch him, but he stays close, a dark anchor in the middle of the storm. "And Ira's the man who's going to keep you safe. Even from me. Even from the things that want to turn you into a weapon."
I shift my weight, the leather of my jacket creaking.
I don't like being part of Cain's sales pitch.
I don't like the way Soren's still crying, or the way the biting plant in the corner's clicking its leaves in agitation.
I like systems. I like clear lines of fire.
I like knowing who the enemy is. Right now, the enemy's the entire world outside that door, and the only thing standing between them and this shivering man is a broken-down coven and an exorcist who's starting to feel things he hasn't felt in ten years.
"The Church won't stop at the door, Cain," I say, my mind already moving to the next phase of the assessment. "If they found him, they'll send a delegation. Or Ezra. They don't give up on divinity once they've gathered it. We've got a limited window before this shop becomes a siege site."
"Then we move," Soren says, scrambling to his feet. He's still shaky, but the manic energy's back, the bratty defiance that he uses to cover the hole in his heart. "We ward the back room. We ground the circuit. We do whatever we have to do. We aren't letting them have him."
He turns to Aven, his green eyes flashing with a protective fire that matches my own, though his is born of grief and mine's born of a sudden, startling realization of duty.
"You brought her through," Soren says, voice rough.
"I don't know what you are, and I don't care right now.
You're bleeding, and they're outside. Don't walk back into that. "
Aven looks at the three of us: the vampire who manipulated him, the witch who wants to use him to see a ghost, and the soldier who sees him as a tactical liability.
He looks like he wants to cry, or scream, or maybe just go back to the bar and drink until the world turns grey.
Instead, he just pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders, his eyes landing on me.
They're full of a weary, ancient bitterness.
"What do you want to do, Aven?" I ask. I need to hear it. I need him to make a choice, even if it's a bad one, because I can't protect someone who's being held here against their will. That's not protection. That's a cage. And I've spent enough of my life building cages for the Church.
Aven looks at me, and for a second, the sarcasm fails him completely.
There's a raw, bleeding honesty in his amber eyes that makes me want to look away.
"What do I want?" he asks, and he laughs again, a sound that's more like a sob than anything resembling humor.
"I want to sleep for a hundred years. I want the dead to shut up.
I want to not be the most interesting thing in the room for five minutes of my miserable life.
I want to go back to when my only problem was a hangover and a shift at Gabriel's. "
He looks at the door, then back at the three of us. The silence in the shop's heavy, broken only by the scratching of spirits on the brickwork outside. "But I think if I walk out that door, I'm going to die. Or worse. And apparently that's the kind of thing people ask after destroying a life."