Coal to Diamonds Read online

  The wood shared more of its reminiscences, and Cole saw them, frustrated, trying to suture together the tool, consulting books to no avail. Next he saw them in their robes at the breakfast table, heard them asking one another what Cole would say needed to be done. Then they stood, candle-lit, naked, entranced, facing each other with the wand shards held vertically. Bobby raised the blade. Fingers wove together. Palms pressed close, joining the fragments. Blood trickled down.

  Overcome, Cole sobbed. No one had ever done anything so profound for him before. They’d bled for him. Once again his legs gave out, and he collapsed on the scorched road, heaving. Bobby crouched beside him, wrapped his large hands around Cole’s triceps, hoisting him up, and said, “Tears later, baby,” as he pointed toward Thorn.

  Cole walked over to stand before his master, who now looked just as he had when they’d met at the library. The dark energy swirled around Cole, stored in readiness if it came to a fight. He held out his hand, saying, “I’m afraid you’ll have to find somebody else. I can break that curse now, with my wand returned, and with Cam to douse the fire and Bobby to smother it. Do you need me to do it?”

  Thorn shook his head. Much to Cole’s surprise, he looked neither angry nor violent, only bemused, and perhaps disappointed. “Go back to your woods, little hedge witch,” he said, cupping Cole’s chin, and then leaning in to kiss him. His lips lingered so long that Cole feared he might weep at the loss of the man. At last he pulled away. After regarding his apprentice a few seconds more, he placed the lump of wax, now cool, into Cole’s arms, as gently as if it were a newly birthed child. “Remember me now and then,” he said.

  So much of Cole longed to seize Thorn’s face, kiss him viciously, hook his nails into his flesh, and implore him not to go that he had to turn away before his avowals spilled unbidden from his mouth. Behind him Bobby and Cam held one another’s waists, burned and wounded, but emanating quiet strength. To the right, fire spread through the upper level of Thorn’s magnificent old house. Black smoke billowed out of the windows, and part of the roof, above the study, had already caved in. Sirens could be heard in the distance.

  Long fingers, tips satin cool, wrapped Cole’s cheek and turned his face. “You thought of me as your captor, Cole,” Thorn said. “I hope one day you’ll see that I only sought to free you from the restrictions of good and evil. From all of your bonds.” He tipped his head toward the two men hugging in the street.

  Cole shook his head. “I’m happy in them,” he told Thorn.

  With an anticlimactic nod and brush of Cole’s brow, Thorn turned and started up the tree-lined lane. His bath robe had grown heavy and hooded and long, swishing on the ground behind him. Overwhelmed with loss, Cole took three steps to follow, but a firm grip on his upper arms stopped him. Looking to his right and left, Cole saw his own dilemma mirrored in Bobby and Cam’s eyes.

  “He wasn’t so bad,” Cam said softly. “He didn’t even get angry or try to fight with us. He just let us go.”

  “He’s causing us more pain this way,” Cole said. “If he’d hurt us, we could hate him and feel justified in what we’d done. This way, he knows that there will be nights when we lie awake thinking of him, wondering where he went, missing him. He’ll remain, in a small way, our master.”

  They joined hands, and Bobby said, “We’re a bit of a spectacle. We should go.”

  “Where?” Cole asked.

  “Back to the cabin. It’ll take Cammy and me days and days to totally cleanse you, Cole. Maybe even until the next full moon.”

  Now came the dreaded moment when Cole had to draw blood, to shatter what had turned out to be a happy ending. He sighed, bracing himself, and said, “I can’t go with you.”

  “What?” Cam inhaled.

  “I’m sorry, Cammy. Bobby. No one has ever done anything for me like what the two of you did. You came back for me. But I’m not safe to be around. I can’t control my power. I’ll wound you. Maybe badly.”

  “But—”

  “No,” Cole said. “I won’t risk it. If you had any idea of the kinds of things I’ve done—”

  “We don’t care, Cole,” Cam said.

  “You’d care if you knew.”

  “Maybe we would,” Bobby said. “But we’ll deal with it. None of us is perfect. None of us is the same as when we were eighteen. We’re all diminished in some ways, better in others. But we’re best when we’re together.”

  Cole broke free of their hands, walked a few steps up the street, and crossed his arms over his chest. The red and blue flash of emergency vehicles painted the leaves on the trees and bushes at the end of the block. Looking down, he remembered his nudity and covered his genitals with his hand. How he wanted to go back to the cabin, to lie vulnerable night after night while Cam sprinkled his body with crisp spring water and Bobby swept his flesh with oak leaves until the entire miasma had been banished. He’d put himself in their hands, trusting in their knowledge and love. Then, by the light of dozens of candles, in a cloud of pungent sage smoke, the three of them would make love.

  But… “I can’t. I can’t be that selfish. I won’t put you two in jeopardy. I love you too much. I have to work this out on my own. If and when I get through it, if and when I learn to control my power instead of letting it have its way, I’ll find you, if that’s still what you want. Until then, you have to trust me as you once did. Go away. Don’t send me pictures. Don’t write. Don’t make me think of you. Please.”

  Bobby grinned. “You’ve always been so conceited, Cole,” he teased. “Thinking only of yourself. What about our magic? If you leave, you’re robbing us of a crucial component for our own spells.”

  “Bobby—”

  “He’s right,” Cam concurred, winding his fingers around Cole’s wrist and urging him up the street, where Bobby had parked his brown truck. “You’re also kind of arrogant. You assume your power is so much greater than ours that we can’t protect ourselves? That we’d be at your mercy?”

  “Personally I feel better when I can keep an eye on you,” Bobby said, smiling broadly, triumphantly, the way he’d done as a boy, as he opened the truck door for Cameron and Cole.

  As Cole stepped up into the cab, Cam brushed his bare ass and added impishly, “Yeah, I like to keep my eyes on you too. It’s less of a strain when I don’t have to use tea leaves and crystal balls.”

  “Besides, your dog misses you,” Bobby continued. “She chewed the handles of all of my golf clubs.”

  Cole took his place at the center of the leather seat, the wax doll resting between his legs and his wand, finally beside his thigh, where it belonged. Cam and Bobby joined him and shut the doors. Their shoulders pressed together, and Cole let his spine curve backward and relinquished all the tension in his body, allowing himself to be supported entirely by the love, trust, and flesh of his brothers. He closed his eyes as Bobby started the engine and took them away from Thorn’s burning house and then away from the town. The sun warmed his cut and bruised body. Exhaustion, held off only by fear and adrenaline, claimed him now that the fight had concluded. Soon they’d be safely under the verdant canopy of the mountain trees, in the cabin down the road from the cemetery. Together. Unable to believe his dearest things had been returned, Cole smiled as he dozed.

  But they hadn’t been returned, he reminded himself. They had come back to him. No matter what he had to do, Cole would keep Bobby and Cam safe, keep the three of them together. Already his mind conceived of a ceremony, outdoors under the mead moon, in which the three of them could share blood and fluids and weave their essences together, all of the elements in perfect balance. They’d join hands, sip from the same chalice, gambol around a bonfire, and then—

  As the truck turned onto the road that led up the mountain, Cole’s body reacted to the vivid fantasy.

  “Why, Cole!” Cam said, faux-scandalized. “You’re thinking rude thoughts.”

  “What, you can read my mind now?”

  “Like I’d need to.” Cam squeezed Cole’s swoll
en head. It felt as if they’d never been apart.

  The forest air smelled purer than the air in town, felt cooler. “I can’t wait to be with you two again,” Cole said. “I want to—It’s like—” For maybe the first time in his life, words failed him. He couldn’t express how much he loved them, how perfectly, perfectly vital to him they’d always been, more cherished than the water he drank or the ground beneath his feet.

  “I can’t wait either, baby,” Cam said, stroking Cole and then leaning over to kiss Cole’s forehead.

  Bobby chuckled and rested his hand on Cole’s knee. “Don’t worry, my loves,” he said. “We’re almost home.”

  He pulled the truck up in front of the cabin and put it into park. It took a moment before Cole’s enchantment-scorched brain processed Bobby’s words. “Home? Does that mean you two are planning to stay?”

  “Here?” Cam said, opening the door and helping Cole out of the truck, “I don’t know. For now. Until we heal you. But I’m staying with you and Bobby no matter what. We all know it’s where we belong.”

  “We’ll decide where to go when the time comes,” Bobby agreed. He opened the door, and Cole couldn’t believe what he saw. They’d restored the interior of the cabin to almost exactly the way he’d left it. If anything, it was cleaner and neater than Cole had kept it.

  Vixen ran to her master with her tail wagging. Cole crouched down and let her lap at his face. He just sat on the cool wooden floor and let everything percolate through the layers of his mind. So much love surrounded him; Cole felt it in every splinter of wood Bobby had chopped and stacked by the stove, ever fiber in the new blankets and throw pillows Cammy had probably bought and placed on the sofa.

  Bobby went into the bathroom and started to fill the tub while Cam took mason jars of herbs from the cupboards. Soon the smell of sage filled the cabin, the smoke winding out from the small bathroom and forming a haze along the ceiling. Cam took the items he’d selected to the tub, and a moment later both of them helped Cole to his feet, each of them taking one of his hands. They guided him to the bathroom and lowered him into water scented with lavender, red clover, sweet grass, cinnamon, and amber resin. Cole closed his eyes and just let the warm liquid close over him. He leaned his head back against the lip of the tub as Bobby and Cam, chanting softly on either side of him, scooped water into their hands and let it drizzle over Cole’s head and face. Cole fell into a gentle trance similar to sleep, though he never lost awareness of his lovers moving and speaking near him.

  Magic had always come intrinsically to Cole. He never thought much about what to do or say, and so now, as Bobby and Cam loved and cared for him, he just laid back and let them, because he knew, in that moment, it was the right thing to do.

  About the Author

  AUGUSTA LI is the author of several short stories, novellas, novels, and yaoi manga scripts, created either on her own or with her partner in crime, Eon de Beaumont. Gus and Eon are also artists and are currently hard at work on many manga and prose projects. They would love nothing more than to see the yaoi/BL genre flourish in the West. Video games, manga, and anime have been huge influences on Gus’s work. Xbox Live calls Gus away from work far more often than it should.

  Visit Gus at http://www.BooksByEonandGus.com or keep an eye out at anime conventions and Goth clubs around the East Coast.

  By AUGUSTA LI

  NOVELS

  BLESSED EPOCH

  Ashes and Echoes

  Ice and Embers

  STREAMCRAFT AND SORCERY

  WITH EON DE BEAUMONT

  Boot for the Gentleman

  A Grimoire for the Baron

  NOVELLAS

  Neskaya

  Coal to Diamonds

  STREAMCRAFT AND SORCERY

  Snowdrop

  Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Romance from AUGUSTA LI

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Copyright

  Coal to Diamonds ©Copyright Augusta Li 2013

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  5032 Capital Circle SW

  Ste 2, PMB# 279

  Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

  USA

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Art by Paul Richmond

  http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com

  This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the Publisher. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 5032 Capital Circle SW Ste 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA.

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-62380-469-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  Second Edition

  May 2013

  First Edition published by Tease Publishing, March 2009

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  About the Author

  Romance from Augusta Li

  Copyright