Coal to Diamonds Read online

  Bobby matched Cole’s tempo. He easily lifted Cam’s light body up and down. Cole pulled back when Bobby raised Cam’s body, and thrust in when Bobby lowered Cam, so that they slid in and out of him in unison. Cam cried out with each thrust. Bobby smoothed the sweat-soaked hair out of Cam’s face and sucked at the place where Cam’s neck flowed into his collarbone. Cam’s nails bit Cole’s shoulders. The tearing pain encouraged Cole, and he picked up speed. Bobby followed his lead, and Cam’s nails dug in deeper. Cole felt his own hot blood flowing in eight thin streams down his back.

  “Fuck, yes,” he grunted as Cam ripped his skin.

  In his ecstasy, Bobby had forgotten to stroke Cam. His hand rested loosely around the base of Cam’s cock now that Cole’s shoulders locked Cam’s thighs against his chest. Cole closed his fist over Bobby’s knuckles and they both moved their hands over the length of Cam’s erection in synchronicity with their thrusts in and out of him. Cam wailed rhythmically, seeming overcome with the pain, pleasure, and intensity of the experience. He thrashed his head from side to side, bumping it against Bobby’s temple and the point of Cole’s chin.

  “Cole! Bobby! Oh God!” he cried. His seed splattered against his chest for the second time that night.

  “Love you, Cam,” Cole breathed as his cock twitched with his own impending orgasm. “Love you, Bobby.” He squeezed the backs of both of their necks and bucked forward, burying himself deep in Cam and filling him with his come. A second later he felt another blast of wet heat as Bobby came. The fluids mixed, coating both their penises.

  Thighs shaking from the exertion, Cole collapsed backward. The way he’d been squatting had exhausted his muscles; they could no longer hold him. He smacked his ass on the floor, but he didn’t care. He’d never had such a beautiful, intimate experience before. He knew for Cameron it had likely been a transformative experience. Cole’s cock throbbed from the severe pressure it had just escaped. His whole body tingled, electrified. On the couch, Bobby held the trembling form of Cam across his lap with Cam’s head resting inside one of his elbows and Cam’s knees hooked over the other. Cam encircled Bobby’s neck with his arms, and the side of his face drooped against Bobby’s chest. Though Cam’s thighs quivered, he looked satisfied and peaceful. They both seemed too sublime to be real. They were so lovely, and so strong. And they were his. Cole couldn’t believe how he’d been blessed.

  “Are you okay, Cam?” Bobby asked.

  Nuzzling in against Bobby, Cam whispered, “I’m wonderful.”

  It took a while before Cole’s euphoria wound down and he had the presence of mind to go to the sink and wet a towel. He poured some more whiskey and coffee into his mug. “You guys still want any of this?” he asked.

  Cam stayed silent, dozing, and Bobby said, “Not this late.” So Cole let them clean themselves and then covered them with the scratchy afghan. He took his place by the dog and the stove, where he could admire his lovers. They looked so beautiful, and had felt so amazing, all of their bodies packed together like that, that Cole couldn’t seem to stop smiling. Soon Bobby carried Cam to the bedroom at the opposite end of the cabin, where the three single beds left by original tenants sat pushed together. Bobby and Cam, entwined in each other’s arms and legs, lay sideways across the conjoined mattresses, so neither would slip into the cracks. A fourth bed sat unoccupied against the opposite wall, under the window. Cole went outside so Vixen could relieve herself and he could have a cigarette. The ominous presence remained, but so did the barrier they’d conjured, and Cole returned to the cabin, put a few logs on the fire, and spooned up behind Bobby, who smelled like soil and evergreens. Even as he slept, Cole’s heart soared between the tops of the oaks and ash and those clouds that hadn’t been driven off by the wind. He could feel the crisp starlight infusing his being and see the cabin glowing beneath him like an opalescent bubble. Fleshless, the cold felt invigorating and sensual, rather than unpleasant. The fraction of his consciousness that remained in the bed heard the soft snores of the two men he loved more than anything in the world.

  Everything would be all right.

  Chapter Two

  COLE knew the fire was out even before he opened his eyes. Cold air nipped at his ears and chin, but the rest of him felt cozy under the worn black comforter with Cam. Icy light stabbed through the cleft in the plaid curtains, yet another item abandoned by the hunting club that had previously leased the cabin. Cole guessed the time to be around seven. Beside him, Cam looked angelic, with his light hair fanning out around his pretty face like a halo. A twitch of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Cole was glad Cam’s dreams had been pleasant. His own, for the first time in weeks, had been mercifully unremarkable. His dream-form had flitted freely through the brisk air, taking sustenance from the moonlight and wind while sleep revitalized his physical body. He’d only been in bed four or five hours, but he felt more rested than he had in a long time.

  Though his bladder felt full, the chill kept Cole in the bed. He watched Cam sleep with his lips slightly parted, and remembered the crazy, passionate love the three of them had made the night before. The scratches on his back stung. His thigh muscles ached like he’d run a marathon. His cock started to stiffen, and he considered rubbing the other man’s shoulder, or maybe waking him with a strategically placed kiss. Bobby, always an early riser, had already left the bed. But jealousy wasn’t an issue among them. At least it had never been in the past. If only he hadn’t had to piss so badly! Cole decided to take care of it and then come back and awaken Cam.

  The cheap, gaudy yellow linoleum of the bathroom floor froze his soles as Cole relieved himself. He went to wash his hands in the chipped, white-washed iron sink that matched his prize possession: an antique claw-foot tub big enough for all three of them. He looked at himself in the square mirror that hung from a rusty nail. Cole didn’t possess the nymphlike beauty of Cam or Bobby’s wholesome good looks. His long nose had been broken in a grade-school fight, before he had Bobby’s presence to deter bullies. It had healed slightly crooked and with a lump on the bridge. His cheeks were high and sharp, his chin pointed. He ran a finger along his jawbone, which was still smooth and stubble-free after two days without a shave. Old Mrs. Riley had liked to tell people around town that her grandson’s straight dark hair and intense almond eyes were the result of “the Black Irish comin’ out in ’im.” She, like Cole’s mother, had been a blue-eyed strawberry blonde.

  Cole walked many miles a day, and he cut and hauled his own wood. But he also forgot to eat when his writing was going well. The result was a thin body with stringy muscle stretched taut under skin the color of wet sand. He looked perpetually tense, like a cobra coiled and ready to strike. Since he’d saved enough tax-return money to lease the cabin, quit his job, and work on his first novel, Cole had let his hair grow to his collarbone, dyed a few pieces crimson, and painted his fingernails black. He wondered, looking at himself, what it was about him that Cam and Bobby loved.

  He ran his palm over the large tattoo on the inside of his right forearm: a black circle with eight arrows pointing out in every direction: the symbol of Chaos. To Cole, Chaos was the ultimate creative and destructive catalyst. The music of the spheres was Chaos. Through it, nothing was true and everything was possible. He’d never been able to fully impart to Bobby and Cam his understanding of magic and the universe through Chaos.

  When Cole returned to the bedroom, Cam was gone. He found Cam in the kitchen, sitting at the table in Cole’s black velvet robe with the blanket wrapped around him. He looked lovely and desirable with his sleepy smile and his pale, mussed hair. Bobby stood in front of the ancient gas range in his loose khakis and no shirt, stirring something in a pan. The coffeemaker gurgled and dripped.

  “Cole, my love,” Bobby said with a grin, “this situation is completely unacceptable. There’s not a damn thing to eat in this house. Now that I used your last half-dozen eggs, there’s nothing in the fridge but ketchup and beer.”

  “Don’t be so harsh,” Col
e responded. “I’m pretty sure there’s a lemon in there somewhere.” He walked over and put his hand on Bobby’s waist. He knew Bobby enjoyed his food, and he had always found it endearing. The sunny-side up eggs looked delicious, and Cole felt surprisingly hungry. “Smells good,” he said. “I think I have a few slices of bread in the cupboard. I’m gonna throw some clothes on. Then we can make toast.”

  “A real feast,” Bobby said sarcastically as Cole headed back toward the bedroom. “I don’t know how you don’t get scurvy, Cole. Why don’t you just build a fire and leave the cooking to me? Gods, I think I’d kill for some bacon and sausage.”

  With the fire crackling and the simple breakfast prepared, the three of them sat down at the small table. Bobby dipped the corner of his bread in the yolk of his egg, chewed it, and then washed it down with a sip of coffee. “I think it’s time we decided what we’re going to do about our friend Mr. Thorn,” he said, meeting each of their gazes in turn.

  “I said we’re safe,” Cole reminded him for the third time. “Cam says so too.” He slurped down a flat, greasy piece of egg white, its edges crisp and brown. Some dried pizza seasoning gave the food zest, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so famished.

  “We’re safe right now,” Bobby continued, building his argument stone by stone. “But we can’t stay in this cabin for the rest of our lives. As I already pointed out, we have no food. I personally don’t want to risk getting struck by lightning or impaled by a tree branch on the way to the supermarket. I’d like to go back to work soon. What we need is a permanent solution.”

  The idea of staying, of waking up every morning to Bobby cooking and Cam wrapped in his soft robe made Cole smile even as it opened a fissure in his heart. They didn’t want to remain in the backwoods of Greysport, Pennsylvania, barely populous enough to be called a town. Unlike Cole, they had lives away from here, important careers in cities with recognizable names. As soon as it was safe, they planned to claw their way to the top of this pit and run, even if that meant leaving Cole at the stagnant bottom again, as they had ten years ago.

  “I could do it, I think,” Cole whispered, looking over Bobby’s head and out the kitchen window. The branches and sky appeared monochromatic and faded, like an old photograph. Last night’s rain had evaporated, leaving behind a mist that fuzzed the edges of things. “I think I can kill him.”

  “Cole, no!” Cam said. His fork dropped from his hand and chimed against his plate.

  “I don’t think we need to go to that extreme,” Bobby agreed. Cole could see in their eyes that they still loved Darius Thorn, the mysterious man who’d appeared not long after they’d returned to Greysport six months ago, and who’d seduced each of them in turn, and Cole too. He’d showed them glimpses of power beyond their wildest imaginings. Even now, with Thorn threatening their lives, the idea of him gone forever saddened them.

  “Maybe we can talk to him,” Cam offered softly. “If we apologize, and ask him to stop—”

  “Talk to him!” Cole spat. “Cam, do you remember how he reacted when we wanted to stop holding ceremonies with him? And what the fuck do we have to apologize for? We’re somewhere between tools and toys in his mind. If we’re not working properly, we can be replaced. He made it perfectly clear that it’s his way or nothing. We can go back and bow down in front of him, do whatever he says, or we can wait for him to figure out how to kill us. That is, unless we get him first.”

  “Cole, that’s enough. Killing is not an option,” Bobby said.

  Cole didn’t like Bobby’s tone, the careful calm one used when speaking to a crazy person with dynamite strapped to his chest. Bobby feared Cole would snap, do something rash. Maybe he would. He didn’t need Cam’s or Bobby’s permission to kill Thorn. But Cole also knew the action would sever his bond with them as certainly and permanently as death. “Killing is the most natural thing in the world,” he said, trying to win their support. “It happens thousands of times a day, all around us. Animals do it. They defend themselves. Even plants kill. Weather kills. Time kills.”

  Now Bobby and Cam looked at him not with nervousness but with a trace of disgust. “I’m not a monster! Thorn is the monster,” Cole said, standing and then slamming the back of his chair against the table’s edge, making the coffee ripple in the mugs and the silverware rattle. “I’m not asking either one of you to do it. All I want to do is protect you, and you look at me like I’m Hitler!” He grabbed his leather coat from the peg where it hung, went outside, and slammed the door.

  The previous night’s downpour had left the naked ground pitted with frosty mud puddles. It had stripped the trees of their remaining leaves. Vixen shuffled through the damp piles around the trunks, coaxing out the maple scent. Cole paced back and forth, smoking. Bobby and Cam were probably talking about him, asking each other if he was dangerous, or insane. While they found Cole’s dark tendencies sexy at times, they were quick to clutch their lights when the shadows grew too long. Maybe they wanted to replace him with Darius Thorn. Three was the most potent magical number. Four was cumbersome. Thorn outdid Cole as a demonic ringleader. He was more exotic than Cole, more knowledgeable and powerful, by far. Thorn stood as a lush, velvety black beside Cole’s threadbare gray. If Bobby and Cam could accept the darkness, then why not have the entirety of the silken, decadent night instead of the narrow patch of shade?

  It had been easy for Cole to be taken in by Darius Thorn when Thorn had moved to town six months ago. He’d been the mentor Cole had always wanted and the friend he so desperately needed. Elegant and worldly, Thorn had seemed more suited to London or Paris than Greysport, and the attention he paid to Cole made Cole feel like maybe he, too, belonged somewhere better. Then, when Cole had introduced Bobby and Cam to Thorn, their knowledge, abilities, and personalities had complemented each other so well, Cole’s life had finally began to feel whole. He should have known it was all too good to last.

  Bobby and Cam had left him before, ten years ago. They’d left him to the miserable little settlement, not much more than the coal-mining camp it had been a century before, where everyone talked behind his back, called him a queer and bastard, and looked at the ground when he passed by. They left knowing that, with his grandmother dead, not a single person within a hundred-mile radius cared whether Cole lived or died. Cam and Bobby had abandoned him to that hell, left him to a loneliness so profound it was almost audible: a constant, melancholy music.

  For ten years, he’d tried to tell himself he wasn’t resentful when Bobby sent him a Christmas card bearing a picture of himself in an Italian suit beside his perfect wife and daughter, or Cam snipped a review of his successful show from the paper. He wanted to be happy for them, his brothers and lovers, as they rose like heat toward the sky. Bobby became a junior partner in his law firm and Cam modeled for blue jean ads, while Cole’s life barely hovered above the muck. He’d published a few stories, tragedy-tinged erotica featuring rugged, olive-skinned warriors and golden-haired fey, but the insurance agency ate most of his time.

  Cole thought he’d finally find satisfaction once he quit his job to write his novel. Three novels, actually. He intended a grandiose trilogy to rival Tolkien. He loved the seclusion of the cabin, the absence of the whispers and stares he’d come to expect in town. He didn’t even mind the extra work required to heat and maintain the little place. But as one year turned into two, he found himself sitting more and more on his porch, watching the sunset gild the trees and aching for Cam and Bobby. He saw them so clearly sometimes that it made him weep: the exact brown of Bobby’s hair or crescent crinkle of Cam’s eyes when he smiled. He took out his wand, that slender piece of boyhood he’d managed to clutch when everything else had been irrevocably lost, and remembered the nights in the tree house. How he wanted those nights back! He’d been happy, complete, in those twilight hours, like never before or since. Together, the three of them held all of the elements in balance. Bobby and Cam had shattered their perfect thing into pieces, and Cole willed it whole ag
ain. Often he sat for hours under a sky that shifted from rose gold to indigo and stroked the wood in his hand, tracing over the sigils with his fingers. He pictured Cam and Bobby from their toenails to their eyelashes. He pictured what it had been like to be with them, what it would be like if they could be together again. Evening became night, autumn winter, and winter spring as he skulked among the trees, twirling the wooden stick in his long fingers, dreaming, longing.

  Casting.

  Summoning.

  Though he hadn’t intended to, Cole had called Cam and Bobby back to his side. But they returned to him damaged, broken in ways he couldn’t believe. Cam had injured his ankle and lost his dancing job. He’d resorted to stripping in an upscale gay club. An irresponsible doctor prescribed Oxycontin, Vicodin, and hydrocodone to alleviate his aches. He eventually became too addicted to even keep his job at the club, and found himself on the street, giving twenty-dollar blowjobs so he could afford a night in a cheap motel, a sandwich, and, of course, his pills. Some nights he didn’t earn enough for the food and the room, and he slept on the street. Finally, after months of being fucked by every piece of trash with a few crumpled bills, being beaten and robbed, he’d had enough and returned to his hometown to kick his habit. His parents didn’t accept Cam or his lifestyle, but they let him use his old bedroom while he cleaned up.

  Bobby cheated on his wife with another lawyer at his firm. The former Mrs. Forester suspected and hired a private investigator. When she secured a dozen photographs of her husband and the other man, she used them not only to claim most of their shared property and custody of their child, but to humiliate the husband who’d scorned her. She sent copies of the pictures, which showed Bobby in the most intimate of situations, to his employer and all of their friends. Predictably, the law firm demanded both men resign. At the divorce hearing, the judge and attorneys bore witness to Bobby’s indiscretions in all of their close-up detail. From the stand, Mrs. Forester declared that yes, that was her husband’s penis, and no, that certainly wasn’t her ass. Bobby was well-known enough that the incident warranted a brief column in the paper. Once proud, strong, and respected, Bobby became too mortified to show his face in Boston. He retreated to the only place, and the only person, who wouldn’t pass judgment.