Coal to Diamonds Read online

  Cole knew his spectral hand had snagged Cam’s graceful foot and made him fall, his distant whisper made Mrs. Forester wonder why her Bobby worked late so often. He hated himself for it, wished he could undo it. Never had he suspected he’d harm Bobby and Cam by simply missing them. He’d never thought his power was that great. He’d gladly have gone back to his bleak solitude, even relinquished his magic, if it would fade the scars the past year had left on his lovers. But it was beyond his ability to change the past, so he would mosaic them back together as best he could. The cracks couldn’t be filled completely, though, and Cam cried sometimes when he did his morning stretches. Cole found Cam now and then staring into the empty medicine cabinet in the cold little bathroom. He kept in shape with yoga and Pilates, but Cam no longer danced. And Cole would catch Bobby looking over his shoulder, afraid of unseen eyes and being watched. Never again would he be the proud young man who ran across the football field after a victory, arms raised and perfect smile flashing.

  The boys they’d been were gone forever. Cole would defend them now, even if it meant scaring them away, losing them for good. He owed them that much after he’d inadvertently shattered their lives. Then, he’d wrap his wand in a square of cloth, put it under his bed, and never lay his hands on it again.

  He flicked his cigarette into a puddle, and it hissed out. He’d go inside and apologize to Bobby and Cam, even though they didn’t know the extent of his offenses against them. Whistling to Vixen, he turned the cold knob of the door. Even the dampened light outdoors made the cabin’s interior gloomy in comparison. Bobby and Cam stood by the sink. They’d cleared away the breakfast dishes and were kissing by the steaming suds in the dishpan. The robe Cam wore hung open, and Bobby rested his right hand on his hip. Bobby had tangled his other hand in Cam’s hair, holding his face close. Cam’s arms hung passively at his sides. His entire body formed a streamlined arc that linked with Bobby at the center. Bobby’s pants did little to hide the swell forming where his crotch intersected with Cam. While they certainly heard Cole enter, they ignored him. Cole closed the door as quietly as he could and slumped against the porch railing, lighting another smoke.

  Cole craved his walk. He thought best when he moved briskly along the dirt roads, passing his familiar places with Vixen trotting ahead. Walking would dissipate his doubt and tire him enough to dull the edge of his anger. With the mist burning away and the piles of bright leaves rustling in the wind, the forest felt welcoming and innocuous, not menacing, as it had under darkness. The glorious disorder of nature beckoned him. Cole slapped his thigh and his Labrador joined him. Before departing, Cole traced a heart and some symbols made up of their secret language in the foggy film on the door’s window: a love spell and a blessing.

  As he crossed in front of the cars, Cole inhaled the heady aroma of soil, pitch, and leaves, everything made more fragrant by moisture. Under the vegetative smell, though, he detected something else. As soon as he crossed the unseen barrier their enchantment had forged, he saw it. A dead doe lay on her side, about ten feet behind Bobby’s truck. Her head was bent so that her brown ears nearly touched her back, and her long, red tongue lolled out. Purpling gums pulled back from square teeth. Gnats crawled over the glossy surface of her open eye. Cole couldn’t see any wounds on the animal. Hunting season was in full swing, but he saw no blood.

  Cole didn’t think much of the sight at first. As he’d tried to explain to Cam and Bobby, nature struck down living things all the time. Nature recycled. She was ruthless and efficient. The deer corpse would feed insects, worms, and maggots. Cole would drag it well into the woods, where it would fertilize the ferns and ivy and oak. Nothing, Cole thought, biting the filter of his cigarette, was more routine than death.

  Then he saw the rest of them. Just off the driveway, beneath the trees and partly obscured by leaves, lay two more deer, their spindly legs tangled together. Another doe had fallen on her white belly. A spiky-horned buck’s black hooves jutted against her back legs. Half a dozen squirrels, their bodies gray balls, scattered the ground between the larger animals. A fat raccoon lay on its back, and a red fox, looking like Vixen in miniature, curled near the trunk of a hemlock tree. All of the forest creatures faced the cabin, forming a disorderly parade of death.

  Realizing what he was looking at, Cole screamed, his breath condensing in a cloud around him. He staggered back a few steps and clutched the bed of Bobby’s truck. His cigarette dropped from his hand. He doubled over, grabbed his stomach, and puked.

  Cole was still bent in half, holding the truck for balance with one hand and his gut with the other, when Bobby and Cam came, blinking, to investigate the commotion. Cam’s robe wasn’t tied, but held shut at the chest by a wobbly hand. Bobby balled his pants in front of his groin. His bare feet slapped the wet clay as he ran to Cole’s side. Straightening slowly, still dizzy, Cole pointed. Bobby gasped and Cam reacted to the line of carcasses the same way Cole had. Vixen lapped at the sick, and Cole didn’t have the vigor to kick her away.

  Both Cam and Cole had to hold on to one of Bobby’s elbows to make it up the porch steps and inside the cabin. They collapsed in front of the fire, each sitting on his heels. They scooted in until their knees touched. They bowed their heads and rested their foreheads against each other for support. They crossed their arms over each other’s backs, forming a snug pyramid of rickety bodies.

  “Holy shit,” Cam whispered.

  “I never thought—” Bobby began. Unable to finish, he tightened his grip on Cole’s shoulder.

  “It’s a warning,” Cole said. He was still nauseous and thankful there wasn’t anything left in his stomach to come up. “He wants us to see what he can, and will, do. We have to kill him.”

  “No,” said Cam and Bobby together.

  “In the name of the gods, why?”

  Bobby pressed his temple against Cole. “I worry for you, baby,” he said. “Don’t be so eager to kill. I don’t want you to become Darius Thorn. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Is that what you think?” Cole asked. “That I’m like him?”

  “No,” Cam said, rubbing the back of Cole’s neck. “I think it’s possible that your power could change you. If you let it.”

  Maybe they were right. Look what the power had done, almost behind his back, to Bobby and Cam. Cole suddenly felt so guilty he feared he’d start sobbing and tell them what he’d done. He wanted to unburden himself, but he feared he’d really lose them if they knew what he was capable of setting in motion. He inhaled, collecting himself, focusing.

  “The two of you mean everything to me,” he said. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t kill him.”

  Cam kissed his cheek and Bobby rubbed his back.

  “We’ll have to do a binding and a banishing,” Cole continued. “I think I know how. We all have to be at our best. There are three of us and one of him, but it’s still going to be rough, I’m afraid. I’m really going to need you guys.”

  “You got it,” Cam said, and Bobby nodded once, decisively.

  Without discussing it, they sat cross-legged on the floor next to the stove. Cole took a few sheets of yellow notebook paper from the drawer below his dusty computer. One practice he’d embraced over the years was the use of sigil magic. It fit well with his love of symbolism and language, and the construction of the sigils came to him organically when most struggled with them, or so he’d read.

  Bobby and Cam joined hands. Then, each of them placed his free hand on Cole’s knee. Cole concentrated on the rhythm of his breath until he felt the current of power flowing through the circuit their limbs formed. Confusion led the mind to gnosis, forced it away from linear thought. Cole quickly performed an exercise he’d devised, picturing a series of random items: a spoon, the TV remote, a cake of soap, a lit match, a round stone from the creek, Bobby’s leather wallet. As he imagined them over and over, the connections between them grew apparent. Clarity issued forth from the nonsense, and Cole began writing.

  We will banis
h Darius Thorn, he wrote in their clandestine script. According to the Chaos school, it didn’t matter that they’d made it up. All language had been imagined by someone at some point. Cole knew it held just as much power as any established magical alphabet, maybe even more. Cole quickly crossed out any repeating letters. They’d eliminated vowels from their language already. Cole pushed the paper aside and slid a fresh sheet in front of him. Next, he arranged the remaining letters into an artful, round design without any conscious intent, almost like automatic writing. If he tried to pay attention to what he did, he’d never be able to make the letters fit together. Cole barely looked at his hand as he worked, and in only a few minutes, he’d finished. All of them stared down at it. To Cole, it resembled a skull, but he also saw the suggestion of three bodies.

  “How should we charge it?” Bobby asked. Once created, the sigil needed to be activated with a burst of power—the stronger, the better.

  “With our love,” Cam said.

  In silent agreement, each of them reached to his right and grasped his partner’s cock. They placed their left hands, one on top of the other, above their sigil, so they could channel the power of their release into it.

  INSTEAD of isolating himself in the woods like Cole, Darius Thorn lived in the center of the six-block square that passed as downtown. The main thoroughfare boasted some fine old houses that had once belonged to those who’d owned the coal mines. Most had been converted to cheap apartments, but Thorn had paid to restore his mansion to its former glory before arriving. Rather than standing to the side, Thorn insinuated himself into the wholesome rhythm of the picturesque main street. Inside his grand Victorian house, with its cream-colored siding, turret, wraparound porch, and burgundy and teal gingerbread detail, he held his debauched rites with his three reluctant apprentices while parents hurried children to school, wives retrieved the mail, and husbands hung Christmas lights. Cole thought Thorn liked the idea of being the gaudy whore among the modest congregation, the cancer in the healthy body.

  It snowed the night the three of them called on Thorn, dusting the scroll work of the house with a dry sparkle. Inside, they sat in the room Thorn called his study. The round space on the second floor contained no furniture except bookshelves. The shelves held not only antique tomes that Cole would have killed to possess, but various jars and vials. A pile of cushions and pillows made of decadent fabrics, silks, and velvets, sat at the center. A medieval-looking iron chandelier that was parallel with Cole’s face when he stood provided the light. It sometimes dripped hot wax on their bodies as they reclined on the cushions, as they did now. At times, Cole enjoyed it.

  Bobby rested on his elbows, Cole lay on his side, and Cam sat with his ankles crossed. Darius Thorn, in his oriental silk robe, black with embroidered silver dragons, propped himself on several pillows and appeared to float. They all stretched their legs inward like the spokes of a wheel, their feet meeting in the center. A tray on the floor held all of their favorite things: caviar for Cam, medallion steaks for Bobby, and good Scotch and a Dominican cigar for Cole. They picked at the food as Thorn regarded them over the rim of his wine glass.

  “Isn’t this cozy,” their host said silkily. “Just like old times.”

  Cole snorted. “We’ve only known you six months.” Thorn had moved to town not long after Cole, Cam, and Bobby had celebrated their Beltane rites. Since no one ever moved to Greysport and few were lucky enough to leave it, Thorn’s arrival stirred gossip and speculation in the small community. Everyone wondered how he’d afforded the renovations to his home. Even Cole still didn’t know.

  Darius Thorn was not a beautiful man. He was thin like Cole, with none of Bobby’s strength or Cam’s fluid grace. A star-shaped patch of wiry black hair between his nipples showed where his robe gaped. His face reminded Cole of a crow with its hooked nose, slight overbite, and shrewd black eyes. His white teeth were too long, and flashed when he smiled. Coarse black hair met at a slight point in the center of his forehead and feathered out over the tips of his ears. But when Cole had first seen Thorn, browsing the shelves of oversized art books in the library, he’d wanted to yank the man’s charcoal trousers down and kneel at his feet. He’d wanted to immerse himself in Thorn like a dying man who’d discovered a desert pool. His heart had somersaulted when Thorn looked up from the Caravaggio portfolio he held and smiled at Cole. All of Cole’s instincts told him this man would be his teacher, the one to polish and refine his skills. Watching him now, Thorn’s intense, supernatural sexual pull almost distracted Cole from the danger of the evening’s work. Part of him, a large part, missed the late-summer nights when the smell of cut grass wafted in the study window and the four of them twisted together among the cushions.

  Thorn sat up, the wiry muscles over his sternum popping. Merlot stained his thin lips. He reached over and slid his long fingers inside the leg of Cam’s loose jeans. Cole hoped Cam wouldn’t flinch, and Cam didn’t disappoint him. He even brushed his fringe out of his eyes and smiled at Thorn.

  “This is nice, isn’t it, Cameron?” Thorn asked again. “You’ve missed me, haven’t you?”

  Cam nodded and sipped some chardonnay. The way Cam’s eyes glistened, Cole couldn’t be sure it was all an act.

  “We belong together,” Thorn said. “I’m so pleased the three of you can see that now.”

  Cole didn’t trust himself to speak; he was too nervous, angry, and conflicted. The way Thorn had put his hand on Cam’s ankle, like he owned him, made Cole want to leap over the heap of cushions and choke him. But at the same time, he wished it was his ankle Thorn held.

  Luckily, Bobby, with his courtroom finesse, broke the silence. “I can only suppose Fate had a hand in our meeting. I don’t think it could be coincidence that all four of us ended up in such a small town within a few weeks of each other.”

  “Magic is drawn to magic,” Thorn said. He slipped his hand further up Cam’s leg. “The three of you needed a teacher, and Fate provided me. Our Cole wants to argue, to say there’s no order to anything, but I’m not of a mind to fight. I just hope I won’t have to deal with any more juvenile rebelliousness from you boys.”

  They shook their heads, gazes cast down, and Thorn continued. “That’s good. You hurt my feelings very much when you walked out on me at Halloween,” he said with a false pout and simper. Then his demeanor changed. He narrowed his eyes and seemed to gather the shadows around himself like a veil. “You’re young, so I’ll allow you one indiscretion. But disrespect me again and there will be consequences. The art requires discipline, after all.”

  “Don’t worry,” Cole said, though he disagreed with that too. All one needed was instinct and will. “We’ll do what must be done.”

  “I want you to move in here,” Thorn said. “All of you. So I can monitor your instruction more closely.”

  They nodded when they would have normally protested. Too much compliance, too easily, could make Thorn suspicious, Cole thought. He was a very shrewd man. He only looked a few years older than the three of them, but Cole suspected otherwise. So Cole said, “It will take me at least a few weeks to get out of my lease.”

  “You can stay here while you handle it,” Thorn said.

  “I suppose,” Cole answered.

  “Good, then. Good. Another drink for everyone.” Thorn poured red wine for himself, white for Cam, and Scotch for Cole and Bobby. They reached to the center of their circle and clinked their glasses together. Outside the snow swirled and drifted on the windowsill. The cry of the wind sounded almost human.

  Thorn set his glass on the parquet floor behind him and clasped Cam’s knees, then pulled Cam forward through the stack of soft, overstuffed pillows and onto his lap. Cole and Bobby sat on either side of him. Thorn, though he didn’t look strong enough, lifted Cam easily by the waist so Cam straddled him. He brushed the hair away from Cam’s neck and kissed him behind his earlobe and along his jaw. He plunged his hands under the waistband of Cam’s loose jeans and closed them around his cheeks, knead
ing the trim muscle. Blond hair shielded Thorn’s pointed face as he nipped and suckled Cam’s delicate skin. Cam’s soft moans sounded both aroused and sad. Tentatively, Cam lifted his hands and touched the sides of Thorn’s hair lightly, as if his head was on fire.

  Thorn pulled his hands out of Cam’s pants and grasped his wrists. He wrenched Cam’s arms around behind him and pinned them against his lower back. Cam thrashed, twisting his slender waist. Thorn squeezed harder and bit the edge of Cam’s ear. A high-pitched cry escaped Cam’s lips. Thorn pulled Cam closer, pressing their chests together.

  “Darius—” Cam pleaded, darting his gaze from side to side. All of them, Thorn included, knew Cam was terrified of being restrained from some past incident he didn’t care to share. Cam’s fear made Thorn grin sadistically and thrust his groin upward.

  “Quiet, Cameron,” he whispered. “Show me you trust me.” He smashed his mouth into Cam’s, swallowing Cam’s cries as he ground against him. When he finally released Cam’s wrists, it was only to peel his blue cashmere sweater and linen shirt over his head. He returned to Cam’s beautiful body, nipping here and sucking there, until a necklace of elliptical bruises decorated Cam from one end of his collarbone to the other. “Stand up,” he said after he withdrew his vicious lips, and Cam obeyed.

  Thorn yanked Cam’s jeans to his ankles. All of their shoes, as Thorn always insisted, had been left just inside the front door. “This won’t do,” Thorn said, clucking his tongue against his teeth as he inspected Cam’s flaccid penis with a clinical detachment. To remedy the situation, Thorn rubbed Cam’s length with the heel of his hand until it started to expand. He rose to his knees to get a better grip and kissed the diagonal muscles of Cam’s waist, then dragged his lips up the rungs of Cam’s ribs as he stroked him.