Coal to Diamonds Read online

  “Darius, you’re being cruel,” Cam entreated.

  Cole inched back toward his clothes as Thorn began to fuck Bobby. His robe swished around him. Bobby didn’t bottom often; when he did it for Cam or Cole, it felt like a special occasion. He took Thorn’s thrusts with hushed grunts. He covered his eyes with his elbow. Just as Cole reached his pants, he saw Thorn’s frozen exterior melting. A film of sweat made his sharp features glow, and his black eyes burned with ravenous lust. He nipped at Bobby’s calf, which now rested on his shoulder.

  From his pants pocket, Cole pulled a piece of cream-colored writing paper along with the sigil they’d created. He unfolded the blank page and smoothed the creases quietly. Fortunately, Bobby’s body distracted Thorn. The older man clamped his eyes shut. Cole gauged the shadows. With the chandelier directly overhead, the blackness outlined the forms of Thorn and Bobby tightly. That would not do. Concentrating, Cole magically snuffed the candles on all three tiers of the left side of the rounded light. Damp bodies and sex hid the slight smoky smell. Flat on his back, Bobby cast no shadow now. Thorn’s shade, though, stretched out to the side, falling almost to Cole’s knees. Cole let the paper fall from his hand. It fluttered to the floor, landing just where Thorn’s head blocked the light.

  “CAMERON, you’re shivering,” Thorn said idly. He lay with Bobby tucked under one arm and Cam under the other. Cole reclined diagonally across the three of them, on his stomach, with his head on Bobby’s shoulder and his legs covering Cam’s crotch.

  “You know what I would love?” Cam said sweetly. “That hot drink you make. With the apple cider and rum and the cinnamon stick.”

  Cole held his breath, waiting to see if the ploy would work. Thorn’s mood was amiable just now; his aura appeared like a smudged charcoal drawing instead of broken black glass. Also, he relished any kind of nod to his skill, whether in reference to magic, sex, or cooking.

  “That sounds good indeed,” Thorn said, ruffling Cole’s eyelashes with his pinky. “Maybe a snack, as well. Cakes and ale, you know?” He chuckled. Cole caught himself loving Thorn just a little. “What do we want? Some shrimp toast? Pâté and crackers?”

  “Maybe some of those little Chinese dumplings, with the hot and sour sauce?” Cole suggested, knowing the dish would take some time to prepare.

  “I’ll go fix them,” Thorn said. “I love the way that spicy sauce makes your lips swell.” Thorn kissed Cam with genuine affection. Cole rolled to Bobby’s far side so Thorn could get up. As he retied his robe, he said, “After we refresh ourselves, maybe we can do some spell work together. There’s a fat, uppity housewife a few doors down who won’t stop harping on me about joining the church. She wants money for some pitiful mission to Africa and for a summer camp for troubled youth. Clueless! She comes to the house every morning at ten, and I never rise so early. What do you think, boys? Can we shut her up for good?” He left the room laughing.

  When Thorn’s footsteps faded on the carpeted stairs, Bobby whispered, “He’s vile.”

  “I don’t know,” Cole mused. “There have been a few people I’ve wanted to shut up.”

  “Cole!” Cam said, aghast.

  “Oh, come on! People in this town have been ridiculing me all my life.” Cole adjusted his voice to mimic the nasally whine of a gossipy woman. “That’s Cole Riley. Nobody knows who his father was. Look at him, he’s so odd. I heard he’s… you know what. With other men! Ooooh!”

  “It’s not nice,” said Cam, who’d taken his share of abuse. “But they don’t deserve to die.”

  “They deserve some kind of payback,” Cole began. “What did I ever do to any of them? Why hate me like that?”

  Bobby interrupted him. “We don’t have time to argue about it now, Cole. Did you get it?”

  “Yeah.” Cole lifted a burgundy cushion with gold fringe to reveal the piece of paper. He held it out for Bobby and Cam to inspect. Burned against the manila fiber was Thorn’s profile. He looked even more birdlike than usual. His sharp nose jutted and hooked. Like a primitive daguerreotype, hints of his eyes and the highlights on his skin could be seen.

  “How?” Cam gasped. Cole had told them his plan, but seeing Thorn’s image scorched into the paper stunned them.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Cole said, pinching Cam’s chin between his thumb and finger.

  “Let’s do this,” Bobby said. Each of them went to their discarded clothes and searched the pockets for what they needed. Cam and Cole brought forth their wands. “I left mine in the truck,” Bobby said, his voice raspy with panic.

  “Shit,” Cole replied.

  “Don’t you think he’d have been suspicious if I dragged that big staff in here?”

  “We’ll do without it,” Cole said.

  “Can we?” Cam asked.

  Cole shrugged. “I don’t know. I make up most of this stuff as I go. Don’t forget, I’m a follower of Chaos.” He forced a dry laugh from his throat. “We’re just gonna have to make do.” He unscrewed the lid of an olive jar that had been washed and the label scraped away. Inside, rusty nails rattled among some dusty soil from the little graveyard near the cabin. A potpourri of deer’s teeth, raccoon fur, and the tiny, curled, severed feet of squirrels filled the container about halfway. Cole rolled the image of Thorn’s profile to a ruler’s width and then folded it three times. Then he handed it to Bobby, who wrapped it tightly in twine until none of the paper could be seen. Each of them tied a knot to hold it in place.

  “No more can your power affect us,” Bobby said. “By my intention, in the names of the gods and ancestors, are you bound. So be it.”

  “Leave us alone,” Cam said, his trembling fingers working on the string. “By my will are you bound. So be it.”

  Cole tied the final knot, imagining all of Thorn’s ability trapped within the tangled fibers. “In the names of the elements, of fire, and earth, wind and water, I now bind you, Darius Thorn. With the aid of the spirits I bind you. By my words I bind you. By my hands, and blood, and bone I bind you. By my love I bind you. With all my soul I bind you. So be it.” He inserted the neat little package into the jar. Cam opened a plastic baggie and poured crystals of sea salt over everything. Bobby sprinkled some herbs on top. Then each of them spit.

  “Close the lid, Cole,” Cam whispered.

  “Not yet.” Reaching over, Cole lifted Bobby’s hand and held it above the jar. He picked open one of the scabs his teeth had made earlier. Blood splattered the salt, saliva, and herbs. Tendrils of crimson smoke rose from the mouth of the container. Cole replaced the gold-toned lid, trapping some of the vapor. Fluids seeped into the salt, dissolving it in pink trails along the side of the glass.

  “That’s disgusting, Cole,” Bobby said.

  “Hey, it works.” They edged closer together and sat on their heels, kneecaps touching. The wood of the floor between them formed a three-point star. Cole set the jar in the center, on top of the sigil, and held his wand over the lid. Cam did the same. “Just use your finger,” Cole said to Bobby. “And for the love of the gods, focus. Reality is malleable. Shape it to your will.”

  “Ochnotinos,” Cole said, tapping the jar lid with the tip of his wand. He’d chosen an incantation using a demon’s name. The chant, which reduced the name a syllable at a time, was designed to break the demon’s hold over a person, but Cole had used it successfully to eliminate other things in the past. Bobby and Cam tapped too, but didn’t repeat the word. The jar rattled, as if a small creature stirred, trapped inside.

  Tap. “Chnotinos,” Cole said

  Tap. Tap. Tap. “Notinos. Tinos. Inos. Nos.”

  “Os,” Cole said, touching the end of his wand to the jar a final time. With that final tap, he released the burning, balled, whirlwind of energy that had been conjured during their lovemaking. It ripped from the root of his being. It felt like it burned his organs and tore his innards in its wake as it shot up into his chest. He screamed and clasped his left wrist with his right hand to support his wand. The molten power slashed d
own his left arm, feeling like it tore tendons, boiled blood, and powdered bone. He’d never felt such intense pain. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Spittle flew from his mouth as he yelled again.

  The force blistered his palm and blackened his nails. It erupted from the tip of his wand with a blinding flash. The metal lid melted to the glass. The contents sizzled and churned. Cole smelled burned hair, his own burned skin. Dark patches flitted around the outskirts of his vision and then crowded toward the center. He felt himself being pulled into the tar pit of unconsciousness. His muscles turned to jelly and his wand fell with a clatter from his charred hand.

  With the last of his strength, Cole muttered “Cammy. Did we?”

  From someplace both inches from his ear and miles away, Cam’s voice swam through the ink, leaving behind circular ripples that overlapped at the edges. “Yeah, Cole. I think we did.”

  Content, even elated despite his agony, Cole let his eyelids close. Nothing mattered now; they were free. His body seemed so heavy, as if he had weights attached to his wrists, ankles, and waist, pulling him down toward the bottom of a dark pool. In slow motion, he arched backward. His last perception was hard warmth surrounding his shoulders and catching his head. Bobby’s soothing scent enclosed him, clutched him, and made him safe. He went to sleep in Bobby’s strong arms like a child in a bassinet.

  Chapter Three

  COLE woke to what he thought, initially, was the worst hangover he’d ever had. His head throbbed. Sharp white light pulsed behind his eyes every time his heart beat. His mouth tasted like it had been packed full of moldy cheese and old cigarette butts. His stomach lurched, and his muscles felt stretched. The joints seemed displaced, as if by some primitive torture device. His shoulders hurt worst, like the balls had been wrenched from their sockets. Was it love that made him ache like this? What had they been drinking? Cheap vodka or that disgusting bourbon Cam’s mother kept hidden in her underwear drawer?

  Something hard and cold stretched along the left side of his face and body. He must be on the tree-house floor. He was naked, but that wasn’t unusual. Perhaps he’d rolled out of his sleeping bag. A strand of hair had fallen into his mouth and tickled his throat unpleasantly. He tried to reach up and brush it away, and found he couldn’t move his arms. His hands, tingling and asleep, rested with the knuckles against his lower back. A dry cough didn’t expel the nuisance, either, so he dared to open his eyes. All that appeared before him were blurred squares of color: burgundy, crimson, peacock blue, and black. He tried to bring the shapes and colors into focus so he could identify his surroundings, but his vision wouldn’t or couldn’t obey his will.

  Something significant had happened, but Cole couldn’t remember what. Something told him he should feel secure, not hurting and disoriented. The tip of his tongue found phosphorous on the back of his front teeth, and he recalled, hazily, fire. Usually fire comforted him, as its patterns most closely mirrored his beliefs about order and Chaos, but just now—

  Cole tried to say Bobby’s name. It pained him to fill his lungs, like he was inhaling glass dust. Nothing escaped his lips but a raspy breath. With a second effort, he managed to croak, “Cam?”

  He heard a swishing sound but couldn’t lift his head to determine the source. Then he felt the press of cool, soothing skin, the side of a waist and a hip with a bare leg bent against a chest, against his back. Good. Cam was with him. He could go back to sleep. Gods, he hoped it was a weekend and not a school day.

  Then Cam spoke. His voice trembled, like he’d been crying. He sounded so young, saying Cole’s name over and over. If the kids had been teasing him again, Cole would make them sorry. Thoughts of bruises, burns, blood, cramps, and vomiting filled his mind. He imagined ankles twisting and snapping on the football field, girls’ hair falling in clumps from their scalps. The anticipation of wickedness and vengeance invigorated him, and Cole twisted, propelling himself from his side to his back. His hands were squashed beneath him. He tried to separate his wrists and discovered something held them together. He willed his eyes to focus. Three circles of flame, each inside the other like a bull’s-eye, swung maybe four feet from his face. Otherwise, the tree house was dark.

  “Wait a second,” he said, his voice sounding like brittle leaves on the wind. “Where are we?”

  “Cole, we didn’t do it,” Cam whispered.

  “What?” His head hurt. He wanted Cam to squeeze his temples in the crook of his arm and let him rest a little longer. He wanted to bask in Cam’s sweet, healing essence, the liquid, soothing flow of his energy. He wanted Cam’s cool spirit to wash over and engulf him, make him feel better, less like he was burning up from the inside—

  “Are you all right?” asked Bobby. Cole tried to reach for him, forgetting his incapacitated hands. He needed Bobby’s strength, needed both of them to balance everything and complete him as a magician. Above him, the burning circles wavered and split, becoming six rings linked together like a chain.

  “Sit him up,” said a voice Cole didn’t know. Or maybe he did—

  “Sit him up, or I will,” the voice said again.

  Cole felt a hand in each of his armpits, pulling him vertical. Cold bumps of brocade wallpaper supported his back. Cam and Bobby edged closer to support him, like a rotten trunk propped in the Y of a healthy tree.

  A sharp-featured man stood in the center of a ring of pillows with his arms crossed. His lover? Yes, he associated this man with bliss and abandon. Thorn—Darius Thorn. Cole shuddered even as he felt a hot current of desire move up his spine.

  Some horizontal burns striped Thorn’s forehead, knifelike cheeks, and neck, like he’d been wrapped in red-hot wire. At his feet lay shards of glass, pink-tinged salt clusters, and bits of fur. He looked livid; sprays of dark energy fizzled around his head, like the flickers from a child’s sparkler in negative. Slowly, the evening’s events returned to Cole, but woolly and out of sequence.

  “Cole,” Thorn said, clucking his tongue. “That wasn’t nice, was it? You owe me an apology.”

  “It didn’t work?” Cole looked from Cam to Bobby. “How didn’t it work?” He’d released enough power to level a city block.

  “Your little trick didn’t work,” Thorn said, “because one or all of you didn’t intend it to. One or all of you didn’t really want to bind or banish me. Someone’s heart wasn’t in it. The magic knows your intentions. It follows your true desires.”

  The three of them, their hands bound, looked at each other, as if the traitor might bear a mark. Cole noticed Bobby and Cam weren’t looking much better than he felt. Bruises darkened the right side of Bobby’s face, and his eye was purple and swollen. Cam shivered as hard as he had after the rain storm. His skin was the color of a catfish’s underbelly.

  “No,” Cole said. “I won’t believe that. I won’t doubt the commitment of my brothers.” How he wanted to clasp their hands, to weave their essences together and bolster his strength with theirs.

  “I don’t believe Cameron or Robert foiled your spell,” Thorn continued. “Why would they? They have lives to return to. But you. How do you benefit if I’m sent away? The only way you get to keep your lovers is if I stay. These men will only remain in this worthless little town if they have no choice. Being with you isn’t enough to keep them here. Isn’t that the long and short of it, Cole?”

  “No!”

  Thorn sucked air through clenched teeth, then expelled it in a dry laugh. “Please! You have a great deal of power, but you can’t control it. And so the magic serves your wish, even if it’s a wish you aren’t willing to acknowledge. This isn’t the first time it’s given you what you wanted, who you wanted, is it?”

  Cole writhed and tried to free himself. Everything hurt. “Shut up,” he spat as he pulled his wrists apart, trying to ignore the wrenching of his shoulder sockets.

  “You,” Thorn said, taking two steps forward so that his crotch was a foot from Cole’s nose, “are potent, undisciplined, and needy. You don’t even know your own mind. It ma
kes for a dangerous mix, Cole.”

  “Fuck you, Thorn.”

  Thorn chuckled and slapped him across the face. Tears pooled in the corners of Cole’s eyes. “And now I must decide what to do with the three of you,” Thorn said. “To my shame, I am a sentimental man. I find that I still love you. Even so, lessons must be learned. Isn’t that the primary purpose of a teacher? Cameron?”

  He knelt down and rested his long fingers on Cam’s tucked-up knees. Then, though lank, scrawny even, Thorn hoisted Cam to his feet as easily as a child retrieves a fallen doll from the grass by its plastic hair while skipping past. Cam twisted, whimpered, and shook. Thorn held his head immobile. Pushing up with his heels, Bobby managed to stand. His muscles bulged as he tried to liberate his arms.

  “Don’t touch him,” Bobby warned Thorn.

  “Ha! Sit down, Robert.” Thorn flicked his fingers, just the way Cole did to dispose of a cigarette butt. A crack, like a bat hitting a ball, resounded. Bobby’s head flew back. Another liver-colored patch appeared, just beside his lips. He reeled, his feet crossing as he stepped back from the blow, tripped, and fell on his hip. When he tried to rise again, Thorn’s magic struck him under the chin and made the back of his head hit the wall.

  How could this be happening? Not twenty feet away, children built the winter’s first snowman by the light of the glowing candy canes lining their driveway. Cole heard their laughter and the crunch of their boots. All around them, dishes were being washed, cocoa served, robes and slippers donned, and televisions turned on. How could this magical struggle happen amidst all of that routine decency?

  “Say good night to Cameron, boys,” Thorn said savagely. “He’ll be sleeping outside tonight.”

  “No,” Cam wailed. “I’ll die.”

  “Are you insane?” Cole hissed, trying, unsuccessfully, to get to his feet. “It’s fucking freezing out there!”