Coal to Diamonds Read online

  “He’s used to it,” Thorn continued, dragging Cam toward the study door. “All those nights on the street, huddling in a corner between a dumpster and a slimy stone wall. Remember those nights, Cameron? How cold it was? So cold you wanted to die, even through the cover of pills? Do you remember crying there, discarded by your customers, hurting and afraid to sleep? Remember the stink? Remember the taste of half a dozen men’s spunk in your mouth? You would have sold your soul for a clean blanket and a cup of coffee. This will be just like the good old days. And tomorrow, maybe you’ll think twice before misbehaving.”

  “Please don’t. I don’t want to die like that. Anything else. Not alone in the cold. Darius—” Cam sobbed softly, whether from thoughts of the past or the future, Cole couldn’t know. He faced the floor; and his hair draped over and hid his face. Cole did know he couldn’t let this happen. With a monumental effort, he pushed himself to his feet, scraping his back along the wall. The scabs Cam’s nails had left broke and bled. Ruddy lines marred Thorn’s antique wallpaper.

  “Thorn, wait,” he said. The authority and power in his own voice surprised Cole. Thorn also looked bewildered as he turned toward Cole.

  “Yes?”

  “I have a proposal.”

  “Cole, you’re in no position—”

  “Please listen. Let Cam and Bobby go. Promise to never bother them again, and I’ll stay. I’ll stay here with you and do whatever you want, for as long as you want.”

  “Cole, no!” Bobby said, pressing his forehead against the side of Cole’s leg.

  “Yes,” Cole continued. “If you keep us here by force, you’ll constantly have to worry that we’ll figure out a way to kill you. And we might. We came close this time, and it was our first attempt. We might escape. You can’t get the most magic out of someone who’s being compelled by threats. Our resentment will taint all of your spells. Who knows how the magic will backfire? But if you let them go, I will be your willing apprentice. I don’t have to tell you that I’m the strongest of us.”

  Thorn had released Cam’s hair and gazed, bemusedly, at Cole. “Why would you do this?” he asked.

  “Like you said,” Cole replied, “what else do I have?”

  “That’s not true, Cole,” Cam said. He hugged the doorframe, but no longer shivered.

  “Baby, shh. What do you say, Thorn?”

  “You’d be mine completely?”

  Cole nodded. “Let our hands go?”

  Thorn considered. “So, you’d sacrifice them for me?” he said. “That’s quite a strong gesture. Powerful.”

  “I sacrifice myself for them,” Cole said. Cam stifled a sob. “Free our hands.”

  Thorn waved his arm, like he was brushing a cobweb away, and the invisible restraints dissipated. Cole felt the blood rush back to his hands, making his fingers sting and swell. Rubbing his wrists, he said, “Bobby, Cam, put your clothes on.”

  Cam fell into Cole’s arms, so hard they almost tumbled backward. Bobby caught them, encircling both of their slender bodies with his arms. Cam wriggled his face between Cole’s neck and collarbone. Tears dripped down his chest. “No, Cole,” Cam wept. “No, I won’t let you.”

  “Shh.” Cole knew if he tried to speak, his voice would break.

  “There’s got to be another way,” Bobby said behind Cole’s ear. “We’ll find it.”

  Shaking his head, Cole repeated, “Get dressed. Please.”

  “Give me your wand,” Thorn said.

  “No,” Cole answered, scanning the room. The wand had rolled against the far wall, underneath the curved window. Cole retrieved it and held one end in each of his fists. “This you cannot have.” His present and future belonged to Thorn, but he wouldn’t relinquish his past to the man who’d corrupted his land, distracted him from his work. Stolen his lovers, his walk, and now his freedom. It should stay with Bobby and Cam, its partial creators. Yes, he’d entrust this last piece of his boyhood to them.

  Cole snapped the slender stick of wood. Instead of breaking in half, it split diagonally, almost horizontally, into two thinner, pointed wands. At the same time, Cole felt a crack along the center of his being: a slashing pain from his left shoulder to his right hip that made him double over for a second.

  “Each of you take part of this,” Cole said, pressing a piece of his wand into Cam’s and Bobby’s hands. Bobby looked sick, like a person who needed to throw up but held it in. Tears streamed freely down Cameron’s face and dripped off of his chin. “Take it, and remember me now and then. Remember when we were boys together. All of our firsts. Now get the hell out of here. Get out of this godforsaken town and don’t look back. Don’t ever come back here for any reason, even if you want to or feel like you should.” The finality of the severing stopped the two men from trying to convince Cole to reconsider. With the wand broken, it was done.

  They embraced, a last embrace, Cole realized, and he couldn’t dam his own tears. He’d never see Bobby and Cam again, not even in a letter or a photograph. The only people who’d ever cared about him, wanted to be with him without obligation, would be gone forever. But he owed them this, after what he’d done. “Bobby,” he said, his voice cracking, “can you take Vixen?”

  “Yeah, baby,” Bobby said, sniffing. “Of course.”

  “And take care of Cam. Take care of each other. I love you both with all my heart, and I’ll never stop. Never.”

  Slowly they pulled away from each other. Bobby and Cam looked at Cole a final time before they shuffled into Thorn’s badly lit hallway. The darkness swallowed them, and then they were gone.

  FOR the first week that he lived with Thorn, Cole couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed. His enchantment-ravaged body still ached. The old house felt even draftier than his shoddy cabin. Phantom pains plagued him, along his sides where Bobby and Cam belonged. Those spots on his waist and ribs never warmed. The loss of his wand left him feeling impotent, castrated. So he remained wrapped in the wine-colored, satin bedclothes, under a canopy of the same fabric. Where, and indeed if, Thorn slept during those days, Cole couldn’t say. But his host crept into the room while Cole was unconscious to leave food on the bedside table: Cajun shrimp, stuffed jalapeños, Szechwan beef kabobs, and other spicy things to snack upon.

  When he’d finally risen, showered, and dressed, craving wind and air, Cole discovered that walking the uneven sidewalks through town was different than wandering his wooded paths. He missed Vixen’s companionship, the familiarity of his trees. The forest smell of evergreens, composting leaves, and rich soil clashed in his memory with the stink of the car exhaust and coal smoke he now breathed. Man’s attempts at imposing order on their world didn’t contain the mysteries of nature for him to ponder. He took to rising a little before noon, like Thorn, dressing, and going out. At least with most of the residents at work or school, he could roam between the old houses generally undisturbed.

  One morning, with the sun reflecting off the snow and making the icicles that hung from the Victorian porches dance with chromatic sparkle, he wandered east from Thorn’s mailbox toward the small square of shops at the town’s hub. Two women, housewives in high-rise jeans, each carrying a brown bag with something green protruding from the top, bent toward each other when they saw him. Cole overheard his full name, the words “living together,” and “wouldn’t believe what goes on it that house,” and smiled for the first time in days. If they only knew!

  After they’d passed, Cole turned and made one woman’s chunky heel break. She staggered forward and dropped her groceries. Celery and cereal and cookies spilled out. A shampoo bottle burst. Eggs broke against the dirty ice coating the concrete. Both women knelt to retrieve what hadn’t been destroyed. Cole chuckled loud enough to make sure they’d heard him. Then, still amused, he continued in the direction of the few shops and office buildings. After about an hour, he circled back and turned onto the lane and went into the beautiful old house that he still couldn’t think of as his home.

  Thorn’s kitchen, too, fel
t alien. One afternoon, Cole stood looking at Thorn’s expensive dishes, neatly stacked behind the glass of the tall cupboards. One got a sense that the possessions had arrived before the man. The brand-new cups and saucers, edged in gold, radiated a sense of impermanence, like the tacky paintings hung above headboards in hotel rooms of cottages by streams, smoke curling from the chimneys. Cole wanted a brandy, but couldn’t locate the bottle or a glass. He stood staring down at his brown hands on the bone-white counter. Uneven, chipped patches of black polish clung to the centers of nails that were rapidly growing long and pointed. He was changing. He heard the soft shuffle of slippered feet on marble tile behind him, but didn’t turn. Thorn’s arms snaked around his waist. His bare chest, the wiry hair sharp even through Cole’s shirt, pressed against his back.

  “Do you know what today is?” Thorn asked, and Cole shook his head. “It’s the winter solstice, Cole. The longest night.”

  Thorn slid his hands under Cole’s shirt and found a nipple with his fingers. He pinched it between the spiky points of his nails, and Cole groaned a prelude to arousal. “A fortuitous time for dark spells,” Thorn said, his breath fogging Cole’s neck. “Shall we work, or celebrate?”

  “Why not both?” A hot tickle spread from Thorn’s hand down Cole’s torso and across his groin. Blood flowed like a torrent to his erection. He relaxed backward, giving his weight to Thorn’s embrace, and said, “There are lots of ways to raise power.”

  Thorn chuckled and ground his own stiffening cock, barely contained by his silk shorts, against Cole’s tailbone. He grazed the sides of Cole’s ribs with his fingertips, sliding them up and down, setting Cole’s flesh alight in their wake. “What are you suggesting?” he joked, his breath moistening Cole’s ear. “We spend the evening in meditation? Some chanting, perhaps?”

  “Weak,” Cole said with a smile. He crossed his arms over Thorn’s and drew their bodies tighter.

  Thorn nodded in agreement, his nose disturbing Cole’s loose hair. “You’re right. Slow, ungainly ways of summoning energy. I think I know a better method.”

  “Teach me,” Cole breathed. His cock pulsed against the inseam of his snug dark pants. Thorn took his hand and led him up the twisting staircase.

  In the wine-colored bedroom, Cole stood languid and still as Thorn removed each article of his clothing with the precision of a surgeon. Outside, the wind whipped up eddies of snow, and the windows rattled in their frames. “Wouldn’t a fire be nice?” Thorn asked, and he tilted his head toward the stone hearth. Cole started toward the kindling and matches, but Thorn grabbed his wrists so hard the bones crunched.

  “Oh, yeah.” Cole understood. Without any moral restrictions on his practice, he’d grown stronger day by day. It had only been about two weeks, but he already noticed an increase in his power. He could certainly manage this. He closed his eyes and visualized a vast universe of flame: fire extending above, below, and within him to infinity. Sulfur filled his mouth. Burn danced across his bare skin, hurting but harmless. He directed the heat into his left hand and pointed at the space between the fireplace’s Corinthian columns. It sprung alight with a roar. Sparks spiraled up the chimney.

  “Good,” Thorn said. “Now get on the bed.”

  Obediently, Cole stretched across the glossy comforter and let his head sink into the pillows. The ends of his hair were singed and brittle where they brushed his shoulders. He found the charred smell sensual and exciting. Thorn opened the top drawer of his tall mahogany dresser and brought out two long, lavender silk scarves and a small bottle. He sat down beside Cole’s hip and said, “Put your hands on the headboard.”

  “Why tie me?” Cole asked. “I’m not going anywhere. I promised myself to you.”

  Thorn trailed the end of one of the scarves over Cole’s body from his protuberant kneecap up over his sinewy thigh, erect cock, and belly. It tickled and raised gooseflesh. Thorn smiled down at him, his teeth looking feral. “But I want to,” he whispered. “And I think you’ll like it too.” He guided Cole’s hands to the bars of the wrought-iron headboard, and Cole gripped the cold metal. “I suspect,” Thorn said as he wound the silk around Cole’s wrists and tied it tightly, “that you have certain tendencies your little boyfriends couldn’t understand. You’re full of dark desires they couldn’t satisfy. You have much more in common with me than with them.”

  The mention of Bobby and Cam jarred Cole out of his aroused torpor. He missed them fiercely. Thorn, seeing Cole’s mouth twist and his erection falter, said, “Don’t suppress it. There’s power in that pain.” He bent and pulled Cole’s lower lip between his teeth, biting it, making it swell. “There’s power in sacrifice,” he breathed. He moved his mouth along the shelf of muscles that angled from Cole’s chest to his shoulder. Crescent-shaped wounds opened along Cole’s triceps under Thorn’s teeth. Cole gasped, arching up his back off the bed.

  “You like the pain, don’t you?”

  “Ung. Yeah.”

  “Robert and Cameron wouldn’t have understood.”

  “That’s wrong. They—”

  “It hurt when they abandoned you,” Thorn went on. He scraped his bottom lip along Cole’s elbow and forearm as he spoke. “Everyone has always left you. But you showed them, didn’t you?”

  Now Thorn held Cole’s face immobile and looked down at him with glittering black eyes, waiting for an answer.

  Cole twisted. The headboard thumped the plaster wall. “I never meant to hurt them,” he said. “I’m not a bad person.”

  With a dry laugh, Thorn said, “You’re most certainly a bad person. A wicked man. And it’s all right, Cole.” He nipped Cole’s chin. “I won’t ask you to stamp it down as they did. It doesn’t frighten or upset me. There’s power in it. Let it flow out of you. You’ll be devastating.”

  “No, I—” Cole couldn’t think with so much going on. The wound Cam and Bobby’s loss had made still oozed freshly. The guilt that he may have hurt them hadn’t ebbed. The idea of his own malicious nature repulsed Cole, while at the same time the thought of letting it cascade unchecked sounded liberating. But he wasn’t sure if he should let it out now, for Thorn, whom he both desired immensely and despised a little.

  “There’s no one left to make you behave,” Thorn said. “They’ve all gone.” He flicked his pointed tongue from one end of Cole’s jaw to the other, stopping at his ear. Cole shivered at the moist trail it left. “It’s just me now. I love you as you are, the dark as well as the light. And I won’t desert you. Ever. Do you believe me?”

  “I guess so.”

  Biting Cole’s lobe, breaking the skin, Thorn breathed through clenched teeth, “Cole. Do you believe me?” His voice betrayed the passion boiling inside of him. Being wanted like that, enough to make the reserved Darius Thorn display his lust, made Cole’s cock leak the first drop of precome just below his belly button. He circled his hips, erratically thrusting into open air.

  “Let me see it,” Thorn said, rolling on top of his apprentice, nothing but his silk underwear separating their bodies. “Bring it out.” Cole knew Thorn meant the power caged inside him: the power and the malevolence.

  Fingernails scraped along Cole’s ribcage. Scratches opened over his throat and heart. He thrashed, straining against his fetters. He wanted to seize Thorn’s hips and heave them against his own. When he tried to thrust his ass up against Thorn’s erection, Thorn lifted his body with a snigger. Cole spread his legs and brought his knees up along Thorn’s sides, dizzy with lust. He groaned with frustration as Thorn slipped away, moving his cock away from Cole’s crack.

  Cole crossed his ankles behind Thorn’s back, trying to trap him. A stinging slap on his thigh made him let go. Thorn’s teeth, tongue, and nails continued to hurt and tease him, driving him closer and closer to the precipice. Everything throbbed: his pulse in his head, his aching cock, the bites and scratches covering his body.

  “You want me, don’t you?” Thorn said savagely. “You want me to fuck you.” As a tease, he nudged Cole’s hole wi
th the head of his cock. Just as Cole scooted forward, Thorn pulled away again and rested his penis beside Cole’s own.

  “Yes!” Cole panted. “You’re driving me crazy!”

  “Do you want it hard? Want me to make it hurt?”

  “Yes!”

  “Show me your power. Bring it out.”

  As Thorn plowed his tongue into Cole’s mouth, Cole tried to induce the trance state that would allow him to tap his energies. He didn’t plan to show his teacher everything he had; he’d give him just enough of a taste to stop Thorn’s merciless taunting. He wouldn’t let out more than he could master. The distraction of Thorn’s tongue roving over his teeth and the roof of his mouth made it difficult to concentrate. Cole disengaged his own tongue and let it fall, still and passive. He compacted the frustration, gathered all of the unrelieved tension in his belly into a tight, white-hot ball between his hipbones. Comet-like bursts spread from this source down his legs and up through his chest. His skin warmed. Psychic flames skipped over the surface as if he were covered in gasoline. The more Thorn provoked him, the more energy Cole raised, transmuting his unrequited lust to raw power. His master rewarded him by finally removing his silk shorts and letting them crumple at the foot of the bed.

  “Oh, that’s quite good.” Thorn groaned with satisfaction and rubbed his cock against Cole’s belly. The moist tip slid up and down the side of Cole’s penis, driving him further into a frenzy. “Give me more.” He grabbed both of their cocks in his hand, squeezed hard, and stroked them twice in unison.

  Cole would have to be careful. He wanted Thorn so badly he’d lose control if he didn’t monitor the situation closely. But that was almost impossible with Thorn tightening his fingers around his shaft and Thorn smearing both of their fluids in circles over Cole’s crown with his thumb. Foot-tall flames danced around him, flaring higher than Thorn’s shoulders. Instead of the blue-tipped, orange fire he’d glimpsed with Cole and Bobby, this energy bloomed liver-dark at the edges and deepened almost to black closer to his body. Cole had suspected that Thorn was changing him, and now he saw how profoundly. Or maybe the blackness had always been within him, contained only by Cam and Bobby’s goodness.