oaths

Light shot rays through another glass of amber liquid, reflected off of the faceted crystal as brightly as it was off of the snow falling past the window. Thin still, but Jo had seen the predictions and knew it would be thick enough by the end of the night to guarantee that only the truly brave or the truly foolish would be out in it. She was neither.

Lips pursing, she stretched her legs out along the couch and watched those flakes of snow drift down. Classes had been ended early, anybody not living on campus making a dash home through the first scatter of them. Hands tight on the wheel, breath catching in her throat as she’d passed the spot where her car had spun off the road in the rain. Where her road, in turning back on itself, had brought him back to her. Magnus. Jo’s lips curved, her hair tumbling from behind her ear as she rested her head against the couch and watched the silent tumble and whirl of white.

There had been snow in Cambaluc of course, up in the mountains the cold would grow bitter every year but if you got out before the passes would lock tight with the first blizzards of the year, you could follow the trail of warmth from one settlement to another on the road. Nights where the heat fled with the sun the fires would blaze until dawn, their caravan circled tight around them, that roasting warmth baking right through their bed rolls and beneath the canvas of the tents. A different sort of cold to what they found when they reached England. Had it been the bitterness of her family’s greeting at first? Perhaps, but there’d been a particularly biting edge to the damp chill of the country that she’d never grown used to. Those nights where it would whistle through their home Jo would find herself pressing close to Kaegan, stealing his warmth from that deceptively slender frame.

The night with the rain it had been Magnus’, as much as either of them could give or receive now. Jo trailed her fingers over the rim of the glass, cooler than her skin still. It hadn’t been her apartment that night but his, a welcome into his life here the way she’d once been welcomed into theirs there. Her lips curled, a momentary wash of almost nostalgic sadness rolling through her. Theirs. Always the two of them as a pair but time had claimed Kaegan, and their children – a stronger pang this time for all she had lost of their lives – her and Magnus already cut free of their lives. Necessary but no less powerful.

Throat thick, Jo eyed her phone, the screen black and still as it lay on the coffee table beside the bottle. Perhaps she should have extended an invitation. The fire roaring, the snow falling, like old times, with the ghosts of the past growing thin enough she could barely see them in the space between.

Would it be fair to make the call now? Dragging him out through it, if Magnus were even here in town – business took him all over after all – or away from his son. That pang back again, leaving her hovering with her bare feet just brushing the floor as she swung her legs down. Curling over her knees, the glass clutched tight, its fill of that ruddy light shimmering as the scotch splashed the sides of the glass with the quick bark of knuckles against the door.

Brow furrowing, Jo set the glass down with a clunk. Pulling her robe tighter around herself she padded to the door. One storm grey eye hovering behind the spy hole before Magnus’ voice cut through tight. Fingers were already working the door latch before the panic bit. Lincoln. His son. The clutch of shared worry in her own chest as she opened the door. ”There’s no bother,” she promised. One hand fisting tight in the lapels of the thick velvet, the other hovering an inch from his chest. Dark brows furrowed as she let her fingertips brush the front of his jacket so lightly she could barely feel it. ”All night? He never came home?” Freedom in that glitter of lapis lazuli and the accompanying razor like cuts in a parents heart.

Remembering the afternoon her own son had darted away in the marketplace, quick as a fish in the river, the glint of the sun on the ash brown hair as he was swallowed up by an incoming crowd of local peasants, Jo raised her hand to Magnus’ cheek as he pulled himself together. ”You haven’t failed him, Magnus, and you won’t. Come in. Just … just for a moment. I’m coming with you and we will find him. I can promise you.” She would save him that pain of loss, even for a short time, if she could. The scars of her own still criss-crossing her heart. Her hand trailed to his shoulder, squeezed lightly as she stepped back, coaxing him with her before she spun away to her bedroom. The robe cast aside, thick wool pants pulled on, a sweater over bare arms and she was back. ”Who is the witch? Would she have done that to him? Would he have…” Her fingers went lightly to his throat, maybe in demonstration, maybe reassurance. The slow throb of his pulse under them just had her pulling her hand back. Boots. Feet crammed into them, a coat, as unnecessary as it might be, the jingle of keys in her hand as she was edging them both from the apartment.

Tagged: MAGNUS DAYNE * Word Count: 940

Magnus had always exuded calm. Seeing something panicked flicker in those still pool eyes, hearing the break in his voice worried her. She had usually been the one with that wave of uncertainty and fear rising up in her, hands shaking, her head a drumbeat in her chest so fast it sounded like hoofbeats in her ears. Jo supposed that eventually she would always have fought her way free of it, the way she had done Cambaluc but when you had somewhere there enfolding your trembling fingers in ones that remained steady.

Her first week in the kitchen at the castle she had burned not only the bread in the huge oven (she had never seen a thing take up so much room just to cook) but her fingers on the roasting stones too. Tears in her eyes, curses falling from her lips that had the cook gawping at her as though she had lost her mind, Jo had found herself fearing banishment from the castle for her ineptitude but Kaegan and Magnus had been there, one distracting her with jokes while he sampled the severely scorched buns, the other taking her hand so gently that she had barely felt the burn after a moment.

His heart could no longer thunder in his throat the way hers did then but in Magnus’ obvious fear for his son Jo could see the utter terror of a parent knowing that their child might be lost. Her hand could have settled there, trying to steady what tremors the nearly frozen hearts in their chest were capable of. The question slipped between them though, concern thick in her voice, leaving her fingers hovering in the air as he shook his head. Linc might have been of adult age now but it didn’t matter, he was Magnus’ ward, a young vampire with no parents of his own to speak of, to help him across the tightrope of turning. Magnus cared for him like his own and in that disappearance was a yawning void of horrific possibilities. Jo finally settled her hand at Magnus’ bearded cheek, those same possibilities tearing at a mother’s heart.

They would find him, the wounds incised deep in Magnus’ conscience and his heart healed when none of those possibilities would come to pass. Perhaps her promise would be a lie but Jo chose to believe that the chances were that Linc would be fine. Jo’s expression softened, her thumb trailing his cheekbone as his hand came up to her elbow. She shook her head, his gratefulness unnecessary. If it had been her children, their children (Magnus might not have been there as much as in their younger years but he was an integral part of her children’s lives), he would not have stopped looked until they were found. She would do the same.

His head had turned as she’d scraped fingertips lightly over the liminal zone between his line cheek and the wiriness of his beard. Something plaintive in it that brought his lips so close to the thin skin of the inside of her wrist. A plea for help that spurred her to move again. Jo felt the echoes of her own fears trembling in the muscles of her stomach as she rushed down the short hallway to her bedroom (was it just fear that fluttered hard enough that she had to press her hand to it like she was calming a child not yet born?). This was a town as full of dangers as Cambaluc but Linc was a child of the modern age, aware of what was out there, tied to this world with technologies a thousand times more advanced than the weapons they had once used to protect themselves. There were ways for him to reach out … if he wanted to, if he could.

After all that Ananda and Elizabeth had done for her Jo couldn’t bring herself to condemn witches automatically – especially when the one in question appeared to be as young and as naïve as Lincoln himself. A girl. The smile that tugged at her lips held a fondness, a nostalgia, she hadn’t felt – or rather allowed herself to feel – in centuries. ”I suppose the question should be was he interested in her?” Boys at that age had seemed to lose their hearts just as fast as the girls and could be just as sly doing something about it too.

Her summer storm eyes softened as she emerged again from her bedroom, fixing on Magnus as he stepped out into the hallway. She eased out after him, the hand not cramming her keys into her pocket closing around his upper arm and squeezing. ”That’s a good sign. If you’re worried that he might have done something to harm her and he’s run … I don’t think he would have done, not if he resisted before.” Time could change everything though, so could the slow slide of a heart towards feelings you had never seen coming.

Jo’s smile was small as it returned, the squeeze coming again as they clattered down the few steps and out into the cool night. Her car sat at the curb, the damage she’d done in the woods repaired so well that you’d hardly have been able to tell she’d run head first into a tree and walked away with barely a scrape. ”There first and then anywhere else he might go. We can cover more ground driving, hmm?” And garner less attention. Jo wormed her fingers into her coat pocket for her keys, thumbing the button as she pulled them free to unlock the doors.

Bracketed in the space between the driver’s door, Jo paused, rose on her toes to curl her empty hand around the back of his neck. ”He’s here somewhere. He’ll know that whatever happens you’ll find him and you’ll support him through everything. You know you’re a good father, don’t you?” But children never let you know that, they pulled at your heart strings, made you feel like the worst person in the world when they were hurting and wanted to lash out. Jo pressed her lips to his cheek, a second promise of all that she couldn’t know for sure before she was slipping into the driver’s seat. ”Where’s the shop?” She asked as she eased down. Somewhere close, in Mystic Falls practically everywhere was.

Tagged: MAGNUS DAYNE * Word Count: 1061

Ah. The days of young love. Jo would have spent her own in Cambaluc, choosing who she wanted to love, but Death had come creeping to the city and the choice then had been snatched away by her step-mother. Force would’ve certainly deadened any ability of her heart to race for a pretty face and a quick smile then, those first shivers words of affection could set rolling through you. Disgust and hatred would’ve taken their place but with Ananda she had fled it all and it had been in the kitchen of the castle she’d felt those first stirrings instead. Kaegan and Magnus hadn’t been much older then but the times had been them men, showing them a world brutal in a different way to the one that had made Lincoln a vampire. Even more than seven hundred years later it left its mark.

The apology from Magnus’ drew a small smile from her. Seven hundred years had thickened her skin and her sensibilities considerably, there was nothing to apologise for. ”There’s nothing to forgive. I’m no blushing flower, Magnus.” She was worried though, enough that the observation was barely a whisper of a consideration when she finally emerged. It probably wasn’t half as important as if the girl was as interested in Lincoln. Heartbreak worked both ways and no matter how worldly Lincoln thought he was, he was still a young man with a barely beaten heart that could be broken.

An unexpected call into work. The celebration of finally being able to walk in the sun, even if it was just the gloom of the night beyond the windshield now as she paused by the car as Magnus opened the door for her – despite the situation some things were just ingrained down to the bone – the distraction of a girl you had your heart set on, something stealing your attention on the way home. There were a thousand reasons Linc could’ve been waylaid and Jo imagined that all of them had run through Magnus mind on an endless loop since the clock had started to tick louder and later.

She could almost hear it herself now and tried to stop it before it drove him insane. Jo had risen up onto her toes to wrap him in what warmth she could give. Close enough that she might have felt his heart, if they still beat the way they had once done. Grey eyes studied his blue ones – a stormy sky in contrast to that warm wash of summer. Jo swallowed hard with her promise as Magnus hand found her waste, her lips turning an inch from his to press hers to his cheek. ”He’s a boy. He might not have said it but he knows what you’ve done for him, what you’ll continue to do. He knows you love him as though he were your own.” Resent it still Lincoln might though. From the bits she’d heard the life he’d had before this one had not been easy, his parents not worthy of the word and yet still she imagined love had been there. There was no earthly reason why it should’ve been but your control over what your heart felt was not always a conscious choice.

Jo eased herself back down, hoping she’d left some small balm for his worries behind. Her hand caught his for a moment, squeezing like he had done her hip before she got in. The engine caught first time as Magnus rushed around to the other side. Not bothering with the seatbelt, noting Magnus didn’t either, Jo pulled out. If the police wanted to waste their time on issuing tickets with a young man was missing then there was little point to them anyway. ”Not far then,” she promised, that small twitch of a smile aimed at him. Magnus still buzzed with nerves as she drove, his fingers drumming, his eyes finding the front of the shop as she pulled in. Not far but it might as well have been.

Dark brows furrowed, her lips pinching. Jo darted a glance from the shop to Magnus and back again. Would the girl have lured him here under false pretences? No. No, from what Magnus had said the girl didn’t seem to be the sort. ”Maybe. You said he was definitely coming here for the ring?” If so, there might have been a chance the door was merely shut to custom. Jo craned over, a hand braced on Magnus’ seat back to peer past him but there wasn’t so much as a flicker of light at the rear of the store. It looked as though the place were locked up tight, another reason to crank Magnus’ fears.

Sinking back, Jo dragged her hands through hair, stopping with it all gathered at the nape of her neck. She saw the glint in Magnus’ eyes a heartbeat before he dropped his head into his hands. ”Maybe, if he is we’ll find him. I promise you, Magnus.” She was shifting in her seat, her heart squeezing painfully in her chest as she wrapped her arms around him to bring him in against her. Her lips found his temple, his cheekbone, her fingers brushing Magnus hair back behind his ears as she met his eyes. ”He’s here and we’ll find him. I need you to trust that. We’ll follow where he might have gone from here, we won’t stop looking. I promise. Please don’t give up.” The words emerged in a whisper, her own eyes burning as they met his from an inch away. Feeling something in her crumpling slightly, aching, Jo pressed her lips to Magnus, trying to pour hope through that connection as her thumbs trailed those high cheekbones.

Tagged: MAGNUS DAYNE * Word Count: 954

A bright, innocent kid perhaps caught up in something she didn’t understand. Oh, Jo understood that all too well. She pressed her lips together, smiled faintly at the description. Once upon a time she’d have believed that someone like that wasn’t capable of the sort of evil needed to truly harm another human being, but more than seven centuries of life had shown her just how much damage could be done even by the well-meaning. Kids didn’t get to escape all of that, they suffered for their youth, had to run from nightmares that should never have been stalking them in the first place. She wanted to promise Magnus that the girl wasn’t the malicious cause of Lincoln’s disappearance, but sounding like Romeo and Juliet and actually getting to turn those first flushes of teenaged love into something real, something last, were two very different things.

In her heart she held on to the idea that this was just those first stirrings of teenaged love, lust. Excitement over the freedom the ring would bring spilling over into something that caught the two of them up in a whirlwind that they’d emerge from giddy and apologetic. Physically, though – she stretched her hand out to settle it on Magnus’ thigh, squeezing lightly in understanding. They were promises she wouldn’t make that way – not saying that he was fine, how they would find him – if this all went wrong they would only add weight to the blow that would shatter his already grieving heart later.

The cracks were already working their way through it, visible to her as they had never been with him. To the girl she had been – barely older than this girl was likely to be now – Magnus had been unbreakable. Returning to them time and time again, just as he had left, untouched by the scars of war that other men bore. It didn’t matter that he was invulnerable to all that now, the damage was spreading in a way it could see and Jo felt her own heart shattering for him.

Wanting to soothe, wanting to close those cracks and give him shelter, Jo reached for him. Gathering him in, fingers tracing the lines of his face, his skull beneath the waves of dull gold hair. Her eyes on his, her lips curling faintly as he allowed himself to trust in what she said, echoing it back to her. Seven centuries ago she had made her choice between the two young men – Kaegan – relegating Magnus to the lifelong thread spot. Would another choice have ever led them here or would it have been a few decades of love, of waiting with Kaegan by her side for her husband to come back from war? The two of them eventually growing old, having children of their own. It was a future she saw in his eyes for a moment now before it drifted away. Each of them had loved another and it was those choices alone that had left them here, grief a bubble between them that turned into something peaceful, something soothing as her lips found his.

Jo’s eyes slipped shut, her fingers grazing Magnus’ ear before her palm found the nape of his neck. His hands slid up her arms, settling at her shoulders as though she needed the comfort as much as he did. Her lashes fluttered as the kiss tailed off, the burn of tears rising behind them as those ghosts began to rush back in. She drew back as Magnus did, wanting nothing more than to settle back into him as she had done on the night he’d found her out in the woods, shaken and soaked through from the rain that had driven her car off the road. Apologies maybe, explanations, began to bubble inside, but there was no time to pick apart what had happened, not when the night filled with screams.

A breath slipped out of her, fingers brushing her lips for a moment before she pushed out of the car and followed Magnus. His hands cradled the hysterical woman’s shoulders, focusing on the woman’s eyes instead of the oozing wound on her throat that another of their kind had inflicted. Jo started towards the mouth of the alley the woman had bolted from as the woman told Magnus her broken story. ”I think there’s another,” she said lightly as Magnus began to compel the woman to leave. ”I can hear a heartbeat … it’s slow but … there’s another I think.” Steady grey eyes rose to meet Magnus’ as he looked back at her, but then he was bolting forward at speed. To his son. The one it seemed had plunged straight into the sort of madness the young of their kind so often did.

Footsteps slapping against the wet ground, Jo followed. The alleyways between the buildings were tight, the trash not yet picked up heaped on both sides, the grubbier part of Mystic Falls offering up a network in which to hide. ”Left,” Jo told him, not that she needed to. From the mouth of the alleyway the boy was visible. Hunkered down in a doorway, one clear space between the bright rings of street lights. The scent of blood rose in the air, a coppery stench that once would’ve choked her, instead of just sharpening the edge of her own hunger.

Magnus spoke to the boy, although Linc’s head remained bowed over the body sprawled across his thighs. Jo eased closer, slowly sinking to her knees beside the boy. He flinched as she slipped her hand between his bare, blood stained forearm and the man’s throat. Fingers pressed against the torn throat but Jo knew it was too late. The heartbeat she’d heard from out on the street was gone, the body was still. ”He’s gone,” Jo said lightly. Her gaze slid up to Magnus’ before she set a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ”Both of them.” She had already picked out the second body crumpled in the corner of that doorway, limbs stiff, an apron still tangled around his waist.

Tagged: LINCOLN & MAGNUS DAYNE * Word Count: 1013

It wasn’t the first time he’d felt the worry emanating from Magnus. Like he was baby to fret over every time he sneezed. Most kids grew to be independent after a while – him younger than most – they shot out of that baby stage, stopped needing to have everything done from them. They grew up and their parents started to trust them. Magnus had clucked around him to start with, his face pinching from time to time when he’d tried to start running – before his parent was even sure he could walk – but he’d relaxed eventually. He’d trusted him to work at the club, to ask Cassie for the ring that’d give him the freedom to do more than run, now that trust lay in blood spatters around their feet and that worry pinched that lined face again.

Seven hundred years of life hadn’t stripped the humanity out of Magnus. He was soft, still able to feel enough that this was hurting him. Lincoln almost laughed at it, the strain just aching in his throat instead. It couldn’t eclipse that hunger, but it was there. Stinging the backs of his eyes, burning a trail down to his blood saturated gut.

Blue eyes blinked rapidly, the tears starting to streak free as he looked up. Past the woman crouched beside him, past Magnus, to the darkening sky overhead. Had it been that long? In the unrelenting cycle of hunger and anger and self-hatred he hadn’t noticed it get light again, hadn’t stopped to feel the sun on his skin. ”You shouldn’t,” Linc said dully. He looked back down at his hand, the ring – all it had done was leave him with the opportunity to slaughter all day long instead of just fighting the urge at night.

Magnus never seemed to be tearing himself in two to try and be good. He lived and breathed sainthood, even when it was just the spring board for this, for the fuck up kid he’d been trying to help out of the goodness of that massive heart that no longer beat in his chest. Linc’s fingers closed around the ring hard enough that it bit into his palm as he sneered. ”You worried I’ll run out of here and burst into flames?” he asked coldly, knowing the answer even if he didn’t want to hear it. ”You tried teaching me, again and again, nothing but lectures. I guess it didn’t work.” If it had he wouldn’t have slipped, Cassie wouldn’t have ended up bleeding and he wouldn’t be trying to put the shredded remnants of his heart back together with the glue of someone else’s blood.

Where were the lessons about that? He threw the blame squarely in Magnus’ face as he barrelled in, the precious ring gone, clattering away out of sight (like he could’ve found it with his blood stained tears clouding his eyes anyway). His palms found the man’s solid chest, fingers curling in as Magnus gripped at him, frowning, like his disappointment was going to change a thing. ”Don’t lie.” There was a desperate note in the command, like maybe he was pleading not to be right. Then she moved. The one Magnus could have because he was above all of this.

The hunger rose immediately, a tide that was going to drown him if he wasn’t careful. It didn’t matter that she was one of them and he could barely hear her heartbeat in her chest. She was there, she had blood in her veins – borrowed, so what – and he could leave them all hurting. Linc barely felt the lukewarm heat of her on the back of his outstretched fingers before Magnus was there, shoving him into the wall. Scrawny as he was, Linc bucked against the hold, forearms squirming up between them, barring across Magnus’ chest to try and push him away.

Linc growled, the sound tearing out of him as he squirmed. Magnus had centuries on him, he was stronger in more ways than just the physical, but it didn’t mean he had a chance of stopping the monster. Calm down, like it was that fucking easy. Laughing, Linc gritted his teeth. The burn in his throat intensified, bordering on a sob as he fisted his hands in the front of Magnus’ shirt and finally looked up. ”How do you do it? How do you stop yourself from fallin’?” There didn’t seem a way when you were already at the bottom of the heap, had never got a foot of it to start with, even when he’d thought he had. Linc felt the sobs roll out of him as Magnus shook him, his fists pounding against Magnus’ chest like he could somehow shake the sense into him that he wasn’t worth it.

How did he get back up from here? He hadn’t wanted to, not while he was wallowing in all that pain. The only thing that had whited it out for a moment had been the blood as it had washed down his throat. The monster had its fill then, now he was empty. Linc sucked in a breath and let it out again, another wash of that heat coming with it. ”Worried someone’s gonna realise your boy’s fucked up?” Linc asked hoarsely. His lip curled again, dotted with sweat now as well as the freckled drops of blood. Beyond Magnus he could see the woman moving, blurring out of there. Going to fetch something to clean up his mess. He didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to be here when the depths of his crimes were unpacked for Magnus to see and feel more disappointment over.

Hands thrust against Magnus again, trying to break free. His head twisted away as the car backed up and the bodies he’d left like broken dolls were put in the boot, like the lid of it being closed would stop him smelling the blood he was steeped with, or seeing their frightened eyes – Cassie’s frightened eyes – every time he closed his own. ”I’m not goin’,” Linc growled at her. She had his ring, he’d heard Magnus say it. That one anchor that could leave him part of humanity and not just some thing crawling among them. He tried to pull away but he felt himself propelled towards the car, bundled in the back like it was a police van, the criminal being taken by to his cell. The door slammed shut on him, his body slumping against the seat. Too late. It was too late for all of this.

Tagged: MAGNUS DAYNE & JOAHNNA BAI (wrap with yours?) * Word Count: 1089