Vale has always taken his job as an assassin seriously, which means killing his targets without asking questions and keeping his mouth shut. When he finds a picture of an old target of his in the hotel room of a man he just disposed of, he knows something fishy is happening. Luckily for him, his target doesn’t have to stay dead.
Cyril is surprised when his boyfriend asks him to reanimate his latest target, because that’s not how his job usually works. He’d do anything for Vale, though, so he does it, only to find himself pulled into a mess he has nothing to do with for once.
Some people have more money than sense, and Peter West is one of those people. He wants Vale killed so he can’t tell anyone that he had his father killed, which makes Vale the prey instead of the predator. More importantly, it puts Cyril in danger, something Vale can’t accept.
He’ll have to get extra friendly with death this time around.
The first thing Vale saw when he opened his eyes was bones.
Oscar was a heavy weight on Vale’s chest. Just a few weeks ago, Vale would’ve jumped, maybe screamed a little at the sight. Now, he sighed and reached out to scratch the top of the skull that made up Oscar’s body.
Oscar made the weird purring sound he always made when he was happy. He wasn’t a cat, so Vale had no idea why or how he made it, but thinking too hard about it gave him the creeps, so he stopped. He didn’t understand Oscar or how Cyril had made him, and he didn’t care. It was none of his business.
Even though the weird bone octopus was curled up on top of him.
Vale’s life had become even weirder than before. He couldn’t regret that when it had brought him Cyril, but sometimes he wondered how he’d managed to get involved. He’d gone from having a fairly normal and boring life to living with a necromancer and his pet.
“Where’s Cyril?” Vale asked.
He doubted Cyril had gone very far. His boyfriend rarely left the apartment except for jobs, preferring the comfort of his home to going out there in the world and having to deal with people. Apparently, he’d much rather deal with dead people than with alive ones, which made his everyday life slightly complicated. It wasn’t like Cyril was a hermit or anything like that, but he was a little weird, and people tended to give him a wide berth when they found out he was a necromancer.
Vale supposed that people would do the same to him if they knew he was a professional killer. It was a good thing he never told anyone. Cyril, on the other hand, couldn’t exactly hide what he was.
But Cyril wasn’t alone anymore. He had Vale and Russell and, in a way, Rachel. He’d never met her, but he would eventually.
Oscar poked at Vale’s cheek with one of his weird bone tentacles. Vale realized he’d stopped scratching him, so he started again, lightly glaring at the pet. Sometimes he still tried making sense of his life and of Oscar, but he’d realized soon after getting with Cyril that his life didn’t have to make sense for him to be happy. He had a necromancer boyfriend and a weird pet. It didn’t matter how it worked or how he’d obtained it.
He hesitated before gingerly wrapping his hands around Oscar’s body. That was still really fucking weird, too. To pick Oscar up, Vale had to pick up his skull body, which creeped him out even though he’d killed dozens of people. Usually, when he killed, his targets weren’t bony. He didn’t often have to deal with skeletons, let alone skeletons that a necromancer had reanimated.
Oscar wrapped his tentacles around Vale’s arms as if trying to cling to him. Knowing him, that was what he was doing. He loved cuddles, and while he got plenty from Cyril, for some reason, he’d gotten attached to Vale since pretty much the day they’d met. If Vale hadn’t known better, he would have thought that Oscar was doing it on purpose because he knew that Vale was weirded out.
Actually, there might be something there. Oscar’s body was made with a human skull. Vale still wasn’t entirely sure how Cyril’s ability worked, but he wouldn’t be surprised if, by using a human skull, Cyril had given Oscar human traits. Maybe Oscar was teasing. Maybe the person the skull had belonged to had been playful and friendly.
Vale sat up and raised Oscar to his face. He stared at the empty eye sockets of Oscar’s body, shuddered, and put him down on the bed. None of this mattered. Knowing whether or not Oscar had a human personality wouldn’t change the fact that he was freaking creepy and half in love with Vale. Vale just had to get used to having him around.
Luckily for him, that came with a cute boyfriend.
Vale got out of bed and went in search of his man, stopping in the bathroom before heading to the kitchen. He could smell coffee and toast, so he knew that Cyril wasn’t far.
Just like he’d expected, Vale found his boyfriend in the window seat. Cyril’s hands were wrapped around a mug that had to be full of tea rather than coffee. Cyril made coffee in the morning for Vale but seldom drank it, preferring tea and herbal mixtures that smelled foul. He’d tried to convince Vale to drink them a few times, but Vale wouldn’t even smell them, let alone let them anywhere near his mouth. Coffee, though, he could do, and he was grateful that Cyril always thought of him when he was the first to wake up in the morning.
Vale stopped next to Cyril and leaned down to kiss the top of his head. Cyril turned, looking sleepy but happy, and smiled at him. “I thought you’d sleep longer,” he said.
“I can go back to bed if you want me to.” Vale grinned. “In fact, you could come back to bed with me.”
Cyril’s cheeks flushed. From what he’d told Vale, he hadn’t had many people in his life beyond his mother. People didn’t understand what being a necromancer meant, and even when they did, they were usually wary of him. It was ridiculous, but human beings usually were. Vale didn’t care that his boyfriend could reanimate the dead. He only cared that Cyril was sweet, gentle, and caring.
People Also Bought:
