Mastering the Flames Read online

  Mastering the Flames

  Book Four of The Beacon Hill Sorcerer

  SJ Himes

  Mastering the Flames © 2019 SJ Himes

  Book Four of The Beacon Hill Sorcerer

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Royal Editing Services

  Historical Content Editing by Royal Editing Services

  Early Developmental Content Editing & Proofing

  by Miranda Vescio

  Cover by Kellie Dennis of

  Book Cover By Design

  https://www.bookcoverbydesign.co.uk/

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Digital piracy kills indie authors.

  I can’t write the books readers love if I can’t make a living doing so. Please don’t pirate my books. No one has permission to upload them or share them for any reason whatsoever. Don’t download them for free.

  The ebook edition of this novel is only for sale through Amazon and is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. If you are reading it and did not legally purchase it or borrow it from Amazon, you have pirated this book. You have harmed my sales and are perpetuating harm against me and decreasing my ability to write the books I want and release them in a timely manner. Want more books from me? Don’t pirate my books!

  Please purchase your own copy and remember to review.

  Content Advisory: Contains mentions of alcohol abuse/alcoholism and addiction. Violence, gore. Mentions of past sexual abuse.

  “’Hope’ is the thing with feathers—254—by Emily Dickinson, written 1861, published posthumously in 1891in Poems by Emily Dickinson, 2nd Series. Public domain usage and attribution.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  1. Little Brother

  2. Quis sum?

  3. Broken Glass

  4. Change is Never Easy

  5. Don’t Touch the Fire

  6. He’s Not Breathing

  7. Sober

  8. Bastard Son of a Petty King

  9. Brotherly Interference

  10. Behavioral Illness

  11. Angelic Fury

  12. Exhaustion

  13. Bed and Breakfast

  14. The Dating Lives of Immortals

  15. The Sons of Raine

  16. A Taste for Blood

  17. Trouble Comes Knocking

  18. Moving Day

  19. Sleeping with the Sentient Undead

  20. Ancient History

  21. Revelations

  22. Date Night

  23. Doctor’s Orders

  24. Retail Therapy

  25. Conversations with Killers

  26. A Lifetime of Eternity

  27. Firestorm

  28. FlashPaper Memory

  29. A Very, Very Short Walk

  30. Something Old, Something New

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Newsletter

  Also by SJ Himes

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  In this book, the issue of alcohol abuse is raised, and the way it’s handled is based upon the experiences of people I know personally, and research on a wide range of treatments. Please keep in mind that this is fiction, and while I tried my utmost best to address the issues with respect and realism, I made artistic decisions that facilitated the progress of the story and the development of characters. No one’s life experiences will match that of someone else, even fictional characters—we all wear our scars differently, feel pain differently, and we all heal differently.

  There is no one perfect universal intersectionality of life experiences.

  I also ask that readers set aside expectations. This is Isaac’s story. Isaac is not Angel. Brothers they may be, the two men are vastly different. I hope you can embrace Isaac as I have, free from his brother’s shadow.

  Thank you to Josh Freeman, BS, CAC-P, for your help with Isaac’s mental health journey.

  Thank you to the following people:

  Alyson Roy

  Ben Gibbs

  Susan Haggerty

  For your help researching Constantine’s past, and helping me get it right—as much as I can inserting supernatural events into the narrative of history. Constantine’s history is long, and loosely based on real historical events and people. Constantine Batiste is wholly fictional, but his father, grandfather, and brother were real people. I’ve changed the dates a bit and added different timelines to account for a bastard son of a petty king, and any errors or alterations to the historical record are solely mine and made to accommodate the story.

  Italians in the 2nd Century BCE were a separate people from the Romans, and I merely moved up the usage of the words Italia/Italians from the first written attestation in the first century BCE to the late second century BCE, to describe Constantine’s maternal ancestry.

  Dedication

  This book is for everyone who needs hope.

  “Hope is the thing with feathers

  That perches in the soul

  And sings the tune without the words

  And never stops at all.”

  ― Emily Dickinson

  Prologue

  Never Again, Nevermore

  “Get away from me!” Isaac screamed a warning at the nurses. They left him strapped to the hospital bed, ducking behind the shield wall in the observation room just in time.

  Fire erupted as Isaac convulsed, his whole body straining against the straps tying him down, muscles cramping and releasing in alternating waves of pain. Sweat evaporated in small wafts of steam as the remnants of his patient gown sizzled and melted, black webbing peeled along the seams, spitting and hissing in the wave of red flames that danced over his skin. The leather restraints burned, but they were thick and warded, resisting the aimless fire that sporadically burst to life over Isaac’s body. The mattress beneath him stank of sweat and bile and charred synthetic materials, due to the convulsions forcing his body to void unpleasantness when the worst of the accelerated detox began.

  He slumped to the bed, the fit passing, but soon it would return, and he would not be able to stop it nor resist it. Isaac welcomed the agony at first, as penance for his horrible choices and the trouble he’d caused his brother over the years. Here was his punishment at long last. Isaac Salvatore was reduced to the ashes of who he was—who he should have been—and there was nothing left upon which to build.

  Time passed in fragmented pieces, the faces of his doctors and others in staff uniforms floating in and out of his awareness, names forgotten in the eons since he’d requested the accelerated detox, foolishly underestimating how bad the magically-assisted withdrawal would become.

  “Isaac, can you hear me?” Darkness broken by flashes of fire and agony burning white-hot behind his eyelids, he twitched, unable to respond, but the voice seemed to know he was vaguely aware.

  “Isaac, the detox is winding down, but it hit you harder than we anticipated. It means your alcohol intake was more severe than you disclosed originally, but we’ve adjusted your treatment.” Isaac tried to say something, anything, but a pained, exhausted whimper was all he managed. “It will be alright, Isaac. Just a bit longer, and you’ll start to feel better. Rest while you can before the next wave hits.”

  He tried to respond, to apologize for holding back the worst of his secr
ets, but the fire came again. Not the fire that burned and danced to his wishes, but the fire from within, a burning emptiness that razed his nerves and devoured his sanity. Images of toxic, smothering liquid flitted through his mind that burned and devoured his flesh as it rose over his body, seeping into charred and seared sections of his skin that exposed the worst of him.

  “Addict. Alcoholic. Liar. Murderer!” Screams bounced inside his head, and he was drowning in liquid fire, the odor of alcohol choking him, making him gag, and then he saw the bodies. Floating in amber liquid, suspended, even as fire charred their extremities to blackened bone, he saw the faces of his family. His father, his mother. Grandparents and aunts and uncles, his younger cousins. All dead. Floating in fiery acid that stank worse than the gutters he found himself in on the nights he was drinking, covered in filth and stinking of foul, cheap beer and sickly-sweet mixed drinks. Nights he drank to forget, to find some peace and yet to make himself suffer, over and over again.

  It was the least he deserved.

  The courtyard was nearly empty. Isaac huddled on a stone bench, the grass beneath his bare feet slick with dew and chilling his toes. Head heavy, feeling like it was stuffed with wet cotton, limbs weak, and eyes bleary, Isaac stared straight ahead at the wet concrete paths cutting through short brown grass and bushes with bare branches. Flower plots lay dormant, covered in some places in tarps to protect against the last few cold snaps of the departing winter. Spring was coming, but in a city on the sea in New England, the changing of the seasons from winter to spring was never smooth and involved a lot of rain, storms, cold snaps, black ice, and mud. So much mud.

  Low, murmuring voices woke him from his stupor, and Isaac rubbed at his eyes, forcing them to focus on a disturbance across the courtyard. Orderlies dressed in white scrubs walked cautiously a few feet away from a patient, who took shuffling steps along one of the paths. The orderlies circled the lonely figure, but not to stop the patient—it was more like they were afraid the person would fall over or stumble and waited to catch them. Isaac sympathized with the unknown patient—he was a night and some few hours out of detox and felt much like how the other patient looked.

  They stopped a few yards away, and the light was still too dim for Isaac to see the patient clearly, but he heard a soft muttering, as if they were speaking to themselves, arms drawn in tight to their thin, sparse frame. Probably tall, but hunched over, with hair that could be dark blonde or brown, unkempt.

  Isaac looked away, thinking he wouldn’t want to be stared at. Isaac was a mess himself and probably looked as wretched as he felt. He felt flayed open, nerves exposed, hollow and exhausted of everything that made him who he was. Even his magic lay quiet, the embers usually ever-present just below his waking mind were now reduced to a small glow, coals banked in a hearth steadily growing colder. If anyone were to use their inner vision on him now his aura would be stripped bare, no defenses in sight, every spiritual scar and mental wound exposed to the air and prying eyes. His affinity was a fire that would never be extinguished, but it was currently quiet, a rarity considering how unstable he usually felt before he came to Nevermore. For once, he didn’t have to fight to keep it contained—his recovery from magically-assisted, accelerated detox exhausted even his magical reserves of power.

  Maybe in a few days he would have more control as his power levels increased. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d tried to control his magic when completely sober. He knew it was years.

  Isaac dipped his chin and took a sniff. Sweat and smoke. He sneezed, body shuddering at the effort. He needed a bath, but instead, he’d begged the nurses to let him go outside before he resumed his treatment schedule. He wiped at his nose, trying to drag his scattered thoughts into a working, functional brain, but he had no strength, mental or physical.

  He didn’t feel like himself. A part of him figured that who he was no longer existed. Who was Isaac Salvatore completely sober with nothing to hide behind? No excuses, no reasons to drink, no bottle to dull his actions and his pain. Maybe being hollow and laid bare was what he deserved, penance for the last ten years of fuck-ups and mistakes and dragging his brother through a shit-storm of drunken binges, bar brawls, pickups in a drunk tank, and his late boyfriend Greg stealing pieces of his family heritage and money when Isaac’s apathy was at its peak.

  Thoughts skittering away from thinking of Greg Doyle, Isaac gasped on a weak sob. He would not think about Greg. He couldn’t. Truths too painful to face threatened to ruin his meager calm.

  “Isaac?” He jumped, body complaining at the movement, and he groaned softly. “Isaac Salvatore?” Isaac looked up and squinted at a nurse, not someone he remembered from his stay in the infirmary.

  “Yeah, that’s me.” The nurse smiled down at him, and she gestured back toward his room.

  “Dr. Mephaestus is expecting you soon. Would you like some help getting back to your room? Breakfast is waiting.”

  He coughed, throat dry, and croaked out a rough, “Yes, please.”

  She was stronger than she looked, probably used to picking up patients and getting them moving, and she manhandled him into standing. He wavered, dizzy, and she gave him time to rest before walking. The other patient with their herd of orderlies had stopped mumbling and was watching Isaac, and he gave an awkward wave at them. He didn’t want to be rude—whoever the other patient was, they looked far worse off than Isaac, and he didn’t want to pretend they weren’t there. Isaac had a feeling the other patient had been staring at him for a while, unnoticed with Isaac locked away in his thoughts.

  The other patient gave a twitch, focused on Isaac in an eerie fashion, their muffled rambling replaced by a stillness that reminded Isaac of a vampire. The other patient couldn’t be, though, not in that state. Vampires didn’t get sick, not that he knew of at least.

  Isaac grimaced, uncomfortable now with the laser focus, and let the nurse help him turn and move down the path back to his room. His shoulders itched and Isaac instinctively looked behind him, nearly falling over, but the nurse caught him and kept him walking. “Who was that?” He asked the nurse, only realizing afterwards that he probably shouldn’t be asking such personal questions.

  His nurse patted his shoulder, one arm under his for support. “I normally wouldn’t say, but in his case you should know. He is here for blood magic addiction. If you see him without an orderly while you’re in the courtyard, please tell a staff member immediately. That’s for his safety as well as your own. Some of the blood magic addiction patients can sense your magics, and your aura is a mess from detox, so you’re like a big neon sign to them right now. He’s one of our better patients, so don’t worry unless he approaches you without his attendants, okay?”

  Isaac winced, amazed that someone suffering from blood magic addiction was even allowed out of confinement, but that was an unfair thought. The man wouldn’t be out of his room if he were a danger to other patients, though it made sense that he was with three orderlies. “Is he dangerous?”

  She hummed. “Maybe once, before he was admitted, but that was a long time ago, and he’s still with us. Improvement can come in great strides, or tiny increments over long periods of time. Nevermore has had some success saving those afflicted with blood magic addiction. He’s come a long way and has only just earned courtyard time. Maybe one day he’ll be one of our successes.”

  “How long has he been here?” Isaac couldn’t stop the question, exhaustion pushing the words past his dormant tactfulness.

  “Longer than I’ve worked here, maybe ten years or so? Something like that.” Her reply was absent-minded, more focused on getting Isaac back in the building in one piece. His feet were cold from the concrete pathway and chill morning air. That warm shower he avoided earlier now sounded fabulous.

  They reached the doorway to his room, a private suite that overlooked the courtyard, all expenses paid for by his big brother. The nurse kept him moving over the threshold, which was best since if he stopped, he was unlikely to get moving again
, so drained was he.

  Isaac shuffled into the shower of the en suite bathroom; he let the nurse strip him down to skin and then turn on the water, which came out blessedly warm immediately. He thought about the lonely figure shuffling about in the garden and shivered despite the warmth of the water. “I hope he gets better.”

  She made a humming sound in agreement as she washed him in kind but impersonal strokes, his whole body shaking with fatigue, and he leaned on the walls of the shower, gripping the metal grab bars placed on each side of the stall.

  Nevermore might be an exclusive, expensive, and highly sought-after rehabilitation clinic, but to be here for the nightmare of blood magic addiction was something Isaac would never wish upon anyone, even himself. His own addiction was horrible enough—but to be in Nevermore for the unending torture that was BMA was enough to spark gratitude in Isaac’s bruised heart that it wasn’t his fate.

  There was hope for Isaac, no matter how small, that he would one day recover and thrive. The only hope for BMA was a miracle, and the gods rarely showed themselves these days.

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