CHAPTER TWO

The exterior of the Lair was not what Toby had expected. Its simplicity was understated. Its malice was nonexistence. By all appearances, the building was overwhelmingly normal. However, Toby knew all too well that the greatest of evil dwelled within the simplest of walls.

Toby took a step closer. The barriers of the club vibrated with the physical force of the music. The tremble of the concrete below his feet reminded him of what Ambrosius had said, "this can only end badly for you."

Toby snorted. It was so like Ambrosius to toy with his mind. After all, Toby had placed all his trust in Adam and he knew his boyfriend was incapable of diving that deep into depravity. At his lowest point, Adam was weak. He possessed an addictive personality, but beyond that he couldn't hurt a fly. Delving a little into his past couldn't possibly be that dangerous.

Toby swallowed tightly before he knocked his fist at the door. He tried to count the seconds in between, but his mind just could not focus. Before he knew it, a small slit opened. Dark eyes peered back at him and their scrutiny was unwavering.

"Who sent you?" the eyes eventually demanded to know.

"Umm…" Toby scratched his neck. "Uh, Adam, I guess."

There was a pause in which the eyes did nothing but stare back at him. Without warning, the slit slammed shut.

All Toby had to do was blink and he was immediately inside the Lair. He had no idea if he was pulled in or fell in, but he was suddenly surrounded by red vinyl and flashing lights. Toby's heart pounded as he examined the scantily clad men around him and suddenly wondered just how big a patron his boyfriend was of this place.

From the corner of his eye, Toby swore he saw a man scream as someone else buried his face within his neck, but by time he turned around, a voice distracted him.

"You're new," the blond man admired as he slowly trailed a finger along Toby's neck. "And… different?"

The strange man then sniffed Toby as if he couldn't be sure.

Toby shrunk away from his touch. He quickly protected his shirt from being torn off as the blond insisted for more.

"No shirts," the blond explained dully. "Club policy."

Toby suddenly remembered that this was an establishment that he had entered. There was a code to follow and business to be made. However, he did not like the way the blond's hand slip beneath his shirt.

"Are you for real?" Toby snapped. He narrowed his eyes when the blond didn't respond. Not verbally anyways. His hands were suddenly on Toby again and eagerly tugging off his shirt.

"You can reclaim this after tonight's events," the blond promised with a smirk as he tucked Toby's shirt into his back pocket. "How well do you know this Adam fellow anyway?"

Toby felt the muscles around his neck tighten. "How do you know Adam?" he countered.

The blond snorted a laugh before he took a step away from Toby. He studied the boy briefly before he came to a decision. He pulled out a card seemingly out of nowhere and offered it to Toby.

"For the backroom," the man explained. "Once you hear your number, waste no time to come on back. You won't regret it – that's also club policy."

Toby accepted the card with some hesitation. "What's it for?"

"Oh, whatever you want." The blond slanted him a smile. "As many times as you want."

Toby groaned and shook his head. Nevertheless, he studied the number on his card. He was beginning to regret his decision already, but he wouldn't back down from gaining the answers he needed.

"A friend of Adam's is a friend of ours," the blond insisted with a mischievous smirk. "You go on to the bar until your number's called. The drinks are on me, so don't hold back."

Toby narrowed his eyes, but he didn't feel comfortable confronting the blond just yet. He headed off to the bar and refused the glass the server offered him. He simply sat intently as he clutched the card in his hands. He hadn't thought of his next step. Actually, he had no idea how long he even sat there. It took him several moments to realize that they had been announcing his number over the music for quite some time.

Toby sat up stiffly when he recognized his number. He cleared his throat and clasped his card as he debated whether or not to go into the backroom. Reigning himself, Toby eventually pushed himself away from the bar and headed to the back.

The walk was dark and silent. The music of the club did not pulsate through the narrow hallways. Instead, Toby heard the moaning and groaning from the other rooms. Just as people were at the climax of their screams, the sound would sudden stop.

"Right in here."

Toby was abruptly shoved into a room. He could have only assumed it was the blond who was capable of such urgent geniality. He took a moment to rub the sting at his shoulder and that's when he noticed the mirror in front of him.

Toby took his next couple of steps with caution. He wondered if his reflection was anything like Adam had seen. What Toby saw looking back at him was someone who was lonely; someone who was desperate. He had deep shadows below his brow. It hurt almost to keep his eyes open. He would have snapped them shut had he not seen a twinkle of light behind him.

Instead of turning around, Toby examined the reflection before him. The wall behind him was painted red and decorated with rows and rows of implements. Leather, wood, lexan… it all stretched across the wall. Some metal studs sparkled like rhinestones underneath the weak light. Each tool was on a hook, ready for immediate use and Toby knew that hundreds, if not thousands, of men had been through these doors. The dim, flickering light bulb above his head offered little to see, but Toby could feel the scuffs and scratches on the counter beneath his hands.

There was a long, agonizing creak as the door suddenly closed and Toby found himself frozen in place. He gripped the counter before him and held onto his breath. He had not anticipated another presence in the room just yet. He certainly had not expected someone to have been hiding behind the door the entire time.

When Toby saw it was Adam, he immediately let his breath go. "Goddamn it, Adam—"

"Don't turn around."

Stunned, Toby held his breath for the second time. Obeying Adam's forceful request, he did not turn around. Instead, he just met his boyfriend's gaze in the mirror. They both looked different then they had before. The Lair obviously had a way of taking hold of people.

Toby continued to stare back at Adam through the mirror. When his boyfriend dropped his eyes, that's when he knew something was undoubtedly wrong.

"Adam—"

The look that Adam flashed back made Toby cringe away. He held his tongue and watched intently as Adam's reflection continued his slow movements.

Adam's hand was on his buckle and Toby felt his heart pound.

"Adam…?"

A second later, Toby heard the distinct sound of Adam's belt being pulled through its loops.

"Adam…!" Toby's voice was a little higher that time.

"Don't talk," Adam ordered as he stopped Toby from turning around again.

As Toby swallowed, he felt the muscles along his throat tighten. Adam's eyes now endlessly met his reflection's and an eerie feeling crept up his spine. The sensation of awaiting instructions was undeniably powerful. It sent shivers coursing through his body.

Adam stretched the leather belt in his hands. It had a snap to it that made Toby wince. He didn't resist when Adam pulled his arms back and tightly fastened them together behind him.

Adam pushed Toby's head forward so that he was completely bent over the counter. Toby had no choice but to look directly at his own reflection. His eyes were more desperate than they were before and shame had warmed his cheeks with color. This position and this view intensified the humiliation he felt.

"Is this was you wanted?" Adam asked.

Toby tried to look at him, but Adam's hand was still on his neck. He tried his best to swallow the knot in his throat. "Adam, you know it's not."

Adam stepped away and Toby was finally able to ease back enough to watch his movements through the mirror. Adam's finger trailed across the line of instruments on the wall. The first to catch his eye was a braided, leather flogger and Toby couldn't deny that he was relieved when Adam finally walked away from that item.

Toby closed his eyes and let out a sigh, but within moments he saw Adam admiring a looped, leather strap. The prospect of its whipping, stinging action was enough to make him whimper.

"No, Adam!" he suddenly blurted out. His hands jerked against his restraints as he instinctively tried to cover his own mouth. Too ashamed to meet Adam's reproaching response, Toby snapped his eyes shut. He only opened them again when he heard Adam resume his steps.

Toby cautiously watched his boyfriend walk pass the strap. Adam barely acknowledged the following paddles. Towards the end of the line were canes and twisted loops and Toby could not be sure exactly what they were, but he suspected their use was all the same.

Adam finally stopped before a flat and wide wooden stick. He took it in his hand to study the strength and weight of it. To Toby, it looked like a thicker, heavier ruler without numbers. Six vertical holes were drilled at the top and Toby recoiled as his imagination took a painful plunge.

Toby squeezed his eyes together as Adam approached him with that stick. He bit back a small cry as he felt it lightly caresses the dip in his back, then down the curve of his now vulnerable backside. Each soft stroke made him squirm.

"Open your eyes," Adam instructed.

"Please, Adam," Toby pleaded against the counter. His lips could feel the scratches that he noticed before.

"Open them," Adam said firmer this time. "I want you to see this."

Toby whimpered into the counter as he slowly returned Adam's gaze in the mirror. The stick in Adam's hand was gripped firmly in determination and Toby wished he had never seen that matchbook…

"Is this what you wanted?" Adam asked again.

When Toby didn't answer fast enough, Adam whipped the stick against the counter. Toby jerked back at the sudden movement. The crack landed menacingly close and Toby could only imagine the impact it would have had on skin.

"No! Fuck, Adam! NO!" Toby panted in frenzy. "This is not what I wanted!"

He began to struggle earnestly against his binds, but Adam placed a hand on his wrists.

"It's whatever they want, as much as they want," Adam spoke softly and Toby looked up as he recognized that statement. "You don't have a choice here, Toby. Once you walk through these doors, that's all the permission they need."

Toby managed to settle his jerky breaths. He tried not to wonder just who would have been lurking behind that door if Adam never showed up.

"And once those doors close," Adam added, "there's a good chance you're never coming back."

Toby tested his restraints again. He started to understand why Adam tried to keep this side of him hidden. He remembered that not too long ago Adam had almost lost himself in the darkness of the island.

"Adam," Toby sighed resignedly, "take me home."

Toby watched as his boyfriend quietly thought over the request. Adam still tapped the stick against the counter and each movement, no matter how slow, made him flinch. The small, yet harsh taps hinted at the weight behind Adam's swing and Toby wasn't eager to find out more.

"Stand up."

That was an order Toby was relieved to obey. He slowly stood away from the mirror and let Adam loosen the belt around his wrists.

Unfortunately, Toby didn't feel any less ashamed when he finally looked at Adam. He felt painfully chastised having been caught in the act of snooping behind his boyfriend's back.

"Come here."

Toby allowed his arms to be pulled around Adam's neck. He crumbled against his boyfriend's chest; the urgency for comfort now taking priority. For a brief moment, he hardly recognized Adam, but now his boyfriend was no longer the threatening force that cornered him in the Lair. Toby pressed his face into the crook of Adam's shoulder and lulled himself in the scent of his sun-warmed skin.

"You asshole," Toby breathed against Adam. The fact that this was just a ploy to teach him a lesson left him feeling unbelievably relieved. Toby's fingers dug into the other man's hair and he could feel the scars that had caused all this trouble to begin with.

Adam nearly grinned. "Got you to listen, didn't it?"

"Asshole," Toby murmured again until Adam pulled him back for a kiss. Adam could still feel the other man's chest heave with each breath he took. That's when he took Toby's face into his hands.

"Dude, I'm telling you: nothing supernatural is gonna rip up apart," Adam promised as he searched Toby's eyes. "You just have to stop looking for danger. I mean it, Toby. You already have a warlock riding your ass at work. You don't need anything else to worry about. This will be your last trip to the Lair if you know what's good for you."

Despite the small jab about warlocks, Toby saw a flicker of anger in Adam's eyes before the light bulb burned out. Adam groaned and took Toby's hand.

"Great, we better get outta here," he stated before Toby pulled him back in.

"I…" Toby stammered nervously and his hands rubbed his bare arms. "I, uh, I don't have my, umm… my shirt."

Toby trembled underneath Adam's gaze. "It's, uh, club policy," he explained awkwardly.

Adam frowned. "Yeah, I know." He shrugged off his shirt and tossed it to Toby.

With a sheepish smile, Toby pulled the other man's shirt over his head. However, being fully clothed again didn't make him feel any less vulnerable in the darken club.

"Don't make any eye contact on the way out," Adam suggested as he slipped his arm around Toby's waist.

Adam kept Toby tight against him as he escorted themselves out of the Lair. He made a couple of small nods and short goodbyes before they were in the moonlight again. Toby couldn't help but note how easy it was for Adam to walk out of the club with his bare chest. The number of people he knew by name made him uneasy.

Adam slowly slid his arm away from Toby's waist and took his hand. Toby smiled back at him, noticing that the gentle energy away from the Lair had an overall effort on their dispositions. The tourists had deserted the beach and all they could hear were the quiet roars of the ocean waves.

The soft, velvety sand had cooled underneath the moonlight. A few wispy clouds painted the sky in a watercolor of blues, purples, and pinks. Toby realized how remarkable it was to be underneath the full glory of the night. Only on the Cove could the real dangers lurk indoors...

"What was that even?" Toby asked quietly once enough silence had passed.

Adam looked back at him fondly. "Hmm?"

"That stick. It kinda looked like a ruler."

"Ooh." Adam laughed at the way Toby blushed. "Just a slimmer paddle, I guess. I really don't know, man."

Toby gave Adam's hand a squeeze as he thought it over. "Shouldn't you?"

"Toby," Adam sighed, knowing that this conversation could easily turn into another argument. "They have a lot of backrooms. I didn't even know they had that one."

"Then how did I end up in there?"

Adam considered Toby and just had to laugh. "I guess Colin thought you needed to be punished!"

Toby rolled his eyes and pushed Adam back a step. "Nice," he teased back. "I just thought since I knew you that they would stick me in one of your old rooms."

"None of them are my room," Adam clarified in a way that made Toby's eyes drop. "I'm not like that anymore. That compulsion is no longer there. Getting mixed up in that shit was the worst thing I could have possibly done. I reorganized my entire life to fit to their schedule. Getting high at night wasn't the problem because I knew the Lair would always be there. It's when the sun came up that I had to worry... I had to do a lot of shit to ensure I had enough saint to make it through the day."

"They gave you that much saint, huh?"

"Yep…" Adam said regretfully as he kicked his sandal into the sand. "Whatever I wanted, as many times as I wanted."

Toby looked apologetically up at Adam, but continued with his next question nonetheless. "You want to tell me who Colin is?"

Adam sighed and kept on walking. "Not much to tell, Toby. Blond, smirky… he's in charge of doling out the numbers."

"And he helped set this up?"

Adam nodded. He failed to notice that the other man was working himself up.

"How did you know that I would even show up at the Lair?"

Adam gave him a sidelong glance. "Bro told me."

Toby scowled and halted their trek. "Ambrosius?" he spat.

Adam placed his hands on his hips and stared authoritatively down at Toby. He caught the undeniable menace in his voice and planned to stop it in its track. "That's enough, Toby."

Toby was so flustered that he could hardly get his next words out. "A-are you shitting me, Adam? Can't you see that Ambrosius has a vendetta against me? I mean, who the hell did you think even gave me that address?!"

"I'm glad he called me."

"You're glad?" Toby gawked at the resoluteness in Adam's statement. "He started this whole fucking mess!"

"That's where you wrong," Adam corrected sternly. "He just saved your ass. This whole mess started because you wouldn't leave it alone."

Toby felt anger sweep through him. "Can't you see he set this entire thing up!" he shouted in earnest. "The matchbook? The address? The call! He even told me it would end badly for me!"

"Oh, Toby," Adam sighed and considered his next words very carefully. "Kevin left you for Bro. That was his choice to make. I am sorry that happened, but there comes a point when you're just gonna have to accept it and stop blaming everything that's wrong in the world on black magic."

"This isn't even about Kevin—"

"It's about listening," Adam stated very determinedly. "I told you to stop prying, to stop messing around in my past. That's a part of my life that I want to forget. Did you ever stop to think about what it would do to me? To go back there?"

Toby braced himself as he watched Adam's hand disappear into his back pocket. When it emerged again, he was holding a tiny, metal box.

"This is what they do," Adam revealed as he tossed the tin at Toby. "They slip you whatever drugs they can in the hope that you'll return for more. Sometimes you won't even realize they did it. You just wake up one day and you're hooked and you just keep going back to that place night after night. You won't even know why, you just know that it makes the pain go away. Can you imagine what they would do to you if they thought it would get to me?"

Toby was momentarily stricken with guilt. He let the tin of saint fall to the ground. However, as he contemplated Adam's speech, he felt his initial anger returning in waves.

"Is this another one of your scare tactics?" Toby accused as he kicked the metal box into the shadows. "Like your act back at the Lair? Goddamn it, Adam. I hate when you do this, I really do. It makes me feel like we're back in high school and you're a bully all over again."

"Toby—"

"No," Toby said definitively. "I'm not gonna let you bully me just so you can get your way. I'm done listening to you. I'll meet you back at Grace's."

"Hold it right there," Adam warned and jerked Toby back a step. "Neither of us is going to be walking home from the Lair at night alone."

Toby's mouth tightened into a willful line as he pulled against Adam's grip. "Let me go!"

"So help me god, Toby," Adam snarled in his ear, "I will drag you back home like this the entire way if I have to!"

Adam's words were astonishingly harsh, but Toby was determined to make it difficult for him. He twisted in the other man's grasp. Grunting and groaning, he dug his feet in the ground. It was beyond maddening how Adam always managed to tighten his grip. Toby ended up cursing breathlessly as his boyfriend proceeded to hold him with little effort.

With frustration draining him, Toby finally conceded and allowed Adam to shepherd him back home. He was more compliant then he had been all night, but his triceps still flexed angrily beneath Adam's stern grip. As they approached the house, Toby hoped that he would be trusted enough to walk the last couple of paces without an escort. Unfortunately, he was mortified at the realization that Adam intended to see his promise through.

Adam practically threw Toby inside house. "I don't want to see you step foot out of your room for the rest of the night."

"Fine by me," Toby managed to say in a disinterested tone as he stormed off towards the bedroom.

"And tomorrow at work you're gonna apologize to Bro for breaking into his office," Adam added and readied himself for a reaction.

Pulse racing swiftly, Toby's only response was to slam the bedroom door shut. He wasn't particularly interested in anyone seeing his redden face anyway.

Adam kicked out a chair and sat at the island in the middle of the kitchen. He hunched over the countertop and tried to ignore that Brit had just seen the entire exchange.

"You know," she said as she played with the mug in her hands, "it's partly my fault for breaking into Bro's office. I should have stopped him."

"Toby knew what he was doing."

"I'd just feel bad if he were fired over it."

Adam sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Bro would never fire Toby, that's what I don't get. Bro gave us all jobs when he didn't have to! This feud Toby keeps going on about seems completely one-sided."

Brit pretended to stir her tea as she cautiously looked over Adam. "You think he's jealous over Kevin?"

"I know he's jealous over Kevin!" Adam grunted. "It's just that… I've seen Kevin and Bro together. They're happy. I mean, they're really happy. There's no faking that. I know Toby was devastated by the breakup, but he's gotta stop blaming it on some sort of dark history of the Cove. He keeps acting like something paranormal is waiting to steal me away."

Brit held back a smile. "Yeah, sometimes that Toby puts too much faith in magic."

"I mean, how long did Toby and Kevin even date anyway?" Adam grumbled as he felt himself getting agitated. "Three months? Was it even that long? I've known Toby my entire life! He should have more trust in me than this."

Brit raised her brow and kept on stirring. "I hear you were quite the self-centered jock in high school."

Adam rolled his eyes at Brit's grin, but didn't take any offense. "But I was always there for Toby. He should know I'm not going anywhere. Blood-thirsty cultists couldn't stop me from loving him."

Brit set her tea down and leaned against the counter. "I'm sure Toby would be glad to hear that."

Adam shrugged. "It's not enough to just say it."

Brit frowned at the tired scowl on Adam's face. Her roommate was obviously in a gloomy mood and would likely be that way all night.

"Well," Brit sighed as she placed her mug in the sink. "I better get to bed. Elena doesn't like it when I wake her up in the middle of the night. Would you like me to make the couch up for you?"

Adam groaned and restrained a smile with some effort. "Nah, I don't think Toby is that mad at me."

Brit nodded. She was well aware that living in such tight quarters on the Cove made everyone quarrel over the slightest things, but they ultimately banded together when it truly mattered. If Toby and Adam could survive the night, Brit knew her boys would be alright.