“You said…” He rubs his chin. Leo’s clean-shaven, and so is Lance. Logan and Lucas have some stubble. Landon has a well-groomed beard and a matching mustache.
“Any ideas?” I ask him.
“You knew about this. You’ve had time to come up with an idea. What do you think?”
I shrug one shoulder. “No idea, dude.”
“Don’t call me that,” he mumbles. His gaze shifts to my hounds. “Can they…”
“Yes.”
Lance lowers down to be more on their level. “Do you boys want to do me a favor?” he asks.
I let out a scoffing sound. My brother glowers at me before returning his focus to the hellhounds.
“Enter the town and go and see whoever has paranormal abilities, especially any witches,” Lance directs.
A snort comes out. I can’t help myself, and when Lance shoots me a murderous look, I burst out laughing.
“They aren’t bloodhounds! And they aren’t magical-sniffing hounds either.”
“Then you ask them to do it for me.”
“No.”
“Why not?” he demands. “I thought you were going to help me with this.”
“I did say I would help, but I’m not going to abuse my relationship with the hellhounds for your purposes.”
“Maybe…”
Lance's magic is a red color, compared to my magical energy orbs that glow light that's on fire. He blasts at Bethlehem, but just like with my own attack, nothing gets through.
He glances around and points to a tree. “Maybe…”
Amused, I watch as my brother—in a suit, mind you—climbs the tree. He shifts over onto the roof of the abandoned establishment and tries to cross over.
No dice. The barrier is up high too.
Lance jumps down and starts to walk around the city, a hand on the barrier. “There has to be a weak point,” he murmurs. “Maybe at night. When she’s sleeping. She has to be weak if she has to use so much magic all day long and all night long on this barrier. Are only demons kept out? Only those with Lucifer’s blood? I can ask a friend to—”
“Do you have any friends?”
Lance bares his teeth at me. I’ve been walking alongside him, on the outside, away from the barrier he’s still touching.
“My friends are with me,” I point out.
“I take it you’re referring to the hounds and not me,” he says dryly.
“You know…” I tap a finger against my cheek. “Maybe if you asked them nicely and used their names…”
"Really?" His glowing yellow eyes, so like my own, grow wide, and then his lips twist into a sheepish smile. "So, uh, what are their names?"
I rub my forehead. "Are you going to ask one of your friends to head on in?" I ask. "Because we might be wasting our time if no demons can head in. Got any vampire friends? Any werewolves?" A swallow lands awkwardly in my stomach as I add, "Any human friends?"
I really hate that we can control humans. We can possess them, of course, but we can also compel them to do our bidding. Where do you think vampires get that ability from? Most lump vampires into a sub-category of demons for a good reason. There are two kinds—the bitten kind who turn and then living vampires who are born and grow older until, I don't know, maybe their twenties? Something like that. All living vampires are the result of a female vampire and an incubus hooking up. After all, incubi impregnate everyone they're with. Clearly, Lily shows that not everyone can impregnate a succubus, but the details involved in all of that I do not need.
Lance stops suddenly and glares at Bethlehem, so close but so far away. “I think I smell werewolves. There are werewolves inside.”
“That’s not all that’s inside,” a cool female voice says.
I look over to see that a cop sits in her car that’s idle on the street near us, her window down. She’s wearing shades. Her blond hair is twisted into a braid that hangs down one shoulder as she appraises us.
“Who are you?” Lance demands, heading closer to her, staying on this side of the barrier of course.
“I think I’ll be the one asking the questions,” she says dryly, lowering her sunglasses a bit on her nose to look at him above them. Her eyes are a cold blue, and there’s a bit of tension in her positioning. There’s something about her that isn’t quite right, and I wonder if she knows what we are.
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” Lance says with a wave of his hand.
“That so?” the cop asks coolly. “Why don’t you step on up to my car and show me some ID?”
Lance and I glance at each other, and I shrug one shoulder. A long while ago, Lily got me a driver’s license, a fake one. I mean, I know how to drive, but the driver’s license says I’m over twenty-one. It’s specifically so I can do what I want here on Earth. Supposedly, that small rectangular piece of plastic can open doors for you. Crazy if you ask me.
It’s not easy to teleport something other than myself, but I hold my hand behind my back and will the license to come to me. After a moment, I feel the plastic, and I grin as I kneel down and rub Shadechomp’s heads before giving the card to Demonfang. Shadechomp has chomp in his name for a reason, and Demonfang’s fangs are sharper, but I think it will be more likely to survive if he’s the one to bring it over.
I pat near his rump, and Demonfang trots over to the car. The cop rolls down her window the rest of the way, and she pats both of his heads before accepting the license, which makes my opinion of her go up several notches until I realize that my illusion no longer is working. He crossed over into Bethlehem territory, so my glamour faded away.
Which means she sees him for what he really is—a fiery two-headed hellhound.
And she’s not fazed about that at all.
Who the Hell is she? Why can’t I sense what she is? Because she’s got to be something, right?
“What about your ID, sir?” the cop asks.
“Why don’t you get out of your car and come over here?” Lance asks.
“You mean you want me to leave the city that I have jurisdiction in?” the cop asks wryly.
I shouldn’t smirk, but I do. Beside me, Lance is fuming mad. I find it interesting that Demonfang’s still by the cop, but when we make eye contact, he bounds back to my side.
“I don’t even know the name of this city,” Lance lies.
“Sure you don’t,” the cop remarks.
Lance holds up his hands.
“Just like I don’t know that you two aren’t human,” she adds.
Lance’s nostrils flare a bit. “You’re delusional.”
“You’re the one who is delusional if you think I’m ignorant,” she continues.
Despite her words, though, she gets out of the cop car and heads toward us, still within the parameters of Bethlehem.
She’s smart. Toying with Lance like this is going to infuriate him enough that he’ll figure out a way to hurt her, though, which makes her stupid too.
Huh. She's practically one of us then. I'm sure Lucifer thinks we're smart because we're his offspring, but he also has to think we're stupid, given that he's so vastly disappointed in us all.
The cop makes a show of reaching for her gun. It’s been modified somehow, and considering she knows what we are…
“Lance,” I murmur. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“Are you the reason why there’s some kind of barrier?” he asks.
Her grin is huge. “I’m not going to ask you two again. Leave now, and don’t come back.”
“I don’t take orders from the likes of you,” Lance says coolly.
“Fine. You were warned,” she says.
And she fires at him.
I’m not sure what it is that comes out of her gun, but it’s not a bullet, and it’s growing larger, and it seems to almost be pure magic.
And it’s heading straight for Lance.
My brother just calmly stands there, waiting to be hit. What is he doing? Is he trying to make a point?
“Teleport,�
� I barely have time to murmur, but he merely holds up his hand, but unlike with my attack, he doesn’t absorb this blow. Instead, he redirects it back to her, but she just stands there, her smug smile on her face only growing as the still-growing magic orb dissipates the moment it strikes the barrier.
Lance stares through me. “Bethlehem can go straight to Hell,” he mutters, and he teleports away, maybe to somewhere else on Earth, maybe to Hell.
Leaving me alone with my hellhounds and a cop who now levels her gun straight at me.
Chapter 16
I hold up my hands. “I’m not leaving without my ID.”
"Your fake driver's license, you mean?"
“It’s not fake,” I protest.
“Sure it isn’t, and I’m the Queen of England.”
“There are still kings and queens?”
“In some countries. Don’t you know that?”
"I don't know. I thought dictators did in most places, even if they're called presidents or prime ministers or czars or pharaohs or whatever."
The cop grimaces. “You don’t get out a lot, do you?”
I shrug one shoulder. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“You aren’t even twenty-one, are you?”
“Twenty. Don’t worry. I haven’t tried any of your alcohol.”
“Does alcohol even affect full-blooded demons?”
“I don’t know. Does it affect you?”
Her grin is slow to form, but it stretches wide. “I don’t trust you.”
“The feeling is mutual. You attacked… that guy I was with.”
“Your boyfriend?”
I shudder and make a gagging sound.
“Your brother then.” Somehow, her smile is even wider now.
“Look, if we’re going to talk some, can you maybe put your gun away? I’m not worried about getting hurt any, but it would show some measure of trust.”
“Trust has to be earned in my experience,” she says coolly.
“But you know my name, and I don’t know yours, and it’s not like I’m saying you have to leave Bethlehem,” I point out.
“So you expect me to believe that your name is Lydia Hellstorm?”
I grin. “Well, the Hellstorm is fake.”
“But fitting, I suppose?” She lifts an eyebrow.
“Possibly.”
“Look, Lydia, I—”
“I still don’t know your name,” I remind her.
“It’s only because I know that giving a demon my name doesn’t give them any power over me that I’m willing to tell you.” She takes a deep breath, like she has to work up to sharing despite her words. “Clarissa Garcia.”
Clarissa waits as if she’s expecting her name to mean something to me.
It doesn’t.
“Hi, Clarissa.” I hold out a hand and pretend to shake hers. “Nice to meet you.”
“You know my name, and that’s it. How do you know it’s nice to meet me?” She crosses her arms, still holding that gun but at least it’s no longer pointed at me.
"Well, maybe I'm being optimistic."
She snorts. “An optimistic demon. Now I’ve seen everything.”
“What can I say? I’m not your typical demon.”
“Typical demon or not, I’ve gone through far too much to keep my city safe.”
“That so?” I appraise her. Is she the reason why Lucifer and the rest of us demons can’t get into the city?
“Yes.” Clarissa grimaces. “I do know that there’s been a lot of activity in the cities surrounding Bethlehem.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. There was an earthquake in Easton recently that scientists don’t understand at all. Normally, there’s the whole tectonic plates thing that causes earthquakes when the plates shift, but that wasn’t the cause.”
Inwardly, I whistle innocently. “Anywhere else?” I ask so she won’t catch a whiff of my guilt.
"Allentown," she grumbles. "No matter what anyone does, there are vampires there. It had been cleared up a bit recently, but it won't last long. It never does."
“That so, huh? I wonder why that is.”
“Maybe they, like you, are drawn to Bethlehem, so they’re settling for settling as close as they can.”
I shrug nonchalantly. “Who said I’m drawn here?”
“I saw you the other day.”
“Which day?” I ask harmlessly.
“The day of the earthquake,” she says, her tone dry.
“Interesting…”
“Especially interesting when you consider that one of my scientist friends said that some plates had shifted. The plates for Bethlehem shifted, but there hadn’t been an earthquake. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
I pick at my teeth.
“There’s something familiar about you and your brother,” she says, wonder in her tone but suspicion in her narrowed eyes. She brings a hand to her mouth, flashing a blue-stoned ring. Slowly, she lowers her hand. “You…”
“Me.”
“You’re…”
The more she focuses on me, the more I focus on her until I realize something.
“You’re part demon,” I say slowly. “You have to be why… You made a deal with Lucifer, didn’t you?” My tone is accusatory.
“I’m not just part demon,” she says sardonically. She lifts her eyebrows, waiting.
But I don’t know what she’s hinting at, so I say nothing.
“You know Lucifer well?” she asks.
“Depends on your definition of well,” I mutter.
“You’re a young demon, though. Why would he want to know you? He doesn’t have some kind of ceremony to get to know all of the demons, does he? That would be…”
“No, he doesn’t know every demon. No, no ceremonies like that. Nothing at all like that.”
"Hmm. Sounds like Hell's a bit boring. That's why you're here? You wanted to shake things up a bit?" From the way she narrows her eyes when she says "shake," I'm starting to think she's suspicious of me.
She’s a good cop. I’ll give her that.
“Home is what you make of it,” I offer. “It can be boring… or it can be thrilling.”
“If you shake it up a bit?”
“Nah. You don’t want to shake up your hometown, know what I’m saying?”
“Considering you or someone else tried and failed to shake mine…”
“You were born in Bethlehem?” I ask.
“Born and raised here.”
But there’s a faraway look in her eyes that suggests she’s lying or maybe ignorant. Maybe she’s not certain about the born part. Considering she’s a demon, hmm…
“Any chance you were born in Hell?” I ask her.
“There’s no chance in Hell that I’m talking to you about my parents,” she snaps.
“No? Got any daddy issues?”
“What?” she shrieks.
“Just trying to find common ground,” I assure her. “Not prying. Not really. But if your father’s a demon…”
“Was,” she mumbles.
“Ah. Even better.”
She blinks a few times.
“You can’t argue that the world isn’t a better place for his being dead, right?” I ask.
“You do realize that you’re saying that demons make the world a worse place, right?”
“Well, that’s the point of…” I hush up as I realize she’s been doing the exact opposite. “You’re a terrible demon.”
“Only half,” she reminds me.
“Yeah, yeah, but if you’re part human…”
“You said you were trying to find common ground,” she says in a blatantly obvious attempt to divert attention away from her other half.
“Yeah…”
“So you have daddy issues too.”
“Yes.”
“Who is your father?” Clarissa asks.
“Who’s your daddy?” I ask, jerking my chin toward her left hand and her sapphire ring.
“You don’t need to know
anything about me,” Clarissa says. “You need to go.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You…” Clarissa shakes her head. “I don’t… Are you… Lucifer knows you. How well exactly?”
I say nothing.
“He’s your father?” she shrills.
“Maybe.”
“You need to go and now,” she demands. “You, your brother, any other siblings you two have, your mothers, all of you are so not welcome here, do you understand?”
“I’m not leaving until I figure out what the other half of you is because you aren’t… You aren’t half human. You’re…” I can sense that she’s something else paranormal, but I’m not sure what she is.
“I’m part angel,” she admits.
“An angel and a demon?” I blink a few times. “That’s… That doesn’t happen every day.”
“Not at all, no, but…” She narrows her eyes at me. “You know what? You aren’t one hundred percent demon yourself.”
I roll my eyes.
“Actually, I think you might have some angel in you too.”
Fury laces through me. I’ve never been this furious before in my entire life, not even when Logan asked if I thought for sure that my father is Lucifer.
“You have no idea who or what I am,” I hiss. “Are you allowed in Bethlehem because of your angel side? Because I can’t come forward. See?”
I’m so furious that I take off at a run toward her. Even though I know I’m going to slam against the barrier, I don’t slow down, and the barrier slams into me like an invisible brick wall.
“See?” I repeat, wiping my mouth even though I’m not bleeding from the collision. “I can’t get through.”
Clarissa exhales loudly through her nose. “I didn’t think you could get through, but… You have Lucifer’s blood in you. If you didn’t…”
“Then maybe I could because you think I have a bit of angel in me? Come on. Yes, Lucifer’s a fallen angel, but there’s no way that even he could have convinced an angel to be with him.”
“I’m not saying a large part of you is angel,” Clarissa protests. “Just a tiny part.”
“Lucifer can con most anyone, but an angel wouldn’t be willing to be with him.”
“I’m not saying Lucifer was with an angel,” Clarissa says. “Listen to me. Your mom wasn’t an angel, but maybe her mother had been, her grandmother, a great-grandfather, who knows? But you have an angel somewhere on your family tree. I’m willing to bet.”
Daughter of Flames: A Mayhem of Magic World Story (A Girl and Her Hellhounds Book 1) Page 10
