by Jenna Black
When I thought of the oubliette, a hint of anger stirred in my center, fighting its way up through the grief, then taking hold and growing. I seized it with the desperation of a drowning woman. Anger is so much easier, so much more comfortable for me than grief. I wanted to get good and pissed, so that at least for a few minutes, I wouldn’t have to feel the pain.
“I will never forgive him for doing that to me,” I declared, and was more thankful than I could say that Lugh didn’t interject any commentary in my brain.
Andy met my eyes, his expression both grave and guarded. “He was doing what he thought was best.”
Outrage swelled in my chest. “Don’t you dare defend him! You’re supposed to be on my side.”
A faint smile curled his lips. “I am on your side. I’m just trying to point out—”
“No! I don’t care why he did it. I don’t care if it’s some kind of abstract ‘right thing.’ He used me, just like any other demon uses and abuses its host. He pretends he’s better than the rest of them, that he cares about human rights, and it’s all bullshit!” I heard my voice rising and forced myself to quiet down for the sake of the neighbors. “I used to think he was different. I was wrong.”
Andy shook his head. “Lugh is different. He’s one of the good guys, and I think you know it, even if you’re angry with him.”
Now I was beginning to be as pissed at Andy as I was at Lugh. “Last time I talked about Lugh, you were warning me to be careful of him and telling me he was just like all the rest. What’s gotten into you?”
He shrugged. “I just have a little more perspective now.” He fixed me with a pointed stare. “If I offered to take Lugh from you, would you do it?”
The question sucked all the air out of my lungs, and it took a moment for me to find my voice. “Are you offering?”
“Let’s say I am. Would you give him to me?”
My head felt about two sizes too big, and I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Was he offering to take Lugh, or wasn’t he?
Andy smiled. “If you hated him as much as you claim, that wouldn’t be a hard question.”
I grunted. “I’m just trying to figure out if you mean it or not.”
He rolled his eyes. “You are such a hard case, Morgan.” He reached out and grabbed my hand. “Yes, I mean it. Will you give him to me?”
Lugh had to be in control to transfer to a different host, but all I’d have to do is take a little nap and Lugh could surface and move out of my life. “He might not leave me even if I tried to give him to you,” I said.
“Are you fooling yourself? Because you’re not fooling me. Will you give him to me?”
I swallowed hard. Andy had always wanted to be a hero. That’s why he’d chosen to be a demon host in the first place. After his experiences with Raphael, he’d seemed to have soured on the idea, but perhaps the desire was too deeply ingrained in him to disappear entirely. If he was determined to be a hero, he’d be a hell of a lot safer with a demon to protect his fragile human body.
And hell, after living with Raphael for ten years, living with Lugh would be a piece of cake. Yeah, I was mad at Lugh, but I had to admit that between him and Raphael, he was very much the lesser of two evils. I could let Andy be the hero he’d always wanted to be, and I could let my life return to a semblance of normalcy. Had it been only a week ago that Andy had awakened from his catatonia and I had dreamed of doing just that?
It was on the tip of my tongue to agree, to take the unbearably heavy burden on my shoulders and shrug it off onto someone else.
But as Lugh had reminded me more than once, there was so much more at stake than just my own life. Lugh might find it inconvenient that he couldn’t control me as he could any other human host, but there were advantages to our partnership. As long as I was his host, no one would ever be able to find him, because no one can tell I’m possessed. That wouldn’t be the case with Andy. I wasn’t only Lugh’s host, I was his refuge as well.
I shook my head at myself. Since Raphael had decided covering his ass was more important than saving his brother’s life, that line of reasoning no longer worked. For all I knew, everyone in the Demon Realm now knew exactly who was hosting Lugh.
I imagined what my life would be like if I gave him up—assuming said life didn’t get cut really, really short when the rebel demons burned me alive on the assumption that I still had him. I could go back to being nothing more than a simple exorcist. I could send predatory demons to the Demon Realm, where they could find their way back to the Mortal Plain at a moment’s notice.
Was that really meant to be the sum total of my contribution to the human race? And how could I possibly find any hint of satisfaction in my futile endeavor, when I’d always know I’d taken the coward’s way out and shoved my big brother into the line of fire in my place?
I let out a deep breath as something settled inside me and I felt almost calm for the first time in forever. “No,” I said softly. “No, I wouldn’t give him to you. He’s my cross to bear now, so to speak.”
Andy nodded sagely and let go of my hand. Luckily for both of us, he refrained from saying “I told you so.”
It was time—past time, really—for me to go home. But something about the expression on Andy’s face made me hesitate.
“What is it?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know.
He ran a hand through his hair, scrubbing at his scalp and looking remarkably uncomfortable. “I have something I need to tell you, and you’re not going to like it. I was going to wait until a better time, but it occurs to me that the longer I put it off, the more you’re not going to like it.”
I groaned. Nope, definitely not something I wanted to hear. But of course, now that he’d dangled that little delicacy in front of my nose, I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it until I’d gotten the full story.
“Spill it,” I said.
He stood up and moved away from me as if in fear of physical violence. He even made sure there was a solid, bulky chair between us. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to hear what he had to say over the alarm bells that were blaring in my head. I sat up straighter and waited for him to drop his bombshell.
Finally, he sighed and squared his shoulders like he was going into battle. “I didn’t betray you,” he said, and I frowned at the words.
“I never said you did.”
He met my eyes steadily. “It appears my cover is blown,” he continued. “They lied to me about Der Jäger. I swear to God I thought he was imprisoned.”
My jaw dropped, and I wished like hell I could come up with another way to explain the words that were coming out of Andy’s mouth. “Raphael?” I gasped.
His gaze dropped to the floor and he gave a quick, jerky nod. “I knew you’d think I betrayed you. So I returned to a host I knew you wouldn’t be willing to destroy.”
Tears blurred my vision yet again. I should have been furious, but I was just too beaten down, so I sat there shaking my head and crying, unable to encompass the idea that I’d lost both my father and my brother in the span of just a few hours.
“I swear to you it will be different this time,” Raphael said. “I will take very good care of Andrew. I am capable of it, despite what you think.”
“You tried to breed a race of empty vessels so you wouldn’t have to be inconvenienced by dealing with host personalities. You don’t give a damn about human beings. Never have, never will.”
He seemed to think he was safe from physical violence, for he moved out from behind the chair and took a seat. “I wanted empty vessels so I could walk the Mortal Plain without having to deal with a fragile human psyche in the process. Taking care of one’s host is hard work. Unrelenting hard work, and that’s not why I like being here.”
“Adam seems to think it’s worth the effort!”
Raphael shrugged. “I’m not Adam. As Lugh has kindly pointed out any number of times during my life, I am a selfish bastard.” He didn’t look particularly tor
n up about the fact, although I couldn’t help seeing the bitterness in his expression. “I wanted to enjoy the pleasures of life on the Mortal Plain without the responsibilities.”
“And so you headed up a project to treat people like prize breeding stock, mucking with their genes and destroying the rejects.”
“If the project had worked, demons would be able to walk the Mortal Plain without taking sentient hosts. People like Andrew would never have to give up their identities for us again.”
I snorted. “You expect me to believe your motives were pure? Not that it would matter if they were. Good intentions can only excuse so much.”
Raphael closed his eyes. “It would be nice if just once you or Lugh could cut me some slack. Maybe I’m not the nicest guy in the world, but I’ve risked—and now lost—everything to keep you safe. And do you know how my dear brother will reward me for my efforts if I ever manage to put him back on the throne? He will no doubt imprison me the moment I set foot in the Demon Realm again.
“But no matter how much the two of you may despise me, I am loyal. I will do as much as you let me to help you both, even when I know it’s not in my own best interests. And I will protect Andrew to the best of my ability—not for his sake, because as you can obviously tell we don’t much like each other, but for Lugh’s.”
“I could exorcize you right now,” I said, though without my Taser handy I somehow doubted I could convince him to hold still for it.
“No, you couldn’t,” he replied calmly. “As I suspect Lugh told you the last time Andrew was my host, as a royal, I’m too powerful for you to cast out. Lugh might be able to do it, but you’d have to let him take control first.”
I was too exhausted and traumatized to muster the kind of reply that would have felt morally satisfying. “Words can’t describe how much I loathe you,” I said instead, my voice flat and dull.
If I didn’t know better, I would have said a hint of hurt flashed across his face before he schooled his expression.
“Go home, Morgan. Get some rest. And try to forgive Lugh for what he did. I’ll be the first one to admit he has his faults, but he always does what he thinks is right, no matter how much it costs him. Or anyone else, for that matter.”
I couldn’t think of a good parting shot, so I just gave him one last scathing look before I got the hell out of there.
I hate demons. Every last one of them.
Then why, you might ask, did I choose to keep hosting Lugh when I thought I had a chance to get rid of him?
Beats the hell out of me.
EPILOGUE
My mom came out of the woodwork for my father’s funeral. I knew she was going to be there, though I hadn’t spoken to her since the day Dad had kicked me out of the house.
Raphael was there, of course, playing the part of Andrew, but I refused to talk to him or even look at him. We sat together in the family waiting area in the funeral parlor, the silence between us dense and oppressive. It’s saying something about the strain between us that my mother’s arrival actually broke up the tension some.
I was shocked when I first caught sight of her. Mrs. Perfect’s face was devoid of makeup, so there was no disguising the dark circles under her eyes, and her hair lay flat against her head, no evidence of having encountered a curling iron and a bottle of hairspray. Her simple black dress made her skin look almost paper white, except for the mottled color of her face. When she saw me, her eyes welled with tears, and she crossed the short distance between us and gathered me into a fierce hug.
Not knowing what else to do, I returned the embrace awkwardly. My own eyes were dry, although that didn’t mean I wasn’t grieving inside. For the loss of my father, for the loss of my brother, for the troubles that had arisen once again between myself and Brian. So far, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to talk to him. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what he’d done or why he’d done it. I could even admit to myself that it had been a noble gesture, doing something that was anathema to him to save me from myself. But I wasn’t sure I could forgive him.
Mom pushed away from me and blotted her tears with an already sodden tissue. Guilt twisted in my gut as I looked into her grief-stricken eyes. Of course, she had no idea the role I’d played in her husband’s death, and though I’d always found my father cold, there was no doubt in my mind that my mom had loved him. My throat tightened, and no words would come.
Raphael stood, drawing Mom’s attention, then dutifully hugged her, eyes fixed on me the entire time. When he let go, Mom excused herself, drawing me with her to the far side of the room. Raphael took the hint and sat back down as far away from us as possible.
She visibly swallowed hard, then firmed her chin and met my eyes. “Mr. Cooper came to see your father and me the day of the accident,” she said quietly, and the tears sprang back to life. She blinked them away. “He told us what happened to you at The Healing Circle. I want you to know neither your father nor I had any idea what they were planning to do to you. We never would have allowed them to take you if we had known they were going to hurt you.”
I couldn’t help a derisive snort. “You knew they were going to give me to the demons.” I lowered my voice, since the engineer of my childhood trauma was sitting so close. “You drugged me and took me to the hospital so I could be mind-raped.”
Her face paled and her chin quivered. “It was for the greater good,” she whispered, but I saw the doubt that swam behind her eyes. She reached out to touch my face, and for some reason I let her do it. “Your father and I did what we thought was right. Maybe in hindsight I think we were wrong, but I can’t change the past. What could we have done differently, when we believed with all our hearts that sacrificing our daughter was the right thing to do?” She shook her head. “How could we have faced ourselves if we had selfishly done as we preferred when we believed it was wrong?”
I remembered the terrible moment when I’d realized that to protect myself, to protect Lugh, I would have to kill my father. I’d faced the same kind of decision my parents had faced: do what I was convinced was right, or do what I’d prefer. I’d turned away from the “right” choice. If Brian hadn’t tackled me, Der Jäger could even now be back in the Demon Realm, telling Dougal and all his minions exactly where Lugh was. Very possibly, that would have led to Lugh’s death and the subjugation of the human race to the demons. How could I be so sure that my decision had been the correct one?
It was the most slippery of moral slopes, and nothing I could deal with in the midst of this maelstrom of grief. I couldn’t force myself to speak words of forgiveness, but neither could I wholeheartedly condemn her.
The world is rarely painted in black and white, Lugh’s voice whispered in my mind, reminding me to shore up my mental defenses. So far, it seemed that I could block his voice out with a concerted effort, but how long before he found a way around that obstacle as well?
“Are you officially coming out of hiding?” I asked my mom.
She looked momentarily taken aback by the change of subject, but she recovered quickly. “Yes. We—I’m in the process of moving back into the house.” The tears returned, and before I knew what I was going to do, I had stepped forward and hugged her.
I could count on one hand the number of times I’d voluntarily hugged my mom as an adult. I had no idea where the impulse had come from, though I hoped it had been my own idea, not Lugh’s. Inside, I shuddered. When Raphael had pretended to offer to take Lugh from me, I’d decided to keep him. But now I wondered if I’d been suffering from temporary insanity. It seemed like every day, he intruded further into my life, and I had no idea where it would all end.
The funeral director stepped into the room and quietly informed us that it was time for the service to begin. Turning away from me, my mom snatched another handful of tissues from the box beside the couch, then raised her chin like a soldier going into battle. Raphael stepped up beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, taking comfort from the man she thoug
ht was her son.
Choking on an upswelling of rage, I watched them walk out into the chapel together. The fate of the world might very well rest on my shoulders, but at the moment, figuring out a way to kick Raphael out of Andy’s body was my top priority. And if it turned out he was lying to me, abusing my brother like he had before, then I would find a way to make him pay.
Seizing my anger, nurturing it to drown out the lingering echoes of grief, I followed my remaining family out into the chapel.
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