by Liz Meldon
Amidst the light, images flashed before her eyes, too quick to make much sense of, but clear enough that she surmised they were memories.
And then darkness. The light vanished, as did the images, and suddenly she was staggering backward, with Severus there to catch her. He cradled her close this time, both arms wrapped around her tightly, possessively, dragging her away from Asmodeus as she tried to gather her bearings.
“The Nephilim speaks the truth,” Asmodeus announced, the faintest glimmer of amusement twinkling in those unfeeling greys. “And the Lutum?”
It was only then she noticed that Diriel had stopped screaming. He sat on the ground, broken, cowering with his hands over his head as he shuddered. Moira had stopped shaking. In fact, she felt oddly calm about the whole thing. Her gaze darted to Asmodeus. Not an angel, but maybe…a fallen angel?
“He serves an angel by the name of Aeneas,” Berith announced. Like Asmodeus’s, the creature’s white hair curtained his sharp, angular features, his skin translucent and waxy. “Aeneas controls their city’s security office. He serves Heaven, and this traitor serves Aeneas.”
“Aeneas,” Asmodeus said, chuckling, showing humor for the first time since he’d arrived. “Naughty boy, consorting with humans.”
Moira inhaled sharply, no longer calm, as a prickling, deep-seated anxiety skittered across her body. Aeneas. Her dad’s name was Aeneas.
Aeneas. Kind of sounds like…
Onions.
Her knees buckled, and Severus’s grasp tightened, holding her up, her back to his chest—but she couldn’t feel him. Moira couldn’t feel anything. Not the sweat dribbling down her face. Not the uncomfortable tightness of her blood-soaked clothes as she broiled in Hell’s heat. Not her lingering aches from battling hellhounds.
She just heard her mom’s voice. She saw the intensive care unit, all the wires connected to her, the beep, beep, beep of the heart rate monitor.
Twenty-two and onions. Twenty-two everything would change.
“No onions, honey.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Onions…bad.”
“Okay, Mom. Sure.”
“Onions will kill you.”
“Mom, I really don’t like onions that much. You don’t have to worry about it. I pick them out of all your salads, remember?”
Holding her mom’s hand. Fighting back tears. Smiling when Moira just wanted to die inside. Nodding. Laughing. Yes, Mom, I’m sure twenty-two is a big year for everybody. Are you sure you don’t mean twenty-one? No, Mom, no onions. Promise.
She’d said whatever she needed to at the time to soothe her mom—her best friend—waiting on death’s door.
She was trying to say Aeneas.
All the pain medication, all the other medication for whatever the doctor’s theory of the day had dictated—she hadn’t been able to speak well, not at the end. But Moira thought she had been able to understand. She had smiled and nodded, thinking she knew what the woman was saying because this was her mother. She would always understand.
Oh my god.
“For your crimes of serving the enemy and inciting bloodshed without just cause, Diriel Lutum,” Asmodeus crooned, his serpentine voice cutting through her jumbled thoughts, her panicked musings. He was much closer now, hovering over a cowering, whimpering Diriel—and he seemed to delight in it, the sentencing. “You are hereby banished from Hell for one full Earth-bound century. You will be marked, unable to cross through a hell-gate, nor will you be permitted to reside in a city with a hell-gate.”
“Mercy,” Diriel wailed, “please, sire! Mercy!”
“Consider this mercy,” Asmodeus said sharply. He then looked to Moira, his gaze lazily sliding across her to Severus, then to a silent Malachi. “I trust you’ve found the answers you needed.”
“Yes, sire,” Severus insisted. Asmodeus gestured toward the carriage.
“Then consider yourselves free to go.”
Before she knew it, Malachi had grabbed Severus’s arm, and Severus all but lifted her up as they collectively sprinted across the bloody battlefield straight for the carriage—a single entity with six legs, always touching, clinging to one another. As soon as the door slammed shut behind them, the skeletal horses spirited them away.
In the distance, Diriel’s forlorn screams echoed. The horses whinnied. And Moira buried her face in Severus’s chest, sobbing.
Chapter Ten
Severus tapped his knuckles on the doorframe, battle-weary and more drained from the day than he cared to admit. “You rang, brother?”
He wasn’t sure why his brother had summoned him to their very empty entertaining hall, but here he was, being a good sport. He hadn’t exactly been prompt; Malachi had called him through the manor’s speaker system some time ago, but Severus hadn’t come trotting along like an obedient dog until he was sure Moira was all right on her own.
“Hmm, yes.” Malachi beckoned him in with a crooked finger, studying one of the dozens of papers spread across what had once been an elegant dining table. Now, all the chairs had been swept aside and stacked against the walls. Any simpleton would have thrown a sheet over them to protect them from the dust, but his brother wasn’t exactly adept at housework.
None of them were, to be fair. Alaric and Severus only begrudgingly team-cleaned their home every other month or so; Moira had taken over much of the cleaning after she had moved in, despite their constant insistence that it wasn’t necessary. She had told him that it kept her busy while he and Alaric were out of the house all day, but he still didn’t like the idea of her tidying up after them all the time. She wasn’t a servant. Alaric had wanted to hire a maid service, but Verrier put his foot down; the fewer people who had access to the building, the better.
“What’s all this?” Severus asked, his shoes clicking curtly along the tile as he crossed to the table. Contracts of some sort, written in a very old Latin script. He reached for the nearest page, only to stop when Malachi cleared his throat.
“How is she?”
“Fine.” When prompted by his brother’s arched brow, Severus quickly added, “Better. Today shook her, as I thought it would. We shouldn’t have brought her.”
Malachi snorted. “Like you have the resolve to leave her behind. She wouldn’t let you…not when you’re so tightly wound around her little finger.”
A retort brewed on the tip of his tongue, but Severus swallowed his annoyance instead. After all, Malachi had been helpful today. He had taken a near disemboweling for the cause, been chowed on by Diriel’s hellhounds, and protected Moira once she’d sprung him free. Now, clad in his usual form-fitting attire, his dress shirt’s sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his wild golden hair pinned back, he looked almost presentable. Hours ago, he’d been a bloodstained mess.
But Severus had been too. Covered in his blood, the blood of Diriel’s vassals—so much blood. Under his nails, in his ears, caked up his nostrils. Every injury he’d sustained had healed, but he still couldn’t forgive himself for not getting to her. Moira had charged into the fray to defend his brother, and there had been too many fucking obstacles in the way for Severus to reach her. He’d be kicking himself for years to come; it was by some miracle that Asmodeus and his boys had shown up when they had. Given more time, Diriel’s vassals might have turned their sights on her.
Asmodeus. Trailing his finger along the dusty table, Severus shuddered at the memory. The former angel was one of the six hundred and sixty-six who’d fallen alongside Lucifer. Like Verrier, they had been cast to Hell for disobeying the laws of Heaven, and here they had ruled ever since. Corrupted Ones. Demons yet not, infected, poisoned, by the spirit of Hell: or so the stories went. Asmodeus and his band of merry men made up the Exsequores—the enforcers. They spent their time corralling and punishing miscreant demons. Rumor had it they delighted in every sentence passed, and from the way the creatures had pounced on Diriel as the carriage pulled away, Severus was inclined to believe it.
Things could have taken a very,
very, very bad turn today.
He shouldn’t have brought Moira.
But Malachi was right, the bastard. Severus was hopelessly wound around her little finger, and he was starting to wonder if it clouded his judgement. He loved her, sure, but in the end, what would that love cost him?
“Where is she?” His brother’s voice cut into his musings, silencing what could have been a very long, very arduous spiral into regret and self-doubt.
“My room,” Severus told him, turning his attention back to the papers. “I brought her something to eat. She’s settled now.”
She had cried herself raw on the carriage ride back, chilling both demons to the bone with her ethereal anguish, only to start up again once they were alone. The battle. The blood. The hellhounds. Diriel. Her father’s name. As a child of Hell, nothing beyond their run-in with the enforcers rattled Severus. But for Moira—it was all too much.
He should have left her behind.
While he had wanted to ask for her thoughts on Aeneas, he had decided to give her time to process the news herself first. He tended to her feelings, held her while she cried and kissed her when she stopped. Severus had insisted she think on everything. Verrier had named Aeneas among the angel sketches Severus had made when all this first started. Moira had seen his face there. She had read the name before; if he recalled correctly, she thought it sounded rather archaic. It likely played across her mind now, a memory tainted by all that the fucker had done to her.
Severus had kept his cool in front of her thus far, but the fact that Aeneas was head of the Seraphim Securities branch in Farrow’s Hollow troubled him. He ran the show. Leader of his garrison: all the other angels would look to him for guidance. One word and the full might of Heaven could rain down upon Severus—and Moira.
They needed to play their cards carefully when they returned to Earth. Very, very carefully. It was a wonder Aeneas hadn’t smote them both already.
“Well, good,” Malachi crooned, maintaining an unnerving amount of eye contact as he swept all the papers up into a single neat stack. “If she’s all tucked away with a good meal, then I can assume I’ll have your full attention?”
He let out a bristly exhale. “Don’t be a fuck, Malachi.”
His brother grinned, and for a few moments, Severus was tempted to grin back. The flicker of his lips, the sudden humor in his heart—was this what it felt like to bond with one’s sibling? Unimpressed with himself, Severus forced his lips into a thin line, then nodded to the pile. “What’s this?”
“This is a contract signing over the property ownership to Cordelia in my absence, who will then entrust it to Auntie Circe when she needs to go topside.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Wait a moment. Your absence?”
“From Hell,” Malachi said frankly, his fingertips drumming the edge of the marble table. “I’ll be returning to Earth with you, and I can’t go unless we sign the deed over to Cordelia…together. I’m sure there are countless rats waiting to descend upon such a prime piece of real estate. It should stay in the family.”
Stay in the family? Severus finally allowed himself to grin. “How selfless of you. Tell me, brother, why is it that you want to go to Earth? Burned all your bridges here?”
“You’re about to square up against an angel,” Malachi remarked, lifting his chin haughtily. “An angel who is leading a squadron of other angels. You’ll need my help.”
Severus couldn’t help himself: he snorted. Loudly. Repeatedly. He held a hand over his mouth to contain it, but he couldn’t stop. Malachi wished to go topside so he could help? Never in his very long life had Severus known him to be quite so selfless. There had to be an ulterior motive in play.
“D’you think I’m a fool, Malachi?” he asked once he’d settled. His brother had watched the whole display in silence, exasperation dripping from every pore. Waiting, Severus crossed his arms and chuckled, his laughter more subdued this time. “Tell me the real reason, and perhaps I’ll consider lending my signature.”
“Don’t be petty, brother, it doesn’t suit you.”
“And, what, altruism suits you?” he fired back, the laughter dead and buried now. “Be serious with me.”
“I was being serious with you,” Malachi growled, stalking around the corner of the table, going toe-to-toe with an unflinching Severus.
“When?”
“When I said I wanted to be a better brother,” Malachi hissed, his eye twitching. “I tortured you, Severus. I know it now. I’ve had a fucking century in this place by myself to reflect on our history, and I…I want it to be better. You and I… We’re all that’s left. You’re my family—”
“I haven’t had a family for centuries, and we both know it.”
“Save the dramatics—”
“I will not—”
“You are my brother,” Malachi snarled. “You’re the only one I’ve got. I’ll not grovel at your feet and beg forgiveness. I’ll not ply you with sweet words and trinkets, hoping to change the past. We are alone, you and I, and I wish for us to be allies. I wish for us to be better than they were, because I know for a fact that we are.”
“An incubus, better than any old run-of-the-mill demon?” His words trembled as he spoke them, and Severus hated himself for it. “Blasphemy, brother, utter blasphemy—”
“Stop,” Malachi stabbed the dead center of Severus’s chest with a thick finger, the claw biting through his shirt, “being petty. I am sorry for my past behavior. Have I not proven myself willing to do the work? I saved your lover’s life today—”
“After she saved yours,” Severus spat, taking a much-needed step back, his heart racing. “You’ve never been one to sit in another’s debt, Malachi.”
“She’s a good fighter,” his brother remarked. “Strong. Determined. Brave. She was terrified, yet she thrust herself in harm’s way for me. Mother would approve.”
“Enough of this—”
“Let me help you help her.” Malachi prowled after him, hands clasped behind his back now and head ducked down so they were at eye level. “You face an angel, brother. You’ll need all the help you can get. If I’m more hindrance than help, we’ll go our separate ways, but you must—”
He shook his head, scowling. “I must do nothing.”
“We are brothers, Severus. You must let me try.”
The chaos demon paused, and only then did Severus feel the wall pressed up against his back. He pushed off it, stalking around his brother—but only back to the table, not out the door. If Malachi was so desperate to leave Hell without losing the family estate, he must have his own game afoot. The idea of him helping Severus—of lending a hand in his hour of need against a real foe—was laughable.
But what did it matter if Malachi abandoned him the second they were through the hell-gate? What was it to him? If anything, it would prove Severus right, and it would put Malachi in his debt—because he couldn’t leave without Severus’s signature, his full name scrawled in blood across dozens of those parchment papers.
“Fine,” he muttered, swiping a hand over his hair—forgetting, briefly, about the horns. “I’ll sign it, and then your actions will define us, Malachi. Do you understand me? It will come down to you.”
Malachi dipped into an unnecessary little half bow. “Naturally.”
Fucker, I don’t believe you for a second. “Well, summon Cordelia, I suppose. I want to get Moira back where she belongs as soon as possible.”
“No need, brother, she’s already here.” Malachi crossed the room with an annoyingly confident strut, forever the victor. “Let herself in, too, the minx.”
Severus pinched the bridge of his nose; of course Malachi already had Cordelia waiting in the wings. Naturally, his brother was just that arrogant—because Severus would yield and Malachi would get his way, as per usual.
He glared up sharply when Malachi clapped him on the shoulder in passing. With a heavy sigh, he swallowed his snarl and joined his brother at the table, skimming the first page of the contr
act with only mild interest. He’d made it to the small print at the bottom when the click-clacking of heels distracted him.
“Hello, boys,” drawled that raspy jazz-singer voice, made harder and smokier in Hell. In waltzed Cordelia, dressed to the nines in her summer attire—black lace from head to toe, including the gloves.
“Thank you for coming, Cordie.”
“You’re lucky I adore you, Mal. I don’t miss the midsummer roast for just anyone.”
Ahh yes, the midsummer roast—demons torching human souls in Pandemonium’s ceremonial town square. What a sacrifice his cousin had made to be with them today.
After she greeted Malachi with a surprisingly gracious hug, Cordelia sashayed around him and made a beeline for Severus. Alaric would have found her wildly fascinating, all her magic-induced scarring on full display. There was hardly a sliver of untouched skin left on her face, but even now, Cordelia was beautiful. She had always been beautiful, scarred or not.
“Hello, cuzzy,” she greeted, kissing his cheek when he offered it. Neither went in for the hug, but she patted his chest affectionately instead, leaning in with a smug grin. “Glad to see you looking more yourself.”
“Don’t get used to it,” he told her, finding his mood suddenly improved at the sight of Cordelia as it never had before. In some strange way, she reminded him of Farrow’s Hollow—and the fact that he was headed back there shortly. “We go topside as soon as we’re all sorted out here.”
“So I’ve heard,” she said lightly, shooting a sidelong glance Malachi’s way as he strolled toward them. “And I’m left with this pile of dust and marble in the meantime. How lady fortune smiles upon me.”
“Consider it a temporary measure,” Malachi said as he settled himself between them, an arm thrown over each of their shoulders. Severus stiffened at the touch, but Cordelia snuggled up next to him like a purring cat. Honestly. Where had the dignity in this family gone? Malachi gave them both a squeeze, then marched them over to the stack of papers. “Now that we’re all present, let’s get signing. The notary will be arriving shortly.”
