To Hell and Back (Fosswell Chronicles) (Devilblood Book 1)

by Raquel Lyon

  “Then you’ll be pleased to hear that there has,” I said to diffuse the situation, “…maybe. That boy over there mentioned a woman. She killed his father, and he thought she’d sent us to do the same to him. It could be a lead.”

  “A woman?”

  “Yes. He called her a witch.”

  “Then I doubt her to be the person we seek. None of our evidence has indicated magical combat.”

  “Well, he could have been using the term as an insult, I suppose.”

  “Hmm… Did he say when this alleged murder occurred?”

  “No, but Charlotte knows. She was there.”

  Yanis rounded on her. “You were a witness?”

  “No. The victim was already dead when I arrived. All I saw was a vamp trying to wipe out the rest of them.”

  “I see. And when was this?”

  “A couple of days ago.”

  “Were there any survivors?”

  “Yes. Him over there, for one.” She pointed to Pus Face.

  “Excellent. Then we are not too late to discover if this turn of events holds any substance.”

  Yanis clicked his fingers to summon Travers over, and the cold chill of his form drifted past the back of my neck as he whispered a quip about handcuffs and bedroom antics. I shot him a look to say leave it out, but he added a furtive wink to his ribbing as he listened to his boss’s instructions.

  “Return to headquarters and fetch the Pryer,” Yanis said to Travers, then addressed his other colleagues. “Men, round this lot up and prepare the bodies for examination.”

  “What are you going to do with them?” I asked. “They’re dead. It’s a bit late to be asking them questions.”

  Yanis cocked a brow as if amused by my ignorance. “Do you not know anything, boy? Whilst we may not be able to interrogate them directly, it is possible to extract their most recent memories.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. But the process takes time. You two look as though you could do with a rest. Return to the safe house and await our arrival. We will be along when the Pryer has done his work.”

  I nodded and nudged Charlotte’s arm. “Good idea. After you.” I smiled sweetly, but her reciprocal smile changed to a frown when I added, “I don’t trust you, either, so I’d rather you stayed up front where I can see you.”

  *****

  The journey back to the dark side was right up there with some of my more awkward experiences. I was convinced Charlotte glanced over her shoulder every few steps just to give me the evil eye, or to make sure that I wasn’t checking out her ass. It was pure luck that she didn’t catch me doing it, as I totally was. Not that I meant to, but part of me had missed the sway of her hips, and it was the most interesting thing to look at in the monotone landscape.

  As we reached the doorway and a draught of freezing air hit us, she finally spoke. “Are you going to finish that conversation?”

  “What conversation was that?”

  “You know damn well what conversation. The one where you were going to tell me how I got this.” She shoved her sleeve up roughly, exposing her scar. “Before we were rudely interrupted.”

  Crap. I was hoping she’d forgotten about that.

  “We’ll talk when I know you weren’t lying about Rust and I’ve got a fucking beer in my hand,” I said, stepping through the doorway.

  She followed like a limpet at my side. “I want to know now.”

  “Well, I don’t feel like talking now. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and one eye on the sky. I’ve had enough trouble for one day.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she sucked in a frustrated sigh, and then stomped over to the motorbike. She snatched at the handlebars to lift the machine, then let it fall just as sharply. “Fuck it!” She kicked the seat.

  “What is it?”

  “The gear lever’s shot.”

  “I guess you’re walking, then. Unless you’re willing to change your opinion of me and accept my help.” She treated me to a decidedly unfriendly sideways glance. “Should only take you… how long?” I asked, stifling a laugh. I might have my mojo back, but even human-to-human I would have held the upper hand when it came to strength and speed, and I had no intention of being out in the open any longer than necessary. “If you’re lucky, there might be a beer left by the time you get back.”

  She planted her hands firmly on her hips. “Fine. You win.”

  With a small amount of self-satisfaction, I stepped over and moved her hands to place them around my neck. For the briefest of moments, time stopped and the past flashed before my eyes as they locked with hers. There was a glimmer of something behind them. What was it? Curiosity? Recollection? It damn well didn’t look like the animosity she emanated on the outside. Her gaze dropped to my mouth, and her fingers inched up through my hair. What was she playing at? Surely she didn’t think she could seduce me into talking? Perhaps she just needed a good kissing to work off her surplus fight energy, like in the old days. She moistened her lips, and my own parted involuntarily, eager to refresh their memories.

  Enough!

  I came to my senses and swept her into my arms to break the moment.

  As I sped through the remaining part of the journey, keeping my eyes firmly focused on the path ahead to avoid trouble, I sensed Charlotte’s stare boring into my cheek while I argued with myself over how much information to divulge to her. I still hadn’t quite decided by the time we burst through the treeline and I pulled up at the sight of the cabin.

  “What the fuck, Char? You didn’t even close the door.”

  “Yes, I did,” she said as I set her down. “Locked it, too.” She twisted towards the light flashing through the doorway. “Oh, shit.” She pulled a seven-inch blade from inside her jacket.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked with scrunched brows.

  “From Mr Du Mont. Shh.”

  “I didn’t see him give it to you.” It was a good thing I wasn’t still cuffed, or I might have been paranoid. “What else are you hiding from me?”

  “Like you can talk about hiding shit,” she whispered. “Now, keep it down; someone might still be in there.”

  With eyes and ears honed for signs of an intruder, I stayed one step behind Charlotte as we crept closer to the cabin, then flattened our backs against the wall outside. Charlotte nodded to me, and I nodded back, happy for her to take the lead and confident she had it covered if I needed time to transform. She bent her head around the opening and then entered, weapon at the ready. I’d only taken two steps to follow before she stopped suddenly and lowered the knife.

  The cabin was empty… too empty.

  “Rust!” I shouted. “Here, boy. Rust!”

  A movement caught the corner of my eye, and Rust’s sheepish face appeared from behind the sofa. That would be right. The big wimp had probably hightailed it behind there the moment he smelled trouble, but I didn’t care. Reassured of his safety, I was just happy to see a friendly face. I bent to greet him, and he almost licked away my smile as I noted the chewed lid of the upturned box on the rug that indicated the stale sandwich hadn’t survived our absence.

  “Someone has a big chip on their shoulder about you,” Charlotte said. “I want to know who, and I want to know why.”

  “Join the club,” I said, wiping dog slobber from my chin as I straightened up and turned to her.

  She’d squatted to examine a patch of dusty remains on the floor, but I didn’t need a closer look to know what they were. I’d left many a similar patch in my wake during my gleaning years. It was the evidence marring the tabletop that concerned me more. I walked over and stared down at my name carved into the rough wood as Charlotte’s head appeared over my shoulder.

  “You’d better start talking,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty

  I stayed silent until a soft cushion was caressing my aching back muscles and my throat had been lubricated by more than one slug of smooth liquid.

  Tension hung in the air as Charlotte played at being
patient, tolerating my procrastination while I emptied one bottle and reached for another from the handful I’d fetched from the crate.

  Sitting at an angle with an arm wrapped over the back of the sofa and one leg bent across the upholstery, she struggled to present a calm exterior. Her heavy breathing indicated that, inside, she was anything but calm—more like a coiled spring ready to burst forth in a tangled mess if I didn’t say something soon. The beer in her hand had remained untouched for the last ten minutes.

  I ran my thumb over my bottle’s neck, wishing it held something stronger, and braced myself for her anger.

  “Can you relax and quit staring at me? You’re making me nervous,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said with more than a touch of sarcasm. “Please… tell me what I can do to make you more comfortable… plump your cushion perhaps, soothe your brow, massage your temples?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, and quit with the snarky comments, for once. You never were that good at them anyway.”

  “There you go again, speaking like you know me. I want an explanation, Connor. I’ve waited long enough.”

  I agreed. She had. But I’d much rather rip through a few demons than face trial by irate woman. I’d never been that good at emotional confrontation and was at the back of the queue when they were doling out conversational skills. Still, I couldn’t put it off any longer. It wasn’t as if I’d be laying my heart bare, and I didn’t have to be wholly forthcoming. It was probably for the best that I not disclose the full intricacies of our relationship. She’d never struck me as the possessive type, and I was almost positive our current situation rendered the possibility that she might want a rerun practically non-existent, but I couldn’t risk it. I was a man, after all—a man who hadn’t been getting any recently—and Charlotte had an allure that was very hard to say no to when she switched on her flirt.

  I turned to face her. She had demon goo in her hair and a streak of it across her cheek, but somehow it only added to her appeal, and I couldn’t deny that our recent time together had rejuvenated the bond I felt with her.

  “Look, I wasn’t going to say anything. I thought it better that I didn’t. Even if you’d have believed me, it would only have complicated things that didn’t need complicating. But when I thought we were about to die, I didn’t think it mattered anymore.”

  “Would you stop waffling and get to the point?” she said.

  “We’ve crossed paths before.”

  “I gathered that much when you told me about this.” She held out her wrist. “But I don’t remember.”

  “But you do remember there was a part of your life you don’t remember.” She looked perplexed. “I was part of that.”

  “How convenient.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you could tell me anything about that time, and I wouldn’t know whether you were being truthful or lying your head off.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “I don’t know. Why would you?”

  I preferred it when she was mad at me. Under the cold stab of her stare, it was easier to ignore the affection we’d once shared. “Do you want to know or not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then shut up and listen.” Against my better judgement, I took her hand as I had in the cell, choosing to concentrate on her scar rather than look her in the eye. “You got this in Venice.”

  “Impossible. I’ve never been to Venice.”

  “Yes, you have. You just don’t remember.” Suddenly conscious of her knee touching my thigh and the heat building at the connection, I let go of her hand and forced my gaze upwards. I hated how my body ignored my brain. “We were tracking a biangu demon during the festival, and you’d insisted on dressing up for the occasion. When he raced through all those dark alleys… Well, it was an easy mistake to make, what with you wearing that stupid beaked mask. You were lucky my claw only caught your arm.”

  She fingered the scar. “You attacked me?”

  “By mistake! I wouldn’t harm a mate on purpose.”

  “We were mates?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hate to point out the obvious, Connor, but you’re a werewolf. Your definition of mate and mine are different.”

  “Point taken. Friends, then.”

  “Just friends?”

  “Good ones.”

  “How good?”

  Damn, she was pushy, and skirting around our relationship was harder than I’d anticipated. I needed another beer. “We had each other’s backs.”

  I rose to go outside, leaving her twirling a strand of hair around her finger. When I returned with a fresh bottle, she let it fall.

  “I’m not buying it,” she said. “I don’t do friends; they get in the way of my work.”

  “You made an exception for me.”

  Instead of resuming my seat, I leaned against the edge of the kitchen sink and kept my distance as she studied me with inquisitive eyes.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, aware of the devilish grin seeping across my face. “Maybe you couldn’t resist my charming good looks.”

  “You’re not that irresistible.”

  I admit it dented my ego when her response shot out without hesitation. “You sure about that?”

  Her stare continued long enough for me to wonder, before she averted her gaze. It clouded as she faced the dying embers of the stove and rubbed at her arm.

  “Are you cold?” I asked.

  Without waiting for an answer, I went to add some wood to the grate. Charlotte watched me for a moment and sipped at her beer until I was done.

  “Let’s pretend for one minute that I actually believe you and that you’re not just kidding around for some underhand reason,” she said in a much calmer tone. “If we were such good friends then, why aren’t we now?”

  “There’s the rub. Your memory is gone because of me.”

  *****

  Two more beers disappeared in the time it took for me to explain my hellish role and expand the details and effects of the curse. When it appeared Charlotte’s scepticism remained, I dug into parts of my memory I’d tried to bury and unearthed snippets of information she’d imparted regarding her family, and how she’d become a demon hunter because her parents were killed by one. Coming up with a few details seemed to do the trick, for the most part, until she decided I should have come clean about our friendship from the start.

  “Did you not think I had a right to know?” she asked.

  “Why complicate things? You’re happy with this life you’ve chosen, and you’d forgotten all about me.”

  “And a lot more besides. As for being happy, how do you think it felt for me to find myself standing on a rooftop, staring at the misty outline of Big Ben in the distance when the last thing I remembered was getting angry at a demon with spaghetti arms in Prague?”

  “I never thought—”

  “No. You didn’t. For days, I was under the impression that the bar must have been home to an illegal portal and that somehow I’d fallen through it. Imagine my surprise when I saw the date on a newspaper and realised a whole year had passed me by.” Her mood had blown from hot to cold and back again, like a faulty hairdryer. I couldn’t win.

  “I’m sorry, okay? I wasn’t exactly given a manual on how the curse worked. I presumed you’d remember everything else, just… not me.”

  “Well, you were wrong. Your little plan didn’t work.”

  “It wasn’t a plan. As soon as I realised you hadn’t followed me, I went back to find you. But you’d gone, and I had a remit to fulfil. As much as I enjoyed our working together, my primary goal had always been to be reunited with my family. I couldn’t put that goal at risk by chasing after someone who wouldn’t have had a clue who I was, even if I had managed to find her.”

  The dryer’s dial turned down to low again as Charlotte’s eyes glazed over. “So you understand why I have to do this then, right? I have to do it for him.”
/>   “Him?”

  “For Seth,” she said. “The person behind this stole Seth.”

  Was she talking about my father? Had his body been stolen? I’d just mentioned my family, and he was the only Seth I was familiar with, but as far as I knew, he was still being cared for by the Assembly. And besides, Charlotte didn’t know him. She couldn’t possibly be talking about him, could she?

  “I’m sorry. Who’s Seth?”

  “Clearly, you don’t know everything about me.”

  “I never claimed to. Please. Tell me who you’re referring to.”

  “Seth’s my baby: my son. The same person who has been abducting and killing all those people took him, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Son? She’d never mentioned having a son.

  “Hang on. Rewind. Your what?”

  “My son.”

  I was vaguely aware of my mouth gaping open. How could she have had a child and not said a word about him in all the time we’d spent together? Where had he been? Who had been looking after him while she ran around hunting demons? Had he been caged up in some soul-sucking boarding school, as I had been?

  “How old is he… your son?”

  “Six months. He’s just a baby.”

  A baby? When did she have time to have a baby? I’d known her for over a year, and she hadn’t been pregnant when I’d left. Or had she? My God, if she had been, then that could mean…?

  I turned from her and ran my fingers through my hair as I attempted to join the dots.

  I hadn’t seen her since that night at the London club. When was that? I thought quickly. About fourteen months ago. Right. So, subtract six… which leaves eight. And eight from nine…

  Oh, Christ! The baby was mine. It was a close call, but it had to be. Shit!

  My head swam, more from the unexpected turn of events than the lake of beer sloshing around my stomach. I walked to the wall and leaned my palms against it, taking deep breaths, then closed my eyes and tried to keep from swaying and ignore the nausea swelling inside.