I followed Mom into the game room past our visitors and stepped inside. She closed the door and moved towards the sofa.
“Mercy, I’m happy to see you’re okay, but we need to discuss rules. You are still a minor. You can’t just leave and gallivant across the country without discussing it with me first.”
“Across the country, on a private plane to Ireland, a trip to hell and back, home and quick leap to Canada and finally home again to be precise.”
Mom’s jaw dropped. I knew I shouldn’t have been so flippant.
“Hell?” I nodded. She closed her mouth in a thin line. “That’s beside the point. You shouldn’t have gotten on a plane to Ireland. What about school?”
“School.” I gave a humorless laugh. “One of my friends, who has saved my butt more times than I could count, needed me, and I should worry about school?”
She sighed. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t have given you permission to leave. However, young lady, I’m still your mother.”
She was right about that. She was my mom. “Didn’t Flynn tell David?”
“He did. He has more respect for his father than you have for me.”
Oh, there were so many things I could say. I bit my tongue instead.
“You could have died, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for you. You are my heart, Mercy. I know you don’t believe that. I love you, and I want you safe. I didn’t make sacrifices in my life if I didn’t want you to have a chance at one.”
I sat on the edge of the couch, emotionally drained. She was right.
“I’m sorry.”
She sat next to me and pushed my hair over my shoulder, so she could get a clear view of me. She took my hand.
“Mercy, you shouldn’t have taken Flynn with you. I know how you feel about him. David’s gone through a lot to get Mia here to protect him. This isn’t the time to put Flynn in danger.”
My anger flared. “Why?”
She looked perplexed by my question. “Why? It’s his only son, and he can’t lose him. Not now.”
“Because he can’t lose you, too, because you guys thought it was a good idea to bring another child into the world.”
She flinched and tucked her hands in her lap after scrubbing a hand through her short hair. The blonde spikes had grown out some. Worse, she looked older.
“How did you find out?”
“Belial told me while I was in hell. Imagine my surprise.”
Her eyes turned into mini flying saucers. “He knows?”
I nodded. “Of course he knows, and he’s pissed.”
She closed her eyes and thought about it.
“Mercy, it wasn’t planned.”
“Don’t you guys know how to use protection? You have to know about condoms based on that lovely conversation we had about sex. And what about the pill?”
Mom appeared uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. I wanted to smile at the role reversal but didn’t.
“Mercy, the pill doesn’t work on us.”
“Fine, condoms work every time, or so you told me, especially if put on properly.”
The squirmy feelings I had in my stomach when she and I had the sex talk was nowhere in attendance.
“Mercy, you deserve answers, but I’m not going to discuss my sex life with my husband with my teenage daughter.”
I flopped my back against the cushions and crossed my arms.
“Mom, really. We are sex demons. What is weird about this conversation is that you are so calm about the fact that you will die soon.”
“Mercy, I survived your birth.”
I felt a well of emotions start to break through. Death surrounded me, and I knew that if one more person in my life died, I would totally lose it.
“That was a fluke and by design according to Belial. He specifically told me you’d be his soon. He also pointed out how he’d honored his bargain, but your death would bring you directly to him.”
She let her eyes slowly close before exhaling a loud breath.
“It’s not a decision David and I made lightly. There is no other option.”
I took that to mean, she wasn’t going to get rid of the parasite that would suck the life out of her. I hated to think of the baby that way, but it was the truth.
“And that’s it. I lose my mother.” I got to my feet.
“Mercy.” She stood up and blocked my path. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“I guess you should have thought of that…”
No need to finish that sentence. I turned on my heels, rounded the sofa and exited the room. I felt raw and couldn’t face the crew I’d left in the kitchen. I rushed to the stairs and bumped past David as I pounded my way to the top. I couldn’t face him. So I didn’t answer when he called my name. I just kept going. Flynn was at the top of the stairs, sheet white.
That made me stumble to a stop.
“What did he tell you?”
He took my hand and led me to his room. He closed the door, placed a forearm on it, and leaned his head against it.
“What is it?”
He turned slowly to face me. He was as pale as a ghost. “He told me who my mother really was.”
“Who was she?”
“She wasn’t exactly human,” he snapped. He shut his eyes, and when he opened them, I saw the remorse in them. “I’m sorry.”
He sat on his bed, and I joined him. Between the two of us, the revelations in his conversation had obviously rattled him more than what mom had said to me.
“She posed as a human woman and Dad fell in love with her. He thought they bonded. He grieved when she died during childbirth. Everything he told me was true up to that point. One night when I was a few weeks old, he thought he heard something in my room, someone talking to me. He came in, and that’s when he saw her.”
“Who?”
He shook his head. “She told him who she was and who she was to me, but he didn’t believe her. Then she morphed into the woman he’d thought died. He still didn’t believe her. True higher demons could change forms. She told him things only my mom would know. Not just one thing, but many things.”
He stood and began to pace the room. “It all makes sense.”
“What makes sense? Who is she? Why did he keep it from you?” I wasn’t sure why I blurted all my questions out at the same time.
“He didn’t tell me because nothing came of it. And he didn’t want to believe her. He didn’t want to believe that the life he had with my mother wasn’t real. That she wasn’t real.”
“Who is she?” I practically yelled.
He glanced up at me. “Lilith.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
An asteroid could have landed on our house, and I wouldn’t have been more surprised.
“How?” was my dumb reply.
Flynn locked his hands behind his head and walked towards the couch on the other side of his room. I got up and followed him there.
“According to Dad, she’s cursed to be barren after her betrayal or something like that. She couldn’t reproduce like other demons and needed a human host. She found my mother on a farm somewhere in the Midwest where she twisted her mind and got her to want more than she ever did. Over time, she stole her soul. When she finally died, Lilith took over her human body as her own. Then she found my dad, and the rest is history.”
Flynn collapsed on the sofa. “She wanted a daughter and got me. She forgot that as a human, she would have a son if the father was an incubus or male Cambion.”
I thought about my mother. Since she was a Cambion and my father wasn’t, that meant I was going to be a girl. Mom hadn’t been surprised. Without a test, we wouldn’t know the gender of Mom and David’s kid because they were both Cambions.
Flynn rested his head on the back of the sofa and stared at the ceiling. “She played my father and faked her death. She would have stolen me if I was a girl, or so she told Dad. She didn’t know what she had because the body she used died a second time during my birth. Wh
en she came back, she learned I was a boy.”
He covered his eyes with his palms.
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
He glanced over at me. “Better than say what?”
“David raised you. God only knows what you would have been like if she’d had her claws in you.”
He wasn’t amused by my attempt at humor.
“She wasn’t supposed to be out. She’d been locked away behind the gates of hell or so legends say. Which is part of the reason Dad didn’t believe her story even though she didn’t need to lie. She told him everything and left me with him.”
“So what changed his mind?”
His eyes shifted to the ceiling again. “After I told him what Sebastian said.”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
Anger flashed in his eyes. “She had a plan. The whole reason she was locked away is her ambition to dethrone Lucifer. Her child, me, I was the backup plan. If Lucifer ever finds out, I’m toast.”
Mia’s words about Flynn dying replayed in my head. Mia was wrong; I had to believe that. And Flynn too. He’d lived seventeen years, and his life was never in any danger. It was me everyone wanted. Belial could have killed Flynn at any time, and he hadn’t.
“Sebastian knows,” I muttered more to myself.
“And that means Belial knows.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense. If he knew, he would have used that against you by now to keep you in line.”
He covered his face, and I knew it was a lot to swallow. I remembered finding out I wasn’t human. I’m sure this revelation felt that way to Flynn. I crawled over to him and wrapped my arms around him.
“You’re still you.”
“She was intended to be Adam’s first wife if stories are to be believed. When he rejected her, she used her beauty and seduced an archangel. She is the original demon of lust, founder of our kind and my mother.”
Flynn was the most beautiful guy I’d ever seen. It made sense if he was her son. He was even more gorgeous than Sebastian, who was a textbook definition of good looking.
“She was second to Lucifer before Belial, which makes me a Prince of Hell just like Sebastian.” Something in his voice changed. “He can’t be more powerful than me. Belial only got to power because Lilith was ousted.” It took a second, but I saw when he figured it out as his features smoothed. “Belial must not know about me. I would be a threat. So how does Sebastian?”
“I don’t think he’s his father’s son as much as Belial thinks. He’s not all bad. He has a heart.”
Flynn pulled me all the way on his lap. The tips of his fingers made contact with skin. His eyes were red hot on mine when he growled, “You were right. And you are mine.”
“Flynn—”
His fingers danced up my back pushing up my shirt in the process.
“I need you Mercy and not in dreamscape and not in some Fairy dream room. I need you for real, something we’ll both remember.”
He leaned his head forward, but I pulled back.
“We said we would wait.”
“He can’t kiss you Mercy. We both know that now, no point in both of us losing out. Just kiss me Mercy, please.”
I’m not sure I ever heard Flynn beg before. But, there was so much need in his request I found myself succumbing to his power of persuasion.
He tasted spicy like the fajitas I made. When my stomach didn’t rebel, I let him devour me. It felt so right as much as it felt so very wrong. I pulled back when Flynn popped the clasp of my bra.
“You said just a kiss.”
The twinkle in his eye danced with mischief. “I meant it. But, I want to touch your skin. Just your back, but your bra is in the way.”
My eyes narrowed on him. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
His grip tightened on my waist. “You’re not just any girl, Mercy. You never were.”
His lips were raw on mine, and I lost myself. It was something more when we were together. It had to have something to do with being mated because everything was intense. It was a rush, borderline addictive. It felt like how it did when we took life force from a human. We had to be sharing and maybe creating energy. Something he needed to survive.
His hands slid up and down the side of my ribcage. In the process, his thumbs skimmed the sides of my breast. Each pass made me shiver. A part of me wanted to take things further. The other part knew that I had to make things right with the two guys I loved before I could go farther with either one of them.
A courtesy knock sounded at the door before it opened. Flynn made no move to remove his hands from under my shirt.
“Flynn, your friends are looking for you.”
I buried my tomato red cheeks in Flynn’s neck because David had caught us.
“Tell them I’m busy right now,” Flynn said confidently, boarding on cocky.
I would have slunk out of the room except my bra was unhooked, and my chest needed to be caged. I reached back to clasp my bra, but Flynn stilled my hands.
“Is there anything else Dad?”
“Flynn, I think maybe you and Mercy should—”
“Not to worry Dad. Mercy and I already did the deed. She’s mine. You can send Mia home.”
His words had me pulling my face out the sand or rather the crook of his neck. My shame was suddenly forgotten. “Is Mia going to be okay? She told me she’d be disgraced if she was sent back.”
David stood for a second before he slowly closed the door behind him. “Let’s step back for a minute. Does your mother know?”
That I wasn't a virgin? Of course she didn’t. “No.”
“Did Flynn—”
I had no idea what he was about to say.
“No. It happened,” I began.
“It was in Fairy. She thought it was a dream, and I thought it was real. We both were wrong a little,” Flynn said.
I decided that I preferred the conversation I had with my mother. It was beyond awkward talking to David about my virginity or lack thereof. Humans didn’t have chats with their parents like this, I was sure.
“You’re okay with it?” David asked.
I wasn’t sure who he was asking. Flynn remained silent. So I assumed it was me.
“Yeah, it’s not like I had a choice.”
Flynn frowned. I hadn’t meant it the way it sounded. Still I didn’t know much about the mating thing with Cambions.
“Mercy, I hate to ask, but you’re not doing this because of Luke.”
Well, crap. They didn’t know Luke was alive, or at least, I hadn’t told them.
“Luke is back, Dad.”
Clearly, by the deer in headlights look, David hadn’t known.
“Where is he now?”
I shrugged. “He has new duties. I think he’s in a council meeting explaining about Rune.”
“Rune?”
Flynn ran down what happened. Apparently, that hadn’t been a part of their earlier discussions. I remembered the in-between place I’d gone in search of Luke. I could only imagine him kneeling and giving his explanation for his part in bringing Rune back from the dead or damned.
“The wards are down?” David asked.
I hadn’t been paying attention to Flynn’s story telling. He must have told him all of it.
“You two need to come downstairs so we can talk about all of this. It’s probably not safe for us to stay here until I can get the wards put back up. I’ll give you a few minutes, but I expect you both downstairs in five.”
David wasn’t often stern. However, he’d used his Dad’s voice on us. We nodded in unison, and he left.
“Now where were we?” Flynn grabbed my bottom pulling me close.
I slapped his hands away. “We have to get downstairs.”
In flash, Flynn reversed our positions. My back was flat against the cushions, and he was looming over me.
“We have five minutes. There is a lot I can do in five minutes.”
He poked my sides, and I began to giggle of a
ll things. I couldn’t help it. I was ticklish.
“Stop, please,” I begged as he continued to tickle me.
His eyes bored into mine, and I stopped laughing. His hand skimmed up my shirt but stopped before touching my chest. He leaned in and kissed me.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this.”
That time, he kissed me slow before sitting up. “You need to go downstairs first.”
“Why?” I asked truly clueless.
He chuckled and shook his head. “God I love you. You are so beautifully naive. I’ll be down in a minute. I just have to take care of something.”
“I have to fix my bra first.”
I got to my feet and struggled with the clasp. Then he was there hooking it back in place. With my back to him, I got my boobs situated. By the time I fully turned, Flynn was halfway turned away from me.
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
I nodded, still not sure what his problem was. I glanced over before I exited the room. He only winked at me. I sighed and let myself out. I would never understand boys.
Instead of going downstairs, I went to my room. I wanted to make sure I looked okay. Despite how I felt about Mia in the beginning, I didn’t want to throw it in her face that Flynn and I were more or less together.
It didn’t matter who I ultimately chose to be with. Flynn and I were bonded. And he needed me for survival. Luke and I had decided before prom that I would do what it took to save his life. Although I didn’t consciously mate with Flynn, that decision was done. It was up to me to continue to be there for him to keep his life going. Even I knew it was more than that and had been for some time. Still, he was mine to take care of. And according to Flynn, I was his.
I headed downstairs after straightened my hair and clothes. I hoped like hell David wasn't going to discuss what Flynn and I had been up to when he found us.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Downstairs, I found Tristrom, Rune, Mia, and Flynn smushed on the couch as Mom and David stood in front of the TV with their parental faces on. When I walked in, Rune, Tristrom, and Flynn all stood up and offered me their seats. Flynn, closest to me, snagged my arm and pulled me on his lap. Embarrassed, I tried to wiggle away, but his steely arms held me in place.
Sacrifice of Mercy Page 19
