by Liz Meldon
“I am a chaos demon.” He folded his arms under her scrutiny, battling the desire to march over and take her face in both hands—make her see. “So, yes, that was just a bit of fun. Innocent, really.”
“You influenced all those people?”
“Yes—”
“And me?” In the dim light emanating from the kitchen, her eyes appeared glossy. Ella swayed a little when she planted her hands on her hips, posture offensive and strong, but her expression soft, mere seconds from splintering. This had… hurt her.
Hurting her hadn’t been his intention. It was why he had kept his fucking distance since he’d strolled out of the hell-gate, yet none of that seemed to matter now.
“I didn’t… realize you were there,” he said somewhat lamely. “I thought you were still downstairs.”
After all, that was where he had last seen her. Chatting with friends, with men, with fucking everyone. Malachi had drifted upstairs to avoid all that nonsense. When she had followed was anyone’s guess, but he had missed her in the crowd, her short stature his downfall.
Malachi cleared his throat. “I didn’t… I wouldn’t have if I’d known…”
How could this vexing woman, this delicious human, render him at a loss for words?
She shouldn’t.
Malachi was never at a loss for words.
He stood taller, mouth twisting with what he knew was a thin, patronizing smile.
“It was innocent,” he remarked with a sniff.
Her perfectly sculpted eyebrows shot up. “Innocent when you kissed me back, even though I was—am—drunk? Drunk and high on whatever the fuck you were doing?”
Yes. He caught the response before it tumbled from his lips. Malachi sensed that honesty had no place in this discussion anymore—nor would it help him. He couldn’t bring himself to lie either, because that would be damning too, so he said nothing.
And all that nothing seemed to crush her. Ella’s expression faltered, the tears swelling, threatening to fall at any moment. Lips trembling, she looked away briefly, then scoffed. Sure enough, one firm blink had two wet tracks slicing down her cheeks.
“I can’t believe I missed you,” she muttered, brushing the tears away distractedly. “I’m so fucking glad that you left.”
Malachi’s nostrils flared when she lifted her gaze to him. Bloodshot eyes. Splotchy cheeks. Tears and anger and disgust. All that paired with her words—he felt the sting as if she’d slapped him. Hard.
His inner demon snarled again, for how dare this tiny human speak to him this way? How dare she ignite an inferno in his chest, the flames licking across his ribs, scorching through his veins, broiling his great, stupid heart.
But before he could get another word in, the front door opened abruptly, slamming into his back and breaking the tense standoff. Moira came bustling in, shoving by him, and stopped when she spotted her teary-eyed friend.
“Ella?”
Shaking her head, the human snatched her robe off the bannister, then hurried upstairs, those tantalizing socks betraying her halfway up. That great, stupid heart of his lurched when she tripped, but she righted herself quickly after, then disappeared up to the second floor.
He felt Moira’s fiery glare before he saw it. Slowly, he glanced down at the hybrid, who fixed him with her venom a few beats longer—as if to ensure he got the message—and then turned it on Severus. The incubus opened and closed his mouth a few times, sputtering, and exhaled sharply when his beloved stalked up after Ella.
“Why is it that when you fuck up, I get in trouble?” his brother growled as he slipped out of his oxfords and arranged them on the shoe rack in the closet.
“I can assure you, brother,” Malachi said, listening to the pitter-patter of a woman scorned through the floorboards, “I am most certainly in trouble.”
“What else is new?” Severus shrugged off his robe and loosened his red-and-gold-striped tie. “Drink?”
Malachi glowered in the general direction of Ella’s room. “Make it six…”
Chapter Five
“So, I’m not really sure what your plan is here, but stalking her isn’t going to make Ella forgive you.”
Malachi drummed his fingers on the passenger-side window of Moira and Severus’s idling SUV. The angel hybrid sat in the driver’s seat, fiddling with her phone, the headlights off but the vehicle on and humming. Dead ahead stood a pathetic little square brick building, metal screening over the windows, the property surrounded by a chain-link fence. Mountains of crunchy leaves piled up across the yard, the bitter chill of November leaving the ground hard and frostbitten. A children’s playground occupied the space to the left of the building, abandoned in the darkness, the breeze rustling one of the swings. In the twenty minutes they had been waiting in a parking spot at the curb, Malachi had been tempted to give the swing a little extra nudge, startle the few unlucky bastards seated near the barred windows tonight.
Just for fun.
Innocent, really.
But the last time he’d had a bit of innocent fun had been a fucking disaster, so he waited, like a good boy, twiddling his thumbs and counting down the minutes until Ella finished with her class.
Elementary school by day, adult learning annex by night, scattered light emanated from a few windows across the building. He and Moira had taken bets on how many classes were running tonight. Malachi said six based on the windows. Moira said three, her irritating little smile suggesting she knew something he didn’t.
The hybrid turned a knob on the dashboard, and a rush of heat washed over him. Scowling, Malachi adjusted the direction of the vents away from his face. He seldom went topside in the winter months; the contrast to Hell was just too startling, even though Hell was no stranger to frozen wastes and bitter storms. The days always blazed, the cracked grey earth roasting come noon. The winter months here, particularly in Canada, were so fucking bleak and miserable all the damn time. Hardly suitable for a demon.
“I mean,” Moira sat back in her seat, fixing him with a hard look, “is the logic here that if you hover in her space long enough, she’ll just get over it?”
He rolled his eyes. “Moira.”
“I’m just curious.”
It had worked before, forcefully situating himself in Ella’s life until she had accepted that he was a part of it. “When I was last here, she grew to tolerate me, maybe even enjoy me, simply by—”
“Last time you didn’t drug her with chaos.”
“That was a mistake.” He threw his hands up, temper flaring. “I thought she was still downstairs. Can I not get an iota of credit here?”
She snorted dryly. “Credit for what?”
“I’ve apologized for—”
“For publicly groping her while she was intoxicated and under your influence?” Moira arched an eyebrow, waiting, and when he said nothing, she chuckled again. Not that the mirth reached her eyes or anything. In fact, Severus’s woman had been grossly unimpressed with him for days. “Yeah. You’re going to have to try harder if you want Ella to forgive you for that. It takes more than words.”
“Well, if she would give me the chance to—”
“She doesn’t owe you that.”
“For Lucifer’s sake, Moira. I am trying.”
“Try harder.” Straight ahead, one of the red metal doors creaked open and humans spilled out into the night, chatting and carrying textbooks. Moira sat up to assess them, her keen eye jumping from face to face, then settled back in her seat when it became obvious Ella wasn’t amongst them. “If you were smart, you’d ask me, her best friend and sister, for advice.”
Malachi scoffed. “And you’d give it to me?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “I’d need to see some groveling… and genuine contrition.”
Ridiculous woman. All of them—the entire gender. Fucking ridiculous.
It had been four very long, very arduous days since the events of All Hallows Eve. Ella had spent the day after exceptionally hungover, which Moira had outright
blamed on him.
“You fed her shots and got her all juiced up on chaos,” she’d snapped, physically barring him from Ella’s room, her palms shimmering with angelic light. “Just fuck off for like twenty-four hours, Malachi.”
Twenty-four hours had come and gone, and still the human refused to speak to him. Never mind that they lived within the same four walls—she found a way to avoid him. And when she wasn’t in those four walls, she was at school all day, then assisting another teacher at night. How was he supposed to make amends when she flat-out avoided him? Force her to listen? That would only make things worse.
Moira also had very full days. Alaric too. Cordelia had gone back to Hell for her mother’s birthday, and Malachi still had a little over two weeks before his mysterious meeting with Cassiel.
Which left him with Severus, and his brother had very little to occupy his time with now that he had stopped escorting. They wasted the hours away at bars, shops, and movie theaters. He had shown Malachi the house he and Moira intended to buy in the countryside. They had sat in the auto dealership while some human switched Severus’s tires from all-seasons to winter—that had been a particularly thrilling Tuesday afternoon.
And in all that time, Malachi had watched his brother waste away. He could appreciate the fact that Severus refused to so much as graze another woman now that he had found his great eternal love, his one true soulmate, blah blah blah… In fact, he actually respected the decision. But all that appreciation and respect said nothing to the fact that his brother’s strength depleted with each day. His brother was an incubus. Lowest on the demon hierarchy, right alongside vampires, his survival relied heavily on physical contact with humans. As a vampire needed to consume blood, Severus needed human life essence. He needed it. There was no getting around it.
Yet he willingly surrendered his strength for the hybrid seated to Malachi’s left.
A hybrid who, apparently, had told Severus to go back to escorting more times than one. While she hadn’t discussed it with Malachi yet, Moira appeared just as concerned with his brother’s decline. He saw it in her eyes, those ethereal blues racked with guilt and worry. Severus had easily stolen the odd caress at the Inferno on Halloween; accidental contact in a crowd of that size was expected. Yet he wouldn’t do it purposefully, and if something didn’t change soon, that would be his downfall.
But that was a matter for another day.
“Do you think she’ll be cross with you for bringing me here?” Malachi asked a few moments later. After all, wasn’t this something of a betrayal? Moira shrugged, still watching the humans trickling out of the building’s main doors.
“Well, it was either let you in or scrape you off my bumper. I’m sure she’ll understand.”
He had made it more than a little difficult for the hybrid to leave, using his massive body to block the SUV in place, but this was the first night he’d caught Moira going to fetch Ella from her new job. Malachi intended to take full advantage of the twelve and a half minutes it would take them to drive home. An ambush, yes, but she had left him no choice.
Actually, he could have chosen to walk away. All these dramatics—over a human—was enough to make any demon say “fuck it.”
But here he was. Clearly he had made his choice.
Ten minutes passed with humans filtering out in clusters of two or three, none of them Ella.
Twenty minutes after the English literature class had supposedly ended, Moira checked her phone with a huff. No message. She turned on the radio, though she didn’t appear to do much listening in the additional fifteen minutes that followed. Malachi shifted about impatiently beside her, glowering at every passing human who wasn’t Ella.
“Is she usually this late?”
“Maybe five, ten minutes,” Moira muttered. A woman in an enormous green coat came shuffling out, two weighty bags hanging off her shoulders like saddlebags. “I mean, she has to collect assignments, give the graded ones back, then tidy up the classroom. But this isn’t her first rodeo as a TA. It shouldn’t take this long.”
By then, the parking lot had emptied save for a few beat-up old vehicles. When a human man greying around the ears sidled out, the full moon glinting off the sizeable bald patch on the top of his head, Moira unbuckled her seat belt and shoved open the door.
“Hi, Mr. Wendell,” she called, loitering beside her open door, her smile somewhat strained. Malachi followed suit, easing his long legs out of the SUV, his breath fogging. The figure slowed, eyes narrowed as he studied Moira beneath the obnoxious glow of the overhead lighting. A flicker of recognition crossed his features just as Malachi was about to roll his eyes, and he shifted his books to one arm, extending the other to Moira as she stepped onto the curb to meet him.
“Miss Aurelia,” he greeted, the pair shaking hands. “Ella’s friend, right?”
“Yup, that’s me.” She reached back to close her door, and Malachi did the same before drifting around the front of the vehicle. “Is Ella running late tonight?”
The human frowned again, casting a wary glance in Malachi’s direction. “Er, running late?”
“I just… I thought class ended at eight.”
“It did.”
“So, I was just wondering—”
“I’m afraid she’s already left for the night,” the man remarked warmly. “Said she had an assignment to finish up for tomorrow… I saw to her usual tasks so she could leave at the bell with everyone else.”
“Oh.” Moira’s arms hung limply at her sides, phone white-knuckled in her one hand. A little kernel of dread formed in his gut, and Malachi strolled toward the building, scanning it with a deep frown. Lingering in the gap between the two chain-link sides, he half listened as Moira exchanged stilted goodbyes with the man he assumed was Ella’s boss. Seconds later, the hybrid fell in line beside him, her boots heavy on the concrete.
“Okay.” She tapped around on her phone, brows furrowed, voice a half octave higher than usual. “Ella wouldn’t leave. She knows that I’m picking her up.”
“Perhaps she saw me and changed course?” He should have moved to the back seat as soon as they’d arrived, lack of leg room be damned. Moira shook her head.
“She wouldn’t do that without telling me.” After one final tap of her thumb, she brought the large, thin rectangle to her ear, eyes darting about. A few beats passed. “It’s ringing—”
“Hush.” Malachi held up a finger to silence her, which earned him a scowl, but he brushed it off. Somewhere, distantly, a brrrrr-ring echoed. He stalked a couple of paces toward the school. “It’s outside.”
She’s outside. Cheeks flushed, Moira jogged ahead, still holding the phone to her ear, then went right in front of the main doors as if to follow the concrete path along the scraggly shrubbery. Malachi caught her by the elbow before she made it very far, hauling her left instead—with some difficulty at that, her whole being far heavier than he remembered.
“Left,” he grunted. Although that brrrrr-ring seemed like it was coming from all sides, it was stronger to the left, somewhere beyond that pathetic little playground. The dread in his gut sharpened as they hurried along, and his inner demon positively bristled with glee at the sudden turn of events. After all, this was the most excitement he’d had in days. Malachi gritted his teeth, rounding the corner and carrying on down the side of the building.
This is Ella.
The excitement faltered.
We enjoy her.
The excitement dulled, replaced once more by gut-wrenching dread. Ella’s voice suddenly trickled from the phone, but Moira pressed the red Disconnect button on the screen with a shake of her head. “Voicemail.”
Beyond the playground was but an empty grass field, evening mist obscuring their view outside the perimeter fence.
“Ella?” Moira’s call echoed, over and over again, fading into the dark and the mist, and she redialed the human’s phone in a panic. Breath quickening, she brought the rectangle to her ear again. Brrrrr-ring. Brrrrr-ring. Brrrrr-r
ing.
They followed the sound to the rear of the building, stumbling upon a court of some kind, white lines painted across the pavement, two nets on either side. It was crystal clear now, the siren song of Ella’s phone, and Malachi’s gaze swept over the shadowy court, down to the distant trees behind the chain-link, only to stop when he smelled it.
Blood.
It smacked him right in the face, and the dread finally just made itself at home, weighing down his every step, until—
“Ella! Get away from her!” Moira sprinted along the back wall of the building, headed straight for the lone crumpled figure on the far side. Instinct demanded he charge ahead, shove the hybrid aside, and tend to a slumped-over, likely very bloody Ella himself. Malachi hesitated, Moira’s panicked pitch screaming between his ears. Get away from her!
They weren’t alone out here.
He clenched his jaw as he scanned the schoolyard for any lingering threats, his inner demon positively beside himself. All that eagerness had shifted away from Ella, spiking suddenly at the thought of tearing a supernatural foe to pieces and stomping them into the frozen earth—just for kicks.
Nothing. Amidst Moira’s frantic Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, Ella—what the fuck?, he could have sworn a shadowy figure haunted the far side of the field. A distinct outline, perhaps a man, perhaps a demon, watching from beyond the fence, but the moment Malachi took a menacing step forward, it vanished. Poof. Seemingly into thin air.
Decidedly demon, then.
His suspicions started to coalesce, a sharper image forming about what had happened while he and Moira sat chatting some fifty feet away in the SUV.
The chaos demon shook his head with a snarl, then stalked over to the scene of the crime, the scent of blood ripening with every damned step.
“Ella?” Moira hoisted her friend into a seated position, her breath catching at the sight. Blood. Bright red—slick and shiny. Fresh. On her neck, her chin, her fingertips. It stained her light grey jacket, her white cardigan beneath.
