Pandora's Box

by Miller, Gracen

  Nix cringed when her head smacked the dresser. Madison went motionless. Thank God Amos wasn’t present to witness her fall. From his vantage point, he couldn’t tell if she breathed. Getting all of them out of this predicament alive weighed on his shoulders. Too bad he was trussed up like a deer waiting to be skinned; it minimized their chance of survival.

  The demon stared in her direction with black sockets, cracked his neck and popped his jaw. “Where’s Amos? Amos!”

  Since the demon’s wounds weren’t healing, Nix hoped he was weakened enough his invisible constraints would give free. Grunting, he jerked against them. They held steady.

  “Daddy?” Amos re-entered the room. The boy caught sight of Micah, froze in his tracks a few seconds, before taking a step backward.

  “Come fix my eyes with your blood. Gave you too much to heal myself,” Micah said, and Amos shook his head, his bottom lip trembling.

  “Scared.”

  With Madison down, saving them was all on Nix now. “Stay away from him, Amos!”

  “Amos! Do as you’re told.” Micah blinked over empty sockets. “I need your assistance.”

  “Don’t go near him, Amos.”

  Ignoring Nix’s warning, Amos took one hesitant step nearer his father and, spying Madison, stopped. He stared at her a long while before saying, “Momma?”

  Not a twitch came from Madison. The child bolted for her. The demon tripped him by sending out another wave of power that had Nix’s hair standing on end. The boy hit the floor on his knees and hands with a loud grunt.

  “Come to me, Amos. This instant!”

  Amos disobeyed his father and crawled toward Madison, whimpering, “Mo-m-Ma…Mo-m-Ma.”

  “Amos,” the demon ex snapped. “Get back here.”

  The boy stopped his crawl and rolled to sit on the floor, facing his father, a hiccup jerking his small shoulders and tears glittering in eyes rimmed with the evil, amber glow. “Mo-m-ma.” Amos sniffled and cast a longing glance at Madison.

  The demon’s face went gentle and kind, his voice pure sweetness, a con if Nix had ever witnessed one, “Help me, son.” Blood oozed down his cheeks from his scratched-out eye sockets. Hooray for Madison, scoring one against the bastard. “Hurry! Your mommy needs our help.”

  “Amos,” Nix called, sending a quick prayer heavenward for help. “If you help him, he’ll kill her.” Doubtful, since the demon ex just infused her with Pandora’s Box, a trip to make a drug overdose seem comforting.

  “Don’t listen to him, Amos. I’m your daddy. He’s a stranger. Who are you going to believe?” Undecided, Amos glanced between them, and the demon hissed, “If you don’t help me, Mommy will die.”

  “Amos, your momma tried to kill him. Who between us has tried to harm you? I have never laid a finger upon you.”

  Amos fidgeted, wavering in indecision.

  Nix spoke fast. “You’re a smart kid. You know he isn’t going to help her. He’ll kill her while you watch, helpless to stop him. Do you want your momma to live?”

  “I am going to kill you,” the demon snarled at Nix.

  “No.” Amos whimpered and lifted his hand. A burst of golden light blossomed around them. The room went devoid of sound, the silence strong enough to ring his ears. Nix closed his eyes and turned his head away from the too-bright light, worse than staring into the sun.

  The demon bellowed, sounding like he rattled in a cage, and Nix flopped to the floor, suddenly released from the invisible restraints. He ran to Amos, swept the boy into his arms. The creature vanished as if he’d never been present. Unsure what to make of the incident since most of them left their human carcass behind, he swept the room with a heavy glower. No body. Proof he told the truth about being a King. Fuck, they were fucked!

  He set Amos on his feet and patted him down, making sure he’d suffered no harm. A child had made a man’s decision. Wise beyond his years, he saw beneath the evil veneer. And if not, he at least chose his mother over his father. A damned blessing in his estimation.

  Nix knelt beside Madison and felt for a pulse. Slow and steady. She’d live. What a huge relief! Tomorrow she would probably have a splitting headache. No idea what he would’ve done with Amos if something happened to her. He shook his head. He couldn’t think about that now.

  Running his fingers over her scalp, he felt for a lump and encountered the stickiness of blood. Hopefully, she wouldn’t suffer anything more permanent than a concussion. Head injuries bled more than any other injury. The quantity of blood wasn’t a vanguard of the damage.

  Madison groaned, swatted his hand away, and her eyes slit open. Confusion wrinkled her forehead as she stared at the two of them. Slowly, she turned her head to the side and winced.

  “You okay, baby?” she asked Amos, struggling to sit up.

  Another groan leeched from her parted lips, and Nix worried she would black out again if she moved too soon. “Take it easy. You took a hard knock to your head.”

  He helped her lean against the dresser in a semi-reclining position. She put a shaky hand to the back of her head. Like a professional gambler, she showed no emotion when she peered at the blood wetting her fingers. She wiped it on her pajama tank top. “Come here, baby.” She held her arms out, and he climbed onto her lap.

  “Mo-m-ma,” he said, through stuttering, traumatized sobs and hiccups.

  Through half-closed eyes, she peeked at Nix. The edges of her lips were white, probably from pain. She hastily scanned the room. “How’d you get rid of him?”

  Nix nodded at Amos. “I didn’t. He did.”

  And he wasn’t certain what to tell her. Should he just come right out and say, Oh, by the way, your son can throw gold light bombs that vaporize demons, make your skin tingle, and cancel out all sound?

  Not your typical dinner conversation. Or traits of any demon he ever encountered. On the positive side, Amos protected her in his demonic form. Even if all the new revelations meant Nix now carried a slew of new problems. He killed monsters for a living. He’d just officially elevated Amos to ‘monster’ status. If Madison were half-succubus, she’d landed in the same boat as Amos.

  “Come here, kiddo.” Nix held his arms out to Amos. “We need to check your momma’s head.”

  He watched as Amos sat up and touched her face with his tiny hand. He kissed her on the cheek and went into Nix’s arms.

  Madison waved his hand aside. “Not yet,” she muttered, her voice weedy. She closed her eyes and inhaled several short breaths. Placing the back of her hand to her mouth, she smeared the blood off where she’d been backhanded and said with a small smile, “If I rise, I’m going to throw up.”

  “Stand for me, sport. Okay?” Nix said to Amos, who nodded his head.

  Bending down, he lifted Madison in his arms. The movement ripped a moan of protest from her. She said nothing, just wrapped her arms around his neck. When he neared her bed, she commanded, “Don’t put me in that bed. I slept with my husband there. The demon was my husband.”

  Nix cringed. “I hoped he was being rhetorical when he called you his wife and Amos his son.” He sure possessed a hard-on for her and Amos, either way.

  “Rhetorical?” she quipped, a slim smile edging the corners of her mouth, the pain too heavy for the humor to reach her eyes. “A big word, Nix Birmingham. Do you know what it means?”

  “Cute, Mads.” He winked.

  “Mads?”

  “You fought like a mad woman. You earned the nickname.” Her short-lived chuckle reminded Nix of her head injury. “Where do you want me to take you?”

  “I don’t care. Not here. Make it fast, before I puke all over you.”

  “Ew. Wouldn’t be good. Could ruin our friendship.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Might strain it a tad.”

  “Lead the way, Amos.”

  Two doors down, he finally got her situated in another bed. He instructed Amos to sit with her while he collected the necessary supplies to tend her wound. Q
uickly, he moved through her house retrieving the first aid kit, warm water, and a cloth. When he returned to the room, he found Amos snuggled up beside her with an arm wrapped around her waist.

  Mother and son. One, possibly part succubus. The other, definitely part demon or fallen angel. Nix wasn’t certain how he wanted to view the revelation yet.

  He ran his hand over his mouth. Amos seemed normal enough now. What would happen when he went back into his demonic state? Would he attack his mother again? Or would the bond between mother and son remain established in his alter-ego as well? What a crap-ola situation.

  The gash Amos gave her prior to his assistance puckered stark on her upper thigh. He’d get a closer inspection of the wound in a few minutes and make sure it still healed correctly. Strange how Amos had hurt her more than once, yet when it came down to it, he loved her enough to choose her over his demon father…or fallen angel father. However he wanted to meditate on this, the situation had escalated to damn complicated.

  He sat beside her on the bed and held out his hand. “I think you have a concussion.”

  She smiled a thank you at him and took the pills he offered. “Yep,” she agreed. “All I want to do is sleep.”

  “You won’t want to sleep for long.” He grinned, indicating the first aid kit.

  “Ah…payback’s a bitch?” she whispered, referring to her less than gentle nursing techniques the day they’d met.

  Nix smiled. “Something like that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Amos lay curled up beside her, asleep on the bed. He seemed particularly worried about letting her out of his sight since the attack. Madison could understand his fear. She wasn’t crazy about letting him out of her sight either. She ruffled his hair. Only a child could sleep after the ordeal they’d just endured. The confessions revealed…she remained ambivalent how to wrap her brain around them.

  She watched Nix wet a rag in a bowl of water. He pulled her into his embrace, stabilizing her by putting her forehead against an arm while he slowly washed away the blood with his other hand. The Sherlock was an enigma, gentle, gruff, and a badass all at the same time. She’d take him in a fight over Rambo or Dirty Harry any day. It didn’t hurt that he was cuter than any 007 she’d ever seen either.

  He seemed to be beating himself up over something, and his self-pummeling bothered her. The man needed to take a lesson in self-esteem or terminate the Superman syndrome. He couldn’t save the world and blame himself when he failed. Those were impossible expectations.

  “It’s gashed pretty good. I think you need a stitch or two.”

  “Do the stitches,” she muttered against his arm.

  “We should get you to a hospital.”

  She rolled her head on his arm and peered up at him. “Nix, hospitals ask questions. Questions I can’t answer, you can’t answer.”

  “We can tell the truth.” Her expression must have revealed her surprise because he said quickly, “You stumbled and fell, hitting your head on the dresser.”

  “How clumsy of me.”

  “Mads—”

  “Just do the dang stitches.” She rolled her face back against his arm and patiently waited, surprised he could possibly be squeamish about something. Demon blood drying on her bedroom floor, and he wanted to whine about putting a stitch or two into her head? Geez, men could be such babies at times.

  “Stubborn,” he muttered.

  “Get used to it.”

  He applied three stitches, and they hurt worse than she remembered from when she’d stitched her leg. Of course, she’d been pumping adrenaline then. Right now, scared and exhausted pretty much summed up how she felt.

  His fingers trailed down the back of her neck, and when he spoke, it sounded like he ground his back teeth. “His fingers burned your neck.”

  “I know.”

  Slowly, he helped her sit back up and lean against the headboard. He picked at the gash on her thigh and deemed it healing just fine without ‘Dr. Nix’s’ assistance. Next, he cleaned the wound on her shoulder, caused by the demon’s claw.

  “My hero.” The pain pills starting to kick in, she felt a little loopy. Otherwise, the words probably wouldn’t have fallen out of her mouth. What had he given her? Her medicinal supply wouldn’t knock out a baby.

  “Yeah.” He chuckled. “Some hero. I couldn’t save either of you.”

  He collected his medical arsenal, his stiff and unyielding body displaying his self-criticism more accurately than his words could.

  “You’re too hard on yourself.”

  “Not hard enough,” he corrected. He stood up abruptly and walked to the dresser. Setting the supplies there, he braced his hands on the top of it and hung his head. “If you or Amos died tonight….”

  “You would have done all you could.”

  Nix turned around and shook his head. He glowered like he wanted to bust something. She wanted to bash his head in for being so unreasonably judgmental. “Heroes don’t let people get killed.”

  “We didn’t die! Besides, my idea of a hero is someone who goes above and beyond the call of duty. You are putting your life in danger just to help us, nothing more than strangers to you, Nix. What type of man does that?”

  Nix shrugged. “A man with a job to do.”

  “A hero, Nix.”

  He snorted. “My uncle’s the hero. Aunt Georgie, Gage, and Zo are heroes, but me….” He shook his head, a frown making him appear too disgusted to finish his thoughts aloud. When he spoke again, she wanted to strangle him. “That makes three times now I failed to protect you from a demon.”

  He better be glad she couldn’t move off the bed without puking because she would slap some freaking sense into his thick skull. “You’re such a dumbass.” He opened his mouth to argue, but she interrupted before he could get a syllable out. “Shut up. Imbeciles shouldn’t be allowed to speak.” She scratched her nose. It felt fuzzy and odd, kind of like it might be a separate entity from her face. Damn good drugs.

  “Come sit.” She patted the bed on the other side of Amos. “I’m guessing you’re going to be all bossy and refuse to let me sleep right away.”

  “Yahtzee.”

  “Dictator,” she huffed without conviction.

  He settled onto the bed beside her, crossing his arms over his chest and his feet at the ankles. His shoes still on his feet. Amusement tickled the edges of her conscious, but she hurt too much to let a smile surface.

  “This argument isn’t over,” he informed her.

  How sweet and how totally incorrect he was. “You’ve got a lot to learn about women.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She grinned and changed the subject. “I don’t want to know, but I need to know. How’d Amos stop the demon?” Nix watched her as he told her everything she’d missed. She wouldn’t think about what Amos could do. Not yet. Too tired and drugged up to think straight, she couldn’t tackle the ramifications of his newfound power. “Do you think he’ll be back?”

  “I don’t think Amos killed him. I don’t know. This isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen.”

  Sick dread coiled in the pit of her stomach. She knew nothing was over. Not by a long shot. Scared to ask the next question, she took a deep breath and blurted it out before she lost her nerve. “The blood made Amos the way he is, right?”

  “That’s mostly…my guess.”

  Yeah, easy to discern he wasn’t saying everything. “You think Amos’s whatever it is he has—”

  “His power?” Nix supplied.

  “Will it go away?”

  He shrugged, a casual roll with an odd tenseness about his shoulders.

  “Nix!”

  “I don’t know.” He stared at her, seemed to consider something and simply repeated, “I don’t know.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  He sighed, rubbed his eyes. “I’m afraid if his powers don’t stop, or he doesn’t stop using them, Sherlocks will want to hunt him.”

  Sick dread kno
tted harder in her gut. “And that’s the positive side of things, if he stopped the demon?”

  Nix agreed with her. Madison rubbed her face with her hands, her cheek tender where Micah struck her, the inside of her mouth mush where her teeth shredded the soft tissue. A minor nuisance. She’d survive. For now. They’d survive if the demon remained gone, and if the hunters decided not to hunt them. What a freaking nightmare.

  She slid down on the bed, rolling onto her side, facing Nix and Amos, propping herself up with her hand. “Do you think Micah could’ve been a demon when we married, as he claimed?”

  He shrugged. “Demons lie all the time.”

  “What if he spoke the truth?” she persisted, her stomach a flurry of butterflies.

  “What does it matter?”

  She watched Amos, slumbering peacefully, curled up beside her. She feathered her fingers through his hair. “It’d make him half demon.” Madison nodded at Amos.

  Nix stared at her son, chewing on his bottom lip. He took a deep breath, went to say something and stopped, went back to biting his lip again. “I’ve never heard of that happening.”

  So much for making her feel better. They couldn’t discount the possibility just because he’d never heard of it happening before. From what she learned from him, demons were usually one step ahead of Sherlocks, and capable of all sorts of nefarious plans. This sounded like something right up their alley.

  She rubbed her eyes and muttered the other thought on her mind. “The idea I might have made love to a demon….” She shuddered. “Words can’t describe how the idea makes me feel.”

  She peeked at Nix, surprised she confessed her inner turmoil aloud. She certainly hadn’t intended to say it; the words had just popped out. He stared at her, a frown wrinkling his forehead. Her statement couldn’t possibly unsettle him as much as the thought did her. As a Sherlock, it probably grossed him out as much, if not more.

  “The other thing he said….”

  “A lie. Maybe.”

  Well, he’d answered her question much too quickly. Telling. Her guess, the idea she could be part succubus bothered him greatly.