by Apryl Baker
He picks up my hair and starts to braid it.
Mary? I remember Eli telling me something about this earlier, but with Dan and then Eric, I hadn’t paid much attention. “What do you mean he has his sights set on Mary?”
“Didn’t she tell you? Well, she may not have had time with everything going on. The child she went and cared for across the street was one of Deleriel’s chosen. He only feeds upon souls that are a little broken, but still hold an edge of goodness and purity to them. That child had been passed from home to home, never really able to bond with a parent. His soul was broken. Mary stood up to Deleriel and his demonic children. He took a shine to the girl and has decided to take her with him when he goes back to his lair.”
“He can’t have her!”
“He’s an upper level demon, Emma Rose. One of the first demons created when the angels fell from heaven. He’s the right hand of the Morning Star. Who are we to stop him?”
“You’re afraid of him!” Silas’ fingers stop braiding and I can feel them flex in my hair. I’m right. He’s afraid of Deleriel. If this thing scares Silas, then I’m doomed.
“Afraid is a strong word. Cautious would be a more accurate word. And he’s also my employer.”
“What?” He works for the super scary demon?
“Unfortunate, but true.” He tisks at a wayward strand of hair. “He owns me.”
Which explains why he’s terrified of the guy.
“What Deleriel wants, Deleriel gets. I know this firsthand. I’ve lived it. Can you imagine what he’d do to a soul as pure as Mary’s? The suffering it would go through? The torture he’d make her endure?”
That blind rage from earlier comes rushing back in, and a low growl starts in my chest, building until I’m up and shaking with rage. No one is touching Mary.
“Come here, my darling girl.” Silas maneuvers me to stand in front of the mirror. “Tell me what you see.”
“My eyes are black.” Demonic eyes. It should terrify me, but I’m so focused on Mary and that monster wanting her, I don’t care.
“Look closer, Emma Rose. Tell me what else you see.”
I stare at myself for a long moment before a shocked gasp fills the room. My eyes aren’t just black. I can see a sheen of yellow in them. The same yellow in that kid’s eyes from my dream, the same yellow in the morgue kid’s eyes. Why are my eyes yellow?
“Your mother’s father wasn’t the man who raised her.” Silas yanks on my hair, pulling the braid tighter. “He was a demon who surfaced when he was summoned to help create a child who would hold immense power. Only she couldn’t do what had been promised. She couldn’t bring images to life.”
Fudgepops.
“It required more than the Dubois had to offer. Delieriel was furious. He almost killed Georgina, but she was a smart one, your mother. She made a deal.”
“A deal?” I don’t like where this is going. Not one bit.
“She promised him a child who could do what he wanted, a child who could bring images to life with her blood. She was to give him the girl upon her second birthday. By then she’d know if the child was capable of doing the thing she could not.”
“And he accepted the deal?”
Silas nods, a black scrunchie appearing in his hands. “She called me and wanted to know if I could help her get the recipe just right.”
“And of course you could.”
He smiled, the danger in his expression unmistakable. “I’d been making plans for two centuries, my darling girl. I set the wheels into motion a long time ago. The first piece of the puzzle came together in New Orleans with a woman named Elizabeth. Elizabeth came from a line of extremely gifted Shamans. She needed a child, and I was more than happy to provide that child. He later married and had a daughter, who married into the Crane family.”
Holy crap. It can’t be…
“You see, Emma Rose, you belong to me because I made you. I worked and cheated and stole and manipulated to make sure you were born with all the right gifts. The gifts Deleriel would pay a high price to own.”
I can’t breathe as the implication of his words echo in my ears. Would he trade me to Deleriel? Would he hand me over to the monster that scares him? If it meant his freedom? In a heartbeat.
“What do you want, Silas?”
“To protect you from him, of course.” He smooths down the stray strands of hair sticking out of the braid. “You’re my granddaughter. It was I who convinced Georgina to let Claire whisk you away before Deleriel collected what he was due. You’re alive because of me, Emma Rose. Your mother would have skinned you alive and fed your bones to Deleriel’s demonic children had I not tricked her.”
Zeke told me she’d been acting weird, standing over my crib. He said he’d been concerned about my safety. Maybe he had a right to do it.
“Why would she have done that? Couldn’t she have just given me to him and been done with it?”
“Nothing is as simple as that.” Silas inspects my braid. “A child cannot consent to giving up its soul. Only a parent can do that. Your mother agreed, but in order for Deleriel to obtain your gifts, you had to suffer, your soul bruised and bloody. Tortured. Your mother happily agreed to do that. She didn’t love you, Mattie. She never did. To her, you were a means to an end. She made sure you were happy and felt loved because you had to be that bright bubbly soul for their plans to work. You feared your father’s intentions, when it was your mother’s you should have been concerned with.”
“But Zeke said after I went missing, she fell into a depression.”
“A punishment. Deleriel was furious she’d let you out of her sight. He imprisoned her in her mind where he delights in torturing her. If she ever wakes up and sees you, run, Emma Rose. Run fast and far. She’ll kill you for all the suffering that’s been inflicted upon her because of you.”
If Silas advises running, I think I might need to heed the warning. “So how come no one could find me? Surely a demon as powerful as Deleriel could locate me?”
“Again, it was my foresight that prevented that. I’d placed a protection spell on you the day you were born. The moment your nanny took you, I activated it. It kept you hidden from everyone. Still does. Except for me. I can always find you because you are my flesh and blood, Emma Rose.”
“I still don’t understand what you want from me, Silas.”
“You’re mine, Emma Rose, and I protect what’s mine.”
“Until it becomes more profitable for you not to do so.” He’s a demon. He makes deals every day, all day. It’s who he is.
“Possibly.” He tilts his head and leans down, laying his cheek against mine. “But for now, you are more valuable to me than anything or anyone else, and I’ll protect you so long as you agree to help me.”
“Help you?”
“To destroy Deleriel. It’s what I bred you to do. You’re the only one who can.”
He wants me to fight a fallen angel? Not any fallen angel either. One of the first fallen angels, friend of Lucifer and all that. He’s out of his freaking mind!
“Now, now, calm down.” He flicks a glance at Dan. “We wouldn’t want your friend there to suffer any more than he already is, now, would we?”
“You won’t touch him.”
“No, I won’t. But my little pets will.”
That’s when I hear the growl, low and menacing. The bed bounces, and I can see the impression in the mattress. Something is sitting on the bed with Dan. Something big.
“Hellhound.” Silas grins fondly in the direction of the bed. “Loyal beasts, but they do have a nasty habit of playing with their food.”
“Get it away from him, Silas.”
“You see, they like the smell of blood. First, she’d use her claws and rip him up a bit, digging across his chest, down his arms and legs. Enough to make him scream. Then she’d go for the juiciest parts…his stomach. She’d open it and eat all the gooey parts inside.”
“I hate you.” There’s not a danged thing I can do either. She�
�s sitting right there next to Dan.
“I know, my darling girl, I know.” He turns me back toward the mirror. “I am sorry for what had to be done to wake up your demonic side. I had no idea the boy was injured when I left. I thought he’d just cuckolded himself.” He lays his cheek against mine and I can smell his breath. Peppermints. He smells like peppermints. Odd a demon should smell like a candy that reminds me of Christmas. “You and I, Mattie, are cut from the same cloth. We see what’s directly in front of us and will hurt others to protect our own. We’ve both done it.”
I want to argue with him, but I can’t. By keeping Dan with me, I upset the balance, and people died. Innocent people. And I’d do it all over again. For Dan, I’d let them all die over and over if it meant keeping him safe. The sly grin tilting Silas’s lips tells me he knows it too.
“Have you been practicing your gift?” He keeps his eyes on our image in the mirror.
“No.”
A heavy sigh rolls through him. “Emma Rose, the only way to defeat him is through your gift. You have to be able to utilize it. If you can’t do this, he gets Mary, and he keeps taking poor souls and feeding the rest to his hungry horde. You saw what happens to those little ones. You met his very first child. In your dreams. You remember him, don’t you?”
Yes, I remember him and the screams of that kid all those little creatures had descended upon.
“You are beginning to test my patience, child. I don’t tell you to do something just to hear myself talk. Up until now, I’ve indulged you. You’re my favorite, you know. I have other children, other grandchildren. None of them even comes close to your raw power. They don’t have your strength, your courage. No matter how much I admire you, I will teach you a lesson. There are so many things I can do to torture you that won’t kill you. I can even strip the flesh from your bones and put it all back together again.”
His moves and his hand comes up to cup my cheek then clamps it over my mouth, trapping me with his body against the dresser. His other hand comes up, and the fingernail on his left hand digs into the soft skin of my cheek, tearing into it. A scream tries to escape as I watch him peel a strip of skin away from my face. It falls, hanging over the hand he has clamped against my mouth. He rubs the exposed tissue and muscle. Salt. His finger feels like salt on an open wound.
I heave, the queasiness surging up into my throat. The pain is unbearable.
“You see, Emma Rose? Even I have my limits. You will do as you are told, or you will be punished. Favorite or not, you are going to do as you’re told.”
He snaps his fingers and the wound is gone, the skin whole and unbroken, the pain gone as if it were never there, but the memory of it remains burned in my mind. He’s crazy.
“You have one main task, Emma Rose. Learn to use your gift. When the time comes to face Deleriel, you must be ready. If you’re not, you will find yourself in an unimaginable hell. One you will never escape. He will devour you, strip you of your gifts, and torture you for an eternity. Prepare yourself.”
And he’s gone. Just like that, he’s gone as quickly as he’d appeared. A quick check of the bed proves his beast is gone as well. My fingers trace where the missing strip of flesh had been. It’s unblemished, but I can still feel it there, feel the pain of watching his fingernail strip it down.
Silas is insane.
And my grandfather.
How messed up is that? Demonic bloodlines on both sides of the family. Should I tell Zeke? I mean, he should know about his demonic bloodlines. But part of me is shouting no. It’s an instinct I’ve never ignored before, and I’m not about to start now. I’ll deal with this on my own. Even if it means talking to someone I don’t want to.
Dan’s phone is lying on the nightstand beside the bed.
There is one person who might be able to help me. One person who lied repeatedly to me.
I pick up the phone and type in Dan’s passcode. He uses the same one for everything. I scroll through his contacts until I see the name Lawrence Olivet. I sit back down in the chair and stare at the name. Then I look at Dan. He trusts Doc, and I trust Dan, so maybe I should trust Doc at least enough to ask for help. If he tries anything, the entire Crane clan is here. He won’t get away with it.
Decision made, I press the call icon and wait. He picks up on the third ring. “Dan?”
“No, it’s Mattie.”
“Mattie? Is everything okay? Why are you calling from Dan’s phone?”
“Because I don’t have my phone.” I really need to figure out what happened to it.
“Oh.” There’s a pause, a long pause. “Mattie, about last night…”
“I don’t want to talk about last night.” I’m not ready to listen to his explanations. “I need to talk to you about something else.”
“Of course. All I want to do is help.”
“Have you ever heard of a fallen angel by the name of Deleriel?”
“Where did you hear that name?” His voice is deathly quiet, so quiet I almost don’t hear it.
“I’m pretty sure that’s who is kidnapping and murdering all the kids here in Charlotte. He’s feeding.”
“He feeds off the tortured souls of the innocent.”
“Figured that part out already. He’s apparently set his sights on Mary, and I need to know how to stop him, or at least keep him from getting his hands on my sister.”
“I don’t think you can, Mattie. He’s one of the first demons, more powerful than anything I’ve ever come up against.”
“Not what I need to hear right now, Doc. He can’t have my sister.”
“There’s a solution here, Mattie. What, I don’t know just yet. Let me do some research, okay? I need to talk to a few people, check some ancient texts. If there’s a way to keep Mary safe, we’ll find it. I promise.”
The fact that he didn’t say “destroy the demon” doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence. Doc’s always the first person to see the glass as half full. He’s only seeing the water pouring out and circling the drain in this situation.
“Well, call Dan’s phone if you find anything. Thanks.” I hang up before he can try to start another conversation about me finding him at the Cross house last night with a picture of me and my mom.
Dan lets out a snore, and I gape at him. He’d slept through Silas, the Hellhound, and my conversation with Doc. He’d be proud of me for swallowing my pride and calling Doc. Not sure that atones for that snore he just let rip.
It has seriously been a day. I woke up to dealing with Meg’s and Jake’s deaths. I went from there to learning about my demonic heritage, then to dealing with a missing kid, to ghostly adventures in the morgue. My day then went down the drain starting with Eli’s curse, discovering Dan has deeper feelings than he led me to believe, dealing with grandparents, and then Silas. Freaking Silas.
And the day still isn’t over. I have to go to dinner with said family.
After that? Figure out where Kayla is before she dies, learn to use my gift of bringing images to life, and oh yeah, destroying a demon that’s pretty much bulletproof.
Just another day in the life of Mattie Louise Hathaway.
The End of Book 4 Part 1
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Acknowledgements
Every time I finish a book, it hits me how blessed I am. My grandma always said God gave each of us a talent. Sometimes we don’t know what that talent is and sometimes we ignore it or squander it away. I ignored mine for a long time because I was afraid. You go and write this bright shiny new book, but then freeze up. Sharing something you created with everyone is
scary. Terrifying really. It was my Gran who finally gave me the courage to try. She told me God blessed me not only with a big imagination, but with the gift of words to go along with it. Told me I needed to use it. And I’m so grateful I did because of how truly blessed it’s made me.
I gained an army of readers who love my silly nonsense words, who love my characters, and enable me to finally do a job I love: writing. If you love what you do, it’s never work. I’m lucky enough to be able to write full time and that is because of that army of readers so thank you to all the fans and all the readers who enable me to do what I love.
Writing is hard, getting published is even harder. I did something everyone told me NOT to do, I trusted a small publisher—Limitless Publishing. It was the best decision I ever made. Am I in big box brick and mortar stores or major bookstore shelves? No, but I hope they will eventually hire someone to do just that. They gave me something no one else did. They believed in my work when everyone else, the agents and the big publishers said nope, not today chickie. You’re just not good enough, but Limitless believed I was. They took a chance on me when no one else would. And that matters to me. It’s why I’m still with Limitless Publishing. The people who work there are fabulous. They take care of me, put up with my madness, and deal with my quirks. Jennifer, Jessica, Dixie, and Elise, I can’t put into words how grateful I am to all of you for all you do. Thank you for being the kind of people who care about their authors. We’re not just numbers to you, but people. That means a lot.
My editor…Lori Whitwam. You have taught me so much and made me a better writer. I’ve learned to focus my thoughts more on paper and that less really is more in a lot of instances. You push me, challenge me, and always work with me even when I drive you nuts with my crazy timelines. Thank you for being an awesome editor and an even better friend. You’re the best.
My family puts up with a lot when I’m writing. They keep me fed and remind me to shower. They don’t mind the pajama bottoms and ratty t-shirts I have on when I write. Thank you guys for just being there and encouraging me. Especially my dad. He always believes in me and gets just as excited as I do when I finish a book. He bites his nails on release day same as I do. My Daddy is awesome.
