Luck of the Devil

by Patricia Eimer

  “Then why go after you? You didn’t take the little loser’s power. It wasn’t you who tied him to the bed and—”

  “Oh, Hope.” I should have known she had some part to play in this.

  “What?”

  “You didn’t?” Why was I asking? Of course she did.

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Hope, did you take Levi’s powers?”

  “What makes you think I did?”

  “Because Matt only told us a demoness stole Levi’s powers. Not that she tied him to a bed and stole them while they were having sex.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of having sex with him. I’d have needed a magnifying glass to even find it.”

  “Hope,” I said, and stared at her. “Did you steal Levi’s powers? Tell me the truth.”

  “It wasn’t like there was much to steal, anyway.”

  “Hope,” I cried.

  “Yes, okay?” she said. “I got him drunk in a bar, took him to a hotel room, tied him to the bed, and swiped his miniscule and completely irrelevant powers. I was hungry, he was there, and that’s what we do. Demoness, remember?”

  “Yes, when it comes to souls,” I said. “But you didn’t swipe Levi’s soul. You took his powers.”

  “I was buzzing, and I needed a little pick-me-up. You know what it’s like sharing powers, what it feels like when you tap someone else and draw it into you.”

  “But you took his powers.”

  “You try to do it wasted on watermelon margaritas.”

  “You didn’t take them on purpose, did you?” I asked warily. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had. Hope was not someone to let that type of opportunity pass her by.

  “No, I was drunk and trying them out and I felt this sort of resistance to my manipulations so I sort of tugged a little harder on the connection, and it snapped.”

  “So you bolted?”

  “I stole a nephilim’s powers. Of course I bolted. It wasn’t like I knew how to give them back on my own, and I wasn’t about to call Dad and tell him what I did. That was right after I had that incident at Berkeley, remember?”

  “The three-day-long frat house debauchery where someone accidentally set the house on fire? Yeah, I remember.” Who didn’t? It was one of Hope’s few public screwups. I’d gotten traction off it for months.

  “I couldn’t tell him he was going to have to get the Alpha involved.”

  “So you bolted and hoped no one would notice?”

  “Well it worked pretty well up till now, hasn’t it? But do me a favor, okay?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell Dad? Please? Just between us sisters? I really don’t want him mad at me right now.”

  “Yeah, sure. Because the whole keeping-secrets thing has been working so well for us lately,” I said.

  “So you will? Keep it secret, I mean.”

  “Of course I will,” I said with a sigh. “I mean, what’s the worst that can happen now? He’s already tried to kill us and we saw how well that worked.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  A few hours later, a nurse came in with a mild sedative we faked swallowing, then flushed down the toilet.

  “I should feel guilty about the improper disposal of medication. But I don’t.”

  “It would have been a waste to give them to us, anyway.” Hope came back from the bathroom and wiped her hand on the scrubs the hospital had let us borrow.

  “And would you want to take them if they did?”

  She shrugged. “Not really.”

  I pressed the button to lower the head of my bed before reaching to flip off my bedside light. “By now Levi probably knows he didn’t succeed in killing us. You know he’s going to try again and, no matter what Agent Hahn thinks, a police presence isn’t going to stop him.”

  “The hospital would be the best place for him to try.” Hope snapped off her own light and we lay together in the darkness. “If he tries to move against us anywhere else, we can contain him until we’re somewhere private. I wouldn’t want to face the Alpha in private, would you?”

  “You’re worried about the Alpha? Levi tried to kill Dad.” I shook my head and tried to relax. It wasn’t the boogeyman out to get us, it was a lone nephilim with an attitude problem. Okay, a lone nephilim with an attitude problem and explosives, but still.

  “Exactly,” Hope said with a dry laugh. “Dad isn’t going to have a chance at him. No, my money is on the Alpha taking him apart in ways Dad can’t even imagine.”

  “Really?”

  “He has a vengeful streak,” Hope said. “Especially when it comes to Dad. They’re the only two of their kind—they need each other to stay even somewhat sane. If one of them had responsibility for everything, they’d go mad.”

  “I guess. It’s just hard to imagine Him being the vengeful one.” I wasn’t sure why the idea of a vengeful God bothered me, as there was plenty of historical precedent, but it did. For some reason Dad was supposed to be the badass of the two, and his brother was supposed to be more of a lovable, goofy uncle who let you eat cookie dough for dinner.

  “What about Boris, though? Do you really think he’s a part of it?”

  She tossed and turned on her bed, trying to get comfortable. It had to suck knowing your husband was trying to kill you. “I don’t know anything going on with him anymore. Six months ago, he was fully committed to who and what he was. If someone like Levi would have suggested he kill me and overthrow Dad, he’d have personally escorted him to Hell and asked permission to take the lunatic apart. But now? I don’t know.”

  “But what does your gut tell you?”

  “I don’t want to believe that the man I loved, who I thought loved me, would try to kill my entire family and me. But I remember when he told the cult about our scam, and how they could have tried to kill us. They were lunatics with an armory, who found out we were trying to cheat them out of money and their chance at Hell. He couldn’t have known they wouldn’t kill us. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it right now. If he’s a part of it, Dad and the Alpha will find him, and I don’t know if you’ll be able to stop them once they have him.”

  “I don’t know if I want to.”

  “Really?”

  “No.” Hope and I had never been much on girl talk, but if there was ever a time to start, now would be it. “I’d probably beg Dad to take mercy on him.”

  “Mercy? The Demonic Nephilim, Hope Bettincourt Morningstar Dreborsky, would ask for the mercy of another? Who are you, and what have you done with our Hope?”

  “Shut up.” She snorted. “Yes, I’d ask for mercy. I do love him, after all. Even now, when I think he’s helped someone try to kill me. I should hate him, and part of me really, really hates him but—”

  “It’s hard not to love him?”

  “Yeah.” She sniffled, and grabbed a tissue from the box on the nightstand between us.

  The sky outside filled with clouds, and I bit my lower lip. If we were lucky, Pittsburgh would only suffer a minor, crying-related storm tonight.

  “I still love him, even though it means I’m a complete idiot.”

  “I don’t think it makes you an idiot.” Even though what she was suggesting was idiotic. “I think it’s the human part of us taking over.”

  She sniffled and blew her nose. “Yeah, the idiot part.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s a little spark of humanity the rest of them don’t have. It’s why we thrive in the Earthly realm.”

  “And they stand out like crazy-ass freaks?”

  “I’d have said like sore thumbs, but crazy-ass freaks covers it. Think about Boris’s suits, for example.”

  “Hey,” she choked, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, “it could have been worse.”

  “Worse than gigolo suits?” I raised my eyebrows and waited for her to explain how it could have been worse than those travesties of men’s fashion.

  “The suits t
hemselves weren’t bad,” Hope insisted. “I mean, find me a man that looks bad in Zegna and Armani. He doesn’t exist. It doesn’t matter how ugly a man is. Put him in a good suit and he’s beating women off with a stick. Boris’s problem was the shiny satin shirts.”

  “Yeah, the shirts ruined the entire appearance you were going for.”

  “They were a compromise,” Hope huffed. “I gave in on the shirts if he promised to wear them underneath the suits, because the alternative was so much worse.”

  “Alternative?”

  Hope shuddered. “Polyester. So much polyester I felt dirty just throwing his wardrobe away. I burned it instead.”

  “You burned his clothes?”

  “The local shelter refused everything except his winter coat. Even the homeless wouldn’t wear them. So I convinced him the suits made him look good. I had to compromise on the shirts, though.”

  “He needed a tiny bit of disco, huh?”

  Two loud thumps sounded in the hallway and both of us bolted upright.

  “It wasn’t as bad as the two of you are making out,” Boris said from the darkened doorway.

  There went that awesome mortal police presence. Forget my donation to next year’s police fund.

  “Boris?” Hope said. “I really don’t want to know this, but what are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to kill Faith, obviously. Hi, Faith.” He wiggled his fingers in a dainty wave.

  “Hi,” I said. “Is there a reason you’re here to kill me? Not to sound mean, but shouldn’t you be going after Hope? She is your wife. Or Tolliver? Someone higher up the food chain from me? Dad, maybe?”

  “I agree with you.” Boris nodded and stepped into the room. “But Brother Ev—”

  “I don’t think we need to keep the pretense up any longer,” another voice announced from the darkness.

  I tried to peer around Boris’s meaty shoulders to see the man hiding in the darkened doorway.

  A much shorter, more slender, man stepped forward, tugging on the sleeves of his ugly Western shirt. Harold had been right—he looked like a weasel. “I’m sure Sister Hope has figured out the connection.”

  “Well, I haven’t,” I said. “And since you intend to kill me, I would really like to know. I think the not knowing who you are and how we’re connected before you go through with killing me and stripping me of my powers would just kill… um, never mind.”

  “Humorous.” The man nodded. “I knew there was a reason my brother was so fond of you. He always did like a funny girl.”

  “That’s me, a laugh a minute, right here in one semi-human body. Jokes, impersonations if you want, dry humor, and sarcasm is my specialty.”

  “Shut up,” he said curtly. “He did finally tell you we’re brothers, didn’t he?”

  “Matt told us everything about you,” Hope said. “Let me guess. Boris put a glamour on you as a disguise so I wouldn’t recognize you as an immortal?”

  “And since he’s a full-fledged demon and you’re not… ” Levi threw his arms out wide with a dramatic flourish.

  “Very clever,” Hope said dryly. “How long have you two been planning this? Six months? A year? Let me guess, when you went on that business trip for the church to Provo?”

  “Oh, long before Provo, my dear.” Levi laughed, walked to her bed, and tapped her on the nose. I waited for her to bite his fingers, and when she didn’t, I had to fight back a minor wave of disappointment.

  Instead of waiting for my sister to grow a spine and fight back, I decided to do what I always did in this family. Take charge. This bastard thought he could take my powers because I was the wimp of the family. The one everybody walked on. It was time he thought again.

  “So very much longer than Provo,” he continued. “Where was it, exactly? Oh yes, Los Angeles. You remember Los Angeles, don’t you, Hope? We had a little drink in a bar and the next think I know YOU STOLE MY POWERS!”

  While everyone else was distracted, I slipped my hand toward the IV pole next to the wall behind my head. Thank Heavens Mercy was still an old-school hospital that used poles instead of wall hangers. Otherwise, my next-best choice would have been a bedpan.

  “It was an accident,” she said, standing up and pointing her own finger back at him. “I didn’t mean to take them. I was just borrowing, and it went wrong.”

  “Well that’s no help to me, is it?”

  “Not like it matters. You barely had any powers to begin with. I couldn’t use your powers to turn on a lamp with my mind if I was sitting next to it. Why do you care if you lost them?”

  “Because they were mine,” he growled. “And you stole them from me.”

  “And I’m sorry about that. It was an accident, and I’m willing to give them back. Just go next door and wake up my father and the Alpha. I’m sure one of them can give you back your powers.”

  “Like they’re actually going to do that now. I highly doubt the Alpha or the Omega wants me to have my powers after everything that’s happened. Besides, why would I want my own measly powers returned when I can take someone else’s?” he said, waving toward me.

  “Whose? Mine? Why would you want mine? Shouldn’t you go higher up the chain of command?” I asked, trying to sound panicked so that he would think I was some weakling. I stood and scooted closer to my IV pole. “I’m sure we could work out a lease program with a demon that has a lot more power than me. They’d probably be willing to share if we pitched it right.”

  “Oh, I have a demon that’s willing to share,” Levi said as he turned so that he could face me, as well. “You see, I met Boris just a few weeks after your darling parasite of a sister stole my powers, and the two of us hatched a little plot of our own. Boris has more power than he’ll ever need, but I have none,” Levi explained quietly. “Meanwhile, he’s got the strategic planning capabilities of a garden-variety fruit bat. But me? I am a master strategist. All I needed was a power source.”

  “So the two of you what? Hooked up? Began your own twisted paranormal bromance?” I asked. I got a grip on the IV pole.

  “Not nearly as trivial as you suggest,” Levi said. “No, we decide to start a business partnership.”

  I knew the two of them were twisted, but this was something to savor for the ages. If I lived that long, of course.

  “A business partnership?” Hope asked.

  “Yes, he seduced you and worked his way into the Omega’s family structure while I bided my time. Once he was secure in his position, I would join him and we’d take over. Now all we have to do is take Faith’s power, kill the lot of you, and Boris here will rule Hell.”

  “What’s in it for you?” I asked quickly, using my opportunity to prolong the conversation and get myself into a better position. Now, if I could only get Hope to realize what I was doing so she could distract Boris. “So far it sounds like all you’re getting is some second-rate powers while he gets everything. A beautiful demon wife, lots of sex, power beyond belief, and the chance to rule Hell. Sounds to me like the strategic mastermind of the group is getting hosed.”

  “Well, I did say the lot of you,” Levi said with a cruel grin.

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “He was going to become the Alpha,” Hope said quietly. “He and Boris would have taken everyone’s powers and become the new rulers of all time and space. They would absorb the Alpha’s and the Omega’s powers.”

  “Damn,” I said. “That’s one hell of a long-range plan.”

  “Perfection can’t be rushed. The problem is, my pesky brother never could stay where he belonged. I manipulated the breeding data to give him a nice, boring mate who was only mildly inferior mentally, and what does he do?”

  He set up Matt and the girl he left behind? Wow, that wasn’t a little creepy or anything. “I don’t know. What did he do?”

  “He decided to run away from home like a tiny child. And straight off he goes, throwing my whole perfect plan into jeopardy, to play house with the Devil’s youngest daughter.”

/>   “Well, don’t you think he’ll be upset you’ve killed me? It’s going to make holidays a real bitch in your household.”

  “Most likely,” Levi said. “But my brother has a destiny greater than his own silly desires.”

  “And who determined that?”

  “I did, of course. It is my prerogative now, being a God amongst men.”

  “You haven’t managed it yet,” I said slowly. “As far as I can tell, all you’ve done is talk while my father and the Alpha sit next door, trying to come up with new and unique ways to make you feel pain.”

  “Too true, but as soon as the killing starts, my guess is I’ll be moving up rapidly. Boris, go get the rest of our guests. I think we’ll want everyone here before we bring in our two VIPs.”

  “And how do you think that’s going to help your meteoric rise up the food chain?” I asked.

  Harold appeared behind Levi, a scowl on his face. He saw me standing next to the IV pole and smiled.

  “You think you’ll just kill me, and they’re going to say, ‘okay, well, I guess it’s time to hand over our powers to you. Thanks so very much’?”

  Harold held up three fingers and began to count down.

  “I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know if you know my dad, but he lives up to his reputation.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he does,” Levi said just as Harold put down his last finger. “But everyone knows his three brats are his only—”

  Instead of waiting for him to finish, Harold floated through Levi.

  I grabbed the IV pole and swung it as hard as I could, grateful that Dad had insisted I join softball so we could have bonding time when I was eight. I made a lousy first baseman, but I was great at bat.

  The pole connected with the side of Levi’s head, dropping him with a dull thunk.

  His unconscious body sprawled across the floor, and a large dent above his ear where the pole had connected darkened.

  “Oh, God, he’s not dead is he?”

  “Nah.” Harold floated over him. “You might have cracked his skull and he’s probably got one hell of a concussion, but he’ll be fine.”

  My hands shook so hard I let the pole drop, and it fell to the floor with a loud clank. I sat on the bed and clasped my hands in my lap, trying to stay calm and not start screaming. Hope looked between me and the body on the floor and sat down as well.