by Dianna Hardy
He turned to the dark-haired female he’d be sleeping with tonight. “Gorgeous, could you give me five minutes with an old friend? I’ll come find you when we’re done, and then I’m all yours.”
He thought she might have purred. “Sure thing. There’s a live band up in five, so I’ll be hanging near the stage.” She winked at him and swaggered off.
“Don’t you have any pride?” retorted Lucifer.
“Pride cometh before the fall. Morgana’s not my problem. You’re the one – what would you call it now – comforting her every second you have free. You sort it out.”
Lucifer smirked at him. “Envious, Abaddon?”
“I have full control over the sins of mankind, so … no. But thank you for caring enough to ask.”
Suddenly, Lucifer’s expression changed and all guise fell away. He must be bored with the banter already. “Look, I don’t care what you do. Talk to her, sleep with her – you seem to be good at that – or find some way to disappear and never come back so she forgets you. But it’s in your best interest that one hundred percent of her concentration is on the Dragon. The Dragon is made partly of your flesh and blood.”
A sharp anger shot through him, but he let it pass; acknowledged it and let it filter out of him. He would never have been able to do that before where Ymari was concerned. Just hearing another man utter her name would have been enough to send him into a raging, jealous frenzy, but everything had changed when goody-two-shoes Gwain had rid the world of sin. That single act had brought down Hell, lifted his own internal shutters, and finally, allowed him to see himself as he actually was – and that had been kinda “whoa!”.
He had wondered in the last few weeks whether he had acted accordingly, whether he should have fought harder for his Ymari; if he had given up too easily. But whichever way he looked at it, he knew there was nothing more he could have done. What fate hath put together, let no God put asunder. And fate was the one thing no being had any control over. Abaddon was many things, but he wasn’t a time waster, and he knew when to quit – he was familiar with the point when obsession ceased to be the thing you feel, and became the thing you are; how it became your master and didn’t let you go. He’d seen it time and time again, and had purged all the sins that came from that transition. No, there had been no possible way to keep Gwain and Mary apart. And so, he had handed his only creation over to fate. Not that the thought of Ymari didn’t still make his gut clench in all kinds of complicated emotions, but, more recently, some of those emotions had been of the more tender and fond variety. Freakin’ weird.
A new warmth flooded his chest, beginning exactly where her teardrop marked his skin.
He denied the urge to touch the opalescent drop, and instead turned to Lucifer and met his gaze. He couldn’t say he had ever really liked this angel. From the moment he had been birthed, despite the immense light and clarity and that he used to exude, he had also carried a hungry energy, as if he could swallow the world and it still wouldn’t satiate his need for more. All angels had fallen for different reasons, and he had always been certain it was this hunger that had caused Lucifer’s fall, although he didn’t know for sure – no one did – because the former archangel had never divulged.
“I would never touch Morgana,” Abaddon said, softly.
Lucifer’s stare hardened. “That’s what I told her.”
“I’ll just bet you did. When the Dragon rises, I’ll be there. Until then, I’m staying out of it. Morgana’s all grown up – she can take care of herself.”
“She’s losing sight of—”
“She knows more than you give her credit for.” He took his drink and made towards the stage, ignoring Lucifer’s spiteful look. Jeez, the guy was so easy to rile up. He found it kind of amusing they both pranced around behind his back thinking he hadn’t a clue he was being spied on.
He turned back one last time to push a final button … because it was fun. “Unlike you, she knows I left the gorilla alive. And she always knew I would.”
He went to find the lovely if somewhat dim female, and left Lucifer seething where he stood.
Chapter Six
“Home, sweet home,” said Elena, perhaps a little too sarcastically.
All the houses in this street had been damaged somehow. Instead of repairing them, most of the owners had just left, seeking solace elsewhere with other family members or friends. It probably didn’t help that the insurance companies were not paying out, deeming the lootings a direct result of the quakes and everything that had happened. Apparently, that made it an ‘act of God’. Ha.
“I need to stand in the centre,” she continued, “which is just here between the living room and kitchen. If I can get a good flow of power, I don’t think the clean-up will take more than—”
“Leave it.”
She wasn’t sure if it was Karl’s flat tone or his words that rocked her boat. “What?”
“I said, leave it. It’s … we don’t need it – we have a new home now.”
“Is that really where you want to live? In Gwain’s penthouse? With everyone else?” God, please not with everyone else – she had to get away from everyone else for at least a short while.
She ignored the faint ‘thrum’ that ran through her body. It had only been twenty-four hours since her succubus had fed – translated, that meant ‘had sex with Karl’ – but the demon was already making itself known.
He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “It’s my penthouse now.”
Shit. He actually looked like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. She tried a softer approach. “Karl, this home isn’t ruined. It’s no effort, I can make it—”
“It was ruined the day Mum died here. And before that.”
It was said in that same tone, devoid of any emotion. She sidled up to him, but felt him stiffen as she took his hand.
“I don’t know what I was holding onto by keeping it – I should have sold it years ago.”
“It’s done you okay. It gave you a monthly rent.”
“I could have found another way to earn more money, and it’s not like I need the money now,” he added, dry laughter colouring his words.
“Then, there would have been a good reason you kept it. You weren’t ready to just let your past go like that.” She winced. Maybe that sentence would have sounded better without the ‘like that’ tagged on at the end.
Karl didn’t seem to notice – hadn’t even changed his expression.
“Let me do this for you – for us. I don’t know if I’m ready to let go of this house. I mean, this is where you grew up,” she smiled, a flood of memories surfacing. “This is where I ran to, to get away from my mum, and you were always here. I think I knew your bedroom better than I knew mine,” her smile widened.
He glanced down at her briefly, but his features remained unreadable, and that really got under her skin. For twenty years she’d known him like the back of her hand. Now, for the first time in their history, she couldn’t fathom what he was thinking.
She blinked back tears so he wouldn’t see them and pushed away the overwhelming sense of loss that washed over her. Idiot. All couples have problems to iron out – this is nothing to worry about.
But she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that because, even though the words were logical, she and Karl had always been a law unto themselves. Best friends since early childhood, they had been inseparable until she’d gone to university and he hadn’t. They may have just been ‘friends’ then, but they had harboured secret feelings for each other and they had made it work – they had come back to each other.
“Please let me fix this,” and suddenly, she meant so much more than the house.
His jaw clenched, but after a pause, he nodded his consent.
She sighed to herself in relief, and took up position in the centre of the building, exactly where Karl had braced himself against an earthquake last time they had stood here. A lump rose in her throat as the memory of that morning flashed into
her mind: Mary’s exuberance despite the inevitable; their last breakfast together; the way they’d had to say goodbye…
Karl walked back a few steps until he was up against the right hand wall of the living room, and leaned against it with his hands stuffed into his pockets.
This wasn’t a difficult task. The place looked ransacked from top to bottom, some furniture broken, some paintings ripped off walls and some bit and pieces smashed up, but the structure of the building was intact. All she needed was a surge of power, a dose of her will, and Mary Poppins could eat her own spoonful of sugar.
The ‘surge’ came to her as easily as a moth to a flame. No incantation was necessary. She let the power flood out of her and engulf the home; projected herself into every inanimate object, then began to sew all the frayed threads in the fabric of energy that she felt. Every broken thing got pieced back together, all disarray finding a home in order.
She let out a little sound of triumph at the sense of achievement. This was standard school stuff – witchcraft she’d learnt a long time ago. She’d used it on broken pencils, her bicycle once, on her computer when it had crashed, and on the dishes a couple of times when she hadn’t been able to muster up the motivation to wash them.
So yeah, using magic frivolously had entered into the equation just a teeny, tiny bit as a child, but she’d never considered herself frivolous compared to all the stories she’d heard from her classmates about all the things they’d gotten up to.
But this, right here, felt wonderful. Whereas her mother’s natural ability was clairvoyance, Elena’s had always been healing. Karl’s house may not be a plant or an animal, but the healer in her felt at peace.
After a couple more minutes, she was done.
She drew in her power, surprised at the slight wooziness she felt. “Wow.” She leaned into the door frame that separated the living room from the kitchen, then gasped as a different energy coursed through her – this one hard and sharp: lust. Sexual and ferocious, although, thankfully, fleeting. For the moment, anyway.
I must have used up more energy than I thought. And sure enough, the skin around her fingernails looked a tad grey and cracked. Fuck.
She felt uncomfortable. Uncomfortably aroused and just … uneasy. And then she realised why. It was always around this time that Karl’s arms found their way around her waist while he murmured soothing words in her ear. He always calmed her succubus … except for now.
She turned to face him, only to find him staring at a spot on the floor behind an oak wood cabinet that hadn’t quite made it flush back against the wall.
She didn’t need to ask, because she knew what was there; had seen Karl on his hands and knees at seventeen, after the police tape had finally been taken down, scrubbing out the evidence of his father’s drunken madness and his mother’s demise.
Tentatively, she made her way to him and looked down towards the same spot, expecting to see the faint outline of blood from his mother’s broken skull that he’d never quite been able to get out.
It wasn’t there.
Dumbfounded, she stared at the pristine cream carpet, then at all of the carpet that spanned across the living room. Cream. Pristine. As if brand new.
“Well,” Karl’s voice came out throaty, “you’ve done a good job.”
She met his eyes, and the pain in them almost tore her apart. It was as if he mirrored the world; as if the apocalypse had brought down his barriers, not just the ones separating dimensions.
This wasn’t a Karl she was altogether familiar with. He’d always been the steady, clear-headed, straight-thinking one. The months following his mother’s death, he’d gotten on with his life, not without difficulty, but with a mature and logical outlook that she had admired. In fact, at this precise moment, it had never been so clear to her how much she had relied on his strength all her life.
“I didn’t mean to … God, I’m sorry.” It seemed strange to apologise for cleaning that stain away; the one he had tried so hard to get rid of himself – the one that had always tainted the house somehow and held it, clutched tightly, in a bubble of moroseness that coloured this area of the living room. Regardless, she felt like she’d just shot a poisoned arrow through Karl’s heel. Everyone guarded their weak spot so they couldn’t be damaged further by it – she’d just obliterated his.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated.
He said nothing.
“Karl, please, we need to talk.”
He pushed himself off the wall, not looking in the least like he was about to open up and have a heart to heart.
“I know you don’t want to, but everything’s falling apart around us and we need to keep strong – you need to keep strong. If we don’t deal with the things that affect us—”
“Keep strong? For who? For me, or you?”
Taken aback, she shook her head. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s not about fair. If it was, I’d have been able to stop my father turning into a murderer, my mother would never have had to deal with his abuse, Gwain would have fucking saved her because he could have, and I should have found out about what I am – who I am – way before now. I should have known, and I would have been able to stop it all. It’s about asking the right questions: Why didn’t any of it happen that way?”
She’d always been kind of useless at holding back the waterworks, especially when the people she loved were angry or hurting, and although he wasn’t shouting – had barely raised his voice at all – it was bloody obvious that a tenuous anger seethed under the surface that had once been so solid.
A mild tremor shook the ground briefly, the dimensions settling into their new positions; the Dragon stirring … “Why didn’t it?” she whispered.
He drove his own poisoned arrow through her weak spot. “Because of you.”
Oh... Her hand covered her mouth as if somehow that would stop her face from crumpling in front of him.
That vacant look had returned. “You can’t help it. It’s not your fault. But that doesn’t make it less true. I wasn’t supposed to know about my angel lineage. Everything happened the way it did, because otherwise, the Shanka would have discovered you. My role was to protect you.”
“Your role?” Her own anger simmered somewhere deep down, although it was still drowned out by the pain inflicted with his words. And to think some couples argued all the time – how exactly did they do that? “Is that what you think our relationship is? You protecting me?”
“Isn’t it? What if we don’t really love each other, Elena?”
I am not hearing this! What the hell happened just now? Did I miss something while I was zoned out with the spell?
“What if we only think we do because we were always fated to be together?”
“I do love you.”
“And what if you only do because you’re supposed to?”
She didn’t have an answer – she was speechless. Stunned.
Something flitted across his eyes, as if he’d just woken from a daze. “I don’t feel like I know myself,” he whispered, his voice cracking mid-sentence. “It’s like I’m me, but not me.”
She approached him again, swallowing back her hurt and pushing her anger to one side, refusing to believe he was actually saying this. “A lot has happened. I think what you’re feeling is normal. Boundaries are gone; many people are feeling confused and—”
“Shouldn’t that make it easier? I mean, we have our free will back, right? I should know exactly who I am.”
“You’ve only just discovered Gwain’s your father.”
Pain lanced through his features at that statement, but he masked it too quickly in that non-Karl way.
“Your angel-father, at least. And you’ve inherited a fortune, and a multi-million pound business. How you’re feeling is normal, but we need to stay open with each other and talk.”
When he next looked at her, his blue eyes were so haunted she went deathly cold inside. His boyish face aged about a thousand years in one second flat. He leane
d right into her and his words ate up any warmth that was left in the space between them. “Why do you always want to get inside me?”
A shiver snaked up her spine. She could barely make her throat work – her voice came out a hushed tremble. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s darkness in you, I can feel it.”
She lost the fight with her tears and they spilled down her cheeks. “How can you say that to me?”
“Is it because you want to control me?”
“Is this how you’ve been thinking the past few weeks?” she forced out. “Is this what’s been going through your mind every time you’re with me? Every time we make love?”
“We don’t make love, Elena – you take.”
The final punch in the gut.
She gasped, words lodged in her throat as a part of her fell into some horrible chasm she hadn’t known existed.
“I’m sorry, darling, but it’s true. We’ve never made love, because it always ends with me satiating you.”
She choked back threatening sobs, wishing her tears would dry up, her voice wavering, “That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to me… As if you don’t get any satisfaction from it!”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
“I don’t know anything you’re saying. I don’t feel like I know you – this isn’t you.”
“Isn’t it? Because I sure as hell don’t know who I am anymore.” He took both her hands in his, a tender action had he not been skewering her with every syllable. Was this a ‘normal’ part of relationships? She felt stupid thinking it, but she felt more stupid that at this moment, she wasn’t entirely sure of the answer – everything was clouded in confusion. Was it okay that they were fighting like this? That they were hurting each other? She had no fucking idea. Other people would know this at twenty-five – God knows, she’d been witness to all of her friends at school in tears over boys – but she … Karl was the first boyfriend she’d ever had and watching any amount of shitty daytime TV portraying all kinds of airbrushed relationships had not readied her for the potential problems within them.
