Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series

by Holley Trent

  “Why the fuck are you following me?” she whispered.

  God, she really was beautiful. If he had doubted that before from a distance, he was sure of it now. She looked so much like Ariel, but there was something a little different. Her brown eyes were a bit lighter than her sister’s amber, and her lips a bit fuller. Up close, her hair was much darker than her sister’s honey brown. He couldn’t tell for sure from the short length, but he bet if it were longer, it’d probably be nearly black.

  He blew out a breath and stared into his coffee cup. Anything to break the hypnotic effect she had on him. The magic was supposed to work in the opposite direction. He’d thought John was an idiot when he’d said Ariel had worked him over without even trying, but now Charles understood it wasn’t weakness on his brother’s part. It was because he’d met his match.

  He pushed some loose hair back behind his ears and forced himself to meet her cold stare. “It’s pretty good coffee, even for a truck stop,” he said.

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Maybe me being here is just coincidence.”

  “Bullshit. Do I look like an idiot?”

  He looked up at that, and found her forehead furrowed, and those lips turned down into a scowl.

  “I bet you’re from the trucking company. Evaluating me. Verifying my mileage and assessing my driving skills.”

  When he didn’t say anything in response, she slapped the tabletop and grinned. “Aha. I knew it had to be coming sooner or later. My trip times are too good, right? You think I’m too productive? Think I’m taking illegal shortcuts?”

  Maybe there was some opportunity here. He drew his cup closer and emptied a sugar packet into it. “Well, you’re obviously not. You seem to be a very … industrious contractor.”

  “Damn right, I am.” Her shoulders relaxed and she tucked her coat onto the seat beside her. “Dude, you should have just told me. I thought you were a prostitute.”

  He couldn’t help making an indignant snort before picking up his menu and hiding his shit-eating grin behind it. “Order what you’d like. It’s on me.”

  A prostitute? Now that was a new one. He was guilty of a lot of sins, but that wasn’t one of them. Incubi generally had no shortage of eager volunteers with whom to sate themselves. Those victims would probably be more resistant if they knew what sort of beings they were dealing with, however. One of Charles’s lesser-liked half-brothers had a motto: “I’ll take their virginity, and then take their soul!” He was just like Pop.

  And when Pop found out about Marion—

  Charles suppressed a groan and fixed his gaze on the menu’s omelet column.

  He sensed the waitress’s return before she’d fully stopped at the tableside.

  “Let me have the Big Beulah,” Marion said to her after clucking her tongue a few beats.

  His gaze flitted over the laminated menu in search of the item. He found it on the back. The Big Beulah: three eggs over easy served atop hash browns with a rasher of bacon, two sausage patties, and a short stack of pancakes on the side.

  He lowered his menu at the sound of her clucking her tongue again. She was still reading.

  “Uh … and let me get a cheese Danish with that, assuming it’s not a week old and crustier than your bathroom mirror. Shit, send someone in there between orders with a bottle of glass cleaner. It’s disgusting. Oh, and some stewed apples.”

  His empty stomach lurched. Where the hell was she going to put it all?

  The waitress smacked her gum and gave Marion a long stare before turning to Charles. “And for you, sir?”

  “Ma’am, wait. I’m not done.” Marion grabbed a little paper tent from near the saltshaker and silently perused the daily specials. She tapped it with an index finger and narrowed her eyes at the waitress. “Is it too early to get a roast beef sandwich on the side?”

  “On the side?” Charles asked, not even bothering to suppress his horror. For fuck’s sake, she could give Claude a run for his money, and that guy had a metabolism outstanding for even a mutt cambion of the half-witch/half-demon variety. Claude couldn’t gain weight even if he tried, and he’d tried.

  Marion gave him a long blink. “What? There a limit to how much you can charge on your corporate credit card?”

  He scoffed. Oh, she had no idea what his net worth was like. He didn’t need credit. Unlike his two favorite brothers, Charles had been born wealthy. He never had to work for money. His money worked for him—assuming he could remember where he kept it all.

  “No, I’m just wondering how you acquired such an appetite. Are you a champion eater of some sort?”

  She blew a raspberry, and he was glad to see her relaxing a bit in his company. That would make what he had to do later easier. “No. I usually get one good meal a day, so I make it a big one.”

  The waitress turned to him, rolling her eyes with uncalled-for commiseration before scribbling Marion’s order on her pad. “And for you, hon?”

  He wasn’t really hungry. Maybe he should have been, given he hadn’t had a meal in sixteen hours, but the longer he sat in front of Marion, his appetite ebbed more and more. He was too amped, too primed for other things to think about food and all the work he’d have to do to consume it.

  He closed his menu and pressed it toward the waitress. “Just a bowl of oatmeal and whatever fruit you have back there. And some more cream for the coffee, please.”

  “Got it.” She hesitated there at the tableside yet again, and this time he looked up and met her provocative stare.

  Her lips pulled up at one corner.

  He rolled his shoulders, sighed, and pushed her lust back at her by imagining he held a mirror up between them. He’d never had to, nor wanted to, do that before, and only knew it was possible because Claude had told him a story about this one woman who’d figured out what he was and who’d wanted to be in his thrall. There were some benefits to being a demon’s kept woman, although it was a job no woman in her right mind wanted.

  Charles’s mother hadn’t wanted it, and that was the other reason she was dead.

  The waitress blew out a resounding sigh, and walked toward the kitchen.

  Gritting his teeth, he turned his attention to Marion, hoping she hadn’t noticed the other woman’s odd behavior.

  Evidently she hadn’t, as she was playing with her phone, completely ignoring him.

  Now relaxed, he laced his fingers together and considered strategy.

  What would she expect from him? Just business? Could he push the limits a bit and offer her a compliment? He was out of practice with simple flirting. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to go about things the old-fashioned way. The last woman he had to do a bit of work to earn the affection of, he’d encountered back in 1910. That was before Pop found him and marked him—brought the incubus shit online. That was before he’d left Princeton, two years shy of earning a degree.

  That girl—he couldn’t even remember her name or what was so special about her. Maybe she was rich? Or perhaps she’d been one of the women his mother thought would be a wholesome influence on him. The only thing his recollection could stir up about the young woman now was that she was blond, and not particularly interesting. She’d sure been into him, though, once they’d gotten all the uncomfortable pleasantries out of the way.

  He rubbed the scruff of his chin, considering what they’d talked about all those years ago.

  Blinding lights shone into the plate glass window at his left, then dimmed as the motorist killed his ignition.

  Ah. Vehicles. Back then, he’d been enamored by powerful trains and Ford’s early Model Ts.

  He cleared his throat. “So, what do you drive when you’re not in your truck?” he asked. Seemed a harmless enough question, and he knew engines pretty well, and loved driving, though he hadn’t gotten to do much of it lately. He could at least sound intelligent about that one topic.

  Marion set down her phone and made the screen go dark, but not quickly enou
gh to hide the map she was studying. Where was she heading next?

  She raised an eyebrow. “Um, hi, my name is Marion. Perhaps you’d like to introduce yourself before you grill me.”

  He cringed. “Sorry, did I skip that part? Sometimes I have the social graces of a caged orangutan, according to my brothers.” He extended his right hand. “Charles Edison.”

  She stared at the hand, then offered him her left one instead of her right. Her smirk conveyed a hint of dare. Distracted as he had been in the past month, he had managed to observe that she wasn’t a southpaw.

  He switched hands and shook before she changed her mind. Her grip was firm and assertive, but her skin was soft. He held onto her hand a bit longer than was proper, because it’d been so long since he’d shaken anyone’s hand, beyond other supernatural types. They weren’t affected by his nature, and they wouldn’t have felt this nice even if they were.

  That casual touch of her hand seemed almost a sin, it was so novel.

  This was his woman—his match. Finally, he’d touched her, and his heart leapt up as if he were some besotted schoolboy and not a man who had lost track of how many women he’d seduced sometime back in the 1960s. That had been the decade when he’d cheated on his friend Vodka with a sweet bitch named Mary Jane. It was the decade he and Claude didn’t like talking about. In addition to having to watch each other’s backs in the Vietnam jungles, Pop had partnered them up back then because there was some shit going on with the angels that had all the demons and their spawn on high alert. Although he didn’t remember much about the decade of free love, from what he and Claude could piece together, there’d been some orgies, and some of those women had been pretty rank.

  Marion pulled her hand back first and picked up her phone yet again.

  He picked up his paper napkin and fidgeted a corner. Things were going great. Swell. Was he awkward, her, or both of them? Either way, he needed to do better if he was going to seduce her in the next two days.

  “To answer your question,” she said, “the rig is both my only vehicle and also my home. Hence my P.O. box in lieu of an address.” She groaned and set the phone down. “Shit. I haven’t been through there in a while. Box must be overflowing.”

  “Through where?”

  “Ohio. Where I grew up, more or less.”

  Oh. He wondered how she’d feel learning she’d been conceived to be a Southern belle and not a Yankee. “You take the full-time gig a bit overboard, huh?”

  She raised her narrow shoulders into a shrug. “I guess I do. I don’t really have any hobbies. No family.” She shrugged again. “I just keep it moving.”

  I’ll give you a family.

  He cringed upon even thinking it. Where’d that come from? Something in her shield had to be seriously screwing with his sense. Or maybe he was mildly deranged from skipping meals. Having a family of his own was something he’d given absolutely zero thought to since his mother died.

  She set down the phone and pulled her coffee closer. Instinctively, he knew she’d use two creams and three sugars. That’s the way Ariel took it, and their grandmother, too.

  Sure enough, Marion took her coffee the same way. He grinned at his witnessing of nature versus nurture.

  He cleared his throat and grinned as the waitress returned with their plates. When she walked away, he asked Marion, “I should probably know this, but I haven’t peeked at the schedules lately. Where are you headed next?”

  She speared a sausage patty and bit into it before answering. “I wouldn’t be on the schedule. I’m supposed to be on vacation, but I don’t know … I picked up this last load on a whim, I guess. Wasn’t really hurting for the money. Just couldn’t say no.”

  “How long is your vacation meant to last?”

  “I haven’t decided. I could go a long while without having to pick up a load. I only need to feed myself and buy gas. I should probably give some other guy a chance to make a little money, especially with Christmas coming soon and draining everyone dry. Not like I have anyone to buy gifts for.”

  The forced smile he’d been wearing twitched a bit at the corners, but she didn’t see it. She was concentrating on her meal. Next year, she’d have no shortage of relations to buy gifts for, and she wouldn’t need to worry about money, either. He’d make sure of that.

  He sprinkled brown sugar onto his oatmeal and stirred, watching her eat. She wasn’t just picking at the components of her meal. She was being downright systematic—going in order. Hash browns, eggs, bacon, hash browns, sausage, hash browns, pancakes. Then she’d repeat it all, occasionally sneaking a bite of her roast beef sandwich.

  Had she not gotten enough to eat growing up in foster care? He didn’t want to press, but a bit of backstory might make her introduction to the Morton clan a bit easier. Assuming he got her there.

  He set down his spoon and cleared his throat. “Whereabouts in Ohio did you grow up? I used to work down there.”

  True enough. He’d worked everywhere, going from one truck stop to the next. There was a reason his father called him “Trucker.” He’d seduced truck stop whores, lady truck drivers, truck stop waitresses, and a few hitchhikers. He’d had no shortage of victims, and only moved around as much as he did for a change of scenery. Because he didn’t kill his victims or leave any visible marks, no one knew what he’d done. As far as everyone else knew, he’d committed no crimes, beyond spiritual ones. Every one of them was going to Hell for succumbing to temptations of the flesh. Who the fuck had made up these rules, anyway? And why were both sides going along with them? He’d never thought to ask when he’d been drinking.

  “All over,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “Birth certificate says I was born in West Virginia, though. I don’t remember my parents.” She sipped her coffee, staring at him over the cup’s rim, likely waiting on some insensitive remark.

  As if he’d dare comment when his own family tree was a sordid mess. He had no full siblings, but at last count, his number of living half-siblings approached a hundred. That was low for Pop, actually. At one point, he’d had nearly a thousand. But it seemed some cambions were born with self-destruct switches. After a few hundred years, they got tired of their physical forms and decided to opt out of life on the Earthly plane. They all thought they’d be more powerful in spirit form, and they were so hungry for the power they’d caused their own demises. Thus the dwindling number of Charles’s half-siblings.

  Charles had considered “opting out” a few times himself, but not for the power.

  He busied himself with his cantaloupe and said, “Maybe that’s a good thing. Not all people should be parents.”

  “You sound like you speak from experience.”

  Absolutely, he did. After all, his father was a fallen angel sociopath, and Charles himself had no inkling of how many children he’d had himself before condom use became widespread. Cambions weren’t susceptible to disease, but were equipped with full reproductive capacities. He imagined most of his children from early in his life were dead. The immortal child he knew of, well, he’d never aspired to be a father to him. Still didn’t. Claude had encountered the lad in the past few months, and according to him, the boy had “turned.” There was no going back for him. That happened with most cambions. A few, though, couldn’t reconcile their guilt with their occupations.

  John couldn’t.

  Claude, at nearly a century older than Charles, still felt like an asshole for corrupting women. He did his job competently, but with increasing bitterness in the past few years. He’d fallen in love once, too, but Pop had taken away his woman. By the time Claude had learned that the demon part of him could be leached out, it was too late to do it. Now when he seduced women, he had to compartmentalize and picture them as nameless, faceless things, or else he couldn’t live with himself. Cambions had a long, long time to live with themselves.

  And Charles—well, Charles generally loved his immortality, but unlike his brothers, that incubus part of him was switched o
n all the time. He couldn’t get away from it and just turn it off if he wanted a no-strings-attached screw. There were always strings. If he so much as touched the back of that waitress’s palm, she was eternally fucked. That was why he’d turned to liquor, even during the era of prohibition. He’d dulled that loud voice from the non-demon part of his conscience with alcohol. Sometimes that voice wondered if he should just go on and kill himself. He wouldn’t hurt people if he were dead.

  If it weren’t for Pop’s redirection—his edict that Charles needed to get out and spawn his own quasi-demon army, he’d still be drunk, and probably still without his fated match.

  He chewed his cantaloupe thoughtfully, and said, “I’m close with only a few members of my family. Two of my brothers, one sister, and, um …”

  She’d stopped shoveling food into her mouth, and now stared at him. This seemed interesting to her, this discussion of family.

  He swallowed. “Uh. One of my brothers, John, is engaged to a woman named Ariel.”

  She nodded, urging him on.

  He’d hoped the name might spark something in her, but of course it wouldn’t. She wouldn’t have heard of her. That knowledge wasn’t a part of her angel shielding.

  “She’s nice. She’s good for him. I don’t really understand what she does for a living, but she’s some sort of artist. Works in advertising. She and John live with Ariel’s grandmother near the North Carolina coast. I visit them about once a month.”

  She widened her eyes. “North Carolina? You go all the way there once a month?”

  “I get around.” Getting around was quite easy when John was available to teleport him here and there. Lucky motherfucker. Julia could do it, too, and no one was sure if they’d inherited that particular talent from Pop, or their mother, Darla. Darla was, by her own recounting, “approximately one drop angel.” If she had supernatural gifts, no one knew what they were because she was rarely “all there.” Neither Charles nor Claude could disappear into thin air. If they got anywhere, it was usually by human means of transport.