by Holley Trent
In spite of his Earth-sized ego, if Pop realized how many women in the room were staring in their direction, he didn’t acknowledge them. That wasn’t a good thing. Whenever Pop ignored women, it meant he had business on the brain.
Charles was sick of his business.
“Still sober?” Pop asked in a flat voice.
“Yes.”
“Interesting. What’s that, ninety days?”
“No. Hundred and fifty this time.”
Pop shrugged. “Sorry. Been busy. Days start to blur after a million years or so.”
Charles hoped the world would cease to exist before he saw that many years. He took a sip of his tea and waited for Pop to get on with it. Pop had summoned him, after all. Charles had merely picked the spot for the meeting. He wanted to get back to Marion. He only had a few precious hours with her at most, and he was squandering them being in audience of his father.
“Hundred and fifty days … and how many women have you been with in all that time, Trucker?”
Here we go. Charles set down his cup and studied his nails. He didn’t have to think that hard. “I think you know the answer to that. You get the reports from Central Office, don’t you? You should know how many new souls I’ve earmarked for them.”
Pop’s eyes narrowed again. “I was hoping there was a delay in the reporting.” He leaned across the table and lowered his voice to a whispery hiss. “I thought I lit a pretty hot fire under your ass last year. You were the most productive of all my children, and I offered you a chance for upward advancement. I picked you, yet in the past year, you’ve not only not avoided my summonses twenty times and subverted the scouts I sent out to find you, but you’ve done no work. Are you fucking kidding me? Would you seriously have me believe you haven’t touched a woman in a year?”
Charles laced his fingers atop the table and ground his teeth.
The only woman he’d touched even casually lately had been Julia—until Marion, that is.
“Maybe I can’t do it without the booze,” he said.
“And maybe I’ll reach through your neck and grab your spine with my bare hands if you keep toying with me.” Pop leaned back and let his natural charms ooze out as the barista sidled over to the table.
Funny, Charles hadn’t been aware they had table service. He’d had to get in the line like everyone else.
“Can I … get you anything, sir?” Her voice quavered, and her hands wrung the canvas of the apron tied at her waist.
Charles studied her. Read her, in the way he’d always been so good at. She couldn’t have been much more than twenty. Young, redheaded, and a little bit stupid. Pop’s favorite type.
Charles rolled his eyes and stared out the window. He hated watching this shit, and it happened almost every time he met his father in a public place. That was why he’d ignored so many summonses. He hated seeing his father work, but he also didn’t want to meet the man in private. He was scary in private.
“Yes, sweetheart, a very large Kona to go,” Pop purred.
“Oh! Okay. I’ll see if we have any left.” She turned to walk back to the counter, but before she could get too far, Pop extended an arm and scooped her in close, caressing her waist with a familiarity he didn’t possess.
As always, his poor victim didn’t seem to mind.
Rage broiled in Charles’s gut, and he fisted his hands on his lap, afraid his anger’s outlet would be his crushing of his teacup. How would he explain why he had no burns?
He had to keep Marion far away from Pop. If possible, he didn’t even want the man to learn her name. If he knew her name, he’d disrespect it.
“It’s all right if you don’t have any, darling,” Pop said to the woman. “Just find me something rich and dark.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, and her tongue glided across her parted lips. If Pop squeezed her just so, she’d probably have an orgasm then and there. He’d managed it before. It wasn’t hard. In the trade, they called those little minimal-contact orgasms “Gateway O’s.” They were just a small taste of what sex demons could give, and once their victims had one, they always followed wherever the demon took them.
“Rich and dark,” she said, eyelids fluttering. “Yeah. Be right back.”
Pop let her go and leaned in close to Charles again. “When I really set my mind to doing something, I get it done. I asked you to spawn an army. Do you know why?”
Spawn. Like frogs and snakes. Appropriate.
“I don’t really care, but you’re going to tell me anyway, right?”
“Can the attitude. I think I liked you better when you were a drunk. You didn’t talk back.”
“Yup.” True that, he hadn’t.
“I picked you because you have power to spare to keep them in check. You’re not like most of my children. They get power only from me, and wouldn’t have any otherwise. But you—you have power of your own.”
“No, I have power from my mother. You know, the dead one.” His voice was flippant, but his mounting anger had him seeing red. How dare Pop mention Charles’s mother after what he’d done to her?
Pop bared his teeth. “Semantics. Claude has power from his mother, too, as does that meddlesome brother of yours, John. I suspect he has something to do with Julia disappearing from her compound. I went to find my sweet little girl, to get her online, and she was gone. That made me angry.”
“Hmm.” Charles pushed up both eyebrows and hoped he conveyed adequate surprise about his half-sister’s disappearance. Julia hadn’t actually disappeared. He and Claude had helped her escape back in February. She was now married to a pro baseball-playing alpha werewolf named Calvin and occasionally popped in at Clarissa’s. Teleporting spared the duo a six-hour drive, though it made Calvin a bit green around the gills.
Charles lifted both shoulders and grunted. “Sucks to be you, I guess. Word must be getting around about you. If I were those poor kids of yours, I’d run, too.” He cracked his knuckles and held up his left palm. “I’d run before you had a chance to do this to me.” His skin burned hot, and his father’s gaze tracked down to Charles’s glowing palm.
Pop was unmoved. Why wouldn’t he be? He was the one who’d put the mark there that brought all that made Charles a demon to the surface. Without that mark, he wouldn’t have been an incubus. He wouldn’t be able to hurt women that way.
“I think you’ve been spending too much time around Claude. Maybe you two should have a little break. Your attitude is wearying.”
“You know what’s wearying? This line of conversation is wearying. Claude and I have been buddy-buddy since around 1910 when you brought me online and then abandoned me for a year to find my own way. Remember that?”
“That period of my existence is somewhat hazy,” Pop said.
“Yeah. My last hundred years or so have been hazy. If it weren’t for Claude, I would have found a sharp sword to fall neck-first onto a long time ago. Leave me alone. I’ve delivered more souls to you in a century than Mary-Catherine has in nearly five hundred years. I have it on good authority that you don’t nag her about productivity.”
He shrugged. “Sue me. I’m a demon. I’m allowed to pick favorites, but let me tell you this.” Pop leaned in once more and projected his warning psychically. Get your shit together or I’m going to assign you a keeper. One you’ll take no particular joy in having accompany you. He has a bit of a grudge against you anyway, so he’ll love to be wielding the whip.
Before Charles could ask who his father meant, Pop said, You don’t even know your own kid’s name, do you? It’s Ross.
Charles leaned back in his chair, jaw flapping.
Pop cleared his throat as the barista returned with his drink. He grabbed it and stood, wrapping his arm around her waist.
She giggled.
“Tell you what, Trucker. You’re right. You used to be a good worker for me, so I’ll make a deal with you and offer a little incentive. Would you like that?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“I don�
��t have to. Red here’s gonna take care of that for me, isn’t that right?”
The barista flushed, and then grinned.
Charles rolled his eyes again.
“You’re supposed to be building an army, but right now I’d settle for you giving me one little lieutenant.” He grazed the pad of this thumb over the barista’s chin and propped it up so her lips were angled toward his. “Three months is long enough to make one stick, so that’s how long I’ll give you.” He brushed his lips over the barista’s and caught her when her legs wobbled beneath her. “And to make it more interesting,” he said, twirling a length of her hair around his index finger, “if I wade into the gene pool and manage to create a new ball of cells of my own before you do … you lose.”
“Well, that’s just super. Thank you, Father, for your outstanding generosity. Where’s Homer or Hesiod? There should be someone writing epic poetry about your goddamned magnanimity.”
A deadline and a contest against the most fertile being on two legs on the planet? Awesome. It wasn’t like he was in the process of wooing his currently ignorant life mate or anything.
“I’m not playing. Fuck you and your contest.”
Pop shrugged his massive shoulders, and his expression remained a neutral blank. “So be it. Just remember, I tried to help you. People usually regret not taking me up on that kindness.”
“I don’t need help remembering. I’ve got memories of my dead mother to remind me just fine.”
“Good. Enjoy your brief freedom, then. Ross will meet up with you soon enough. He may not be able to teleport and pop in on you, but he’s aggressive. He’ll find his daddy just fine.”
The threat should have chilled Charles a bit, but instead of fear making his gut frozen and heavy, heat built up inside his chest.
He was just one man, one cambion. Why couldn’t Pop just leave him be? He had a hundred children fighting for favor, so why did he insist on badgering Charles? He’d done his time, and now he ached to be let off the hook. The guys running things in Hell didn’t give a shit about him, and he knew it. He was replaceable, and was more than willing to get out of the way and let someone else have his job. In truth, he would give up immortality to not be what he was.
Charles closed his eyes and counted his breaths until his father left. He felt the departure of the demon’s energy from the shop, and when he opened his eyes again, his father was on the other side of the window, winking at him while strolling arm in arm with the barista.
“Damn it,” Charles mumbled, tossing his cup into the trash and shouldering the street door open. “No wonder people smite demons.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Charles pushed the grocery cart up and down the aisles of the giant super-store, scanning cans and boxes, confusion settling more deeply into his brain with each passing minute. What did people eat? Like, real people and not cambions who relied on waitresses to provide most of their meals. He wasn’t a cook by any stretch of the imagination. He’d never stayed long enough in one place to justify learning that skill.
He lingered in front of the frozen food displays and stared into the fogged enclosure. Pizza, maybe? Fingers on the handle, he paused. No, pizza seemed lowbrow. He took a step back and pondered. But then again, Marion was a trucker. Maybe she expected such fare. He reached out again, and again froze.
The plan was to seduce her. He needed to impress her to do that. Would she be impressed by one of those frozen discs?
He grunted, and turned the cart around. He’d seen an employee somewhere—
Ah. The deli counter.
“What do you want, gorgeous?”
He raked a hand through his hair and shifted his weight. “Uh … If I—”
He took a step back from her to ease his aura away, and gritted his teeth. He held up one hand, bidding her to wait, while the images flitted through his head. There was a man in this store—in the storeroom. He’d been watching this woman for months and had grown fond of her. He’d yet to make a move, but they were a match. They just needed a push.
Groaning, he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms and relaxed his shoulders. He opened his eyes to see the woman giving him a patient, though bored, look. She probably dealt with all sorts of kooks in her line of work.
“I apologize. If I were going to make sandwiches …”
Both of her gray eyebrows inched upward.
“What I mean is, what’s good? If it was going to be for a date or a picnic?”
She pointed a gloved index finger toward the salami.
“And how much of it would …”
She shook her head and mumbled, “Men. All of you are the same. You need explicit instructions for everything, and even if you had them, you probably wouldn’t follow them. Why can’t you just see what’s there?”
That question didn’t seem directed to him, so he didn’t respond.
She sighed and grabbed a sheet of butcher paper. “You’re young and probably stupid, so I’ll get you sorted. Just two people?”
He nodded.
“How many meals?”
“Lunch and dinner.”
“Come back in ten minutes.”
“Right. Uh … thanks.” He let his gaze fall to her nametag. “Rosie.”
She grinned, but made a shooing gesture.
He wheeled his cart away. He meandered around a floral kiosk and admired the lilies and tulips. Women liked flowers, right? Or was that the last century’s fad? Marion didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would be endeared by such a thing, but would she be angry if he tried?
“Maybe I’ll say they’re for the house if she doesn’t seem interested …” He reached into the display and drew out the largest bundle of dark red tulips they had. Red because red wasn’t sweet. The feelings he had at the moment were anything but. They could never be anything besides passionate, because they were a fated pair. Besides, his mother had always bought red. Back then, she’d said it added a bit of ardor to the house where otherwise there would have been none. She’d stopped buying them, though, when she’d fallen in love. She hadn’t needed them anymore, because she and her husband had plenty of passion to spare.
After the flowers, he considered other things that would either thrill or offend Marion. Chocolates—those he left on their shelf. Champagne—he put that back, and opted for a bottle of wine he knew he wouldn’t be drinking himself. His father may have sobered him up, but staying sober was a battle he had to fight alone.
He even circled the shopping cart around the jewelry counter for a bit, before realizing he was getting way ahead of himself. The likely outcome to this situation would probably be a hard slap, and not Marion throwing herself into his open arms.
Maybe he could just tell her who he was to her—that she was his, and he was hers, and nothing would ever change that.
Yeah, right, she’d fall for that lickety-split. Sounded fucking cornball even to him.
He sighed and retreated to the deli counter where the employee held out two bags and handed him a ticket for the cashier.
“What’s all this?” he asked, rifling through the neat white packets and clear plastic tubs.
“Sandwich fixings, coleslaw, pickles, rolls, a rotisserie chicken, roasted potatoes, some dill green beans, and today’s cake special. Mocha-chocolate crunch.”
“Oh.” Sounded good, and he told her as much.
She nodded and dismissed him by resuming her previous wiping-down of the case.
He’d set the bags into his cart and started wheeling away, when he turned back to her. “Uh, Rosie?”
“Hmm? Need something else? Maybe some suggestions on where to take her to after you feed her?” She gave him a long blink.
Ah. She’d been waiting on that man to make a move.
“No, I’m good with suggestions, but since you helped me, I’d like to help you.”
“You going to go get me some coffee from the Coffee A-Go Go kiosk?”
That sparked his memory. There was no coffee to go in the p
ercolator at the house. Marion was a Morton, so she’d want coffee, and a lot of it.
He shook his head. “No, my dear. You know, you have quite a personality. I bet people are intimidated by you. I bet you like to take charge, and people expect it.”
She scoffed and flicked a dismissive hand in his general direction. “Never had a stranger psychoanalyze me across the meat counter before.”
“It’s not psychoanalysis, but …” He closed his eyes once more. He couldn’t always pluck a name out of the ether, but the man was so close, perhaps if he concentrated hard enough—
Ah, there it was.
When he opened his eyes, she was leaning against the counter with a look of concern on her face.
He didn’t blame her.
“George expects you to take charge. I think if you do, you’ll get what you’ve been hoping for.”
Her mouth fell open, but no words came out.
He turned the cart and scanned the aisle markers in search of coffee.
It’d have to be very, very good coffee. Marion deserved it. No, she deserved everything.
When he was a boy, his mother had told him when he found The One, he’d want to give her everything, including his own life. At the time, he’d thought that sounded insane. Who would give up his life and leave the woman he loved alone to fend for herself?
But his mother had understood the nature of love, because as a descendent of Anteros she was love embodied, in the same way Pop was lust.
He had given up his life. He’d started letting it go the moment he realized there was a woman out there for him. It would have been easier for him to just toe the line with Pop, but he didn’t want easy.
He wanted Marion.
• • •
When Charles returned home, loaded down with bags and a bouquet of flowers tucked under his arm, he expected to find the house quiet—for Marion to be napping. No, she was sitting at the kitchen table, cross-legged, with the little radio on the counter cranked up to that unholy rock and roll garbage Claude liked, and peering into an open book.
“Oh, let me help,” she said, unfolding her legs and readying herself to stand, but Charles grinned and shook his head.
