Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series

by Holley Trent

  She shook her head. “You abandoned him?”

  He opened his mouth to tell her that he didn’t know about him until recently, but even when he had found out, he hadn’t been in a big hurry to seek him out. Hell, Ross had known about him and had willfully avoided him the same way. As far as Ross was concerned, Charles was just a contributor of genetic material—the same way Charles felt about Pop. He wasn’t a father, for fuck’s sake.

  But now, he could see how that thought would frighten Marion. She’d think he’d abandon Ruby the same way. But, he couldn’t.

  “I was no father to him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “And he’s dangerous? He’s one of the people I have to watch out for? Will he hurt Ruby?” She took motivated steps toward Mother, but Mother held up one hand, and Clarissa held Marion back by the elbow.

  “Please let me hold her while I can,” Mother said. “The veil will rarely be so thin that I can be pulled through such as now. Even now it’s difficult.” She indicated Claude, who now had squatted and pressed his head between his knees as if he felt the need to vomit.

  Marion brushed her grandmother’s hand down gently and turned to Charles. “Well, will he, Charles? Is that the thing you’ve been keeping from me? You said it would make sense later. That doesn’t make sense!”

  “Marion, he would take her if he could. Right now, we’re hiding him. Keeping him away from Pop so he doesn’t share what he knows.”

  “Ross is … different,” Mother said, and she’d leaned forward for a better view of Marion.

  Ruby had opened her eyes and now had the fingers of her little hand wrapped around Mother’s index finger.

  “He’s harder to hold captive. The tricks you use to keep Gulielmus out won’t necessarily keep Ross out, because in spite of the way he behaves, Ross is mostly human.”

  “He’s an animal,” Claude growled out, and he lifted his head as if it were a two-ton brick. His eyes were glazed, glowing red again.

  “He’s your nephew,” Mother said.

  “And I should have killed him the first time I encountered him.”

  Marion gasped and spun toward Claude. “You’d kill your own flesh and blood? Just like that? I can’t believe I trusted you, too.”

  With what seemed like great effort, Claude nodded. “You don’t mean that. You know better. Your gut’s better than that, so stop discounting what it’s telling you. He’s bad, cheri. He doesn’t fight it. He likes what he is, and he’ll kill you and laugh about it. I see Papa in him. He’s cold. Has no conscience.”

  “And how many souls have you hand-delivered to Hell, huh? Your conscience is so clean that you can be so cavalier? You’d kill Ruby, too, I bet.”

  Claude snorted, and Mother flickered.

  “Hold it together!” she said in a desperate voice.

  Mother inclined her head toward Marion. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this, but I’m sure Charles has already told you. You’re his. He’s yours. You’re a match designed from the time you were conceived, Marion. I’m sorry for who his father is. I really am, but I love my son just like you love your daughter, even though you’re so scared she might go bad. You love her in spite of it, just like I love Charles and I love Ross, too.”

  “You love everyone,” Charles whispered.

  She laughed. “Almost everyone. Changed my mind about that one particular fool the day he kindly directed me to the Elysian Fields.”

  “You think that’s funny?”

  “I knew the rules, Charles. It was different for me than with the others. The deal was different. I was only safe for as long as I didn’t refuse him. I didn’t love him, not the way he wanted, so I refused him after that first time. He waited until you were grown to follow through on that threat, through. He’s really good at psychological terrorism.” She laughed again, and this time when she flickered, her eyes widened and Claude forced himself to stand. He extended his arms and took Ruby from the disappearing visitor.

  Charles looked at Marion, and found the color in her face had fled.

  He wrapped his arms around whatever he could grab of his mother.

  She nuzzled his cheek, kissed him on the forehead, and said to Marion, “Trust him, Marion. We all make mistakes. I made my share. You can keep him good.”

  And then she was gone.

  Marion’s pallid face bore a startled expression as Claude’s labored breathing filled the air.

  Charles stepped between Marion and Claude, looked from one to the other, and settled Ruby into her mother’s arms.

  Claude said, “Cheri, I know you ain’t got no reason to believe us, but think on this. You’re not the only one who’s had it rough. I had a true love, too, and Papa killed her in her fucking sleep when I stopped doing my job. Nothing is black and white. You don’t know all the history, so before you judge us, think about what was going through our heads when we made the decisions we did. We needed rescuing, too, and maybe we’re not all there yet.”

  He ambled shakily toward the main house.

  Marion wouldn’t meet Charles’s gaze. She looked at Ruby, then at the spot of grass where Mother had been, and then tears tracked down her cheeks.

  He’d never seen her cry, and seeing it now broke his heart. Was there an easier way to introduce her to this chaos that was his life? He wished there were, but he’d committed a lot of sins in a hundred and twenty-four years, and was ashamed of every one of them. The Fates said she was stuck with him anyway. Sometimes he regretted that for her.

  She turned, and saying nothing, walked toward her little house, shoulders quaking from her sobs.

  Clarissa’s brief shake of her head confirmed what Charles already knew. Marion wouldn’t want to talk, so for now, he let her go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Charles had ignored enough of Pop’s summonses in the past several weeks that he could feel the demon’s anger. Generally, that erratic telepathic link between demon father and cambion son was cut off. They both had their own mental shields they kept up to block the other from their thoughts, but this time, Pop was so angry he didn’t even try to conceal it.

  Well, Charles was plenty angry himself. So angry, in fact, that he was in just the kind of mood to have that long-awaited clash with his father.

  What was Pop going to do? Kill him? Well, if that was his plan, he’d have to work hard at it. While in the past, Charles may have sought the easy way out—death by whosoever’s hands would gift him with it—now, there were people depending on him. Real people, including one tiny one with a heartrending cry, and no teeth. If he went, sure, Marion and Ruby would be taken care of. They’d have his money, his assets, but they wouldn’t have him. He understood fully now why his mother had said no to Pop that second time. Although she loved her son, she hadn’t loved his father. Like Charles, she was a purveyor of true love—requited love—and when she found it for herself, nothing would keep her from it. Not even an incubus with an ego the size of a planet.

  That incubus wasn’t going to keep Charles from love, either. He may have been conceived to shun such human trappings, but his mother’s will was obviously stronger than his father’s. Maybe it had taken a hundred years for the battle to come to a head, but finally, love won out.

  Charles jammed his Bowie knife into the gut of the demon scout that had been tracking him all over Eastern North Carolina for the past week, and let it bleed out.

  Charles eased back a bit and watched the ugly lizard-cat hybrid drain into the earth. He’d let the thing find him, and had led it in a circuitous maze for the past three days just to confuse and infuriate his father. He’d weaved in and out of places demons could not be—holy places—but for some reason Charles could, and finally led it to this swampy bit of woodland near the Croatan National Forest.

  Pop materialized in front of him, his aura crackling red and face an angry, ugly mask.

  He’d never seen his father so furious, and his features twisted and disfigured with his rage. “Where’s Ross?” he thu
ndered.

  Charles stabbed the knife into the soft Earth and brushed his hands clean on his blue jeans. He met his father’s angry blue stare with impunity. Maybe he couldn’t rid himself of everything that made him half-demon the way John had, but recently, something in him had broken for the better. Pop had chosen to go bad, so why couldn’t Charles do the opposite? He had his mother’s magic after all. Wasn’t that what had made his conscience so guilty for the past century? The two halves of him couldn’t form a complete whole because they didn’t fit together any better than Pop and Mother had. He was lust. She was love. They were two people battling the nature of the other, but Charles was one man carrying that raging war within.

  He’d have to use his mother’s magic to suppress one side once and for all. He’d already started.

  “Ross is being taken care of,” he said. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and matched his father’s unblinking stare.

  Pop’s nostrils flared. “In what way?”

  “In the way fathers take care of their sons sometimes. I’m preventing the brat from hurting himself and others.”

  “What care do you have about hurting people?” Pop asked, and he eased in so close his nose was inches from Charles’s. “Don’t forget what you are.”

  “A pawn?” Hands free from his pockets, he gave Pop a shove backward. The demon had to be close to four hundred pounds, but Charles had just enough strength to push him away from him a couple of feet.

  “Good little soldier?” He scoffed. “No way. You came to me at the worst possible time in my life. I was already doubting everything, and you just swooped in and helped my corruption along. I guess I can’t even fault you for it, because that’s what you do. You prey on weaknesses and search out vulnerabilities.”

  “What is this change in you?” Pop bellowed. “I offered you unbelievable power for continuing to do what you were capably doing for a hundred years, and this is how you repay me?”

  “Repay you?” That made Charles chuckle. “That’s a wildly hilarious consideration. Fathers are supposed to give things to their children because they want to, and not because they’re looking for a future payout. But you’re not a father. You’re a supernatural sperm donor. Goddamned shame, too. I should ask what broke in you all those millennia ago that made you turn from being so pure, and so good, to what you are now. I think you have some daddy issues of your own.”

  Pop lunged at him, teeth bared, and Charles stepped aside with a sigh. “You’re not really trying that hard, and I guess I don’t blame you. Even when my head’s in a bad place, I wouldn’t do anything to intentionally harm my daughter, or Ross, even being what he is.”

  “Your daughter?” Pop spat.

  “Yep.” Charles eased his phone out of his back pocket and queued up the photo slideshow. He held the device out to Pop, who snatched it.

  “Isn’t she a beauty? She looks like Mother and Marion.” He added in a whisper, “And she’s a null, Pop. Not a lick of power. Claude saw to it.”

  Pop flinched, but said nothing for a long while. He just kept scrolling as if he couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him—this surely was some sort of joke.

  “Not a joke,” Charles said, and he made no motion to take the phone back. “That name is familiar to you, isn’t it? Marion? There’s an APB out on her and the rest of the Mortons and Thomases, one which I’m sure your bosses could withdraw if you put your weight against it. Maybe you should withdraw it anyway. You haven’t noticed yet that some of the children you’ve had waiting in the wings to train up have gone missing. I know you’ve been busy.” He grinned and hoped it was sufficiently predatory. “I’m going to keep pulling them away from you, one by one until you have no one left to recruit. It’s in your best interest to call your peers off.”

  “I’ll do no such thing.” Pop tossed the phone back, and Charles caught it handily.

  “I didn’t think you would. But let me tell you something. I may be a softer, gentler Charles, but if you go near my family with even a hint of malice in that black heart of yours, I will let Clarissa kill you. You know how badly she wants to.”

  “Maybe I’ll kill you.”

  Charles shrugged. “I know you’re capable. You killed my mother for lesser reasons, right? Wasn’t it funny how that worked? She was your one great love, but you weren’t hers.”

  The ground shook beneath them and Charles took a step back, laughing.

  “Demons can’t have true loves, can they? Not when they’re not willing to give things up. Well, unlike you, I’m so willing.” He took two big steps back as a huge glowing sword formed in Pop’s grip.

  Charles knew what it was even without having seen it before. That was the sword that had ended his mother’s life.

  “You were an angel,” Charles said as Pop’s grip tightened around the scabbard and his aura flashed blood red.

  “Ego made you fall from grace, and fuck if I’m going to let you drag me down with you.”

  Right as Pop lifted his blade and lunged, John appeared at Charles’s side and grabbed his brother’s arm.

  Before he could whisk him home to Clarissa’s, Charles said to Pop, “It’s only going to get harder for you from here on out. We will fight you, and we’re not human. You know it won’t be an easy fight.”

  Pop’s sword sluiced the air beside Charles’s ear, but John had already started pulling them out.

  Pop had showed his hand. He’d missed.

  He wasn’t the kind of demon who’d miss.

  • • •

  Momma stepped through the back door into the kitchen carrying two bulky canvas totes. Groceries again.

  She paused, looked from Marion, nursing Ruby, to Julia, who bounced a second baby bundle in her arms.

  “Where’d that baby come from?”

  Ariel giggled behind her coffee mug. “Sometimes, when two people love each other very much—”

  Momma groaned and thrust the bags onto the counter. “Oh, you know what I meant! Whose child is it?”

  Julia and Ariel shared a look.

  She propped her fists on her hips and narrowed her eyes. “Whose child is it?”

  Julia sighed. “I just popped into the hospital to take a look, and I couldn’t just leave him there.”

  “You stole a baby?” Momma shrieked, striding toward the table with panic written all over her face.

  “Big Daddy G’s baby,” Ariel said with a snicker. “Apparently he freed his baby momma of her trance, and she high-tailed it out there as soon as she could put a pair a pants on.”

  “She abandoned him. He’s just like a little birdie who fell from his nest,” Julia said, pouting. “He’s my brother. I couldn’t leave him.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Momma said, and she shook her head. “We can’t keep that child. I got enough Hell raining down on me as it is.”

  “But look at him. He’s so defenseless.” Julia extended the baby toward Momma and Momma planted her fists on her hips, staring at her sort-of granddaughter-in-law.

  “You may not have thought this through, because your wolf husband is really going to be howling if you take that kid home with you.”

  Julia shrugged. “Probably.”

  Marion chuckled, and then jolted when a hand alighted on her shoulder. She turned to see a tired-looking Charles peering down at her, and John striding across the kitchen toward the coffee maker.

  She registered his touch, heard his mental whisper of sweetheart, and then remembered what Irene and Claude had said. Irene had said trust him, and to help him be good. Claude had said to stop discounting her gut.

  Her gut said Charles was doing the best he could under the circumstances.

  Weren’t they all?

  Charles moved away, following John toward the coffee.

  “Where have you two been?” Ariel asked.

  Julia was still engaging Momma to take the baby, who apparently didn’t even have a name.

  Good luck.

  John handed Charles a full mug and rol
led tense shoulders back in circles. “Dealing with Gulielmus. He’s in a righteous rage, but I think he’ll steer clear for a while.”

  “He needs to come get this baby!” Momma said, pointing as if they all didn’t know what baby she was referring to.

  John walked over to the child and stared down at him. “Is he juiced?”

  “Don’t know,” Julia said. “We’ll have to ask Claude.”

  “Haven’t seen Claude since the night Irene was here. I think he went to go recover from the ordeal, though I don’t know where. Maybe he’s at his cabin. I’ll pop over there later and see if he needs anything.”

  John, Julia, Momma, and Ariel continued their chatter in the background while Charles walked toward Marion.

  Instinctively, she held out Ruby.

  He set down his mug and took her, nuzzling his nose against her downy hair. He murmured something to her and carried her toward the back door.

  Marion followed.

  They walked in a companionable silence past the Thomases’ temporary mobile home and down the path to Marion’s cozy bungalow. She’d barely moved in, and it still had the new-house smell. She’d had the keys for less than a week.

  He stepped up onto the porch and waited as she pulled the screen door open.

  He sat on the comfortable sofa he’d picked out himself, and suddenly, Marion realized that all the items he’d purchased for her little house had actual personalities in a way his Coeur d’Alene house did not. At first, she’d thought he’d bought items that he thought she’d like, but now it seemed more likely that he picked what he liked—and she just happened to like it, too.

  He settled Ruby in the crease between his legs and patted the unoccupied sofa cushion beside him.

  She sat.

  “It’s been a crazy year, huh?” she said when he didn’t seem to be forthcoming with words. He just jiggled his knees slightly, and Ruby’s heavy eyelids drifted downward.

  “It’ll certainly be one I won’t forget. I guess that’s not saying much, though, given most of my life was wasted in a drunken stupor.”

  She gave his resting left hand a dismissive flick. “Momma says you’ve been holding out on me again.”