by eden Hudson
Tempie squirmed on Kathan’s lap while he talked. Apparently, he had a much easier time switching gears from sex to professionalism than she did. I tried not to look at her.
“How often does something like this happen?” I asked.
Kathan smiled humorlessly. “More often than you would think around here.”
“Because of Colt,” I said.
Kathan shifted Tempie off his lap.
“I know you’ve spent a lot of time with the Whitneys over the past week, Modesty—and yes, I know about your part in their attack on the Dark Mansion. I want you to understand that I don’t fault you for being sucked in by them. Harder-hearted, more experienced women than you have fallen for Tough’s act.”
“This isn’t about Tough,” I said. Which was a straight-up lie. Blowing up the barn and the foot soldiers’ barracks had been a distraction so Colt and I could get Tough out before Kathan staked him.
“Modesty, I know what happened,” Kathan said, his face a mask of concern. “Gossip travels fast in a town this size. What Tough did was in no way a reflection on you. It wasn’t because you weren’t good enough or beautiful enough. He would have cheated on you eventually no matter who you were. There isn’t a human or NP in existence who can give that boy enough love or attention to satisfy his narcissism. You were just a body to him.”
I bit my lips together. The nights at the bar came back to me. Watching Tough play, listening to the crowd screaming for him, seeing the way he transformed as soon as he stepped onto the stage. It was like he came alive just for that second.
But what about all the times I’d found Tough alone in his room, playing that beat-up acoustic guitar? Jax had said Tough did it to get away. He couldn’t leave physically, but he could when he was playing.
“You’re wrong,” I told Kathan.
“I wish I was.” He was giving me a look I’d seen way too much over the last few days—like he felt sorry for me for being so naive.
“And what about Colt?” I said. “Telling everyone he’s a racist, like some Human Rights terrorist—”
“Modesty, he hates an entire race. If you can supply me with another word that captures that, I’ll be happy to amend my statement.”
“Some words might be correct by definition, but in practice, they’re as false as any other word,” I stuttered. But the whole time I was grasping for my point, my brain was screaming, Idiot! You think he doesn’t know that? He’s been lying with the truth since pre-prehistory. He probably invented words.
Kathan smiled at me like a patient teacher with an exceptionally stupid student. “Even disregarding his hatred for my kind, Modesty, you can’t argue that Colt isn’t a danger to himself and those around him. Quite honestly, as close as you got to him, it’s a miracle you’re still alive.”
This time I kept my mouth shut. Just that morning I’d had Colt’s hand around my throat, the muzzle of a gun digging into my cheek. I could still see the slow turn of the gun from my head to his. I could hear him begging me to understand why he needed to kill himself. “Once she’s in, there’s no other way to get her out.”
“I’ve given Colt every opportunity,” Kathan said. “Tried to get him help. When they were in school, I tried desperately to get all of the orphans of the NP-Human Conflict into counseling, but none of the Whitney children would go. I felt—I still feel—partially responsible for Colt’s mental instability. Giving him to Mikal after he murdered her familiars was the kindest thing I could think to do. It was meant to be a quick end, a time of peace, a few days without having to fight the hell inside himself before death. And Mikal loved him in her own way, tried to protect him from himself. But we underestimated just how far gone he was. I can’t make that mistake again, Modesty. Mercy is no longer an option. Too many NPs and humans have suffered because of my lenience.”
“What about the last battle?” I asked. “You had the Witches’ Council authenticate the Whitney Death Prophecy, so you know once the last of the chosen soldiers of God visited death upon his brother, a holy champion would rise and the final battle for Earth would begin. Tough killed Colt to get him away from Mikal and Colt rose from the dead.”
Kathan waved dismissively and shook his head. “Prophecies tend to be either overwritten and vague or deceptively obvious. I won’t lie to you and tell you I don’t have an eye toward the last battle. Having Colt out of the way would serve my purposes in the short run, but you and Tempie are my true hope for victory.”
“Because we’re supposed to be the Destroyers,” I said.
“Destroyer,” Tempie said. “Singular, because it only works if we’re ‘bound as one.’ But not just the Destroyer—the Godkiller.”
“Godkiller,” I said. “What does that even mean?”
“What do you think it means, nerd?”
I slammed back against my seat. “Augh, you’re such a—”
“Girls.” Kathan didn’t shout, but his voice filled the backseat of the limo and shut us both up. He turned to me. “As joint-familiar with Temperance, some of my power will transfer to you. Bound as one, you will become the Destroyer—also called the Godkiller—and not only purge the earth of the squalor and evil mankind has wrought, but also have the ability to bring down the Creator Himself.”
I swallowed.
“But you can’t.” Not that I was a huge fan of the way God was running the world, but the idea of fighting Him…of killing Him… “It’s not possible to kill God.”
“Not for anyone else,” Kathan said. “But I can make it possible for you and Temperance. When I’m elevated to the level of commander, the two of you will experience a power like no human has ever experienced before. You will finally be able to right all the wrongs done to you—all the wrongs done in this world.”
Ryder
A dead guy, his lunatic brother, and half a dozen fallen angel foot soldiers armed with automatic rifles run into each other in the woods. What’s the punchline?
“COLT WHITNEY, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR THE TERRORIST ATTACK ON THE DARK MANSION,” Rian drawled over the loudspeaker. “DROP THE SWORD, GET ON YOUR KNEES, AND PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD.”
It was a cute fantasy. I bet having the cabin between him and Colt made Rian think it was even halfway plausible.
On this side of the cabin, though, shit was tense. Colt didn’t move. The foot soldiers didn’t move. The light from Mikal’s flaming sword flickered. Everyone’s breathing was the loudest sound in the clearing.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. Slowly. “Don’t do anything stupid, Sunshine.”
“IF YOU REFUSE TO GO PEACEFULLY—”
Colt lunged at the closest foot soldier.
Every rifle went off at the same time.
If I was still alive, I would’ve hit the dirt. As it was, I just yelped. You know, in a manly way.
The biggest reason you never carry a rifle when a handgun will do the job is that rifles are too damn inconvenient. To shoot something with a rifle, you have to have a minimum of a barrel-length between you and your target. So, it was the right move, Colt closing the distance, making this a hand-to-hand affair rather than bringing a sword to a rifle fight. I probably wouldn’t have done it if I was the one breathing and Colt was the dead one, but I could still recognize that it was the right move.
But what was I going to do, just stand there watching? It wasn’t like I could die again. And I had been—
Imagined, a voice whispered in the back of my brain. Made up. Fabricated.
—sent to protect my little brother long enough to get the last battle won. That was the whole reason I was there.
“All right! Fine!” I clicked my tongue at Colt to let him know I was there.
He clicked back. Just like riding a bike.
I started whaling on the foot soldiers closest to me. Broke one’s nose. Knocked down another one’s rifle before he shot Colt.
I was managing to kick some serious angel ass, but they weren’t paying any attention to me. Maybe be
cause—
You’re not really there.
—every single eye was on the Sword of Judgment in Colt’s hand. One cut from that thing and they’d be warming their tail feathers in the Lake of Fire next to Mikal. They tried to stay just outside the sword’s reach and shoot at him at the same time. They were fast, experienced, and intelligent.
But Colt was crazy.
I loved fighting. Always had. Chalk it up to Short Man Syndrome if you have to, but I would fight any asshole of any size on any day or night of the week. But the way I fought and the thing Colt did weren’t the same kind of thing. Colt didn’t fight for fun. He didn’t fight because he liked it. He fought because he was it.
Colt disappeared into fights. Not like so you’d lose track of him, but more like he wasn’t Colt anymore, wasn’t human or my brother or anybody. He was just a sword or a gun or fists—or, hell, once just a pen. I’d seen him get shot during battles and not notice it until way later. And after the war, a couple times when guns deals went wrong. During one attempted fuck-over by a pack of coyotes—the last fucking time we sold guns to coyotes, by the way—Colt got stabbed. Tough and I had to drag him away from the fight and leave all our shit behind to get stolen because Colt was losing too much blood. When we got him back to the cabin, he snapped out of it. He hadn’t even realized he’d got cut.
Tough had thought that was really awesome because Tough was an idiot with a hero-worship problem. He didn’t understand that our brother was a weapon of mass destruction that just fucking detonated sometimes. That wasn’t cool, it was terrifying. Especially when you took into account that none of us, not even Sissy, knew how to snap Colt out of it when he went off.
Of course, it came in handy every once in a great while. Like when you were trapped in the woods with a death squad of fallen angel foot soldiers.
Colt kicked and slashed and hacked. As soon as a rifle got a bead on him, he went for the winged asshole aiming it. The foot soldiers tried to get just enough distance between themselves and him to shoot him without punching their own one-way ticket to Hell. I knocked them back at him and disrupted their shots when I could.
Then we pulled a play worthy of being right back in the middle of the war.
Colt lunged at a foot soldier. The soldier tripped back toward me. Colt spun around to hold off a double-team. I slammed my elbow into the back of the foot soldier’s skull, then kicked him back toward Colt. Clicked my tongue. Colt dropped and rolled away from the double-team. He came up swinging the sword. It sliced home, right into the foot soldier’s thigh.
“Fuck yeah!” I hollered. It was beautiful. Just fucking beautiful. If we’d had the Sword of Judgment during the war, we would’ve won.
A burning wind whipped through the trees. The leaves curled up and crackled. The woods turned a creepy green, one shade sicker than that color the sky turns just before a tornado hits.
I stopped grinning like a dumbass and took a couple steps back.
“No.” The foot soldier dropped his rifle. He grabbed for one of his buddies, catching a handful of tar-covered feathers and not much more. “Don’t let them. Help. Help me! Please!”
Then the wailing kicked up. Endless, throatless screams that were even worse than that greenish light, coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. If I’d still been alive, I probably would’ve pissed myself hearing that.
Colt had gone still, staring off into nothing. But the foot soldiers were too busy trying to put some distance between themselves and their doomed buddy to take advantage of the perfect target.
“Don’t let them!” the doomed foot soldier screamed. In the greenish light and the flickering orange from the Sword of Judgment, you could see tears rolling down his face.
As somebody who had seen Them before, in passing, I couldn’t say as I blamed the guy for crying. I didn’t particularly want to see Them again either, and I wasn’t even the one getting dragged to Hell.
“Come on, Sunshine.” I grabbed Colt’s arm and pulled him away while everybody else was too scared to think. “Let’s get out of here before shit gets real.”
Tiffani
Once I made it back to the bakery, I went to the kitchen and mixed the dough for lobster tail pastries. I didn’t open for another six hours, but I’d already fed and I almost never slept. I had to do something.
Victoria, the vamp who made me, used to say that I was an insomniac because my soul wanted to be alive so badly that it wouldn’t let me sleep. But Vic had had a romantic way of looking at everything, even the burgeoning alcoholism she’d made me kick before she would turn me. The truth is when you get made, the way you die is the way you stay. Your skin tightens a little from the lost fluids and the vamp venom evens out your skin tone, but your hair and fingernails never grow again. Every illness or broken bone you have at the moment of death is yours for the duration of your undeath.
I died a chronic insomniac. Getting made had preserved that.
Times like tonight made me hate my insomnia. Staying awake around the clock saved me a fortune in legal fees—vamps are legally dead when they sleep, so unless you have a recurring daily freeze on your assets your inheritors could take over your estate while you “slept”—and it allowed me to keep the bakery open all day, but it also gave me twenty-four hours of focused dwelling time.
My standby distraction was baking. It had been my mother’s, too. Used to be when I came home from school, I could tell exactly how things between her and my father were going as soon as I walked in the door. If I smelled roast or casserole, everything was as it should be. Cookies? Tread lightly. Fresh baked bread, pastries, or starters? Wait in your room.
After I finished shaping the lobster tails, I added the cream puff filling, and threw them in the oven. Then I started a batch of scones. Strawberries and cream since they were the hardest not to overcook. I threw the ingredients together, slammed the bowl under the mixer, and dropped the arm. The paddle churned the dough.
Damn it all. I rubbed my eyes. I needed a cigarette. But I could smell the lobster tails getting close. They might go over if I didn’t stick around.
“What the hell.” I fished my hard pack out of my khakis and lit up. “It’s my bakery.” I could smoke inside if I wanted to. Colt was the only human I knew who would’ve given me the business about the smell soaking into the food.
I flipped the mixer off and pinched the cigarette between my lips while I scraped the paddle clean.
The vamp connection with Mitzi opened.
This Tough sleeping at night thing is really inconvenient, she said. I want to go to the carnival! Everybody’s going to be having fun riding rides but me. I wish he had turned into an insomniac like you.
I shrugged and blew smoke at the ceiling from the corner of my mouth. Maybe if Vic hadn’t been staked back in ‘79, she would’ve said that Tough’s soul wanted to be dead so badly that it wouldn’t let him stay awake.
Gloomy, gloomy Tiffani, Mitzi said.
What happened to putting Tough down for Jason? I asked.
Definitely at some point. She let me see her fantasy of plunging the stake into Tough’s chest as he came. It was one she’d shown me a few times before when she was having sex with him. I always wanted to do that when he was alive, just to see what would happen to a human. But for now he’s enough fun to keep me busy. Or he would be if he would wake the hell up.
I spread some flour on the island and scooped the dough onto it. Stopped to flick my cigarette butt into the slop sink and find my rolling pin.
Mitzi’s giggle danced across the connection. Did you know I’m his revenge-fuck? It’s so pathetic.
Did you want something?
What’s the matter, Tiffani? Can’t stand that I’m getting some and you’re all alone, all over again? What happened with Saint Lover-boy? Are you too white bread for him now? Does he want someone with a little more kink?
She was trying to get a reaction, but when it came to Mitzi, shutting off the anger and pain was easy. Only two peop
le in eighty-five years had been able to affect me the way she was trying to and she wasn’t either one of them.
I could show you a thing or two if you wanted, Mitzi said, pushing a little harder. If your little saint is anything like his brother, I’ve got some moves that’ll drive him crazy.
I’m an old dog. I stopped rolling out the dough and grabbed the pizza cutter. It’s too late to teach me new tricks.
Is it the heat thing? Mitzi asked. Mikal’s an awfully hot act to follow. You can’t blame a guy for not wanting to freeze his dick off in your ice-cold snatch.
I let her feel me shrug, then I began cutting the dough into triangles. With scones, the trick is getting them all the exact same size so they cook evenly.
You’re the worst, Mitzi pouted.
Got customers coming in a couple hours, I told her. At least twice as many as usual, with the Armistice Celebration. I need to get this place ready to open.
Mitzi gave me a disgusted sigh, then closed the connection.
As soon as she was gone, I threw the pizza cutter at the wall. Paint chipped, cinder block cracked, and the wheel snapped off the handle.
I scrubbed my hands across my face. Then I went to the magnet strip and pulled down the ulu. The rest of that dough wasn’t going to cut itself.
Desty
As we turned down the lane to the Dark Mansion, I fought the urge to look out the window. My nerves were already shot. I didn’t need to watch a demonic cathedral’s Hell windows crawling in the moonlight. I focused on my boots. They were boring, beat-up, safe. And was that a little sand on the sole? Fascinating.
Flickering red and orange light started bouncing around the interior of the limo like a burning disco ball.
I couldn’t help it. I scooted closer to the window and looked.
The dilapidated barn at the edge of the parking lot was just a pile of burning boards. A twisted, blackened cow panel stood next to the blaze, clinging onto a cheerfully burning hedge post.
“Hedge,” Dad used to say when he was fixing fence. “Built to last.”
